and Glenallan House,
ostensibly for the sake of completing two essays, one on the mail-shirt of the
Great Earl, and the other on the left-hand gauntlet of Hell-in-Harness. He
regularly inquires whether Lord Geraldin has commenced the Caledoniad, and
shakes his head at the answers he receives. En attendant, however, he has
completed his notes, which, we believe, will be at the service of any one who
chooses to make them public without risk or expense to THE ANTIQUARY.
 

                                     Notes

1 Sandy Gordon's Itinerarium.
 
2 Ars Topiaria, the art of clipping yew-hedges into fantastic figures. A Latin
poem, entitled Ars Topiaria, contains a curious account of the process.
 
3 This bibliomaniacal anecdote is literally true; and David Wilson, the author
need not tell his brethren of the Roxburghe and Bannatyne Clubs, was a real
personage.
 
4 Of this thrice and four times rare broadside, the author possesses an
exemplar.
 
5 A bonnet-laird signifies a petty proprietor, wearing the dress, along with the
habits of a yeoman.
 
6 It may be worth while to mention that the incident of the supposed Prætorium
actually happened to an antiquary of great learning and acuteness, Sir John
Clerk of Penicuik, one of the Barons of the Scottish Court of Exchequer, and a
parliamentary commissioner for arrangement of the Union between England and
Scotland. As many of his writings show, Sir John was much attached to the study
of Scottish antiquities. He had a small property in Dumfriesshire, near the
Roman station on the hill called Burrenswark. Here he received the distinguished
English antiquarian Roger Gale, and of course conducted him to see this
remarkable spot, where the lords of the world have left such decisive marks of
their martial labours.
An aged shepherd whom they had used as a guide, or who had approached them from
curiosity, listened with mouth agape to the dissertations on foss and vallum,
ports dextra, sinistra, and decumana, which Sir John Clerk delivered ex
cathedra, and his learned visitor listened with the deference to the dignity of
a connoisseur on his own ground. But when the cicerone proceeded to point out a
small hillock near the centre of the enclosure as the Prætorium, Corydon's
patience could hold no longer, and, like Edie Ochiltree, he forgot all
reverence, and broke in with nearly the same words - »Prætorium here, Prætorium
there, I made the bourock mysell with a flaughter-spade.« The effect of this
undeniable evidence on the two lettered sages may be left to the reader's
imagination.
The late excellent and venerable John