The character of Captain Clutterbuck, taken abstractedly from all consideration of its prototype, may be said to represent a certain species of men to be found in almost every Scottish village of any extent. Sergeant M‘Alpine, in the Legend of Montrose, is another picture of them, and perhaps a more complete one than Clutterbuck. They are the scattered wrecks of war, drifted upon the beach of retirement, and left to waste away. They chiefly roost about little towns in remote parts of the country, where society is not expensive, and where half-pay procures the necessaries of life in the best possible style. Here there always exist one or two of these individuals, rendering the place respectable by their presence, and receiving a sort of spontaneous homage from the people, in virtue of their independence, their gentility, and their scars. Like the fading relics of the City Guard, they change the most warlike of their habiliments for others more consonant with the costumes of peace; but yet, though the scarlet be gone from the coat and the sword from the hand, they do not altogether shake off the airs of war. There is still something of the parade to be observed in the small-ruffled shirt, the blue-necked coat, and the shoe-buckles; while the starched and powdered rigidity in the cheek is as military as before, and the walking cane is but a slight defalcation, in either dignity or ferocity, from its predecessor, the sword. The walk, proud, portly, and erect, is another relic of military habit that can never be abandoned: and every other little punctuality of life and manners, such as soldiers are accustomed to, is equally pertinacious in clinging to the person of the disbanded officer. Such persons have long-winded stories about Ticonderago and Mount Abraham, which every one of their acquaintance has known by heart these twenty years; and yet such is the respect paid to the good old gentleman, that amazement as naturally follows the unfolding of the story, and the laugh comes as ready on the catastrophe of the joke, as ever. No one could be uncivil to _the Captain_. An excellent sketch of this description of persons is to be found in the xxxth number of _Blackwood’s Magazine_, under the title of “Lament for Captain Paton.” To this poem we refer the reader for further particulars respecting the character represented in Captain Clutterbuck. SCENERY.