NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 155 



elegant public building I have ever yet seen in any country 

 which I have visited ; and very unlike some I could name, in 

 which may be found 



" Windows and doors in nameless sculptures drest, 

 With order, symmetry, or taste unblest ; 

 Forms like some bedlam statuary's dream, 

 The craz'd creations of misguided whim." 



We then walked into the Parliament House that was the 

 Court of Session that is. In other words, we got amongst the 

 ^lawyers, than which, they say, there is only one worse place in 

 which a man can find himself. My chief object here was to 

 have a sight of Lord Jeffreys, who did so much honour, not to 

 fox-hunting, but to sound learning as well as the general litera- 

 ture of our country, when editor of the Edinburgh Review. And 

 in truth he is well worth looking at, for a countenance or an eye 

 more expressive of intellectual powers cannot I think be imagined. 

 I forgot to ask before which of the three or four judicial big-wigs 

 I saw this day sitting in the judgment-seat, Williamson once 

 appeared as a witness in a horse cause, as thereon hangs rather 

 an amusing tale. On being called on for his testimony, he put 

 his spectacles on his nose, and pulling a large book (his hunting 

 d ry) out of his p ocket, begantoread : " The hound s met this 

 day, my lord, at H addon Rig, and we found our fox at ten 

 minutes past eleven," when his lordship informed him that all 

 extraneous matter might be dispensed with, and desired him to 

 confine himself to facts. 



It was my intention this day to have heard Professor Wilson 

 lecture, but learning from Mr. Blackwood that he was indisposed 

 with a cold, I thought it prudent to await a fitter opportunity. 

 I finished the morning then with a lounge in Mr. Inglis's stables, 

 which was rendered more than usually agreeable by meeting 

 several of my sporting friends in them, who had arrived, in 

 Edinburgh to attend one of the periodical dinners of the Royal 

 Caledonian Hunt Club. Amongst them was Mr. Campbell of 

 Saddel, who had seen a run that morning with the Duke of 

 Buccleuch's hounds, and who, accompanied by his Grace, had 

 ridden to Edinburgh after hunting the distance just fifty miles. 

 Nor was this all. Mr. Campbell rode the same number of miles 

 the next morning to meet Lord Elcho's pack ! So much for the 

 charms of fox-hunting ; but what other pastime would be pur- 

 chased at such a sacrifice as this ? 



My notice of Edinburgh would be very incomplete, were -I to 

 pass over, without remark, this justly celebrated club, of which 

 the King is patron ; and which consists of most of the noblemen 



