were rid of a few of its incumbrances. I shall write very soon again, and hope in a more amusing way.

Yours ever,

P. M.

P. S.-I forgot to mention the only inhabitants of this Palace, or rather of its precincts, are gentlemen, who find it convenient to take advantage of the sanctuary_still afforded by the royalty of the soil. All around the Palace itself, and its most melancholy garden, there are a variety of little miserable patchwork dwellings, inhabited by a considerable population of gentry, who prefer a residence here to one in a jail. They have abundance of room here within their limits, for the whole of Arthur's Seat is, I believe, considered as part of the royal domain. However, they emerge into the town of a Sunday; and I am told some of them contrive to cut a very fashionable figure in the streets, while the catchpoles, in obedience to the commandment, "rest from working."

LETTER IV.

TO THE SAME.

March 20.

I BELIEVE, that had I given myself up entirely to the direction of my friend W. I should have known, up to this hour, very little about Edinburgh more modern than the Canongate, and perhaps heard as little about any worthies she has produced since the murder of Archbishop Sharpe. He seemed to consider it a matter of course, that morning after morning the whole of my time ought to be spent in examining the structure of those gloomy tenements in wynds and closes, which had, in the old time, been honoured with the residence of the haughty Scottish Barons, or the French ambassadors and generals, their constant visiters. In vain did I assure him, that houses of exactly the same sort were to be seen in abundance in the city of London, and that even I myself had been wearied of counting the fleurs-de-lis carved on every roof and chimney piece of a green grocer's habitation in Mincing-lane. Of such food, in his estima

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tion, there could be no satiety; every land bad its coat of arms, and every quartering called up to his memory the whole history of some unfortunate amour, or still more unfortunate marriage; in so much that, had I taken accurate notes of all his conversation, I am persuaded I might, before this time, have been in a condition to fill more sheets than you might be likely to peruse, with all the mysteries of the causes celebres, or, to speak more plainly, of the Scandalous Chronicle of Scotland. What horrors of barbarism-what scenes of murder, rape, incest-seem to have been the staple commodities of a week-day life, among these ferocious nobles! But, in good truth, I did not come to Scotland to learn such things as these; and although a little sprinkling of them might be very well in its way, I soon found it expedient to give my good friend a slight hint, that I wished he could contrive to afford me something else for the main woof of my meditations..... He begins to understand my drift, and will, I think, learn to accommodate himself to my humour, pas-a-pas.

Notwithstanding all his devotion to the past, indeed, he is far from being an unconcerned or inept observer of more modern things-and I have already said as much. He is quite au fait, I have found, in regard to the history and performances of all the leading characters of the present day in Scotland; but, unless questions are put to him, he seems, with a very few exceptions, to make a point of never alluding to their existence. It would appear as if he was not over anxious to remember that such people are; but when the conversation actually turns on them and their merits, he expresses himself apparently in no uncandid manner concerning the least-and in a tone of genuine admiration concerning the greatest of them. But I despair of making you comprehend the vagaries of such an original.

I wish you had a few minutes' use of the magical mirror, if it were only that you might enjoy one view of him, as he sits wrapped up in his huge blue velvet robe-de-chambre, with a night-cap of the same, dashing execrations by the dozen upon the whigs, the presbyterians, and the Edinburgh reviewers; for his splenetic imagination jumbles them altogether--disjecta membra poetae-in one chaos of abomination. Could one enter into his premises of prejudice, one might perhaps find less difficulty in joining in his sweeping sentences of conelusion. He considers whiggery as having been the ruin of

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the independence of bis country, and as forming, at this moment, the principal engine for degrading the character of his countrymen. I own I am rather at a loss to discover what he means by "whiggery," (for he never deigns to give a definition;) and all I know of the matter is, that it is something for which he equally vituperates Mr. Halkston, of Rathillet, and Mr. Francis Jeffrey-two persons, between whom, I suspect, few other people would find many circumstances of resemblance--and each of whom, I am quite sure, would disdain, with all his might, the idea of being coupled with the other. What you or I might be apt to designate by the same term, would, I am certain, coincide in very few points with any notion he may happen to affix to it. But, perchance, we may be able to get a little more light as we go on. mean time, W- has gone into the country for a few days, upon some of his county politics. I wished to have gone with him, but had caught a vile cold, and did not care for aggravating it. I shall have more leisure to write during his absence; so expect a long letter next time.

In the

P. M.

LETTER V.

TO LADY JOHNES.

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 commnon-place 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 a mere acuteness, however, I think I have seen faces in Yorkshire, at least a match for any thing to be found farther 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.

The best place to study their faces in is the kirk; it is there that the sharpness of their discernment is most vehemently expressed in every line-for they are all critics of the sermon, and even of the prayers; but it is there also that this sharpness of feature is most frequently seen to melt away before emotions of a nobler order, which are no less peculiarly, though far less pertinently theirs. It is to me a very interesting thing to witness the struggle that seems to be perpetually going on between the sarcastic and reverential elements of their disposition---how bitterly they seem to rejoice in their own strength, when they espy, or think they espy, some chink in the armour of their preacher's reasoning; and then with what sudden humility they appear to bow themselves into the . dust, before some single solitary gleam of warm affectionate eloquence the only weapon they have no power to resist. If I mistake not, it is in this mixture of sheer speculative and active hard-headedness, with the capacity of so much lofty enthusiasm concerning things intangible, that we must seek for the true differential quality of the Scottish peasants. I shall have abundant occasion to return to this hereafter.

The gentlemen of this part of the country have assuredly by no means the same advantages over those of the south, which the Scotch peasants have over the English. I know not altogether to what these advantages enjoyed by the lower orders may be owing ;-their better education is of course the

first and most obvious source; their more sterile soil--and, consequently, their less luxurious life, may be others almost as efficient. Above all, the picturesque aspect of their ever various landscapes, cannot fail to exert a powerful influence on the opening mind of their youth. But in some of these things, at least, the peasantry of particular districts in England share abundantly, and I think there are some pretty extensive tracts on the continent where the whole of these circumstances, are very nearly so, are found acting together, without producing any such similarity of effect as might have been expected. I suspect that we must go farther back if we would arrive at any satisfactory solution. Of this too hereafter.

The gentry, however, have no pretensions to a more intelligent exterior than their neighbours of the south. The truth is, that certain indications of worldly quicksightedness, which please on the face, and the air of a peasant, produce quite a different effect when exhibited in the case of a person of superior rank. One rather wishes to see these things kept under in the appearance of a person of education, than suspects their non-existence in the totality of his character. Without wanting their due proportion of the national enthusiasm, the Scottish gentry seem to show much fewer symptoms of it than those below them; and this is a sufficiently natural result of their sense of their own comparative importance. It is a result, notwithstanding, which tends to make any thing but a favourable impression on the mind of a stranger.

High and low, they are, for the most part, a race of tall, well-formed people; active of limb, and powerful of muscle; leaner by far than the English :-(for here a very fat man is stared at, and one of such bulk as is met with at every corner in London, must, it would seem, lay his account with a little quizzing from all his friends on the subject of his obesity.) In their gait and gestures, they have neither the vivacity of the Frenchman, nor the noble gravity of the Spaniard, nor the stable heavy vigour of the Englishman; but a certain grotesque mixture of elasticity and sedateness, which is sufficient to prove their descent from a hardy and warlike set of marauders, the effects of whose subathric existence have not yet been washed out by any great influx of idleness or luxury; and, at the same time, under favour, to remind one with what zeal these progenitors exerted all their energies, in behalf of the most taciturn species of fanaticism that was ever made subservient to the pur