In a city like Edinburgh, there is always something to keep the public alive, but during our three days’ stay in the town, on this occasion, there were topics under discussion which seemed to excite the people, although I had been told that the Scotch were not excitable.  Indeed all Edinburgh seemed to have gone mad about the Pope.  If his Holiness should think fit to pay a visit to his new dominions, I would advise him to keep out of reach of the Scotch.

In company with the Crafts, I visited the Calton Hill, from which we had a delightful view of the city and surrounding country.  I had an opportunity during my stay in the city, of visiting the Infirmary, and was pleased to see among the two or three hundred students, three coloured young men, seated upon the same benches with those of a fairer complexion, and yet there appeared no feeling on the part of the whites towards their coloured associates, except of companionship and respect.  One of the cardinal truths, both of religion and freedom, is the equality and brotherhood of man.  In the sight of God and all just institutions, the whites can claim no precedence or privilege, on account of their being white; and if coloured men are not treated as they should be in the educational institutions in America, it is a pleasure to know that all distinction ceases by crossing the broad Atlantic.  I had scarcely left the lecture room of the Institute and reached the street, when I met a large number of the students on their way to the college, and here again were seen coloured men arm in arm with whites.  The proud American who finds himself in the splendid streets of Edinburgh, and witnesses such scenes as these, can but behold in them the degradation of his own country, whose laws would make slaves of these same young men, should they appear in the streets of Charleston or New Orleans.

After all, our country is the most despotic in the wide world, and to expose and hold it up to the scorn and contempt of other nations, is the duty of every coloured man who would be true to himself and his race.

During my stay in Edinburgh, I accepted an invitation to breakfast with the great champion of Philosophical Phrenology.  Few foreigners are more admired in America, than the author of “The Constitution of Man."[B] Although not far from 70 years of age, I found him apparently as active and as energetic as many men of half that age.  He was much pleased with Mr. and Mrs. Craft, who formed a part of the breakfast party.  It may be a pleasure to the friends of these two fugitive slaves, to know that they are now the inmates of a good school where they are now being educated.  For this, they are mainly indebted to that untiring friend of the Slave, John B. Estlin, Esq., of Bristol, whose zeal and co-operation with the American Abolitionists, have gained for him an undying name with the friends of freedom in the New World.

[B] George Combe, Esq.

LETTER XIII.