the shrewd, jovial word, the man of the Parliament House and of the world; and next step, moody, the light of his eye withdrawn, as if seeing things that were invisible; his shut mouth, like a child's, so impressionable, so innocent, so sad; he was now all within, as before he was all without; hence his brooding look. As the snow blattered in his face, he muttered, "How it raves and drifts! On-ding o' snaw,—ay, that's the word, on-ding — "He was now at his own door, "Castle Street, No. 39." He opened the door, and went straight to his den; that wondrous workshop, where, in one year, 1823, when he was fifty-two, he wrote "Peveril of the Peak," "Quentin Durward," and "St. Ronan's Well," besides much else. We once took the foremost of our novelists, the greatest, we would say, since Scott, into this room, and could not but mark the solemnizing effect of sitting where the great magician sat so often and so long, and looking out upon that little shabby bit of sky and that back green, where faithful Camp lies.

He sat down in his large green morocco elbow chair, drew himself close to his table, and glowered and gloomed at his writing apparatus, "a very handsome old box, richly carved, lined with crimson velvet, and containing ink bottles, taper stand, etc., in silver, the whole in such order, that it might have come from the silversmith's window half an hour before." He took out his paper, then starting up angrily, said, “Go spin, you jade, go spin.' No, d- it, it won't do,

"My spinnin' wheel is auld and stiff,

The rock o't wunna stand, sir,
To keep the temper pin in tiff
Employs ower aft my hand, sir.

I am off the fang. I can make nothing of 'Waverley' to-day; I'll awa' to Marjorie. Come wi' me, Maida, you thief." The great creature rose slowly, and the pair were off, Scott taking a maud (a plaid) with him. "White as a frosted plum cake, by jingo!" said he, when he got to the street. Maida gamboled and whisked among the snow, and his master strode across to Young Street, and through it to 1 North Charlotte Street, to the house of his dear friend, Mrs. William Keith, of Corstorphine Hill, niece of Mrs. Keith, of Ravelston, of whom he said at her death, eight years after, "Much tradition, and that of the best, has died with this excellent old lady, one of

the few persons whose spirits and cleanliness and freshness of mind and body made old age lovely and desirable."

Sir Walter was in that house almost every day, and had a key, so in he and the hound went, shaking themselves in the lobby. "Marjorie! Marjorie!" shouted her friend, "where are ye, my bonnie wee croodlin doo?" In a moment a bright, eager child of seven was in his arms, and he was kissing her all over. Out came Mrs. Keith. "Come yer ways in, Wattie." "No, not now. I am going to take Marjorie wi' me, and you may come to your tea in Duncan Roy's sedan, and bring the bairn home in your lap." "Tak' Marjorie, and it on-ding o snaw!" said Mrs. Keith. He said to himself, "On-ding,that's odd, that is the very word." "Hoot, awa! look here," and he displayed the corner of his plaid, made to hold lambs (the true shepherd's plaid, consisting of two breadths sewed together, and uncut at one end, making a poke or cul de sac). "Tak' yer lamb," said she, laughing at the contrivance, and so the Pet was first well happit up, and then put, laughing silently, into the plaid neuk, and the shepherd strode off with his lamb Maida gamboling through the snow, and running races in her mirth.

Didn't he face "the angry airt," and make her bield his bosom, and into his own room with her, and lock the door, and out with the warm, rosy, little wifie, who took it all with great composure! There the two remained for three or more hours, making the house ring with their laughter; you can fancy the big man's and Maidie's laugh. Having made the fire cheery, he set her down in his ample chair, and standing sheepishly before her, began to say his lesson, which happened to be,

66

Ziccotty, diccotty, dock, the mouse ran up the clock, the clock struck wan, down the mouse ran, ziccotty, diccotty, dock." This done repeatedly till she was pleased, she gave him his new lesson, gravely and slowly, timing it upon her small fingers, he saying it after her,

--

He pretended to great difficulty and she rebuked him with

most comical gravity, treating him as a child. He used to say that when he came to Alibi Crackaby he broke down, and PinPan, Musky-Dan, Tweedle-um, Twoddle-um made him roar with laughter. He said Musky-Dan especially was beyond endurance, bringing up an Irishman and his hat fresh from the Spice Islands and odoriferous Ind; she getting quite bitter in her displeasure at his ill behavior and stupidness.

Then he would read ballads to her in his own glorious way, the two getting wild with excitement over "Gil Morrice" or the "Baron of Smailholm "; and he would take her on his knee, and make her repeat Constance's speeches in "King John," till he swayed to and fro, sobbing his fill. Fancy the gifted little creature, like one possessed, repeating:

"For I am sick, and capable of fears,

Oppressed with wrong, and therefore full of fears;
A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;

A woman, naturally born to fears."

"If thou that bidst me be content, wert grim,
Ugly and slanderous to thy mother's womb,
Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious -

Or, drawing herself up "to the height of her great argument,"

"I will instruct my sorrows to be proud,

For grief is proud, and makes his owner stout.

Here I and sorrow sit."

Scott used to say that he was amazed at her power over him, saying to Mrs. Keith, "She's the most extraordinary creature I ever met with, and her repeating of Shakespeare overpowers me as nothing else does."

Thanks to the unforgetting sister of this dear child, who has much of the sensibility and fun of her who has been in her small grave these fifty and more years, we have now before us the letters and journals of Pet Marjorie,- before us lies and gleams her rich brown hair, bright and sunny as if yesterday's, with the words on the paper, "Cut out in her last illness," and two pictures of her by her beloved Isabella, whom she worshiped; there are the faded old scraps of paper, hoarded still, over which her warm breath and her warm little heart had poured themselves; there is the old watermark, "Lingard,

1808." The two portraits are very like each other, but plainly done at different times; it is a chubby, healthy face, deep-set, brooding eyes, as eager to tell what is going on within as to gather in all the glories from without; quick with the wonder and the pride of life; they are eyes that would not be soon satisfied with seeing; eyes that would devour their object, and yet childlike and fearless; and that is a mouth that will not be soon satisfied with love; it has a curious likeness to Scott's own, which has always appeared to us his sweetest, most mobile and speaking feature.

There she is, looking straight at us as she did at him, fearless and full of love, passionate, wild, willful, fancy's child. One cannot look at it without thinking of Wordsworth's lines on poor Hartley Coleridge:

O blessed vision, happy child!
Thou art so exquisitely wild,
I thought of thee with many fears,

Of what might be thy lot in future years.

I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest,

Lord of thy house and hospitality;

And Grief, uneasy lover! ne'er at rest,

But when she sat within the touch of thee.

Oh, too industrious folly!

Oh, vain and causeless melancholy!

Nature will either end thee quite,

Or, lengthening out thy season of delight,
Preserve for thee by individual right,

A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flock.

And we can imagine Scott, when holding his warm, plump little playfellow in his arms, repeating that stately friend's lines:

"Loving she is, and tractable, though wild,
And Innocence hath privilege in her,
To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes,
And feats of cunning; and the pretty round

Of trespasses, affected to provoke

Mock chastisement and partnership in play.

And, as a fagot sparkles on the hearth,

Not less if unattended and alone,

Than when both young and old sit gathered round,

And take delight in its activity,

Even so this happy creature of herself

Is all-sufficient; solitude to her

Is blithe society; she fills the air

With gladness and involuntary songs."

But we will let her disclose herself. We need hardly say that all this is true, and that these letters are as really Marjorie's as was this light brown hair; indeed, you could as easily fabricate the one as the other.

"I men

There was an old servant, Jeanie Robertson, who was forty years in her grandfather's family. Marjorie Fleming, or, as she is called in the letters, and by Sir Walter, Maidie, was the last child she kept. Jeanie's wages never exceeded £3 a year, and, when she left service, she had saved £40. She was devotedly attached to Maidie, rather despising and ill-using her sister Isabella, — a beautiful and gentle child. This partiality made Maidie apt at times to domineer over Isabella. tion this" (writes her surviving sister) "for the purpose of telling you an instance of Maidie's generous justice. When only five years old, when walking in Raith grounds, the two children had run on before, and old Jeanie remembered they might come too near a dangerous mill lade. She called to them to turn back. Maidie heeded her not, rushed all the faster on, and fell, and would have been lost, had her sister not pulled her back, saving her life, but tearing her clothes. Jeanie flew on Isabella to give it her' for spoiling her favorite's dress; Maidie rushed in between, crying out, 'Pay [whip] Maidjie as much as you like, and I'll not say one word; but touch Isy, and I'll roar like a bull!' Years after Maidie was resting in her grave, my mother used to take me to the place, and told the story always in the exact same words." This Jeanie must have been a character. She took great pride in exhibiting Maidie's brother William's Calvinistic acquirements, when nineteen months old, to the officers of a militia regiment then quartered in Kirkcaldy. This performance was so amusing that it was often repeated, and the little theologian was presented by them with a cap and feathers. Jeanie's glory was "putting him through the carritch [catechism]" in broad Scotch, beginning at the beginning with, "Wha made ye, ma bonnie man?" For the correctness of this and the three next replies Jeanie had no anxiety, but the tone changed to menace, and the closed nieve (fist) was shaken in the child's face, as she demanded, "Of what are you made?" "DIRT," was the answer uniformly given.