arried the daughter of Haliburton of Newmains--there was also Macdougal
and Campbell blood on the spindle side of the older generations of the
family. Their eldest son Walter, father of Sir Walter, was born in 1729,
and, being bred to the law, became the original, according to undisputed
tradition, of the 'Saunders Fairford' of _Redgauntlet_, the most
autobiographical as well as not the least charming of the novels. He
married Anne Rutherford, who, through her mother, brought the blood of
the Swintons of Swinton to enrich the joint strain; and from her father,
a member of a family distinguished in the annals of the University of
Edinburgh, may have transmitted some of the love for books which was not
the most prominent feature of the other ingredients.

Walter himself was the third 'permanent child' (to adopt an agreeable
phrase of Mr. Traill's about another person) of a family of twelve, only
five of whom survived infancy. His three brothers, John, Thomas, and
Daniel, and his sister Anne, all figure in the records; but little is
heard of John and not much of Anne. Thomas, the second, either had, or
was thought by his indulgent brother to have, literary talents, and was
at one time put up to father the novels; while Daniel (whose misconduct
in money matters, and still more in showing the white feather, brought
on him the only display of anything that can be called rancour recorded
in Sir Walter's history) concerns us even less. The date of the
novelist's birth was 15th August 1771, the place, 'the top of the
College Wynd,' a locality now whelmed in the actual Chambers Street face
of the present Old University buildings, and near that of Kirk of Field.
Escaping the real or supposed dangers of a consumptive wet-nurse, he was
at first healthy enough; but teething or something else developed the
famous lameness, which at first seemed to threaten loss of all use of
the right leg. The child was sent to the house of his grandfather, the
Whig farmer of Sandyknowe, where he abode for some years under the
shadow of Smailholm Tower, reading a little, listening to Border legends
a great deal, and making one long journey to London and Bath. This first
blessed period of 'making himself'[1] lasted till his eighth year, and
ended with a course of sea-bathing at Prestonpans, where he met the
original in name and perhaps in nature of Captain Dalgetty, and the
original in character of the Antiquary. Then he returned (_circ._ 1779)
to his f