I have no doubt a long excursive hooker
Suits well some lordly lounger of Bengal,
Who never writes, or looks into a book, or

Does any thing with earnestness at all;
He sits, and his tobacco's in the nook, or

Tended by some black heathen in the hall,
Lays up his legs, and thinks he does great things
If once in the half hour a puff he brings.

I rather follow in my smoking trim

The example of Scots cottars and their wives
Who, while the evening air is warm and dim,
In July sit beside their garden hives;
And, gazing all the while with wrinkles grim
To see how the concern of honey thrives,
Empty before they've done a four-ounce bag
Of sailors' twist, or, what's less common-

-shag.

CHAPTER IV.*

Odoherty's Success in Edinburgh Society-Attends Lectures in the University-Remarks on Scottish Fashionables-Acts as Cicerone to the Austrian Archdukes-Specimens of his Songs-Visit to Glasgow and Honors from the University—A Tale of Terror! - Fragments: Abolition of the Pronoun I; Scandal; Blue-Stockings; Skull-Walls and the Catacombs.

THIS winter was indeed a memorable one in the life of Odoherty. Divided almost in equal proportions between the Old and the New Town of Edinburgh-the society of Hogg, Allan, and the Dilettanti, on the one hand, and that of the female and fashionable world on the other—and thus presenting to the active mind of the Ensign a perpetual succession, or rather alternation, of the richest viands-it produced the effects which might have been anticipated, and swelled considerably the bulk

* The gentleman who drew up the first two notices of this life, having died of an apoplexy some time ago, the notice which appeared in March, and the present one, are by a different hand. [The reader is advised to refer to, if he should have forgotten or passed over, the explanation of the above note in page 27.]-M.

of two portfolios, respectively set apart for the prose and verse compositions which, at this period of his career, our bard was so rapidly pouring forth to the admiration of his numerous friends and the public.

His morning hours were devoted to attend several courses of lectures in the University; for Odoherty was never weary of learning, and embraced with ardor every opportunity that was afforded him of increasing the stores of his literary acquisitions and accomplishments. His remarks upon the different lectures. which he now attended, possess all his characteristic acuteness, and would have done honor to a more practised critic. But these we reserve for the separate publication of his works. To insert any mutilated fragments of them here would be an act of injustice to the illustrious Professors, Brown, Playfair, Leslie, Hope, Ritchie, &c., no less than to their distinguished disciple.*

* Dr. Thomas Brown, the immediate predecessor of the late John Wilson, as Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, was the son of a Scottish clergyman, and born in 1778. A pupil of Dugald Stewart, at the age of twenty he published Observations on the Zoonomia of Dr. Darwin (most of it written before he was eighteen), graduated as M.D. in 1803 — published two volumes of poems in 1804-soon after brought out his Relation of Cause and Effect and became Dugald Stewart's substitute in the chair of Moral Philosophy, in 1808-9, and Joint-Professor, in 1810. The Paradise of Coquettes, a poem of much merit, appeared in 1814. He died, at Brompton, near London, in April, 1820. His Lectures were given to the world after his death, and upon them chiefly rests his great reputation as a philosopher.Professor John Playfair, the son of a Scottish minister, was born in 1748, educated at St. Andrew's, ordained for the church, early distinguished himself by his progress in science, succeeded to his father's parish in 1773, but eventually resigned it, and, after some time spent in travel and private tuition, was appointed Joint-Mathematical Professor, at Edinburgh University, in 1785-he had previously stood two unsuccessful contests, for a similar chair; at Aberdeen, when he was only eighteen, and at St. Andrew's when he was twentyfour. In 1805, resigning the mathematical chair, he was made Professor of Natural History, and died, in July, 1819, at Edinburgh. His acquirements, in literature and science, were very great. His writings embraced a vast variety of subjects-the most eminent among them are his Elements of Geometry, Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory, Outlines of Natural Philosophy, Dissertation on the Progress of Mathematical and Physical Science since the Revival of Letters in Europe (for the Encyclopedia Britannica), and a great number of articles for the Edinburgh Review, of which the best known are a masterly criticism on Madame de Staël's Corinne, and an account (in the eleventh volume of that periodical) of Laplace's Mecanique Celeste. This last article,

Great and illustrious as is the fame of these Philosophers, it is possible that the names of some of them may live in distant ages, chiefly because of their connexion with that of Odoherty. The Ensign may be to them what Xenophon has been to Socrates; he may be more, for it is possible that none of them may have a Plato.

The gay world of the northern metropolis, which, during this remarkable winter, was adorned by the graceful and ingenious Ensign, seems, we are constrained to observe, to have found less favor in his eyes than in those of most other visitors with whom we have had an opportunity of conversing. In one of those inimitable letters of his, addressed to the compiler of the present sketch, he comments with some little causticity on the incidents if his best biographer be credited, there is no general account of the great facts and principles of astronomy so clear, comprehensive, and exact, nor half so beautiful and majestic in the composition. In that clever and caustic work, Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk, Mr. Lockhart (as Doctor Morris) has paid high, eloquent, and merited homage to the genius of Brown, Playfair, and Leslie, and dwells with great gusto upon a trial of strength and agility which took place, about 1818, at Craig-crook, the country seat of Mr. Jeffrey, for which Playfair threw off his coat and waistcoat: "With the exception of Leslie, they all jumped wonderfully; and Jeffrey was quite miraculous, considering his brevity of stride. But the greatest wonder of the whole was Mr. Playfair. He is also a short man, and he cannot be less than seventy, yet he took his stand with the assurance of an athletic, and positively beat every one of us—the very best of us, at least half a heel's breadth. I was quite thunderstruck, never having heard the least hint of his being so great a geometrician-in this sense of the word."-There were two Edinburgh lawyers of the name of Hope, at this time. One was Charles Hope, Lord President of the Court of Session, and (in 1819), Colonel of the Royal Blues, a foot regiment of Edinburgh volunteers. He was an upright judge, an eloquent speaker, a sound lawyer, and a strong tory. The other was John Hope, an intimate friend of Scott's, and the person referred to in the text. He was Dean of the Faculty of Advocates and Solicitor-General for Scotland, when he was thus mentioned in Scott's diary of December, 1825, "decidedly the most hopeful young man of his time: high connections, great talent, spirited ambition, a ready elocution, with a good voice and dignified manners, prompt and steady courage, vigilant and constant assiduity, popularity with the young men, and the good opinion of the old, will, if I mistake not, carry him as high as any man who has arisen here since the days of old Hal Dundas [the first Viscount Melville]." -John Hope fulfilled his high expectation. When I last saw him, in May, 1850, he was on the Scottish judicial bench as the Lord Justice Clerk, head of the chief criminal Court of Scotland.-M.

"The

of several balls and routes which he had just attended. gayeties of Edinburgh," writes the Ensign," are a bad and lame caricature of those of London. There is the same squeeze, the same heat, the same buzz; but, alas! the ease, the elegance, the non-chalance are awanting. In London, the different orders of society are so numerous that they keep themselves totally apart from each other; and the highest circles of fashion admit none as denizens except those who possess the hereditary claims of birth and fortune, or (as in my own case), those who are supposed to atone for their deficiencies in these respects, by extraordinary genius or merit.-Hence there are so few stones of the first, or even of the second, water, that recourse is necessarily had to far inferior gems-not unfrequently even to the tranșitory mimicries of paste. You shall see the lady of an attorney stowing away her bedsteads and basinstands, dismantling all her apartments, and turning her whole family topsy-turvy once in a season, in order that she may have the satisfaction of dispersing two hundred cards, with "At home" upon them. It is amusing enough to see with what laborious exertion, she and her daughters, sensible people that attend to domestic concerns, plainwork, &c., for three parts of the year, become for a few short weeks the awkward inapt copyists of their far less respectable betters. It is distressing to see the faded airs with which these good Bourgeoises endeavor to conceal their confusion in receiving the curtsy of a lady of quality, who comes to their houses only for the purpose of quizzing them in some corner, with some sarcastic younger brother," &c. The rest of the letter, consisting chiefly of rapturous descriptions of particular young ladies, is omitted from motives of delicacy. Two fair creatures, however, a most 'exquisite petite Blonde, and a superb sultana-like Brunette, who seem to have divided for several weeks the possession of the sensible heart of Odoherty, may receive, upon personal application to the publisher, several sonnets, elegies, &c., which are inscribed with their names in the above-mentioned portfolio of their departed admirer—faint and frail memorials of unripened affections — memorials over which they may now drop a tear of delightful pensiveness-which they may now press to the virgin bosom without a hope, and therefore, alas! without a blush. VOL. I.-3

About this period their Imperial Highnesses the Archdukes John and Lewis of Austria arrived in the Caledonian metropolis. Although they received every polite attention from the military, legal, and civic dignitaries of the place, these elevated personages were afflicted, notwithstanding, with considerable symptoms of ennui, in the course of the long evening which they spent at M'Culloch's, after returning from the pomps and festivities of the day. It was then that their Highnesses, expressing some desire to partake of the more unceremonious and week-day society of the Northern Athens, various characters of singing, smoking, and scientific celebrity were introduced to their àpartment, through the intervention of a gentleman in their suite. Among these, it is scarcely necessary to observe, was Odoherty. The Ensign, with that happy tact which a man of true genius carries into every situation of life, immediately perceived and caught the air, manner, &c.—in a word, whatever was best adapted for captivating the archiducal fancy. His proficiency in the German tongue, the only one which these princes spoke with much fluency, was not indeed great; but he made amends for this by the truly Germanic ferocity with which he smoked (for the Ensign was one of those who could send the cloud, ad libitum, through the ears and nostrils, as well as the mouth) by the unqualified admiration which he testified for the favorite imperial beverage of Giles' ale-but, above all, by the style of matchless excellence in which he sung some of his own songs, among which were the following:

SONG I.

CONFUSION to routs and at homes,

To assemblies, and balls, and what not;

'Tis with pain e'er Odoherty roams

From the scenes of the pipe and the pot.

Your Dandies may call him a sot,

They never can call him a spoon ;

* The Royal Hotel, Edinburgh, was kept by James M'Culloch, who literally resembled a ton of flesh." His death took place on January 12, 1819, and is thus mentioned in a letter from Sir Walter Scott, "No news here but that the goodly hulk of conceit and tallow, which was called Macculloch, of the Royal Hotel, Prince's street, was put to bed dead-drunk on Wednesday night, and taken out the next morning dead-by-itself-dead.” — M.