die with me. My relations hate me for it; I hate myself for it. My friends pity that which I cannot help, and say, that it is better than its opposite which is more frequently a thing of insensibility and of indifference to temptation, rather than a moral restraint from it. But be that as it may, it kept me preaching on the mountain top till nearly dark. The poles I mentioned were not the "guide-poles," but dead fir trees, so they misled me.

I got down to Lovett's deer-forest: a wild wilderness of precipices, decayed and fallen trees; holes grown over with moss and heather, and trackless. The night-mist came on and drew its death-like curtain round me, Few know the horrors of a mist in a roadless country. It shuts out your mountain-points of observation, and it is useless to stir a foot unless you have a bourn to follow. So was I fixed! I slided and fell down the steeps, catching the trees, stumps, and heather for holdfasts; startling the red deer as much as they startled me, and breaking my shins and elbows at every fall. I wonder I was not killed; but I often notice that fright, for the time, gives a

dreadful energy. It stretches the senses as it

were; and you strike points with your foot, and catch with your hand with almost supernatural certainty. At last I came to a river. I prepared to ford it, and when in the middle, the stream was so strong it carried me off my legs and floated me down within a few yards of a deep fall. I made a last effort and swam to the bank with above a stone weight of cutlery on my back, but from its steepness, had to wade again for a landing place over huge blocks of stone; half a mile higher I landed; completely exhausted after drowning Dr. Adam Smith and Dr. Pailey, my pocket travelling companions. I then fancied I saw a hut, and made towards it; but it proved to be a cattle shed! I looked around but could see no habitation! I returned to the shed, and took off my wet clothes, to lay down in company with two calves for the night; but I found the straw worse than my clothes, so I dressed again, "To walk the night" till the glow-worm's waining lamp should warn me of morning. Near midnight I heard a dog bark. It was my guardian angel for the moment; I listened again-it was really a dog! My kingdom for a dog!

I made for the sound as a storm-tossed mariner would a port. To attempt to paint the anxious world, within, would be absurd, for I do not now feel it. I came to a hut and asked for the shepherd to whom I had been directed A man was performing his night orgies over a whisky-still, who of course took me for an exciseman, and consequently handed me out again; and pointed the direction of the shepherd's house I came forward over bog and heath, somewhere, and after two miles tug of it, chance, and the blinking embers of a turf-fire landed me, where I am now writing on a three legged stool to thee. This was life, action, tug, bustle, yea, verily, determination.

Now thou must lend thine ear to a different tune, for thou must know I have turned musical. I often thought I had a taste that way, so I exchanged with my jew-brother-(my mushroom-supper-friend) for a fiddle. Whether it be a Cremoni-or a Scotch Fiddle-or an Highland one originally, I can't say, but its notes are of the most touching kind I ever experienced: it makes you dance as by instinct. I have scraped, (or scratched,) tunes upon it to my own astonishment. It has such sin

gular influence upon sensation as to make you laugh, and cry, in a breath. A circulation full of needle points, or cantharides is nothing to it. It makes my very whiskers bristle when it plays. Hence foolish enigma, the Scotch Fiddle is the Itch!!!! Why so modest; have I not pledged to relate the truth, and though I "swear" it with my hat on, yet I swear! It is a national disgrace, and not an individual one. I tell thee again that I have got that minor plague the Itch !!!!

"If fools have ulcers, and their pride conceal 'em,

They must have ulcers still, for none can heal 'em."

It is the prominent feature in the face of the country; and shall a silly mock modesty make me assume a foolish delicacy, towards a still more foolish prejudice on thy part; and delineate a face without a nose,-no;-and if thy nose end prickles with sympathy, why scratch it as I do. Thinkest thou to travel round this vast wild, lolling on thine own sofa with these letters in thine hand, without a single bump or scratch-no. If thou wert to see a cart wheel passing over an enemy's foot thou wouldst lift thine own up in sympathy;

so, surely for a friend, thou wilt bear a scratch or so. Bestir thyself, and write to King George, and tell him; that he has a 350 miles length of territory in the Highlands of Scotland (let alone Ireland) where his subjects, more or less, are dying a slow death with this execrable disease; partly from the lack of cleanliness and the external comforts of life, but principally from the want of nutricious food! They live mostly upon potatoes, and sometimes meal, when it is not too expensive, which is ten times more heating than the former. I speak experimentally of the latter. I warned thee before, that I should cry out if I wanted help on this point; now give me thy full and perfect sympathy, for, on this point, of all others, I require it. What! I am not writing to a squeamish Miss, but to a moralist and a politician, who ought to lend his skin to be worried to death with the whole host of Highland vermin, to gain practical knowledge of the state of a country! I fear, after this most daring of all confessions, that I may lose a very good friend, for thy feelings may overule thy head on my return (if ever), and associate this complaint with me, even then; but I cannot help it, for mine oath is registered in