fference to which I refer is an
indescribable something, which can only be compared to peculiarities of
accent. They both speak the same language; perhaps in classical purity
of phraseology the fashionable Scotchman is even superior to the
Englishman; but there is a flatness of tone in his accent--a lack of what
the musicians call expression, which gives a local and provincial effect
to his conversation, however, in other respects, learned and intelligent.
It is so with his manners; he conducts himself with equal ease,
self-possession, and discernment, but the flavour of the metropolitan
style is wanting.

I have been led to make these remarks by what I noticed in the guests
whom I met on Friday at young Argent's. It was a small party, only five
strangers; but they seemed to be all particular friends of our host, and
yet none of them appeared to be on any terms of intimacy with each other.
In Edinburgh, such a party would have been at first a little cold; each
of the guests would there have paused to estimate the characters of the
several strangers before committing himself with any topic of
conversation. But here, the circumstance of being brought together by a
mutual friend, produced at once the purest gentlemanly confidence; each,
as it were, took it for granted, that the persons whom he had come among
were men of education and good-breeding, and, without deeming it at all
necessary that he should know something of their respective political and
philosophical principles, before venturing to speak on such subjects,
discussed frankly, and as things unconnected with party feelings,
incidental occurrences which, in Edinburgh, would have been avoided as
calculated to awaken animosities.

But the most remarkable feature of the company, small as it was,
consisted of the difference in the condition and character of the guests.
In Edinburgh the landlord, with the scrupulous care of a herald or
genealogist, would, for a party, previously unacquainted with each other,
have chosen his guests as nearly as possible from the same rank of life;
the London host had paid no respect to any such consideration--all the
strangers were as dissimilar in fortune, profession, connections, and
politics, as any four men in the class of gentlemen could well be. I
never spent a more delightful evening.

The ablest, the most eloquent, and the most elegant man present, without
question, was the son of a saddler. No expense had been spared on