And now we have said our say. It is not for us--more especially as the batteries of our opponents are still masked--to remonstrate with an administration which assuredly, on many points, has a just claim to the support and confidence of the nation at large. Still we may insinuate the question--Is it very politic, in the present state of matters, to rouse up a feeling in peaceful Scotland which may, with little fanning of the fuel, terminate in an agitation quite as extensive as that which at present unhappily prevails in Ireland? It is not only wrong, but--what Talleyrand held to be a greater sin in a statesman--most injudicious, to overlook in such a matter the tendency of the national character. Scotchmen have long memories; and although the days of hereditary feuds have gone by, they are not the less apt to remember and to cherish injuries. Would it not, therefore, be prudent to adhere to the homely but excellent maxim, "Let well be alone;" and to abstain from forcing the country into a position which it is really unwilling to assume, merely for the sake of illustrating another proverb with which we close our remarks upon the Scottish Banking System--"IT IS POSSIBLE TO BUY GOLD TOO DEAR." THE MILKMAN OF WALWORTH. CHAPTER I. I was just fifteen, when the battle of Waterloo, (it will soon be thirty years ago,) by giving peace to Europe, enabled my father to gratify one of the principal desires of his heart, by sending me to finish my education at a German university. Our family was a Lincolnshire one, he its representative, and the inheritor of an encumbered estate, not much relieved by a portionless wife and several children, of whom I was the third and youngest son. My eldest brother was idle, lived at home, and played on the fiddle. Tom, my second brother, two years older than myself, had just entered the army time enough to be returned in the Gazette as severely wounded in the action of the 18th. I was destined for the church--as much, I believe, from my mother's proneness to Prelacy, (in a very different sense from its usual acceptation,) she being fond of expatiating on her descent from one of the Seven of immortal memory, as from my being a formal, bookish boy, of a reserved and rather contemplative disposition. The profession did not appear uncongenial to my taste; and although, from my classical education having been deplorably neglected, there was no small share of grinding and fag before me, I entered readily into my father's views; the more especially, as in them was comprehended the preliminary visit to Germany, the land of my early visions, where I hoped to be on more intimate terms than ever with my old acquaintances, the Spirit of the Brocken, the Wild Hunter, &c. &c.; or, mayhap, to carry to practical results in the heart of the Black Forest the lessons of natural freedom I had so largely acquired from Schiller. My father's object in sending me to Heidelberg was not, I believe, quite of so elevated a character.