perfectly correct as to pattern, they having already executed many orders from similar drawings and directions by Mr Hay. So I hope to see both you and Miss Scott doing honour to the ancient garb of your antecessors (_sic_), though ladies, as you will afterwards see, being rather difficult to fix, were left very much to their “awin fauntasyes” in such matters. That I may complete the account of this curious manuscript I may add that after the tartans have been gone through we have a dissertation of “womenis quhite plaids clyppit Arryssadis, the quhilk are not orderit after their clannes, but after their awin conceits and as it liketh them.” Then we have a short treatise of “Hoses and Trewsis,” and then “Hereafter followethe of senyes of divers clannes,” &c., in the list of which I find “Scotte, Blaeberrye,” with which I hope Miss Scott will adorn her head at the next ball she honours with her presence, and so make war fairly under her proper badge. The whole concludes, as most books of those times were wont to do, with a L’Envoy in the following lines:— Dames and Lordyngis. [Here the quotation ends in Sir Thomas’s copy. It has been considered unnecessary to reprint the lines with which the _Vestiarium_ concludes.] What Sir Richard Urquhart the author was I have not yet made out, but presume that he was of the Cromarty family, though I confess I cannot find one of the name corresponding to the times in the celebrated Urquhart genealogy, which begins with Adam. I think I have now told you enough of this curious MS. to lead you to approve of the advice I have given to the brothers Messrs Hay, that they ought to publish it without one moment’s delay, illustrated with minute specimens of all the tartans described in it, with a scale attached to each, so as to make one aware of the proper size the cloth should be wrought. This, I am happy to say, I have prevailed on them to do, and the plan they think of is to print it at their own expense after they shall have got as many subscribers as will ensure their being no losers; and as engravings would not only be deadly as to cost, but totally inadequate to the purpose of giving specimens of the tartans, and, indeed, useless where the effect cannot be given without colouring them with the same trouble that is bestowed on a drawing, they have resolved to get a given number of yards of silk ribbon woven of each pattern of the breadth of ladies sash ribbons, whence pieces of perhaps four or six inches in length may be cut and neatly laid down with paste on drawing paper, which will make a cheap, novel, very beautiful, and most satisfactory illustration to the work, and render it in every respect a popular as it will be an elegant national work for the drawing-room table, which cannot fail to be much in request.[85] I mean to write to Mr Cadell and the Taits to get information for the gentlemen as to the expense of printing and publishing the work, and