eople do not meet; and I long to see Ellis, Heber, Gifford,
and one or two more. I do not include Mrs. Morritt and you,
because we are much nearer neighbors, and within a whoop and
a holla in comparison. I think we should come up by sea, if
I were not a little afraid of Charlotte being startled by
the March winds--for our vacation begins 12th March.

You will have heard of poor Caberfae's death? What a pity it
is he should have outlived his promising young
representative. His state was truly pitiable--all his fine
faculties lost in paralytic imbecility, and yet not so
entirely so but that he perceived his deprivation as in a
glass darkly. Sometimes he was fretful and anxious because
he did not see his son; sometimes he expostulated and
complained that his boy had been allowed to die without his
seeing him; and sometimes, in a less clouded state of
intellect, he was sensible of, and lamented his loss in its
full extent. These, indeed, are {p.014} the "fears of the
brave, and follies of the wise,"[5] which sadden and
humiliate the lingering hours of prolonged existence. Our
friend Lady Hood will now be Caberfae herself. She has the
spirit of a chieftainess in every drop of her blood, but
there are few situations in which the cleverest women are so
apt to be imposed upon as in the management of landed
property, more especially of an Highland estate. I do fear
the accomplishment of the prophecy, that when there should
be a deaf Caberfae, the house was to fall.[6]

[Footnote 5: Johnson's _Vanity of Human Wishes_.]

[Footnote 6: Francis, Lord Seaforth, died 11th January,
1815, in his 60th year, having outlived four sons, all
of high promise. His title died with him, and he was
succeeded in his estates by his daughter, Lady Hood, now
the Hon. Mrs. Stewart-Mackenzie of Seaforth.--See some
verses on Lord Seaforth's death, in Scott's _Poetical
Works_, vol. viii. p. 392 [Cambridge Ed. p. 419]. The
Celtic designation of the chief of the clan MacKenzie,
_Caberfae_, means _Staghead_, the bearing of the family.
The prophecy which Scott alludes to in this letter is
also mentioned by Sir Humphry Davy in one of his
Journals (see his