professional formality in his manners. But this, like his three-
tailed wig and black coat, he could slip off on a Saturday
evening, when surrounded by a party of jolly companions, and
disposed for what he called his altitudes. On the present occasion
the revel had lasted since four o'clock, and at length, under the
direction of a venerable compotator, who had shared the sports and
festivity of three generations, the frolicsome company had begun
to practise the ancient and now forgotten pastime of HIGH JINKS.
This game was played in several different ways. Most frequently
the dice were thrown by the company, and those upon whom the lot
fell were obliged to assume and maintain for a time a certain
fictitious character, or to repeat a certain number of fescennine
verses in a particular order. If they departed from the characters
assigned, or if their memory proved treacherous in the repetition,
they incurred forfeits, which were either compounded for by
swallowing an additional bumper or by paying a small sum towards
the reckoning. At this sport the jovial company were closely
engaged when Mannering entered the room.

Mr. Counsellor Pleydell, such as we have described him, was
enthroned as a monarch in an elbow-chair placed on the dining-
table, his scratch wig on one side, his head crowned with a
bottle-slider, his eye leering with an expression betwixt fun and
the effects of wine, while his court around him resounded with
such crambo scraps of verse as these:--

Where is Gerunto now? and what's become of him?
Gerunto's drowned because he could not swim, etc., etc.

Such, O Themis, were anciently the sports of thy Scottish