tion of a decent clergyman
of the church of Scotland, in a dress more old-fashioned than could now
be produced in the General Assembly, walking arm in arm, and seemingly
in the most familiar terms, with a Parsee merchant. They stopped a
moment at the gate of the court-yard to admire the front of the old
mansion, which had been disturbed with so unusual a scene of gaiety.

Shaws-Castle, though so named, presented no appearance of defence; and
the present edifice had never been designed for more than the
accommodation of a peaceful family, having a low, heavy front, loaded
with some of that meretricious ornament, which, uniting, or rather
confounding, the Gothic and Grecian architecture, was much used during
the reigns of James VI. of Scotland, and his unfortunate son. The court
formed a small square, two sides of which were occupied by such
buildings as were required for the family, and the third by the stables,
the only part to which much attention had been paid, the present Mr.
Mowbray having put them into excellent order. The fourth side of the
square was shut up by a screen wall, through which a door opened to the
avenue; the whole being a kind of structure, which may be still found on
those old Scottish properties, where a rage to render their place
_Parkish_, as was at one time the prevailing phrase, has not induced the
owners to pull down the venerable and sheltering appendages with which
their wiser fathers had screened their mansion, and to lay the whole
open to the keen north-east; much after the fashion of a spinster of
fifty, who chills herself to gratify the public by an exposure of her
thin red elbows, and shrivelled neck and bosom.

A double door, thrown hospitably open on the present occasion, admitted
the company into a dark and low hall, where Mowbray himself, wearing
the under dress of Theseus, but not having yet assumed his ducal cap and
robes, stood to receive his guests with due courtesy, and to indicate to
each the road allotted to him. Those who were to take a share in the
representation of the morning, were conducted to an old saloon, destined
for a green-room, and which communicated with a series of apartments on
the right, hastily fitted with accommodations for arranging and
completing their toilet; while others, who took no part in the intended
drama, were ushered to the left, into a large, unfurnished, and long
disused dining parlour, where a sashed door opened into the gardens,
crossed with