_Old Mortality._--It was Mr. Train, supervisor of excise at Dumfries, who
recalled to my recollection the history of Old Mortality, although I myself
had a personal interview with that celebrated wanderer, so far back as
about 1792. He was then engaged in repairing the grave-stones of the
Covenanters who had died while imprisoned in the castle of Dunnottar, to
which many of them were committed prisoners at the period of Argyle's
rising; their place of confinement is still called the Whig's vault. Mr.
Train, however, procured for me far more extensive information concerning
this singular person, whose name was Patterson, than I had been able to
acquire during my short conversation with him. He was (as I may have
somewhere already stated) a native of the parish of Closeburn, in
Dumfries-shire, and it is believed that domestic affliction, as well as
devotional feeling, induced him to commence the wandering mode of life,
which he pursued for a very long period. It is more than twenty years since
Robert Patterson's death, which took place on the high road near Lockerby,
where he was found exhausted and expiring. The white pony, the companion of
his pilgrimage, was standing by the side of its dying master; the whole
furnishing a scene not unfitted for the pencil. These particulars I had
from Mr. Train.

_Jennie Deans_.--An unknown correspondent (a lady) favoured me with the
history of the upright and high principled female, whom, in the "Heart of
Mid Lothian," I have termed Jeanie Deans. The circumstance of her refusing
to save her sister's life by an act of perjury, and undertaking a
pilgrimage to London to obtain her pardon, are both represented as true by
my fair and obliging correspondent; and they led me to consider the
possibility of rendering a fictitious personage interesting by mere dignity
of mind and rectitude of principle, assisted by unpretending good sense and
temper, without any of the beauty, grace, talent, accomplishment, and wit,
to which a heroine of romance is supposed to have a prescriptive right. If