fed on their peculiar demesnes the superfluous population, which their natural protectors rejected. That population, moreover, was for a considerable time rejected from their ranks by the industrious classes; for the latter would admit no one among them except he had served an apprenticeship, and felt an objection arising from an esprit de corps to the education of the children of labourers. The great landed proprietors, embarrassed in the first instance by the employment of too great an extent of territory, or its over-production, in consequence of the deficiency of interior communications, which were less numerous than at present, for a long time neglected agriculture, for the care of flocks; because the trade in English wool, which was in request in all the European markets, was the safest speculation. Crimes, to which misery and hunger give impulse, rapidly multiply. In this part of England they have diminished since the increased working of the mines, which render that devouring impost, called the poor tax, less oppressive than in other counties of England. In our time, notwithstanding some slight storms, every thing has re-assumed a face of tranquillity and prosperity. But another objection which I would urge against the actual system of farming in Northumberland, is founded on the division of the lands into farms of too large a description. The rent of some of them is as high as £6000 sterling. Means of improvement are certainly more practicable with such a capital as the farmers must employ, who tenant farms of

this description. But two or three farmers, who choose to combine, may exert a fatally monopolizing influence over the markets, by engrossing not only their own peculiar products, but also those of the small farmers in their vicinity, in order subsequently to subject them and the whole department by famine. Hence, what ought to be the patriarchal character of the farmer is changed into that of a greedy speculator. But besides this, the system has given birth between the farmer and the consumer to a race of public blood-suckers called middle men, who offering to the first the advantage of selling his produce to a single individual, undertake to make the necessary advances to the miller and the baker: in short, there are other speculators, who are continually gambling in the rise of corn and flour. It may be easily conceived, therefore, that bread in this country often reaches a price which would appear exorbitant in France. I forbear adverting to the transitory distress which ruined so many English farmers by the re-action of the events of 1814.

LETTER LXXVI.

TO MR. V. CHAPUINS.

IF I had met with the laird of Monkbairns at Cornhill, I should have abandoned myself to the

pleasure of chatting with him as long as he pleased on the castrametation of the ancients; for at Cornhill are to be seen magnificent vestiges of a Roman wall; but I was impatient to cross the Tweed; and not far from us, at Coldstream, I perceived the elegant arches of a bridge, on the centre of which we might say we were in Scotland. My philosopher and myself surveyed it with the impatience of children. Coldstream is an historical name. It was from this village, the name of which Monk gave to a new regiment of guards, that that general departed for London. Was he then meditating the restoration of the Stuarts? Did he maintain his silent reserve through indecision or policy? And when on his arrival in London, he declared against the parliament, was it not because he perceived with his own eyes, while traversing England, the popular lassitude of a usurpation, which the death of Cromwell had divested of the transitory legitimacy of glory and genius? cannot attribute to a character such as Monk's, an entirely disinterested and patriotic character. He probably made up his resolution for fear of being anticipated by another, and making a sudden metamorphosis from a republican to a courtier, he affected to restore the crown unconditionally to Charles II. When a revolution, fortunate or unfortunate, has brought every thing into question, and broken all the links of the social chain, no restoration can be durable without a new contract between the nation and the prince. After this frank exposition of my principles, I may be per

I

mitted to add, that, seduced perhaps by the associations which Walter Scott has recently conjured up in favour of the Stuarts, and perhaps by way of opposition to the house of Brunswick, which no great virtue has yet rendered legitimate in my eyes, I have a poetic attachment for the Stuarts, and I should be sorry to be induced to think that there are no longer any Jacobites in Scotland.

At length we set foot in that country, which the genius of Walter Scott has diademed with the halo of a poetical glory, more rational than that of the old bard Ossian. To judge of it from a first glance, the land which I had pictured as sterile or severely beautiful, was not discoverable; the Tweed wound among enamelled meadows: an elegant villa first presented itself to our view, succeeded here and there by a few ruins of picturesque castles. We then traversed an uncultivated country; but the road soon resumed its variety of scenery. The town of Kelso, where we stopped for about an hour, contains little in itself worthy of remark; but its old abbey of AngloNorman architecture is of a fine style, and contrasts in a picturesque manner with the rural and graceful environs of the town. The trees of the park of Fleurus, and those of Springwood, add to the general effect. With the first shades of twilight we again set forward, and arrived at Dalkeith, a castle illustrated by the name of Buccleugh, which Sir Walter Scott so often introduces into his verses. We perceived a groupe of mountains

marked in vague outlines on the horizon of the sky, illuminated at once by the light of the moon, and of the polar day. We hear the names of Arthur's Seat and Salisbury's Craig pronounced around us, without being able to discriminate one of these rocks from the other; we were, in fine, entering Edinburgh, and on the point of alighting at the Bull hotel.

From the time of our quitting York somewhat dissatisfied with the rain on the outside of the stage, my philosopher saw nothing of me, except when we stopped, and at the inns on the road, or when simultaneously abandoning, he his cushions, and I my dickey, we quitted the road, in order, like peripatetic philosophers, to explore some bye locality. From Newcastle, an additional attraction had endeared to my companion the charms of his travelling prison, as I think Sir Walter Scott calls the mail in his Heart of Midlothian. A charming young English lady and her father took their seats in the vehicle. It was now my turn to play the philosopher, and Mr. Charles F―e seriously invested me with the title, in order to monopolize without a rival the little attentions of French gallantry. On my part I acquired the advantage of being characterized as a most learned doctor, in the recommendatory letters which the young English lady consigned to us on taking leave at the gates of a castle situated in our road. While Mr. Charles Fe, in the lower regions of the stage, yielded to the charms of a platonic conversation with his pretty fellow traveller, I from my airy emi