c,
which he in great part attributed to our having only one opera, which he
kindly informed me was "Bob et Joan." However indisposed to check the
current of his loquacity by any effort of mine, I could not avoid the
temptation to translate for him a story which Sir Walter Scott once
related to me, and was so far apropos, as conveying my own sense of the
merits of our national music, such as we have it, by its association with
scenes, and persons, and places we are all familiar with, however
unintelligible to the ear of a stranger.

A young French viscomte was fortunate enough to obtain in marriage the
hand of a singularly pretty Scotch heiress of an old family and good
fortune, who, amongst her other endowments, possessed a large
old-fashioned house in a remote district of the highlands, where her
ancestors had resided for centuries. Thither the young couple repaired
to pass their honeymoon; the enamoured bridegroom gladly availing himself
of the opportunity to ingratiate himself with his new connexion, by
adopting the seclusion he saw practised by the English on such occasions.
However consonant to our notions of happiness, and however conducive to
our enjoyment this custom be--and I have strong doubts upon the subject
--it certainly prospered ill with the volatile Frenchman, who pined for
Paris, its cafes, its boulevards, its maisons de jeu, and its soirees.
His days were passed in looking from the deep and narrow windows of some
oak-framed room upon the bare and heath-clad moors, or watching the
cloud's shadows as they passed across the dark pine trees that closed the
distance.

Ennuyee to death, and convinced that he had sacrificed enough and more
than enough to the barbarism which demanded such a "sejour," he was
sitting one evening listlessly upon the terrace in front of the house,
plotting a speedy escape from his gloomy abode, and meditating upon the
life of pleasure that awaited him, when the discordant twang of some
savage music broke upon his ear, and roused him from his reverie. The
wild scream and fitful burst of a highland pibroch is certainly not the
most likely thing in nature to allay the irritable and ruffled feelings
of an irascible person--unless, perhaps, the hearer eschew breeches. So
thought the viscomte. He started hurriedly up, and straight before him,
upon the gravel-walk, beheld the stalwart figure and bony frame of an old
highlander, blowing, with all his lungs, the "Gathering of the cla