----- no doubt, have opportunities of being better acquainted with them. W has promised to ask several of them to dine with him some day next week---and, as usual, I shall have my eyes and ears about me. The history of this Magazine may be considered in quite a different point of view--as the struggle, namely, of two rival booksellers, striving for their respective shares in the profits of periodical publications. Of the respective conduct of the persons who, in this point of view, might come to be taken into consideration, I cannot pretend to judge in any way; but I think it looks as if nothing could be more fair than that some division should take place bere, as every where else, in that sort of spoil. Had the Magazine not appeared as it did, it is probable that the natural tendency, which a thriving trade has to split into competitions, would soon have given rise to something of the same sort among the bibliopoles of Edinburgh. As for the great bookseller against whom Mr. Blackwood seemed to have opened the war with so much vigour, I think he has shown less skilfulness than might have been expected in the forces which he has brought to act immediately in defence of the position attacked. I do not speak of the Edinburgh Review, for it is well able to take care of itself; but of the Scots Magazine, one of the oldest works of the kind in existence, which Mr. Constable has been endeavouring to revive, so as to render it a fit competitor with the new, and, indeed, audaciously original Magazine I have been talking about. It seems as if nothing could be more dull, trite, and heavy, than the bulk of this ancient work. The only enlivening things in it are a few articles now and then by Hazlitt, and a few better still by a gay writer of the name of Reynolds. But these are quite lost in the dullness all about them. In themselves, being all genuine gems of the Cockney School, they are of little intrinsic value, and their glitter only makes the lead in which they are set look more heavy than ever. Mr. Reynolds, however, is certainly a very promising writer, and might surely do better things than copying the Cockneys. There is another circumstance about the writers of Blackwood's Magazine, which cannot miss to catch your attention, viz. that they have never been in any degree studious of keeping up the imposing stateliness and guarded self-importance, usually made so much of by critics and reviewers. They have presented themselves in all the different aspects which lively fancy and good-humoured caprice could sug gest. They assume new disguises every month, and have a whole regiment of fictitious personages into whose mouths they have thrown so much matter, that they almost begin to be regarded as real personages by the readers of the Magazine; for, to ask whether such or such a name be a real or fictitious one, is always some trouble-and trouble is of all things what Magazine readers in general hold in most cordial detestation. Had these young writers been more reserved, they might perhaps have enjoyed more consideration than they now do among the foolish part of the public. Probably the spirit in which they have written has been but imperfectly understood by the majority. As Mr. Jeffrey says of the French Revolution-it is not easy to judge of the real scope of many movements and events, till a good while after they have taken place. Ever yours, P. M. LETTER XLVII. TO THE SAME. ANOTHER of the great morning lounges has its seat in a shop, the character of which would not at first sight lead one to expect any such thing-a clothier's shop, namely, occupied by a father and son, both of the name of David Bridges. The cause and centre of the attraction, however, is entirely lodged in the person of the junior member of the firm, an active, intelligent, and warm-hearted fellow, who has a prodigious love for the Fine Arts, and lives on familiar terms with all the artists of Edinburgh; and around whom, in consequence of these circumstances, the whole connoisseurs and connoisseurship of the North have by degrees become clustered and concentrated, like the meeting of the red and yellow stripes in the back of a tartan jacket. This shop is situated in the High-Street, not above a couple of hundred yards from the house of my friend Wwho, as might be supposed, is one of its most frequent visiters. I had not been long in Edinburgh before I began to make some inquiries concerning the state of art in Scotland, and Wimmediately conducted me to this dilettanti lounge, saying, that bere was the only place where I might be furnished with every means of satisfying all my curiosity. On entering, one finds a very neat and tasteful-looking shop, well stocked with all the tempting diversities of broad-cloth and bombazeens, silk stockings, and spotted handkerchiefs. A few sedate-looking old fashioned cits are probably engaged in conning over the Edinburgh papers of the day, and perhaps discussing mordicus the great question of Burgh Reform; but there is nothing either in the place or the company that at all harmonizes with one's notions of a great poviσngiov of Gusto. After waiting for a few minutes, bowever, the younger partner tips a sly wink across his counter, and beckons you to follow him through a narrow cut in its mahogany surface, into the unseen recesses of the establishment. A few steps downwards, and in the dark, land you in a sort of cellar below the shop proper, and here by the dim and religious light which enters through one or two well-grated peeping holes, your eyes soon discover enough of the furniture of the place to satisfy you that you have at last reached the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Fine Arts. Plaster of Paris casts of the Head of the Farnese Hercules,-the Dancing Faun, the Laocoon,-and the Hermaphrodite, occupy conspicuous stations on the counters; one large table is entirely covered with a book of Canova's designs, Turner's Liber Studiorum, and such sort of manuals; and in those corners where the little light there is streams brightest, are placed upon huge piles of corduroy and kerseymere, various wooden boxes, black, brown, and blue, wherein are locked up from all eyes save those of the privileged and initiated frequenters of the scene, various pictures and sketches, chiefly by living artists, and presents to the proprietor. Mr. Bridges, when I asked him on my first visit, what might be the contents of these mysterious receptacles, made answer in a true technicoCaledonian strain,-" Oo, Doctor Morris, they're just a wheen bits-and (added he, with a most knowing compression of his lips,)-let me tell you what, Dr. Morris, there's some no that ill bits amang them neither." The bit that attracted most of my admiration, was a small and exquisitely finished picture, by William Allen-the subject, Two Tartar Robbers dividing their Spoil. I shall not describe this piece, because I have since seen a masterly etching of it in an unfinished state, executed by a young Scotch engraver of the name of Steuart, which I have or dered to be sent me as soon as it is completed, so that you will have an opportunity of judging for yourself. The ener gy of the design, however, and the inimitable delicacy of the colouring made me very curious to see some of the larger productions of the same artist; and I had no sooner hinted so much, than Bridges proposed to carry me at once to Mr. Allan's atelier. The artist, he said, was extremely unwell, and confined to his room; but he could assure me of a kind reception. I needed very little pressing, so we proceeded immediately qua data via fuit. We had no great distance to walk, for Mr. Allan lives in the Parliament-Close, not a gunshot from where we were. After climbing several flights of a stair-case, we were ushered into the house of the painter; and Mr. Bridges being quite at home, conducted us straight into his painting room the most picturesque painting room, I fancy, in Europe. Mr. Allan returned about two years ago to Edinburgh, (the place of his birth,) from a residence of many years in various regions of the East, and his apartment is decorated in a most splendid manner with the trophies of his wanderings. The wainscot is completely covered with rich clusters of military accoutrements, Turkish scimitars, Circassian bows and quivers, hauberks of twisted mail from Caucasus, daggers, dirks, javelins, and all manner of long unweildy fowling pieces-Georgian, Armenian, and Tartar. These are arranged, for the most part, in circles, having shields and targets of bone, brass, and leather for their centres. Helmets of all kinds and sizes, are hung above these from the roof, and they are interspersed with most gorgeous draperies of shawls, turbans and saddle-cloths. Nothing can be more beautiful than the effect of the whole; and indeed I suppose it is so far as it goes, a complete fac-simile of the barbaric magnificence of the interior decorations of an eastern palace. The exterior of the artist himself barmonized a good deal with bis furniture; for he was arrayed by way of robe-dechambre, in a dark Circassian vest, the breast of which was loaded with innumerable quilted lurking-places, originally, no doubt, intended for weapons of warfare, but now occupied with the harmless shafts of hair-pencils; while he held in his hand the smooth cherrywood stalk of a Turkish tobaccopipe, apparently converted very happily into a pallet-guard. A swarthy complexion and a profusion of black hair, tufted in a wild though not ungraceful manner, together with a pair of large sparkling eyes, looking out from under strong shaggy brows, full of vivacious and ardent expressiveness-were scarcely less speaking witnesses of the life of roaming and romantic adventure, which, I was told, this fine artist had led. In spite of his bad health, which was indeed but too evident, his manners seemed to be full of a light and playful sportiveness, which is by no means common among the people of our nation, still less among the people of Scotland; and this again was, every now and then, exchanged for a depth of enthusiastic earnestness, still more evidently derived from a sojourn among men, whose blood flows through their veins with a heat and a rapidity to which the North is a stranger. The painter, being extremely busy, could not afford us much of his time upon this visit, but showed us, after a few minutes, into an adjoining apartment, the walls of which were covered with his works, and left us there to examine them by ourselves. For many years I have received no such feast as was now afforded me; it was a feast of pure delight,above all, it was a feast of perfect novelty, for the scenes in which Mr. Allan has lived has rendered the subjects of his paintings totally different, for the most part, from those of any other artist, dead or alive; and the manner in which he treats his subjects is scarcely less original and peculiar. The most striking of his pieces are all representations of human beings, living and moving under the influence of manners whereof we know little, but which the little we do know of them has tended to render eminently interesting to our imaginations. His pencil transports us at once into the heart of the East-the Land of the myrtle, the rose, and the vine, Where the flowers ever blossom, the skies ever shine, On one side we see beautiful creatures-radiant in a style of beauty with which poetry alone has ever attempted to make us familiar; on another, dark and savage men, their faces stamped with the full and fervid impress of passions which the manners and the faith of Christendom teach men, if not to subdue within them, at least to conceal in their exterior. The skies, too, are burning every where in the brightness of their hot, unclouded, blue-and the trees that lift their heads among them, wear wild fantastic forms, no less true to nature than they are strange to us. also have all a new character of barbarian pomp about thein The buildings |