The Antiquary.

CHAPTER I.

Go call a coach, and let a coach be call'd,
And let the man who calleth be the caller;
And in his calling let him nothing call,

his fellow-citizens. The boots, the great-coat, th umbrella, the little bundle in his hand, the hat pulled over his resolved brows, the determined importance of his pace, his brief answers to the salutations of lounging acquaintances, are all marks by which the experienced traveller in mail-coach or diligence can distinguish, at a distance, the companion of his future journey, as he pushes onward to the place of rendezvous. It is then that, with worldly wisdom, the first comer hastens to secure the best birth in the coach for himself, and to make the most convenient arrangement for his baggage before the arrival of his competitors. Our youth, who was gifted with little prudence of any sort, and who was, moreover, by the absence of the coach, deprived of the power of availing himself of his priority of choice, amused himself, instead, by speculating upon the occupation and character of the personage who was now come to the coach-office. He was a good-looking man of the age of sixty, perhaps older, but his hale complexion and firm step announced that years had not impaired his strength or health. His countenance was of the true Scottish cast, strongly marked, and rather harsh in features, with a shrewd and penetrating eye, and a countenance in which habitual gravity was enlivened by a cast of ironical humour. His dress was uniform, and of a colour becoming his age and gravity; a wig, well dressed and powdered, surmounted by a slouched hat, had something of a professional air. He might be a clergyman, yet his appearance was more that of a man of the world than usually Di-belongs to the kirk of Scotland, and his first ejaculation put the matter beyond question.

But Coach! Coach! Coach! O for a coach, ye gods!" Chrononhotonthologos. Ir was early on a fine summer's day, near the end of the eighteenth century, when a young man, of genteel appearance, journeying towards the northeast of Scotland, provided himself with a ticket in one of those public carriages which travel between Edinburgh and the Queensferry, at which place, as the name implies, and as is well known to all my northern readers, there is a passage-boat for crossing the Frith of Forth. The coach was calculated to carry six regular passengers, besides such interlopers as the coachman could pick up by the way, and intrude upon those who were legally in possession. The tickets, which conferred right to a seat in this vehicle of little ease, were dispensed by a sharp-looking old dame, with a pair of spectacles on a very thin nose, who inhabited a "laigh shop," anglicè, a cellar, opening to the High Street by a straight and steep stair, at the bottom of which she sold tape, thread, needles, skeans of worsted, coarse linen cloth, and such feminine gear, to those who had the courage and skill to descend to the profundity of her dwelling, without falling headlong themselves, or throwing down any of the numerous articles which, piled on each side of the descent, indicated the profession of the trader below.

The written hand-bill, which, pasted on a projecting board, announced that the Queensferry ligence, or Hawes Fly, departed precisely at twelve o'clock on Tuesday, the fifteenth July, 17-, in order to secure for travellers the opportunity of passing the Frith with the flood-tide, lied on the present occasion like a bulletin; for although that hour was pealed from Saint Giles's steeple, and repeated by the Tron, no coach appeared upon the appointed stand. It is true, only two tickets had been taken out, and possibly the lady of the subterranean mansion might have an understanding with her Automedon, that, in such cases, a little space was to be allowed for the chance of filling up the vacant places -or the said Automedon might have been attending a funeral, and be delayed by the necessity of stripping his vehicle of its lugubrious trappingsor he might have staid to take a half-mutchkin extraordinary with his crony the hostler-or-in short, he did not make his appearance.

The young gentleman, who began to grow somewhat impatient, was now joined by a companion in this petty misery of human life the person who had taken out the other place. He who is bent upon journey is usually easily to be distinguished from

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He arrived with a hurried pace, and, casting an alarmed glance towards the dial-plate of the church, then looking at the place where the coach should have been, exclaimed, " Deil's in it-I am too late after all!"

The young man relieved his anxiety, by telling him the coach had not yet appeared. The old gentleman, apparently conscious of his own want of punctuality, did not at first feel courageous enough to censure that of the coachman. He took a parcel, containing apparently a large folio, from a little boy who followed him, and, patting him on the head, bid him go back and tell Mr B- that if he had known he was to have had so much time, he wou'd have put another word or two to their bargain,— then told the boy to mind his business, and he would be as thriving a lad as ever dusted a duodecimo. The boy lingered, perhaps in hopes of a penny to buy marbles; but none was forthcoming. Our senior leaned his little bundle upon one of the posts at the head of the staircase, and, facing the traveller who had first arrived, waited in silence

be on the north side to-day-and all the expense of his journey, besides damages, direct and conAt length, after one or two impatient glances at sequential, arising from delay, should be accumuthe progress of the minute-hand of the clock, hav-lated on the devoted head of Mrs Macleuchar. ing compared it with his own watch, a huge and antique gold repeater, and having twitched about his features to give due emphasis to one or two peevish pshaws, he hailed the old lady of the cavern.

ume to time with the knowing look of an amateur, | by being urged forward, yet the man of whipcord admiring its height and condition, and ascertaining, escaped some severe abuse and reproach by the by a minute and individual inspection of each leaf, agreeable mode which the traveller found out to that the volume was uninjured and entire from pass the interval of delay. title-page to colophon. His fellow-traveller took the liberty of inquiring the subject of his studies. He lifted up his eyes with something of a sarcastic glance, as if he supposed the young querist would not relish, or perhaps understand, his answer, and pronounced the book to be Sandy Gordon's Itinerarium Septentrionale, a book illustrative of the Roman remains in Scotland. The querist, unappalled by this learned title, proceeded to put several questions, which indicated that he had made good use of a good education, and although not possessed of minute information on the subject of antiquities, had yet acquaintance enough with the classics to render him an interested and intelligent auditor when they were enlarged upon. The elder traveller, observing with pleasure the capacity of his temporary companion to understand and answer him, plunged, nothing loath, into a sea of discussion concerning urns, vases, votive altars, Roman camps, and the rules of castrametation.

The pleasure of this discourse had such a dulcifying tendency, that, although two causes of delay occurred, each of much more serious duration than that which had drawn down his wrath upon the unlucky Mrs Macleuchar, our ANTIQUARY only bestowed on the delay the honour of a few episodical poohs and pshaws, which rather seemed to regard the interruption of his disquisition than the retardation of his journey.

The first of these stops was occasioned by the breaking of a spring, which half an hour's labour hardly repaired. To the second, the Antiquary was himself accessory, if not the principal cause of it; for, observing that one of the horses had cast a fore-foot shoe, he apprized the coachman of this important deficiency. "It's Jamie Martingale that furnishes the naigs on contract, and uphauds them," answered John, " and I am not entitled to make any stop, or to suffer prejudice by the like of these accidents."

"And when you go to-I mean to the place you deserve to go to, you scoundrel,-who do you think will uphold you on contract? If you don't stop directly and carry the poor brute to the next smithy, I'll have you punished, if there's a justice of peace in Mid-Lothian ;" and, opening the coach door, out he jumped, while the coachman obeyed his orders, muttering, that "if the gentlemen lost the tide now, they could not say but it was their ain fault, since he was willing to get on."

I like so little to analyze the complication of the causes which influence actions, that I will not venture to ascertain whether our Antiquary's humanity to the poor horse was not in some degree aided by his desire of showing his companion a Pict's camp, or Round-about, a subject which he had been elaborately discussing, and of which a speciraen, very curious and perfect indeed," happened to exist about a hundred yards distant from the place where this interruption took place. But were I compelled to decompose the motives of my worthy friend (for such was the gentleman in the sober suit, with powdered wig and slouched hat), I should say, that, although he certainly would not in any case have suffered the coachman to proceed while the horse was unfit for service, and likely to suffer

So much time was consumed by these interruptions of their journey, that when they descended the hill above the Hawes (for so the inn on the southern side of the Queensferry is denominated), the experienced eye of the Antiquary at once discerned, from the extent of wet sand, and the number of black stones and rocks, covered with sea-weed, which were visible along the skirts of the shore, that the hour of tide was past. The young traveller expected a burst of indignation; but whether, as Croaker says in "The Good-natured Man," our hero had exhausted himself in fretting away his misfortunes beforehand, so that he did not feel them when they actually arrived, or whether he found the company in which he was placed too congenial to lead him to repine at anything which delayed his journey, it is certain that he submitted to his lot with much resignation.

"The d-l's in the diligence and the old hag it belongs to!-Diligence, quoth I? Thou shouldst have called it the Sloth-Fly, quoth she? why, it moves like a fly through a glue-pot, as the Irishman says. But however, time and tide tarry for no man; and so, my young friend, we'll have a snack here at the Hawes, which is a very decent sort of a place, and I'll be very happy to finish the account I was giving you of the difference between the mode of entrenching castra statica and castra æstiva, things confounded by too many of our historians. Lacka-day, if they had ta'en the pains to satisfy their own eyes, instead of following each other's blind guidance!-Well! we shall be pretty comfortable at the Hawes; and besides, after all, we must have dined somewhere, and it will be pleasanter sailing with the tide of ebb and the evening breeze."

In this Christian temper of making the best of all occurrences, our travellers alighted at the Hawes.

As the senior traveller descended the crazy steps of the diligence at the inn, he was greeted by the fat, gouty, pursy landlord, with that mixture of familiarity and respect which the Scotch innkeepers of the old school used to assume towards their more valued customers.

"Have a care o' us, Monkbarns!" (distinguishing him by his territorial epithet, always most agreeable to the ear of a Scottish proprietor)—“ is this you? I little thought to have seen your honour here till the summer session was ower."

"Ye donnard auld deevil," answered his guest, his Scottish accent predominating when in anger, though otherwise not particularly remarkable,

ye donnard auld crippled idiot, what have I to do with the session, or the geese that flock to it, or the hawks that pick their pinions for them?"

"Troth, and that's true," said mine host, who, in

fact, only spoke upon a very general recollection of the stranger's original education, yet would have been sorry not to have been supposed accurate as to the station and profession of him, or any other occasional guest"That's very true; but I thought ye had some law affair of your ain to look afterI have ane mysell--a ganging plea that my father left me, and his father afore left to him. It's about our back-yard-ye'll maybe hae heard of it in the Parliament-House, Hutchison against Mackitchinson; it's a weel-kenn'd plea-it's been four times in afore the fifteen, and deil onything the wisest o' them could make o't, but just to send it out again to the outer-house. O it's a beautiful thing to see how lang and how carefully justice is considered in this country!"

"Hold your tongue, you fool," said the traveller, but in great good-humour," and tell us what you can give this young gentleman and me for dinner." "Ou, there's fish, nae doubt,-that's sea-trout and caller haddocks," said Mackitchinson, twisting his napkin ;" and ye'll be for a mutton-chop, and there's cranberry tarts very weel preserved, and and there's just onything else ye like."

ter the Reformation, was, they asserted, descended from one of the original printers of Germany, and had left his country in consequence of the persecutions directed against the professors of the Reformed religion. He had found a refuge in the town near which his posterity dwelt, the more readily that he was a sufferer in the Protestant cause, and certainly not the less so, that he brought with him money enough to purchase the small estate of Monkbarns, then sold by a dissipated laird, to whose father it had been gifted, with other church lands, on the dissolution of the great and wealthy monastery to which it had belonged. The Oldenbucks were therefore loyal subjects on all occasions of insurrection; and, as they kept up a good intelligence with the borough, it chanced that the Laird of Monkbarns, who flourished in 1745, was provost of the town during that ill-fated year, and had exerted himself with much spirit in favour of King George, and even been put to expenses on that score, which, according to the liberal conduct of the existing government towards their friends, had never been repaid him. By dint of solicitation, however, and borough interest, he contrived to gain a place in the customs, and, being a frugal, careful man, had found himself enabled to add considerably to his paternal fortune. He had only two sons, of whom, as we have hinted, the present laird was the younger, and two daughters, one of whom still flourished in single blessedness, and the other, who was greatly more juvenile, made a love-match with a captain in the Forty-twa, who had no other fortune but his commission and a Highland pedigree. Poverty disturbed a union which love would otherwise have made happy, and Captain M'Intyre, in justice to his wife and two children, a boy and girl, had found himself obliged to seek his fortune As, notwithstanding his pledge to the contrary, in the East Indies. Being ordered upon an expethe glorious delays of the law were not without dition against Hyder Ally, the detachment to which their parallel in the kitchen of the inn, our younger he belonged was cut off, and no news ever reached traveller had an opportunity to step out and make his unfortunate wife, whether he fell in battle, or some inquiry of the people of the house concerning was murdered in prison, or survived, in what the the rank and station of his companion. The infor- habits of the Indian tyrant rendered a hopeless mation which he received was of a general and less captivity. She sunk under the accumulated load authentic nature, but quite sufficient to make him of grief and uncertainty, and left a son and daughacquainted with the name, history, and circum-ter to the charge of her brother, the existing laird stances of the gentleman, whom we shall endeavour, in a few words, to introduce more accurately to our readers.

"Which is to say, there is nothing else whatever? Well, well, the fish and the chop, and the tarts, will do very well. But don't imitate the cautious delay that you praise in the courts of justice. Let there be no remits from the inner to the outer-house, hear ye me?"

"Na, na," said Mackitchinson, whose long and heedful perusal of volumes of printed session papers had made him acquainted with some law phrases -"the denner shall be served quamprimum, and that peremptorie." And with the flattering laugh of a promising host, he left them in his sanded parlour, hung with prints of the Four Seasons.

Jonathan Oldenbuck, or Oldinbuck, by popular contraction Oldbuck, of Monkbarns, was the second son of a gentleman possessed of a small property in the neighbourhood of a thriving seaport town on the north-eastern coast of Scotland, which, for various reasons, we shall denominate Fairport. They had been established for several generations, as landholders in the county, and in most shires of England would have been accounted a family of some standing. But the shire of was filled with gentlemen of more ancient descent and larger fortune. In the last generation, also, the neighbouring gentry had been almost uniformly Jacobites, while the proprietors of Monkbarns, like the burghers of the town near which they were settled, were steady assertors of the Protestant succession. The latter had, however, a pedigree of their own, on which they prided themselves as much as those who despised them valued their respective Saxon, Norman, or Celtic genealogies. The first Oldenbuck, who had settled in their family mansion shortly af

of Monkbarns.

The history of that proprietor himself is soon told. Being, as we have said, a second son, his father destined him to a share in a substantial mercantile concern, carried on by some of his maternal relations. From this Jonathan's mind revolted in the most irreconcilable manner. He was then put apprentice to the profession of a writer, or attorney, in which he profited so far, that he made himself master of the whole forms of feudal investitures, and showed such pleasure in reconciling their incongruities and tracing their origin, that his master had great hope he would one day be an able conveyancer. But he halted upon the threshold, and, though he acquired some knowledge of the origin and system of the law of his country, he could never be persuaded to apply it to lucrative and practical purposes. It was not from any inconsiderate neglect of the advantages attending the possession of money that he thus deceived the hopes of his master. "Were he thoughtless or lightheaded, or rei suæ prodigus," said his instructor, "I would know what to make of him. But he never pays away a shilling without looking anxiously after