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equal and undivided over the whole surface, as if no touch but that of Time had been there, and as if even He had traced the vestiges of his dominion with a sure indeed, but with a delicate and reverential finger. The lineaments have all the appearance of having been beautifully shaped, but the want of his teeth has thrown them out of their natural relation to each other. The eyes alone have bid defiance to the approach of the adversary. Beneath bleached and hoary brows, and surrounded with innumerable wrinkles, they are still as tenderly, as brightly blue, as full of all the various eloquence and fire of passion, as they could have been in the most vivacious of his days, when they were lighted up with that purest and loftiest of all earthly flames, the first secret triumph of conscious and conceiving genius.

By and by, Mr M withdrew into his closet, and having there thrown off his slippers, and exchanged his cap for a brown wig, he conducted me to the drawing-room. His family were already assembled to receive us-his wife, just as I should have wished to picture her, a graceful old lady, with much of the remains of beauty, clothed in an open gown of black silk, with deep flounces, and having a high cap, with

the lace meeting below the chin-his eldest son, a man rather above my own standing, who is said to inherit much of the genius of his father, (although he has chosen to devote it to very different purposes-being very eminent among the advocates of the present time)—and some younger children. The only visitor, besides myself, was an old friend, and, indeed, contemporary of M-, a Mr R--, who was, in his time, at the head of the profession of the law in Scotland; but who has now lived for many years in retirement. I have never seen a finer specimen, both in appearance and manners, of the true gentleman of the last age. In his youth, he must have been a perfect model of manly beauty; and, indeed, no painter could select a more exquisite subject for his art even now. His hair combed back from his forehead and highly powdered, his long queue, his lace-ruffles, his suit of snuff-coloured cloth, cut in the old liberal way, with long flaps to his waistcoat, his high-heeled shoes and rich steel-buckles-every thing was perfectly in unison with the fashion of his age. The stately and measured decorum of his politeness was such, as could not well be displayed by any man dressed in our free-and-easy style; but in him it did not produce the least effect of stiff

ness or coldness. It was a delightful thing to see these two old men, who had rendered themselves eminent in two so different walks of exertion, meeting together in the quiet evening of their days, to enjoy in the company of each other every luxury which intellectual communication can afford, heightened by the yet richer luxury of talking over the feelings of times, to which they almost alone are not strangers.

They are both perfectly men of the world, so that there was not the least tinge of profes sional pedantry in their conversation. As for Mr M, indeed, literature was never anything more than an amusement to him, however great the figure he has made in it, and the species of literature in which he excelled was, in its very essence, connected with any ideas rather than those of secluded and artist-like abstraction. There was nothing to be seen which could have enabled a stranger to tell which was the great lawyer, and which the great novellist. I confess, indeed, I was a little astonished to find, from Mr M's mode of conversation, how very little his habits had ever been those of a mere literary man. He talked for at least half an hour, and, I promise you, very knowingly, about flies for angling; and told me, with great good

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humour, that he still mounts his poney in autumn, and takes the field against the grouse with a long fowling-piece slung from his back, and a pointer-bitch, to the full as venerable among her species as her affectionate master is among his. The lively vivacity with which he talked over various little minute circumstances of his last campaign in the moors, and the almost boyish keenness with which he seemed to be looking forward to the time of trouting—all this might have been looked upon as rather frivolous, and out of place, in another of his years; but, for my part, I could not help being filled both with delight and admiration, by so uncommon a display of elasticity in the springs of his tempe

rament.

He gave us an excellent bottle of Muscat-deRives-altes during dinner, and I must say I am inclined very much to approve of that old-fashioned delicacy. We had no lack of Châteaula-Rose afterwards, and neither of the old gentlemen seemed to have the slightest objection to its inspiration. A truly charming air of sober hilarity was diffused over their features, and they began to give little sketches of the old times, in which perhaps their hilarity might not always be so sober, in a way that carried me back de

lightfully to the very heart of "High-jinks." According to the picture they gave, the style of social intercourse in this city, in their younger days, seems, indeed, to have been wonderfully easy and captivating. At that time, you must know, not one stone of the New Town, in which they, and all the fashionable inhabitants of Edinburgh now reside, had been erected. The whole of the genteel population lived crowded together in those tall citadels of the Old Town, from one of which my friend W still refuses to be dislodged. Their houses were small, but abundantly neat and comfortable, and the labour which it cost to ascend to one of them was sure to be repaid at all hours by a hearty welcome from its possessor. The style of visiting, altogether, was as different as possible from the ceremonious sort of fashion now in vogue. They did not deal in six weeks' invitations and formal dinners; but they formed, at a few hours' notice, little snug supper-parties, which, without costing any comparative expence, afforded opportunities a thousand-fold for all manner of friendly communication between the sexes. As for the gentlemen, they never thought of committing any excess, except in taverns, and at night; and Mr R mentioned, that, almost within his own recollec

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