“Now, Cot forgie your honour,” said Janet; “for it is no like your ainsell to give such names to a faitherless bairn.” “I have got nothing else to give him, Janet; he must wait a little.” “Then I have got some breakfast to give the bit gillie,” said Janet; “and he can wait by the fireside in the kitchen, till your honour’s ready; and cood enough for the like of him, if he was to wait your honour’s pleasure all day.” “But, Janet,” said I to my little active superintendent, on her return to the parlour, after having made her hospitable arrangements, “I begin to find this writing our Chronicles is rather more tiresome than I expected, for here comes this little fellow to ask for manuscript--that is, for something to print--and I have got none to give him.” “Your honour can be at nae loss. I have seen you write fast and fast enough; and for subjects, you have the whole Highlands to write about, and I am sure you know a hundred tales better than that about Hamish MacTavish, for it was but about a young cateran and an auld carlin, when all’s done; and if they had burned the rudas quean for a witch, I am thinking, may be they would not have tyned their coals--and her to gar her ne’er-do-weel son shoot a gentleman Cameron! I am third cousin to the Camerons mysel’--my blood warms to them. And if you want to write about deserters, I am sure there were deserters enough on the top of Arthur’s Seat, when the MacRaas broke out, and on that woeful day beside Leith Pier--ohonari!”-- Here Janet began to weep, and to wipe her eyes with her apron. For my part, the idea I wanted was supplied, but I hesitated to make use of it. Topics, like times, are apt to become common by frequent use. It is only an ass like Justice Shallow, who would pitch upon the over-scutched tunes, which the carmen whistled, and try to pass them off as his FANCIES and his GOOD-NIGHTS. Now, the Highlands, though formerly a rich mine for original matter, are, as my friend Mrs. Bethune Baliol warned me, in some degree worn out by the incessant labour of modern romancers and novelists, who, finding in those remote regions primitive habits and manners, have vainly imagined that the public can never tire of them; and so kilted Highlanders are to be found as frequently, and nearly of as genuine descent, on the shelves of a circulating library, as at a Caledonian ball. Much might have been made at an earlier time out of the history of a Highland regiment, and the singular revolution of ideas which must have taken place in the minds of those who composed it, when exchanging their native hills for the battle-fields of the Continent, and their simple, and sometimes indolent domestic habits for the regular exertions demanded by modern discipline. But the market is forestalled. There is Mrs. Grant of Laggan, has drawn the manners, customs, and superstitions of the mountains in their natural unsophisticated state; [Letters from the Mountains, 3 vols.--Essays on the Superstitions of