fails even when against this "philo-operative
cant," its writer must needs quote Sydney
Smith. "We miss Sydney Smith, it is said, in
times like these— in every time when a contagious
folly, and especially a folly of cant and
selfish sensibility, is in question. This very case,
in a former phase came under his eye"—and
then we have two notes of what he said against
the Ten Hours' Bill: sayings with which, it
happens, that the writer of these papers
perfectly agrees. When a case really parallel
to this, affecting, not the laws of labour, but
the carrying on of trade in a way leading
sometimes to cruel deaths came under his
eye, we did not miss Sydney Smith indeed!
The author of the paper upon climbing boys
was the last person for Miss Martineau to
quote. "We come now," begins one of his
paragraphs, "to burning little chimney-
sweepers;" and the same paragraph ends by
asking, "What is a toasted child, compared
to the agonies of the mistress of the house
with a deranged dinner?" Palpably put, and
with a bitter irony, we fear!

We have done. We hope we have not
been induced to exceed the bounds of
temperate and moderate remonstrance, or to
prostitute our part in Literature to Old Bailey
pleading and passionate scolding. We
thoroughly forgive Miss Martineau for having
strayed into such unworthy paths under the
guidance of her anonymous friend, and we
blot her pamphlet out of our remembrance.

COMING SOUTH A CENTURY AGO.

MANY amusing books (and many dull ones)
come into existence through the clubs which
have been following the fashion of the
Bannatyne in Edinburgh, the Maitland in Glasgow,
and the Camden and Grainger in
England. The northern clubs have indulged
the most in what the French call
luxurious editions. They have benefited by
the notion that each subscriber will, in
addition to his very moderate subscription,
sooner or later print a book for them at his
own charge. And when a duke presents to
one of these societies the Chartulary of
Melrose at the cost of a thousand guineas,
and an earl having paid as much for the
printing of the Chartulary of Paisley goes on
to produce four or five quartos of the
Analecta of Woodrow, the example of liberality
is set upon no trifling scale. As gifts, though
not to be refused, are not always well chosen,
volumes that are scarcely worth the pains of
reading do occasionally appear. This by the
way. We have been reading without any sense
of pain one of the publications of the Maitland
club—a piece of history relating to a family at
present extinct in the male line, the Stewarts
of Coltness, in Lanarkshire. Authorship ran
in their blood. One of their family wrote a
domestic narrative in the year sixteen
hundred, which was the main source of a
genealogical history of the race drawn up by a
Sir Archibald one hundred and seventy-
three years later. There were cavalier
Coltnesses, and there was a Gospel Coltness; but
the Coltness to whom we mean to pay attention
in this place is a lady—a literary Coltness,
married unto Mr. Calderwood of Polton, in
Mid-Lothian. This clever dame descended
into England, exactly one hundred years ago,
and passed over Holland, on a journey to her
brother, a political exile at Aix-la-Chapelle.
She wrote a journal, and regarding England
through a Scotch mist of her own, took notes
in a shrewd way; sometimes canny, and
sometimes (as regards the relative merits of the
north and south), of a not wholly unquestionable
kind. This lady had been bred up in
the family of a distinguished crown lawyer;
was accustomed to the best society in
Scotland; was in her own family commander-in-
chief over an amiable husband; and, if we
may venture to state so much, forty years of
age, when she, for the first time in. her life,
came south.

Mrs. Calderwood and her husband travelled
from Edinburgh to London in their own post-
chaise, attended by a serving-man on horseback
with pistols in his holsters and a broad-
sword in his belt. There was a case of
pistols in the carriage, more fit, perhaps, for
the use of the lady than of the good-natured
laird; who, being a man of accomplishments,
took with him a pocket Horace to beguile the
hours of wayfaring. They set out on the
third of June; and, being on the road each
day for twelve or fourteen hours, arrived in
London on the evening of the tenth.

On the road of course, one day, the lady
dined at Durham, "and I went," she adds,
"to see the cathedral; it is a prodigious
bulky building." The day happening to be
Sunday, Mrs. Calderwood was much shocked
at the behaviour of little boys, who played at
ball in what she termed the piazzas, and
supposed that the woman who was showing her
the place considered her a heathen,—"in
particular she stared when I asked what the
things were they kneeled upon, as they
appeared to me to be so many Cheshire
cheeses." Mrs. Calderwood had travelled
far into England before she met with any
sensible inhabitant; and then the first
intelligent native is recorded, and proves to have
been a chamber-maid.

"At Barnet we stopped; and while we
changed horses, I asked some questions at the
maid who stood at the door, which she
answered and went in. In a little time out
comes a squinting, smart-like, black girl, and
spoke to me, as I thought, in Irish; upon
which I said, 'Are you a Highlander?'
'No,' said she, 'I am Welch. Are not you
Welch?' No,' said I, 'but I am Scots, and
the Scots and Welch are near relations, and
much better born than the English. She
took me by the hand, and looked so kindly,
that I suppose she thought me her relation
because I was not English; which makes me