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and had not time to dig him a deeper grave, and no way of getting a stouter coffin. It will just do all as well. Poor fellow, it was all the clothes he had for many a day before." I was shocked at the recital, but Holmes was too much intoxicated to pursue the subject any farther. I called on him in the morning, and learned that Benson had joined as a private soldier in this desperate service, under the name of Maberly-that he speedily rose to a command-was distinguished for doing desperate actions, in which he seemed quite reckless of life-had, however, been treated with consider able ingratitude-never was paid a dollar-had lost his baggage-was compelled to part with almost all his wearing apparel for subsistence, and had just made his way to the sea-side, purposing to escape to Jamaica, when he sunk, overcome by hunger and fatigue. He kept the secret of his name till the last moment, when he confided it, and a part of his unhappy history, to Holmes. Such was the end of Benson, a man born to high expectations, of cultivated mind, considerable genius, generous heart, and honourable pur poses.

Jack Dallas I became acquainted with at Brazen Nose. There was a time that I thought I would have died for him-and, I believe, that his feelings towards me were equally warm. Ten years ago we were the Damon and Pythias-the Pylades and Orestes of our day. Yet I lost him by a jest. He was wooing most desperately a very pretty girl, equal to him in rank, but rather meagre in the purse. He kept it, however, a profound secret from his friends. By accident I found it out, and when I next saw him, I began to quiz him. He was surprised at the discovery, and very sore at the quizzing. He answered so testily, that I proceeded to annoy him. He became more and more sour, I more and more vexatious in my jokes. It was quite wrong on my part; but God knows I meant nothing by it. I did not know that he had just parted with his father, who had refused all consent to the match, adding injurious insinuations about the mercenary motives of the young lady. Dallas had been defending her, but in vain; and then, while in this mood, did I choose him as the butt of my silly witticisms. At last something I said—some mere piece of nonsense-nettled him so much, that VOL. XIV.

he made a blow at me. I arrested his arm, and cried, "Jack, you would have been very sorry had you put your intentions into effect." He coloured as if ashamed of his violence, but remained sullen and silent for a moment, and then left the room. We never have spoke since. He shortly after went abroad, and we were thus kept from meeting and explaining. On his return, we joined different coteries, and were of different sides in politics. In fact, I did not see him for nearly seven years until last Monday, when he passed me, with his wife -a different person from his early passion, the girl on account of whom we quarrelled-leaning on his arm. I looked at him, but he bent down his eyes, pretending to speak to Mrs Dallas. So be it.

Then there was my brother-my own poor brother, one year younger than myself. The verdict-commonly a matter of course-must have been true in his case. What an inward revolution that must have been, which could have bent that gay and free spirit, that joyous and buoyant soul, to think of self-destruction. But I cannot speak of poor Arthur. These were my chief friends, and I lost the last of them about ten years ago; and since that time I know no one, the present company excepted, for whom I care a farthing. Perhaps, if they had lived with me as long as my other companions, I would have been as careless about them, as I am about Will Thomson, Jack Megget, or my younger brothers. I am often inclined to think, that my feelings towards them are but warmed by the remembered fervour of boyhood, and made romantic by distance of time. I am pretty sure, indeed, that it is so. And, if we could call up Benson innocent from the mould of South America

Could restore poor, dear Arthurmake Dallas forget his folly-and let them live together again in my society, I should be speedily indifferent about them too. My mind is as if slumbering, quite wrapped up in itself, and never wakes but to act a part. I rise in the morning, to eat, drink, talkto say what I do not think, to advocate questions which I care not forto join companions whom I value not, to indulge in sensual pleasures which I despise-to waste my hours in trifling amusements, or more trifling business, and to retire to my bed perfectly indifferent as to whether I am ever again S

to see the shining of the sun. Yet, is my outside gay, and my conversation sprightly. Within I generally stagnate, but sometimes there comes a twinge, short indeed, but bitter. Then it is that I am, to all appearance, most volatile, most eager in dissipation; but could you lift the covering which shrouds the secrets of my bosom, you would see that, like the inmates of the hall of Eblis, my very heart was fire.

Ha-ha-ha!-say it again, Jemmy -say it again, man-do not be afraid. Ha-ha-ha!-too good-too good, upon honour. I was crossed in love! Í in love. You make me laugh-excuse my rudeness-ha-ha-ha! No, no, thank God, though I committed follies of various kinds, I escaped that foolery. I see my prosing has infected you, has made you dull. Quick, unwire the champagne-let us drive spirits into us by its generous tide. We are growing muddy over the claret. I in love! Banish all gloomy thoughts, "A light heart and a thin pair of breeches Goes thorough the world, my brave boys." What say you to that? We should drown all care in the bowl-fie on the plebeian word,-we should dispel it by the sparkling bubbles of wine, fit to be drank by the gods; that is your only true philosophy.

"Let us drink and be merry,
Dance, laugh, and rejoice,
With claret and sherry,
Theorbo and voice.

"This changeable world
To our joys is unjust;
All pleasure's uncertain,
So down with your dust.

"In pleasure dispose

Your pounds, shillings, and pence,
For we all shall be nothing

A hundred years hence."

What, not another bottle?-Only one more-Do not be so obstinate. Well, if you must, why, all I can say is, good night.

He is gone. A kind animal, but a fool, exactly what is called the best creature in the world. I have that affection for him that I have for Towler, and I believe his feelings towards me are like Towler's, an animal love of one whom he looks up to. An eating, drinking, good-humoured, good-natured varlet, who laughs at my jokes, when I tell him they are to be laughed at, sees things exactly in the light that I see them in, backs me in my asser

tions, and bets on me at whist. I had rather than ten thousand pounds be in singleness of soul, in thoughtlessness of brain, in honesty of intention, in solid contented ignorance, such as Jemmy Musgrove. That I cannot be. N'importe.

Booby as he is, he did hit a string which I thought had lost its vibration had become indurated like all my other feelings. Pish! It is well that I am alone. Surely the claret has made me maudlin, and the wine is oozing out at my eyes. Pish!-What nonsense. Ay, Margaret, it is exactly ten years ago. I was then twenty, and a fool. No, not a fool for loving you. By Heavens, I have lost my wits to talk this stuff! the wine has done its office, and I am maundering. Why did I love you? It was all my own perverse stupidity. I was, am, and ever will be, a blockhead, an idiot of the first water. And such a match for her to be driven into. She certainly should have let me know more of her intentions than she did. Indeed!-Why should she? Was she to caper after my whims, to sacrifice her happiness to my caprices, to my devotions of today, and my sulkinesses, or, still worse, my levities of to-morrow? No, no, Margaret: never-never-never, even in thought, let me accuse you, model of gentleness, of kindness, of goodness, as well as of beauty. I am to blame myself, and myself alone.

I can see her now, can talk to her without passion, can put up with her husband, and fondle her children. I have repressed that emotion, and, in doing so, all others. With that throb lost, went all the rest. I am now a

mere card in the pack, shuffled about eternally with the set, but passive and senseless. I care no more for my neighbour, than the King of Diamonds cares for him of Clubs. Dear, dear Margaret, there is a lock of your hair enclosed unknown to you in a little case which lies over my heart. I seldom dare to look at it. Let me kiss its auburn folds once more, and remember the evening I took it. But I am growing more and more absurd. I drink your health then, and retire.

Here's a health to thee, Margaret,
Here's a health to thee;
The drinkers are gone,
And I am alone,

So here's a health to thee.

Dear, dear Margaret.

ON THE PLUCKLESS SCHOOL OF POLITICS.

No. I.

DEAR MR NORTH, SOME late events which have demonstrated the jobbery of the Whigs, and the folly of some of the Tories, appear to me worthy of being recorded, for the edification of the present, and example of all future generations. I am, myself, sir, an élève of the Pluckless School, but my own plucklessness is not the result of the same motives which influence the rest of my brethren. In the first place, I am a young and nearly feeless advocate, and I am inclined to think, that if I ventured openly to avow the principles of real Toryism which I feel in my heart, the few semi-Tory writers who occasionally send me a sequestration fee of two guineas at the beginning of a session, for which they expect me to make all the motions in all the cases they may happen to have in Court till the end of it, would instantly desert me, and encourage some seemingly moderate and smooth-speaking Whig. But, secondly, I happen to have a small spark of modesty in my composition, and when I find my seniors at the bar, and the avowed leaders of the Tories in Scotland, succumbing to the Whig scribes, I am not bold enough to stand forward at the head of a sort of forlorn hope, who might give me the slip in the very moment of the onset.

To you, however, my dear sir, I will be candid and open; to you I will disclose those sentiments which I dare not broach at a meeting of the Faculty, or even venture to suggest over a bottle of claret, at the table of any of my employers. To you I will open up a little specimen of Whig jobbery, and will shew you how it has been incubated and fostered by some old Tories, till the egg burst, and was found to be addled. You must know, then, that Satan, the leader of the Whigs, (they cannot fix on a leader for themselves, so I take the liberty of naming the father of opposition for them,) Satan, I say, regretting the trimming that some of his party had received at your hands, my dear Christopher, determined to lend them a helping hand in the way of a job, and in order to forward the plot, he fixed on a few Tories

as the instruments by which he would carry it through.

There are a dozen or two members of the chivalrous order of W.S., who hold a certain superiority over their brethren. You will find that, like the names of knights in the Red Book, these heroes are distinguished by a cross in our Edinburgh Almanack. To some of these Grand Crosses of the Quill the: old gentleman addressed himself. Do not imagine that he appeared in the horrors of horns, hoof, and tail; he came in all gentle guise, and, carrying a powder puff in his hands, blew a cloud of vanity into their eyes, softly insinuating that it would be a fine thing for them to have the exclusive patronage of a chair in our University, and distantly hinting, that if they could mount one sort of chair, the time might come when some of them, the said K. G. C.'s, might aspire to another. If their body were qualified to teach law, who should say they were not fit to administer it likewise? In short, these gentlemen determined, at the instigation of the devil, in the shape of vanity, to endeavour to get a lectureship of conveyancing, which they had some years ago set agoing as a sort of pensionary situation for any member of their Society who might have parted from his practice, erected into a Professorship in the University.

The bargain was easily struck; the good old gentlemen thought they would steal a march on the Whigs by gaining their most sweet voices in favour of the measure, inasmuch as the present incumbent on the chair which they proposed to transport to the College, happened to be a member of that deluded faction; while all the time little did they suppose that in fact they were the dupes of the very party they meant to take in, and that the whole affair originated in a party manœuvre to get another Whig professor forced into the University.

This, as you know better than I do, is a part of the present grand scheme of the Whigs, to obtain the command and control of all public seminaries, and to exercise their tyranny over all private ones. They are, and have long

been, indefatigable in their exertions for this purpose. Witness the jobbery about the Lord-Rectorships at Glasgow and Aberdeen, and Jeffrey's grand humbug speech at the former University; witness the late affair of the Edinburgh Academy, which every body sees is just a plan to make the Tories do the Whigs' work. The Senatus Academicus of Edinburgh, by the constant and unremitting exertions of this indefatigable party, is now nearly equally divided, and the importance of thrusting in one oppositionist can only be thoroughly known to those who anticipate the effects of this great scheme, which, next to ministerial power, is the main object of the Whigs.

I need not tell you that, with their usual cunning, the Whigs kept this out of view, and gave the glory of the proposal entirely to their cat's paws, the Tory commissioners.

Accordingly, a proposal was drawn up, and submitted to the Court of Session and the Faculty of Advocates. It is important to observe what this proposal was. It was not a request that these bodies should give the sanction of their approbation generally to the utility of a course of lectures on conveyancing, or to the advantage to be gained by such course being delivered in the University. No doubt the application was so worded as to lead at first sight to a belief that this was all that was asked; and due pains were taken both in the outset, and in the after proceedings in the Faculty, to keep out of view the real nature of the demand. It peeps out, however, even in the very first application to the Court and Faculty, and it is truly this: That their chair of conveyancing as at present existing, together with the gentleman who at present sits in it, should forthwith be transferred to the University. Without this stipulation the Whigs would never have been satisfied, well knowing that if the proposal had been merely prospective, the object of a Whig vote in the University would have been at best but problematical. Accordingly the committee state, that they have again resolved to solicit the boon of a University chair for their lectureship. But it is not until the very last step of

the proceeding, viz. their application in form to the Town Council, that they express themselves plainly, proposing that Mr Macvey Napier, the present lecturer, shall be the first professor.

My principal object in addressing you, is to submit the reasons which I did not dare, from the fear of starvation, to utter in the Faculty, but which induced me to vote with the majority against Mr Cranstoun's motion; and this I do, because my reasons differ essentially from those given by the persons who spoke on the question. Before proceeding, however, I think it right to mention, that the Lord President informed these ambitious gentlemen, that he did not conceive the matter was one in which the Court was called upon to give an opinion.

When the proposal was first laid before the Faculty, they were of opinion that a report of the committee appointed to consider a former proposal of the same sort, made in 1796, should be reprinted. This report contained many solid objections against the erection of such a professorship at all. It was held that there was no occasion for a division of the subjects of law and conveyancing; that the lectures on the feudal law, the most important branch of the course of municipal law already established in the University, must necessarily embrace the leading doctrines of conveyancing; while lectures on conveyancing would sink into a mere dead letter, unless a complete course of feudal law were delivered by the lecturer-so that the one chair must necessarily interfere with the other. This is a proposition which it is impossible to deny; and when it is stated, that it was maintained by Dean of Faculty Henry Erskine,* Mr Adam Rolland, Mr John Pringle, Mr A. Balfour, Mr Solicitor-General (Blair), Mr G. Fergusson (Lord Hermand,) Mr C. Boswell (Lord Balmuto,) Mr A. F. Tytler (Lord Woodhouselee,) Mr W. (now Lord) Robertson, and Mr D. (now Baron) Hume, I should humbly suppose it was entitled to some respect, especially as it was unanimously adopted by the Faculty. At length, on a reconsideration of this report, which is a most able one, toge

It is curious that Mr Erskine's name is kept out of view, and only his title, Dean of Faculty, given in the printed papers.-While Mr Blair's name is given, as well as his title. There is a reason for this.

ther with an answer by the Knights Commissioners, the Faculty met to express their opinion on this matter. The real proposition before them was this, That the Society of Writers to the Signet should have the exclusive patronage of a professorship of law in the University; that the professor should be eligible only from the body of Writers to the Signet; and that the present lecturer should be the first professor. This, I say, was the real proposal. Mr Cranstoun was the person selected to support it; and surely no one could have come forward for the purpose with so good a chance of success. The high estimation in which he is so justly held by all his brethren, created a prepossession in his favour. His mild, and yet manly eloquence, had its due effect, and, I doubt not, blinded many of his hearers to the real object in view, and increased the numbers of the minority. But his motion was of a very different nature from the real proposal of the Writers. He moved, that a set of lectures on conveyancing is a very good and useful thing, and that it might be still more bene ficial if a chair in the University were obtained for the lecturer. This, you see, is quite safe and general. Many a one might agree in these propositions, who would deny the propriety of giving the Writers the exclusive election and eligibility, and who might have still stronger objections to the appointment of any man already elected.

But I wish to give you an idea of some of the reasons urged by Mr Cranstoun in defence of his motion. I do not pretend to give you his words, which were certainly, to my mind, much more effective than his arguments. In the first place, he made some most unnecessary observations on the importance of conveyancing as a branch of law, and upon the advantages to be derived from methodical study of it. Nobody disputes that it is a useful branch of legal knowledge. But the question is, whether it cannot be taught by the professor of law already appointed? Mr Cranstoun went on to tell us, that no lawyer of ten years standing was fit to understand a progress of titles. That he himself, when a progress was sent to him for an opinion, used to feel a cold sweat break out upon him; but then he informed us, that the secret of unravelling such a progress is all a knack. He compared it to an alge

braical formula, which, when known, enables the calculator to answer problems beyond the reach of the ordinary arithmetician; (but he did not say why this trick, which, when known, makes the matter so plain, could not be taught by the lecturer on Scots law as well as by a separate professor). Then he gave us a fine tirade upon the baseness and degradation of allowing politics to interfere with the matter, and concluded with moving the two propositions already quoted, in the following words :

"1. That the Institution of a Course of

Lectures on Conveyancing, is calculated to improve the system of Legal Education in this country, and thereby to produce results beneficial to the community.

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2. That the benefits of such a Course would be more extensive, if a Chair in the University were obtained for the Lecturer."

Then we had an assertion from the professor of Scots law, that he would not lose a shilling by the affair. Whether he meant by this, that he was not afraid of interference of the courses, or that he was undaunted by the talents of the intended lecturer, I know not. Perhaps he wishes to be relieved of the trouble of delivering the feudal lectures, or perhaps he thinks that many students, upon measuring the talents of the two professors, will not be drawn from his class by the delivery of another set of lectures on the same subject.

The Tories who spoke, stuck fast to the reasons given in the old report, with one exception. One gentleman declared, that he never would consent to yield the right of the Faculty to the patronage of all professorships of law, which were or might be established. Here I agree with him. The Faculty were the original and only authorized teachers of law. Every one acquainted with the early history of our courts, knows that these Writers to the Signet were not originally even practitioners in our courts, except in so far as their signature was required to those judicial steps which necessarily pass the King's Signet. The original agents were the servants (as they were termed) of Advocates; young men destined for the bar, whose legal education consisted in attendance in the chambers of some counsel, and who derived their right of agenting causes, as it is now termed, from the necessity of waiting upon their in

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