The delight of the two publishers in at last receiving the MS. of _The Black Dwarf_ and the manner in which it passed into the hands of Constable, even before the stipulated 6000 copies were disposed of,--it must be owned he treated his rivals somewhat unhandsomely, finally severing them from Scott's literary career,--are fully set forth by the historian of the House of Blackwood. With her "one cannot but feel that this was one of those tragically insignificant circumstances which so often shape life apart from any consciousness of ours. Probably ruin would never have overtaken Sir Walter had he been in the steady and careful hands of Murray and Blackwood, for it is unlikely that even the glamour of the great Magician would have turned heads so reasonable and sober.")] {p.115} While these volumes were in progress, Scott found time to make an excursion into Perthshire and Dumbartonshire, {p.116} for the sake of showing the scenery, made famous in The Lady of the Lake and Waverley, to his {p.117} wife's old friends, Miss Dumergue and Mrs. Sarah Nicolson,[40] who had never before been in Scotland. The account which he gives of these ladies' visit at Abbotsford, and this little tour, in a letter to Mr. Morritt, shows the "Black Hussar of Literature" in his gentler and more habitual mood. [Footnote 40: The sister of Miss Jane Nicolson.--See _ante_, vol. i. p. 248. Vol. ii. p. 82.] TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., M. P., ROKEBY PARK. ABBOTSFORD, 21st August, 1816.