The Prince seems melancholy, whether naturally or from habit, I do not pretend to say; but I do not remember thinking him so at Paris, where I saw him frequently, then a much poorer man than myself; yet he showed some humour, for alluding to the crowds that followed him everywhere, he mentioned some place where he had gone out to shoot, but was afraid to proceed for fear of ‘bagging a boy’.  He said he really thought of getting some shooting-place in Scotland, and promised me a longer visit on his return.  If I had had a day’s notice to have warned the waters, we could have met him with a very respectable number of the gentry; but there was no time for this, and probably he liked it better as it was.  There was only young Clifton who could have come, and he was shy and cubbish, and would not, though requested by the Selkirk people.  He was perhaps ashamed to march through Coventry with them.  It hung often and sadly on my mind that he was wanting who could and would have received him like a Prince indeed; and yet the meeting betwixt them, had they been fated to meet, would have been a very sad one.  I think I have now given your lordship a very full, true, and particular account of our royal visit, unmatched even by that of King Charles at the Castle of Tillietudlem.  That we did not speak of it for more than a week after it happened, and that that emphatic monosyllable, The Prince, is not heard amongst us more than ten times a-day, is, on the whole, to the credit of my family’s understanding.  The piper is the only one whose brain he seems to have endangered; for, as the Prince said he preferred him to any he had heard in the Highlands—­(which, by the way, shows his Royal Highness knows nothing of the matter),—­the fellow seems to have become incapable of his ordinary occupation as a forester, and has cut stick and stem without remorse to the tune of Phail Phranse, i.e. the Prince’s welcome.

[Footnote 1:  Bundle of hog’s bristles; symbol of the soutars.]

To DANIEL TERRY

Progress at Abbotsford

Abbotsford, 10 Nov. 1822.

My dear Terry,

I got all the plans safe, and they are delightful.  The library ceiling will be superb, and we have plenty of ornaments for it without repeating one of those in the eating-room.  The plan of shelves is also excellent, and will, I think, for a long time suffice my collection.  The brasses for the shelves I like—­but not the price:  the notched ones, after all, do very well.  I have had three grand hawls since I last wrote to you.  The pulpit, repentance-stool, King’s seat, and God knows how much of carved wainscot, from the kirk of Dunfermline, enough to coat the hall to the height of seven feet:—­supposing it boarded above, for hanging guns, old portraits, intermixed with armour, &c.—­it will be a superb entrance-gallery:  this is hawl the first.