uninterrupted study. You have said a thousand times, that I am only qualified to make my way by dint of plodding, and therefore plod I must.

My father seems to be more impatient of your absence than he was after your first departure. He is sensible, I believe, that our solitary meals want the light which your gay humour was wont to throw over them, and feels melancholy, as men do when the light of the sun is no longer upon the landscape. If it is thus with him, thou mayest imagine it is much more so with me, and canst conceive how heartily I wish that thy frolic were ended, and thou once more our inmate.

I resume my pen, after a few hours interval, to say that an incident has occurred, on which you will yourself be building a hundred castles in the air, and which even I, jealous as I am of such baseless fabrics, cannot but own affords ground for singular conjecture.

My father has of late taken me frequently

along with him when he attends the Courts, in his anxiety to see me properly initiated into the practical forms of business. I own I feel something on his account and my own from this overanxiety, which, I dare say, renders us both ridiculous. But what signifies my repugnance? my father drags me up to his counsel learned in the law," Are you quite ready to come on to-day, Mr Crossbite ?-This is my son, designed for the bar-I take the liberty to bring him with me today to the consultation, merely that he may see how these things are managed."

Mr Crossbite smiles and bows, as a lawyer smiles on the solicitor who employs him, and, I dare say, thrusts his tongue into his cheek, and whispers into the first great wig that passes him, “ What the d-1 does old Fairford mean by letting loose his whelp on me ?"

As I stood beside them, too much vexed at the childish part I was made to play to derive much information from the valuable arguments of Mr Crossbite, I observed a rather elderly man, who stood with his eyes firmly bent on my father, as

if he only waited an end of the business in which he was engaged, to address him. There was something, I thought, in the gentleman's appearance which commanded attention-Yet his dress was not in the present taste, and though it had once been magnificent, was now antiquated and unfashionable. His coat was of branched velvet, with a satin lining, a waistcoat of violet-coloured silk, much embroidered; his breeches the same stuff as the coat. He wore square-toed shoes, with fore-tops, as they are called; and his silk stockings were rolled up over his knee, as you may have seen in pictures, and here and there on some of those originals who seem to pique themselves on dressing after the mode of Methuselah. A chapeau bras and sword necessarily completed his equipment, which, though out of date, shewed that it belonged to a man of distinction.

The instant Mr Crossbite had ended what he

had to say, this gentleman walked up to my father, with "Your servant, Mr Fairford-it is long since you and I met."

My father, whose politeness, you know, is ex

act and formal, bowed, and hemmed, and was confused, and at length professed that the distance since they had met was so great, that though he remembered the face perfectly, the name, he was sorry to say, had-really-somehow-escaped his memory.

"Have you forgot Herries of Birvenswork ?" said the gentleman, and my father bowed even more profoundly than before; though I think his reception of his old friend seemed to lose some of the respectful civility which he bestowed on him while his name was yet unknown. It now seemed to be something like the lip-courtesy which the heart would have denied had ceremony permitted.

My father, however, again bowed low, and hoped he saw him well.

"So well, my good Mr Fairford, that I come hither determined to renew my acquaintance with one or two old friends, and with you in the first place. I halt at my old resting-place--you must dine with me to-day at Paterson's, at the head of the Horse Wynd-it is near your new fashionable dwelling, and I have business with you."

My father excused himself respectfully, and not without embarrassment-" he was particularly engaged at home."

"Then I will dine with you, man," said Mr Herries of Birvenswork; "the few minutes you can spare me after dinner will suffice for my business; and I will not prevent you a moment from minding your own-I am no bottle-man."

You have often remarked that my father, though a scrupulous observer of the rites of hospitality, seems to exercise them rather as a duty than as a pleasure; indeed but for a conscientious wish to feed the hungry and receive the stranger, his doors would open to strangers much seldomer than is the case. I never saw so strong an example of this peculiarity, (which I should otherwise have said is caricatured in your description,) as in his mode of homologating the self-given invitation of Mr Herries. The embarrassed brow, and the attempt at a smile which accompanied his "We will expect the honour of seeing you in Brown's Square at three o'clock,” could not deceive any one, and did not impose upon the old Laird. It was with a look of scorn that