the more shame for me now to refuse the complaisance which I have so often to solicit. I am hastening to think prose a better thing than verse, and if you have any hopes to convince me to the contrary, it must be by writing and publishing another volume of plays as fast as possible. I think they would be most favorably received; and beg like Burns, to

-"tell you of mine and Scotland's drouth,

Your servant's humble

A young friend of mine, Lord Francis Gower, has made a very fair attempt to translate Goethe's unstranlatable play of Faust, or Faustus. He gives also a version of Schiller's very fine poem on Casting the Bell, which I think equals Mr. Sotheby's-nay, privately, (for tell it not in Epping Forest, whisper it not in Hempsted), rather outdoes our excellent friend. I have not compared them minutely, however. As for Mr. Howison, such is the worldly name of Polydore, I never saw such a change in my life upon a young man. It may be fourteen years, or thereabouts, since he introduced himself to me, by sending me some most excellent verses for a youth sixteen years old. I asked him to Ashestiel, and he came-a thin hectic youth, with eye of dark fire, a cheek that colored on the slightest emotion, and a mind fraught with feeling of the tender and the beautiful, and eager for poetical fame-otherwise, of so little acquaintance with the world and the world's ways, that a sucking turkey might have been his tutor. I was rather a bear-like nurse for such a lamb-like charge. We could hardly indeed associate together, for I was then eternally restless, and he as sedentary. He could neither fish, shoot, or course-he could not bear the inside of the carriage with the ladies, for it made him sick, nor the outside with my boys, for it made him giddy. He could not walk, for it fatigued him, nor ride, for he fell off. I did all I could to make him happy, and it was not till he had caught two colds and one sprain, besides risking his life in the Tweed, that I gave up all attempts to convert him to the things of this world. Our acquaintance after this languished, and at last fell asleep, till one day last year, I met at Lockhart's a thin consumptive looking man, bent double with study, and whose eyes seemed to have been extinguished almost by poring over the midnight lamp, though protected by immense green spectacles. I then found that my poet had turned metaphysician, and that these spectacles were to assist him in gazing into the millstone of moral philosophy. He looked at least twice as old

as he really is, and has since published a book, very small in size, but, from its extreme abstracted docrines, more difficult to comprehend than any I ever opened in my life. I will take care he has one of my copies of the Miscellany. If he gets into the right line, he will do something remarkable yet.

In

We saw, you will readily suppose, a great deal of Miss Edgeworth, and two very nice girls, her younger sisters, It is scarcely possible to say more of this very remarkable person, than that she not only completely answered, but exceeded the expectations which I had formed. I am particularly pleased with the naivete' and good humored ardor of mind which she unites with such formidable powers of acute observation. external appearance, she is quite the fairy of our nursery-tale, the Whippity Stourie, if you remember such a sprite, who came flying through the window to work all sorts of marvels. I will never believe but what she has a wand in her pocket, and pulls it out to conjure a little before she begins to draw those very striking pictures of manners. I am grieved to say, that, since they left Edinburgh on a tour to the Highlands, they have been detained at Forres by an erysipelas breaking out on Miss Edgeworth's face. They have been twelve days there, and are now returning southwards, as a letter from Harriet informs me. hope soon to have them at Abbotsford, where we will take good care of them, and the invalid in particular. What would I give to have you and Mrs. Agnes to meet them, and what canty cracks we would set up about the days of langsyne! The increasing powers of steam, which, like you, I look on half-proud, half-sad, half-angry, and half-pleased, in doing so much for the commercial world, promise something also for the sociable; and, like Prince Houssein's tapestry, will, I think, one day waft friends together in the course of a few hours, and, for aught we may be able to tell, bring Hampstead and Abbotsford within the distance of, Will you dine with us quietly to-morrow?' I wish I could advance this happy abridgement of time and space, so as to make it serve my present wishes.

I

TO MISS EDGEWORTH.-SIR W. SCOTT,

Miss Harriet had the goodness to give me an account of your safe arrival in the Green Isle, of which I was, sooth to say, extremely glad for I had my own private apprehensions that your very disagreeable disorder might return while you were among

strangers, and in our rugged climate. I now conclude you are settled quietly at home, and looking back on recollections of mountains, and vallies, and pipes, and clans, and cousins, and masons, and carpenters, and puppy-dogs, and all the confusion of Abbotsford, as one does on the recollections of a dream. We shall not easily forget the vision of having seen you and our two young friends, and your kind indulgence for all our humors, sober and fantastic, rough or smooth. Mamma writes to make her own acknowledgements for your very kind attention about the cobweb stockings, which reached us under the omnipotent frank of Croker, who, like a true Irish heart, never scruples stretching his powers a little to serve a friend.

We are all here much as you left us, only in possession of our drawing room, and glorious with our gas-lights, which as yet have only involved us once in total darkness—once in a temporary eclipse. In both cases the remedy was easy, and the cause obvious; and if the gas has no greater objections than I have yet seen or can anticipate, it is soon like to put wax and mutton-suet entirely out of fashion. I have recovered, by great accident, another verse or two of Miss Sophia's beautiful Irish air; it is only curious as hinting at the cause of the poor damsel of the red petticoat's deep dolour :

'I went to the mill, but the miller was gone,

I sate me down and cried ochone,

To think on the days that are past and gone,
Of Dickie Macphalion that's slain.
Shool, shool, &c.

I sold my rock, I sold my reel,
And sae hae I my spinning-wheel,
And all to buy a cap of steel,

For Dickie Macphalion that's slain.
Shool, shool,' &c. &c.

But who was Dickie Macphalion for whom this lament was composed? Who was the Pharaoh for whom the pyramid was raised? The questions are equally dubious and equally important; but as the one, we may reasonably suppose, was a king of Egypt, so I think we may guess the other to have been a captain of Rapparees: since the ladies, God bless them, honor with the deepest of their lamentations, gallants who live wildly, die bravely, and scorn to survive until they become old and not worth weeping for. So much for Dickie Macphalion, who, I dare say, was in his day 'a proper young man.'

We have had Sir Humphrey Davy here for a day or twovery pleasant and instructive, and Will Rose for a month-that is, coming and going. Lockhart has been pleading at the circuit for a clansman of mine, who, having sustained an affront from two men on the road home from Earlstown fair, nobly way. laid and murdered them both, single-handed. He also cut off their noses, which was carrying the matter rather too far, and so the jury thought-so my namesake must strap for it, as many of The Rough Clan have done before him. After this, Lockhart and I went to Sir Henry Stewarts, to examine his process of transplanting trees. He exercises wonderful power certainly over the vegetable world, and has made his trees dance about as merrily as ever did Orpheus; but he has put me out of conceit with my profession of a landscape-gardener, now I see so few brains are necessary for a stock in trade. I wish Miss Harriet would dream no more ominous visions about Spicie. The poor thing has been very ill of that fatal disorder proper to the canine race, called, par excellence, the distemper. I have prescribed for her, as who should say thus you would doctor a dog, and I hope to bring her through, as she is a very affectionate little creature, and of a fine race. She has still an odd wheezing, however, which makes me rather doubtful of success. The Lockharts are both well, and at present our lodgers, together with John Hugh, or, as he calls himself, Donichue, which sounds like one of your old Irish kings. They all join in every thing kind and affectionate to you and the young ladies, and best compliments to your brother.-Believe me, ever, dear Miss Edgeworth, yours, with the greatest truth and respect. WALTER SCOTT.

TO MRS. H. MORE.-COUNTESS CREMORNE.

I almost scruple intruding upon you, my dear Mrs. More, knowing as I do with sorrow, that you are so very far from well; and also knowing how many letters are pouring in upon you from all your friends and correspondents; but I cannot help wishing to tell you how gratefully I feel your kindness in sending me your most valuable book: I wish I could give you the satisfaction of knowing with what sort of pleasure I have been reading it. I wish you could have seen me reading it, as I do the letters of a few beloved friends,-slowly, for fear of coming to the end; and reading those parts over and over again which

most delight, and I hope, mend my heart. You know, my dear madam, that I do not deal in compliments; in sincerity and truth let me assure you, that I do not think I ever read a book which interested me quite so much. It will, I hope and trust, do extensive good in these most perilous times. I hear our dear bishop of London mentioned it in his sermon last Sunday, at St James' Church, in a manner the most honorable (if I may be allowed the expression) to himself as well as to you. Will you allow me to tell you that I could not read the eighty-sixth page of the first volume with dry eyes? but my tears were tears of joy and gratitude: I felt that I had not (to make use of your own beautiful words) "blotted out the spring from the year," by robbing my dear little girl (when she was lent to me) of the "simple joys, and the unbought delights which naturally belonged to her blooming season;" her pleasures were, gathering for me or for her father, the first cowslip; watching the bees at work; or, full of raptures, bounding before us at the first singing of the cuckoo or the nightingale; she never was at a play, or opera, or a baby ball, and I believe there never was a happier child. Our son, too, was brought up in the same simplicity. But I am interrupted by a kind visit from Mr. Gisborne, and I am ashamed to see how I have been writing about my children; but I will not make an apology; I am sure your kind heart will make it for me. I shall rejoice sincerely in hearing that your health is restored, and in seeing you, before it be very long, at Fulham and at Chelsea. I trust you are very thankful to God for being enabled to be such a bright light in this dark bewildered world. May He give you every real comfort here, and crown you with everlasting blessedness hereafter.

Pray believe me, my dear Mrs. More, to be and grateful

your

affectionate F. CREMORNE.

PLINY TO HISPULA.

As I remember the great affection which was between you and your excellent brother, and know you love his daughter as your own, so as not only to express the tenderness of the best of aunts, but even to supply that of the best of fathers, I am sure it will give you pleasure to hear that she proves worthy of her father, worthy of you, and worthy of your and her ancestors. Her ingenuity is admirable; her frugality is extraordina