In the accompanying parcel I send you two of my volumes, which you may not yet have seen, and in which you may find some materials for your proposed introductory memoir. At all events they may furnish you with amusement in a leisure hour. The bulkier of the two, "Scenes and Legends," of which a new edition has just appeared, and of which the first edition was published, after lying several years beside me, in 1835, is the earliest of my works to which I attached my name. It forms a sort of traditionary history of a district of Scotland, about two hundred miles distant from the capital, in which the character of the people has been scarce at all affected by the cosmopolitanism which has been gradually modifying and altering it in the larger towns; and as it has been frequently remarked,--I know not with what degree of truth,--that there is a closer resemblance between the Scotch and Swiss than between any other two peoples of Europe, you may have some interest in determining whether the features of your own country-folk are not sometimes to be seen in those of mine, as exhibited in my legendary history. Certainly both countries had for many ages nearly the same sort of work to do; both had to maintain a long and ultimately successful war of independence against nations greatly more powerful than themselves; and as their hills produced little else than the "soldier and his sword," both had to make a trade abroad of that art of war which they were compelled in self-defense to acquire at home. Even in the laws of some nations we find them curiously enough associated together. In France, under the old regime, the personal property of all strangers dying in the country, SWISS AND SCOTS EXCEPTED, was forfeited to the king.