beautiful of her sex, and who enjoyed hers in return. I would have shown you their suitable condition. I would have painted the expectation of an honourable union, and would have concluded by showing her to you in the arms of another by the legal prostitution of parental choice in the teeth of affection: with child by a rival, and only reclaimed at last, after so cruel and so afflicting a divorce, with her freshest charms despoiled and her very morals, in a manner, impeached by asserting the purity and virtue of her original and spotless choice. Good --! imagine my client to be plaintiff, and what damages are you not prepared to give him! and yet he is here as defendant, and damages are demanded against him. O monstrous conclusion !"

Throughout the whole course of his very distinguished professional career, Lord Erskine adhered with constancy and fidelity to the political principles and engagements with which he began life. His ambition was of too noble a nature to look for its reward in honours meanly earned at the expense of integrity. It cannot be doubted that many occasions occurred to him of bartering his political character for place or for emolument, but, undazzled by false splendour, he always refused to become a party to such an exchange. Nor did he ever suffer political considerations to prevent him from the due and just discharge of his professional duties, preferring, as in the case of Paine, the certain loss of office and advancement to the sullying of his high professional character.

It would be inexcusable in this place to omit the following fine observations on the professional character of Lord Erskine, from the pen, it has been said, of a most distinguished person, himself a very illustrious ornament of the profession which was once adorned by the splendid genius and elevated by the lofty reputation of Erskine. "The professional life of this eminent person, who has of late years reached the highest honours of the law, is in every respect useful as an example to future lawyers. It shows that a base time-serving demeanour towards the judges and a corrupt or servile conduct towards the Government, are not the only, though, from the frailty of human nature and the wickedness of the age, they may often prove the surest, roads to preferment. It exalts the character of the English barrister beyond what in former times it had attained, and holds out an illustrious instance of patriotism and independence, united with the highest legal excellence, and crowned in the worst of times with the most ample success. But it is doubly important, by proving how much a single man can do against the corruptions of his age, and how far he can vindicate the liberties of his country, so long as courts of justice are pure, by raising his single voice against the outcry of the people and the influence of the Crown, at the time when the union of

these opposite forces was bearing down all opposition in Parliament, and daily setting at nought the most splendid talents, armed with the most just cause. While the administration of the law flows in pure channels; while the judges are incorruptible, and watched by the scrutinising eyes of an enlightened bar, as well as by the jealous attention of the country; while juries continue to know and to exercise their high functions, and a single advocate of honesty and talents remain, thank God! happen what will in other places, our personal safety is beyond the reach of a corrupt ministry and their venal adherents. Justice will hold her even balance in the midst of hosts armed with gold or with steel. The law will be administered steadily, while the principles of right and wrong, the evidence of the senses themselves, the very axioms of arithmetic, may seem elsewhere to be mixed in one giddy and inextricable confusion; and after every other plank of the British constitution shall have sunk below the weight of the Crown, or been stove in by the violence of popular commotion, that one will remain, to which we are ever fondest of clinging, and by which we can always most surely be saved." "#

The great truths of religion were early impressed by education on the mind of Lord Erskine, and they continued to exercise, throughout his whole life, a powerful influence over his feelings. It was not the language of the advocate when, on the trial of Paine, he made the following eloquent profession: "For my own part, I have been ever deeply devoted to the truths of Christianity; and my firm belief in the Holy Gospel is by no means owing to the prejudices of education (though I was religiously educated by the best of parents), but has arisen from the fullest and most continued reflections of my riper years and understanding. It forms, at this moment, the great consolation of a life which, as a shadow, passes away; and without it, I should consider my long course of health and prosperity (too long, perhaps, and too uninterrupted to be good for any man), as the dust which the wind scatters, and rather as a snare than a blessing."

It must be admitted, that in the moral character of Lord Erskine there were failings, which more thoughtful and prudent men would have avoided; and though it may be regretted, it cannot be a matter of surprise, that he did not exhibit a union of contradictory qualities, displaying at once the ardent temperament of genius, and the blameless and passionless conduct of less sensitive natures. It is unfortunately but too true, to use his own words, that "it is the nature of everything that is great or useful in the animate and inanimate world to be wild and irregular; and we must be contented to take them with the alloys that belong to

* Edinburgh Review, vol. xvi., p. 127.

them, or to live without them." He was himself as deeply sensible as any one could be of his own failings, for the pardon of which he looked with confidence to the mercy-seat of God. In his speech on the trial of Stockdale, there is a passage which may be regarded as a commentary upon his own feelings. "Every human tribunal ought to take care to administer justice, as we look hereafter to have justice administered to ourselves: upon the principle on which the Attorney-General prays sentence upon my client-God have mercy upon us!instead of standing before Him in judgment with the hopes and consolations of Christians, we must call upon the mountains to cover us; for which of us can present for Omniscient examination a pure, unspotted, and faultless course? But I humbly expect that the benevolent Author of our being will judge us, as I have been pointing out for your example. Holding up the great volume of our lives in His hand, and regarding the general scope of them, if He discovers benevolence, charity, and goodwill to man, beating in the heart, where He alone can look; if He finds that our conduct, though often forced out of the path by our infirmities, has been in general well directed, His searching eye will assuredly never pursue us into those little corners of our lives, much less will His justice select them for punishment, without the general context of our existence, by which faults may be sometimes found to have grown out of virtues, and very many of our heaviest offences to have been grafted, by human imperfection, upon the best and kindest of our affections. No, gentlemen, believe me this is not the course of Divine justice, or there is no truth in the Gospels of Heaven. If the general tenor of a man's conduct be such as I have represented, he may walk through the shadow of death, with all his faults about him, with as much cheerfulness as in the common paths of life, because he knows that, instead of a stern accuser, to expose before the Author of his nature those frail passages which, like the scored matter in the book before you, chequers the volume of the brightest and best spent life, His mercy will obscure them from the

eyes of His purity, and our repentance blot them out for ever."

That Lord Erskine was not altogether free from the weakness of vanity, a weakness not unfrequently found in persons who, in other respects, possess the strongest minds, is evident even from his speeches. There is, upon various occasions, an obvious endeavour to introduce himself and his own actions to the notice of the audience; an ungraceful practice, which increased upon him in the later part of his life, and of which an instance may be seen in the debates in the House of Lords of the 1st of March 1806. It has been said of Lord Erskine, that "thoroughly acquainted with the world, he even condescended to have recourse to little artifices, pardonable in themselves, to aid his purposes. He examined the court the night before the trial, in order to select the most advantageous place for addressing the jury. On the cause being called, the crowded audience were, perhaps, kept waiting a few minutes before the celebrated stranger made his appearance; and when at length he gratified their impatient curiosity, a particularly nice wig, and a pair of new yellow gloves, distinguished and embellished his person, beyond the ordinary costume of the barristers of the circuit."

The demeanour of Lord Erskine in court was to the bench respectful, though never subservient; to the bar, kind, courteous, and engaging. It has been said, that during his long practice he was never known, but upon one occasion, to utter a harsh or rude word to those opposed to him, and that, in the single instance in which his temper mastered him, he made ample amends by a voluntary and instantaneous apology.

In person, Lord Erskine possessed many advantages: his features were regular, intelligent, and animated, and his action is said to have been exceedingly graceful. His constitution was remarkably strong; and it was mentioned by himself in the House of Lords, as a singular fact, that during the twenty-seven years of his practice he had not been for a single day prevented in his attendance on the courts by any indisposition or corporeal infirmity.

in addition to higher advantages. She has herself told us the story of her early life and her first struggles in an unfinished memoir, which has been published since her death. In the mere acquisition of knowledge she had no peculiar difficulties to encounter, either from circumstances or from any deficiency in herself.

the consideration of those whose principle of education is, that nothing ought ever to be put into the hands of children, or attempted to be taught to them, except what has been completely brought down to the level of their understanding. It does not appear to be in this way that the growth of mind is best furthered. We believe that what most fertilises and excites young minds, is that which they are at first capable of understanding only partially, and which, instead of descending to them, gradually draws them up towards itself. Little good, indeed, is to be got by any of us out of anything except what is more or less beyond us and above us when we first apply ourselves to it. Nothing else can teach us anything that is really new, or at least can make the mind put forth any new powers. The dimness and perplexity at the commencement, are the earnest of clearness and extent of vision to come.

Let us hear Anne Macvicar's own account of what in no long time she made out of her childish, and as many would say, worse than useless, study of "Paradise Lost." The most distinguished inhabitant of Albany in those days was the widow of Colonel Schuyler. "Madame Schuyler's house at Albany," writes Mrs Grant, "was the resort of all strangers whose manners or conduct entitled them to her regard. Her ancestors on both sides constituted the aristocracy of the province, and her descent, her understanding, and education, gave her great weight in society, which was increased by the liberal use she made of a comparatively large fortune. In her, the warmest family affection and the kindest heart were entirely under the control of the soundest practical good sense. Some time after our arrival at Albany, I accompanied my parents one evening to visit Madame Schuyler, whom I regarded as the Minerva of my imagination, and treasured all her discourse as the veritable words of wisdom. The conversation fell upon dreams and forewarnings. I rarely spoke till spoken to at any time; but of a sudden, the spirit moved me to say that bad angels sometimes whispered dreams into the soul. When asked for my authority, I surprised every one, but myself most of all, by a long quotation from Eve's fatal dream infusing into her mind the ambition that led to guilt. After this happy quotation I became a great favourite, and Madame Schuyler never failed to tell any one who had read Milton of the origin of her partiality."

At this time the child would appear to have been hardly yet seven years old. We much question if any more customary or more plausible-looking plan of education would have awakened in her mind at that age so much feeling of the highest things as this quotation from Milton implied. A larger or more exact acquaintance with the mere mechanical dexteri

ties of scholarship might no doubt have been acquired by another method. But that would have been comparatively worthless. "While we remained in America," she proceeds, "I enjoyed much of Madame Schuyler's society; and after my father removed from Albany, I spent two winters with her in that city. Indeed, if my parents would have parted with me, she would have kept me entirely with herself. Whatever culture my mind received, I owe to her."

In 1768, her father, whose health was beginning to give way, and who thought he had secured a provision for himself and his family by some land which he had purchased in America on easy terms, and the market value of which was every day rising as the surrounding country became cleared and inhabited, determined to return with his family to Scotland. They arrived at Glasgow in May. Anne was now in her fourteenth year. "I was first sought after," she says, "as something curious and anomalous, having none of the embellishments of education, knowing only reading, writing, and needlework; writing, indeed, very imperfectly, yet familiar with books, with plants, and with trees, with all that regarded the face of nature; perfectly ignorant of the customs and manners of the world; combining with a childish and amusing simplicity, a store of various knowledge, which nothing less than the leisure of much solitary retirement, and the tenacity of an uncommonly retentive memory, could have accumulated in the mind of an overgrown child-for such I appeared to those who knew my age."

And in a letter, written in 1809, to a friend who had rallied her on her bad spelling-which, curiously enough, it would appear, stuck to her, authoress as she was, to the end of her lifeafter observing that she was delighted with the pleasantry of her correspondent's observations upon a defect, which was the less to be excused, inasmuch as orthography was a thing to be learned merely by a common degree of observation, she informs her that the first unshackled letter of her own diction that she ever wrote in her life was actually the one, dated 1773, which makes the first of her printed "Letters from the Mountains." The original of this, she says, she has still beside her, "written in the childish and most unformed hand imaginable." And then she gives the following naive and amusing account of her early education: "I was taught to write, when a girl in America, by a soldier in my father's regiment, who began life in the character of a gentleman, but, being an incorrigible sot, retained nothing but a fine hand to distinguish him from his fellows when he was chosen my teacher. This tutor of mine visited the black hole so often, that I got copies, perhaps twenty-at long intervals-when he was removed into another regiment. I was thus de