discovering that the hook and mattock are unfavorable to his chanter hand." When the cloth was drawn, and the never-failing salver of _quaighs_ introduced, John of Skye, upon some well-known signal, entered the room, but _en militaire_, without removing his bonnet, and taking his station behind the landlord, received from his hand the largest of the Celtic bickers brimful of Glenlivet. The man saluted the company in his own dialect, tipped off the contents (probably a quarter of an English pint of raw aqua vitæ) at a gulp, wheeled about as solemnly as if the whole ceremony had been a movement on parade, and forthwith recommenced his pibrochs and gatherings, which continued until long after the ladies had left the table, and the autumnal moon was streaming in upon us so brightly as to dim the candles. [Footnote 116: I understand that this now celebrated soup was _extemporized_ by M. Florence on Scott's first visit to Bowhill after the publication of _Guy Mannering_. Florence had _served_--and Scott having on some sporting party made his personal acquaintance, he used often afterwards to gratify the poet's military propensities by sending up magnificent representations in pastry, of citadels taken by the Emperor, etc.] I had never before seen Scott in such buoyant spirits as he showed this evening--and I never saw him in {p.279} higher afterwards; and no wonder, for this was the first time that he, Lord Melville, and Adam Ferguson, daily companions at the High School of Edinburgh, and partners in many joyous scenes of the early volunteer period, had met since the commencement of what I may call the serious part of any of their lives. The great poet and novelist was receiving them under his own roof, when his fame was at its _acme_, and his fortune seemed culminating to about a corresponding height--and the generous exuberance of his hilarity might have overflowed without moving the spleen of a Cynic. Old stories of _the Yards_ and _the Cross-causeway_ were relieved by sketches of real warfare, such as none but Ferguson (or Charles Mathews, had he been a soldier) could ever have given; and they toasted the memory of _Green-breeks_ and the health of _the Beau_ with equal devotion.