without delay to their seat in Selkirkshire. This was the only
explanation given, but it was afterwards discovered that Lord Napier's
valet had committed the grievous mistake of packing up a set of
neckcloths which did not correspond IN POINT OF DATE with the shirts
they accompanied!

The ladies of the 'smart set' in Edinburgh wear French fripperies
and chiffons, as do their sisters every where, but the other women of
society dress a trifle more staidly than their cousins in London,
Paris, or New York. The sobriety of taste and severity of style that
characterise Scotswomen may be due, like Susanna Crum's dubieties, to
the haar, to the shorter catechism, or perhaps in some degree to the
presence of three branches of the Presbyterian Church among them; the
society that bears in its bosom three separate and antagonistic kinds of
Presbyterianism at the same time must have its chilly moments.

In Lord Cockburn's time the 'dames of high and aristocratic breed'
must have been sufficiently awake to feminine frivolities to be both
gorgeously and extravagantly arrayed. I do not know in all literature
a more delicious and lifelike word-portrait than Lord Cockburn gives
of Mrs. Rochead, the Lady of Inverleith, in the Memorials. It is quite
worthy to hang beside a Raeburn canvas; one can scarce say more.

'Except Mrs. Siddons in some of her displays of magnificent royalty,
nobody could sit down like the Lady of Inverleith. She would sail like a
ship from Tarshish, gorgeous in velvet or rustling silk, done up in
all the accompaniments of fans, ear-rings, and finger-rings, falling
sleeves, scent-bottle, embroidered bag, hoop, and train; managing all
this seemingly heavy rigging with as much ease as a full-blown swan does
its plumage. She would take possession of the centre of a large sofa,
and at the same moment, without the slightest visible exertion, cover
the whole of it with her bravery, the graceful folds seeming to lay
themselves over it, like summer waves. The descent from her carriage,
too, where she sat like a nautilus in its shell, was a display which no
one in these days could accomplish or even fancy. The mulberry-coloured
coach, apparently not too large for what it contained, though she alone
was in it; the handsome, jolly coachman and his splendid hammer-cloth
loaded with lace; the two respectful liveried footmen, one on each side
of the richly carpeted step,--these were lost sight of amidst the slow
majesty with whi