While on our journey from London to Paris, to attend the Peace Congress, I could not but observe the marked difference between the English and American delegates.  The former looked as if their pockets had been filled with sandwiches, made of good bread and roast beef, while the latter appeared as if their pockets had been filled with Holloway’s Pills, and Mrs. Kidder’s Cordial.

I breakfasted this morning in a room in which the Poet Burns, as I was informed, had often sat.  The conversation here turned upon Burns.  The lady of the house pointed to a scrap of poetry which was in a frame hanging on the wall, written, as she said, by the Poet, on hearing the people rejoicing in a church over the intelligence of a victory.  I copied it and will give it to you:—­

   “Ye hypocrites! are these your pranks,
    To murder men and give God thanks? 
    For shame! give o’er, proceed no further,
    God won’t accept your thanks for murder.”

The fact that I was in the room where Scotland’s great national poet had been a visitor, caused me to feel that I was on classic, if not hallowed ground.  On returning from our morning visit, we met a gentleman with a coloured lady on each arm.  Craft remarked in a very dry manner, “If they were in Georgia, the slaveholders would make them walk in a more hurried gait than they do.”  I said to my friend, that if he meant the pro-slavery prejudice would not suffer them to walk peaceably through the streets, they need go no further than the pro-slavery cities of New York and Philadelphia.  When walking through the streets, I amused myself, by watching Craft’s countenance; and in doing so, imagined I saw the changes experienced by every fugitive slave in his first month’s residence in this country.  A sixteen months’ residence has not yet familiarized me with the change.

* * * * *

LAUREL BANK, Jan. 18, 1851.

Dear Douglass,—­I remained in Edinburgh a day or two after the date of my last letter, which gave me an opportunity of seeing some of the lions in the way of public buildings, &c., in company with our friend Wm. Craft.  I paid a visit to the Royal Institute, and inspected the very fine collection of paintings, statues, and other productions of art.  The collection in the Institute is not to be compared to the British Museum at London, or the Louvre at Paris, but is probably the best in Scotland.  Paintings from the hands of many of the masters, such as Sir A. Vandyke, Tiziano, Vercellio and Van Dellen, were hanging on the wall, and even the names of Reubens, and Titian, were attached to some of the finer specimens.  Many of these represent some of the nobles, and distinguished families of Rome, Athens, Greece, &c.  A beautiful one representing a group of the Lomellini family of Genoa, seemed to attract the attention of most of the visitors.