serve her celebrity. In Kay's _Edinburgh Portraits_ the
reader will find more about Dr. Graham.]

Graham's earth-bath, too, was, I understand, tried upon Scott, but his
was not one of the cases, if any such there were, in which it worked a
cure. He, however, improved about this time greatly in his general
health and strength, and Mr. Irving, in accordance with the statement
in the Memoir, assures me that while attending the early classes at
the College the young friends extended their walks, so as to visit in
succession all the old castles within eight or ten miles of Edinburgh.
"Sir Walter," he says, "was specially fond of Rosslyn. We frequently
walked thither before breakfast--after breakfasting there, walked all
down the river side to Lasswade--and thence home to town before
dinner. He used generally to rest one hand upon my shoulder when we
walked together, and leaned with the other on a stout stick."

The love of picturesque scenery, and especially of feudal castles,
with which the vicinity of Edinburgh is plentifully garnished, awoke,
as the Memoir tells us, the desire of being able to use the pencil.
Mr. Irving says--"I attended one summer a class of drawing along with
him, but although both fond of it, we found it took up so much time
that we gave this up before we had made much progress." In one of his
later diaries, Scott himself gives the following more particular
account of this matter:--

"I took lessons of oil-painting in youth from a little Jew
animalcule--a smouch called Burrell--a clever, sensible creature
though. But I could make no progress either in painting or drawing.
Nature denied me the correctness of eye and neatness of hand. Yet I
was very desirous to be a draughtsman at least--and labored harder to
attain that point than at any other in my recollection to which I did
not make some approaches. Burrell was {p.110} not useless to me
altogether neither. He was a Prussian, and I got from him many a long
story of the battles of Frederick, in whose armies his father had been
a commissary, or perhaps a spy. I remember his picturesque account of
seeing a party of the _black hussars_ bringing in some forage carts
which they had taken from a body of the Cossacks, whom he described as
lying on the top of the carts of hay mortally wounded, and, like the
dying gladiator, eyeing their own blood as it ran down through the
straw."

A year or two later Scott renewed his attempt. "I afterwards," he