“It not unfrequently happened,” says Captain Clutterbuck, in his amusing account of himself, “that an acquaintance which commenced in the Abbey concluded in the Inn, which served to relieve the solitude as well as the monotony of my landlady’s shoulder of mutton, whether hot, cold, or hashed.” This happened not more frequently in the case of Captain Clutterbuck than it does in that of Captain O——n. The latter personage, indeed, makes a constant practice of living entirely with his _eleves_ during their stay in Melrose; and, as they have been guests at the hospitable board of his learning and entertainment, so he in turn becomes a guest at the parade of their “bottle of sherry, minced collops, and fowl,” or whatever else the order upon David Kyle may be. He is thus always ready at the elbows of their ignorance, to explain and to exhibit the various petty curiosities of the place, of which it is probable they might otherwise be obliged to remain perfectly unknowing, but for the condescending attention of Captain O. He is not destitute of other means of entertainment, besides showing the Abbey. He can tell a good story, after a few glasses, and is an excellent hand at a song. “The Broom of the Cowdenknows” is his favourite and his best; but we are also tenderly attached to “The Flowers of the Forest,” which he gives in the milkmaid style, with much pathos. When his company is agreeable, he can (about the tenth tumbler,) treat them with “Willie brewed a peck o’ Maut,” or “Auld Lang Syne,” or “For a’ that and a’ that.” These infatuating lyrics he gives in such a style of appropriate enthusiasm, that if his companions have at all a spark of Burns’s fire in their composition, they will rise up and join hands round the table, and, at the conclusion of every stanza, drink down immense cups of kindness, till, in the springtide of their glory, they imagine themselves the most jolly, patriotic, and independent Scotsmen upon the face of the earth. Such is the deceiving effect of a national song upon the spirits of men of sober reason when prepared for the excitement by previous intoxication. This trait is also not without its parallel in Clutterbuck. The reader will remember how, in the Introduction to Nigel, he pathetically laments that since Catalani visited the ruins, his “Poortith Cauld” has been received both poorly and coldly, and his “Banks of Doon” been fairly coughed down, at the Club. May the vocal exertions of Captain O——n, however, never meet with such a scurvy reception among the cognoscenti of Melrose!