LETTER III.

THOU must excuse dates, for I am become an Highlander, and it is beneath the dignity of an Highlander, to waste a thought upon either time or distance. For the former, he has neither watch, almanack, nor an unclouded sun to measure with; and the latter is measured by the former. He would rather make a kill-time, in a soliloquy upon nothing, at a favorite mountain spring, than trouble himself about it. What a happy indifference! past, present, and future, all put to bed. The landlord and waiter, at the head inn at Blair, had a dispute, whether Castleton was fifteen or twenty eight miles distant, both taking the English mile as standard.

After having spent a few days round this much neglected scenery, Bremar; (by the bye, there is a Castle here, which, four well timed pills from a long eighteen pounder, would rake its bowels out for it, and make it kneel for

mercy to the doctor! How the iron ribs of John Bull, of the present day, would shake with laughter at such a place! There is a company of soldiers placed in it to kill the smugglers from Glen Levet, and to drink their healths in the seized whiskey.) I am off to that glen of my longings, which traveller ne'er trod. Wilt thou go with me? Hope (twin to ambition) is a great cheat, though a wise one. Few things are, in enjoyment, what they seem in anticipation. Wise, cheating hope, spurs up the morbid energies of the soul to new pursuit; and the more remote and difficult the object, the keener is her spur! Such is my feeling towards this pass of Ballochdergh; and if I thought tourist's ink had ever soiled its ideal glen, the sentiment would sink below Zero. This sentiment kept Parry's blood from forming ice-bergs round his heart at the pole ; and made Macullock (from all account) to insult these people with broad truths, that his full length by Chantry, may strut in a niche of the philosophic hall of their new Iona, at doomsday. Such is man my friend!—I would not speak irreverently of this latter gentleman, nor, mayhap, would he care if I did, for he is

one of your self-dependent men, who set opinion at defiance, and who too, like Byron, would have died of chagrin had his works not made a noise in the world. His works give the lie to his manner in this case. He endeavours to prove by pride, what his labours refute by slavery.

It requires a man of courage to look upon death in the field, great courage to tell a friend and a people of their faults and prejudices, but the lion of all, is that most glorious courage, which dare admit, this best of faults, the fear of opinion; for it is the embryo-type of the fear of God, a bond to moral good, and a silent pledge to an hereafter. Never, my friend, act with total indifference to public opinion; for whatever thy thoughts may be of the base, nature has, on general principles, made man a correct judge of his fellow's actions; and the more we court his good opinion, the nearer we shall approach that ideal perfection of character, of benevolence, which will render us susceptible to higher enjoyments hereafter. I am not going to turn Rabbi and hold forth, but this is a fixed and immutable principle in nature, which, but let philosophy and religion

put her in the right way, she may have a glimpse of that moral Jerusalem, that beautiful ideal of refinement, here, which is the stepping stone to an hereafter, and makes a little heaven on earth. It is a popular error to say that the Ethiopian or the Indian is in his natural state. Not to mention the fall of Adam (which good men may be at issue about), we all raise, in idea, an imaginary perfectability in man, which speaks fairly for the probability; and nature does not often lead us into error.

Suppose a line drawn between the two extremes-a generalized being,-combined from all their bright atoms; apply moral influence to him, having regard to climate, health, and, last and most important, breed to this being, and what might the development be in the progeny a thousand years hence ?-perfection. It would be a consummation much to be wished, though the world might laugh at such dreaming speculation. All things were in speculation t ll proved.

We have heard of ancient Romans; we see modern Greeks; multiply the perfections of the former by the former means, you have a God plant the latter in Ethiopia and neglect

him, you have a thing neither animal nor human.

Again, the Apollo is called the muscular or physical standard of perfection; all nations flock to copy him, little calculating the remote causes of their admiration. They admire. the skill of the artist, without supposing that this was an ideal compound, concentrating the genius, the sentiment, the soul, of an intellectual people. Dr. Johnson supposed the point between the two extremes of every thing was the line of beauty. This may hold good, probably, in natural philosophy, but in moral, as more connected with mind, this Apollo usurps the line of beauty over the whole race; at least in the opinion of those whose opinion is worth having; and even the lowest grades of man, express by their wonder what they would speak with their tongues.

This indirect reverence to mind amounts to a conviction, that it is intellectual development in the figure to which they bow, from association; and but associate that intellect with an Ethiopian Apollo, and we should go barefooted to Timbuctoo to copy. All things are from associated comparison, my friend.