mind as I was packing my portmanteau. My
mother offered to help me in this operation;
but success had altered my sentiments with
regard to that antiquated relation so entirely,
that I could not admit her to the privilege of
touching my clothes. The stockings of the
gold medallist had become sacred; the other
habiliments of the painter of "Kippel Wood
with figures, price thirty guineas," disdained
a lower handling than his own, as I locked
the portmanteau, put on the direction, and
said, "Mother, I am going to toon by the
morning train." My mother is Scotch, I am
Scotch, and our pronunciation is of the Scotch
Scotchest.

"Till the toon?" said the old lady; "what
for do you need a train to gang till the
toon?"

The provincial person did not know that
Toon meant London. I snubbed her in a
sharp yet dignified manner, as Michael
Angelo might have snubbed his mother if
she had been ignorant of something about
Rome; and the conversation ended by the
amazed old individual bursting into tears,
and saying: "Oh, Jamie, if this is the way ye
treat yer mither because yer gotten a bit
round thing to hing round yer neck, I wish
ye had never got the prize!"

Astonishing! She had never parted from
me before without kissing me and saying:
"Ah! Jamie, y 'ere no very bonnie, but
y'ere gude, and that's far better." My
heart softened in a moment, I would have
called her back and kissed her a hundred
times, and told her I loved her better than
ever; but she was gone. She had hurried
into my aunt's, three doors down the lane;
and there, family lamentation was held
over my sad and unnatural disposition, and
many wishes expressed that the prize might
turn out to be a mistake, and to have been
intended for somebody else. As if anybody
else could paint anything worthy of a prize!
Ha! ha! I laughed at the idea when it was
reported to me at tea, and hugged the purse
containing, the thirty guineas with closer
pertinacity to my breast. The proof of the painting
is the price of it, I said, while my aunt
sat and gloomed, and my mother looked at
me with tears in her eyes. "He's sae changed,
Ellen," she said to her scowling sister, "ye
wad na ken him for the same laud" (this
is the hideous way in which the northern
barbarity pronounces " lad "), "he was aye a
wee silly wi' his fraits and fancies, either in
love wi' ither folk or thinking ither folk in
love wi' him, but modest, and simple, and the
kindest bairn to his auld mither; and only
look at him noo!"

"'Deed he's no very pleasant to look at
any time," replied Aunty Nell; "for his
squint's distressing, and the up-turn o' his
nose is far frae engaging, and just at present
I decline to look at him ava', for he puffs like
a Hieland piper, and growls like a colley
dog."

The infatuated pair carried on a conversation
on the subject of my character,
my personal appearance, my chances of
success in the great world, the change
come over me since the distribution, all as
if I had been an article of furniture; or
even with less delicacy, for I should be
ashamed to speak so disparagingly (in its
presence) of a chest of drawers as they spoke
of me.

However, I heeded them not. I went
full sail up the river of imagination, and saw
myself president of the Royal Academy;
proposing the prince's health at the annual dinner,
sworn in of the right honourable privy
council, and taking my seat at the board
accordingly. How long they carried on their
libellous discourse: how long I indulged in
an agreeable prospect for the future I cannot
tell; but at last my mother startled me in
the middle of a walk with Lady Edith
Maltravers, when I was in the very act of lifting
her over a stile. I remember her long light
hair got loose, and fell all over my face as I
raised her in my arms; my mother
interrupted me, I say, while I was whispering
some nonsense or other in Lady Edith's ear,
by screaming: "Are ye as ungrateful to ither
folk as to me? Are ye no goin to say fareweel
till the President?"

The thought fell upon my heart like
"light from the left," and I put my
Glengarry bonnet on my head, and walked to the
President's house. The President is a little
stout man who married a printseller's
daughter, and had all his finest pictures
engraved by the cleverest artists. His uncle
also was provost of the town, and his aunt
was wife of the editor of the "Weekly
Connoisseur." His genius therefore was universally
acknowledged, and Sir Erskine Dawbie
threw a new glory upon Scottish Art. He
received me kindly. "What I have admired
about you, Jamie," he said, "is your great
modesty, and your beautiful affection to your
mother. Try to overcome your bashfulness.
It never did anybody any good. Continue to
be kind to the auld woman, and I've no
doubt you'll get on." My modesty! and I
was conscious of what a striking peacock I
had become. My affection to my mother!
and the poor old body was weeping over my
harshness. I felt as if the President had
stung me. The wasp went on; "you have
some drawbacks, Jamie, to contend against.
You 're very awkward in manner, and
sometimes rather repulsive in look. You
are uncommon little, and no very weel
made. Your tongue seems a wee ow'r big
for your mouth, and your accent— you 'll
forgive me for saying so—is perfectly atrocious.
Some of these faults you canne correct, but
others ye can—particularly the language;
and I hope one of your first endeavours, when
ye get to London, will be to learn the English
tongue."

"But the brush has no accent," I said,