479 
Lord Aberdeen had been pointing out to him the success of his 
plantations in magnificent and extensive woods, “ You don’t 
mean that you planted all these yourself?” “ Yes,” replied the 
peer ; u and perhaps you will believe what I have before told you, 
that my line was not politics,” but farming. In this light of a 
Scottish proprietor, we must ever consider him as a patriotic and 
judicious benefactor of his country. Lord Aberdeen was for many 
years the efficient President of the Antiquarian Society of London, 
and no one was more fitted for such an honour. He was an accu- 
rate scholar, and a patient investigator into the remains of antiquity. 
It is curious to observe how Lord Aberdeen preserved, through all 
the circumstances and stirring incidents of an unusually exciting 
period of public affairs, the love of classical literature which he had 
imbibed at Harrow, at Cambridge, and at Athens. His mind had 
been early imbued with a fine taste for the best writers of Greece 
and Home, and the effects were visible to the last. It is often, I 
believe, thus a taste for life — • 
“ Quo serael est imbuta, recens servabit odorem 
Testa diu.” 
We have specimens of his accurate scholarship and ingenious criti- 
cisms in his contributions to Walpole’s “ Memoirs on Turkey,” and 
in his work on the C( Beauty of Grecian Architecture.” 
In 1817 a book was published entitled “Memoirs Belating to Eu- 
ropean and Asiatic Turkey, Edited from MS. Journals, by Bobert 
Walpole.” It consisted of such extracts from the journals and port- 
folios of intelligent and learned travellers, who had of late years 
visited that interesting portion of the globe, as were calculated to 
throw light upon its present condition and ancient grandeur, its 
geography, antiquities, and natural history, recorded, too, in their 
own language. It is a very valuable and interesting collection. 
Amongst these papers are some very learned dissertations by Lord 
Aberdeen; one of these is upon the gold and silver coinage of Athens. 
A curious question had been agitated by scholars on the subject of 
Attic coinage, and many learned men have held that the Athenians 
never coined gold money at all. There was no doubt gold money, 
but it seems to have been in coins of other countries. Gold coin 
seems to have been the stater of Persia or Egina, or the ancient 
dugs /zog, so called from Darius. Aristophanes speaks of gold coin- 
age, but in his mocking way calls the pieces vrov^ga ya\%ia, which 
