the murderer, and hear the cries of the infants, although the deep ravine between them and the place of blood, was far more than sufficient to prevent any possibility of rescue. The tutor sat down upon the spot, immediately after having concluded his butchery, as if in a stupor of despair and madness, and was only roused to his recollection by the touch of the hands that seized him.

It so happened, that the Magistrates of the City were assembled together in their CouncilRoom, waiting till it should be time for them to walk to church in procession, (as is their custom,) when the crowd drew near with their captive. The horror of the multitude was communicated to them, along with their intelligence, and they ordered the wretch to be brought at once into their presence. It is an old law in Scotland, that when a murderer is caught in the very act of guilt, (or, as they call it, red-hand,) he may be immediately executed, without any formality or delay. Never surely could a more fitting occasion be found for carrying this old law into effect. Gabriel was hanged within an hour after the deed was done, the red knife being suspended from his neck, and the blood of the innocents scarcely dry upon his fingers.

Such is the terrible story from which the name of Gabriel's Road is derived. I fear the spirit from which these horrors sprung, is not yet entirely extinct in Scotland; but on this I shall have a better opportunity to make a few remarks, when I come to speak at length of the present religious condition of the nation-the most important of all objects to every liberal traveller in every country-but to none so important as to the traveller who visits Scotland, and studies the people of Scotland, as they deserve to be studied.

202

LETTER XLV.

TO THE SAME.

MY DEAR DAVID WILLIAMS,

I TAKE no offence whatever with anything you have said, nor do I think it at all likely that I shall ever take any serious offence from anything you can say. The truth is, that you are looking upon all these matters in far too serious a point of view. I care nothing about this book, of which you have taken up so evil a report; but I insist upon it, that you spend one or two evenings in looking over the copy I send you, before you give me any more of your solemn advices and expostulations. When I have given you time to do this, I shall write to you at greater length, and tell you my own mind all about the matter.

Ever your's,

P. M.

203

LETTER XLVI.

TO THE SAME.

I PRESUME you have now done as I requested; and if so, I have no doubt you are prepared to listen to what I have to say with a more philosophic temper. The prejudices you had taken up without seeing the book, have, I make no question, made unto themselves wings and passed away-at least the most serious of them,-and you are probably quite as capable of taking a calm and impartial view of the affair as I myself am; for as to my allowing any partiality for W seriously to warp my judgment concerning a literary Journal, in which he sometimes writes this is, I assure you, a most absurd suspicion of your's-but transeat cum aliis.

The history of Blackwood's Magazine is very singular in itself, and I think must long conti

nue to form an important epoch in the literary history of Scotland-above all, of Edinburgh. The time of its first appearance was happily chosen, just when the decline of that intense and overmastering interest, formerly attracted to the Edinburgh Review, had fairly begun to be not only felt, but acknowledged on every hand; and had it not appeared at that particular time, it is probable that something, not widely different in spirit and purpose, must have ere long come forth; for there had already been formed in Scotland a considerable body of rebels to the long undisputed tyrannical sway of Mr Jeffrey and his friends; and it was necessary that the sentiments of this class should find some vehicle of convenient expression. In short, the diet of levity and sarcastic indifference, which had so long formed the stable nourishment of Scottish intellect, had by repetition lost, to not a few palates, the charming poignancy of its original flavour; and besides, the total failure of all the political prophecies of the Whig wits, and, indeed, the triumphant practical refutation given by the great events of the preceding years to all their enunciations of political principles, had, without doubt, tended very powerfully to throw discredit