PETER'S LETTERS ΤΟ HIS KINSFOLK. LETTER XXVIII. TO THE REV. DAVID WILLIAMS. I HAVE already told you, that the Bar is the great focus from which the rays of interest and animation are diffused throughout the whole mass of society, in this northern capital. Compared with it, there is no object or congregation of objects, which can be said to have any wide and commanding grasp of the general attention. The Church the University-even my own celebrated Faculty, in this its great seat of empire-all are no better than the "minora sidera,” among which the luminaries of forensic authority and forensic reputation shine forth conspi cuous and superior. Into whatever company the stranger may enter, he is sure, ere he has been half an hour in the place, to meet with something to remind him of the predominance of this great jurisprudential aristocracy. The names of the eminent leaders of the profession, pass through the lips of the ladies and gentlemen of Edinburgh, as frequently and as reverently as those of the great debaters of the House of Commons do through those of the ladies and gentlemen of London. In the absence of any other great centres of attraction, to dispute their preeminence in the general eye, the principal barristers are able to sustain and fix upon themselves, from month to month, and year to year, in this large and splendid city, something not unlike the same intensity of attention and admiration, which their brethren of the south may be too proud to command over the public mind of York or Lancaster, for two Assize-weeks in the year. I think the profession makes a very tyrannical use of all these advantages. Not contented with being first, it is obvious they would fain be alone in the eye of admiration; and they seem to omit no opportunity of adding the smallest piece of acquisition to the already over-stretched verge of their empire. It is easy to see that they look upon the whole city as nothing more than one huge Inn of Court, set apart from end to end for the purposes of their own peculiar accommodation; and they strut along the spacious and crowded streets of this metropolis, with the same air of conscious possession and conscious dignity, which one meets with in London among the green and shadowy alleys of the Temple Gardens. Such is their satisfied assurance of the unrivalled dignity and importance of their calling, that they hold themselves entitled, wherever they are, to make free use not only of allusions, but of phrases, evidently borrowed from its concerns; and such has been the length of time during which all these instruments of encroachment have been at work, that memory of their commencement and just sense of their tendency have alike vanished among the greater part of those in whose presence the scene of their habitual operation is laid. Even the women appear to think it quite necessary to succumb to the prevailing spirit of the place; and strive to acquire for themselves some smattering of legal phrases, with which to |