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in Cowal. You are so much of an antiquarian, that I dare say you will have no difficulty in answering one more question about this chieftainship. Is it a thing that can be bought? I have heard queer stories about certain sales of right to the chieftainship. If this is consistent with the principles of Celtic heraldry, it is a strange relic of barbarity, truly worthy of what Pinkerton calls "the aboriginal savage of Europe." A single word more, and I have done. Had they ever a chief at all? Were they ever any thing more than what our fathers recollect them—a pack of naked hairy banditti, headed by the stoutest and boldest ragamuffin whom they could find pro tempore? Is there any shadow of truth in the story, that they once possessed great landed estates in the west? I suspect not. Mr Scott seems to think them something of a clan, and has spoken a good deal about them in the notes to his Lady of the Lake. Did it never strike you as a singular thing, that all the information he has been able to muster about this great, ill-fated, persecuted, heroic clan, has been gathered from the records of the courts of justice? I suspect, that if you look a little into the matter, the only Macgregors who were ever much above the vulgar, possessed a species of elevation, not in general much envied by those who are more humbly situated.—Yours, with hereditary affection,

P.S. Use no ceremony. Command my services in behalf of the continuation. I trust you are hard at work with Montrose. Depend upon it, he is a better hero than Claverhouse. Whenever you come west, be sure that we have always a sheep's head, and a little of John Hamilton's best for you, in the Salt-market. Adieu!

Mr Kean. In our last we promised to attempt a sketch of this actor. We now redeem our pledge. Never was so entire a revolution wrought in so short a space of time, by one person, as that which has just been effected by Mr Kean in the art of acting. A revolution which is the more extraordinary, from its having happened quite unconsciously and unintentionally on the part of its creator, and quite unexpectedly to every one else; and yet one, the foundations of which cannot but be laid in the immutable truth of nature, because it has been instantly, and at once, hailed with an universal burst of delight and sympathy, from all sorts and conditions of people,—all, except the insignificant few, whose petty interests, or still pettier envies, prevent them from feeling rightly, or from choosing to express their right feelings. We speak of this revolution as already brought about,—for it is so in fact, though not in effect. The school of acting which Mr Kean has established, exists at present in his own person only; but its practice and principles are now so firmly fixed in the feelings and understandings of those who are its judges, that they cannot, at least in the present generation, be very far departed from. Any attempt to supersede that practice, or those principles, by such as obtained seven years ago, would be received now, just as an attempt to supersede the plays of Shakspeare would, by translations from those of Racine. Indeed, we cannot better illustrate what we feel to be the distinctive difference between the acting of Mr Kean and that of his distinguished predecessor, than by saying that, as an actor, the latter is to the former nearly what, as a poet, Racine is to Shakspeare. In making this comparison, nothing can be farther from our wishes or intentions, than to express ourselves slightingly or disrespectfully of Mr Kemble. We owe him unmingled gratitude, and shall never let slip an opportunity of paying it to him. He is associated with some of the dearest and most delightful wonder of our boyhood; with the noblest fancies and loftiest aspirations of our youth; with the deepest, and purest, and most lasting pleasures of our manhood. We owe as much to his performance of Cato as we do to the sight of the Apollo Belvedere—the memory of both lies at the bottom of our hearts, and we shall be wiser, and better, and happier for it as long as we live.

The world might have been well content with Mr Kemble's acting, with-