sounds with facillty; while the Ger- velling is also perfectly safe, except, man is never able wholly to acquire indeed, among the Nomadic tribes of the sound of the English th, the Bo- the Caucasus, &c. &c. hemian r, or the Polish l. I was Whether it arises from the dispoalso assured by all the German Pro- sition of the people, or from the chafessors in Russia, with whom I be- racter of the government, I know came acquainted, that the Russian not; but nowhere does a more unpossesses a decided and remarkable limited religious toleration prevail capacity for the mathematics.

than in Russia.' Another remarkable A third trait in their national cha- trait among the Russians, is their racter is kindness. Among no other extreme and disinterested hospitality. people does this truly amiable virtue A stranger, or a young man of moappear to be cultivated to a greater derate circumstances, in any of the extent. Whether in an unknown larger cities, is sure of obtaining part of the city, or in the deserts of access to tables which he may consider Siberia, one is equally sure of being as his own; and can avail himself of directed aright; and even of being the general invitation given, without accompanied until he is certain of his the least reserve or constraint. Gaiety way. "Blind beggars sit in the most and good-humour prevail at the encrowded streets with the money they tertainments of the better classes, have collected, in their hats ; to these, without ever degenerating into Bacpersons, even of the lowest classes, chanalian excess. The common peo. will give an alms, and should any ple, however, indulge very freely in one have a larger piece of money the use of spirits, and particularly of th an he can well spare, will put it their favourite brandy; yet even in down and take out as much change their moments of extreme inebriety, as he thinks proper; nor is the op- they are rarely quarrelsome, and, portunity for being dishonest on such when uable any longer to assist occasions, ever known to mislead themselves, are treated with every them. This is a piece of confidence attention, and all tenderness, by their that in some other capitals of Eu- less intoxicated companions. If rope, would soon be repented of by Venice be the Paradise of monks, whoever should think of displaying Russia is most assuredly that of it. It must not, however, be sup- drunkards ; for, there, a man in liquor posed that the Russians are abso- is regarded almost as a saint, and is sutely immaculate in this respect; on sure to receive all the services his sithe contrary, they make small scruple tuation demands, an humanity that of appropriating to themselves any probably arises in no small degree little article of value. But robbery, from sympathy with the disabled or any thing like violence, very rarely person, and a consciousness of their -occurs ; little care therefore is taken

own frequent need of similar acts of to secure doors and windows. Tra- charity.

LETTERS FROM EDINBURGH.

No. II.

a

To Richard Pemberton, Esq. Paper Buildings, Temple, London.

Edinburgh, May, 1821. My Dear Dick,-I perfectly un- not write a letter from this impudent derstand your quiz about the • Let- town but you must make him the ters," and I have no doubt the bear and fiddle of it ;-as if we were doctor and you are laying your wise all seeking a hook in the nose for the heads together, to make a lion of me sake of the crowd it may bring round when I return; but take care that us! — But neither bear-dance, nor when your head is in my mouth I Morris-dance shall you lead me ;do not wag my tail.—What a plague I have consulted a Scots law friend sets you. upon Peter!--Can a man about my compact to send you an account of the place, and he tells me; Fisk," (all equally Intelligible to me,) that I may resile at any time before I think they beat your barring of implement, (as he phrased it) and dowers, dockings of tails, and titles may claim a locus penitentiæ.-You of hotchpot, clean out of the field. are on the wrong side of the post

About four-fifths of my old play. with me for law therefore, and I mates and school cronies live by the advise you not to force me to take law, and I may almost say, the same advantage of my Scotch domicile. proportion holds in the upper popu

Speaking of law, I do not know lation of Edinburgh :--You will not, upon what subject I can better in- therefore, be surprised at my knowtroduce Edinburgh and you to ledge of the trade, for the Scots each other, for it is the living of both lawyers are not only not troubled of you :-) am afraid, however, that with any of that shyness of being were you to meet upon it, your mu- known, which some friends of mine tual admiration would resemble what in London are beset with, but seem we may imagine that of Lycurgus rather to brag of their calling, and and Jeremy Bentham to be in sie in mixed companies, they foist in the milar circumstances ; for I am not shop with an air of such easy facesure that the Lacedemonian and the tiousness, that you are wheedled into Bencher would be more ignorant picking up their jargon for the sake of each other's craft, than a hoary of the jocularity which is clothed in Scottis laywer and my present Cor. it. The profession altogether, here, respondent.-In one particular, you is on a quite different footing from law gentry are the same in all coun- England :-—That branch of it, which tries, that is, the barbarism of your answers to your attorneys, is comlanguage: — the Latin Lexicogram posed of a rank in society above the phers never omit the head “ Barba- average of yours, and before an aptous or Law-Latin ;"-I am told, prentice can be bound to it, he must there is a similar distinction as to produce certificates of having atLaw-Scotch, and of course, our de- tended a University, and made proscendants in the 30th century will gress in his studies ;-an immense have the same addition to their John- advantage, and one great source of sons and Sheridans.

In England, as the cultivation of intellectual purfar as ever you would let me learn, suits which characterizes the young your mystic words are inapplicable lawyers of this place.- In most other to any thing else but law, and one towns the society of young people is can guess at the meaning of a rule broken for ever by their leaving nisi, a demurrer, and a rejoinder, school, but here, generally speaking, although your fi fa's, and ca sa's they meet in two future stages, the are more than sufficiently enigmatic College and the Court, engaged in the cal--but here the language is per- attainment of the same object, profectly oracular, and it would puzzle fessional learning; and the desire Edipus hiniself to interpret it. When of being “ clever fellows" is kept a Judge intends to be peremptory in alive, by its being necessary to prean order, he ordains parties to conde- serve their status among their assoscend; when he is disposed to be ciates. This desire, and the consemild and monitory, he recommends quent ambition of shining, have of them to box their pleas !-Witnesses late amazingly increased among my must be brought into court upon a young townsmen. Indeed, I fear it Diligence, and before they can be ex- is outrunning itself,—they are but amined, they must be purged !- seedlings in literature, yet they asWhen a man leaves his estates to the sume a sharp knowledge of every poor, he is said to mortify them, and thing connected with it, which to the when you lose your deceased elder really learned must be distressing:brother's estate, it is called a con- It is now found such an apparently quest!—They boast also of as much easy matter to talk, and to write, execrable Latin as you in Westmin- and to print, with the air and manster-hall,—some of it, indeed, is their ner of a scholar and a critic, and the peculium, (ex. gra. this word,) and high road of learning is trodden by so for horrible phrases, such as " blasts many travellers, that its increase of ing you at the horn," “poinding your rubbish can scarcely be wondered at. ground," " consigning you to the You have often heard Allan and

me gabble about our debating Socie- last, about twelve o'clock, and among ties in Edinburgh, and you cannot the few Sabbath breakers that I have forgotten our dispute about a saw, there was one whose grave elcertain West Indian president of the derly appearance set the consciences Medical, of which one of us was an of us younger sinners quite at rest unworthy member-I am told they for our profanation. He looked as if have increased ten-fold, and there are he knew me, but trusting to looks in now the Select, the Speculative, this respect has got me into so many the Juridical, Academic, Theologic, ridiculous dilemmas, that I have re

Theomathic, Philalethic, Dialecticand solved to disregard them whenever I Didactic, besides numerous others am not sure of the looker, which, in devoted to particular branches of a little, I was in the present instance: science. How they are all kept he was a man of sixty and upwards, going I cannot so easily tell you,-- fresh looking and healthy, dressed in some of their names,

least, go upon

a fine medium of the old school, the tic:- I have heard that one of them, more modern fulness of the 1799, and at a full meeting, came to a resolu- the last fit from Allen and Wilson.. tion of applying the balance in their His face was a mixture of playful treasurer's hands to a dinner and bluntness and waggery, with a good drink at the house of my namesake deal of genuine benignity, and an auBill, a measure which, as one of thoritative swell of the under lip; but their patriarchs prognosticated, with above all there was a beam of arch tears in his eyes, swallowed up the intelligence, an incapability, if I may Society for ever. You cannot fail to so speak, of not taking a sarcastic. observe, however, that where there view of a subject, that I have never is a spirit among the body of respect- seen more strongly marked, except able

young men, which sets these in the face of Voltaire ;-in short, it thinking speculations a-going, there was Mr. A. When we had must be a state of society very diffe- passed once or twice, I ventured up rent from that of a trading or com- to him, and addressing him by name, mercial capital. Men of sound sense asked him how he did ;-before. I and liberal education are much the could get out my sentence, he had same all over the world, but I rather recollected me, and holding out his think that it is in Edinburgh only that hands, “ Eh! Tam Young, where you have an enlightened city as a in the world have you come from," city, although London may exceed it he welcomed me home very cordially. in quantum of intellect, even propor- We walked nearly a couple of hours tionately to its excess of population; round this most delightful of all posbut the grievance of London is, that sible places, as your newspapers you cannot collect yourselves, you phrase it, and my companion was are profound philosophers and bril- quite a chronicle, a living abstract of liant wits on such and such an even- strangers guides," for upwards of ing, alternately at Kensington, Albe- forty years. He looked down upon marle-street, Tavistock-square, &c. the whole of the New Town as you Now, in Edinburgh you meet your and I look at a row of new buildeminent men in clusters, daily and ings in the Regent's Park; or as I hourly if you like, in the streets or look upon the piles of streets, squares, public walks, and you are saved a and crescents, that have sprung up sensation (that will intrude itself at a here since my boyhood. At the north party,) that you are looked upon as side of the hill, he pointed out to me one of an audience brought together a most beautiful new chapel for the to see and be introduced to Mr. worshippers of your land, and close Such-a-one, the lion of the night: by it the gothic spires of the Catholic -besides, from the spirit to which I chapel, both built during my transhave alluded, society at large par- portation-“ Aye,” said he, “ they takes of the nature of your eminent were ay mithers bairns,” (he graand distinguished society; and what dually got Scotch in his language as in London is made a set feast of, is we grew familiar,) “ they were ay here an ordinary meal.

mithers bairns, though they coost I went up to the Calton Hill (tle out owre their parritch ; now-a-days Acropolis, as they will have it, of we may go to the devil without this Athens) for a walk, on Sunday breaking an Act of Parliament, and VOL. III.

der now,

as my freend John Downie the writer mendation in the next world as weel says, the mair gaits you try for Hea- as in this, and at any rate, Mr.James, ven, the better chance you have o' you'll plead your habit and repure, the right,-so he taksa round of for I see you're weel dressed, and I'se them all. You'll ken the Tabernacle warrant you have been in good comin the Walk.-Yonder it hings oure pany, but come along with us to the coach work. I mind, and so may your friend Charley Deas, and if you, when its members, the Halda- you are no better engaged, you can nites, used to subscribe three baw- walk out with us to the land of (abees in the week for the hire o' the naan.” Mr. T agreed, and Circus on the Sabbath nights (they A took us along the most pubca't the Pantheon now) and they tell lic streets, just as the people were a story o' a parcel of you Englishmen crowding to the afternoon service. gaun in half muddled and hissing the I hardly ever saw so many pretty preacher, because, as you said, Mr. girls ;-the carriage beauties of a Merryman never appeared in a black Hyde Park Sunday cannot excel jerkin,—but you'll mak no such blun- them, and the pedestrians, as the

for it has got its right name Morning Post calls them, cannot at last, at least, if all kinds of wor- equal them.—I speak of respectable ship implies all kinds of gods." The women, you will recollect, for if I place which he thus described has did not make this explanation, Simpgone through numberless changes - kinson and you would be on me imfrom a circus, chapel, assembly, mediately in a manner that I know room, theatre, ball and concert of old. rooms, and is now under the foster- When we were passing St. David'sing management of the “ United street, (look for it on the map I left Stud” Company, as what Mr. A. you, at the east end of Princes-sireet,) called “ a horse play-house !" Mr. A mentioned a circumstance

As we got round to the Old Town regarding its name, which was new side, he continued—“Ay, and yone to me-mind, I don't vouch for the der's the closs where the Babylonish fact" Did it ever strike you Mir. harlot was glad to get leave to lye Young, that the Edinburgh people forty years syne,-that's afore your retained their puritanism in all their day,--Chalmers's closs, just aff the streets but this ?---You never bear of Physic Gardens yonder. -I mind Saunt James's-square, or St. George's, when the mob harried them wi fire or St. John's, or St. Catharine's, -and and sword, and desolation, and I as to St. Giles and St. Cuthbert, they ance helped to save a poor auld have unnamed them altogether, at Aberdeen priest from getting his neck least they have buried them wi’ Saunt broke out at a window in a flour John Knox i' the Tolbuith Kirk, or sack-but the holy text of pike and wi' my gude-father Saunt Sanders gun has been long obsolete, and if Mowbray i' the Wast; but here the it's ever revived, I suppose it will Suunt's as sure's the David or the be somewhat in the fashion o' the Andrew.” I could not account for French and English firing at Fonte- the peculiarity, though its existence noy,"_" Après Messieurs, Après immediately struck me. “Look up,” Messieurs," – for politeness is now said A-" to the corner house on the order of the day among the god- the right hand, wi' pillars at the ly of all denominations.” As we got threshold,—that house, you see, was down the hill into the town, we met built before either the square or the a friend of A-'s, a Mr. T- street, and stood for sometime by a young advocate, to whom he intro- itseľ:- it was possessed by the duced me ;-he told us that he had suunt that lies below yon thing en just returned from attendance on the hill like a Jang gallipot, or a some ladies, with whom he had been porter-mug without the handle ; and hearing Mr. Alison in the episcopal when the New Town Christeners had chapel, and he remarked upon the exhausted their Georges and Charelegance of the sermou and the gen- lottes and Fredericks and llanovers, tility of the people who sat in the (and, my word, they did extend the churches of your persuasion. “Nae royalty,) some of them seeing this doubt, nae doubt,” said A-, “a house, bethought them o’its illustrie genteel appearance will be a recom- ous occupier, and named it after

6

ay?

him, but how it cam by its holy that we passed at Canaan, till my addition, except on account o its next letter. I must not omit, howname-father getting canoneezed in ever, to tell you, that

Asays, the Calton-hill calendar, my friend that this Crosbie was the original of There will be better able to Pleydell in Guy Mannering: if this tell you.-I will say for my towns- be so, it will enlist an older hand in men, that if the working o'miracles the composition of these immortal be, as I am told, the chief grounds works than has ever been publicly of canonization, there has been no noticed. lack o' them at the shrine of David Tell Allan that I got his last letHume !---What d'ye think, Mr.TV, ter, and am delighted to hear of his

It was hard to say upon carriage job ;-he need not be so what the old man's satire bore hard- uneasy about a good coachman, for est,--but the latter part was an evi- if he himself knows his trade, his dent fling at T-, who, although horses will not be long before they a clergyman's son, is, I suppose, can trot to his patients' doors, withone of the school which predominates out any other hint than being yoked! here. A-- contimed:-“ As for I shall write him immediately, but the square, I never could learn how as he is under some woeful delusions it cam' by its sanctity, unless it was about this town, which it is fit he after my auld friend Andrew Crosbie should not be suffered longer to the advocate, that built yon fine labour under, tell him in three house wi' the pillars, that they're words, that Bickers are abrogated, making a bank of.” This kind of the Claugh is abolished, and Cowlies conversation kept us till we reached are no more.--And in this goodly Mr. Deas's stair,—and we found him company, my dear Dick, I leave you at home ;-but, as I have not much for a week or two. more room in this sheet, and cannot Ever yours, most sincerely, think of beginning a fourth, I must

T. Y. leave him and the delightful evening

A SELECTION OF IRISH MELODIES,

BY THOMAS MOORE.

The eighth, and, we fear, the last tains and valleys of his country are number of the Irish Melodies, hy still rich in most melodious airs, the union of whose music to his beau- which have escaped the accompania tiful verse, Mr. Moore has laid his ments of Mr. Bishop. Whether, country under such infinite obliga- however, this is to be the last sound tions, has just issued from the press. of the Irish harp, or whether it will When, in a former portion of the produce another dulcet echo, its mus work, the poet bade®“ farewell to sic has certainly established, for Irehis harp,” with all respect for him, land, a high name in vocal science, we doubted his sincerity. « At and the verse to which it has been lover's perjuries they say Jove “ married" places its author amongst laughs.”—At poet's lapses, then, why the very first lyric poets of any age should mortals be too serious ? In or nation—even by the side of Hothis case it is impossible, because race and Anacreon. Beautiful as are the delinquent has the double justi- many parts of his Lalla Rookh, and fication of love and poetry. How- exquisite as we admit many of his ever, there is prefixed to this num- epistles from America to be, it is to ber a general and final dedication of his songs that Moore must trust for the entire work to the nobility and immortality, and immortal he must gentry of Ireland, which really looks he as long as English · ladies can love, as if it was brought to its termina- or Irish gentlemen can drink, which, tion in good earnest. Why this we take it, is as much of immortality should be so, is not for us to say. as any modern bard can consider him The poet is still

, and long may he self equitably entitled to. The lyrist continue so, in full possession of his has, indeed, in this respect, a great fine faculties; and the wild moun- advantage over the brotherhood of