The dinner was such as suited a professed antiquary, comprehending many savoury specimens of Scottish viands, now disused at the tables of those who affect elegance. There was the relishing Solan goose, whose smell is so powerful that he is never cooked within doors. Blood-raw he proved to be on this occasion, so that Oldbuck half threatened to throw the greasy sea-fowl at the head of the negligent housekeeper, who acted as priestess in presenting this odoriferous offering. But, by good-hap, she had been most fortunate in the hotch-potch, which was unanimously pronounced to be inimitable. “I knew we should succeed here,” said Oldbuck exultingly, “for Davie Dibble, the gardener (an old bachelor like myself), takes care the rascally women do not dishonour our vegetables. And here is fish and sauce, and crappit-heads--I acknowledge our womankind excel in that dish--it procures them the pleasure of scolding, for half an hour at least, twice a-week, with auld Maggy Mucklebackit, our fish-wife. The chicken-pie, Mr. Lovel, is made after a recipe bequeathed to me by my departed grandmother of happy memory--And if you will venture on a glass of wine, you will find it worthy of one who professes the maxim of King Alphonso of Castile,--Old wood to burn--old books to read--old wine to drink--and old friends, Sir Arthur--ay, Mr. Lovel, and young friends too, to converse with.” “And what news do you bring us from Edinburgh, Monkbarns?” said Sir Arthur; “how wags the world in Auld Reekie?” “Mad, Sir Arthur, mad--irretrievably frantic--far beyond dipping in the sea, shaving the crown, or drinking hellebore. The worst sort of frenzy, a military frenzy, hath possessed man, woman, and child.” “And high time, I think,” said Miss Wardour, “when we are threatened with invasion from abroad and insurrection at home.” “O, I did not doubt you would join the scarlet host against me--women, like turkeys, are always subdued by a red rag--But what says Sir Arthur, whose dreams are of standing armies and German oppression?” “Why, I say, Mr. Oldbuck,” replied the knight, “that so far as I am capable of judging, we ought to resist cum toto corpore regni--as the phrase is, unless I have altogether forgotten my Latin--an enemy who comes to propose to us a Whiggish sort of government, a republican system, and who is aided and abetted by a sort of fanatics of the worst kind in our own bowels. I have taken some measures, I assure you, such as become my rank in the community; for I have directed the constables to take up that old scoundrelly beggar, Edie Ochiltree, for spreading disaffection against church and state through the whole parish. He said plainly to old Caxon, that Willie Howie’s Kilmarnock cowl covered more sense than all the three wigs in the parish--I think it is easy to make out that inuendo--But the rogue shall be taught better manners.”