tioners thought fit to attempt making Dr. Morris his butt, and I believe he did absolutely succeed in trotting me a few yards to and fro on the subject of the shandrydan. But I perceived what was going forward in good time, and watching my opportunity, transferred with infinite dexterity the bit from my own mouth to that of my trotter---aye, and made him grind it till I believe his gums were raw. I had the good sense, however, to perceive the danger of the practice in spite of my own successful debut, and, God willing, from this moment, hope never to fill the roll either of Trotter or Trotlee.

The ideas you will form of the style of society which prevails in this place, from these little data, cannot indeed be very high ones. Beware, however, of supposing that to faults of so detestable a nature, there are no exceptions. I have already met with many---very many---well-bred gentlemen in Glasgow, who neither trot nor are trotted---who never were so stupid as to utter a pun-nor so malicious as to invent or echo a nick-name. It is true, indeed, that they are the nigro simillimi cygno of the place; but their rarity only renders them the more admirable, and the less deserving of being crowded into the list of evil-doers, with whom they are continually surrounded.

P. M.

LETTER LXXII.

TO THE SAME.

AFTER all, I am inclined to think that the manners of mercantile men are by no means so disagreeable as those of men engaged in most other active professions. In the manners of Glasgow, it is true, there is a sad uniformity of mercantile peculiarities; but how could this be otherwise in a town where no nobility resides, and where there is no profession that brings the aristocracy of talent much into view? In such a town, it is obvious there must be a miserable defect in the mechanism of society, from there being nothing to counteract the overbearing influence of mere wealth, or to preserve the remembrance of any other species of distinction. In a society where individuals claim importance

on many different grounds, there must, of course, be produced an extension of thought, corresponding to the different elements which these individuals contribute to the general mass. But bere, no doubt, the cup below is a dead one, and the one gilded drop floats alone and lazily upon the heavy surface.

Yet, taking matters as they are, perhaps the influence of the mercantile profession, although bad enough when thus exclusively predominant, is not, in itself, one of the worst. If this profession does not necessarily tend to refine or enlighten human nature, it at least does not distort it into any of those pedantries connected with professions which turn altogether upon the successful exercises of a single talent. The nature of the merchant is left almost entirely free, and he may enter into any range of feelings be pleases-but it is true he commonly saves himself the trouble of doing so, and feels only for NUMBER ONE.

In Glasgow, however, it would seem that the mercantile body is graced with a very large number of individuals, who are distinguished by a very uncommon measure of liberality of spirit. They are quite unwearied in their private and public charities; and although not much tinged with literary or philosophical enthusiasm in their own persons, they appreciate the value of higher cultivation to the community at large, and are, on all occasions, willing to contribute in the most laudable manner, to promoting, sustaining, or erecting institutions friendly to the cause of such cultivation. Two institutions of this nature have of late owed their being to this fine spirit of the Glasgow merchants, and I should hope they may long flourish, to reflect lasting honour on the names of their founders. I allude to the Astronomical Observatory-a very pretty building, magnificently furnished with all manner of instruments-and the New Botanic Garden, which is already of great extent, and which promises, I think, to be of amazing value. Both of these have been founded by private subscription among the leading members of the mercantile body in this thriving city-and the last mentioned is in the way of receiving continua! augmentations to its riches from the kindred enthusiasm of liberality which exists among those young men connected with the place, of whom so many hundreds are scattered over every region of the world. The productions of distant climates are forwarded on every opportunity by these young persons to this rising garden in their native city; each, no doubt,

deriving a generous pleasure in his exile, from the idea that he is thus contributing to the ornament of the place, with the localities of which his earliest and best recollections are connected.

But a few of the members of this profession, with whom I have become acquainted since my arrival here, are really men of a very superior class in every point of view-and might, I take it, be presented, without the least alarm for their credit, in any European society in which it has ever been my chance to move. These are commonly persons descended from some of the old mercantile families in the place --who, although they pursue the calling of their fathers-(and indeed to desert such a calling would, in their case, be pretty much the same sort of thing with giving up a fine hereditary landed estate)---yet enjoyed, in their earlier years, by means of the ancient wealth of their houses, every facility of liberal education, such as their native city could afford---and who, in not a few instances, moreover, have received many additional means of improvement from that foreign travel, in which a great part of their after and more strictly professional education consisted. These men busy themselves in the mornings with their concerns in the town; but in the evenings, they commonly retire to the beautifui villas which they have in the neighbourhood---and with the abundance of which, indeed, the whole face of the country round about Glasgow, in every direction, is adorned and enriched. Here they enjoy as much, perhaps, of elegant leisure and domestic enjoyment as falls to the lot of any other class of British subjects. The collisions in which they are constantly engaged with each other, and with the world, are sufficient to prevent them from acquiring any narrow and domineering ideas of sequestrated self-importance; while, on the other hand, the quiet and graceful method of their lives at home, softens and refines their minds from the too exclusive asperities of struggling self-interest, and the conflictions of the baser passions. I question whether our island can boast of a set of men more truly bonourable to her character---more admirable both in regard to their principles and their feelings---more unaffectedly amiable at home, or more courteous in their demeanour abroad, than some of those, the elite of the merchant-house of Glasgow, at whose hospitable mansions, during the later days of my stay in this neighbourhood, I have spent so many delightful hours. By degrees, it often happens, these gentlemen abstract themselves altogether from business, handing it

over, I suppose, to some of their sons or relations. They purchase land, and then take their place in the great body of British gentry, with, for aught I see, as much propriety, as any that elevate themselves to that most enviable of all human conditions, from any of those professions which think themselves too exclusively entitled to the appellation of liberal. After becoming acquainted with some of those enlightened and amiable individuals, and seeing the fine elegant way in which the quiet evenings of their days and of their lives are spent, I could not help recollecting, with some little wonder, the terms of unmitigated derision in which I had heard the lawyers of Edinburgh speak concerning "the people of Glasgow." Truly, I think such language is well becoming in the lips of your porers over title-deeds—your fustian sleeved writers-your drudging side-bar jurisconsults. I should like to know in what respect the habitual occupations of these meu are more likely to favour the culture of the general mind, than those of the great merchant, who sends his ships to every region of the habitable world, and receives them back loaded with its riches; or the great manufacturer who subdues the elements to his purpose, and by his speculations at once encourages the progress and extends the fame of those arts and sciences, in which not a little of the truest glory of his country consists.

The respectable families of this place have to boast, moreover, of having produced not a few individuals, who, abandoning the profession of their fathers, have devoted themselves to other pursuits, and achieved things that cannot fail to reflect honour both to them and the city of their habitation. Such was that gentle and delightful poet, James Grahame, the author of the Sabbath, who died only a few years ago in the midst of his family bere, and over whose remains a modest and affecting inscription is placed in the choir of the Cathedral. I have been gratified more than once during my sojourn in Glasgow, with hearing the terms of deep and tender affection in which the memory of this good man is spoken of, by those whose admiration of his mild and solemn genius has been warmed and enriched into a yet nobler kind of enthusiasm, by the experience of his personal virtues-their own intimate knowledge of that fine heart, from which so many of his inspirations appear to have been derived, and with the pervading charm of which, each and all of his most beautiful inspirations appear to have been sanctified. It is, indeed, a precious pleasure which one

receives in contemplating the sober endearing influences which survive the death of such a man, in the place where he was best known. This is the true embalming-such are the men who scarcely need the splendours of genius to preserve their memories-who may

trust

The lingering gleam of their departed lives,

To oral records and the silent heart.

The author of the Isle of Palms, and the City of the Plague, (whose exquisite lines on the death of James Grahame are engraved on the memory of not a few here, and elsewhere,) is himself also a native of this place, and connected by blood with many of the most respectable families of this vicinity. I mentioned this gentleman more than once to you in my letters from Edinburgb, and am glad that you were pleased with my account of his eloquence. The truth is, that I do not think justice is at all done in general to his genius—it is every where, indeed, admitted to be beautiful and various; but I suspect its strength and originality are not adequately appreciated, even by those who ought to be most capable of studying its productions. The meed of poetical popularity, (in its proudest sense,) has been bestowed, in our time, in a way that cannot be considered in any other light than that of extreme partiality, by all who contemplate the poetical works which have been produced among us, with a calm and deliberate eye. The reputation of those who have acquired great reputation, is perfectly just and proper; but there are not a few names which ought to share more than they do in the high honours which have been lavished on our first-rate favourites. Such, most assuredly, are the names of Coleridge, of Lamb, and of Wilson-three poets, distinguished by very different kinds of acquirement, and very different kinds of genius-but all agreeing in one particular, and that no unimportant one neither-namely, that they have appealed too exclusively to the most delicate feelings of our nature, and neglected, in a great measure, to call upon those more wide-spread sympathies, whose responses are so much more easy to be wakened--and, being once aroused, so much louder in their cheering and reverberating notes. I should except, however, from this rule, as applied to Mr. Wilson's poetry, bis last and longest poem, the City of the Plague-in which there is surely no want of passionate and powerful appeals to all those feelings and