“I ought before now to have written you my particular
thanks for your kind attention to the interest which I came so strangely and
unexpectedly to have in the passing of the Judicature Bill. The only purpose
which I suppose Lord Lauderdale had in view
was to state charges which could neither be understood nor refuted, and to give
me a little pain by dragging my brother’s misfortunes into public notice. If the last was
his aim, I am happy to say it has most absolutely miscarried, for I have too
much contempt for the motive which dictated his Lordship’s eloquence to
feel much for its thunders. My brother loses by the bill from L.150 to L.200,
which no power short of an act of Parliament could have taken from him, and far
from having a view
| THOMAS SCOTT—LORD HOLLAND. | 285 |
“I received the Guerras* safe; it is a fine copy, and I think very cheap, considering how difficult it is now to procure foreign books. I shall be delighted to have the Traite des Tournois. I propose, on the 12th, setting forth for the West Highlands, with the desperate purpose of investigating the caves of Staffa, Egg, and Skye. There was a time when this was a heroic undertaking, and when the return of Samuel Johnson from achieving it was hailed by the Edinburgh literati with ‘per varios casus,’ and other scraps of classical gratulation equally new and elegant. But the harvest of glory has been entirely reaped by the early discoverers; and in an age when every London citizen makes Lochlomond his wash-pot, and throws his shoe over Ben-Nevis, a man may endure every hardship and expose himself to every danger of the Highland seas, from sea-sickness to the jaws of the great sea-snake, without gaining a single leaf of laurel for his pains.
“The best apology for bestowing all this tediousness upon you is, that John Burnet is dinning into the ears of the Court a botheration about the politics of the magnificent city of Culross. But I will release you sooner than I fear I shall escape myself, with the assurance that I am ever yours most truly,
