you not cherish it? Balaam is your weapon, and why should ye not use it? Ye are asses, and why should ye not bray?

Give me abuse as much as you will -by all means-but one thing only I ask of you: utter no falsehoods-speak not that which is not. Abuse me as much as you please for being a Tory, but on no account deny that I am one when I say I am. You are well aware in your own secret hearts, that there are such beings as conscientious Tories. Good heavens! how you would leap and skip, could ye persuade yourselves for one single moment that there are not. There is no need to fight about mere names. You are well aware, to your woe and sorrow, and utter confusion of face, that by far the greater part of the talent, and virtue, and property of the nation, is steadfastly arrayed against your Radico-Whiggish system; and that, could the sensi

ble men of Great Britain and Ireland be polled upon such a question, the votes, to mark you out as enemies of the peace and honour of the land, would exceed those in behalf of you by numbers without number numberless. This you know. In case you did not know or believe it before, I tell you now, and you must now know it, that I am one of the firmest of those, by what ever name you may choose to call them, that understand, and despise, and execrate your system of belief, or rather, I should say, of disbelief, both religious and political. I am not only one of the firmest of the adherents of the adverse cause now, but I have been all along one of the most consistent. To your limited perception it may indeed appear a very extraordinary and unintelligible affair, that a man born and bred in the bosom of the people-a shepherd on the hills of Ettrick, should avow himself to have been, from his earliest days, a scorner of those low flatteries with which you are accustomed to court the applause of the vulgar-a believer in the honour of the aristocracy, and a lover of the monarchy of his native land. Yet the thing, most unhappy Reviewer, is even so: and, what is more, I live here in a beautiful, wild, and romantic region of the land, the inhabitants of which, high and low-Scotts, Pringles, Ballantynes, Brydens, Laidlaws, and Hoggs are all (I may say all, for

e exceptions are imperceptible in

quantity, and in quality worthless) all animated with the same belief-all born and nursed in the same principles-all ready, at a moment's warning, to mount and draw for the protection of those institutions, which, with unceasing pertinacity, you have assailed for twenty years,-which, God be praised, you have as yet ineffectually assailed-and which, I trust, will form the happiness and glory of our children's children, long after it shall have been forgotten that such a thing as the Edinburgh Review ever existed, to say nothing of you and the like of you, that are no better than disgraces to the Review, such as it is.

But I have no intention to enter into general disquisition-it does not suit me; and I am aware of my own place, however different the case may be with those I am encountering.

All I had in view when I took up my pen, was to rebuke you for the impudence of one or two specific assertions which you have made, derogating, in a very important manner, from my credibility as a historian and a collector of historical monuments. And to this I would fain confine myself-but how is it possible I should pass over all that malicious trash you have heaped together about Jacobitism (poor Jacobitism!) at the threshold of your article? You surely are not serious, when you accuse me of being a serious defender of the doctrines of Jacobitism. You do not surely believe in your heart, that I think the majority of the British nation were in the wrong, when they placed the crown on the head of the first of the present august family. You would not have the face to say that it is so, if you were asked the question in any private company: and yet you have the audacity to put down that statement slap-dash, and without the vestige of authority-without either rhyme or reason, as I may say-in the Edinburgh Review. I and all my kindred have always loved and honoured the protestant succession; and if you will look into my Brownie of Bodsbeck, you will perhaps see enough to satisfy you, that I am neither a papist, nor an approver of persecutions either civil or religious. But, sir, although I am neither a papist nor a believer in the old doctrine of JUS DIVINUM, I have that about me that makes me feel great respect for the character of a

conscientious papist, and what you probably esteem a still more odious character, that of a conscientious Jacobite also. I have no hesitation, and no shame, in making the confession; and a similar confession, whatever you may say to the contrary, was made by the late lamented venerated Sovereign of these realms, King George III. himself. And here I come at once to the point with you. I say in my book, "His Majesty having been told of a gentleman of family and fortune in Perthshire, who had not only refused to take the oath of allegiance to him, but had never permitted him to be named as king in his presence: "Carry my compliments to him,' said the king- but no-what-stop-no; he may perhaps not receive my compliments as King of England-give him the Elector of Hanover's compliments, and tell him that he respects the steadiness of his principles." Now, what does my Reviewer say to this story? Why, truly, it throws him into a perfect fume, and he swears his late Majesty was no more capable of making such a speech "than Mr Pitt was of dying with Oh! my country! on his lips."

Whether Mr Pitt died with Oh! my country! on his lips or not, I cannot pretend to say, because I am in a solitary place here, and have no means of scrutinizing the facts; but I think no honest man can doubt that he died as he had lived, with Oh! my country! in his heart. As for the story about good King George the Third, I think I shall put that to rest for ever, when I inform my Reviewer, that I had the story from my publisher, Mr Blackwood, who had it from the late Mr Home Drummond of Blairdrummond, to whom it was told by Mr Oliphant of Gask, the very gentleman to whom this message was conveyed at the king's own request and command, in the very words I have stated by the then member for the county of Perth. I may add, that the story is just as well known in that part of the country as the issue of the field of Culloden. Mr Oliphant was an old gentleman, universally loved and respected; and although, from a scruple of conscience he would not take the oaths to King George, nor permit him to be mentioned, other wise than as the Elector of Hanover, in his presence, he had, at the moment when this royal message was delivered

to him, three sons high in his Majesty's service, all as gallant soldiers as ever drew sword under the House of Brunswick.

Another story I tell of his late Majesty is contradicted with equal pith and brevity by this manful Reviewer; and yet it is equally true, although just at this moment I do not feel myself at liberty to give its pedigree in the same manner. It refers to his Majesty having apologised, to some Scottish gentlemen, for calling the unfortunate Chevalier de St George by the name of "the Pretender," saying, "Prince Charles Stuart I mean." His late Majesty did say these words-and what is more, I believe it is pretty well known that his present Majesty is accustomed to speak of the same unhappy person in terms of equal respect. And after all, say what you will, Mr Radical, will you deny that Charles Edward was entitled to be called a prince? Do you hold the blood of a hundred kings for nothing, mere_nothing? Do you think the grandson of James II. was not, in courtesy, entitled to be mentioned in some other more respectful style than a person of plebeian birth-a mere terræ filius like me, for example, or like yourself, Mr Reviewer? It is impossible that you will hold up your face to such a foolish proposition. If you do, your very friends will laugh at you, and perhaps whistle" the Deil took away the Exciseman," or some other well known comical and derisory tune in your ear. As for the phraseology of "Prince Charles Stuart," till you suggest a more appropriate one I shall continue to believe that it was adopted ad literam by King George III. Í am informed, by my minister, that it is the universal phraseology of Voltaire and all other continental historians of the last century. But, perhaps Macvey Napier, Esquire, is your authority, and I have little doubt you think him a much better judge of etiquette than either Francis Marie Arrouette de Voltaire, gentleman of the bed-chamber to Louis XV. or even George the Third, by the grace of God, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith. As for the stories themselves, the truth is, sir, that no trait in the late good king's character was better known or more highly approved of by the whole of his subjects, (a few of your immitigably envious Whigs alone excepted, )

and what sort of strides they are? I have seen the flying Tailor of Stavely, in Westmoreland, and also him of Ettrick, take large strides-but there is something fearsomely mysterious in hearing of" large strides taken within a few years," and knowing nothing more of the matter. This is a stupid way of writing.

As to a

trouts in St Mary's Loch. delicate hand, I never had pretensions to it--but it has felt its way, notwithstanding, wherever there was occasion; and, as to gaining admittance, I have had doors opened to me, before now, by better men in livery than the author of this article. Nobody will accuse him, poor fellow, of "brute force;" for he is weak as a willow. Skip over a page or two of drivelling, which I have already done for, and observe your stupidity in what follows. "His Majesty was a plain rational person, utterly incapable of such nonsense. The folly of it was as much beneath his good sense as the conceit of it was beyond his ingenuity." Yet immediately afterwards you say," the kind of message

Sentence 16.-" Mr Scott's avowed writings are not entirely free from this imputation-and those still more popular works which are so generally as cribed to him, abound with instances of the spirit of which we are speak ing." Again, "Walter Scott's bad and bald jokes:" call folk by their right names, you jackanapes, for that is only good manners. You may do what you like with your own name-but hold your hands off the mighty.

Sentence 18.-You say no one could have blamed Mr Hogg, "if, like a truly able and successful defender of those bad principles, David Hume, he had contrived to make the worse appear the better reason, by dexterity of statement and skilful narrative." I never expected to have seen the day when I was to be likened to David Hume. I really cannot help laughing myself at this juxtaposition of names. James Hogg and David Hume! Then you gravely tell us that Hume was a "truly able" man. This is a discovery with a vengeance. Oh, man! "truly able" is just one of the stupidest epithets I ever saw. It makes one almost sick and squeamish to look at it. Then, who ever heard of "a successful defender of bad principles ?" I am sure that even our enemies will not think this good against me-and David Hume.

Sentence 19.-" His is not that judicious abstinence which gains what greediness never can reach-that delicate hand which feels its way, and gains admittance where brute force knocks in vain." These are, most undoubtedly, two of the very worst metaphors that I ever saw in literature. The charge, too, is perfectly false. I am not a greedy man, though I take my victuals well; and I am sure that I put it into a better skin than some I could mention. Abstinence, in my opinion, is never judicious, except when one has nothing to eat-and that is not likely to be my case, so long as there are mawkins and moorfowl within the bounds of the forest, fish in Yarrow, and

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the vile buffoonery and clumsy con ceit of it really evinces a degree of vulgarity and affectation in the writer," &c. What an ass you are, man, to contradict yourself in that stupid way. You speak of his late Majesty as if you had lived all your lifetime on the strictest intimacy with him. You could not speak more familiarly of Mr Constable, nor I of Mr Blackwood. "Mr Blackwood is a plain rational person, altogether incapable of such nonsense!" This is a free and easy way of talking of a king, whose face, I presume, you never saw but on a copper coin, and may be called, in your own phraseology, a sort of twin-brother to the new-fangled doctrine of illegitimacy." I have told, in my book, two or three anecdotes of his late Majesty, on the authority of men of honour and rank. You say they are false, because they are not agreeable to your opinion of the King's character and general habits; and pray, who are you, who lived so familiarly with his late Majesty. You are not the gentleman, are you, who once happened to sleep in the same bed with Theodore, king of Corsica, and complained of him because he wore spurs, and vowed never again to sleep in the same bed with a king? I pass over about two score of bad sentences, and come to a piece of severity. carries this a step farther, and tries to cast imputations on the memory of those founders of a liberty, which he either cannot appreciate, because his principles are slavish, or sets little account upon, because its history, its adventures, will not serve to work up into middling poems, and tales calculated to lengthen and sadden a

Mr Hogg