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The interest of the drama thus expires with the fourth act. In the fifth, there is some powerful painting of the distraction of Ferdinand, whom remorse has driven into madness, and a murderous confusion of death among the guilty actors; but the extracts already given are sufficient to enable our readers to estimate the general character of the tragedy, and our limits prevent us from offering any farther criticism.^[1]

H. M.

DEAR SIR,

Mr Blackwood informs me that he has been severely taken in hand for the publication of a letter of mine, concerning the management of the college library in this city; it is therefore doubtful whether he will print this; but as he is publisher of your best work, the "Tales of my Landlord," I dare say he must have some suspicion who you are, and will take care to transmit the MS. (if MS. it must remain) to your honoured hands. You have no idea what a splutter your amusing, but rather hasty novel, has created among the good people in this town. You know we have long been fond of literature—how could we be otherwise, with such a college in the midst of us?—but I lament to say our own attempts have our been in the main far from successful. We have tried some scores of "periodical publications," after the form of the Spectator, none of which have ever been spectators of a second year. We have also, now and then, made an effort to keep up a lively newspaper among us, but, somehow or other, the moment the paper begins to be taken in, the editor begins to be taken out, and as he himself fares better, the poor readers are obliged to fare worse. In short, the peculiar local jokes of our city have never been able to procure for themselves any indigenous publication, capable of giving them the smallest chance of immortality, but have been preserved, like the wisdom of the ancient Druids, by oral communication,—that is, have been handed down from one generation of bon vivants to another, the chief repositories of the present day being John Douglas, Dr Scott (he who has so often been in the mouths of the public), Veracity Cochrane the jeweller, Urquhart the barber, and your humble servant.

The appearance of your book was expected by us, like all the rest of the "reading public," with great anxiety; but little did we know how much more reason we had to gape for it, than any of the other inhabitants of the island. Little did we think that we ourselves were to be immortalized in Rob Roy! little did we guess that just at the time when "The Attic Stories" were expiring, (they can scarcely be said ever to have been alive), just at the time when the Chronicle was beginning to lose all its point (for Duncan Whip appears to be quite defunct), we should be taken in hand by a writer of so much importance as the author of "Waverly" and "Old Mortality." Dear sir, I wish you had come out and a visit the week your paid me book came out. The whole town was in a tumult. You could not walk along the Trongate without jostling your way through hosts of roaring citizens, all alike transported into