THE Whigs are still lords of public opinion in Edinburgh, to an extent of which, before visiting Scotland, I could scarcely have formed any adequate notion. The Tories have all the political power, and have long had it; but from whatever cause (and I profess myself incapable of assigning any rational one), their power does not appear to have given them command of much sway over the general opinions, even of those that think with them regarding political matters. I confess that I, born and bred a Tory, and accustomed, in my part of the country, to see the principles I reverence supported by at least an equal share of talent, was not a little mortified by certain indications of faint-heartedness and absurd diffidence of themselves among the Scottish Tories, which met my eye ere I had been long in Edinburgh.

I am inclined, upon the whole, to attribute a good deal of this to the influence of the Edinburgh Review. That work was set on foot, and conducted for some years, with an astonishing degree of spirit; and although it never did anything to entitle it to much respect, either from English Scholars, or English Patriots, or English Christians, I can easily see how such a work, written by Scotchmen, and filled with all the national prejudices of Scotchmen, should have exerted a wonderful authority over the intellect of the city in which it was published. Very many of its faults (I mean those of the less serious kind—such as its faults in regard to literature and taste), were all adapted for the meridian of Scotland; and for a time, certainly the whole country was inclined to take a pride in its success. The prestige of the Edinburgh Review has now most undoubtedly vanished even there; but there still remains a shadow of it sufficient to invest its old conductors with a kind of authority over the minds of those, who once were disposed to consider them as infallible judges, de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis; and then the high eminence of some of these gentlemen in their profession of the law, gives them another kind of hold upon the great body of persons following that profession, which is every thing in Edinburgh; because the influence of those who follow it is not neutralized to any considerable extent by the presence of any great aristocracy, or of any great intellectual cultivation out of themselves.

MARCH 14

DEAR DAVID,

IF you knew what a life I have led since I wrote to you, you would certainly feel no difficulty in comprehending the reason of my silence. I thought my days of utter dissipation had been long since over, but I fear your clerical frown would have told me quite the reverse, had you been present almost any evening that has passed since my arrival in Edinburgh. I shall not shock you with any of the particulars; remember that you were once a layman yourself, and try to excuse about the worst you can imagine. What a glorious night we spent at your rooms the Saturday before you took orders!

I continue, notwithstanding all this, to pick up a vast deal of information concerning the present literary, political, and religious condition of this country; and I have already jotted down the heads of several highly valuable letters, in which I design, ere long, to embody the elite of all my acquisitions for your benefit and that of Jack. Perhaps, however, the facts I have gathered may be nothing the worse for undergoing a more leisurely digestion in my own mind, before I think of conveying them to your’s. Depend upon it, that I shall very soon put you in possession of more knowledge, touching Scotland, than was ever revealed to any wondering common-room, by any travelled or travelling tutor, since the days of Dr Johnson. So have patience.

Wastle was never more completely in his element, than when he took me to see Holyrood. You, who delight in honest enthusiasm, whatever be its object, would have been gratified beyond measure, with the high zealous air of dignfied earnestness he assumed, long before we arrived even within sight of the old palace. From his own house, the way thither lies straight down the only great street of the Old Town—a street, by far the most impressive in its character, of any I have ever seen in Britain.

DEAR AUNT,

IF you meet with Mr David Williams of Ystradmeiric, he will tell you that I send him a long letter every other day, filled with histories of dinner-parties, and sketches of the Edinburgh literati; and yet, such is my diligence in my vocation of tourist, I am laying up stores of anecdotes about the northern beau-monde, and making drawings in crayon of the northern beauties, which, I flatter myself, will be enough to amuse your ladyship half the autumn, after I return to you. There is a very old rule, to do like the Romans when you are in Rome; and the only merit I lay claim to on the present occasion, resolves itself into a rigid observance of this sage precept. It is the fashion here for every man to lead two or three different kinds of lives all at once, and I have made shift to do somewhat like my neighbours. In London, a lawyer is a lawyer, and he is nothing more; for going to the play or the House of Commons, now and then, can scarcely be considered as any serious interruption of his professional habits and existence. In London, in like manner, a gay man is nothing but a gay man; for, however he may attempt to disguise the matter, whatever he does out of the world of gayety is intended only to increase his consequence in it. But here I am living in a city, which thrives both by law and by gayeties, and—would you believe it?—a very great share of the practice of both of these mysteries lies in the very same hands. It is this, so far as I can judge, which constitutes what the logicians would call the differential quality of the society of Edinburgh. It is, at this time of the year at least, a kind of melange of London, Bath, and Cheltenham; and I am inclined to think, that, upon due examination, you would find it to be in several particulars a more agreeable place than any of these. In many other particulars, I think any rational person would pronounce it, without difficulty, to be more absurd than any of them.

I PRESUME you have now done as I requested; and if so, I have no doubt you are prepared to listen to what I have to say with a more philosophic temper. The prejudices you had taken up without seeing the book, have, I make no question, made unto themselves wings and passed away—at least the most serious of them,—and you are probably quite as capable of taking a calm and impartial view of the affair as I myself am; for as to my allowing any partiality for Wastle seriously to warp my judgment concerning a literary Journal, in which he sometimes writes—this is, I assure you, a most absurd suspicion of your’s—but transeat cum aliis.

The history of Blackwood's Magazine is very singular in itself, and I think must long continue to form an important epoch in the literary history of Scotland—above all of Edinburgh. The time of its first appearance was happily chosen, just when the decline of that intense and overmastering interest, formerly attracted to the Edinburgh Review, had fairly begun to be not only felt, but acknowledged on every hand; and had it not appeared at that particular time, it is probable that something, not widely different in spirit and purpose, must have ere long come forth; for there had already been formed in Scotland a considerable body of rebels to the long undisputed tyrannical sway of Mr Jeffrey and his friends; and it was necessary that the sentiments of this class should find some vehicle of convenient expression. In short, the diet of levity and sarcastic indifference, which had so long formed the stable nourishment of Scottish intellect, had by repetition lost, to not a few palates, the charming poignancy of its original flavour; and besides, the total failure of all the political prophecies of the Whig wits, and, indeed, the triumphant practical refutation given by the great events of the preceding years to all their enunciations of political principles, had, without doubt, tended very powerfully to throw discredit upon their opinions in regard to other matters.

THE LAIRD seeing that I had recovered a considerable measure of my vigour, insisted upon carrying me with him to make my bow at the levee of the Earl of Morton, who has come down as the King's Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of this year. Detesting, as he does, the Kirk—its Creed—and its practice—to wait in all due form upon the representative of Majesty, at this its great festival, is a thing which he would think it highly indecorous in him, or in the head and representative of any ancient Scottish family, to omit; and, indeed, he is of opinion, that no gentleman of any figure who happens to be in Scotland at the time, should fail to appear in the same manner. He was, besides, more than commonly anxious in his devoirs on this occasion, on account of his veneration for the blood of the old Earls of Douglas, whose true representative he says the Earl of Morton is. My curiosity came powerfully in back of his zeal, and I promised to be in all readiness next morning at the hour he appointed.

In the mean time, His Grace (for such is the style of the Commissioner) had already arrived at the Royal Hotel, where, more avito, the provost and bailies, in all the gallantry of furred cloaks and gold chains, were in readiness to receive him, and present the ancient silver keys, symbolical of the long-vanished gates of the Gude Town of Edinburgh. The style in which the whole of this mock royalty is got up, strikes me as being extremely absurd. In the first place, I hold it a plain matter, that, if the King's majesty is to send a representative to preside over the disputes of the Scottish ministers and elders, this representative should be lodged no-where but in the Palace of Holyrood, where he might hold his mimic state in the same halls and galleries which have been dignified by the feet of the real monarchs of Scotland.

THERE cannot be a greater contrast between any two individuals of eminent acquirements, than there is between Mr Clerk and the gentleman who ranks next to him at the Scottish Bar—Mr Cranstoun. They mutually set off each other to great advantage; they are rivals in nothing. Notwithstanding their total dissimilitude in almost every respect, they are well nigh equally admired by every one. I am much mistaken if anything could furnish a more unequivocal testimony to the talents of them both.

It was my fortune to see Mr Cranstoun for the first time, as he rose to make his reply to a fervid, masculine, homely harangue of my old favourite; and I was never less disposed to receive favourably the claims of a stranger upon my admiration. There was something, however, about the new speaker which would not permit me to refuse him my attention; although, I confess, I could scarcely bring myself to listen to him with much gusto for several minutes. I felt, to use a simile in Mr Clerk's own way, like a person whose eyes have been dazzled with some strong, rich, luxuriant piece of the Dutch or Flemish school, and who cannot taste, in immediate transition, the more pale, calm, correct gracefulness of an Italian Fresco; nevertheless, the eyes become cool as they gaze, and the mind is gradually yielded up to a less stimulant, but in the end a yet more captivating and soothing species of seduction. The pensive and pallid countenance, every delicate line of which seemed to breathe the very spirit of compact thoughtfulness—the mild, contemplative blue eyes, with now and then a flash of irresistible fire in them—the lips so full of precision and tastefulness, not perhaps without a dash of fastidiousness in the compression of their curves—the gentle, easy, but firm and dignified air and attitude—every thing about him had its magic, and the charm was not long in winning me effectually into its circle.

DEAR DAVID,

SINCE I came to this town the weather has in general been of a very unpleasant kind. When you look out from the windows of your apartment, nothing can be finer than the appearance every thing presents. The air is as clear as amber overhead, and the sun shines with so much power, that in these splendid streets, the division of the bright from the shadowy part, reminds one of the richest effects of a Cuyp, or a Sachtleeven. But when you come out, in the full trust inspired by this brilliant serenity of aspect, you find yourself woefully disappointed. The action of the sun and air upon the nerves, is indeed delightfully stimulant; but the whole charm is destroyed before you have time to enjoy it, by some odious squall of wind which cuts you to the teeth—and what is worse, comes loaded with a whole cloud of flying dust and gravel, which is sure to leave its traces behind it, on still more delicate parts of your physiognomy. As for myself, I am often obliged to walk with a handkerchief held before my eyes—and in spite of all my precautions, I have been several times in such a state, that I have absolutely rubbed myself blind. The whole of this arises from the want of watering the streets—a thing which might surely be accomplished without the least difficulty, by a subscription among the inhabitants. If this evil be so severe at present, what must it be in the dog-days?—and yet the people submit to it all quietly in streets, below every one of which, they know water is flowing in pipes, ready to be scattered ad libitum, and at an expense not worthy of being mentioned.—“O! cæcas hominum mentes!”

Yesterday, however, there was an unusual degree of quietness in the state of the atmosphere. A slight shower, which fell in the morning, had laid the most offensive part of the dust, without giving the least appearance of damp to the roads—and I drove to Craigcrook, Mr Jeffrey's villa, molto gustosamente—the expectation of the manifold luxuries I hoped to enjoy there—the prospective delights both of palate and intellect—being heightened and improved by the preliminary gratification I tasted, while the shandrydan rolled along between the refreshed green of the meadows and corn-fields.

I REMEMBER when Kean, in the first flush of his reputation, announced his intention of spending Passion-week in Edinburgh, to have seen a paragraph extracted from a Scots newspaper, in which this circumstance was commented on in a way, that I could scarcely help regarding as a little ridiculous. I cannot recall the exact words; but the northern editor expressed himself somewhat in this style—“We are happy to hear it rumoured, that the celebrated new actor, Mr Kean, proposes making his first appearance on our boards during the approaching holidays. He no doubt feels much anxiety to have the favourable opinion of the London public confirmed and sanctioned by the more fastidious and delicate discrimination, which, as all the sons of Thespis are well aware, belongs to the enlightened and refined, although candid and generous, audience of our metropolis.”

What the measure of Mr Kean's anxiety on this occasion might really have been, I possess no means of learning; but from all that I have seen and heard of the Edinburgh audience, I must confess I do not think, were I myself an actor, their favourable verdict would be exactly the crowning and finishing grace, for which I should wait with any very supernatural timidity of expectation. That they should for a moment dream of themselves as being entitled to claim weight and authority, equal (to say nothing of superior) to what is claimed and received by the great audience of the British capital—this is a thing, at the first glance, so superabounding in absurdity, that I could scarcely have believed it to be actually the case, unless, from innumerable little circumstances and expressions which have fallen under my own observation, I had been compelled to do so. How old this ridiculous prejudice of self-complacency may be, I know not; but I suspect that it, like many other ridiculous prejudices of the place, has been fostered and pampered into its present luxurious growth by the clamorous and triumphant success of the Edinburgh Review.

TILL within these few years, it was the custom for the whole of the Judges of whom the Court of Session is composed, to sit together upon the same bench; and Scottish litigants had thus the advantage of submitting their causes to the joint decision of a much greater number of arbiters than those of England ever had to do with. The enormous increase of litigation, however, which resulted from the extended population, and, above all, from the extended commerce of Scotland, joined, perhaps, with sufficient experience that this multitude of counsellors brought disadvantages, as well as advantages along with it, gave rise to a separation of the Civil Court into two Divisions, each of which now exercises the full powers formerly vested in the whole body; the Lord President of the Session retaining his place as President of the First, and the Lord Justice-Clerk (who acts also, as his title denotes, as head of the Criminal Court,) being President of the Second of these Divisions. From all that I can hear, this arrangement has been productive of the happiest effects; an infinitely greater quantity of business being of course discussed, and no business whatever being less thoroughly, or less satisfactorily discussed, than when each individual case was at once, as the popular phrase ran, “ta’en before the Fifeteen.”

The nature of the causes with which these two courts have been chiefly occupied since I began to attend their sittings, has been such, that although I have had great amusement in hearing the particular sides of many questions set forth to the best advantage, by the ingenuity of the particular pleaders, there has been much less to amuse me, a stranger to the technicalities of the Scottish law, in the more concise and more abstruse disquisitions wherein the several Judges have delivered their opinions concerning the legal merits of the arguments employed in my hearing. The external appearance of the Courts, however, is abundantly dignified and impressive; and, without being able to understand most of what was delivered from the Bench, I have heard more than enough to satisfy me that there is no want of talent in the Judges who take the principal direction and conduct of the business brought before them.

DEAR WILLIAMS,

THE life I have led here has been such a strange mixture of all sorts of occupations, that were I to send you a literal diary of my transactions, I believe you would not fail to discover abundant room for doubting the authenticity of the M.S. I shall therefore reserve the full and entire history of this part of my existence, till I may have opportunity of communicating it to you viva voce over a bottle of Binn D, and proceed in the meantime, as I have been doing, to give you little glimpses and fragments of it, exactly in the order that pleases to suggest itself.

In Smollett's time, according to the inimitable and unquestionable authority of our cousin, Matthew Bramble, no stranger could sleep more than a single night in Edinburgh, with the preservation of any thing like an effectual incognito. In those days, as I have already told you, the people all inhabited in the Old Town of Edinburgh—packed together, family above family, for aught I know clan above clan, in little more than one street, the houses of which may, upon an average, be some dozen stories in height. The aerial elevation, at which an immense proportion of these people had fixed their abodes, rendered it a matter of no trifling moment to ascend to them; and a person in the least degree affected with asthma, might as soon have thought of mounting the Jungfrau, as of paying regular devoirs to any of the fair cynosures of these ὑπερτατα δωματα. The difficulty of access, which thus prevented many from undertaking any ascents of the kind, was sufficient to prevent all those who did undertake them, from entering rashly on their pilgrimages. No man thought of mounting one of those gigantic staircases, without previously ascertaining that the object of his intended visit was at home—unless it might be some Hannibal fresh from the Highlands, and accustomed, from his youth upwards, to dance all his minuets on Argyle's bowling-green.

An imaginative leap is required for a modern reader to appreciate what engravings meant for a reader in the early nineteenth century, before the widespread creation of the great institutional art galleries of Britain's capital and provincial cities enabled access to original paintings and before the internet and other media bombarded each one of us with a plethora of photographic images. The young Charlotte Brontë, for example, struck her school-fellows as knowing a good deal about celebrated pictures and painters, and by the age of thirteen had already drawn up a list of painters whose work she wished to see, but her information came mostly from printed descriptions and from woodcuts or engravings. Whenever ‘an opportunity offered of examining a picture or cut of any kind, she went over it piecemeal, with her eyes close to the paper’, and she and her sisters ‘would take and analyse any print or drawing which came in their way, and find out how much thought had gone to its composition, what ideas it was intended to suggest, and what it did suggest’. A similar dependence on prints as an initial source of information on paintings is evident in various passages of Lockhart's Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk. After seeing William Allan's Two Tartar Robbers dividing their Spoil, Dr Peter Morris learns that James Stewart (1791-1863, ODNB) is preparing an engraving of the picture and orders a copy for his home of Pensharpe-Hall, both as a souvenir for himself and as an opportunity for his correspondent Rev. David Williams (who has not seen the original) to judge for himself of the composition (p. 306). It must also have been common for someone viewing a wellknown painting for the first time to have had its outline previously fixed upon his or her mind by a more easily accessible engraving. Morris, in stating to his correspondent that at Hamilton Palace he has seen Rubens's Daniel in the Lions’ Den, adds that he need not say anything about it ‘as you are quite familiar with the prints’ (p. 519).

DEAR AUNT,

YOU ask me to speak more particularly concerning the external aspect and manners of the people among whom I am sojourning. I wish it were as easy for me to satisfy your curiosity on some other points mentioned in your last letter, as on this.

The Scots are certainly rather a hard-favoured race than otherwise; but I think their looks are very far from meriting the sort of commonplace sarcasms their southern neighbours are used to treat them with. Indeed, no one who has seen a Scots regiment, as I should suppose you must have done, can possibly be of opinion that they are at all an ugly nation; although it is very likely he may be inclined to prefer the general appearance of some other nation or nations to theirs. For my part, I am not without suspicion, that a little longer residence among them might teach me to become an absolute admirer of their physiognomies; at least, I am sensible, that the slight repugnance I felt for them at first, has already very considerably given way.

What the Scottish physiognomists are used to talk of, with the highest satisfaction, is the air of superior intelligence stamped on the faces of their countrymen of the lower orders of society; and indeed there is no question, a Scottish peasant, with his long dry visage, his sharp prominent cheekbones, his grey twinkling eyes, and peaked chin, would seem a very Argus, if set up close beside the sleek and ponderous chubbiness of a Gloucestershire farmer—to say nothing of the smarter and ruddier oiliness of some of our own country folks. As to the matter of mere acuteness, however, I think I have seen faces in Yorkshire, at least a match for any thing to be found further to the north. But the mere shrewdness of the Scotch peasant's face, is only one part of its expression; it has other things, I should imagine, even more peculiarly characteristic.

DEAR DAVID,

YOU must attribute my silence during the last eight days entirely to the kindness and hospitality of the good folks of Glasgow, who have really gained more upon me than I could have conceived possible in so short a space. Their attention has not been confined to giving me good dinners and suppers alone; they have exerted themselves in inventing a thousand devices to amuse me during the mornings also; and, in a word, nothing has been omitted that might tempt me to prolong my stay among them.—In truth, I have prolonged it much beyond what I had at all calculated upon;—indeed, much beyond what I could well afford, considering how the season is advanced, and how much I have yet before me ere I can bring my tour to its conclusion. However, I shall probably get on with less interruption, after I have fairly entered the Highlands, which, God willing, shall now be very soon, for I have arranged every thing for going by the steam-boat on Thursday to the Isle of Bute, from which I shall proceed in the same way, next morning, as far as Inverary, to which place I have just sent forward the shandrydan, under the sure guidance of your old friend, the trusty John Evans.

I have made good use of the shandrydan, however, in my own person, during the days I have lingered in this charming neighbourhood. In company with one or other of my Glasgow friends, I have visited almost every scene at all interesting, either from its natural beauty, or from the historical recollections connected with it, throughout this part of the country. I have seen not a few fine old castles, and several fields of battle. I have examined the town of Paisley, where some very curious manufactures are carried on in a style of elegance and ingenuity elsewhere totally unrivalled; and where, what is still more to my taste, there are some very fine remains of the old Abbey, the wealth of which was transferred at the time of the Reformation to the family of the Abbot Lord Claud Hamilton, son to the Duke of Chatelherault, whose descendant, the Marquis of Abercorn, now claims that old French title, as being the male representative of the House of Hamilton.

DEAR DAVID,

I BELIEVE I have already hinted to you, that the students in this University are very fond of Debating Societies, and, indeed, the nature of their favourite studies might prepare one abundantly to find it so. They inhale the very atmosphere of doubt, and it is in the course of nature that they should exhale the very breath of disputation. They are always either actually struggling, vi et armis, to get over some quagmire or another, or, after establishing themselves once more on what they conceive to be a portion of the Terra Firma, falling out among themselves, which of the troop had picked his way along the neatest set of stepping-stones, or made his leap from the firmest knot of rushes. Before they have settled this mighty quarrel, it is possible they may begin to feel the ground giving way beneath their feet, and are all equally reduced once again to hop, stride, and scramble, as they best may for themselves.

The first of the institutions, however, which I visited, is supposed to be frequented by persons who have already somewhat allayed their early fervour for disputation, by two or three years’ attendance upon Debating Societies, of an inferior and of a far more ephemeral character. While he attends the prælections of the Professor of Logic, the student aspires to distinguish himself in a club, constituted chiefly or entirely of members of that class. The students of Ethics and of Physics are, in like manner, provided with separate rooms, in which they canvass at night the doctrines they have heard promulgated in the lecture of the morning. It is not till all this apprenticeship of discipline has been regularly gone through, that the juvenile philosopher ventures to draw up a petition, addressed to the president and members of the Speculative Society of Edinburgh, which humbly sheweth forth, that he would fain be permitted to give to his polemical and oratorial faculties the last finish of sharpness and elegance under the high auspices of their venerable body.

OMAN’S

AFTER passing the town of Dalkeith, and all along the skirts of the same lovely tract of scenery on the Esk, which I have already described to you, the road to Abbotsford leads for several miles across a bare and sterile district, where the progress of cultivation has not yet been able to change much of the general aspect of the country. There are, however, here and there some beautiful little valleys cutting the desert—in one of which, by the side of a small mountain stream, whose banks are clothed everywhere with a most picturesque abundance of blooming furze, the old Castle of Borthwick is seen projecting its venerable Keep, unbroken apparently, and almost undecayed, over the few oaks which still seem to linger like so many frail faithful vassals around the relics of its grandeur. When I passed by this fine ruin, the air was calm and the sky unclouded, and the shadow of the square massy pile lay in all its clear breadth upon the blue stream below; but Turner has caught or created perhaps still more poetical accompaniments, and you may see it to at least as much advantage as I did, in his magnificent delineation.

Shortly after this the view becomes more contracted, and the road winds for some miles between the hills—while, upon the right, you have close by your side a modest little rivulet, increasing, however, every moment in breadth and boldness. This is the infant Gala Water—so celebrated in the pastoral poetry of Scotland—flowing on to mingle its tributary stream with the more celebrated Tweed. As you approach, with it, the great valley of that delightful river, the hills become more and more beautiful in their outlines, and where they dip into the narrow plain, their lower slopes are diversified with fine groupes of natural wood—hazel—ash—and birch, with here and there some drooping, mouldering oaks and pines, the scanty relics of that once mighty Forest, from which the whole district still takes its name.

I REGARD, then, the academical institutions of England and Scotland, as things specifically distinct, both in their structure and in their effects. The Universities, here, educate, in proportion to the size and wealth of the two countries, twenty times a larger number than ours in England educate. They educate these persons in a very different way, and for totally different purposes—in reality at least, if not in profession. They diffuse over every part of the kingdom, and over many parts of the neighbouring kingdoms, a mighty population of men, who have received a kind and measure of education which fits them for taking a keen and active management in the affairs of ordinary life. But they seldom send forth men who are so thoroughly accomplished in any one branch of learning, as to be likely to possess, through that alone, the means of attaining to eminence; and, what is worse, the course of the studies which have been pursued under their direction, has been so irregular and multifarious, that it is a great chance whether any one branch of occupation may have made such a powerful and commanding impression on the imagination of the student, as might induce him afterwards to perfect and complete for himself what the University can only be said to have begun.

In England, the object of the Universities is not, at present, at all of this kind. In order to prepare men for discharging the duties of ordinary life, or even for discharging the duties of professions requiring more education than is quite common in any country, it is not thought necessary that the University should ever be resorted to. Those great and venerable institutions have both existed from the very commencement of the English monarchy, and have been gradually strengthened and enriched into their present condition, by the piety and the munificence of many successive generations of kings and nobles. They are frequented by those only, who may be called upon at some future period to discharge the most sacred and most elevated duties of English citizenship; and the magnificence of the establishments themselves carries down a portion of its spirit into the humblest individual who connects himself with them.

MY DEAR DAVID WILLIAMS,

I TAKE no offence whatever with anything you have said, nor do I think it at all likely that I shall ever take any serious offence from anything you can say. The truth is, that you are looking upon all these matters in far too serious a point of view. I care nothing about this book, of which you have taken up so evil a report; but I insist upon it, that you spend one or two evenings in looking over the copy I send you, before you give me any more of your solemn advices and expostulations. When I have given you time to do this, I shall write to you at greater length, and tell you my own mind all about the matter.

Ever your’s,

P. M.

DEAR AUNT,

HOWEVER composed and arranged, the routs and balls of this place are, during their season, piled upon each other with quite as much bustle and pomp as those even of London. Every night, some half a dozen ladies are at home, and every thing that is in the wheel of fashion, is carried round, and thrown out in due course at the door of each of them. There is at least one regular ball every evening, and besides this, half of the routs are in their waning hours transformed into carpet-dances, wherein quadrilles are performed in a very penseroso method to the music of the piano-forte. Upon the whole, however, I am inclined to be of opinion, that even those who most assiduously frequent these miscellaneous assemblages are soon sickened, if they durst but confess the truth, of the eternal repetition of the same identical crowd displaying its noise and pressure under so many different roofs. Far be it from me to suspect, that there are not some faces, of which no eye can grow weary; but, in spite of all their loveliness, I am certainly of opinion, that the impression made by the belles of Edinburgh would be more powerful, were it less frequently reiterated. Among the hundred young ladies, whose faces are exhibited in these parties, a very small proportion, of course, can have any claims to that higher kind of beauty, which, like the beauty of painting or sculpture, must be gazed on for months or years before the whole of its charm is understood and felt as it ought to be. To see every evening, for months in succession, the same merely pretty, or merely pleasing faces, is at the best a fatiguing business. One must soon become as familiar with the contour of every cheek, and the sweep of every ringlet, as one is with the beauties or defects of one's own near relatives. And if it be true, that defects in this way come to be less disagreeable, it is no less true, per contra, that beauties come to have less of the natural power of their fascination.