IN MEMORIAM.— DR HARDY 355 



witli her rewards, undisturbed hy mean jealousies or 

 vain ambitions, than James Hardy. 



It would have been impossible to find a man better 

 fitted than Dr Hardy, both by inclination and training, 

 for the work to which he chose to devote himself. His 

 gifts lay not so much in the direction of speculation 

 and theory as in the patient accumulation of facts, and 

 in this pursuit he was unwearied. His powers of 

 observation were of the keenest ; by a kind of instinct 

 he was able to seize and arrange all the facts cognate 

 to his subject ; and to these qualities he added an 

 indomitable perseverance, and a patience to which no 

 task ever seemed too tedious or arduous, and to which 

 the most remote and difficult investigations were sooner 

 or later forced to yield. His memory was of singular grasp 

 and tenacity, and nothing once laid hold of was suffered 

 to be let go. Hence he was generall}^ able on the spur 

 of the moment to furnish replies to inquiries on almost 

 every subject, which astonished the recipients no less 

 by their accuracy than their exhaustiveness, and inspired 

 respect and confidence in circles far be3^ond the limits 

 of the Club. 



His capacity for work was prodigious. In his younger 

 days, when books were less easily acquired than they 

 are now, it was no unusual thing for him, when a rare 

 volume was lent him, to transcribe its contents from 

 beginning to end. The chartularies of Kelso, Dryburgh, 

 and Melrose, and numerous local Minute Books and 

 Kirk Session Records — Hutton and Buncle in particular — 

 were copied out by him in this way ; and to such laborious 

 methods, he doubtless owed his unique grasp of the 

 details of the history of Border families and estates. His 

 scientific papers, his reports for the Club's Proceedings, and 

 his editorial annotations are all remarkable for thorough - 

 liess and exactness. Even his occasional correspondents 



