formation of these fantastic piles, which leaves the eye, that would scrutinize and penetrate them, unsatisfied and dim with gazing. In company with the first friend I saw, (of whom more anon,) I proceeded at once to take a look of this superb city from a height, placed just over the point where the old and new parts of the town meet. These two quarters of the city, or rather these two neighbouring but distinct cities, are separated by a deep green valley, which once contained a lake, and which is crossed at one place by a huge earthen mound, and at another by a magnificent bridge of three arches. This valley runs off toward the estuary of the Forth, which lies about a mile and a half from the city, and between the city and the sea there rises on each side of it a hill-to the south that called Arthur's Seat-to the north the lower and yet sufficiently commanding eminence on which I now stoodthe Calton Hill. This hill, which rises about 350 feet above the level of the sea, is, in fact, nothing more than a huge pile of rocks, covered with a thin coating of soil, and, for the most part, with a beautiful verdure. It has lately been circled all round with spacious gravelled walks, so that one reaches the summit without the least fatigue. It seems as if you had not quitted the streets, so easy is the ascent; and yet where did streets or city ever afford such a prospect! The view changes every moment as you proceed; yet what grandeur of unity in the general and ultimate impression! At first you see only the skirts of the New Town, with apparently few public edifices to diversify the grand uniformity of their outlines; then you have a rich plain, with green fields, groves and villas, gradually losing itself in the sea-port town of Edinburgh, -Leith. Leith covers, for a brief space, the margin of that magnificent Frith which recedes upward among an amphitheatre of mountains, and opens downward into the ocean, broken everywhere by green and woody isles, excepting where the bare brown rock of the Bass lifts itself above the waters mid-way to the sea. As you move round, the Frith disappears, and you have Arthur's Seat in your front. In the valley between lies Holyrood, ruined-desolate-but majestic in its desolation. From thence the Old Town stretches its dark shadow-up, in a line, to the summit of the Castle rock-a royal residence at either extremity--and all between an indistinguishable mass of black tower-like structures the concentrated" walled city," which has stood more sieges than I can tell of. Here we paused for a time, enjoying the majestic gloom of this most picturesque of cities. A thick blue smoke hung low upon the houses, and their outlines reposed behind on ridges of purple clouds;—the smoke, and the clouds, and the murky air, giving yet more extravagant bulk and altitude to those huge strange dwellings, and increasing the power of contrast which met our view, when a few paces more brought us once again upon the New Town-the airy bridge-the bright green vale below and beyond it—and, skirting the line of the vale on either side, the rough crags of the Castle rock, and the broad glare of Prince's Street, that most superb of terracesall beaming in the open yellow light of the sun-steeples and towers, and cupolas, scattered bright beneath our feet--and, far as the eye could reach, the whole pomp and richness of distant commotion-the heart of the city. Such was my first view of Edinburgh. I descended again into her streets in a sort of stupor of admiration. Excuse my troubling you with all this, now that I have written it; but do not be alarmed with any fear, lest I should propose to treat you with much more of the same kind of diet. I have no intention to send you a description of the cities and scenery of Scotland. I refer you semel et simul to Sir John Carr, and our dear countryman, Mr. Pennant. I have always been "a fisher of men ;" and here also, I promise you, I mean to stick to my vocation. But enough for the present. Yours sincerely, P. M. P. S.-You will observe by the date of my letter, I have already left the Black Bull. I write from one of the most comfortable hotels I ever was in, and have already ascertained the excellence of the port. LETTER II. TO THE SAME. Oman's, March 6. DEAR DAVID, Do you recollect W. of Tripity? I suspect not; but you have heard of him a thousand times. And yet you may have met him at my rooms, or North's; for I think he determined, after you began to reside. At all events, you remember to have heard me describe his strange eccentric character his dissolute behaviour during the first years of his residence-his extravagant zeal of study afterwards-last of all, the absurdity of his sudden elopement, without a degree, after having astonished the examining masters by the splendid commencement of his examination. The man is half-mad in some things; and that is the key of the whole mystery. W- and I were great friends during the first terms I spent at Jesus. He had gone to school at Harrow with my brother Samuel, and called on me the very day I entered. What a life was ours in that thoughtless prime of our days! We spent all the mornings after lecture in utter lounging— eating ice at Jubb's-flirting with Miss Butler-bathing in the Charwell, and so forth. And then, after dinner, we used to have our fruit and wine carried into the garden, (I mean at Trinity,) and there we sat, three or four of us, sipping away for a couple of hours, under the dark refreshing shade of those old beechen bowers. Evensong was no sooner over, than we would down to the Isis, and man one, or sometimes two, of Mother Hall's boats, and so run races against each other, or some of our friends, to Iffley or Sandford. What lots of bread and butter we used to devour at tea, and what delight we felt in rowing back in the cool misty eveningsometimes the moon up long ere we reached Christ Church meadows again. A light supper-cheese-and-bread and lettuces--and a joyous bowl of Bishop-these were the regular conclusion. I would give half I am worth to live one week of it over again. At that time, W------ and I, Tom Vere, (of Corpus,) and one or two more, were never separate above three or four hours in the day. I was on my way to deliver a letter of introduction to a young barrister of this place, when, in turning the corner of a street, my old friend, Will W, passed close at my elbow. I knew him in a moment, although he is greatly changed, and called after him. He turned round with a fierce air, as if loth to be disturbed, (for he was evidently up to the chin in meditation ;) but, on recognizing his ancient acquaintance, nothing could be more hearty than the kindness of his countenance. After a few hurried terrogations on both sides, diversified by scarcely any responses on either, I took hisarm and began to explain to him the purposes of my visit to a city in which he had so little expectation of seeing me. He accompanied me immediately to the Calton Hill, of which I spoke in my last, and where, as he assured me, he spends at least one hour every day when in Edinburgh. On coming down he carried me to the Hotel where I now am; and, having seen my baggage and horses fairly established, and walked a good deal about the town, we proceeded to his house, where I remained for the rest of the day. I assure you this rencounter has afforded me the highest pleasure, and I doubt not it will be of infinite use to me, moreover-for Wis, perhaps, of all men, the very person I should have selected to act as my cicerone in Scotland. Indeed, I wonder at myself for not having made more accurate inquiries about him before I set out; but I had somehow got a confused idea in my head that he was resident in France or Germany, and really had never thought of him in relation to my own schemes of visiting his country. He has already introduced me to several very pleasant fellows here. But before I describe his companions, I must endeavour to give you some little notion of himself. After leaving Oxford under the strange circumstances you. have often heard me speak of, W-proceeded to the North, where he spent several years in severe study, not a whit discouraged in his views, or shaken from his attachments, by the singular catastrophe to which the constitutional and irresistible panic of a moment had exposed him. He changed, however, but indeed it was scarcely possible for him to do otherwise, the course and tenor of his usual pursuits; passing for a time from the classics, with 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 widdle 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 visiter. 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 entertains, 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 tolerably productive one, W-feels himself perfectly at liberty to pursue whatever mode of life is most |