hour I went, he was engaged, not in prælection, but in examining his pupils on some of the subjects of a lecture he had delivered on the preceding day. Perhaps, however, the benefits derived from his teaching may be traced in no inconsiderable measure to bis peculiar excellence in this very branch of his duties. Such a clear manly method of putting his questions---such a ready manner of comprehending the drift of the replies he received---such skilful nicety in drawing out the workings of perplexed minds, and making those who were puzzled find for themselves the thread that should lead them out of their labyrinths-and all this accompanied with such an honest, downright, paternal sort of kindness in voice, look, and gesture-I have really never before seen a more amiable combination of the faculties most precious in a teacher of youth. I think it no wonder, that they who have sat at the feet of this good man, should be very slow in losing their memory of so much moral worth and real talent, exerted in so rare a style of union for the furtherance of their improvement. It is no wonder, that the days spent in drinking wisdom from so pure and liberal a fountain, should form, in feeling and intelligent minds, some of the dearest of those youthful recollections, which afford throughout the years of active and bustling life, the most charming breathing-places of reposing meditation. In such feelings it must be that such a spirit finds the best reward of all its labours. Wherever such a man as this goes, throughout all the districts of the land in which he has so long exerted himself, he is sure to meet with eyes that kindle into a filial flame, when they see once more the venerable lineaments of bis well-known face. He has created for himself a mighty family, among whom his memory will long survive-by whom all that he said and did -his words of kind praise and kind censure-his gravity and his graciousness-will, no doubt, be dwelt upon with warm. and tender words and looks, long after bis earthly labours shall have been brought to their close. The good such men do is of such a kind, that it cannot "die with them." I waited upon this excellent person soon after the conclusion of his examination, and delivered several letters I had for him from his friends in Edinburgh. He asked me to dine with him, to which I assented, and in the meantime he proposed we should go and see the Hunterian Museum together, as there was still an hour or two we had to spare. This Museum is chiefly remarkable for the very fine collection of anatomical preparations it contains, and I am glad I had an opportunity of seeing them, as one of them strongly exemplified a fact concerning the junction of the vertebræ, which I have stated at some length in my treatise De Muliere, &c. p. 97. There is also an excellent collection of medals, but I could not be permitted to see them at this time, owing to the strict regulations under which their inspection is laidnecessarily, I well believe, from what I know of the consciences of collectors. Their stuffed animals are not very numerous, nor have they been allotted a very conspicuous situation, being placed in small rooms below stairs, where the elephants and hippopotamuses look rather disconsolate. In one corner I saw an Egyptian mummy, which is shut up in a huge wooden case, strongly clasped with iron bars, as if to prevent it from coming out and chasing any of the Professors up stairs, when they happen to visit that apartment at a late and dreary hour. As it was entirely enveloped in the original linen swaddling-bands, I had no opportunity of investigating the organ of combativeness in the lower lateral part of the forehead, which is said by Spurzheim to be large in most mummies. In another apartment,--by the way a singularly elegant one both in shape and furniture,-there is a fine assemblage of pictures. The collection is not extensive, but most of the specimens are of rare excellence. There is a beautiful Guido, representing the Virgin watching the infant Christ asleep. There is a St. Catharine, by Domenichino, full of expression-a head of St. Peter, by Rubens, with rather too much of the homeliness of the human passions, but gloriously coloured. The collection is also graced with a Correggio-the Virgin and Child, and St. Joseph,-a picture in capital preservation. The Virgin is represented with a sweet look of maternal tenderness, putting upon the child a new vest, which appears, from the implements introduced in the picture, to be the workmanship of her own hands. There is a Salvator, not a landscape, but a group of figures-Laomedon, detected by Apollo and Neptune, all in a very bold and striking style of mastery. There is a Danae and the Golden Shower, by my old favourite Luca Giordano, an artist of whom shamefully little is known or thought in this country. *I should mention, that in the Second Edition, published at Paris in 1812, it is at page 103. There, is besides, a small inimitable Murillo, the Good Shepherd. They have also a landscape by Rembrant, a flat country, with a town in the distance, a scene in which it is evident no object has been introduced for the sake of ornament. There is something in the perspective of level plains which always strikes me-Welchman though I be-as more sublime than any view clogged and obstructed with mountains, or other large objects. I think that a barrier of mountains rising between the spectator and the horrizon, suggests the idea of limitation somehow, and circumscription. Your eye is stopped, and your attention trammelled, by the different summits and eminences; and in examining the localities of a particular spot, you lose the notion of what Homer calls the immeasurable earth. The ocean, by recalling the idea of infinitude, inspires a sense of the sublime; but, at the same time, in contemplating a marine landscape, we fell a certain coldness, resulting from the want of life and vegetation. The avapixo yehatua, of which Eschylus speaks, is, after all, but a cheerless thing, compared with the smiling repose of sunbeams on the long vanishing distances of a track glowing with the vestiges of human labour and human happiness. There are some other pictures, but I have mentioned the most remarkable. After dinner, and ap excellent bottle of wine, the Professor took me with him to the porter's lodge of the College, one of the rooms of which is used by some of the brethren as a kind of common-room. Here I spent the evening very delightfully, in a snug, quiet, intelligent little society. We played whist till ten, then supped on a glorious Glasgow luxury of fresh herrings, and concluded the whole with a moderate quantum sufficet of rum-punch, in the manufacture of which some one or two of these learned persons seemed to be no whit inferior to the best of the neighbouring citi zens. P.M. LETTER LXXIX. TO THE SAME. Buck's-Head. NEXT day, I spent almost the whole morning in company with my excellent cicerone, in taking a survey of a few of the most extensive manufactories of this place. As these, however, must be in all respects quite similar to those of other towns which you have often seen, I shall not trouble you with any particular description of what I saw. It ap peared to me, upon the whole, that the Glasgow manufacturers conduct matters with more attention to the comforts of those whom they employ, than most of their brethren elsewhere; a fact which, indeed I remember to have heard men'tioned in Parliament a few sessions ago, with a very laudable degree of pride, by the Member for the town, Mr. Kirkman Finlay, himself one of the greatest merchants of Scotland, and, I well believe, one of the most intelligent also, in spite of all the jokes against him in the Courier. I was assured, at least, that there prevails in this place nothing of the vile custom of unceasing labour by day and by night, which has been, with so much noble passion, described and branded in the words of the Wanderer.* After being confined for hours to the steam-heated atmosphere of these places, my ears dingling with the eternal rock and buzz of wheels and spindles, and my eyes fretted and inflamed with the flakes of cotton every where flying about; and, in spite of all that I have said, my spirits being not a little depressed by the contemplation of so many thousands of poor creatures shut out in their captivity from The gentle visitations of the sun And in these structures mingled, old and young, -my spirits being somewhat saddened with all these poisonous sights, and sounds, and reflections, I readily embraced the proposal of my friend-that we should walk forth, name *The passage is this "When soothing darkness spreads O'er hill and vale," the Wanderer thus expressed ly, into the fields, and refresh ourselves with breathing the unpolluted air of heaven, till the hour of dinner. He led me into a large piece of meadow ground, which stretches along the banks of the Clyde to the east of the city, and which, being public property, is left in its free untainted verdure, forming a beautiful contrast to the dust of the city, and a precious breathing-place to its inhabitants. It forms, in fact, a fine park-indeed, excepting London and Dublin, there is no town in these islands which possesses any thing that can be compared with it. My friend told me, however, that with all its natural attractions, it is far from being much frequented by the fashionables of the place, who prefer walking on the Trongate, or on some of the narrow highways round the town, and leave this delicious Green (for that is the name it goes by) to be trodden almost exclusively by the feet of those whom they are pleased (in contradistinction from themselves) to call the Vulgar. But my friend remembers the old times, when the Green was the constant lounge, and has a pride in being seen walking leisurely under the ancient elms which gave shade to the more judicious worthies of a generation that has passed away. A tall Monument, in the form of an obelisk, has been erected to the memory of Lord Nelson, in the midst of this green, and contrasts itself agreeably with the level plain surface out of which it arises. Shortly after it was erected, it was struck by lightning--the top was completely shattered -and a yawning fissure points out the course of the destructive element, more than half-way down one of the sides. But it would be a difficult thing to repair this injury, and the people of Glasgow have allowed the Monument to remain And at the appointed hour a bell is heard→ Disgorged are now the ministers of day; And as they issue from the illumined pile, A fresh band meets them at the crowded door And in the courts-and where the rumbling stream Glares, like a troubled spirit, in its bed Among the rocks below-Men, maidens, youths, |