ntion of the name of author and title of book); and it is
a question of very curious interest how far these sweet "spells" in
Quackleben, and the like religious exercises of a nature compatible with
worldly business (compare Luckie Macleary, "with eyes employed on
Boston's 'Crook in the Lot,' while her ideas were engaged in summing up
the reckoning"--Waverley, i. 112)--do indeed modify in Scotland the
national character for the better or the worse; or, not materially
altering, do at least solemnize and confirm it in what good it may be
capable of. My own Scottish nurse described in "Fors Clavigera" for
April, 1873, would, I doubt not, have been as faithful and affectionate
without her little library of Puritan theology; nor were her minor
faults, so far as I could see, abated by its exhortations; but I cannot
but believe that her uncomplaining endurance of most painful disease,
and steadiness of temper under not unfrequent misapprehension by those
whom she best loved and served, were in great degree aided by so much of
Christian faith and hope as she had succeeded in obtaining, with little
talk about it.

123. I knew however in my earlier days a right old Covenanter in my
Scottish aunt's house, of whom, with Mause Hedrigg and David Deans, I
may be able perhaps to speak further in my next paper.[109] But I can
only now write carefully of what bears on my immediate work: and must
ask the reader's indulgence for the hasty throwing together of materials
intended, before my illness last spring, to have been far more
thoroughly handled. The friends who are fearful for my reputation as an
"ecrivain" will perhaps kindly recollect that a sentence of "Modern
Painters" was often written four or five times over in my own hand, and
tried in every word for perhaps an hour--perhaps a forenoon--before it
was passed for the printer. I rarely now fix my mind on a sentence, or a
thought, for five minutes in the quiet of morning, but a telegram comes
announcing that somebody or other will do themselves the pleasure of
calling at eleven o'clock, and that there's two shillings to pay.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 98: October 1881.]

[Footnote 99: "Jean Francois Millet." Twenty Etching's and Woodcuts
reproduced in Facsimile, and Biographical Notice by William Ernest
Henley. London, 1881.]

[Footnote 100: I am sorry to find that my former allusion to the boating
expedition in this novel has been misconstrued by a young authoress of
promise i