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Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk: The Text
and Introduction, Notes, and Editorial

Material John Gibson Lockhart (Editor)
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Peter’s Letters to his
Kinsfolk
The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Works of
John Gibson Lockhart
The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Works of
SeriesJohn
The Edinburgh Gibson
Critical
Editor: Lockhart
Edition
Thomas of the Works of
C. Richardson
John Gibson Lockhart
Series Editor: Thomas C. Richardson
Series Editor: Thomas
Advisory C. Richardson
Board
Dr Ian Campbell (University
Advisory Boardof Edinburgh)
Dr Peter Garside (University of Edinburgh)
DrDrIan
Gillian Advisory
Campbell Boardof Edinburgh)
(University
Hughes (Independent Scholar)
Dr Peter
Dr Caroline Garside (University
McCracken-Flesher of Edinburgh)
(University of Wyoming)
Dr Ian Campbell (University of Edinburgh)
DrDr Gillian Hughes (Independent Scholar)
DrKirsteen McCue
Peter Garside (University
(University of of Glasgow)
Edinburgh)
Dr Caroline
Dr McCracken-Flesher
Robert Morrison (University
(Bath Spa of Wyoming)
University)
Dr Gillian Hughes (Independent Scholar)
Dr Kirsteen McCue (University of Glasgow)
Dr Caroline McCracken-Flesher (University of Wyoming)
Dr Robert Morrison (Bath Spa University)
Dr Kirsteen McCue (University of Glasgow)
Published: Dr Robert Morrison (Bath Spa University)
Some Passages in the Life of Mr Adam Blair, edited by
Published:
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Vol 1_series page.indd 1 23/08/2022 11:50

Peter’s Letters to his
Kinsfolk
JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART
Volume One: The Text
Edited by
Peter Garside and Gillian Hughes
EDINBURGH
University Press
Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK.
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© The Text, Edinburgh University Press 2022

The Tun – Holyrood Road, 12 Jackson’s Entry, Edinburgh EH8 8PJ
© Editorial matter and organisation, Peter Garside and Gillian Hughes 2022
Typeset at Mississippi University for Women, Columbus, Mississippi,

and printed and bound in Great Britain on acid-free paper at
TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
ISBN 978 1 3995 0070 8 (hardback)

ISBN 978 1 3995 0071 5 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 3995 0072 2 (epub)
The right of Peter Garside and Gillian Hughes to be identified as the Editors
of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patent Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI
No. 2498).
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or

by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording
or any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior permission
in writing from the publisher.
Contents
VOLUME ONE
Aims of the Edition vii

Volume Editors’ Acknowledgements ix
Note on the Present Edition x
Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk 1
VOLUME TWO
Introduction 1
1. Genesis 1
2. Composition and Publication 16
3. Early Responses 30
4. The ‘Third’ and Subsequent Editions 35
5. The Present Text 49
Emendation List 69
Hyphenation List 80
Explanatory Notes 83
The Engravings 349
Index to the Text of Peter’[s Letters 367
Aims of the Edition
John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854) has been understudied and
undervalued by critics and literary historians in large measure because
his obsessive insistence on anonymity means that the full extent of his
literary work and influence is not generally known. Lockhart’s works
have never been collected, and there have been no critical editions of
individual works. The extent and significance of his literary
accomplishments have been eclipsed by his role in the attacks on Leigh
Hunt, John Keats, and William Hazlitt in Blackwood’s Edinburgh
Magazine, and by his authorship of the biography of his father-in-law,
Sir Walter Scott.
Lockhart had a career in literature that spanned nearly four decades,
serving for much of that time (1826-1853) as editor of what was perhaps
the premier journal of his age, The Quarterly Review, published in
London by John Murray. Lockhart began his literary career in 1817 with
the Edinburgh publisher, William Blackwood, who sent Lockhart to
Germany on a literary tour where he met Goethe and other German
literati. Lockhart’s first book-length publication was a two-volume
translation of Frederick Schlegel’s Lectures on the History of
Literature, Ancient and Modern (1818). Lockhart was also a major
contributor to Blackwood’s new publishing venture, Blackwood’s
Edinburgh Magazine, and over his lifetime wrote or had a hand in more
than two hundred works in Blackwood’s. There was biting satire,
certainly, but those works are small in number. The vast majority of his
Blackwood’s works are significant, incisive works of literary criticism
covering a broad range of topics from Greek tragedy and poetry to early
Spanish literature to works of contemporary American, British, and
German authors. His Blackwood’s works also include serious and
satirical verse, as well as essays on important political and social topics
of his day. He published four novels during his time with Blackwood,
as well as a fictitious account of the Edinburgh and Glasgow literary,
cultural, legal, political, and religious scenes, Peter’s Letters to his
Kinsfolk. Other works during this period include a collection of Spanish
translations, Ancient Spanish Ballads; an edition of Don Quixote, with
his annotations and a biographical essay on Cervantes; and a lengthy
biographical essay on Daniel Defoe to preface an edition of Robinson
Crusoe.
In December 1825 Lockhart left Scotland for London to become
editor of the Quarterly Review. Lockhart wrote nearly 120 articles for
viii
the Quarterly in addition to directing the literary, political, and social

focus of the review as an active editor. Over the next few years Lockhart
also wrote biographies of Robert Burns, Napoleon, and Sir Walter Scott.
He served as editor of John Murray’s Family Library, edited Scott’s
poetry and prose works, and contributed significantly to the notes for
editions of Byron’s works and to the revisions of John Wilson Croker’s
edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson. He also contributed original
poetry, translations, and essays to various other periodicals and annuals.
Lockhart, as an author and an editor, influenced a wide range of
nineteenth-century life. The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Works of
John Gibson Lockhart aims to identify and collect the full range of
Lockhart’s works and to provide the appropriate critical apparatus to
enable readers for the first time to assess fully Lockhart’s achievement
and his significance for nineteenth-century studies.
Volume Editors’ Acknowledgements
The completion of the present edition would not have been possible
without the support of various people and institutions, for which the
present editors are most grateful. In the first place we wish to record our
major debt to our Series Editor, Thomas C. Richardson, for his
unfailingly shrewd and good-humoured advice on all matters editorial
and also for undertaking the laborious tasks of the typesetting and
picture editing of this edition. As with every other title in The Edinburgh
Critical Edition of the Works of John Gibson Lockhart the financial and
technical support of the Mississippi University for Women has also
been essential.
Both editors have benefited through their affiliation to the University
of Edinburgh during the preparation of this volume, as Honorary
Professorial Fellow and Honorary Research Fellow respectively.
Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk is a widely-allusive literary work with
a frame of reference much broader than any two individuals can hope to
deal with adequately on their own, and we wish to thank a number of
individual scholars for their contribution to elucidating it, in particular
Ian Alexander, Devin Ames, Iain Gordon Brown, Gerry Carruthers,
Claire Connolly, Ian Duncan, David Frederickson, Stephen Hall,
Cameron Howard, Bob Irvine, Vic Jones, Roland Paxton, Thomas B.
Richardson, Rachel Sweet, Iain Torrance, Derek Webb, and Michael
Wood.
We are grateful to the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland
for permission to quote from manuscripts held by that Library, and
similarly to the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, and to the University of
Edinburgh Library. We also wish to thank the staff of these institutions
for their helpful and friendly assistance with our work there. In addition
the following individuals and the institutions they work for should not
be forgotten: Kate Anderson of the National Galleries of Scotland; Paul
Cox of the National Portrait Gallery; Iain Duffus of Edinburgh Central
Library; Isobel Maclellan of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow; and Ruth
Pollitt of the Anatomical Museum, University of Edinburgh.
Last but by no means least, we are deeply grateful to our families for
their constant support, in particular to Gillian Garside and David Sweet.
Note on the Present Edition
For ease in consultation the text of Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk
appears in the first volume of this edition, while explanatory notes and
other supporting editorial material appear in the second volume.
The text provided in this volume is based on the ‘third’ (actually
second) edition of Peter’s Letters of 1819, with emendations from the
limited manuscript materials extant, from separately-printed originals
for some sections of the work, and from the ‘second’ (actually first)
edition. In addition to this a number of editorial interventions have been
made where Lockhart’s intentions appear to have been misunderstood
or errors made during textual transmission and in the processes of
printing. For further commentary see the ‘Introduction’ in the second
volume of this edition, especially the section on ‘The Present Text’, as
well as the ‘Emendation List’, which provides a more specific record.
_____________________________________________
PETER’S LETTERS
TO
HIS KINSFOLK
_____________________________________________
PETER’S LETTERS
TO
HIS KINSFOLK
VOLUME THE FIRST

DEDICATION
__________
TO THE RIGHT REVEREND
THE LORD BISHOP OF ST DAVIDS
MY LORD,
I TRUST you will excuse the liberty I take in inscribing to you a new
edition of my Letters from Scotland. That none of these letters were
addressed to your Lordship, is a circumstance for which I take great
shame to myself, after the very kind manner in which you spoke to me
on that head, the day I left you—may I be permitted to add, after the
long experience I have had of your Lordship’s concern and attachment,
in several years of professional attendance, and, since that was laid
aside, of private intercourse and friendship.
I must not attempt to deny, that there are some things in these Letters
which are not exactly what I should have judged proper for your Lord-
ship’s eye;—but your Lordship is aware that they were written without
the smallest notion of being printed. I hope the effect of the whole cor-
respondence may be agreeable to you, and I well know the gentle and
forgiving nature of your disposition. Above all, I should be highly flat-
tered to learn that the account I have given of the State of Religion in
Scotland, had interested and pleased you. The truly liberal and apostolic
zeal with which your Lordship has so long been labouring to serve my
countrymen in their most important concerns, is appreciated and hon-
oured by none more highly than,
MY LORD,
Your Lordship’s very humble,
and very affectionate Servant,
PETER MORRIS.
PENSHARPE-HALL,
ABERYSTWITH
THE
EPISTLE LIMINARY
TO
THE SECOND EDITION
___________
TO
MR DAVIES,
BOOKSELLER, IN THE STRAND, LONDON
DEAR SIR,
THE high terms in which you are pleased to express yourself concern-
ing the specimens of my Letters from Scotland which have fallen into
your hands, are, I assure you, among the most valued testimonies of
approbation which have ever come in my way. To receive applause
from one’s acquaintances, is more delightful than to receive it from
strangers; but the most precious of all tokens is that which proceeds
from an old and dear friend. It is true, that in such case there may be, in
general, no small suspicion of partiality, but this cannot be the case with
you, as you say you liked the work before you were aware of the name
of its author.
Since that name has now been divulged through the rashness of a
certain publication, I do not see that any very good purpose could be
answered by attempting to keep up the mystery in the work itself. I
therefore accept of your offers with regard to the Second Edition, and
permit you to send it forth into the world with the name of Peter Morris
as conspicuously affixed to it as you may deem expedient.
About the same time that your letter reached me, I had another letter
on the same subject from my friend Mr William Blackwood, of Edin-
burgh. As you and he are already connected in so many ways, it strikes
me that no inconvenience could attend your being connected together in
this little matter also. I shall be happy if you find it consistent with your
8 PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK, VOL. I
views to communicate the purport of what I have said to him, with all
haste; and hope to see the Second Edition graced with both your names
on the title-page.
When in Edinburgh I became acquainted with Mr James Ballantyne,
and have a strong inclination that any little thing of mine should be
printed at his press, both from my regard for the man himself, and on
account of the high report I heard of his qualifications in that way, from
some of the best judges I know of. The First Edition being but a coarse
job, and so small withal, I did not think of him, but trust there will be
nothing to prevent him undertaking this, about which Mr Blackwood
will be able to arrange with him very easily, being on the spot. I should
think the best way would be to leave the style of printing, &c. entirely
to Mr Ballantyne’s own discretion—I am sure he will do all he can to
make my book a pretty one. As for correcting of proofs, &c., I dare say
I might very safely leave that also to Mr Ballantyne; but I have a friend
in Edinburgh, (a Mr Wastle,) who will find it quite an amusement to
superintend all that affair; and, by the way, I am a very bad hand at
correcting proofs myself, for I read them so quickly, that my eye passes
over a thousand errata, for one that escapes the observation of a person
more accustomed to such things.
What you say about the portraits, puzzles me more than anything else;
I mean as to the propriety of introducing such things at all. It is very
true, however, as you have heard, that my pencil was in request while I
was in Scotland, almost as much as my pen, and that I have now a very
rich portfolio of the chief worthies I met with in that northern region. In
this matter, too, I am inclined to trust more to my friends’ judgment than
to my own, so I have sent you this day (per waggon) the whole lot of
the sketches, leaving you to select for the engraver such as seem most
likely to improve the appearance and popularity of the work. I think,
however, you should on no account omit the sketches of the Man of
Feeling, Mr Scott, Mr Jeffrey, Mr Alison, and Dr Chalmers. The others
you may do with as you please.
I would have sent you my drawings of scenery also, but really in the
present day when so much is a-doing in that line by much abler hands,
I feel shy about pushing my rude efforts upon the public. I have,
therefore, packed up only a very few specimens—not at all for the
engraver—but merely as a present to Mrs Davies, which I beg she will
accept, as also the cheese which accompanies them, along with the best
wishes and compliments of a very old acquaintance and admirer. You
cannot do better than have the etchings executed in Edinburgh also.
EPISTLE LIMINARY 9
Nobody can be better for the purpose than Mr Lizars—and, if he be too

much engaged to do the whole, he can get a very excellent young artist,
some of whose works I saw when there, to give him assistance—I mean
Mr Stewart, who is engraving Allan’s Picture of The Robbers dividing
their Spoil. By the bye, I had a note from Sir Joseph Banks a day or two
ago, in which he says a great deal about a new invention of Mr Lizars,
which he thinks is the greatest thing that has occurred in engraving since
the time of Albert Durer. I have not seen any specimen of it, but do ask
him to try some of the portraits in the new way—say my own—for that
is of least consequence.*
As I am just going over to Dublin to spend a few weeks with my
brother Sam, I shall not be able to hear from you again about this mat-
ter—so I leave it with perfect confidence in your hands, and those of Mr
Blackwood. I hear the cry for the book is great, particularly in the North;
therefore do bestir yourselves, and have PETER out before the rising of
Parliament.
I hope you won’t allow next Autumn to go over, without coming
down and paying a visit to some of your old friends in your native coun-
try—and I am vain enough to hope you won’t omit us if you do come. I
am an idler man, now-a-days, than I could wish to be; so do come, my
dear sir; and if my good friend, Mr Cadell, could come with you, tanto
melius;—I shall do all I can to amuse you in the mornings; and, in the
evenings, you shall both have as much as you please of what, I flatter
myself, is not the worst claret in the principality. Between ourselves, I
have a great desire to see you, as I have some thoughts of looking over
my papers, and giving you Peter’s Letters from Italy and Germany, in
the course of the winter. Meantime, I remain, with great sincerity,
Your friend,
PETER MORRIS
PENSHARPE-HALL,
ABERYSTWITH
Wednesday Evening
_____________________________________________
*The portrait of Dr Morris is done in this new style; and had the time permitted, the
others would all have been done so likewise. It is thrown off by the common printing-
press, as the reader will observe—but this is only one of the distinguishing excellencies
of this new and splendid invention of Mr Lizars. I am happy that my friend’s book has
the honour of being the first graced with a specimen of it; and not the less so that the
specimen presents a capital likeness of my friend himself.
W. W.
LIST OF EMBELLISHMENTS
__________
VOLUME THE FIRST
Portrait of the Author ............................................................... to face the Title

The Author in his Shandrydan driving to Edinburgh .............. Vignette on Title
Portrait of Mr Leslie...................................................................................... 49
———— Mr Mackenzie .............................................................................. 67
———— Mr Playfair .................................................................................. 108
———— Mr Jameson ................................................................................ 145
VOLUME THE SECOND
The Author and Mr Scott riding towards Melrose Abbey ....... Vignette on Title
Portrait of Mr Clerk..................................................................................... 212
———— Mr Jeffrey ................................................................................... 220
———— alter et idem ................................................................................ 222
———— Lord Justice-Clerk, Macqueen of Braxfield ............................... 248
———— Mr Allan ..................................................................................... 307
———— Mr Scott...................................................................................... 363
VOLUME THE THIRD
The Lord High Commissioner walking in Procession to

open the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland ...... Vignette on Title
Portrait of Mr Alison ................................................................................... 420
———— The Ettrick Shepherd.................................................................. 444
———— Mr Wilson .................................................................................. 500
———— Dr Chalmers ............................................................................... 507
The Author on Board of the Rob Roy Steam-Boat, bidding
Farewell to his Glasgow Friends................................ Vignette, on page 546
CONTENTS
OF
VOLUME FIRST
__________
LETTER I
Arrival ........................................................................................................... 17
Edinburgh ...................................................................................................... 18
Calton-Hill .................................................................................................... 20
Edinburgh...................................................................................................... 20
LETTER II
Mr Wastle of Wastle ..................................................................................... 22
Lawn-Market................................................................................................. 25
Mr Wastle of that Ilk ..................................................................................... 25
Sheep’s-Head ................................................................................................ 25
Mr Wastle’s Portrait ...................................................................................... 26
Old Oxonians ................................................................................................ 27
LETTER III
Edinburgh...................................................................................................... 28
Edinburgh—Holyrood-House ....................................................................... 28
Edinburgh—Canongate ................................................................................. 28
Edinburgh—Holyrood-House ....................................................................... 29
Edinburgh—Queen Mary .............................................................................. 30
Holyrood-House—Charles I ......................................................................... 31
Holyrood-House—Sanctuary ........................................................................ 31
LETTER IV
Antiquarianism .............................................................................................. 33
Toryism of Wastle......................................................................................... 33
Wastle ........................................................................................................... 34
LETTER V
Scottish Physiognomies ................................................................................ 35
Scottish Peasantry ......................................................................................... 35
Scottish Gentry.............................................................................................. 36
National Features .......................................................................................... 37
Scottish Women ............................................................................................ 37
Changes of Complexion ................................................................................ 37
Scottish Beauty ............................................................................................. 38
Ladies’ Dress—Saddles ................................................................................ 40
LETTER VI
Mr Jeffrey...................................................................................................... 41
Physiognomy—Goethe—Canova ................................................................. 42
Short Men—Campbell—Moore.................................................................... 43
Hales—Chillingworth ................................................................................... 43
Napoleon—Mr Jeffrey .................................................................................. 43
Mr Jeffrey...................................................................................................... 44
LETTER VII
Streets of Edinburgh...................................................................................... 46
Craig-Crook .................................................................................................. 46
Professors Playfair and Leslie ....................................................................... 47
Craig-Crook—Leaping ................................................................................. 47
Mr Playfair .................................................................................................... 48
Mr Leslie ....................................................................................................... 48
Dinner ........................................................................................................... 50
Dinner-Party.................................................................................................. 50
Mr Jeffrey’s Conversation............................................................................. 51
Mr Playfair .................................................................................................... 53
LETTER VIII
Scottish Literati ............................................................................................. 54
Mr Wastle...................................................................................................... 54
Tories ............................................................................................................ 56
Whigs ............................................................................................................ 57
Clergy............................................................................................................ 57
David Hume .................................................................................................. 57
LETTER IX
David Hume’s Portrait .................................................................................. 61
Cranioscopy .................................................................................................. 61
Portrait of Rousseau ...................................................................................... 62
Hume and Rousseau ...................................................................................... 63
LETTER X
The Man of Feeling ....................................................................................... 65
Warren Hasting’s Face .................................................................................. 66
Mr Mackenzie ............................................................................................... 66
Mr Adam Roland .......................................................................................... 68
Mr Mackenzie and Mr Roland ...................................................................... 68
Sportsmanship ............................................................................................... 69
Old Stories .................................................................................................... 69
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I 13
LETTER XI
Burns’s Dinner .............................................................................................. 71
Edinburgh Review on Burns ......................................................................... 74
Burns’s Dinner .............................................................................................. 75
Mrs Burns—Mr Maule.................................................................................. 75
Mr Cockburn ................................................................................................. 76
Whig-Bigotry ................................................................................................ 76
Mr Wordsworth ............................................................................................. 78
LETTER XII
Mr John Wilson............................................................................................. 80
The Ettrick Shepherd .................................................................................... 81
The Jolly Beggars.......................................................................................... 83
Crabbe and Burns .......................................................................................... 85
Burns’s Dinner .............................................................................................. 86
The Ettrick Shepherd’s Face ......................................................................... 87
The Ettrick Shepherd .................................................................................... 87
Mr Patrick Robertson .................................................................................... 89
LETTER XIII
University of Edinburgh................................................................................ 90
System of Education ..................................................................................... 92
Neglect of Classical Learning ....................................................................... 93
Classical Learning ......................................................................................... 95
Study of History ............................................................................................ 96
Classical Learning—Language ..................................................................... 99
University of Edinburgh................................................................................ 99
Mr Christison .............................................................................................. 100
Mr Dunbar................................................................................................... 101
LETTER XIV
The Ethical Class-room ............................................................................... 102
Dr Thomas Brown....................................................................................... 104
LETTER XV
Professor Playfair ........................................................................................ 109
New Observatory ........................................................................................ 109
David Hume’s Monument ........................................................................... 110
LETTER XVI
Scottish Students ......................................................................................... 112
Cheapness of Education in Scotland ........................................................... 113
Scottish Students ......................................................................................... 114
LETTER XVII
English Universities .................................................................................... 117
English and Scotch Universities.................................................................. 119
LETTER XVIII
Society of Edinburgh .................................................................................. 121
Lawyers ........................................................................................................ 122
Advocates.................................................................................................... 122
Writers to the Signet ................................................................................... 123
Men of Business .......................................................................................... 123
Society of Edinburgh .................................................................................. 124
LETTER XIX
Balls and Routs ........................................................................................... 126
Present Style of Dress ................................................................................. 127
Legs and Ancles .......................................................................................... 127
Scotch Dancing ........................................................................................... 129
Scotch Quadrilles ........................................................................................ 130
Hornem’s Waltz .......................................................................................... 131
LETTER XX
Edinburgh—Houses .................................................................................... 134
Edinburgh—Cadies ..................................................................................... 135
Gaelic Language ......................................................................................... 137
Edinburgh Cadies ........................................................................................ 138
LETTER XXI
Dr Brewster ................................................................................................. 140
Professor Jameson ....................................................................................... 141
Natural History............................................................................................ 144
Mr James Wilson ........................................................................................ 147
Ornithology—Swallows.............................................................................. 148
Professor Jameson ....................................................................................... 148
LETTER XXII
Debating Societies....................................................................................... 149
Speculative Society ..................................................................................... 149
Lord Nelson Tavern .................................................................................... 150
Mr Barclay .................................................................................................. 151
Speculative Society ..................................................................................... 152
LETTER XXIII
Cranioscopy and Craniology ....................................................................... 159
Madonnas .................................................................................................... 162
Hercules Farnese ......................................................................................... 163
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I 15
LETTER XXIV
Edinburgh Blue-Stockings .......................................................................... 165
A Rout ......................................................................................................... 166
A Rout—Mr Jeffrey .................................................................................... 167
A Rout—Mr Leslie ..................................................................................... 167
A Rout—Lord Buchan ................................................................................ 168
A Rout ......................................................................................................... 168
A Rout—Music ........................................................................................... 169
A Rout ......................................................................................................... 169
LETTER XXV
Edinburgh Blue-Stockings .......................................................................... 171
Mrs Grant of Laggan ................................................................................... 171
LETTER XXVI
Theatre ........................................................................................................ 173
Theatre—Gas-Light .................................................................................... 174
Theatre ........................................................................................................ 174
Theatre—Rob Roy ...................................................................................... 176
Mr Mackay in Baillie Jarvie........................................................................ 177
Theatre—Mr Murray................................................................................... 178
Mrs Henry Siddons ..................................................................................... 178
Theatre ........................................................................................................ 179
LETTER XXVII
Edinburgh—The Castle............................................................................... 180
Faustus ........................................................................................................ 182
PETER’S LETTERS
TO
HIS KINSFOLK
___________
LETTER I
TO THE REV. DAVID WILLIAMS
OMAN’S HOTEL, EDINBURGH, MARCH 5

I ARRIVED here last night, only two hours later than my calculation at
Liverpool, which was entirely owing to a small accident that befel
Scrub, as I was coming down the hill to Musselburgh. I was so much
engaged with the view, that I did not remark him stumble once or twice,
and at last down he came, having got a pretty long nail run into his foot.
I turned round to curse John, but perceived that he had been fast asleep
during the whole affair. However, it happened luckily that there was a
farrier’s shop only a few yards on, and by his assistance we were soon
in a condition to move again. My chief regret was being obliged to make
my entry into the city after night-fall, in consequence of the delay; and
yet that is no great matter neither. As for the shandrydan, I have never
had the least reason to repent my bringing it with me. It is positively the
very best vehicle in existence. The lightness of the gig—the capacity of
the chariot—and the stylishness of the car—it is a wonderful combina-
tion of excellencies. But I forget your old quizzing about my Hobby.
My evil genius, in the shape of an old drivelling turnpike-man,
directed me to put up at the Black Bull, a crowded, noisy, shabby,
uncomfortable inn, frequented by all manner of stage-coaches and their
contents, as my ears were well taught before morning. Having devoured
a tolerable breakfast, however, I began to feel myself in a more genial
condition than I had expected, after so long a journey, and sallied out to
deliver one or two letters of introduction, and take a general view of the
town, in a temper which even you might have envied. To say the truth,
I know not a feeling of more delightful excitation, than that which
attends a traveller, when he sallies out of a fine clear morning, to make
his first survey of a splendid city, to which he is a stranger. I have often
before experienced this charming spirit-stirring sensation. Even now, I
remember, with a kind of solemn enthusiasm, the day when (in your
company too, my dear David,) I opened my window at the White Horse,
Fetter-lane, and beheld, for the first time, the chimneys and smoke (for
there what else could I behold?) of London. I remember the brief devoirs
paid by us both to our coffee and muffins, and the spring of juvenile
elasticity with which we bounded, rather than walked, into the midst of
the hum, hurry, and dusky magnificence of Fleet-Street. How we stared
at Temple-Bar! How our young blood boiled within us, as we passed
over the very stones that had drank the drops as they oozed from the
fresh-dissevered head of brave old Balmerino! With what consciousness
of reverence did we pace along the Strand—retiring now and then into
a corner to consult our pocket-map—and returning with a high
satisfaction, to feel ourselves under the shadow of edifices, whose very
names were enough for us! How we stood agaze at Charing Cross! The
statue of the Martyr at our right—Whitehall on our left—Westminster
Abbey, lifting itself like a cloud before us—pillars and palaces all
around, and the sun lighting up the whole scene with rays enriched by
the deep tinges of the atmosphere through which they passed.
I do not pretend to compare my own feelings now-a-days with those
of that happy time—neither have I any intention of representing Edin-
burgh as a place calculated to produce the same sublime impressions,
which every Englishman must experience when he first finds himself in
London. The imagination of a Southern does not connect with this
northern city so many glorious recollections of antiquity, nor is there
any thing to be compared with the feeling of moral reverence, accorded
by even the dullest of mankind, to the actual seat and centre of the wisest
and greatest government in the world. Without at all referring to these
things, the gigantic bulk and population of London, are, of themselves,
more than sufficient to make it the most impressive of all earthly cities.
In no place is one so sensible, at once, to the littleness and the greatness
of his nature—how insignificant the being that forms a scarcely distin-
guishable speck in that huge sweep of congregated existence—yet how
noble the spirit which has called together that mass—which rules and
guides and animates them all—which so adorns their combination, and
LETTER I 19
teaches the structures of art almost to rival the vastness of Nature. How
awful is the idea which the poet has expressed, when he speaks of “all
that mighty heart!”
And yet there is no lack of food for enthusiasm even here. Here is the
capital of an ancient, independent, and heroic nation, abounding in
buildings ennobled by the memory of illustrious inhabitants in the old
times, and illustrious deeds of good and of evil; and in others, which
hereafter will be reverenced by posterity, for the sake of those that
inhabit them now. Above all, here is all the sublimity of situation and
scenery—mountains near and afar off—rocks and glens—and the sea
itself, almost within hearing of its waves. I was prepared to feel much;
and yet you will not wonder when I tell you, that I felt more than I was
prepared for. You know my mother was a Scotchwoman, and therefore,
you will comprehend that I viewed the whole with some little of the
pride of her nation. I arrived, at least, without prejudices against that
which I should see, and was ready to open myself to such impressions
as might come.
I know no city, where the lofty feelings, generated by the ideas of
antiquity, and the multitude of human beings, are so much swelled and
improved by the admixture of those other lofty, perhaps yet loftier feel-
ings, which arise from the contemplation of free and spacious nature
herself. Edinburgh, even were its population as great as that of London,
could never be merely a city. Here there must always be present the idea
of the comparative littleness of all human works. Here the proudest of
palaces must be content to catch the shadows of mountains; and the
grandest of fortresses to appear like the dwellings of pigmies, perched
on the very bulwarks of creation. Everywhere—all around—you have
rocks frowning over rocks in imperial elevation, and descending, among
the smoke and dust of a city, into dark depths such as nature alone can
excavate. The builders of the old city, too, appear as if they had made
nature the model of their architecture. Seen through the lowering mist
which almost perpetually envelopes them, the huge masses of these
erections, so high, so rugged in their outlines, so heaped together, and
conglomerated and wedged into each other, are not easily to be distin-
guished from the yet larger and bolder forms of cliff and ravine, among
which their foundations have been pitched. There is a certain gloomy
indistinctness in the formation of these fantastic piles, which leaves the
eye, that would scrutinize and penetrate them, unsatisfied and dim with
gazing.
In company with the first friend I saw, (of whom more anon,) I
proceeded at once to take a look of this superb city from a height, placed
just over the point where the old and new parts of the town meet. These
two quarters of the city, or rather these two neighbouring but distinct
cities, are separated by a deep green valley, which once contained a lake,
and which is now crossed at one place by a huge earthen mound, and at
another by a magnificent bridge of three arches. This valley runs off
towards the æstuary of the Forth, which lies about a mile and a half from
the city, and between the city and the sea there rises on each side of it a
hill—to the south that called Arthur’s Seat—to the north the lower and
yet sufficiently commanding eminence on which I now stood—the
Calton Hill.
This hill, which rises about 350 feet above the level of the sea, is, in
fact, nothing more than a huge pile of rocks covered with a thin coating
of soil, and, for the most part, with a beautiful verdure. It has lately been
circled all round with spacious gravelled walks, so that one reaches the
summit without the least fatigue. It seems as if you had not quitted the
streets, so easy is the ascent; and yet where did streets or city ever afford
such a prospect! The view changes every moment as you proceed; yet
what grandeur of unity in the general and ultimate impression! At first,
you see only the skirts of the New Town, with apparently few public
edifices, to diversify the grand uniformity of their outlines; then you
have a rich plain, with green fields, groves, and villas, gradually losing
itself in the sea-port town of Edinburgh,—Leith. Leith covers, for a brief
space, the margin of that magnificent Frith, which recedes upwards
among an amphitheatre of mountains, and opens downward into the
ocean, broken everywhere by isles green and smiling, excepting where
the bare brown rock of the Bass lifts itself above the waters midway to
the sea. As you move round, the Frith disappears, and you have Arthur’s
Seat in your front. In the valley between lies Holyrood, ruined—deso-
late—but majestic in its desolation. From thence the Old Town stretches
its dark shadow—up, in a line to the summit of the Castle rock—a royal
residence at either extremity—and all between an indistinguishable
mass of black tower-like structures—the concentrated “walled city,”
which has stood more sieges than I can tell of.
Here we paused for a time, enjoying the majestic gloom of this most
picturesque of cities. A thick blue smoke hung low upon the houses, and
their outlines reposed behind on ridges of purple clouds;—the smoke,
and the clouds, and the murky air, giving yet more extravagant bulk and
altitude to those huge strange dwellings, and increasing the power of
contrast which met our view, when a few paces more brought us once
LETTER I 21
again upon the New Town—the airy bridge—the bright green vale
below and beyond it—and skirting the line of the vale on either side, the
rough crags of the Castle rock, and the broad glare of Prince’s Street,
that most superb of terraces—all beaming in the open yellow light of
the sun—steeples and towers, and cupolas scattered bright beneath our
feet—and, far as the eye could reach, the whole pomp and richness of
distant commotion—the heart of the city.
Such was my first view of Edinburgh. I descended again into her
streets in a sort of stupor of admiration.
___________
Excuse my troubling you with all this, now that I have written it; but
do not be alarmed with any fear, lest I should propose to treat you with
much more of the same kind of diet. I have no intention to send you a
description of the cities and scenery of Scotland. I refer you semel et
simul to Sir John Carr and our dear countryman Mr Pennant. I have
always been “a fisher of men;” and here also, I promise you, I mean to
stick to my vocation. But enough for the present.
Your’s sincerely
P. M.
P. S.—You will observe by the date of my letter, I have already left

the Black Bull. I write from one of the most comfortable hotels I ever
was in, and have already ascertained the excellence of the port.
LETTER II
TO THE SAME
OMAN’S, MARCH 6
DEAR DAVID,
DO you recollect Wastle of Trinity? I suspect not; but you have heard
of him a thousand times. And yet you may have met him at my rooms,
or North’s; for I think he determined, after you began to reside. At all
events, you remember to have heard me describe his strange eccentric
character—his dissolute behaviour during the first years of his resi-
dence—his extravagant zeal of study afterwards—last of all, the absurd-
ity of his sudden elopement, without a degree, after having astonished
the examining masters by the splendid commencement of his examina-
tion. The man is half-mad in some things; and that is the key of the
whole mystery.
Wastle and I were great friends during the first terms I spent at Jesus.
He had gone to school at Harrow with my brother Samuel, and called
on me the very day I entered. What a life was ours in that thoughtless
prime of our days! We spent all the mornings after lecture in utter loung-
ing—eating ice at Jubb’s—flirting with Miss Butler—bathing in the
Charwell, and so forth. And then, after dinner, we used to have our fruit
and wine carried into the garden, (I mean at Trinity,) and there we sat,
three or four of us, sipping away for a couple of hours, under the dark
refreshing shade of those old beechen bowers. Evensong was no sooner
over, than we would down to the Isis, and man one, or sometimes two
of Mother Hall’s boats, and so run races against each other, or some of
our friends, to Iffley or Sandford. What lots of bread and butter we used
to devour at tea, and what delight we felt in rowing back in the cool
misty evening—sometimes the moon up long ere we reached Christ
Church meadows again. A light supper—cheese-and-bread and let-
tuces—and a joyous bowl of Bishop—these were the regular conclu-
sion. I would give half I am worth to live one week of it over again. At
that time, Wastle and I, Tom Vere (of Corpus,) and one or two more,
were never separate above three or four hours in the day.
I was on my way to deliver a letter of introduction to a young barrister
LETTER II 23
of this place, when, in turning the corner of a street, my old friend, Will
Wastle, passed close at my elbow. I knew him in a moment, although
he is greatly changed, and called after him. He turned round with a fierce
air, as if loth to be disturbed, (for he was evidently up to the chin in
meditation;) but, on recognising his ancient acquaintance, nothing could
be more hearty than the kindness of his countenance. After a few hurried
interrogations on both sides, diversified by scarcely any responses on
either, I took his arm and began to explain to him the purposes of my
visit to a city in which he had so little expectation of seeing me. He
accompanied me immediately to the Calton Hill, of which I spoke in my
last, and where, as he assured me, he spends at least one hour every day
when in Edinburgh. On coming down he carried me to the Hotel where
I now am; and, having seen my baggage and horse fairly established,
and walked a good deal about the town, we proceeded to his house,
where I remained for the rest of the day. I assure you this rencounter has
afforded me the highest pleasure, and I doubt not it will be of infinite
use to me, moreover—for Wastle is perhaps, of all men, the very person
I should have selected to act as my Cicerone in Scotland. Indeed, I
wonder at myself for not having made more accurate enquiries about
him before I set out; but I had somehow got a confused idea in my head
that he was resident in France or Germany, and really had never thought
of him in relation to my own schemes of visiting his country. He has
already introduced me to several very pleasant fellows here. But before
I describe his companions, I must endeavour to give you some little
notion of himself.
After leaving Oxford under the strange circumstances you have often
heard me speak of, he proceeded to the North, where he spent several
years in severe study, not a whit discouraged in his views, or shaken
from his attachments, by the singular catastrophe to which the con-
stitutional and irresistible panic of a moment had exposed him. He
changed, however, but indeed it was scarcely possible for him to do
otherwise, the course and tenor of his usual pursuits; passing for a time
from the classics, with the greater part of whom he had formed a pretty
accurate acquaintance, and flinging himself over head and ears into the
very heart of Gothic antiquities, and the history, poetry, and romance of
the middle ages. These he has quitted by fits and starts, and spent the
intervals of their neglect in making himself far better skilled than is
common in the modern literature of foreign countries, as well as of
England; but ever since, and up to this moment, they form the staple of
his occupation—the daily bread of his mind. He lives almost continually
in the days gone by, and feels himself, as he says, almost a stranger
among matters which might be supposed to be nearer to him. And yet
he is any thing but a stranger to the world he actually lives in; although
indeed he does perhaps regard not a few both of its men and its things,
with somewhat of the coldness of an unconcerned visitor. In short, for
there is no need to disguise the fact to you, he has nursed himself into
such a fervent veneration for the thoughts and feelings of the more
ancient times of his country and of ours, (for as to that matter he is no
bigot,) that he cannot witness, without a deep mixture of bile, the
adoration paid by those around him to thoughts, feelings, and persons,
for whom he entertains, if not absolute, at the least no inconsiderable
comparative contempt. I have said that he is not a bigot, in regard to any
old ideas of difference between his own country and ours. This I
attribute in a great measure, certainly, to the course of study he has so
devoutly pursued, and which could not have failed, in making him
acquainted with the ancient condition of both countries, to reveal to him
far more points of agreement than disagreement between them. But a
part of his liberality must also, I should think, be ascribed to the
influence of his education in England, more particularly in Oxford; his
long residence in that noble city having filled the finest part of his mind
with reverent ideas, concerning both the old and the present grandeur of
England, such as can never be eradicated, nor even weakened, by any
after experience of his life. Such, I suspect, from his conversation, to be
the truth of the case; and yet it is only from odd hints and suggestions,
that I have made shift to gather so much, for, of all men living, he is the
least chargeable with the sin of dissertation, and I never heard him in
my life give more than one sentence to the expression of any opinion he
entertains.
Having now succeeded to the family estate, which is a very ancient,
and a tolerably productive one, he feels himself perfectly at liberty to
pursue whatever mode of life is most agreeable to his fancy. He has
travelled a good deal on the continent of Europe, and even penetrated
into Asia Minor and Egypt, as far up as the Pyramids. These journies,
however, could only have been undertaken for the purpose of gratifying
some very ardent curiosity, in regard to a few particular points con-
nected with his former devotedness to classical learning; and he now
declares, that, unless he should be tempted to visit Spain for the sake of
her cathedrals, he will never again leave the white cliffs behind him. He
makes an annual or biennial trip to London; but, with this exception, he
is always to be found either at his old castle in Berwickshire, or here in
LETTER II 25
Edinburgh, where he has a very snug house, although by no means in a

fashionable part of the town. From a feeling of respect for his ancestors,
he refuses to quit the old family-residence, which is no other than a
lodging up five pair of stairs, in one of those huge aerial edifices of the
Old Town—edifices which sometimes contain beneath a single roof a
population, layer above layer, household above household, more
numerous than that of many a street in many a city south of the “ideal
line.” Here Wastle still sits in the same enormously stuffed and pro-
digiously backed elbow-chair, and still reposes beneath the same ante-
diluvian testers which served his grandfather, his great-grandfather, and
all his generations back, for aught I know, to the days of Queen Mary;
it being on many occasions his most chosen boast, that the degradation
which affects, in other houses, the blood of the race, has touched in his
house nothing but their furniture, and has not totally destroyed even that.
My friend ushered me into this remarkable habitation of his, not only
without the least symptom of shame for its apparent obscurity, and the
equally apparent filth of its approach, but with a certain air of proud and
haughty satisfaction, as if he would have been ashamed to have con-
ducted me to one of the newer, more commodious, and more elegant
houses we had seen in the New Town. “The times are changed,” says
he, “since my grandfather, the Lord of Session, used to see all the ladies
of quality in Edinburgh in this old-fashioned habitaculum. I desire to
see none of them here now. I have a tailor for my neighbour immedi-
ately below me—a cobbler—a tallow-chandler—a dancing-master—a
grocer—and a cow-feeder, are all between me and the street; and above,
God knows what store of washerwomen—French teachers—auc-
tioneers—midwives—seamstresses—and students of divinity, are be-
tween me and the chimney-top. But no matter. I have some claret, which
is not too old to be tasteable; and I shall make an endeavour to give you,
at least, as good commons as you were used to at the Bachelor’s table
of Trinity.”
I had no reason to complain of his fare, although I confess, when the
covers were first removed, I was not without some apprehensions, that
it might prove as Methuselamitish as his dwelling. Whether that might,
or might not be, the provender was excellent. It consisted, primo, of
broth made from a sheep’s head, with a copious infusion of parsley, and
other condiments, which I found more than palatable, especially after,
at my host’s request, I added a spoonful or two of Burgess to it.
Secundo, came the aforementioned sheep’s head in propria per-
sona—the hair having been taken off, not by the knife, but by the hot-
iron, and the skin retaining from this operation, not only an inky hue,
which would astound an Exmoorian, but a delicious, oily, fragrant
gusto, worthy of being transferred, me judice, to the memorandum-book
of Beauvilliers himself. These being removed, then came a leg of
roasted mutton, five years old at the least, from the Castlemains of
Wastle. A dish of pancakes, very finely powdered with sugar, brought
up the rear of the dinner, every five minutes of which we washed down
with a glass of rare sherry, as ancient as Falstaff, or Johannisberg, which
my friend had imported himself from the very cellars of Metternich. A
ewe-milk cheese, which I found as good as any thing that ever came
from the Pays de Vaud, and a glass of ale, such as I could not beat even
in Cardigan, formed a sort of appendage to the feast; and just before the
cloth was drawn, I tasted, for the first time, a liqueur, which I prefer
vastly to all the Marasquin—ay, to all the Curaçoa in existence—the
genuine Usquebaugh of Lochaber. Our Chateau-la-fitte and olives went
down after this repast like very nectar and ambrosia. But you will say, I
am a gourmand even upon paper.
To conclude with a portrait of my entertainer.—William Wastle is a
pale-faced, grave-looking, thin gentleman, of forty years old, or thereby.
He has a stoop in his gait, and walks with his toes in; but his limbs seem
full of sinew, and he is of a seemly breadth across the back. He uses to
wear a hat of singular broad brim, like a Quaker, for the convenience of
shadow to his eyes, which are weak, though piercing. These he farther
comforts and assists by means of a pair of spectacles, of the pure crys-
talline in winter, “but throughout the sunny portion of the year,” green.
His nose is turned up somewhat at the point, as it were disdainfully. His
lips would be altogether indiscernible, but for the line of their division;
and can call up in no mind (unless, perchance, on the principle of con-
trast) any phantasy either of cherry or rose-bud, to say nothing about
bees. This yellow visage of his, with his close firm lips, and his grey
eyes shining through his spectacles, as through a burning-glass, more
brightly—the black beard not over diligently shorn—all lurking under
the projecting shadow of that strange brim, compose such a physiog-
nomy, as one would less wonder to meet with in Valladolid, than in
Edinburgh. It is plain, yet not ugly. It is monastic, yet it is not anchoretic.
It is bitter, and yet it wants not gleams of sheer good humour. In short,
it belongs, and only could belong, to the nervous, irritable, enthusiastic,
sarcastic William Wastle. The years which had passed since our parting,
had exaggerated the lines of this countenance, and entirely removed
every vestige of its bloom. But the features were too marked to have
LETTER II 27
undergone any essential alteration; and after dinner, when some half a
dozen bumpers of claret had somewhat smoothed its asperities, I could
almost have fancied myself to be once more transported back to the
common-room of Trinity or Jesus.
To you, who know us of old, I need scarcely add, that two Oxonians
meeting after such a separation, over such wine, were in no hurry to
shorten their sederunt. I think it is very creditable to me, however, that
I retained enough of my senses to be able to find my way to Oman’s,
without accepting, far less asking, either direction or assistance. Of
course, I am too well-seasoned a cask to feel the smallest bad effects
this morning. Quite the contrary: I have already swallowed three cups
of coffee, as many rolls and eggs, and about a pound of excellent
mutton-ham, and expect my old friend every moment to resume his
functions as my Lionizer.
Ever your’s,
P. M.
LETTER III
TO THE SAME
MARCH 14
DEAR DAVID,
IF you knew what a life I have led since I wrote to you, you would
certainly feel no difficulty in comprehending the reason of my silence.
I thought my days of utter dissipation had been long since over, but I
fear your clerical frown would have told me quite the reverse, had you
been present almost any evening that has passed since my arrival in
Edinburgh. I shall not shock you with any of the particulars; remember
that you were once a layman yourself, and try to excuse about the worst
you can imagine. What a glorious night we spent at your rooms the
Saturday before you took orders!
I continue, notwithstanding all this, to pick up a vast deal of infor-
mation concerning the present literary, political, and religious condition
of this country; and I have already jotted down the heads of several
highly valuable letters, in which I design, ere long, to embody the elite
of all my acquisitions for your benefit and that of Jack. Perhaps, how-
ever, the facts I have gathered may be nothing the worse for undergoing
a more leisurely digestion in my own mind, before I think of conveying
them to your’s. Depend upon it, that I shall very soon put you in pos-
session of more knowledge, touching Scotland, than was ever revealed
to any wondering common-room, by any travelled or travelling tutor,
since the days of Dr Johnson. So have patience.
Wastle was never more completely in his element, than when he took
me to see Holyrood. You, who delight in honest enthusiasm, whatever
be its object, would have been gratified beyond measure, with the high
zealous air of dignfied earnestness he assumed, long before we arrived
even within sight of the old palace. From his own house, the way thither
lies straight down the only great street of the Old Town—a street, by far
the most impressive in its character, of any I have ever seen in Britain.
The sombre shadows, cast by those huge houses of which it is com-
posed, and the streams of faint light cutting the darkness here and there,
where the entrance to some fantastic alley pierces the sable mass of
LETTER III 29
building—the strange projectings, recedings, and windings—the

roofs—the stairs—the windows, all so luxuriating in the endless variety
of carved work; the fading and mouldering coats of arms, helmets,
crests, coronets, supporters, mantles, and pavilions; all these testi-
monials of forgotten pride, mingled so profusely with the placards of
old clothes-men, and every ensign of plebeian wretchedness; it is not
possible to imagine more speaking emblems of the decay of a once royal
city, or a more appropriate avenue to a deserted palace. My friend was
at home in every nook of this labyrinth. I believe he could more easily
tell in what particular house of the Canongate any given lord or baron
dwelt two hundred years ago, than he could in what street of the new
city his descendant of the present day is to be found. It was quite
marvellous with what facility he expounded the minutest hieroglyphics
which had, no doubt, once been visible on shields of which my eye
could now see nothing but rough outlines and smooth surfaces. “Ha!”
said he, “the crescents and the sheaves!” pointing to a tall thin building,
from the windows of which sundry patches of wet linen hung dangling
over our heads—“the crescents within the tressure—the sheaves—and
the sword in pale on the escutcheon of pretence—this was once the
palace of the Seatons—Oh! domus antiqua, heu! quam dispari
dominare domino!” A little on, the Heart and Stars of Douglas—the
Lymphads of Argyle—the Lion of Dundas, and I know not how many
monsters of how many chieftains, were all saluted in their turn with like
exclamations of reverence. He directed my attention to a building of
prodigious elevation on the right, altogether having very much the
appearance of the more ancient hotels in Paris, and informed me that
here was the residence of the Hamiltons, after they had left their house
without the walls, in the time of James VI; “and here,” said he, pointing
right forwards, “is Holyrood. You are already within the liberty, for we
have crossed the strand.”
At first sight, this ancient habitation has truly a great deal of royalty
in its aspect. Two huge square towers; one many centuries older than
the other, but still sufficiently like to balance each other nobly; a low
curtain between these, and, in the centre, a spacious gateway under a
lofty canopy, somewhat after the fashion of a crown imperial, the whole
of fine old grey stone; in front, an open esplanade, paved with massy
pieces of granite, and a few kilted grenadiers loitering about the gate—
all had an appearance of neglected majesty, which I could not help
feeling to be abundantly impressive. The Laird uncovered himself as we
stept into the porch, and I saw, by his manner, that I should sorely offend
him by omitting the same mark of veneration. Within, I found a

melancholy quadrangle, for the most part of a noble architecture, but all
over as black as if the sun had never shone upon it since the death of
Queen Elizabeth. An ancient gentlewoman, with whom my friend
seemed to be on terms of infinite familiarity, undertook forthwith to
conduct us over the interior. Here, but for the power of memory, and it
may be of imagination, I suspect there would not, after all, be much to
merit particular attention. The gallery is long and stately, but the vile
daubs of Fergus I and his progenitors, entirely disfigure it. The adjoining
apartments of Queen Mary, now appropriated to the use of the family
of Hamilton, are far from noble in their dimensions; but there is a
genuine air of antique grandeur in the hangings and furniture of the
inner apartments, none of which have been changed since the time of
the most unfortunate of Queens and Beauties—and this is enough to
atone for every thing. In the state-room also, the attendant pointed out a
cypher, which she said was Mary’s, but Wastle told me, that, in fact,
that room had been last fitted up for Charles I, and that the cypher was
composed of his initials, and those of his Queen Henrietta Maria. Here,
then, is the bed in which Mary slept with Darnley—the closet where
Rizzio was murdered—the ante-chamber in which Knox insulted his
sovereign, and made it his boast that he “cared little for the pleasant face
of a gentlewoman.” There are some portraits, and one exquisite one of
Mary herself—I mean an exquisitely beautiful portrait of some exquisite
beauty—for as to the real features of the lovely Queen, he must be a
more skilful antiquarian than I pretend to be, who could venture any
guess with respect to them. Even her eyes are represented of many
different colours; but this I only take as an evidence, that they were of
that most delicious of all hues, if hue it may be called, that is as
changeful as the cameleon—the hazel. I think it is Mackenzie that raves
somewhere so delightfully about those softest, and yet most queen-like
of eyes. They have not indeed the dazzling sparkle of the Jewish or
Italian black, neither have they the vestal calmness of the blue—but they
are the only eyes in the world that have the watery swimming lustre of
conscious weakness—and when they can change this for the fire of
command, and flash annihilation from their contracting lids, what eyes
can be compared to them?—what eyes could be so fitting for Mary?
The portrait is very beautiful indeed, but it is only a miniature, and by
no means satisfies my imagination so much as that in the picture gallery
of the Bodleian. There is nothing I should like better than to ascertain
the real history of that painting. It is so softly executed, that, at first
LETTER III 31
sight, one would suppose it to be done in water colours, and to be

covered with a glass. But it is in oils, and on a very old piece of oak (for
I once took it down to examine it.) It strikes me, that they used to tell
some story about its having been painted by a nun before Mary left
France; but I suspect the tradition of its history is very vague and
uncertain. I think, however, the picture carries much more of the air of
reality about it than any I have seen. What luxurious pensiveness in the
lips! what irresistible melting radiance in the eyes—the eye-lids how
beautifully oval; the eye-lashes how long, how tender! there was nobody
ever invented the like except Correggio . . . . . But I forget that I am not
talking to the Laird of Wastle, who would fain, if he could, make not
only a beauty, but a saint of her.
There is also a fine portrait of Charles I—one of the many, many
masterly Vandykes. The king is in a riding habit; he has the same
indescribable look of majesty and melancholy which makes it impos-
sible for any man to look upon it without wondering by what process of
brutalizing, even a Cromwell or a Bradshaw should ever have learned
to regard the original without the reverence of humility. How could any
common mortal feel otherwise than abashed in the presence of that
“grey discrowned head?”—And Charles kept his court here too for a
time, and Laud preached, and Rothes flattered, and the Presbyterians
themselves looked smoothly on all the pageants of his state. What a
different kind of journey he lived to make hither, and what a different
kind of return to his Whitehall!
Some spacious, but uncomfortable looking apartments in the newer
part of the quadrangle, were occupied by the Bourbon princes during
their stay here. I saw the Prie-dieu used by Monsieur, and many other
little relics of their Catholic devotion; but in truth, I neither felt, nor
pretended to feel, either curiosity or interest about tracing the footsteps
of these gentlemen. I have seen these younger sprigs of the lily, and with
all my respect for the good old king himself, I wish the lily were rid of
a few of its incumbrances. I shall write very soon again, and I hope in a
more amusing way.
Your’s ever,
P. M.
P. S.—I forgot to mention the only inhabitants of this Palace, or rather

of its precincts, are gentlemen, who find it convenient to take advantage
of the sanctuary still afforded by the royalty of the soil. All around the
Palace itself, and its most melancholy garden, there are a variety of little
miserable patchwork dwellings, inhabited by a considerable population

of gentry, who prefer a residence here to one in a jail. They have abun-
dance of room here within their limits, for the whole of Arthur’s Seat is,
I believe, considered as part of the royal domain. However, they emerge
into the town of a Sunday; and I am told some of them contrive to cut a
very fashionable figure in the streets, while the catch-poles, in obedi-
ence to the commandment, “rest from working.”
LETTER IV
TO THE SAME
MARCH 20
I BELIEVE, that had I given myself up entirely to the direction of my
friend the Laird, I should have known, up to this hour, very little about
any part of Edinburgh more modern than the Canongate, and perhaps
heard as little about any worthies she has produced since the murder of
Archbishop Sharpe. He seemed to consider it a matter of course, that,
morning after morning, the whole of my time ought to be spent in
examining the structure of those gloomy tenements in wynds and closes,
which had, in the old time, been honoured with the residence of the
haughty Scottish barons, or the French ambassadors and generals, their
constant visitors. In vain did I assure him, that houses of exactly the
same sort were to be seen in abundance in the city of London, and that
even I myself had been wearied of counting the fleurs-de-lis carved on
every roof and chimney-piece of a green-grocer’s habitation in Min-
cing-lane. Of such food, in his estimation, there could be no satiety;
every land had its coat-of-arms, and every quartering called up to his
memory the whole history of some unfortunate amour, or still more
unfortunate marriage—in so much that, had I taken accurate notes of all
his conversation, I am persuaded I might, before this time, have been in
a condition to fill more sheets than you might be likely to peruse, with
all the mysteries of the causes celebres, or, to speak more plainly, of the
Scandalous Chronicle of Scotland.—What horrors of barbarism—what
scenes of murder, rape, incest—seem to have been the staple com-
modities of week-day life among these ferocious nobles! But, in good
truth, I did not come to Scotland to learn such things as these; and
although a little sprinkling of them might be very well in its way, I soon
found it expedient to give my good friend a slight hint, that I wished he
could contrive to afford me something else for the main woof of my
meditations. . . . . . He begins to understand my drift, and will, I think,
learn to accommodate himself to my humour, pas-a-pas.
Notwithstanding all his devotion to the past, indeed, he is far from
being an unconcerned or inept observer of more modern things—and I
have already said as much. He is quite au fait, I have found, in regard

to the history and performances of all the leading characters of the pre-
sent day in Scotland; but, unless when questions are put to him, he
seems, with a very few exceptions, to make a point of never alluding to
their existence. It would appear as if he was not over anxious to remem-
ber that such people are; but when the conversation actually turns on
them and their merits, he expresses himself apparently in no uncandid
manner concerning the least—and in a tone of genuine admiration con-
cerning the greatest of them. But I despair of making you comprehend
the vagaries of such an original.
I wish you had a few minutes’ use of the magical mirror, if it were
only that you might enjoy one view of him, as he sits wrapped up in his
huge blue velvet robe-de-chambre, with a night-cap of the same,
dashing execrations by the dozen upon the whigs, the presbyterians, and
the Edinburgh reviewers; for his splenetic imagination jumbles them all
together—disjecta membra poetae—in one chaos of abomination.
Could one enter into his premises of prejudice, one might perhaps find
less difficulty in joining in his sweeping sentences of conclusion. He
considers whiggery as having been the ruin of the independence of his
country, and as forming, at this moment, the principal engine for
degrading the character of his countrymen. I own I am rather at a loss
to discover what he means by “whiggery,” (for he never deigns to give
a definition;) and all I know of the matter is, that it is something for
which he equally vituperates Mr Halkston of Rathillet, and Mr Francis
Jeffrey,—two persons, between whom, I suspect, few other people
would find many circumstances of resemblance,—and each of whom, I
am quite sure, would disdain, with all his might, the idea of being
coupled with the other. What you or I might be apt to designate by the
same term, would, I am certain, coincide in very few points with any
notion he may happen to affix to it. But, perchance, we may be able to
get a little more light as we go on. In the mean time, Wastle has gone
into the country for a few days, upon some of his county politics. I
wished to have gone with him, but had caught a vile cold, and did not
care for aggravating it. I shall have more leisure to write during his
absence; so expect a long letter next time.
P. M.
LETTER V
TO LADY JOHNES
DEAR AUNT,
YOU ask me to speak more particularly concerning the external aspect
and manners of the people among whom I am sojourning. I wish it were
as easy for me to satisfy your curiosity on some other points mentioned
in your last letter, as on this.
The Scots are certainly rather a hard-favoured race than otherwise;
but I think their looks are very far from meriting the sort of common-
place sarcasms their southern neighbours are used to treat them with.
Indeed, no one who has seen a Scots regiment, as I should suppose you
must have done, can possibly be of opinion that they are at all an ugly
nation; although it is very likely he may be inclined to prefer the general
appearance of some other nation or nations to theirs. For my part, I am
not without suspicion, that a little longer residence among them might
teach me to become an absolute admirer of their physiognomies; at
least, I am sensible, that the slight repugnance I felt for them at first, has
already very considerably given way.
What the Scottish physiognomists are used to talk of, with the highest
satisfaction, is the air of superior intelligence stamped on the faces of
their countrymen of the lower orders of society; and indeed there is no
question, a Scottish peasant, with his long dry visage, his sharp promi-
nent cheekbones, his grey twinkling eyes, and peaked chin, would seem
a very Argus, if set up close beside the sleek and ponderous chubbiness
of a Gloucestershire farmer—to say nothing of the smarter and ruddier
oiliness of some of our own country folks. As to the matter of mere
acuteness, however, I think I have seen faces in Yorkshire, at least a
match for any thing to be found further to the north. But the mere
shrewdness of the Scotch peasant’s face, is only one part of its expres-
sion; it has other things, I should imagine, even more peculiarly charac-
teristic.
The best place to study their faces in is the kirk; it is there that the
sharpness of their discernment is most vehemently expressed in every
line—for they are all critics of the sermon, and even of the prayers; but
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might be pushed to the front? This, the reasoning of his jealousy which was
to destroy his perspective and lead him into trouble.
IV
This was due in some measure to the distance between reality and the
dream world in which he lived. As he grew older, he became more and more
impressed with the pomp of power. The son of a Yankee shoemaker was
covetous of the ribbons of distinction. The masses receded to a respectful
distance. In the forefront were the gods, and he among them; and among
these he claimed a right to the front rank. Ceremony became important.
Titles were safeguards of organized society. An order of nobility sprang up
in his imagination. ‘You and I,’ he wrote Sam Adams, ‘have seen four noble
families rise up in Boston—the Crafts, Gores, Dawes, and Austins. These
are really a nobility in our town, as the Howards, Somersets, Berties in
England.’ His feet lost contact with the earth—he soared. ‘Let us do justice
to the people and to the nobles; for nobles there are, as I have proved, in
Boston as well as in Madrid.’[1223] Many things, he thought, can make for
nobility—even matrimony. ‘Would Washington have been Commander of
the Revolutionary army or President ... if he had not married the rich widow
of Mr. Custis? Would Jefferson have been President ... if he had not married
the daughter of Mr. Wales?’ Thus he challenged John Taylor of Caroline.
[1224]
Infatuated with such views, he was naturally in harmony with his party in
its contempt for democracy.[1225] ‘If our government does well I shall be
more surprised than I ever was in my life,’ he said one day, standing by the
stove in the Senate Chamber before the gavel had fallen. Carroll ventured
the opinion that it was strong enough. ‘If it is, I know not whence it is to
arise,’ Adams replied. ‘It cannot have energy. It has neither rewards nor
punishments.’[1226] This distrust of democracy was ingrained. We find it
outcropping in his early life, as toward the end. When he was summoned to
go over the reply of the Massachusetts Legislature to the pretensions of
Hutchinson, the royal Governor, in 1773, he found ‘the draught of a
report[1227] was full of very popular talk and of those democratical
principles that have done so much mischief to this country.’[1228] Even
Paine’s ‘Common Sense,’ which was tonic to the Revolution, was spoiled
for him because ‘his plan was so democratical.’[1229] Haunting the
bookstalls in London he thought ‘the newspapers, the magazines, the
reviews, the daily pamphlets were all in the hands of hirelings,’ and was
convinced that the men who ‘preached about ... liberty, equality, fraternity,
and the rights of man’ could be hired ‘for a guinea a day.’[1230] It was after
this that he wrote the ‘Discourses of Davilla’—an onslaught on democracy.
And fourteen years after his retirement he wrote from his library at Quincy
to John Taylor: ‘Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes,
exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy that did not
commit suicide.’[1231] This distrust and distaste for the masses weakened
him as much with the people as his temperamental defects with his party
associates. I have dwelt on these weaknesses because they explain the
tragedy of his failure. There were other qualities that entitled him to a
happier fate.
Chief among these were the fervor and the disinterestedness of his love
of country. Had he died the day after the signing of the Declaration, he
would have been assured a permanent place in history. No man played a
more heroic part in the fight for independence. The struggling young lawyer
who refused a position under the Crown that he might not be embarrassed in
supporting his countrymen in their inevitable struggle;[1232] who, awakened
by the sinister drum-beats of the red coats every morning, ‘solemnly
determined at all events to adhere to [his] principles in favor of [his]
country’;[1233] who defended Hancock in the courts on the charge of
smuggling with stubborn tenacity until the case ‘was suspended at last only
by the battle of Lexington’;[1234] who, when the crisis came, prepared to
immolate himself and family upon the altar of liberty;[1235] and who had the
audacity to base an argument against the Stamp Act on the principles of the
Revolution itself, and, standing four square against more petitions to the
King, won the lasting gratitude and admiration of Jefferson when, as ‘the
Colossus of the Debate,’[1236] he bore the brunt of the battle for the
Declaration—that man could well hold his head high in the presence of
Washington himself. ‘Politics,’ he wrote Warren, ‘are an ordeal path among
red-hot plough shares. Who then would be a politician for the pleasure of
running about barefooted among them. Yet some one must.’[1237] And
again: ‘At such times as this there are many dangerous things to be done
which nobody else will do, and therefore I cannot help attempting
them.’[1238] Nor was he blind to his fate in the event of the failure of his
cause. ‘I go mourning in my heart all day long,’ he wrote his wife in dark
days, ‘though I say nothing. I am melancholy for the public and anxious for
my family.... For God’s sake make your children hardy, active and
industrious.’[1239] This intense Americanism did not moderate with time.
As a politician he was all too often open to censure; as a patriot he was
above reproach. Jefferson never doubted his absorption in his country; and
Hamilton, temperamentally unable to get along with him, wrote him down
as ‘honest, firm, faithful, and independent—a sincere lover of his
country.’[1240] Because he had more enemies than friends, and more
detractors than admirers, one might conclude from the opinions of his
contemporaries that he had but mediocre ability. There is no question as to
the fallibility of his judgment where his prejudices were enlisted and the
characters of men were involved. Again we find Jefferson more friendly
than the Federalists. ‘A bad calculator of the force and probable effect of the
motives which govern men,’ he wrote; and then added, ‘This is all the ill
that can possibly be said of him; he is profound in his views and accurate in
his judgment except where knowledge of the world is necessary to form a
judgment.’[1241] Hamilton thought him ‘a man of an imagination sublimated
and eccentric,’ and was not impressed with his intellectual endowments.
[1242] The father of Wolcott thought him ‘of a very moderate share of
prudence, and of far less real abilities than he believes he possesses.’[1243]
And McHenry, having been expelled from the Cabinet for his disloyalty,
declared ‘the mind of Mr. Adams like the last glimmerings of a lamp,
feeble, wavering and unsteady, with occasionally a strong flash of light, his
genius little, and that too insufficient to irradiate his judgment.’[1244] The
Adams who emerges from these opinions is a man of ability often reduced
to impotency by the lack of judgment. This is, no doubt, the whole truth
about his intellect. The sneers from men who could not forgive him for the
wrong they had done him, and from others who could not control him,
cannot stand in the light of what he did, and said, and wrote.
As a writer, he suffers in comparison with Hamilton and Madison, and
his more ambitious productions, like the ‘Discourses of Davilla,’ while
showing much erudition and some ingenuity, are heavy and pompous. But in
the earlier days when he was writing shorter papers for the press, he did
better. Whether he could write or not, he loved to do it. The author of the
earlier period was more interesting and attractive than that of later times.
However much the critics may quarrel over his capacity to write, the
evidence is conclusive as to his ability to speak. As an orator he was the
Patrick Henry of New England. His argument against the Writs of
Assistance in 1761 fired the heart of Otis and swept him into the ranks of
the active patriots. Jefferson bears testimony to the power of his eloquence
in the fight for the Declaration. Given a cause that appealed to his heart and
imagination, he never failed to find himself by losing himself in the fervor
of the fight.
Nor can there be any question of his courage. It required temerity to step
forth from the patriots’ ranks to face the representative of the Crown with
the most audacious denials of his pretensions; courage, too, to lead the fight
against further attempts at conciliation with the King. But the most
courageous act of his career was his defense in court of Captain Preston, the
British officer charged with murder in the Boston massacre. Not only
physical courage was here demanded, for he invited personal attack, but
moral courage at its highest. He was dependent for clientage on the Boston
public and the victims of the massacre were Bostonians. He was an
American, and he was standing between a hated redcoat and an American
revenge. He gambled with his career, for he armed his enemies with
ammunition, and he was charged with selling his country for an enormous
fee. The fact that he received but eighteen guineas would have been the
answer, but he maintained a dignified silence. There is nothing finer or more
courageous in the records of a public man.[1245] This courage was to stand
him in good stead when he defied his party for his country in the French
negotiations, and played for the verdict of history.
This courage could only have sprung from the consciousness of an
honest intent—and his honesty, personal or political, has never been
questioned. Sedgwick recommended him to Hamilton for the Vice-
Presidency as ‘a man of unconquerable intrepidity and of incorruptible
integrity,’ and Hamilton was to find to his chagrin that the compliment was
not given in a Pickwickian sense.[1246] And yet he was not a Puritan of the
intolerant sort. In early life he was given to the reading of sermons and at
one time confessed to an inclination to the ministry—but it did not last long.
In early manhood, we find him moralizing in his diary against card-playing,
but not on moral grounds. ‘It gratifies none of the senses ...; it can entertain
the mind only by hushing its clamors.’[1247] Even the scurrility of his times
spared him the charge of immorality. ‘No virgin or matron ever had cause to
blush at sight of me,’ he wrote in his ‘Autobiography.’[1248] And while
Franklin and Morris appear to have taken advantage of the moral laxity of
Paris, we are quite sure that Adams, packed in tight among fashionable
ladies watching the Queen eat soup, never gave a flirtatious glance, and are
more than half persuaded that his declination to join Madame du Barry in
her garden was due to her none too spotless reputation. But if he was not
given to women or to song, it appears that he consumed his full share of
wine. We have his own story of the fashionable dinners in the Philadelphia
of the Continental Congress, when he would sit at the table from three until
nine ‘drinking Madeira, claret and burgundy.’[1249] We get a glimpse of him
in a New York Club before the Revolution with ‘punch, wine, pipes and
tobacco.’[1250] And on another occasion he records with boastful pride that
he ‘drank Madeira at a great rate and found no inconvenience in it.’[1251]
Even so, we may be sure that he seldom drank to excess.
Such the man who sat facing the Cabinet he did not choose—stubborn,
suspicious, vain, jealous, courageous, honest, irascible, tempestuous,
patriotic, and rising above its members in ability and public service as a
mountain above the pebbles at its base.
VI
No student of physiognomy, familiar with the character of Adams, could

have glanced at the stern, cold Puritan face of Timothy Pickering, his
Secretary of State, without a premonition of certain estrangement. The long,
thin, super-serious features were as uncongenial and unresponsive as though
carved from granite. The thin, silvery locks and the spectacles combined to
create an unpleasant impression of asceticism; and the cold eyes that peered
through the glasses spoke of the narrow, uncompromising mind of a
follower of Cromwell. There, too, he could read the insatiable ambition, the
audacious courage, the relentless will of the Roman conqueror. Seldom did
that face soften with a smile; for he had no sense of humor. His portrait, by
Stuart, as a frontispiece to a volume of old New England blue laws would
have symbolized the spirit of the book. No Indian stoic ever presented a
countenance less revealing in repose, or more stone-like in composure. The
resemblance to the Roundhead fanatic was accentuated in the extreme
simplicity, the Quaker-like plainness of his garb.
Here was clearly a man to whom joyous frivolity was indecent
dissipation; with whom the scrutiny of suspicion was a duty; and to whom
duties were the sum total of life. But beneath the repellently cold, metallic
exterior there were volcanic fires of passion, and when he emerged from the
deadly calm of composure it was to storm. It was not in his nature to confer,
but to lay down the law. So lacking was he in a sense of humor that he
honestly persuaded himself that he always stood at Armageddon and battled
for the Lord. Even when he was moved to treachery by an ambition wholly
incongruous to his capacity, he really felt that he was detached from all
personal considerations and was fighting for the abstract principle of right.
[1252] Never once in his long life, even when he was a cheap conspirator
planning the destruction of the Union, did he think himself in the wrong.
Never once in his voluminous correspondence does he hint at a possible
mistake. He was, in his political views and his personal relations,
impeccably pure—and he admitted it. Not only did he admit it—he
impassionedly proclaimed it, and this alone made him an impossible adviser
for John Adams. He was the smug, self-righteous type that would remake
the world in its own image. They who disagreed with him were hounds of
the devil to be thrown without pity into the uttermost darkness. And he was
sincere in it all. He was fond of hymns and psalms, in church devout, at
prayer most fervent, and he read the Bible habitually without discovering
the passage about the throwing of stones.[1253]
This temperament made him difficult in even ordinary conversation. He
had an excellent command of language, but he preferred the harsher words.
There was no twilight zone for him. Things were white or black. He was
violent in his opinions and violent in the gesticulation with which he tried to
force them on his hearers. So little could he see himself as others saw him
that, when he once exclaimed, ‘I abhor gesticulation,’ with a powerful
sweep of his muscular arms, he could not understand the smile of his
auditor.[1254] But for this intemperance, all too much like that of Adams to
make harmony possible, he would have been a great conversationalist. He
used words with accuracy, was interesting in narrative, and had read widely
and wisely; but too frequently to converse with Pickering was to quarrel.
This unhappy quality, along with his poverty, explains why he did not figure
in the social life of the Federalist capital. His tactlessness and bluntness,
which he confused with honesty, were intolerable. In a letter to a friend who
had given an acquaintance a note of introduction, he wrote that he should
‘not put myself to the expense nor my family to the trouble of a splendid
exhibition at table.’[1255] It must have caused some mirth in the home of the
elegant Binghams to read his reply to an invitation to dinner: ‘Mrs.
Pickering and I are constrained to forego many pleasures of society, because
we cannot persuade ourselves to enter on a career of expenses, which, being
far beyond our income, would lead to ruin. For this reason, Mrs. Pickering
chooses to dine abroad only at Mrs. Washington’s, as a consequence of my
official station; and this as seldom as decency will permit.... But Mrs.
Pickering is aware that as a public man I cannot seclude myself ... and
therefore often urges, on my part singly, an intercourse which is useful as
well as agreeable. I shall, then, with pleasure, dine with you occasionally,
but without promising to reciprocate all your civilities.’[1256]
Here we have one of several traits that make him stand out among the
other Federalist leaders as an exotic. He was poor, but not so poor as the
letter indicates; nor was he so completely shut off from society, despite his
frugality. If he gave no fashionable entertainments, his was a home of
hospitality, and he who promised no reciprocation for the entertainments of
the Binghams was able to entertain at his board a future King of France.
[1257] But, unfashionable, and plain as a Yankee huckster, he found the ways
of fashion irksome and offensive. Writing his wife disgustedly of the
enormous head-dresses of the Philadelphia ladies, he added: ‘But you know,
my dear, I have old-fashioned notions. Neither powder nor pomatum have
touched my head these twelve months, not even to cover my baldness.’[1258]
And the ‘extravagance of the prevailing fashions,’ suggested by the
introduction of ‘the odious fashion of hoops’ convinced him that many
families would be ruined.[1259] Verily such a creature would have been
grotesquely out of place among his fellow Federalists in the gay drawing-
rooms of Mrs. Bingham.
He differed from them, too, theoretically at least, on a more vital point.
They were thorough aristocrats; he was instinctively a democrat—though he
seemed to prefer it as an ideal rather than as a reality. Lodge recognizes this
difference and explains that ‘he had all the pride of the Puritan who gloried
in belonging to the chosen people of God.’[1260] We can well believe the
assertion of his son and biographer that he liked the common people
because among them he belonged. Then, too, he inherited a respect for them
from his father who ardently espoused the cause of equal rights for all men,
and was prone to apologize for the weaknesses of the poor, and to criticize
people of wealth and power.[1261] With this inheritance he was to enter the
field of controversy at twenty-five in a newspaper battle with the Tories of
Salem with a letter which might have been written by Jefferson. ‘For whom
was government instituted?’ he wrote. ‘Was it solely for the aggrandizement
of the few, who, by some fortunate accident, have been bred in a manner
which the world calls genteel? or to protect the lives, liberty and property of
the body of the people? Is government supported by the better sort? On the
contrary, has not every attack on the laws and constitution proceeded from
that class? The very phrase, “friends of government” is invidious and carries
with it an impudent insinuation that the whole body of the people, the
pretended friends of government excepted, are enemies to government; the
suggestion of which is as ridiculous as it is false.’[1262]
The tall, gaunt figure in plain garb, seated in company with the
fashionable Hamilton or Morris, was not more incongruous than the mind,
capable even in youth of such heretical and ‘demagogic’ thoughts. Stranger
still, this liking for the common herd never wholly left him. Thus his
experiment in pioneering in the western wilderness—where democracy
thrived best. A wholly admirable figure, this Pickering of the frontier,
applying brain and brawn to the conquering of the woods, organizing civil
government, battling at the peril of his life for law and order, kidnaped and
carted away. His own story of this adventure is as thrilling as a dime novel.
[1263] Even then his faith in the people was not destroyed.
Thus Pickering finally entered public life—a ‘friend of the people,’
farmer, frontiersman, unsuccessful merchant. About him there was no
glamour of success. He had been a failure. At Harvard he had made a fair
record, and his meager career as a lawyer was unsuccessful. He had failed as
a farmer, failed as a pioneer, failed as a Philadelphia merchant because unfit
for commercial life. He had played a spinet and a violin and given lessons in
sacred music at Salem and Marblehead, but that could scarcely be deemed
success;[1264] and in the army, where he was capable as a trainer of raw
recruits, his courage, energy, and promptness might have taken him far but
for the handicap of short-sightedness and glasses.[1265] Thus, when he
entered the public service at forty-six his career had been one of failure, and
he was to get this new chance through importunate applications to a man he
little respected—for he had a poor opinion of the ability of Washington.
Here again he differed from other Federalists holding a similar opinion; he
did not simulate admiration.[1266] The naming of a child after Washington
called for his sarcasm.[1267] He was disgusted during the war when a rustic
was heard to say, ‘I suppose he [Washington] is the greatest man in the
world.’[1268] He criticized Washington as over-cautious[1269] and refused to
hail him as a hero because he thought him lacking in ‘eminent military
talents.’[1270] He thought the army suffered through his procrastinated
decisions.[1271] Serving on the committee at the close of the struggle to
formulate the answer of the officers to the ‘Farewell Orders to the Armies of
the United States,’ he referred sarcastically to the word ‘Orders,’ and wrote
his wife: ‘Though it is rather modest, or in other words does not abound in
panegyric, I think it (the reply) will be graciously received.’[1272] To
another he boasted that the reply was marked ‘as the Italians do some strains
of music—moderato.’[1273]
But land poor, and a failure, he was quite willing to serve under the man
he did not appreciate. From the organization of the government, he was an
office-seeker, looking, not for a career, but for a job. There was no demand
for his services—he urged them. His brother-in-law, a member of Congress,
became his broker. He applied to Hamilton for an assistant secretaryship of
the Treasury, to find it promised.[1274] In August his broker wrote him of a
prospective vacancy in the postmaster-generalship and suggested that he see
Washington at once.[1275] A month later, Pickering made application,[1276]
but his interview with the President only resulted in a temporary position as
a negotiator with the Indian tribes. In May, 1791, he asked Washington for
the Comptrollership of the Treasury, to be refused,[1277] and it was not until
August, after more than a year of persistent wire-pulling, that he was
recognized with the then comparatively unimportant post of Postmaster-
General, which was not at that time a Cabinet position.
Thus he came into close contact with Hamilton, entered into his plans,
made himself useful, and slowly ascended, finally reaching the State
Department with some misgivings, and only after many others had declined
the place. He owed everything to Hamilton, nothing to Adams, and, as he
sat in sphinx-like silence at the Cabinet table, it was to Hamilton, not to
Adams, that he looked as chief.
VII
The same was true of Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury, albeit
these two men were, in most respects, the antitheses of each other. There
was nothing of saturnity and brooding silence in Wolcott—he smiled. Both
wore masks—one that of a stoic, the other that of a smiling epicurean. They
resembled in a common capacity for uncommon treachery. In this, they both
excelled. Both were professional feeders at the public crib and passionate
panters after office.
The handsome Wolcott had infinitely more finesse in the art of double-
dealing. He had read his Machiavelli to better advantage. If he was to
conspire with the enemies of the chief, he was to present an ever-smiling
face to Adams in the conference room. He was too exquisite a conspirator to
seem one. He had early learned the advantage of smiling through; and
leaving Adams, with his face wreathed in friendly smiles, he could sit down
to the writing of a letter to Hamilton with the same smile still on his face.
Life was altogether lovely and interesting to this happy warrior who
delivered his sword thrusts through curtains.
The son of an idol of Connecticut Federalists who was repeatedly elected
to the governorship, Wolcott passed his boyhood in and near Litchfield,
ministering to a frail constitution by tending cattle and working on the farm.
He did not permit the war to interfere with his career at Yale, felt no
sentimental call to Valley Forge, and found that the rattle of musketry need
not interfere with his preparations for the Bar. Almost immediately on the
conclusion of these preparations, he found a job as a clerk in the office of
the Committee of Pay Table, and such was his industry and methodical
efficiency that he rose in that line of the civil service to be Comptroller of
Public Accounts before the formation of the National Government.
This opened a new and fairer vista for an efficient bureaucrat, and the
moment the department of the Treasury was established he was ‘induced by
his friends’ to offer himself for a position.[1278] Even then, professional
office-seekers merely yielded to the importunities of admirers. The
congressional delegation for Connecticut pressed hard for an appointment,
and he was offered the post of Auditor of the Treasury at fifteen hundred
dollars a year. We can scarcely conceive that he hesitated, though it is of
record that his sponsors urged him to accept, and that Hamilton expressed
the hope that he would not refuse. He had hoped for the Comptrollership—
but that might follow. The fact that Hamilton had favored him for the better
place was promising.[1279] Meanwhile, on the salary, he could ‘live cheap
and snug as you please.’[1280] Thus he went upon the Federal payroll. Thus
he came under the observation and supervision of the genius at the head of
the Treasury,
then the most powerful dispenser of patronage. Thus he was able to practice
his ingratiating arts on one worth while. In little more than a year he was
made Comptroller on the recommendation of Hamilton, and when that
statesman retired to private life, it was he who lifted the faithful servitor into
the Cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury. There Adams found him; there,
unhappily for him, he let him remain.
It would be unjust to leave the impression that Wolcott was without
merit. He was not brilliant, but he possessed an infinite capacity for taking
pains. Even in college, where he failed to sparkle, he was a hard student
with ‘the strong reasoning faculties of the Wolcott family’ a little
neutralized by ‘some eccentricities in reasoning.’[1281] In the Treasury, in
subordinate positions, he had shown good judgment, much practical sense, a
comprehensive acquaintance with business and business needs, exceptional
power of sustained application, no imagination, and a dog-like devotion to
Hamilton. The latter found this combination of virtues had not only made
his conduct good, ‘but distinguished.’ More, he had ‘all the requisites which
can be desired,’ and these were ‘moderation with firmness; liberality with
exactness, indefatigable industry with an accurate and sound discernment, a
thorough knowledge of business, and a remarkable spirit of order and
arrangement.’[1282] In brief, he was the perfect bureaucrat, the indispensable
man Friday. If he brought no political strength to the Administration, he
could, with dependability, do the drudgery and register the will of others
who could.
If he was not a friend of the people, nor the electorate of him, he was the
courtier and friend of the powerful, and thus his was one of the first careers
created by the social lobby. If he did not cultivate the voters, he selected his
friends with fine discrimination with the view of his own advancement. At
Yale he cultivated Noah Webster and Uriah Tracy, a potent writer and a
powerful politician; he early profited by the popularity and prestige of his
father, and through his father’s and his family’s influential friends; and
socially, he made himself the ‘bonny boy’ of the Hamiltonian circle, and
smiled and joked himself into the affections of the Bingham set. A beautiful
and brilliant sister brought him the championship of the clever Chauncey
Goodrich and his associates. A charming wife threw wide all the doors of
the capital. While he was earning the grateful appreciation of Hamilton and
the Essex Junto, this attractive wife was winning and deserving the tender
affection of Mrs. Washington, with whom she was on terms of intimacy, and
she was corresponding regularly with Nellie Custis.[1283] When Washington
left public life, his wife gave the wife of Wolcott a lock of the General’s hair
and one of her own. The social lobby looked after its own—and Wolcott
was its very own.
For this cultivation of the social lobby, he was well adapted, for he had a
genius for society, with his cheerful disposition, his playful manner, his
conversation, which, while sometimes sober, was usually gay. The ‘small
talk’ that Adams lacked, Wolcott had in full measure running over. A master
of the art of banter, no one with entrée to Mrs. Bingham’s could tell a joke
better or more noisily enjoy one. His laugh was hearty, frequent, and
infectious. Living in a world of statistics, he at least affected a love of
literature, was fond of quoting poetry, and interested in the personalities of
distinguished writers. His conversation after office hours could be light and
graceful. Gracious, smiling, ingratiating, this bureaucrat—one of the first—
created and sustained by the social lobby as one of its first exhibits. He
differed from Pickering as day from night, but like his sphinx-like colleague
of Salem, he owed everything to Hamilton, nothing to Adams; and as he sat,
suave and smiling, at the Cabinet table, it was to Hamilton, not to Adams,
that he looked as chief.
VIII
If Pickering was a conspirator against Adams and did not care who knew
it, and Wolcott a conspirator trying to conceal it, James McHenry, the
Secretary of War, was a conspirator and scarcely knew it. The simplicity of
this Irish immigrant is most disarming. Left alone, he would have been
harmless. His was only another instance of loving, not wisely, and too well.
Born in comfortable circumstances in Ireland, the impairment of his health
through intensive application to his studies in an academy in Dublin brought
him to America on a recuperative voyage. So favorably was he impressed
that his family soon followed and his father opened a general store in
Baltimore. A year later, we find him in an academy in Newark, Delaware,
and then in Philadelphia studying medicine under the celebrated Dr. Rush.
But he took as little to his profession as to the prosaic duties of the
counting-room, and, thanks to inherited property, lived through the greater
portion of his life as a gentleman of leisure. In nothing that he ever
undertook did he attain distinction. The practice of his profession was
limited to a brief period as surgeon in the army; his career in commerce was
almost as much curtailed; and he employed his leisure as a dilettante in
politics and literature.
Had McHenry remained in Ireland, it is easy to imagine him as a young
blade about Dublin, affecting the fashions, a bit dandified in dress, over-
fond of society, given to verse. A searcher of souls might have discovered in
him an ambition—to write poetry. Even in his academy days at Newark he
was an inveterate verse-maker, and he thought enough of his effusions to
send them to the papers. It was a weakness he never overcame, and at his
death they found a great portfolio full of rhymes. It is possible—and it is
this pathetic touch that makes one almost love him—that he hoped for a
posthumous volume as a memorial and monument.[1284] Some of these
lyrics are clever, light and graceful, reminders of the sort that even Curran
liked to make for the amusement of his friends—thoroughly Irish. He could
never have become a poet, but there is evidence in his letters that had he
turned his attention to the humorous essay, he might have produced things
worth while. These epistles are charming in their playfulness, sprightly,
witty, glowing with humor. No one among the public men of the period
could have made posterity so much their debtor with letters on men, women,
and events—not even Morris, Ames, or Goodrich. He was really made for
an observer, rather than participant, in the harsh conflicts of life—more of a
Horace than a Robert Walpole, more of a Boswell than a Johnson. Dinners,
dances, routs, these, and the writing of light verses, were enough to make
him happy.
And yet he was not effeminate. If he did not play his part in the affairs of
men with brilliancy or even efficiency, he did with courage and to the best
of his ability. We have few references to his services as surgeon in the army.
It was when he became one of Washington’s secretaries that he fell
completely under the fascination of Hamilton. Even before his resignation
from the army, he had entered politics as a member of the State Senate in
Maryland, a rather important body consisting then of but fifteen members.
Here he was the representative of the commercial class. In the
Constitutional Convention he was obscure, and strangely enough his views
were the very opposite of Hamilton’s. Speaking seldom, his voice was
raised in warning against too much centralization.[1285] He was even
favorable to a mere amendment to the Articles of Confederation,[1286] and
his chief interest was in the provisions for the regulation of commerce.[1287]
When the work was over, he signed with avowed reluctance, and solely on
the ground—which was characteristic—that he distrusted his own judgment,
that amendments might be made, and he was willing to take a chance.[1288]
In the bitter fight over ratification in the Maryland Convention, he took but
little part.
Even so, the confidence and friendship of Washington and Hamilton
were not weakened. To him they looked from the beginning for advice on
Maryland patronage, and Washington found it convenient to use him as an
agent in matters of this sort.[1289] Hamilton thus employed him frequently.
[1290] Taking seriously his rôle as the Federalist boss and distributer of the
loaves and fishes, he resented the disregarding of one of his
recommendations, and even the long explanatory letter of Hamilton failed to
smooth his ruffled feathers.[1291] More than two years were to elapse before
his woman-like affection for his idol gained the ascendancy over his
resentment. ‘I have not ceased to love you nor for a moment felt an
abatement of my friendship,’ he wrote impulsively after the long silence.
[1292]
Like Pickering and Wolcott, McHenry was persistent in his hints for
place. Six years before the Constitution went into effect, we find him
soliciting the influence of Washington to get him a diplomatic post in
Europe, and the great man tried and failed.[1293] Among the first letters
Hamilton received on entering the Cabinet was one from McHenry. ‘I am
not wholly lost to ambition,’ he wrote, ‘and would have no objection to a
situation where I might indulge and improve at the same time my literary
propensities, with, perhaps, some advantage to the public. Would you,
therefore, be good enough to feel ... whether the President has thought of
me, or would, in such a case, nominate me. I wish you would do this for me
as a thing springing entirely from yourself.’[1294] Nothing came of it, and
the faithful party hack continued to run the errands of the Administration in
Maryland. Three years later, he took his courage in both hands and wrote
directly to Washington asking to be sent to Paris and Vienna to attempt to
secure the release of Lafayette. He wanted a change of air. It would be no
use, the President replied.[1295] It was not until near the close of
Washington’s eight years in office—and only then because many others had
declined—that he was finally summoned to Philadelphia to become
Secretary of War. Would he have felt so much elated had he read Hamilton’s
comment on his capacity? ‘McHenry, you know,’ wrote the leader. ‘He
would give no strength to the Administration but he would not disgrace the
office. His views are good.’[1296] But happily he did not know, and
jubilantly he gave up all private enterprises as incompatible with public
office—for in such matters he was meticulously proper—and, mounting his
horse, he rode to Philadelphia. He carried the conviction with him that he
owed his honor to the earnest persistency of his idol. To the extent indicated,
this was true. The great genius of Federalism, now planning to continue his
domination of the Government from his law office in New York, had
reasons to believe that whoever might be President, McHenry would be his
own faithful servitor. When Hamilton had married Betty Schuyler, his friend
had journeyed to Albany with some verses for the event. Was it with an
indulgent smile that the bridegroom acknowledged the poem? ‘You know I
often told you you wrote prose well, but had no genius for poetry. I
retract.’[1297] Six years before the first inauguration of Washington, this
ardent friend had written Hamilton: ‘Were you ten years older and twenty
thousand pounds richer, there is no doubt but that you might obtain the
suffrages of Congress for the highest office in their gift.’[1298] Verily it was
not without an eye to the future that Hamilton found a place for such an
idolater and political valet in the Cabinet.
There is something a bit wistful and pathetic about McHenry that
persuades forgiveness for even his treachery to Adams. His were the sins of
a lover, and love covers a multitude of sins. Nature intended him for a snug
harbor, and fate pushed him out upon tempestuous seas. His own best
epitaph has been written by himself: ‘I have built houses. I have cultivated
fields. I have planned gardens. I have planted trees. I have written little
essays. I have made poetry once a year to please my wife; at times got
children, and at all times thought myself happy.’[1299] Like Pickering and
Wolcott, he owed everything to Hamilton—nothing to Adams; and as he
faced Adams in the Cabinet room, it was to Hamilton—not to Adams—that
he looked as chief.
The other member of the Cabinet, the Attorney-General, was a political
cipher. Knowing what we now know of the characters and factional
affiliations of the President and his advisers, it will not be difficult to follow
the serpentine trail of the next four years, nor to understand one of the forces
that worked with Jefferson for the utter destruction of the Federalist Party.
CHAPTER XV
COMEDY AND HEROICS
S CARCELY had Adams entered upon his office when he found himself
confronted with the possibility of a war with France. Some time before,
Gouverneur Morris, the American Genêt in Paris, had been recalled,
none too soon, and James Monroe had been sent to smooth the ruffled
feathers of the French. Because he had followed his instructions too
enthusiastically and failed to understand that ‘a diplomat is a person sent
abroad to lie for his country,’ he had been recalled in disgrace, as Jefferson
had foreseen, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a Charleston Federalist,
had been sent as Minister. Not only had the French Government refused to
receive him, but he had been ordered from the soil of France. All this seems
wicked perversity on the part of France without a hasty glance at the
antecedents of the story.
Primarily nothing could have been more unfortunate than the
appointment of Morris. No more charming or clever diplomat than this
bosom friend of Hamilton has served America abroad. Born to the purple,
he was an aristocrat by nature, with a blatantly cynical and contemptuous
conception of the masses of mankind. His was the shimmer due to
generations of polishing. As a young man in the society of New York and
Philadelphia, he was enormously popular because he was handsome,
dashing, witty, eloquent, a bit risqué and in consequence of his fashionable
and gilded background. In the Constitutional Convention no one spoke with
greater fluency or frequency—or with less effect. He sought the
establishment of an aristocratic state, and made no secret of his hostility to
democracy. To an even greater degree than Hamilton he foreshadowed the
extreme policies of the Federalist Party. He was, in truth, its personification,
able, brilliant, rich; socially delightful, cynical, aristocratic, masterful, and
disdainful of the frontier.[1300] Like Hamilton, he failed in the Convention,
but his was the hand that fashioned the phrasing of the fundamental law.
There was more than a hint of the fashionable roué in this handsome
fellow when he went to Paris. Women and their pursuit was ever an
engrossing game with him. Even his graduation essay was on ‘Wit and
Beauty,’ and for his Master’s Degree he wrote on ‘Love.’ He was the sort of
beau that Congreve would have cherished, elegant in dress and manner,
given to levity and light banter, eagerly sought. The loss of a leg through an
accident in 1780 did not sour him nor diminish his appeal to women. On ‘a
rough oak stick with a knob at the end,’[1301] he hobbled on to his triumphs.
Such was the man sent to succeed Jefferson, the philosopher of
democracy, at the moment the Revolution was breaking on the boulevards—
a bitter, outspoken partisan of the old régime, a sarcastic enemy of the
Revolution, a champion of privilege less compromising than the nobility
itself. While Genêt was intriguing against the Government in America,
Morris was intriguing against the Government in France. But his love
flowers were still thrown over the garden wall of politics. Jefferson had
been shocked at his reactionary opinions in Paris. Madame Lafayette had
chided him on being an aristocrat.[1302] Quite early he began his affair with
Madame de Flahaut, the novelist, a pretty, winsome woman who effectively
used her marriage to an old man as a lure for lovers, and his diary teems
with references to the frail beauty. There were evenings at her home,
sneering at liberty and democracy; teas in her salon; drives and dinners,
when he was entranced by the ‘spirituel and delicate repartee’ of his friend.
[1303] Then walks in the Gardens of the Tuileries and about the Champs
Élysées, afternoons at Madame’s house reading ‘La Pucelle,’ while she rode
about Paris in the well-known carriage of the American Minister,[1304] and
finally, when danger came, he took her into his house. The Minister aimed
high, and even the Duchess of Orleans was not above his amorous
expectations, thinking her beautiful enough ‘to punish the duke for his
irregularities,’ and we find him writing poems to her, and buying her a
Newfoundland dog in London.[1305] No young blade ever found Paris more
seductive.
On swept the Revolution, on came the Terror, with Morris openly and
defiantly sneering at the former and its principles. The coldness of the
crowds in the streets when the Queen rode by enraged him.[1306] In the
terrible August days of 1792 he drove the reactionary Madame de Flahaut
through the Bois de Boulogne,[1307] and when the nation imprisoned the
King he was soon neck-deep in intrigues to effect his rescue.[1308] Messages
were exchanged with Louis, plans perfected, and only the King’s courage
failed. Later Louis made him the custodian of 750,000 livres to be used in
bribing those who stood in the way of his escape. America’s Minister was
paymaster of the King seeking to join the allied monarchs in the crushing of
the Revolution.[1309] Much of this was known in Paris, and much of it
known and approved by Federalist leaders in America, Ames objecting to
the publication of certain papers because they would disclose Morris’s
intolerable activities.[1310]
II
Monroe was the antithesis of Morris. Where Morris was brilliant,

Monroe was dull; where Morris was bubbling with a sense of humor,
Monroe had none at all; where Morris was a lover of dinners and dances,
Monroe was indifferent; where Morris was a Cavalier, Monroe was a
Puritan in his relations with women; where Morris was an aristocrat,
Monroe was a democrat; Morris was a monarchist at heart, Monroe, a robust
republican; Morris an enemy of the French Revolution, Monroe, a friend.
But if Monroe was not scintillating, he was sincere, and if not brilliant, he
was industrious.[1311] Soon he was as popular in Paris as Morris had been
unpopular—so popular that Jay thought it not beneath his dignity as an
American Minister to England to exchange belittling letters with Grenville
about him. He had ironed out old differences when the Jay Treaty
compromised his position.
No diplomat ever worked under more disheartening handicaps, for the
Federalists in Philadelphia hated him, and months went by without a line of
instructions or news from the State Department. Meanwhile, Washington
was being poisoned against him by Federalist politicians who had his ear,
and in the spring of 1796 Madison wrote Monroe that his enemies had ‘been
base enough to throw into circulation insinuations that you have launched
into all the depths of speculation’ and ‘purchased the magnificent estate of
the late Prince of Condé.’[1312] Pickering and Wolcott were planning his
recall that spring and writing Hamilton about it.[1313] The latter was easily
persuaded.[1314] Some one else should be sent—some one not so friendly to
the French. That the leaders of the English party were not averse to giving
offense to France is shown in the astounding suggestion that William Smith,

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Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk: The Text

and Introduction, Notes, and Editorial

Vol 1_series page.indd 1 23/08/2022 11:50

JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART

Volume One: The Text

© The Text, Edinburgh University Press 2022

Typeset at Mississippi University for Women, Columbus, Mississippi,

ISBN 978 1 3995 0070 8 (hardback)

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or

Aims of the Edition vii

Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk 1

the Quarterly in addition to directing the literary, political, and social

VOLUME THE FIRST

TO THE RIGHT REVEREND

THE LORD BISHOP OF ST DAVIDS

THE SECOND EDITION

BOOKSELLER, IN THE STRAND, LONDON

Nobody can be better for the purpose than Mr Lizars—and, if he be too

VOLUME THE FIRST

Portrait of the Author ............................................................... to face the Title

VOLUME THE SECOND

VOLUME THE THIRD

The Lord High Commissioner walking in Procession to

TO THE REV. DAVID WILLIAMS

OMAN’S HOTEL, EDINBURGH, MARCH 5

P. S.—You will observe by the date of my letter, I have already left

Edinburgh, where he has a very snug house, although by no means in a

building—the strange projectings, recedings, and windings—the

him by omitting the same mark of veneration. Within, I found a

sight, one would suppose it to be done in water colours, and to be

P. S.—I forgot to mention the only inhabitants of this Palace, or rather

miserable patchwork dwellings, inhabited by a considerable population

have already said as much. He is quite au fait, I have found, in regard

No student of physiognomy, familiar with the character of Adams, could

COMEDY AND HEROICS

Monroe was the antithesis of Morris. Where Morris was brilliant,

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