GLASGOW, April 16, 1853.

DEAR AUNT E.:—­

You shall have my earliest Scotch letter; for I am sure nobody can sympathize in the emotions of the first approach to Scotland as you can.  A country dear to us by the memory of the dead and of the living; a country whose history and literature, interesting enough of itself, has become to us still more so, because the reading and learning of it formed part of our communion for many a social hour, with friends long parted from earth.

The views of Scotland, which lay on my mother’s table, even while I was a little child, and in poring over which I spent so many happy, dreamy hours,—­the Scotch ballads, which were the delight of our evening fireside, and which seemed almost to melt the soul out of me, before I was old enough to understand their words,—­the songs of Burns, which had been a household treasure among us,—­the enchantments of Scott,—­all these dimly returned upon me.  It was the result of them all which I felt in nerve and brain.

And, by the by, that puts me in mind of one thing; and that is, how much of our pleasure in literature results from its reflection on us from, other minds.  As we advance in life, the literature which has charmed us in the circle of our friends becomes endeared to us from the reflected remembrance of them, of their individualities, their opinions, and their sympathies, so that our memory of it is a many-colored cord, drawn from many minds.

So in coming near to Scotland, I seemed to feel not only my own individuality, but all that my friends would have felt, had they been with me.  For sometimes we seem to be encompassed, as by a cloud, with a sense of the sympathy of the absent and the dead.

We left Liverpool with hearts a little tremulous and excited by the vibration of an atmosphere of universal sympathy and kindness.  We found ourselves, at length, shut from the warm adieus of our friends, in a snug compartment of the railroad car.  The English cars are models of comfort and good keeping.  There are six seats in a compartment, luxuriously cushioned and nicely carpeted, and six was exactly the number of our party.  Nevertheless, so obstinate is custom that we averred at first that we preferred our American cars, deficient as they are in many points of neatness and luxury, because they are so much more social.

“Dear me,” said Mr. S., “six Yankees shut up in a car together!  Not one Englishman to tell us any thing about the country!  Just like the six old ladies that made their living by taking tea at each other’s houses.”

But that is the way here in England:  every arrangement in travelling is designed to maintain that privacy and reserve which is the dearest and most sacred part of an Englishman’s nature.  Things are so arranged here that, if a man pleases, he can travel all through England with his family, and keep the circle an unbroken unit, having just as little communication with any thing outside of it as in his own house.