it,--"By G----, No!" One of the Commissioners, not quite entering
{p.213} into the solemnity with which Scott regarded this business,
had, it seems, made a sort of motion as if he meant to put the crown
on the head of one of the young ladies near him, but the voice and
aspect of the Poet were more than sufficient to make the worthy
gentleman understand his error; and, respecting the enthusiasm with
which he had not been taught to sympathize, he laid down the ancient
diadem with an air of painful embarrassment. Scott whispered, "Pray,
forgive me;" and turning round at the moment, observed his daughter
deadly pale, and leaning by the door. He immediately drew her out of
the room, and when the air had somewhat recovered her, walked with her
across the Mound to Castle Street. "He never spoke all the way home,"
she says, "but every now and then I felt his arm tremble; and from
that time I fancied he began to treat me more like a woman than a
child. I thought he liked me better, too, than he had ever done
before."

These little incidents may give some notion of the profound
seriousness with which his imagination had invested this matter. I am
obliged to add, that in the society of Edinburgh at the time, even in
the highest Tory circles, it did not seem to awaken much even of
curiosity--to say nothing of any deeper feeling. There was, however, a
great excitement among the common people of the town, and a still
greater among the peasantry, not only in the neighborhood, but all
over Scotland; and the Crown-room, becoming thenceforth one of the
established _lions_ of a city much resorted to, moreover, by stranger
tourists, was likely, on the most moderate scale of admission-fee, to
supply a revenue sufficient for remunerating responsible and
respectable guardianship. This post would, as Scott thought, be a very
suitable one for his friend, Captain Adam Ferguson; and he exerted all
his zeal for that purpose. The Captain was appointed: his nomination,
however, did not take place for some months after; and the postscript
of a {p.214} letter to the Duke of Buccleuch, dated May 14, 1818,
plainly indicates the interest on which Scott mainly relied for its
completion: "If you happen," he writes, "to see Lord Melville, pray
give him a jog about Ferguson's affair; but between ourselves, I
depend chiefly on the kind offices of Willie Adam, who is an auld
sneck-drawer." The Lord Chief-Commissioner, at all times ready to lend
Scott his inf