hare-soup, hotchpotch, and cockeyleekie, extended down the centre, and such light articles as geese, turkeys, entire sucking-pigs, a singed sheep's head, and the unfailing haggis, were set forth by way of side-dishes. Blackcock and moorfowl, bushels of snipe, black puddings, white puddings, and pyramids of pancakes, formed the second course. Ale was the favourite beverage during dinner, but there was plenty of port and sherry for those whose stomachs they suited. The quaighs of Glenlivet were filled brimful, and tossed off as if they held water. The wine decanters made a few rounds of the table, but the hints for hot punch and toddy soon became clamorous. Two or three bowls were introduced, and placed under the supervision of experienced manufacturers—one of these being usually the Ettrick Shepherd, and then the business of the evening commenced in good earnest. The faces shone and glowed like those at Camacho's wedding: the chairman told his richest stories of old rural life, Lowland or Highland; Fergusson and humbler heroes fought their peninsular battles o'er again; the stalwart Dandie Dinmonts lugged out their last winter's snow-storm, the parish scandal, perhaps, or the dexterous bargain of the Northumberland tryste ; and every man was knocked down for the song that he sung best, or took most pleasure in singing. Sheriff-substitute Shortreed -(a cheerful hearty little man, with a sparkling eye and a most infec

tious laugh)-gave us Dick o' the Cow, or Now Liddesdale has ridden a raid; his son Thomas (Sir Walter's assiduous disciple and assistant in Border Heraldry and Genealogy) shone without a rival in The Douglas Tragedy and The Twa Corbies; a weatherbeaten, stiff-bearded veteran, Captain Ormistoun, as he was called (though I doubt if his rank was recognised at the Horse-Guards), had the primitive pastoral of Cowdenknowes in sweet perfection; Hogg produced The Women folk, or The Kye comes hame; and, in spite of many grinding notes, contrived to make everybody delighted, whether with the fun or the pathos of his ballad; the Melrose doctor sang in spirited style some of Moore's masterpieces; a couple of retired sailors joined in Bould Admiral Duncan upon the high sea;· - and the gallant croupier crowned the last bowl with Ale, good ale, thou art my darling! Imagine some smart Parisian savant- some dreamy pedant of Halle or Heidelberg a brace of stray young Lords from Oxford or Cambridge, or perhaps their prim college tutors, planted here and there amidst these rustic wassailers—this being their first vision of the author of Marmion and Ivanhoe, and he appearing as heartily at home in the scene as if he had been a veritable Dandie himself-his face radiant, his laugh gay as childhood, his chorus always ready. And so it proceeded until some worthy, who had fifteen or twenty miles to ride home, began to insinuate that

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his wife and bairns would be getting sorely anxious about the fords, and the Dumples and Hoddins were at last heard neighing at the gate, and it was voted that the hour had come for doch an dorrach—the stirrup-cup-to wit, a bumper all round of the unmitigated mountain dew. How they all contrived to get home in safety Heaven only knows—but I never heard of any serious accident except upon one occasion, when James Hogg made a bet at starting that he would leap over his wall-eyed pony as she stood, and broke his nose in this experiment of "o'ervaulting ambition." One comely goodwife, far off among the hills, amused Sir Walter by telling him, the next time he passed her homestead after one of these jolly doings, what her husband's first words were when he alighted at his own door-" Ailie, my woman, I'm ready for my bed-and oh lass (he gallantly added), I wish I could sleep for a towmont, for there's only ae thing in this warld worth living for, and that's the Abbotsford hunt!"

It may well be supposed that the President of the Boldside Festival and the Abbotsford Hunt did not omit the good old custom of the Kirn. Every November, before quitting the country for Edinburgh, he gave a harvest-home, on the most approved model of former days, to all the peasantry on his estate, their friends and kindred, and as many poor neighbours besides as his barn could hold. Here old and young danced from sunset to sunrise, John

of Skye's bagpipe being relieved at intervals by the violin of some 66 Wandering Willie;"—and the laird and all his family were present during the early part of the evening-he and his wife to distribute the contents of the first tub of whisky-punch, and his young people to take their due share in the endless reels and hornpipes of the earthen floor. As Mr Morritt has said of him as he appeared at Laird Nippey's kirn of earlier days, "to witness the cordiality of his reception might have unbent a misanthrope." He had his private joke for every old wife or "gausie carle," his arch compliment for the ear of every bonny lass, and his hand and his blessing for the head of every little Eppie Daidle from Abbotstown or Broomylees.

"The notable paradox," he says in one of the most charming of his essays, "that the residence of a proprietor upon his estate is of as little consequence as the bodily presence of a stockholder upon Exchange, has, we believe, been renounced. At least, as in the case of the Duchess of Suffolk's relationship to her own child, the vulgar continue to be of opinion that there is some difference in favour of the next hamlet and village, and even of the vicinage in general, when the squire spends his rents at the manor-house, instead of cutting a figure in France or Italy. A celebrated politician used to say he would willingly bring in one bill to make poaching felony, another to encourage the breed of foxes, and

a third to revive the decayed amusements of cockfighting and bull-baiting-that he would make, in short, any sacrifice to the humours and prejudices of the country gentlemen, in their most extravagant form, provided only he could prevail upon them to dwell in their own houses, be the patrons of their own tenantry, and the fathers of their own children.'"*

Essay on Landscape Gardening, Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. xxi. p. 77.