The Waverley novels, by Sir Walter Scott, complete in 12 vol., printed from the latest English ed., embracing the author's last corrections, prefaces & notes.

OLD MORTALITY. 419
They were at this moment at an arched gateway, battlemented and flanked
with turrets, one whereof was totally ruinous, excepting the lower story,
which served as a cow-house to the peasant whose family inhabited the
turret that remained entire. The gate had been broken down by Monk'l s
soldiers during the civil war, and had never been replaced, therefore presented no obstacle to Bothwell and his party. The avenue, very steep and
narrow, and causewayed with large round stones, ascended the side of the
precipitous bank in an oblique and zigzag course, now showing now hiding
a view of the Tower and its exterior bulwarks, which seemed to rise almost
perpendicularly above their heads. The fragments of Gothic defences
which it exhibited were upon such a scale of strength, as induced Bothwell
to exclaim, "It's well this place is in honest ahd loyal hands. Egad, if.the
enemy had it, a dozen of old whigamore wives with their distaffs might
keep it against a troop of dragoons, at least if they had half the spunk of
the old girl we left at Milnwood. Upon my life," he continued, as they
came in front of the large double tower and its surrounding defences and
flankers, "it' is a superb place, founded, says the worn inscription over the
gate-unless the remnant of my Latin has given me the slip-by Sir Ralph
de Bellenden in 1350- a respectable antiquity. I must greet the old lady
with due honour, though it should put me to the lab1our of recalling some
of the compliments that I used to dabble in when I was wont to keep that
sort of company."
As he thus communed with himself, the butler, who had reconnoitred the
soldiers from an arrow-slit in the wall, announced to his lady, that a commanded party of dragoons, or, as he thought, Life-Guardsmen, waited at
the gate with a prisoner under their charge.
"I am certain," said Gudyill, "and positive, that the sixth man is a
prisoner; for his horse is led, and the two dragoons that are before have
their carbines out of their budgets, and rested upon their thighs. It was
aye the way we guarded prisoners in the days of the great Marquis."
"King's soldiers?" said the lady; "probably in want of refreshment.
Go, Gudyill, make them welcome, and let them be accommodated with
what provision and forage the Tower can afford. And stay, tell my gentlewoman to bring my black scarf and manteau. I will go down myself to
receive them; one cannot show the King's Life-Guards too much respect in
times when they are doing so much for royal authority. And d'ye hear,
Gudyill, let Jenny Dennison slip on her pearlings to walk before my niece
and me, and the three women to walk behind; and bid my niece attend me
instantly."
Fully accoutred, and attended according to her directions, Lady Margaret
now sailed out into the court-yard of her tower with great courtesy and
dignity. Sergeant Bothwell saluted the grave and reverend lady of the
manor with an assurance which had something of the light and careless
address of the dissipated men of fashion in Charles the Second's time, and
of Edinburgh, a large horse of.this kind was placed, on which now and then, in the more ancient times, a
veteran might be seen mounted, with a firelock tied to each foot, atoning for some small offence.
There is a singular work, entitled Memoirs of Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester (son of Queen
Anne), from his birth to his ninth year, in which Jenkln Lewis, an honest Welchman in attendance on the
royal infant's person, is pleased to record that his Royal Highness laughed, cried, crow'd, and said Gig and
Dy, very like a babe of plebeian descent. He had also a premature taste for the discipline as well as the
show of war, and had a corps of twenty-two boys, arrayed with paper caps and wooden swords. For the
maintenance of discipline in this juvenile corps, a wooden horse was established in the Presence-chamber,
and was sometimes employed:in the punishment of offences not strictly military. Hughes, the Duke's
tailor, having made him a suit of clothes which were too tight, was appointed, in an order of the day issued
by the young prince, to be placed on this penal steed.'I'he man of remnants, by dint of supplication and
mediation, escaped from the penance, which was likely to equal the inconveniences of his brother artist's
equestrian trip to Brentford. But an attendant named Weatherly, who had presumed to bring the young
prince.a toy (after he had discarded the use of them,) was actually mounted on the wooden horse without a
saddle, with his face to the tail, while he was plied by four servants of the household with syringes and squirts,
till he had a tholrouglh wetting. "' He was a waggish fellow," says Lewis, "and would not lose anything for the
joke's sake when he was putting his tricks upon others, so lie was obliged to submit cheerfully to what was
inflicted upon him, being at our mercylto play him off well, which we did accordingly." Amid much such
nonsense, Lewis's book shows that this poor child, the heir of the British monarchy, who died when he
was eleven years old, was in truth, of promising parts, and of a good disposition. The volume, which
rarely occurs, is an 8vo, published in 1789, the editor being Dr. Philip Hayes of Oxford.