What indeed, sirs, but Porridge and Catechism'! It is as you, Colonel, say, deep wisdom,' too deep for us moderns. The book is very disjointed, and comprises clippings and cuttings, polite pieces of poetry, paragraphs about Scotch dances, Scotch theatricals, the Scotch Prayer-book, and ruling elders-very mysterious officials are ruling elders-devoid of interest to one anxious to know about brilliant Harry Erskine. His face laughs at us (or is it at the author and his title-page ?) whenever we open the book; but ere we can talk with him we must be presented to his tedious and numerous uncles and aunts, his father and grandfathers, or otherwise his kinsfolk.' This garrulous writing is not literature, though interesting to readers of Notes and Queries. If the author had done his work in anything approaching the first-class style in which Goupil and Co. have done theirs in the beautiful photogravure, and the publishers have executed theirs in the handsome paper, type, and binding, it would have been a desirable book; and there are errors- -for instance, one is surprised to read Francis, Lord Cockburn.' The subject is worthy of better literary work, worthy of Mr. Louis Stevenson. He would have given us what the subject merits, a keen enjoyment, have made the old judges quaintly picturesque, a company of delightful characters, have told the stories with gusto, and introduced the ladies' love-letters with charming effect. It would have formed a bright companion to his Picturesque Edinburgh.' As it is, every reader must be his own Louis Stevenson. He would have given a fine setting to this story of Lady Stair, a leader of fashion, with the genteelest company at her tea-table, who with staff in hand went in the ancient chair,' attended by her black servant, to the Duke and Duchess of Douglas at Holyrood House. The ancient dame was nobly enraged at a scandal, and protested, striking her stick on the floor and stamping her feet, that she had never gotten hersel' mix'd up wi' ony clatters an' clavers,' and declared in her strong Scotch tongue without a blush that the Duke was a daumed villain.' Exit Lady Stair, pleased and erect after having so plainly delivered her blunt opinion. Literary skill is shown in two letters of Frances Fairfax, Countess of Buchan, grand-daughter of Sir Thomas Browne, to her husband, opening with these addresses, My dearest life,' My pretty creature.' The books are a kind of history,' or, Christopher Sly would say, household stuff.'

They lead our thoughts back to serious times when it was not necessary that a lawyer should occupy the Chancellorship, to the old Scotch judges who are a mighty contrast to their present successors on the bench, whose lives, like those of most judges now, are written in the records of the court's decisions. Theirs is a homely, honest history. Would that we could say as much for their old predecessors. Time is when we can now calmly review their characteristics, and many of them deserve the condemnation which their time-fellow Butler uttered against one of their number, 'Passes judgment as a gamester does false dice. The first thing he takes is his oath and his commis

sion, and afterwards the strongest side and bribes. He gives judgment as the counsel at the bar are said to give advice, when they are paid for it. He wraps himself warm in furs, that the cold air may not strike his conscience inward.'

The history of the old judges, with their rugged ferocity, great corruption, and their occasional brave words and deeds, is a miniature history of Scotland. For long the bench was a political machine; and was influenced like the people by the Hanoverian succession, the Orange revolution, the Jacobite rebellion-when doubtful people became Jacobites and bankrupts became heroes-and by all the national petty feuds. The judges were not a happy breed of men. Along with their kings and nobles they took part in the tortuous intrigues, and paid the penalties all suffer who play with loaded dice. They lived in ages when to endure was not often to overcome, ages of bribes and barbarity, of torture-boots and thumbscrews, of deaths by daggers and on the scaffold. Not unfrequently they perished by assassination, by their own hands, by the public executioner, and on the field. They were a glorious harvest of characters, a race of mortals gifted with the antique daring heart.

Every county, nearly every parish in Scotland, has given birth to her judges, who selected for their lordship titles the names of their ancestral estates, and reading the roll of old judges is like calling over a list of estates or farms or fields. Their landed titles gave a landed splendour to the court, a fictitious grandeur to the bench. A Home lost his personality in the lordship title of Kames, a Dalrymple in that of Hailes, both being borrowed from the arable acres they owned. My lords Kames and Hailes on the bench were still the same individuals as Mr. Henry Home and Sir John Dalrymple were at the bar. History but rarely records the performance of ordinary duties whether by judge or advocate; yet Scotch history affords ample evidence that the old judges seldom stood up for the pure administration of law-the one duty they owed to their office and their country. They did not furnish the splendid types of manhood like her Knox or Cromwell, who, to use Mr. Lecky's words, 'were careless indeed of glory, but very careful of honour, who made the supreme majesty of moral rectitude the guiding principle of their lives, who proved in the most trying circumstances that no allurements of ambition, no storms of passion, could cause them to deviate a hair's-breadth from the course they believed to be their duty.' The bench certainly gave no room for displaying the powers of a Knox or a Cromwell, but there were opportunities and to spare for displaying moral rectitude, judicial integrity, and for fulfilling upright duty in trying years. The patriotic Forbes of Culloden was about the only judge who deserved this honour. The relationship between the nation and the bench, when corruption broke out in patches over the land, is a phase in national morals and cannot be gainsaid.

History is our keenest satirist. Presbyterian Scotland is

indebted to a pope for the golden ducats raised from her bishoprics and monasteries for the support of the supreme law courts, styled the College of Justice, in their infancy, 1532. This accounts for the provision that half of the senators or judges were to be ecclesiastical dignitaries. The College was forty years old when a judge, the Bishop of Orkney, was 'delated' for this among other reasons, that he was a judge, and that his parishioners were like sheep wandering at large. Fifty years after the court was opened by the king, a complaint was made that young judges without gravity or sufficient means had by themselves, their wives, or dependants taken bribes, and so it was alleged justice was bought and sold. And accordingly an enactment was made that only men that fear God,' and were of good literature and good fame, possessed sufficient living of their own and a knowledge of law, were to be appointed. About the same time ecclesiastical dignitaries were declared ineligible. The fear of God was not so powerful in those rude days as the fear of kings. Judges had been displaced for no better reason than that they had given judgments adverse to royal wishes. For some time, the story runs, the king gave them the privilege to elect their fellow-judges, and offered them a list or selection to choose from; but to protect themselves against a displeased king, who overawed them with his presence, they voted by ballot. This is the first notice of secret voting in Scotland. The court was suspended after the national defeat at Dunbar, and Cromwell appointed commissioners to administer justice during the Protectorate. Cromwell's kinless judges were the first pure judges in Scotland. Camden tells us with a solemn shake of the head that whoever could back a steed or shake a spear in the Borderland were moss-troopers and cattle-drivers-a diverting occupation; and lifting up his feeble arms he said with horror that all the law they knew was the length of their swords. It is a pretty phrase that judges on the bench were then carried away by private interests.' Daring men only required great wills and no conscience to help themselves to slices from the common wealth. If corrupt they were only influenced by what was politely termed their 'darling project,' and their selfesteem suffered no shock in being known as My lord Little-Justice." It was the acknowledged duty of a great man and a wise judge not to depend on friends, but to further by his office himself, family, and kindred, who alone were said to stick to one. A president declined to preside at a trial in which his son-in-law was plaintiff, yet was allowed to plead at the bar as his advocate. In foul weather men were busy, and friendships fell like ripe grain before the sickle of greed. A sorry fugitive made the characteristic offer, early in the sixteenth century, to return to Scotland on condition he was tried by unsuspected judges. In the following century a bedridden judge was carried to vote at the trial of the Earl of Argyle. This feeble judge fell asleep while the pleadings were being read, but was aroused to give the casting vote for the libel being sustained-a vote which is not recorded to his honour, though it must be frankly admitted that

he was not equal to struggle against old age's infirmities and strong pressure from without, and that the guilt rather lies with the oppressing friends.

It would have been remarkable if the Scotch people had, in these fierce ages, any attachment to their judges. Buckle, with his biting eloquence, has shown it is the last charge that could be brought against that nation that they had any superstitious attachment to their kings, and I am content with quoting two pointed sentences. The Scotch have made war upon most of their kings, and put to death many. To mention their treatment of a single dynasty, they murdered James I. and James III.' The sacred character of the office did not prevent the fury of their lawless countrymen from wreaking vengeance on the judges, who, though not lacking courage, were not the brave race of mortals

That for a fantasy, and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds.

Terrible is the list who died with their boots on, and this at once suggests the pathetic soliloquy of Richard II. over the untoward fate of kings. Leslie was poisoned at Dieppe, whither he had gone as a royal commissioner at the marriage of Francis and Mary. JusticeClerk Scot died under peculiar circumstances; and Knox tells, legendlike, that the king, afraid at midnight, or after, called aloud for torches, and raised all that lay beside him in the palace, and told that Scot was dead, for he had been at him with a company of devils. Galbraith was murdered by a burgess because of favour shown to a litigant. Libbertoun was fatally wounded at the battle of Dunbar. A Chancellor was struck from his horse, and murdered, in a valley near Torhorwald. Maitland the younger died by his own hand in prison. President Sir George Lockhart was, on returning one Sunday from church, shot dead in a wynd off the Lawnmarket by an enraged litigant, who boasted that it was to learn the president to do justice.' A High Chancellor, after supping with nobles, escaped from Holyrood Palace the night of Rizzio's murder by leaping out of a window into the garden behind. Some died in foreign lands, and frequent is the historian's remark that the place and date of their deaths are unknown. An officer of court, an earl, was executed at the market cross, when he expressed that deep regret which men, ever since the days of Wolsey, make in great misfortune. They had meted out that Scotch rugged ferocity and high-handed disregard of justice which the bench was then conspicuous for. It is hardly for us too severely to blame these wilful and terrible acts, for the bench must have been corrupt indeed that did not command the respect of their fellow-men -and Scotchmen have ever had a high sense of justice and rightand no doubt the New Testament sentence rang their death-knell, With what measure ye mete it shall be meted to you again.' It is true an historical judgment must be liable to the balance of set-offs; but can there be any defence for a corrupt judge? The present No. 634 (NO. CLIV. N.S.)

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honoured President has raised the question, And what though some of them were also cruel bigots in religion, fanatical supporters of despotism, faithless friends, or corrupt judges?' which, from the ordinary rules of ethics, can admit of but one answer. Lord Stair, the founder of Scots Law, who overtopped all Scotch judges, propounded the startling paradox that it is more advantageous to the nation that unjust judges be reputed just, than that just judges be reputed unjust. It is a crafty statement of a crafty judge, who procured from the king the monopoly of holding markets at his native place for his own advantage, and who preserved his estate from confiscation by his eldest son supporting the Government, and so obtained remission of forfeiture which his offences had incurred. Paradox or not, it admits the corruption which it seeks to palliate.

A characteristic story is told of the Borderers' exploits, and the dangers which judges encountered. The Earl of Traquair, when engaged in a lawsuit, dreaded the Lord President Durie's opposition. The Earl's servant, Will Armstrong, as the judge was riding in the suburbs one afternoon, threw a trooper's cloak over him, and did not slacken his steed till Durie was safely lodged in the tower of the Graemes in Annandale. Will boasted he stole an auld lurdane aff the bench.' It was a bold trick, a bit of Border fairplay in a lawsuit, and the Borderside rang with laughter against the kidnapped judge. In good time Will set down the judge at the Council doors in Edinburgh

And there full loudly shouted he:

'Gie me my guerdon, my sovereign liege,

An' take ye back your auld Durie.'

The dethronement of the last Stuart king drove some judges, along with the people, wild with joy. Lord Messington, one of King James II.'s judges, girt with a broad buff belt, and swinging a halbert overhead, led the mob that gutted Holyrood Chapel. In the Greyfriars' Kirkyard is the mausoleum of Sir George Mackenzie, the King's Advocate, known, from his savage deeds, to the children of to-day as Bloody Mackenzie, who pride themselves on their prowess in knocking at the mausoleum and singing out the challenge, Bluidy Mackenzie, come oot if ye daur!' The bairns shake their clenched little fists, spit on the judge's grave, and when startled run terrified as for their mortal lives. This childish hatred renders criticism unnecessary; his name soon makes a restless bairn fall asleep with its head happed among the blankets.

How very old the old Scotch judges are to us! They seem as old as the Bible, to have belonged to another world than ours. The cold pages of history recite facts as damning as their bitterest enemy could desire. We rub our eyes, and unwillingly ask, did they hold the offices, and accept the public pay, as do the present judges? Were they not judges in name and knaves in reality? These fantastic and eccentric beings were composed of very stern stuff, of undoubted flesh and blood. They have left a habitation and a name. The