"I lie simmering over things for an hour or so before I get up-and there's the time I am dressing to overhaul my half-sleeping, half-waking projet de chapitre-and when I get the paper before me, it commonly runs off pretty easily. Besides, I often take a dose in the plantations, and while Tom marks out a dyke or a drain as I have directed, one's fancy may be running its ain riggs in some other world." It was in the month following that I first saw Abbotsford. He invited my friend John Wilson (now Professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh) and myself to visit him for a day or two on our return from an excursion to Mr Wilson's beautiful villa on Windermere, but named the particular day (October 8th) on which it would be most convenient for him to receive us; and we discovered on our arrival, that he had fixed it from a good-natured motive. We found him walking at no great distance from the house, with five or six young people, and his friends Lord Melville and Adam Fergusson. Having presented us to the first Lord of the Admiralty, he fell back a little and said, "I am glad you came to-day, for I thought it might be of use to you both, some time or other, to be known to my old school-fellow here, who is, and I hope will long continue to be, the great giver of good things in the Parliament House. I trust you have had enough of certain pranks with your friend Ebony, and if so, Lord Melville will have too much sense to remember them." We then walked round a plantation called the Thicket, and came back to the house by a formidable work which he was constructing for the defence of his haugh against the wintry violences of the Tweed; and he discoursed for some time with keen interest upon the comparative merits of different 1 Ebony was Mr Blackwood's own usual designation in the jeux d'esprit of his young Magazine, in many of which the persons thus addressed by Scott were conjoint culprits. They both were then, as may be inferred, sweeping the boards of the Parliament House as "briefless barristers." methods of embankment, but stopped now and then to give us the advantage of any point of view in which his new building on the eminence above pleased his eye. It had a fantastic appearance-being but a fragment of the existing edifice—and not at all harmonizing in its outline with the original tenement to the eastward. Scott, however, expatiated con amore on the rapidity with which, being chiefly of darkish granite, it was assuming a "timehonoured" aspect. Fergusson, with a grave and respectful look observed, "Yes, it really has much the air of some old fastness hard by the river Jordan." This allusion to a so-called Chaldee MS., in the manufacture of which Fergusson fancied Wilson and myself to have had a share, gave rise to a burst of laughter among Scott's merry young folks, while he himself drew in his nether lip and rebuked the Captain with "Toots, Adam! Toots, Adam!" He then returned to his embankment, and described how a former one had been entirely swept away in one night's flood. But the Captain was ready with another verse of the Oriental MS., and groaned out by way of echo-" Verily my fine gold hath perished!" Whereupon the "Great Magician" elevated his huge oaken staff as if to lay it on the waggish soldier's back-but flourished it gaily over his own head, and laughed louder than the youngest of the company. As we walked and talked, the Pepper and Mustard terriers kept snuffing about among the bushes and heather near us, and started every five minutes a hare, which scudded away before them and the ponderous stag-hound Maida—the Sheriff and all his tail hollowing and cheering in perfect confidence that the dogs could do no more harm to poor puss than the venerable tom-cat, Hinse of Hinsfeldt, who pursued the vain chase with the rest. At length we drew near Peterhouse, and found sober Peter himself, and his brother-in-law the facetious factotum 1 See Blackwood for October 1817. Tom Purdie, superintending, pipe in mouth, three or four sturdy labourers busy in laying down the turf for a bowling-green. "I have planted hollies all round it, you see,” said Scott," and laid out an arbour on the right-hand side for the laird; and here I mean to have a game at bowls after dinner every day in fine weather-for I take that to have been among the indispensables of our old vie de chateau." But I must not forget the reason he gave me some time afterwards for having fixed on that spot for his bowling-green. "In truth," he then said, "I wished to have a smooth walk and a canny seat for myself within ear-shot of Peter's evening psalm." The coachman was a devout Presbyterian, and many a time have I in after years accompanied Scott on his evening stroll, when the principal object was to enjoy, from the bowling-green, the unfailing melody of this good man's family-worship—and heard him repeat, as Peter's manly voice led the humble choir within, that beautiful stanza of Burns's Saturday Night : 66 : They chant their artless notes in simple guise; It was near the dinner-hour before we reached the house, and presently I saw assembled a larger company than I should have fancied to be at all compatible with the existing accommodations of the place; but it turned out that Adam Fergusson, and the friends whom I have not as yet mentioned, were to find quarters elsewhere for the night. His younger brother, Captain John Fergusson of the Royal Navy (a favourite lieutenant of Lord Nelson's), had come over from Huntly Burn; there were present also, Mr Scott of Gala, whose residence is within an easy distance; Sir Henry Hay Macdougal of Mackerston, an old baronet, with gay, lively, and highly polished manners, related in the same degree to both Gala and the Sheriff; Sir Alexander Don, the member for Roxburghshire, whose elegant social qualities had been alluded to in a preceding chapter; and Dr Scott of Darnlee, a modest and intelligent gentleman, who, having realized a fortune in the East India Company's medical service, had settled within two or three miles of Abbotsford, and, though no longer practising his profession, had kindly employed all the resources of his skill in the endeavour to counteract his neighbour's recent liability to attacks of cramp. Our host and one or two others appeared, as was in those days a common fashion with country gentlemen, in the lieutenancy uniform of their county. How fourteen or fifteen people contrived to be seated in the then dining-room of Abbotsford I know not-for it seemed quite full enough when it contained only eight or ten; but so it was--nor, as Sir Harry Macdougal's fat valet, warned by former experience, did not join the train of attendants, was there any perceptible difficulty in the detail of the arrangements. Everything about the dinner was, as the phrase runs, in excellent style; and in particular the potage à la Meg Merrilees, announced as an attempt to imitate a device of the Duke of Buccleuch's celebrated cook-by name Monsieur Florence-seemed, to those at least who were better acquainted with the Kaim of Derncleugh than with the cuisine of Bowhill,1 a very laudable specimen of the art. The champaign circulated nimbly—and I never was present at a gayer dinner. It had advanced a little beyond the soup when it received an accompaniment which would not, perhaps, have improved the satisfaction of southern guests, had any such been present. A tall and stalwart bagpiper, in complete Highland costume, appeared pacing to and fro on the green before the house, and the window being open, it seemed as if he might as well have been straining his lungs within the parlour. At a pause of his strenuous performance, Scott took occasion to explain, that John of Skye was a recent acquisition to the rising hamlet of Abbotstown; that the man was a capital hedger and I understand that this now celebrated soup was extemporized by M. Florence on Scott's first visit to Bowhill after the publication of Guy Mannering. ditcher, and only figured with the pipe and philabeg on high occasions in the after part of the day; "but indeed," he added, laughing, "I fear John will soon be discovering that the hook and mattock are unfavourable to his chanter hand." When the cloth was drawn, and the never-failing salver of quaighs introduced, John Bruce, upon some wellknown signal, entered the room, but en militaire, without removing his bonnet, and taking his station behind the landlord, received from his hand the largest of the Celtic bickers brimful of Glenlivet. The man saluted the company in his own dialect, tipped off the contents (probably a quarter of an English pint of raw aquavitæ) at a gulp, wheeled about as solemnly as if the whole ceremony had been a movement on parade, and forthwith recommenced his pibrochs and gatherings, which continued until long after the ladies had left the table, and the autumnal moon was streaming in upon us so brightly as to dim the candles. I had never before seen Scott in such buoyant spirits as he shewed this evening-and I never saw him in higher afterwards; and no wonder, for this was the first time that he, Lord Melville, and Adam Fergusson, daily companions at the High School of Edinburgh, and partners in many joyous scenes of the early volunteer period, had met since the commencement of what I may call the serious part of any of their lives. The great poet and novelist was receiving them under his own roof, when his fame was at its acmé, and his fortune seemed culminating to about a corresponding height-and the generous exuberance of his hilarity might have overflowed without moving the spleen of a Cynic. Old stories of the Yards and the Crosscauseway were relieved by sketches of real warfare, such as none but Fergusson (or Charles Mathews, had he been a soldier), could ever have given; and they toasted the memory of Greenbreeks and the health of the Beau with equal devotion. When we rose from table, Scott proposed that we should |