Macellum of Pozzuoli

On the 10^th of January [1832], I accompanied him to Pozzouli, and the late Mr. Laing Meason was of the party.  Here we succeeded in getting Sir Walter placed upon  a heap of ruins, where he might see the remains of the Thermae, commonly called the Temple of Serapis.  His observation was, that we might tell him anything, and he would believe at all, for many of his friends, and particularly Mr. Morritt, had frequently tried to drive classical antiquities, as they were called, into his head, but they had always found his “skull too thick”.

From John Gibson Lockhart’s “Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott”, The Temple of Serapis mentioned above is the Macellum of Pozzuoli, in the province of Naples.  It was excavated in the 18^th century, and a statue of Serapis was found there, indicating the site was a Serapeum. 

Mary Russell Mitford

'...Did I, when talking of 'Waverley,' tell you that I had happened a year or two ago to meet with a most curious book—alluded to, though not named, in that -work—entitled, 'Some Passages in the Life of Colonel Gardiner, by Dr. Doddridge?' This Colonel Gardiner is the Colonel G of Waverley,' and this biographical morceau is exactly calculated to form le pendant to the life of Johanna Southcote with which Mr. Toser will probably some day favour the world. The supernatural illumination is precisely the same in both cases, though I cannot find that the worthy colonel ever fancied himself in the family-way, or that he ever made any money of his conversion. Of course he was more fool and she is more knave—if knave can ever be feminine, which, alas! for the sex, I fear it can.


I am still firmly of opinion that Walter Scott had some share in 'Waverley;' and I know not the evidence that should induce me to believe that Dugald Stewart had anything to do with it. He! the triptologist!—as Horace Walpole says. He! the style-monger, whose periods, with their nice balancing and their elaborate finish, always remind me of a worthy personage in blue and silver, yclept, I believe, the Flemish Hercules, whom I have seen balancing a ladder on his finger, with three children on one end and two on the other—he write that half French, half English, half Scotch, half Gaelic, half Latin, half Italian—that hotch-potch of languages—that moveable Babel called 'Waverley!' My dear Sir William, there is not in the whole book one single page of pure and vernacular English; there is not one single period, of which you forget the sense in admiration of the sound...'

Mary Russell Mitford had fairly mixed opinions on Walter Scott's writing.  She refers to it as "dull as the fat weed that grows on Lethe's bank (he never could write ' Guy Mannering ' I am sure—it is morally impossible!)" - with the exception of the Scott's Life of Dryden, which she was reading.

But Scott loomed large in her reckoning, and she was on to something when she suspected in 1814 that he had "something to do with Waverley".  The text above, as well as the quote in the paragraph following, was published in "The Life of Mary Russell Mitford", edited by Alfred Guy L'Estrange.  The first comes from a letter Mitford wrote to Sir William Elkord on December 14, 1814.  Waverley was published in 1814, and Scott's authorship was still not public at that point.

Ms. Mitford's most notable work is "Our Village", which contains sketches of rural life.  Mary Russell Mitford died on January 10, 1855.

The Penny Post

The penny post was introduced in Great Britain on January 10, 1840.  A major change from the previous charging scheme was that any letter posted in Great Britain or Ireland cost the same amount (one penny), regardless of distance.  Sir Rowland Hill receives credit for introducing the new system, as well as the idea of the prepaid postage stamp.

The penny post came into existence well after Walter Scott passed away (1832).  Scott provides this vignette of the role of the post in daily life from "The Antiquary":

Leaving Mr. Oldbuck and his friend to enjoy their hard bargain of fish, we beg leave to transport the reader to the back-parlour of the post-master's house at Fairport, where his wife, he himself being absent, was employed in assorting for delivery the letters which had come by the Edinburgh post. This is very often in country towns the period of the day when gossips find it particularly agreeable to call on the man or woman of letters, in order, from the outside of the epistles, and, if they are not belied, occasionally from the inside also, to amuse themselves with gleaning information, or forming conjectures about the correspondence and affairs of their neighbours. Two females of this description were, at the time we mention, assisting, or impeding, Mrs. Mailsetter in her official duty.