In the rude lines describing such passing of hours quoted by Scott in his introduction to the 'Border Minstrelsy,' [71] you find the grandmother spinning, with her stool next the hearth,--"for she was old, and saw right dimly" (fire-light, observe, all that was needed even then;) "she spins to make a web of good Scots linen," (can you show such now, from your Glasgow mills?) The father is pulling hemp (or beating it). The only really beautiful piece of song which I heard at Verona, during several months' stay there in 1869, was the low chant of girls unwinding the cocoons of the silkworm, in the cottages among the olive-clad hills on the north of the city. Never any in the streets of it;--there, only insane shrieks of Republican populace, or senseless dance-music, played by operatic-military bands. And one of the most curious points connected with the study of Border-life is this connection of its power of song either with its industry or human love, but never with the religious passion of its "Independent" mind. The definite subject of the piper or minstrel being always war or love, (peasant love as much honoured as the proudest,) his feeling is steadily antagonistic to Puritanism; and the discordance of Scottish modern psalmody is as unexampled among civilized nations as the sweetness of their ballads--shepherds' or ploughmen's (the plough and pulpit coming into fatalest opposition in Ayrshire); so that Wandering Willie must, as a matter of course, head the troop of Redgauntlet's riotous fishermen with "Merrily danced the Quaker's wife." And see Wandering Willie's own description of his gudesire: "A rambling, rattling chiel he had been, in his young days, and could play weel on the pipes;--he was famous at 'Hoopers and Girders;' a' Cumberland could not touch him at 'Jockie Lattin;' and he had the finest finger for the back-lilt between Berwick and Carlisle;--the like o' Steenie was na the sort they made Whigs o'." And yet, to this Puritan element, Scott owed quite one of the most noble conditions of his mental life. But it is of no use trying to get on to his aunt Janet in this letter, for there is yet one thing I have to explain to you before I can leave you to meditate, to purpose, over that sorrowful piece of Scott's diary with which it began. If you had before any thoughtful acquaintance with his general character, or with his writings, but had not studied this close of his life, you cannot but have read with surprise, in the piece of the diary I quoted, the recurring sentences showing the deep wounds of his pride. Your impression of him was, if thoughtfully received, that of a man modest and self-forgetful, even to error. Yet, very evidently, the bitterest pain under his fallen fortune is felt by his pride. Do you fancy the feeling is only by chance so strongly expressed in that passage? It is dated 18th December. Now read this:--