NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 231 



" If sack and sugar be a sin, God help us all." The Castle of Wemyss 

 stands nobly, showing a majestic front ; yet the tout-ensemble, to the 

 eye, is spoiled by a most infernal-looking village that is below it; but 

 like many other infernal places, apparently full of money or money's- 

 worth — namely, coals and salt, (not Attic, I believe, as Cicero would say,) 

 and therefore by no means to be sneezed at in these money-getting 

 times. However to return to the owner of it. Captain Wemyss, a 

 captain of his Majesty's navy, and from all I heard of him in private life, 

 as straight- forward, as hospitable, and as honest a man as ever entered a 

 cockpit (for which by the bye he must have been rather an inconvenient 

 height, being certainly upwards of six feet without his shoes) ; and, 

 although from only one day's observation of him in the field, I am unable to 

 appreciate him as a sportsman — I may add, a hard rider to hounds, 

 taking every thing that comes in his way, with the characteristic 

 intrepidity of his profession. That he believes himself to be a sportsman, 

 however, did not admit of a doubt from the various telegraphic sionals 

 that the huntsman received from him on the day 1 saw him in the field, 

 during a most perplexing run of an hour, which, notwithstanding all 

 things, ended in the death of the fox. 



An expression of Horace's now crosses my path, and all but brino-s me 

 to a check. It imphes the difficulty of discriminating between what is 

 fit, and what is not fit — *' Quid decet, quid non" — in what we do or 

 say, and especially so when we comment upon the doings or sayings of 

 other people. But Captain Wemyss is a character — a good one I have 

 acknowledged him to be — that must not be passed over by me in silence, 

 and I am sure he will pardon a short notice of him here, particularly as 

 he has already appeared in the pages of the New Sporting Magazine. 



