SIR WALTER SCOTT, the fourth child of Walter Scott, writer to the Signet of Edinburgh, was born in that city on the 15th of August 1771. He came of the Border family, the Scotts of Harden, an offshoot from the house of Beccleuch. His childhood was passed for the most part at Sandyknowe, the farm of his Father in Roxburghshire. In 1783, he went to the University.