Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

230 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
You will, I am sure, do me the justice to believe that, had
it been in my power to prevent it, never should you have had
one uneasy or unpleasant feeling from anything connected with
the Magazine. Whatever could tend to your honour or advan-
tage has always been my first and most anxious wish, and to
attain this I never have, and never could have, considered any
sacrifice as too great. Had I for one moment believed that
it would be either for your honour or advantage to cut all
connection with the Magazine, you may rest assured I would
have been the very first person to tell you so. My strong and
decided conviction, on the contrary, has been that you owed
it to yourself to stand forward in a manly way, so as to show
that the attacks of the miscreants who slandered you so foully
and so falsely were of no avail, and only recoiled on themselves.
Their sole object was to induce you and others to abandon the
Magazine, and any quailing was giving them a triumph. From
the disagreeable occurrence which has been so annoying to you
personally, it is not to be wondered at that you should have
felt sore and unhappy. For months, therefore, I have said
little, but left the matter entirely to your own feelings. If,
however, you had given me your wonted confidence, I would
have told you what my impressions were, and that they were
no friends of yours who circulated reports of your having
abandoned the Magazine : for were this true it would be an
acknowledgment that the personal attacks upon you were well
founded, and you were therefore forced to give way to public
opinion. The Magazine supported with talent and spirit, I
have always believed, would do honour to all acquainted with
it, and put to shame all those who attempted to run it down.
As to any claims of my own upon you, these I have never
mentioned and never will. Only this I will say, that if you
knew a thousand part of the miseries I have endured and
much of them on your account— you would have felt more
for me than you appeared to do for many months past, when
I seemed to be left in a state of desertion by those from whom
I expected different things.
It is most painful and distressing to me even to allude to
any of these things, but I try to assure you that if I did not
think it would be highly creditable to you to give your aid
—