impudence is extreme, their malice is cold-blooded, covert, crawling, deliberate, without the frailty or excuse of passion. They club their vices and their venality together, and by the help of both together are invincible. The choice spirits who have lately figured in a much-talked-of publication, with ‘old Sylvanus at their head,’— ‘Leaning on cypress stadle stout,’— in their ‘pious orgies’ resemble a troop of Yahoos, or a herd of Satyrs— ‘And with their horned feet they beat the ground!’— that is to say, the floor of Mr. Blackwood’s shop! There is one other publication, a match for this in flagrant impudence and dauntless dulness, which is the John Bull. The Editor is supposed, for the honour of Scotland, to be an Irishman. What the _Beacon_ might have proved, there is no saying; but it would have been curious to have seen some articles of Sir Walter’s undoubted hand proceeding from this quarter, as it has been always contended that Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine was too low and scurrilous a publication for him to have any share in it. The adventure of the _Beacon_ has perhaps discovered to Sir Walter’s admirers and the friends of humanity in general, that ‘Entire affection scorneth nicer hands!’ Old Dr. Burney, about the middle of the last century, called one morning on Thomson, the Author of The Seasons, at a late hour, and on expressing his surprise at the poet’s not having risen sooner, received for answer,—‘I had no motive, young man!’ A Scotchman acts always from a motive, and on due consideration; and if he does not act right or with a view to honest ends, is more dangerous than any one else. Others may plead the vices of their blood in extenuation of their errors; but a Scotchman is a machine, and should be constructed on sound moral, and philosophical principles, or should be put a stop to altogether. MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS _The Liberal._] [1823.