usual hour of going to bed, he said to the queen, "I am somewhat fatigued, and I believe I shall sleep

soundly. May it please God, that he who fired the

pistol at me, may enjoy as profound a rest as I shall have!"

A PICTURESQUE VIEW OF SCOTLAND.

"In compliance with the last request which closed your most welcome letter, I have to tell you that the years which I have passed in Scotland are to be numbered among the happiest of my life. The Scotch are a people particularly intelligent and enterprising; the improvement of the mind seems to be the business of life here amongst the literary and scientific men, and their, transcendant powers have made, and do now make, themselves to be felt over every part of the earth. My mind receives inexpressible delight, and a continued accession of strength, by listening to, and conversing with some of the ablest men that ever adorned and dignified human nature. Since I have been in Scotland my soul has been enriched and strengthened by the study of metaphysics and political economy, in addition to my classical and physiological attainments.

"But to leave myself, and turn to a much more interesting subject. The women in Scotland possess personal charms, that surpass even those of the blue-eyed daughters of Circassia; they are lively,

elegant, easy, and very attractive in their manners, so that even a philosopher might be forgiven if he loses his heart irrevocably in Scotland.

"As for the scenery round this heavenly spot, how can I convey to you a description of its beauty and its grandeur? It is often my delight to wander alone on the banks of the winding stream, and listen to the songsters of the wood, at the close of the day.

"I often steal out from my chamber, in the dead of night, and scale the craggy cliffs, which are piled in hoary grandeur high o'er the glimmering dale; or wander, lone and pensive, in the woods, along whose windings wild murmurs the solemn gale; and solitary, musing, slow, I haunt the scenes where melancholy strays forlorn, and woe retires to weep, what time the wan moon's yellow horn gleams on the western deep, tinging faint the broad extended bosom of the western main.

"But my soul is wakened to sublimer thought, when I traverse the sheltered side of a grove in a cloudy winter's morn, and hear the storm rave among the trees; and my heart swells with enthusiastic devotion to the Lord of all the earth, and of the heavens, when I wind my way up some steepy bill during the agitations of the elements; and striding along the summit of the rugged rock, while the lightning flashes arround me, and amidst the howlings of the tempest, I apostrophize the genius of the storm, and hear the angry spirit of the waters shriek.

"But I am running on about myself, when I ought

to pourtray the scenery around Edinburgh. All that nature can perform to delight the eyes of man, and to elevate his soul with scenes of sublimity and grandeur, she has done (and art has lent her aid also) for this town. From that majestic and venerable edifice, the castle, our prospect is, indeed, magnificent and extended. We survey the New Town below, adorned with the most elegant and regular buildings, and broad, airy, spacious streets; her spires and turrets glittering in the sun; her whole domain swarming with inhabitants, and resounding with the busy hum of men. We cast our view over the Frith of Forth, and beyond the gleaming of the silver wave, the kingdom of Fyfe stretches its extended length of coast.

Turning our back upon this scene, we behold the Old Town beneath, presenting a most picturesque view from the antiquity and the height of its buildings, and the frequent alternation of eminences and of depressions, on which the houses are erected; some seeming to hang in mid-air, while others are sunk in the vale below. Casting our view beyond the city, we survey a fair and a pleasant country, gay with enamelled, verdant meads, and waving rich with furrowed corn; and, beyond all, terminating the prospect, the long-extended ranges of the Pentland mountains lift their bleak heads to the sky.

"I am not able to describe a thousandth part of the excessive beauty and grandeur of the scenery, or to give the faintest image of the exquisite delight,

which every sensible mind must experience in contemplating such a prospect."

Edward (the writer of the above letter) occasionally made excursions from his head-quarters at Edinburgh, into the country; during the last summer of his residence in Scotland he visited the Highlands. When he came to the pass of Killiakranky he paused with wonder and dismay: the country round was terrifically grand; far as the could range, the prospect was bound by an eternal chain of mountains, whose summits were buried in the clouds.

eye

Edward dismounted, and bade his servant hold his horse, while he crawled, at the imminent hazard of breaking his neck, down some very steep rocks, in order to bathe in the river Garry. At length, he reached the lowermost ledge of the precipice, against which the unwearied waves beat in hoarse cadence. The water was clear and limpid, so as to enable him to see and to avoid the sunken masses of stone, that lay a few feet under its surface.

Edward having bathed, and dressed himself, stood on the shelving ledge of a rock, close by the water's side, and suffered his soul to be wrapt in ecstasy by a survey of the most admirable and stupendous scenery with which his eyes had been ever blessed. The vast masses of rocks had been, in many places, rifted by the lightning's blast, and, here and there, disclosed an awful chasm. At their base and far up the steep, the hills were naked and bare, but above, thinly skirted with hardy trees and shrubs, as

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the mountain ash, the elm, and the hazel. The arch of a bridge, which led to a stately mansion near, reared itself full sixty feet above the bed of the river, although in the winter season, when the floods roll down the impetuous tide of their torrents from the mountain heights, the waters rise above the level of the arch, and find their way through some round apertures at its side, made for the purpose of affording an outlet to the streams, lest the great weight of accumulated waters should press upon and sweep away the whole fabric into destruction.

From the spot where Edward stood, as he looked through the bridge's arch, he beheld a noble country open on his view. The banks of the river (which tumbled its foaming flood over many a rough and broken fragment of rock, that impeded its course through the channel) were smiling with verdure, the plains beyond exhibited the marks of cultivation, and the whole of the prospect was terminated by a range of mountains, some of which were slightly cloathed with wood, while the rest, in bleak and sullen majesty, exposed their bare heads to the storm, and defied the ravages of all-devouring time.

In the rebellion of 1745, when the Hessian troops came to this spot, they declared that they would go no farther, for that these were the confines of the world. And no wonder, for before General Wade had caused the famous military road, which now runs over all this tract of country, to be made, half a dozen Highlanders, with a few loose