letters, both the Under-Secretary and Lord Tweeddale urged Dundas not to follow the Lord Advocate, who had gone up to London, but to stay some time either at Berwick or Newcastle, in order to carry on the correspondence with Scotland. Dundas accordingly stayed at Berwick till November 12, when he returned to Edinburgh, by which time the royal forces under General Handasyd were approaching the city.

Very little trustworthy information regarding the movements of the rebel army reached either London or Edinburgh until it was known that on December 4 the Young Pretender had entered Derby. The news reached London on the 6th-Black Friday as it was calledand all was panic. "It is difficult to conceive," Mitchell writes to Dundas, "how few behaved like men." But on that very day the Highlanders were in full retreat to the north, and the invasion of England was at an end." (P. 136.)

In the meantime a change of government was imminent in London. Lord Tweeddale at the end of December had resolved to resign his post of Secretary of State for Scotland. When Lord Arniston, Dundas's father, heard of the Secretary's resignation, he at once wrote to his son, earnestly urging him not to resign, expressing the opinion that nobody else should resign, because resigning may shock the king, and we have always held it a medium in politics never to 'make war with the king whatever we do with his ministers.' Dundas, however, had made up his mind to resign, and intimated his resolution to his father. Lord Arniston was indignant; he evidently feared that this dislocation from office might act in the future against the success of the family interest, and allow that of Argyll again to have the ascendency in Scotland. He wrote his son a long letter, in the course of which he said:

'I hope you will think over the matter again before resigning, notwithstanding what ill usage or discouragement you may have met with. Some of many reasons against your resigning are: In the first place, since the Duke [of Cumberland] is to all appearance coming to Scotland to command, and is, I hope, by this time set out on the road, your station and office must give you frequent opportunities of waiting upon him and forming an acquaintance; and whether you may not get the better of some other people, whose patron he does not much favour, is at least an equal chance, and the rather considering the company that are to attend him, Duke of Montrose, Duke of Queensberry, and Earl of Rothes. Now, I don't think any advantage can attend your resignation just now equal to what may arise from this opportunity and acquaintance. At least I should think this single incident sufficient reason for delaying your resignation two months. In the next place,' &c. &c. (P. 139.)

The old gentleman's indignation and worldly-wise maxims did not prevail with his son. Even the tempting hope of getting the better of some other people'. a cautious Scottish form of locution which may cover a pretty deep hostility, and by which Lord Justice Clerk Milton and his 'patron' Argyll were evidently pointed at-was not sufficient to break down the disheartened Solicitor-General's resolution. He resigned his office, assigning as his reason the heavy nature of the duties; and his resignation was at once accepted.

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'His real reason,' says Mr. Omond, was the difficulty he found in holding his own against the Lord Justice Clerk, who, it appears, did not treat him with sufficient confidence, and was therefore constantly putting him in a false position. Lord Arniston was much annoyed, and wrote to his son a long and angry letter, in which he declared that" provocations from the L.J.C. [Lord Justice Clerk] I never would have minded one figg. as I know that neither his "impudence nor his patron's high power could have been able to turn "out one man-I mean either the Advocate or you. I must own, "your so obstinate resolution, notwithstanding, has given and does "give me very great vexation. You have by this step established "for ever the power of the very man that I believe you and I abominate." (P. 141.)

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The Lord Advocate wrote a kind letter to Dundas, wishing he had held on a little longer, as did also President Forbes of Culloden, who thought Lord Arniston had advised his son right. Yet before the end of February the Lord Advocate had also resigned; and no Secretary of State had been appointed in the place of Tweeddale. Thus,' remarks Mr. Omond, long before April came, with the final defeat of the Pretender at Culloden, a sweeping change had been 'made among the persons on whom had fallen the burden ' of maintaining the royal cause during the early days of the 'Rebellion.'

After his resignation Dundas went back to his practice at the bar, to which, being relieved from official duties, he now could give his undivided attention. But the old man, his father, was far from being reconciled to it; the resignation appears, along with defective bodily health, to have affected his spirits, and he resolved, in turn, to resign his seat on the bench-a resolution which nearly ended the brilliant career ' of his son, and which might, by destroying the influence of his family, have materially changed the course of Scottish political history. For Dundas declared that if his father left the bench he would leave the bar, and retire into

private life.' Lord Arniston's wife, Dundas's stepmother, pled with her husband not to carry his resolve into action, for the sake of his son's prospects in life. The old man listened and was appeased. You need say no more,' he said. If my Roby thinks it would hurt him that I should resign, I will never do it. Let me bear affronts, contempt, &c.; I will never be a hindrance to the views of a son I so much esteem as well as love.' The death of Lord President Forbes in December 1747 put an end to all Lord Arniston's ideas of leaving the bench. We have already stated that he secured the place rendered vacant by Forbes; and he had the satisfaction of seeing the Lord Justice Clerk that puppy,' as he used to call him-thrust aside.

In 1754 Dundas was returned unopposed for Midlothian to Parliament, in the Whig interest, and shortly afterwards became Lord Advocate. In this capacity he had a large patronage at his command, and he seems to have dispensed it with an eye to the strengthening and extending of the family interest. The Duke of Argyll still formed the chief opposition to the Dundas influence, and Lord Milton was still, as before, the recipient of the duke's confidence in Scottish affairs. Great part of Dundas's correspondence, when attending to his parliamentary duties in London, referred to the steps that were taken to watch Lord Milton's motions in Edinburgh, to know what new friends he was making for the duke, and what new schemes were being concocted. This Dundas was indeed a cautious, skilful politician, with a keen eye for his own and his family's interest, but narrow in his sympathies, and bitter in his personal hostilities, as readers of Dr. Carlyle's Autobiography' will remember. Shortly after his appointment as Lord Advocate, but rather in his capacity of Dean of Faculty, he was brought into contact with David Hume, the historian, who two years previously had been elected Keeper of the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, on which occasion Dundas had strongly opposed Hume's candidature. As Keeper of the Library, therefore, Hume must have had frequent occasions of meeting Dundas, and in 1754 he appealed to him on a point of library management in which the historian differed from the curators. The point in dispute was as to the propriety of retaining in the Advocates' Library three French books that had been recently purchased for it. These were Les Contes de la Fontaine,' L'Histoire Amoureuse 'des Gaules,' and 'L'Ecumoire,' which books were ordered to be removed from the shelves as indecent books, and un

'worthy of a place in a learned library.' It is interesting to note that the curators who objected to the retention of these books in the library were afterwards well known to the world by their titles of Lord Monboddo, Lord Glenlee, and Lord Hailes. Dundas was probably suspected of sympathising with the narrow-mindedness of his brethren the curators; at all events Hume remonstrated against their action in the following characteristic letter addressed to Dundas :

My Lord,-Reflecting on the conversation which I had the honour to have with your lordship yesterday, I remember that your lordship asked whether I insisted that these three books must be in the library? I believe I answered that the books were indifferent to me, and that being once expelled I did not see how they could be restored except by being bought anew. This answer was the effect of precipitation and inadvertence. I take this opportunity of retracting it; that if your lordship be so good as to interpose your authority in this affair, you may be informed of the grounds on which I conceive the matter to stand. The expelling these books I could conceive in no other light than as an insult on me, which nothing can repair but the reinstating them. Mr. Wedderburn and Mr. Millar, who certainly had no bad intentions, will not, I hope, regard my insisting on this point as any insult on them. And if any of the curators had bad intentions, which I hope they had not, there cannot in the world be a more rejoicing spectacle, nor one more agreeable to the generality of mankind, than to see insolence and malice thrown in the dirt. These qualities, which are always dirty, must in that case appear doubly so.

There is a particular kind of insolence which is more provoking as it is meaner than any other; 'tis the Insolence of Office, which our great poet mentions as sufficient to make those who are so unhappy as to suffer by it seek even a voluntary death rather than submit to it. I presume it is chance, not design, which has exposed some of the curators to the reproach of this vice. But I am sure no quality will be more disagreeable to your lordship, for if I may judge by the affable manner in which you received me, your late promotion will operate no such effect upon you.

'As to the three books themselves, your lordship has little leisure from more grave and important occupations to read them; but this I will venture to justify before any literary society in Europe, that if every book not superior in merit to "La Fontaine " be expelled the library, I shall engage to carry away all that remains in my pocket. I know not, indeed, if any will remain except our fifty-pound Bible, which is too bulky for me to carry away. If all worse than Bussi Rabutin, or Crebillon, be expelled, I shall engage that a couple of porters do the office. By the bye, Bussi Rabutin contains no bawdy at all, though if it did I see not that it would be a whit the worse. For I know not a more agreeable subject both for books and conversation, if executed with decency and ingenuity. I can presume, with

out intending the least offence, that as the glass circulates at your lordship's table, this topic of conversation will sometimes steal in, provided always there be no ministers present. And even some of

these reverend gentlemen I have seen not to dislike the subject. I hope your lordship will excuse this freedom, and believe me to be, with great regard, my lord, your lordship's most obedient and most humble servant, 'DAVID HUME.'

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Whether the Lord Advocate was, or was not, actually opposed to the retention of the three objectionable volumes does not appear for certain; but in a case which shortly thereafter stirred the ecclesiastical courts of Scotland to unwonted excitement, the part which he took favoured the illiberal side of things, and rendered him for the remainder of his life unpopular with the Moderate or intellectual party in the Scottish Church. The case we refer to was that which arose out of the first representation in public of John Home's tragedy of Douglas'-a tragedy usually denominated celebrated,' but this, we may now infer, not so much from any permanent literary quality which it possesses, as from the extraordinary furore which its appearance in Edinburgh created, and the eminent names which were mixed up in the dispute. A number of ministers of the Church witnessed its first representation on the stage; and out of these, Dr. Carlyle of Inveresk was singled for prosecution by the Church courts. Among those who strongly supported Home was Lord Milton, and possibly the mere fact of that puppy' being prominent on one side decided Dundas to place himself on the other. The Lord Advocate not only joined with those who abused Home for writing the play, but he refused also to use his influence with the Presbytery of Dalkeith to get them to withdraw the invidious prosecution against Dr. Carlyle for his support of Home. This was felt by Carlyle keenly when, referring to Dundas in his Autobiography,' he says, 'a word from him would have 'done.' When the case reached the General Assembly, however, there was a vast majority in favour of Carlyle, showing, as he himself remarks, that the opposition to Home was more the result of local illwill and rancour than of any general feeling against him throughout the Church. Home, at the same time, to avoid the risk of deposition, had to resign his living. Notwithstanding all this perhaps somewhat on account of it-the tragedy was listened to and applauded by an appreciative public. The play,' says Carlyle, had un'bounded success for a great many nights in Edinburgh, and was attended by all the literati and most of the

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