ense.

'It is very true,' he said; 'Darsie was a pleasant companion-but over
waggish, over waggish, Alan, and somewhat scatter-brained.--By the way,
Wilkinson must get our ale bottled in English pints now, for a quart
bottle is too much, night after night, for you and me, without his
assistance.--But Darsie, as I was saying, is an arch lad, and somewhat
light in the upper story--I wish him well through the world; but he has
little solidity, Alan, little solidity.'

I scorn to desert an absent friend, Darsie, so I said for you a little
more than my conscience warranted: but your defection from your legal
studies had driven you far to leeward in my father's good opinion.

'Unstable as water, he shall not excel,' said my father; 'or, as the
Septuagint hath it, EFUSA EST SICUT AQUA--NON CRESCAT. He goeth to
dancing-houses, and readeth novels--SAT EST.'

I endeavoured to parry these texts by observing, that the dancing-houses
amounted only to one night at La Pique's ball--the novels (so far as
matter of notoriety, Darsie) to an odd volume of TOM JONES.

'But he danced from night to morning,' replied my father, 'and he read
the idle trash, which the author should have been scourged for, at least
twenty times over. It was never out of his hand.'

I then hinted, that in all probability your fortune was now so easy as
to dispense with your prosecuting the law any further than you had done;
and therefore you might think you had some title to amuse yourself. This
was the least palatable argument of all.

'If he cannot amuse himself with the law,' said my father, snappishly
'it is the worse for him. If he needs not law to teach him to make a
fortune, I am sure he needs it to teach him how to keep one; and it
would better become him to be learning this, than to be scouring the
country like a land-louper, going he knows not where, to see he knows
not what, and giving treats at Noble House to fools like himself' (an
angry glance at poor me), 'Noble House, indeed!' he repeated, with
elevated voice and sneering tone, as if there were something offensive
to him in the name, though I will venture to say that any place in which
you had been extravagant enough to spend five shillings, would have
stood as deep in his reprobation.

Mindful of your idea, that my father knows more of your real situation
than he thinks proper to mention, I thought I would hazard a fishing
observation. 'I did not see,' I said, 'how the Scottish law would