--"Nay, nay, Mr. Mitchell, I'll
not do that; for if that were to be done, I and the like of me
would have no life with such as you;" from which I inferred he
thought that, were the evangelical clergy to obtain the
superiority, they would introduce such strictness of discipline
as would not quadrate with the ideas of that party called _the
moderate_ in the Church of Scotland, whose views, I presume, Sir
Walter had now adopted. Some, however, to whom I have mentioned
Sir Walter's reply, have suggested that I had misunderstood his
meaning, and that what he said was not in earnest, but in
jocularity and good-humor. This may be true, and certainly is a
candid interpretation. As to the ideal beings already mentioned
as the subject of his inquiries, my materials were too scanty to
afford him much information."

Notwithstanding {p.098} the rigidly Presbyterian habits which this
chronicle describes with so much more satisfaction than the
corresponding page in the Ashestiel Memoir, I am reminded, by a
communication already quoted from a lady of the Ravelston family, that
Mrs. Scott, who had, she says, "a turn for literature quite uncommon
among the ladies of the time," encouraged her son in his passion for
Shakespeare; that his plays, and the Arabian Nights, were often read
aloud in the family circle by Walter, "and served to spend many a
happy evening hour;" nay, that, however good Mitchell may have frowned
at such a suggestion, even Mr. Scott made little objection to his
children, and some of their young friends, getting up private
theatricals occasionally in the dining-room after the lessons of the
day were over. The lady adds, that Walter was always the manager, and
had the whole charge of the affair, and that the favorite piece used
to be Jane Shore, in which he was the Hastings, his sister the Alicia.
I have heard from another friend of the family that Richard III. also
was attempted, and that Walter took the part of the Duke of
Gloucester, observing that "the limp would do well enough to represent
the hump."

A story which I have seen in print, about his partaking in the dancing
lessons of his brothers, I do not believe. But it was during Mr.
Mitchell's residence in the family that they all made their
unsuccessful attempts in the art of music, under the auspices of poor
_Allister_ Campbell--the Editor of Albyn's Anthology.

Mr. Mitchell appears to have te