Peter's Letters to his kinsfolk [By J. G. Lockhart, assisted by Christopher North.] The second edition. (Postscript to the third edition of Peter's Letters.)

Letter XXVII

Edinburgh— The Castle DEDICATION. TO THE RIGHT REVEREND THE LORD BISHOP OF ST. DAVIDS. My Lord, I trust you will excuse the liberty I take in inscribing to you a new edition of my Letters from Scotland. That none of these letters were addressed to your Lord ship, is a circumstance for which I take great shame to myself, after the very kind manner in which you spoke to me on that DEDICATION. VI head, the day I left you— may I be per mitted to add, after the long experience I have had of your Lordship's concern and attachment, in several years of profession al attendance, and, since that was laid aside, of private intercourse and friendship. I must not attempt to deny, that there are some things in these Letters which are not exactly what I should have judged pro per for your Lordship's eye ; — but your Lordship is aware that they were written without the smallest notion of being printed.

I hope the effect of the whole correspondence may be agreeable to you, and I well know the gentle and forgiving nature of your disposition. Above all, I should be highly flattered to learn that the account I have given of the State of Religion in Scotland, had interested and pleased you. The truly liberal and apostolic zeal with which your Lordship has so long been la bouring to serve my countrymen in their DEDICATION. most important concerns, is appreciated and honoured by none more highly than, My Lord, Your Lordship's very humble, and very affectionate Servant, Peter Morris. PENSHARPE-H A LL, 1 Aberystwith, j THE EPISTLE LIMINARY TO THE SECOND EDITION TO MR DAVIES, BOOKSELLER, IN THE STRAND, LONDON. Dear Sir, The high terms in which you are plea sed to express yourself concerning the spe cimens of my Letters from Scotland which have fallen into your hands, are, I assure you, among the most valued testimonies of approbation which have ever come in my way.

To receive applause from one's ac quaintances, is more delightful than to re ceive it from strangers ; but the most pre cious of all tokens is that which proceeds from an old and dear friend. It is true, that in such case there may be, in general, X no small suspicion of partiality, but this cannot be the case with you, as you say you liked the work before you were aware of the name of its author. Since that name has now been divulged through the rashness of a certain publica tion, I do not see that any very good pur pose could be answered by attempting to keep up the mystery in the work itself. I therefore accept of your offers with regard to the Second Edition, and permit you to send it forth into the world with the name of Peter Morris as conspicuously affixed to it as you may deem expedient.

About the same time that your letter reached me, I had another letter on the same subject from my •friend Mr William Blackwood, of Edinburgh. As you and he are already connected in so many ways, it strikes me that no inconvenience could at tend your being connected together in this little matter also. I shall be happy if you find it consistent with your views to com municate the purport of what I have said to him, with all haste ; and hope to see the Second Edition graced with both your names on the title-page. When in Edinburgh I became acquaint ed with Mr James Ballantvne, and have a strong inclination that any little thing of mine should be printed at his press, both from my regard for the man himself, and on account of the high report I heard of his qualifications in that way, from some of the best judges I know of.

The First Edition being but a coarse job, and so small withal, I did not think of him, but trust there will be nothing to prevent him undertaking this, about which Mr Blackwood will be able to arrange with him very easily, being on the spot. I should think the best way would be to leave the style of printing, &c entirely to Mr Ballantyne's own discretion — I am sure he will do all he can to make my book a pretty one. As for correcting of proofs, &c, I dare say I might very safely leave that also to Mr Ballantyne ; but I have a friend in Edinburgh, (a Mr W — =-,) who will find it quite an amusement to su perintend all that affair ; and, by the way, I am a very bad hand at correcting proofs myself, for I read them so quickly, that my eye passes over a thousand errata, for one that escapes the observation of a person more accustomed to such things.

What you say about the portraits, puzzles me more than anything else ; I mean as to the propriety of introducing such things at all. It is very true, however, as you have heard, that my pencil was in request while I was in Scotland, almost as much as my pen, and that I have now a very rich portfolio of the chief worthies I met with in that northern region. In this matter, too, I am inclined to trust more to my friends' judgment than to my own, so I have sent you this day (per waggon) the whole lot of the sketches, leaving you to select for the engraver such as seem most likely to improve the appearance and popularity of the work. I think, however, you should on no account omit the sketches of the Man of Feelino-, Mr Scott, Mr Jeffrey, Mr Alison, and Dr Chalmers. The others you may do with as you please. would have sent you my drawings of scenery also, but really in the present day, when so much is a-doing in that line by much abler hands, I feel shy about pushing my rude efforts upon the public.

I have, therefore, packed up only a very few specimens — not at all for the engraver — but merely as a present to Mrs Davies, which 1 beg she will accept, as also the cheese which accompanies them, along with the best wishes and compliments of a very old acquaintance and admirer. You cannot do better than have the etchings executed in Edinburgh also. Nobody can be better for the purpose than Mr Lizars — and, if he be too much engaged to do the whole, he can get a very excellent young artist, some of whose works 1 saw when there, to give him assistance — I mean Mr Stewart, who is engraving Allan's Picture of The Robbers dividing their Spoil. By the bye, I had a note from Sir Joseph Banks a day or two ago, in which he says a great deal about a new invention of Mr Lizars, which he thinks G is the -greatest thing that has occurred in engraving since the time of Albert Durer.

I have not seen any specimen of it, but do ask him to try some of the portraits in the new way — say my own — for that is of least consequence.* As I am just going over to Dublin to spend a few weeks with my brother Sam, I shall not be able to hear from you again about this matter — so I leave it with per fect confidence in your hands, and those of Mr Blackwood. I hear the cry for the book is great, particularly in the North ; therefore do bestir yourselves, and have Peter out before the rising of Parliament. * The portrait of Dr Morris is done in this new style ; and had the time permitted, the others would all have been done so likewise. It is thrown off by the common printing-press, as the reader will observe — but this is only one of the distinguishing excellencies of this new and splendid invention of Mr Lizars.

I am happy that my friend's book has the honour of being the first graced with a specimen of it ; and not the less so that the speci men presents a capital likeness of my friend himself. W. W. I hope you won't allow next Autumn to go over, without coming down and paying a visit to some of your old friends in your native country — and I am vain enough to hope you won't omit us if you do come. I am an idler man, now-a-days, than I could wish to be ; so do come, my dear sir ; and if my good friend, Mr Cadell, could come with you, tanto melius ; — I shall do all I can to amuse you in the mornings ; and, in the evenings, you shall both have as much as you please of what, I flatter myself, is not the worst claret in the principality. Between ourselves, I have a great desire to see you, as I have some thoughts of looking over my papers, and giving you Peter's Letters from Italy and Germany, in the course of the winter.

Meantime, I remain, with great sincerity, Your friend, Peter Morris. Pensharpe Hall, \ Aberystwith. V Wednesday Evening. J LIST OF EMBELLISHMENTS. VOLUME THE FIRST. Portrait of the Author .... to face the Title. The Author in his Shandrydan driving to Edinburgh, Vignette on Title. Portrait of Mr Leslie . . . . . to face p. 64 — Mr Mackenzie 99 Mr Playfair 181 Mr Jameson 252 VOLUME THE SECOND. The Author and Mr S riding towards Melrose Ahbey Vignette on Title. Portrait of Mr Clerk ; to face p. 45 of Mr Jeffrey 59 Lord Justice-Clerk, Macqueen of Braxfield 112 Mr Allan 234 Mr Scott 351 VOLUME THE THIRD. The Lord High Commissioner Walking in Procession to open the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland Vignette on Title. Portrait of Mr Alison to face p. 93 The Ettrick Shepherd . . . . 141 Mr Wilson 256 — Dr Chalmers 269 The Author on Board of the Rob Roy Steam-Boat, bidding Farewell to his Glasgow Friends. • Vignette, on Page SSI VOL. 1. A

Letter I. To The Rev

DAVID WILLIAMS. Oman's Hotel, Edinburgh, March 5. I arrived here last night, only two hours later than my calculation at Liverpool, which was entirely owing to a small accident that befel Scrub, as I was coming down the hill to Mus selburgh. I was so much engaged with the view, that I did not remark him stumble once or twice, and at last down he came, having got a pretty long nail run into his foot. I turned round to curse John, but perceived that he had been fast EDINBURGH — BLACK BULL. asleep during the whole affair. However, it hap pened luckily that there was a farrier's shop only a few yards on, and by his assistance we were soon in a condition to move again. My chief re gret was being obliged to make my entry into the city after night-fall, in consequence of the delay ; and yet that is no great matter neither.

As for the shandrydan, I have never had the least reason to repent my bringing it with me. It is positively the very best vehicle in existence. The lightness of the gig — the capacity of the chariot — and the stylishness of the car — it is a wonderful combination of excellencies. But I forget your old quizzing about my Hobby. My evil genius, in the shape of an old drivelling turnpike-man, directed me to put up at the Black Bull, a crowded, noisy, shabby, uncomfortable inn, frequented by all manner of stage coaches and their contents, as my ears were well taught before morning. Having devoured a tolerable breakfast, however, I began to feel my self in a more genial condition than I had ex pected, and sallied out to deliver one or two letters of introduction, and take a general vieAV of the town, in a temper which even you might have envied.

To say the truth, I know not a feeling of more delightful excitation, than that EDINBURGH. 5 which attends a traveller, when he sallies out of a fine clear morning, to make his first survey of a splendid city, to which he is a stranger. I have often before experienced this charming spirit-stirring sensation. Even now, I remember, with a kind of solemn enthusiasm, the day when (in your company too, my dear David,) I opened my window at the White Horse, Fetter-lane, and beheld, for the first time, the chimneys and smoke (for there what else could I behold ?) of London. I remember the brief devoirs paid by us both to our coffee and muffins, and the spring of juvenile elasticity with which we bounded, rather than walked, into the midst of the hum, hurry, and dusky magnificence of Fleet- Street.

How we stared at Temple- Bar ! How our young blood boiled within us, as we passed over the very stones that had drank the drops as they oozed from the fresh-dissevered head of brave old Balmerino ! With what consciousness of reverence did we pace along the Strand — retiring now and then into a corner to consult our pocket-map — and returning with a high satisfaction, to feel ourselves under the shadow of edifices, whose very names were enough for us ! How we stood agaze at Charing Cross ! The statue of the Martyr at our right — Whitehall EDINBURGH. on our lest — Westminster Abbey, lifting itself like a cloud before us — pillars and palaces all around, and the sun lighting up the whole scene with rays enriched by the deep tinges of the atmosphere through which they passed. I do not pretend to compare my own feel ings now-a-days with those of that happy time — neither have I any intention of representing Edinburgh as a place calculated to produce the same sublime impressions, which every English man must experience when he first finds himself in London.

The imagination of a Southern does not connect with this northern city so many glorious recollections of antiquity, nor is there any thing to be compared with the feeling of moral reverence, accorded by even the dullest of mankind, to the actual seat and centre of the wisest and greatest government in the world. Without at all referring to these things, the gi gantic bulk and population of London, are, of themselves, more than sufficient to make it the most impressive of all earthly cities. In no place is one so sensible, at once, to the littleness and the greatness of his nature — how insignifi cant the being that forms a scarcely distin guishable speck in that huge sweep of congrega ted existence— yet how noble the spirit which EDINBURGH. 7 has called together that mass — which rules and guides and animates them all — which so adorns their combination, and teaches the structures of art almost to rival the vastness of Nature.

How awful is the idea which the poet has expressed, when he speaks of " all that mighty heart !" And yet there is no lack of food for enthusiasm even here. Here is the capital of an ancient, independent, and heroic nation, abounding in buildings ennobled by the memory of illustrious inhabitants in the old times, and illus trious deeds of good and of evil ; and in others, which hereafter will be reverenced by posterity, for the sake of those that inhabit them now. Above all, here is all the sublimity of situation and scenery — mountains near and afar off — rocks and glens — and the sea itself, almost within hearing of its waves. I was prepared to feel much ; and yet you will not wonder when I tell you, that I felt more than I was prepared for. You know well, that my mother was a Scotchwo man, and therefore, you will comprehend that I viewed the whole with some little of the pride of her nation.

I arrived, at least, without pre judices against that which I should see, and was ready to open myself to such impressions as might come. EDINBURGH. I know no city, where the lofty feelings, generated by the ideas of antiquity, and the multitude of human beings, are so much swelled and improved by the admixture of those other lofty, perhaps yet loftier feelings, which arise from the contemplation of free and spacious nature herself. Edinburgh, even were its population as great as that of London, could never be merely a city. Here there must always be present the idea of the comparative littleness of all human works. Here the proudest of palaces must be content to catch the shadows of mountains ; and the grandest of fortresses to appear like the dwellings of pigmies, perched on the very bulwarks of creation.

Everywhere — all around — you have rocks frowning over rocks in imperial elevation, and descending, among the smoke and dust of a city, into dark depths, such as nature alone can excavate. The builders of the old city, too, appear as if they had made nature the model of their architecture. Seen through the lowering mist which almost perpetually envelopes them, the huge masses of these erections, so high, so rugged in their outlines, so heaped together, and conglomerated and wedged into each other, are not easily to be distinguished from the yet laro-er and bolder forms of cliff and ravine, among which CALTON HILL. 9 their foundations have been pitched. There is a certain gloomy indistinctness in the formation of these fantastic piles, which leaves the eye, that would scrutinize and penetrate them, un satisfied and dim with gazing.

In company with the first friend I saw, (of whom more anon,) I proceeded at once to take a look of this superb city from a height, placed just over the point where the old and new parts of the town meet. These two quarters of the city, or rather these two neighbouring but distinct cities, are separated by a deep green valley, which once contained a lake, and which is now crossed at one place by a huge earthen mound, and at another by a magnificent bridge of three arches. This valley runs off towards the æstuary of the Forth, which lies about a mile and a half from the city, and between the city and the sea there rises on each side of it a hill — to the south that called Arthur's Seat — to the north the lower and yet sufficiently commanding eminence on which I now stood — the Calton Hill. This hill, which rises about 350 feet above the level of the sea, is, in fact, nothing more than a huge pile of rocks covered with a thin coating of soil, and, for the most part, with a beautiful verdure.

It has lately been circled CALTON HILL. all round ,vith spacious gravelled walks, so that one reaches the summit without the least fa tigue. It seems as if you had not quitted the streets, so easy is the ascent ; and yet where did streets or city ever afford such a prospect ! The view changes every moment as you proceed; yet what grandeur of unity in the general and ultimate impression ! At first, you see only the skirts of the New Town, with apparently few pub lic edifices, to diversify the grand uniformity of their outlines ; then you have a rich plain, with green fields, groves, and villas, gradually losing itself in the sea-port town of Edinburgh, — Leith. Leith covers, for a brief space, the margin of that magnificent Frith, which recedes upwards among an amphitheatre of mountains, and opens downward into the ocean, broken everywhere by green and woody isles, excepting where the bare brown rock of the Bass lifts itself above the waters midway to the sea.

As you move round, the Frith disappears, and you have Ar thur's Seat in your front. In the valley be tween lies Holyrood, ruined — desolate — but ma jestic in its desolation. From thence the Old Town stretches its dark shadow — up, in a line to the summit of the Castle rock — a royal re sidence at either extremity — and all between EDINBURGH. 11 an indistinguishable mass of black tower-like structures — the concentrated " walled city," which has stood more sieges than I can tell of. Here we paused for a time, enjoying the ma jestic gloom of this most picturesque of cities. A thick blue smoke hung low upon the houses, and their outlines reposed behind on ridges of purple clouds ; — the smoke, and the clouds, and the murky air, giving yet more extravagant bulk and altitude to those huge strange dwell ings, and increasing the power of contrast which met our view, when a few paces more brought us once again upon the New Town — the airy bridge — the bright green vale below and be yond it — and, skirting the line of the vale on either side, the rough crags of the Castle rock, and the broad glare of Prince's Street, that most superb of terraces — all beaming in the open yel low light of the sun — steeples and towers, and cupolas scattered bright beneath our feet — and, far as the eye could reach, the whole pomp and richness of distant commotion — the heart of the city.

Such was my first view of Edinburgh. I de scended again into her streets in a sort of stupor of admiration. EDINBURGH. Excuse my troubling you with all this, now that I have written it ; but do not be alarmed with any fear, lest I should propose to treat you with much more of the same kind of diet. I have no intention to send you a description of the cities and scenery of Scotland. I refer you semel et simul to Sir John Carr and our dear countryman Mr Pennant. I have always been "- a fisher of men ;" and here also, I promise you, I mean to stick to my vocation. But enough for the present. Your's sincerely, P. M. P. S. — You will observe by the date of my letter, I have already left the Black Bull. I write from one of the most comfortable hotels I ever was in, and have already ascertained the excellence of the port.

Letter II. To The Same

Oman's, March G. Dear David, Do you recollect W of Trinity ? I sus pect not ; but you have heard of him a thousand times. And yet you may have met him at my rooms, or North's ; for I think he determined, after you began to reside. At all events, you remember to have heard me describe his strange eccentric character — his dissolute behaviour du ring the first years of his residence — his extrava gant zeal of study afterwards — last of all, the ab surdity of his sudden elopement, without a de gree, after having astonished the examining mas ters by the splendid commencement of his exa mination. The man is half-mad in some things ; and that is the key of the whole mystery. W and I were great friends during the MR W first terms I spent at Jesus. He had gone to school at Harrow with my brother Samuel, and called on me the very day I entered.

What a life was ours in that thoughtless prime of our days ! We spent all the mornings after lecture in utter lounging — eating ice at Jubb's — flirt ing with Miss Butler — bathing in the Char well, and so forth. And then, after dinner, we used to have our fruit and wine carried into the garden, (I mean at Trinity,) and there we sat, three or four of us, sipping away for a couple of hours, under the dark refreshing shade of those old beechen bowers. Evensong was no sooner over, than we would down to the Isis, and man one, or sometimes two of Mother Hall's boats, and so run races against each other, or some of our friends, to Iffley or Sandford. What lots of bread and butter we used to devour at tea, and what delight we felt in rowing back in the cool misty evening — sometimes the moon up long ere we reached Christ Church meadows again.

A light supper— cheese-and-bread and lettuces — and a joyous bowl of Bishop — these were the regular conclusion. I would give half I am worth to live one week of it over again. At that time, W— — . and I, Tom Vere (of Corpus,) and one MR W 15 or two more, were never separate above three or four hours in the day. I was on my way to deliver a letter of introduction to a young barrister of this place, when, in turning the corner of a street, my old friend, Will W , passed close at my elbow. I knew him in a moment, although he is greatly changed, and called after him. He turned round with a fierce air, as if loth to be disturbed, (for he was evidently up to the chin in meditation ;) but, on recognizing his ancient acquaintance, nothing could be more hearty than the kindness of his countenance.

After a few hurried interrogations on both sides, diversified by scarcely any re sponses on either, I took his arm and began to explain to him the purposes of my visit to a city in which he had so little expectation of see ing me. He accompanied me immediately to the Calton Hill, of which I spoke in my last, and where, as he assured me, he spends at least one hour every day when in Edinburgh. On coming down he carried me to the Hotel where I now am ; and, having seen my baggage and horses fairly established, and walked a good deal about the town, we proceeded to his house, where I remained for the rest of the day. I assure MR W. you this rencounter has afforded me the highest pleasure, and I doubt not it will be of infinite use to me, moreover— for W is, perhaps, of all men, the very person I should have selected to act as my Cicerone in Scotland.

Indeed, I wonder at myself for not having made more accurate enquiries about him before I set out ; but I had somehow got a confused idea in my head that he was resident in France or Germany, and really had never thought of him in relation to my own schemes of visiting his country. He has already introduced me to several very pleasant fellows here. But before I describe his companions, I must endeavour to give you some little notion of himself. After leaving Oxford under the strange cir cumstances you have often heard me speak of, W proceeded to the North, where he spent several years in severe study, not a whit dis^ couraged in his views, or shaken from his attachments, by the singular catastrophe to which the constitutional and irresistible panic of a moment had exposed him. He changed, however, but indeed it was scarcely possible for him to do otherwise, the course and tenor of his usual pur suits ; passing for a time from the classics, with MR W- 17 the greater part of whom he had formed a pretty accurate acquaintance, and flinging himself over head and ears into the very heart of Gothic an tiquities, and the history, poetry, and romance of the middle ages.

These he has quitted by fits and starts, and spent the intervals of their neglect in making himself far better skilled than is common in the modern literature of foreign countries, as well as of England ; but ever since, and up to this moment, they form the staple of his occupation — the daily bread of his mind. He lives almost continually in the days gone by, and feels himself, as he says, almost a stranger among matters which might be supposed to be nearer to him. And yet he is any thing but a stranger to the world he actually lives in ; al though indeed he does perhaps regard not a few both of its men and its things, with some what of the coldness of an unconcerned visitor. In short, for there is no need to disguise the fact to you, he has nursed himself into such a fervent veneration for the thoughts and feelings of the more ancient times of his country and of ours, (for as to that matter he is no bigot,) that he cannot witness without a deep mixture of bile, the adoration paid by those around him to thoughts, feelings, and persons, for whom he en- A7OL. i. B MR W tertains, if not absolute, at the least no inconsiderable comparative contempt.

I have said that he is not a bigot, in regard to any old ideas of difference between his own country and ours. This I attribute in a great measure, certainly, to the course of study he has so devoutly pur sued, and which could not have failed, in making him acquainted with the ancient condition of both countries, to reveal to him far more points of agreement than disagreement between them. But a part of his liberality must also, I should think, be ascribed to the influence of his educa tion in England, more particularly in Oxford ; his long residence in that noble city having filled the finest part of his mind with reverent ideas, concerning both the old and the present gran deur of England, such as can never be eradicated, nor even weakened, by any after experience of his life. Such, I suspect, from his conversation, to be the truth of the case ; and yet it is only from odd hints and suggestions, that I have made shift to gather so much, for, of all men living, he is the least chargeable with the sin of disser tation, and I never heard him in my life give more than one sentence to the expression of any opinion he entertains.