h of a foreign
{p.207} dynasty. Here is fine planting weather. I trust it
is as good in the Forest and on Tweedside.

Ever your Grace's truly faithful

Walter SCOTT.

TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., M. P., ROKEBY.

DEAR MORRITT,--Our fat friend has remembered a petition
which I put up to him, and has granted a Commission to the
Officers of State and others (my unworthy self
included)--which trusty and well-beloved persons are to
institute a search after the Regalia of Scotland. There has
an odd mystery hung about the fate of these royal symbols of
national independence. The spirit of the Scotch at the Union
clung fondly to these emblems; and to soothe their jealousy
it was specially provided by an article of the Union, that
the Regalia should never be removed, under any pretext, from
the kingdom of Scotland. Accordingly they were deposited,
with much ceremony, as an authentic instrument bears, in a
strong chest, secured by many locks, and the chest itself
placed in a strong room, which again was carefully bolted up
and secured, leaving to national pride the satisfaction of
pointing to the barred window, with the consciousness that
there lay the Regalia of Scotland. But this gratification
was strangely qualified by a surmise, which somehow became
generally averred, stating, that the Regalia had been sent
to London; and you may remember that we saw at the Jewel
Office a crown, _said to be_ the ancient Crown of Scotland.
If this transfer (by the way, highly illegal) was ever made,
it must have been under some secret warrant; for no
authority can be traced for such a proceeding in the records
of the Secretary of State's Office. Fifteen or twenty years
ago, the Crown-room, as it is called, was opened by certain
Commissioners, under authority of a sign-manual. They saw
the fatal chest, strewed with the dust of an hundred years,
about six inches thick: a coating of like thickness lay on
{p.208} the floor; and I have heard the late President
Blair say, that the uniform and level appearance of the dust
warranted them to believe that the chest, if opened at all
after 1707, must have been violated within a short time of
that date, since, had it been opened at a later period, the
dust accumulated