xx iv MEMOIR OF SIR J. G. DALYELL. 



" OFFICE FOR TRADE, WHITEHALL, 

 20th Mar. 1807. 



" MY DEAR SIR, 



" I have received safely your music book, and your kind letter of the 28th ult. 

 " I know not how to thank you for them ; and still less for the honour of heing chosen an 

 Honorary Member of the Antiquary Society ; as I learn from the Secretary. It will gratify 

 me to receive, from so kind a friend, the other things which you are so kind as to say you 



will send I have not had time to study your music book ; but I have made an 



engagement with a musician to go over it with me ; and I will let you know what we 

 think of it. 



" I shall be always happy in any occasion of showing you what a high value I set upon 

 vour friendship, as I am, with sincere esteem. 



" MY DEAR SIR, 



" Your faithful and obedient servt. 



" GEO. CHALMERS." 



We know not what music book it was that Chalmers refers to possibly 

 an ancient one, which Sir John had sent, for the purpose of aiding him 

 in the compilation of his great work, the first volume of which appeared 

 a year or two afterwards. 



In 1809, Sir John called attention to those ecclesiastical remains of 

 Scotland, so many of which have, of later years, been printed by the Ban- 

 natyne, Maitland, and Spalding Clubs. This he did in " a Tract chiefly 

 relative to Monastic Antiquities, with some account of a recent search for 

 the Remains of Scottish Kings interred in the Abbey of Dunfermline." 

 From the cartulary of the Abbey, which he describes, he drew consider- 

 able information as to its history, its laws, and privileges, and not a little 

 illustrative of the state of the country generally especially in reference 

 to the servitude of the lower class of peasantry in ancient times. The 

 Tract was well calculated to advance the object of the author, in awaken- 

 ing the literary world to the importance of such monastic antiquities. 

 Some of the charters are written in the vernacular, and it is remarkable 

 that the language was much the same in the thirteenth century, 1214, 

 1233 and the fifteenth, 1457 as it is at present. Latin, as stated in 

 the cartulary, was always translated into English thus showing that the 

 English and Scottish were considered different languages. " The ancient 



