660 MR small's biographical SKETCH OF PROF. ADAM FERGUSON. 



immediate neighbourhood, where he lived for the next fourteen years, — a longer 

 period than he had ever spent in any of his previous places of abode. During 

 this period he still enjoyed good health, and interested himself in farming with 

 all the ardour of a young agriculturist. 



It was to an incident which occurred while Ferguson lived at Hallyards, 

 that we owe one of Sir W. Scott's most characteristic novels. Among the 

 hills near the house lived an eccentric and misshapen dwarf, called David 

 Ritchie, and Scott, then a young advocate, when he came in 1797 to pay a visit 

 to the Fergusons, was taken to see David as one of the lions of the district. The 

 strong impression which the interview with the hermit, who was supposed to be 

 possessed of magical powers, made on Scott, was never effaced; and the tale of 

 the ' Black Dwarf,' published twenty years afterwards, owed its origin to this 

 remarkable occurrence.* 



The following letter addressed to Sir John M'Pherson, contains Ferguson's 

 views as to the epitaph which he wished to be inscribed on his tomb, and also 

 an allusion to the energy which was the distinguishing feature of the character 

 of the late Sir John Sinclair. 



" Hallyards, 2d July 1798. 



" My Dear Friend, — My silence is not negligence nor forgetfulness. If I had 

 ten thousand of the best letters that ever were written, you should have them 

 all ; but what can I write from this post, at which my prime consolation is, that 

 I have nothing to do but to wait quietly till my time comes. The French, I trust, 

 although they may teaze, cannot subdue this armed nation ; and all speculation 

 on the subject is at an end. I have in my view a most delightful kirkyard, 

 retired and green, on the bank of a running water, and facing a verdant hill, 

 which in your part of the world would pass for a tremendous mountain ; but to 

 me it gives the idea of silence and solitude away from the noise of folly; and so 

 I fancy myself laid there, with a stone to tell the rustic moralist what he will not 

 imderstand, because I sometimes project it should be in Greek, as follows : — ^i ^yw 

 rov Kosfiov i^a-oiLaGcL, %ct.i a-o ka.sa[j.n)og ;^a/c£ ; but then, again, I wish to explain it, and so it 

 should be, ' I have seen the works of God, it is now your turn, do you behold them 

 and rejoice.' I would speak my verse for agriculture in Greek also, — AvQ^umM ix^oi 

 yiM^yia, — and you may judge of my willingness to write when I put all this on* 

 paper to you. I have not stirred from home for many months past till lately, 

 when Admiral and Mrs Nugent being at Edinburgh led me thither to gratify my 

 sense of their kindness to my little seaman. And I am still the more convinced, 

 that Nugent is the most amiable, faultless creature upon earth. In that excur- 

 sion I met our friend, Sir John Sinclair, in the street ; this put it in his head to 

 write to me since my return hither, an account of works he is projecting to pro- 

 mote what he calls statistical philosophy. I hinted that his project is too vast; 



* Chambers's Hist, of Peeblesshire, p. 402. 



