n to evade the gaily circling glass.
The others began to talk thick and at once, each performing his own part
in the conversation, without the least respect to hist neighbour. The
Baron of Bradwardine sang French CHANSONS-A-BOIRE, and spouted pieces
of Latin; Killancureit talked, in a steady unalterable dull key,
of top-dressing and bottom-dressing, [This has been censured as an
anachronism; and it must be confessed that agriculture of this kind was
unknown to the Scotch Sixty Years since.] and year-olds, and gimmers,
and dinmonts, and stots, and runts, and kyloes, and a proposed
turnpike-act; while Balmawhapple, in notes exalted above both, extolled
his horse, his hawks, and a greyhound called Whistler. In the middle of
this din, the Baron repeatedly implored silence; and when at length the
instinct of polite discipline so far prevailed, that for a moment he
obtained it, he hastened to beseech their attention 'unto a military
ariette, which was a particular favourite of the Marechal Duc de
Berwick;' then, imitating, as well as he could, the manner and tone of a
French mousquetaire, he immediately commenced,--

Mon coeur volage, dit-elle,
N'est pas pour vous, garcon;
Est pour un homme de guerre,
Qui a barbe au menton.
Lon, Lon, Laridon.

Qui ports chapeau a plume,
Soulier a rouge talon,
Qui joue de la flute,
Aussi du violon.
Lon, Lon, Laridon.

Balmawhapple could hold no longer, but broke in with what he called a
d--d good song, composed by Gibby Gaethroughwi't, the piper of Cupar;
and, without wasting more time, struck up,--

It's up Glenbarchan's braes I gaed,
And o'er the bent of Killiebraid,
And mony a weary cast I made,
To cuittle the muirfowl's tail.

[SUUM CUIQUE. This snatch of a ballad was composed by Andrew MacDonald,
the ingenious and unfortunate author of VIMONDA.]

The Baron, whose voice was drowned in the louder and more obstreperous
strains of Balmawhapple, now dropped the competition, but continued to
hum, Lon, Lon, Laridon, and to regard the successful candidate for the
attention of the company, with an eye of disdain, while Balmawhapple
proceeded,--

If up a bonny black-cock should spring,
To whistle him down wi' a slug in his wing,
And strap him on to my lunzie string,
Right seldom would I fail.

After an ineffectual attempt to recover the second verse, he sang the
first over again; and, in prose