fted into an English steamboat at Rotterdam on the 11th of June, and
arrived in London on the 13th. There he recognized his children, and
appeared to expect immediate death, as he gave them repeatedly his
most solemn blessing, but for the most part he lay at the St. James's
Hotel, in Jermyn Street, without any power to converse. There it was
that Allan Cunningham, on walking home one night, found a group of
working men at the corner of the street, who stopped him and asked,
"as if there was but one death-bed in London, 'Do you know, sir, if
this is the street where he is lying?'" According to the usual irony
of destiny, it was while the working men were doing him this hearty
and unconscious homage, that Sir Walter, whenever disturbed by the
noises of the street, imagined himself at the polling-booth of
Jedburgh, where the people had cried out, "Burk Sir Walter." And it
was while lying here,--only now and then uttering a few words,--that
Mr. Lockhart says of him, "He expressed his will as determinedly as
ever, and expressed it with the same apt and good-natured irony that
he was wont to use."

Sir Walter's great and urgent desire was to return to Abbotsford, and at
last his physicians yielded. On the 7th July he was lifted into his
carriage, followed by his trembling and weeping daughters, and so taken to
a steamboat, where the captain gave up his private cabin--a cabin on
deck--for his use. He remained unconscious of any change till after his
arrival in Edinburgh, when, on the 11th July, he was placed again in his
carriage, and remained in it quite unconscious during the first two stages
of the journey to Tweedside. But as the carriage entered the valley of the
Gala, he began to look about him. Presently he murmured a name or two,
"Gala water, surely,--Buckholm,--Torwoodlee." When the outline of the
Eildon hills came in view, Scott's excitement was great, and when his eye
caught the towers of Abbotsford, he sprang up with a cry of delight, and
while the towers remained in sight it took his physician, his son-in-law,
and his servant, to keep him in the carriage. Mr. Laidlaw was waiting for
him, and he met him with a cry, "Ha! Willie Laidlaw! O, man, how often I
have thought of you!" His dogs came round his chair and began to fawn on
him and lick his hands, while Sir Walter smiled or sobbed over them. The
next morning he was wheeled about his garden, and on the following morning
was out in this way for a couple of hours; w