have been educated in either of the Lights, from reverting to the darkness of the Established Kirk-to say nothing of the more than Cimmerian obscurity and "night palpable" of the Episcopalians.

And yet nothing surely can be more absurd, than that two such clergymen should be lending support to two such pitiable sets of schismatics. I can understand very well, that there are many cases in which it would be wrong to interpret too strictly the great Scriptural denunciations against the errors of schism-but I am, indeed, very sorely mistaken if such matters as the disputes upon which these New and Old Light-men have separated from the Kirk of Scotland, can by any possible logic be brought into the number of allowable exceptions to so great and important a rule. If any thing were wanting to make the cup of their absurdities overflow, it is the pettish and splenetic hatred which they seem to bear to each other-for I believe the New thinks the Auld Light devotee in a much worse condition than the adherent of the Kirk itself-and, of course, vice versa. Nay-such is the extreme of the folly-that these little Lilliputian controversies about burgess oaths, &c. have been carried into America by Scottish emigrants, and are at this moment disturbing the harmony of the Church of Christ in a country where no burgess oath ever existed, or, it is probable, ever will exist. Beyond the mere letter of their formal disputes, these Dissenters can have no excuse to offer for their dereliction of the Kirk. They cannot accuse her clergy of any want of zeal, worth, or learning. In short, their dissent is only to be accounted for by the extravagant vanity and self-importance of a few particular theorists-absurdly inherited and maintained by men whose talents, to say nothing of their piety, should have taught them to know better.*

* I have since heard that the Burghers and Anti-burghers are taking measures to form a coalition, and, willing, bona fide, to drop all remembrance of their feuds. This is excellent, and does honour to their respective leaders: I would hope it may prepare the way for the return of all these dissenters (who can scarcely be said to have even a pretence for dissent) to their allegiance to the Mother Kirk.

I went, however, to hear Dr. M'Crie preach, and was not disappointed in the expectations I had formed from a perusal of his book. He is a tall, slender man, with a pale face, full of shrewdness, and a pair of black piercing eyesa shade of deep secluded melancholy passing ever and anon across their surface, and dimming their brilliancy. His voice, too, has a wild but very impressive kind of shrillness in it at times. He prays and preaches very much in the usual style of the Presbyterian divines-but about all that he says there is a certain unction of sincere, old-fashioned, haughty Puritanism, peculiar, so far as I have seen, to himself, and by no means displeasing in the historian of Knox. He speaks, too, with an air of authority, which his high talents render excusable, nay, proper-but which few could venture upon with equal success. I went on the same day to hear Dr. Jamieson, and found him also a sensible and learned preacher. He is a very sagacious-looking person, with bright grey eyes, and a full round face-the tones of his voice are kindly and smooth, and altogether he exhibits the very reverse of that anchoretic aspect and air which I had remarked in Dr. M'Crie. I could see that the congregations of both these men regard them with an intense degree of interest and affectionate humility-all which, to be sure, is extremely natural and proper. So much for the New and Auld Lights.

As I am so very soon to visit the West of Scotland, where I am assured the head-quarters of Presbyterianism are still to be found in the old haunts of the Covenanters, I shall defer any farther remarks I may have to make upon the state of religion in Scotland, till I have added the whole of that rich field to the domain of my observation.

P.M.

P. S. Many thanks for your hint about Old Potts. I fear I have been behaving very badly indeed-but shall endeavour to find time for scribbling a few pages suitable to bis tastes, before I set off for Glasgow. As for the £500—I rather think you ought to fight shy-but, no doubt, you are as well up to that matter as I am. I shall advise. Potts to

come down to the North, where, in good truth, I do think he would make a noble figure. There is no Dandy in Edinburgh worthy to hold the candle to our friend.

P. M.

LETTER LXIII.

TO FERDINAND AUGUSTUS POTTS, ESQ.

Clarendon Hotel, Bond-Street.

I WISH to God, my dear Potts, you would come down to Edinburgh, and let me engage apartments for you at the Royal Hotel. Are you never to extend your conquests beyond London or Cardigan? Are you to lavish your captivations for ever on Bond-street milliners and blowsy Welchwomen? Why, my dear sir, your face must be as well known about St. James's as the sign of the White-Horse Cellar, and your tilbury and dun gelding as familiar to the cockneys as the Lord Mayor's coach. Even Stulze himself cannot possibly disguise you as formerly. Your surtouts, your upper Benjamins, your swallow-tails, your club-coats, your orange tawny Cossacks, are now displayed without the slightest effect. It matters not whether Blake gives you the cut of the Fox, the Bear, or the Lion, whether you sport moustaches or dock your whiskers, yours is an old face upon town, and, you may rely on it, it is well known to be so. Not a girl that raises her quizzing-glass to stare at you but exclaims, "Poor Potts! how altered he must be. I have heard mamma say, in her time, he was good-looking; who could have believed it?" Every young Dandy that enquires your name is answered with, "Don't you know Old Potts?" "Old Potts! why, that gentleman is not old." "No! bless your soul, he has been on town for the last twenty years." Yet let not all this mortify you, my dear fellow, for you are not old. Six-and-thirty is a very good age, and you are still a devilish good-looking fellow. What you want is a change of scene to extend your sphere of

action, to go where your face will be a new one; and, whenever you do so, you may rely on it you will never be called "Old Potts." Now, if you will take my advice, and decide on shifting your quarters, I know of no place that would suit you half so well as Edinburgh. Your tilbury and dun gelding (though they will stand no comparison with Scrub and the shandrydan) will cut a much greater dash in Prince'sstreet than in Hyde-Park; and your upper Benjamin and orange tawny Cossacks will render you a perfect Drawcansir among the ladies. As a Jehu, you will have no rivals in Scotland. A brace of heavy dragoons, to be sure, are occasionally to be seen parading in a crazy dog-cart, in the seat of which their broad bottoms appear to have been wedged with much dexterity, and a writer or two, particularly a Mr., the Lambert of the Law, (weighing about twenty stone,) is sometimes to be met with in a lumbering buggy, moving at the rate of the Newcastle wagon, and drawn by a horse, whose tenuity of carcase forms a striking contrast to the rotund abdomen of his master. Scotland, to say the truth, has produced many painters, poets, heroes, and philosophers, but not a single whip. Indeed, since my arrival in Edinburgh, I have heard of a Scotsman having discovered the perpetuum mobile, but never of any one who could drive four spanking tits in real bang-up style. Your talents in that department will, therefore, cast them all into the shade; and I will venture to predict, that neither writer nor heavy dragoon will dare to show his nose in a buggy after your first appearance in the north.

I assure you, by coming down to Edinburgh you will add mightily to your importance. In London you are but a star (a star of the first magnitude, I admit,) in the mighty firmament of fashion. Twinkle as bright as you please, there are a thousand others who twinkle just as brightly. In short, you are, and can be, but one in a crowd, and I defy you to poke your head into a large party without encountering fifty others whose claims to distinction are quite as good as your own. But here you will be the sun in the splendid heaven of Bon-ton, the patula fagus, under whose spread

ing branches the admiring and gentle Tityri of the north will be proud to recline :

Potts, like the Sun, in Fashion's heaven shall blaze,
While minor planets but reflect his rays.

All this, my dear friend, I submit to your own good sense and deliberate consideration. In the meanwhile, I shall endeavour to enable you to judge with more precision of the advantages of my plan, by throwing together, for your information, a few short remarks on the state of Dandyism in the North.

The Dandies of Edinburgh possess a finer theatre whereon to display their attractions than those of any other city in the three kingdoms. You have nothing in London which, as a promenade, can be compared to Prince's-street. Bond-street is abominably narrow and crooked, and really contains nothing to gratify the eye but the living beauties who frequent it, and the gold snuff-boxes and India handkerchiefs which decorate the windows. St. James's-street is better, but it wants extent, and Dame-street in Dublin has the same fault. Oxford Road is perhaps less exceptionable than either; but it is unfashionable, and, at best, holds no greater attractions than can be afforded by an almost endless vista of respectable dwelling-houses and decent shops. But Prince's-street is a magnificent terrace, upwards of a mile in length, forming the boundary of a splendid amphitheatre, and affording to the promenading Dandy a view not only of artificial beauties, but also of some of the sublimest scenery of Nature. There, when the punch-bowl is empty, and "night's candles are burned out," he may stagger down the steps of the Albyn Club, and behold

"Jocund day

Stand tiptoe on the misty mountain's top,"

as the sun majestically raises his disk above the top of Arthur's Seat. There is something rural and grand in the prospect which it affords you. Not that sort of rurality (if I may coin a word) which Leigh Hunt enjoys at Hampstead, which