and gaunt, with a cliff-like brow, self-possessed, and holding his
extraordinary powers of conversation in easy command; clinging to his
northern accent with evident relish; full of lively anecdote, and with
a streaming humour, which floated everything he looked upon. His talk
playfully exalting the familiar objects, put the companion at once
into an acquaintance with his Lars and Lemurs, and it was very
pleasant to learn what was predestined to be a pretty mythology. Few
were the objects and lonely the man, 'not a person to speak to
within sixteen miles except the minister of Dunscore; so that books
inevitably made his topics.

"He had names of his own for all the matters familiar to his
discourse. 'Blackwood's' was the 'sand magazine;' 'Fraser's' nearer
approach to possibility of life was the 'mud magazine;' a piece of
road near by that marked some failed enterprise was 'the grave of the
last sixpence.' When too much praise of any genius annoyed him, he
professed hugely to admire the talent shewn by his pig. He had spent
much time and contrivance in confining the poor beast to one enclosure
in his pen, but pig, by great strokes of judgment, had found out
how to let a board down, and had foiled him. For all that, he still
thought man the most plastic little fellow in the planet, and he liked
Nero's death, 'Qualis artifex pereo!' better than most history. He
worships a man that will manifest any truth to him. At one time he had
inquired and read a good deal about America. Landor's principle was
mere rebellion, and that he feared was the American principle. The
best thing he knew of that country was, that in it a man can have meat
for his labour. He had read in Stewart's book, that when he inquired
in a New York hotel for the Boots, he had been shown across the
street, and had found Mungo in his own house dining on roast turkey.