practice; but as there are a great number of offices of vari ous degrees of honour and emolument, which can only be filled by members of the Faculty of Advocates, they are contented to wear the gown year after year, in the expectation of at last being able to step into the possession of one of these births, by means of some connexions of blood, or marriage, or patronage. One should at first sight say, that this must be rather a heartless kind of drudgery; but, such as it is, it is submitted to by a very great number of well-educated and accomplished gentlemen, who not only keep each other in countenance with the rest of the world, but, what is much better, render this mode of life highly agreeable in itself. These persons constitute the chief community of loungers and talkers in Edinburgh; and such is the natural effect of their own family connexions, and the conventional kind of respect accorded to the name of their profession, that their influence may be considered as extending over almost the whole of the northern part of the island. They make the nearest approach, of any class of men now existing, to the modes of Templar-life described by Addison and Steele; for, as to the Temple wits and critics of our day, you know they are now sadly "shorn of their beams," and are, indeed, regarded by the ruling powers of the West-end-the of EV TEλE, of Albemarle-street, &c.-as forming little better than a sort of upper form of the Cockney-school. The chief wealth of the profession, however, if not the chief honour, is lodged with the attorneys, or, as they are here called, the Writers. Of these there is such an abundance in this city, that I cannot for my life understand by what means they all contrive to live; and those of them with whom I have become acquainted, I do assure you live well. They are sub-divided into various classes, of which the highest is that of the Writers or Clerks to the Signet, so called because they alone have the privilege of drawing particular kinds of deeds, to which the king's signet is affixed. Even of these there are many hundreds in actual practice at this moment, and many of them have realized large fortunes, and retired from business to enjoy the otium cum dignitate. It may be said, that almost every foot of land in Scotland pays something to the Writers to the Signet; for there is scarcely an estate in Scotland, the proprietor of which does not entrust the management of the whole of his affairs to one of their order. The connexion which exists between them and the landed interest is thus of the most intimate nature. The country gentlemen of Scotland, from whatever causes, are generally very much in debt. Their writers, or, as they call them, their agents or doers, are of necessity acquainted with the many secrets which men in debt must have; they are themselves the bankers and creditors of their clients. In short, when a gentleman changes his man of business, his whole affairs must undergo a complete revolution and convulsion; and in Scotland, it is a much easier thing to get rid of one's wife, than of one's doer. These advocates and rich writers may be considered as forming the nucleus of the society of Edinburgh. Their connexions of birth and business bind them so closely with the Janded gentry, that these last come to Edinburgh principally in order to be in their neighbourhood; these again draw with them a part of the minor noblesse, and the whole of the idle military men who can afford it. Of late years also, the gentry of some of the northern English counties have begun to come hither, in preference to going to York as they used to do; and out of all this medley of materials, the actual mass of the society of Edinburgh is formed. I mean the winter society of Edinburgh; for, in the summer monthsthat is from April till Christmas-the town is commonly deserted by all, except those who have ties of real business to connect them with it. Nay, during a considerable portion of that time, it loses, as I am informed, the greater part even of its eminent lawyers, and has quite as green and desolate an appearance, as the fashionable squares in London have about the falling of the leaf. The medley of people, thus brought together for a few months every year to inhabit a few streets in this city, cannot afford to split their forces very minutely, so as to form many different spheres of society, according to their opinions of their relative rank and importance. It is now admitted everywhere, that no party is worth the going to, unless it be a crowded one; now, it is not possible to form a party here that shall be at once select and crowded. The dough and the leaven must go together to make up the loaf, and the wives of the lords and lairds, and advocates, and writers, must be contented to club their forces, if they are to produce any thing that deserves the honourable name of a squeeze. Now and then, indeed, a person of the very highest importance, may, by great exertion succeed in forming one exception to this rule. But the rule is in general a safe one; and the Edinburgh parties are in the main mixed parties. I do not mean that they are mixed in a way that renders them at all disagreeable, even to those who have been accustomed to the style of society in much greater capitals, but that they are mixed in a way of which no example is to be found in the parties of London, or indeed of any European capital, except the Paris of the present time: People visit each other in Edinburgh with all the appearance of cordial familiarity, who, if they lived in London, would imagine their difference of rank to form an impassable barrier against such intercourse. Now, although the effect may not amount to any thing absolutely unpleasant, there is no question that this admission of persons not educated in the true circles, must be seen and felt upon the general aspect of the society of Edinburgh, and that, upon the whole, this society is, in consequence of their admission, less elegant than might otherwise have been expected in the capital of such a country as Scotland. * * * Yours very affectionately, P. M. LETTER XIX. TO THE SAME. DEAR AUNT, HOWEVER composed and arranged, the routs and balis 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 beside this, half of the routs are in their waning bours 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 as semblages 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. The effects of this unceasing flood of gaiety, then, are not perhaps so very favourable as might be expected to the great object of all gaieties-the entrapping of the unfortunate lords of the creation. But this is not the worst of the matter. I am really very free from any very puritanical notions, in regard to the pleasures of human life; but I do sincerely, and in honest earnestness doubt, whether any good is gained to the respectable citizens of this town, by having their wives and daughters immersed, for so considerable a portion of the year, in a perpetual round of amusements, so fatiguing to their bodies and their minds, and so destructive, I should fear, of much of that quiet and innocent love of home and simple pleasures, in which the true charm of the female character ought to consist, and in which its only true charm does at this moment consist, in the opinion of all men of sense and feeling. It is a very pretty thing, no doubt, to see a young lady dressed with Parisian flowers and Parisian gauzes, and silk slippers and an Indian fan, and the whole &c. of fashionable array: But I question whether this be, after all, the style in which a young man of any understanding sees a young lady with most danger to his peace. It is very well that people in the more quiet walks of life. should not be ignorant of what goes on among those that are pleased to style themselves their betters: But, I do think that this is rather too entire and bona fide an initiation into a train of existence, which is, luckily, as inconsistent with the permanent happiness, as it is with the permanent duties, of those who cannot afford all their lives to be mere fine ladies. For myself, after living so quietly in Cardigan, I have been on the whole much pleased with the full and leisurely view I have now had even of this out-skirt of the beau-monde. I do not think matters have undergone any improvement since I last peeped into its precincts. The ladies are undoubtedly by no means so well-dressed as they were a few years ago, before these short waists and enormous tetes of flowers and ringlets were introduced from Paris. There is, perhaps, no one line in the whole of the female form, in which there lies so much gracefulness as in the outline of the back. Now, that was seen as it ought to be a few years ago; but now every woman in Britain looks as if her clothes were hung about her neck by a peg. And then the truly Spartan exposure of the leg, which seems now to be in fashion, is, in my judgment, the most unwise thing in the whole world; for any person can tell well enough from the shape of the foot and ancle, whether the limb be or be not handsome; and what more would the ladies have? Moreover, the fashion has not been allowed to obtain its ascendancy without evident detriment to the interests of the majority; for I bave never yet been in any place where there were not more limbs that would gain by being concealed, than by being exposed. But, in truth, even those who have the shape of a Diana, may be assured that they are not, in the main, gainers by attracting too much attention to some of their beauties. I wonder that they do not recollect and profit by the exquisite description of the Bride, in Sir John Suckling's poem of the Wedding : "Her feet beneath her petticoat, As for those, who, with bad shapes, make a useless display of their legs, I must own, I have no excuse for their folly. I know well enough, that it is a very difficult thing to form any proper opinion about one's own face; because it is universally admitted that faces, which have no regularity of fea |