Of those classes of persons whose professions fix them in Scotland, the Athens, if she manages her patronage honestly and judiciously, may always command the best. The judges and pleaders in her supreme court ought to be superior to the sheriffs and attornies in the Scottish counties; her clergymen, if those who have the appointment of them were to be guided solely by merit, ought to be the most learned and most eloquent that Scotland can produce; the professors in her university ought (under the same proviso) to be superior to those of Aberdeen and St. Andrews, and perhaps also to those of Glasgow; and, even in other cases, she may produce one or two lights more brilliant than the average in the metropolis;--but, in all cases, where there is no necessary tie, real or imaginary, to bind a man northward of the Tweed, the Athens must be satisfied with making her selection after London has been supplied. Or if she deny the conclusion, she must also deny a principle upon which her people know as well how to act as the people of any place,--that whoever can afford to pay the best, will get the best and the readiest service. For adopting this theory, the Athens must not accuse me, either of ignorance of her erudition, or of a wish to detract from her real merits. I know her more intimately than she may perhaps be aware; and if I were to judge her by the strict letter of my own experience, I should place her sundry degrees lower still; and tell the world of some of the bitterness which she foolishly squeezes into her own dish, and some of the ludicrous positions into which she works herself, by attempting a grace and a dignity, which her nature and her education alike deny to her; but I have no desire to state any more than is sufficient to establish the truth; and if she can point out a theory either of this leading feature of her general character, or of any of the more detailed and particular ones, which will explain the phenomena better than mine, I shall be very willing to adopt it. Meanwhile, however, it is fitting that a city, which not only looks down in scorn upon the country to which she owes her daily bread, but which affects to sneer at those whom she must notwithstanding copy, and whom it is utterly impossible that she can ever equal, should be rebuked for her arrogance, and resisted when she would claim that to which she neither has nor can have the smallest title. CHAPTER V. POLITICS OF THE ATHENS. “As when the sea breaks o’er its bounds, And overflows the level grounds, Those banks and dams, that, like a screen, Did keep it out, now keep it in; So, when tyrannic usurpation Invades the freedom of a nation, The laws o’ th’ land, that were intended To keep it out, are made defend it.”--BUTLER.