NEWSPAPER SnuannsEs.—Two Edinburgh papers, the Scotsman and the Caledonian. Mercury,
have, for months past, edified their reeders by mutual attack and recrimination, truces, and renewals of warfare. At iast, by way of commentary on the " ingenues di- dicisse " of HortacE, they agreed, a few days ago, to fight about the tine arts. Statuary was the subject—the question was the admire- lion of naked figures, which the editor of one of these journals had expressed. The chivalry of the Scotsman was first in arms. It re- joices in two conductors; and that. good courage might not be lost, a double duel was resolved on. The Mercury boasts of but one editor; but there was the proprietor in the background, and to his manhood the first appeal was made. He, however, declined the honours of precedence, and got posted for his moderation. His editor was then summoned to the field of glory, and some little diffi-e culty about seconds happily removed. On the part of the Mercury,,\ was found a friend unconnected with the dispute ; on the part of the Scotsman, the co-editor, who had been baulked of his laurels by the pacific temper of the antagonist assigned him, proposed in the first instance to attend his coadjutor, but in the end, gave place to the artist, whose conceptions had furnished the proximate cause of warfare. After a formidable council of war, at which the whole effective force of the friends on one side assisted, a meeting was accomplished; and by the narratives of the seconds, the array for battle must have been imposing. The principals, the seconds, and two surgeons, took the field; and the intended second of the Scotsman ; (himself the original challenger of the proprietor of the Mercury); made demonstrations in the distauce,—with the design, probably, in the event of a general engagement, of equalizing some appre- hended disparity between his party and the enemy. The princi- ' pals tired once without effect, and the seconds prevented the farther , waste of powder. The seconds complimented the principals and each other ; but the principals themselves were marched off' the field with-..! out reconciliation or concessions on either side.
The rationale of these proceedings is not very obvious. Men who begin with the pistol, do not, when that fails them, seek satisfaction at i the pen's point ; why then, when the pen fails, should recourse be had to the pistoi? l And this alternative standard of taste and honour, cui bono Y The field of battle has proved as much too narrow for the angry : feelings of the parties in this case, as the literary arena previously. if men of ink will, in defiance of logic, leave their element, and adopt the heroic mode of defending honour, they should at least be logical enough to decide their differences in the new characters in which it is their ambition to figure. Here we have two gentlemen, after the requisite denunciations and manifestoes, brought fairly into the field ; they have aides-du-camp, a medical staff, and the other appliances and means of martial distinction at their disnosal,—to say nothing of the Scythian stimulant winch the presence of dear friends may be supposed to im- part; and yet, so far as the termination of their quarrels was the object, they need never have left their closets. We are not by any means sure that the death or mutilation of one or both would have placed the merits of the original dispute in a clearer point of view ; but such a result would have involved but one error in logic, while the actual conclusion of the affair involves two errors.
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