on the lid, and displaced at opening it,
must have been lying around the chest. But the Commissioners
did not think their warrant entitled them to force this
chest, for which no keys could be found; especially as their
warrant only entitled them to search for _records_--not for
crowns and sceptres.

The mystery, therefore, remained unpenetrated; and public
curiosity was left to console itself with the nursery
rhyme:--

"On Tintock tap there is a mist,
And in the mist there is a kist."

Our fat friend's curiosity, however, goes to the point at
once, authorizing and enjoining an express search for the
Regalia. Our friend of Buccleuch is at the head of the
Commission, and will, I think, be as keen as I or any one,
to see the issue.

I trust you have read Rob by this time. I think he smells of
the cramp. Above all, I had too much flax on my distaff; and
as it did not consist with my patience or my plan to make a
fourth volume, I was obliged at last to draw a rough,
coarse, and hasty thread. But the book is well liked here,
and has reeled off in great style. I have two stories on the
anvil, far superior to Rob Roy in point of interest. Ever
yours,

Walter SCOTT.

The Commissioners, who finally assembled on the 4th of February, were,
according to the record, "the Right Hon. Charles Hope, Lord President
of the Court of Session; the Right Hon. David Boyle, Lord
Justice-Clerk; the Right Hon. William Adam, Lord Chief Commissioner of
the Jury Court; Major-General John Hope {p.209} (Commanding the
Forces in Scotland); the Solicitor-General (James Wedderburn, Esq.);
the Lord Provost of Edinburgh (Kincaid Mackenzie, Esq.); William
Clerk, Esq., Principal Clerk of the Jury Court; Henry Jardine, Esq.,
Deputy Remembrancer in the Exchequer; Thomas Thomson, Esq., Deputy
Clerk-Register of Scotland; and Walter Scott, Esq., one of the
Principal Clerks of Session."

Of the proceedings of this day, the reader has a full and particular
account in an Essay which Scott penned shortly afterwards, and which
is included in his Prose Miscellanies (vol. vii.). But I must not omit
the contemporaneous letters in which he announced the success of the
quest to his friend the Secretary of the Admiralty, and through him to
the Regent:--

TO J. W. CROKER, ESQ., M. P., ETC., ETC.