Our sister kingdom is like a cultivated field,--the farmer expects that, in spite of all his care, a certain number of weeds will rise with the corn, and can tell you beforehand their names and appearance.

But Scotland is like one of her own Highland glens, and the moralist who reads the records of her criminal jurisprudence, will find as many curious anomalous facts in the history of mind, as the botanist will detect rare specimens among her dingles and cliffs." "And that's all the good you have obtained from three perusals of the Commentaries on Scottish Criminal Jurisprudence ?" said his companion.

"I suppose the learned author very little thinks that the facts which his erudition and acuteness have accumulated for the illustration of legal doctrines, might be so arranged as to form a sort of appendix to the half-bound and slip-shod volumes of the circulating library." "I'll bet you a pint of claret," said the elder lawyer, "that he will not feel sore at the comparison.

But as we say at the bar, 'I beg I may not be interrupted;' I have much more to say, upon my Scottish collection of _Causes Ce'le'bres._ You will please recollect the scope and motive given for the contrivance and execution of many extraordinary and daring crimes, by the long civil dissensions of Scotland--by the hereditary jurisdictions, which, until 1748, rested the investigation of crises in judges, ignorant, partial, or interested--by the habits of the gentry, shut up in their distant and solitary mansion-houses, nursing their revengeful Passions just to keep their blood from stagnating--not to mention that amiable national qualification, called the _perfervidum ingenium Scotorum,_ which our lawyers join in alleging as a reason for the severity of some of our enactments.

When I come to treat of matters so mysterious, deep, and dangerous, as these circumstances have given rise to, the blood of each reader shall be curdled, and his epidermis crisped into goose skin .-- But, hist!--here comes the landlord, with tidings, I suppose, that the chaise is ready." It was no such thing--the tidings bore, that no chaise could be had that evening, for Sir Peter Plyem had carried forward my landlord's two pairs of horses that morning to the ancient royal borough of Bubbleburgh, to look after his interest there.