52 THE BANK ACCOUNTANT. 



cannot be traditionary ; such, for instance, as a George's 

 Square in Edinburgh some fifteen years before the actual 

 erection of the place bearing that name ; the numbering 

 of houses, too, when there were no numbers ; and the 

 coining by the head of Leith walk from Queeiisferry to 

 Edinburgh. You speak of dates of the thirteenth and 

 fourteenth centuries on the front of Urquhart Castle, in 

 connection with architectural styles, I am sure not much 

 earlier than the seventeenth, and when I am equally 

 sure that no dates were carved on houses in Scotland, 

 at least, far as I have ridden, and much as I have seen 

 in my native country, I never saw a date upon a build- 

 ing earlier than the sixteenth century. This shows that 

 you fill up and round off ; and why not ? but only such 

 matters must be managed discreetly. 



' I am much obliged by the Jacobite Psalm, which 

 is certainly much above the tame poetry of the period. 

 Your remark about the Jacobites has often struck myself. 

 I account for their becoming Liberals in after-times, by 

 the fact of Jacobitism at length becoming identified with 

 a patriotic indignation at the corrupt government of the 

 early Brunswick sovereigns, in which last character it 

 must have very readily associated with modern Liberalism. 

 1 1 had thought of it as a duty to endeavour to give 

 you some hints as to your future conduct in literature, 

 such as a metropolitan may be sometimes able to give 

 to a provincial. But now that I see your volume I deem 

 it needless to try. A mind such as you have the fortune 

 to possess, can hardly ever or anywhere be at a loss. I 

 could hope, however, that you may keep in view the 

 advantage, for your own happiness, of advancing into 

 some more conspicuous situation in life, where the 

 powers and tendencies of your mind may find more 

 fitting scope and exercise than at present. For the at- 



