matter; little by little, whatever your wishes may be, you will destroy and undermine, until nothing of what makes Scotland Scotland shall remain!” “And so saying,” adds Mr. Lockhart, “he turned round to conceal his agitation, but not until Mr. Jeffrey saw tears gushing down his cheek,—­resting his head, until he recovered himself, on the wall of the Mound."[47] It was the same strong feeling for old Scotch institutions which broke out so quaintly in the midst of his own worst troubles in 1826, on behalf of the Scotch banking-system, when he so eloquently defended, in the letters of Malachi Malagrowther, what would now be called Home-Rule for Scotland, and indeed really defeated the attempt of his friends the Tories, who were the innovators this time, to encroach on those sacred institutions—­the Scotch one-pound note, and the private-note circulation of the Scotch banks.  But when I speak of Scott as a Home-Ruler, I should add that had not Scotland been for generations governed to a great extent, and, as he thought successfully, by Home-Rule, he was far too good a Conservative to have apologized for it at all.  The basis of his Conservatism was always the danger of undermining a system which had answered so well.  In the concluding passages of the letters to which I have just referred, he contrasts “Theory, a scroll in her hand, full of deep and mysterious combinations of figures, the least failure in any one of which may alter the result entirely,” with “a practical system successful for upwards of a century.”  His vehement and unquailing opposition to Reform in almost the very last year of his life, when he had already suffered more than one stroke of paralysis, was grounded on precisely the same argument.  At Jedburgh, on the 21st March, 1831, he appeared in the midst of an angry population (who hooted and jeered at him till he turned round fiercely upon them with the defiance, “I regard your gabble no more than the geese on the green,”) to urge the very same protest.  “We in this district,” he said, “are proud, and with reason, that the first chain-bridge was the work of a Scotchman.  It still hangs where he erected it a pretty long time ago.  The French heard of our invention, and determined to introduce it, but with great improvements and embellishments.  A friend of my own saw the thing tried.  It was on the Seine at Marly.  The French chain-bridge looked lighter and airier than the prototype.  Every Englishman present was disposed to confess that we had been beaten at our own trade.  But by-and-by the gates were opened, and the multitude were to pass over.  It began to swing rather formidably beneath the pressure of the good company; and by the time the architect, who led the procession in great pomp and glory, reached the middle, the whole gave way, and he—­worthy, patriotic artist—­was the first that got a ducking.  They had forgot the middle bolt,—­or rather this ingenious person had conceived that to be a clumsy-looking feature,