LORD W00DHOUSELEE. 521 



Abercrombie (Tate Lord Abercrombie), of William Craig 

 (late Lord Craig), of Allan Maconochie (late Lord Mea- 

 dowbank), of William Adam (now Lord Chief-Commissioner), 

 of Robert Liston, of Andrew Dalzel, of William Robert- 

 son (now Lord Robertson), of John Playfair, of Dr Gre- 

 gory, and of Dugald Stewart, — men, whom in this place it 

 would ill become me to insult with praise, but from whose 

 friendship, I may be permitted to say, there is no name so il- 

 lustrious that would not derive distinction. 



If the seasons of academical study were thus happily and 

 usefully employed by Mr Tytler, the seasons of the summer 

 vacation were not less so. Upon these occasions, he retired 

 to Woodhouselee, the beautiful seat of his father, near Edin- 

 burgh, a scene endeared to him by the remembrances of in- 

 fancy, — by all the ties of domestic affection, — by the improve- 

 ments which his father was then annually adding to it, — and, 

 perhaps, by those anticipations of greater embellishment which 

 it was afterwards to receive from his own hands. Amid the 

 solitude and quiet of this romantic residence, and at a distance 

 from the prescribed routine of academical labour, he felt all the 

 happiness that arises from the freedom of study, and was at 

 liberty to follow out, without interruption, those literary pur- 

 suits to which inclination and taste most strongly inclined him. 

 The character of his age, and of his mind, led him naturally to 

 those compositions which, as addressed to the imagination and 

 the heart, constitute the polite literature of every country. 

 His knowledge, both of the ancient and the modern languages, 

 enabled him to indulge this desire ; and in the course of 

 successive summers, he seems to have formed and to have exe- 

 cuted, with this view, a plan both of comprehensive and of 

 systematic study. 



He 



