"No, no, my dear Pleydell! Here ends the astrologer."

* * * * *




The Heart of Midlothian


John Ruskin coupled "Rob Roy" and "The Heart of Midlothian" as
the best of all the "Waverley Novels." The latter,
constituting the second series in the "Tales of My Landlord,"
was published in 1818, and was composed during a period of
recurrent fits of intense bodily pain. The romance gets its
name from Midlothian, or Middle Lothian, an Edinburgh prison
which in days gone by used to mark the centre of the district
of Lothian, between the Tweed and the Forth, now the County of
Edinburgh. According to Scott himself, the story of the
heroism of Jeannie Deans was founded on fact. Her prototype
was one Helen Walker, the daughter of a small Dumfriesshire
farmer, who in order to get the Duke of Argyle to intercede to
save her sister's life got up a petition and actually walked
to London barefoot to present it to his grace. Helen Walker
died in 1791, and on the tombstone of this unassuming heroine
is an inscription by Scott himself.


_I.--In the Tolbooth_