MY DEAR SIR,-The kind reception which you gave me on my arrival in Scotland, with but a slender claim on your acquaintance, and the high opinion which I formed of your liberality of sentiment in the course of much delightful communication with you, both in Buchanan House and elsewhere, encourage me to address you on a subject, from which I should otherwise have studiously abstained, as involving many delicate and perhaps disputable questions. Our mutual friend Hhad partially prepared me for finding, in the Christopher North of private life, a still more enlightened and engaging old man than the pages of his published writings present to us; but, independently of other qualities, my anticipations were far short of that courteous hospitality, that wide-spread fellow-feeling, and that mild toleration for honest differences of opinion, which I soon found him to possess. I am aware, that, in sending you this packet, I am trespassing on your time, and perhaps trying your temper; but the extent of your indulgence to me on former occasions must plead my excuse, however imperfectly, if I seem to overtax it now.

You are aware that, though speaking the language of Britain, and bearing British blood in my veins, I cannot boast of having been born in this country. Yet no man, I believe, entertains towards her soil a more fond or filial affection. My father was a native of England; my mother of Scotland. I feel an interest, and a pride in all that concerns either part of the United Kingdom; and perhaps, as earliest impressions are the strongest, my predilections are rather in favour of the northern than of the southern division. I well remember, when yet a child, and when the first pulsations of taste and feeling were awakening within me, the sad but pleasing sympathy with which I listened to my mother, while, with tears in her eyes, and her sweet voice faltering with emotion, she sung to her children, the nurslings of a distant and destructive climate, those soft and simple strains which had delighted her

own childhood in the cool glens, and by the prattling streamlets of her native land. Her favourite melodies were the pastoral songs of Scotland, of which the peculiar imagery never failed to affect her with the tenderest longings of attachment, and produced in the expanding minds of her little nursery an involuntary desire to know and to see the objects that could excite so strong a devotion in one whom we so much loved and venerated. In advancing years, I retained for Scotland, and all that was connected with it, much of that instinctive affection which had thus been implanted in me. But various circumstances attending the course of life on which I entered, prevented me from visiting my maternal country until a recent period, when, among other advantages, I enjoyed the pleasure and profit of making your acquaintance, and I hope I may add, of acquiring your friendship.

In most respects, my visit to Scotland has not disappointed me. Her mountains and valleys were all, or more than all, that I had fancied or desired. I found her institutions wisely framed, and ably administered. Her people generally impressed me with a high conviction of their virtues and good sense; and those with whom I have had a more familiar intercourse, have laid me, by their civilities and cordialities, under obligations that I can never either forget or repay. But allow me, my dear sir, to say, that in one particular, the conduct or manners of your countrymen gave me considerable pain, and seemed to me to leave room for considerable amendment.

The fault that I have to find with them lies in an excessive, and I think superfluous display of national feeling, particularly in matters of learning and literature. Since I came among you, I have been present at a good many meetings and entertainments, more or less of a literary or public nature; and while there has been no lack of laudation bestowed on merit of home growth, I have been struck with the almost entire absence of any allusion, and certainly of any adequate tribute, to the literary excellence even of your nearest

neighbours. I was for some time delighted to have the privilege of sharing in the just enthusiasm excited by the names of those great men, whether living or dead, who have raised the honour of Scotland so high. Burns, Scott, Campbell, Wilson, North, Jef frey, Chalmers, seemed to me, in their several spheres, most proper and pleasing objects of admiration, and sources of honest pride. I read with delight in every countenance the feelings of self-gratulation which filled my companions at the sound of those distinguished names. I set my features by the same glass, and cheered and clap. ped with the loudest and lustiest among them. I began more than ever to claim a part in your national treasures, and said, after Correggio," Anch' io son Scozzese." But after several repetitions of the same diet, it began to pall. I longed for variety-I longed for truth: for though what I heard, for the most part, was the truth, and nothing but the truth, it was not the whole truth. It was not the suggestio falsi, but it was the suppres sio veri. I asked myself the question, but without receiving an answer favourable to the practice of my excellent friends here, whether genius now, and in time past, was really confined to Scotland, or whether only the optics of those about me were too shortsighted to discover it beyond the Scottish border. I speculated whether this so very limited enthusiasm was prompted by a love of literature, or proceeded merely from a love of self, amiable indeed, and intelligible, yet erroneous in fact, and indefensible in principle. Burns, thought I, is indisputably an admirable poet, who will live as long as his language can be understood; yet "it may be dooted," as M'Leod said in other cases, though he probably would not have said it of a countryman, whether his poetry is of a very ethereal or elevated kind, and whether its reputation has not sometimes been endangered, not by faint but by injudicious praise. Scott we all love and delight in : but is it quite clear that he is as great as Shakspeare; that his prose fictions can, in wisdom, beauty, and sublimity, be matched with the poetry of the chief of poets?

Campbell is sweet and touching, and something more; but is it true that he has surpassed the excellencies of those English worthies, whom his own criticisms have so justly exalted? Wilson is a true and delightful poet, whether in prose or rhyme; but, to say the least, he has a formidable rival in Wordsworth: yet Wilson's name is ever in your mouths, and Words worth's ye never utter. Jeffrey in his day was pretty and pleasant; but can we safely affirm that he was a greater than Johnson? Chalmers is eloquent, earnest, and energetic; but even on his disc there are a few spots discernible by the telescope of truth; and there are luminaries in the sister church that could make him pale his beams when at the brightest. North, I admit, is unapproached and unapproachable,* but one swallow does not make a summer; and you have no right to claim preeminence in every thing, because in some single department, those who are otherwise your equals or superiors, have hitherto failed to surpass you. Why, then, do such excellent and penetrating persons as you are, thus exclusively dwell on the glories of Scattish writers, and either wholly withhold, or but rarely and reluctantly allow, to the men and the memories in which England abounds, that share of sympathy and admiration which is so justly their due?

Such, my dear North, were my internal expostulations with those whom yet I ardently love and respect, and by whom I earnestly desire to be es teemed, not only as a friend but as a countryman. Now, tell me whether, in the idea that I thus adopted, I was or was not mistaken. Perhaps I have been hasty in admitting the impression that was thus formed. I may, by mere accident, have been thrown among persons, or have been present on occasions, that do not exhibit a fair sample of the national feeling in Scotland on this subject. If so, I am sincerely sorry for my mistake, and shall be most happy to see it corrected. But if I am not here in error, nay, if there is any foundation whatever for my opinion, even though it be less than I suppose, I must humbly submit that

this state of things ought not to be, and that every true friend of Scotland is interested in its reformation.

If the extreme and exclusive partiality for Scottish merit which is thus exhibited in our countrymen (permit me so to speak of them in the rest of this letter), were called for by any unwillingness in our southern neighbours to do us justice, I should be the last to find fault with even an exaggerated assertion of our claims. Let the honour or the fame of Scotland be attacked, and I will allow you to bristle up your spines, like the armed plant that forms the emblem of your nation, and to prove that aggression shall never escape punishment. Nay, in such a case, I would wag my tongue or my claymore in her defence, with the best of you! But why at present these laboured and one-sided panegyrics? What has made it necessary now, for years past, to dwell specially and solely on the literary praises of Scotland? Quis vituperavit? Her merits, in all departments, have long been fully acknowledged by the world, and by England among the rest. We need not, therefore, display that Yankee-like itch for praise, that springs from a morbid soreness within; we need not resort to this perpetual bolstering up of our pretensions, of which the natural explanation is, that it indicates insecurity of position.

The course that I thus take the liberty of lamenting, appears to me to be objectionable on these several grounds: 1. It is unjust; 2. It is ungrateful; 3. It is foolish; 4. It is injurious.

1. It is unjust. Scotland has, indeed, done much for literature. But what she has done, cannot, without violence to truth and reason, be held as paramount or equal to the contributions of the rest of the empire. Count up the names which she has added to the list of literary classics, and compare them with those of England, and either we must confess our great inferiority, or we must allow our principles of criticism or veracity to be perverted by our patriotism.

Let us take a hasty review of the poetry which has been produced in each country, leaving out, necessarily, the inferior names on both sides of the question. One eminent poet of early date Scotland can boast of Dunbar ; one to whose merit you have

yourself done no more than justice by a noble criticism. Admirable, indeed, he is, alike for fancy, tenderness, and humour; yet he is surely a paler and a lesser light than the morning-star of English song. Chaucer, too, we must remember, had the precedence in point of time by fully a century; and Dunbar, doubtless, drew much from his example, both in language and in thought. From Dunbar to Ramsay how wide a space in our history-more than two centuries-yet how few names of any consideration can we number to fill it up! How much of our sky is dark and vacant, while that of England is a glittering galaxy! Three glorious orbs of song may be there discovered at no great interval from each other-Spencer, Shakspeare, Milton; each, indeed, not a star but a sun, dazzlingly bright, and not more bright than beneficent; not coldly shining with beams of idle beauty, but diffusing to all the world the light of truth and the warmth of virtue. With these must be associated many luminaries of secondary dignity, that elsewhere would appear conspicuously brilliant, but here are made dim, partly by the surpassing lustre of those greater lights, and partly by the very frequency with which they are themselves clustered together. In later times, indeed, Scotland has more to show. Let the author of the Gentle Shepherd receive his due meed of praise for that native simplicity and genuine tenderness which his English rivals failed either to seek or to attain ;-let Thomson be reverenced as a great and worthy high-priest of Nature, and a glorious restorer of her true worship, when it had been either forgotten or corrupted ;-let Beattie retain all the praise that he has ever received he well deserves it, as a genuine poet, who knew and taught that the love of beauty and of goodness must go hand in hand ;-and let Burns conclude the century, a noble product of his country's character and institutions, unrivalled in all the qualities of lyric tenderness, of manly force, or of homely humour, that his genius or position were calculated to inspire. But let us not forget that, during this later period, our neighbours, too, have a list to show, which we must not boast of surpassing. Pope, Young, Goldsmith, Gray, Collins, and Cowper, are names never to be uttered