snuff-colored gentleman snatched
rather than took it from me, exclaiming, "Wha' did ye say, madam? it was
the _prince's_ sword!" and laid it tenderly back in the receptacle from
which he had taken it.

As we drove away, Dr. Combe told me, what indeed I had perceived, that
this old man, who looked like a shriveled, russet-colored leaf for age
and feebleness, was a passionate partisan of Charles Edward, by whom my
mention of him as the Pretender, if coming from a man, would have been
held a personal insult. It was evident that I, though a mere chit of the
irresponsible sex, had both hurt and offended him by it. His sole
remaining interest in life was hunting out and collecting the smallest
records or memorials of this shadow of a hero; surely the merest "royal
apparition" that ever assumed kingship. "What a set those Stuarts must
have been!" exclaimed an American friend of mine once, after listening
to "Bonnie Prince Charlie," "to have had all those glorious Jacobite
songs made and sung for them, and not to have been more of men than they
were!" And so I think, and thought even then, for though I had a passion
for the Jacobite ballads, I had very little enthusiasm for their
thoroughly inefficient hero, who, for the claimant of a throne, was
undoubtedly _un tres pauvre sire_. Talking over this with me, as we
drove from Mr. M----'s, Dr. Combe said he was persuaded that at that
time there were men to be found in Scotland ready to fight a duel about
the good fame of Mary Stuart.

Sir Walter Scott told me that when the Scottish regalia was discovered,
in its obscure place of security, in Edinburgh Castle, pending the
decision of government as to its ultimate destination, a committee of
gentlemen were appointed its guardians, among whom he was one; and that
he received a most urgent entreaty from an old lady of the Maxwell
family to be permitted to see it. She was nearly ninety years old, and
feared she might not live till the crown jewels of Scotland were
permitted to become objects of public exhibition, and pressed Sir Walter
with importunate prayers to allow her to see them before she died. Sir
Walter's good sense and good nature alike induced him to take upon
himself to grant the poor old lady's petition, and he himself conducted
her into the presence of these relics of her country's independent
sovereignty; when, he said, tottering hastily forward from his support,
she fell on her knees before the crown, and, clasping and