The volume of verses was not without its more immediate results in a local circle. It brought him under the notice of Sir Thomas Dick Lauder of Relugas, who is now remembered by his _Wolf of Badenoch_--a not quite unsuccessful effort at bending the bow of Ulysses, though without the dramatic force of Scott. By Carruthers he was introduced to Principal Baird, and thus a link with the past was effected through a man who had edited the poems of Michael Bruce, had befriended Alexander Murray for a short period the occupant of the Oriental chair in Edinburgh, and been a patron of Pringle and a close friend of Scott. By Baird he was strongly pressed to venture on a literary life in the capital, but the time was not propitious, and he wisely resolved to devote himself to several years of accumulation and reflection before he should embark on a vocation for which he had no great liking, and in which, even to the last, he had but little belief. For an ordinary journalist he would indeed have been as little qualified as Burns when offered a post on Perry's _Morning Chronicle_. The justness of his resolution was fully shown when the opportunity found him, and he was then fully prepared for the work he was to do. He was induced by the Principal to draw up for him a brief sketch of his life, and of this a draft bringing it up to 1825 was composed and sent to Edinburgh. There existed at this time in the North the remains of a little coterie of ladies, numbering among its members Henry Mackenzie's cousin,--Mrs. Rose of Kilravock, whom Burns had visited on his Highland tour, Lady Gordon Cumming, and Mrs. Grant of Laggan, whose once well-known _Letters from the Mountains_ have yielded in popularity to her song of _Highland Laddie_, which commemorates the departure in 1799 of the Marquis of Huntly with Sir Ralph Abercromby. By none of them, however, was he more noticed than by Miss Dunbar of Boath, who occupies in his early correspondence the place taken in the letters of Burns by Mrs. Dunlop. During his visits to this excellent lady he explored the curious sand-dunes of Culbin which still arrest the attention of the geologist and traveller in his rambles by the Findhorn. By Miss Dunbar he was pressed to embark on literature, while Mrs. Grant was of the opinion that he might follow the example of Allan Cunningham, who was engaged in the studio of Chantrey. But such patronage was in his case no less wisely exercised than admitted, nor was his the nature to be in any way spoiled by it; his self-reliant disposition suffered no such baneful effects as were felt by the much weaker nature of Thom of Inverurie, the one lyrical utterance of Aberdeenshire, or by Burns in the excitement of his Edinburgh season. He even became a town councillor, though he admits that his masterly inactivity was such as led him to absent himself pretty wholly from the duties, whose onerous nature may be inferred when the most important business before the