OMAN’S, TUESDAY EVENING

DEAR DAVID,

I AM rather surprised that you should already begin to call upon me for disquisition, when you may well suppose I have still so many interesting descriptions to give you. I have now seen, not one or two, but a great number of those eminent persons who confer so much honour upon the present condition of Scotland, and of whom you yourself have so often talked to me in terms of ardent curiosity. I assure you, but indeed why should I waste words to do so, that the extraordinary talents of these men are as far as possible from losing by a close inspection of their manners. The tone of that society, which they have necessarily had so great a share in forming, is as free as possible from the influence of that spirit of jealousy and constraint which I have observed operating, in some other cities, in such a way, as to prevent men of genius from doing justice to themselves, elsewhere than in their writings. Hereafter, indeed, I shall have occasion to say something of the spirit of party in Scotland, and to show with what destructive violence it attacks the very essence of cordial communion among some of the less considerable classes of society. Nay, I fear from what I already see, that I shall find some little occasion to lament the insidious and half unsuspected influences of the same spirit among those who should be more above its working. But in the social intercourse of most of the men of literary eminence whom I have as yet seen, the absence of all feeling of party appears to be quite as entire as that of some other, and yet more offensive feelings which are elsewhere sufficiently manifest in their effects; and the principles, as well as the reputation of the one of such men, appear to act in no other way upon the other, than as gentle stimulants of his intellect, and of his courtesy.

My friend Wastle, as I have already whispered, not only forms, but glories in forming, an exception to this sort of behaviour.