The most formal, unqualified, and severe condemnation recorded against my Pencillings, however, is that of the renowned Editor of the Quarterly, and to show the public the immaculate purity of the forge where this long-echoed thunder is manufactured, I will quote a passage or two from a book of the same description, by the Editor of the Quarterly himself. 'Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk,' by Mr. Lockhart, are three volumes exclusively filled with portraits of persons, living at the time it was written in Scotland, their conversation with the author, their manners, their private histories, etc., etc. In one of the letters upon the 'Society of Edinburgh,' is the following delicate passage:-- "'Even you, my dear Lady Johnes, are a perfect history in every branch of knowledge. I remember, only the last time I saw you, you were praising with all your might the legs of Col. B----, those flimsy, worthless things that look as if they were bandaged with linen rollers from the heel to the knee. You may say what you will, but I still assert, and I will prove it if you please by pen and pencil, that, with one pair of exceptions, the best legs in Cardigan are Mrs. P----'s. As for Miss J---- D----'s, I think they are frightful.'... "Two pages farther on he says:-- "'As for myself, I assure you that ever since I spent a week at Lady L----'s and saw those great fat girls of hers, waltzing every night with that odious De B----, I can not endure the very name of the thing.' "I quote from the second edition of these letters, by which it appears that even these are _moderated_ passages. A note to the first of the above quotations runs as follows: "'A great part of this letter is omitted in the Second Edition in consequence of the displeasure its publication gave to certain ladies in Cardiganshire. As for the gentleman who chose to take what I said of him in so much dudgeon, he will observe, that I have allowed what I said to remain _in statu quo_, which I certainly should not have done, had he expressed his resentment in a proper manner.' "So well are these unfortunate persons' names known by those who read the book in England, that in the copy which I have from a circulating library, they are all filled out in pencil. And I would here beg the reader to remark that these are private individuals, compelled by no literary or official distinction to come out from their privacy and figure in print, and in this, if not in the _taste_ and _quality_ of my descriptions, I claim a fairer escutcheon than my self-elected judge--for where is a person's name recorded in my letters who is not either by tenure of public office, or literary, or political distinction, a theme of daily newspaper comment, and of course fair game for the traveller. "I must give one more extract from Mr. Lockhart's book, an account of a dinner with a private merchant of Glasgow.