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nence, inspired by the country, or the historical name of the ancient ruins which occasionally occurred, amused myself with attaching ideal figures to the various pictures successively unrolled before my eyes. I lent names, moreover, to the various personages who displayed themselves here and there in the environs of the road. After remarking the general character of the Scottish physiognomy, (long face, high cheek bones, grey eyes, cold look, or smile announcing a mixture of surprise and sagacity), I readily transformed the whole into heroes of Sir Walter Scott. An old laird, who was distinguished by an air of bonhomie and affectation at the same time, became the Baron of Bradwardine. By the side of him stood a plebeian, in a strange or imperfect costume, with a vague look, and singing an unintelligible couplet with singular volubility. This was Davie Gellatly. Beneath the entry of a chateau, a young female of noble deportment, but somewhat haughty and disdainful, reminded me of Flora Mac Ivor, on a visit to her friend Rose. A modest young female peasant was going to church with her bible; that was Jeannie Deans, about to pray for her sister. Did a worthy farmer of frank deportment, with a countenance of good humour, pass by with his dogs? That was Dandie Dinmont. At the bottom of a hillock a party of gipsies were gravely smoking their pipes; they probably composed a part of the wandering family of Meg Merrilies. And yon old beggar, with his wallet and blue mantle, who waits for our alms without humiliat

ing himself to utter a plaintive adulation; perhaps he had known Edie Ochiltree, who had communicated to him the secret of his independence. In short, from the moment of quitting Coldstream, I felt myself to be on that Scottish soil which the wizard had touched with his wand, and whence so many original shapes have emanated to take their place among the associations of all that has vividly interested ourselves during the various epochs of our lives.

We are at length in Edinburgh.

LETTER LXXVII.

TO M. A. CLAPIER, AVOCAT.

You are wrong, my dear Alexander, for not taking a journey to Scotland. I might have pitted you against a brother lawyer, against whom I have found it difficult to make head.* During one of those hours of gossip, with which one is easily induced to while away the evening in the coffee room of an inn, we contracted an acquaintanceship at Newcastle with a young law student, from the office of Mr. Williams in London, and who, according to his own account, was going to

* I have a more real cause for regret in thinking that my friend Alexander might have assisted me in my study of the Scotch law.

devote three days to a tour of Scotland. In the character of modest and silent strangers, we had smiled at the simplicity of the young cockney, at his peremptory orders to the waiter and barmaid, and the detail of his scheme of rapid excursion. It appeared to him that three days were sufficient to inspect all that was curious in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and the Highlands. We had been induced to flatter his characteristic precipitancy, and he had already pressed us into the service, not disguising that he reckoned on our joining him, in order to make an economical division of the common expenses of the journey; but when we were about to set out, I designedly pleaded for our excuse the irrevocable basis of an agreement we had made in his absence with the office of a stage coach, the itinerary of which was not in accord with his. I could not live a supernumerary hour with gentry who speculate on a first condescension, in order to make it the occasion of exacting a second. I have as mortal a fear of the direction of these social tyrants, as I should have of that of the gendarme who was conducting me to prison. The first person whom we found at table in the little coffeeroom of the Bull inn, was our hurried student, who, although he had not been an hour in Edinburgh, and was there for the first time in his life, offered to act as guide for us on the next day. But he drew from his portfeuille, a little manuscript list of the curiosities of the town, and assured us that in six hours we should have sufficiently viewed and reviewed them, to be enabled

to depart at the same time as himself. Our lawyerling would not take my hint, and the philosopher and myself, induced possibly with some curiosity at the prospect of seeing Edinburgh in six hours, promised to rise betimes in the morning.

The next morning we were called before eight o'clock. Notwithstanding our dilatoriness, which must have naturally annoyed the impatience of our new friend, who after having already finished his own breakfast, assisted us in getting through ours, we were ready by nine o'clock; and at three o'clock in the afternoon we had already seen all the curiosities of Edinburgh noted in the itinerary of our student, who had, as he said, pencilled down a sufficient collection of memorabilia to render him the oracle of his office for three weeks to come. At first I felt a little distaste to this mode of being carried about against my will; but the promenade shortly furnished such varied and at the same time such comic incidents, that I made up my mind to enjoy the ridicule of the affair. The assurance with which the student provided himself with a new cicerone at the corner of every street, and at every fresh edifice, was worth observing. He had promised to carry back his remarks, and each new object supplied him with matter; but the note once made a tort et a travers (for a second and corrected information changed nothing) his object was accomplished. I perceived afterwards, that either the rapidity of our excursion, or the difference of our idiom, or the malice of some old Celt, piqued by the pert tone

of the enquirer, had led him to mistake the Piræus for the name of a man. What numerous sights did I see that day which I have never been fated to see again! how many piquante observations about to be carried back to Mr. Williams's office! At last, at five o'clock, the student, whom I named Mr. Busy-body, took his departure, having all Edinburgh at his fingers' ends.

It is now my turn to take you over Edinburgh with equal rapidity; but from my own notes, which I have been at the pains to verify by more than one excursion.

Arthur's Seat is an eminence, almost as familiar to any reader of Sir Walter Scott, as Montmartre is to the Parisians. This basaltic rock, not only commands Edinburgh, but the surrounding hills, which themselves appear to form a part of a city chiefly situated on unequal eminences, and united by bridges or causeways. It is from the conic summit of Arthur's Seat, that I could wish to sketch a panorama of the northern Athens; that is to say, the most extraordinary panorama which any city in Europe can supply. It has at least very greatly effaced the impression I retained of Rouen, as seen from the road to Paris, and e ven that of the still more admired view of the beautiful Marseilles, depicting itself with its bastions and its plain of waters, to the astonished eye of the traveller from that point of the road to Aix called the Viste.

On the pinnacle of Arthur's feet above the level of the sea.

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