nvolved in the same perplexities
as their descendant. The parlour was distinctly acknowledged to be in
Scotland, and two-thirds of the kitchen were as certainly allowed to be
in England: his three ancestors were born in the room over the parlour,
and, therefore, were Scotchmen beyond question; but Peter, unluckily,
being brought into the world before the death of his grandfather, his
parents occupied a room immediately over the debatable boundary line
which crossed the kitchen. The room, though scarcely eight feet square,
was evidently situated between the two countries; but, no one being able
to ascertain what portion belonged to each, Peter, after many arguments
and altercations upon the subject, was driven to the disagreeable
alternative of confessing he knew not what countryman he was. What
rendered the confession the more painful was, that it was Peter's
highest ambition to be thought a Scotchman. All his arable land lay on
the Scotch side; his mother was collaterally related to the Stuarts; and
few families were more ancient or respectable than the Elliots. Peter's
speech, indeed, betrayed him to be a walking partition between the two
kingdoms, a living representation of the Union; for in one word he
pronounced the letter _r_ with the broad, masculine sound of the North
Briton, and in the next with the liquid _burr_ of the Northumbrians.

Peter, or, if you prefer it, Peter Elliot, Esquire of Marchlaw, in the
counties of Northumberland and Roxburgh, was, for many years, the best
runner, leaper, and wrestler between Wooler and Jedburgh. Whirled from
his hand, the ponderous bullet whizzed through the air like a pigeon on
the wing; and the best putter on the Borders quailed from competition.
As a feather in his grasp, he seized the unwieldy hammer, swept it round
and round his head, accompanying with agile limb its evolutions, swiftly
as swallows play around a circle, and hurled it from his hands like a
shot from a rifle, till antagonists shrunk back, and the spectators
burst into a shout. "Well done, Squire! the Squire for ever!" once
exclaimed a servile observer of titles. "Squire! wha are ye squiring
at?" returned Peter. "Confound ye! where was ye when I was christened
Squire? My name's Peter Elliot--your man, or onybody's man, at whatever
they like!"

Peter's soul was free, bounding, and buoyant, as the wind that carolled
in a zephyr, or shouted in a hurricane, upon his native hills; and his
body was thirteen sto