garb of modern days, the last living relics of that venerable school.

The appearance of the fine old man had no tendency to dissipate the feelings I have just at, tempted to describe. I found him in his library, surrounded with a very large collection of books -few of them apparently new ones-seated in a high-backed easy chair-the wood-work carved very richly in the ancient French taste, and covered with black hair-cloth. On his head he wore a low cap of black velvet, like those which we see in almost all the pictures of Pope. But there needed none of these accessories to carry back the imagination. It is impossible that I should paint to you the full image of that face. The only one I ever saw which bore any resemblance to its character, was that of Warren Hastings-you well remember the effect it produced, when he appeared among all that magnificent assemblage, to take his degree at the installation of Lord Grenville. In the countenance of Me, there is the same clear transparency of skin, the same freshness of complexion, in the midst of all the extenuation of old age. The wrinkles, too, are set close to each other, line upon line; not deep and bold, and rugged, like those of most old men, but

eyes

equal and undivided over the whole surface, as if no touch but that of Time had been there, and as if even He had traced the vestiges of his dominion with a sure indeed, but with a delicate and reverential finger. The lineaments have all the appearance of having been beautifully shaped, but the want of his teeth has thrown them out of their natural relation to each other. The alone have bid defiance to the approach of the adversary. Beneath bleached and hoary brows, and surrounded with innumerable wrinkles, they are still as tenderly, as brightly blue, as full of all the various eloquence and fire of passion, as they could have been in the most vivacious of his days, when they were lighted up with that purest and loftiest of all earthly flames, the first secret triumph of conscious and conceiving genius.

By and by, Mr Men withdrew into his closet, and having there thrown off his slippers, and exchanged his cap for a brown wig, he conducted me to the drawing-room. His family were already assembled to receive us-his wife, just as I should have wished to picture her, a graceful old lady, with much of the remains of beauty, clothed in an open gown of black silk, with deep flounces, and having a high cap, with

the lace meeting below the chin his eldest son, a man rather above my own standing, who is said to inherit much of the genius of his father, (although he has chosen to devote it to very dif ferent purposes-being very eminent among the advocates of the present time)-and some younger children. The only visitor, besides myself, was an old friend, and, indeed, contemporary of· Cand Meren a Mr Rand who was, in his time, at the head of the profession of the law in Scotland; but who has now lived for many years in retirement. I have never seen a finer specimen, both in appearance and manners, of the true gen tleman of the last age. In his youth, he must have been a perfect model of manly beauty; and, indeed, no painter could select a more exquisite subject for his art even now. His hair combed back from his forehead and highly pow dered, his long queue, his lace-ruffles, his suit of snuff-coloured cloth, cut in the old liberal way, with long flaps to his waistcoat, his high-heeled shoes and rich steel-buckles-every thing was perfectly in unison with the fashion of his age. The stately and measured decorum of his polite ness was such, as could not well be displayed by any man dressed in our free-and-easy style; but' in him it did not produce the least effect of stiff