1816.

MY DEAR MORRITT,--I have not had a moment's kindly leisure
to answer your kind letter, and to tell how delighted I
shall be to see you in this least of all possible dwellings,
but where we, nevertheless, can contrive a pilgrim's
quarters and the warmest welcome for you and any friend of
your journey;--if young Stanley, so much the better. Now, as
to the important business with the which I have been
occupied: You are to know we have had our kind hostesses of
Piccadilly upon a two months' visit to us. We owed them so
much hospitality, that we were particularly anxious to make
Scotland agreeable to the good girls. But, alas, the wind
has blown, and the rain has fallen, in a style which beats
all that ever I remembered. We accomplished, with some
difficulty, a visit to Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond, and, by
dint of the hospitality of Cambusmore and the Ross, we
defied bad weather, wet roads, and long walks. But the
weather settled into regular tempest, when we settled at
Abbotsford; and, though the natives, accustomed to bad
weather (though not at such a time of year), contrived to
brave the extremities of the season, it only served to
increase the dismay of our unlucky visitors, who, accustomed
only to Paris and London, expected _fiacres_ at the
Milestane Cross, and a pair of oars at the Deadman's Haugh.
Add to this a strong disposition to _commerage_, when there
was no possibility of gratifying it, and a {p.118} total
indisposition to scenery or rural amusements, which were all
we had to offer--and you will pity both hosts and guests. I
have the gratification to think I fully supported the
hospitality of my country. I walked them to death, I talked
them to death, I showed them landscapes which the driving
rain hardly permitted them to see, and told them of feuds
about which they cared as little as I do about their
next-door news in Piccadilly. Yea, I even played at cards,
and as I had Charlotte for a partner, so ran no risk of
being scolded, I got on pretty well. Still the weather was
so execrable, that, as the old drunken landlord used to say
at Arroquhar, "I was perfectly ashamed of it;" and, to this
moment, I wonder how my two friends fought it out so
patiently as they did. But the young people and the cottages
f