thout delay to their seat in Selkirkshire.
This was the only explanation given, but it was afterwards discovered
that Lord Napier's valet had committed the grievous mistake of packing
up a set of neck-cloths which did not correspond _in point of date_
with the shirts they accompanied!

The ladies of the "smart set" in Edinburgh wear French fripperies and
_chiffons_, as do their sisters everywhere, but the other women of
society dress a trifle more staidly than their cousins in London,
Paris, or New York. The sobriety of taste and severity of style that
characterize Scotswomen may be due, like Susanna Crum's dubieties, to
the _haar_, to the shorter catechism, or perhaps in some degree to the
presence of three branches of the Presbyterian church among them; the
society that bears in its bosom three separate and antagonistic kinds
of Presbyterianism at the same time must have its chilly moments.

In Lord Cockburn's time the "dames of high and aristocratic breed"
must have been sufficiently awake to feminine frivolities to be both
gorgeously and extravagantly arrayed. I do not know in all literature
a more delicious and lifelike word-portrait than Lord Cockburn gives
of Mrs. Rochead, the Lady of Inverleith, in the Memorials. It is quite
worthy to hang beside a Raeburn canvas; one can scarce say more.

"Except Mrs. Siddons in some of her displays of magnificent royalty,
nobody could sit down like the Lady of Inverleith. She would sail like
a ship from Tarshish, gorgeous in velvet or rustling silk, done up in
all the accompaniments of fans, ear-rings and finger-rings, falling
sleeves, scent-bottle, embroidered bag, hoop, and train; managing all
this seemingly heavy rigging with as much ease as a full-blown swan
does its plumage. She would take possession of the centre of a large
sofa, and at the same moment, without the slightest visible exertion,
cover the whole of it with her bravery, the graceful folds seeming to
lay themselves over it, like summer waves. The descent from her
carriage, too, where she sat like a nautilus in its shell, was a
display which no one in these days could accomplish or even fancy. The
mulberry-colored coach, apparently not too large for what it
contained, though she alone was in it; the handsome, jolly coachman
and his splendid hammer-cloth loaded with lace; the two respectful
liveried footmen, one on each side of the richly carpeted step,--these
were lost sight of amidst the slow majesty with wh