Mr. Hall Maxwell. 3 



he left the whole of his money, subject to the life- 

 interest of Miss Dick, who had been to him a sister 

 indeed, to endow the Veterinary College, where he 

 had lived and laboured for two-and-forty years. 



Edinburgh seems still stranger to us without Mr. 

 Hall Maxwell, of Dargavel, and those pleasant half- 

 hour chats at Albyn Place, where he was quite the 

 moving spirit and Secretary of the Highland 

 Society. His object, as he once said to us, was " to 

 hold Scotland in one great Society's network, and 

 never let a mesh be out of order." In this he was 

 most ably backed up by his confidential clerk, Mr. 

 Duncan, and they both seemed to have the power of 

 laying their finger in an instant on the most minute 

 spring of the vast system they had reared. None 

 were kinder and more ready to assist us on every 

 point within their range. No matter how intricate 

 the search for it might seem in prospective, Mr. 

 Maxwell would ring his bell : " Mr. Duncan, would 

 you please find me, &c. ?" and in five or six minutes 

 his fidus Achates would return with all the particu- 

 lars tabulated, as if by magic. 



In 1846 Mr. Maxwell succeeded Sir Charles 

 Gordon, who died at his post, and he held office 

 until the gih of May, 1866. His first meeting was 

 at Inverness, in 1846; and there, nineteen years 

 after, he made his farewell speech. He was pressed 

 not to resign ; but Glasgow, where the business of 

 the meeting is always unusually heavy, stood next on 

 the list, and his heart-symptoms had long given him 

 no uncertain warning that he must seek rest. But 

 for the ill-health of his successor, Mr. Macduff (who 

 died without taking office), his connexion with the 

 Society would have ceased some months earlier. He 

 was bred to the law, and practised regularly, previous 

 to his acceptance of office; and those in the profession 

 who knew his powers and remembered his speaking, 

 more especially in a great murder-defence, believed 



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