us, devoted, and unremitting affection and zeal for my
improvement, with a laudable sense of the honour of the profession to
which he has trained me.

As we have no near relations, the tie betwixt us is of even unusual
closeness, though in itself one of the strongest which nature can form.
I am, and have all along been, the exclusive object of my father's
anxious hopes, and his still more anxious and engrossing fears; so what
title have I to complain, although now and then these fears and hopes
lead him to take a troublesome and incessant charge of all my motions?
Besides, I ought to recollect, and, Darsie, I do recollect, that my
father upon various occasions, has shown that he can be indulgent as
well as strict. The leaving his old apartments in the Luckenbooths was
to him like divorcing the soul from the body; yet Dr. R---- did but
hint that the better air of this new district was more favourable to
my health, as I was then suffering under the penalties of too rapid a
growth, when he exchanged his old and beloved quarters, adjacent to the
very Heart of Midlothian, for one of those new tenements (entire within
themselves) which modern taste has so lately introduced. Instance also
the inestimable favour which he conferred on me by receiving you into
his house, when you had only the unpleasant alternative of remaining,
though a grown-up lad, in the society of mere boys. [The diminutive and
obscure place called Brown's Square, was hailed about the time of its
erection as an extremely elegant improvement upon the style of designing
and erecting Edinburgh residences. Each house was, in the phrase used
by appraisers, 'finished within itself,' or, in the still newer
phraseology, 'self-contained.' It was built about the year 1763-4; and
the old part of the city being near and accessible, this square soon
received many inhabitants, who ventured to remove to so moderate a
distance from the High Street.] This was a thing so contrary to all my
father's ideas of seclusion, of economy, and of the safety to my morals
and industry, which he wished to attain, by preserving me from the
society of other young people, that, upon my word, I am always rather
astonished how I should have had the impudence to make the request, than
that he should have complied with it.

Then for the object of his solicitude--Do not laugh, or hold up your
hands, my good Darsie; but upon my word I like the profession to which
I am in the course of being educa