upon which public opinion was at the time strongly
divided.
In this neighbourhood Margaret again saw Miss Martineau, at a new home " presented to her by the gratitude of England for her course of energetic and benevolent effort." Dean Milman, historian and dramatist, wus here introduced to Margaret, who describes him as “a specimen of the polished, scholarly man of the world."
Margaret, pow visited various places of interest in Scotland, and in Edinburgh saw Dr. Andrew Combe, Dr. Chalmers, and De Quincey. Dr. Combe, au eminent authority in various departments of medicine and physiology, was a younger brother of George Combe, the distinguished phrenologist. He had much to say about his tribulations with the American publishers who had pirated one of his works, but who refused to print an amended edition of it, on the ground that the book sold well enough as it was. Margaret describes. Dr. Chalmers as "half shepherd, half orator, florid, portly, yet of an intellectually luminous appearance."
De Quincey was of the same age as Wordsworth Margaret finds his “thoughts and knowledge" of a character somewhat superseded by the progress of the age. She found him, not the less, " an admirable narrator, not rapid, but gliding along like a rivulet through a green meadow, giving and taking a thousand little beauties not required to give his story due relief, but each, in itself, a separate boon." She admires, too, his urbanity, so opposed to the rapid, slang, Vivian-Greyish style current in the literary conversation of the day."
Among Margaret's meditations in Scotland was one
