that prevailed was kept up chiefly as a factious engine. I lived in the midst of it. My father's house was one of the places where the leaders, and the ardent followers, of the party in power were in the constant habit of assembling. I can sit yet, in imagination, at the small sidetable, and overhear the conversation, a few feet late Duke of Buccleuch took a glass of sherry by himself at the table of Charles Hope, then lord advocate, and this was noticed afterwards as a piece of ducal contempt. This prandial nuisance was horrible. But it was nothing to what followed. For after dinner, and before the ladies re-off, at the established Wednesday dinner. How tired, there generally began what were called "Rounds" of toasts followed by "Sentiments;" a faint conception of whose nauseousness can be easily formed from the practice still existing in some societies, who, having no ideas of their own, are compelled to found their claims to sociality upon the ready-made wit of others. "But a new generation gradually laughed the sentiments away; so that at last one could only be got as a curiosity, from some old-fashioned practitioner. They survived longer in male parties, especially of a wild character. Yet Scott, in presiding even at the grave annual dinners of the Bannatyne Club, always insisted on rounds of ladies and gentlemen, and of authors and printers, poets and kings, in regular pairs. Of course, in that toasting and loyal age, the king was never forgotten, even though the consisted only of the host and his wife and children." company "There is no contrast," Lord Cockburn goes to say, "between those old days and the present, that strike me so strongly as that suggested by the differences in religious observances; not so much by the world in general, as by deeply religious people. I knew the habits of the religious very well, partly through the piety of my mother and her friends, the strict religious education of her children, and our connection with some of the most distinguished of our devout clergymen. I could mention many practices of our old pious which would horrify modern zealots." The learned old man then proceeds to show how erroneous it is to condemn the last age as infidel, because it was not given up to the modern fashions and extravagances committed under the guise of piety. But in politics the old people were as illiberal as the moderns are in religious observances. Everything that was supposed to have a liberal tendency was at once and summarily denounced. The progress of the French revolution tended much to strengthen this spirit of opposition: "No doubt the intolerance was justified, or at least provoked, by fright at first; but this soon became a pretence; and the hourly violence they raved! What sentiments! What principles! Not that I differed from them. I thought them quite right; and hated liberty and the people as much as they did. But this drove me of such wits as they left me at the idea of bloodinto an opposite horror; for I was terrified out shed, and it never occurred to me that it could be avoided. My reason no sooner began to open, and to get some fair play, than the distressing wisdom of my ancestors began to fade, and the more attractive sense that I met with among the young men into whose company our debating societies threw me, gradually hardened me into what I became-whatever this was.” Some of Lord Cockburn's pleasantest reminiscenses are connected with the men of the past generation, who did honor to Scotland by their literature and philosophy. His pictures of Principal Robertson, of Adam Ferguson, the historian of Rome, of Dr. Joseph Black, of Dr. Henry, of Dr. Thomas Macknight, of Dr. John Erskine, of the Rev. Dr. Carlyle, of Professor John Robison, are positive photographs. One excerpt will prove what we say: "Dr. Joseph Black had, at one time, a house near us, to the west. He was a striking and beautiful person; tall, very thin, and cadavethere was little of it except what was collected rously pale; his hair carefully powdered, though into a long thin queue; his eyes dark, clear, and large, like deep pools of pure water. He wore black speckless clothes, silk stockings, silver buckles, and either a slim green silk umbrella, or a genteel brown cane. The general frame and air were feeble and slender. The wildest boy respected Black. No lad could be irreve and so illustrious. So he glided, like a spirit, rent towards a man so pale, so gentle, so elegant, through our rather mischievous sportiveness, unharmed. He died seated, with a bowl of milk on his knee, of which his ceasing to live did not spill a drop; a departure which it seemed, after the event happened, might have been foretold of this atteunated philosophical gentleman. "I have known of some peaceful deaths not unlike this; but one that was even more than tranquil was that of Dr. Henry the historianabout 1790, I think. I had the account of it from Sir Harry Moncreiff, who I believe was his favorite younger friend. The Doctor was living at a place of his own in his native county of Stirling. He was about seventy-two, and had been for some time very feeble. He wrote to Sir Harry that he was dying, and thus invited him for the last time—' Come out here directly. | I have got something to do this week, I have got to die.' Sir Harry went; and found his friend plainly sinking, but resigned and cheerful. He had no children, and there was nobody with him except his wife. She and Sir Harry remained alone with him for about three days, being his last three; during a great part of which the reverend historian sat in his easy-chair, and conversed, and listened to reading, and dozed. While engaged in this way, the hoofs of a horse were heard clattering in the court below. Mrs. Henry looked out, and exclaimed that it was 'that wearisome body,' naming a neighboring minister, who was famous for never leaving a house after he once got into it. 'Keep him out,' cried the Doctor, 'don't let the cratur in here.' But before they could secure his exclusion, the cratur's steps were heard on the stair, and he was at the door. The Doctor instantly winked significantly, and signed to them to sit down and be quiet, and he would pretend to be sleeping. The hint was taken; and when the intruder entered, he found the patient asleep in his cushioned chair. Sir Harry and Mrs. Henry put their fingers to their lips, and pointing to the supposed slumberer as one not to be disturbed, shook their heads. The man sat down near the door, like one inclined to wait till the nap should Once or twice he tried to speak; but was instantly repressed by another finger on the lip, and another shake of the head. So he sat on, all in perfect silence, for above a quarter of an hour; during which Sir Harry occasionally detected the dying man peeping cautiously through the fringes of his eyelids, to see how his visitor was coming on. At last Sir Harry tired, and he and Mrs. Henry pointing to the poor Doctor, fairly waived the visitor out of the room; on which the Doctor opened his eyes wide, and had a tolerably hearty laugh; which was renewed when the sound of the horse's feet made them certain that their friend was actually off the premises. Dr. Henry died that night. A pious and learned man, with considerable merit in the execution, and complete originality in the plan, of his history." be over. army. We used to go to her house in Bunker's Hill, when boys, on Sundays between the morning and afternoon sermons, where we were cherished with Scotch broth, and cakes, and many a joke from the old lady. Age had made her incapable of walking even across the room; so, clad in a plain black silk gown, and a pure muslin cap, she sat half encircled by a high-backed black leather chair, reading; with silver spectacles stuck on her thin nose; and interspersing her studies, and her days, with much laughter, and not a little sarcasm. What a spirit! There was more fun and sense round that chair than in the theatre or the church. I remember one of her granddaughters stumbling, in the course of reading the newspapers to her, on a paragraph which stated that a lady's reputation had suffered from some indiscreet talk on the part of the Prince of Wales. Up she of fourscore sat, and said with an indignant shake of her shrivelled fist and a keen voice-The dawmed villain! does he kiss and tell!'" And Lady Arniston, the mother of the first Lord Melville, a good representative, in her general air and bearing, of what the noble English ladies must have been in their youth, who were queens in their family castles, and stood sieges in defence of them: "She was in her son's house in George-square when it was attacked by the mob in 1793 or 1794, and though no windows could be smashed at that time by the populace without the inmates thinking of the bloody streets of Paris, she was perfectly firm, most contemptuous of the assailants, and with a heroic confidence in her son's doing his duty. She once wished us to go somewhere for her on an evening; and on one of us objecting that if we did, our lessons for next day could not be got ready-Hoot man!' said she, 'what o' that! as they used to say in my day-it's only het hips and awa' again.' And Sophia-or, as she was always cal There was also at that time, and, in- led, Suphy-Johnston, of the Hilton fa deed, there is still to be met with-but at rare intervals—a singular race of excellent Scotch old ladies. They were a delightful set; strong-headed, warm-hearted, and high-spirited; the fire of their tempers not always latent; merry even in solitude; very resolute; indifferent about the modes and habits of the modern world; and adhering to their own ways, so as to stand out like primitive rocks above ordinary society: "There sits a clergyman's widow, the mother of the first Sir David Dundas, the introducer of our German system of military manoeuvres, and at one time commander-in-chief of the British mily: "Her own proper den was in a flat on the ground-floor of a house in Windmill street, where her sole companion was a single female servant. When the servant went out, which she generally took the liberty of doing for the whole of Sunday, Suphy's orders were that she This saved Suphy the torment of always rising; should lock the door, and take the key with her. for people went away when they found the house, as they thought, shut up. But she had a hole through which she saw them perfectly well; and, if she was inclined, she conversed through this orifice; and when tired of them told them to go away. Though enjoying life, neither she nor any of those stout-hearted woman had any horror of death. When Suphy's day was visibly approaching, Dr. Gregory prescribed abstinence from animal food, and recommended 'spoon meat,' unless she wished to die. 'Dee, Doctor! odd I'm thinking they've forgotten an auld wife like me up yonder!' However, when he came back next day, the Doctor found her at the spoon meat -supping a haggis. She was remembered." Miss Menie Trotter, of the Mortonhall family, was a not less amusing character. She was of the agrestic order. Her pleasures lay in the fields and long country walks. Ten miles at a stretch, within a few years of her death, was nothing to her. The liberal old lady generally sacrificed an ox to hospitality every autumn, which, according to a system of her own, she ate regularly from nose to tail; and as she indulged in him only on Sundays, and with a chosen few, he feasted her half through the winter. "On one of her friends asking her, not long before her death, how she was, she said, 'Very weel-quite weel. But eh, I had a dismal dream last night! a fearfu' dream! Ay! I'm sorry for that—what was it?' 'Ou! what d'ye think! Of a' places i' the world, I dreamed I was in heeven! And what d'ye think I saw there? Deil ha'et but thoosands upon thoosands, and ten thoosands upon ten thoosands, o' stark naked weans! That wad be a dreadfu' thing! for ye ken I ne'er could bide bairns a' my days!'" In December, 1800, Henry Cockburn entered the Faculty of Advocates, and from that time forth he speaks of Edinburgh as a witness, and indeed as an actor in most of its occurrences. Everything rang of the Revolution in France. Scotch Toryism was rampant. The real Whigs were few, but even then they began to claim that supremacy of talent which was destined in Cockburn's palmiest days to give them power over their opponents. The leading Whigs then were, Erskine, Gillies, Clerk, Cathcart, all judges; four leading advocates; and one well-known saturnine writer to the Signet, James Gibson, afterwards Sir James Gibson-Craig of Riccarton. The party had also, in the medical profession, John Allen and John Thomson; and at the university, Dugald Stewart, John Playfair, and Andrew Dalzel. They were all, in Henry Cockburn's estimation, men of talent, personal boldness, and purity, active and fearless. The teaching of the three last, and the personal example of the leading men of the bar, must have done much to pave the way to the future triumph of Whiggery in the very stronghold of Toryism. Monboddo, Swinton, and Braxfield had left the scene shortly before Cockburn entered the faculty, but he has preserved some anecdotes of the "giant of the bench," as Braxfield was called, of a very striking character. Strong-built and dark, with rough eyebrows, powerful eyes, threatening lips, and a low growling voice, he was like a formidable blacksmith. His accent and dialect were exaggerated Scotch; his language, like his thoughts, short, strong, and conclusive. Thousands of his sayings have been preserved, but almost the only story of him Cockburn says he ever heard that had some fun in it without immodesty, was when a butler gave up his place because his lordship's wife was always scolding him. "Lord!" he exclaimed, "ye've little to complain o': ye may be thankfu' ye're no married to her." It was at the bar that the man's eccentricities were most felt. His conduct as a criminal judge, Cockburn remarks, was a disgrace to the age. To a man who once eloquently undertook his own defence, he said: "Ye're a vera clever chiel, man, but ye wad be nane the waur o' a hanging." · "Mr. Horner (the father of Francis), who was one of the jurors in Muir's case, told me that when he was passing, as was often done then, behind the bench to get into the box, Braxfield, Horner, come awa, and help us to hang ane o' who knew him, whispered-' Come awa, Maister thae daamned scoondrels.' The reporter of Gerald's case could not venture to make the prisoner say more than that 'Christianity was an innovation.' But the full truth is, that in stating this view he added that all great men had been reformers, even our Saviour himself.' 'Muckle he made o' that,' chuckled Braxfield in an under mentaries had made our criminal record intellivoice, he was hanget.' Before Hume's Comgible, the forms and precedents were a mystery understood by the initiated alone, and by nobody so much as by Mr. Joseph Norris the ancient clerk. Braxfield used to quash anticipated doubts by saying-Hoot! just gie me Josie Norrie and a gude jury, an' I'll doo for the fallow.' He died in 1799, in his seventy-eighth year.* *When Lord Kames, an indefatigable and speculative but coarse man, tried Matthew Hay, with whom he used to play at chess, for murder at Ayr, in September, 1780, he exclaimed, when the verdict of guilty was returned, "That's checkmate to you, Matthew!" Besides general and uncontradicted notoriety, I had this fact from Lord Hermand, who was one of the counsel at the trial, and never forgot Lord Eskgrove was almost as great a the eccentricities of Scottish judges in character, only in another way: olden time by the following statement: "Nothing disturbed him so much as the expense of the public dinner for which the judge on the circuit has a fixed allowance, and out of which the less he spends the more he gains. His devices for economy were often very diverting. His servant had strict orders to check the bottles of wine by laying aside the corks. His lordship once went behind a screen in Stirling, while the company was still at table, and seeing an alarming row of corks, got into a warm altercation, which everybody overheard, with John; maintaining it to be 'impossibill' that they could have drunk so much. On being assured that they had, and were still going on—'Well, then, John, I must just protect myself.' On which he put a handful of the corks into his pocket, and resumed his seat. Brougham tormented him, and sat on his skirts wherever he went for above a year. The Justice liked passive counsel who let him dawdle on with culprits and juries in his own way; and consequently he hated the talent, the eloquence, the energy, and all the discomposing qualities of Brougham. At last it seemed as if a court day was to be blessed by his absence, and the poor Justice was delighting himself with the prospect of being allowed to deal with things as he choose; when, lo! his enemy appearedtall, cool, and resolute. 'I declare, said the Justice, that man Broom, or Broug-ham, is the torment of my life!' His revenge, as usual, consisted in sneering at Brougham's eloquence by calling it or him the Harangue. 'Well, gentle-men, what did the Harangue say next? Why, it said this' (misstating it); but here, gentle-men, the Harangue was most plainly wrongg, and not intelligibill.' "As usual, then, with stronger heads than his, everything was connected by his terror with republican horrors. I heard him, in condemning a tailor to death for murdering a soldier by stabbing him, aggravate the offence thus: And not only did you murder him, whereby he was berea-ved of his life, but you did thrust, or push, or pierce, or project, or propell, the le-thall weapon through the belly-band of his regimental breeches, which were his Ma-jes-ty's.' A key is afforded to a certain extent to a piece of judicial cruelty which excited his horror and anger. Scott is said to have told this story to the Prince Regent. If he did so, he would certainly tell it accurately, because he knew the facts quite well. But in reporting what Sir Walter had said at the royal table, the Lord Chief Commissioner Adam confused the matter, and called the judge Braxtield, the crime forgery, and the circuit town Dumfries; and this inaccurate account was given by Mr. Lockhart in his first edition of Scott's Life (chap 34). Braxfield was one of the judges at Hay's trial, but he had nothing to do with the checkmate. "At Edinburgh, the old judges had a practice at which even their barbaric age used to shake its head. They had always wine and biscuits on the bench, when the business was clearly to be protracted beyond the usual dinner-hour. The modern judges-those I mean who were made after 1800, never gave in to this; but with those of the preceding generation, some of whom lasted several years after 1800, it was quite common. Black bottles of strong port were set down beside them on the bench, with glasses, caraffes of water, tumblers, and biscuits; and this without the slightest attempt at concealment. The refreshment was generally allowed to stand untouched, and as if despised, for a short time, during which their lordships seemed to be intent only on their notes. But in a little, some water was poured into the tumbler, and sipped quietly as if merely to sustain nature. Then a few drops of wine were ventured upon, but only with the water: till at last patience could endure no longer, and a full bumper of the pure black element was tossed over; after which the thing went on regularly, and there was a comfortable munching and quaffing, to the great envy of the parched throats in the gallery. The strong-headed stood it tolerably well, but it told, plainly enough, upon the feeble. Not that the ermine was absolutely intoxicated, but it was certainly sometimes affected. however, was so ordinary with these sages, that it really made little apparent change upon them. It was not very perceptible at a distance; and they all acquired the habit of sitting and looking judicial enough, even when their bottles had reached the lowest ebb. This open court refection did not prevail, so far as I ever saw, at Circuits. It took a different form there. The temptation of the inn frequently produced a total stoppage of business; during which all concerned -judges and counsel, clerks, jurymen, and provosts-had a jolly dinner; after which they returned again to the transportations and hangings. I have seen this done often. It was a common remark that the step of the evening procession was far less true to the music than that of the morning." This, At the time when Henry Cockburn en tered upon active life, the bar, upon which the condition of Scotland has always so much depended, was divided into Whigs and Tories, with an overwhelming numerical majority in favor of the latter. The Whigs, having started, could not be prevented going on with the race; but all hope of official preferment, and even of any professional countenance that power could show them, was sternly and ostentatiously closed against them. The talents were all with the Whigs. In their ranks were Brougham, Jeffrey, Cockburn, Moncrieff, Horner, Macfarlane, Fletcher, and many others; and at their head, Erskine, Clerk, and Gillies; on the government side, Blair, Hope, and Dundas; and in a subaltern position, Walter Scott. After the war broke out again in 1803, Edinburgh, like every other place, became a camp, and continued so till the peace in 1814:1 "We were all soldiers, one way or other. Professors wheeled in the College area; the side arms and the uniform peeped from behind the the parade and the review formed the staple of gown at the bar, and even on the bench; and men's talk and thoughts. Hope, who had kept his lieutenant-colonelcy, when he was lord advocate, adhered to it, and did all its duties after he became lord justice-clerk. This was thought unconstitutional by some; but the spirit of the day applauded it. "day applauded it. Brougham served the same gun in a company of artillery with Playfair. Grahame (the Sabbath), Thomas Thomson, and James Moncrieff, John Richardson, James Charles Bell, were all in one company of rifle In 1806, the Whigs were surprised to find themselves in power. A new future opened itself to the powerful community of young men of ability who had attached themselves to that party in Edinburgh. The first Scotch judge that the Whigs made does not appear, however, to have been a credit to the party. The sketch given by Charles Haig, "the Mighty" king of the Ante Manum Club, a man famous for law, punch, whist, claret, and worth, is an admirable specimen of clever and racy pen-and-ink description. Jeffrey's young ambition did not at that time soar beyond reporting, but the op position of the Bench, to whom fair re porting was as unknown as it was inconvenient, was one of the proximate causes of the appearance of the Edinburgh Review, of which the first number was published on the 10th of October, 1802. Archibald Constable inaugurated with its appearance a new era in Scottish literature, and confounded not merely his rivals in trade, but his very authors, by his unheard-of prices. "Ten, even twenty, guineas a sheet for a review, 2000l. or 3000l. for a single poem, and 10007. each for two philosophical dissertations, drew authors from dens where they would otherwise have starved, and made Edinburgh a literary mart, famous with strangers, and the pride of its own citizens." men. Francis Horner walked about the streets with a musket, being a private in the Gentlemen Sir Walter Scott was also no ignoble volunteer: Society was at that time in a state of high animation, and continued so for many years. Cockburn justly attributes this to the survivance of several of the eminent men of the preceding age, and of curious old habits which the modern flood had not yet obliterated; the rise of a powerful "Walter Scott's zeal in the cause was very curicommunity of young men of ability; the exclusion of the British from the Contin- of Midlothian Yeomanry Cavalry. It was not a ous. He was the soul of the Edinburgh troop ent, which made Edinburgh, both for duty with him, or a necessity, or a pastime, but education and for residence, a favorite an absolute passion, indulgence in which gratiresort for strangers; the war, which main-fied his feudal taste for war, and his jovial sociatained a constant excitement of military preparation, and of military idleness; the blaze of that popular literature, which made it the second city in the empire for learning and science; and the extent and the ease with which literature and society embellished each other, without rivalry and without pedantry. bleness. He drilled, and drank, and made songs, with a hearty conscientious earnestness which inspired or shamed everybody within the attraction. I do not know if it is usual, but his troop used to practice, individually, with the sabre at a turnip, which was stuck on the top of a staff, to represent a Frenchman, in front of the line. Every other trooper, when he set forward in his turn, was far less concerned about the success |