CHAP. I.] BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 3 



scope and leisure there, is known to the lovers of Sir 

 W. Scott and to the readers of Lord Cockburn both 

 prominent figures in the Edinburgh of 1824-1831. 



And the agora of " Modern Athens " was the 

 Parliament House. There the heir-presumptive could 

 while away his time of waiting for " dead men's 

 shoon " ; there the laird's brother might qualify for 

 some berth hereafter to be provided for him ; and 

 the son of those whose ancestral estates had been 

 impaired by rashness or misfortune, and who had 

 perchance sought the asylum of the Abbey, might 

 hope through honourable industry to restore the 

 fallen house, or even to win new lustre for an ancient 

 name. 



When John Clerk Maxwell, after leaving the 

 University, first sought those purlieus of the law, 

 he was already a laird, although a younger brother. 

 For he had inherited the estate of Middlebie, which, 

 by the conditions of the entail under which it had 

 descended from the Maxwells, 1 could not be held to- 

 gether with Penicuik, and was therefore necessarily 

 relinquished by Sir George Clerk in favour of his 

 brother John. This arrangement had been completed 

 when the two brothers were boys together at the High 

 School, and were living in George Square with their 

 mother and their sister Isabella. Their father, James 

 Clerk, 2 - who died before his elder brother, Sir John, 

 was a naval captain in the H.E.I.C.S., but retired 



i See below, pp. 16-23. 



2 He is said to have played well on the bagpipes, and a set of pipes 

 was until recently preserved at Glenlair, of which the following singular 



