Niebuhr’s motives for this residence in Scotland were, according to Madame Hensler’s account, of a very miscellaneous description. Besides the advantages to be derived from visiting a foreign land, “he was to brace up and strengthen both his mental and physical energies in preparation for active life.” Why this should be better accomplished as a student in Edinburgh than as a citizen in Copenhagen, we do not apprehend; nor what there was in the air of Denmark that had enfeebled the spirit of self-reliance or of enterprise. But we are told that “he had become too dependent on the little details of life. He felt that he stood, so to speak, outside the world of realities.” Therefore he sets himself down for a year as a student at Edinburgh. London, of course, is first visited. He speaks highly of the English. Throughout his life he entertained a predilection for our countrymen, and extols the integrity and honesty of the national character. We feel a certain bashfulness, a modest confusion, when we hear such praises; but, as national characters nowhere stand very high, we suppose we may accept the compliment. Occasionally we sell our patriotic votes, as at St Alban’s and elsewhere; occasionally we fill our canisters of preserved meats with poisonous offal; and there is not a grocer’s shop in all England where some adulterated article of food is not cheerfully disposed of. Nevertheless, it seems we are a shade more honest than some of our neighbours. The compliment does not greatly rejoice us. However, it is not all praise that we receive. He finds “that true warm-heartedness is extremely rare” amongst us. We shall be happy to learn that it is commonly to be met with in any part of the world. He laments, too, the superficiality and insipidity of general conversation. “That narrative and commonplaces form the whole staple of conversation, from which all philosophy is excluded—that enthusiasm and loftiness of expression are entirely wanting, depresses me more than any personal neglect of which, as a stranger, I might have to complain. I am, besides, fully persuaded that I shall find things very different in Scotland; of this I am assured by several Scotchmen whom I already know.” In this full persuasion he sets forth to Scotland. We have an account of his journey, which, read in these railroad times, is amusing enough. The translator of the letters has evidently been determined that we should not miss the humour of the contrast. Niebuhr gives his absent Amelia as minute a description of the mode of travelling as if he were writing from China. After describing the post-chaises, “very pretty half-coaches, holding two,” and the royal mail, rapid, “but inconvenient from the smallness of its build, and particularly liable to be upset,” he proceeds to the old-fashioned stage-coach—