settled in Edinburgh, first as an upper clerk and
manager--for, after his failure as a merchant he had to begin the world
anew; and now, in the speculation year, he had succeeded in establishing
a business for himself, which bore about it a hopeful and promising air
so long as the over-genial season lasted, but fell, with many a more
deeply-rooted establishment, in the tempest which followed. On quitting
the north, I had been charged with a letter for him by his father, which
I knew, however, to be wholly recommendatory of myself, and so I had
failed to deliver it. Cousin William, like Uncle James, had fully
expected that I was to make my way in life in some one of the learned
professions; and as his position--though, as the result unfortunately
showed, a not very secure one--was considerably in advance of mine, I
kept aloof from him, in the character of a poor relation, who was quite
as proud as he was poor, and in the belief that his new friends, of
whom, I understood, he had now well-nigh as many as before, would hold
that the cousinship of a mere working man did him little credit. He had
learned from home, however, that I was in Edinburgh, and had made not a
few ineffectual attempts to find me out, of which I had heard; and now,
on forming my resolution to return to the north, I waited upon him at
his rooms in Ambrose's Lodgings--at that time possessed of a sort of
classical interest, as the famous Blackwood Club, with Christopher North
at its head, used to meet in the hotel immediately below. Cousin William
had a warm heart, and received me with great kindness, though I had, of
course, to submit to the scold which I deserved; and as some young
friends were to look in upon him in the evening, he said, I had to do
what I would fain have avoided, perform penance, by waiting, on his
express invitation, to meet with them. They were, I ascertained, chiefly
students of medicine and divinity, in attendance at the classes of the
University, and not at all the formidable sort of persons I had feared
to meet; and finding nothing very unattainable in their conversation,
and as Cousin William made a dead set on me "to bring me out," I at
length ventured to mingle in it, and found my reading stand me in some
stead. There was a meeting, we were told, that evening, in the apartment
below, of the Blackwood Club. The night I spent with my cousin was, if
our information was correct, and the _Noctes_ not a mere myth, one of
the famous