public
meeting, if the Lord Commissioner had been his brother. Here
ends my _per contra_ account. The opposite page would make
my letter too long if I entered equally into particulars.
Carlisle and Corby Castles in Waverley did not affect me
more deeply than the prison and trial scenes. The end of
poor Madge Wildfire is also most pathetic. The meeting at
Muschat's Cairn tremendous. Dumbiedikes and Rory Bean are
delightful. And I shall own that my prejudices were secretly
gratified by the light in which you place [Uncle] John of
Argyle, whom Mr. Coxe so ran down to please Lord Orford. You
have drawn him to the very life. I heard so much of him in
my youth, so many anecdotes, so often 'as the Duke of Argyle
used to say'--that I really believe I am almost as good a
judge as if I had seen and lived with him.... [My beloved
mother] has told me, that when she married, [in 1737, the
very time], he was still remarkably handsome; with manners
more graceful and engaging than she ever saw in any one
else; the most agreeable person in conversation, the best
teller of a story. When fifty-seven thus captivates
eighteen, the natural powers of pleasing must be
extraordinary. You have likewise colored Queen Caroline
exactly right--but I was bred up in another creed about Lady
Suffolk, of whom, as a very old deaf woman, I have some
faint recollection. [My mother] knew her intimately, and
never would allow she had been the King's mistress, though
she owned it was currently believed. She said he had just
enough liking for her to make the Queen very civil to her,
and very jealous and spiteful; the rest remained always
uncertain at most, like a similar scandal in our days, where
I, for one, imagine love of seeming influence on one side,
and love of lounging, of an easy house and a good dinner on
the other, to be all the criminal passions concerned.
However, I confess, [my mother] had that in herself which
made her not ready to think the worst of her fellow-women.

"Did you ever hear the history of John, Duke of Argyle's
marriage, and constant attachment, before and after, to a
woman not handsomer or much more elegant than Jeanie Deans,
though very unlike her in understanding? I can give it you,
if you {p.269} wish it, for it is at my fingers' ends