returned; and I was not surprised nor even pained. If they had not
been looked at, as (like all amateurs) I suspected was the case,
there was no good in repeating the experiment; if they had been
looked at - well, then I had not yet learned to write, and I must
keep on learning and living. Lastly, I had a piece of good fortune
which is the occasion of this paper, and by which I was able to see
my literature in print, and to measure experimentally how far I
stood from the favour of the public.


II


The Speculative Society is a body of some antiquity, and has
counted among its members Scott, Brougham, Jeffrey, Horner,
Benjamin Constant, Robert Emmet, and many a legal and local
celebrity besides. By an accident, variously explained, it has its
rooms in the very buildings of the University of Edinburgh: a hall,
Turkey-carpeted, hung with pictures, looking, when lighted up at
night with fire and candle, like some goodly dining-room; a
passage-like library, walled with books in their wire cages; and a
corridor with a fireplace, benches, a table, many prints of famous
members, and a mural tablet to the virtues of a former secretary.
Here a member can warm himself and loaf and read; here, in defiance
of Senatus-consults, he can smoke. The Senatus looks askance at
these privileges; looks even with a somewhat vinegar aspect on the
whole society; which argues a lack of proportion in the learned
mind, for the world, we may be sure, will prize far higher this
haunt of dead lions than all the living dogs of the professorate.