though it lies within my arbitrary power to extend my materials as I think proper, I cannot call you into Exchequer if you do not think proper to read my narrative. Let me therefore consider. It is true, that the annals and documents in my hands. say but little of this Highland chase; but then I can find copious materials for description elsewhere. There is old Lindsay of Pitscottie ready at my elbow, with his Athole hunting, and his "lofted and joisted palace of green timber; with all kind of drink to be had in burgh and land, as ale, beer, wine, muscadel, malvasie, hippocras, and aquavitæ ; with wheat-bread, main-bread, ginge-bread, beef, mutton, lamb, veal, venison, goose, grice, capon, coney, crane, swan, partridge, plover, duck, drake, brissell-cock, pawnies, black-cock, muir-fowl, and capercailzies;" not forgetting the "costly bedding, vaiselle, and napry," and least of all the "excelling stewards, cunning baxters, excellent cooks, and pottingars, with confections and drugs for the deserts." Besides the particulars. which may be thence gleaned from this Highland feast, (the splendour of which induced the pope's legate to dissent from an opinion which he had hitherto held, that Scotland namely was the-the-the latter end of the world)-besides these, might I not illuminate my pages with Taylor the Water Poet's hunting in the braes of Mar, where, "Through heather, mosse, mong frogs, and bogs, and fogs, Mongst craggy cliffs and thunder-battered hills, Hares, hinds, bucks, roes, are chased by men and dogs, Where two hours hunting fourscore fat deer kills. Lowland, your sports are low as is your seat; The Highland games and minds are high and great." But without further tyranny over my readers, or display of the extent of my own reading, I will content myself with borrowing a single incident from the memorable hunting at Lude, commemorated in the ingenious Mr Gunn's Essay on the |