I have not often seen fairer promises of excellence in this department than in your correspondent; but I tell you frankly that they will all be blighted and perish prematurely unless sedulously cultivated.

It is a poor ambition to raise a casual laugh in the unreflecting.
The article did not appear in the _Quarterly_, and Mr.Pillans, the writer, afterwards became a contributor to the _Edinburgh Review_.
In a letter of August 25, 1811, we find Gifford writing to a correspondent: "Since the hour I was born I never enjoyed, as far as I can recollect, what you call _health_ for a single day." In November, after discussing in a letter the articles which were about to appear in the next _Review_, he concluded: "I write in pain and must break off." In the following month Mr.Murray, no doubt in consideration of the start which his _Review_ had made, sent him a present of L500.

"I thank you," he answered (December 6), "very sincerely for your magnificent present; but L500 is a vast sum.

However, you know your own business." Yet Mr.Murray was by no means abounding in wealth.

There were always those overdrawn bills from Edinburgh to be met, and Ballantyne and Constable were both tugging at him for accommodation at the same time.
The business arrangements with Constable & Co., which, save for the short interruption which has already been related, had extended over many years, were now about to come to an end.