literary work found its way into a Scotch farm-house or cottage, if large, it was a treatise on mystic or polemical divinity, and if small, it was a legendary ballad, or a sermon by some pious divine, whose style was not the most classical, or his language the most easily understood. It is not, indeed, fifty years since there was any thing like a regular bookseller, or a printing-press employed for literary purposes, in the Athens. Before that time, there were persons who sold Bibles, and catechisms, and ballads, and penny almanacks, in divers nooks about Libberton Wynd and the Lucken Booths; and there were printers who, when a process before the Court of Session became too voluminous, or when the parties could not afford to pay for as many written copies as were necessary, put the eloquence of the advocates, and the wisdom of the judges, into types. An occasional parson, too, would become so far enamoured of his own powers of holding forth, as to have a sermon, or homily, upon some question of the catechism, or point of the confession of faith, printed and published; but previous to the year 1780, it was very rare indeed to find an Athenian bibliopole speculating in any literary work, the price of which was to be more than sixpence; and as for paying a man for literary labour, the Athenians would as soon have thought of paying a Lapland witch for procuring foul weather. With regard to the literature of the Athens, it is worthy of remark that the time of George the Third corresponded with that of Anne in England; and that when the style of writing south of the Tweed was changing to another, if not to a better model, the wits of the Athens were imitating the Tatlers and Spectators. The era of the French revolution was a remarkable one in the literature, if not particularly of the Athens, at least of the rest of Scotland; and the reading of the pamphlets of that time, which probably the people would have been as well without, led to the establishment of subscription libraries throughout the country, and made those readers, and in some measure critics, in general literature, whose whole course of study had previously been theological. But until very recently, the periodical literature of the Athens was hardly deserving the name. The Athenian newspapers were always dull and spiritless, and while the politics of the Athens remain what they are, there is no chance that they shall become better. In the provincial parts of Scotland, I met with several journals written with great taste, spirit, and liberality; but in the Athens, there is only one worth naming,--the “Scotsman;” and that, whether through fear of the party or from what other cause, I know not, I found not to be such as I would have expected. I found it a sensible production, certainly, and as much superior to the others as can well be imagined; but it is by no means what would be expected from people pretending to so much intellect, and freedom, as the party by whom it was supported.