trespass, was enough to poison forever the spirit of this juvenile presbyterian-his whole soul became filled with the blackest demons of rage, and he resolved to sacrifice to his indignation the instruments of what he conceived to be so deadly a disgrace. It was Sunday, and after going to. church as usual with his pupils, he led them out to walk in the country-for the ground on which the New Town of Edinburgh now stands was then considered as the country by the people of Edinburgh. After passing calmly, to all appearance, through several of the green fields, which have now become streets and squares, he came to a place more lonely than the rest, and there drawing a large claspknife from his pocket, he at once stabbed the elder of his pupils to the heart. The younger boy gazed on him for a moment, and then fled with shrieks of terror; but the murderer pursued him with the bloody knife in his hand, and slew him also as soon as he was overtaken. The whole of this shocking scene was observed distinctly from the Old Town, by innumerable crowds of people, who were near enough to see every motion of the murderer, and hear the cries of the infants, although the deep ravine between them and the place of blood, was far more than sufficient to prevent any possibility of rescue. The tutor sat down upon the spot, immediately after having concluded his butchery, as if in a stu por of despair and madness, and was only roused to his recollection by the touch of the hands that seized him.

It so happened, that the Magistrates of the city were assembled together in their Council-Room, waiting till it should be time for them to walk to church in procession, (as is their custom,) when the crowd drew near with their captive. The horror of the multitude was communicated to them, along with their intelligence, and they ordered the wretch to be brought at once into their presence. It is an old law in Scotland, that when a murderer is caught in the very act of guilt, (or, as they call it, red-hand,) he may be immediately executed, without any formality or delay. Never surely could a more fitting occasion be found for carrying this old

law into effect. Gabriel was hanged within an hour after the deed was done, the red knife being suspended from his neck, and the blood of the innocents scarcely dry upon his fingers.

Such is the terrible story from which the name of Gabriel's Road is derived. I fear the spirit from which these horrors sprung, is not yet entirely extinct in Scotland; but on this I shall have a better opportunity to make a few remarks, when I come to speak at length of the present religious condition of the nation-the most important of all objects to every liberal traveller in every country-but to none so important as to the traveller who visits Scotland, and studies the people of Scotland, as they deserve to be studied. Ever your affectionate friend,

LETTER XLV.

TO THE SAME.

P. M.

MY DEAR DAVID WILLIAMS,

I TAKE no offence whatever with any thing you have said, nor do I think it at all likely that I shall ever take any serious offence from any thing you can say. The truth is, that you are looking upon all these matters in far too serious a point of view. I care nothing about this book, of which you have taken up so evil a report; but I insist upon it, that you spend one or two evenings in looking over the copy I send you, before you give me any more of your solemn advices and expostulations. When I have given you time to do this, I shall write to you at greater length, and tell you my own mind all about the matter.

Ever your's,

P. M.

LETTER XLVI.

TO THE SAME.

I PRESUME you have now done as I requested; and if so, I have no doubt you are prepared to listen to what I have to say with a more philosophic temper. The prejudicies you had taken up without seeing the book, have, I make no question, made unto themselves wings and passed away-at least the most serious of them,-and you are probably quite as capable of taking a calm and impartial view of the affair as I myself am; for as to my allowing any partiality for Wseriously to warp my judgment concerning a literary Journal, in which he sometimes writes-this is, I assure you, a most absurd suspicion of your's-but, transeat cum aliis.

The history of Blackwood's Magazine is very singular in itself, and I think must long continue to form an important epoch in the literary history of Scotland-above all, of Edinburgh. The time of its first appearance was happily chosen, just when the decline of that intense and overmastering interest, formerly attracted to the Edinburgh Review, had fairly begun to be not only felt, but acknowledged on every hand; and had it not appeared at that particular time, it is probable that something, not widely different in spirit and purpose, must have ere long come forth; for there had already been formed in Scotland a considerable body of rebels to the long undisputed tyrannical sway of Mr. Jeffrey and his friends; and it was necessary that the sentiments of this class should find some vehicle of convenient expression. In short, the diet of levity and sarcastic indifference, which had so long formed the stable nourishment of Scottish intellect, had by repetition lost, to not a few palates, the charming poignancy of its original flavour; and besides, the total failure of all the political prophecies of the Whig wits, and, indeed, the triumphant practical refutation given by the great events of the preceding years to all their enunciations of political princi

ples, had, without doubt, tended very powerfully to throw discredit upon their own opinions in regard to other matters. The Whigs themselves, indeed, were by no means inclined to acknowledge that the sceptre of their rulers had lost any portion of its power; but the continuance of their own firm allegiance was by no means sufficient to prevent this from being actually the case; for, in preceding times, the authority of the critical sceptre had been acknowledged by Scottish Tories, no less humbly than by Scottish Whigs; and it was too natural for these last to suspect, at this alarming crisis, that the former would now think themselves in possession of a favourable opportunity for throwing off a sway, which had always with them rested much more on the potency of fear than on that of love.

The subjection of the antecedent period had, indeed, been as melancholy and profound, as any thing ever exemplified within the leaden circle of an eastern despot's domination. There was, for a long time, no more thought among the Scottish reading public of questioning the divine right, by which Mr. Jeffrey and his associates ruled over the whole realms of criticism, than there is in China of pulling down the cousin-german of the Moon, and all his bowing court of Mandarins. In many respects, there is no doubt the Scotch had been infinitely indebted to this government-it had done much to refine and polish their ideas and manners-it had given them an air of intelligence and breeding, to which they had been strangers before its erection among them. But these advantages were not of so deep a nature, as to fix themselves with any very lasting sway in the souls of the wiser and better part of the people. They were counterbalanced in the eyes of the simple and less meditative classes, by many circumstances of obvious character and obvious importance too, (after these had once been able to fix attention ;)—and those who were accustomed or able to reflect in a more serious and profound manner upon the condition of their country, could not, I suppose, be blind to another circumstance equally true, and far more generally and enduringly important than any other-namely, that the influence acquired by the

Edinburgh Reviewers over the associations of the great majority of Scottish minds, was not an influence accompanied with any views of philosophy calculated to ennoble human nature, or with any genial or productive spirit of thought likely to draw out the genius and intellect of the country in which their Review was published.

The national mind of any country is not likely to be elicited advantageously, if the reins of public association are managed with all the petulance of eager self-love, caring little for the investigation of any principle, or the expansion of any feeling, provided it can in the mean time assume to itself the appearance of superior smartness and cleverness. Love, which "hopeth all things and believeth all things," is the true inventive principle. It is the true caloric, which calls out every sort of vegetation from the soil, which contains in its bosom the sleeping germs of national genius. Now, the Edinburgh Review cared very little for what might be done, or might be hoped to be done, provided it could exercise a despotic authority in deciding on the merits of what was done. Nobody could ever regard this work as a great fosteringmother of the infant manifestations of intellectual and imaginative power. It was always sufficiently plain, that in all things its chief object was to support the credit of its own appearance. It praised only where praise was extorted—and it never praised even the highest efforts of contemporary genius, in the spirit of true and genuine earnestness, which might have been becoming :-Even in the temple of their adoration, the Reviewers still carried with them the swell and strut of their own worldly vanity; and, in the midst of their most fervent devotions, it was always easy to see that they conceived themselves to be conferring honour on the object of their worship. They never spoke out of the fullness of the heart, in praising any one of our great living poets, the majesty of whose genius would have been quite enough to take away all ideas, except those of prostrate respect, from the breasts of critics to whom any portion of the true mantle of an Aristotle, or a Longinus, or a Quinctilian, might have descended. Looking back