Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

188 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
write on these subjects, you would supply our greatest vacuum.
If you have, as I suspect, studied British history more, and
more deeply than most men, surely there could be no field
.more glorious than this. A little liberal classical criticism
comes to us like a delightful stranger from a more happy land,
and I know you can command this pleasure for us without any
trouble to yourself. In the notice prefixed to No. 7 of the
Magazine occur names of various articles. Such of them as
have not since appeared do not exist, and may be called into
being by you as well as by any other. After all we have had
about Burns, a letter from you would still be most acceptable.
An account of the plans for a seminary of education in Wales
would be equally so, as some talk has lately been going on both
here and in Liverpool in regard to educational schemes. Did I
not formerly mention a paper on the probable reception Prince
Charles would have met with in "Wales? N.B. — A little
memoir of Colonel Johnes, with some account of his library,
an account of the state of religion in your country, &c., &c. A
little theology would be capital. The Scots divines are very
ignorant. I hope, then, that " Cambria " will not be the only
thing of yours in the next number. Blackwood publishes on
the 20th here, but your parcel may be in good time if you send
it off immediately on receipt of this. If you have any curiosity,
I will send you an index of authors to the different numbers of
the Magazine since October.
We begin to hope that Hunt won't prosecute.
This, perhaps, is the only letter of Lockhart's extant
that can be called boyish. His eagerness to confide
all the secrets of the Magazine to his Welsh friend,
though so strongly against the principles of the
brotherhood, his still greater eagerness to intrust
him with any subject under heaven, looks more like
the delight of sudden and precocious power, and a
rapturous sense of his own position as the very opener
of the gates of Fame and Fortune, than anything else
that ever appears—at least in the aspect of him which