or the mute ire of Cansh at being told that the Trongate is a mere lane, and the buildings of no earthly value! I think I hear the obstreperous roar of Provan, consequent on the testimony of an intoxicated brass-founder, that the substratum of the Green is black band! Would not the oleaginous cheeks of Sheddon glisten with indignant dew, if he heard the Clyde described as a positive nuisance to the community?--and would not you, O Bogle, annihilate with a terrific frown, the ruffian who should aver that the finest square in Glasgow is evidently intended by nature for the purposes of a railway station? My life upon it, that you five would soon bring the witnesses to their senses. But, as the business is conducted at present, neither the judges--that is, the members of the committee--nor the counsel who are examining, know any thing at all about the localities. There is a complete monopoly in the business. Members of the English bar, who are necessarily strangers to the site of the proposed operations, are invariably employed by the solicitors in preference to our own advocates who were born and bred upon the spot. Friend Squashers, for example, was never in his life twenty miles north of the Old Bailey, and yet he is considered the fittest person to expatiate to the committee on the advantages of a Highland line. And I will say this for him, that he makes his mountains remarkably like Shooter’s Hill; and in point of bullying a witness, and insulting a landed proprietor, none of our native lads are fit to hold the candle to him.