years after, at a book-stall, when working in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh as a journeyman mason. It is not every day one meets with so genuine a Highlander as my cousin the merchant; and though he failed to inspire me with all his own Ossianic faith and zeal, there were some of the little old Celtic practices which he resuscitated _pro tempore_ in his father's household, that I learned to like very much. He restored the genuine Highland breakfasts; and, after hours spent in busy exploration outside, I found I could as thoroughly admire the groaning table, with its cheese, and its trout, and its cold meat, as even the immortal Lexicographer himself. Some of the dishes, too, which he revived, were at least curious. There was a supply of _gradden_-meal prepared--_i.e._, grain dried in a pot over the fire, and then coarsely ground in a handmill--which made cakes that, when they had hunger for their sauce, could be eaten; and on more than one occasion I shared in a not unpalatable sort of blood-pudding, enriched with butter, and well seasoned with pepper and salt, the main ingredient of which was derived, through a judicious use of the lancet, from the _yeld_ cattle of the farm. The practice was an ancient, and by no means unphilosophic one. In summer and early autumn there is plenty of grass in the Highlands; but, of old at least, there used to be very little grain in it before the beginning of October; and as the cattle could, in consequence, provide themselves with a competent supply of blood from the grass, when their masters, who could not eat grass, and had little else that they could eat, were able to acquire very little, it was opportunely discovered that, by making a division in this way of the all-essential fluid, accumulated as a common stock, the circumstances of the cattle and their owners could be in some degree equalized. With these peculiarly Highland dishes there mingled others not less genuine--now and then a salmon from the river, and a haunch of venison from the hill-side--which I relished better still; and if all Highlanders live but as well in the present day as I did during my stay with my aunt and cousins, they would be rather unreasonable were they greatly to complain.