My health is, I think, greatly improved; I have had some returns of my spasmodic affection, but tolerable in degree, and yielding to medicine. I hope gentle exercise and the air of my hills will set me up this summer. I trust you will soon be out now. I have delayed reading the sheets in progress after Vol. I., that I might enjoy them when collected. Ever yours, etc., Walter SCOTT. TO MR. LAIDLAW. EDINBURGH, Wednesday. [March, 1818.] DEAR WILLIE,--I am delighted to hear the plantings get on so well. The weather here has been cruelly changeable--fresh one day--frost the next--snow the third. This morning the snow lay three inches thick, and before noon it was gone, and blowing a tempest. Many of the better ranks are ill of the typhus fever, and some deaths. How do your poor folks come on? Let Tom advance you money when it is wanted. I do not propose, like the heroine of a novel, to convert the hovels of want into the abodes of elegant plenty, but we have enough to spare to relieve actual distress, and do not wish to economize where we can find out (which is difficult) where the assistance is instantly useful. Don't let Tom forget hedgerow trees, which he is very {p.228} unwilling to remember; and also to plant birches, oaks, elms, and such like round-headed trees along the verges of the Kaeside plantations; they make a beautiful outline, and also a sort of fence, and were not planted last year because the earth at the sunk fences was too newly travelled. This should be mixed with various bushes, as hollies, thorns, so as to make a wild hedge, or thickety obstruction to the inroads of cattle. A few sweetbriers, alders, honeysuckles, laburnums, etc., should be thrown in. A verdant screen may be made in this way, of the wildest and most beautiful description, which should never be clipt, only pruned, allowing the loose branches to drop over those that are taken away. Tom is very costive about trees, and talks only of 300 poplars. I shall send at least double that number; also some hagberries, etc. He thinks he is saving me money when he is starving my projects; but he is a pearl of honesty and good intention, and I like him the better for needing driving where expense is likely. Ever yours, W. SCOTT. TO JOHN MURRAY, ESQ., ALBEMARLE STREET, LONDON. ABBOTSFORD, 23d March, 1818. DEAR MURRAY,-- "Grieve not for me, my dearest dear, I am not dead but sleepeth here."--