Note 108 — DECEMBER.

During Sir Walter's illness in 1818-19 Mr. Skene was with him at Abbotsford, and he records a curious incident regarding Dryburgh which may be given here:—"For nearly two years he had to struggle for his life with that severe illness, which the natural strength of his constitution at length proved sufficient to throw off. With its disappearance, although restored to health, disappeared also much of his former vigour of body, activity, and power of undergoing fatigue, while in personal appearance he had advanced twenty years in the downward course of life; his hair had become bleached to pure white and scanty locks; the fire of his eye quenched; and his step, more uncertain, had lost the vigorous swinging gait with which he was used to proceed; in fact, old age had by many years anticipated its usual progress and marked how severely he had suffered. The complaint, that of gall-stones, was one of extreme bodily suffering. During his severest attack he had been alone at Abbotsford with his daughter Sophia, before her marriage to Mr. Lockhart, and had sent to say that he was desirous I should come to him, which I did, and remained for ten days till the attack had subsided. During its course the extreme violence of the pain end spasmodic contraction of the muscles of the stomach were such that I scarcely expected the powers of endurance could sustain him through the trial, and so much at times was he exhausted by it as to leave us in alarm as to what the result had actually been. One night I shall not soon forget: he had been frequently and severely ill during the day, and having been summoned to his room in the middle of the night, where his daughter was already standing, the picture of deep despair, at his bed-side, the attack seemed intense, and we followed the directions left by the physician to assuage it. At length it seemed to subside, and he fell back exhausted on the pillow, his eyes were closed, and his countenance wan and livid. Apparently with corresponding misgivings, his daughter at one side of the bed and I at the other gazed for some time intently and in silence on his countenance, and then glanced with anxious inquiring looks to each other, till, at length, having placed my finger on his pulse, to ascertain whether it had actually ceased to throb, I shall never forget the sudden beam which again brightened his daughter's countenance, and for a moment dispelled the intense expression of anxiety which had for some time overspread it, when Sir Walter, aware of my feeling his pulse, and the probable purpose, whispered, with a faint voice, but without opening his eyes, 'I am not yet gone.' After some time he revived, and gave us a proof of the mastery of his mind over the sufferings of the body. 'Do you recollect,' he said to me, 'a small round turret near the gate of the Monastery of Aberbrothwick, and placed so as to overhang the street?' Upon answering that I did perfectly, and that a picturesque little morsel it was, he said, 'Well, I was over there when a mob had assembled, excited by some purpose, which I do not recollect, but failing of their original intention, they took umbrage at the little venerable emblem of aristocracy, which still bore its weather-stained head so conspicuously aloft, and, resolving to humble it with the dust, they got a stout hawser from a vessel in the adjoining harbour, which a sailor lad, climbing up, coiled round the body of the little turret, and the rabble seizing the rope by both ends tugged and pulled, and laboured long to strangle and overthrow the poor old turret, but in vain, for it withstood all their endeavours. Now that is exactly the condition of my poor stomach: there is a rope twisted round it, and the malicious devils are straining and tugging at it, and, faith, I could almost think that I sometimes hear them shouting and cheering each other to their task, and when they are at it I always have the little turret and its tormentors before my eyes.' He complained that particular ideas fixed themselves down upon his mind, which he had not the power of shaking off; but this was, in fact, the obvious consequence of the quantity of laudanum which it was necessary for him to swallow to allay the spasms.