her
gratitude, instead of exhausting itself in these declarations, according
to the way of the world, continues as lively at this moment as if she
had never thanked me at all. It is owing to her recollection of this
piece of good service that I have the permission of wandering, like the
ghost of some departed gentleman usher, through these deserted halls,
sometimes, as the old Irish ditty expresses it--

Thinking upon things that are long enough ago;--and sometimes wishing
I could, with the good luck of most editors of romantic narrative, light
upon some hidden crypt or massive antique cabinet, which should yield to
my researches an almost illegible manuscript, containing the authentic
particulars of some of the strange deeds of those wild days of the
unhappy Mary.

My dear Mrs. Baliol used to sympathise with me when I regretted that all
godsends of this nature had ceased to occur, and that an author might
chatter his teeth to pieces by the seaside without a wave ever wafting
to him a casket containing such a history as that of Automates; that
he might break his shins in stumbling through a hundred vaults without
finding anything but rats and mice; and become the tenant of a dozen
sets of shabby tenements without finding that they contained any
manuscript but the weekly bill for board and lodging. A dairymaid of
these degenerate days might as well wash and deck her dairy in hopes of
finding the fairy tester in her shoe.

"It is a sad and too true a tale, cousin," said Mrs. Baliol, "I am sure
we all have occasion to regret the want of these ready supplements to a
failing invention. But you, most of all, have right to complain that the
fairest have not favoured your researches--you, who have shown the world
that the age of chivalry still exists--you, the knight of Croftangry,
who braved the fury of the 'London 'prentice bold,' in behalf of the
fair Dame Policy, and the memorial of Rizzio's slaughter! Is it not a
pity, cousin, considering the feat of chivalry was otherwise so much
according to rule--is it not, I say, a great pity that the lady had not
been a little younger, and the legend a little older?"

"Why, as to the age at which a fair dame loses the benefit of chivalry,
and is no longer entitled to crave boon of brave knight, that I leave
to the statutes of the Order of Errantry; but for the blood of Rizzio
I take up the gauntlet, and maintain against all and sundry that I
hold the stains to be of no modern dat