Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

K T. s. 365
we have said, either introduction or guarantee, without
even a name or local habitation, a mere collocation of
initials, dating from a public news-room. The initials
were not even his own, for it was to K. T. S. that Mr
Blackwood wrote the many and long letters which we
find in his letter-books. The correspondence begins
on the 1st February 1820, with a letter signed C.
North :—
C. North to B. T. 8., Minerva Booms, Cork.
It has for a long time been my great ambition to secure an
Irish Correspondent, and though I am under great obligations
to one gentleman for occasional favours, I have never as yet
been able to acquire anything of the kind regularly.
The short things you have had the kindness to send afford
sufficient proof that your talents and accomplishments are
great and varied. Your ways of thinking, too, on all important
subjects, seem to harmonise as well as possible with that, in
the spirit of which the greater part of the Magazine always
has been written. In short, there is no question you can, if
you choose, be of more use to me, and it, than any one with
whom we have casually become acquainted. If you should
wish to establish any regular system of co-operation with us,,
you have a thousand fields on which you may enter along with
the friends whose assistance we already enjoy, and one great
field, the condition of your own Ireland, literary and political,
&c., which you have entirely to yourself to do with as you
will : and you need not fear our admitting anything that would
interfere with your views in regard to Ireland, were we honoured
with your aid as to that most interesting subject.
In the meantime, of all the articles you allude to, even the
mathematical on Leslie, there is not one that I shall not be
very proud to receive quam primum. I earnestly hope they
may pave the way for a more close connection with a gentleman
for whose talents, acquirements, and principles I entertain
the highest respect.
A postscript adds that did the unknown feel dis-