The _wit_ of the Athenians may be considered as one of their “fundamental features,” for many reasons, and for this among the rest, that it mainly consists of punning, which is accounted the lowest stratum, and therefore the foundation of all wit whatsoever. It is of various kinds and degrees, according to the class of persons among whom it passes current; but still the basis of every Athenian witticism is a pun, and every Athenian, though he should be nothing else, is sure to be a punster. There are two original species of Athenian pun,--the legal and the learned: the first is said to have been introduced by the late Henry Erskine, and the second is contested by the late Professor Hill, Dr. Brewster, and others. Whether this be true at all, and if true, how far the truth of it extends, I am not either bound or prepared to say, but certain it is that those learned and humorous persons get more of it laid at their door than do any others now in existence; and the “gentleman of the Dunciad” who was “determined that every good thing should be Shakspeare’s,” has many praise-worthy imitators in the Gem of the North. You cannot meet with an idle draper yawning at the door of a shop, who has not some good thing of Harry Erskine to tell you; nor is there a student within the Athenian college who has not John Hill by rote. Brewster, indeed, is not so often quoted; but Brewster is still alive, and what is more, he holds no public function or situation of any great consequence. I went to view the Advocates’ Library, in company with two of that faculty; and they edified me with sundry choice sayings of the immortal Harry. I remarked, that it was singular that the advocates, the most illustrious body within the Scotch seas, should have been the last to have a hall in which to contain their collection of books. “The same remark was made,” said my conductor, “to the late Honourable Henry Erskine, and he said a very clever thing upon the subject.” I very naturally gave him that wishing and inquiring look, which brings out a good thing without any preamble; and he, after working a-while at his ears, hemming, and rubbing his spectacles, said, “Why, Sir, I must condescend, _in limine_, that the Dean of Faculty, (Mr. Erskine was once Dean, and the title continues longer than the office,) was a great wit, and that ‘a mortification,’ according to our vocabulary, means a bequest of money or property of any kind; and, having given in this condescendence, I will proceed to the argument of the case. Well, Sir, a gentleman was remarking to the Dean, the shame that it was to the faculty, that they had not a better apartment for their library. ‘We shall get it some time, and get it in a Christian way,’ said the Dean, with that happy look which always indicated that there was something to come. ‘Why in a Christian way?’ said the gentleman. ‘Because,’ said the Dean, ‘we shall get it through the _mortification of our members_,’