of the tenderness of his mother’s nature, and he returned warmly her affection for himself.  His executors, in lifting up his desk, the evening after his burial, found “arranged in careful order a series of little objects, which had obviously been so placed there that his eye might rest on them every morning before he began his tasks.  These were the old-fashioned boxes that had garnished his mother’s toilette, when he, a sickly child, slept in her dressing-room,—­the silver taper-stand, which the young advocate had bought for her with his first five-guinea fee,—­a row of small packets inscribed with her hand, and containing the hair of those of her offspring that had died before her,—­his father’s snuff-box, and etui-case,—­and more things of the like sort."[2] A story, characteristic of both Sir Walter’s parents, is told by Mr. Lockhart which will serve better than anything I can remember to bring the father and mother of Scott vividly before the imagination.  His father, like Mr. Alexander Fairford, in Redgauntlet, though himself a strong Hanoverian, inherited enough feeling for the Stuarts from his grandfather Beardie, and sympathized enough with those who were, as he neutrally expressed it, “out in ’45,” to ignore as much as possible any phrases offensive to the Jacobites.  For instance, he always called Charles Edward not the Pretender but the Chevalier,—­and he did business for many Jacobites:—­

“Mrs. Scott’s curiosity was strongly excited one autumn by the regular appearance at a certain hour every evening of a sedan chair, to deposit a person carefully muffled up in a mantle, who was immediately ushered into her husband’s private room, and commonly remained with him there until long after the usual bed-time of this orderly family.  Mr. Scott answered her repeated inquiries with a vagueness that irritated the lady’s feelings more and more; until at last she could bear the thing no longer; but one evening, just as she heard the bell ring as for the stranger’s chair to carry him off, she made her appearance within the forbidden parlour with a salver in her hand, observing that she thought the gentlemen had sat so long they would be better of a dish of tea, and had ventured accordingly to bring some for their acceptance.  The stranger, a person of distinguished appearance, and richly dressed, bowed to the lady and accepted a cup; but her husband knit his brows, and refused very coldly to partake the refreshment.  A moment afterwards the visitor withdrew, and Mr. Scott, lifting up the window-sash, took the cup, which he had left empty on the table, and tossed it out upon the pavement.  The lady exclaimed for her china, but was put to silence by her husband’s saying, ’I can forgive your little curiosity, madam, but you must pay the penalty.  I may admit into my house, on a piece of business, persons wholly unworthy to be treated as guests by my wife.  Neither lip of me nor of mine comes after Mr. Murray of Broughton’s.’