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ation. Mr L. was formerly the companion of Mirabeau in a military school in France, and tells several interesting anecdotes of this celebrated personage, and has preserved some of his letters, written at the age of seventeen. Good for nothing from his earliest youth, witty, turbulent, and factious, as he shewed himself afterwards, Mirabeau exposed himself frequently to merited punishment, always borne very impatiently. Once he refused obstinately to leave his place of confinement, where he said he had been put unjustly, unless due reparation was made to him. Mr L., early a negociator, was selected to reason with him, and bring him, if possible, to his right senses. "You are destined," he said to him, "to the profession of arms in France; how can you expect to succeed with this undisciplinable spirit?" "Ah!" he answered, striking his forehead with his hand, "that is too true; was I not born in a country like yours, where merit need not pay court to power, and the road to distinction lies open!"-then denounced vengeance against the existing state of things in France.

why

We could not be at Edinburgh without wishing to see the Caledonian bard, whose fertile and brilliant genius produces poems with the rapidity of thought, and we have been gratified. Mr Scott is a tall and stout man, thirty-five or forty years of age; very lame from some accident in his early youth. His countenance is not particularly poetical, -complexion fair, with a coarse skin,-little beard,-sandy hair,-and light eyes and eye-brows ;-the tout ensemble rather dull and heavy: Yet when he speaks, which he

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is not always disposed to do, and is animated, his eye lightens up

"With all a poet's extasy."

This poet likes conviviality, and tells well, and con amore, such stories as are told here only after dinner. He is a great tory, and consequently a warm friend of liberty (in Spain), a disposition, I have already observed, characteristic of his party. His disapprobation of a certain article in the Edinburgh Review, on Cevallo's book, induced him to withdraw his name from the list of subscribers. This article is, in one sense, friendly to Spanish liberty, but then not in the right sense. Mr Scott has a valuable place, which had been promised him by the ministry which preceded Mr Fox's, but he was not in possession when they went out, and some of Mr Fox's colleagues objected to his having it, saying it was a job. "It is at least a job in favour of genius," answered Mr Fox, with that liberality and generosity which distinguished him so particularly," it does not happen often, and is not dangerous." Mr Scott had the place;—and I hope does justice to the memory of his whig patron.

The celebrated Braham is here, and we have heard him in the opera of the Siege of Belgrade, a most wretched performance,—too bad even for the British public to bear with patience, accustomed as it is to modern stupidities. I perceived many signs of weariness and impatience amongst the audience. Braham has an astonishing voice, and of the most uncommon sort-a fine counter-tenor, clear, and powerful; but he wants simplicity and feeling. The petite pièce was the Village Lawyer; a mediocre translation of our excellent Avo

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cat Patelin. The Edinburgh theatre is diminutive, paltry, and little frequented. A town of the same rank in France would have a large theatre, always full. Here people spend their evenings generally at home, their main dependence for happiness is there; and the pleasures found abroad are mere casualties. The French will not envy this mode of life. Yet the incapacity of enjoying simple and natural pleasures, does not imply an aptitude for others. The French often feel satiety and ennui abroad,-which is the worst that could have happened at home.

The late scandalous pillory scene in the Haymarket having been mentioned lately in company here, one of the Scotch judges (Lords of Session) expressed his marked disapprobation of the prosecution and punishment, and declared their courts would not countenance any such proceedings. Several persons of distinction were mentioned, now prosecuted in England, or threatened with vexatious charges of the same nature; which, true or false, inflict provisionally shame, ridicule, and exile.

Jan. 1. 1811.-There is no sleeping the first night of the year at Edinburgh. It is a received custom for the common people to give a kiss to any woman met in the streets, about midnight, on foot, or in carriages. Few women expose themselves to this rude salutation. But the streets are full, notwithstanding, of unruly boys, who knock at house doors, and make a noise all night. This is a little relic of the coarse manners of former times, which is still tolerated; and, considering what this country was before its union with England, there is, perhaps, more reason to be asto

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nished at the advanced state of its police, than otherwise.

Fier comme un Ecossois, is said proverbially in France, and the English are not sparing of their reproaches against Scotland, for the pride of its inhabitants; yet you certainly meet with more prevenance from them than from their neighbours; more of the essentials of politeness, under forms perhaps less gentle and elegant. It is certainly remarkable enough, that the Scotch accuse the English of "soft and washy manners ;"-a novel sort of imputation against them assuredly, and most unexpected.

There existed in England, during the greatest part of the last century, a sort of jealous ill-will against the Scotch. It was the fashion to rail at their poverty, their rapacious industry, the proud servility of their manners, their uncleanliness, and, finally, their itch. The works of the best writers of the time, the conversations and bon mots, recorded in letters and memoirs, published since, the very speeches in Parliament, were full of ill-natured and vulgar remarks, of flat jokes, in the very worst taste. This theme, which appeared so fertile, is at last quite exhausted; and all this local wit strikes now as very dull. The facetious witticisms of our Voltaire on Freron, on M. le Franc de Pompignan, and so many other unfortunate adversaries, which amused France and all Europe at the time, have had the same fate, and inspire now no other interest or sentiment than those of pity, surprise, and disgust. Dr Johnson, the giant of English literature, was one of the last who indulged in satirical remarks and coarse abuse against the Scotch. His admirable historian, Boswell, has

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transmitted them to posterity, in a work more amusing than the best novel, and more useful than the best history. As a portrait from nature of the manners, customs, and ways of thinking of his own time, delineated with a simplicity, and a candour of vanity, which sets criticism and ridicule at defiance, you find yourself in the best society the country could afford; the most learned, the cleverest, and the most witty. It is conversation, all substance and spirit, never languid, weak, or insignificant; enjoyed without the painful effort. of bearing a part in it, or the fidgetty consciousness of your own dulness and silence. Something like reading by your fireside of mighty battles and sieges, of distant voyages, of hair-breadth escapes, you feel all the enthusiasm, and you partake of all the glory, without any of the drudgery and toil, weariness, fatigue, and danger.

I do not know whether the Scotch ever shewed much resentment at so many insults; they cer tainly shew none at present; and disarm calumny more effectually by this good sense and moderation, than they could by any other means. I have seen on the stage, in London, a tolerably good play, The Man of the World, admirably acted by Cooke, in which a Scotchman, Sir Pertinax Macsycophant, is the principal personage; a designing fawning scoundrel, who, in order to initiate his son into the ways of the world, which have made his own fortune, tells him, very improbably, but very pleasantly, of all his base practices and maxims. This play is acted in Scotland, and received with great good-humour.

Edinburgh is the Birmingham of literature;-a new place, which has its fortune to make. The two great universities, Oxford and Cambridge, re