DEAR AUNT,

IF you meet with Mr David Williams of Ystradmeiric, he will tell you that I send him a long letter every other day, filled with histories of dinner-parties, and sketches of the Edinburgh literati; and yet, such is my diligence in my vocation of tourist, I am laying up stores of anecdotes about the northern beau-monde, and making drawings in crayon of the northern beauties, which, I flatter myself, will be enough to amuse your ladyship half the autumn, after I return to you. There is a very old rule, to do like the Romans when you are in Rome; and the only merit I lay claim to on the present occasion, resolves itself into a rigid observance of this sage precept. It is the fashion here for every man to lead two or three different kinds of lives all at once, and I have made shift to do somewhat like my neighbours. In London, a lawyer is a lawyer, and he is nothing more; for going to the play or the House of Commons, now and then, can scarcely be considered as any serious interruption of his professional habits and existence. In London, in like manner, a gay man is nothing but a gay man; for, however he may attempt to disguise the matter, whatever he does out of the world of gayety is intended only to increase his consequence in it. But here I am living in a city, which thrives both by law and by gayeties, and—would you believe it?—a very great share of the practice of both of these mysteries lies in the very same hands. It is this, so far as I can judge, which constitutes what the logicians would call the differential quality of the society of Edinburgh. It is, at this time of the year at least, a kind of melange of London, Bath, and Cheltenham; and I am inclined to think, that, upon due examination, you would find it to be in several particulars a more agreeable place than any of these. In many other particulars, I think any rational person would pronounce it, without difficulty, to be more absurd than any of them.