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Rh of Clyth, to Caithness, where he endured for eighteen months the labour of professional visiting over a wide and wild circuit of country. Although he lost his health under such labour, so that at last he was glad to escape to the more genial region of his native city, he seems to have pursued in the Highlands, and with success, those poetical and literary studies from which his after-life derived its chief distinction. Here, also, influenced no doubt by the bleak and scowling scenery, he wandered in thought among the lands of the sun and their scenes of enchantment, by way of pleasing contrast, until he composed the greater part of a poetical tale, of which the locality was an Armida garden at the foot of the Himalaya mountains, and the actors, Pharem, a mighty Indian magician, and Ima, daughter of the Khan of Shiraz. Besides this lucubration, which he no doubt found beyond his powers to finish, the young dreamer had already tried his strength in authorship in the columns of the " Inverness Journal." The chief of these contributions was "The Tale of Eivor, a Scandinavian Legend," and the "Harp of Salem," a lament over fallen Jerusalem.

On returning from Caithness to Glasgow, Macnish made a journey to Paris, where he resided a year, for the double purpose of recruiting his constitution and continuing his medical education. In the French capital, among other opportunities of improving his taste, he frequented the Louvre, while its vast collection of the treasures of art, the spoils of conquered nations, were as yet unreclaimed; and here he learned to appreciate the beauties of painting and sculpture, without expressing his emotions in that artistic phraseology which is too often made the cloak of ignorant pretension. But of all places in Paris, the cemetery of Pere-la-Chaise, that city of the dead, became his favourite resort; and it was there that, in all likelihood, he increased that love of strange musing and mysticism which he had commenced in Caithness, and among the second-sighted Highlanders. On coming home he became assistant to his father, and completed his medical education at the university of Glasgow, where he took out his diploma of surgeon in 1825. His thesis which he delivered on this occasion, was an essay on the Anatomy of Drunkenness, which he afterwards expanded into his well-known work of the same title.

Before this period, however, Macnish had written articles, both in prose and verse, for the "Literary Melange," and for the "Emmet," periodicals of the Glasgow press. In 1822, also, he sent two productions to Constable's "Edinburgh Magazine," the one entitled "Macvurieh the Murderer," and the other, " The Dream Confirmed." Both were incidents which he had learned in the Highlands, and expanded into regular stories. But in 1825, a more popular and lasting field was opened to him in "Blackwood's Magazine," of which he afterwards became one of the most distinguished contributors. His first contribution to this periodical, was his tale entitled "The Metempsychosis; "and he was encouraged to persevere from its being published in the monthly number as the leading article. This was no small distinction; for it will be remembered by the admirers of this most famed of magazines, that at the period we mention, it was in no want of highly talented correspondents. During the same year were inserted his "Man with the Nose," and the "Barber of Gottingen;" and on the following, the "Adventures of Colonel O'Shaughnessy," and "Who can it be?" articles whose classical style and rich, racy, original humour, arrested the attention of Ebony's readers, who at this time might well be called the reading public, and raised the question of