himself? and when next my ill-fortune (which has thus its
pleasant side) brings him hurrying to me when he would fain
sit down to meat or lie down to rest, will he care to remember
that he takes this trouble for one who is not fool enough to
be ungrateful?

R. L. S.

SKERRYVORE,
BOURNEMOUTH.


NOTE


THE human conscience has fled of late the troublesome
domain of conduct for what I should have supposed to be the
less congenial field of art: there she may now be said to
rage, and with special severity in all that touches dialect;
so that in every novel the letters of the alphabet are
tortured, and the reader wearied, to commemorate shades of
mis-pronunciation. Now spelling is an art of great difficulty
in my eyes, and I am inclined to lean upon the printer, even
in common practice, rather than to venture abroad upon new
quests. And the Scots tongue has an orthography of its own,
lacking neither "authority nor author." Yet the temptation is
great to lend a little guidance to the bewildered Englishman.
Some simple phonetic artifice might defend your verses from
barbarous mishandling, and yet not injure any vested interest.
So it seems at first; but there are rocks ahead. Thus, if I