Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

252 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
command time even for a short note at this moment. My
Magazine has arrived safe, which I fear all have not done,
and the No. is very good—especially Charlemagne—the Rab-
bins—the working of the bill in Scotland, and the abuse of
Colman, which refreshed me. I am afraid you must give me
another month's law— I promise a 'Noctes' for Xmas— let
Wilson keep up the ball tUl then.
I know not what is to be the upshot of all these subscriptions.
The folk here say it is a joke to be rearing monuments in various
places, while, if the Major should die to-morrow, Charles would
inherit Abbotsford at the lest without a shilling to keep it up.
They are for getting Walter to sell them his liferent, and take
the whole back as a gift, with the obligation and entail, house,
land, and library, in terms of his father's designation—and but
for the fear of interfering with our dealings with the creditors
they would ere now have done something publicly. They meet
next Friday, at Bridgewater House, the Marquis of Stafford in
the chair, in the hope of having by that time exact information
as to the extent of the claims of those creditors who object to
the Executors' proposal—and I share the hopes that such information
may then be at their command. Sir Coutts Trotter,
Croker, &c., &c., are sanguine enough, and believe that £50,000,
a fair price for Abbotsford, will be easily raised. I think they
are wild in these views ; but as my brother-in-law has no objec-
tion to their proceedings (which he considers as moved entirely
by the wish to make Abbotsford a lasting monument of his
father's name and taste), and as, however the result may fall
short of their hopes, it must pro tanto relieve him—I have
nothing to do but to wait in patience. If the Edinburgh
people did well, they would put a statue where Castle Street
cuts Princes Street, with the Castle-rock for a background;
or they would make a huge Homeric Cairn on Arthur's Seat
—a land and sea mark—and throw the rest, if anything, of
their funds into the hands of the Bridgewater House Committee.
But whether it is possible for them to do this now,
I don't know. I consider it as disgusting to be putting Scott
on a par with Dugald Stewart, Playfair, and so forth in the
temple line. Meantime this is private to you and the Professor,
until affairs have progressed a little further. As the literary