w. s. ? 17 



nickname him the showman or the little philosopher, or 

 jeer at his favourites, he held the candle so near as to 

 bum the tails of some of the birds. And by some such 

 suicidal stratagem it was his wont to disarm the sardonic 

 furies. A lady remembers his telling at Inverary Castle, 

 late in life, the story of a dog which, in leaping a fence, 

 had spiked itself ; and as he described their sitting up 

 over-night with the poor animal, and its pitiful appealing 

 looks to its different friends, and its gradual subsidence 

 into the arms of death, the human touches which he threw 

 in were beginning to be too much for his tender-hearted 

 auditors, when the arch tone in which he ended, " It was 

 very affecting," compelled every one to laugh just at the 

 moment they were beginning to cry. Of this inverting 

 of the stylus, by which he so far cancels the effect of a 

 powerful passage, his works contain innumerable in- 

 stances. In order to escape the reproach of romance or 

 sentimentalism, he singed the tail ; but when it is the 

 plumage of an ibis or a bird of paradise, we regret the 

 sacrifice. 



With all the Latin and Greek which could be acquired 

 at school and college, and with a facility and elegance 

 in writing English which seemed to be inherent in his 

 family, it was time that the youth should choose a 

 profession ; and, we suspect, with a very languid prefer- 

 ence, he chose the law — in Edinburgh, the natural 



