A LITERARY BANKER. 21 



plutonic formation, and speckled with human dwellings. 

 I need not tell you that, as I looked from the walls and 

 saw so much of the antique and the venerable beneath 

 me, and so much of the beautiful around, I wished for a 

 companion to see all that I saw, and to feel all that I 

 felt ; nor need I say, my Lydia, what companion it was 

 I wished for. Uncommunicated pleasure, you know, is 

 apt to change its nature, and to become pain. 



1 Mr Miller, our accountant here, is the son of a dis- 

 senting clergyman, who died about four years ago. He 

 is a smart, obliging young lad, and a thorough master of 

 his business. He has introduced me to a few of his 

 acquaintance here, and to his mother, a remarkably fine- 

 looking woman, who, though her son is perhaps as old 

 as you are, might still pass for a young lady. I have 

 twice drunk tea with her. I have passed an evening, 

 too, with Mr Paterson, our bank agent, a frank, obliging 

 young man (he is five years younger than I am), of much 

 general information, and with none of the little pride of 

 our north-country bankers in his composition. Among 

 the many causes of gratitude which Providence has given 

 me, the kindness which I everywhere meet with is not 

 one of the least. Mr Paterson tells me that McDiarmid, 

 the editor of the Dumfries Courier, and the ablest of 

 all our provincial editors, was at one time a clerk in the 

 Commercial Bank; but he was by no means a very superior 

 one. One of the tellers was astounded on one occasion 

 to find his cash a thousand pounds short ; and after 

 vainly striving to discover some error in his calculations, 

 he gave up the search, and deemed himself ruined. He 

 lived a wretched life for about a fortnight, when he at 

 length ascertained that poor McDiarmid, in one of his 

 absent moods, had contrived, in carrying forward his 

 balance, to leave a thousand pounds behind. On leav- 



