f Aunt Margaret's Mirror, was now living with one female
attendant, in a small house not far from Mr. Scott's residence in
George's Square. The maid-servant, in {p.091} a sudden access of
insanity, struck her mistress to death with a coal-axe, and then
rushed furiously into the street with the bloody weapon in her hand,
proclaiming aloud the horror she had perpetrated. I need not dwell on
the effects which must have been produced in a virtuous and
affectionate circle by this shocking incident. The old lady had been
tenderly attached to her nephew, "She was," he says, "our constant
resource in sickness, or when we tired of noisy play, and closed round
her to listen to her tales."

It was at this same period that Mr. and Mrs. Scott received into their
house, as tutor for their children, Mr. James Mitchell, of whom the
Ashestiel Memoir gives us a description, such as I could not have
presented had he been still alive. Mr. Mitchell was living, however,
at the time of his pupil's death, and I am now not only at liberty to
present Scott's unmutilated account of their intercourse, but enabled
to give also the most simple and characteristic narrative of the other
party. I am sure no one, however nearly related to Mr. Mitchell, will
now complain of seeing his keen-sighted pupil's sketch placed by the
side, as it were, of the fuller portraiture drawn by the unconscious
hand of the amiable and worthy man himself. The following is an
extract from Mr. Mitchell's MS., entitled "Memorials of the most
remarkable occurrences and transactions of my life, drawn up in the
hope that, when I shall be no more, they may be read with profit and
pleasure by my children." The good man was so kind as to copy out one
chapter for my use, as soon as he heard of Sir Walter Scott's death.
He was then, and had for many years been, minister of a Presbyterian
chapel at Wooler, in Northumberland, to which situation he had retired
on losing his benefice at Montrose, in consequence of the Sabbatarian
scruples alluded to in Scott's Autobiography.

"In 1782," says Mr. Mitchell, "I became a tutor in Mr. Walter
Scott's family. He was a Writer to the Signet in George's
{p.092} Square, Edinburgh. Mr. Scott was a fine-looking man,
then a little past the meridian of life, of dignified, yet
agreeable manners. His business was extensive. He was a man of
tried integrity, of strict morals, and had a respect for religion
and its ordin