The reader, if I can prevail on myself to
continue the present work, will probably be able
to judge, in the course of it, whether I have made
any useful progress in the study of the olden times.
I owed this turn of study, in part, to the conversation
of my kind man of business, Mr Fairscribe,
whom I mentioned as having seconded the
efforts of my invaluable friend, in bringing the
cause on which my liberty and the remnant of my
property depended, to a favourable decision. He
had given me a most kind reception on my return.
He was too much engaged in his profession for me
to intrude on him often, and perhaps his mind was
too much trammelled with its details to permit his
being willingly withdrawn from them. In short,
he was not a person of my poor friend Somerville's
expanded spirit, and rather a lawyer of the ordinary
class of formalists, but a most able and excellent
man. When my estate was sold, he retained some
of the older title-deeds, arguing, from his own
feelings, that they would be of more consequence
to the heir of the old family than to the new purchaser.
And when I returned to Edinburgh, and
found him still in the exercise of the profession to
which he was an honour, he sent to my lodgings
the old family-bible, which lay always on my father's
table, two or three other mouldy volumes,
and a couple of sheep-skin bags, full of parchments
and papers, whose appearance was by no
means inviting.
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