must have afforded a most picturesque contrast to the strictly legal costume of full-dress black suits, in which, at that time, they made their appearance there on the other mornings of the week. They retained their gowns and wigs, but every other part of their equipment was in the very extreme of opposition to the usual integuments worn in company with these -riding-coats of all the splendid hues, not then as now abandoned to livery-servants, bright mazarine blue, pea-green, drummers' yellow, &c. &c., but always buckskin breeches, and top-boots and spurs. The steeds to be forthwith mounted by these embryo cavaliers, were meantime drawn up in regular lines or circles, under the direction of serving-men and cadies in the Parliament-Close; and no sooner did the Judges leave the bench, than the whole squadron got rid of their incumbrances, and were off in a twinkling-some to their own estates-others to the estates of their friendsbut every one to some place or other out of Edinburgh. Although all this parade has long since dropt into disuse and oblivion, the passion for farming has by no means deserted its hold of the Scotch lawyers. Among many others, as I have said, Lord Hermand keeps up the old spirit with infinite zeal. It is not now in the power of professional people to leave Edinburgh at the end of every week; but the moment any session of the Court is over, and a few weeks of intermission are put in his power, he quits the city on the instant, and buries himself among his woods, and corn-fields, and cattle, till necessity compels him once more to exchange these for the "pulvis, strepitusque Romæ." Even in the city, there is in his dress and gait a great deal that marks his Lordship's rural attachments and habits. His stockings are always of the true farmer's sort, with broad stripes alternately of black and white worsted-and bis shoes are evidently intended for barder work than pacing the smooth granite of the streets of Edinburgh. I confess that my eye lingers with very singular delight, even upon these little traits in the appearance of one, that may well be considered, and therefore cannot fail to be honoured, as the last representative of so fine a class. P. M. LETTER XL. TO THE SAME. I THINK you will allow me no inconsiderable share of credit for the cordial manner in which I have lauded the excellencies of the Scottish Barristers, when I tell you, that those whom I have particularly described to you, are each and all of them Whigs-most of them fervent, nay, bigotted Whigs, or, as Dr. Par would say, xuyalalo. Nor will it diminish the merits of my liberality, when I inform you that the friend, under whose auspices my inspection of Edinburgh has been chiefly conducted, so far from regarding these eminent men with the same impartial eye of which I have made use, has well nigh persuaded himself into a thorough conviction that their talents and attainments are most extravagantly over-rated in common opinion; and has, moreover, omitted no opportunity of detracting from them in private, when he may have heard me expatiate upon their praises. There are only two exceptions to this-Mr. Cranstoun and Mr. Jeffrey. The former be cannot help admiring and loving for the beautifully classical style of his eloquence, and, indeed, of all his attainments; but I think it forms no small ingredient both in his love and admiration, that Mr. Cranstoun happens to be sprung from one of the greatest of the old Border families, and so, it may be supposed, to have been nourished in infancy, with the same milk of romantic and chivalrous tradition, of which he himself imbibed so largely then, and with the influences of which even now his whole character and conversation are saturated and overflowing; for I have already said enough to satisfy you, that few men can quote the words of the poet with more propriety than Mr. W "The Boy is Father of the Man, In regard to Jeffrey, his mode of thinking may perhaps appear something still more peculiar. In the first place, indeed, the talents of this remarkable man are of such an order, that it is quite impossible a man of such talents as Mr. W should not admire them. The direction which has been given to these great talents, is a thing which W contemplates, and has long contemplated, "more in sorrow than in anger." While nobody can more abominate the scope and tendency of the Edinburgh Review, than he does, he is very far from being one of those who extend the feeling of aversion due to the work, from it to its principal conductor, or, indeed, who feel any difficulty in sympathizing with some part, at least, of those early feelings and circumstances, to which, in all probability, the worst things in the conduct of this celebrated Journal may be traced. He understands too much of poor human nature, to be an inexorable judge of the failings of a man, whose general power of intellect, and general rectitude of feeling and principle, he cannot but acknowledge. At times, it is true, on some new piece of provocation, bis temper deserts him for a moment; but he soon recovers his tranquillity, and, in common, the tone wherein he speaks of Mr. Jeffrey, is assuredly more nearly akin to that of affectionate regret, than to that of impatiennt spleen, far less of settled aversion and dislike. In truth, Mr. W's views of literature are of so large a kind, and he has so much accustomed himself to trace the connexion which subsists between the inanifestations of mind in one age, and those in ages preceding and following, that it would be a very inconsistent thing, where he to concentrate any overwhelming portion of the wrath excited in his breast by any particular direction of intellectual forces, upon the head of any individual author whatever. Besides, were he inclined to heap the coals of his vengeance upon any one head, on account of the turn which literary and political criticism has taken in our days, most assuredly it would be on no living head that he would think of laying such a burden. He regards the Scotch philosophers of the present day, and among, or above the rest, Mr. Jeffrey and the Edinburgh Reviewers, as the legitimate progeny of the sceptical philosophers of the last age; and although he is far from having any sympathy with the feelings which the whole style of that philosophy most eminently and powerfully tends to nourish, he cannot for a moment permit himself to lay at the door of any one individual, a larger share in the common blame, that in strict, and yet in comprehensive justice, he thinks that individual ought to sustain. There is only one point of view in which Mr. W is accustomed to talk of Mr. Jeffrey, as having initiated a bad and destructive species of mental exertion among his countrymen, or, at least, as having so far assisted the natural tendency towards some such species, as to have merited, in no inconsiderable measure, the dispraise, both present and future, with which the initiator of any such species must of necessity lay his account. One of the greatest curses of a sceptical philosophy, is that by leaving no object upon which the disinterested affections may exercise themselves; it is apt to cause the minds of mankind to be too exclusively taken up about the paltry gratifications of the personal feelings. When the true ornaments of our nature are forgotten, Pride and Vanity must become the arbiters of human life. All those periods of history, which are looked back upon as the most splendid, were times when men cared most about principles, and least about themselves; but when there are no longer any earnest notions about what is to be loved or respected, even the public themselves become infected with the delirium of wishing to despise every thing, and literature is made to assume a tone of petulance, which corresponds with this absurd and paltry passion, exactly in the same proportion in which it does violence to all the nobler thoughts and more delightful feelings, for whose nourishment the divine field of literature was originally intended by the great Author of our being. It is chiefly in having led the way in 'giving this direction to the criticism, and through that to the whole literature of our day, that Mr. W- -feels himself constrained to regard Mr. Jeffrey as having been the enemy of his country, and as meriting, in all succeeding generations, the displeasure of high minded and generous Englishmen. A man of genius, like Mr. Jeffrey, must, indeed, have found it an easy matter to succeed in giving this turn to the public mind, among a people where all are readers, and so few are scholars, as is the case here in Scotland. Endowed by nature with a keen talent for sarcasm, nothing could be more easy for him than to fasten, with destructive effect of nonchalance, upon a work which had perhaps been composed with much earnestness of thought on the part of the author, and with a most sincere anxiety after abstract truth, either of reasoning or of feeling. The object of the critic, however, is by no means to assist those, who read his critical lucubrations, to enter with more facility, or with better preparation, into the thoughts, or feelings, or truths, which his author endeavours to inculcate or illustrate. His object is merely to make the author look foolish; and he prostitutes his own fine talents, to enable the common herd of his readers to suppose themselves looking down from the vantage-ground of superior intellect, upon the poor, blundering, deluded poet or philosopher, who is the subject of review. It is a pitiable thing to contemplate the extent to which these evil fashions have been introduced among us, and I have no doubt that their introduction has been far more owing to the prostitution of the exquisite talents of Mr. Jeffrey, than to any one cause whatever; neither do I'at all doubt, after what I have seen of Scotland, that the power of the unholy spells has been far greatest and far most effectual in the immediate centre of their ring. It is probable, I think, that if Mr. Jeffrey were at last to throw aside his character of Reviewer, and come before the world in a volume filled with continuous thoughts, and continuous feelings, originating in his own mind, he would find that the public he has so well trained, would be very apt to turn upon himself, and think themselves called upon to laugh, more solito, even at Mr. Jeffrey himself, when deprived of the blue and yellow panoply under which they have for so many years been wont to regard his blows as irresistible, and himself as invulnerable. The most vulgar blockhead who takes up and reads an article in the Edinburgh Review, imagines for the time that he himself is quizzing the man of genius, whose labours are there sported with. His opaque features are illuminated with triumph, and, holding the journal fast in his hand, he pursues his fantastic victory to the last extremities. Month after month, or quarter after quarter, this most airy species of gratification is renewed, till, by long habit, our blockhead at last becomes bona fide satisfied and convinced, that he is quite superior to any thing the age can produce. Now and then, to be sure, some passing event or circumstance may dart a momentary disturbance into the sanctuary of his self-complacency; but this will only make him long the more fervently for the next number of the Review, to convince him that he was all in the right-to rekindle the fluttering lamp of his vanity, and make the sanctum sanctorum of his conceit as bright a thing as ever. In the mean time, to talk in the plain way the subject deserves, whatever share of understanding or |