← catalogue

The Antiquary — Volume 01

by Walter Scott · English · Gutenberg #7003 · 528,958 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Antiquary — Volume 01
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Antiquary — Volume 01

Author: Walter Scott


        
Release date: August 16, 2004 [eBook #7003]
                Most recently updated: December 30, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7003

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANTIQUARY — VOLUME 01 ***




Produced by David Widger



Bookcover

Spines




THE ANTIQUARY


BY SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART.


Titlepage


Frontispiece




CONTENTS

VOLUME ONE

INTRODUCTION

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER FIRST.

CHAPTER SECOND.

CHAPTER THIRD.

CHAPTER FOURTH.

CHAPTER FIFTH.

CHAPTER SIXTH.

CHAPTER SEVENTH.

CHAPTER EIGHTH.

CHAPTER NINTH.

CHAPTER TENTH.

CHAPTER ELEVENTH.

CHAPTER TWELFTH.

CHAPTER THIRTEENTH.

CHAPTER FOURTEENTH.

CHAPTER FIFTEENTH.

CHAPTER SIXTEENTH.

CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH.

CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH.

CHAPTER NINETEENTH.

CHAPTER TWENTIETH.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST.




ILLUSTRATIONS

Bookcover

Spines

Titlepage

Frontispiece

The Antiquary and Lovel—the Sanctum

Sir Arthur and Miss Wardour

The Rescue of Sir Arthur and Miss Wardour

Eddie Ochiltree Visits Miss Wardour

Mrs. Heukbane and Mrs. Shortcake

St. Ruth (arbroath Abbey)

The Ruins of St. Ruth





VOLUME ONE

           I knew Anselmo. He was shrewd and prudent,
                Wisdom and cunning had their shares of him;
                But he was shrewish as a wayward child,
           And pleased again by toys which childhood please;
           As—-book of fables, graced with print of wood,
                Or else the jingling of a rusty medal,
                Or the rare melody of some old ditty,
           That first was sung to please King Pepin's cradle





INTRODUCTION

The present work completes a series of fictitious narratives, intended
to illustrate the manners of Scotland at three different periods.
Waverley embraced the age of our fathers, Guy Mannering that of our own
youth, and the Antiquary refers to the last ten years of the eighteenth
century. I have, in the two last narratives especially, sought my
principal personages in the class of society who are the last to feel
the influence of that general polish which assimilates to each other the
manners of different nations. Among the same class I have placed some
of the scenes in which I have endeavoured to illustrate the operation of
the higher and more violent passions; both because the lower orders are
less restrained by the habit of suppressing their feelings, and because
I agree, with my friend Wordsworth, that they seldom fail to express
them in the strongest and most powerful language. This is, I think,
peculiarly the case with the peasantry of my own country, a class with
whom I have long been familiar. The antique force and simplicity
of their language, often tinctured with the Oriental eloquence of
Scripture, in the mouths of those of an elevated understanding, give
pathos to their grief, and dignity to their resentment.

I have been more solicitous to describe manners minutely than to arrange
in any case an artificial and combined narrative, and have but to regret
that I felt myself unable to unite these two requisites of a good Novel.

The knavery of the adept in the following sheets may appear forced
and improbable; but we have had very late instances of the force of
superstitious credulity to a much greater extent, and the reader may be
assured, that this part of the narrative is founded on a fact of actual
occurrence.

I have now only to express my gratitude to the Public for the
distinguished reception which, they have given to works, that have
little more than some truth of colouring to recommend them, and to take
my respectful leave, as one who is not likely again to solicit their
favour.


To the above advertisement, which was prefixed to the first edition
of the Antiquary, it is necessary in the present edition to add a
few words, transferred from the Introduction to the Chronicles of the
Canongate, respecting the character of Jonathan Oldbuck.

"I may here state generally, that although I have deemed historical
personages free subjects of delineation, I have never on any occasion
violated the respect due to private life. It was indeed impossible that
traits proper to persons, both living and dead, with whom I have had
intercourse in society, should not have risen to my pen in such works
as Waverley, and those which, followed it. But I have always studied to
generalise the portraits, so that they should still seem, on the whole,
the productions of fancy, though possessing some resemblance to real
individuals. Yet I must own my attempts have not in this last particular
been uniformly successful. There are men whose characters are so
peculiarly marked, that the delineation of some leading and principal
feature, inevitably places the whole person before you in his
individuality. Thus the character of Jonathan Oldbuck in the Antiquary,
was partly founded on that of an old friend of my youth, to whom I am
indebted for introducing me to Shakspeare, and other invaluable favours;
but I thought I had so completely disguised the likeness, that it could
not be recognised by any one now alive. I was mistaken, however, and
indeed had endangered what I desired should be considered as a secret;
for I afterwards learned that a highly respectable gentleman, one of the
few surviving friends of my father, and an acute critic, had said, upon
the appearance of the work, that he was now convinced who was the author
of it, as he recognised, in the Antiquary, traces of the character of a
very intimate friend* of my father's family."

* [The late George Constable of Wallace Craigie, near Dundee.]

I have only farther to request the reader not to suppose that my late
respected friend resembled Mr. Oldbuck, either in his pedigree, or the
history imputed to the ideal personage. There is not a single incident
in the Novel which is borrowed from his real circumstances, excepting
the fact that he resided in an old house near a flourishing seaport, and
that the author chanced to witness a scene betwixt him and the female
proprietor of a stage-coach, very similar to that which commences the
history of the Antiquary. An excellent temper, with a slight degree of
subacid humour; learning, wit, and drollery, the more poignant that
they were a little marked by the peculiarities of an old bachelor; a
soundness of thought, rendered more forcible by an occasional quaintness
of expression, were, the author conceives, the only qualities in which
the creature of his imagination resembled his benevolent and excellent
old friend.

The prominent part performed by the Beggar in the following narrative,
induces the author to prefix a few remarks of that character, as it
formerly existed in Scotland, though it is now scarcely to be traced.

Many of the old Scottish mendicants were by no means to be confounded
with the utterly degraded class of beings who now practise that
wandering trade. Such of them as were in the habit of travelling through
a particular district, were usually well received both in the farmer's
ha', and in the kitchens of the country gentlemen. Martin, author of
the Reliquiae Divi Sancti Andreae, written in 1683, gives the following
account of one class of this order of men in the seventeenth century,
in terms which would induce an antiquary like Mr. Oldbuck to regret its
extinction. He conceives them to be descended from the ancient bards,
and proceeds:—-"They are called by others, and by themselves,
Jockies, who go about begging; and use still to recite the Sloggorne
(gathering-words or war-cries) of most of the true ancient surnames
of Scotland, from old experience and observation. Some of them I have
discoursed, and found to have reason and discretion. One of them told
me there were not now above twelve of them in the whole isle; but he
remembered when they abounded, so as at one time he was one of five that
usually met at St. Andrews."

The race of Jockies (of the above description) has, I suppose, been long
extinct in Scotland; but the old remembered beggar, even in my own time,
like the Baccoch, or travelling cripple of Ireland, was expected to
merit his quarters by something beyond an exposition of his distresses.
He was often a talkative, facetious fellow, prompt at repartee, and not
withheld from exercising his powers that way by any respect of persons,
his patched cloak giving him the privilege of the ancient jester. To
be a gude crack, that is, to possess talents for conversation, was
essential to the trade of a "puir body" of the more esteemed class; and
Burns, who delighted in the amusement their discourse afforded, seems to
have looked forward with gloomy firmness to the possibility of himself
becoming one day or other a member of their itinerant society. In his
poetical works, it is alluded to so often, as perhaps to indicate that
he considered the consummation as not utterly impossible. Thus in the
fine dedication of his works to Gavin Hamilton, he says,—

                     And when I downa yoke a naig,
                    Then, Lord be thankit, I can beg.

Again, in his Epistle to Davie, a brother Poet, he states, that in their
closing career—

                     The last o't, the warst o't,
                         Is only just to beg.

And after having remarked, that

                  To lie in kilns and barns at e'en,
                  When banes are crazed and blude is thin,

Is doubtless great distress; the bard reckons up, with true poetical
spirit, the free enjoyment of the beauties of nature, which might
counterbalance the hardship and uncertainty of the life, even of
a mendicant. In one of his prose letters, to which I have lost the
reference, he details this idea yet more seriously, and dwells upon it,
as not ill adapted to his habits and powers.

As the life of a Scottish mendicant of the eighteenth century seems to
have been contemplated without much horror by Robert Burns, the author
can hardly have erred in giving to Edie Ochiltree something of poetical
character and personal dignity, above the more abject of his miserable
calling. The class had, intact, some privileges. A lodging, such as
it was, was readily granted to them in some of the out-houses, and the
usual awmous (alms) of a handful of meal (called a gowpen) was scarce
denied by the poorest cottager. The mendicant disposed these, according
to their different quality, in various bags around his person, and thus
carried about with him the principal part of his sustenance, which he
literally received for the asking. At the houses of the gentry, his
cheer was mended by scraps of broken meat, and perhaps a Scottish
"twalpenny," or English penny, which was expended in snuff or whiskey.
In fact, these indolent peripatetics suffered much less real hardship
and want of food, than the poor peasants from whom they received alms.

If, in addition to his personal qualifications, the mendicant chanced to
be a King's Bedesman, or Blue-Gown, he belonged, in virtue thereof,
to the aristocracy of his order, and was esteemed a parson of great
importance.

These Bedesmen are an order of paupers to whom the Kings of Scotland
were in the custom of distributing a certain alms, in conformity with
the ordinances of the Catholic Church, and who where expected in return
to pray for the royal welfare and that of the state. This order is still
kept up. Their number is equal to the number of years which his Majesty
has lived; and one Blue-Gown additional is put on the roll for every
returning royal birth-day. On the same auspicious era, each Bedesman
receives a new cloak, or gown of coarse cloth, the colour light blue,
with a pewter badge, which confers on them the general privilege of
asking alms through all Scotland,—all laws against sorning, masterful
beggary, and every other species of mendicity, being suspended in favour
of this privileged class. With his cloak, each receives a leathern
purse, containing as many shillings Scots (videlicet, pennies sterling)
as the sovereign is years old; the zeal of their intercession for the
king's long life receiving, it is to be supposed, a great stimulus
from their own present and increasing interest in the object of their
prayers. On the same occasion one of the Royal Chaplains preaches a
sermon to the Bedesmen, who (as one of the reverend gentlemen expressed
himself) are the most impatient and inattentive audience in the world.
Something of this may arise from a feeling on the part of the Bedesmen,
that they are paid for their own devotions, not for listening to those
of others. Or, more probably, it arises from impatience, natural, though
indecorous in men bearing so venerable a character, to arrive at the
conclusion of the ceremonial of the royal birth-day, which, so far as
they are concerned, ends in a lusty breakfast of bread and ale; the
whole moral and religious exhibition terminating in the advice of
Johnson's "Hermit hoar" to his proselyte,

                   Come, my lad, and drink some beer.

Of the charity bestowed on these aged Bedesmen in money and clothing,
there are many records in the Treasurer's accompts. The following
extract, kindly supplied by Mr. Macdonald of the Register House, may
interest those whose taste is akin to that of Jonathan Oldbuck of
Monkbarns. BLEW GOWNIS.

    In the Account of Sir Robert Melvill of Murdocarney,
    Treasurer-Depute of King James VI., there are the following Payments:—

                              "Junij 1590.

    "Item, to Mr. Peter Young, Elimosinar, twentie four gownis of blew
    clayth, to be gevin to xxiiij auld men, according to the yeiris of his
    hienes age, extending to viii xx viii elnis clayth; price of the elne
    xxiiij s.                              Inde, ij cj li. xij s.

    "Item, for sextene elnis bukrum to the saidis gownis, price of the elne x
    s.                                     Inde,viij li.

    "Item, twentie four pursis, and in ilk purse twentie four schelling
                                        Inde, xxciij li.  xvj s.
    "Item, the price of ilk purse iiij d.       Inde, viij s.

    "Item, for making of the saidis gownis       viij li. "

    In the Account of John, Earl of Mar, Great Treasurer of Scotland, and of
    Sir Gideon Murray of Enbank, Treasurer-Depute, the Blue-Gowns also appear
    thus:—


                              "Junij 1617.

   "Item, to James Murray, merchant, for fyftene scoir sex elnis and aine
   half elne of blew claith to be gownis to fyftie ane aigeit men, according
   to the yeiris of his Majesteis age, at xl s.  the elne
                                        Inde,vj c xiij li.

    "Item, to workmen for careing the blewis to James Aikman, tailyeour, his
    hous xiij s.  iiij d.

    "Item, for sex elnis and ane half of harden to the saidis gownis, at vj
    s.  viij d.  the elne                 Inde,xliij s. iiij d.

    "Item, to the said workmen for careing of the gownis fra the said James
    Aikman's hous to the palace of Halyrudehous xviij s.

    "Item, for making the saidis fyftie ane gownis, at xij s.  the peice
                                        Inde,xxx li. xij s.

    "Item, for fyftie ane pursis to the said puire menlj s.

    "Item, to Sir Peter Young,li s.  to be put in everie ane of the saidis
    ljpursis to the said poore men j cxxxl jj s.

    "Item, to the said Sir Peter, to buy breid and drink to the said puir men
    vj li. xiij s. iiij d.

    "Item, to the said Sir Peter, to be delt amang uther puire folk j cli.

    "Item, upoun the last day of Junii to Doctor Young, Deane of Winchester,
    Elimozinar Deput to his Majestic, twentie fyve pund sterling, to be gevin
    to the puir be the way in his Majesteis progress    Inde,iij c li. "

I have only to add, that although the institution of King's Bedesmen
still subsists, they are now seldom to be seen on the streets
of Edinburgh, of which their peculiar dress made them rather a
characteristic feature.

Having thus given an account of the genus and species to which Edie
Ochiltree appertains, the author may add, that the individual he had
in his eye was Andrew Gemmells, an old mendicant of the character
described, who was many years since well known, and must still be
remembered, in the vales of Gala, Tweed, Ettrick, Yarrow, and the
adjoining country.

The author has in his youth repeatedly seen and conversed with Andrew,
but cannot recollect whether he held the rank of Blue-Gown. He was a
remarkably fine old figure, very tall, and maintaining a soldierlike
or military manner and address. His features were intelligent, with a
powerful expression of sarcasm. His motions were always so graceful,
that he might almost have been suspected of having studied them; for
he might, on any occasion, have, served as a model for an artist, so
remarkably striking were his ordinary attitudes. Andrew Gemmells had
little of the cant of his calling; his wants were food and shelter, or
a trifle of money, which he always claimed, and seemed to receive as his
due. He, sung a good song, told a good story, and could crack a severe
jest with all the acumen of Shakespeare's jesters, though without using,
like them, the cloak of insanity. It was some fear of Andrew's satire,
as much as a feeling of kindness or charity, which secured him the
general good reception which he enjoyed everywhere. In fact, a jest of
Andrew Gemmells, especially at the expense of a person of consequence,
flew round the circle which he frequented, as surely as the bon-mot of
a man of established character for wit glides through the fashionable
world, Many of his good things are held in remembrance, but are
generally too local and personal to be introduced here.

Andrew had a character peculiar to himself among his tribe for aught I
ever heard. He was ready and willing to play at cards or dice with any
one who desired such amusement. This was more in the character of the
Irish itinerant gambler, called in that country a "carrow," than of the
Scottish beggar. But the late Reverend Doctor Robert Douglas, minister
of Galashiels, assured the author, that the last time he saw Andrew
Gemmells, he was engaged in a game at brag with a gentleman of fortune,
distinction, and birth. To preserve the due gradations of rank, the
party was made at an open window of the chateau, the laird sitting on
his chair in the inside, the beggar on a stool in the yard; and they
played on the window-sill. The stake was a considerable parcel of
silver. The author expressing some surprise, Dr. Douglas observed, that
the laird was no doubt a humourist or original; but that many decent
persons in those times would, like him, have thought there was
nothing extraordinary in passing an hour, either in card-playing or
conversation, with Andrew Gemmells.

This singular mendicant had generally, or was supposed to have, much
money about his person, as would have been thought the value of his life
among modern foot-pads. On one occasion, a country gentleman, generally
esteemed a very narrow man, happening to meet Andrew, expressed great
regret that he had no silver in his pocket, or he would have given him
sixpence.—"I can give you change for a note, laird," replied Andrew.

Like most who have arisen to the head of their profession, the modern
degradation which mendicity has undergone was often the subject of
Andrew's lamentations. As a trade, he said, it was forty pounds a-year
worse since he had first practised it. On another occasion he observed,
begging was in modern times scarcely the profession of a gentleman; and
that, if he had twenty sons, he would not easily be induced to breed one
of them up in his own line. When or where this laudator temporis acti
closed his wanderings, the author never heard with certainty; but most
probably, as Burns says,

                   —he died a cadger-powny's death,
                          At some dike side.

The author may add another picture of the same kind as Edie Ochiltree
and Andrew Gemmells; considering these illustrations as a sort of
gallery, open to the reception of anything which may elucidate former
manners, or amuse the reader.

The author's contemporaries at the university of Edinburgh will probably
remember the thin, wasted form of a venerable old Bedesman, who stood
by the Potterrow-Port, now demolished, and, without speaking a syllable,
gently inclined his head, and offered his hat, but with the least
possible degree of urgency, towards each individual who passed. This man
gained, by silence and the extenuated and wasted appearance of a palmer
from a remote country, the same tribute which was yielded to Andrew
Gemmells' sarcastic humour and stately deportment. He was understood to
be able to maintain a son a student in the theological classes of the
University, at the gate of which the father was a mendicant. The young
man was modest and inclined to learning, so that a student of the same
age, and whose parents where rather of the lower order, moved by seeing
him excluded from the society of other scholars when the secret of his
birth was suspected, endeavoured to console him by offering him some
occasional civilities. The old mendicant was grateful for this attention
to his son, and one day, as the friendly student passed, he stooped
forward more than usual, as if to intercept his passage. The scholar
drew out a halfpenny, which he concluded was the beggar's object, when
he was surprised to receive his thanks for the kindness he had shown to
Jemmie, and at the same time a cordial invitation to dine with them next
Saturday, "on a shoulder of mutton and potatoes," adding, "ye'll put on
your clean sark, as I have company." The student was strongly tempted
to accept this hospitable proposal, as many in his place would
probably have done; but, as the motive might have been capable of
misrepresentation, he thought it most prudent, considering the character
and circumstances of the old man, to decline the invitation.

Such are a few traits of Scottish mendicity, designed to throw light on
a Novel in which a character of that description plays a prominent
part. We conclude, that we have vindicated Edie Ochiltree's right to the
importance assigned him; and have shown, that we have known one beggar
take a hand at cards with a person of distinction, and another give
dinner parties.

I know not if it be worth while to observe, that the Antiquary,* was not
so well received on its first appearance as either of its predecessors,
though in course of time it rose to equal, and, with some readers,
superior popularity.

* Note A. Mottoes.




EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO THE ANTIQUARY.

"THE ANTIQUARY" was begun in 1815; the bargain for its publication by
Constable was made in the October of that year. On December 22 Scott
wrote to Morritt: "I shall set myself seriously to 'The Antiquary,' of
which I have only a very general sketch at present; but when once I get
my pen to the paper it will walk fast enough. I am sometimes tempted to
leave it alone, and try whether it will not write as well without the
assistance of my head as with it,—a hopeful prospect for the reader!'"
It is amazing enough that he even constructed "a general sketch," for
to such sketches he confesses that he never could keep constant. "I have
generally written to the middle of one of these novels without having
the least idea how it was to end,—in short, in the hab nab at a venture
style of composition" (Journal, Feb. 24, 1828). Yet it is almost
impossible but that the plot of "The Antiquary" should have been duly
considered. Scott must have known from the first who Lovel was to
turn out to be, and must have recognised in the hapless bride of
Lord Glenallan the object of the Antiquary's solitary and unfortunate
passion. To introduce another Wandering Heir immediately after the Harry
Bertram of "Guy Mannering" was rather audacious. But that old favourite,
the Lost Heir, is nearly certain to be popular. For the Antiquary's
immortal sorrow Scott had a model in his own experience. "What a romance
to tell!—and told, I fear, it will one day be. And then my three years
of dreaming and my two years of wakening will be chronicled doubtless.
But the dead will feel no pain." The dead, as Aristotle says, if they
care for such things at all, care no more than we do for what has passed
in a dream.

The general sketch probably began to take full shape about the last day
of 1815. On December 29 Scott wrote to Ballantyne:—

          DEAR JAMES,—
               I've done, thank'God, with the long yarns
                   Of the most prosy of Apostles—Paul,1
               And now advance, sweet heathen of Monkbarns,
                  Step out, old quizz, as fast as I can scrawl.

In "The Antiquary" Scott had a subject thoroughly to his mind. He
had been an antiquary from his childhood. His earliest pence had
been devoted to that collection of printed ballads which is still
at Abbotsford. These he mentions in the unfinished fragment of his
"Reliquiae Trotcosienses," in much the same words as in his manuscript
note on one of the seven volumes.

"This little collection of Stall tracts and ballads was formed by me,
when a boy, from the baskets of the travelling pedlars. Until put into
its present decent binding it had such charms for the servants that it
was repeatedly, and with difficulty, recovered from their clutches. It
contains most of the pieces that were popular about thirty years since,
and, I dare say, many that could not now be procured for any price
(1810)."

Nor did he collect only—

                      "The rare melody of some old ditties
          That first were sung to please King Pepin's cradle.

"Walter had soon begun to gather out-of-the-way things of all sorts. He
had more books than shelves [sic]; a small painted cabinet with Scotch
and Roman coins in it, and so forth. A claymore and Lochaber axe,
given him by old Invernahyle, mounted guard on a little print of Prince
Charlie; and Broughton's Saucer was hooked up on the wall below it." He
had entered literature through the ruined gateway of archleology, in the
"Border Minstrelsy," and his last project was an edition of Perrault's
"Contes de Ma Mere l'Oie." As pleasant to him as the purchase of new
lands like Turn Again, bought dearly, as in Monkbarns's case, from
"bonnet lauds," was a fresh acquisition of an old book or of old armour.
Yet, with all his enthusiasm, he did not please the antiquaries of his
own day. George Chalmers, in Constable's "Life and Correspondence"
(i. 431), sneers at his want of learning. "His notes are loose and
unlearned, as they generally are." Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, his
friend in life, disported himself in jealous and ribald mockery of
Scott's archaeological knowledge, when Scott was dead. In a letter of
the enigmatic Thomas Allen, or James Stuart Hay, father of John Sobieski
and Charles Edward Stuart, this mysterious person avers that he never
knew Scott's opinion to be held as of any value by antiquaries (1829).
They probably missed in him "a sort of pettifogging intimacy with dates,
names, and trifling matters of fact,—a tiresome and frivolous accuracy
of memory" which Sir Arthur Wardour reproves in Monkbarns. Scott, in
brief, was not as Dry-as-dust; all the dead bones that he touches come
to life. He was as great an archeologist as a poet can be, and, with
Virgil, was the greatest antiquary among poets. Like Monkbarns, he was
not incapable of being beguiled. As Oldbuck bought the bodle from the
pedlar at the price of a rare coin, so Scott took Surtees's "Barthram's
Dirge," and his Latin legend of the tourney with the spectre knight, for
genuine antiquities. No Edie Ochiltree ever revealed to him the truth
about these forgeries, and the spectre knight, with the ballad of
"Anthony Featherstonhaugh," hold their own in "Marmion," to assure the
world that this antiquary was gullible when the sleight was practised by
a friend. "Non est tanti," he would have said, had he learned the truth;
for he was ever conscious of the humorous side of the study of the
mouldering past. "I do not know anything which relieves the mind so much
from the sullens as a trifling discourse about antiquarian oldwomanries.
It is like knitting a stocking,—diverting the mind without occupying
it." ("Journal," March 9, 1828).

Begun about Jan. 1, 1816, "The Antiquary" was published before May 16,
1816, when Scott writes to say that he has sent Mr. Morritt the novel
"some time since." "It is not so interesting as its predecessors; the
period does not admit of so much romantic situation. But it has been
more fortunate than any of them in the sale, for six thousand went off
in the first six days, and it is now at press again." The Preface of the
first edition ends with the melancholy statement that the author "takes
his respectful leave, as one who is not likely again to solicit favour."
Apparently Scott had already determined not to announce his next novels
("The Black Dwarf" and "Old Mortality") as "by the Author of Waverley."
Mr. Constable, in the biography of his father, says (iii. 84): "Even
before the publication of 'The Antiquary,' John Ballantyne had been
impowered by the Author to negotiate with Mr. Murray and Mr. Blackwood
for the first series of the 'Tales of my Landlord.'" The note of
withdrawal from the stage, in the first edition of "The Antiquary,"
was probably only a part of another experiment on public sagacity. As
Lockhart says, Mr. Murray and Mr. Blackwood thought that the consequent
absence of the Author of "Waverley's" name from the "Tales of my
Landlord" would "check very much the first success of the book;" but
they risked this, "to disturb Constable's tenure."

Scott's temporary desertion of Constable in the "Tales of my Landlord"
may have had various motives. There was a slight grudge against
Constable, born of some complications of the Ballantynes' affairs.
Perhaps the mere amusement of the experiment on public sagacity was one
of the more powerful reasons for the change. In our day Lord Lytton and
Mr. Trollope made similar trials of their popularity when anonymous, the
former author with the greater success. The idea of these masquerades
and veils of the incognito appears to have bewitched Constable. William
Godwin was writing for him his novel "Mandeville," and Godwin had
obviously been counselled to try a disguise. He says (Jan. 30, 1816) "I
have amused my imagination a thousand times since last we parted with
the masquerade you devised for me. The world is full of wonder. An old
favourite is always reviewed with coldness. . . . 'Pooh,' they say;
'Godwin has worn his pen to the stump!' . . . But let me once be
equipped with a significant mask and an unknown character from your
masquerade shop, and admitted to figure in with the 'Last Minstrel,' the
'Lady of the Lake,' and 'Guy Mannering' in the Scottish carnival, Gods!
how the boys and girls will admire me! 'Here is a new wonder!' they
will say. 'Ah, this is something like! Here is Godwin beaten on his own
ground. . . Here is for once a Scottish writer that they cannot say has
anything of the Scotchman about him.'"

However, Mr. Godwin did not don the mask and domino. "Mandeville" came
out about the same time as "Rob Roy;" but the "craziness of the public"
for the Author of "Waverley" was not changed into a passion for the
father-in-law of Shelley.

"'The Antiquary,' after a little pause of hesitation, attained
popularity not inferior to 'Guy Mannering,' and though the author
appears for a moment to have shared the doubts which he read in the
countenance of James Ballantyne, it certainly was, in the sequel, his
chief favourite among all his novels.'"

As Scott said to Terry, "If a man will paint from nature, he will be
likely to amuse those who are daily looking at it." The years which saw
the first appearance of "Guy Mannering" also witnessed that of "Emma."
By the singular chance, or law, which links great authors closely
in time, giving us novelists in pairs, Miss Austen was "drawing from
nature" at the very moment when Scott was wedding nature with romance.
How generously and wisely he admired her is familiar, and it may, to
some, seem curious that he never deliberately set himself to a picture
of ordinary life, free from the intrusion of the unusual, of the heroic.
Once, looking down at the village which lies on the Tweed, opposite
Melrose, he remarked that under its roofs tragedies and tales were
doubtless being lived. 'I undertake to say there is some real romance at
this moment going on down there, that, if it could have justice done to
it, would be well worth all the fiction that was ever spun out of human
brains.' But the example he gave was terrible,—"anything more dreadful
was never conceived by Crabbe;" yet, adds Lockhart, "it would never have
entered into his head to elaborate such a tale." He could not dwell in
the unbroken gloom dear to some modern malingerers. But he could
easily have made a tale of common Scotch life, dark with the sorrow of
Mucklebackit, and bright with the mirth of Cuddie Headrigg. There was,
however, this difficulty,—that Scott cared not to write a story of a
single class. "From the peer to the ploughman," all society mingles in
each of his novels. A fiction of middle-class life did not allure him,
and he was not at the best, but at his worst, as Sydney Smith observed,
in the light talk of society. He could admire Miss Austen, and read her
novels again and again; but had he attempted to follow her, by way of
variety, then inevitably wild as well as disciplined humour would have
kept breaking in, and his fancy would have wandered like the old knights
of Arthur's Court, "at adventure." "St. Ronan's Well" proved the truth
of all this. Thus it happens that, in "The Antiquary," with all his
sympathy for the people, with all his knowledge of them, he does not
confine himself to their cottages. As Lockhart says, in his admirable
piece of criticism, he preferred to choose topics in which he could
display "his highest art, that of skilful contrast."

Even the tragic romance of "Waverley" does not set off its Macwheebles
and Callum Begs better than the oddities of Jonathan Oldbuck and
his circle are relieved, on the one hand by the stately gloom of the
Glenallans, on the other by the stern affliction of the poor fisherman,
who, when discovered repairing "the auld black bitch of a boat," in
which his boy had been lost, and congratulated by his visitors on being
capable of the exertion, makes answer, "And what would you have me to
do, unless I wanted to see four children starve, because one is drowned?
It 's weel with you gentles, that can sit in the house with handkerchers
at your een, when ye lose a friend; but the like o' us maun to our work
again, if our hearts were beating as hard as ony hammer." And to his
work again Scott had to go when he lost the partner of his life.

The simple unsought charm which Lockhart notes in "The Antiquary" may
have passed away in later works, when what had been the amusement of
happy days became the task of sadness. But this magic "The Antiquary"
keeps perhaps beyond all its companions,—the magic of pleasant memories
and friendly associations. The sketches of the epoch of expected
invasion, with its patriotic musters and volunteer drillings, are
pictures out of that part in the author's life which, with his early
Highland wanderings ("Waverley") and his Liddesdale raids ("Guy
Mannering"), was most dear to him. In "Redgauntlet," again, he makes, as
Alan Fairford, a return on his youth and his home, and in "Rob Roy" he
revives his Highland recollections, his Highland lairds of "the blawing,
bleezing stories." None of the rest of the tales are so intimate in
their connection with Scott's own personal history. "The Antiquary" has
always, therefore, been held in the very first rank of his novels.

As far as plot goes, though Godwin denied that it had any story, "The
Antiquary" may be placed among the most careful. The underplot of the
Glenallans, gloomy almost beyond endurance, is very ingeniously made
to unravel the mystery of Lovel. The other side-narrative, that of
Dousterswivel, is the weak point of the whole; but this Scott justifies
by "very late instances of the force of superstitious credulity, to a
much greater extent." Some occurrence of the hour may have suggested the
knavish adept with his divining-rod. But facts are never a real excuse
for the morally incredible, or all but incredible, in fiction. On the
wealth and vraisemblance and variety of character it were superfluous to
dilate. As in Shakspeare, there is not even a minor person but lives
and is of flesh and blood, if we except, perhaps, Dousterswivel and Sir
Arthur Wardour. Sir Arthur is only Sir Robert Hazlewood over again, with
a slightly different folly and a somewhat more amiable nature. Lovel's
place, as usual, is among the shades of heroes, and his love-affair is
far less moving, far more summarily treated, than that of Jenny Caxon.
The skilful contrasts are perhaps most remarkable when we compare
Elspeth of the Burnfoot with the gossiping old women in the post-office
at Fairport,—a town studied perhaps from Arbroath. It was the opinion
of Sydney Smith that every one of the novels, before "The Fortunes of
Nigel," contained a Meg Merrilies and a Dominie Sampson. He may have
recognized a male Meg in Edie Ochiltree,—the invaluable character who is
always behind a wall, always overhears everything, and holds the threads
of the plot. Or he may have been hypercritical enough to think that
Elspeth of the Burnfoot is the Meg of the romance. Few will agree with
him that Meg Merrilies, in either of these cases, is "good, but good too
often."

The supposed "originals" of certain persons in the tale have been
topics of discussion. The character of Oldbuck, like most characters in
fiction, is a combination of traits observed in various persons. Scott
says, in a note to the Ashiestiel fragment of Autobiography, that Mr.
George Constable, an old friend of his father's, "had many of those
peculiarities of character which long afterwards I tried to develop in
the character of Jonathan Oldbuck." Sir Walter, when a child, made Mr.
Constable's acquaintance at Prestonpans in 1777, where he explored the
battle-field "under the learned guidance of Dalgetty." Mr. Constable
first introduced him to Shakspeare's plays, and gave him his first
German dictionary. Other traits may have been suggested by John Clerk
of Eldin, whose grandfather was the hero of the story "Praetorian here,
Praetorian there, I made it wi' a flaughter spade." Lockhart is no
doubt right in thinking that Oldbuck is partly a caricature of Oldbuck's
creator,—Sir Walter indeed frankly accepted the kinship; and the book
which he began on his own collection he proposed to style "Reliquim
Trotcosienses; or, the Gabions of Jonathan Oldbuck."

Another person who added a few points to Oldbuck was "Sandy Gordon,"
author of the "Itinerarium Septentrionale" (1726), the very folio which
Monkbarns carried in the dilatory coach to Queensferry. Gordon had been
a student in the University of Aberdeen; he was an amateur in many arts,
but antiquarianism was his favourite hobby. He was an acquaintance of
Sir John Clerk of Eldin, the hero of the Praetorium. The words of Gordon
in his "Itinerarium," where he describes the battle of the Grampians,
have supplied, or suggested, the speech of Monkbarns at the Kaim
of Kinprunes. The great question was, Where is the Mons Grampius of
Tacitus? Dismissing Camden's Grantsbain, because he does not know where
it is, Gordon says, "As for our Scotch Antiquaries, they are so divided
that some will have it to be in the shire of Angus, or in the Mearns,
some at the Blair of Athol in Perthshire, or Ardoch in Strathallan, and
others at Inverpeffery." Gordon votes for Strathern, "half a mile short
of the Kirk of Comrie." This spot is both at the foot of the Montes
Grampii, "and boasts a Roman camp capable of holding an army fit to
encounter so formidable a number as thirty thousand Caledonians. . . .
Here is the Porta Decumana, opposite the Prcetoria, together with the
dextra and sinistra gates," all discovered by Sandy Gordon. "Moreover,
the situation of the ground is so very exact with the description
given by Tacitus, that in all my travels through Britain I never beheld
anything with more pleasure. . . . Nor is it difficult, in viewing this
ground, to say where the Covinarii, or Charioteers, stood. In fine, to
an Antiquary, this is a ravishing scene." He adds the argument "that
Galgacus's name still remains on this ground, for the moor on which the
camp stood is called to this day Galdachan, or Galgachan Rosmoor."
All this lore Gordon illustrates by an immense chart of a camp, and a
picture of very small Montes Grampii, about the size and shape of buns.
The plate is dedicated to his excellency General Wade.

In another point Monkbapns borrows from Gordon. Sandy has a plate (page
20) of "The Roman Sacellum of Mars Signifer, vulgarly called 'Arthur's
Oon.' With regard to its shape, it is not unlike the famous Pantheon at
Rome before the noble Portico was added to it by Marcus Agrippa." Gordon
agrees with Stukeley in attributing Arthur's Oon to Agricola, and
here Monkbarns and Lovel adopt almost his words. "Time has left Julius
Agricola's very name on the place; . . . and if ever those initial
letters J. A. M. P. M. P. T., mentioned by Sir Robert Sibbald, were
engraven on a stone in this building, it may not be reckoned altogether
absurd that they should bear this reading, JULIUS AGRICOLA MAGNUS
PIETATIS MONUMENTUM POSUIT TEMPLUM; but this my reader may either accept
or reject as he pleases. However, I think it may be as probably received
as that inscription on Caligula's Pharos in Holland, which having these
following letters, C. C. P. F., is read Caius Caligula Pharum Fecit."
"This," Monkbarns adds, "has ever been recorded as a sound exposition."

The character of Edie Ochiltree, Scott himself avers to have been
suggested by Andrew Gemmells, pleasantly described in the Introduction.
Mr. Chambers, in "Illustrations of the Author of 'Waverley," clears up
a point doubtful in Scott's memory, by saying that Geimells really was a
Blue-Gown. He rode a horse of his own, and at races was a bookmaker.
He once dropped at Rutherford, in Teviotdale, a clue of yarn containing
twenty guineas. Like Edie Ochiltree, he had served at Fontenoy. He
died at Roxburgh Newton in 1793, at the age of one hundred and five,
according to his own reckoning. "His wealth was the means of enriching
a nephew in Ayrshire, who is now (1825) a considerable landholder there,
and belongs to a respectable class of society."

An old Irus of similar character patrolled Teviotdale, while Andrew
Gemmells was attached to Ettrick and Yarrow. This was Blind Willie Craw.
Willie was the Society Journal of Hawick, and levied blackmail on the
inhabitants. He is thus described by Mr. Grieve, in the Diary already
quoted: "He lived at Branxholme Town, in a free house set apart for the
gamekeeper, and for many a year carried all the bread from Hawick used
in my father's family. He came in that way at breakfast-time, and got a
wallet which he put it in, and returned at dinner-time with the 'bawbee
rows' and two loaves. He laid the town of Hawick under contribution for
bawbees, and he knew the history of every individual, and went rhyming
through the town from door to door; and as he knew something against
every one which they would rather wish should not be rehearsed, a bawbee
put a stop to the paragraph which they wished suppressed. Willie Craw
was the son of a gamekeeper of the duke's, and enjoyed a free house at
Branxholme Town as long as he lived."

Had Burns ever betaken himself to the gaberlunzie's life, which he
speaks of in one of his poems as "the last o't, the worst o't," he would
have proved a much more formidable satirist than poor Willie Craw, the
last of the "blind crowders." Burns wrote, of course, in a spirit of
reckless humour; but he could not, even in sport, have alluded to the
life as "suited to his habits and powers," had gaberlunzies been mere
mendicants. In Herd's collection of Ballads is one on the ancient
Scottish beggar:—

                In Scotland there lived a humble beggar,
                  He had nor house, nor hald, nor hame;
                  But he was well liked by ilk a body,
                And they gave him sunkets to rax his wame.

                A sieve fu' o' meal, a handfu' o' groats,
                  A dad o' a bannock, or pudding bree,
                  Cauld porridge, or the lickings o' plates,
                Wad make him as blythe as a body could be.

The dress and trade of the beggar are said to have been adopted by
James V. in his adventures, and tradition attributes to him a song, "The
Gaberlunzie Man."

One of Edie's most charming traits is his readiness to "fight for his
dish, like the laird for his land," when a French invasion was expected.
Scott places the date of "The False Alarm," when he himself rode a
hundred miles to join his regiment, on Feb. 2, 1804.

Lockhart gives it as an event of 1805 (vol. ii. p. 275). The occasion
gave great pleasure to Scott, on account of the patriotism and courage
displayed by all classes. "Me no muckle to fight for?" says Edie. "Isna
there the country to fight for, and the burns I gang dandering beside,
and the hearths o' the gudewives that gie me my bit bread, and the bits
o' weans that come toddling to play wi' me when I come about a landward
town?" Edie had fought at Fontenoy, and was of the old school. Scott
would have been less pleased with a recruit from St. Boswells, on the
Tweed. This man was a shoemaker, John Younger, a very intelligent and
worthy person, famous as an angler and writer on angling, who has left
an account of the "False Alarm" in his memoirs. His view was that the
people, unlike Edie, had nothing to fight for, that only the rich had
any reason to be patriotic, that the French had no quarrel with the
poor. In fact, Mr. Younger was a cosmopolitan democrat, and sneered at
the old Border glories of the warlike days. Probably, however, he would
have done his duty, had the enemy landed, and, like Edie, might have
remembered the "burns he dandered beside," always with a fishingrod in
his hand.

     The Editor cannot resist the temptation to add that the patriotic
     lady mentioned in Scott's note, who "would rather have seen her son
     dead on that hearth than hear that he had been a horse's length
     behind his companions," was his paternal great-grandmother, Mrs.
     John Lang. Her husband, who died shortly afterwards, so that she was
     a widow when Scott conversed with her, chanced to be chief
     magistrate of Selkirk. His family was aroused late one night by the
     sound of a carriage hurrying down the steep and narrow street. Lord
     Napier was bringing, probably from Hawick, the tidings that the
     beacons were ablaze. The town-bell was instantly rung, the
     inhabitants met in the marketplace, where Scott's statue now stands,
     and the whole force, with one solitary exception, armed and marched
     to Dalkeith. According to the gentleman whose horse and arms were
     sent on to meet him, it was intended, if the French proved
     victorious, that the population of the Border towns should abandon
     their homes and retire to the hills.

No characters in the "Antiquary," except Monkbarns and Edie Ochiltree,
seem to have been borrowed from notable originals. The frauds of
Dousterswivel, Scott says, are rendered plausible by "very late
instances of the force of superstitious credulity to a much greater
extent." He can hardly be referring to the career of Cagliostro, but
he may have had in his memory some unsuccessful mining speculations by
Charles Earl of Traquair, who sought for lead and found little or none
in Traquair hills. The old "Statistical Account of Scotland" (vol. xii.
p. 370) says nothing about imposture, and merely remarks that "the noble
family of Traquair have made several attempts to discover lead mines,
and have found quantities of the ore of that metal, though not adequate
to indemnify the expenses of working, and have therefore given up the
attempt." This was published in 1794, so twenty years had passed
when "The Antiquary" was written. If there was here an "instance
of superstitious credulity," it was not "a very late instance." The
divining, or "dowsing," rod of Dousterswivel still keeps its place in
mining superstition and in the search for wells.

With "The Antiquary" most contemporary reviews of the novels lose their
interest. Their author had firmly established his position, at least
till "The Monastery" caused some murmurings. Even the "Quarterly Review"
was infinitely more genial in its reception of "The Antiquary" than of
"Guy Mannering." The critic only grumbled at Lovel's feverish dreams,
which, he thought, showed an intention to introduce the marvellous. He
complained of "the dark dialect of Anglified Erse," but found comfort in
the glossary appended. The "Edinburgh Review" pronounced the chapter on
the escape from the tide to be "I the very best description we have ever
met, inverse or in prose, in ancient or in modern writing." No reviewer
seems to have noticed that the sun is made to set in the sea, on the
east coast of Scotland. The "Edinburgh," however, declared that the
Antiquary, "at least in so far as he is an Antiquary," was the chief
blemish on the book. The "sweet heathen of Monkbarns" has not suffered
from this disparagement. The "British Critic" pledged its reputation
that Scott was the author. If an argument were wanted, "it would be that
which has been applied to prove the authenticity of the last book of
the Iliad,—that Homer must have written it, because no one else could."
Alas! that argument does not convince German critics.

                                            ANDREW LANG.





CHAPTER FIRST.

               Go call a coach, and let a coach be called,
               And let the man who calleth be the caller;
               And in his calling let him nothing call,
               But Coach! Coach! Coach! O for a coach, ye gods!
                                 Chrononhotonthologos.

It was early on a fine summer's day, near the end of the eighteenth
century, when a young man, of genteel appearance, journeying towards the
north-east of Scotland, provided himself with a ticket in one of those
public carriages which travel between Edinburgh and the Queensferry,
at which place, as the name implies, and as is well known to all my
northern readers, there is a passage-boat for crossing the Firth of
Forth. The coach was calculated to carry six regular passengers, besides
such interlopers as the coachman could pick up by the way, and intrude
upon those who were legally in possession. The tickets, which conferred
right to a seat in this vehicle, of little ease, were dispensed by a
sharp-looking old dame, with a pair of spectacles on a very thin nose,
who inhabited a "laigh shop," anglice, a cellar, opening to the High
Street by a straight and steep stair, at the bottom of which she sold
tape, thread, needles, skeins of worsted, coarse linen cloth, and such
feminine gear, to those who had the courage and skill to descend to
the profundity of her dwelling, without falling headlong themselves, or
throwing down any of the numerous articles which, piled on each side of
the descent, indicated the profession of the trader below.

The written hand-bill, which, pasted on a projecting board, announced
that the Queensferry Diligence, or Hawes Fly, departed precisely at
twelve o'clock on Tuesday, the fifteenth July 17—, in order to secure
for travellers the opportunity of passing the Firth with the flood-tide,
lied on the present occasion like a bulletin; for although that hour was
pealed from Saint Giles's steeple, and repeated by the Tron, no coach
appeared upon the appointed stand. It is true, only two tickets had been
taken out, and possibly the lady of the subterranean mansion might have
an understanding with her Automedon, that, in such cases, a little space
was to be allowed for the chance of filling up the vacant places—or the
said Automedon might have been attending a funeral, and be delayed by
the necessity of stripping his vehicle of its lugubrious trappings—or
he might have staid to take a half-mutchkin extraordinary with his crony
the hostler—or—in short, he did not make his appearance.

The young gentleman, who began to grow somewhat impatient, was now
joined by a companion in this petty misery of human life—the person who
had taken out the other place. He who is bent upon a journey is usually
easily to be distinguished from his fellow-citizens. The boots, the
great-coat, the umbrella, the little bundle in his hand, the hat pulled
over his resolved brows, the determined importance of his pace, his
brief answers to the salutations of lounging acquaintances, are all
marks by which the experienced traveller in mail-coach or diligence can
distinguish, at a distance, the companion of his future journey, as he
pushes onward to the place of rendezvous. It is then that, with worldly
wisdom, the first comer hastens to secure the best berth in the coach
for himself, and to make the most convenient arrangement for his baggage
before the arrival of his competitors. Our youth, who was gifted with
little prudence, of any sort, and who was, moreover, by the absence of
the coach, deprived of the power of availing himself of his priority of
choice, amused himself, instead, by speculating upon the occupation and
character of the personage who was now come to the coach office.

He was a good-looking man of the age of sixty, perhaps older,—but his
hale complexion and firm step announced that years had not impaired
his strength or health. His countenance was of the true Scottish
cast, strongly marked, and rather harsh in features, with a shrewd
and penetrating eye, and a countenance in which habitual gravity was
enlivened by a cast of ironical humour. His dress was uniform, and of a
colour becoming his age and gravity; a wig, well dressed and powdered,
surmounted by a slouched hat, had something of a professional air. He
might be a clergyman, yet his appearance was more that of a man of
the world than usually belongs to the kirk of Scotland, and his first
ejaculation put the matter beyond question.

He arrived with a hurried pace, and, casting an alarmed glance towards
the dial-plate of the church, then looking at the place where the coach
should have been, exclaimed, "Deil's in it—I am too late after all!"

The young man relieved his anxiety, by telling him the coach had not
yet appeared. The old gentleman, apparently conscious of his own want of
punctuality, did not at first feel courageous enough to censure that
of the coachman. He took a parcel, containing apparently a large folio,
from a little boy who followed him, and, patting him on the head, bid
him go back and tell Mr. B——, that if he had known he was to have had so
much time, he would have put another word or two to their bargain,—then
told the boy to mind his business, and he would be as thriving a lad as
ever dusted a duodecimo. The boy lingered, perhaps in hopes of a penny
to buy marbles; but none was forthcoming. Our senior leaned his little
bundle upon one of the posts at the head of the staircase, and, facing
the traveller who had first arrived, waited in silence for about five
minutes the arrival of the expected diligence.

At length, after one or two impatient glances at the progress of the
minute-hand of the clock, having compared it with his own watch, a huge
and antique gold repeater, and having twitched about his features to
give due emphasis to one or two peevish pshaws, he hailed the old lady
of the cavern.

"Good woman,—what the d—l is her name?—Mrs. Macleuchar!"

Mrs. Macleuchar, aware that she had a defensive part to sustain in the
encounter which was to follow, was in no hurry to hasten the discussion
by returning a ready answer.

"Mrs. Macleuchar,—Good woman" (with an elevated voice)—then apart, "Old
doited hag, she's as deaf as a post—I say, Mrs. Macleuchar!"

"I am just serving a customer.—Indeed, hinny, it will no be a bodle
cheaper than I tell ye."

"Woman," reiterated the traveller, "do you think we can stand here all
day till you have cheated that poor servant wench out of her half-year's
fee and bountith?"

"Cheated!" retorted Mrs. Macleuchar, eager to take up the quarrel upon a
defensible ground; "I scorn your words, sir: you are an uncivil
person, and I desire you will not stand there, to slander me at my ain
stair-head."

"The woman," said the senior, looking with an arch glance at his
destined travelling companion, "does not understand the words of
action.—Woman," again turning to the vault, "I arraign not thy
character, but I desire to know what is become of thy coach?"

"What's your wull?" answered Mrs. Macleuchar, relapsing into deafness.

"We have taken places, ma'am," said the younger stranger, "in your
diligence for Queensferry"——"Which should have been half-way on the road
before now," continued the elder and more impatient traveller, rising
in wrath as he spoke: "and now in all likelihood we shall miss the tide,
and I have business of importance on the other side—and your cursed
coach"—

"The coach?—Gude guide us, gentlemen, is it no on the stand yet?"
answered the old lady, her shrill tone of expostulation sinking into a
kind of apologetic whine. "Is it the coach ye hae been waiting for?"

"What else could have kept us broiling in the sun by the side of the
gutter here, you—you faithless woman, eh?"

Mrs. Macleuchar now ascended her trap stair (for such it might be
called, though constructed of stone), until her nose came upon a level
with the pavement; then, after wiping her spectacles to look for
that which she well knew was not to be found, she exclaimed, with
well-feigned astonishment, "Gude guide us—saw ever onybody the like o'
that?"

"Yes, you abominable woman," vociferated the traveller, "many have seen
the like of it, and all will see the like of it that have anything to do
with your trolloping sex;" then pacing with great indignation before
the door of the shop, still as he passed and repassed, like a vessel who
gives her broadside as she comes abreast of a hostile fortress, he
shot down complaints, threats, and reproaches, on the embarrassed Mrs.
Macleuchar. He would take a post-chaise—he would call a hackney coach—he
would take four horses—he must—he would be on the north side,
to-day—and all the expense of his journey, besides damages, direct and
consequential, arising from delay, should be accumulated on the devoted
head of Mrs. Macleuchar.

There, was something so comic in his pettish resentment, that the
younger traveller, who was in no such pressing hurry to depart, could
not help being amused with it, especially as it was obvious, that
every now and then the old gentleman, though very angry, could not help
laughing at his own vehemence. But when Mrs. Macleuchar began also to
join in the laughter, he quickly put a stop to her ill-timed merriment.

"Woman," said he, "is that advertisement thine?" showing a bit of
crumpled printed paper: "Does it not set forth, that, God willing, as
you hypocritically express it, the Hawes Fly, or Queensferry Diligence,
would set forth to-day at twelve o'clock; and is it not, thou falsest of
creatures, now a quarter past twelve, and no such fly or diligence to
be seen?—Dost thou know the consequence of seducing the lieges by
false reports?—dost thou know it might be brought under the statute of
leasing-making? Answer—and for once in thy long, useless, and evil
life, let it be in the words of truth and sincerity,—hast thou such
a coach?—is it in rerum natura?—or is this base annunciation a mere
swindle on the incautious to beguile them of their time, their patience,
and three shillings of sterling money of this realm?—Hast thou, I say,
such a coach? ay or no?"

"O dear, yes, sir; the neighbours ken the diligence weel, green picked
oat wi' red—three yellow wheels and a black ane."

"Woman, thy special description will not serve—it may be only a lie with
a circumstance."

"O, man, man!" said the overwhelmed Mrs. Macleuchar, totally exhausted
at having been so long the butt of his rhetoric, "take back your three
shillings, and make me quit o' ye."

"Not so fast, not so fast, woman—Will three shillings transport me to
Queensferry, agreeably to thy treacherous program?—or will it requite
the damage I may sustain by leaving my business undone, or repay the
expenses which I must disburse if I am obliged to tarry a day at the
South Ferry for lack of tide?—Will it hire, I say, a pinnace, for which
alone the regular price is five shillings?"

Here his argument was cut short by a lumbering noise, which proved to
be the advance of the expected vehicle, pressing forward with all the
dispatch to which the broken-winded jades that drew it could possibly
be urged. With ineffable pleasure, Mrs. Macleuchar saw her tormentor
deposited in the leathern convenience; but still, as it was driving off,
his head thrust out of the window reminded her, in words drowned amid
the rumbling of the wheels, that, if the diligence did not attain the
Ferry in time to save the flood-tide, she, Mrs. Macleuchar, should be
held responsible for all the consequences that might ensue.

The coach had continued in motion for a mile or two before the stranger
had completely repossessed himself of his equanimity, as was manifested
by the doleful ejaculations, which he made from time to time, on the too
great probability, or even certainty, of their missing the flood-tide.
By degrees, however, his wrath subsided; he wiped his brows, relaxed his
frown, and, undoing the parcel in his hand, produced his folio, on which
he gazed from time to time with the knowing look of an amateur, admiring
its height and condition, and ascertaining, by a minute and individual
inspection of each leaf, that the, volume was uninjured and entire
from title-page to colophon. His fellow-traveller took the liberty
of inquiring the subject of his studies. He lifted up his eyes with
something of a sarcastic glance, as if he supposed the young querist
would not relish, or perhaps understand, his answer, and pronounced
the book to be Sandy Gordon's Itinerarium Septentrionale,* a book
illustrative of the Roman remains in Scotland.

* Note B. Sandy Gordon's Itinerarium.

The querist, unappalled by this learned title, proceeded to put
several questions, which indicated that he had made good use of a good
education, and, although not possessed of minute information on the
subject of antiquities, had yet acquaintance enough with the classics to
render him an interested and intelligent auditor when they were enlarged
upon. The elder traveller, observing with pleasure the capacity of
his temporary companion to understand and answer him, plunged, nothing
loath, into a sea of discussion concerning urns, vases, votive, altars,
Roman camps, and the rules of castrametation.

The pleasure of this discourse had such a dulcifying tendency, that,
although two causes of delay occurred, each of much more serious
duration than that which had drawn down his wrath upon the unlucky Mrs.
Macleuchar, our =Antiquary= only bestowed on the delay the honour of
a few episodical poohs and pshaws, which rather seemed to regard the
interruption of his disquisition than the retardation of his journey.

The first of these stops was occasioned by the breaking of a spring,
which half an hour's labour hardly repaired. To the second, the
Antiquary was himself accessory, if not the principal cause of it; for,
observing that one of the horses had cast a fore-foot shoe, he apprized
the coachman of this important deficiency. "It's Jamie Martingale that
furnishes the naigs on contract, and uphauds them," answered John, "and
I am not entitled to make any stop, or to suffer prejudice by the like
of these accidents."

"And when you go to—I mean to the place you deserve to go to, you
scoundrel,—who do you think will uphold you on contract? If you don't
stop directly and carry the poor brute, to the next smithy, I'll have
you punished, if there's a justice of peace in Mid-Lothian;" and,
opening the coach-door, out he jumped, while the coachman obeyed his
orders, muttering, that "if the gentlemen lost the tide now, they could
not say but it was their ain fault, since he was willing to get on."

I like so little to analyze the complication of the causes which
influence actions, that I will not venture to ascertain whether our
Antiquary's humanity to the poor horse was not in some degree aided by
his desire of showing his companion a Pict's camp, or Round-about,
a subject which he had been elaborately discussing, and of which a
specimen, "very curious and perfect indeed," happened to exist about a
hundred yards distant from the spot where this interruption took place.
But were I compelled to decompose the motives of my worthy friend (for
such was the gentleman in the sober suit, with powdered wig and slouched
hat), I should say, that, although he certainly would not in any case
have suffered the coachman to proceed while the horse was unfit for
service, and likely to suffer by being urged forward, yet the man of
whipcord escaped some severe abuse and reproach by the agreeable mode
which the traveller found out to pass the interval of delay.

So much time was consumed by these interruptions of their journey, that
when they descended the hill above the Hawes (for so the inn on the
southern side of the Queensferry is denominated), the experienced eye
of the Antiquary at once discerned, from the extent of wet sand, and
the number of black stones and rocks, covered with sea-weed, which were
visible along the skirts of the shore, that the hour of tide was past.
The young traveller expected a burst of indignation; but whether, as
Croaker says in "The Good-natured Man," our hero had exhausted himself
in fretting away his misfortunes beforehand, so that he did not feel
them when they actually arrived, or whether he found the company in
which he was placed too congenial to lead him to repine at anything
which delayed his journey, it is certain that he submitted to his lot
with much resignation.

"The d—l's in the diligence and the old hag, it belongs to!—Diligence,
quoth I? Thou shouldst have called it the Sloth—Fly, quoth she? why, it
moves like a fly through a glue-pot, as the Irishman says. But, however,
time and tide tarry for no man, and so, my young friend, we'll have a
snack here at the Hawes, which is a very decent sort of a place,
and I'll be very happy to finish the account I was giving you of the
difference between the mode of entrenching castra stativa and castra
aestiva, things confounded by too many of our historians. Lack-a-day, if
they had ta'en the pains to satisfy their own eyes, instead of following
each other's blind guidance!—Well! we shall be pretty comfortable at the
Hawes; and besides, after all, we must have dined somewhere, and it will
be pleasanter sailing with the tide of ebb and the evening breeze."

In this Christian temper of making the best of all occurrences, our
travellers alighted at the Hawes.




CHAPTER SECOND.

              Sir, they do scandal me upon the road here!
                A poor quotidian rack of mutton roasted
                Dry to be grated! and that driven down
              With beer and butter-milk, mingled together.
                It is against my freehold, my inheritance.
              Wine is the word that glads the heart of man,
              And mine's the house of wine. Sack, says my bush,
             Be merry and drink Sherry, that's my posie.
                        Ben Jonson's New Inn.

As the senior traveller descended the crazy steps of the diligence at
the inn, he was greeted by the fat, gouty, pursy landlord, with that
mixture of familiarity and respect which the Scotch innkeepers of the
old school used to assume towards their more valued customers.

"Have a care o' us, Monkbarns (distinguishing him by his territorial
epithet, always most agreeable to the ear of a Scottish proprietor), is
this you? I little thought to have seen your honour here till the summer
session was ower."

"Ye donnard auld deevil," answered his guest, his Scottish accent
predominating when in anger though otherwise not particularly
remarkable,—"ye donnard auld crippled idiot, what have I to do with the
session, or the geese that flock to it, or the hawks that pick their
pinions for them?"

"Troth, and that's true," said mine host, who, in fact, only spoke upon
a very general recollection of the stranger's original education, yet
would have been sorry not to have been supposed accurate as to the
station and profession of him, or any other occasional guest—"That's
very true,—but I thought ye had some law affair of your ain to look
after—I have ane mysell—a ganging plea that my father left me, and his
father afore left to him. It's about our back-yard—ye'll maybe hae heard
of it in the Parliament-house, Hutchison against Mackitchinson—it's a
weel-kenn'd plea—its been four times in afore the fifteen, and deil ony
thing the wisest o' them could make o't, but just to send it out again
to the outer-house.—O it's a beautiful thing to see how lang and how
carefully justice is considered in this country!"

"Hold your tongue, you fool," said the traveller, but in great
good-humour, "and tell us what you can give this young gentleman and me
for dinner."

"Ou, there's fish, nae doubt,—that's sea-trout and caller haddocks,"
said Mackitchinson, twisting his napkin; "and ye'll be for a
mutton-chop, and there's cranberry tarts, very weel preserved, and—and
there's just ony thing else ye like."

"Which is to say, there is nothing else whatever? Well, well, the fish
and the chop, and the tarts, will do very well. But don't imitate the
cautious delay that you praise in the courts of justice. Let there be no
remits from the inner to the outer house, hear ye me?"

"Na, na," said Mackitchinson, whose long and heedful perusal of
volumes of printed session papers had made him acquainted with some law
phrases—"the denner shall be served quam primum and that peremptorie."
And with the flattering laugh of a promising host, he left them in his
sanded parlour, hung with prints of the Four Seasons.

As, notwithstanding his pledge to the contrary, the glorious delays of
the law were not without their parallel in the kitchen of the inn, our
younger traveller had an opportunity to step out and make some inquiry
of the people of the house concerning the rank and station of his
companion. The information which he received was of a general and less
authentic nature, but quite sufficient to make him acquainted with
the name, history, and circumstances of the gentleman, whom we shall
endeavour, in a few words, to introduce more accurately to our readers.

Jonathan Oldenbuck, or Oldinbuck, by popular contraction Oldbuck,
of Monkbarns, was the second son of a gentleman possessed of a small
property in the neighbourhood of a thriving seaport town on the
north-eastern coast of Scotland, which, for various reasons, we shall
denominate Fairport. They had been established for several generations,
as landholders in the county, and in most shires of England would have
been accounted a family of some standing But the shire of——was filled
with gentlemen of more ancient descent and larger fortune. In the last
generation, also, the neighbouring gentry had been almost uniformly
Jacobites, while the proprietors of Monkbarns, like the burghers of
the town near which they were settled, were steady assertors of the
Protestant succession. The latter had, however, a pedigree of their
own, on which they prided themselves as much as those who despised them
valued their respective Saxon, Norman, or Celtic genealogies. The first
Oldenbuck, who had settled in their family mansion shortly after the
Reformation, was, they asserted, descended from one of the original
printers of Germany, and had left his country in consequence of the
persecutions directed against the professors of the Reformed religion.
He had found a refuge in the town near which his posterity dwelt,
the more readily that he was a sufferer in the Protestant cause, and
certainly not the less so, that he brought with him money enough to
purchase the small estate of Monkbarns, then sold by a dissipated laird,
to whose father it had been gifted, with other church lands, on the
dissolution of the great and wealthy monastery to which it had belonged.
The Oldenbucks were therefore, loyal subjects on all occasions of
insurrection; and, as they kept up a good intelligence with the borough,
it chanced that the Laird of Monkbarns, who flourished in 1745, was
provost of the town during that ill-fated year, and had exerted himself
with much spirit in favour of King George, and even been put to expenses
on that score, which, according to the liberal conduct of the existing
government towards their friends, had never been repaid him. By dint
of solicitation, however, and borough interest, he contrived to gain
a place in the customs, and, being a frugal, careful man, had found
himself enabled to add considerably to his paternal fortune. He had only
two sons, of whom, as we have hinted, the present laird was the younger,
and two daughters, one of whom still flourished in single blessedness,
and the other, who was greatly more juvenile, made a love-match with a
captain in the Forty-twa, who had no other fortune but his commission
and a Highland pedigree. Poverty disturbed a union which love would
otherwise have made happy, and Captain M'Intyre, in justice to his wife
and two children, a boy and girl, had found himself obliged to seek his
fortune in the East Indies. Being ordered upon an expedition against
Hyder Ally, the detachment to which he belonged was cut off, and no news
ever reached his unfortunate wife, whether he fell in battle, or was
murdered in prison, or survived in what the habits of the Indian tyrant
rendered a hopeless captivity. She sunk under the accumulated load of
grief and uncertainty, and left a son and daughter to the charge of her
brother, the existing Laird of Monkbarns.

The history of that proprietor himself is soon told. Being, as we have
said, a second son, his father destined him to a share in a substantial
mercantile concern, carried on by some of his maternal relations. From
this Jonathan's mind revolted in the most irreconcilable manner. He was
then put apprentice to the profession of a writer, or attorney, in which
he profited so far, that he made himself master of the whole forms
of feudal investitures, and showed such pleasure in reconciling their
incongruities, and tracing their origin, that his master had great
hope he would one day be an able conveyancer. But he halted upon the
threshold, and, though he acquired some knowledge of the origin and
system of the law of his country, he could never be persuaded to
apply it to lucrative and practical purposes. It was not from any
inconsiderate neglect of the advantages attending the possession
of money that he thus deceived the hopes of his master. "Were he
thoughtless or light-headed, or rei suae prodigus," said his instructor,
"I would know what to make of him. But he never pays away a shilling
without looking anxiously after the change, makes his sixpence go
farther than another lad's half-crown, and wilt ponder over an old
black-letter copy of the acts of parliament for days, rather than go to
the golf or the change-house; and yet he will not bestow one of these
days on a little business of routine, that would put twenty shillings
in his pocket—a strange mixture of frugality and industry, and negligent
indolence—I don't know what to make of him."

But in process of time his pupil gained the means of making what he
pleased of himself; for his father having died, was not long survived by
his eldest son, an arrant fisher and fowler, who departed this life, in
consequence of a cold caught in his vocation, while shooting ducks in
the swamp called Kittlefittingmoss, notwithstanding his having drunk a
bottle of brandy that very night to keep the cold out of his stomach.
Jonathan, therefore, succeeded to the estate, and with it to the means
of subsisting without the hated drudgery of the law. His wishes were
very moderate; and as the rent of his small property rose with the
improvement of the country, it soon greatly exceeded his wants and
expenditure; and though too indolent to make money, he was by no means
insensible to the pleasure of beholding it accumulate. The burghers of
the town near which he lived regarded him with a sort of envy, as one
who affected to divide himself from their rank in society, and whose
studies and pleasures seemed to them alike incomprehensible. Still,
however, a sort of hereditary respect for the Laird of Monkbarns,
augmented by the knowledge of his being a ready-money man, kept up his
consequence with this class of his neighbours. The country gentlemen
were generally above him in fortune, and beneath him in intellect,
and, excepting one with whom he lived in habits of intimacy, had little
intercourse with Mr. Oldbuck of Monkbarns. He, had, however, the usual
resources, the company of the clergyman, and of the doctor, when he
chose to request it, and also his own pursuits and pleasures, being in
correspondence with most of the virtuosi of his time, who, like himself,
measured decayed entrenchments, made plans of ruined castles, read
illegible inscriptions, and wrote essays on medals in the proportion
of twelve pages to each letter of the legend. Some habits of hasty
irritation he had contracted, partly, it was said in the borough of
Fairport, from an early disappointment in love in virtue of which he had
commenced misogynist, as he called it, but yet more by the obsequious
attention paid to him by his maiden sister and his orphan niece, whom he
had trained to consider him as the greatest man upon earth, and whom he
used to boast of as the only women he had ever seen who were well
broke in and bitted to obedience; though, it must be owned, Miss Grizzy
Oldbuck was sometimes apt to jibb when he pulled the reins too tight.
The rest of his character must be gathered from the story, and we
dismiss with pleasure the tiresome task of recapitulation.

During the time of dinner, Mr. Oldbuck, actuated by the same curiosity
which his fellow-traveller had entertained on his account, made some
advances, which his age and station entitled him to do in a more direct
manner, towards ascertaining the name, destination, and quality of his
young companion.

His name, the young gentleman said, was Lovel.

"What! the cat, the rat, and Lovel our dog? Was he descended from King
Richard's favourite?"

"He had no pretensions," he said, "to call himself a whelp of that
litter; his father was a north-of-England gentleman. He was at present
travelling to Fairport (the town near to which Monkbarns was situated),
and, if he found the place agreeable, might perhaps remain there for
some weeks."

"Was Mr. Lovel's excursion solely for pleasure?"

"Not entirely."

"Perhaps on business with some of the commercial people of Fairport?"

"It was partly on business, but had no reference to commerce."

Here he paused; and Mr. Oldbuck, having pushed his inquiries as far
as good manners permitted, was obliged to change the conversation. The
Antiquary, though by no means an enemy to good cheer, was a determined
foe to all unnecessary expense on a journey; and upon his companion
giving a hint concerning a bottle of port wine, he drew a direful
picture of the mixture, which, he said, was usually sold under that
denomination, and affirming that a little punch was more genuine and
better suited for the season, he laid his hand upon the bell to order
the materials. But Mackitchinson had, in his own mind, settled their
beverage otherwise, and appeared bearing in his hand an immense double
quart bottle, or magnum, as it is called in Scotland, covered with
saw-dust and cobwebs, the warrants of its antiquity.

"Punch!" said he, catching that generous sound as he entered the
parlour, "the deil a drap punch ye'se get here the day, Monkbarns, and
that ye may lay your account wi'."

"What do you mean, you impudent rascal?"

"Ay, ay, it's nae matter for that—but do you mind the trick ye served me
the last time ye were here!"

"I trick you!"

"Ay, just yoursell, Monkbarns. The Laird o' Tamlowrie and Sir Gilbert
Grizzlecleuch, and Auld Rossballoh, and the Bailie, were just setting in
to make an afternoon o't, and you, wi' some o' your auld-warld stories,
that the mind o' man canna resist, whirl'd them to the back o' beyont to
look at the auld Roman camp—Ah, sir!" turning to Lovel, "he wad wile the
bird aff the tree wi' the tales he tells about folk lang syne—and did
not I lose the drinking o' sax pints o' gude claret, for the deil ane
wad hae stirred till he had seen that out at the least?"

"D'ye hear the impudent scoundrel!" said Monkbarns, but laughing at
the same time; for the worthy landlord, as he used to boast, know the
measure of a guest's foot as well as e'er a souter on this side Solway;
"well, well, you may send us in a bottle of port."

"Port! na, na! ye maun leave port and punch to the like o' us, it's
claret that's fit for you lairds; and, I dare say, nane of the folk ye
speak so much o' ever drank either of the twa."

"Do you hear how absolute the knave is? Well, my young friend, we must
for once prefer the Falernian to the vile Sabinum."

The ready landlord had the cork instantly extracted, decanted the wine
into a vessel of suitable capaciousness, and, declaring it parfumed the
very room, left his guests to make the most of it.

Mackitchinson's wine was really good, and had its effect upon the
spirits of the elder guest, who told some good stories, cut some sly
jokes, and at length entered into a learned discussion concerning the
ancient dramatists; a ground on which he found his new acquaintance
so strong, that at length he began to suspect he had made them his
professional study. "A traveller partly for business and partly for
pleasure?—why, the stage partakes of both; it is a labour to the
performers, and affords, or is meant to afford, pleasure to the
spectators. He seems, in manner and rank, above the class of young men
who take that turn; but I remember hearing them say, that the little
theatre at Fairport was to open with the performance of a young
gentleman, being his first appearance on any stage.—If this should be
thee, Lovel!—Lovel? yes, Lovel or Belville are just the names which
youngsters are apt to assume on such occasions—on my life, I am sorry
for the lad."

Mr. Oldbuck was habitually parsimonious, but in no respects mean; his
first thought was to save his fellow-traveller any part of the expense
of the entertainment, which he supposed must be in his situation more
or less inconvenient. He therefore took an opportunity of settling
privately with Mr. Mackitchinson. The young traveller remonstrated
against his liberality, and only acquiesced in deference to his years
and respectability.

The mutual satisfaction which they found in each other's society induced
Mr. Oldbuck to propose, and Lovel willingly to accept, a scheme for
travelling together to the end of their journey. Mr. Oldbuck intimated
a wish to pay two-thirds of the hire of a post-chaise, saying, that a
proportional quantity of room was necessary to his accommodation; but
this Mr. Lovel resolutely declined. Their expense then was mutual,
unless when Lovel occasionally slipt a shilling into the hand of a
growling postilion; for Oldbuck, tenacious of ancient customs, never
extended his guerdon beyond eighteen-pence a stage. In this manner they
travelled, until they arrived at Fairport* about two o'clock on the
following day.

* [The "Fairport" of this novel is supposed to refer to the town of *
Arbroath, in Forfarshire, and "Musselcrag," post, to the fishing village
of * Auchmithie, in the same county.]

Lovel probably expected that his travelling companion would have invited
him to dinner on his arrival; but his consciousness of a want of ready
preparation for unexpected guests, and perhaps some other reasons,
prevented Oldbuck from paying him that attention. He only begged to
see him as early as he could make it convenient to call in a forenoon,
recommended him to a widow who had apartments to let, and to a person
who kept a decent ordinary; cautioning both of them apart, that he only
knew Mr. Lovel as a pleasant companion in a post-chaise, and did not
mean to guarantee any bills which he might contract while residing at
Fairport. The young gentleman's figure and manners; not to mention
a well-furnished trunk, which soon arrived by sea, to his address
at Fairport, probably went as far in his favour as the limited
recommendation of his fellow-traveller.




CHAPTER THIRD.

                 He had a routh o' auld nick-nackets,
                 Rusty airn caps, and jinglin-jackets,
               Would held the Loudons three in tackets,
                            A towmond gude;
               And parritch-pats, and auld sayt-backets,
                           Afore the flude.
                                           Burns.

After he had settled himself in his new apartments at Fairport,
Mr. Lovel bethought him of paying the requested visit to his
fellow-traveller. He did not make it earlier, because, with all the old
gentleman's good-humour and information, there had sometimes glanced
forth in his language and manner towards him an air of superiority,
which his companion considered as being fully beyond what the difference
of age warranted. He therefore waited the arrival of his baggage from
Edinburgh, that he might arrange his dress according to the fashion
of the day, and make his exterior corresponding to the rank in society
which he supposed or felt himself entitled to hold.

It was the fifth day after his arrival, that, having made the necessary
inquiries concerning the road, he went forth to pay his respects at
Monkbarns. A footpath leading over a heathy hill, and through two
or three meadows, conducted him to this mansion, which stood on the
opposite side of the hill aforesaid, and commanded a fine prospect of
the bay and shipping. Secluded from the town by the rising ground, which
also screened it from the north-west wind, the house had a solitary, and
sheltered appearance. The exterior had little to recommend it. It was an
irregular old-fashioned building, some part of which had belonged to a
grange, or solitary farm-house, inhabited by the bailiff, or steward,
of the monastery, when the place was in possession of the monks. It
was here that the community stored up the grain, which they received
as ground-rent from their vassals; for, with the prudence belonging to
their order, all their conventional revenues were made payable in kind,
and hence, as the present proprietor loved to tell, came the name of
Monkbarns. To the remains of the bailiff's house, the succeeding
lay inhabitants had made various additions in proportion to the
accommodation required by their families; and, as this was done with
an equal contempt of convenience within and architectural regularity
without, the whole bore the appearance of a hamlet which had suddenly
stood still when in the act of leading down one of Amphion's, or
Orpheus's, country dances. It was surrounded by tall clipped hedges of
yew and holly, some of which still exhibited the skill of the topiarian
artist,* and presented curious arm-chairs, towers, and the figures of
Saint George and the Dragon.

* Ars Topiaria, the art of clipping yew-hedges into fantastic figures.
A Latin poem, entitled Ars Topiaria, contains a curious account of the
process.

The taste of Mr. Oldbuck did not disturb these monuments of an art now
unknown, and he was the less tempted so to do, as it must necessarily
have broken the heart of the old gardener. One tall embowering holly
was, however, sacred from the shears; and, on a garden seat beneath its
shade, Lovel beheld his old friend with spectacles on nose, and pouch on
side, busily employed in perusing the London Chronicle, soothed by the
summer breeze through the rustling leaves, and the distant dash of the
waves as they rippled upon the sand.

Mr. Oldbuck immediately rose, and advanced to greet his travelling
acquaintance with a hearty shake of the hand. "By my faith," said he, "I
began to think you had changed your mind, and found the stupid people of
Fairport so tiresome, that you judged them unworthy of your talents, and
had taken French leave, as my old friend and brother-antiquary Mac-Cribb
did, when he went off with one of my Syrian medals."

"I hope, my good sir, I should have fallen under no such imputation."

"Quite as bad, let me tell you, if you had stolen yourself away without
giving me the pleasure of seeing you again. I had rather you had taken
my copper Otho himself.—But come, let me show you the way into my
sanctum sanctorum—my cell I may call it, for, except two idle hussies
of womankind," (by this contemptuous phrase, borrowed from his
brother-antiquary, the cynic Anthony a-Wood, Mr. Oldbuck was used to
denote the fair sex in general, and his sister and niece in particular),
"that, on some idle pretext of relationship, have established themselves
in my premises, I live here as much a Coenobite as my predecessor, John
o' the Girnell, whose grave I will show you by and by."

Thus speaking the old gentleman led the way through a low door; but
before entrance, suddenly stopped short to point out some vestiges of
what he called an inscription, and, shaking his head as he pronounced it
totally illegible, "Ah! if you but knew, Mr. Lovel, the time and trouble
that these mouldering traces of letters have cost me! No mother ever
travailed so for a child—and all to no purpose—although I am almost
positive that these two last marks imply the figures, or letters, LV,
and may give us a good guess at the real date of the building, since we
know, aliunde, that it was founded by Abbot Waldimir about the middle
of the fourteenth century—and, I profess, I think that centre ornament
might be made out by better eyes than mine."

"I think," answered Lovel, willing to humour the old man, "it has
something the appearance of a mitre."

"I protest you are right! you are right! it never struck me before—see
what it is to have younger eyes—A mitre—a mitre—it corresponds in every
respect."

The resemblance was not much nearer than that of Polonius's cloud to a
whale, or an owzel; it was sufficient, however, to set the Antiquary's
brains to work. "A mitre, my dear sir," continued he, as he led the way
through a labyrinth of inconvenient and dark passages, and accompanied
his disquisition with certain necessary cautions to his guest—"A mitre,
my dear sir, will suit our abbot as well as a bishop—he was a mitred
abbot, and at the very top of the roll—take care of these three steps—I
know Mac-Cribb denies this, but it is as certain as that he took away my
Antigonus, no leave asked—you'll see the name of the Abbot of Trotcosey,
Abbas Trottocosiensis, at the head of the rolls of parliament in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—there is very little light here, and
these cursed womankind always leave their tubs in the passage—now take,
care of the corner—ascend twelve steps, and ye are safe!" The Antiquary
and Lovel--the Sanctum

Mr. Oldbuck had by this time attained the top of the winding stair which
led to his own apartment, and opening a door, and pushing aside a piece
of tapestry with which it was covered, his first exclamation was, "What
are you about here, you sluts?" A dirty barefooted chambermaid threw
down her duster, detected in the heinous fact of arranging the sanctum
sanctorum, and fled out of an opposite door from the face of her
incensed master. A genteel-looking young woman, who was superintending
the operation, stood her ground, but with some timidity.

"Indeed, uncle, your room was not fit to be seen, and I just came to see
that Jenny laid everything down where she took it up."

"And how dare you, or Jenny either, presume to meddle with my private
matters?" (Mr. Oldbuck hated puttting to rights as much as Dr. Orkborne,
or any other professed student.) "Go, sew your sampler, you monkey, and
do not let me find you here again, as you value your ears.—I assure
you, Mr. Lovel, that the last inroad of these pretended friends to
cleanliness was almost as fatal to my collection as Hudibras's visit to
that of Sidrophel; and I have ever since missed

                    My copperplate, with almanacks
                    Engraved upon't and other knacks
                    My moon-dial, with Napier's bones,
                    And several constellation Stones;
                    My flea, my morpeon, and punaise,
                      I purchased for my proper ease.

And so forth, as old Butler has it."

The young lady, after courtesying to Lovel, had taken the opportunity to
make her escape during this enumeration of losses. "You'll be poisoned
here with the volumes of dust they have raised," continued the
Antiquary; "but I assure you the dust was very ancient, peaceful, quiet
dust, about an hour ago, and would have remained so for a hundred years,
had not these gipsies disturbed it, as they do everything else in the
world."

It was indeed some time before Lovel could, through the thick
atmosphere, perceive in what sort of den his friend had constructed his
retreat. It was a lofty room of middling size, obscurely lighted by high
narrow latticed windows. One end was entirely occupied by book-shelves,
greatly too limited in space for the number of volumes placed upon them,
which were, therefore, drawn up in ranks of two or three files deep,
while numberless others littered the floor and the tables, amid a chaos
of maps, engraving, scraps of parchment, bundles of papers, pieces of
old armour, swords, dirks, helmets, and Highland targets. Behind Mr.
Oldbuck's seat (which was an ancient leathern-covered easy-chair, worn
smooth by constant use) was a huge oaken cabinet, decorated at each
corner with Dutch cherubs, having their little duck-wings displayed, and
great jolter-headed visages placed between them. The top of this cabinet
was covered with busts, and Roman lamps and paterae, intermingled
with one or two bronze figures. The walls of the apartment were partly
clothed with grim old tapestry, representing the memorable story of Sir
Gawaine's wedding, in which full justice was done to the ugliness of the
Lothely Lady; although, to judge from his own looks, the gentle knight
had less reason to be disgusted with the match on account of disparity
of outward favour, than the romancer has given us to understand. The
rest of the room was panelled, or wainscotted, with black oak, against
which hung two or three portraits in armour, being characters in
Scottish history, favourites of Mr. Oldbuck, and as many in tie-wigs
and laced coats, staring representatives of his own ancestors. A large
old-fashioned oaken table was covered with a profusion of papers,
parchments, books, and nondescript trinkets and gewgaws, which seemed to
have little to recommend them, besides rust and the antiquity which it
indicates. In the midst of this wreck of ancient books and utensils,
with a gravity equal to Marius among the ruins of Carthage, sat a large
black cat, which, to a superstitious eye, might have presented the
genius loci, the tutelar demon of the apartment. The floor, as well
as the table and chairs, was overflowed by the same mare magnum of
miscellaneous trumpery, where it would have been as impossible to find
any individual article wanted, as to put it to any use when discovered.

Amid this medley, it was no easy matter to find one's way to a chair,
without stumbling over a prostrate folio, or the still more awkward
mischance of overturning some piece of Roman or ancient British pottery.
And, when the chair was attained, it had to be disencumbered, with a
careful hand, of engravings which might have received damage, and of
antique spurs and buckles, which would certainly have occasioned it
to any sudden occupant. Of this the Antiquary made Lovel particularly
aware, adding, that his friend, the Rev. Doctor Heavysterne from the
Low Countries, had sustained much injury by sitting down suddenly and
incautiously on three ancient calthrops, or craw-taes, which had been
lately dug up in the bog near Bannockburn, and which, dispersed by
Robert Bruce to lacerate the feet of the English chargers, came thus in
process of time to endamage the sitting part of a learned professor of
Utrecht.

Having at length fairly settled himself, and being nothing loath to make
inquiry concerning the strange objects around him, which his host was
equally ready, as far as possible, to explain, Lovel was introduced to a
large club, or bludgeon, with an iron spike at the end of it, which,
it seems, had been lately found in a field on the Monkbarns property,
adjacent to an old burying-ground. It had mightily the air of such
a stick as the Highland reapers use to walk with on their annual
peregrinations from their mountains; but Mr. Oldbuck was strongly
tempted to believe, that, as its shape was singular, it might have been
one of the clubs with which the monks armed their peasants in lieu of
more martial weapons,—whence, he observed, the villains were called
Colve-carles, or Kolb-kerls, that is, Clavigeri, or club-bearers. For
the truth of this custom, he quoted the chronicle of Antwerp and that
of St. Martin; against which authorities Lovel had nothing to oppose,
having never heard of them till that moment.

Mr. Oldbuck next exhibited thumb-screws, which had given the Covenanters
of former days the cramp in their joints, and a collar with the name of
a fellow convicted of theft, whose services, as the inscription bore,
had been adjudged to a neighbouring baron, in lieu of the modern
Scottish punishment, which, as Oldbuck said, sends such culprits to
enrich England by their labour, and themselves by their dexterity.
Many and various were the other curiosities which he showed;—but it
was chiefly upon his books that he prided himself, repeating, with a
complacent air, as he led the way to the crowded and dusty shelves, the
verses of old Chaucer—

               For he would rather have, at his bed-head,
               A twenty books, clothed in black or red,
                    Of Aristotle, or his philosophy,
                    Than robes rich, rebeck, or saltery.

This pithy motto he delivered, shaking his head, and giving each
guttural the true Anglo-Saxon enunciation, which is now forgotten in the
southern parts of this realm.

The collection was indeed a curious one, and might well be envied by
an amateur. Yet it was not collected at the enormous prices of modern
times, which are sufficient to have appalled the most determined as well
as earliest bibliomaniac upon record, whom we take to have been none
else than the renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha, as, among other slight
indications of an infirm understanding, he is stated, by his veracious
historian, Cid Hamet Benengeli, to have exchanged fields and farms for
folios and quartos of chivalry. In this species of exploit, the good
knight-errant has been imitated by lords, knights, and squires of our
own day, though we have not yet heard of any that has mistaken an inn
for a castle, or laid his lance in rest against a windmill. Mr. Oldbuck
did not follow these collectors in such excess of expenditure; but,
taking a pleasure in the personal labour of forming his library, saved
his purse at the expense of his time and toil, He was no encourager of
that ingenious race of peripatetic middle-men, who, trafficking between
the obscure keeper of a stall and the eager amateur, make their profit
at once of the ignorance of the former, and the dear-bought skill and
taste of the latter. When such were mentioned in his hearing, he seldom
failed to point out how necessary it was to arrest the object of your
curiosity in its first transit, and to tell his favourite story of
Snuffy Davie and Caxton's Game at Chess.—"Davy Wilson," he said,
"commonly called Snuffy Davy, from his inveterate addiction to black
rappee, was the very prince of scouts for searching blind alleys,
cellars, and stalls for rare volumes. He had the scent of a slow-hound,
sir, and the snap of a bull-dog. He would detect you an old black-letter
ballad among the leaves of a law-paper, and find an editio princeps
under the mask of a school Corderius. Snuffy Davy bought the Game of
Chess, 1474, the first book ever printed in England, from a stall in
Holland, for about two groschen, or twopence of our money. He sold it
to Osborne for twenty pounds, and as many books as came to twenty pounds
more. Osborne resold this inimitable windfall to Dr. Askew for sixty
guineas. At Dr. Askew's sale," continued the old gentleman, kindling as
he spoke, "this inestimable treasure blazed forth in its full value,
and was purchased by Royalty itself for one hundred and seventy
pounds!—Could a copy now occur, Lord only knows," he ejaculated, with a
deep sigh and lifted-up hands—"Lord only knows what would be its ransom;
and yet it was originally secured, by skill and research, for the
easy equivalent of two-pence sterling. * Happy, thrice happy, Snuffy
Davie!—and blessed were the times when thy industry could be so
rewarded!

* This bibliomaniacal anecdote is literally true; and David Wilson, the
author need not tell his brethren of the Roxburghe and Bannatyne Clubs,
was a real personage.

"Even I, sir," he went on, "though far inferior in industry and
discernment and presence of mind, to that great man, can show you a
few—a very few things, which I have collected, not by force of money,
as any wealthy man might,—although, as my friend Lucian says, he might
chance to throw away his coin only to illustrate his ignorance,—but
gained in a manner that shows I know something of the matter. See this
bundle of ballads, not one of them later than 1700, and some of them
an hundred years older. I wheedled an old woman out of these, who loved
them better than her psalm-book. Tobacco, sir, snuff, and the Complete
Syren, were the equivalent! For that, mutilated copy of the Complaynt of
Scotland, I sat out the drinking of two dozen bottles of strong ale with
the late learned proprietor, who, in gratitude, bequeathed it to me by
his last will. These little Elzevirs are the memoranda and trophies of
many a walk by night and morning through the Cowgate, the Canongate, the
Bow, St. Mary's Wynd,—wherever, in fine, there were to be found brokers
and trokers, those miscellaneous dealers in things rare and curious.
How often have I stood haggling on a halfpenny, lest, by a too ready
acquiescence in the dealer's first price, he should be led to suspect
the value I set upon the article!—how have I trembled, lest some passing
stranger should chop in between me and the prize, and regarded each poor
student of divinity that stopped to turn over the books at the stall,
as a rival amateur, or prowling bookseller in disguise!—And then, Mr.
Lovel, the sly satisfaction with which one pays the consideration, and
pockets the article, affecting a cold indifference, while the hand is
trembling with pleasure!—Then to dazzle the eyes of our wealthier and
emulous rivals by showing them such a treasure as this" (displaying a
little black smoked book about the size of a primer); "to enjoy their
surprise and envy, shrouding meanwhile, under a veil of mysterious
consciousness, our own superior knowledge and dexterity these, my young
friend, these are the white moments of life, that repay the toil, and
pains, and sedulous attention, which our profession, above all others,
so peculiarly demands!"

Lovel was not a little amused at hearing the old gentleman run on in
this manner, and, however incapable of entering into the full merits
of what he beheld, he admired, as much as could have been expected, the
various treasures which Oldbuck exhibited. Here were editions esteemed
as being the first, and there stood those scarcely less regarded as
being the last and best; here was a book valued because it had the
author's final improvements, and there another which (strange to tell!)
was in request because it had them not. One was precious because it
was a folio, another because it was a duodecimo; some because they
were tall, some because they were short; the merit of this lay in the
title-page—of that in the arrangement of the letters in the word Finis.
There was, it seemed, no peculiar distinction, however trifling
or minute, which might not give value to a volume, providing the
indispensable quality of scarcity, or rare occurrence, was attached to
it.

Not the least fascinating was the original broadside,—the Dying Speech,
Bloody Murder, or Wonderful Wonder of Wonders,—in its primary tattered
guise, as it was hawked through the streets, and sold for the cheap and
easy price of one penny, though now worth the weight of that penny in
gold. On these the Antiquary dilated with transport, and read, with a
rapturous voice, the elaborate titles, which bore the same proportion to
the contents that the painted signs without a showman's booth do to the
animals within. Mr. Oldbuck, for example, piqued himself especially
in possessing an unique broadside, entitled and called "Strange and
Wonderful News from Chipping-Norton, in the County of Oxon, of certain
dreadful Apparitions which were seen in the Air on the 26th of July
1610, at Half an Hour after Nine o'Clock at Noon, and continued till
Eleven, in which Time was seen Appearances of several flaming Swords,
strange Motions of the superior Orbs; with the unusual Sparkling of
the Stars, with their dreadful Continuations; With the Account of the
Opening of the Heavens, and strange Appearances therein disclosing
themselves, with several other prodigious Circumstances not heard of in
any Age, to the great Amazement of the Beholders, as it was communicated
in a Letter to one Mr. Colley, living in West Smithfield, and attested
by Thomas Brown, Elizabeth Greenaway, and Anne Gutheridge, who were
Spectators of the dreadful Apparitions: And if any one would be
further satisfied of the Truth of this Relation, let them repair to
Mr. Nightingale's at the Bear Inn, in West Smithfield, and they may be
satisfied."*

* Of this thrice and four times rare broadside, the author possesses an
exemplar.

"You laugh at this," said the proprietor of the collection, "and I
forgive you. I do acknowledge that the charms on which we doat are not
so obvious to the eyes of youth as those of a fair lady; but you will
grow wiser, and see more justly, when you come to wear spectacles.—Yet
stay, I have one piece of antiquity, which you, perhaps, will prize more
highly."

So saying, Mr. Oldbuck unlocked a drawer, and took out a bundle of keys,
then pulled aside a piece of the tapestry which concealed the door of
a small closet, into which he descended by four stone steps, and,
after some tinkling among bottles and cans, produced two long-stalked
wine-glasses with bell mouths, such as are seen in Teniers' pieces, and
a small bottle of what he called rich racy canary, with a little bit
of diet cake, on a small silver server of exquisite old workmanship. "I
will say nothing of the server," he remarked, "though it is said to
have been wrought by the old mad Florentine, Benvenuto Cellini. But, Mr.
Lovel, our ancestors drank sack—you, who admire the drama, know where
that's to be found.—Here's success to your exertions at Fairport, sir!"

"And to you, sir, and an ample increase to your treasure, with no more
trouble on your part than is just necessary to make the acquisitions
valuable."

After a libation so suitable to the amusement in which they had been
engaged, Lovel rose to take his leave, and Mr. Oldbuck prepared to give
him his company a part of the way, and show him something worthy of his
curiosity on his return to Fairport.




CHAPTER FOURTH.

                The pawkie auld carle cam ower the lea,
                Wi' mony good-e'ens and good-morrows to me,
                    Saying, Kind Sir, for your courtesy,
                    Will ye lodge a silly puir man?
                                  The Gaberlunzie Man.

Our two friends moved through a little orchard, where the aged
apple-trees, well loaded with fruit, showed, as is usual in the
neighbourhood of monastic buildings, that the days of the monks had not
always been spent in indolence, but often dedicated to horticulture
and gardening. Mr. Oldbuck failed not to make Lovel remark, that the
planters of those days were possessed of the modern secret of preventing
the roots of the fruit-trees from penetrating the till, and compelling
them to spread in a lateral direction, by placing paving-stones beneath
the trees when first planted, so as to interpose between their fibres
and the subsoil. "This old fellow," he said, "which was blown down last
summer, and still, though half reclined on the ground, is covered
with fruit, has been, as you may see, accommodated with such a
barrier between his roots and the unkindly till. That other tree has a
story:—the fruit is called the Abbot's Apple; the lady of a neighbouring
baron was so fond of it, that she would often pay a visit to Monkbarns,
to have the pleasure of gathering it from the tree. The husband, a
jealous man, belike, suspected that a taste so nearly resembling that
of Mother Eve prognosticated a similar fall. As the honour of a noble
family is concerned, I will say no more on the subject, only that the
lands of Lochard and Cringlecut still pay a fine of six bolls of barley
annually, to atone the guilt of their audacious owner, who intruded
himself and his worldly suspicions upon the seclusion of the Abbot and
his penitent.—Admire the little belfry rising above the ivy-mantled
porch—there was here a hospitium, hospitale, or hospitamentum (for it
is written all these various ways in the old writings and evidents), in
which the monks received pilgrims. I know our minister has said, in the
Statistical Account, that the hospitium was situated either in the lands
of Haltweary or upon those of Half-starvet; but he is incorrect, Mr.
Lovel—that is the gate called still the Palmer's Port, and my gardener
found many hewn stones, when he was trenching the ground for winter
celery, several of which I have sent as specimens to my learned friends,
and to the various antiquarian societies of which I am an unworthy
member. But I will say no more at present; I reserve something for
another visit, and we have an object of real curiosity before us."

While he was thus speaking, he led the way briskly through one or two
rich pasture-meadows, to an open heath or common, and so to the top of
a gentle eminence. "Here," he said, "Mr. Lovel, is a truly remarkable
spot."

"It commands a fine view," said his companion, looking around him.

"True: but it is not for the prospect I brought you hither; do you see
nothing else remarkable?—nothing on the surface of the ground?"

"Why, yes; I do see something like a ditch, indistinctly marked."

"Indistinctly!—pardon me, sir, but the indistinctness must be in your
powers of vision. Nothing can be more plainly traced—a proper agger or
vallum, with its corresponding ditch or fossa. Indistinctly! why, Heaven
help you, the lassie, my niece, as light-headed a goose as womankind
affords, saw the traces of the ditch at once. Indistinct!—why, the great
station at Ardoch, or that at Burnswark in Annandale, may be clearer,
doubtless, because they are stative forts, whereas this was only an
occasional encampment. Indistinct!—why, you must suppose that fools,
boors, and idiots, have ploughed up the land, and, like beasts and
ignorant savages, have thereby obliterated two sides of the square, and
greatly injured the third; but you see, yourself, the fourth side is
quite entire!"

Lovel endeavoured to apologize, and to explain away his ill-timed
phrase, and pleaded his inexperience. But he was not at once quite
successful. His first expression had come too frankly and naturally not
to alarm the Antiquary, and he could not easily get over the shock it
had given him.

"My dear sir," continued the senior, "your eyes are not inexperienced:
you know a ditch from level ground, I presume, when you see them?
Indistinct! why, the very common people, the very least boy that can
herd a cow, calls it the Kaim of Kinprunes; and if that does not imply
an ancient camp, I am ignorant what does."

Lovel having again acquiesced, and at length lulled to sleep the
irritated and suspicious vanity of the Antiquary, he proceeded in his
task of cicerone. "You must know," he said, "our Scottish antiquaries
have been greatly divided about the local situation of the final
conflict between Agricola and the Caledonians; some contend for Ardoch
in Strathallan, some for Innerpeffry, some for the Raedykes in the
Mearns, and some are for carrying the scene of action as far north as
Blair in Athole. Now, after all this discussion," continued the old
gentleman, with one of his slyest and most complacent looks, "what would
you think, Mr. Lovel,—I say, what would you think,—if the memorable
scene of conflict should happen to be on the very spot called the Kaim
of Kinprunes, the property of the obscure and humble individual who now
speaks to you?" Then, having paused a little, to suffer his guest to
digest a communication so important, he resumed his disquisition in a
higher tone. "Yes, my good friend, I am indeed greatly deceived if this
place does not correspond with all the marks of that celebrated place
of action. It was near to the Grampian mountains—lo! yonder they are,
mixing and contending with the sky on the skirts of the horizon! It was
in conspectu classis—in sight of the Roman fleet; and would any admiral,
Roman or British, wish a fairer bay to ride in than that on your right
hand? It is astonishing how blind we professed antiquaries sometimes
are! Sir Robert Sibbald, Saunders Gordon, General Roy, Dr. Stokely,—why,
it escaped all of them. I was unwilling to say a word about it till
I had secured the ground, for it belonged to auld Johnnie Howie, a
bonnet-laird* hard by, and many a communing we had before he and I could
agree.

* A bonnet-laird signifies a petty proprietor, wearing the dress, along
with the habits of a yeoman.

At length—I am almost ashamed to say it—but I even brought my mind to
give acre for acre of my good corn-land for this barren spot. But then
it was a national concern; and when the scene of so celebrated an event
became my own, I was overpaid.—Whose patriotism would not grow warmer,
as old Johnson says, on the plains of Marathon? I began to trench the
ground, to see what might be discovered; and the third day, sir, we
found a stone, which I have transported to Monkbarns, in order to have
the sculpture taken off with plaster of Paris; it bears a sacrificing
vessel, and the letters A. D. L. L. which may stand, without much
violence, for Agricola Dicavit Libens Lubens."

"Certainly, sir; for the Dutch Antiquaries claim Caligula as the founder
of a light-house, on the sole authority of the letters C. C. P. F.,
which they interpret Caius Caligula Pharum Fecit."

"True, and it has ever been recorded as a sound exposition. I see
we shall make something of you even before you wear spectacles,
notwithstanding you thought the traces of this beautiful camp indistinct
when you first observed them."

"In time, sir, and by good instruction"—

"—You will become more apt—I doubt it not. You shall peruse, upon your
next visit to Monkbarns, my trivial Essay upon Castrametation, with some
particular Remarks upon the Vestiges of Ancient Fortifications lately
discovered by the Author at the Kaim of Kinprunes. I think I have
pointed out the infallible touchstone of supposed antiquity. I premise a
few general rules on that point, on the nature, namely, of the evidence
to be received in such cases. Meanwhile be pleased to observe, for
example, that I could press into my service Claudian's famous line,

               Ille Caledoniis posuit qui castra pruinis.

For pruinis, though interpreted to mean hoar frosts, to which I own we
are somewhat subject in this north-eastern sea-coast, may also signify
a locality, namely, Prunes; the Castra Pruinis posita would therefore be
the Kaim of Kinprunes. But I waive this, for I am sensible it might
be laid hold of by cavillers as carrying down my Castra to the time of
Theodosius, sent by Valentinian into Britain as late as the year 367, or
thereabout. No, my good friend, I appeal to people's eye-sight. Is
not here the Decuman gate? and there, but for the ravage of the horrid
plough, as a learned friend calls it, would be the Praetorian gate. On
the left hand you may see some slight vestiges of the porta sinistra,
and on the right, one side of the porta dextra wellnigh entire. Here,
then, let us take our stand, on this tumulus, exhibiting the foundation
of ruined buildings,—the central point—the praetorium, doubtless, of the
camp. From this place, now scarce to be distinguished but by its slight
elevation and its greener turf from the rest of the fortification,
we may suppose Agricola to have looked forth on the immense army
of Caledonians, occupying the declivities of yon opposite hill,—the
infantry rising rank over rank, as the form of ground displayed their
array to its utmost advantage,—the cavalry and covinarii, by which I
understand the charioteers—another guise of folks from your Bond-street
four-in-hand men, I trow—scouring the more level space below—

                       —See, then, Lovel—See—
            See that huge battle moving from the mountains!
        Their gilt coats shine like dragon scales;—their march
        Like a rough tumbling storm.—See them, and view them,
                       And then see Rome no more!—

Yes, my dear friend, from this stance it is probable—nay, it is nearly
certain, that Julius Agricola beheld what our Beaumont has so admirably
described!—From this very Praetorium"—

A voice from behind interrupted his ecstatic description—"Praetorian
here, Praetorian there, I mind the bigging o't."

Both at once turned round, Lovel with surprise, and Oldbuck with mingled
surprise and indignation, at so uncivil an interruption. An auditor had
stolen upon them, unseen and unheard, amid the energy of the Antiquary's
enthusiastic declamation, and the attentive civility of Lovel. He
had the exterior appearance of a mendicant. A slouched hat of huge
dimensions; a long white beard which mingled with his grizzled hair;
an aged but strongly marked and expressive countenance, hardened, by
climate and exposure, to a right brick-dust complexion; a long blue
gown, with a pewter badge on the right arm; two or three wallets, or
bags, slung across his shoulder, for holding the different kinds of
meal, when he received his charity in kind from those who were but
a degree richer than himself:—all these marked at once a beggar by
profession, and one of that privileged class which are called in
Scotland the King's Bedesmen, or, vulgarly, Blue-Gowns.

"What is that you say, Edie?" said Oldbuck, hoping, perhaps, that his
ears had betrayed their duty—"what were you speaking about!"

"About this bit bourock, your honour," answered the undaunted Edie; "I
mind the bigging o't."

"The devil you do! Why, you old fool, it was here before you were born,
and will be after you are hanged, man!"

"Hanged or drowned, here or awa, dead or alive, I mind the bigging o't."

"You—you—you—," said the Antiquary, stammering between confusion and
anger, "you strolling old vagabond, what the devil do you know about
it?"

"Ou, I ken this about it, Monkbarns—and what profit have I for telling
ye a lie?—l just ken this about it, that about twenty years syne, I,
and a wheen hallenshakers like mysell, and the mason-lads that built the
lang dike that gaes down the loaning, and twa or three herds maybe,
just set to wark, and built this bit thing here that ye ca'
the—the—Praetorian, and a' just for a bield at auld Aiken Drum's bridal,
and a bit blithe gae-down wi' had in't, some sair rainy weather. Mair by
token, Monkbarns, if ye howk up the bourock, as ye seem to have began,
yell find, if ye hae not fund it already, a stane that ane o' the
mason-callants cut a ladle on to have a bourd at the bridegroom, and he
put four letters on't, that's A. D. L. L.—Aiken Drum's Lang Ladle—for
Aiken was ane o' the kale-suppers o' Fife."

"This," thought Lovel to himself, "is a famous counterpart to the
story of Keip on this syde." He then ventured to steal a glance at our
Antiquary, but quickly withdrew it in sheer compassion. For, gentle
reader, if thou hast ever beheld the visage of a damsel of sixteen,
whose romance of true love has been blown up by an untimely discovery,
or of a child of ten years, whose castle of cards has been blown down by
a malicious companion, I can safely aver to you, that Jonathan Oldbuck
of Monkbarns looked neither more wise nor less disconcerted.

"There is some mistake about this," he said, abruptly turning away from
the mendicant.

"Deil a bit on my side o' the wa'," answered the sturdy beggar; "I never
deal in mistakes, they aye bring mischances.—Now, Monkbarns, that young
gentleman, that's wi' your honour, thinks little of a carle like me; and
yet, I'll wager I'll tell him whar he was yestreen at the gloamin, only
he maybe wadna like to hae't spoken o' in company."

Lovel's soul rushed to his cheeks, with the vivid blush of
two-and-twenty.

"Never mind the old rogue," said Mr. Oldbuck; "don't suppose I think
the worse of you for your profession; they are only prejudiced fools and
coxcombs that do so. You remember what old Tully says in his oration,
pro Archia poeta, concerning one of your confraternity—quis nostrum
tam anino agresti ac duro fuit—ut—ut—I forget the Latin—the meaning is,
which of us was so rude and barbarous as to remain unmoved at the death
of the great Roscius, whose advanced age was so far from preparing us
for his death, that we rather hoped one so graceful, so excellent in
his art, ought to be exempted from the common lot of mortality? So the
Prince of Orators spoke of the stage and its professor."

The words of the old man fell upon Lovel's ears, but without conveying
any precise idea to his mind, which was then occupied in thinking by
what means the old beggar, who still continued to regard him with a
countenance provokingly sly and intelligent, had contrived to thrust
himself into any knowledge of his affairs. He put his hand in his pocket
as the readiest mode of intimating his desire of secrecy, and securing
the concurrence of the person whom he addressed; and while he bestowed
on him an alms, the amount of which rather bore proportion to his fears
than to his charity, looked at him with a marked expression, which
the mendicant, a physiognomist by profession, seemed perfectly to
understand.—"Never mind me, sir—I am no tale-pyet; but there are mair
een in the warld than mine," answered he as he pocketed Lovel's bounty,
but in a tone to be heard by him alone, and with an expression which
amply filled up what was left unspoken. Then turning to Oldbuck—"I am
awa' to the manse, your honour. Has your honour ony word there, or to
Sir Arthur, for I'll come in by Knockwinnock Castle again e'en?"

Oldbuck started as from a dream; and, in a hurried tone, where vexation
strove with a wish to conceal it, paying, at the same time, a tribute
to Edie's smooth, greasy, unlined hat, he said, "Go down, go down to
Monkbarns—let them give you some dinner—Or stay; if you do go to the
manse, or to Knockwinnock, ye need say nothing about that foolish story
of yours."

"Who, I?" said the mendicant—"Lord bless your honour, naebody sall ken a
word about it frae me, mair than if the bit bourock had been there since
Noah's flood. But, Lord, they tell me your honour has gien Johnnie Howie
acre for acre of the laigh crofts for this heathery knowe! Now, if he
has really imposed the bourock on ye for an ancient wark, it's my real
opinion the bargain will never haud gude, if you would just bring down
your heart to try it at the law, and say that he beguiled ye."

"Provoking scoundrel!" muttered the indignant Antiquary between his
teeths—"I'll have the hangman's lash and his back acquainted for this."
And then, in a louder tone,—"Never mind, Edie—it is all a mistake."

"Troth, I am thinking sae," continued his tormentor, who seemed to have
pleasure in rubbing the galled wound, "troth, I aye thought sae; and
it's no sae lang since I said to Luckie Gemmers, Never think you,
luckie' said I, that his honour Monkbarns would hae done sic a daft-like
thing as to gie grund weel worth fifty shillings an acre, for a mailing
that would be dear o'a pund Scots. Na, na,' quo' I, depend upon't the
lard's been imposed upon wi that wily do-little deevil, Johnnie Howie.'
But Lord haud a care o' us, sirs, how can that be,' quo' she again, when
the laird's sae book-learned, there's no the like o' him in the country
side, and Johnnie Howie has hardly sense eneugh to ca' the cows out o'
his kale-yard?' Aweel, aweel,' quo' I, but ye'll hear he's circumvented
him with some of his auld-warld stories,'—for ye ken, laird, yon other
time about the bodle that ye thought was an auld coin"—

"Go to the devil!" said Oldbuck; and then in a more mild tone, as one
that was conscious his reputation lay at the mercy of his antagonist, he
added—"Away with you down to Monkbarns, and when I come back, I'll send
ye a bottle of ale to the kitchen."

"Heaven reward your honour!" This was uttered with the true mendicant
whine, as, setting his pike-staff before him, he began to move in the
direction of Monkbarns.—"But did your honour," turning round, "ever get
back the siller ye gae to the travelling packman for the bodle?"

"Curse thee, go about thy business!"

"Aweel, aweel, sir, God bless your honour! I hope ye'll ding Johnnie
Howie yet, and that I'll live to see it." And so saying, the old beggar
moved off, relieving Mr. Oldbuck of recollections which were anything
rather than agreeable.

"Who is this familiar old gentleman?" said Lovel, when the mendicant was
out of hearing.

"O, one of the plagues of the country—I have been always against
poor's-rates and a work-house—I think I'll vote for them now, to have
that scoundrel shut up. O, your old-remembered guest of a beggar becomes
as well acquainted with you as he is with his dish—as intimate as one
of the beasts familiar to man which signify love, and with which his own
trade is especially conversant. Who is he?—why, he has gone the vole—
has been soldier, ballad-singer, travelling tinker, and is now a
beggar. He is spoiled by our foolish gentry, who laugh at his jokes, and
rehearse Edie Ochiltree's good thing's as regularly as Joe Miller's."

"Why, he uses freedom apparently, which is the, soul of wit," answered
Lovel.

"O ay, freedom enough," said the Antiquary; "he generally invents some
damned improbable lie or another to provoke you, like that nonsense he
talked just now—not that I'll publish my tract till I have examined the
thing to the bottom."

"In England," said Lovel, "such a mendicant would get a speedy check."

"Yes, your churchwardens and dog-whips would make slender allowance
for his vein of humour! But here, curse him! he is a sort of privileged
nuisance—one of the last specimens of the old fashioned Scottish
mendicant, who kept his rounds within a particular space, and was the
news-carrier, the minstrel, and sometimes the historian of the district.
That rascal, now, knows more old ballads and traditions than any other
man in this and the four next parishes. And after all," continued he,
softening as he went on describing Edie's good gifts, "the dog has some
good humour. He has borne his hard fate with unbroken spirits, and it's
cruel to deny him the comfort of a laugh at his betters. The pleasure of
having quizzed me, as you gay folk would call it, will be meat and drink
to him for a day or two. But I must go back and look after him, or he
will spread his d—d nonsensical story over half the country."*

* Note C. Praetorium.

So saying our heroes parted, Mr. Oldbuck to return to his hospitium at
Monkbarns, and Lovel to pursue his way to Fairport, where he arrived
without farther adventure.




CHAPTER FIFTH.

                     Launcelot Gobbo. Mark me now:
                      Now will I raise the waters.
                                         Merchant of Venice.

The theatre at Fairport had opened, but no Mr. Lovel appeared on the
boards, nor was there anything in the habits or deportment of the young
gentleman so named, which authorised Mr. Oldbuck's conjecture that his
fellow-traveller was a candidate for the public favour. Regular were the
Antiquary's inquiries at an old-fashioned barber who dressed the only
three wigs in the parish which, in defiance of taxes and times, were
still subjected to the operation of powdering and frizzling, and who for
that purpose divided his time among the three employers whom fashion
had yet left him; regular, I say, were Mr. Oldbuck's inquiries at
this personage concerning the news of the little theatre at Fairport,
expecting every day to hear of Mr. Lovel's appearance; on which occasion
the old gentleman had determined to put himself to charges in honour of
his young friend, and not only to go to the play himself, but to
carry his womankind along with him. But old Jacob Caxon conveyed no
information which warranted his taking so decisive a step as that of
securing a box.

He brought information, on the contrary, that there was a young man
residing at Fairport, of whom the town (by which he meant all the
gossips, who, having no business of their own, fill up their leisure
moments by attending to that of other people) could make nothing. He
sought no society, but rather avoided that which the apparent gentleness
of his manners, and some degree of curiosity, induced many to offer him.
Nothing could be more regular, or less resembling an adventurer, than
his mode of living, which was simple, but so completely well arranged,
that all who had any transactions with him were loud in their
approbation.

"These are not the virtues of a stage-struck hero," thought Oldbuck to
himself; and, however habitually pertinacious in his opinions, he must
have been compelled to abandon that which he had formed in the
present instance, but for a part of Caxon's communication. "The young
gentleman," he said, "was sometimes heard speaking to himsell, and
rampauging about in his room, just as if he was ane o' the player folk."

Nothing, however, excepting this single circumstance, occurred to
confirm Mr. Oldbuck's supposition; and it remained a high and doubtful
question, what a well-informed young man, without friends, connections,
or employment of any kind, could have to do as a resident at Fairport.
Neither port wine nor whist had apparently any charms for him. He
declined dining with the mess of the volunteer cohort which had been
lately embodied, and shunned joining the convivialities of either of
the two parties which then divided Fairport, as they did more important
places. He was too little of an aristocrat to join the club of
Royal True Blues, and too little of a democrat to fraternise with an
affiliated society of the soi-disant Friends of the People, which the
borough had also the happiness of possessing. A coffee-room was his
detestation; and, I grieve to say it, he had as few sympathies with the
tea-table.—In short, since the name was fashionable in novel-writing,
and that is a great while agone, there was never a Master Lovel of whom
so little positive was known, and who was so universally described by
negatives.

One negative, however, was important—nobody knew any harm of Lovel.
Indeed, had such existed, it would have been speedily made public; for
the natural desire of speaking evil of our neighbour could in his case
have been checked by no feelings of sympathy for a being so unsocial. On
one account alone he fell somewhat under suspicion. As he made free use
of his pencil in his solitary walks, and had drawn several views of the
harbour, in which the signal tower, and even the four-gun battery, were
introduced, some zealous friends of the public sent abroad a whisper,
that this mysterious stranger must certainly be a French spy. The
Sheriff paid his respects to Mr. Lovel accordingly; but in the interview
which followed, it would seem that he had entirely removed that
magistrate's suspicions, since he not only suffered him to remain
undisturbed in his retirement, but it was credibly reported, sent him
two invitations to dinner-parties, both which were civilly declined. But
what the nature of the explanation was, the magistrate kept a profound
secret, not only from the public at large, but from his substitute, his
clerk, his wife and his two daughters, who formed his privy council on
all questions of official duty.

All these particulars being faithfully reported by Mr. Caxon to his
patron at Monkbarns, tended much to raise Lovel in the opinion of his
former fellow-traveller. "A decent sensible lad," said he to himself,
"who scorns to enter into the fooleries and nonsense of these idiot
people at Fairport—I must do something for him—I must give him a
dinner;—and I will write Sir Arthur to come to Monkbarns to meet him. I
must consult my womankind."

Accordingly, such consultation having been previously held, a special
messenger, being no other than Caxon himself, was ordered to prepare
for a walk to Knockwinnock Castle with a letter, "For the honoured Sir
Arthur Wardour, of Knockwinnock, Bart." The contents ran thus:

"Dear Sir Arthur,

"On Tuesday the 17th curt.stilo novo, I hold a coenobitical symposion at
Monkbarns, and pray you to assist thereat, at four o'clock precisely. If
my fair enemy, Miss Isabel, can and will honour us by accompanying you,
my womankind will be but too proud to have the aid of such an auxiliary
in the cause of resistance to awful rule and right supremacy. If not,
I will send the womankind to the manse for the day. I have a young
acquaintance to make known to you, who is touched with some strain of
a better spirit than belongs to these giddy-paced times—reveres his
elders, and has a pretty notion of the classics—and, as such a youth
must have a natural contempt for the people about Fairport, I wish to
show him some rational as well as worshipful society.—I am, Dear Sir
Arthur, etc. etc. etc."

"Fly with this letter, Caxon," said the senior, holding out his missive,
signatum atque sigillatum, "fly to Knockwinnock, and bring me back an
answer. Go as fast as if the town-council were met and waiting for the
provost, and the provost was waiting for his new-powdered wig."

"Ah sir," answered the messenger, with a deep sigh, "thae days hae lang
gane by. Deil a wig has a provost of Fairport worn sin' auld Provost
Jervie's time—and he had a quean of a servant-lass that dressed it
herself, wi' the doup o' a candle and a drudging-box. But I hae seen the
day, Monkbarns, when the town-council of Fairport wad hae as soon wanted
their town-clerk, or their gill of brandy ower-head after the haddies,
as they wad hae wanted ilk ane a weel-favoured, sonsy, decent periwig on
his pow. Hegh, sirs! nae wonder the commons will be discontent and rise
against the law, when they see magistrates and bailies, and deacons, and
the provost himsell, wi' heads as bald and as bare as ane o' my blocks!"

"And as well furnished within, Caxon. But away with you!—you have an
excellent view of public affairs, and, I dare say, have touched the
cause of our popular discontent as closely as the provost could have
done himself. But away with you, Caxon!"

And off went Caxon upon his walk of three miles—

                  He hobbled—but his heart was good!
                  Could he go faster than he could?—

While he is engaged in his journey and return, it may not be impertinent
to inform the reader to whose mansion he was bearing his embassy.

We have said that Mr. Oldbuck kept little company with the surrounding
gentlemen, excepting with one person only. This was Sir Arthur Wardour,
a baronet of ancient descent, and of a large but embarrassed fortune.
His father, Sir Anthony, had been a Jacobite, and had displayed all the
enthusiasm of that party, while it could be served with words only. No
man squeezed the orange with more significant gesture; no one could more
dexterously intimate a dangerous health without coming under the penal
statutes; and, above all, none drank success to the cause more deeply
and devoutly. But, on the approach of the Highland army in 1745,
it would appear that the worthy baronet's zeal became a little more
moderate just when its warmth was of most consequence. He talked much,
indeed, of taking the field for the rights of Scotland and Charles
Stuart; but his demi-pique saddle would suit only one of his horses;
and that horse could by no means be brought to stand fire. Perhaps
the worshipful owner sympathized in the scruples of this sagacious
quadruped, and began to think, that what was so much dreaded by the
horse could not be very wholesome for the rider. At any rate, while Sir
Anthony Wardour talked, and drank, and hesitated, the Sturdy provost of
Fairport (who, as we before noticed, was the father of our Antiquary)
sallied from his ancient burgh, heading a body of whig-burghers,
and seized at once, in the name of George II., upon the Castle of
Knockwinnock, and on the four carriage-horses, and person of the
proprietor. Sir Anthony was shortly after sent off to the Tower of
London by a secretary of state's warrant, and with him went his son,
Arthur, then a youth. But as nothing appeared like an overt act of
treason, both father and son were soon set at liberty, and returned to
their own mansion of Knockwinnock, to drink healths five fathoms deep,
and talk of their sufferings in the royal cause. This became so much a
matter of habit with Sir Arthur, that, even after his father's death,
the non-juring chaplain used to pray regularly for the restoration
of the rightful sovereign, for the downfall of the usurper, and for
deliverance from their cruel and bloodthirsty enemies; although all idea
of serious opposition to the House of Hanover had long mouldered away,
and this treasonable liturgy was kept up rather as a matter of form
than as conveying any distinct meaning. So much was this the case, that,
about the year 1770, upon a disputed election occurring in the county,
the worthy knight fairly gulped down the oaths of abjuration
and allegiance, in order to serve a candidate in whom he was
interested;—thus renouncing the heir for whose restoration he weekly
petitioned Heaven, and acknowledging the usurper whose dethronement he
had never ceased to pray for. And to add to this melancholy instance
of human inconsistency, Sir Arthur continued to pray for the House
of Stuart even after the family had been extinct, and when, in truth,
though in his theoretical loyalty he was pleased to regard them as
alive, yet, in all actual service and practical exertion, he was a most
zealous and devoted subject of George III.

In other respects, Sir Arthur Wardour lived like most country gentlemen
in Scotland, hunted and fished—gave and received dinners—attended races
and county meetings—was a deputy-lieutenant and trustee upon turnpike
acts. But, in his more advanced years, as he became too lazy or unwieldy
for field-sports, he supplied them by now and then reading Scottish
history; and, having gradually acquired a taste for antiquities, though
neither very deep nor very correct, he became a crony of his neighbour,
Mr. Oldbuck of Monkbarns, and a joint-labourer with him in his
antiquarian pursuits.

There were, however, points of difference between these two humourists,
which sometimes occasioned discord. The faith of Sir Arthur, as an
antiquary, was boundless, and Mr. Oldbuck (notwithstanding the affair
of the Praetorium at the Kaim of Kinprunes) was much more scrupulous in
receiving legends as current and authentic coin. Sir Arthur would have
deemed himself guilty of the crime of leze-majesty had he doubted the
existence of any single individual of that formidable head-roll of one
hundred and four kings of Scotland, received by Boethius, and rendered
classical by Buchanan, in virtue of whom James VI. claimed to rule his
ancient kingdom, and whose portraits still frown grimly upon the walls
of the gallery of Holyrood. Now Oldbuck, a shrewd and suspicious man,
and no respecter of divine hereditary right, was apt to cavil at this
sacred list, and to affirm, that the procession of the posterity
of Fergus through the pages of Scottish history, was as vain and
unsubstantial as the gleamy pageant of the descendants of Banquo through
the cavern of Hecate.

Another tender topic was the good fame of Queen Mary, of which the
knight was a most chivalrous assertor, while the esquire impugned it,
in spite both of her beauty and misfortunes. When, unhappily, their
conversation turned on yet later times, motives of discord occurred in
almost every page of history. Oldbuck was, upon principle, a staunch
Presbyterian, a ruling elder of the kirk, and a friend to revolution
principles and Protestant succession, while Sir Arthur was the very
reverse of all this. They agreed, it is true, in dutiful love and
allegiance to the sovereign who now fills* the throne; but this was
their only point of union.

* The reader will understand that this refers to the reign of our late
gracious Sovereign, George the Third.

It therefore often happened, that bickerings hot broke out between them,
in which Oldbuck was not always able to suppress his caustic humour,
while it would sometimes occur to the Baronet that the descendant of a
German printer, whose sires had "sought the base fellowship of paltry
burghers," forgot himself, and took an unlicensed freedom of debate,
considering the rank and ancient descent of his antagonist. This, with
the old feud of the coach-horses, and the seizure of his manor-place and
tower of strength by Mr. Oldbuck's father, would at times rush upon his
mind, and inflame at once his cheeks and his arguments. And, lastly, as
Mr. Oldbuck thought his worthy friend and compeer was in some respects
little better than a fool, he was apt to come more near communicating
to him that unfavourable opinion, than the rules of modern politeness
warrant. In such cases they often parted in deep dudgeon, and with
something like a resolution to forbear each other's company in future:

But with the morning calm reflection came; and as each was sensible that
the society of the other had become, through habit, essential to
his comfort, the breach was speedily made up between them. On such
occasions, Oldbuck, considering that the Baronet's pettishness resembled
that of a child, usually showed his superior sense by compassionately
making the first advances to reconciliation. But it once or twice
happened that the aristocratic pride of the far-descended knight took
a flight too offensive to the feelings of the representative of the
typographer. In these cases, the breach between these two originals
might have been immortal, but for the kind exertion and interposition
of the Baronet's daughter, Miss Isabella Wardour, who, with a son, now
absent upon foreign and military service, formed his whole surviving
family. She was well aware how necessary Mr. Oldbuck was to her father's
amusement and comfort, and seldom failed to interpose with effect, when
the office of a mediator between them was rendered necessary by the
satirical shrewdness of the one, or the assumed superiority of the
other. Under Isabella's mild influence, the wrongs of Queen Mary were
forgotten by her father, and Mr. Oldbuck forgave the blasphemy which
reviled the memory of King William. However, as she used in general to
take her father's part playfully in these disputes, Oldbuck was wont to
call Isabella his fair enemy, though in fact he made more account of her
than any other of her sex, of whom, as we have seen, he, was no admirer.

There existed another connection betwixt these worthies, which had
alternately a repelling and attractive influence upon their intimacy.
Sir Arthur always wished to borrow; Mr. Oldbuck was not always willing
to lend. Mr. Oldbuck, per contra, always wished to be repaid with
regularity; Sir Arthur was not always, nor indeed often, prepared to
gratify this reasonable desire; and, in accomplishing an arrangement
between tendencies so opposite, little miffs would occasionally take
place. Still there was a spirit of mutual accommodation upon the whole,
and they dragged on like dogs in couples, with some difficulty and
occasional snarling, but without absolutely coming to a stand-still or
throttling each other.

Some little disagreement, such as we have mentioned, arising out of
business, or politics, had divided the houses of Knockwinnock and
Monkbarns, when the emissary of the latter arrived to discharge his
errand. In his ancient Gothic parlour, whose windows on one side looked
out upon the restless ocean, and, on the other, upon the long straight
avenue, was the Baronet seated, now turning over the leaves of a folio,
now casting a weary glance where the sun quivered on the dark-green
foliage and smooth trunks of the large and branching limes with which
the avenue was planted. At length, sight of joy! a moving object is
seen, and it gives rise to the usual inquiries, Who is it? and what can
be his errand? The old whitish-grey coat, the hobbling gait, the hat
half-slouched, half-cocked, announced the forlorn maker of periwigs, and
left for investigation only the second query. This was soon solved by a
servant entering the parlour,—"A letter from Monkbarns, Sir Arthur."

Sir Arthur took the epistle with a due assumption of consequential
dignity.

"Take the old man into the kitchen, and let him get some refreshment,"
said the young lady, whose compassionate eye had remarked his thin grey
hair and wearied gait.

"Mr. Oldbuck, my love, invites us to dinner on Tuesday the 17th," said
the Baronet, pausing;—"he really seems to forget that he has not of late
conducted himself so civilly towards me as might have been expected."

"Dear sir, you have so many advantages over poor Mr. Oldbuck, that no
wonder it should put him a little out of humour; but I know he has much
respect for your person and your conversation;—nothing would give him
more pain than to be wanting in any real attention."

"True, true, Isabella; and one must allow for the original
descent;—something of the German boorishness still flows in the blood;
something of the whiggish and perverse opposition to established rank
and privilege. You may observe that he never has any advantage of me
in dispute, unless when he avails himself of a sort of pettifogging
intimacy with dates, names, and trifling matters of fact—a tiresome and
frivolous accuracy of memory, which is entirely owing to his mechanical
descent."

"He must find it convenient in historical investigation, I should think,
sir?" said the young lady.

"It leads to an uncivil and positive mode of disputing; and nothing
seems more unreasonable than to hear him impugn even Bellenden's rare
translation of Hector Boece, which I have the satisfaction to possess,
and which is a black-letter folio of great value, upon the authority of
some old scrap of parchment which he has saved from its deserved destiny
of being cut up into tailor's measures. And besides, that habit of
minute and troublesome accuracy leads to a mercantile manner of doing
business, which ought to be beneath a landed proprietor whose family has
stood two or three generations. I question if there's a dealer's clerk
in Fairport that can sum an account of interest better than Monkbarns."

"But you'll accept his invitation, sir?"

"Why, ye—yes; we have no other engagement on hand, I think. Who can the
young man be he talks of?—he seldom picks up new acquaintance; and he
has no relation that I ever heard of."

"Probably some relation of his brother-in-law Captain M'Intyre."

"Very possibly—yes, we will accept—the M'Intyres are of a very ancient
Highland family. You may answer his card in the affirmative, Isabella; I
believe I have, no leisure to be Dear Sirring myself."

So this important matter being adjusted, Miss Wardour intimated "her
own and Sir Arthur's compliments, and that they would have the honour of
waiting upon Mr. Oldbuck. Miss Wardour takes this opportunity to renew
her hostility with Mr. Oldbuck, on account of his late long absence from
Knockwinnock, where his visits give so much pleasure." With this placebo
she concluded her note, with which old Caxon, now refreshed in limbs and
wind, set out on his return to the Antiquary's mansion.




CHAPTER SIXTH.

                   Moth. By Woden, God of Saxons,
            From whence comes Wensday, that is, Wodnesday,
                   Truth is a thing that I will ever keep
                   Unto thylke day in which I creep into
                             My sepulcre—
                             Cartwright's Ordinary.

Our young friend Lovel, who had received a corresponding invitation,
punctual to the hour of appointment, arrived at Monkbarns about five
minutes before four o'clock on the 17th of July. The day had been
remarkably sultry, and large drops of rain had occasionally fallen,
though the threatened showers had as yet passed away.

Mr. Oldbuck received him at the Palmer's-port in his complete brown
suit, grey silk stockings, and wig powdered with all the skill of the
veteran Caxon, who having smelt out the dinner, had taken care not to
finish his job till the hour of eating approached.

"You are welcome to my symposion, Mr. Lovel. And now let me introduce
you to my Clogdogdo's, as Tom Otter calls them—my unlucky and
good-for-nothing womankind—malae bestiae, Mr. Lovel."

"I shall be disappointed, sir, if I do not find the ladies very
undeserving of your satire."

"Tilley-valley, Mr. Lovel,—which, by the way, one commentator derives
from tittivillitium, and another from talley-ho—but tilley-valley, I
say—a truce with your politeness. You will find them but samples of
womankind—But here they be, Mr. Lovel. I present to you in due order, my
most discreet sister Griselda, who disdains the simplicity, as well as
patience annexed to the poor old name of Grizzel; and my most exquisite
niece Maria, whose mother was called Mary, and sometimes Molly."

The elderly lady rustled in silks and satins, and bore upon her head a
structure resembling the fashion in the ladies' memorandum-book for the
year 1770—a superb piece of architecture, not much less than a modern
Gothic castle, of which the curls might represent the turrets, the black
pins the chevaux de frise, and the lappets the banners.

The face, which, like that of the ancient statues of Vesta, was thus
crowned with towers, was large and long, and peaked at nose and chin,
and bore, in other respects, such a ludicrous resemblance to the
physiognomy of Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck, that Lovel, had they not appeared
at once, like Sebastian and Viola in the last scene of the "Twelfth
Night," might have supposed that the figure before him was his old
friend masquerading in female attire. An antique flowered silk gown
graced the extraordinary person to whom belonged this unparalleled tete,
which her brother was wont to say was fitter for a turban for Mahound
or Termagant, than a head-gear for a reasonable creature, or Christian
gentlewoman. Two long and bony arms were terminated at the elbows by
triple blond ruffles, and being, folded saltire-ways in front of her
person, and decorated with long gloves of a bright vermilion colour,
presented no bad resemblance to a pair of gigantic lobsters. High-heeled
shoes, and a short silk cloak, thrown in easy negligence over her
shoulders, completed the exterior of Miss Griselda Oldbuck.

Her niece, the same whom Lovel had seen transiently during his first
visit, was a pretty young woman, genteelly dressed according to the
fashion of the day, with an air of espieglerie which became her very
well, and which was perhaps derived from the caustic humour peculiar to
her uncle's family, though softened by transmission.

Mr. Lovel paid his respects to both ladies, and was answered by the
elder with the prolonged courtesy of 1760, drawn from the righteous
period,

                       When folks conceived a grace
                       Of half an hour's space,
                       And rejoiced in a Friday's capon,

and by the younger with a modern reverence, which, like the festive
benediction of a modern divine, was of much shorter duration.

While this salutation was exchanging, Sir Arthur, with his fair daughter
hanging upon his arm, having dismissed his chariot, appeared at the
garden door, and in all due form paid his respects to the ladies.

"Sir Arthur," said the Antiquary, "and you, my fair foe, let me make
known to you my young friend Mr. Lovel, a gentleman who, during the
scarlet-fever which is epidemic at present in this our island, has the
virtue and decency to appear in a coat of a civil complexion. You see,
however, that the fashionable colour has mustered in his cheeks which
appears not in his garments. Sir Arthur, let me present to you a young
gentleman, whom your farther knowledge will find grave, wise, courtly,
and scholar-like, well seen, deeply read, and thoroughly grounded in all
the hidden mysteries of the green-room and stage, from the days of Davie
Lindsay down to those of Dibdin—he blushes again, which is a sign of
grace."

"My brother," said Miss Griselda, addressing Lovel, "has a humorous way
of expressing himself, sir; nobody thinks anything of what Monkbarns
says—so I beg you will not be so confused for the matter of his
nonsense; but you must have had a warm walk beneath this broiling
sun—would you take anything?—a glass of balm-wine?"

Ere Lovel could answer, the Antiquary interposed. "Aroint thee, witch!
wouldst thou poison my guests with thy infernal decoctions? Dost thou
not remember how it fared with the clergyman whom you seduced to partake
of that deceitful beverage?"

"O fy, fy, brother!—Sir Arthur, did you ever hear the like?—he must have
everything his ain way, or he will invent such stories—But there goes
Jenny to ring the old bell to tell us that the dinner is ready."

Rigid in his economy, Mr. Oldbuck kept no male servant. This he
disguised under the pretext that the masculine sex was too noble to
be employed in those acts of personal servitude, which, in all early
periods of society, were uniformly imposed on the female. "Why,"
would he say, "did the boy, Tam Rintherout, whom, at my wise sister's
instigation, I, with equal wisdom, took upon trial—why did he pilfer
apples, take birds' nests, break glasses, and ultimately steal my
spectacles, except that he felt that noble emulation which swells in the
bosom of the masculine sex, which has conducted him to Flanders with
a musket on his shoulder, and doubtless will promote him to a glorious
halbert, or even to the gallows? And why does this girl, his full
sister, Jenny Rintherout, move in the same vocation with safe and
noiseless step—shod, or unshod—soft as the pace of a cat, and docile as
a spaniel—Why? but because she is in her vocation. Let them minister to
us, Sir Arthur,—let them minister, I say,—it's the only thing they are
fit for. All ancient legislators, from Lycurgus to Mahommed, corruptly
called Mahomet, agree in putting them in their proper and subordinate
rank, and it is only the crazy heads of our old chivalrous ancestors
that erected their Dulcineas into despotic princesses."

Miss Wardour protested loudly against this ungallant doctrine; but the
bell now rung for dinner.

"Let me do all the offices of fair courtesy to so fair an antagonist,"
said the old gentleman, offering his arm. "I remember, Miss Wardour,
Mahommed (vulgarly Mahomet) had some hesitation about the mode
of summoning his Moslemah to prayer. He rejected bells as used by
Christians, trumpets as the summons of the Guebres, and finally adopted
the human voice. I have had equal doubt concerning my dinner-call.
Gongs, now in present use, seemed a newfangled and heathenish invention,
and the voice of the female womankind I rejected as equally shrill and
dissonant; wherefore, contrary to the said Mahommed, or Mahomet, I have
resumed the bell. It has a local propriety, since it was the conventual
signal for spreading the repast in their refectory, and it has the
advantage over the tongue of my sister's prime minister, Jenny, that,
though not quite so loud and shrill, it ceases ringing the instant you
drop the bell-rope: whereas we know, by sad experience, that any attempt
to silence Jenny, only wakes the sympathetic chime of Miss Oldbuck and
Mary M'Intyre to join in chorus."

With this discourse he led the way to his dining-parlour, which Lovel
had not yet seen;—it was wainscotted, and contained some curious
paintings. The dining-table was attended by Jenny; but an old
superintendent, a sort of female butler, stood by the sideboard, and
underwent the burden of bearing several reproofs from Mr. Oldbuck, and
inuendos, not so much marked, but not less cutting, from his sister.

The dinner was such as suited a professed antiquary, comprehending many
savoury specimens of Scottish viands, now disused at the tables of those
who affect elegance. There was the relishing Solan goose, whose smell is
so powerful that he is never cooked within doors. Blood-raw he proved to
be on this occasion, so that Oldbuck half threatened to throw the
greasy sea-fowl at the head of the negligent housekeeper, who acted as
priestess in presenting this odoriferous offering. But, by good-hap,
she had been most fortunate in the hotch-potch, which was unanimously
pronounced to be inimitable. "I knew we should succeed here," said
Oldbuck exultingly, "for Davie Dibble, the gardener (an old bachelor
like myself), takes care the rascally women do not dishonour our
vegetables. And here is fish and sauce, and crappit-heads—I acknowledge
our womankind excel in that dish—it procures them the pleasure of
scolding, for half an hour at least, twice a-week, with auld Maggy
Mucklebackit, our fish-wife. The chicken-pie, Mr. Lovel, is made after
a recipe bequeathed to me by my departed grandmother of happy memory—And
if you will venture on a glass of wine, you will find it worthy of
one who professes the maxim of King Alphonso of Castile,—Old wood to
burn—old books to read—old wine to drink—and old friends, Sir Arthur—ay,
Mr. Lovel, and young friends too, to converse with."

"And what news do you bring us from Edinburgh, Monkbarns?" said Sir
Arthur; "how wags the world in Auld Reekie?"

"Mad, Sir Arthur, mad—irretrievably frantic—far beyond dipping in the
sea, shaving the crown, or drinking hellebore. The worst sort of frenzy,
a military frenzy, hath possessed man, woman, and child."

"And high time, I think," said Miss Wardour, "when we are threatened
with invasion from abroad and insurrection at home."

"O, I did not doubt you would join the scarlet host against me—women,
like turkeys, are always subdued by a red rag—But what says Sir Arthur,
whose dreams are of standing armies and German oppression?"

"Why, I say, Mr. Oldbuck," replied the knight, "that so far as I am
capable of judging, we ought to resist cum toto corpore regni—as the
phrase is, unless I have altogether forgotten my Latin—an enemy who
comes to propose to us a Whiggish sort of government, a republican
system, and who is aided and abetted by a sort of fanatics of the worst
kind in our own bowels. I have taken some measures, I assure you, such
as become my rank in the community; for I have directed the constables
to take up that old scoundrelly beggar, Edie Ochiltree, for spreading
disaffection against church and state through the whole parish. He said
plainly to old Caxon, that Willie Howie's Kilmarnock cowl covered more
sense than all the three wigs in the parish—I think it is easy to make
out that inuendo—But the rogue shall be taught better manners."

"O no, my dear sir," exclaimed Miss Wardour, "not old Edie, that we have
known so long;—I assure you no constable shall have my good graces that
executes such a warrant."

"Ay, there it goes," said the Antiquary; "you, to be a staunch Tory, Sir
Arthur, have nourished a fine sprig of Whiggery in your bosom—Why,
Miss Wardour is alone sufficient to control a whole quarter-session—a
quarter-session? ay, a general assembly or convocation to boot—a
Boadicea she—an Amazon, a Zenobia."

"And yet, with all my courage, Mr. Oldbuck, I am glad to hear our people
are getting under arms."

"Under arms, Lord love thee! didst thou ever read the history of Sister
Margaret, which flowed from a head, that, though now old and somedele
grey, has more sense and political intelligence than you find now-a-days
in the whole synod? Dost thou remember the Nurse's dream in that
exquisite work, which she recounts in such agony to Hubble Bubble?—When
she would have taken up a piece of broad-cloth in her vision, lo! it
exploded like a great iron cannon; when she put out her hand to save a
pirn, it perked up in her face in the form of a pistol. My own vision in
Edinburgh has been something similar. I called to consult my lawyer; he
was clothed in a dragoon's dress, belted and casqued, and about to mount
a charger, which his writing-clerk (habited as a sharp-shooter) walked
to and fro before his door. I went to scold my agent for having sent me
to advise with a madman; he had stuck into his head the plume, which
in more sober days he wielded between his fingers, and figured as an
artillery officer. My mercer had his spontoon in his hand, as if he
measured his cloth by that implement, instead of a legitimate yard. The,
banker's clerk, who was directed to sum my cash-account, blundered
it three times, being disordered by the recollection of his military
tellings-off at the morning-drill. I was ill, and sent for a surgeon—

               He came—but valour so had fired his eye,
               And such a falchion glittered on his thigh,
               That, by the gods, with such a load of steel,
              I thought he came to murder,—not to heal.

I had recourse to a physician, but he also was practising a more
wholesale mode of slaughter than that which his profession had been
supposed at all times to open to him. And now, since I have returned
here, even our wise neighbours of Fairport have caught the same valiant
humour. I hate a gun like a hurt wild duck—I detest a drum like a
quaker;—and they thunder and rattle out yonder upon the town's common,
so that every volley and roll goes to my very heart."

"Dear brother, dinna speak that gate o' the gentlemen volunteers—I am
sure they have a most becoming uniform—Weel I wot they have been wet to
the very skin twice last week—I met them marching in terribly doukit, an
mony a sair hoast was amang them—And the trouble they take, I am sure it
claims our gratitude."

"And I am sure," said Miss M'Intyre, "that my uncle sent twenty guineas
to help out their equipments."

"It was to buy liquorice and sugar-candy," said the cynic, "to encourage
the trade of the place, and to refresh the throats of the officers who
had bawled themselves hoarse in the service of their country."

"Take care, Monkbarns! we shall set you down among the black-nebs by and
by."

"No Sir Arthur—a tame grumbler I. I only claim the privilege of croaking
in my own corner here, without uniting my throat to the grand chorus of
the marsh—Ni quito Rey, ni pongo Rey—I neither make king nor mar king,
as Sancho says, but pray heartily for our own sovereign, pay scot and
lot, and grumble at the exciseman—But here comes the ewe-milk cheese in
good time; it is a better digestive than politics."

When dinner was over, and the decanters placed on the table, Mr. Oldbuck
proposed the King's health in a bumper, which was readily acceded to
both by Lovel and the Baronet, the Jacobitism of the latter being now a
sort of speculative opinion merely,—the shadow of a shade.

After the ladies had left the apartment, the landlord and Sir Arthur
entered into several exquisite discussions, in which the younger guest,
either on account of the abstruse erudition which they involved, or
for some other reason, took but a slender share, till at length he was
suddenly started out of a profound reverie by an unexpected appeal to
his judgment.

"I will stand by what Mr. Lovel says; he was born in the north of
England, and may know the very spot."

Sir Arthur thought it unlikely that so young a gentleman should have
paid much attention to matters of that sort.

"I am avised of the contrary," said Oldbuck.

"How say you, Mr. Lovel?—speak up for your own credit, man."

Lovel was obliged to confess himself in the ridiculous situation of one
alike ignorant of the subject of conversation and controversy which had
engaged the company for an hour.

"Lord help the lad, his head has been wool-gathering!—I thought how it
would be when the womankind were admitted—no getting a word of sense out
of a young fellow for six hours after.—Why, man, there was once a people
called the Piks"—

"More properly Picts," interrupted the Baronet.

"I say the Pikar, Pihar, Piochtar, Piaghter, or Peughtar," vociferated
Oldbuck; "they spoke a Gothic dialect"—

"Genuine Celtic," again asseverated the knight.

"Gothic! Gothic! I'll go to death upon it!" counter-asseverated the
squire.

"Why, gentlemen," sad Lovel, "I conceive that is a dispute which may
be easily settled by philologists, if there are any remains of the
language."

"There is but one word," said the Baronet, "but, in spite of Mr.
Oldbuck's pertinacity, it is decisive of the question."

"Yes, in my favour," said Oldbuck: "Mr. Lovel, you shall be judge—I have
the learned Pinkerton on my side."

"I, on mine, the indefatigable and erudite Chalmers."

"Gordon comes into my opinion."

"Sir Robert Sibbald holds mine."

"Innes is with me!" vociferated Oldbuck.

"Riston has no doubt!" shouted the Baronet.

"Truly, gentlemen," said Lovel, "before you muster your forces and
overwhelm me with authorities, I should like to know the word in
dispute."

"Benval" said both the disputants at once.

"Which signifies caput valli," said Sir Arthur.

"The head of the wall," echoed Oldbuck.

There was a deep pause.—"It is rather a narrow foundation to build a
hypothesis upon," observed the arbiter.

"Not a whit, not a whit," said Oldbuck; "men fight best in a narrow
ring—an inch is as good as a mile for a home-thrust."

"It is decidedly Celtic," said the Baronet; "every hill in the Highlands
begins with Ben."

"But what say you to Val, Sir Arthur; is it not decidedly the Saxon
wall?"

"It is the Roman vallum," said Sir Arthur;—"the Picts borrowed that part
of the word."

"No such thing; if they borrowed anything, it must have been your Ben,
which they might have from the neighbouring Britons of Strath Cluyd."

"The Piks, or Picts," said Lovel, "must have been singularly poor in
dialect, since, in the only remaining word of their vocabulary, and that
consisting only of two syllables, they have been confessedly obliged to
borrow one of them from another language; and, methinks, gentlemen, with
submission, the controversy is not unlike that which the two knights
fought, concerning the shield that had one side white and the other
black. Each of you claim one-half of the word, and seem to resign the
other. But what strikes me most, is the poverty of the language which
has left such slight vestiges behind it."

"You are in an error," said Sir Arthur; "it was a copious language,
and they were a great and powerful people; built two steeples—one at
Brechin, one at Abernethy. The Pictish maidens of the blood-royal were
kept in Edinburgh Castle, thence called Castrum Puellarum."

"A childish legend," said Oldbuck, "invented to give consequence to
trumpery womankind. It was called the Maiden Castle, quasi lucus a non
lucendo, because it resisted every attack, and women never do."

"There is a list of the Pictish kings," persisted Sir Arthur, "well
authenticated from Crentheminachcryme (the, date of whose reign is
somewhat uncertain) down to Drusterstone, whose death concluded their
dynasty. Half of them have the Celtic patronymic Mac prefixed—Mac,
id est filius;—what do you say to that, Mr. Oldbuck? There is Drust
Macmorachin, Trynel Maclachlin (first of that ancient clan, as it may
be judged), and Gormach Macdonald, Alpin Macmetegus, Drust Mactallargam"
(here he was interrupted by a fit of coughing)—"ugh, ugh, ugh—Golarge
Macchan—ugh, ugh—Macchanan—ugh—Macchananail, Kenneth—ugh—ugh—
Macferedith, Eachan Macfungus—and twenty more, decidedly Celtic names,
which I could repeat, if this damned cough would let me."

"Take a glass of wine, Sir Arthur, and drink down that bead-roll of
unbaptized jargon, that would choke the devil—why, that last fellow has
the only intelligible name you have repeated—they are all of the tribe
of Macfungus—mushroom monarchs every one of them; sprung up from the
fumes of conceit, folly, and falsehood, fermenting in the brains of some
mad Highland seannachie."

"I am surprised to hear you, Mr. Oldbuck: you know, or ought to know,
that the list of these potentates was copied by Henry Maule of Melguin,
from the Chronicles of Loch Leven and St. Andrews, and put forth by him
in his short but satisfactory history of the Picts, printed by Robert
Freebairn of Edinburgh, and sold by him at his shop in the Parliament
Close, in the, year of God seventeen hundred and five, or six, I am not
precisely certain which—but I have a copy at home that stands next to my
twelvemo copy of the Scots Acts, and ranges on the shelf with them very
well. What say you to that, Mr. Oldbuck?"

"Say?—why, I laugh at Harry Maule and his history," answered Oldbuck,
"and thereby comply with his request, of giving it entertainment
according to its merits."

"Do not laugh at a better man than yourself," said Sir Arthur, somewhat
scornfully.

"I do not conceive I do, Sir Arthur, in laughing either at him or his
history,"

"Henry Maule of Melgum was a gentleman, Mr. Oldbuck."

"I presume he had no advantage of me in that particular," replied the
Antiquary, somewhat tartly.

"Permit me, Mr. Oldbuck—he was a gentleman of high family, and ancient
descent, and therefore"—

"The descendant of a Westphalian printer should speak of him with
deference? Such may be your opinion, Sir Arthur—it is not mine. I
conceive that my descent from that painful and industrious typographer,
Wolfbrand Oldenbuck, who, in the month of December 1493, under the
patronage, as the colophon tells us, of Sebaldus Scheyter and Sebastian
Kammermaister, accomplished the printing of the great Chronicle of
Nuremberg—I conceive, I say, that my descent from that great restorer
of learning is more creditable to me as a man of letters, than if I had
numbered in my genealogy all the brawling, bullet-headed, iron-fisted,
old Gothic barons since the days of Crentheminachcryme—not one of whom,
I suppose, could write his own name."

"If you mean the observation as a sneer at my ancestry," said the
knight, with an assumption of dignified superiority and composure, "I
have the pleasure to inform you, that the name of my ancestor, Gamelyn
de Guardover, Miles, is written fairly with his own hand in the earliest
copy of the Ragman-roll."

"Which only serves to show that he was one of the earliest who set the
mean example of submitting to Edward I. What have, you to say for the
stainless loyalty of your family, Sir Arthur, after such a backsliding
as that?"

"It's enough, sir," said Sir Arthur, starting up fiercely, and pushing
back his chair; "I shall hereafter take care how I honour with my
company one who shows himself so ungrateful for my condescension."

"In that you will do as you find most agreeable, Sir Arthur;—I hope,
that as I was not aware of the extent of the obligation which you have
done me by visiting my poor house, I may be excused for not having
carried my gratitude to the extent of servility."

"Mighty well—mighty well, Mr. Oldbuck—I wish you a good evening—Mr.
a—a—a—Shovel—I wish you a very good evening."

Out of the parlour door flounced the incensed Sir Arthur, as if the
spirit of the whole Round Table inflamed his single bosom, and traversed
with long strides the labyrinth of passages which conducted to the
drawing-room.

"Did you ever hear such an old tup-headed ass?" said Oldbuck, briefly
apostrophizing Lovel. "But I must not let him go in this mad-like way
neither."

So saying, he pushed off after the retreating Baronet, whom he traced
by the clang of several doors which he opened in search of the apartment
for tea, and slammed with force behind him at every disappointment.
"You'll do yourself a mischief," roared the Antiquary; "Qui ambulat in
tenebris, nescit quo vadit—You'll tumble down the back-stair."

Sir Arthur had now got involved in darkness, of which the sedative
effect is well known to nurses and governesses who have to deal with
pettish children. It retarded the pace of the irritated Baronet, if it
did not abate his resentment, and Mr. Oldbuck, better acquainted with
the locale, got up with him as he had got his grasp upon the handle of
the drawing-room door.

"Stay a minute, Sir Arthur," said Oldbuck, opposing his abrupt entrance;
"don't be quite so hasty, my good old friend. I was a little too rude
with you about Sir Gamelyn—why, he is an old acquaintance of mine, man,
and a favourite; he kept company with Bruce and Wallace—and, I'll be
sworn on a black-letter Bible, only subscribed the Ragman-roll with
the legitimate and justifiable intention of circumventing the false
Southern—'twas right Scottish craft, my good knight—hundreds did it.
Come, come, forget and forgive—confess we have given the young fellow
here a right to think us two testy old fools."

"Speak for yourself, Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck," said Sir Arthur with much
majesty.

"A-well, a-well—a wilful man must have his way."

With that the door opened, and into the drawing-room marched the
tall gaunt form of Sir Arthur, followed by Lovel and Mr. Oldbuck, the
countenances of all the three a little discomposed.

"I have been waiting for you, sir," said Miss Wardour, "to propose we
should walk forward to meet the carriage, as the evening is so fine."

Sir Arthur readily assented to this proposal, which suited the angry
mood in which he found himself; and having, agreeable to the established
custom in cases of pet, refused the refreshment of tea and coffee, he
tucked his daughter under his arm; and after taking a ceremonious leave
of the ladies, and a very dry one of Oldbuck—off he marched.

"I think Sir Arthur has got the black dog on his back again," said Miss
Oldbuck.

"Black dog!—black devil!—he's more absurd than womankind—What say you,
Lovel?—Why, the lad's gone too."

"He took his leave, uncle, while Miss Wardour was putting on her things;
but I don't think you observed him."

"The devil's in the people! This is all one gets by fussing and
bustling, and putting one's self out of one's way in order to give
dinners, besides all the charges they are put to!—O Seged, Emperor of
Ethiopia!" said he, taking up a cup of tea in the one hand, and a volume
of the Rambler in the other,—for it was his regular custom to read while
he was eating or drinking in presence of his sister, being a practice
which served at once to evince his contempt for the society of
womankind, and his resolution to lose no moment of instruction,—"O
Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia! well hast thou spoken—No man should presume
to say, This shall be a day of happiness."

Oldbuck proceeded in his studies for the best part of an hour,
uninterrupted by the ladies, who each, in profound silence, pursued some
female employment. At length, a light and modest tap was heard at the
parlour door. "Is that you, Caxon?—come in, come in, man."

The old man opened the door, and thrusting in his meagre face, thatched
with thin grey locks, and one sleeve of his white coat, said in a
subdued and mysterious tone of voice, "I was wanting to speak to you,
sir."

"Come in then, you old fool, and say what you have got to say."

"I'll maybe frighten the ladies," said the ex-friseur.

"Frighten!" answered the Antiquary,—"what do you mean?—never mind the
ladies. Have you seen another ghaist at the Humlock-knowe?"

"Na, sir—it's no a ghaist this turn," replied Caxton;—"but I'm no easy
in my mind."

"Did you ever hear of any body that was?" answered Oldbuck;—"what reason
has an old battered powder-puff like you to be easy in your mind, more
than all the rest of the world besides?"

"It's no for mysell, sir; but it threatens an awfu' night; and Sir
Arthur, and Miss Wardour, poor thing"—

"Why, man, they must have met the carriage at the head of the loaning,
or thereabouts; they must be home long ago."

"Na, sir; they didna gang the road by the turnpike to meet the carriage,
they gaed by the sands."

The word operated like electricity on Oldbuck. "The sands!" he
exclaimed; "impossible!"

"Ou, sir, that's what I said to the gardener; but he says he saw them
turn down by the Mussel-craig. In troth, says I to him, an that be the
case, Davie, I am misdoubting"—

"An almanac! an almanac!" said Oldbuck, starting up in great alarm—"not
that bauble!" flinging away a little pocket almanac which his niece
offered him.—"Great God! my poor dear Miss Isabella!—Fetch me instantly
the Fairport Almanac."—It was brought, consulted, and added greatly to
his agitation. "I'll go myself—call the gardener and ploughman—bid them
bring ropes and ladders—bid them raise more help as they come along—keep
the top of the cliffs, and halloo down to them—I'll go myself."

"What is the matter?" inquired Miss Oldbuck and Miss M'Intyre.

"The tide!—the tide!" answered the alarmed Antiquary.

"Had not Jenny better—but no, I'll run myself," said the younger lady,
partaking in all her uncle's terrors—"I'll run myself to Saunders
Mucklebackit, and make him get out his boat."

"Thank you, my dear, that's the wisest word that has been spoken
yet—Run! run!—To go by the sands!" seizing his hat and cane; "was there
ever such madness heard of!"




CHAPTER SEVENTH.

                       —Pleased awhile to view
               The watery waste, the prospect wild and new;
               The now receding waters gave them space,
               On either side, the growing shores to trace
               And then returning, they contract the scene,
               Till small and smaller grows the walk between.
                                            Crabbe.

The information of Davie Dibble, which had spread such general alarm at
Monkbarns, proved to be strictly correct. Sir Arthur and his
daughter had set out, according to their first proposal, to return to
Knockwinnock by the turnpike road; but when they reached the head of the
loaning, as it was called, or great lane, which on one side made a sort
of avenue to the house of Monkbarns, they discerned, a little way
before them, Lovel, who seemed to linger on the way as if to give him
an opportunity to join them. Miss Wardour immediately proposed to her
father that they should take another direction; and, as the weather
was fine, walk home by the sands, which, stretching below a picturesque
ridge of rocks, afforded at almost all times a pleasanter passage
between Knockwinnock and Monkbarns than the high-road. Sir Arthur and
Miss Wardour

Sir Arthur acquiesced willingly. "It would be unpleasant," he said, "to
be joined by that young fellow, whom Mr. Oldbuck had taken the freedom
to introduce them to." And his old-fashioned politeness had none of the
ease of the present day which permits you, if you have a mind, to cut
the person you have associated with for a week, the instant you feel or
suppose yourself in a situation which makes it disagreeable to own him.
Sir Arthur only stipulated, that a little ragged boy, for the guerdon
of one penny sterling, should run to meet his coachman, and turn his
equipage back to Knockwinnock.

When this was arranged, and the emissary despatched, the knight and his
daughter left the high-road, and following a wandering path among sandy
hillocks, partly grown over with furze and the long grass called bent,
soon attained the side of the ocean. The tide was by no means so far out
as they had computed but this gave them no alarm;—there were seldom ten
days in the year when it approached so near the cliffs as not to leave a
dry passage. But, nevertheless, at periods of spring-tide, or even
when the ordinary flood was accelerated by high winds, this road was
altogether covered by the sea; and tradition had recorded several fatal
accidents which had happened on such occasions. Still, such dangers
were considered as remote and improbable; and rather served, with other
legends, to amuse the hamlet fireside, than to prevent any one from
going between Knockwinnock and Monkbarns by the sands.

As Sir Arthur and Miss Wardour paced along, enjoying the pleasant
footing afforded by the cool moist hard sand, Miss Wardour could not
help observing that the last tide had risen considerably above the
usual water-mark. Sir Arthur made the same observation, but without its
occurring to either of them to be alarmed at the circumstance. The sun
was now resting his huge disk upon the edge of the level ocean,
and gilded the accumulation of towering clouds through which he had
travelled the livelong day, and which now assembled on all sides, like
misfortunes and disasters around a sinking empire and falling monarch.
Still, however, his dying splendour gave a sombre magnificence to the
massive congregation of vapours, forming out of their unsubstantial
gloom the show of pyramids and towers, some touched with gold, some with
purple, some with a hue of deep and dark red. The distant sea, stretched
beneath this varied and gorgeous canopy, lay almost portentously still,
reflecting back the dazzling and level beams of the descending luminary,
and the splendid colouring of the clouds amidst which he was setting.
Nearer to the beach the tide rippled onward in waves of sparkling
silver, that imperceptibly, yet rapidly, gained upon the sand.

With a mind employed in admiration of the romantic scene, or perhaps
on some more agitating topic, Miss Wardour advanced in silence by her
father's side, whose recently offended dignity did not stoop to open
any conversation. Following the windings of the beach, they passed
one projecting point of headland or rock after another, and now found
themselves under a huge and continued extent of the precipices by which
that iron-bound coast is in most places defended. Long projecting reefs
of rock, extending under water and only evincing their existence by here
and there a peak entirely bare, or by the breakers which foamed over
those that were partially covered, rendered Knockwinnock bay dreaded by
pilots and ship-masters. The crags which rose between the beach and the
mainland, to the height of two or three hundred feet, afforded in
their crevices shelter for unnumbered sea-fowl, in situations seemingly
secured by their dizzy height from the rapacity of man. Many of these
wild tribes, with the instinct which sends them to seek the land before
a storm arises, were now winging towards their nests with the shrill and
dissonant clang which announces disquietude and fear. The disk of the
sun became almost totally obscured ere he had altogether sunk below the
horizon, and an early and lurid shade of darkness blotted the serene
twilight of a summer evening. The wind began next to arise; but its
wild and moaning sound was heard for some time, and its effects became
visible on the bosom of the sea, before the gale was felt on shore. The
mass of waters, now dark and threatening, began to lift itself in larger
ridges, and sink in deeper furrows, forming waves that rose high in
foam upon the breakers, or burst upon the beach with a sound resembling
distant thunder.

Appalled by this sudden change of weather, Miss Wardour drew close to
her father, and held his arm fast. "I wish," at length she said,
but almost in a whisper, as if ashamed to express her increasing
apprehensions, "I wish we had kept the road we intended, or waited at
Monkbarns for the carriage."

Sir Arthur looked round, but did not see, or would not acknowledge, any
signs of an immediate storm. They would reach Knockwinnock, he said,
long before the tempest began. But the speed with which he walked, and
with which Isabella could hardly keep pace, indicated a feeling that
some exertion was necessary to accomplish his consolatory prediction.

They were now near the centre of a deep but narrow bay or recess, formed
by two projecting capes of high and inaccessible rock, which shot out
into the sea like the horns of a crescent;—and neither durst communicate
the apprehension which each began to entertain, that, from the unusually
rapid advance of the tide, they might be deprived of the power of
proceeding by doubling the promontory which lay before them, or of
retreating by the road which brought them thither.

As they thus pressed forward, longing doubtless to exchange the easy
curving line, which the sinuosities of the bay compelled them to adopt,
for a straighter and more expeditious path, Sir Arthur observed a human
figure on the beach advancing to meet them. "Thank God," he exclaimed,
"we shall get round Halket-head!—that person must have passed it;" thus
giving vent to the feeling of hope, though he had suppressed that of
apprehension.

"Thank God, indeed!" echoed his daughter, half audibly, half internally,
as expressing the gratitude which she strongly felt.

The figure which advanced to meet them made many signs, which the
haze of the atmosphere, now disturbed by wind and by a drizzling rain,
prevented them from seeing or comprehending distinctly.—Some time before
they met, Sir Arthur could recognise the old blue-gowned beggar, Edie
Ochiltree. It is said that even the brute creation lay aside their
animosities and antipathies when pressed by an instant and common
danger. The beach under Halket-head, rapidly diminishing in extent by
the encroachments of a spring-tide and a north-west wind, was in like
manner a neutral field, where even a justice of peace and a strolling
mendicant might meet upon terms of mutual forbearance.

"Turn back! turn back!" exclaimed the vagrant; "why did ye not turn when
I waved to you?"

"We thought," replied Sir Arthur, in great agitation, "we thought we
could get round Halket-head."

"Halket-head!—the tide will be running on Halket-head by this time like
the Fall of Fyers!—it was a' I could do to get round it twenty minutes
since—it was coming in three feet abreast. We will maybe get back by
Bally-burgh Ness Point yet. The Lord help us!—it's our only chance. We
can but try."

"My God, my child!"—"My father! my dear father!" exclaimed the parent
and daughter, as, fear lending them strength and speed, they turned to
retrace their steps, and endeavoured to double the point, the projection
of which formed the southern extremity of the bay.

"I heard ye were here frae the bit callant ye sent to meet your
carriage," said the beggar, as he trudged stoutly on a step or two
behind Miss Wardour; "and I couldna bide to think o' the dainty young
leddy's peril, that has aye been kind to ilka forlorn heart that cam
near her. Sae I lookit at the lift and the rin o' the tide, till I
settled it that if I could get down time eneugh to gie you warning, we
wad do weel yet. But I doubt, I doubt, I have been beguiled! for what
mortal ee ever saw sic a race as the tide is risening e'en now? See,
yonder's the Ratton's Skerry—he aye held his neb abune the water in my
day—but he's aneath it now."

Sir Arthur cast a look in the direction in which the old man pointed. A
huge rock, which in general, even in spring-tides, displayed a hulk like
the keel of a large vessel, was now quite under water, and its place
only indicated by the boiling and breaking of the eddying waves which
encountered its submarine resistance.

"Mak haste, mak haste, my bonny leddy," continued the old man—"mak
haste, and we may do yet! Take haud o' my arm—an auld and frail arm it's
now, but it's been in as sair stress as this is yet. Take haud o' my
arm, my winsome leddy! D'ye see yon wee black speck amang the wallowing
waves yonder? This morning it was as high as the mast o' a brig—it's
sma' eneugh now—but, while I see as muckle black about it as the crown
o' my hat, I winna believe but we'll get round the Ballyburgh Ness, for
a' that's come and gane yet."

Isabella, in silence, accepted from the old man the assistance which Sir
Arthur was less able to afford her. The waves had now encroached so much
upon the beach, that the firm and smooth footing which they had hitherto
had on the sand must be exchanged for a rougher path close to the foot
of the precipice, and in some places even raised upon its lower ledges.
It would have been utterly impossible for Sir Arthur Wardour, or his
daughter, to have found their way along these shelves without the
guidance and encouragement of the beggar, who had been there before in
high tides, though never, he acknowledged, "in sae awsome a night as
this."

It was indeed a dreadful evening. The howling of the storm mingled with
the shrieks of the sea-fowl, and sounded like the dirge of the three
devoted beings, who, pent between two of the most magnificent, yet
most dreadful objects of nature—a raging tide and an insurmountable
precipice—toiled along their painful and dangerous path, often lashed by
the spray of some giant billow, which threw itself higher on the beach
than those that had preceded it. Each minute did their enemy gain ground
perceptibly upon them! Still, however, loth to relinquish the last
hopes of life, they bent their eyes on the black rock pointed out
by Ochiltree. It was yet distinctly visible among the breakers, and
continued to be so, until they came to a turn in their precarious
path, where an intervening projection of rock hid it from their sight.
Deprived of the view of the beacon on which they had relied, they now
experienced the double agony of terror and suspense. They struggled
forward, however; but, when they arrived at the point from which they
ought to have seen the crag, it was no longer visible: the signal of
safety was lost among a thousand white breakers, which, dashing upon
the point of the promontory, rose in prodigious sheets of snowy foam,
as high as the mast of a first-rate man-of-war, against the dark brow of
the precipice.

The countenance of the old man fell. Isabella gave a faint shriek,
and, "God have mercy upon us!" which her guide solemnly uttered, was
piteously echoed by Sir Arthur—"My child! my child!—to die such a
death!"

"My father! my dear father!" his daughter exclaimed, clinging to
him—"and you too, who have lost your own life in endeavouring to save
ours!"

"That's not worth the counting," said the old man. "I hae lived to be
weary o' life; and here or yonder—at the back o' a dyke, in a wreath o'
snaw, or in the wame o' a wave, what signifies how the auld gaberlunzie
dies?"

"Good man," said Sir Arthur, "can you think of nothing?—of no help?—I'll
make you rich—I'll give you a farm—I'll"—

"Our riches will be soon equal," said the beggar, looking out upon the
strife of the waters—"they are sae already; for I hae nae land, and you
would give your fair bounds and barony for a square yard of rock that
would be dry for twal hours."

While they exchanged these words, they paused upon the highest ledge of
rock to which they could attain; for it seemed that any further attempt
to move forward could only serve to anticipate their fate. Here, then,
they were to await the sure though slow progress of the raging element,
something in the situation of the martyrs of the early church, who,
exposed by heathen tyrants to be slain by wild beasts, were compelled
for a time to witness the impatience and rage by which the animals
were agitated, while awaiting the signal for undoing their grates, and
letting them loose upon the victims.

Yet even this fearful pause gave Isabella time to collect the powers of
a mind naturally strong and courageous, and which rallied itself at this
terrible juncture. "Must we yield life," she said, "without a struggle?
Is there no path, however dreadful, by which we could climb the crag, or
at least attain some height above the tide, where we could remain till
morning, or till help comes? They must be aware of our situation, and
will raise the country to relieve us."

Sir Arthur, who heard, but scarcely comprehended, his daughter's
question, turned, nevertheless, instinctively and eagerly to the old
man, as if their lives were in his gift. Ochiltree paused—"I was a
bauld craigsman," he said, "ance in my life, and mony a kittywake's and
lungie's nest hae I harried up amang thae very black rocks; but it's
lang, lang syne, and nae mortal could speel them without a rope—and if
I had ane, my ee-sight, and my footstep, and my hand-grip, hae a' failed
mony a day sinsyne—And then, how could I save you? But there was a path
here ance, though maybe, if we could see it, ye would rather bide where
we are—His name be praised!" he ejaculated suddenly, "there's ane coming
down the crag e'en now!"—Then, exalting his voice, he hilloa'd out to
the daring adventurer such instructions as his former practice, and
the remembrance of local circumstances, suddenly forced upon his
mind:—"Ye're right!—ye're right!—that gate—that gate!—fasten the rope
weel round Crummies-horn, that's the muckle black stane—cast twa plies
round it—that's it!—now, weize yoursell a wee easel-ward—a wee mair yet
to that ither stane—we ca'd it the Cat's-lug—there used to be the root
o' an aik tree there—that will do!—canny now, lad—canny now—tak tent and
tak time—Lord bless ye, tak time—Vera weel!—Now ye maun get to Bessy's
apron, that's the muckle braid flat blue stane—and then, I think, wi'
your help and the tow thegither, I'll win at ye, and then we'll be able
to get up the young leddy and Sir Arthur."

The adventurer, following the directions of old Edie, flung him down
the end of the rope, which he secured around Miss Wardour, wrapping her
previously in his own blue gown, to preserve her as much as possible
from injury. Then, availing himself of the rope, which was made fast at
the other end, he began to ascend the face of the crag—a most precarious
and dizzy undertaking, which, however, after one or two perilous
escapes, placed him safe on the broad flat stone beside our friend
Lovel. Their joint strength was able to raise Isabella to the place of
safety which they had attained. Lovel then descended in order to assist
Sir Arthur, around whom he adjusted the rope; and again mounting to
their place of refuge, with the assistance of old Ochiltree, and such
aid as Sir Arthur himself could afford, he raised himself beyond the
reach of the billows. The Rescue of Sir Arthur and Miss Wardour

The sense of reprieve from approaching and apparently inevitable death,
had its usual effect. The father and daughter threw themselves into
each other's arms, kissed and wept for joy, although their escape
was connected with the prospect of passing a tempestuous night upon a
precipitous ledge of rock, which scarce afforded footing for the four
shivering beings, who now, like the sea-fowl around them, clung there
in hopes of some shelter from the devouring element which raged beneath.
The spray of the billows, which attained in fearful succession the foot
of the precipice, overflowing the beach on which they so lately stood,
flew as high as their place of temporary refuge; and the stunning sound
with which they dashed against the rocks beneath, seemed as if they
still demanded the fugitives in accents of thunder as their destined
prey. It was a summer night, doubtless; yet the probability was slender,
that a frame so delicate as that of Miss Wardour should survive till
morning the drenching of the spray; and the dashing of the rain, which
now burst in full violence, accompanied with deep and heavy gusts of
wind, added to the constrained and perilous circumstances of their
situation.

"The lassie!—the puir sweet, lassie!" said the old man: "mony such a
night have I weathered at hame and abroad, but, God guide us, how can
she ever win through it!"

His apprehension was communicated in smothered accents to Lovel; for
with the sort of freemasonry by which bold and ready spirits correspond
in moments of danger, and become almost instinctively known to each
other, they had established a mutual confidence.—"I'll climb up the
cliff again," said Lovel—there's daylight enough left to see my footing;
I'll climb up, and call for more assistance."

"Do so, do so, for Heaven's sake!" said Sir Arthur eagerly.

"Are ye mad?" said the mendicant: "Francie o' Fowlsheugh, and he was the
best craigsman that ever speel'd heugh (mair by token, he brake his neck
upon the Dunbuy of Slaines), wodna hae ventured upon the Halket-head
craigs after sun-down—It's God's grace, and a great wonder besides,
that ye are not in the middle o' that roaring sea wi' what ye hae done
already—I didna think there was the man left alive would hae come down
the craigs as ye did. I question an I could hae done it mysell, at this
hoar and in this weather, in the youngest and yaldest of my strength—But
to venture up again—it's a mere and a clear tempting o' Providence,"

"I have no fear," answered Lovel; "I marked all the stations perfectly
as I came down, and there is still light enough left to see them quite
well—I am sure I can do it with perfect safety. Stay here, my good
friend, by Sir Arthur and the young lady."

"Dell be in my feet then," answered the bedesman sturdily; "if ye gang,
I'll gang too; for between the twa o' us, we'll hae mair than wark
eneugh to get to the tap o' the heugh."

"No, no—stay you here and attend to Miss Wardour—you see Sir Arthur is
quite exhausted."

"Stay yoursell then, and I'll gae," said the old man;—"let death spare
the green corn and take the ripe."

"Stay both of you, I charge you," said Isabella, faintly; "I am well,
and can spend the night very well here—I feel quite refreshed." So
saying, her voice failed her—she sunk down, and would have fallen from
the crag, had she not been supported by Lovel and Ochiltree, who placed
her in a posture half sitting, half reclining, beside her father,
who, exhausted by fatigue of body and mind so extreme and unusual, had
already sat down on a stone in a sort of stupor.

"It is impossible to leave them," said Lovel—"What is to be done?—Hark!
hark!—did I not hear a halloo?"

"The skreigh of a Tammie Norie," answered Ochiltree—"I ken the skirl
weel."

"No, by Heaven!" replied Lovel, "it was a human voice."

A distant hail was repeated, the sound plainly distinguishable among the
various elemental noises, and the clang of the sea-mews by 

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/7003