ll this regard for your accommodation, don't suppose I am
devoid of a little self-interest when I press your speedy return
to Auld Reekie, for I am really tiring excessively to see the
said parlor again inhabited, Besides that, I want the assistance
of your eloquence to convince my honored father that Nature did
not mean me either for a vagabond or _travelling merchant_, when
she honored {p.210} me with the wandering propensity lately so
conspicuously displayed. I saw Dr. yesterday, who is well. I did
not choose to intrude upon the little lady, this being sermon
week; for the same reason we are looking very religious and very
sour at home. However, it is with _some folk_ selon les regles,
that in proportion as they are pure themselves, they are entitled
to render uncomfortable those whom they consider as less perfect.
Best love to Miss R., cousins and friends in general, and believe
me ever most sincerely yours,

WALTER SCOTT.

In July, 1795, a young lad, James Niven by name, who had served for
some time with excellent character on board a ship of war, and been
discharged in consequence of a wound which disabled one of his hands,
had the misfortune, in firing off a toy cannon in one of the narrow
wynds of Edinburgh, to kill on the spot David Knox, one of the
attendants of the Court of Session; a button, or some other hard
substance, having been accidentally inserted with his cartridge. Scott
was one of his counsel when he was arraigned for murder, and had
occasion to draw up a written argument or _information_ for the
prisoner, from which I shall make a short quotation. Considered as a
whole, the production seems both crude and clumsy, but the following
passages have, I think, several traces of the style of thought and
language which he afterwards made familiar to the world:--

"Murder," he writes, "or the premeditated slaughter of a citizen,
is a crime of so deep and scarlet a dye, that there is scarce a
nation to be found in which it has not, from the earliest period,
been deemed worthy of a capital punishment. 'He who sheddeth
man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed,' is a general maxim
which has received the assent of all times and countries. But it
is equally certain that even the rude legislators of former days
soon perceived that the death of one man may be oc