scene. Overhead, the sky is all one breathless canopy of lucid crystal blue-here and there a small bright star twinkling in the depth of æther-and full in the midst, the moon walking in her vestal glory, pursuing, as from the bosom of eternity, her calm and destined way-and pouring down the silver of her smiles upon all of lovely and sublime that nature and art could heap together, to do homage to her radiance. How poor, how tame, how worthless, does the converse even of the best and wisest of men appear, when faintly and dimly remembered amidst the sober tranquillity of this heavenly hour! How deep the gulf that divides the tongue from the heart-the communication of companionship from the solitude of man! How soft, yet how awful, the beauty and the silence of the hour of spirits!

I think it was one of the noblest conceptions that ever entered into the breast of a poet, which made Göethe open his Faustus with a scene of moonlight. The restlessness of an intellect wearied with the vanity of knowledge, and tormented with the sleepless agonies of doubt-the sickness of a heart bruised and buffeted by all the demons of presumption-the wild and wandering throbs of a soul parched among plenty, by the blind cruelty of its own dead affections-these dark and depressing mysteries all maddening within the brain of the Hermit Student, might have suggested other accompaniments to one who had looked less deeply into the nature of man-who had felt less in his own person of that which he might have been ambitious to describe. But this great master of intellect was well aware to what thoughts, and what feelings, the perplexed and the bewildered are most anxious to return. He well knew where it is, that Nature has placed the best balm for the wounds of the spirit-by what indissoluble links she has twined her own eternal influences around the dry and chafed heart-strings that have most neglected her tenderness. It is thus, that his weary and melancholy sceptic speaks his phial of poison is not yet mingled on his tablebut the tempter is already listening at his ear, that would not allow him to leave the world until he should have plunged

yet deeper into his snares, and added sins against his neighbour, to sins against God, and against himself. I wish I could do justice to his words in a translation-or rather that I had Coleridge nearer me.

Would thou wert gazing now thy last

Upon my troubles, glorious Harvest Moon!
Well canst thou tell how all my nights have past,
Wearing away, how slow, and yet how soon!
Alas! alas! sweet Queen of Stars,
Through dreary dim monastic bars,
To me thy silver radiance passes,
Illuminating round me masses
Of dusty books, and mouldy paper,
That are not worthy of so fair a taper.

O might I once again go forth,

To see thee gliding through thy fields of blue,
Along the hill-tops of the north;—

O might I go, as when I nothing knew,
Where meadows drink thy softening gleam,
And happy spirits twinkle in the beam,

To steep my heart in thy most healing dew.

I HAVE already told you, that the Bar is the great focus from which the rays of interest and animation are diffused throughout the whole mass of society, in this northern capital. Compared with it, there is no object or congregation of objects, which can be said to have any wide and commanding grasp of the general attention. The Church-the University-even my own celebrated Faculty, in this its great

seat of empire-all are no better than the "minora sidera,” among which the luminaries of forensic authority and forensic reputation shine forth conspicuous and superior. Into whatever company the stranger may enter, he is sure, ere he has been half an hour in the place, to meet with something to remind him of the predominance of this great jurisprudential aristocracy. The names of the eminent leaders of the profession, pass through the lips of the ladies and gentlemen of Edinburgh, as frequently and as reverently as those of the great debaters of the House of Commons do through those of the ladies and gentlemen of London. In the absence of any other great centres of attraction, to dispute their preeminence in the general eye, the principal barristers are able to sustain and fix upon themselves, from month to month, and year to year, in this large and splendid city, something not unlike the same intensity of attention and admiration, which their brethren of the south may be too proud to command over the public mind of York or Lancaster, for two Assize-weeks in the year.

I think the profession makes a very tyrannical use of all these advantages. Not contented with being first, it is obvious they would fain be alone in the eye of admiration ; and they seem to omit no opportunity of adding the smallest piece of acquisition to the already over-stretched verge of their empire. It is easy to see that they look upon the whole city as nothing more than one huge Inn of Court. set apart from end to end for the purposes of their own peculiar accommodation; and they strut along the spacious and crowded streets of this metropolis, with the same air of conscious possession and conscious dignity, which one meets with in London among the green and shadowy alleys of the Temple Gardens. Such is their satisfied assurance of the unrivalled dignity and importance of their calling, that they hold themselves entitled, wherever they are, to make free use not only of allusions, but of phrases, evidently borrowed from its concerns; and such has been the length of time during which all these instruments of encroachment have been at work, that memory

of their commencement and just sense of their tendency have alike vanished among the greater part of those in whose presence the scene of their habitual operation is laid. Even the women appear to think it quite necessary to succumb to the prevailing spirit of the place; and strive to acquire for themselves some smattering of legal phrases, with which to garnish that texture of political, critical, and erotical common-places, which they share with the Masters and Misses of other cities, wherein the pretensions of the Gens Togata are kept somewhat more within the limits of propriety. My friend W tells me, that, in the course of a love-correspondence, which once, by some unfortunate accident, got into general circulation in Edinburgh, among many other truly ludicrous exemplifications of the use of the legal style of courtship, there was one letter from the Strephon to the Phyllis, which began with, "Madam-in answer to your duplies, received of date as per margin." But this, no doubt, is one of W's pleasant exaggerations.

Although, however, the whole of the city, and the whole of its society, be more than enough redolent of the influence of this profession, it is by no means to be denied, that a very great share of influence is most justly due to the eminent services which its members have rendered, and are at the present time rendering to their country. It is not to be denied, that the Scottish lawyers have done more than any other class of their fellow-citizens, to keep alive the sorely threatened spirit of national independence in the thoughts and in the feelings. of their countrymen. It is scarcely to be denied, that they have for a long time furnished, and are at this moment furnishing, the only example of high intellectual exertion, (beyond the case of mere individuals,) in regard to which Scotland may challenge a comparison with the great sister-state, which has drawn so much of her intellect and her exertion into the overwhelming and obscuring vortex of her superiority. It is a right and a proper thing, then, that Scotland should be proud of her Bar-and, indeed, when one reflects for a moment, what an immense overshadowing proportion of

all the great men she has produced have belonged, or at this moment do belong to this profession, it is quite impossible to be surprised or displeased, because so just a feeling may have been carried a little beyond the limit of mere propriety. It is not necessary to go back into the remote history of the Bar of Scotland, although, I believe, there is in all that history no one period devoid of its appropriate honours. One generation of illustrious men, connected with it throughout the whole, or throughout the greater part of their lives, has only just departed, and the memory of them and their exertions is yet fresh and unfaded. Others have succeeded to their exertions and their honours, whom they that have seen both, admit to be well worthy of their predecessors. Indeed, it is not necessary to say one word more concerning the present state of the profession than this-that, in addition to many names which owe very great and splendid reputation to the Bar alone, the gown is worn at this moment by two persons, whom all the world must admit to have done more than all the rest of their contemporaries put together, for sustaining and extending the honours of the Scottish name-both at home and abroad. You need scarcely be told, that I speak of Mr. W―S and Mr. J-. The former of these has, indeed, retired from the practice of the Bar; but he holds a high office in the Court of Session. The other is in the full tide of professional practice, and of a professional celebrity, which could scarcely be obscured by any thing less splendid, than the extra-professional reputation which has been yet longer associated with his name-and which, indeed, is obviously of a much higher, as well as of a much more enduring character, than any reputation which any profession, properly so called, ever can have the power to bestow.

The courts of justice with which all these eminent men are so closely connected, are placed in and about the same range of buildings, which in former times were set apart for the accommodation of the Parliament of Scotland. The main approach to these buildings lies through a small oblong square, which takes from this circumstance the name of "the Par