I never can forget, however, the description Sir Adam Ferguson gave me of a morning he had passed with Scott at Abbotsford, which at that time was still unfinished, and, swarming with carpenters, painters, masons, and bricklayers, was surrounded with all the dirt and disorderly discomfort inseparable from the process of house-building.  The room they sat in was in the roughest condition which admitted of their occupying it, at all; the raw, new chimney smoked intolerably.  Out-of-doors the whole place was one chaos of bricks, mortar, scaffolding, tiles, and slates.  A heavy mist shrouded the whole landscape of lovely Tweed side, and distilled in a cold, persistent, and dumb drizzle.  Maida, the well-beloved staghound, kept fidgeting in and out of the room, Walter Scott every five minutes exclaiming, “Eh, Adam! the puir brute’s just wearying to get out;” or, “Eh, Adam! the puir creature’s just crying to come in;” when Sir Adam would open the door to the raw, chilly air for the wet, muddy hound’s exit or entrance, while Scott, with his face swollen with a grievous toothache, and one hand pressed hard to his cheek, with the other was writing the inimitably humorous opening chapters of “The Antiquary,” which he passed across the table, sheet by sheet, to his friend, saying, “Now, Adam, d’ye think that’ll do?” Such a picture of mental triumph over outward circumstances has surely seldom been surpassed:  house-builders, smoky chimney, damp draughts, restless, dripping dog, and toothache form what our friend, Miss Masson, called a “concatenation of exteriorities” little favorable to literary composition of any sort; but considered as accompaniments or inspiration of that delightfully comical beginning of “The Antiquary,” they are all but incredible.

To my theatrical avocation I have been indebted for many social pleasures and privileges; among others, for Sir Walter Scott’s notice and acquaintance; but among the things it has deprived me of was the opportunity of enjoying more of his honorable and delightful intercourse.  A visit to Abbotsford, urged upon us most kindly, is one of the lost opportunities of my life that I think of always with bitter regret.  Sir Walter wanted us to go down and spend a week with him in the country, and our professional engagements rendered it impossible for us to do so; and there are few things in my whole life that I count greater loss than the seven days I might have passed with that admirable genius and excellent, kind man, and had to forego.  I never saw Abbotsford until after its master had departed from all earthly dwelling-places.  I was staying in the neighborhood, at the house of my friend, Mrs. M——­, of Carolside, and went thither with her and my youngest daughter.  The house was inhabited only by servants; and the housekeeper, whose charge it was to show it, waited till a sufficient number of tourists and sight-seers had collected, and then drove us all together from room to room of the house in a body, calling back