poses of ghostly ambition. When a man visits France, whether he be a believer or a despiser of the doctrine of the Spurzheims, he must look long around him before he can find any face which he could imagine to be the property of one lineally sprung from the loins of the Bayards and the Duguesclins, or, if you will, of the Harlays, and the Du Thous. But here the deterioration of the species, if such there be, has scarcely begun to tell upon their physiognomies; and you meet, at every step, persons who have that about them which would prevent you from being at all astonished, if you should be told immediately afterwards, that they could trace themselves, without difficulty, to the Burleighs and the Claverhouses,---I had almost said, the Bell-the-Cats, and the Kirkpatricks.

I have not, as yet, seen a great deal of the women. Those, even of the peasantry, seem, when young, to be comely and well-complexioned; but it is a great mistake to suppose that they are fairer than with us. And yet the testimony of travellers cannot be entirely despised; and if their report is in any degree a correct one, light hair, and light eyes, were almost universal at no very remote period. This is a circumstance that has often appeared to me to be very inadequately accounted for; I mean the great and remarkable change that has taken place in the complexions not only of the Scotch, but of the English, and indeed of all the Gothic nations of Europe. When the Romans first became acquainted with the Germans and the Britons, there can be no question that both the gentlemen and the ladies of those nations had yellow locks and blue eyes; and you have heard, no doubt, that the Roman belles, stimulated, it is to be suspected, by the stories of their campaigning husbands and lovers, endeavoured, by a thousand tricks of the toilette, to muster charms as nearly as they could in the same taste. You well know, that the Messalinas and Poppaas used to cut off the finest black curls in the world, to make room for false tetes manufactured from the hair of the poor girls of the Sicambri and the Batavi, while others strove to produce the same sort of effect by means of hair-powder made of gold-dust, and washes, of more cunning chemistry than I would undertake to describe. Even in far later times, so late as Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, Erasmus and Paul Henztner represent the ladies of England as being, with very few exceptions, blondes; and such, if voyagers of less illustrious reputation "may be in aught believed,"

not much above a hundred years ago, were the far greater portion of the beaux and belles of Scotland.

"Sandy-haired" is still one of the standing epithets applied to the ideal Scot, by all inexperienced persons, who introduce any description of him into novels or satires-witness Churchill, and a thousand of less note; and I confess, that I was myself prepared to find the case much more as they have represented it, than I really have done. By looking around me at home, and remembering what the old writers had said of ourselves, I might have learned to be more suspicious of their accuracy; but the truth is, I had never taken the pains to think much about the matter. In fact, they are now as far from being a light-haired people as we are. I amused myself (God forgive me) with counting the number of fair heads last Sunday in a very crowded church, and, I assure you, they did not amount to one in fifty. There are far more people here with locks of all but Israelitish blackness, than of any shade that could with propriety be called either white, yellow, or red; and the general hues are exactly the same variations of brown, between Bistre and burnt Sienna, which we are accustomed to in the south.

I was at a large party yesterday evening-the first sight I have had of the gay world here--and had an opportunity of viewing, at my leisure, all the fashionable belles of the town. You always accuse me of being too undistinguishing an admirer; but I am sure, even you would have allowed that there was no want of beauty. It is many years since I have been familiar with the beau monde of London, but I do not believe I ever in any one evening there, saw a greater number of fine women and of very different kinds too. I had heard before I wet that I should see Miss *****, the same celebrated star of whom you have so often heard Sir Thomas speak, and who, indeed, cannot show herself any where, even in this unromantic age, without leaving an uneffaceable impression on all that behold her. I confess the description the knight used to give of her appeared to me to be a little high-flown; but "seeing is believing"-the world has assuredly only one *****. I looked round a room crowded with lovely women, but my eye was fixed in a moment; and I never thought of asking which was she. The first view I had was a profile. I had no suspicion that nature could still form countenances upon that heavenly model. The fore

head, high and clear, decends almost without a curve into ́the nose, and that again drops into the mouth with such bold defined elegance of lineament, as I should scarcely have believed to be copied from living beauty, had I met with it in some masterpiece of sculpture. The lips have such a delicate precision of form, and such an expression of divine simplicity in their smile, that one could almost believe they had never admitted any grosser diet than ambrosia; but the full oval sweep of the cheek and chin, and the mode in which these are carried down into the neck, are, perhaps, the most truly antique parts of the whole. And then such hair-such long luxurious tresses of radiant brown, braided with such serene grace upon that meek forehead! If you have seen Canova's testa d'Helena, you may form some notion of those most exquisite curls. The colour of her eyes I could not ascertain; I suspect they are dark grey, or hazel; but the redundant richness of her eye-lashes gives them all that glossy splendour which oriental beauties borrow from their Sirmé. But, indeed, colour is a small matter in eyes enchased so deeply beneath such majestic brows. I think Lucretius himself would have admitted, that the spirit must be immortal on which so glorious a tenement has been bestowed!

With this divine exception, I must do the men the justice to say, that the most beautiful women in the room were all matrons. Had she been absent, there were two or three of these on whom all my enthusiasm might well have been expended; and one, Mrs. ******, whose graceful majesty was such, that when I met her next evening in a smaller assembly, I almost began to suspect myself in having been too exclusive in my deification. But I have already said more than I should have ventured on to almost any other of your sex-a great Ideal more than I should have dared to write, far less speak, to my cousin to whom I beg you will present the humble duty of

Her slave, &c. &c.

P. M.

P. S. By way of pleasing Jane, you may tell her that I do not think the Scottish ladies are at all good dressers. They are very gorgeous-I never saw such a display of crimson velvet, and ostrich feathers, and diamond necklaces, except once at a birth-day. But the fashions have a long

cold journey before they reach Edinburgh, and I think they do not regain the same easy air which they have before they begin their travels. They are apt to overdo every thing, particularly that vilest and most unnatural of all fashions, the saddle--or I know not what you call it--which is at present permitted to destroy so much of the back, and indeed, to give so much meanness to the whole air. They say the scrophula brought in the high shirt collars of the men-and the Spectator gives some equally intelligible account of the fardingale. Pray, what hunch-backed countess was she that had wit enough to bring the saddle into vogue? I think all the three fashions are equally abominable, and the two of them that still remain should be voted out by the clean-skinned and straight-backed, who, I hope, are still the major part of the community. But, ne sutor ultra crepidam *** P. M.

LETTER VI.

TO THE REV. DAVID WILLIAMS.

DEAR DAVID,

ALTHOUGH my sole purpose, or nearly so, in coming to Scotland, was to see and converse with the illustrious men who live here, I have been in Edinburgh for a fortnight, and can scarcely say that I have as yet seen even the faces of most of them. What with lounging about in the mornings with W, and claret in the evening, and routs and balls at night, I fear I am fast getting into a very unprofitable life. The only very great man here, to whom I had letters of introduction, was Scott, and he happened to go out of town for a few weeks, I believe the very day after my arrival. I forwarded my letter to him in the country, however, and he has invited me to pay him a visit there, at the castle he has just built upon the banks of the Tweed. He has been so attentive, moreover, as to send me letters for Mr. McKenzie the Man of Feeling, Mr. Jeffrey, Mr. Playfair, and several other men of note, on both sides of the question; so that I shall now see as much as I please of all the Dons. I shall take the opportunity of W's absence, to call upon all these gentle

men; for, excepting Mr. Scott and Mr. McKenzie, he has no acquaintance with any of them. I believe, indeed, there is little love lost between him and them-and I wish to see things with my own eyes.

Of all the celebrated characters of this place, I rather understand that Jeffrey is the one whom travellers are commonly most in a hurry to see-not surely, that the world, in general, has any such deep and abiding feeling of admiration for him, or any such longing to satisfy their eyes with gazing on his features, as they have with regard to such a man as Scott, or even St-t; but I think the interest felt with respect to him is of a more vivacious and eager kind, and they rush with all speed to gratify it—exactly as men give immediate vent to their petty passions, who have no difficulty, or rather, indeed, who have a sort of pleasure in nursing silently, and concealing long, those of a more serious and grave importance. A few years ago, I should, perhaps, have been more inclined to be a sharer in this violent sort of impatience; but even now I approached the residence of Jeffrey with any feelings assuredly rather than those of indifference.

He was within when I called, and in a second I found myself in the presence of this bugbear of authors. He received me so kindly, (although, from the appearance of his room, he seemed to be immersed in occupation,) and asked so many questions, and said and looked so much, in so short a time, that I had some difficulty in collecting my inquisitorial powers to examine the person of the man. I know not how, there is a kind of atmosphere of activity about him; and my eyes caught so much of the prevailing spirit, that they darted for some minutes from object to object, and refused, for the first time, to settle themselves even upon the features of a man of genius---to them, of all human things, the most potent

attractions.

I find that the common prints give a very inadequate notion of his appearance. The artists of this day are such a set of cowardly fellows, that they never dare to give the truth as it is in nature; and the consequence is, after all, that they rather take from, than add to, the impressiveness of the faces they would flatter. What a small matter is smoothness of skin, or even regularity of feature, in the countenance that Nature has formed to be the index of a powerful intellect? Perhaps I am too much of a connoisseur to be a fair judge of such matters; but I am very sure, that the mere