all his care, a certain number of weeds will rise with the corn, and can
tell you beforehand their names and appearance. But Scotland is like one
of her own Highland glens, and the moralist who reads the records of her
criminal jurisprudence, will find as many curious anomalous facts in the
history of mind, as the botanist will detect rare specimens among her
dingles and cliffs."

"And that's all the good you have obtained from three perusals of the
Commentaries on Scottish Criminal Jurisprudence?" said his companion. "I
suppose the learned author very little thinks that the facts which his
erudition and acuteness have accumulated for the illustration of legal
doctrines, might be so arranged as to form a sort of appendix to the
half-bound and slip-shod volumes of the circulating library."

"I'll bet you a pint of claret," said the elder lawyer, "that he will not
feel sore at the comparison. But as we say at the bar, 'I beg I may not
be interrupted;' I have much more to say, upon my Scottish collection of
_Causes Ce'le'bres._ You will please recollect the scope and motive given
for the contrivance and execution of many extraordinary and daring
crimes, by the long civil dissensions of Scotland--by the hereditary
jurisdictions, which, until 1748, rested the investigation of crises in
judges, ignorant, partial, or interested--by the habits of the gentry,
shut up in their distant and solitary mansion-houses, nursing their
revengeful Passions just to keep their blood from stagnating--not to
mention that amiable national qualification, called the _perfervidum
ingenium Scotorum,_ which our lawyers join in alleging as a reason for
the severity of some of our enactments. When I come to treat of matters
so mysterious, deep, and dangerous, as these circumstances have given
rise to, the blood of each reader shall be curdled, and his epidermis
crisped into goose skin.--But, hist!--here comes the landlord, with