ity, and perhaps in some
instances from diffidence, they suffer themselves to be directed by
the opinions of others. Hence has arisen the swarm of critics and
reviewers, those clouds that obscure the fair light that would beam on
the mind of man, by his individual reflection, and through his
existence degrade him, by a submission to assumed authority;--a
voluntary blindness, that excludes him from the observation of nature,
and through indolence and credulity render his noblest faculties
feeble, assenting, and lethargic; and delude him to barter the
inheritance of his intellect for a mess of pottage.--_Dr.
Haslam.--Lancet_.

* * * * *

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

* * * * *

MUNCHAUSEN RIDE THROUGH EDINBURGH.

We were sitting rather negligently on an infernal animal, which, up to
that day, had seemed quiet as a lamb--kissing our hand to Mrs.
Davison, then Miss Duncan, and in the blaze of her fame, when a
Highland regiment, no doubt the forty-second, that had been trudging
down the Mound, so silently that we never heard them, all at once, and
without the slightest warning, burst out, with all their bag-pipes,
into one pibroch! The mare--to do her justice--had been bred in
England, and ridden, as a charger, by an adjutant to an English
regiment. She was even fond of music--and delighted to prance behind
the band--unterrified by cymbals or great drum. She never moved in a
roar of artillery at reviews--and, had the Castle of Edinburgh--Lord
bless it--been self-involved, at that moment, in a storm of thunder
and lightning, round its entire circle of cannon, that mare would not
so much as have pricked up her ears, whisked her tail, or lifted
a hoof. But the pibroch was more than horse-flesh and blood could
endure--and off we two went like a whirlwind. Where we went--that is
to say, what were the names of the few first streets along which
we were borne, is a question which, as a man of veracity, we must
positively decline answering. For some short space of time, lines of
houses reeled by without a single face at the windows--and these,
we have since conjectured, might be North and South Hanover street,
and Queen-street. By and by we surely were in something like a
square--could it be Charlotte-square?--and round and round it we
flew--three, four, five, or six times, as horsemen do at the
Caledonian amphitheatre--for the animal had got blind with