t de la
cour_, reels and country dances. Our partners used to give us
gingerbread and oranges. Dancing before so many people was quite an
exhibition, and I was greatly mortified one day when ready to begin a
minuet, by the dancing-master shaking me roughly and making me hold out
my frock properly.

Though kind in the main, my uncle and his wife were rather sarcastic and
severe, and kept me down a good deal, which I felt keenly, but said
nothing. I was not a favourite with my family at that period of my life,
because I was reserved and unexpansive, in consequence of the silence I
was obliged to observe on the subjects which interested me. Three Miss
Melvilles, friends, or perhaps relatives, of Mrs. Charters, were always
held up to me as models of perfection, to be imitated in everything, and
I wearied of hearing them constantly praised at my expense.

In a small society like that of Edinburgh there was a good deal of
scandal and gossip; every one's character and conduct were freely
criticised, and by none more than by my aunt and her friends. She used
to sit at a window embroidering, where she not only could see every one
that passed, but with a small telescope could look into the
dressing-room of a lady of her acquaintance, and watch all she did. A
spinster lady of good family, a cousin of ours, carried her gossip so
far, that she was tried for defamation, and condemned to a month's
imprisonment, which she actually underwent in the Tolbooth. She was let
out just before the king's birthday, to celebrate which, besides the
guns fired at the Castle, the boys let off squibs and crackers in all
the streets. As the lady in question was walking up the High Street,
some lads in a wynd, or narrow street, fired a small cannon, and one of
the slugs with which it was loaded hit her mouth and wounded her tongue.
This raised a universal laugh; and no one enjoyed it more than my uncle
William, who disliked this somewhat masculine woman.

Whilst at my uncle's house, I attended a school for writing and
arithmetic, and made considerable progress in the latter, for I liked
it, but I soon forgot it from want of practice.

My uncle and aunt generally paid a visit to the Lyells of Kinnordy, the
father and mother of my friend Sir Charles Lyell, the celebrated
geologist; but this time they accepted an invitation from Captain
Wedderburn, and took me with them. Captain Wedderburn was an old
bachelor, who had left the army and devoted himself