tion, put to me by my Sovereign, perhaps
I do not, or rather perhaps I do know; but I was never put
to the test. He is far too well-bred a man ever to put so
ill-bred a question.'"

The account I have already given of the convivial scene alluded to
would probably have been sufficient; but it can do no harm to place
Ballantyne's, or rather Scott's own testimony, also on record.

I ought not to have omitted, that during Scott's residence in London,
in April, 1815, he lost one of the English friends, to a meeting with
whom he had looked forward with the highest pleasure. Mr. George Ellis
died on the 15th of that month, at his seat of Sunning Hill. This
threw a cloud over what would otherwise have been a period of unmixed
enjoyment. Mr. Canning penned the epitaph for that dearest of his
friends, but he submitted it to Scott's consideration before it was
engraved.

{p.039} CHAPTER XXXV.

Battle of Waterloo. -- Letter of Sir Charles Bell. -- Visit
to the Continent. -- Waterloo. -- Letters from Brussels and
Paris. -- Anecdotes of Scott at Paris. -- The Duke of
Wellington. -- The Emperor Alexander. -- Bluecher. --
Platoff. -- Party at Ermenonville, etc. -- London. --
Parting with Lord Byron. -- Scott's Sheffield Knife. --
Return to Abbotsford. -- Anecdotes by Mr. Skene and James
Ballantyne.

1815.

Goethe expressed, I fancy, a very general sentiment, when he said,
that to him the great charm and value of my friend's Life of
Buonaparte seemed quite independent of the question of its accuracy as
to small details; that he turned eagerly to the book, not to find
dates sifted, and countermarches analyzed, but to contemplate what
could not but be a true record of the broad impressions made on the
mind of Scott by the marvellous revolutions of his own time in their
progress. Feeling how justly in the main that work has preserved those
impressions, though gracefully softened and sobered in the retrospect
of peaceful and more advanced years, I the less regret that I have it
not in my power to quote any letters of his touching the reappearance
of Napoleon on the soil of France--the immortal march from Cannes--the
reign of the Hundred Days, and the preparations for another struggle,
which fixed the gaze of Europe in May, 1815.

That he should have been among the first civilians {p.040} who
hurried over to see the field of Waterloo, and hear English bugles
sound abou