It has these lines:--

"His converse breathed the Christian. On his tongue
The praises of religion ever hung;
Whence it appeared he did on solid ground
Commend the pleasures which himself had found....
His venerable mien and goodly air
Fix on our hearts impressions strong and fair.
Full seventy years had shed their silvery glow
Around his locks, and made his beard to grow;
That decent beard, which in becoming grace
Did spread a reverend honor on his face," etc.--(1838.)]

Scantily as the worthy Jacobite seems to have been provided with this
world's goods, he married the daughter of a gentleman of good
condition, "through whom," says the MS. memorandum already quoted,
"his descendants have inherited a connection with some honorable
branches of the _Slioch nan Diarmid_, or Clan of Campbell." To this
connection Sir Walter owed, as we shall see hereafter, many of those
early opportunities for studying the manners of the Highlanders, to
which the world are indebted for Waverley, Rob Roy, and The Lady of
the Lake.

Robert Scott, the son of Beardie, formed also an honorable alliance.
{p.060} His father-in-law, Thomas Haliburton,[39] the last but one of
the "good lairds of Newmains," entered his marriage as follows in the
domestic record, which Sir Walter's pious respect induced him to have
printed nearly a century afterwards:--"My second daughter Barbara is
married to Robert Scott, son to Walter Scott, uncle to Raeburn, upon
this sixteen day of July, 1728, at my house of Dryburgh, by Mr. James
Innes, minister of Mertoun, their mothers being cousings; may the
blessing of the Lord rest upon them, and make them comforts to each
other and to all their relations;" to which the editor of the
Memorials adds this note--"May God grant that the prayers of the
excellent persons who have passed away may avail for the benefit of
those who succeed them!--_Abbotsford_, Nov., 1824."

[Footnote 39: "From the genealogical deduction in the
Memorials, it appears that the Haliburtons of Newmains were
descended from and represented the ancient and once powerful
family of Haliburton of Mertoun, which became extinct in the
beginning of the eighteenth century. The first of this latter
family possessed the lands and barony of Mertoun by a charter
granted by Archibald,