536 PRÆTERITA-III

some companionship which might lighten the burden of the days to her.

61. I have never yet spoken of the members of my grandmother’s family, who either remained in Galloway,* or were associated with my early days in London. Quite one of the dearest of them at this time, was Mrs. Agnew, born Catherine Tweddale, and named Catherine after her aunt, my father’s mother.¹ She had now for some years been living in widowhood; her little daughter, Joan, only five years old when her father died, having grown up in their pretty old house at Wigtown,† in the simplicity of entirely natural and contented life: and, though again and again under the stress of domestic sorrow, untellable in the depth of the cup which the death-angels filled for the child, yet in such daily happiness as her own bright and loving nature secured in her relations with all those around her; and in the habits of childish play, or education, then common in the rural towns of South Scotland: of which, let me say at once that there was greater refinement in them, and more honourable pride, than probably, at that time, in any other district of Europe;‡ a certain pathetic

* See Præterita, vol. i. § 69 [p. 62].

† Now pulled down and the site taken for the new county buildings. The house as it once stood is seen in the centre of the woodcut at page 6 of Gordon Fraser’s Guide,² with the Stewartry hills in the distance. I have seldom seen a truer rendering of the look of an old Scottish town.

‡ The following couple of pages, from Redgauntlet,³ put in very few words the points of difference between them and the fatally progressive follies and vanities of Edinburgh:-

“‘Come away, Mr. Fairford; the Edinburgh time is later than ours,’ said the Provost.

“‘And come away, young gentleman,’ said the Laird; ‘I remember your father weel, at the Cross, thirty years ago. I reckon you are as late in Edinburgh as at London; four o’clock hours, eh?’

“‘Not quite so degenerate,’ replied Fairford; ‘but certainly many Edinburgh

¹ [See the pedigree, below, p. 603.]

² [Wigtown and Whithorn: Historical and Descriptive Sketches, Stories and Anecdotes (written and published by Gordon Fraser, Wigtown, 1877). In this edition the woodcut is the frontispiece.]

³ [Chapter xi.]

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