It was enacting its greatest modern incident, the first French Revolution, when the young Scotch student returned to Edinburgh and changed his College gown for that of the advocate. Scott had the start of him in the Court of Session by two years, and had become rather active and distinguished in the Speculative Society before Jeffrey joined it. When the latter, then a lad of nineteen, was introduced, (one evening in 1791), he observed a heavy-looking young man officiating as secretary, who sat solemnly at the bottom of the table in a huge woollen night-cap, and who, before the business of the night began, rose from his chair, and, with imperturbable gravity seated on as much of his face as was discernible from the wrappings of the ‘portentous machine’ that enveloped it, apologised for having left home with a bad toothache. This was his quondam schoolfellow Scott. Perhaps Jeffrey was pleased with the mingled enthusiasm for the speculative, and regard for the practical, implied in the woollen night-cap; or perhaps he was interested by the Essay on Ballads which the hero of the night-cap read in the course of the evening: but before he left the meeting he sought an introduction to Mr. Walter Scott, and they were very intimate for many years afterwards. The Speculative Society dealt with the usual subjects of elocution and debate prevalent in similar places then and since; such as, whether there ought to be an Established Religion, and whether the Execution of Charles I. was justifiable, and if Ossian’s poems were authentic? It was not a fraternity of speculators by any means of an alarming or dangerous sort. John Allen and his friends, at this very time, were spouting forth active sympathy for French Republicanism at Fortune’s Tavern, under immediate and watchful superintendence of the Police; James Macintosh was parading the streets with Horne Tooke’s colours in his hat; James Montgomery was expiating in York Jail his exulting ballad on the Fall of the Bastille; and Southey and Coleridge, in despair of old England, had completed the arrangements of their youthful colony for a community of property, and proscription of everything selfish, on the banks of the Susquehana;—but the Speculative orators rarely probed the sores of the body politic deeper than an inquiry into the practical advantages of belief in a future state? and whether it was for the interest of Britain to maintain the balance of Europe? or if knowledge could be too much disseminated among the lower ranks of the people?