There are, we are quite sure, countless boxes and
drawers, and pigeon-holes of such things, which want looking over, and
would well repay the trouble.
Nay, we are sure that the proprietors would find themselves much
benefited even if we were to do nothing more than to induce them to look
over their own collections. How much good might we have done (as well as
got, for we do not pretend to speak quite disinterestedly), if we had
had the looking over and methodizing of the chaos in which Mr. Oldbuck
found himself just at the moment, so agonizing to an author, when he
knows that the patience of his victim is oozing away, and fears it will
be quite gone before he can lay his hand on the charm which is to fix
him a hopeless listener:--"So saying, the Antiquary opened a drawer, and
began rummaging among a quantity of miscellaneous papers ancient and
modern. But it was the misfortune of this learned gentleman, as it may
be that of many learned and unlearned, that he frequently experienced on
such occasions, what Harlequin calls "_l'embarras des richesses_"--in
other words, the abundance of his collection often prevented him from
finding the article he sought for." We need not add that this
unsuccessful search for Professor Mac Cribb's epistle, and the scroll of
the Antiquary's answer, was the unfortunate turning-point on which the
very existence of the documents depended, and that from that day to this
nobody has seen them, or known where to look for them.
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