The most remarkable man in our party was a young fellow of three-and-twenty--at least as much a blackguard as any of his companions, but possessed of great strength of character and intellect, and, with all his wildness, marked by very noble traits. He was a strongly and not inelegantly formed man, of about six feet--dark-complexioned, and of a sullen cast of countenance, which, however, though he could, I doubt not, become quite as formidable as he looked, concealed in his ordinary moods much placidity of temper, and a rich vein of humour. Charles ---- was the recognised hero of the squad; but he differed considerably from the men who admired him most. Burns tells us that he "often courted the acquaintance of the part of mankind commonly known by the ordinary phrase of _blackguards_;" and that, "though disgraced by follies, nay, sometimes stained with guilt, he had yet found among them, in not a few instances, some of the noblest virtues--magnanimity, generosity, disinterested friendship, and even modesty." I cannot say with the poet that I ever courted the acquaintance of blackguards; but though the labouring man may select his friends, he cannot choose his work-fellows; and so I have not unfrequently _come in contact_ with blackguards, and have had opportunities of pretty thoroughly knowing them. And my experience of the class has been very much the reverse of that of Burns. I have usually found their virtues of a merely theatric cast, and their vices real; much assumed generosity in some instances, but a callousness of feeling, and meanness of spirit, lying concealed beneath. In this poor fellow, however, I certainly did find a sample of the nobler variety of the genus. Poor Charles did too decidedly belong to it. He it was that projected the Sunday party to Roslin; and he it was that, pressing his way into the recesses of a disreputable house in the High Street, found the fast-bound wight choking in an apron, and, unloosing the cords, let him go. No man of the party squandered his gains more recklessly than Charles, or had looser notions regarding the legitimacy of the uses to which he too often applied them. And yet, notwithstanding, he was a generous-hearted fellow; and, under the influence of religious principle, would, like Burns himself, have made a very noble man.