have you to trust too much to his or any mans friendship, as you are more certain to meet with kindness if you don't ask it, or seem not to stand in need of it, than if you do either. The world is extremely capricious now-a-days, especially the great; and he who would use their interest must take care to ride very gently, and to use the spur with great caution. You see I am so much of a Yorkshire man as not to be able to write without borrowing my ideas from horses, jockies, &c.

I HAVE long looked on matrimony as a ne cessary ingredient in human happiness; for which cause you have no reason to suppose that I shall think the worse of you for having taken that step. I heartily wish you all happiness; and shall be glad to know the happy woman. I am so far from thinking matrimony a clog to any man, that I look upon it as a spur to a virtuous mind; and to me, at least, it is no small inducement to industry that the effects of it tend to the ease and happiness of those for whom I feel the strongest affection. I am glad to hear that HOPE is so much your friend, as I really believe him to be a good

sort of a man, and one who wishes well to mankind in general.

So much for your letter. You see I have only left one page for myself; and I am determined to fill it up, as you desire measure for measure.

very

well;

As to your hint, I understand it and, if you will put it in it in my power, I am determined not to be behind hand with any of your friends. Whether the manner in which I mean to serve you will suit or not, I cannot say, but shall be glad to have your opinion of it. The plan is this. I intend to print my performance here, as it is a popular one, by subscription in weekly numbers; and

I

may afterwards do the same at London and Edinburgh. Now, it is no easy matter, you know, for a person in practice to be able to find time both for writing and correcting; and, if you could make it suit your conveniency to come up here for a few weeks, and lend me a hand at the time of printing, I should not only esteem it a great favour, but will engage to give you L.100, not in loan, but as a reward, provided you can stay long enough, besides the preference of

printing my work at Edinburgh, which I flatter myself might turn out to good account. You certainly think I am very vain of my performance; but you will find that I am not so vain a parent as you may imagine; only I think I have hit upon something that will sell.

I CANNOT fix upon the time when I should want you up, as the subscription is just now about to be opened; but, as I have given you the hint, I beg your opinion of it in course, and you shall hear more of the particulars. I have sundry other reasons for wishing to see you here, besides what I have mentioned, and I am greatly mistaken if the journey do not turn out to your account. I intended, if you had not been settled in business, to have given you an invitation to my house for a year or so, by way of looking about you; and I believe had that happened, you would not have fixed in Edinburgh, But as it is, a jaunt cannot hurt you, as your partner can look after the business; and it must pass in your town that you are gone up to London on AFFAIRS RELATing to bu-, SINESS; and to make this strictly true, you shall visit the capital before your return,.

But my paper is done before I have got the affair properly opened. Pray write me in course; and you shall have another sheet with the scheme at large, Yours, &c. W. BUCHAN.

Ir is difficult to explain some of the rather vague allusions employed by Dr BUCHAN in the foregoing letter, and which delicacy has even induced us to render less obvious. Dr CULLEN was for many years one of the brightest luminaries and ablest supporters of the high fame of the medical school in the University of Edinburgh; and, quite contrary to the observation of Dr BUCHAN, was a man universally known and esteemed for great suavity of manners. The other person alluded to was a gentleman of much genius, knowledge, and industry; and had recently brought out a very useful work on medicine. It unfortunately happened that Dr CULLEN, in one of his prelections, made use of some expressions which were conceived to convey an insinuation against the authenticity of the facts contained in the publication of the other learned Doctor; to whom the expressions, perhaps exaggerated

in their recital, were reported by some busy body. Conceiving his honour and veracity attacked in the tenderest point, the indignant author is said to have sent a challenge to the professor; but the dispute fell to the ground without the effusion of blood.

In one of the paragraphs of this letter, Dr BUCHAN is rather fastidiously hypercritical in his observations on the common Edinburgh name of the Cynanche Trachealis of nosologists. It has received its Scots name of Croup from a somewhat similar disease of the same name which is incident to poultry. In the north of England it is called the stuffing; which a Yorkshire man, in the same spirit of cavil with Dr BUCHAN, might be disposed to look for in the pannels of his saddle. After all, in his own favourite literary child, Domestic Medicine, the disease is named Croup.

FROM certain allusions in this letter, it seems highly probable that Mr SMELLIE had applied to his friend Dr BUCHAN for the loan of an hundred pounds, to enable him to set in business for himself. The Doctor here affects to impress upon Mr SMELLIE, that his medical practice did not leave him sufficient

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