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This statue has been erected entirely at the expense of the gentlemen of the Scottish Bar, and it is impossible not to admire and honour the feelings, which called forth from them such a magnificent mark of respect for the memory of their illustrious Brother. Lord Melville walked the boards of the Parliament House during no less than twenty years, before he began to reside constantly in London as Treasurer of the Navy; and during the whole of this period, his happy temper and manners, and friendly open-hearted disposition, rendered him a universal favourite among all that followed the same course of life. By all true Scotchmen, indeed, of whatever party in church or state, Melville was always regarded with an eye of kindliness and partiality. Whig and Tory agreed in loving him; and how could it be otherwise, for although nobody surely could be more firm in his political principles than he himself was, he allowed no feelings, arising out of these principles, to affect his behaviour in the intercourse of common life. He was always happy to drink his bottle of port with any worthy man of any party; and he was always happy to oblige personally those, in common with whom he had any recollections of good-humoured festivity. But the great course of his popularity was unquestionably nothing more than his intimate and most familiar acquaintance with the actual state of Scotland, and its inhabitants: and all their affairs. Here in Edinburgh, unless Mr. W 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.*

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, shows 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

*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 aerial 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.

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 abstractionand the whole head is such, that it might almost be placed upon the bust of 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 Jurisprudence 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 dis

position. 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.

LETTER XXXII.

TO THE SAME.

I BELIEVE I repeated to you, at the close of my last letter, a remark of Mr. Clerk concerning President Blair. This Mr. Clerk is unquestionably, at the present time, the greatest man among those who derive their chief fame from their appearance at the Scottish Bar. His face and figure attracted my particular attention, before I had the least knowledge of his name, or suspicion of his surpassing celebrity. He has by some accident in infancy, been made lame in one of his limbs; but he has, notwithstanding, every appearance of great bodily vigour and activity.

I remember your instructions concerning the Barristers of Scotland, and after having visited their Courts with great assiduity, during the greater part of my stay in this place, shall now proceed to draw you portraits of the most eminent, as near as I can hit it, in the style you wish me to employ. I must begin with Mr. Clerk, for, by the unanimous consent of his brethren, and indeed of the whole of the profession, he is the present Coryphæus of the Bar-Juris consultorum sui

seculi facile princeps. Others there are that surpass him in a few particular points, both of learning and of practice; but, on the whole, his superiority is entirely unrivalled and undisputed. Those who approach the nearest to him, are indeed so much his juniors, that he cannot fail to have an immense ascendancy over them, both from the actual advantages of his longer study and experience, and, without offence to him or them be it added, from the effects of their early admiration of him, while he was as yet far above their sphere. Do not suppose, however, that I mean to represent any part of the respect with which these gentlemen treat their senior, as the result of empty prejudice. Never was any man less of a quack than Mr. Clerk; the very essence of his character is scorn of ornament, and utter loathing of affectation. He is the plainest, the shrewdest, and the most sarcastic of men; his sceptre owes the whole of its power to its weight—nothing to glitter.

It is impossible to imagine a physiognomy more expressive of the character of a great lawyer and barrister. The features are in themselves good—at least a painter would call them so; and the upper part of the profile has as fine lines as could be wished. But then, how the habits of the mind have stamped their traces on every part of the face! What sharpness, what razor-like sharpness, has indented itself about the wrinkles of his eye-lids; the eyes themselves so quick, so gray, such bafflers of scrutiny, such exquisite scrutinizers, how they change their expression-it seems almost, how they change their colour-shifting from contracted, concentrated blackness, through every shade of brown, blue, green, and hazel, back into their own open, gleaming gray again! How they glisten into a smile of disdain!-Aristotle says, that all laughter springs from emotions of conscious superiority. I never saw the Stagyrite so well illustrated, as in the smile of this gentleman. He seems to be affected with the most delightful and balmy feelings, by the contemplation of some soft-headed, prosing driveller, racking his poor brain, or bellowing his lungs out-all about something which he, the

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