196 EDITOR. 



and running sores of the party/ he was naturally to them 

 an object of hostility. Here is his reply to Finlay. 



' I received your kind-hearted letter at a time when I 

 was in no kind-hearted trim. I was engaged amid the 

 turmoil of a Court of Appeal into which I had been 

 summoned at the instance of a political shop-keeper 

 who indulges in the ambition of becoming great in the 

 Town Council of Cromarty, and who, regarding my vote as 

 an obstacle in the path, would fain have swept it away. 

 I was a good deal annoyed by the fellow and somewhat 

 angry to boot, for nothing, as the event showed, could 

 be more frivolous than the objection ; but your letter, 

 which I first perused amid the hum of the Court, 

 brought me to myself at once, and made me ashamed 

 that I could be either. I am less a politician than most 

 men. I love peace, I love leisure, I love my friends, 

 and when let alone I never think of my enemies ; but I 

 have been born under a vile, bustling, political, knock- 

 down sort of planet, and, like Yorick's starling, can't get 

 out. Well, I shall be quiet enough one day, and till 

 then, since fate is fate, I must just try and keep up the 

 quarrel on the right side. 



' And so you are in our own country once more, in 

 the country of green fields and temperate suns ; and 

 after a separation of twenty years I am to have the 

 pleasure of grasping your hand as of yore. We shall 

 wander among the woods together, and visit the caves, 

 and climb the Sutor roadie and MacFarquhar's Bed. The 

 rowans and blae-berries will be all gone, and the crows'- 

 apples are a failure this year, but you will be in time for 

 the brambles and the sloes ; it will go hard, too, if we 

 won't be able to steal a pocketful of potatoes out of one 

 of the Square parks, and get them roasted among the 

 rocks, and we shall at least try whether two old fellows, 



