eit; but, writing to a kind friend in Glasgow, I find the brook was
called "Molyndona" even before the building of the Subdean Mill in 1446.
See also account of the locality in Mr. George's admirable volume, "Old
Glasgow," pp. 129, 149, etc. The Protestantism of Glasgow, since
throwing that powder of saints into her brook Kidron, has presented it
with other pious offerings; and my friend goes on to say that the brook,
once famed for the purity of its waters (much used for bleaching), "has
for nearly a hundred years been a crawling stream of loathsomeness. It
is now bricked over, and a carriage-way made on the top of it;
underneath the foul mess still passes through the heart of the city,
till it falls into the Clyde close to the harbor."]

FICTION, FAIR AND FOUL.[62]

II.

35. _"He hated greetings in the market-place_, and there were generally
loiterers in the streets to persecute him _either about the events of
the day_, or about some petty pieces of business."

These lines, which the reader will find near the beginning of the
sixteenth chapter of the first volume of the "Antiquary," contain two
indications of the old man's character, which, receiving the ideal of
him as a portrait of Scott himself, are of extreme interest to me. They
mean essentially that neither Monkbarns nor Scott had any mind to be
called of men, Rabbi, in mere hearing of the mob; and especially that
they hated to be drawn back out of their far-away thoughts, or forward
out of their long-ago thoughts, by any manner of "daily" news, whether
printed or gabbled. Of which two vital characteristics, deeper in both
men, (for I must always speak of Scott's creations as if they were as
real as himself,) than any of their superficial vanities, or passing
enthusiasms, I have to speak more at another time. I quote the passage
just now, because there was one piece of the daily news of the year 1815
which did extremely interest Scott, and materially direct the labor of
the latter part of his life; nor is there any piece of history in this
whole nineteenth century quite so pregnant with various instruction as
the study of the reasons which influenced Scott and Byron in their
opposite views of the glories of the battle of Waterloo.

36. But I quote it for another reason also. The principal greeting which
Mr. Oldbuck on this occasion receives in the market-place, being
compared with the speech of Andrew Fairservice, examined in my first
paper, will fu