‘Very sorry that before my leaving Scotland I could not have the pleasure of passing some hours with you. I take the liberty of addressing you these few lines, the principal object of which is to thank you for all the particular kindness and friendship you honoured me with during my stay in this country. The more lively I always felt this your kindness since idle prejudices had not the power over you to treat us with that coldness and reserve which foreigners, and the more so, prisoners of war in Britain, so often meet with. ‘If in the case only that my conduct whilst I had the honour of being acquainted with you, has not met with your disapproval, I pray you to preserve me, even so far off, your friendship. To hear sometimes of you would certainly cause me great pleasure. ‘Pray acquaint Mrs. Elliott and the rest of your family of the high esteem with which I have the honour to be, Sir, ‘Your humble servant, ‘G. DE TALLARD, Lieut. ‘Hawick, March 11, 1814.’ LAUDER I am indebted to the late Mr. Macbeth Forbes for these notes. There hangs in one of the rooms of Thirlestane Castle, the baronial residence of the Earls of Lauderdale, an oil-painting executed by a French prisoner of war, Lieutenant-Adjutant George Maurer of the Hesse-Darmstadt Infantry. He is described in the Admiralty Records as a youth of twenty, with hazel eyes, fresh complexion, five feet nine and three-quarter inches in height, well made, but with a small sword scar on his left cheek. Although his production is by no means a striking work of art, it is nevertheless cherished as a memento of the time when—a hundred years ago—French prisoners were billeted in Lauder, Berwickshire, and indulged in pleasant intercourse with the inhabitants of this somewhat remote and out-of-the-way country town. In the left corner of the painting, which represents Lauder as seen from the west, is a portrait, dated August 1813, of the artist decked in a sort of Tam-o’-Shanter bonnet, swallow-tailed coat, and knee breeches, plying his brush. The average number of prisoners at Lauder was between fifty and sixty, and the average age was twenty-six. They appear to have conducted themselves with great propriety in the quiet town; none of them was ever sent to the Tolbooth. They resided for the most part with burgesses, one of whom was James Haswell, a hairdresser, whose son remembered two of the prisoners who lived in his father’s house, and who made for him and his brothers, as boys, suits of regimentals with cocked hats, and marched them through the town with bayonets at their sides.