LETTER II.

TO THE SAME.

Oman's, March 6.

DEAR DAVID,

but

Do you recollect W, of Trinity? I suspect not; you have heard of him a thousand times. And yet you may have met him at my rooms, or North's; for I think be determined, after you began to reside. At all events, you remember to have heard me describe his strange eccentric character his dissolute behaviour during the first years of his residence-bis extravagant zeal of study afterwards-last of all, the absurdity of his sudden elopement, without a degree, after having astonished the examining masters by the splendid commencement of his examination. The man is half-mad in some things; and that is the key of the whole mystery. W-- and I were great friends during the first terms I spent at Jesus. He had gone to school at Harrow with my brother Samuel, and called on me the very day I entered. What a life was ours in that thoughtless prime of our days! We spent all the mornings after lecture in utter loungingeating ice at Jubb's-flirting with Miss Butler-bathing in the Charwell, and so forth. And then, after dinner, we used to have our fruit and wine carried into the garden, (I mean at Trinity,) and there we sat, three or four of us, sipping away for a couple of hours, under the dark refreshing shade of those old beechen bowers. Evensong was no sooner over, than we would down to the Isis, and man one, or sometimes two, of Mother Hall's boats, and so run races against each other, or some of our friends, to Iffley or Sandford. lots of bread and butter we used to devour at tea, and what delight we felt in rowing back in the cool misty eveningsometimes the moon up long ere we reached Christ Church meadows again. A light supper-cheese-and-bread and lettuces--and a joyous bowl of Bishop-these were the regular conclusion. I would give half I am worth to live one week of it over again. At that time, W- and I, Tom Vere, (of Corpus,) and one or two more, were never separate above three or four hours in the day.

What

I was on my way to deliver a letter of introduction to a

young barrister of this place, when, in turning the corner of a street, my old friend, Will W- passed close at my elbow. I knew him in a moment, although he is greatly changed, and called after him. He turned round with a fierce air, as if loth to be disturbed, (for he was evidently up to the chin in meditation ;) but, on recognizing his ancient acquaintance, nothing could be more hearty than the kindness of his countenance. After a few hurried interrogations on both sides, diversified by scarcely any responses on either, I took his arm and began to explain to him the purposes of my visit to a city in which he had so little expectation of seeing me. He accompanied me immediately to the Calton Hill, of which I spoke in my last, and where, as he assured me, he spends at least one hour every day when in Edinburgh. On coming down he carried me to the Hotel where I now am; and, having seen my baggage and horses fairly established, and walked a good deal about the town, we proceeded to his house, where I remained for the rest of the day. I assure you this rencounter has afforded me the highest pleasure, and I doubt not it will be of infinite use to me, moreover for Wis, perhaps, of all men, the very person I should have selected to act as my cicerone in Scotland. Indeed, I wonder at myself for not having made more accurate inquiries about him before I set out; but I had somehow got a confused idea in my head that he was resident in France or Germany, and really had never thought of him in relation to my own schemes of visiting his country. He has already introduced me to several very pleasant fellows here. But before I describe his companions, I must endeavour to give you some little notion of himself.

After leaving Oxford under the strange circumstances you have often heard me speak of, W-proceeded to the North, where he spent several years in severe study, not a whit discouraged in his views, or shaken from his attachments, by the singular catastrophe to which the constitutional and irresistible panic of a moment had exposed him. He changed, however, but indeed it was scarcely possible for him to do otherwise, the course and tenor of his usual pursuits; passing for a time from the classics, with the greater part of whom he had formed a pretty accurate acquaintance, and flinging himself over head and ears into the very heart of Gothic antiquities, and the history, poetry, and romance, of the middle ages.

These he has quitted by fits and starts, and spent the intervals of their neglect in making himself far better skilled than is common in the modern literature of foreign countries, as well as of England; but ever since, and up to this moment, they form the staple of his occupation-the daily bread of his mind. He lives almost continually in the days gone by, and feels himself, as he says, almost a stranger among matters which might be supposed to be nearer to him. And yet he is any thing but a stranger to the world he actually lives in; although indeed he does perhaps regard not a few both of its men and its things, with somewhat of the coldness of an unconcerned visiter. In short, for there is no need to disguise the fact to you, he has nursed himself into such a fervent veneration for the thoughts and feelings of the more ancient times of his country and of ours, (for as to that matter he is no bigot,) that he cannot witness, without a deep mixture of bile, the adoration paid by those around him to thoughts, feelings, and persons, for whom he entertains, if not absolute, at the least no inconsiderable comparative contempt. I have said that he is not a bigot, in regard to any old ideas of difference between his own country and ours. This I attribute in a great measure, certainly, to the course of study he has so devoutly pursued, and which could not have failed, in making him acquainted with the ancient condition of both countries, to reveal to him far more points of agreement than disagreement between them. But a part of his liberality must also, I should think, be ascribed to the influence of his education in England, more particularly in Oxford; his long residence in that noble city having filled the finest part of his mind with reverent ideas concerning both the old and the present grandeur of England, such as can never be eradicated, nor even weakened, by any after experience of his life. Such, I suspect, from his conversation, to be the truth of the case; and yet it is only from odd hints and suggestions, that I have made shift to gather so much, for of all men living, he is the least chargeable with the sin of dissertation, and I never heard him in my life give more than one sentence to the expression of any opinion he entertains.

Having now succeeded to the family estate, which is a very ancient and tolerably productive one, W-feels himself perfectly at liberty to pursue whatever mode of life is most

agreeable to his fancy. He has travelled a good deal on the continent of Europe, and even penetrated into Asia Minor and Egypt, as far up as the Pyramids. These journeys, however, could only have been undertaken for the purpose of gratifying some very ardent curiosity, in regard to a few particular points connected with his former devotedness to classical learning; and he now declares, that unless he should be tempted to visit Spain for the sake of her cathedrals, he will never again leave the white cliffs behind him. He makes an annual or biennial trip to London; but, with this exception, he is always to be found either at his old castle in Berwickshire, or here in Edinburgh, where he has a very snug house, although by no means in a fashionable part of the town. From a feeling of respect for his ancestors, he refuses to quit the old family residence, which is no other than a lodging up five pair of stairs, in one of those huge aerial edifices of the Old Town-edifices which sometimes contain beneath a single roof a population, layer above layer, household above household, more numerous than that of many a street in many a city south of the "ideal line." Here W still sits in the same enormously stuffed and prodigiously backed elbow-chair, and still reposes beneath the same antediluvian testers which served his grandfather, his great grandfather, and all his generations back, for aught I know, to the days of Queen Mary; it being on many occasions his most chosen boast, that the degradation which affects, in other houses, the blood of the race, has touched in his house nothing but their furniture, and has not totally destroyed even that.

W ushered me into this remarkable habitation of his, not only without the least symptom of shame for its apparent obscurity, and the equally apparent filth of its approach, but with a certain air of proud and haughty satisfaction, as if he would have been ashamed to have conducted me to one of the newer, more commodious, and more elegant houses we had seen in the New Town. "The times are changed," says he, "since my grandfather, the Lord of Session, used to see all the ladies of quality in Edinburgh in this old-fashioned habitaculum. I desire to see none of them here now. I have a tailor for my neighbour immediately below me-a cobler-a tallow chandler-a dancingmaster--a grocer-and a cowfeeder, are all between me and

the street; and above, God knows what store of washerwomen-French teachers--auctioneers-midwives-seamstresses--and students of divinity, are between me and the chimney-top. But no matter. I have some claret, which is not too old to be tasteable; and I shall make an endeavour to give you, at least, as good commons as you were used to at the Bachelor's table of Trinity."

I had no reason to complain of his fare, although I confess, when the covers were first removed, I was not without some apprehensions, that it might prove as Methuselamitish as his dwelling. Whether that might, or might not be, the provender was excellent. It consisted, primo, of broth made from a sheep's head, with a copious infusion of parsley, and other condiments, which I found more than palatable, especially after, at my host's request, I added a spoonful or two of Burgess to it.

Secundo, came the aforementioned sheep's head in propria persona-the hair having been taken off, not by the knife, but by the hot-iron, and the skin retaining from this operation, not only an inky hue, which would astound an Exmoorian, but a delicious, oily, fragrant gusto, worthy of being transferred, me judice, to the memorandum-book of Beauvilliers himself. These being removed, then came a leg of roasted mutton, five years old at the least, from the Castlemains of W- A dish of pancakes, very finely powdered with sugar, brought up the rear of the dinner, every five minutes of which we washed down with a glass of rare sherry, as ancient as Falstaff, or Johannisberg, which my friend had imported himself from the very cellars of Metternich. A ewe-milk cheese, which I found as good as any thing which ever came from the Pays de Vaud, and a glass of ale, such as I could not beat even in Cardigan, formed a sort of appendage to the feast; and just before the cloth was drawn, I tasted, for the first time, a liqueur, which I prefer vastly to all the Marasquin--ay, to all the Curacoa in existence-the genuine Usquebaugh of Lochaber. Our Chateau-la-fitte and olives went down after this repast like very nectar and ambrosia. But you will say, I am a gourmand even upon paper.

To conclude with a portrait of my entertainer.-William W is a pale-faced, grave-looking thin gentleman, of forty years old, or thereby. He has a stoop in his gait, and walks