For my part, the idea I wanted was supplied, but I hesitated to make use of it.
Topics, like times, are apt to become common by frequent use.

It is only an ass like Justice Shallow, who would pitch upon the over-scutched tunes, which the carmen whistled, and try to pass them off as his FANCIES and his GOOD-NIGHTS.

Now, the Highlands, though formerly a rich mine for original matter, are, as my friend Mrs.Bethune Baliol warned me, in some degree worn out by the incessant labour of modern romancers and novelists, who, finding in those remote regions primitive habits and manners, have vainly imagined that the public can never tire of them; and so kilted Highlanders are to be found as frequently, and nearly of as genuine descent, on the shelves of a circulating library, as at a Caledonian ball.

Much might have been made at an earlier time out of the history of a Highland regiment, and the singular revolution of ideas which must have taken place in the minds of those who composed it, when exchanging their native hills for the battle-fields of the Continent, and their simple, and sometimes indolent domestic habits for the regular exertions demanded by modern discipline.

But the market is forestalled.
There is Mrs.Grant of Laggan, has drawn the manners, customs, and superstitions of the mountains in their natural unsophisticated state; [Letters from the Mountains, 3 vols .-- Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders--The Highlanders, and other Poems, etc.] and my friend, General Stewart of Garth, [The gallant and amiable author of the History of the Highland Regiments, in whose glorious services his own share had been great, went out Governor of St Lucia in 1828, and died in that island on the 18th of December 1829,--no man more regretted, or perhaps by a wider circle of friends and acquaintance.] in giving the real history of the Highland regiments, has rendered any attempt to fill up the sketch with fancy-colouring extremely rash and precarious.