accordingly, and he pointed out to me this hand which, like the writing on Belshazzar's wall, disturbed his hour of hilarity. "Since we sat down," he said, "I have been watching it--it fascinates my eye--it never stops--page after page is finished and thrown on that heap of MS., and still it goes on unwearied--and so it will be till candles are brought in, and God knows how long after that. It is the same every night--I can't stand a sight of it when I am not at my books."--"Some stupid, dogged, engrossing clerk, probably," exclaimed myself, or some other giddy youth in our society. "No, boys," said our host, "I well know what hand it is--'tis Walter Scott's." This was the hand that, in the evenings of three summer weeks, wrote the last two volumes of Waverley. Would that all who that night watched it had profited by its example of diligence as largely as William Menzies! In the next of these letters Scott enclosed to Mr. Morritt the Prospectus of a new edition of the old poems of the Bruce and the Wallace, undertaken by the learned lexicographer, Dr. John Jamieson; and he announces his departure on a sailing excursion round the north of Scotland. It will be observed that when Scott began his letter, he had only had Mr. Morritt's opinion of the first volume of Waverley, and that before he closed it he had received his friend's honest criticism on the work as a whole, with the expression of an earnest hope that he would drop his _incognito_ on the title-page of a second edition. TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., M. P., PORTLAND PLACE, LONDON. ABBOTSFORD, July 24, 1814. MY DEAR MORRITT,--I am going to say my _vales_ to you for some weeks, having accepted an invitation from a committee of the Commissioners for the Northern Lights (I don't mean the Edinburgh Reviewers, but the _bona-fide_ Commissioners for the Beacons), to accompany them upon a nautical tour round Scotland, visiting all that is curious on continent and isle. The party are three gentlemen with whom I am very well acquainted, William Erskine being one. We have a stout cutter, well fitted up and manned for the service by Government; and to make assurance double sure, the admiral has sent a sloop of war to cruise in the dangerous points of our tour, and sweep the sea of the Yankee privateers, which sometimes annoy our northern latitudes. I shall visit the Clephanes in their solitude--and let you know all that I see that is rare and entertaining, which, as we are masters of our time and vessel, should add much to my stock of knowledge.