now wholly independent of little casualties; and the habits of economy which they acquired in youth still remain with them, so far as to regulate their mode of life.

Be not then deceived with the success of your early undertakings; trade may fail, in both cases, it is good to have had an eye to the evil day.

OBITUARY OF THE LEARNED.
The Honourable Thomas Fitzmaurice Esq.

To the Editor of the Bee.

SIR, ALTHOUGH none can disapprove more than I do of officious eulogy concerning the lives of private individuals, in which the public might not participate, and which might thereby excite remarks, or at least reflections unfavourable to the deceased, or disagreeable to surviving relations, yet, when a man has for a long time conducted himself with a splendid fortune and useful talents in a way to contribute to the welfare of his country, I look upon it as a debt due by posterity not to permit such a name to vanish in the obituary of a common newspaper, or in that of a literary society. On this account I have thought it proper in this department of your respectable literary journal, to mark my respect for the character and memory of the late worthy Thomas Fitzmaurice son of the earl of Shelburne and brother of the marquis of Landsdowne.

There is another reason, Sir, that induces me to distinguish the memory of Mr Fitzmaurice in Scotland, because he was educated in this country, applied himself dilligently to useful learning in that truly academical university of Glasgow, and distinguishing himself from the VOL. Xviii.

K

wealthy and noble students who prefer so often the gay amusements of a city to the vigorous pursuit of science, he did credit to our noblest Scottish manufacture, that of learned, virtuous, and useful citizens.

To these may be added, with respect to this country, that his son Lord Kirkwall, now in the sixteenth year of his age, is the heir of a Scottish earldom; and what is much more interesting, of the brave earl of Orkney.

Mr Fitzmaurice was born in the year 1741, and after an excellent grammatical institution in England, was placed at Glasgow to study under the tuition of the eminent Adam Smith, Dr Black, and John Millar, three men, who, in morals, politics, philosophy, and jurisprudence, were fit indeed to verify the formal or ceremonial adage of" Tres faciunt collegium."

It was in the classes and company of those truly eminent and justly celebrated men that I had first the pleasure of becoming intimately acquainted with Mr Fitzmaurice; and I then conceived the opinion of him which by his conduct in life he afterwards verified, "That the scales in which he weighed moral excellence were much too exact to incline him heartily into the dirty beaten paths of political life," and that he would become what I conceive to be the most respectable of all characters, an active, independent, useful country gentleman, ready to afsume magistracy when called upon as a duty, but never as a trade. During his service in parliament he stood aloof from that party spirit which disgraces our country and nation; and when he became rich, by his mother's settlement and by his marriage, he chose a private station, on the principles of Mr Addison's Cato, in which the more he is traced the more respectfully he will be remembered.

75 I fhall conclude this fhort entry with the copy of a letter I had from him when he came first into parlia ment, not only as a specimen of his early years, but as an example and a lecture to our modern nobility.

Bath, Jan. 10. 1763.

"Yours of the 12 of December from Glasgow I had the pleasure of receiving when at Oxford, since which my thoughts and time have been taken up with electioneering till last Wednesday se'ennight, when I was elected member of parliament for Calne in Wiltshire.

"Had not Dr Blackstone's lectures kept me pretty closeconfined at Oxford during the greatest part of last summer, I should have taken care not to have allowed so long an interruption of our correspondence to have taken place.

"I admire equally your persevering to pursue law and rhetoric as studies, and natural phylosophy and chemistry ás amusements. Were these, or such like employments of time more attended to and cultivated, our young people of rank and fashion would render themselves lefs at a lofs to consume those numberless heavy hours, days, nay, even weeks and months, that so frequently hang upon their hands for though wine, women, and sleep, with fribblifh difsipation, may for some time engage them agreeably, they soon come to find that these feverish contrivances will not hold out, even although the glorious hazards and rewards of gaming should be called in to afsist with all their forces.

"For these and many other reasons I cannot but congratulate myself on the time I passed at Glasgow; tho' I much regret my not having paid more attention to the civil law, for which I am now punished in the course of my law lectures at Oxford, which interest me more than

I am able to exprefs, and which will hereafter be a noble legacy to England *.”

Mr Fitzmaurice was the great grandson of the famous Sir William Petty, author of some excellent tracts on poHitical economy, most of whose descendants have been remarkable for talents and for attachment to the principles of the British constitution. I am, Sir, your well wisher.

B.

ANECDOTES OF PAINTING IN SCOTLAND.

For the Bee.

TH
HERE seems to have
Scotland so early as the
him are in a good stile.

A full length of his natural son,

when a child, was done; but it was destroyed in a house belonging to the family of Errol, in the year 1586. There still remains a good copy of it; probably the work of a French painter. Lord Seton, ancestor of the Winton family, when ambassador from Mary of Guise, became acquainted with Sir Anthony More, who accompanied him to Scotland, and did a family piece for him on timbert. Charles I. when at Seton-house in 1663, admired

*Mr Fitzmaurice when in Scotland discovered a predi'ection, even at that time, for the innocent and pleasing study of rural affairs, and the Editor of this paper had an opportunity of conferring a very acceptable favour upon him by introducing him as a member of a society of farmers at Ratho, and of reading a discourse written by him as a member, which is no doubt minuted in the M. S. collections made by that society.

† A very good copy of which, made by Mosman at Aberdeen, is now in the pofsefsion of Mrs Seton of Mounie in Aberdeenshire. The ☛riginal, it is believed is, or lately was, in the house of Pinkey.

it, and Lord Winton offered it to him; the king refused to rob him of it. The original pictures of Queen Mary* are thought to have been done in France. Portraits of James VI. are said to have been done before he left Scotland. George Jamiesone, a native of Aberdeen, studied under Rubens along with Vandyck; he returned to Scotland in 1628, and died 1644. When the king was at Edinburgh, 1633, the magistrates procured from Jamiesone many of his portraits, with which they adorned the sides of the Nether-bow port. This much attracted the king's notice on his way to the parliament house. Charles sat to Jamiesone for a full length picture; and, on account of a complaint in his eyes or head, the king made him wear his hat, a privilege he ever after used. Alexander his scholar did a portrait of Sir George Mackenzie at full length, in his gown, as king's advocate. The elder Scougal, who in his draperies imitated the stile of Sir Peter Lely, had a great repute in the time of Charles II. and portraits of his hand are almost in every family in Scotland. Corrudes, a foreigner, did also many portraits at this time, in a good stile. The duke of York engaged De Wit, a Flemish painter, to ornament the galleries of Holyroodhouse with 119 portraits, 19 whole lengths. The ancient heads are ideal, the modern copies. He also painted the chimnies and ceilings there. Though de Wit's talent was chiefly for history, he did many portraits in Scotland; particularly at Castle Lyon and Glammis, and at Clerkington in Mid Lothian. He was employed till 1688, when he was dismissed from the service of the public, without complete payment for his works. He died in Scotland. For some years after the Revolution, the younger Scougal was the only painter in Scotland; and

*And of the regent Mary, a very good one of whom is in the Trinity House, Leith, usually mistaken for one of the queen.