her with severity, merely for a frankness which, I supposed, was in some degree justified by my own personal merit; and the feelings of partiality, which her beauty, and the singularity of her situation, were of themselves calculated to excite, were enhanced by my opinion of her penetration and judgment in her choice of a friend.

After Miss Vernon quitted the apartment, the bottle circulated, or rather flew around the table in unceasing revolution. My foreign education had given me a distaste to intemperance, then and yet too common a vice among my countrymen. The conversation which seasoned such orgies was as little to my taste, and, if anything could render it more disgusting, it was the relationship of the company. I therefore seized a lucky opportunity, and made my escape through a side-door, leading I knew not whither, rather than endure any longer the sight of father and sons practising the same degrading intemperance, and holding the same coarse and disgusting conversation. I was pursued, of course, as I had expected, to be reclaimed by force, as a deserter from the shrine of Bacchus. When I heard the whoop and hollo, and the tramp of the heavy boots of my pursuers on the winding stair which I was descending, I plainly foresaw I should be overtaken unless I could get into the open air. I therefore threw open a casement in the staircase, which looked into an old-fashioned garden; and, as the height did not exceed six feet, I jumped out without hesitation, and soon heard, far behind, the “hey whoop! stole away! stole away!” of my baffled pursuers. I ran down one alley, walked fast up another; and then, conceiving myself out of all danger of pursuit, I slackened my pace into a quiet stroll, enjoying the cool air which the heat of the wine I had been obliged to swallow, as well as that of my rapid retreat, rendered doubly grateful.

As I sauntered on, I found the gardener hard at his evening employment, and saluted him, as I paused to look at his work. “Good even, my friend.”

“Gude e’en—gude e’en t’ye,” answered the man, without looking up, and in a tone which at once indicated his northern extraction.

“Fine weather for your work, my friend.”

“It’s no that muckle to be compleened o’,” answered the man, with that limited degree of praise which gardeners and farmers usually bestow on the very best weather. Then raising his head, as if to see who spoke to him, he touched his Scotch bonnet with an air of respect, as he observed. “Eh, gude safe us!—it’s a sight for sair een, to see a gold-laced jeistiecor in the Ha’ garden sae late at e’en.”

“A gold-laced what, my good friend?”

“Ou, a jeistiecor¹—that’s a jacket like your ain, there. They hae other things to do wi’ them up yonder—unbuttoning them to make room for the beef and the bag-puddings, and the claret-wine, nae doubt—that’s the ordinary for evening lecture on this side the Border.”

“There’s no such plenty of good cheer in your country, my good friend,” I replied, “as to tempt you to sit so late at it.”

“Hout, sir, ye ken little about Scotland; it’s no for want of gude vivers—the best of fish, flesh, and fowl hae we, by sybos, ingans, turneeps, and other garden fruit. But we hae mense and discretion, and are moderate of our mouths; but here, frae the kitchen to the ha’, it’s fill and fetch mair, frae the tae end of the four-and-twenty till the tother. Even their fast days—they ca’ it fasting when they hae the best o’ sea-fish frae Hartlepool and Sunderland by land carriage, forbye trouts, grilses, salmon, and a’ the lave o’t, and so they make their very fasting a kind of luxury and abomination; and then the awfu’ masses and matins of the puir deceived souls—but I shouldna speak about them, for your honour will be a Roman, I’se warrant, like the lave.”

“Not I, my friend; I was bred an English Presbyterian, or dissenter.”