one. His vigour seems to be a perfect widow's cruise, bubbling for ever upwards, and refusing to be exhausted-swelling and spreading till all the vessels of the neighbourhood are saturated, and more than saturated, with the endless unwearied irrigation of its superfluous richness.

Mr P was the only other person whose conversation made any very striking impression on me but indeed this might well be the case, without the least reflection on the talents of those present. This gentleman's mode of talking is just as different as possible from his friend's-it is quietly, simply, unaffectedly sensible, and that is all one thinks of it at first-but by degrees he says things, which although at the moment he utters them, they do not produce any very startling effect, have the power to keep one musing on them for a long time after he stops-so that, even if one were not told who he is, I believe one would have no difficulty in discovering him to be a great man. The gravity of his years-the sweet unassuming gentleness of his behaviour-and the calm way in which he gave utterance to thoughts, about which almost any other person would have made so much bustle-every thing about the appearance and manners of this serene and venerable

old man, has left a feeling of quiet, respectful, and affectionate admiration upon my mind. I brought him into town in the shandrydan, and he has asked me to dine with him in the beginning of next week. I mean before the time, to go and hear him deliver one of his lectures, and shall tell you what I think of it-although, considering the subject of which he treats, you may perhaps feel no great anxiety to hear my opinion.

I declare the wine here is superb. I think some of J's Château-Margout beats the lot you bought at Colonel Johnes's all to nothingdon't take this in dudgeon.

Ever your's,

P. M.

73.

LETTER VIII.

TO THE REV. D. W.

DEAR DAVID,

OMAN'S, TUESDAY EVENING.

should already

I am rather surprised that you begin to call upon me for disquisition, when you may well suppose I have still so many interesting descriptions to give you. I have now seen, not one or two, but a great number of those eminent persons who confer so much honour upon the present condition of Scotland, and of whom you yourself have so often talked to me in terms of ardent curiosity. I assure you, but indeed why should I waste words to do so, that the extraordinary talents of these men are as far as possible from losing by a close inspection of their manners. The tone of that society, which they have necessarily had so great a share in forming, is as free as possible from the influence of that spirit of jealousy and constraint which I have observed operating in some other cities, in

such a way, as to prevent men of genius from doing justice to themselves, elsewhere than in their writings. Hereafter, indeed, I shall have occasion to say something of the spirit of party in Scotland, and to show with what destructive violence it attacks the very essence of cordial communion among some of the less considerable classes of society. Nay, I fear from what I already see, that I shall find some little occasion to lament the insidious and half unsuspected influences of the same spirit among those who should be more above its working. But in the social intercourse of most of the men of literary eminence whom I have as yet seen, the absence of all feeling of party appears to be quite as entire as that of some other, and yet more offensive feelings which are elsewhere sufficiently manifest in their effects; and the principles, as well as the reputation of the one of such men, appear to act in no other way upon the other, than as gentle stimulants of his intellect, and of his courtesy.

My friend W, as I have already whispered, not only forms, but glories in forming, an exception to this sort of behaviour. He utterly hates a Whig and a Calvinist, and he has no scruple about saying as much upon every occasion. He abominates the style of complaisant

smoothness, with which some, who entertain many of his own opinions, are accustomed to treat those whom he calls by no better name than the Adversaries; and complains indeed with an air of gravity, which I should not have expected in any man of his understanding, that by this species of conduct, the Great Cause itself, (by which he means the cause of true religion and true patriotism, as united and inseparable), has sustained, is sustaining, and is likely to sustain injuries of a more dangerous character than its unassisted enemies alone could have any power of inflicting. He has a two-fold argument on this head. "In the first place," says he," the utterly ignorant and uninformed, who must constitute the great majority of every nation, and the half ignorant and conceited, who constitute an infinitely larger proportion of the Scotch than of any other nation under heaven

and who, wherever they may be found, are a far more despicable, though no doubt, a more dangerous class than that upon which they think themselves entitled to look down-all these people, " thick as the leaves in Vallambrosa," are, in spite of themselves, mightly influenced in all things by the example of the few men of true genius and learning their country does contain.