easily. I forgot one appointment on particular business, and I wilfully
broke through another, that I might stay at home and finish his
confounded book, which, after all, is about two brothers, the greatest
rascals I ever heard of. The one, sir, goes near to murder his own
father, and the other (which you would think still stranger) sets about
to debauch his own wife."

"I find, then, Mr. Fairscribe, that you have no taste for the romance of
real life--no pleasure in contemplating those spirit-rousing impulses,
which force men of fiery passions upon great crimes and great virtues?"

"Why, as to that, I am not just so sure. But then to mend the matter,"
continued the critic, "you have brought in Highlanders into every story,
as if you were going back again, _velis et remis_, into the old days of
Jacobitism. I must speak my plain mind, Mr. Croftangry. I cannot tell
what innovations in Kirk and State may now be proposed, but our fathers
were friends to both, as they were settled at the glorious Revolution,
and liked a tartan plaid as little as they did a white surplice. I wish
to Heaven, all this tartan fever bode well to the Protestant succession
and the Kirk of Scotland."

"Both too well settled, I hope, in the minds of the subject," said I, "to
be affected by old remembrances, on which we look back as on the portraits
of our ancestors, without recollecting, while we gaze on them, any of the
feuds by which the originals were animated while alive. But most happy
should I be to light upon any topic to supply the place of the Highlands,
Mr. Fairscribe. I have been just reflecting that the theme is becoming a
little exhausted, and your experience may perhaps supply"----

"Ha, ha, ha!--_my_ experience supply!" interrupted Mr. Fairscribe, with