Every reasonable creature
must think the Ministers would have deserved the cord
themselves, if they had left him in a condition again to
cost us the loss of 10,000 of our best and bravest, besides
thirty millions of good money. The very threats and frights
which he has given the well-meaning people of this realm
(myself included), deserved no less a punishment than
banishment, since the "putting in bodily fear" makes so
material a part of every criminal indictment. But, no doubt,
we shall see Ministers attacked for their want of generosity
to a fallen enemy, by the same party who last year, with
better grounds, assailed them for having left him in a
situation again to disturb the tranquillity of Europe.--My
young friend Gala has left me, after a short visit to
Abbotsford. He is my nearest (conversible) neighbor, and I
promise myself much comfort in him, as he has a turn both
for the sciences and for the arts, rather uncommon among our
young Scotch lairds. He was delighted with Rokeby and its
lord, though he saw both at so melancholy a period, and
endured, not only with good-humor but with sympathy, the
stupidity of his fellow-traveller, who was not by {p.071}
any means _dans son brillant_ for some time after leaving
you.

We visited Corby Castle on our return to Scotland, which
remains, in point of situation, as beautiful as when its
walks were celebrated by David Hume, in the only rhymes he
was ever known to be guilty of. Here they are, from a pane
of glass in an inn at Carlisle:--

"Here chicks in eggs for breakfast sprawl,
Here godless boys God's glories squall,
Here Scotchmen's heads do guard the wall,
But Corby's walks atone for all."

Would it not be a good quiz to advertise _The Poetical Works
of David Hume_, with notes, critical, historical, and so
forth--with an historical inquiry into the use of eggs for
breakfast, a physical discussion on the causes of their
being addled; a history of the English Church music, and of
the choir of Carlisle in particular; a full account of the
affair of 1745, with the trials, last speeches, and so
forth, of the poor _plaids_ who were strapped up at
Carlisle; and, lastly, a full and particular description of
Corby, with the genealogy of every family who ever p