Note every syllable of the description of him given in the introduction to the third canto of 'Marmion:' "Still, with vain fondness, could I trace Anew each kind familiar face That brightened at our evening fire; From the thatched mansion's grey-haired sire, Wise without learning, plain, and good, And sprung of Scotland's gentler blood; Whose eye in age, quick, clear, and keen, Showed what in youth its glance had been; Whose doom discording neighbours sought, Content with equity unbought, To him, the venerable priest, Our frequent and familiar guest." Note, I say, every word of this. The faces "brightened at the evening fire,"--not a patent stove; fancy the difference in effect on the imagination, in the dark long nights of a Scottish winter, between the flickering shadows of firelight, and utter gloom of a room warmed by a close stove! "The thatched mansion's."--The coolest roof in summer, warmest in winter. Among the various mischievous things done in France, apparently by the orders of Napoleon III., but in reality by the foolish nation uttering itself through his passive voice, (he being all his days only a feeble Pan's pipe, or Charon's boatswain's whistle, instead of a true king,) the substitution of tiles for thatch on the cottages of Picardy was one of the most barbarous. It was to prevent fire, forsooth! and all the while the poor peasants could not afford candles, except to drip about over their church floors. See above, 6, 17. "Wise without learning."--By no means able, this Border rider, to state how many different arrangements may be made of the letters in the word Chillianwallah. He contrived to exist, and educate his grandson to come to something, without that information. "Plain, and good."--Consider the value there is in that virtue of plainness--legibility, shall we say?--in the letters of character. A clear-printed man, readable at a glance. There are such things as illuminated letters of character also,--beautifully unreadable; but this legibility in the head of a family is greatly precious. "And sprung of Scotland's gentler blood."--I am not sure if this is merely an ordinary expression of family pride, or whether, which I rather think, Scott means to mark distinctly the literal gentleness and softening of character in his grandfather, and in the Lowland Scottish shepherd of his day, as opposed to the still fiery temper of the Highland clans--the blood being equally pure, but the race altogether softer and more Saxon. Even Auld Wat was fair-haired, and Beardie has "amber beard and flaxen hair." "Whose doom discording neighbours sought, Content with equity unbought."-- Here you have the exactly right and wise condition of the legal profession.