gate. As for myself, I am well, altho' certainly a little fagged, not having had any recreation from the labour of writing, or reading for writing, during the last four or five months. I have now very nearly finished my second volume; and if I am spared, I hope to be in the printer's hands in November.

"I have not fired a shot, and often envied Jem at Taymouth, and you in the North. I often think of the pheasants, and the lamb lair, and long to be shooting with you and Johnny."*

The reader has now had sufficient insight into the domestic life of Mr. Tytler at this period. A tenderer husband, or one more entirely happy in his union with an amiable, artless, and highly accomplished woman, never lived. The successive births of three children,-Mary Stewart born in 1827, Alexander in 1831, and Thomas Patrick in 1833,completed their wedded happiness. Their circumstances were far from affluent. From the very first I find allusions in their letters to economy and the little mysteries of housekeeping, with neither of which subjects there seems to have been much practical acquaintance on either side. But they had enough, and their tastes and desires were the reverse of extravagant. They seem in fact to have led the life almost of recluses in the midst of the gay capital during the winter months, abundantly happy in each other's society; while Rankeilour, (the residence of Mrs. Tytler's married sister Eleanor,) Newliston or Mount Esk, and occasionally a hired cottage, afforded a delightful change in the summer. This was rendered even necessary by the delicate health of Mrs. Tytler, to whom the air of Edinburgh proved unsuitable.

Never a person of robust constitution, this Lady almost from the year of her marriage, showed symptoms of decline. * To Thomas Hog, Esq., who was the guest of Sir John Hepburn.

Those allusions until that loving

Of this, the reader will have been made aware by the many anxious allusions in Tytler's letters, whenever he was separated from his Rachel for a few days. to a feeble and delicate frame never cease, correspondence itself comes to a close. "Let me beseech you not to over-exert yourself in any way whatever. Do not walk much about the room: do not lift Mary, or keep her long on your knee: do not overtask your mind by reading or writing." * It was always thus! But affection ever deems its object immortal; and my friend, at first unsuspicious of danger, continually sustained himself with a strong hope that all might yet be well. The contrary anticipation crushed him. "O, dearest Rachel, I sometimes tremble when I think what desolation would fall on me, if anything befell you. If I pine under a separation of even a few days, and feel that even amid my own friends and family I feel solitary, what would become of this poor heart if you were to be torn away from it?"+ His spirits rose and fell Iwith his wife's variable health. cheerfulness revived him her pains unmanned him quite. "When you smile and are happy and seem to be well, 'it is fresh morning with me,' as Shakspeare says somewhere. Every thing looks gay and gilded, and my spirits rise into joy, and move on as lightly as the little green-coloured wherry over our dear pond at Newliston. But all is instantly overcast to me when you are in pain. My spirits sink like lead. I plump down at once into despondency, and cannot be comforted."

Her

In the meantime he was working indefatigably at his History; Love now adding a stimulus where Ambition already supplied a sufficient spur. He was correcting the last proof of his first volume, in March 1828; and before September * To his wife, 15th April, 1830. +5 Feb. 1828.

To his wife, 4th March, 1828.

in the following year, he had finished writing his third. For the publication of his work, he had already secured the good offices of Mr. Tait: his announcement of it in the newspapers, as 'preparing for the press,' in six volumes, having produced no proposals from the publishers either of Edinburgh or of London.

The first two volumes of the 'History of Scotland," (which appeared respectively in 1828 and 1829,) were reviewed by Sir Walter Scott, in the Quarterly Review for November, 1829. He characterized the work with singular candour; noticing certain blemishes in a performance on which he nevertheless bestowed a very liberal measure of judicious commendation. It would be impossible, in fact, to withhold from this work the praise of having called attention, more perhaps than any which had preceded it, to the wondrous mine of historical information, yet unwrought, which exists in the State Paper Office. Chiefly interesting is Sir Walter's Review as supplying a novice with a general notion of the relation which Mr. Tytler's work bears to the labours of those who had preceded him in the same inquiry; as well as of the precise juncture at which he takes up the thread of his country's story. A wish is also twice expressed that "Mr. Tytler would bestow a portion of the research which he has brought to the later period, upon the dark ages preceding the accession of Alexander [III., 1249;] which might be made with advantage the subject of an introductory dissertation or volume. The facts are not, indeed, numerous; but cleared of the hypotheses which have been formed, and the spleen and virulence with which these have been defended, some account of Scotland from the earliest period, is a chapter of importance to the history of mankind." Accordingly, to produce such a volume, was long a favourite project with my friend; as I shall have occasion to show by and by. Let me, while on this subject, borrow the language of one who

has given an able and an accurate sketch of his life. It is as follows.

"He commenced with the reign of Alexander III., because it is only from this point that our national history can be properly authenticated. Edward I., who made such wild havoc with the Scottish muniments, so that no trace of Scotland as an independent kingdom should ever be found, was unable to annihilate the memory of the prosperity he had destroyed, the cruelties he had perpetrated, and the gallantry with which his usurpation had been overthrown; these were burnt in, as with a branding-iron, upon Scottish memory to the end of time; and Edward, by his work of demolition, only erected himself into a notorious pillar, to form a new starting-point for the national history to commence its glorious career. Tytler, however, knew that a stirring and eventful era had gone before, and that the early boyhood and youth of Scotland was not only full of interest, but a subject of intense curiosity; and doubly difficult though the task would have been, he had resolved, long before the History was ended, to explore this mythic period, and avail himself of such facts and probabilities as it afforded, in the form of a preliminary Dissertation.-He had also purposed to terminate his History, not at the Union of the two Crowns of England and Scotland under James I., but of the two kingdoms under Queen Anne. This, however, he subsequently found would have constituted a task equal in magnitude to all his past labours, and would have required a new life-time for its fulfilment; so that the design was abandoned.” *All this, however, is to anticipate.†

* From a memoir by the Rev. Thomas Thomson, contributed to the last edition of the Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen, published by Blaikie of Glasgow.

+ A few details on the subject of Tytler's History of Scotland, viewed rather on its commercial side, may not be unacceptable to some readers. Of the first volume, published in 1828, only 500 copies were at first printed.

These sold

But the prosecution of his History, made it indispensable for my friend to obtain access to documents preserved in London. Accordingly, in the Spring of 1830, being desirous of consulting some of the MSS. in the State Paper Office, and the British Museum, as well as to pave the way for future works, he tore himself from the society of his beloved Rachel and his little child, and proceeded to London. He was further desirous of succeeding to the office of Historiographer of Scotland, whenever it should be vacant by the death of Dr. Gillies, who had already attained the age of 83.-Writing to his wife from Ripon, (13th March 1830,) he says, "Today, I visited Pontefract Castle, during the time that Helen rested, and saw the tower where Richard the Second is reported to have been murdered. I endeavoured to instruct an old gardener who was working amid the ruins, in my story as to his escape and death in Scotland; and found him not so bigoted as I expected, although he was past 70. But when once planted, these traditions stick to old Castles as tenaciously as the ivy which covers them." It is interesting to compare this passage with what Tytler says in the

rapidly, and 750 more followed. Of vols. ii. and iii., both issued in 1829, the impression was 1150: of vol. iv., (in 1831,) 1125. The remaining volumes (v. to ix.—so much had the author miscalculated the probable extent of his work, which after all he only brought down to the Union of the Crowns,-) appeared in 1834, 1837, 1840, 1842, and 1843.

As might have been foreseen in the case of so protracted a work, the sale of the latter volumes fell off very considerably. Yet the profit on the first edition was very considerable. A second edition, of 2000 copies, also in nine volumes, at half the price of the first, appeared between 1841 and 1843, and met with a good sale. For this, Mr. Tytler received 707. per volume, as the volumes appeared. A third edition, in 7 volumes instead of 9, was published in 1845; for which Mr. Tait paid the Historian 500l. Of this impression, however, the sale has proved slow and unsatisfactory.

For these particulars, I am indebted to the obliging communications of the very intelligent publisher of the History. Mr. Tait reminds me that the second edition came out expressly as a cheap edition; the third as a handsome library edition.