still on the increase. To these survivors in the world of philosophy and letters add, as notables in the department of science, Robison, the Professor of Natural Philosophy, and Playfair, the Professor of Mathematics, and, as the ablest remaining specimens of the old Edinburgh clergy, Dr. John Erskine and Sir Henry Moncreiff. Passing into the miscellaneous society amid which those men moved, and which they linked intellectually with the past, we may distribute their Edinburgh contemporaries of the year 1802 into three categories:—(1) _The Old Worthies._—This category includes a considerable number of surviving citizens, belonging, by their age, habits, and costume, to the same past generation as the notabilities above named, and many of them, indeed, older than the younger notabilities of that list. Most conspicuous among them were the old dons of the Parliament House; of some of whom Lord Cockburn gives wonderful portraits. The awful Braxfield was dead; but his successor on the bench, David Rae, Lord Eskgrove,—more familiarly known as “Esky,”—was keeping the Parliament House in a constant roar with the daily rumour of his last absurdities. What a blessing for a moderately-sized community to have at its heart such a preventive against insipidity, such a clove or cassia-bud of all-diffusive relish, as this famous Lord Justice-Clerk Esky; whom Lord Cockburn once heard sentence a tailor to death for the murder of a soldier in these terms,—“Not only did you murder him, whereby he was berea-ved of his life, but you did thrust, or push, or pierce, or project, or propell the le-thall weapon through the belly-band of his regimen-tal breeches, which were his Majes-ty’s,” and of whom Lord Cockburn further vouches that his customary formula of address to a criminal in concluding the sentence of death was,—“Whatever your religi-ous persua-shon may be, or even if, as I suppose, you be of no persua-shon at all, there are plenty of reverend gentlemen who will be most happy to show you the way to yeternal life.” Of the rest of the fifteen judges, the most remarkable for their talents and their character were the Lord President Hay Campbell, Lord Glenlee, Lord Hermand, Lord Meadowbank the first, and Lord Cullen. After Esky, Hermand was the most notorious oddity of the bench. At the bar, the witty Harry Erskine, and Charles Hay, afterwards Lord Newton, might be ranked among the older men. Coevals of these dons of the Parliament House, were Andrew Dalzel, the Professor of Greek in the University, and Dr. Finlayson, the Professor of Logic; with whom may be mentioned the simple-hearted Dr. Adam, Rector of the High School, the Rev. Dr. Struthers, a distinguished preacher of the Secession Church, and the veteran bookseller Creech. (2) _The Middle-Aged Men._—Taking this class to include all who, while old enough to have obtained some standing in life, were still not past their maturity, we may enumerate in it such leading lawyers as Robert Dundas of Arniston