Miss Bradwardine then gave Waverley to understand, that this poor simpleton was dotingly fond of music, deeply affected by that which was melancholy, and transported into extravagant gaiety by light and lively airs. He had in this respect a prodigious memory, stored with miscellaneous snatches and fragments of all tunes and songs, which he sometimes applied, with considerable address, as the vehicles of remonstrance, explanation, or satire. Davie was much attached to the few who showed him kindness; and both aware of any slight or ill usage which he happened to receive, and sufficiently apt, where he saw opportunity, to revenge it. The common people, who often judge hardly of each other, as well as of their betters, although they had expressed great compassion for the poor innocent while suffered to wander in rags about the village, no sooner beheld him decently clothed, provided for, and even a sort of favourite, than they called up all the instances of sharpness and ingenuity, in action and repartee, which his annals afforded, and charitably bottomed thereupon a hypothesis, that David Gellatley was no farther fool than was necessary to avoid hard labour. This opinion was not better founded than that of the negroes, who, from the acute and mischievous pranks of the monkeys, suppose that they have the gift of speech, and only suppress their powers of elocution to escape being set to work. But the hypothesis was entirely imaginary; David Gellatley was in good earnest the half-crazed simpleton which he appeared, and was incapable of any constant and steady exertion. He had just so much solidity as kept on the windy side of insanity; so much wild wit as saved him from the imputation of idiocy; some dexterity in field-sports, (in which we have known as great fools excel,) great kindness and humanity in the treatment of animals intrusted to him, warm affections, a prodigious memory, and an ear for music. The stamping of horses was now heard in the court, and Davie's voice singing to the two large deer greyhounds, Hie away, hie away, Over bank and over brae, Where the copsewood is the greenest, Where the fountains glisten sheenest, Where the lady-fern grows strongest, Hie away, hie away. "Do the verses he sings," asked Waverley, "belong to old Scottish poetry, Miss Bradwardine?" “I believe not,” she replied. "This poor creature had a brother, and Heaven, as if to compensate to the family Davie's deficiencies, had given him what the hamlet called uncommon talents. An uncle contrived to educate him for the Scottish kirk, but he could not get preferment because he came from our ground. He returned from college hopeless and broken-hearted, and fell into a decline. My father supported him till his death, which happened before he was nineteen. He played beautifully on the flute, and was supposed to have a great turn for poetry. He was affectionate and compassionate to his brother, who followed him like his shadow, and we think that from him Davie gathered many fragments of songs and music unlike those of this country. But if we ask him where he got such a fragment as he is now singing, he either answers with wild and long fits of laughter, or else breaks into tears of lamentation; but was never heard to give any explanation, or to mention his brother's name since his death." "Surely," said Edward, who was readily interested by a tale bordering on the romantic, "surely more might be learned by more particular inquiry." "Perhaps so," answered Rose; "but my father will not permit any one to practise on his feelings on this subject." By this time the Baron, with the help of Mr. Saunderson, had Indued a pair of jack-boots of large dimensions, and now invited our hero to follow him as he stalked clattering down the ample staircase, tapping each huge balustrade as he passed with the but of his massive horse-whip, and humming, with the air of a chasseur of Louis Quatorze, Pour la chasse ordonnée il faut preparer tout, CHAPTER XIII. A more rational Day than the last. THE Baron of Bradwardine, mounted on an active and wellmanaged horse, and seated on a demipique saddle, with deep housings to agree with his livery, was no bad representative of the old school. His light-coloured embroidered coat, and superbly barred waistcoat, his brigadier wig, surmounted by a small gold-laced cocked-hat, completed his personal costume; but he was attended by two well-mounted servants on horseback, armed with holsterpistols. In this guise he ambled forth over hill and valley, the admiration of every farm-yard which they passed in their progress, till, "low down in a grassy vale,” they found David Gellatley leading two very tall deer greyhounds, and presiding over half a dozen curs, and about as many bare-legged and bare-headed boys, who, to procure the chosen distinction of attending on the chase, had not failed to tickle his ears with the dulcet appellation of Maister Gellatley, though probably all and each had hooted him on former occasions in the character of daft Davie. But this is no uncommon strain of flattery to persons in office, nor altogether confined to the bare-legged villagers of Tully-Veolan; it was in fashion Sixty Years since, is now, and will be six hundred years hence, if this admirable compound of folly and knavery, called the world, shall be then in existence. These gillie-wet-foots," as they were called, were destined to beat the bushes, which they performed with so much success, that, after half an hour's search, a roe was started, coursed, and killed; the Baron following on his white horse, like Earl Percy of yore, and magnanimously flaying and embowelling the slain animal (which, he observed, was called by the French chasseurs, faire la curée) with his own baronial couteau de chasse. After this ceremony, he conducted his guest homeward by a pleasant and circuitous route, commanding an extensive prospect of different villages and houses, to each of which Mr. Bradwardine attached some anec * A bare-footed Highland lad is called a gillie-wet-foot. Gillie, in general, means servant or attendant. dote of history or genealogy, told in language whimsical from prejudice and pedantry, but often respectable for the good sense and honourable feelings which his narrative displayed, and almost always curious, if not valuable, for the information they contained. The truth is, the ride seemed agreeable to both gentlemen, because they found amusement in each other's conversation, although their characters and habits of thinking were in many respects totally opposite. Edward, we have informed the reader, was warm in his feelings, wild and romantic in his ideas and in his taste of reading, with a strong disposition towards poetry. Mr. Bradwardine was the reverse of all this, and piqued himself upon stalking through life with the same upright, starched, stoical gravity which distinguished his evening promenade upon the terrace of Tully-Veolan, where for hours together the very model of old Hardyknute Stately stepp'd be east the wa', And stately stepp'd he west. As for literature, he read the classic poets, to be sure, and the Epithalamium of Georgius Buchanan, and Arthur Johnstone's Psalms, of a Sunday; and the Delicia Poetarum Scotorum, and Sir David Lindsay's Works, and Barbour's Bruce, and Blind Harry's Wallace, and the Gentle Shepherd, and the Cherry and the Slae. But though he thus far sacrificed his time to the Muses, he would, if the truth must be spoken, have been much better pleased had the pious or sapient apophthegms, as well as the historical narratives, which these various works contained, been presented to him in the form of simple prose. And he sometimes could not refrain from expressing contempt of the "vain and unprofitable art of poem-making," in which, he said, "the only one who had excelled in his time was Allan Ramsay, the periwig-maker.' But although Edward and he differed toto cœlo, as the Baron would have said, upon this subject, yet they met upon history as on a neutral ground, in which each claimed an interest. The Baron, The Baron ought to have remembered that the joyous Allan literally drew his blood from the house of the noble Earl, whom he terms Dalhousie of an old descent, My stoup, my pride, my ornament. Waverley. 6 indeed, only cumbered his memory with matters of fact; the cold, dry, hard outlines which history delineates. Edward, on the contrary, loved to fill up and round the sketch with the colouring of a warm and vivid imagination, which gives light and life to the actors and speakers in the drama of past ages. Yet with tastes so opposite, they contributed greatly to each other's amusement. Mr. Bradwardine's minute narratives and powerful memory supplied to Waverley fresh subjects of the kind upon which his fancy loved to labour, and opened to him a new mine of incident and of character. And he repaid the pleasure thus communicated, by an earnest attention, valuable to all story-tellers, more especially to the Baron, who felt his habits of self-respect flattered by it; and sometimes also by reciprocal communications, which interested Mr. Bradwardine, as confirming or illustrating his own favourite anecdotes. Besides, Mr. Bradwardine loved to talk of the scenes of his youth, which had been spent in camps and foreign lands, and had many interesting particulars to tell of the generals under whom he had served, and the actions he had witnessed. Both parties returned to Tully-Veolan in great good-humour with each other; Waverley desirous of studying more attentively what he considered as a singular and interesting character, gifted with a memory containing a curious register of ancient and modern anecdotes; and Bradwardine disposed to regard Edward as puer (or rather juvenis) bonæ spei et magnæ indolis, a youth devoid of that petulant volatility, which is impatient of, or vilipends, the conversation and advice of his seniors, from which he predicted great things of his future success and deportment in life. There was no other guest except Mr. Rubrick, whose information and discourse, as a clergyman and a scholar, harmonized very well with that of the Baron and his guest. Shortly after dinner, the Baron, as if to show that his temperance was not entirely theoretical, proposed a visit to Rose's apartment, or, as he termed it, her Troisième Etage. Waverley was accordingly conducted through one or two of those long awkward passages with which ancient architects studied to puzzle the inhabitants of the houses which they planned, at the end of which Mr. Bradwardine began to ascend, by two steps at once, a very steep, |