comprehension of which is essential to our well-being, both here and hereafter. It will be our object to prove, on the one hand, that prescience is reconcileable with the course of events, being dependent on the freedom of the human will; and, on the other, that the fixed and pre-ordained process of action which is the subject of foresight, is not only compatible with, but, in fact, inseparable from, the doctrine of future rewards and punishments."

We trust we have no one among us who is disposed either to fatalism, or to dispute the divine attributes; but ere we could state to our worthy friend that the grand field of argument which he had offered was likely to be too vast for our columns, he had plunged headlong into the metaphysical questions of Liberty and Necessity. Definition followed definition,-argument was succeeding to argument, embroiling our ideas, and confounding, not only the apprehension, but even the mechanical powers, of our official organ and amanuensis aforesaid.

Our excellent philosopher had not proceeded far, when a concealed spectator might have been amused with the various effects which his commencement produced among the members of our divan. One grinned, one coughed, several yawned, and those who had yielded their serious and bona fide attention to the beginning of the lecture, began one by one to slacken, as the philosopher became lost to them, and perhaps to himself, in the mist of metaphysics. Even so, reader, it was lately our lot to see one of the long-coaches which go towards Falkirk set off on its journey, with out waiting for five or six passengers, who, having come up to be witnesses upon a trial,

were now on their return. These Insides, it seems, (to use the appropriate designa tion,) had not obtained their dismission from the gentlemen of the long robe until just three minutes after the patience of the coachman was exhausted. While hope remained that vigorous exertion might remedy this evil, the unhappy witnesses might be seen plying their utmost speed along Prince's Street, with their eyes fixed on the lessening vehicle, and their voices drowned in the long nasal twang of the resounding horn. One by one, as legs and wind failed, and as the case seemed to grow more and more desperate, they might be observed to slacken their pace, wipe their brows, pocket the tickets which they had brandished as intimating their title to arrest the flying chariot, and, giving up the fruitless pur suit, mingle with the idle strollers on Prince's-Street, whom they had previously entertained with a rival display of their agility.-Even so, in proportion as our powers of comprehension were clear and long-breathed, we kept our attention up with the meaning of our venerable friend, and then, out-run and out of wind, gave up the attempt one after another, and resigned our powers of understanding to slumber in what the Rambler would have called the torpor of inactivity.

At length the Coryphæus to whom we owe our First Number, and among whose qualities a certain impatience of protracted discussion is often manifest, snatched his hat from the table, and muttered between his teeth, " Egad, this is worse than my friend Peter Grievance-I'll e'en down to him again."

The Doctor, interrupted in his dictation, stopped short, put up his spectacles, and,

ed importance, seemed to await the restoration of silence in order to resume his task. This was an imprudent manœuvre on the part of Dr Dunder: an orator should always beware of quitting possession of the floor, even for a moment, when he perceives that his audience become impatient. The feelings of decorum and complaisance, wearing gradually more and more feeble, are at length barely sufficient to prevent the rudeness of actual interruption, and by no means adequate to repress the disposition of the audience to hustle the speaker off the stage should he give them an opportunity of bursting in at any pause in his lecture. Accordingly, the words of our Coryphæus were no sooner uttered, than two or three voices enquired, who was Peter Grievance, and what was he doing below stairs?

"Prosing, as we are doing above," was the reply; " and as to who he is," continued the speaker, again laying down his hat,for, to do him justice, he is as fond of haranguing as Dr Dunder himself-" as to who he is,. I thought there had not been a man in Edinburgh whom he has not talked into a fit of the blue devils. What he is depends partly on what he has been, and that would take some time to tell you."

"Let us hear him-let us hear him," was repeated from different corners; for, as Dr Dunder was observed to handle, re. cover, and present his notes, as if in order to resume his silenced fire, we were, to our shame be it spoken, all anxious to put him hors de combat.

"Peter, then," replied his acquaintance, "since you will have him, is one of those unfortunate beings who have been, during their whole life, (according to their own

ny to shoot their arrows at ; and the lightest misfortunes of his life are those which he ascribes to his own peculiar Evil Luck, unaided by the malice of his brethren of mankind. I have heard that at the High School he never was permitted to rise above the booby-form; a circumstance which Peter ascribes entirely to the partiality of the masters of that seminary, and appeals to all who know him if the thing does not speak for itself. At college he was treated with the same gross injustice; for his mien, and the happy correspondence of a long miserable visage that seemed to qualify him for an undertaker's man, was an inexhaustible source of pun and fun to the thin Professor of Humanity; and the learned Professor of Greek used to say more cruel things to him in that Ethnic language than Peter (having respect for his memory) chuses to repeat. As he was convinced, from these circumstances of melancholy experience, that the constitution of our academy affords no fair play for genius, Peter exchanged it for the stern school of arms, and tried successively the sea and land service. During six months service on board the Ajax, he found himself at first excessively sea-sick, which he imputes partly to the wretched and unhealthy birth in which the midshipmen are stowed, and partly to the pertinacious and brutal obstinacy of the captain, who kept the sea (watching a French squadron) during a heavy gale of wind. When the malady to which he was thus wilfully subjected had something abated, he found that the tyrannical rules of the service were calculated to drive all gentlemen out of that line, in order that ministers might dispose of naval appointments to their own creatures exclusively. In the

pur

army he was equally unfortunate; and if his authority can be received, there is no doubt that the fatal expedition to Saint Domingo bad for its secret motive the pose of vacating, by means of the yellow fever, the ensigncy held in the - regi. | ment of infantry by Peter Grievance, gentleman. But he will explain the secret springs of that unhappy affair when his political memoirs. shall be made public. ManMankind, and especially those who possessed any influence on his fortunes, appearing thus to be engaged in a combination against Peter, he resolved, nevertheless, not to be awanting to himself, but, relying on his own exertions, determined to break the measures instituted against him by his secret and powerful enemies, by the sale of his commission. In the course of this transaction he was cheated of ten days' pay, whether by the address of the agent or pay-master he is at a loss to assert positively, but inclines to believe they understood each other, and divided shares on the profit of the fraud. To qualify himself, I suppose, to meet the arts of imposition, by which he had already been such a sufferer, Mr Grievance resol ved to apply himself to the law, for which profession his father had originally destined him. But I perceive," said our friend, in terrupting himself, and looking at Dr Dunder, who was impatiently tapping his papers with the case of his spectacles, "I perceive I interrupt business."

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vedly to the high eminence which they have somehow attained, for Peter can safely aver, that he made little or no progress while under their tuition. I pass over the narrow escape which he made of being remitted to his studies, upon his first private examination, previous to assuming the honours of the gown,-a difficulty which was only averted by a kind-hearted examinator, who enlarged to his brethren on the noted example of a repulsed candidate for the toga having hanged himself, in the acute feeling of his disappointment. At the bar, the arts of his contemporaries (commonly called hugging) for securing the good-will and custom of the agents, together with the partiality of the judges for their own peats, or protégeés, sons, nephews, and cousins, in the nineteenth degree, prevented any one who came to the bar with the fair, manly, and independent views of Peter Grievance, from squeezing his way forward among the sordid crowd of dependents and sycophants. In the meanwhile Mr Grievance, senior, a person only remarkable for having quarrelled with every living soul in the parish of Dolour, which he honoured with his resi dénce, and for never in his life having expressed himself satisfied with the weather which Heaven was pleased to send, was removed to a place where we sincerely hope he finds nothing to complain of. He left his son a competent estate, encumbered only with fifteen law suits (ganging pleas,

"Mr Grievance, gentlemen," resumed the historian of that unhappy person, "was not more fortunate in his legal than he had been in his classical studies. He is of opinion, that the professors of municipal and civil jurisprudence, have risen most undeser

thize, than in those I have hitherto de f tailed. It is needless to add, that Peter's cruel fate pursued him, and that the Ordinary and Inner House in general dismissed his actions with expences, and assoilzied (for we know the language of the bar,) his parties from the claims he brought against them. On the other hand, the minister, the gauger, the titular of tiends, even the servants whom he dismissed between terms, found, by the influence of Peter's evil-star, favour in the eyes of the judges, and they decerned against him with costs.

"However fond a man may be of the agitation and liberty of growling, derived from the dependence and unsuccessful determination of a law-suit, these, like fine paintings, winter-fruit, foreign wines of high flavour, and other exotic dainties, are luxuries in which the wealthy alone can prudently indulge, and therefore Peter saw the necessity of becoming a sufferer at less expence. I do not know, if, in point of economy, he chose his subject of vexation happily, when, taking about sixty acres of his small estate into his own hand, he commenced agricul turist. But this I do know, that had he been to search all the callings and occupations of mankind, since Adam first handled his spade, and Tubal Cain blew his bellows, he could not have found one which afforded a more constant source for complaint and despondence. Peter knew how to avail himself of each contingence that arose, to bring a charge against the weather. If it rained, it rotted the crops; if it was fair, the turnips and grass were burned up by the drought. When corn was low priced, it was not worth threshing out and driving to market. Did it rise? it was too much to be apprehended that the mob of the coun try-town would burn his stack yard.

"Peter throve and fattened during the time of the late war. Its reverses and they were sufficiently numerous afforded him frequent and legitimate ground of com plaint, and he was observed to increase in corpulence, and in the chuckling look, which, under the phrase of sorrow, can hide inward satisfaction, after the retreat to Deventer, the evacuation of the Helder, the convention of Cintra, and other national misfortunes. How this should be I know not, unless on the same principle that an ass thrives and gets fat upon this tles, which every other animal will die ra ther than taste. Our victories, to be sure, were hard curds, but he had his resources in pitying the friends and families of the fallen; nay, if these were few in number, he would be content to extend his benevo lence to the suffering parents and relatives of our vanquished enemies, rather than not act as a damper.

The triumphant peace of. 1814 struck Peter so hard a blow, that he did not recover it for a month. All he had left was to hint his doubts, in the shape of a modest hope, that we might all be the better for the news this time twelvemonth. And as Buonaparte's return made Peter Grievance a true prophet, that remarkable event gave him a triumph which even the victory of Waterloo could not so totally subdue, but that he still hints that an escape from St Helena is not only possible, but very probable, as has been proved to him by his friend Jonathan Slyboots, skipper of the good ship Penobscot, now loading for New York-" And if he breaks loose upon us again," says Peter, looking sly, “I think all your faces will be as long as mine." "In expectation of the joyful resurrection of a friend who has furnished him with so

many opportunities for indulging his favourite humour of croaking, the internal distress of the country furnishes Peter Grieve. ance with ample fund for declamation. Talk to him of the abolition of the Income-Tax, "Aye, but," replies Peter, sighing, "how are you to meet the expenditure without it ?"-Hint at the reduction in army and navy," Poor fellows," says Peter, " and so you turn them adrift to starve, the instant your turn is served!—And moreover," says he, "have you not, by your premature disbanding of the forces, limited your means of subduing popular discontent ?"

"Happy man," continued our Coryphæus, looking upward, “fortunate, thrice fortunate Peter Grievance, thou hast built thy wishes, hopes, sympathies, and grounds of self-satisfaction, on a source that can never fail thee! He who desires the hap. piness of mankind is sure to be disappoint. ed, he who struggles to obtain their gra titude most probably excites their envy or malevolence, but he who finds pleasure in anticipating misfortunes in prospect, and dilating and exaggerating them when they arrive, is sure to have ample means of gra tification. All pursuits are unsubstantial, vague, and uncertain, when compared to those of Peter. Ambition may miss his aim, Science mistake her object, Painting and Poetry fail to obtain their laurel, the philanthropist may break his heart in despair of achieving the good he meditates, and the sanguine, who live upon hope, may verify the adage, and die of disappointment. But the last trumpet shall sound, and the frame of the world assume a new form, and be subjected to new laws, ere Peter, or those who, like Peter, find plea sure in the disasters, mistakes, mischances,

and misfortunes which chequer human life, shall fail of gratification!"

Our friend finished this sublime apostrophe, casting his eyes up to the ceiling, and squeezing between his hands the hat which he had resumed with the purpose of departing. "Our hour of study and preparation is out," said a member of our body, recollecting himself and looking at his watch, "and not a word prepared for the press.

"Your honour will forgive me," said the faithful Secretary, "but it's all down in black and white. I make it a rule never to lose a moment of my time when the pen's in my hand; and I am sure I never made a blunder excepting when I put down the civilities my late master (rest his soul) said to his black cat, betwixt the Primo and Secundo of the Memorial in the great case of Bother against Bore'um."

"What have you put down now ?" was one general exclamation.

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My character of Peter Grievance, I think," said our Coryphæus, smiling; "so Liberty and Necessity must e'en give place till some future occasion."

There was more energy than philosophy in the look which Dr Dunder gave, both to the officious clerk and the too forward associate who had thus anticipated his task. But the deed was done, the hour expended, the allotted sheet of paper filled to the margin; so, his being a case in which remonstrance and regret were alike unavailing, he pocketed his mortification with the notes which had so long over-awed us, and betook himself, with a sigh, to the seclusion of his own book-closet.