If Jean Gordon was the prototype of the CHARACTER of Meg Merrilies, I imagine Madge must have sat to the unknown author as the representative of her PERSON."'[Footnote: Blackwood's Magazine, vol.I, p.

56.] How far Blackwood's ingenious correspondent was right, how far mistaken, in his conjecture the reader has been informed.
To pass to a character of a very different description, Dominie Sampson,--the reader may easily suppose that a poor modest humble scholar who has won his way through the classics, yet has fallen to leeward in the voyage of life, is no uncommon personage in a country where a certain portion of learning is easily attained by those who are willing to suffer hunger and thirst in exchange for acquiring Greek and Latin.

But there is a far more exact prototype of the worthy Dominie, upon which is founded the part which he performs in the romance, and which, for certain particular reasons, must be expressed very generally.
Such a preceptor as Mr.Sampson is supposed to have been was actually tutor in the family of a gentleman of considerable property.

The young lads, his pupils, grew up and went out in the world, but the tutor continued to reside in the family, no uncommon circumstance in Scotland in former days, where food and shelter were readily afforded to humble friends and dependents.

The laird's predecessors had been imprudent, he himself was passive and unfortunate.