garnish that texture of political, critical, and erotical common-places, which they share with the Masters and Misses of other cities, wherein the pretensions of the Gens Togata are kept somewhat more within the limits of propriety. My friend W tells me, that, in the course of a love-correspondence, which once, by some unfortunate accident, got into general circulation in Edinburgh, among many other truly ludicrous exemplifications of the use of the legal style of courtship, there was one letter from the Strephon to the Phyllis, which began with "Madam-in answer to your duplies, received of date as per margin." But this, no doubt, is one of W's pleasant exaggerations.

Although, however, the whole of the city, and the whole of its society, be more than enough redolent of the influence of this profession, it is by no means to be denied, that a very great share of influence is most justly due to the eminent services which its members have rendered, and are at the present time rendering to their country. It is not to be denied, that the Scottish lawyers have done more than any other class of their fellow-citizens, to keep alive the sorely threatened spirit of national independence in the thoughts and in the feelings of their country

mén. It is scarcely to be denied, that they have for a long time furnished, and are at this moment furnishing, the only example of high intellectual exertion, (beyond the case of mere individuals,) in regard to which Scotland may challenge a comparison with the great sister-state, which has drawn so much of her intellect and her exertion into the over-whelming and obscuring vortex of her superiority. It is a right and a proper thing, then, that Scotland should be proud of her Bar-and, indeed, when one reflects for a moment, what an immense overshadowing proportion of all the great men she has produced have belonged, or at this moment do belong to this profession, it is quite impossible to be surprised or displeased, because so just a feeling may have been carried a little beyond the limit of mere propriety. It is not necessary to go back into the remote history of the Bar of Scotland, although, I believe, there is in all that history no one period devoid of its appropriate honours. One generation of illustrious men, connected with it throughout the whole, or throughout the greater part of their lives, bas only just departed, and the memory of them and their exertions is yet fresh and unfaded. Others

have succeeded to their exertions and their honours, whom they that have seen both, admit to be well worthy of their predecessors. Indeed, it is not necessary to say one word more concerning the present state of the profession than this that, in addition to many names which owe very great and splendid reputation to the Bar alone, the gown is worn at this moment by two persons, whom all the world must admit to have done more than all the rest of their contemporaries put together, for sustaining and extending the honours of the Scottish name-both at home and abroad. You need scarcely be told, that I speak of Mr WS and Mr J. The former of these has, indeed, retired from the practice of the Bar; but he holds a high office in the Court of Session. The other is in the full tide of professional practice, and of a professional celebrity, which could scarcely be obscured by anything less splendid, than the extra-professional reputation which has been yet longer as sociated with his name-and which, indeed, is obviously of a much higher, as well as of a much more enduring character, than any reputation which any profession, properly so called, ever can have the power to bestow.

The courts of justice with which all these eminent men are so closely connected, are placed in and about the same range of buildings, which in former times were set apart for the accommodation of the Parliament of Scotland. The main approach to these buildings lies through a small oblong square, which takes from this circumstance the name of " the Parliament Close." On two sides this Close is surrounded by houses of the same gigantic kind of elevation which I have already described to you, and in these, of old, were lodged a great proportion of the dignitaries and principal practitioners of the adjacent courts. At present, however, they are dedicated, like most of the houses in the same quarter of the city, to the accommodation of tradespeople, and the inferior persons attached to the Courts of Law. The western side of the quadrangle, is occupied in all its length by the Church of St Giles's, which in the later times of Scottish Episcopacy possessed the dignity of a Cathedral, and which, indeed, has been the scene of many of the most remarkable incidents in the ecclesiastical history of Scotland. In its general exterior, this church presents by no means a fine specimen of the Gothic Architecture, although there are several individual parts about

the structure which display great beauty-the tower above all which rises out of the centre of the pile, and is capped with a very rich and splendid canopy in the shape of a Crown Imperial. This beautiful tower and canopy form a fine point in almost every view of the city of Edinburgh; but the effect of the whole building, when one hears and thinks of it as a Cathedral, is a thing of no great significance. The neighbourhood of the Castle would indeed take something from the impression produced by the greatest Cathedral I am acquainted with, were it placed on the site of St Giles's; but nothing assuredly could have formed a finer accompaniment of softening and soothing interest to the haughty and imperious sway of that majestic fortress, than some large reposing mass of religious architecture, lifting itself as if under its protection out of the heart of the city which it commands. The only want, if want there be, in the whole aspect of this city, is, that of some such type of the grandeur of Religion rearing itself in the air, in somewhat of its due proportion of magnitude and magnificence. It is the only great city, the first impression of whose greatness is not blended with ideas suggested by the presence of some such edifice, piercing the sky in splendour or in gloom, far above