Dined at James Ballantyne’s, and heard his brother Sandy sing and play on the violin, beautifully as usual.  James himself sang the Reel of Tullochgorum, with hearty cheer and uplifted voice.  When I came home I learned that we had beat the Coal Gas Company, which is a sort of triumph.

FOOTNOTES: 

[511] The rude inscription on the stone placed over the grave of this Border amazon, slain at Ancrum Moor, A.D. 1545, ran thus—­

  “Fair maiden Lilliard lies under this stane,
  Little was her stature but great was her fame,
  Upon the English louns she laid many thumps,
  And when her legs were cuttet off she fought upon her stumps.”

See New Stat.  Account Scot., “Roxburgh,” p. 244.

[512] Tempest, Act I. Sc. 2.

[513] An article for the Foreign Quarterly Review, regarding which Mr. Lockhart says:—­“It had then been newly started under the Editorship of Mr. R.P.  Gillies.  This article, it is proper to observe, was a benefaction to Mr. Gillies, whose pecuniary affairs rendered such assistance very desirable.  Scott’s generosity in this matter—­for it was exactly giving a poor brother author L100 at the expense of considerable time and drudgery to himself—­I think it necessary to mention; the date of the exertion requires it of me.”—­Life, vol. ix. pp. 72-3; see Misc.  Prose Works, vol. xviii. p. 270.

[514] See note 1, p. 387.

[515] Merry Wives, Act I. Sc. 1.

[516] The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton, by Captain Thomas Hamilton, had just been published anonymously.

[517] Mr. Lockhart adds the following lines:—­

  “The shade of youthful hope is there,
  That lingered long, and latest died;
  Ambitions all dissolved to air,
  With phantom honours by his side.

  “What empty shadows glimmer nigh? 
  They once were friendship, truth, and love! 
  Oh, die to thought, to memory die,
  Since lifeless to my heart ye prove.”

(Poems by the Hon. W.R.  Spencer, London, 1811, p. 68.) “The best writer of vers de societe in our time, and one of the most charming of companions, was exactly Sir Walter’s contemporary, and, like him, first attracted notice by a version of Buerger’s Lenore.  Like him, too, this remarkable man fell into pecuniary distress in the disastrous year 1825, and he was now (1826) an involuntary resident in Paris, where he died in October 1834, anno aetat. 65.”—­J.G.L.

[518] The following note to Mr. and Mrs. Skene belongs to this day:—­

My dear Friends,—­I am just returned from Court dreeping like the Water Kelpy when he had finished the Laird of Morphey’s Bridge, and am, like that ill-used drudge, disposed to sing—­

Sair back and sair banes.[D]

In fact I have the rheumatism in head and shoulders, and am obliged to deprive myself of the pleasure of waiting upon you to-day to dinner, to my great mortification.—­Always yours, WALTER SCOTT.