but to have made one of the most singular experiments upon the said winds themselves, that ever entered into a philosophic head. This learned personage, whom the Athenian magistrates had at one time refused to expel from the city “_cum avisamento eorum ministrorum_,” upon the alleged ground of his being a conjuror, had made long and laborious experiments in all sorts of heating and cooling, physical and metaphysical. When other matters and fires were nearly exhausted with him, it struck him that it would excite mortal wonder, and win immortal renown, if he could bring atmospheric air to a red heat. He foresaw, that if he should succeed in this experiment, it would be farewell to both gas and steam; and there would be no need of dangerous boilers, castiron pipes, smoking chimneys, and all the other casualties of the new power and the new light. If this degree of temperature could be communicated to the atmosphere, the fondest dreams of mankind would be realized,--the midnight air might be rendered more glorious than the sun; winter might be driven within the polar circle; the precinct of the Holyrood might be made fragrant with spices, and fat with olives; and the vine might clothe the now naked crags, green with never-fading leaves, and purple with perennial grapes. That which promised so many and so delightful advantages was worth trying, and so the philosophic personage is reported to have gone about his experiment in this wise:-- He procured a bagpipe; and having dissected away the chanter, the drones, and the bellows,--making the stumps secure with ligatures, he carried the inflated bag to a neighbouring barn, and set two brawny peasants a-threshing it with their flails, while he stood by, wishing and wondering as to the result. What that result was, I was unable to learn, and indeed I made not much inquiry respecting it,--and I mention it only as one of the many instances in which I heard the Athenians boast of their philosophy. But if they have no literary men, as such, of whom they can boast, they have about as little title to put on airs about their literary taste. In that, as well as in all other matters, they are idolaters; and it may be truly said of them, as was said of the people of the elder Athens, that the most conspicuous of their altars is “to the Unknown God.” So long as Jeffrey was deemed infallible, they ventured no opinion upon any point, until they knew how he had delivered himself. When, for instance, he had, as he thought, blasted the laurels of Byron in the bud, the cry that ran through the Athens was, “What a silly fool to attempt to write poetry? But the Review has done his business. _He_ will write no more at any rate.” When the retribution of the “Scotch Reviewers” was hurled back, the worshippers of the Athens were astonished, but they said nothing. The fact is, that they neither have opinions of their own in such matters, nor have they leisure to form them.