foot was on the step of the chaise, when about to enter it, I was
informed that his lordship had ordered that I should take as much game
as I liked. What makes the steward, Joe Murray, an interesting object to
me, is that the old man has seen the abbey in all its vicissitudes of
greatness and degradation. Once it was full of unbounded hospitality and
splendour, and now it is simply miserable. If this man has feelings--of
which, by the way, he betrays no symptom--he would possibly be miserable
himself. He has seen three hundred of the first people in the county
filling the gallery, and seen five hundred deer disporting themselves in
the beautiful park, now covered with stunted offshoots of felled trees.
Again I say it gave me the heartache to witness all this ruin, and I
regret that my romantic picture has been destroyed by the reality."


Among the friends that welcomed Mr. Murray to Edinburgh was Mr. William
Blackwood, who then, and for a long time after, was closely connected
with him in his business transactions. Blackwood was a native of
Edinburgh; having served his apprenticeship with Messrs. Bell &
Bradfute, booksellers, he was selected by Mundell & Company to take
charge of a branch of their extensive publishing business in Glasgow. He
returned to Edinburgh, and again entered the service of Bell et
Bradfute; but after a time went to London to master the secrets of the
old book trade under the well-known Mr. Cuthill. Returning to Edinburgh,
he set up for himself in 1804, at the age of twenty-eight, at a shop in
South Bridge Street--confining himself, for the most part, to old books.
He was a man of great energy and decision of character, and his early
education enabled him to conduct his correspondence with a remarkable
degree of precision and accuracy. Mr. Murray seems to have done business
with him as far back as June 1807, and was in the habit of calling upon
Blackwood, who was about his own age, whenever he visited Edinburgh. The