1810.

IT will without doubt be expected of me, and the expectation is perfectly reasonable, that before I make any observations on the characters of others, I should give some account of my own: therefore to this necessary purpose, established by invariable custom, and that of giving some general outlines of the plan I mean to pursue in the course of this publication, I dedicate this day's Paper. Yet though this is a task incumbent on me, it has some fortunate circumstances attending it; for though there is scarcely a single individual in Edinburgh who has not seen me, as have great numbers in the country besides, yet not one of a thousand amongst them know who I am, or what I am about: so that though I am bound to tell the truth, I am not bound to tell the whole truth; and the omissions which I chuse to make have very little chance of being discovered. I do intend in the course of this work to laugh at a great deal of my fellow-subjects, and to make other people laugh at them likewise; but if I were to give a true and literal detail of all my adventures and misadventures, and the blunders of various kinds which I have committed, they might well laugh at me in their turn. I do not like this entirely; it does not altogether suit my taste to be laughed at; and

NUMB. I.

he who would reclaim others, should reserve a certain degree of consequence to himself. There is one leading feature in my character, which, if fully investigated, will give you a sufficient idea of it at once. I am wholly intent on the behaviour of other people, and regardless of my own. This abominable propensity seems to have been engrained in my nature; to have commenced with my existence, but to have grown proportionally with the powers of my mind, and strengthened with its strength: and it is this only that can account for a thousand untoward circumstances which have attended me in almost every undertaking. I am a bachelor, about sixty years of age; have spent the most of my days in the country, where I have been engaged in innumerable projects, which have all miscarried: but nothing in the world disturbs. or perplexes me. My mind is so buoyant, and my thoughts so vague, that if I can get a few of my fellow-creatures placed before my eyes, that I may contemplate their various manners and looks, it is sufficient for me: I can laugh at their follies, weep over their misfortunes, and feel as deeply for all their concerns as they can possibly do themselves. You will be very apt to suspect that a simple old man, who has only left the mountains a few years ago, can have no great stock of ideas where with to entertain the enlightened and polite circles: but, on my own behalf, let me remind you, that every thing here being quite new to me, any incongruity of taste or character will be

much more ready to strike me, than such as have been used to witness the same scenes all their days. Besides, I am constantly upon the look-out for singularities, and flatter myself that I have discovered great abundance of them: certain it is, I have seen many things that have amused me, both among the books, the men, and the women; but to country manners I am still most attached, as my readers will soon discover; and my friends and correspondents living there, we will be often hearing from them; and as I have spent such a long life in doing nothing else but making observations, it would be mortifying to reflect that none had been the better of them but myself. But I must try to be a little more circumstantial.

When I was a little trifling boy, although the school-house was not above three hundred yards distant from my father's door, there were so many wonder. ful things to engage my attention by the way, (and the longer I contemplated them they appeared still the more wonderful,) that I cften reached the school much about the time the rest came out of it in the middle of the day. Our teacher was a man of peculiar manners, and I could not help regarding him often so earnestly, that I fell insensibly into a habit of imitating him in all his singular attitudes and distortions of feature. I had the same ridiculous loud ha, ha, of a laugh; the same shake in my walk, with my arms set a-kimbo, and my hat a little on one side; and even the same way of spitting, and adjusting my neckcloth; so that the pedant having conceived the idea that I mimicked him for sport, for this and my other mistakes I was often belaboured most severely. On my quitting this

school, my parents had a consultation, which lasted nearly a month, on the most proper calling for me; and at length, my contemplative mood swaying them in a high degree, I was destined to be a Seceder minister. I went to the college when very young, and soon finishing my classes, was sent finally to a country town in the south of Scotland to attend the professor of divinity over that sect; and had hopes of soon being called to some capital benefice, but fell into a most humiliating blunder on my very first attempt at pulpit eloquence in public. I certainly had composed as good a sermon, or at least as good a discourse, for the occasion as any novice was capable of: it was divided into three heads and an improvement, and each of these was branched out again, into first, second, and third places; and though I say it myself, I do not believe that the boldest, and most new-modelled bible-thumper amongst the clergy of the present day, could have confounded and puzzled a piece of scripture better than I had contrived to do; no, not even though a maintainer of our angelic purity by nature. However it went all for nothing. In short, I lost the thread of my sermon, and with it my whole powers of recollection, and made a solemn vow that night never to try another, which I have kept.

I cannot give a distinct account in what manner my thoughts were drawn. away so completely from my subject; but my misfortune originated in contemplating the manner and looks of a very old man too minutely during the time that the congregation was singing a psalm; for when the professor arose and called to order, there was a

speech from Shakespeare, appropriated to the old man's character, flowing spontaneously from my lips. I awaked as from a dream. My flesh crept; my face grew as warm as fire, and all my theological arguments were gone and for ever. The only effort I was capable of making was that of taking down my hat, and hasting out of the church, into which I have never again entered with a design to preach. I then commenced farmer, and was the foremost in all the country for plausible theory, and new improvements: but as I attended still more to other people's business than my own, my crops, notwithstanding all my expences, never turned well out. There was another thing I never can account for; when 1 had any of my farm produce to dispose of, if there was a villain in all the market I was sure to meet with him. I blamed, the soil of my farm.-gave it up,-took another. That was still worse.-I went all to the Devil, as the saying is. I next turned poet; but that was the worst business I ever tried; I wrote epigrams, odes, and pastorals without number, and as every body declared that they possessed a high degree of excellence, I went and offered them to sundry booksellers, but the blockheads declared they would have nothing to do with them. They were without doubt sufficiently punished in the loss they sustained by their unpremeditated refusal, and I consoled myself as well as I could by endeavouring to mimic them, and laugh at their various

manners.

It was then I commenced a Spy upon the manners, customs, and particular characters of all ranks of people, and all ranks of authors in particular, as far as my

comprehension served me, which seems to have been the business for which Nature designed me; and this pleasing, but unprofitable employment, I have now continued to pursue with increasing avidity, for the space of twenty years.

I have travelled over the greatest part of Britain in various characters, ond often got into scrapes extremely embarrassing and ludicrous, some of which I may probably relate by and by.

I am now become an observer so accurate, that by contemplating a person's features minutely, modelling my own after the same manner as nearly as possible, and putting my body into the same posture which seems most familiar to them, I can ascertain the compass of their minds and thoughts, to a few items, either on the one side or the other,-not precisely what they are thinking of at the time, but the way that they would think about any thing. This study has been the source of much pleasure to me, and hath likewise led me into many blun-ders. For an instance; I was walking one day very lately, by the side of a millpond near the Water of Leith, while three beautiful young ladies were walking the same way on the other side.They were vastly interesting-I fell to studying them with great seriousness.If I remember aright, I was endeavouring to ascertain the exact degree of value which each of them set upon herself, and how each of them would receive the same proposal or address. For this purpose I was obliged to strain the organs of my vision to the most precise point, that certain smiles and gestures might not be misconstrued; and just when I had very nearly gained my point, I happened

to forget that my own steps might so readily go astray, and setting my foot upon nothing, like the Highlander who fell over a stair in the dark, I fell headlong into the pool. It was above my depth; and the shore being a perpendicu lar wall, I had certainly perished if it had not been for the ladies, the innocent causersof my misfortune. At first the y creamed aloud, but seeing no other help appear, they hasted round to the place where I was plunging; and one of them giving me a hold of her silk mantle, saved the poor Spy from a watery grave. The first question they asked me was, how it happened; I said it happened by looking at them. "O fie, said one of them, what a shame for an old grey-headed rogue, like you, to be looking so intently at young girls; upon my word you have got nothing that you did not richly deserve." They went away convulsed with laughter, while I was standing shaking my ears, and spitting incessantly; and as long as they were in view, they looked back now and then, and broke jests upon me; one telling me that "this would learn me when to look at ladies in future;" and another, "that it would have been as becoming in me to have been looking to my own feet, or thinking upon my grave rather than upon them." I understand this story has made considerable noise, and my misfortune has been attributed to causes widely differing from the truth. It may easily be conceived, that as an observer of oddities, I never can miss employment in such a place as Edinburgh; and I take so much delight in it, that I always endeavour to make the most of my time: I attend all the places of worship by rotation, and the theatre every

night when it is open; Leith and Portobello races; S. Belzoni and the Highland pipers: and in short every public place where I can possibly thrust in my head.. Even a station in Prince's street for an hour before dinner is a treat to me, and would still be more agreeable if the people would walk a little slower; but there is such a rapid succession of busy, careless, and beautiful faces, that I am oblied to be very quick and decisive in my remarks.

During the middle of the day I saunter from one bookseller's shop to another; and though I sometimes hear the clerks complaining, that they are eternally plagued with that long, lean, hungry-looking dl, I am obliged to put up with it; and as I seldom lift a newspaper, but only pore over the reviews, magazines, and new productions (with all of which I mean to have a bout by and by,) so I think I do the people very little injury. But I believe ere long, they will either be much more civil to me, or else expel me altogether: I have seen, I have seen the transgressions of these people, and am fully persuaded if it were not for some of the lean, hungry-looking d--ls as they call them, they would not in general be so fat. Yes, my dear readers; would you believe it, there is a numerous race of beings in this world who feed themselves upon the brains of their own spe cies.

Such then is the man who hath set himself up as a Spy upon the taste and genius of his countrymen. He is a being of the utmost simplicity; and subject to many weaknesses, foibles, and wayward fancies; not to give any of them a worse name: and the only suitable qualifications