Meeting at Kelso with Mr. Walter Scott, whose discriminating habits and just observations I had occasion to know from his youth, and at the same time seeing one of my Yetholm friends in the horse market, I merely said to Mr. Scott, Try to get before that man with the long drab coat; look at him on your return, and tell me whether you ever saw him, and what you think of him.' He was so good as to indulge me; and rejoining me, said, without hesitation, I never saw the man, that I know of; but he is one of the gypsies of Yetholm, that you told me of several years ago.' scarcely say that he was perfectly correct.

I need

"The descendants of Faa now take the name of Fall, from the Mess. Falls, of Dunbar, who, they pride themselves in saying, are of the same stock and lineage. When old Will Faa was upwards of eighty years of age, he called on me at Kelso, in his way to Edinburgh, telling that he was going to see the laird, the late Mr. Nesbit, of Dirleton, as he understood that he was very unwell, and himself being now old, and not so stout as he had been, he wished to see him once more before he died.

“The old man set out by the nearest road, which was by no means his common practice. Next market-day some of the farmers informed me, that they had been in Edinburgh and seen Will Faa upon the bridge, (the south bridge was not then built;) that he was tossing about his old brown hat, and huzzaing with great vociferation, that he had seen the laird before he died. Indeed Will himself had no time to lose, for having set his face homewards by the way

of the sea coast, to vary his route, as is the general custom of the gang, he only got the length of Coldingham, when he was taken ill and died."

Before receiving the very interesting report from William Smith, the author of this Survey was entirely at a loss to determine what was become of the descendants of John Faw, who styled himself Lord and Earl of Little Egypt; and with a numerous retinue entered Scotland in the reign of Queen Mary, as stated in section the 5th. His complaint of his men refusing to return home with him, might be only a feint, invented to cover his design of continuing in the country; for there does not appear to be any traces in history of the banishment of Fawgang, or of their quitting Scotland. But in the above-cited report, we find at the head of the Tinklers a Will Faa, in whose name there is only a variation of one letter from that of his distinguished predecessor; and that in reference to this origin, he asserts the Falls of Dunbar to be of the same stock and lineage.

The Memoirs of Philip de Comines have long been esteemed as furnishing an impartial, authentic, and lively delineation of the remarkable era of Louis XI of France. These have acquired more than usual interest, as the ground-work of one of the most vigorous and beautiful of those master productions, by

which the spirit of past ages is brought before us in the most natural and vivid colours; and the hard historical outline of great events and remarkable personages is worked up into a portraiture full of life and beauty. Quentin Durward is, in fine, a picture of foreign manners towards the end of the fifteenth century. And well it is contrasted with the introductory outline, which commences these volumes, of those of the beginning of the nineteenth, in which the interesting portrait of a restored emigrant of the old court is one of the happiest probably ever drawn even by the master of Waverley.

The hero, a young Scotsman of the shire of Angus, (or Hanguise, as the marquis persists in calling it) and the only surviving branch of a gentle family whom the Ogilvies had harried and exterminated in a feud, arrives in France in quest of happier fortunes; but previously to entering on his adventures, we have a finely written view of the state of that country and of the characters of Louis XI and Charles, Duke of Burgundy. It is the lot of Quentin to encounter the former near Plessis le Tours, and to ingratiate himself into his favour, as far as ever an ingenious youth could be prized by a tortuous politician. At first Louis suffers the adventurer to be nearly drowned, and then succours him as Maitre Pierre, a substantial citizen, while his attendant (Tristan *, his provost marshal)

The characters introduced in this volume are finely delineated. Louis and his ministers or adherents, Cardinal Balue, Oliver le Dain (his barber), Tristan (his executioner) and his satellite hangman. Trois Eschelles and Petit André are not only shockingly identified, but the Duke of Orleans,

passes for a still lower character. He is carried to an inn, and kindly entertained by the king, who discovers that he is in search of service, and looks forward to a maternal uncle, one of his majesty's bravest Scottish archers, and named Ludovic Leslie or le Balafré, from a scar on his face. At this inn Quentin is blessed with a sight of Isabelle, Countess of Croye, a vassal of the Duke of Burgundy's, but who, with her aunt Hameline, had fled to Louis, to avoid being forced into an hated marriage by that hot and peremptory lord.

The next character who appears on the stage is his uncle Ludovic; and a portion of the author's description of the interview between the relations is well worth citing as an example of the work:

"The cavalier who awaited Quentin Durward's descent into the apartment where he had breakfasted, was one of those of whom Louis XI had long since said, that they held in their hands the fortune of France, as to them were entrusted the direct custody and protection of the royal

person.

"Each of them ranked as a gentleman in place and honour; and their near approach to the king's person gave them dignity in their own eyes, as well as in those of the nation of France. They were sumptuously armed, equipped, and mounted; and each was entitled to allowance for a squire, a valet, a page, and two yeomen, one of whom was termed coutelier, from the large knife which he wore to dispatch those whom in the mêlée his master had thrown

the brave Dunois, Joan, the king's daughter, Crawford, the captain of the guard, Isabella of Čroye, and certain Bohemian vagabonds who perform no unimportant parts in the drama, are all most characteristically woven into the web of this history so unlike a fiction.

to the ground. With these followers, and a corresponding equipage, an archer of the Scottish Guard was a person of quality and importance; and vacancies being generally filled up by those who had been trained in the service as pages or valets, the cadets of the best Scottish families were often sent to serve under some friend and relation in those capacities, uutil a chance of preferment should occur.

"The coutelier and his companion, not being noble or capable of this promotion, were recruited from persons of inferior quality; but as their pay and appointments were excellent, their masters were easily able to select from among their wandering countrymen the strongest and most courageous to wait upon them in that capacity.

Ludovic Leslie, or, as we shall more frequently call him, Le Balafré, by which name he was generally known in France, was upwards of six feet high, robust, strongly compacted in person, and hard-favoured in countenance, which latter attribute was much increased by a large and ghastly scar, which, beginning on his forehead, and narrowly missing his right eye, had laid bare the cheek-bone, and descended from thence almost to the tip of his ear, exhibiting a deep seam, which was sometimes scarlet, sometimes blue, and sometimes approaching to black; but always hideous, because at variance with the complexion of the face in whatever state it chanced to be, whether agitated or still, flushed with unusual passion, or in its ordinary state of weatherbeaten and sun-burnt swarthiness.

"His dress and arms were splendid. He wore his national bonnet, crested with a tuft of feathers, and with a Virgin Mary of massive silver for a brooch. These had been presented to the Scottish Guard, in consequence of the king, in one of his fits of superstitious piety, having devoted the swords of his guard to the service of the Holy Virgin, and, as some say, carried the matter so far as to draw out a commission to Our Lady as their Captain General. The archer's gorget, arm-pieces, and gauntlets, were of the finest steel, curiously inlaid with silver, and his hauberk, or shirt of mail, was as clear and bright as the frost-work of a winter