These little incidents may give some notion of the profound seriousness with which his imagination had invested this matter. I am obliged to add, that in the society of Edinburgh at the time, even in the highest Tory circles, it did not seem to awaken much even of curiosity--to say nothing of any deeper feeling. There was, however, a great excitement among the common people of the town, and a still greater among the peasantry, not only in the neighborhood, but all over Scotland; and the Crown-room, becoming thenceforth one of the established _lions_ of a city much resorted to, moreover, by stranger tourists, was likely, on the most moderate scale of admission-fee, to supply a revenue sufficient for remunerating responsible and respectable guardianship. This post would, as Scott thought, be a very suitable one for his friend, Captain Adam Ferguson; and he exerted all his zeal for that purpose. The Captain was appointed: his nomination, however, did not take place for some months after; and the postscript of a {p.214} letter to the Duke of Buccleuch, dated May 14, 1818, plainly indicates the interest on which Scott mainly relied for its completion: "If you happen," he writes, "to see Lord Melville, pray give him a jog about Ferguson's affair; but between ourselves, I depend chiefly on the kind offices of Willie Adam, who is an auld sneck-drawer." The Lord Chief-Commissioner, at all times ready to lend Scott his influence with the Royal Family, had, on the present occasion, the additional motive of warm and hereditary personal regard for Ferguson.