excellent breakfast on the up-journey, and the equally excellent and substantial "tea," or tea-dinner rather, on returning, to be had in the shepherd's house at Moy. It may seem unromantic and prosaic to say so, but it is a fact nevertheless, that one's appreciation of the sublime and beautiful--let Mr. Edmund Burke say what he likes--is not a little enhanced by a due supply of creature comforts pari passû. If one cannot carry the comforts of home about with him, any more than honest Bailie Nicol Jarvie could carry about with him the comforts of the "Sautmarket," it is no small matter to meet with good cheer off a snow-white cloth, with the attentions of a smart, intelligent serving girl, in odd and out-of-the-way places, where you least expect it. Altogether, a trip by the Fort-William and Kingussie mail-coach during the present fine weather is very enjoyable indeed--superior, upon the whole, we should say, to the "Rambler's" post-chaise, not forgetting that the latter is a solitary and somewhat surly sort of business, whereas in the former you have the chance of pleasant and agreeable companionship, in addition to its other attractions. For one to make a discovery, and to think that oneself has made a discovery, are two widely different things. We readily acknowledge the distinction. That we have made a discovery we shall not venture to affirm, but we think we have. Our discovery, if discovery it be, is this, that Sir Walter Scott is indebted for Dominie Sampson's "prodigious!" to Boswell's Life of Johnson. Who can think of the worthy, kind-hearted, most unsophisticated, and withal most learned, albeit life-long kirkless parson, without instantly recalling his favourite exclamation of "Pro-di-gi-ous?" We stumbled on our discovery in this wise:--A few evenings ago we were reading the third volume of a very fine edition of Boswell's "Johnson," kindly placed at our disposal by Lady Riddell of Strontian--and a good edition of a good book is no small matter to one so far removed from libraries as we are--when we came to a page that described Johnson's meeting with a gentleman who had been his companion at Pembroke College, Oxford, some fifty years previously. Mr. Edwards, for that was the gentleman's name, and Boswell accompanied Johnson home, where, in course of conversation, Mr. Edwards said, addressing Johnson, "Sir, I remember you would not let us say prodigious at college. For even then, sir (turning to Boswell), he was delicate in language, and we all feared him." Now, can any one doubt that it was having his attention particularly called to the word in this passage that made Scott first ponder the absurdity of using a word of such volume and import on every trifling occasion, and caused him, possibly at a long subsequent date (for Scott's memory, as we know, was prodigiously retentive--there the word, you will observe, is pat and appropriate enough--prodigiously retentive, we say, of words,