ed street, no way distinguishable, except by our rheumatism, from ordinary

men.

In Glasgow, i. e. the West Country, we are so excessively popular, that we have not the smallest doubt, that were we to stand for Renfrewshire, we should oust young Mr Maxwell, or did we affect the boroughs, might render all the hopes of squire or cit an empty dream. What a scramble for us in the Coffee-room! We chanced to look in, on the last day of publication. We were cooling our heels at the fire, a few chairs from the gander, whose face was reflecting additional dulness on the Scotsman, when all present, young, old, and middle-aged, sprung to their feet, and rushed pell-mell to one table, like bees who had found their queen. It was Blackwood's Magazine that had been laid down. One of the Banditti, dressed in a sort of Hussar uniform, had siezed the prize, and held it so tight, that we trembled for poor George Buchanan, who grew black in the face within his grasp. The Bandit's long yellow spurs were by no means idle among the legs below-and at last he cleared his way into a corner, where he sat with us expanded before him, and with about six stout under-writers on each shoulder, all gloating on the yet unenjoyed charms of virgin Maga.

Would to heaven some ingenious person could suggest to us an expedient for mitigating our sufferings under the hospitality of the unparalleled people of the West! How can we, in three or four days, and our stay in Glasgow rarely exceeds that period, dine with a population of 140,000 souls? We do our best to gratify them; and our bitterest enemy will not dare to say that we ever refused an invitation to the smallest or shortest meal of all the six, without evident symptoms of extreme sorrow. Our plan is as follows:-We engage ourselves to breakfast with a married subscriber and ten children, at seven o'clock, if in summer, on the plea of being obliged to leave the West Country by the mail at half past eight. We select a suburban subscriber for this breakfast, either beyond Gorbals or on the Saughie-ha road. Accepting with difficulty our fifth cup of tea, to wash over the lug of our latest roll, and crushing our last egg-shell in the ear of our host's little daughter by way of a parting practical, we start up on

the stroke of eight, and hobble off, as if afraid to lose our seat in the coach. The mile's hobble gives us quite a new appetite; and, by the time we are fairly in the heart of the city, we feel rather hungry for breakfast. We have secured ourselves against this anticipated emotion, and call in upon a bachelor subscriber in Queen or Millar-street, whom we generally find with his eyes staring in his head, under the fumes of a tumbler of sodawater, which he is inhaling with the most savage satisfaction. There, we prefer butter-toast, nor decline the rizzard haddock. We make ourselves more than usually delightful to ourselves and the other, till ten strikes in the lobby, and our friend is off to the Coffee-room. We regret exceedingly that we leave town by the Telegraph at twelve. We accordingly visit another friend in one of the squares, and are asked to dinner. The thing is impossible-we must start at twelve. Well, you will surely take a lunch? Wesmile; and Grizzy is ordered to prepare a beef-stake. Instanter, the sound of the wooden beetle is heard, softening the obdurate heart of the rump; the music of the frying-pan follows; and before eleven o'clock we have made shift to swallow a pound of stot-beef, which, in the West Country, beats our stot-beef here all to sticks. A swig or two of brown-stout, and a few bumpers of old port, encourage us to look forward to a six hour's journey without fear of starvation; at least we trust to ourselves as far as the Halfway-house. We never take a ticket beforehand, and so contrive to allow the Telegraph to set off without us. We are in despair. At four o'clock we must go, since we have thus been cheated out of our seat at twelve. But, as good luck would have it, we meet the Major and a posse of other friends in front of the Black Bull, and tell them of the sad necessity that forces us to abandon the West Country, and all that our heart holds most dear, in less than four hours.

A party is collected, and we attack the cold round. Being rather sharp set, we ply a knife and fork to the astonishment of the West; and, half in joke, half in earnest, propose a leetle bowl of cold punch. The Major mingles-and we are blest. In the pride of the moment we volunteer the making of the next bowl. We fail.

It is as strong as a horse. We

try in vain to mend it. First water, then rum, then water again, then a squeeze of the yellow, then a plump of the saccharine, and finally, another splash of the baser fluid. Nothing will do; and we hurriedly finish off the bowl in despair. Thus fleet the silver-ladled hours, till the guard's horn sounds as if it were as tall as the Ram's Horn itself; and we must be off to Edinburgh at last. Our friends can with difficulty refrain from unnecessarily wetting the table with their tears. We fling ourselves from them in an agony, but, meeting the Colonel at the foot of the Candleriggs, we give up our design against the four o'clock," and, to avoid a quarrel, go with him to take herrings and hotch-potch. We regret having seen so little of our Glasgow friends this visit, and we beg the Colonel to make no apologies for the dinner, as hunger is good kitchen, and we have not eat any thing all day. After dinner, a few Professors from the college come stepping in-We have a game or two at bowls, and then, after half-a-dozen rubbers of whist, giving up all idea of supping out, we tackle to some excellent pickle salmon, and hot kidnies, with an eye occasionally leering towards our old friend, the punch bowl, on the sideboard, who, after supper, is brought forward in all his smooth rotundity, and encircled with glasses in a manner illustrative of the wonders of one part of the Solar System.

For Jove's satellites are less than Jove." Being fond of early hours, we will not, on any account, allow the fascination of the Colonel and Professors, to keep us out of our lodgings later than three o'clock-and by six, we rise again like a giant refreshed, and resume our depredations. By this process, which is, however, hard upon us, and which we positively could never yet stand above eight days in succession, we keep up our Magazine, and contrive to lay in a number of admirable articles.

In Paisley we are more upon ceremony with our friends-and at the grand dinner lately given to us in that handsome inn, the Abercorn-arms, we are told that we left behind us the most favourable impression. From the Sneddon to Maxwell-town there is not a street in which some families do not patronize the Magazine. None

dislike us but the most violent of the radicals—and it is satisfactory to know, that of the twenty new Sunday-clubs, not one takes us in. None of the most respectable booksellers think their window worth looking at unless George Buchanan be there-and many a pretty group of brown duffles congregates near the shop of our good friend Mr Crichton, admiring the placid features of the sage. Most of those who were accustomed to speak against our work have left Paisley; and we have understood that it is the intention of some of the more ingenious among them to establish a press in New South Wales. Sale in Paisley about 300.

Port-Glasgow is a pretty little town-and the people are becoming considerably more erudite. It may, however, be doubted, if they yet make punch so well as at Glasgow. Be that as it may, the sale of the Magazine is increasing thereit is quoted as a standard work-and we shrewdly suspect that we have a lurking contributor there, one of the fair sex, who must be indeed the most faithful of women, as she has paid her addresses to us for the last three years, in very impassioned and well-spelt epistles, and is regularly ready with her article once a month. Hitherto we have declined to insert-but the last piece was the best, and she seems now in a promising way. The other piece, to which she alludes in her conversation of August, was safely delivered some time ago. Sale considerable.

In Greenock the Magazine is looking up. We are sorry to understand that we have given offence there, but we cannot find to whom or wherefore. All we know is, that there is a vague feeling of offence floating over part of the town. A sort of dissatisfaction is occasionally seen louring on the faces of men seemingly well off in the world -and it is whispered in the streets that we are the cause of the gloom. We are perfectly willing to make any reasonable apology for occasioning absurd faces of that nature. But if we are disagreeable to them, how much more disagreeable must they be to us ? Only let us know what the Greenock people want, and they shall have itbut this pouting and peevishness is not like them-so no more of it. 127.

We find that it will not be in our power to give the returns from the

other towns and villages in Scotland, in this Number. Let us shortly ad1 vert to our hill and mountain sale.

A party was formed against us for a while, at first, in the south of Scotland. The old Scots Magazine had always kept a conscientious register of the fall of rain, and was extremely accurate in snow and hail-storms. The marriage-list had a high character, and, we believe, deservedly so-and the obituary was well conducted. The picture, too, of a sheep or a man's face-of the Rumbling-bridge, or Mr Runciman the painter, took prodigiously; nor was the " High-water at Leith" without its effect. In this way the work got a footing in the vallies of the South, and from Moffat to Kelso the old woman was taken in and lodged comfortably in the spence. The worthy shepherds of the forest, and parts adejacent, thought it cruel to give her up, and were afraid to trust her with George Buchanan. But when she got a green gown, at her time of life, she was shewn the door very generalily, and has now left the country-side altogether. Still we were not much =relished. David Bryden constantly 1 abused us, and that set the Farmer's Club at Selkirk and Hawick against us. We question much if at first we were understood in a pastoral country. Hogg said we were not. Laidlaw = maintained we were. For a while we were suspected of being jocular but by degrees our love of the naked truth came to be felt and acknowledged-and soon as we were admitted to be mere matter-of-fact men, the tide changed in our favour, and now there is not a single south country farmer who does not pin his faith on our sleeve. Seven hundred copies go monthly in among the hills-and the most puzzling subscriber we have is the worthy tailor at Yarrow Ford, who takes two copies-on what principle we do not, and probably never shall understand. He regularly reads both copies; not as if he were collating them, but one after the other; and our present theory is, that he imagines them to be two separate works, occasionally treating of the same subjects, but with an agreeable variety of argument and illustration.

God preserve us, we had almost forgot to mention Peebles. The business at the Hotel has just doubled itself,

since Blackwood's Magazine was taken in there; and the Miss Ritchies inform us, that from the 20th to the 25th of the month, their house is like a bee-hive. Young gentlemen who go to Peebles for a little trouting, are seen with the rod in the one hand, and the Magazine in the other; so we are literally read all down the Tweed, by Inverleithen, Clovenford, Melrose, and Kelso. We ourselves now are burgesses of Peebles, and a set of the Magazine has been superbly bound, with the arms of the Corporation, and deposited in the Town-Hall.

From the Highlands of Scotland the returns are most encouraging. The steam-boats carry us to Inverary, from which we take the gig to Cladich, on to Dalmally, and so up Glenorchy and elsewhere. We drop ourselves all round about Loch Awe, and there has been some talk lately of having us translated into Gaelic. The steamboat also takes about 250 to Fort William, and when the navigation of the Caledonian Canal is completely open, which by the late report of the Commissioners, we see is likely soon to be the case, we have no doubt, that in a few years we shall have done more to civilize the Highlands, than either Mr Brown of Biggar, or Mr Legh Richmond. We have preached at Icolmkill, as well as that last named reverend gentleman; indeed, we have no doubt, much better; though we believe he thinks that he has converted a Jew, which is more than we hope ever to do. The good people of Inverness were nettled with us, for speaking slightingly of their earthquake, but it was only in the scientific department where there are no jokes, and when it was explained that we were serious, our subscribers were satisfied, and we intend to praise their next earthquake very much. Aberdeen we are less read than at Inverness, which is odd, as we believe there is an University there. Montrose is not so literary a place as Brechin, by the difference between a dozen and a score, and of all kingdoms on the face of the earth, next to Dahomey, the kingdom of Fife is the most illiterate, that is to say, in the interior of the country. We sell about six score along the coast, from the East Neuk to the bay of Aberdour.

At

Such is a faint sketch of our land sale. But we have property to a con

siderable amount afloat. Every steam boat in Britain and America has Blackwood's Magazine; all British packets, most ships of war, and some thousand sail of merchantmen. We believe that Blackwood and Baldwin were the first periodical works that ever went up in a balloon. Young Sadler took us up. When about 4000 feet above the earth, the balloon remained stationary, and the intrepid aeronaut threw Baldwin out. The balloon in nine seconds, gained 3000 feet of ascent. It penetrated a thunder-cloud, and Mr Sadler, junior, let us gently slip overboard. As if so much gas had been allowed to escape, the balloon descended with great rapidity, and the aeronaut had a narrow escape. Mr Sadler was of opinion that but for us, he could not have ascended with Baldwin. Perhaps no periodical but ourselves ever went down in a divingbell. We accompanied the Bishop of and a party of young ladies, and when we came ashore, were just like fish out of the water. But we are forgetting our sale in Ireland, so let us cross the Channel.

Ireland. As bad luck would have it, Mr Blackwood has mislaid the book in which he keeps the Irish department of our sale. In a note we have this moment received from him, he tells us, that he had fondly hoped that it had been left at Ambrose's, last great Quarterly dinner, but that mine host could not find it among his ledgers, and has an indistinct recollection of O'Doherty carrying it away beneath his arm at day-break. If so, we request the Adjutant, wherever this meets his eye, to return our Irish register immediately. We find that we must leave America, Asia, and Africa, to a future Number.

II. We are absolutely coining money. -There can be no occasion to dwell long on this part of our subject. Any person can calculate the profits on 17,000 copies. The trade has them at 2s. a copy: say that paper, printing, advertising, postages, and all other incidental expenses, cost one shilling a copy, you have 17,000 shillings, or £850, clear profit, per month. We pay 10, 15, or 20 guineas per sheet take 15 on the average-seven sheets, 105 guineas per month, leaving £745 clear profit per month. Multiply that by 12, and we have £8,940 per an

num. The publisher takes the one half, and we the other, i. e. £4000 per annum, each-for the £940 goes for bad debts, charity, dinners at Ambrose's, and presents of books, hams, &c. to our favourite contributors. We have become great speculators lately in the stocks; and as we bought in £3500 t'other day at 66 and a fraction, we hope to clear some hundreds by the spring of the year, which we shall send to Mr Michael Linning, as our mite towards the erection of the Parthenon. If stocks do not rise, we cannot subscribe.

We have, we perceive, made a very foolish and important error in this statement. Instead of standing us in one shilling, each copy costs but ninepence; so that you must add to our annual income a fourth of £8940, or £2235. It frequently happens, too, that we ourselves write copiously, and, of course, we are paid for what we write at the highest rate, namely £21 per sheet. Say we write, one month with another, two sheets, and you will find that yields us some pounds over 500. Add this 500 to the half of 2235, and you have upwards of £1,600! Nay, farther, whatever article is sent to us gratis, we pocket for it 20 guineas. This is one of the articles of our agreement. In short, we find that, as editor and contributor, we nett about £6000 per annum ; and that our publisher and contributor (for he has written some very fair articles) Mr Blackwood, cannot well pocket less than £5000 per annum; which we do most disinterestedly wish he may long live to enjoy.

Gracious heavens! another most egregious omission is just staring us in the face, We have been supposing our whole 17,000 copies to be sold at two shillings only; whereas Mr Blackwood has upwards of 2,500 private subscribers, who, of course, tip him their half-crowns. This, we find, puts into his pocket £375 per annum, and a like sum into our own. We think that we foresee other errors in our calculation-all telling against ourselves; but we are quite worn out with this constant rising up of new objects in the long vista of our prosperity; so, for heaven's sake, add a few hundreds, for errors excepted, and you will have the amount of our income (from this one work at least) with as much accuracy as the nature of the subject ad

mits of. We are inclined to suspect, that, with the exception of the author of the novels, whoever he may be, literature has been fully more lucrative to Christopher North than to any of his great contemporaries.

III. Having thus, agreeably to our promise to the public, made her our confident in this momentous affair, we go on to shew that we are deserving of our good fortune, and that our success in life is creditable both to ourselves and to our subscribers. Our merits are so numerous, in our opini1 on, and so conspicuous, that the great difficulty lies in selection. We hope, therefore, that the Public will pardon us, though we begin by calling her attention, first, to virtues that may seem 1to her only entitled to after-consideration. She will, we are sure, extend indulgence to us, in the midst of the manifold difficulties attendant on an attempt to do justice to our own incomparable excellencies.

First, then, it seems to us that we have deserved well of our country, by =putting down, or at least reducing to = their proper level, the Whigs. Their extreme arrogance, and their want of I principle, had been smoked by other clear-sighted and intelligent persons before our time; though, perhaps, we have put the finishing strokes to the picture of their pride and dishonesty: but their incredible dullness and stupidity had escaped general observation till we pointed it out; and then, to be I sure, it was obvious as Arthur's Seat or St Paul's. Mr Jeffrey is the only clever Whig in Scotland; and it pleases us to see him so much admired by ourselves and correspondents. His followers are but a poor, dull set; and we have long felt for him-obliged to tolerate such adherents. We have not the least doubt that he would come over to us, if his goodness of heart did not prevent him from abandoning the helpless. In what a deplorable condition would he leave them all, were he to come over to us! What would become of all that concatenation of young and elderly gentlemen that now dangles behind him, close to his very heels, like onions on a string, were he to cut them all off with a shilling, and let them trundle away, each its several circuit; from your large, fat, yellow, insipid onion, to your little, lean, fiery, bitter onionet, so distressing to both sides of the question, both the eyes

and the nose? The rope of onions is really, at present, an imposing rope of onions enough, as it keeps swirling about, in obedience to every motion of Mr Jeffrey; but were Mr Jeffrey to die, or join us, either of which would make him immortal, what would become of the vegetables? It is plain, then, that our excellent friend cannot, without much cruelty, join us and our party in the state. Ten years ago, the young Whig was non sordidus auctor," considerable shakes; but now they are all asses. It needs strong nerves to ask a young Edinburgh Whig the very simplest question. He immediately takes his ground, and begins to bray. Mr Coleridge says, that in nature there is nothing melancholy. We beg his pardon-there is. The bray of a young Edinburgh Whig is more melancholy than any thing in the whole compass of art. There is nothing half so much so in Burton's Anatomy. What discomforting ups and downs! What lugubrious deep draws! What unintentional shriekings! What wretched prosody! What mistakes of longs for shorts! Then, with what a pair of eyes he looks at you, when his oration is closed! and with what immeasurable ears the creature seems listening for your reply!

Of the London Whigs we know less now than we did some twenty years ago. Thomas Moore is the only man of genius among them, but, whatever else he may have made of his politics, he has most certainly not made good poetry. We have heard that he threatened to attack us and our Magazine. Now, invaluable little fellow as he is, does he think in his heart that he is any match for us in playful, kind-hearted, slashing satire. him just try-and Mr Wastle will let him have a Canto of the Mad Banker

Let

Lauerwinkel a letter-and ourselves an article. But all this is episodical. Well, except this accomplished, witty, and fanciful scholar, where is there a Whig in England-an avowed and absolute Whig-that, as a literary man, is fairly out of the class of third raters? Lord Holland is somewhat feeble, and somewhat clumsy - Mr Brougham, who cannot well be called a literary man, has drawn the character of my Lord Lauderdale in the Edinburgh Review, and the likeness, though strong, is not flattering-Mr Hobhouse has not an English feeling about