Swallowing no thin washy potation, but a strong overproof spirit, with a smack of smoke--and “where there is smoke there is fire,” yet without flashing off, according to temperance theories, by spontaneous combustion. On the contrary, the canny northerns are noted for soundness of constitution and clearness of head, with such a strong principle of vitality as to justify the poetical prediction of C***, that the world’s longest liver, or Last Man, will be a Scotchman. All these favourable signs I duly noted; and prophetically refrained from delivering the letter of introduction to Doctor C----, which was to place me under his medical care. As the sick man said, when he went into the gin-shop instead of the hospital, I “trusted to natur.” Whenever the weather permitted, therefore, which was generally when there were no new books to the fore, I haunted the banks and braes, or paid flying visits to the burns, with a rod intended to punish that rising generation amongst fishes called trout. But I whipped in vain. Trout there were in plenty, but like obstinate double teeth, with a bad operator, they would neither be pulled out nor come out of themselves. Still the sport, if so it might be called, had its own attractions, as, the catching excepted, the whole of the Waltonish enjoyments were at my command, the contemplative quiet, the sweet wholesome country air, and the picturesque scenery--not to forget the relishing the homely repast at the shealing or the mill; sometimes I went alone, but often we were a company, and then we had for our attendant a journeyman tobacco-spinner, an original, and literary withal, for he had a reel in his head, whence ever and anon he unwound a line of Allan Ramsay, or Beattie, or Burns. Methinks I still listen, trudging homewards in the gloaming, to the recitation of that appropriate stanza, beginning-- “At the close of the day when the hamlet was still,”