eel son shoot a gentleman Cameron! I am third cousin to
the Camerons mysel'--my blood warms to them. And if you want to write
about deserters, I am sure there were deserters enough on the top of
Arthur's Seat, when the MacRaas broke out, and on that woeful day beside
Leith Pier--ohonari!"--

Here Janet began to weep, and to wipe her eyes with her apron. For my
part, the idea I wanted was supplied, but I hesitated to make use of it.
Topics, like times, are apt to become common by frequent use. It is
only an ass like Justice Shallow, who would pitch upon the over-scutched
tunes, which the carmen whistled, and try to pass them off as his
FANCIES and his GOOD-NIGHTS. Now, the Highlands, though formerly a rich
mine for original matter, are, as my friend Mrs. Bethune Baliol warned
me, in some degree worn out by the incessant labour of modern romancers
and novelists, who, finding in those remote regions primitive habits and
manners, have vainly imagined that the public can never tire of them;
and so kilted Highlanders are to be found as frequently, and nearly of
as genuine descent, on the shelves of a circulating library, as at a
Caledonian ball. Much might have been made at an earlier time out of
the history of a Highland regiment, and the singular revolution of ideas
which must have taken place in the minds of those who composed it, when
exchanging their native hills for the battle-fields of the Continent,
and their simple, and sometimes indolent domestic habits for the regular
exertions demanded by modern discipline. But the market is forestalled.
There is Mrs. Grant of Laggan, has drawn the manners, customs, and
superstitions of the mountains in their natural unsophisticated state;
[Letters from the Mountains, 3 vols.--Essays on the Superstitions of
the Highlanders--The Highlanders, and other Poems, etc.] and my friend,
General Stewart of Garth, [The gallant and amiable author of the History
of the Highland Regiments, in whose glorious services his own share
had been great, went out Governor of St Lucia in 1828, and died in that
island on the 18th of December 1829,--no man more regretted, or perhaps
by a wider circle of friends and acquaintance.] in giving the real
history of the Highland regiments, has rendered any attempt to fill up
the sketch with fancy-colouring extremely rash and precarious. Yet
I, too, have still a lingering fancy to add a stone to the cairn;
and without calling in imagination to aid the impressions o