"I was in my fourth year when my father was advised that the Bath waters might be of some advantage to my lameness. My affectionate aunt--although such a journey promised to a person of her retired habits anything but pleasure or amusement--undertook as readily to accompany me to the wells of Bladud, as if she had expected all the delight that ever the prospect of a watering-place held out to its most impatient visitants." And why should she not? Does it not seem somewhat strange to you, from what you know of young, or even middle-aged, aunt Jessies of the present day, that Miss Scott should look upon the journey to Bath as so severe a piece of self-denial; and that her nephew regards her doing so as a matter of course? How old was aunt Jessie, think you? Scott's father, the eldest of a large family, was born in 1729,--in this year, therefore, was forty-six. If we uncharitably suppose Miss Jessie the next oldest, she would be precisely of the age of Mrs. Tabitha Bramble; and one could fancy her, it seems to me, on the occasion of this unforeseen trip to the most fashionable watering-place in England, putting up her "rose-collard neglegay with green robins, and her bloo quilted petticot," without feeling herself in the position of a martyr led to the stake. But aunt Jessie must really have been much younger than Mrs. Tabitha, and have had the advantage of her in other particulars besides spelling. She was afterwards married, and when Lockhart saw her (1820?)--forty years or so after this--had still "the softest eye and the sweetest voice." And from the thatched mansion of the moorland, Miss Jessie feels it so irksome and solemn a duty--does she?--to go to "the squares, the circus, and the parades, which put you" (Miss Lydia Melford) "in mind of the sumptuous palaces represented in prints and pictures; and the new buildings, such as Prince's Row, Harlequin's Row, Bladud's Row, and twenty other rows besides,"--not to speak of a real pump in a pump-room, with a handle to it, and other machinery, instead of the unpumped Tweed! Her nephew, however, judges her rightly. Aunt Jessie could give him no truer proof of faithful affection than in the serenity with which she resolves to take him to this centre of gaiety. Whereupon, you are to note this, that the end of all right education for a woman is to make her love her home better than any other place; that she should as seldom leave it as a queen her queendom; nor ever feel entirely at rest but within its threshold. For her boy, however, there are things to be seen in Bath, and to be learned. "I acquired the rudiments of reading from an old dame near our lodgings, and I had never a more regular teacher, though I think I did not attend her more than a quarter of a year. An occasional lesson from my aunt supplied the rest." Yes, little Walter. If we indeed have a mind to our book, that is all the teaching we want; we shall perhaps get through a volume or two in time.