remove all restraints from the national commerce, and advocated the abolition of sinecures. On retiring from Parliament, he devoted himself to the promotion of agriculture and manufactures in North Britain. He established an agricultural society on his estate.[25] He improved the condition of the Scottish fisheries, and discovered a method of preserving salmon for the London market. He was much respected on his estate, was benevolent to the poor, and exercised a generous hospitality. He did not attend church on the plea of feeble health, but he associated with the clergy of his neighbourhood, and to his household spoke reverently of religion. In some twenty of his letters, written at intervals during a period of twenty-five years preceding his decease, the writer has on a close examination been unable to detect any remark savouring of scepticism. Yet it is nearly certain that he cherished to the close of a long life the blighting infidelity of David Hume. To the Right Hon. John Wilson Croker was communicated by Sir Walter Scott the following metrical epitaph, which it was alleged Mr. Dempster composed upon himself:— “Pray for the soul of deceased George Dempster, In his youth a great fool, in his old age a gamester; What you’re to know, on this tomb you shall see, Life’s thread he let go when just ninety-three. So sound was his bottom, his acquaintance all wonder’d How old Nick had got him till he lived out the hundred. To his money concerns he paid little attention, First selling his land, then pawning his pension;[26] But his precious time he much better did manage, To the end of his life from his earliest nonage, He divided his hours into two equal parts, And spent one half in sleeping, the other at _cartes_.”[27] Mr. Dempster died on his estate of Dunnichen, Forfarshire, on the 13th February, 1818, at the age of eighty-four. In May, 1763, two months before the period reached in the preceding narrative, Boswell asked Sir David Dalrymple to interpose with his father, who was threatening to disinherit him on account of his unsettled habits. He concludes a letter to Sir David in these words,—“Tell him to have patience with me for a year or two, and I may be what he pleases.” In June he informs Sir David that his father’s proposal that he should proceed to Utrecht, there to study civil law under the celebrated M. Trotz had met with his acceptance, and that his father was “much pleased to find in him so prudent a disposition.”[28] He adds,—