44 THE BANK ACCOUNTANT. 



of thought and feeling, which might afford employment 

 to the philosopher. 



' My amusements at length produced a volume 

 which, though not quite such a work as I had conceived 

 might have been written on the subject, I deemed not en- 

 tirely devoid of merit. I submitted my MS., through Sir 

 Thomas D. Lauder (a gentleman who has honoured me 

 by his notice and shown me much kindness), to some of 

 the literati of Edinburgh : their judgment regarding it 

 has been favourable beyond my most sanguine antici- 

 pations. Still, however, the work is local in its character, 

 and more exclusively so in its title, and in times like the 

 present I can have nothing to expect from the booksellers. 

 But the circumstances which militate most against the 

 general interest of the work must have some little tend- 

 ency to impart to it a particular interest in the district 

 of country whose traditions it relates, and whose scenery 

 and general character it purports to describe. If, like 

 a convex lens, the focus bears on only a narrow space, 

 in that narrow space the rays must be concentrated. 

 For a work of this kind the mode of publishing by 

 subscription is the only available one ; and, after hesitat- 

 ing long for the scheme has often been resorted to in 

 this part of the country by men of an inferior cast, in- 

 ferior both in sentiment and intellect, and I was un- 

 willing it should be thought that I had anything in 

 common with them I now betake myself to it. I 

 would ill like to risk my respectability as a man for the 

 uncertain chance of being a little known as a writer ; 

 but there is surely nothing mean in a mode of publica- 

 tion which such men as Pope and Cowper and Burns 

 have had recourse to. The meanness must consist not 

 abstractedly in the scheme itself, but, when the work 

 chances to be a worthless one, in the inveigling the 



