Perhaps the Author of “Waverley” has nowhere so completely given the effect of reality to his portraiture as in the case of honest Dandie Dinmont, the renowned yeoman of Charlieshope. This personage seems to be quite familiar to his mind, present to his eye, domesticated in the chambers of his fancy. The minutest motions of the farmer’s body, and the most trivial workings of his mind, are alike bright in his eye; and so faithful a representation has been produced, that one might almost think the author had taken his sketch by some species of mental _camera obscura_, which brought the figure beneath his pencil in all its native colours and proportions. It is impossible to point out any individual of real life as the original of this happy production. It appears to be entirely generic—that is to say, the whole class of Liddisdale farmers is here represented, and little more than a single thread is taken from any single person to form the web of the character. Three various persons have been popularly mentioned as furnishing the author with his most distinguished traits, each of whom have their followers and believers among the country people. It will perhaps be possible to prove that Dandie Dinmont is a sort of compound of all three, the ingredients being leavened and wrought up with the general characteristic qualities of the “Lads of Liddisdale.” Mr. ARCHIBALD PARK, late of Lewinshope, near Selkirk, brother of the celebrated Mungo Park, was the person always most strongly insisted on as being the original of Dandie. He was a man of prodigious strength, in stature upwards of six feet, and every member of his body was in perfect accordance with his great height. He completely realized the most extravagant ideas that the poets of his country formerly entertained of the stalwart borderers; and his achievements “by flood and field,” in the violent exercises and sports of his profession, came fully up to those of the most distinguished heroes of border song. He had all the careless humour and boisterous hospitality of the Liddisdale farmer. On the appearance of the novel, his neighbours at once put him down as the Dandie Dinmont of real life, and he was generally addressed by the name of his supposed archetype by his familiar associates, so long as he remained in that part of the country, which, however, was not long. His circumstances requiring him to relinquish his farm, he obtained, by the interest of some friends, the situation of collector of customs at Tobermory, to which place he removed in 1815. Soon after he had settled there, he was attacked by a paralytic affection, from which he never thoroughly recovered, and he died in 1821, aged about fifty years.