[65] Holyrood remained an asylum for civil debtors until 1880, when by
the Act 43 & 44 Victoria, cap. 34 imprisonment for debt was abolished.
For description of bounds see _Chronicles of the Canongate,_ p. 7. (vol.
xli.).
[66] The book was published during November, under the following title,
_Chronicles of the Canongate_ (First Series). By the author of
_Waverley_, etc.--SIC ITUR AD ASTRA, motto of Canongate arms. In two
vols. _The Two Drovers_, _The Highland Widow_, _The Surgeon's Daughter_.
Edinburgh, printed for Cadell and Co., and Simpkin Marshall. London
1827.
The introduction to this work contains sketches of Scott's own life,
with portraits of his friends, unsurpassed in any of his earlier
writings; for example, what could be better than the description of his
ancestors the Scotts of Raeburn, vol. xli. p. 61:--
"_They werena ill to them, sir, and that is aye something; they were
just decent bien bodies. Ony poor creature that had face to beg got an
awmous and welcome; they that were shamefaced gaed by, and twice as
welcome. But they keepit an honest walk before God and man, the
Croftangrys, and as I said before, if they did little good, they did as
little ill. They lifted their rents and spent them; called in their kain
and eat them; gaed to the kirk of a Sunday, bowed civilly if folk took
aff their bannets as they gaed by, and lookit as black as sin at them
that keepit them on_."
[67] Mrs. Wilson, landlady of the inn at Fushie, one stage from
Edinburgh,--an old dame of some humour, with whom Sir Walter always had
a friendly colloquy in passing. I believe the charm was, that she had
passed her childhood among the Gipsies of the Border. But her fiery
Radicalism latterly was another source of high merriment.--J.G.L.
[68] The "new hare" was this: "It transpired in the very nick of time,
that a suspicion of usury attached to these Israelites without guile, in
a transaction with Hurst and Robinson, as to one or more of the bills
for which the house of Ballantyne had become responsible. This
suspicion, upon investigation, assumed a shape sufficiently tangible to
justify Ballantyne's trustees in carrying the point before the Court of
Session; but they failed to establish their allegation."--_Life_, vol.
ix. pp. 178-9.
[69] A favourite domestic at Abbotsford, whose name was never to be
mentioned by any of Scott's family without respect and
gratitude.--_Life_, vol. x. p. 3.
[70] Lady Jane Stuart's house was No. 12 Maitland Street, opposite
Shandwick Place. Mrs. Skene told Mr. Lockhart that at Sir Walter's first
meeting with his old friend a very painful scene occurred, and she
added--"I think it highly probable that it was on returning from this
call that he committed to writing the verses, _To Time_, by his early
favourite."--_Life_, vol. ix, p. 183.