Lockhart at Abbotsford, which he first saw in 1818, merits a chapter to himself. Sir Humphry Davy and Dr. Wollaston, natural philosophers both, Henry Mackenzie, and William Stewart Rose, translator of Ariosto, to whom Scott dedicated the first canto of 'Marmion,' were at Abbotsford in 1820. Of their doings (unliterary) some account will be found in the preceding pages. The year 1823, when Miss Edgeworth visited Abbotsford, Lockhart believes to be the happiest in Scott's life. Probably no more welcome guest crossed his threshold. Scott and she corresponded occasionally. As a matter of fact, it was Maria's delightful delineations of Irish life and character which inspired him to try his own hand at fiction. Long had he hoped to meet her. At last the novelist of 'Castle Rackrent' and 'The Absentee' was in Scotland, with Abbotsford as her objective. Barely had she and her sister reached Edinburgh before a note came from Scott begging them to venture to his house that very night, late as it was, and just as they were, to hear the Laird of Staffa and some of his clansmen singing Highland boat-songs. 'Ten o'clock struck,' writes Miss Edgeworth, 'as I read this note. We were tired; we were not fit to be seen; but I sent for a hackney, and just as we were, without dressing, we went. As the coach stopped, we saw the hall lighted, and the moment the door opened, heard the joyous sounds of loud singing. Three servants: 'The Miss Edgeworths!' sounded from hall to landing-place; and as I paused for a moment in the ante-room, I heard the first sound of Walter Scott's voice--'The Miss Edgeworths?--come!' Thus the eventful meeting took place, and the friendship of two lives long intimate, so far as correspondence can be said to create intimacy, seems to have grown to its full height, literally at their first hand-clasp. Here is Scott's opinion of the 'little Irish lioness,' as he called her: 'It is scarcely possible to say more of this remarkable person than that she not only completely answered, but exceeded the expectations which I had formed. I am particularly pleased with the naïveté and good-humoured ardour of mind which she unites with such formidable powers of acute observation.' 'Never did I see a brighter day at Abbotsford,' says Lockhart, 'than that on which Miss Edgeworth first arrived there; never can I forget her look and accent when she was received by Scott at his archway, and exclaimed: 'Everything about you is exactly what one ought to have had wit enough to dream!' The visit was a series of fêtes. The weather, on its good behaviour, allowed of an out-of-doors life to the full. One day they picnicked at Cauldshiels. Another, the whole party feasted by the Rhymer's Waterfall in the Glen, and the stone on which Maria sat was ever afterwards called 'Edgeworth's stone.' A third day they drove to the Upper Yarrow, and about sunset the baskets were unpacked beside St. Mary's Chapel of the Lowes, or all that remains of it, high up on the hillside, overlooking the shining waters of the Loch. The young ladies trimmed their hair with heather and blue-bells, and some of the party sang, and Scott recited, until it was time to go home beneath the softest of harvest moons. So passed that halcyon fortnight, and Miss Edgeworth never saw Abbotsford again. But exactly two years later, Mr. Lovell Edgeworth threw open the doors of his classical mansion at Edgeworthstown to the Wizard of the North, and Maria, with her brother and sister, accompanied him to Killarney amid a succession of festive gaiety wherever they halted.