seemed to pay much, if any attention to the discourse, nor even deigned to sit down like other decent people, but wandered about from gallery to gallery like an evil spirit. This erratic habit of Jock's was not altogether without its use. When he observed any person taking a nap during the sermon, he reached over to the place, and tapped him gently on the head with his kent, till he awoke; and when, in any of his future rounds, he found the drowsy person repeating the offence, he gave him such a merciless rap over the sconce, as might serve as an antidote against sleep through an infinity of sermons, whether evangelical, moral, thumping, or sedate. When in a sitting mood, he sometimes took a modest seat on the pulpit-steps, where it is customary for a number of deaf old men and women to roost, who would not be able to hear in any other part of the church. These old dames whom the reader will perhaps remember as the unfortunate persons that Dominie Sampson sprawled over, in his premature descent from the pulpit, when he sticket his first preaching, our waggish friend Jock would endeavor to torment by every means his knavish nature could invent. He would tread upon their corns, lean amo

ignorant country folk, passes for a very free delivery-an unco gude discourse-at weel; and as habit renders every thing familiar, even preaching itself, these pulpit vagaries ripen with their years, and are confirmed with their practice; and what would in another be termed eccentricity, is, in a Scotch preacher, an early cultivated knack of abusing the sacredness of his functions for the sake of acquiring a morbid popularity, and a local ascendancy over the weak minds of his hearers. Daft Jock Gray's imitations of such boisterous, roaring, caper-cutting, gesticulating, carnying, gospel-drivers, argue, above all, the least in favor of his imbecility-on the contrary, they show him to have been an accurate observer of nature, and would justify the opinion that had such a mind been duly cultivated, if not a perfect gem, at least an original, instead of a mimic pulpit-thumper, might have been produced.

rously upon their laps, set them on a false scent after the psalm, and sometimes getting behind them, plant his longest face above their cathedral-looking black bonnets and reverend grandmother faces, like an owl looking over an ivy wall, or the devil over Lincoln; while few of the congregation could contain their gravity at the extreme humor of the scene. The fun has not unfrequently been a little enhanced by the old lady, on whom Jock was practising, turning round in holy dudgeon, and dealing the unlucky wag a vengeful thwack across the face with her heavy quarto bible.

We shall conclude this sketch of Daft Jock Gray, as the original of Davie Gellatley, with the following anecdotal traits, the first of which, however, we fear is not strictly canonical. Having once received an affront from his mother, who refused to give him an extra allowance of bannocks at a time when he meditated a long journey to a new year's day junketting, he went up to the steepest of one of the Eildon hills, at that time deeply covered with snow, and played a pliskie worthy of Asmodeus himself, who has the reputation among the country people of having created this part of the world! he rolled a huge snow-ball till it became too large in its accumulation for his strength, and theu taking it to the edge of the declivity, sent it rolling down the hill like an Alpine avalanche, gathering in its course to such an enormous magnitude, that when it descended to the plain it seemed a younger brother of the three Eildons. This mass was found, when it had fully melted away through the ensuing summer, to have licked up with its mountain tongue,' thirty-five withered whin bushes, nineteen hares, three ruined cottages, beside a whole encampment of peatstacks!!!!

The following trait is from Stewart's Sketches of the Highlands, and is given as a counterpart to the fidelity of Davie Gellatley, as exerted on behalf of his unfortunate patron :-'In the years 1746 and 1747, some of

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the gentlemen "who had been out" in the rebellion, were occasionally concealed in a deep woody den near my grandfather's house. A poor half witted creature, brought up about the house, was, along with many others, entrusted with the secret of their concealment, and employed in supplying them with necessaries. was supposed that when the troops came round on their usual searches, they would not imagine that he could be entrusted with so important a secret, and, consequently, no questions would be asked. One day two ladies, friends of the gentlemen, wished to visit them in their cave, and asked Jamie Forbes to show them the way. Seeing that they came from the house, and judging from their manner that they were friends, he did not object to their request, and walked away before them. When they had proceeded a short way, one of the ladies offered him five shillings. The instant he saw the money, he put his hands behind his back, and seemed to lose all recollection. "He did not know what they wanted; he never saw the gentlemen and knew nothing of them," and turning away walked in quite a contrary direction. When questioned afterwards why he ran from the ladies, he answered, that when they had offered him such a sum (five shillings was of some value eighty years ago, and would have bought two sheep in the Highlands) he suspected they had no good intention, and that fine clothes and fair words were meant to entrap the gentlemen.'

The original of this limb of the Scottish law is supposed to have been identified in the celebrated Mr. Crosbie who flourished for many years at the head of the bar, and was well known for his integrity (a rare virtue in some of our lawyers) and abilities as a counsel about the period alluded to in the novel.

Mr. Crosbie, for the greater part of his life, lived in a house at the foot of Allan's close, lately in the possession of a Mr. Richard Cleghorn, a solicitor. From this place he was accustomed to walk every morning to the parliament house, dressed in his gown and wig; there being at that time no functionaries about the court, to dress in due these habiliments, as are employed at the present more punctilious times. It was likewise the simple custom, we are told, of the period to which we refer, however revolting it might be to the fine and learned feelings of our modern barristers to think of such a practice now, to fee counsel in John's Coffeeroom over a gill of brandy and a bunch of raisins, then technically called a cock and a feather.' It was at this ancient tavern where Mr. Crosbie was frequently found; though his favorite resort was the 'Clerihughs,'t a place well described in the novel.

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A well frequented and respectable house in the Anchor Close, kept by a person familiarly called Daunie Christie, where a splendid Bacchanalian ceremony used to be got up on Saturday nights, by the lawyers which consisted of the most distinguished characters both of the bar and the bench, resorted thither, to regale themselves with tripe and minced collops, which mine host' served up at the moderate charge of sixpence a head.

The following practical and humorous joke, it is said, was played off upon Mr. Crosbie by the celebrated Lord Gardenstone, who in the course of a walk from Morningside, where he lived, met a rustic going to Edinburgh, in order to be present at the pleading of a cause in which he was deeply interested as a principal, and in which Mr. Crosbie had been retained as counsel. His Lordship directed the man to get a dozen or two of farthings at a snuff shop in the grass market, to wrap them up separately in white paper as if they were so many guineas, and to present them, as the occasion served, in the capacity of fees. The counsel who did not happen to be very warmly animated with his client's case, frequently suffered his eloquence to droop, to the imminent danger of being non-suited. His wary client, however, who had posted himself close to his back, ever and anon as he found the cadence of his voice hastening to a full stop for the purpose of winding up the argument, slipped another farthing into his hand. These repeated applications of the wrapped-up farthings so powerfully stimulated Mr. Crosbie's exertions, that he strained every nerve in grateful zeal for the interests of his treacherous client; and precisely as the fourteenth farthing was passing into his counsel's hand, the cause turned in his favor. The denouement of the conspiracy, which took place shortly afterwards in John's Coffee-house over a bottle of wine with Lord Gardenstone at the expense of Mr. Crosbie, from the profits of his pleading, may be better imagined than described. One of the last acts of Mr. Crosbie's life, was the building of an elegant house in St. Andrew's Square, at present occupied by the Royal Bank of Scotland, where he died about the year 1784, in, it is said, rather limited circumstances. His portrait may be seen in the Advocate's library.