276 Statements concerning Sir Walter Scott. 



Whether the powheads of the Russells of the south of 

 Scotland ever had any particular meaning or not, the frog, 

 as a device used by the Eoman jewellers, is said to be an 

 emblem of the resurrection. 



It is known to have been an Etruscan device, and some 

 such meaning would have been quite in keeping with the 

 sentiment of Etruscan art, which, as it is, we know chiefly 

 from the tombs. But the conjectural meanings attached to 

 objects of art in Italy are apt to be of an ecclesiastical 

 character. 



A French family of Eoussels have three small fish in a 

 cantle in the upper part of the shield, the arms otherwise 

 being different. 



Tadpoles are called teiards or grenouillettes in French. 



It is whimsical also that the Latin name of Eanunculus 

 or tadpole, given by the botanists to a plant of the 

 buttercup kind, or closely allied to it — the unusually dark 

 colour of whose flower does very much resemble the black 

 of the tadpole — should have become the scientific name of 

 the whole great class to which a large part of our hardy 

 garden flowers belong. Not only the aconite and the Christ- 

 mas rose, the columbines and peonies, but the Clematis; and 

 what is still more unlike the buttercups, the larkspur and 

 also the monks-hood, the Aconitum Napellas of medicine, are 

 Eanunculacse . 



I observe, in one of the extracts from the just-published 

 life of Mr John Lockhart, that three English ladies (who, 

 by their names, must have hailed from Cornwall) staying at 

 Melrose in 1817, were visited by the Scotts, the Constables, 

 and Miss Eussell of Ashiesteel. This was probably just the 

 party from Abbotsford ; the Constables might have been 

 spending the summer somewhere in the neighbourhood, but 

 Miss Eussell could not have been at Ashiesteel, which was 

 unfurnished, except as far as it was inhabited by the 

 shepherd and his wife. 



There seems no recollection of Miss Eutherford and her 

 nieces ever having stayed at Melrose ; while it must have 

 been on a visit, either this summer or within a year or two 

 of this time, that Lady Scott impressed Miss Jane Eussell's 

 assistance to help her with some work the gardener abso- 

 lutely refused to do. 



