opinion easily, and to conduct discussions with forbearance, were,
without undue obtrusion, the most cheerful people that were to be met
with. Lords Monboddo, Hailes, Glenlee, Meadowbank, and Woodhouselee,
all literary judges, and Robert Blair, Henry Erskine, and Henry
Mackenzie, senior, were at the earlier end of this file; Scott and
Jeffrey at the later--but including a variety of valuable persons
between these extremities. Sir William Forbes, Sir James Hall, and Mr
Clerk of Eldin, represented a class of country gentlemen cultivating
learning on its account. And there were several, who, like the founder
of the Huttonian theory, selected this city for their residence solely
from the consideration in which science and letters were here held,
and the facilities, or rather the temptations, presented for their
prosecution. Philosophy had become indigenous in the place, and all
classes, even in their gayest hours, were proud of the presence of its
cultivators. Thus learning was improved by society, and society by
learning. And unless when party-spirit interfered--which, at one time,
however, it did frequently and bitterly--perfect harmony, and, indeed,
lively cordiality, prevailed.

'And all this was still a Scotch scene. The whole country had not
begun to be absorbed in the ocean of London. There were still little
great places--places with attractions quite sufficient to retain men
of talent or learning in their comfortable and respectable provincial
positions, and which were dignified by the tastes and institutions
which learning and talent naturally rear. The operation of the
commercial principle which tempts all superiority to try its fortune
in the greatest accessible market, is perhaps irresistible; but
anything is surely to be lamented which annihilates local intellect,
and degrades the provincial spheres which intellect and its
consequences can alone adorn. According to the modern rate of