It is not likely that Buchanan ever asked the Town Council of Edinburgh for bread, but it is believed that they gave him a stone--without any inscription, however, to show for whom it was intended, so that by 1701 it was lost or stolen. His skull also is believed to be one of the lawful and sacred possessions of the Edinburgh University. If genuine, it may be a phrenological curiosity. Sir W. Hamilton once used it at a lecture which was listened to and approved of by Thomas Carlyle. Sir William demonstrated to Carlyle’s satisfaction that the said skull, supposed to be Buchanan’s, was according to phrenological dogmas far inferior to that of some ‘Malay cut-throat’ or other unredeemed ruffian. Assuming this to be the fact--and my authority for believing it is a letter of Carlyle published in Veitch’s _Life_ of Sir W. Hamilton--I am surprised that Mr. Hosack and Sir John Skelton were not converted to phrenology. But for my part, believing in the universal but mostly untranslatable symbolism of Nature, from the ‘flower in the crannied wall’ to the human face and form divine, and believing only to a limited extent in phrenology as the dark side of physiognomy that is open to touch rather than to sight, I should hold that the skull which was inferior to a Malay’s in any respect except thickness could never be the skull of Buchanan; and it would not alter my conviction to feel sure that George Combe was present at Sir William Hamilton’s lecture, and for the first and only time in their career of phrenological disputation expressly agreed with him. Whatever Buchanan’s head and face may have been like--and his portraits impute to him either sleepy, benevolent dulness, or ferrety, peevish conceit--it is not believable that his head or face could have ever resembled that of a Malay or any other kind of savage. So acute a logician as Sir W. Hamilton ought to have doubted one of his premises at least, and been able to conceive it possible that the resetters of dead men’s skulls may be sometimes the victims of outside, as well as inside, deception. EPILOGISTIC