s for years, preferring the
interior of the planet; and forthwith "Christopher North," "Christopher
North," reverberated along the galleries, while the gnomes came flocking
in all directions, with safety-lamps, to catch a glimpse of the famous
Editor. On another occasion, we remember, when coasting the south of
Ireland in our schooner, falling in with a boat like a cockle-shell,
well out of the Bay of Bantry, and of the three half-naked Paddies that
were ensnaring the finny race, two smoked us at the helm, and bawled up,
"Kitty go bragh!" Were we to go up in a balloon, and by any accident
descend in the interior of Africa, we have not the slightest doubt that
Sultan Belloo would know us in a jiffy, having heard our person so
frequently described by Major Denham and Captain Clapperton. So we are
known, it seems, in the Still--by the men of the Worm? Yes--the
principal proprietor in the concern is a schoolmaster over about
Loch-Earn-Head--a man of no mean literary abilities, and an occasional
contributor to the Magazine. He visits The Shop in breeches--but now
mounts the kilt--and astonishes us by the versatility of his talents. In
one of the most active working bees we recognise a cadie, formerly in
Auld Reekie ycleped "The Despatch," now retired to the Braes of
Balquhidder, and breathing strongly the spirit of his youth. With that
heather-houghed gentleman, fiery-tressed as the God of Day, we were, for
the quarter of a century that we held a large grazing farm, in the
annual practice of drinking a gill at the Falkirk Tryst; and--wonderful,
indeed, to think how old friends meet--we were present at the amputation
of the right leg of that timber-toed hero with the bushy whiskers--in
the Hospital of Rosetta--having accompanied Sir David Baird's splendid
Indian army into Egypt.

Shying, for the present, the question in Political Economy, and viewing
the subject in a moral, social, and poetical light, what, pray, is the
true influence of THE STILL? It makes people idle. Idle? What species of
idleness is that which consists in being up night and day--traversing
moors and mountains in all weathers--constantly contriving the most
skilful expedients for misleading the Excise, and which, on some
disastrous day, when dragoons suddenly shake the desert--when all is
lost except honour--hundreds of gallons of wash (alas! alas! a-day!)
wickedly wasted among the heather-roots, and the whole beautiful
Apparatus lying battered and spiritl