The reviewer proceeds to proclaim an opinion asserted to have been delivered by Sir Walter Scott, that the MS. was a clumsy imitation of the genuine writing of its professed period, “and unentitled to any credit.” The reviewer, however, has concealed that Sir Walter Scott never saw the original MS., and that he died some years before the publication of the printed edition—consequently that he never had any opportunity of forming a judgment even from a careful and formal copy. According to the acknowledgment of the reviewer himself, the asserted opinion of Sir Walter was founded upon a “description of the MS., with a transcript of a part, if not the whole.” How far any critic could presume to form a judgment upon any “transcript,” especially an imperfect “part,” of a work, we leave to the experience of those accustomed to the criticism of old writings. But the reviewer has farther concealed the nature of the “transcript” said to have been exhibited to Sir Walter Scott. After the originals of the _Vestiarium_ were in the possession of its editor, there never was made more than one “transcript,” that alluded to by the reviewer as “a transcript obtained by a gentleman in the north.” This copy, or, as admitted by the reviewer, “a part,” was transmitted by the transcriber to some of his friends in Edinburgh, at which time we believe, as asserted by the reviewer, it was casually shewn to Sir Walter Scott. The reviewer, however, has concealed the nature of this transcript, upon which Sir Walter’s asserted opinion is so maliciously quoted. Far from being, as might have been expected, a critical facsimile, or even matter-of-fact copy from the original, it was a sort of “Hood’s Comic Almanack” of tartans, neatly written, not in “clerks’,” “scriveners’,” or any other MS. text of the sixteenth century, but in ordinary Roman letter, consequently, exhibiting no “imitation” of the “genuine writing” of the period, said to have been contra-distinguished in Sir Walter’s observation, and still farther at variance with the original, or any object of serious criticism, by being illustrated in vermilion, with bizarre caricatures in the form of burlesque head and tail pieces, generally graphic puns and hieroglyphics for the name of each family whose title they adorned. Of their description, consequently, of the serious character of the MS. of which Sir Walter Scott’s criticism is so gravely reported, a conclusion may be formed by a few examples, such as, for “Dundas” the sketch of a small “Dun,” and on its summit an “ass.” For Brodie (pronounced in Scots Broadie), a large, _i.e._, a “Broad” “eye.” And for Montgomery the view of a mount, enlivened by several dancing figures, intended to associate the idea of “go-merry,” and the like. Such is the manuscript said to have been exhibited to and condemned by Sir Walter Scott as “of no authority whatever.” Its removal from authority, however, was farther extended by the fact that