Gewge Stmt.1 WILLTAM BLACKWOOD. 141
Letters,?? &c. At what precise period Professor
Wilson came into personal communication with
old William Blackwood is not quite known, but he
had been for some time an anonymous contributor,
under the initial N. His last papers, Nos. g and
10 of ? Dies Boreales,? were written, we believe,
in the autumn of 1852. William Blackwood himself
never wrote more thah two or three articles for
the earlier numbers, but the whole management
and arrangement devolved upon him at No. 17
-
First there is, as usual, a spacious place set apzrt
for retail business, and a numerous detachment of
young clerks and apprentices, to whose management
that important department of the concern is
entrusted. Then you have an elegant oval saloon,
lighted from the roof, where various groups of
loungers and literary diktfanti are engaged at, or
criticising amongst themselves, the publications
just amved by that day?s coach from London. In
such critical colloquies the voice of the bookseller
THE SALOON IN MESSRS. BLACKWOODS? ESTABLISHMENT.
Princes Street, and he executed the editorial duties
with unusual skill, tact, and vigour. He was still
there in 1823, when Leigh Hunt threatened legal
proceedings against the magazine-? a cockney
crow,? as Lockhart called it in one of his letters
to Wilson; adding, ?Who the devil czres for all
cockneydom 7 ?
His establishment in 45 Georg: Street is very
like what we find it described as having been in
? Peter?s Letters ? (Vol. 11.) :-? The length of
vista presented to one on entering the shop has a
very imposing effect, for it is carried back, room
after room, through various gradations of light and
shadow, till the eye cannot distinctly trace the
outline of any object in the farthest distance.
himself may ever and anon be heard mingling the
broad and unadulterated notes of its -4uld Reekie
music ; for, unless occupied in the recesses of the
premises with some other business, it is here he
has his usual station. He is a nimble, active-looking
man, of middle age, and moves about from one corfier
to another with great alacrity, and apparently under
the influence of high animal spirits. His complexion
is very sanguineous, but nothing can be
more intelligent, keen, and sagacious than the
expression of the whole physiognomy; above all,
the grey eyes and eyebrows, as full of locomotion
as those of Catalani. The remarks he makes are,
in general, extremely acute-much more so, indeed,
than those of any other member of the trade I
