The last fortnight in August he was ill of a bilious fever, during which his new friends proved very kind. Lady Blessington called daily in her carriage at his lodgings (over the shop of a baker, who gratified Willis by being overwhelmed at her ladyship’s condescension), and Dr. William Beattie, the king’s physician, attended his interesting patient devotedly and refused to take any fee. This excellent gentleman, who was the anonymous author of “Heliotrope” and a prolific contributor to the Annuals, became a firm friend of Willis and his correspondent for many years after his return to America. He was an intimate of Samuel Rogers and of Thomas Campbell, whose life he afterwards wrote, and he introduced Willis to both of them. By September the latter was sufficiently convalescent to be ordered into the country. He had received an invitation from the Earl of Dalhousie, whom he had met in Italy, to make him a visit at Dalhousie Castle, near Edinburgh, and accordingly he set out for Scotland on the second of the month. Lady Charlotte Bury, a “scribbling woman,” had given him a letter to her brother, the Duke of Argyle, and he carried a score beside to other people in Scotland. At Dalhousie, the feudal castle of the Ramsays, nobly situated on a branch of the Esk, Willis was heartily welcomed, and passed a most agreeable fortnight. The earl had been governor of the Canadas in 1831; Lady Dalhousie was an invalid, and both of them were quiet, domestic people, kindly and simple, living with the profuse and even splendid hospitality proper to their rank, but without ostentation of fashion or gayety. The house was full of guests, among them the countess’s niece, Lady Moncrieff, a lovely widow of twenty-five, who was very polite to Willis during his next winter in London. The earl’s son, Lord Ramsay, was home from Oxford and initiated Willis into the mysteries of shooting over the stubble. This young gentleman succeeded to his father’s title in 1838, was a member of Sir Robert Peel’s ministry from 1843 to 1847, and in the latter year was made Governor-General of India. It was during his viceroyalty that the Burmese war was fought, the Punjaub annexed, and the railway begun from Calcutta to Bombay.