My Dear Sir,--I send you a few hasty notes upon Mr. Robert Ferguson's little work (relating to the dialect current at the English Lakes).[48] Mr. Ferguson's book is learned and seasonable, adapted to the stage at which such studies have now arrived among us, and adapted also to a popular use. I am sure that Mr. Ferguson knows a great deal more about his very interesting theme than _I_ do. Nevertheless, I presume to sit in judgment upon him; or so it will be inferred from my assuming the office of his reviewer. But in reality I pretend to no such ambitious and invidious functions. What I propose to do, in this hasty and _extempore_ fashion, is--simply to take a seat in Mr. Ferguson's court as an _amicus curiae_, and occasionally to suggest a doubt, by possibility an amendment; but more often to lead astray judge, jury, and docile audience into matter growing out of the subject, but very seldom leading back into it, too often, perhaps, having little to do with it; pleasant by possibility, according to Foote's judgment in a parallel case, 'pleasant, but wrong.' No great matter if it should be so. It will be read within the privileged term of Christmas;[49] during which licensed saturnalia it can be no blame to any paper, that it is 'pleasant, but wrong.' [Footnote 48: _The Northmen in Cumberland and Westmoreland._ By Robert Ferguson. Carlisle: Steel & Brother. London: Longmans & Co.] [Footnote 49: Writing at the moment in Scotland, where Christmas is as little heard of, or popularly understood or regarded, as the Mahometan festival of Beyram or the fast of Ramadan, I ought to explain that, as Christmas Day, by adjournment from Lady Day--namely, March 25--falls uniformly on December 25, it happens necessarily that _Twelfth_ Day (the adoration of the Magi at Bethlehem), which is the ceremonial close of Christmas, falls upon the 5th day of January; seven days in the old, five in the new, year.]