But it is contended here, that in matters not of doctrinal speculation but of private life and domestic policy, every one consults and understands his own interest; that whatever other _hobbies_ he may have, he minds this as the main object, and contrives to make both ends meet, in spite of seeming inattention and real difficulties. ‘If we look around us’ (says a shrewd, hard-headed Scotchman) ‘and take examples from the neighbourhood in which we live, we shall find that allowing for occasional exceptions, diversities and singularities, the _main-chance_ is still stuck to with rigid and unabated pertinacity—the accounts are wound up and every thing is right at the year’s end, whatever freaks or fancies may have intervened in the course of it. The business of life goes on (which is the principal thing) and every man’s house stands on its own bottom. This is the case in Nicholson-street, in the next street to it, and in the next street to that, and in the whole of Edinburgh, Scotland, and England to boot.’ This, I allow, is a _home-thrust_, and I must parry it, how I can. It is a kind of heavy, broad-wheeled waggon of an objection that makes a formidable, awkward appearance, and takes up so much of the road, that I shall have a lucky escape if I can dash by it in my light travelling gig without being upset or crushed to atoms. The persons who in the present instance have the charge of it, in its progress through the streets of Edinburgh, are a constitutional lawyer, a political economist, an opposition editor, and an _ex-officio_ surveyor of the Customs—fearful odds against one poor metaphysician! Their machine of human life, I confess, puts me a little in mind of those square-looking caravans one sometimes meets on the road in which they transport wild beasts from place to place; and dull, heavy, safe, and flat as they look, the inmates continue their old habits, the monkeys play their tricks, and the panthers lick their jaws for human blood, though cramped and confined in their excursions. So the vices and follies, when they cannot break loose, do their worst _inside_ this formal conveyance, the _main-chance_. As this ovation is to pass up High-street, for the honour of the Scottish capital, I should wish it to stop at the shop-door of Mr. Bartholine Saddletree, to see if he is at home or in the courts. Also, to inquire whether the suit of Peter Peebles is yet ended; and to take the opinion of counsel, how many of the Highland lairds or Scottish noblemen and gentlemen that were out in the fifteen and the forty-five, perilled their lives and fortunes in the good cause from an eye to the _main-chance_? The Baron of Bradwardine would have scorned such a suggestion; nay, it would have been below Balmawhapple or even Killancureit. But ‘the age of chivalry is gone, and that of sophists, economists, and calculators has succeeded.’ I should say that the risk, the secrecy, the possibility of the leaders having