for Mr. Bannerman, be neatly put up, sealed, and directed, and you will take them down to Down's Wharf, at Wapping, where the Aberdeen and Montrose Packets lie, and give them to the captains, who will take charge of them, without the expense of entering them as parcels at the Wharf. "If any person call, or you have anything to say, do so daily, and oblige,-Yours truly,

"Mr. Ramsay."

"JOSEPH HUME.

"Impracticable," or some such disparaging verdict, was the eminently "practical" Joe's finding on our friend. A few months after leaving Mr. Hume's employment, Mr. Ramsay became one of the teachers in Robert Gordon's Hospital, Aberdeen. In 1827 we find him contributing some mathematical questions to The Ladies' Diary.

It is amusing to glance over those neatly printed Ladies' Diaries, in which the mathematicians of those days gave each other nuts to crack. Mr. Ramsay's nuts, although hardish then are not hard now, our mathematicians having hit upon simpler forms of solution.

In the comparative quiet and ease of Gordon's Hospital, Mr. Ramsay found leisure for much else besides mathematical trifles. He contributed articles to Blackwood's Magazine, The Aberdeen Magazine, and other serials-got into correspond

ence with Southey, Wordsworth, Joanna Baillie, Miss Mitford, Christopher North, etc.; in short, began the life of a man of letters. In 1834, he left the Hospital and became editorial writer for the Aberdeen Journal, whose leaders from this date exhibit a vigour and literary finish not common in a provincial paper.

Joseph Robertson, James Bruce, William Duncan, Thomas Spark, and Robert Brown, formed then his close companions. These wrote and spoke much, and enjoyed life with the zest which youth, sound teeth, and a good digestion, ever give. Ramsay's wit made him often cock of the company. The symposiums held in "Susie Affleck's," the squibs let off in the Letter of Marque, Pirate, etc., etc., were of this date. At "Susie's," high jinks were held after the manner of those immortal nights at Ambrose's, with this difference, that a racy verbal description was all that remained of the one, while a mass of glorious reading is the produce of the other. In the Shaver, Quizzing Glass, and Pirate, Ramsay indulged freely in teasing AberIdeen writers and readers. Much of it deserves to perish, but some is good and pure, and will live when the media through which it first saw light are utterly forgotten. The Aberdeen editors of those days delighted in humbugging each other.

Local publications were then greatly more numerous than now, and in Aberdeen Magazines,

Censors, Journals, Chronicles, Pirates, Shavers, Observers, etc., there was much vigorous good writing. His work upon the Journal did not then sit heavy on him, and many a table at that time owed its chief attraction to Ramsay's presence there. He was an exquisite mimic, and at these merry meetings, by some inimitable imitation or drollery, would set the table in a roar. His talk was always in "native Doric," and pithily could he use it. As illustrations, amongst many that occur to the writer, the following indicate the vein in which much of his conversation ran. Speaking of the frequent necessity for the rough and ready practical enforcement of principles on the young idea, he added

"Yer fine moral 'suasion is all humbug;

Naething persuades like a rap on the lug."

"I min' weel when I was scarcely five years old, how my mither taught me that. The good woman had been hearing me repeat 'The Lord's Prayer.' She had added to her other instructions that night the information that next night she wished me to say in addition 'something of my own-something that I earnestly wished God to grant me.' Ye can fancy her amazement, when from the lips of her kneeling boy there rose the petition, 'Oh Lord, gi'e my mither a better temper-mak' her-.' The 'dirl,' that instantly rang through my head, rings in't now when I'm speakin' o't." Changing the

current of conversation, he would dramatise some scene which had occurred during the week, and the rendering of the manners and peculiarities of all the characters introduced was a treat such as is rarely enjoyed. One such scene may be recorded here, but without the facile imitative voice and mobile face of the little man, it loses much of its point. Robbie Brown had given an account of a political harangue of Dr. Kidd's. This report,

though reproduced verbatim et literatim, did not please the doctor, who went from one devout admirer to another, as was his custom in such difficulties, asking, “Did I say so and so," till he got enough of “Eh na, Doctor,” to satisfy himself. Then hurrying to Woolmanhill, where Brown's little shop was, he demanded of Brown's aged mother, also an admirer of the popular preacher, "Does Robert Brown live here?" "Yes, Doctor." "I want to see him." Robbie was in the cellar, and being lame, came up so far leaning on his crutch. As the head appeared above the floor level, he stopped at the shout of the irate polemic, "Are you Robert Brown?" "Yes, Doctor." "You write for the papers.”No answer.

"You put words into my mouth which "You put a lie on the lips of a minister of the gospel." No word from Robbie, who "stood on the leg that was good," waiting the clearing of the storm. It came in the following thunder-clap. "You've done that, sir,

I never uttered." No answer.

version of the scene was exquisite ;—“ Old Mrs. Brown, weeping and crying, "Oh, Rob, Rob, I tell't ye nae to meddle wi' the papers. An' ye canna thrive fin ye've interfered wi' the ministers. Oh, Rob, Rob, ye canna brak anither mither's heart." The Hebraist's thundering, and Robbie's calm serenity, were all done justice to.

Mr. Ramsay was at a dinner party, in the days when black velvet vests were held to be the correct thing to wear, his honest black cloth one drew down a shower of jokes upon him from Dr. D——. till Ramsay stopped the medico's fun by naively uttering, "Doctor, doctor, the mort-cloth is not the insignia of my profession." 'Ramsay, I'll paint your portrait for that hit," said Mr. Giles, and painted forthwith it was.* "Why do you let Mr. Power of the Aberdeen Herald go on so?" said some one in the course of the evening to Mr. Ramsay the question evoked from Ramsay the neat quotation—

"Ah!

The pomp of Heraldry,

The pride of Power,

Alike await the inevitable hour."

Having a deep reverence for things sacred,

* Now the property of the writer; Mr. Giles at his death having bequeathed it to him.