Hence a difference between the literary society of Edinburgh and that of London, not indicated in the mere fact that the one city was the Scottish, and the other the English, capital. The literary society of Edinburgh did consist chiefly of authors of Scottish birth, but there might have been Englishmen in it without essentially changing its character; and, on the other hand, the literary society of London included Scotsmen and Irishmen as well as Englishmen. The difference, therefore, was not so much that the one society consisted of Scottish and the other of English elements. It was rather that the one consisted of men independently resident in the place as lawyers, clergymen, and what not, and employing their leisure in literature, while the other consisted, to far greater extent, of authors by profession. This difference is pointed out by one of the old Edinburgh set itself, as serving to account for what he considered the greater geniality and cordiality of the habits of that set in their intercourse with each other in comparison with the contemporary habits of London literary society under the dogmatic presidency of Johnson. “Free and cordial communication of sentiments, the natural play of good humour,” says Henry Mackenzie, in his memoir of his friend John Home, “prevailed among the circle of men whom I have described. It was very different from that display of learning, that prize-fighting of wit, which distinguished a literary circle of our sister country of which we have some authentic and curious records.” And the reason, he thinks, lay in the different constitutions of the two societies. “The literary circle of London was a sort of sect, a _caste_ separate from the ordinary professions and habits of common life. They were traders in talent and learning, and brought, like other traders, samples of their goods into company, with a jealousy of competition which prevented their enjoying, as much as otherwise they might, any excellence in their competitors.” There is some truth in this, though it is expressed somewhat carpingly; and even at the present day the remark may be taken as describing a certain difference which the Edinburgh “wuts” think they see between themselves and the London “wits.” But may not the fact under notice have some bearing also on the centralisation question? If from the first, and at the very time when the literary reputation of Edinburgh was at its height, Edinburgh was not a centre of professional literary industry, then,—despite the subsequent establishment of important newspapers and some important periodicals in the city, and the generation in it by their means of some amount of professional literary industry,—it is hardly likely that it can long resist with visible success the tendency which threatens to centralise British literary industry of that sort mainly in London. If, indeed, in literature, as in other kinds of production, the manufacture might be carried on at a distance from the