moment that they depart from this offensive mode of personal warfare, and take a single position upon the real ground in dispute, from that moment the whole of their batteries, whether they will or not, must be turned against those whom they affect to defend. Thus, though they may have been useful in effecting a momentary distraction of public attention, they neither have, nor can they overturn a single principle of those against whom their ribaldry is directed, nor establish one for those whom they call their friends. There is another thing against their permanence. Men, whether official or not, are never fond of having that brought prominently forward in which themselves do not excel. Now if one were to pitch upon the very weakest point--the blank as it were in the official men of Scotland, and of the Athens, that upon which one would pitch would be literature. The civic part of them, from their education, their associates, and the whole tenour of their lives, can neither love a book, nor, indeed, know any thing about it; and if the opposition and liberal men of the Athens, who after all are by very much the majority, are utterly unable or unwilling to support even one literary man, it is not to be supposed that the other party who are fewer in number, and ever fearful of exposure, can have more ability or more disposition. No doubt, such of the writers for Blackwood as know the extreme barrenness of the ruling men in the Athens, in all matters of taste and information, and the more fond and forcible predilection which they have for dining in taverns and carousing in ale-houses, and who have marked that those ears which are deaf as their kindred clay to every voice of elegance or of criticism, are open as their mouths for a dinner, or their hands for a bribe, when grossness usurps the place of taste, and ribaldry comes in the stead of science,--no doubt those writers have risked a hope in supplying husks for the Athenian swine; but though the deeds have been immoral, the remembrance of them will not be immortal; and though there may always be a few that, seeking their chief pleasure, and finding their only renown in their own debauchery, are pleased to see deeds worthless as their own, “Register’d to fame eternal, In deathless pages of diurnal;”