o volumes in three
weeks, and made immortal in 1814; and when its author, by the death of
Lord Melville, narrowly escaped getting a civil appointment in
India--three men, evidently lawyers, might have been seen escaping like
schoolboys from the Parliament House, and speeding arm-in-arm down Bank
Street and the Mound in the teeth of a surly blast of sleet.

The three friends sought the _bield_ of the low wall old Edinburgh boys
remember well, and sometimes miss now, as they struggle with the stout
west wind....

The third we all know. What has he not done for every one of us? Who
else ever, except Shakespeare, so diverted mankind, entertained and
entertains a world so liberally, so wholesomely? We are fain to say not
even Shakespeare, for his is something deeper than diversion, something
higher than pleasure; and yet who would care to split this hair?

Had any one watched him closely before and after the parting, what a
change he would see! The bright, broad laugh, the shrewd, jovial word,
the man of the Parliament House and of the world; and next step, moody,
the light of his eye withdrawn, as if seeing things that were invisible;
his shut mouth like a child's, so impressionable, so innocent, so sad;
he was now all within, as before he was all without; hence his brooding
look. As the snow blattered in his face, he muttered, "How it raves and
drifts! On-ding o' snaw,--ay, that's the word,--on-ding--" He was now at
his own door, "Castle Street, No. 39." He opened the door and went
straight to his den; that wondrous workshop, where in one year, 1823,
when he was fifty-two, he wrote 'Peveril of the Peak,' 'Quentin
Durward,' and 'St. Ronan's Well,' besides much else. We once took the
foremost of our novelists--the greatest, we would say, since Scott--into
this room, and could not but mark the solemnizing effect of sitting
where the great magician sat so often and so long, and looking out upon
that little shabby bit of sky, and that back green where faithful dog
Camp lies.

He sat down in his large green morocco elbow-chair, drew himself close
to his table, and glowered and gloomed at his writing apparatus, "a very
handsome old box, richly carved, lined with crimson velvet, and
containing ink-bottles, taper-stand, etc., in silver, the whole in such
order that it might have come from the silversmith's window half an hour
before." He took out his paper, then starting up angrily, said, "'Go
spin, you jade, go spin.' No, d---