ignorance, and a want of right education." Here, however, a
low grumbling sound, gradually shaping itself into words, interrupted
the lecturer. There was a worthy old captain among the audience, who had
not given himself very much to the study of elocution or the
_belles-lettres_; he had been too much occupied in his younger days in
dealing at close quarters with the French under Howe and Nelson, to
leave him much time for the niceties of recitation or criticism. But the
brave old man bore a genial, generous heart; and the strictures of the
elocutionist, emitted, as all saw, in the presence of the assailed
author, jarred on his feelings. "It was not gentlemanly," he said, "to
attack in that way an inoffensive man: it was wrong. The poems were, he
was told, very good poems. He knew good judges that thought so; and
unprovoked remarks on them, such as those of the lecturer, ought not to
be permitted." The lecturer replied, and in glibness and fluency would
have been greatly an overmatch for the worthy captain; but a storm of
hisses backed the old veteran, and the critic gave way. As his remarks
were, he said, not to the taste of the audience--though he was taking
only the ordinary critical liberty--he would go on to the readings. And
with a few extracts, read without note or comment, the entertainment of
the evening concluded. There was nothing very formidable in the critique
of Walsh; but, having no great powers of face, I felt it rather
unpleasant to be stared at in my quiet corner by every one in the room,
and looked, I daresay, very much put out; and the sympathy and
condolence of such of my townsfolk as comforted me in the state of
supposed annihilation and nothingness to which his criticism had reduced
me, were just a little annoying. Poor Walsh, however, had he but known
what threatened him, would have been considerably less at ease than his
victim.

The cousin Walter introduced to the reader in an early chapter as the
companion of one of my Highland journeys, had grown up into a handsome
and very powerful young man. One might have guessed his stature at about
five feet ten or so, but it in reality somewhat exceeded six feet: he
had amazing length and strength of arm; and such was his structure of
bone, that, as he tucked up his sleeve to send a bowl along the town
links, or to fling the hammer or throw the stone, the knobbed
protuberances of the wrist, with the sinews rising sharp over them,
reminded one rather of