question of Whither—with which, also, we intermeddle not here. Enough for us to understand that there verily a Scene of Universal History is being enacted (a little living TIMEpicture in the bosom of ETERNITY)—and with the feeling due in that case, to ask not so much Why it is, as What it is. Leaving priorities and posteriorities aside, and cause-and-effect to adjust itself elsewhere, conceive so many vivid spirits thrown together into Europe, into the Paris of that day, and see how they demean themselves, what they work out and attain there. As the mystical enjoyment of an object goes infintely farther than the intellectual, and we can look at a picture with delight and profit, after all that we can be taught about it is grown poor and wearisome; so here, and by far stronger reason, these light Letters of Diderot to the Voland, again unveiling and showing Parisian Life, are worth more to us than many a heavy tome laboriously struggling to explain it. True, we have seen the picture (that same Parisian life-picture) ten times already; but can look at it an eleventh time; nay this, as we said, is not a canvas-picture, but a life-picture, of whose significance there is no end for us. Grudge not the elderly Spinster her existence, then; say not she has lived in vain. For what of History there is, in this Preternuptial Correspondence, should we not endeavour to forgive and forget all else, the sensibilité itself? The curtain which had fallen for almost a century is again drawn up; the scene is alive and busy. Figures grown historical are here seen face to face, and again live before us. a call towards. D'Alembert's Mélanges, as the impress of a genuine spirit, in peculiar position and probation, have still instruction for us, both of head and heart. The man lives retired here, in questionable seclusion with his Espinasse; incurs the suspicion of apostasy, because in the Encyclopédie he saw no Evangile and celestial Revelation, but only a huge Folio Dictionary: and would not venture life and limb on it, without a "consideration." Sad was it to Diderot to see his fellow-voyager make for port, and disregard signals, when the sea-krakens rose round him! They did not quarrel; were always friendly when they met, but latterly met only at the rate of "once in the two years." D'Alembert died when Diderot was on his death-bed: "My friend," said the latter to the news-bringer, "a great light is gone out." Hovering in the distance, with wo-struck, minatory air, stern-beckoning, comes Rousseau. Poor Jean Jacques! Alternately deified, and cast to the dogs; a deep-minded, highminded, even noble, yet wofully misarranged mortal, with all misformations of Nature intensated to the verge of madness by unfavourable Fortune. A lonely man; his life a long soliloquy! The wandering Tiresias of the time;-in whom, however, did lie prophetic meaning, such as none of the others offer. Whereby indeed it might partly be that the world went to such extremes about him; that, long after his departure, we have seen one whole nation worship him, and a Burke, in the name of another, class him with the offscourings of the earth. His true character, A strange theatre that of French Philoso- with its lofty aspirings and poor performings; phism; a strange dramatic corps! Such ano-and how the spirit of the man worked so ther corps for brilliancy and levity, for gifts wildly, like celestial fire in a thick dark eleand vices, and all manner of sparkling incon-ment of chaos, and shot forth ethereal radisistencies, the world is not like to see again. There is Patriarch Voltaire, of all Frenchmen the most French; he whom the French had, as it were, long waited for, "to produce at once, in a single life, all that French genius most prized and most excelled in ;" of him and his wondrous ways, as of one known, we need say little. Instant enough to "crush the Abomination" (écraser l'Infame,) he has prosecuted his Jesuit-hunt over many lands and many centuries, in many ways, with an alacrity that has made him dangerous, and endangered him: Rousseau and Diderot were early friends: he now sits at Ferney, withdrawn from the ac- who has forgotten how Jean Jacques walked tive toils of the chase; cheers on his hunting-to the Castle of Vincennes, where Denis (for dogs mostly from afar: Diderot, a beagle of the first vchemence, he has rather to restrain. That all extant and possible Theology be abolished, wil. not content the fell Denis, as surely it might have done; the Patriarch must address him a friendly admonition on his Atheism, and make him eat it again. D'Alembert, too, we may consider as one known; of all the Philosophe fraternity, he who in speech and conduct agrees best with our English notions; an independent, patient, prudent man; of great faculty, especially of great clearness and method; famous in Mathematics; no less so, to the wonder of some, in the intellectual provinces of Literature. A foolish wonder; as if the Thinker could think only on one thing, and not on any thing he had ance, all-piercing lightning, yet could not illuminate, was quenched and did not conquer: this, with what lies in it, may now be pretty accurately appreciated. Let his history teach all whom it concerns, to "harden themselves against the ills which Mother Nature will try them with;" to seek within their own soul what the world must for ever deny them; and say composedly to the Prince of the Power of this lower Earth and Air: Go thou thy way; I go mine! heretical Metaphysics, and irreverence to the Strumpetocracy) languishes in durance; and devised his first Literary Paradox on the road thither? Their Quarrel, which, as a fashionable hero of the time complains, occupied all Paris, is likewise famous enough. The reader recollects that heroical epistle of Diderot tc Grimm on that occasion, and the sentence: "Oh, my friend, let us continue virtuous, for the state of those who have ceased to be so makes me shudder." But is the reader aware what the fault of him "who had ceased to be so" was? A series of ravelments and squab bling grudges, "which," says Mademoiselle with much simplicity, "the Devil himself could not understand." Alas, the Devil well under stood it, and Tyrant Grimm too did, who had the ear of Diderot, and poured into it his own | Revolution," (with loss of his ruffles ;) and was unjust, almost abominable spleen. Clean seen at the Court of Gotha, sleek and well to paper need not be soiled with a foul story, | live, within the memory of man. where the main actor is only "Tyran le Blanc;" enough to know that the "continually virtuous" Tyrant found Diderot "extremely impressionable;" so poor Jean Jacques must go his ways, (with both the scath and the scorn,) and among his many woes bear this also. Diderot is not blamable; pitiable rather; for who would be a pipe, which not Fortune only, out any Sycophant may play tunes on? The world has heard of M. le Chevalier de Saint-Lambert; considerable in Literature, in Love, and War. He is here again, singing the frostiest Pastorals; happily, however, only in the distance, and the jingle of his wires soon dies away. Of another Chevalier, worthy Jancourt, be the name mentioned, and little more: he digs unweariedly, mole-wise, in the Encyclopedic field, catching what he can, and shuns the light. Then there is Helvetius, the well-fed Farmer-general, enlivening his sybaritic life with metaphysic paradoxes. His reve freest Philosophe-spirit, with Philanthropy and Sensibility enough: the greater is our astonishment to find him here so ardent a Preserver of the Game: "This Madame de Nocé," writes Diderot, treating of the Bourbonne Hot-springs, " is a neighbour of Helvetius. She told us, the Philosopher was the unhappiest man in the world on his estates. He is surrounded there by neighbours and peasants who detest him. They break the windows of his mansion, plunder his grounds by night, cut his trees, You Of this same Tyrant Grimm, desiring to speak peaceably, we shall say little. The man himself is less remarkable than his fortune. Changed times indeed, since the thread-lations, De l'Homme and De l'Esprit, breathe the bare German Bursch quitted Ratisbon, with the sound of cat-calls in his ears, the condemned "Tragedy, Banise," in his pocket; and fled southward, on a thin travelling-tutorship; -since Rousseau met you, Herr Grimm, "a young man described as seeking a situation, and whose appearance indicated the pressing necessity he was in of soon finding one!" Of a truth, you have flourished since then, Herr Grimm: his introductions of you to Diderot, to Holbach, to the black-locked D'Epinay, where not only you are wormed in, but he is wormed out, have turned to some-throw down his walls, tear up his spiked what; the Thread-bare has become wellnapped, and got ruffles and jewel-rings, and walks abroad in sword and bag-wig, and lackers his brass countenance with rouge, and so (as Tyrun le Blanc) recommends himself to the fair; and writes Parisian Philosophegossip to the Hyperborean Kings, and his Grimm's Leaves, copied "to the number of twenty," are bread of life to many; and cringes here, and domineers there: and lives at his ease in the Creation, in an effective tendresse with the D'Epinay, husband or custom of the country not objecting!-Poor Börne, the new German flying Sansculotte, feels his mouth water, at Paris, over these fleshpots of Grimm; reflecting with what heart he too could write "Leaves," and be fed thereby. Börne, my friend, those days are done! While Northern Courts were a "Lunar Versailles," it was well to have an Uriel stationed in their Sun there; but of all spots in this Universe (hardly excepting Tophet) Paris now is the one we at court could best dispense with news from; never more, in these centuries, will a Grimm be missioned thither; never a "Leaf of Börne" be blown court-wards by any wind. As for the Grimm, we can see that he was a man made to rise in the world: a fair, even handsome outfit of talent, wholly marketable; skill in music, and the like, encyclopedical readiness in all ephemera; saloon-wit, a trenchant, unnesitating head; above all, a heart ever in the right place, in the market-place, namely, and marked for sale to the highest bidder." Really a methodical, adroit, managing man. By "hero-worship," and the cunning appliance of alternate sweet and sullen, he has brought Diderot to be his patient milch-cow, whom he can milk an Essay from, a Volume from, when he lists. Victorious Grimm! He even escape those same "horrors of the French paling. He dare not go to shoot a hare, Alas! are not Helvetius's preserves, at this hour, all broken up, and lying desecrated Neither can the others, in what latitude and longitude soever, remain eternally impregnable. But if a Rome was one saved by geese, need we wonder that an England is lost by partridges? We are sons of Eve, who bartered Paradise for an apple. But to return to Paris and its Philosophe Church militant. Here is a Marmontel, an active subaltern thereof, who fights in a small way, through the Mercure; and, in rose-pink romance-pictures, strives to celebrate the "moral sublime." An Abbé Morellet, busy with the Corn Laws, walks in at intervals, stooping, shrunk together, "as if to get nearer himself" (pour être plus près de lui-même.) The rogue Galiani alternates between Naples and Paris; Galiani, by good luck, has, "for ever settled the question of the Corn Laws;" an idle fellow otherwise; a spiritual Lazzarone; full of frolics, wanton quips, anti-jesuit gesta, and wild Italian humour; the sight of his swart, sharp face is the signal for Laughter,in which indeed, the Man himself has unhappily evaporated, leaving no result behind him. Of the Baron d'Holbach thus much may be said, that both at Paris and at Grandval he gives good dinners. His two or three score volumes of Atheistic Philosophism, which he published, (at his own expense,) may now be forgotten and even forgiven. A purse open and deep, a heart kindly-disposed, quiet, sociable, or even friendly; these, with excellent wines, gain him a literary elevation, which no thinking faculty he had could have pretended to. An easy, laconic gentleman; of grave politeness; apt to lose temper at play; yet, on the whole, good-humoured, eupeptic, and eupractic: there may he live and let live. Nor is heaven's last gift to man wanting here; the natural sovereignty of women. Your Châtelets, Epinays, Espinasses, Geoffrins, Deffands, will play their part too; there shall, in all senses, be not only Philosophers, but Philosophesses. Strange enough is the figure these women make: good souls, it was a strange world for them. What with metaphysics and flirtation, system of nature, fashion of dress-caps, vanity, curiosity, jealousy, atheism, rheumatism, traités, bouts-rimés, noblesentiments, and rouge-pots,-the vehement female intellect sees itself sailing on a chaos, where a wiser might have wavered, if not foundered. For the rest, (as an accurate observer has remarked,) they become a sort of Lady-Presidents in that society; attain great influence; and, imparting as well as receiving, communicate to all that is done or said somewhat of their own peculiar tone. In a world so wide and multifarious, this little band of Philosophes, acting and speaking as they did, had a most various reception to expect; votes divided to the uttermost. The mass of mankind, busy enough with their own work, of course heeded them only when forced o do it; these, meanwhile, form the great neutral element, in which the battle has to fight itself; the two hosts, according to their several success, to recruit themselves. Of the Higher Classes, it appears, the small proporion not wholly occupied in eating and dressing, and therefore open to such a question, are in their favour, strange as to us it may seem; the spectacle of a Church pulled down is, in stagnant times, amusing, nor do the generality, on either side, yet see whither ulteriorly it is tending. The Reading World, which was then more than now the intelligent, inquiring world, reads eagerly (as it will ever do) whatsoever skilful, sprightly, reasonable-looking word is written for it; enjoying, appropriating the same; perhaps without fixed judgment, or deep care of any kind. Careful enough, fixed enough, on the other hand, is the Jesuit Brotherhood; in these days sick unto death; but only the bitterer and angrier for that. Dangerous are the death-convulsions of an expiring Sorbonne, ever and anon filling Paris with agitation: it behooves your Philosophe to walk warily, and, in many a critical circumstance, to weep with the one cheek, and smile with the other. Nor is Literature itself wholly Philosophe: apart from the Jesuit regulars, in their Trevoux Journals, Sermons, Episcopal Charges, and other camps or casemates, a considerable Guerrilla, or Reviewer force (consisting, as usual, of smugglers, unemployed destitute persons, deserters who have been refused promotion, and other the like broken characters) has organized itself, and maintains a harassing bush-warfare: of these the chieftain is Frèron, once in tolerable repute with the world, had he not, carrying too high a head, struck his foot on stones, and stumbled. By the continual depreciating of talent, grown at length undeniable, he has sunk low enough: Voltaire, in the Ecossaise, can bring him on the stage, and have him killed by laughter, unde the name, sufficiently recognisable, of Wasp (in French, Frelon.) Another Empecenador, still more hateful, is Palissot, who has written and got acted a Comedy of Les Philosophes, at which the Parisians, spite of its dulness, have also laughed. To laugh at us! The so meritorious us! Heard mankind ever the like? For poor Palissot, had he fallen into Philosophe hands, serious bodily tar-and-feathering might have been apprehended: as it was, they do what the pen, with its gall and copperas, can; invoke Heaven and Earth to witness the treatment of divine Philosophy;-with which view, in particular, friend Diderot seems to have composed his Rameau's Nephew, wherein Palissot and others of his kidney are (figuratively speaking) mauled and mangled, and left not in dog's likeness. So divided was 'he world, Literary, Courtly, Miscellaneous, on this matter: it was a confused anomalous time. Among its more notable anomalies may be reckoned the relations of French Philosophism to foreign Crowned Heads. In Prussia there is a Philosophe King; in Russia a Philosophe Empress: the whole North swarms with kinglets and queenlets of the like temper. Nay, as we have seen, they entertain their special ambassador in Philosophedom, their lion's-provider to furnish spiritual Philosophe-provender; and pay him well. The great Frederic, the great Catherine, are as nursing-father and nursing mother to this new Church of Antichrist, a all straits, ready with money, honourable royal asylum, help of every sort,-which, however, except in the money-shape, the wiser of out Philosophes are shy of receiving. Voltaire has tried it in the asylum shape, and found it un- | under thin disguises, some hundred and fifty suitable; D'Alembert and Diderot decline re- printers working at it with open doors, all peating the experiment. What miracles are Paris knowing of it, only Authority winking wrought by the arch-magician Time! Could hard. Choiseul, in his resolute way, had now these Frederics, Catherines, Josephs, have shut the eyes of Authority, and kept them shut. looked forward some three-score years; and Finally, to crown the whole matter, a copy of beheld the Holy Alliance in conference at the prohibited Book lies in the King's private Laybach! But so goes the world: kings are library: and owes favour, and a withdrawal not seraphic doctors, with gift of prescience, of the prohibition, to the foolishest accident: but only men, with common eyesight, participating in the influences of their generation: kings too, like all mortals, have a certain love of knowledge; still more infallibly, a certain desire of applause; a certain delight in mortifying one another. Thus what is persecuted here finds refuge there; and ever, one way or other, the New works itself out full-formed from under the Old; nay the Old, as in this instance, sits sedulously hatching a cockatrice that will one day devour it. "One of Louis Fifteenth's domestics told me," says Voltaire, "that once, the king his master supping, in private circle (en petite compagnie,) at Trianon, the conversation turned first on the chase, and from this on guzzowder. Some one said that the best powder was made of sulphur, saltpetre, and charcoal, in equal parts. The Duc de la Vallière, with better knowledge, maintained that for good powder there must be but one part of sulphur, one of charcoal, with five of saltpetre, well filtered, well evaporated, well crystallized. "It is pleasant,' said the Duc de Nivernois, that we who daily amuse ourselves with kill sometimes with killing men, or getting ourselves killed, on the frontiers, should not know what that same work of killing is done with.' No less anomalous, confused, and contradictory is the relation of the Philosophes to their own Government. How, indeed, could it be otherwise, their relation to Society being stilling partridges in the Park of Versailles, and so undecided; and the Government, which might have endeavoured to adjust and preside over this, being itself in a state of anomaly, death-lethargy, and doting decrepitude? The "Alas! we are in the like case with all true conduct and position for a French Sove- things in this world,' answered Madame de reign towards French Literature, in that coun- Pompadour; ‘I know not what the rouge I put try, might have been, though perhaps of all upon my cheeks is made of; you would bring things the most important, one of the most dif- me to a nonplus, if you asked how the silk ficult to discover and accomplish. What chance hose I wear are manufactured.' "Tis a pity,' was there that a thick-blooded Louis Quinze, said the Duc de Vallière, that his majesty from his Pare aux Cerfs, should discover it, confiscated our Dictionnaires Encyclopédiques, should have the faintest inkling of it? His which cost us our hundred pistoles; we should "peaceable soul" was quite otherwise employ- soon find the decision of all our questions ed: Minister after Minister must consult his there.' The King justified the act of confisown several insight, his own whim, above all cation; he had been informed that these twenhis own ease and so the whole business, now ty-one folio volumes, to be found lying on all when we look on it, comes out one of the most ladies' toilettes, were the most pernicious botched, piebald, inconsistent, lamentable, and things in the world for the kingdom of France; even ludicrous objects in the history of State- he had resolved to look for himself if this craft. Alas, necessity has no law: the states- were true, before suffering the book to circuman, without light, perhaps even without eyes, late. Towards the end of the repast, he sends whom Destiny nevertheless constrains to go- three of his valets to bring him a copy; they vern (what is still called governing) his nation enter, struggling under seven volumes each. in a time of World-Downfal, what shall he do, The article powder is turned up; the Duc de la but if so may be, collect the taxes, prevent Vallière is found to be right: and soon Ma(in some degree) murder and arson; and for dame Pompadour learns the difference between the rest, wriggle hither and thither, return upon the old rouge d'Espagne with which the ladies his steps, clout up old rents and open new,- of Madrid coloured their cheeks, and the rouge and, on the whole, eat his victuals, and let the des dames of Paris. She finds that the Greek devil take it? Of the pass to which States- and Roman ladies painted with a yurple exmanship had come in respect of Philosophism, tracted from the murer, and that co..sequently let this one fact be evidence instead of a thou- our scarlet is the purple of the ancients; that sand. M. de Malesherbes writes to warn Di- there is more purple in the rouge d'Espagne, derot that next day he will give orders to have and more cochineal in that of France. She all his papers seized.-Impossible! answers learns how stockings are woven; the stockDiderot: juste ciel! how shall I sort them, where ing-frame described there fills her with amazeshall I hide them, within four-and-twenty ment. Ah, what a glorious book!' cried she. hours? Send them to me, answers M. de Males-Sire, did you confiscate this magazine of all herbes! Thither accordingly they go, under lock and seal; and the hungry catchpoles find nothing but empty drawers. The Encyclopédie was set forth first "with approbation" and Privilége du Roi; next, it was stopped by Authority; next, the public murmuring suffered to proceed; then again, positively for the last time, stopped,-and, no whit the less, printed, and written, and circulated, useful things, that you might have it wholly to yourself, then, and be the one learned man in your kingdom?' Each threw himself on the volumes, like the daughters of Lycomedes on the jewels of Ulysses; each four forthwith whatever he was seeking. Some who had lawsuits were surprised to find the decision of them there. The King reads there all the rights of his crown. Well, in truth,' (mais vraiment, said he, I know not why they said so much ill of the book." 'Ah, Sire,' said the Duc de Nivernois, 'does not your majesty see,' &c. &e." In such a confused world, under such unheard of circumstances, must friend Diderot ply his editorial labours. No sinecure is it! Penetrating into all subjects and sciences; waiting and rummaging in all libraries, laboratories; nay, for many years, fearlessly diving into all manner of workshops, unscrewing stocking looms, and even working thereon, (that the department of Arts and Trades might be perfect;) then seeking out contributors, and flattering them; quickening their laziness, get ting payment for them ; quarrelling with Bookseller and Printer; bearing all miscalculations, misfortunes, misdoings of so many fallible men (for there all at last lands) on his single back: surely this was enough, without having farther to do battle with the beagles of Office, perilously withstand them, expensively sop them, toilsomely elude them! Nevertheless, he perseveres, and will not but persevere;-less, perhaps, with the deliberate courage of a Man, who has compared result and outlay, than with the passionale obstinacy of a Woman who, having made up her mind. will shrink at no ladder of ropes but ride with her lover, though all the four Elements gainsay it. At every new concussion from the Powers, he roars; say rather, shrieks, for there is a female shrillness in it; proclaiming, Murder! Robbery! Rape! invoking men and angels; meanwhile proceeds unweariedly with the printing. It is a hostile building up (not of the Holy Temple at Jerusalem, but of the Unholy one at Paris :) thus must_Diderot, like Ezra, come to strange extremities; and every workman works with his trowel in one hand, in the other his weapon of war; that so, in spite of all Tiglaths, the work go on, and the top-stone of it be brought out with shouting. Shouting! Ah! what faint broken quaver is that in the shout; as of a man that shouted with the throat only, and inwardly was bowed down with dispiritment? It is Diderot's faint broken quaver: he is sick and heavy of soul. Scandalous enough: the Goth, Lebreton, loving, as he says, his head better even than his profit, has for years gone privily at dead of night, to the finished Encyclopedic proof-sheets, and there with nefarious pen, scratched out whatever to him seemed dangerous; filling up the gap as he could, or merely letting it fill itself up. Heaven and Earth! Not only are the finer Philosophe sallies mostly cut out, but hereby has the work become a sunken, hitching, ungainly mass, little better than a monstrosity. Goth! Hun! sacrilegious Attila of the book-trade! Oh, surely for this treason the hottest of Dante's Purgatory were too temperate. Infamous art thou, Lebreton, to all ages, that read the Encyclopédie; and Philosophes not yet in stad lling-clothes shall gnash their teeth over tl ee, and spit upon thy memory.-Lebreton pockets both the abuse and the cash, and sleeps sound in a whole skin. The able Editor could never be said to get the better of it. Now, Lowever, it is time that, quitting gen eralities, we go, in this fine autumn weather, to Holbach's at Grandval, where the hardworked, but unwearied Encyclopedist, with plenty of ink and writing paper, is sure to be. Ever in the Holbach household, his arrival is a holiday; if a quarrel spring up, it is only because he will not come, or too soon goes away. A man of social talent, with such a tongue as Diderot's, in a mansion where the only want to be guarded against was that of wit, could not be other than welcome. He composes Articles there, and walks, and dines, and plays cards, and talks; lang tingly waits letters from his Voland, copiously writes to her. It is in these copious love-despatches that the whole matter is graphically painted: we have an Asmodeus' view of the interior life there, and live it over again with him. The Baroness in red silk, tempered with snow-white gauze, is beauty and grace itself; her old Mother is a perfect romp of fifteen, or younger; the house is lively with company: the Baron, as we said, speaks little, but to the purpose; is seen sometimes with his pipe, in dressing gown and red slippers; otherwise the best of landlords. Remarkable figures drop in: generals disabled at Quebec; fashionable gentlemen rusticating in the neighbourhood; Abbés, such as Galiani, Raynal, Morellet; perhaps Grimm and his Epinay; other Philosophes and Philosophesses. Guests too of less dignity, acting rather as butts than as bowmen: for it is the part of every one either to have wit, or to be the cause of haying it. Among these latter, omitting many, there is one whom, for country's sake, we must particularize; an ancient personage, named Hoop (Hope,) whom they call Père Hoop; by birth a Scotchman. Hoop seems to be a sort of fixture at Grandval, not bowman, therefore butt; and is shot at for his lodging. A most shrivelled, wind-dried, dyspeptic, chill-shivering individual; Professor of Life-weariness; sits dozing there,-dozes there, however, with one eye open. He submits to be called Mummy without a shrug; cowers over the fire, at the warmest corner. Yet is there a certain sardonic subacidity in Père Hoop; when he slowly unlocks his leathern jaw, we hear him with a sort of pleasure. Hoop has been in various countries and situations; in that croaking metallic voice of his, can tell a distinct story. Diderot apprehended he would one day hang himself: if so, what Museum now holds his remains? The Parent Hoops, it would seem, still dwelt in the city of Edinburgh; he, the second son, as Bourdeaux Merchant, having helped them thither, out of some proud Manorhouse no longer weather-tight. Can any ancient person of that city give us trace of such a man? It must be inquired into. One only of Father Hoop's reminiscences we shall report, as the highest instance on record of a national virtue: At the battle of Prestonpans, a kinsman of Hoop, a gentleman with gold rings on his fingers, stands fighting and fencing for life with a rough Highlander; the Highlander, by some clever stroke, whisks the jewelled hand clear off, and then-picks it up fror the ground, sticks it in his sporran for |