aff wi' you demented into some loch, where you are found floatin in the mornin a swollen corp, wi' the mark o' claws on your hause, your een hangin out o' their sockets; your head scalped wi' something waur than a tammyhawk, and no a single bane in your body that's no grund to mash like a malefactor's on the wheel, for havin curst the Holy Inquisition. North. Why, my dear Shepherd, genius, I feel, can render terrible even the meanest superstition.

Shepherd. Meanness and majesty signify naething in the supernatural. I've seen an expression in the een o' a pyet, wi' its head turned to the ae side, and though in general a shy bird, no caring for you though you present your rung1 at it as if you were gaun to shoot it wi' a gun, that has made my verra heart-strings crunkle up wi' the thochts o' some indefinite evil comin I kent na frae what quarter o' the lowerin heavens. For pyets, at certain times and places, are no canny, and their nebs look as if they were peckin at mort-cloths.

North. Cross him out, James-cross him out.

Shepherd. A raven ruggin at the booels o' a dead horse is naething; but ane sittin a' by himsel on a rock, in some lanely glen, and croak-croakin, naebody can think why, noo lookin savagely up at the sun, and noo tearin, no in hunger, for his crap's fu' o' carrion, but in anger and rage, the moss aneath him wi' beak or tawlons; and though you shout at him wi' a' your micht, never steerin a single fit frae his stance, but absolutely lauchin at you wi' a horrid guller in the sooty throat o' him, in derision o' you, ane o' God's reasonable creturs,-I say, sir, that sic a bird, wi' sic unaccoontable conduct, in sic an inhuman solitude, is a frichtsome demon; and that when you see him hop-hoppin awa wi' great jumps in amang the region o' rocks, you wadna follow him into his auncient lair for ony consideration whatsomever, but turn your face doun the glen, and thank God at the sound o' some distant bagpipe. A' men are augurs. Yet sitting here, what care I for a raven mair than for a how-towdie?

North. The devil in Scotland, during the days o' witchcraft, was a most contemptible character.

Shepherd. Sae muckle the better. It showed that sin maun be a low base state, when a superstitious age could embody

1 Rung-walking-staff.

it in a nae mair imposing impersonation. I should like to ken distinckly the origin o' Scottish witchcraft. Was't altogether indigenous, think ye, sir? or coft' or borrowed frae ither kintras?

North. I am writing a series of articles on witchcraft, James, and must not forestall myself at a Noctes.

Shepherd. Keep it a' to yoursel, and nae loss. Had I been born then, and chosen to play the deevil

North. You could not have done so more effectually than you did some dozen years ago, by writing the Chaldee Manuscript.

Shepherd. Hoots!—I wadna hae condescended to let auld flae-bitten wutches kiss

North. That practice certainly showed the devil to be no gentleman-But, pray, who ever thought he was one? Shepherd. Didna Milton?

North. No, James. Milton makes Satan-Lucifer himself— Prince of the morning-squat down a toad by the ear of Eve asleep in Adam's bosom in the nuptial-bower of Paradise.

Shepherd. An eve's-dropper. Nae mair despicable character on earth or in hell.

North. And afterwards, James, in the hall of that dark consistory, in the presence-chamber of Pandemonium, when suddenly to the startled gaze of all his assembled peers, their great Sultaun, with "fulgent head," "star-bright appears, and godlike addresses the demons-What happens? a dismal universal hiss—and all are serpents !2

Shepherd. Gran' is the passage -and out o' a' bounds magnificent, ayont ony ither imagination o' a' the sons o'

men.

North. Yes, my dear James-the devil, depend upon it, is intus et in cute—a poor pitiful scoundrel.

Shepherd. Yet I canna quite agree wi' Young in his Night Thoughts, who says, "Satan, thou art a dunce!" I canna picture him to my mind's ee sittin wi' his finger in his mouth, at the doup o' the furm--Booby.

North. Yet you must allow that his education has been very much neglected that his knowledge, though miscellaneous, is superficial-that he sifts no subject thoroughlyand never gets to the bottom of anything.

1 Coft-bought.

2 Paradise Lost, book x. line 504.

PROSECUTIONS OF THE PRESS.

287

Shepherd. No even o' his ain pit. But it wadna be fair to blame him for that, for it has nane.

North. Then he is such a poltroon, that a child can frichten him into hysterics.

Shepherd. True—true. It can do that, just by kneelin doun at the bedside, fauldin its hauns together, wee bit pawm to wee bit pawm, turnin up its blue een to heaven, and whusperin the Lord's Prayer. That sets Satan into a fitlike a great big he-goat in the staggers-aff he sets ower the bogs and wee Jamie, never suspeckin that it's the smell o' sulphur, blaws out the lang-wick'd cawnle that has been dreepin its creesh on the table, and creeps into a warm sleep within his father's bosom.

North. I have sometimes amused myself with conjecturing, James, what may be his opinion of the Magazine.

Shepherd. Him read the Magazine! It would be wormwood to him, sir. Waur than thae bonny red-cheeked aipples that turned within his mouth into sand and ashes. Yet I wuss he would become a regular subscriber-and tak it in. Wha kens that it michtna reclaim him-and

"I'm wae to think upon yon den,

Even for his sake!"

North. Having given the devil his due-what think ye, James, of these proposed prosecutions of the Press?

Shepherd. Wha's gaun to tak the law o' Blackwood noo? North. Not Blackwood, but the newspaper press, with the Standard-so 'tis said-and the Morning Journal, at the head. Shepherd. I never heard tell o't afore. Wha's the public persecutor?

North. The Duke of Wellington.

Shepherd. That's a confoonded lee, if ever there was ane tauld in this warld.

North. James, look at me,-I am serious. The crime laid to their charge is that of having endeavoured to bring the government into contempt.

1

1

Shepherd. If a crime be great in proportion as it's diffeecult,

They were prosecuted at the instance of Wellington and Peel, for having charged these statesmen with a dereliction of principle in passing the Catholic Emancipation Act. Mr Robert Alexander, editor of the Morning Journal, was convicted and imprisoned.

288

NORTH ON THE GOVERNMENT.

I am free tae confess, as they say in Parliament, that the bringin o' the government o' this kintra into contempt, maun be a misdemeanour o' nae muckle magnitude.

North. Perhaps it is wrong to despise anything; and certainly, in the highest Christian light, it is so. Wordsworth finely says, "He who feels contempt for any living thing, has faculties which he has never used."

Shepherd. Then Wudsworth has faculties in abundance that he has never used; for he feels contempt for every leevin thing, in the shape either o' man or woman, that can write as gude or better poetry than himsel—which I alloo is no easy; but still it's possible, and has been dune, and will be dune again, by me and ithers. But that's rinnin awa frae the subject.-Sae it's actionable to despise the government! In that case, no a word o' politics this nicht. Do ye admire the government?

North. Sweet are the uses of adversity, "that, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head."

Shepherd. But admittin the aptitude o' the first pairt o' the similitude, has the present government a precious jewel in its head? I dout it-although the Duke o' Wellington may, for onything I ken to the contrar, hae like Hazlitt-and like him deny it too-a carbuncle on his nose.

North. If the government bring actions against the Standard and the Morning Journal, it must then, to be consistent, instantly afterwards institute an action of a very singular and peculiar kind-an action against itself—

Shepherd. Eh?

1

North. For having not only endeavoured, but beyond all expectation of the most sanguine, succeeded in overwhelming itself beneath a load of contempt, from which all the spades and shovels of all the ministerial hirelings, whether Englishmen feeding on roast-beef and plum-pudding, or Irishmen on "wetuns" and praes, or Scotchmen on brose, butter, and brimstone, will never, between this date and the Millennium, supposing some thousands of the most slavish of the three nations working extra hours, succeed in disinterring it, nor, dig till they die, ever come within a myriad cubic feet of its putrefying skeleton.

1 Praes-potatoes.

THE DUKE.-LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.

289

Shepherd. But surely the Duke wull haud the hauns o' the Whig Attorney?

North. The Duke, who has stood in a hundred battles, calm as a tree, in the fire of a park of French artillery, cannot surely, James, I agree with you, turn pale at a shower of paper pellets.

Shepherd. No pale wi' fear, but aiblins wi' anger. Ira furor brevis.

North. Better Latin than any of Hazlitt's quotations.

Shepherd. It is Latin. But do you really think that he's mad?

North. I admire the apothegm, James.

Shepherd. I'll lay a hoggit o' whusky to a saucer o' salloop, that the Government never brings its actions against the Stannard and Jurnal.

North. But there's no salloop in Scotland, James-and were I to lose my wager, I must import a saucerful from Cockaigne -which would be attended with considerable expense-as neither smack nor waggon would take it on board, and I should have to send a special messenger, perhaps an express, to Mr Leigh Hunt.

Shepherd. What are the ither papers sayin till't?

North. All on fire, and blazing away with a proper British spirit-Globe, Examiner, and all-except " yon trembling coward who forsook his master," the shameful yet shameless slave, the apostatising Courier, whose unnatural love of tergiversation is so deep, and black-grained, and intense, that once a quarter he is seen turning his back upon himself, in a style justifying a much-ridiculed but most felicitous phrase of the late Lord Castlereagh; so that the few coffee-house readers, who occasionally witness his transformations, have long given up in despair the hopeless task of trying to discover his brazen face from his wooden posteriors, and let the lusus naturæ, with all its monstrosities, lie below the table bespitten and bespurned, in secula seculorum.

Shepherd. That's a maist sweepin and sonorous specimen o' oral vituperation.

North. The Liberty of the Press can never be perfectly pure from licentiousness. If it were, I should propose calling it the Slavery of the Press. What sense is there in telling any set of men by all manner of means to speak out boldly about

VOL. II.

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