34 THE BANK ACCOUNTANT. 



open rebellion ; and the arms I saw were taken from a 

 body that had assembled on a moor near Falkirk, and 

 which, better skilled in forming resolutions than fight- 

 ing, were dispersed by a party of military on the first 

 charge ; all except a boy, who, entrenching himself in a 

 bog, continued firing at the soldiers until surrounded 

 and captured. I saw his pistol and little sword. The 

 pikes are strange, uncouth things, like brooinsticks, 

 with points, some of which resemble large nails, others 

 butchers' knives. All that I have heard from history of 

 popular commotions and uprisings, of Jack Cades and 

 Massaniellos and Jacks of Leyden, came into my mind 

 as I looked at them ; I saw, too, a Shirramuir Lochaber 

 axe, and an old tilting spear. On my return to Linlith- 

 gow 1 was overtaken by a furious snow-storm, which, I 

 find, from the newspapers, has been the occasion of 

 much loss of life. Had you seen me as I entered the 

 town, resembling nothing earthly except, perhaps, a 

 moving wreath, or one of those effigies of snow which 

 children set up in the time of thaw, I am certain you 

 would not have known me. 



' Since coming here I have made a very few accessions 

 to my library. My cousin has given me an old edition 

 of Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, and I 

 have picked up at stalls cheap copies of Goldsmith's 

 Citizen of the World, Franklin's Essays, and Camp- 

 bell's Pleasures of Hope. My own volume is getting 

 on pretty well ; I have returned proofs for the first two 

 hundred pages ; but I am afraid I have committed a 

 sad blunder regarding it. Nothing could have been 

 easier for me than to have rendered it an unbroken 

 series of legendary stories ; I have materials at will, and 

 find no difficulty in narration. As it is, however, it 

 abounds in dissertation ; and holding, as it does, a mid- 



