Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 002.djvu/654

they write on a subject so very dry. Indeed I consider it quite sufficient, and perhaps more than ought to be required, if they can render it intelligible to others. This way of writing is quite familiar to the Noble Earl, only his Lordship boldly goes the vole, as may be learned by reference to his "Inquiry on Public Wealth." But a vast deal of mischief has been practically done to the bullion cause by a parcel of ninnies, who persist, notwithstanding all my honest endeavours, in preferring a twenty-one-shilling-note to a golden guinea! To combat such perverse infatuation would be unavailing; and unless the novelty of the SOVEREIGNS now issuing shall create a diversion in our favour, I am fearful that even Mr Huskisson, in his new office of commissioner of woods, &c. &c., will not be able to consider, with perfect complacency, what he has formerly said and written concerning the predominant value of the precious metals over a Bank of England billet-doux.

Not considering the present moment very propitious for the exercise of public damping, notwithstanding the suspension of the habeas corpus, and the consequent enormities committed by the suspension of many innocent citizens, merely for walking about for their amusement, in London and in the country, and now and then committing murder and treason pro bono publico,—I mean to rest, as it were, on my oars. However, I have several matters in embryo, which may tell ere long—such as a much injured emperor, a banished princess, disputed succession to the crown, dragoons in Pall Mall, and grenadiers in white gaiters, &c. &c. But I must not discover all the secrets of my art, nor display the extent of my resources prematurely, thereby anticipating the speeches and motions of my patriot friends in parliament, whose stock of eloquence and argument, though great, will not, at the present eventful crisis, admit of any deduction. I shall therefore conclude this long letter, with the assurance that I am very much at your devotion, Mr Editor, on terms consistent with the purity of patriotism, whenever you shall stand in need of the sly services of one who has so long discharged, and, I may say, fulfilled, all the duties of

A Damper.

If it could alleviate in the smallest degree the intense sufferings that have preyed upon my mind, and blasted my hope, during a period now of almost seven-and-thirty years, I would account the pain I may feel, during the time I am attempting to narrate the following occurrence, of no more consequence than the shower of sleet that drives in my face while I am walking home from the parish church to my parlour fire.

I already remarked, it is within a few months of being thirty-seven years since I left the university of Glasgow, in company with a young person of my own age, and from the same part of the country. I shall speak of him by the name of Campbell; it can interest few but myself now, to say that it is not his real name. We had been intimately acquainted for years before we came together to the college, and a predilection for the same studies, a strong bias for general literature, and more especially for those courses of inquiry which are the amusement rather than the task of minds given to the pursuit of knowledge, had, in the course of four swift years, bound us together in one of those friendships which young men are apt to persuade themselves can never possibly be dissolved, while no sooner are they separated for a time, than every event they meet with in the course of common life tends insensibly to obliterate this youthful union; as the summer showers so imperceptibly melt the wreath of snow upon the mountain, that the evening on which the last speck disappears passes unnoticed.

But our friendship was not destined to be subjected to this slow and wasting process: it was suddenly and fearfully broken off. It is now seven-and-thirty years, next June, since the