THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK. 
THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR, 
INTRODUCTORY “NOTE. 
IT was expected of Sir Walter Scott, when the author of 
‘Waverley’ was in his prime, and his novels and poems were 
undoubtedly ¢4e books of the period, that he would some 
day devote his attention to the toilers of the sea, and weave 
the round of fisher life, with its perils and privations, 
its brief joys and prolonged griefs, into one of those 
romantic narratives of which he had become the master 
spirit. 
It is certain the great novelist meditated at one time 
a work of that kind, and that he employed himself on 
several occasions in gathering such information as would 
give reality to its details, as also in making those 
studies of character in which he so much delighted. The 
friends of Sir Walter Scott have now mostly all gone 
over to the majority; and there can be only very few 
alive to-day who have held converse with the ‘ Lord 
of Abbotsford.” Probably Doctor William Chambers 
was about the last of the men who knew Sir Walter, 
and could have spoken from personal knowledge of 
that great man’s aspirations, but now the good doctor him- 
self, after a life of much usefulness, is sleeping his last sleep. 
It was the doctor’s brother, however, Robert Chambers, 
B 
