all their affairs. Here in Edinburgh, unless Mr Wastle exaggerates very much, there was no person of any consideration, whose whole connections and concerns were not perfectly well known to him. And I already begin to see enough of the structure of Scottish society, to appreciate somewhat of the advantages which this knowledge must have placed in the hands of so accomplished a statesman. The services which he had rendered to this part of the island were acknowledged by the greater part of those who by no means approved of the general system of policy in which he had so great a share; and among the subscribers to his statue were very many, whose names no solicitation could have brought to appear under any similar proposals with regard to any other Tory in the world.*

* As one little trait, illustrative of Lord Melville's manner of conducting himself to the people of Scotland, I may mention, that to the latest period of his life, whenever he came to Edinburgh, he made a point of calling in person on all the old ladies with whom he had been acquainted in the days of his youth. He might be seen going about, and climbing up to the most aërial habitacula of ancient maidens and widows, and it is probable he gained more by this, than he could have gained by almost any other thing, even in the good opinion of people who might themselves be vainly desirous of having an interview with the great statesman.

In the two Inner Houses, as they are called, (where causes are ultimately decided by the two great Divisions of the Court,) are placed statues of two of the most eminent persons that have ever presided over the administration of justice in Scotland. In the hall of the Second Division, behind the chair of the Lord Justice Clerk, who presides on that bench, is placed the statue of Duncan Forbes of Culloden; and in a similar situation, in the First Division, that of the Lord President Blair, who died only a few years ago. The statue of Culloden is by Roubilliac, and executed quite in his usual style as to its detail; but the earnest attitude of the Judge, stooping forward and extending his right hand, and the noble character of his physiognomy, are sufficient to redeem many of those defects which all must perceive. The other statue-that of Blair, is another work of Chantry, and, I think, a vastly superior one to the Melville. The drapery, indeed, is very faulty-it is narrow and scanty, and appears to cling to the limbs like the wet tunic of the Venus Anadyomene. But nothing can be grander than the attitude and whole air of the figure. The Judge is not represented as leaning forward, and speaking with eagerness like Forbes, but as bending his head towards the

ground, and folded in the utmost depth of quiet meditation; and this, I think, shews the conception of a much greater artist than the Frenchman. The head itself is one of the most superb things that either Nature or Art has produced in modern times. The forehead is totally bald, and shaped in a most heroic style of beauty the nose springs from its arch with the firmness and breadth of a genuine antique-the lips are drawn together and compressed in a way that gives the idea of intensest abstraction-and the whole head is such, that it might almost be placed upon the bust of the Theseus, without offence to the majesty of that inimitable torso. The most wonderful circumstance is, that, unless all my friends be deceived, the statue, in all these points, is a most faithful copy of the original. Nor, to judge from the style in which the memory of the man is spoken of by all with whom I have conversed on the subject of his merits, am I inclined to doubt that it may have been so. He died very suddenly, and in the same week with Lord Melville, who had been through life his most dear and intimate friend; and the sensation produced all over Scotland by this two-fold calamity, is represented to have been one of the most impressive and awful things in the world.

In regard to the best interests of the Scottish nation, perhaps the Judge might be even a greater loss than the Statesman; for there seems to be no reason to doubt, that he was cut off not far from the commencement of a judicial career, which, if it had been continued through such a space of time as the ordinary course of nature might have promised, would have done more for perfecting the structure of the Civil Jurispru-. dence of Scotland, than is likely to be accomplished under many successive generations of less extraordinary men. It would appear as if the whole of his clear and commanding intellect had been framed and tempered in such a way, as to qualify him peculiarly and expressly for being what the Stagyrite has finely called "a living Equity"—one of the happiest, and perhaps one of the rarest, of all the combinations of mental powers. By all men of all parties, the merits of this great man also were alike acknowledged, and his memory is at this moment alike had in reverence by them all. Even the keenest of his now surviving political opponents, himself one of the greatest lawyers that Scotland ever has produced, is said to have contemplated the supreme intellect of Blair with a feeling of respectfulness not much akin to the common cast

of his disposition. After hearing the President overturn, without an effort, in the course of a few clear and short sentences, a whole mass of ingenious sophistry, which it had cost himself much labour to erect, and which appeared to be regarded as insurmountable by all the rest of his audience, this great Barrister is said to have sat for a few seconds, ruminating with much bitterness on the discomfiture of his cause, and then to have muttered between his teeth, My man! God Almighty spared nae pains when he made your brains." Those that have seen Mr Clerk, and know his peculiarities, appreciate the value of this compliment, and do not think the less of it because of its coarseness.

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