iv Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. 
school he went to the University of Edinburgh, and in the 
Humanity Class of Professor Pillans my acquaintance, or rather 
friendship, with him commenced, and it continued unbroken down 
to the end. A very bright, attractive, and able band they were, that 
contribution from the new school. Some made their mark in the 
world thereafter. The most prominent of them were, in addition to 
Swinton himself, William Aytoun, the author of the Lays of the 
Cavaliers , and afterwards Professor of Rhetoric in the University of 
Edinburgh; George Makgill of Kemback; John Balfour Melville of 
Mount Melville ; and John Thomson Gordon, who was afterwards 
Sheriff of Edinburgh. Archibald Campbell Tait, a cousin of 
Swinton’s, and the future Archbishop of Canterbury, was his class- 
fellow at the Edinburgh Academy, but went to Glasgow University, 
though he afterwards rejoined the circle in the summer in the ranks 
of the debating club entitled the Classical Society. Among other 
comrades was numbered a man of some subsequent reputation, and 
quite as good company as any of them — Samuel Warren, the author 
of Ten Thousand a Year. He remained for two years among us, 
and then disappeared, but had not been long gone, when the 
“ Diary of a Late Physician ” burst upon us. I do not know whether 
admiration or exasperation at our companion’s sudden fame was 
the prevalent feeling ; we were indeed raised in our own esteem 
to have lived so near the rose, but exasperated also by not having 
found him out. But he was a man worth knowing, and we met 
elsewhere afterwards. 
The Classical Society was founded by a knot of students in the 
Latin Class in Edinburgh about the year 1827. Swinton, I think, 
joined it during its second year. They were an unassuming but 
resolute band of students, who cultivated oratory under some dis- 
advantage in a dingy class-room of the old High School, by the 
light of a single tallow candle. It had been originally intended by 
the founders that the debates should be in Latin, but, after two or 
three attempts the efforts were too spasmodic to witness, and the 
vernacular was resumed. At the risk of some anticipation I must 
quote some lines from Swinton’s pen on the origin of this primitive 
parliament, partly because they show the historian at his best, and 
partly from their thorough fidelity. I am indebted to the family 
for the manuscript book which contains among others the perform- 
