pression 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 forehead, high and clear, descends 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 deal 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.

DEAR DAVID,

LETTER VI.

TO THE REV. DAVID WILLIAMS.

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 S, 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. M— the Man of Feeling, Mr. J, Mr. P, 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 gentlemen ; for, excepting Mr. S― and Mr. M————, 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 Jis 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 Sor 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 J with any feelings assuredly rather than those of indifference.

He was within when I called, and in a second I found my

self 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 handsomeness of a great man is one of the last things about him that fixes my attention. I do not wish, neither, to deny, that, when I first saw Goethe, the sublime simplicity of his Homeric beauty-the awful pile of forehead—the large deep eyes, with their melancholy lightnings-the whole countenance, so radiant with divinity, would have lost much of its power, had it not been, at the same time, the finest specimen of humanity I had ever beheld; neither would I conceal the immeasurable softness of delight which mingled with my reverence, when I detected, as if by intuition, in the midst of the whole artists of St. Luke's, the Hyperion curls, and calm majestic lineaments, which could be nobody's but Canova's. But although beauty never exists in vain, there is nothing more certain than that its absence is scarcely perceived by those who are capable of discovering and enjoying the marks

of things more precious than beauty. Could all our countrymen of the present time, of very great reputation for talents or genius, be brought together into a single room, their physiognomies would, I doubt not, form as impressive a group as can well be imagined; but among the whole, there would scarcely be more than one face which any sculptor might be ambitious of imitating on marble. J's countenance could not stand such a test. To catch the minutest elements of its eloquent power, would I think be a hard enough task for any painter, and indeed, as I have already told you, it has proved too hard a task for such as have yet attempted it.

It is a face which any man would pass without observation in a crowd, because it is small and swarthy, and entirely devoid of lofty or commanding outlines-and besides, his stature is so low, that he might walk close under your chin or mine without ever catching the eye even for a moment. However, he is scarcely shorter than Campbell; and some inches taller than Tom Moore, or the late Monk Lewis. I remember Lord Clarendon somewhere takes notice, that in his age, (the prime manhood of English intellect, as Coleridge calls it,) a very large proportion of the remarkable men were very short in stature. Such, if my memory serves me, were Hales, and Chillingworth, and Sidney Godolphin, and Lord Falkland himself, who used, I think, to say, that it was a great ingredient into his friendship for Mr. Godolphin, that he was pleased to be in his company, where he was the properer man. In our own time, we have more than one striking instance of the "Mens magna in corpore parvo ;"-Buonaparte himself for one; and, by the way, he is the only little man I ever saw, who seemed to be unconscious, or careless, or disdainful of the circumstance. Almost all other persons of that description appear to labour under a continual and distressing feeling that nature has done them injustice, and not a few of them strive to make up for her defects, by holding their heads as high as possible, and even giving an uncomfortable elevation or projection to the chin, all which has a very mean