I was disappointed in never seeing some incident in his subsequent works laid in a scene resembling the rugged solitude around Loch Skene, for I never saw him survey any with so much attention.  A single serious look at a scene generally filled his mind with it, and he seldom took another; but here he took the names of all the hills, their altitudes, and relative situations with regard to one another, and made me repeat them several times.  It may occur in some of his works which I have not seen, and I think it will, for he has rarely ever been known to interest himself, either in a scene or a character, which did not appear afterwards in all its most striking peculiarities.

There are not above five people in the world who, I think, know Sir Walter better, or understand his character better, than I do; and if I outlive him, which is likely, as I am five months and ten days younger, I will draw a mental portrait of him, the likeness of which to the original shall not be disputed.  In the meantime, this is only a reminiscence, in my own line, of an illustrious friend among the mountains.

The enthusiasm with which he recited, and spoke of our ancient ballads, during that first tour of his through the forest, inspired me with a determination immediately to begin and imitate them, which I did, and soon grew tolerably good at it.  Of course I dedicated The Mountain Bard to him: 

  Blest be his generous heart for aye;
  He told me where the relic lay,
  Pointed my way with ready will,
  Afar on Ettrick’s wildest hill,
  Watched my first notes with curious eye,
  And wonder’d at my minstrelsy: 
  He little ween’d a parent’s tongue
  Such strains had o’er my cradle sung.

Edinburgh Literary Journal.

* * * * *

RETROSPECTIVE GLEANINGS.

NOTES OF A BOOKWORM.

(For the Mirror.)

Robberies and iniquities of all kinds were so uncommon in the reign of Alfred, that it is said, he hung up golden bracelets near the highways, and no man dared to touch them.

Earl Godwin, in order to appease Hardicanute, (whose brother he had been instrumental in murdering,) made him a magnificent present of a galley with a gilt stern, rowed by fourscore men, who wore each of them a golden bracelet on his arm, weighing sixteen ounces, and were clothed and armed in the most sumptuous manner.  Hardicanute pleased with the splendour of the spectacle, quickly forgot his brother’s murder, and on Godwin’s swearing that he was innocent of the crime, allowed him to be acquitted.

The cities of England appear by Domesday Book, to have been at the conquest little better than villages; York itself, though it was always the second, at least the third city in England, contained only 1,418 families; Norwich contained 738 houses; Exeter, 315; Ipswich, 538; Northampton, 60; Hertford, 146; Bath, 64; Canterbury, 262; Southampton, 84; and Warwick, 225.