¥ONGE STREET AND DUNBAS STREET. 625 



II.— HENRY DUNDAS, FIRST VISCOUNT MELVILLE. 



The engraved portrait wMeh. I liave of the Eight Hon. Henry 

 Dundas, is from a painting by the distinguished Scottish artist, Sir 

 Henry Eaeburn, R.A. It represents him in his ermined robes as a 

 member of the House of Peers; for our Henry Dundas became finally 

 a Viscount — Viscount Melville. He is standing at a table and speak- 

 ing. His left hand rests lightly on papers before him. His right arm 

 is shai-ply bent. The hand, planted on the hip, rather awkwardly 

 draws back a portion of the robe, displaying its interior silken lining. 

 He wears a curled and powdered wig of the time of George III. The 

 oval, smooth-shaven countenance is not very remarkable; but some 

 dignity is thrown into it by Raeburn's art, which, nevertheless, has 

 failed to divest it of an expression of self-consciousness. The brows 

 are slightly knitted; the eyes look out over the head of the spectator, 

 and the lips are compressed. The nose is good. Below is a fac 

 simile autograph signature, " Melville." 



Henry Dundas was, as it were, an hereditary Scottish juris-consult. 

 His father and grandfather had been judges of the Scottish bench. 

 His father was Lord President of the Court of Session, sitting by the 

 title of Lord Arniston. His brother Robert also held the same high 

 legal ofiice, and assumed the same title, which was derived from an 

 estate named Arniston. The Dundasses of Arniston were descended 

 from George Dundas of Dundas, sixteenth in descent from the Dunbars, 

 Earls of March. Henry Dundas was bred to the bar, and became a 

 member of the faculty of advocates in 1763. Though of high Scottish 

 rank, the family fortune by no means rendered him affluent. It is said 

 " that when the young Henry established himself in his chambers in 

 the Fleshmarket Close, in Edinburgh, he had, after paying his fees 

 and other expenses connected with admission to the bar, exactly £60 

 remaining in his purse as capital, so far as cash was concerned, where- 

 with to make a start in the world. But his solid and well-trained 

 abilities stood him in excellent stead. They soon began to tell. He 

 was appointed successively assessor of the magistrates of Edinburgh, 

 depute-advocate, i.e. deputy to the Lord Advocate of Scotland, for 

 public prosecutions, and Solicitor-General for Scotland. Boswell, in 

 his Life of Johnson, thus speaks of the pleading of Dundas in the 

 case of Joseph Knight, a negro slave from the West Indies, who 

 claimed his freedom in Scotland: "I cannot too highly praise the 



