-Haste hither, Harry, as ever you look for good
at my hand.

"A good player, Harry, always studies to make the best of bad
cards--and so I have endeavoured to turn my wound to some account;
and it has given me the opportunity to secure Monsieur le Frere in
my interests. You say very truly, that it is of consequence to me to
know the character of this new actor on the disordered scene of my
adventures.--Know, then, he is that most incongruous of all
monsters--a Scotch Buck--how far from being buck of the season you
may easily judge. Every point of national character is opposed to
the pretensions of this luckless race, when they attempt to take on
them a personage which is assumed with so much facility by their
brethren of the Isle of Saints. They are a shrewd people, indeed,
but so destitute of ease, grace, pliability of manners, and
insinuation of address, that they eternally seem to suffer actual
misery in their attempts to look gay and careless. Then their pride
heads them back at one turn, their poverty at another, their
pedantry at a third, their _mauvaise honte_ at a fourth; and with
so many obstacles to make them bolt off the course, it is positively
impossible they should win the plate. No, Harry, it is the grave
folk in Old England who have to fear a Caledonian invasion--they
will make no conquests in the world of fashion. Excellent bankers
the Scots may be, for they are eternally calculating how to add
interest to principal;--good soldiers, for they are, if not such
heroes as they would be thought, as brave, I suppose, as their
neighbours, and much more amenable to discipline;--lawyers they are
born; indeed every country gentleman is bred one, and their patient
and crafty disposition enables them, in other lines, to submit to
hardships which other natives could not bear, and avail themselves
of advantages which others would let pass under their noses
unavailingly. But assuredly Heaven did not form the Caledonian for
the gay world; and his efforts at ease, grace, and gaiety, resemble
only the clumsy gambols of the ass in the fable. Yet the Scot has
his sphere too, (in his own country only,) where the character which
he assumes is allowed to pass current. This Mowbray, now--this
brother-in-law of mine--might do pretty well at a Northern Meeting,
or the Leith races, where