tender expression of gentleness, which tells that he has also his share in the blood, and in the miseries, of our own lower nature. The stooping reflective attitude may be that of a hero weary with combat, but is one that speaks, as if his combatting had been in a noble cause-as if high thoughts had nerved his arm more than the mere exultations of corporeal vigour. His head is bent from the same quarter as that of the Madonnas, and whoever takes the trouble to examine it, will find, that in this particular point is to be found the chief expansion and prominence of his organization.

In a place where education is so much diffused among the men, it is natural to suppose, that the women also must, in no inconsiderable degree, be imbued with some passion for literature. The kinds of information most in request here, (and, indeed, necessarily so, when we reflect on the means of education which the place affords,) are evidently much more within the reach of the Fair Sex, than in most other cities of the same importance. To be able to talk with fluency about the Politics and Belles Lettres of the day, is all that is required of an accomplished man in Edinburgh, and these are accomplishments which the ladies, modest as they are,

6

would require more modesty than is either natu ral or proper to suppose themselves incapable of acquiring. That ignorance of the learned languages and ancient literature, which the men have not the assurance to attempt disguising, has broken down effectually the first and most insurmountable barrier which separates the intellectual pretensions of the two sexes in Eng land, and, indeed, in almost all the capitals of Europe. The universal neglect with which the more ancient and massy literature, even of our own island, seems to be treated, has removed another mighty, although not quite so insurmountable barrier; and, in short, between the men and the women, for aught I can see, there is no "gulf fixed." The men, indeed, seem still to be anxious to prolong, in their own favour, the existence of something of that old prestige, which owes the decay of its vigour entirely to themselves. But the greatest Mysogynists in the world have never accused the sex of being deficient in acuteness of discernment, and the ladies of Edinburgh are quite sufficiently quicksighted, not to allow the advantages which have been given them, to slip unused through their fingers.

So far as I may judge from my own short experience, however, the Scottish ladies, in general, are very far from pushing these advantages to any undue extent. It is not necessary to enter minutely into the causes of their forbearance in this respect; for a much slower person than Mr David Williams would have no great diffieulty in forming a pretty fair guess, as to the most efficient of them. The merit which they do certainly possess and exemplify in this part of their conduct, may perhaps be divided into pretty equal shares between the influences of Nature and those of Art. Those gentler and more delicate feelings of our nature, which all their modes of life-their hopes, fears, pleasures, and sorrows, render them better able to appreciate, are alone, I should think, more than enough to weaken with the best of them the influence of those lighter and more transitory feelings, which derive gratification or uneasiness from the conscious possession or conscious want of such a measure of literary information, as is common among either the men or the women with whom they can be called upon to associate. With those of a less feminine and less just character, in point of mere feeling, there cannot be wanting enough of penetration to teach them, that

the confession of inferiority is one of the most cunning treacheries with which to bait the hook of female fascination; and thus it is that the highest and most sacred of inspirations, on the one hand, co-operate with not a few less lofty and generous suggestions on the other, to keep within limits the infection of blue-stockingism the one set of motives, as might befit their origin, attacking the secret root and essence of the mania for insignificant acquisition-the other no less appropriately, and no less powerfully, chilling and repressing the mania for insignificant display.

There are, however, abundant exceptions to this rule even here. Innate and incorrigible vanity in some; particular incidents in the early history of others, too minute to be explained in any general terms of description; and in a few cases, without doubt, the consciousness of capacity of a really extraordinary nature, have been sufficient to create a certain number of charac ters, which are somewhat inaccurately and unjustly classed together by the gentlemen of Edinburgh, under the appellation of "our Bluestockings." With the chief and most prominent persons of this class, it has as yet been my good or evil fortune to come very little in contact.