his friend's extraordinary enthusiasm. While smile at the sentiment,—knowing, of course, so much better ourselves,—we feel an envious admiration of the happy man who uttered it.
There is a curious little incident which Mrs. Lockhart used to relate, in after years, as a proof of her father's emotional temperament, and of the reverence with which he regarded all that savored of past or present greatness. When the long-concealed Scottish regalia were finally brought to light, and exhibited to the public of Edinburgh, Scott, who had previously been one of the committee chosen to unlock the chest, took his daughter to see the royal jewels. She was then a girl of fifteen, and her nerves had been so wrought upon by all that she had heard on the subject that, when the lid was opened, she felt herself growing faint, and withdrew a little from the crowd. A light-minded young commissioner, to whom the occasion suggested no solemnity, took up the crown, and made a gesture as if to place it on the head of a lady standing near, when Sophia Scott heard her father exclaim passionately, in a voice "something between anger
