492 
year at an advanced age, had long been a Fellow of the Royal 
Society. He spent many years in Edinburgh, and at one time 
was in some practice as an advocate. I recollect him a regular 
attendant on the Society’s meetings. But his natural bent was towards 
the duties and avocations of a country gentleman. These occupied 
his attention during the later years of his life. But he joined, with 
all his pursuits, a love of literature to the last, and, with much intel- 
ligence, took great interest in everything that was going on at home 
or abroad in the fields of scientific and literary inquiry. 
John Schank More was born at North Shields in 1784, where 
his father was the respected pastor of a congregation in connection 
with the first seceders from the Scottish Established Church. He 
was educated in Edinburgh, and had an early predilection for the 
bar, to which he was called in 1806. He had good practice as a 
junior counsel, but he soon showed that his bent was rather to the 
teaching of the profession, and the exposition of the general principles 
of law as its expounder, than to the practice of court. In 1827 
he published an edition of “ Erskine’s Principles of the Law of 
Scotland, 5 ’ a very useful manual for guiding young students to a 
correct knowledge of that standard manual. But in 1832 he pub- 
lished his most important work, his edition of Lord Stair’s “ Insti- 
tutions of the Law of Scotland, with Notes and Illustrations.” 
Lord Stair’s work was the production of a most philosophical mind, 
as well as of a profound lawyer. It contains more than a digest of 
municipal law, it contains an able treatise of general jurispru- 
dence. His illustration of such a work, therefore, fell in with 
Professor More’s peculiar habits of mind and thought. I have 
been assured by an eminent Scottish lawyer, that he was par- 
ticularly happy in bringing forward all circumstances in illustra- 
tion of his abstract law principles, whether derived from home or 
foreign sources. He had extraordinary knowledge of what may be 
termed the literature of the law. Hence his edition of Stair has 
taken its place as a standard work, and is quoted for general prin- 
ciples, both at the bar in argument, and on the bench in judgment. 
A course of study producing such happy ^results as the Professor’s 
labours in the two great works of Erskine and Stair must have 
been recognised as the best preparation for a legal chair, and the 
best proof of fitness for its occupancy. Accordingly, in 1843, on 
