ANIMAL HAPPINESS.

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idiwut-and should be taen afore a magistrate, and fined roundly, or sent to the treadmill, for an unprincipled, irreligious, and maist unnatural leear.

Tickler. What, James, do the Forest lads ever take a turn-up at a fair or wedding?

Shepherd. Ower aften-peace is best. But I ne'er heard fechtin ca'd cruel about the Border. They do gie ither desperate paiks-baith up and doun--for they're no nice that way; but gin there be ony cruelty in the business o' a black ee and a bluidy nose, our folk are sae stupid that they hae never yet fand it out. It's a' cant and effeminacy. North. There is a good deal of ignorance in it. Many people have from their youth up been unaccustomed to all athletic exercises-and to them a box on the ear is a very awful concern. But they will lie back, three in a post-chaise, with heavy luggage, and miry up-hill roads, and snore through a fifteen mile-stage of a stormy winter night, without once thinking of the spavined, and wind-galled, and foundered pair of dying hacks, that have dragged them to a fat supper, and a warming-pan'd bed.

Shepherd. Farmers' horses are a very happy class of people -hard-workit to be sure, and at times sair galloped, when master or man has had a drap ower much; but weel fed and fodder'd, and treated like brithers. Cows, too, are very happy -and saw ye ever the like o' calves wi' their tails up, and covin' wi' their buddin foreheads, and funkin wi' their hindlegs, till they're breathless on the knowe? The rural brute population are happy. We farmers and shepherds mak them sae-or rather we help-for nature pours happiness into the hearts o' a' creturs, and they a' enjoy life till the inevitable but unapprehended day.

There

North. How much pleasanter, James, this our little partie quarrè, than yesterday's lumbering dinner-throng. could not have been fewer than twenty?

Shepherd. I agree wi' you, sir. It's just the maist difficult thing in a' this world to ken hoo to keep up a conversation in a mixed pairty. Out o' ony dizzen there's aye three or four sure to poishon the evening. Ae cretur begins upon paintin, perhaps no the Director-general, for I like to hear him-and keeps deavin3 ye wi' his buttery touches, and the Exhibitions 1 Covin-butting. 2 See ante, p. 28, note. 8 Deavin-deafening.

frae the time o' the cheese and speerits, a' the way on, without interruption, to that o' the porter and red herrings. No anither topic the haill nicht but paintin. A' the lave o' us clean lose the power o' utterance, and sit fillin up tumbler after tumbler maist disconsolately, the toddy having lost a' taste, and a' power o' fuddlin, except mere stupefication o' the head.

Tickler. Or some infernal idiot begins upon Political Economy, and to his own refutation, without any demand, gives you a supply of raw material that fills the whole room with the smell of hides, blubber, and barilla. You might think him one of the "Twa Stirks," that, in absence of the Stot,' mislead the Scotsman. The dolt drivels his way between truism and paradox, feeble and fumbling, and with the intellect of a sticket man-milliner.

North. With the exception of about half-a-dozen, one or two of whom are of doubtful claims, all these gentry are the most vulgar and most vapid of praters and scribblers. Incapable of comprehending any ordinary and everyday subject, and knowing that they would expose themselves to detection and ridicule the moment they presumptuously opened mouth in company on such topics as gentlemen of education usually converse about, they think to shroud their imbecility and ignorance in-Science, the science of Political Economy !

Tickler. O the hideous jabber of the foolish knaves! But be you strong of stomach, and, as the Shepherd would say, dinna scunner-keep down your rising gorge-scrutinise the paltry prate of the pretenders-and you find them ignorant. even of the common rules of arithmetic. They would fain fling flour in your eyes-or knock you down with a bar of bullion-but strip their tongues of this jargon, translate the gabble into English, and the would-be Malthus, or Ricardo, or Tooke, or Mushet, or Buchanan, stares round the company with his vacant and nonplussed eyes, and then vainly tries to

1 In the exasperation of politics the name of "the Stot" had been applied, by the writers in Blackwood's Magazine, to Mr J. R. M'Culloch, at that time the editor of The Scotsman, and since then the author of The Principles of Political Economy, and other highly esteemed works. In after life Professor Wilson and Mr M'Culloch were thoroughly reconciled. The Professor lived to appreciate and acknowledge the many excellent qualities of the Economist, to whose talents and literary merits he had never at any time been insensible. I do not know precisely who the "Twa Stirks" were.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

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recover the balance of power by an undue absorption of the circulating medium.

North. In short, you laugh the man of Science into a sulky drunkard, and he and his Principles and Elements of Political Economy lie snoring together below the mahogany, till, getting offensive, mine host calls in the chairman from the corner, and bundling him into the vehicle, the room is ventilated,-export being in this case infinitely more advantageous than import, and society benefited by getting suddenly off hand so much native produce and raw material-to say nothing of Dugald and the carrying trade.

Shepherd. Ha, ha, ha!-I canna help lauchin, it soun's sae comical. I ken naething about Political Economy—but I hae observed ae thing in the kintra, and especially at the Farmers' Club at Selkirk, that the greatest gawpuses1 are aye speakin about it, that can speak about naething else—and perhaps it would be fully as weel for them gin they were to read Hogg upon Sheep, and Dr Findlater. They're a' hard drinkers, too, the maist o' them-bad managers—and break.

North. James, only think of an infuriated dunce in the Scotsman declaring that Sir Walter Scott is not entitled to offer his opinion to the public on the Currency !

Shepherd. Deil tak the idiwut-what for no?

North. The subject is above and beyond his powers! The obscure and insolent lout claims the subject as his own;-he, forsooth, has read all the authors, "from Smith to Ricardo,' and calls upon the world to hold its mouth wide open, that he may administer a dose of doctrine.

Shepherd. Hoo does the fule ken what Sir Walter has read or no read? And oh! sir! can ony cretur in the Scotsman be really sae weak or wicket as. to think himsel capable o' understandin ony ae* thing whatsomever that's ayont the grasp o' the Author o' Waverley's haun?

Tickler. About a thousand editors of pelting journals, and

1 Gawpus-fool.

2 The Shepherd's Guide: being a Practical Treatise on the Diseases of Sheep, and the best Means of preventing them. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1807.

3 Soon after the great monetary crisis in 1825, Sir Walter Scott published three letters on the Currency, under the signature of Malachi Malagrowther. These letters were of essential service to Scotland, by causing Government to abandon their scheme of abolishing the Scotch £1 bank-notes, which they were on the point of carrying into effect.

4 Ony ae-any one.

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HIS LETTERS ON THE CURRENCY.

three times that number of understrappers " upon the establishment," think themselves able to correct the errors of Adam Smith. "We cannot help being surprised that Adam Smith," &c.; and then the dunce, shutting his eyes, and clenching his fists, without the slightest provocation, runs his numskull bang against the illustrious sage.

North. Adam never so much as inclines from the centre of gravity-while the periodical meal-monger, leaving only some white on the sleeve of the old gentleman's coat, which is easily brushed off by the hand, reels off into the ditch, as if he had been repelled from the wall of a house, and is extricated by some good-natured friend, who holds him up, dirty and dripping, to the derision of all beholders.

Shepherd. It's perfectly true, that a' the newspaper chiels speak out bauldly upon the principles and yelements o' the science—and though I'm wullin to alloo that there's some verra clever fallows amang them, yet oh! man, its mair than laughable, for it's loathsome, to hear them ca'in that ower kittle for Sir Walter that's sae easy to themselves, wha write, in my opinion, a sair splutterin style, as to language,—and, as to thocht, they gang roun' and roun', and across and reacross, back'ards and forrits, out o' ae yett1 and in at anither, now loupin ower the hedges, and now bringin doun the stane-wa's,—sometimes playin plouter into a wat place up to the oxters, and sometimes stumblin amang stanes,-now rinnin fast fast, like a jowler on the scent, and then sittin doun on a knowe, and yowlin like a collie at the moon,-in short, like a fou fallow that has lost his way in a darkish nicht, and after sax hours' sair and unavailing travel, is discovered snoring sound asleep on the road-side by decent folk riding in to the market.

North. I shall probably have two pretty stiffish articles about public men and things in this Number; and therefore fear that I must delay the Currency Question for another month. I shall then, in my usual way, settle it for ever.

Tickler. Malachi Malagrowther is in the wrong, and the Courier scribe has done him.

North. Malachi Malagrowther is in the right, and the Courier prig has done himself. I have a twenty-page article in my head; and it will spring forth, full-grown, and armed like Minerva, from the brain of Jove.

1 Yett-gate.

Shepherd. Ma faith! you and Malachi 'll skelp their doups for them, and gar them skirl.

North. O Lord, James! but the Chancellor of the Exchequer is a heavy joker! If his taxes were as heavy as his wit, the country would indeed be sorely burthened. There is a grace and brilliancy about all Canning says, and he never makes a pass without a palpable hit. Robinson' should stick to his own figures-arithmetical ones, I mean -yet there was "Hear, hear!" And the Chancellor cackled, flapped his wings, and crowed after the fashion of an unwieldy barn-door fowl, who sees that a game-cock, who would kill him at a single blow, is at a safe distance in another croft, attending to his own pursuits.

Tickler. I disagree entirely.

Shepherd. Haud your tongue, Mr Tickler. I'm quite convinced by Mr North's twenty-page article, that's to loup out like Minerva. Besides, eh! man, a' the Englishers, like gowks, canna see that Malachi has a way o' expressin himsel peculiar to the Malagrowthers; and they set about answering him wi' grave faces the length o' my arm.

North. Very silly, indeed, James-but there's a braw time comin. Tickler, have you been at the Exhibition?

Tickler. John Watson Gordon is great. His "Dr Hunter" is equal to anything of Raeburn's.

North. I doubt that.

Tickler. Well, then-next to Raeburn, John stands among our Scottish modern portrait-painters.

แ

Shepherd. What for does every person cry out, Ower mony portraits, ower mony portraits?" Can onything be mair pleasant than just a' at ance, when your freend is a thousand miles aff, or perhaps dead, to see the very cretur himsel on canvass, lookin at you wi' a smile or a frown?

Tickler. If people would not be so excessively ugly,

1 Afterwards Viscount Goderich, and at a later period, Earl of Ripon.' At this time he was Chancellor of the Exchequer.

2 Dr John Hunter, professor of Humanity in the University of St Andrews. This eminent scholar and philologist, who published editions of several of the Roman Classics remarkable for the accuracy of their text, died in 1837, aged 91. The picture referred to in the text now ornaments the hall of the United College, St Andrews.

3 Some of Sir Henry Raeburn's portraits have been seldom equalled, and never surpassed by those of any British artist. Born in 1756, he died in 1823.