observations on the inhabitants of "Auld Reekie," are something like the subject of his communication "Shavings," rather superficial.

Improvidence forms no feature in the Scottish character; but your flying tourist charges "the gude folk o' Embro'" with monstrous extravagance in making bonfires of their carpenters' chips; and proceeds to reflect in the true spirit of civilization how much better it would have been if the builders' chips had been used in lighting household fires, to the obviously great saving of bundle-wood, than to have thus wantonly forced them to waste their gases on the desert air. But your traveller forgot that in countries which abound in wheat, rye is seldom eaten; and that on the same principle, in Scotland, where coal and peat are abundant, the "natives," like the ancient Vestals, never allow their fires to go out, but keep them burning through the whole night. The business of the "gude man" is, immediately before going to bed, to load the fire with coals, and crown the supply with a "canny passack o' turf," which keeps the whole in a state of gentle combustion; when, in the morning a sturdy thrust from the poker, produces an instantaneous blaze. But, unfortunately, should any untoward "o'er-night clishmaclaver" occasion the neglect of this duty, and the fire be left, like envy, to feed upon its own vitals, a remedy is at hand in the shape of a pan "o' live coals" from some more provident neighbour, resident in an upper or lower "flat;" and thus without bundle-wood or "shavings," is the mischief cured.

I hope that this explanation will sufficiently vindicate my Scottish friends from M.L.B.'s aspersion. Scotchmen improvident! never: for workhouses are as scarce among them as bundle-wood, or intelligent travellers. Recollect that I am not in a passion; but this I will say, though the gorge choke me, that M.L.B. strongly reminds me of the French princess, who when she heard of some manufacturers dying in the provinces of starvation, said, "Poor fools! die of starvation—if I were them I would eat bread and cheese first."

The next time M.L.B. visits Scotland, let him ask the first peasant he meets how to keep eggs fresh for years; and he will answer rub a little oil or butter over them, within a day or two after laying, and they will keep any length of time, perfectly fresh. This discovery, which was made in France by the great Reamur, depends for its success upon the oil filling up the pores of the egg-shell, and thereby cutting off the perspiration between the fluids of the egg and the atmosphere, which is a necessary agent in putrefaction. The preservation of eggs in this manner, has long been practised in all "braid Scotland;" but it is not so much as known in our own boasted land of stale eggs and bundle-wood.

In Edinburgh, I mean the Scottish and not the Irish capital, M.L.B. may actually eat new laid eggs a year old! How is it that this great comfort is not practised in the navy? The Scotch have also a hundred other domestic practices for the saving of the hard earned "siller;" and are far from the commission of any such idle waste as M.L.B.'s story exhibits. S.S.

P.S. Tinder-boxes are unknown in Scotland, and I am sure M.L.B. if he wants a business would as readily make his fortune by selling them, as the Yorkshireman who went to the West Indies with a cargo of great coats.

LINES

ON MY FORTY-NINTH BIRTHDAY.

(For the Mirror.)

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

PHILOSOPHY OF LONDON.

The Quadrant

The principle of suum cuique is felicitously enforced in that ostentatious but rather heavy piece of architecture, the Regent Quadrant, the pillars of which exhibit from time to time different colours, according to the fancy of the shop-owners to whose premises respectively they happen to belong. Thus, Mr. Figgins chooses to see his side of a pillar painted a pale chocolate, while his neighbour Mrs. Hopkins insists on disguising the other half with a coat of light cream colour, or haply a delicate shade of Dutch pink; so that the identity of material which made it so hard for Transfer, in Zeluco, to distinguish between his metal Venus and Vulcan, is often the only incident that the two moieties have in common.

Squares.

The few squares that existed in London antecedent to 1770, were rather sheep-walks, paddocks, and kitchen gardens, than any thing else. Grosvenor Square in particular, fenced round with a rude wooden railing, which was interrupted by lumpish brick piers at intervals of every half-dozen yards, partook more of the character of a pond than a parterre; and as for Hanover Square, it had very much the air of a sorry cow-yard, where blackguards were to be seen assembled daily, playing at husselcap up to their ankles in mire. Cavendish Square was then for the first time dignified with a statue, in the modern uniform of the Guards, mounted on a charger, à l'antique, richly gilt and burnished; and Red Lion Square, elegantly so called from the sign of an ale-shop at the corner, presented the anomalous appendages of two ill-constructed watch-houses at either end, with an ungainly, naked obelisk in the centre, which, by the by, was understood to be the site of Oliver Cromwell's re-interment. St. James's Park abounded in apple-trees, which Pepys mentions having laid under contribution by stealth, while Charles and his queen were actually walking within sight of him. The quaint style of this old writer is sometimes not a little entertaining. He mentions having seen Major-General Harrison "hanged, drawn, and quartered at Charing-Cross, he (Harrison) looking as cheerful as any man could in that condition." He also gravely informs us that Sir Henry Vane, when about to be beheaded on Tower Hill, urgently requested the executioner to take off his head so as not to hurt a seton which happened to be uncicatrized in his neck!

Modern Building.

We are the contemporaries of a street-building generation, but the grand maxim of the nineteenth century, in their management of masonry, as in almost every thing else, as far as we can discover, appears to lie in that troublesome line of Macbeth's soliloquy, ending with, "'twere well it were done quickly." It is notorious that many of the leases of new