ESTE.
Bailie Nicol Jarvie.—Lockhart, in his Life of Scott, speaking of the first representation of Rob Roy on the Edinburgh boards, observes—
"The great and unrivalled attraction was the personification of Bailie Jarvie by Charles Mackay, who, being himself a native of Glasgow, entered into the minutest peculiarities of the character with high gusto, and gave the west country dialect in its most racy perfection."
But in the sweetest cup of praise, there is generally one small drop of bitterness. The drop, in honest Mackay's case, is that by calling him a "native of Glasgow," and, therefore, "to the manner born," he is, by implication, deprived of the credit of speaking the "foreign tongue" like a native. So after wearing his laurels for a quarter of a century with this one withered leaf in them, he has plucked it off, and by a formal affidavit sworn before an Edinburgh bailie, the Glasgow bailie has put it on record that he is really by birth "one of the same class whom King Jamie denominated a real Edinburgh Gutter-Bluid." If there is something droll in the notion of such an affidavit, there is, assuredly, something to move our respect in the earnestness and love of truth which led the bailie to make it, and to prove him a good honest man, as we have no doubt, "his father, the deacon, was before him."
EFFESSA.
Camels in Gaul.—The use of camels by the Franks in Gaul is more than once referred to by the chroniclers. In the year 585, the treasures of Mummolus and the friends of Gondovald were carried from Bordeaux to Convennes on camels. The troops of Gontran who were pursuing them—
"invenerunt camelos cum ingenti pondere auri atque argenti, sive equos quos fessos per vias reliquerat"—Greg. Turon., l. vii. c. 35.
And after Brunichild had fallen into the hands of Chlotair, she was, before her death, conducted through the army on a camel:—
"Jubetque eam camelum per omnem exercitum sedentem perducere."—Fredegarius, c. 42.
By what people were camels first brought into Gaul? By the Romans; by the Visigoths; or by the Franks themselves?