the greater part of whom he had formed a pretty accurate acquaintance, and flinging himself over head and ears into the very heart of Gothic antiquities, and the history, poetry, and romance of the middle ages. These he has quitted by fits and starts, and spent the intervals of their neglect in making himself far better skilled than is common in the modern literature of foreign countries, as well as of England; but ever since, and up to this moment, they form the staple of his occupation-the daily bread of his mind. He lives almost continually in the days gone by, and feels himself, as he says, almost a stranger among matters which might be supposed to be nearer to him. And yet he is any thing but a stranger to the world he actually lives in; although indeed he does perhaps regard not a few both of its men and its things, with somewhat of the coldness of an unconcerned visitor. In short, for there is no need to disguise the fact to you, he has nursed himself into such a fervent veneration for the thoughts and feelings of the more ancient times of his country and of ours, (for as to that matter he is no bigot,) that he cannot witness without a deep mixture of bile, the adoration paid by those around him to thoughts, feelings, and persons, for whom he en

VOL. I.

1

B

tertains, if not absolute, at the least no inconsiderable comparative contempt. I have said that he is not a bigot, in regard to any old ideas of difference between his own country and ours. This I attribute in a great measure, certainly, to the course of study he has so devoutly pursued, and which could not have failed, in making him acquainted with the ancient condition of both countries, to reveal to him far more points of agreement than disagreement between them. But a part of his liberality must also, I should think, be ascribed to the influence of his education in England, more particularly in Oxford; his long residence in that noble city having filled the finest part of his mind with reverent ideas, concerning both the old and the present grandeur of England, such as can never be eradicated, nor even weakened, by any after experience of his life. Such, I suspect, from his conversation, to be the truth of the case; and yet it is only from odd hints and suggestions, that I have made shift to gather so much, for, of all men living, he is the least chargeable with the sin of dissertation, and I never heard him in my life give more than one sentence to the expression of any opinion he entertains.

*

Having now succeeded to the family estate,

which is a very ancient, and a tolerably productive one, W― feels himself perfectly at liberty to pursue whatever mode of life is most agreeable to his fancy. He has travelled a good deal on the continent of Europe, and even penetrated into Asia Minor and Egypt, as far up as the Pyramids. These journies, however, could only have been undertaken for the purpose of gratifying some very ardent curiosity, in regard to a few particular points connected with his former devotedness to classical learning; and he now declares, that, unless he should be tempted to visit Spain for the sake of her cathedrals, he will never again leave the white cliffs behind him. He makes an annual or biennial trip to London; but, with this exception, he is always to be found either at his old castle in Berwickshire, or here in Edinburgh, where he has a very snug house, although by no means in a fashionable part of the town. From a feeling of respect for his ancestors, he refuses to quit the old familyresidence, which is no other than a lodging up five pair of stairs, in one of those huge aerial edifices of the Old Town-edifices which sometimes contain beneath a single roof a population, layer above layer, household above household, more numerous than that of many a street in

many a city south of the "ideal line." Here W still sits in the same enormously stuffed and prodigiously backed elbow-chair, and still reposes beneath the same antediluvian testers which served his grandfather, his great grandfather, and all his generations back, for aught I know, to the days of Queen Mary; it being on many occasions his most chosen boast, that the degradation which affects, in other houses, the blood of the race, has touched in his house nothing but their furniture, and has not totally destroyed even that.

W ushered me into this remarkable habitation of his, not only without the least symptom of shame for its apparent obscurity, and the equally apparent filth of its approach, but with a certain air of proud and haughty satisfaction, as if he would have been ashamed to have conducted me to one of the newer, more commodious, and more elegant houses we had seen in the New Town. "The times are changed," says he," since my grandfather, the Lord of Session, used to see all the ladies of quality in Edinburgh in this old-fashioned habitaculum. I desire to see none of them here now. I have a tailor for my neighbour immediately below mea cobler-a tallow-chandler-a dancing-master

a grocer and a cowfeeder, are all between me and the street; and above, God knows what store of washer women-French teachers-auctioneers-midwives-seamstresses-and students of divinity, are between me and the chimneytop. But no matter. I have some claret, which is not too old to be tasteable; and I shall make an endeavour to give you, at least, as good commons as you were used to at the Bachelor's table of Trinity."

I had no reason to complain of his fare, although I confess, when the covers were first removed, I was not without some apprehensions, that it might prove as Methuselamitish as his dwelling. Whether that might, or might not be, the provender was excellent. It consisted, primo, of broth made from a sheep's head, with a copious infusion of parsley, and other condi ments, which I found more than palatable, especially after, at my host's request, I added a spoonful or two of Burgess to it.

Secundo, came the aforementioned sheep's head in propria persona-the hair having been taken off, not by the knife, but by the hot-iron, and the skin retaining from this operation, not only an inky hue, which would astound an Exmoorian, but a delicious, oily, fragrant gusto, worthy of