"But shall we go mourn for that, my dear? The pale moon shines by night; And when we wander here and there, We then do go most right." I hope you will like Bertram to the end; he is a Caravaggio sketch, which, I may acknowledge to you--but tell it not in Gath--I rather pique myself upon; and he is within the keeping of Nature, though critics will say to the contrary. It may be difficult to fancy that any one should take a sort of pleasure in bringing out such a character, but I suppose it is partly owing to bad reading, and ill-directed reading, when I was young. No sooner had I corrected the last sheet of Rokeby, than I escaped to this Patmos as blithe as bird on tree, and have been ever since most decidedly idle--that is to say, with busy idleness. I have been banking, and securing, and diking against the river, and planting willows, and aspens, and weeping-birches, around my new old well, which I think I told you I had constructed last summer. I have now laid the foundations of a famous background of copse, with pendent trees in front; and I have only to beg a few years to see how my colors will come out of the canvas. Alas, who can promise that? But somebody will take my place--and enjoy them, whether I do or no. My old friend and pastor, Principal Robertson (the historian), when he was not expected to survive many weeks, still watched the setting of the blossom upon some fruit-trees in the garden with as much interest as if it was possible he could have seen the fruit come to maturity, and moralized on his own conduct, by observing that we act upon the same inconsistent motive throughout life. It is well we do so for those that are to come after us. I could almost dislike the man who refuses to plant walnut-trees, because they do not bear fruit till the second generation; and so--many thanks to our ancestors, and much joy to our successors, and truce to my fine and very new strain of morality. Yours ever, W. S. The following letter lets us completely behind the scenes at the publication of Rokeby. The "horrid story" it alludes to was that of a young woman found murdered on New Year's Day in the highway between Greta Bridge and Barnard Castle--a crime, the perpetrator of which was never discovered. The account of a parallel atrocity in Galloway, and the mode of its detection, will show the reader from what source Scott drew one of the most striking incidents in his Guy Mannering:-- TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., ROKEBY PARK. EDINBURGH, 12th January, 1813.