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man, in a shandry-dan of his own invention, of which, by the bye, we hear the rather too much-it being evidently the Doctor's hobby. He arrived in Edinburgh about the middle of last winter -and past a month there-regularly attending the Parliament House, the theatre, routes, balls, churches, and all other places of public amusement -so that nothing seems to have escaped him. He then ran his shandry-dan into Glasgow under the six hours, beating the Telegraph by eleven minutes, and during a fortnight's residence in that city, put up, nominally, at the Buck's Head-for Mrs Jardine seems to have had but little of his company, invitations having poured in upon him from all quarters. He found time, however, in the midst of all his racketing, to write long letters to his kinsfolk in Wales and tells us that a sudden thought struck him to have them printed and no sooner said than done. The manuscript was instantly sent to a Mr Reece, who is the very Ballantyne of Aberystwith, and in one month it was transformed into a most

beautiful piece of Welsh typography. The great object of the work before us seems to be to give a philosophical estimate of the legal and mercantile character of Scotland-and this our author tries to accomplish, by delineating the society of Edinburgh and of Glasgow. We shall enable our readers to judge, from pretty copious extracts, how far Dr Morris has succeeded in his attempt. He speaks thus cavalierly of the whigs of Edinburgh. "The Whigs are still lords of public opinion in Edinburgh to an extent of which, before visiting Scotland, I could scarcely have formed any adequate notion. The Tories have all the political power, and have long had it, but from whatever cause (and I profess myself incapable of assigning any rational one,) their power does not appear to have given them command of much sway over the general opinions, even of those that think with them regarding political matters. I confess that I, born and bred a good Tory, and accustomed, in my part of the country, to see the principles I reverence supported by at least an equal share of talent, was not a little mortified by certain indications of faintheartedness and absurd diffidence of themselves among the Scottish Tories, which met my eye ere I had been long in Edinburgh.

"I am inclined, upon the whole, to attribute a good deal of this to the influence of the Edinburgh Review. That work was set on foot and conducted for some years

with an astonishing degree of spirit; and although it never did any thing to entitle it to much respect either from English scholars, or English patriots, or English Christians, I can easily see how much such a work written by Scotchmen, and filled with all the national prejudices of Scotchmen, should have exerted a wonderful authority over the intellect of the city in which it was published. Very many of its faults (I mean these of the less serious kind-such as its faults in regard to literature and taste), were all adapted for the meridian of Scotland; and for a time certainly the whole country was inclined to take a pride in its success. The Prestige of the Edinburgh Review has now most undoubtedly vanished even there; but there still remains a shadow of it sufficient to invest its old conductors with a kind of authority over the minds of those who once were disposed to consider them as infallible judges, de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis; And then the high eminence of some of these gentlemen in their profession of the law, gives them another kind of hold upon the great body of persons following that profession-which is every thing in Edinburgh, because the influence of those who follow it is not neutralized to any considerable extent by the presence of any great aristocracy, or of any great intellectual cul

tivation out of themselves. The Scotch are people it is wonderful how far the influence a people of talkers; and among such a of any one person may be carried around and below him, by mere second-third-and fourth hand babbling, all derived from one trivial source. I am not, however, of opinion that this kind of work will go on much longer. Jeffrey has evidently got sick of the Review or rather, he has evidently written himself out (and indeed my only quirements as his should not have written wonder is, that a person of such limited achimself out much sooner in such a department);-Brougham has enough to do in Parliament-that is to say, he gives himself enough to do; and even there you well know what a Charlatan kind of reputation he has. Horner is dead. Walter Scott has long since left them.-The Review is now a very sensible, plain sort of book-in its best parts, certainly not rising above the British Review-and in its inferior parts there is often a display of calm drivelling, much beyond what the British Review itself would admit. And then there is no point-no wit—no joke -no spirit, nothing of the glee of young existence about it. It is a very dull book, more proper to be read between sleeping and waking, among old, sober, cautious tradesmen, than to give any spring to the fancy or reason of the young, the active, and the intelligent. The secret will out ere long-viz. that the Edinburgh Reviewers have not been able to get any effectual recruits among the young people about them. There is no infusion of fresh blood into the veins of the Review. When one visits Edinburgh, where one cannot stir a step

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without stumbling over troops of confident, comfortable, glib, smart young Whigs, one is at a loss to understand the meaning of this dearth. One would suppose that every ball-room and tavern overflowed with gay Edinburgh reviewers. One hears a perpetual buzz about Jeffrey, Brougham, the Review, &c. &c. and would never doubt that prime articles were undergoing the process of concoction in every corner. But, alas! the fact is, that the young Edinburgh Whigs are a set of very stupid fellows, and the Review must wait long enough if it is never to be resuscitated but by them.

"They are really a very disagreeble set of pretenders I mean those of them that do make any pretensions at all to literary character. They are very ill educated in general; they have no classical learning; few of them can construe two lines of any Latin poet; and as for Greek, they scarcely know which end of the book should be held to their noses. They have never studied any philosophy of any kind-unless attending a course of lectures on metaphysics, delivered by a man far too ingenious to be comprehended for above five sentences at a time, by persons of their acquirements and capacity can be called studying philosophy. They know sometimes a little about chemistry and geology to be sure, but these are studies in which the proficiency of mere amateurs can never be any great matter. They know a very little of English history and politics-enough to enable them to spin out a few half-hours of blarney in their debating societies. But, upon the whole, it may safely be asserted, that all they know worthy of being known upon any subjects of general literature, politics, or philosophy, is derived from the Edinburgh Review itself; and as they cannot do the Review any great service by giving it back its own materials, I conceive that this work is just in the act of falling a sacrifice to habits of superficial acquirement, and contented ignorance, which it was shortsighted enough to encourage, if not to create, in order to serve its own temporary purposes among the rising generation in Scotland.

"One would imagine, however, that these young whigs might have begun, long ere this time, to suspect somewhat of their own situation. They must be quite aware, that they have never written a single page in the Edinburgh Review, or that, if they have done so, their pages were universally looked upon as the mere lumber of the book: contrasting, too, their own unproductive petulance with the laborious and fruitful early years of those whom they worship, and in whose walk they would fain be supposed to be following-it is difficult to understand how they happen to keep themselves so free from the qualms of conscious imbecility. Perhaps, after all, they are au fond less conceited than they appear to be; but certainly to judge from externals, there never was a more self-satisfied crew of young ignoramuses. After being let a little into their real character and attainments, I can VOL. IV.

not say but that I derived a considerable degree of amusement from the contemplation of their manners. As for their talk, it is such utter drivelling, the moment they leave their text-books, (the moment they give over quoting,) that I must own I found no great entertainment in it. It is a pity to see a fine country like Scotland, a country so rich in recollections of glorious antiquity, so rich in the monuments of genius, at this moment adorned with not a few fullgrown living trees of immortal fruit-it is a pity to see such a country so devoid of promise for her future harvests. It is a pity to see her soil wasting on the nurture of this unproductive pestilential underwood, juices which, under better direction, might give breadth to the oak, and elevation to the pine," &c.-Vol. I. pp. 106-12.

*

"The respectable elder whigs must, of a surety, feel very sore upon all this; for it is not to be supposed, that they can be quite so easily satisfied with these young gregarii, as the young gregarii are with themselves. I understand, accordingly, that nothing gives them so much visible delight as the appearance of any thing like a revival of talent among their troops. When a young whig makes a tolerable speech at the bar, or writes a tolerable law-paper, or adventures to confess himself author of a tolerable paragraph in a party print-in short, when he manifests any symptom of possessing better parts than the confessedly dull fellows around him, there is much rejoicing in the high places, a most remarkable crowing and clapping of wings in honour of the rising luminary. The young genius is fed and fattened for a season with puffs and praises; and, in consequence of that kind of dominion or prestige to which I have already alluded, the very tories begin to contemplate him with a little awe and reverence, as a future formidable antagonist, with whom it may be as well to be upon some tolerable terms in private. Well-a year or two goes over his head, and the genius has not yişibly improved in any thing except conceit. He is now an established young whig genius. If any situation becomes empty, which it would be convenient for him to fill, and if, notwithstanding of this, he is not promoted to it by those, whom, on every occasion, he makes the objects of his ignorant abuse-this neglect of him is talked of by himself and his friends, as if it were virtually a neglect of genius in the abstract;-with so much readiness do these good people enter into the spirit of a personification. A Dutch painter could not typify ideal beauty under a more clumsy and heavy shape, than they sometimes do genius; nor are the languishing, coy, and conscious airs of some Venus over a lust-house at Schedam, a whit more exquisite in their way, than the fat indignant fatuity of some of these neglected geniuses of Scotland.

"So many of these geniuses, however, 4 I

have now been puffed up and pushed up to a little temporary reputation, and then sunk under their own weight into their own mud, that one should suppose the elevators must now be a little weary of exerting their mechanical powers in that way. Their situation is, indeed, almost as discouraging as that of Sisyphus, doomed for ever to struggle in vain against the obstinate, or as Homer calls it, the "impudent” stone's alacrity in sinking.

αὐτὶς ἔπειτα πεδονδε κυλινδετο λαας αναίδης.” Ibid, p. 119. Peter then devotes two long letters to the state of education in Edinburgh; and though we have detected some erFors in his account of the course of study pursued in our university, and can by no means concur with him in some of his very severe strictures on not a few of the professors, yet it is wonderful with what acuteness he has penetrated into the spirit of the system. We propose, on a future occasion, to take up the cudgels in behalf of our Alma Mater, and to defend her against the attacks of this Oxonian, in whose mind, liberal as it is, we think that we can discern some slight symptoms of prejudices fostered among the of Rhedicina; but, for the present, we content ourselves with quoting a passage, distinguished, as we think, for candour and liberality, and which shews that Peter's heart is of the right stuff

groves

"The ideas entertained in England respecting the state of religion in Scotland, are just as absurd as those which used to be in fashion about the external appearance of that country. I positively believe, that if the bench of bishops were requested, at this moment, to draw up, with the assistance of the Oxford and Cambridge heads of houses and regius professors, a short account of its spiritual condition, they would talk as if it had as few men of rational piety in it, as the Cockney wits used to think it had trees. According to these received prejudices, the Scottish peasants are universally imbued with the most savage and covenanting fanaticism-a fault for which ample atonement is made by the equally universal freethinking and impiety of the higher orders of their countrymen. Every Scotsman is a bigot to one or other of those equally abominable heresies-Atheism or Calvinism. They would represent the faith of this country as a strange creature somewhat after the fashion of old Janus, dressed on one side in a solemn suit of customary blue, and on the other in the rainbow frippery of a Parisian fille-de-joie-giving with her right hand the grasp of fellowship to John Knox, and leering and leaning to the left on a more fashionable beau, David Hume."

"The principal mouth-piece of this southern bigotry is, I am very sorry to say, a work for which I have, in almost every other respect, the greatest esteem-the Quarterly Review. It is a pity that that work, which exerts over the public mind of England so salutary an influence, as the guardian of her character her true character, both political and religious it is a very great pity that this admirable work should in any way tend to keep up improper prejudices against the Scottish among the majority of its readers. No doubt there is this excuse for them, that they view the mind of Scotland as represented in some measure in the Edinburgh Review. But I, who am certainly no admirer of the religion of the Edinburgh Review, think it extremely unfair to represent it as being either the oracle or symbol of the spirit of the country wherein it is produced. Why, although the Edinburgh reviewers sit at times in the chair of the scoffer, should the of the religious condition of a country which English be taught to think with disrespect hot long ago possessed a Blair and an Erskine, and which at this moment can boast of Moncrieff, Alison, and Chalmers? The truth is, that I believe no country in Europe is less tainted with the spirit of infidelity than Scotland. The faith of their devout ancestors has come down to them entire; it is preached throughout this country by a body of clergymen who, if they cannot pretend to so much lish divines, are in general far better intheological erudition as some of our Engformed upon matters of actual life than they are far more fitted to be the friends and instructors of their parishioners far more humble in their desires, and, I may add, far more unexceptionably exemplary in their life and conversation.

"The appearance of a single Sunday in Scotland, is of itself sufficient to shew the absurdity of the late sarcasms in the Quarterly; the churches are thronged, not with the peasantry and mechanics alone, but with every order and condition of men and women who are capable of reading the Bible, or listening to a sermon. The Scotch have indeed got rid of a great many of those useless prejudices with which their forefathers were infected, and which still seem to linger in the bosoms of some of our own countrymen; but the trunk has been strengthened, not weakened, by the lopping off of its rotten branches and excrescencies; and although the tree of their neighbours may cast a broader shade, I have my doubts whether it be productive of better fruit.

"The most remarkable change which has occurred in the religious thinking of the Scotch, is that which may be observed in regard to their mode of treating those who profess a persuasion different from their own. Half a century ago, a Papist, or even an Episcopalian, appeared very little removed from the condition of a Heathen in the eyes of a good Scots Presbyterian :

here and there people might be found who thought somewhat more judiciously; but the common opinion certainly was, that the idolatry of a Roman Catholic is quite as bad

as that of a Cherokee or a South-seaislander. The Scotch now no longer con

sider it as a matter of perfect certainty, that the Pope is the Antichrist, and the Church of Rome the Babylon of the Revelations, They do full honour to those heroic and holy spirits who wrought the great work of the Reformation, but they do not doubt that even those who nominally adhere to the ancient faith, have derived great benefit from the establishment of the new.

They refuse to consider the kingdom of Christ as composed only of the little province which they themselves inhabit. They are thankful indeed for the mode in which their own district is ruled; they believe, perhaps, that their own municipal regulations are wiser than those to which most of their neighbours submit; but they never doubt, that throughout the whole of the empire the general principles of government are substantially the same, nor hesitate to consider themselves as linked by the firmest bonds of common loyalty and devotion, both to each other, and to that authority which all true Christians are equally proud to acknowledge and obey,

"But, above every thing, what shews the absurdity of the Quarterly's notions up on these subjects, in a most striking point of view, is this simple fact, that, in spite of the cuts which it is perpetually giving themaelves, the Quarterly Review is a very great favourite among the Scotch. The Scotch have no such prejudice against English education, and the English forms of religion, as the Review attributes to them. On the contrary, they are delighted to hear these defended in the Quarterly from the malignant aspersions of their own Edinburgh reviewers so at least the enlight ened and well-educated Scotchmen with whom I conversed uniformly represented themselves to be; and I believe them most sincerely. It is time that all this foolery should be at an end, and that people, who in fact are of the same way of thinking, should not be persuaded into supposing themselves enemies to each other.' Ibid, p. 230.

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This is really a fine passage. When we consider how difficult a thing it is to get rid of national prejudices of any kind, and more particularly, how deeprooted those prejudices are which men educated at Oxford commonly bear towards the very name of Presbyterianism, we cannot refuse to Dr Morris the praise of having overcome his prejudices in a way that does equal honour to the perspicacity of his intellect, and the goodness of his heart. We trust the liberal and manly style in which he ex

presses these sentiments, may produce some effect on those for whose benefit he appears to have thrown them out. In regard to the Quarterly reviewers, for example, this language of a man who has shared the advantages of that system of education which they, properly no doubt, but too exclusively, prize and who shares, as is manifest from the whole tenor of his writing, all those principles, both political and ful and energetic champions, ought religious, of which they are the powernot to be mere igra that leave no trace behind. In the very last number of their work, and in a paper which is likely to produce, if indeed it have not already done so, a more decisive effect than any thing that has been written for many years, concerning the parliamentary conduct of British statesmen,even in this admirable

paper it is easy to perceive the marks of those very bigotries which this intelligent traveller has so eloquently condemned. What has Mr Brougham to do with Scotland ? excepting that this gentleman received part of his education here, and figured for a few years among us, as he has since done among our neighbours, with his lean red bag, and acquired considerable notoriety in Edinburgh, by being one of the early supporters of the Edinburgh Review, we know of no connexion which subsists between Scotland and Mr Brougham. This

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review calls him, is an Englishman, great statesman and lawyer," as the and we should be sorry to deprive England of the honour due to her soil for having produced him. We are persuaded, that the insolent ignorance, and depraved coxcombry of Mr Brougham's behaviour in the matter of the education committee, has excited quite as universal, and quite as deep a feeling of disgust in Scotland as in England. He is now certainly in a low enough situation; but his Castigator might have placed him there without throwing any of the mud upon us, who are just as well pleased with the humiliation of the Charlatan as the best Regius Professor among them all. But to proceed: The Doctor occupies the remainder of his first volume with a very animated description of various circles of private society into which he was introduced during his stay in Edinburgh. We might quote, from this part of the work, many passager

man,

which could not fail to be highly interesting to our readers, such, for example, as his description of a blue stocking party, (tea and turn-out,) where he had the felicity to hear many very novel remarks on the poetry of Lord Byron, Walter Scott, Thomas Moore, and to meet with the Ettrick Shepherd in propriâ persona where he was favoured with a critical disquisition on things in general, by a fantastic Frenchman, who concluded his diatribe with these consolatory words, "I do very much approve Shakspeare"-where he was informed, by one old lady, that Buonaparte is a mere poltroon, and by another, that the march of intellect will infallibly render a reform in Parliament necessary within the next half-century, &c. &c. all very proper to be treasured up and remembered by any frequenter of Tabby at-homes, but dismissed with infinite scorn by Doctor Morris, who is a two-bottle and one of those, to use Madame Deffand's phrase, qui n'aiment pas la prose. There is also an excellent chapter on the bar of Scotland, wherein the Doctor has favoured us with most graphic and lively portraitures of Messrs Clerk, Cranstoun, Jeffrey, Cockburn, and several others of less note. There is also a very amusing account of a ball, which the Doctor seems to have been wonderfully delighted with, although he modestly declined participating in the more active part of its pleasures. The beauty of the Scotch young ladies has had few more fervent admirers than the Doctor; and although his delicacy has made him leave asterisks instead of names, the exquisite truth and feeling of some of his descriptions will easily enable those acquainted with our beau monde to discover what "bright particular stars" they were, that most effectually dazzled his optics. All these passages, however, in spite of the interest which we are aware they would give to our pages, we omit-for divers good and sufficient reasons, which the judicious will understand without any formal enunciation of them.

At Glasgow, the Doctor has his eyes about him quite as much as at Edinburgh; but although we well know there is nothing which could be more agreeable to our good friends of that eity, than to hear at full length his opinion of them and all their out-go

ings and in-comings, the comparative small importance of these topics in the eyes of the rest of the world induces us to extract only a very few passages, and these perhaps not the most intensely characteristic or amusing. The following sketch, however, will be allowed, by all who have ever gone the western circuit, or had occasion in any other way to visit the capital of St Mungo, to be a picture from the life, and to the life.

"Mr

asked me to dine with him next day, and appointed me to meet him at the coffee-room or exchange, exactly at a quarter before 5 o'clock, from which place he said he would himself conduct me to his ill-shaped, low-roofed room, st rounded on residence. My rendezvous is a very large, all sides with green cane chairs, small tables, and newspapers, and opening by glass folding-doors, upon a paved piazza of some extent. This piazza is in fact the Exchange, but the business is done in the adjoining room, where all the merchants are to be seen at certain hours of the day, pacing up and down with more or less importance in their strut, according to the situation of their affairs, or the nature of the bargains of the day. I have seldom seen a more amusing medley. Although I had travelled only forty miles from Edinburgh, I could with difficulty persuade myself that I was still in the same kingdom. Such roaring! such cursing! such peals of discord! such laughter! such grotesque attitudes! such arrogance! such vulgar disregard of all courtesy to a stranger! Here was to be seen the counting-house blood, dressed in box-coat, belcher handkerchief, and top boots, or leather gaiters-discoursing (Edepol!) about brown sugar and genseng! Here was to be seen the counting-house dandy, with whalebone stays, stiff neckcloth, Surtout, Cossacks, a spur on his heel, a gold-headed cane on his wrist, and a Kent on his head

mincing primly to his brother dandy some question about Pullicat Handkerchiefs. Here was to be seen the counting-house bear, with a grin, and a voice like a glassblower. Here, above all, was to be seen the Glasgow literateur, striding in his corner, with a pale face and an air of exquisite abstraction, meditating, no doubt, some high paragraph for the chronicle, or perchance, some pamphlet against Dr Chalmers! Here, in a word, were to be seen abundant varieties of folly and presumption -abundant airs of plebeianism-I was now in the coffee-room of Glasgow.

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My friend soon joined me, and observing, from the appearance of my countenance, that I was contemplating the scene with some disgust, My good fellow,' said he,

you are just like every other well-educated stranger that comes into this town, you cannot endure the first sight of us mercantile

whelps. Do not, however, be alarmed, I

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