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Proceedings of the Royal Society 
walk in the footsteps of our predecessors, and to keep the torch 
which they have handed down to us burning brightly, is to show 
ourselves worthy of our great inheritance. 
I cannot finish my remarks without a tribute of respect to the 
able and vigorous intellect of the man I just now mentioned — I mean 
Henry Mackenzie. The Society owes him many obligations ; so 
does his country. He created a style of periodical literature in 
Scotland which has borne rich fruit ; and although even he could 
not prolong the life of the literary class, his own extended to a 
patriarchal age, in which he saw the lessons he had taught produce 
an exuberant harvest. As a pendant to some of Cockburn’s sketches 
of the olden time, I finish these desultory outlines by a quotation 
from another writer. The author of Peter’s Letters — I suppose I 
may say John Gibson Lockhart — describes a dinner party about 
1818, at the house of Henry Mackenzie, at which the only other 
guest was another of our founders Adam Pollan d, who, if he only 
lived on Raeburn’s canvas, could not have been forgotten. 
He says — “ The only visitor besides myself was an old friend, and 
indeed contemporary with Mackenzie, a Mr Roland, who was in his 
time at the head of the legal profession in Scotland, but who has now 
lived for several years in retirement. I have never seen a finer speci- 
men, both in appearance and manner, of the old Scottish gentleman. 
“ It was a delightful thing to see these two old men, who rendered 
themselves eminent in two so different walks of exertion, meeting 
together in the quiet evening of their days, to enjoy in the company 
of each other every luxury which intellectual communication can 
afford, heightened by the yet richer luxury of talking over the feel- 
ings of times to which they almost alone are not strangers.” “ They 
are both perfectly men of the world, and there was not the least 
tinge of professional pedantry in their conversation.” He proceeds — 
“According to the picture they gave, the style of social intercourse 
in this city, in their younger days, seems indeed to have been wonder- 
fully easy and captivating. At that time not one stone of the New 
Town, in which they and all the fashionable inhabitants of Edin- 
burgh now reside, had been erected. The whole of the genteel 
population lived crowded together in those tall citadels of the Old 
Town. Their houses were small, but abundantly neat and comfort- 
able, and the labour which it cost to ascend to one of them was sure 
to be repaid by a hearty welcome from its possessor. The style of 
