that the St Andrews Trust should be managed, not by local persons, but from Edinburgh. But, only a few days after, Dr Bell writes: "Since writing the holograph deed, dated 21st December 1831, I have executed a deed, dated 29th December 1831, which perhaps supersedes it." Perhaps : he was not quite sure. And, further on, he launches out into another denunciation of his own trustees-whom he calls "ostensible advocates and insidious patrons ;" and he enumerates the "studied embarrassments, machinations, devices, distortions, and perversion of the propositions of a dying, speechless, and insulated man, with funds undisposed of."

In the beginning of 1832, Dr Bell grew worse, but his mind was as active as ever. Mr Davies's bedroom was next his own, and he could call him whenever he awoke. This "he now generally did at three, four, five, or six o'clock;" and Mr Davies had to get up at once, read his own manuscripts to him, receive his corrections and recorrections, transfer them from slate to paper, read the manuscripts over again, and correct and recorrect them once more. Up to Thursday the 26th of January 1832, his intellect was vigorous and his memory unimpaired. The day after he was very weak; and it was plain that the end was not far off. His friends went to see him. "He was sitting in his chair, his head inclined forward, his breathing short." When Mr Allen came in, he just looked up, and then dropped his eyes again. At half-past ten he was asleep, but still in his chair. Mr Davies and his two women-servants knelt round him, holding the hand of

the master whom they loved so well, in spite of his pas sionate manners and exactingness. His breathing became softer and gentler, and, when they next looked up, he was dead. So passed upon a quiet wave of sleep into the unknown world the soul of the fiery eager Scotchman, who had fought a good fight, kept faith with God and man, and who had also been the lover of, and beloved by, children. He was seventy-nine; and, as a prebendary, his body was buried in Westminster Abbey.

CHAPTER XV.

DR BELL'S CORRESPONDENCE.

DR BELL'S correspondents were of all kinds, ranks, and nationalities; and one might have expected to find a good deal of interesting matter a good many characteristic remarks, unconscious revelations, curious national traits, and piquant anecdotes-in them. But it is not so. Dr Bell kept every note, letter, paper, and pamphlet he received during sixty years; and it is only astonishing how barren the mass turns out to be. Everybody, with one or two exceptions, writes in the most ponderous and sesquipedalian style-it is plain that Dr Johnson was still all abroad in the air; and everybody pays everybody else the most elaborate compliments. The end of last century was the period of the minuet; and George III.'s sons and daughters danced. that slow and elaborate dance for entire eveningshours at a time-with each other. The personages in Dr Bell's letters walk and talk as if they were dressed in the stiffest pasteboard or brocade, as if life might be spent in writing and in reading letters, as if the old antediluvian span had come into existence once more. Dr Bell writes of his two young American pupils:

ments.

"To London they owe several very genteel accomplishThey keep no company, but that in the very first line of life. Your sons have, among their con-disciples and most intimate friends at St Andrews, an earl, the son of an earl, the son of a bishop, the grandson of a bishop, and the sons of knights in great number." Thus people talked in pedigrees, and arranged their conversation according to precedence. And these two young gentlemen themselves, going home to Virginia rather unexpectedly, cannot say that their father and mother were both glad and surprised to see them, but must put their facts and feelings in this eighteenth century fashion: "Our meeting with papa and mamma was joyful beyond description. The engine of paternal affection was conjoined with that of surprise, by no means weak, you will allow. We announced our arrivals with our own persons."

And we find a Mr Sikes opening a correspondence with Dr Bell after this wise: "My acquaintance with you has indeed been short; but it has served to persuade me that you possess those respectable qualities of head and heart which ought to make me desirous of improving it." In fact, one might just as well take to reading the 'Polite Letter-Writer.'

The few women who write to him are by far the best of his correspondents. They say what they have to say in fewer and simpler words than the men, some of whom write in the most long-drawn, ponderous, and dreary style. Mrs Berkeley, the wife of the then Dean of Canterbury, is one of these correspondents. She thanks Dr Bell for "half-a-dozen elegant dried

G

bottle bonnets" (history has forgotten to give any description of these), and advises all young men "who mean to succeed, ever to plough with the heifer, if they mean to rise; for, whether the lords of the creation know it or not, or are too proud to own it, we females, one way or another, openly, or, as the French say, sourdement, whether we be wife, mistress, sister, or daughter, guide the world." And she goes on to volunteer to Dr Bell, who must have known the climate of St Andrews very well, a description of a St Andrews winter, which is perfectly accurate. "Alas! we" (in Canterbury) "have not had a St Andrews winter. I wished myself there all the vile frosty severe weather. If I had a good safe balloon, Mrs Finsham, who is now with us on a visit, and I both declare we would set off in it in the beginning of November, and stay till May, then up again to England. My neighbours used to provoke me by saying, 'Well, madam, this can be nothing to you who have been in Scotland.' I rave at them. I can conceive that an Edinburgh winter may be bad enough, but in London I never suffered so little cold as I did in St Andrews in winter: no, they were pleasant indeed." The present writer thoroughly agrees with Mrs Berkeley. Dry, mild, genial winters are the rule at St Andrews; and there is also at all seasons the most blithe, light, inspiriting, and uplifting air in the whole of Great Britain.

Another female correspondent, Mrs Cleghorn, is more sentimental, and not so sensible as Mrs Berkeley. When Dr Bell writes her that he is going to India, she replies: "Your letter, my dear sir, I read over with a mixed