had, as Johnson found, 'advanced the value of his lands with great tenderness to his tenants.' Past the older residence flowed the river Lugar, here of considerable depth, and then bordered with rocks and shaded with wood--the old castle whose 'sullen dignity' was the nurse of Boswell's devotion to the feudal principles and 'the grand scheme of subordination,' of which he lets us hear so much when he touches on 'the romantick groves of my ancestors.' James Boswell, the immortal biographer of Johnson, was born in Edinburgh on October 29, 1740. The earliest fact which is known about him is one which he himself would have described as 'a whimsical or characteristical' anecdote, and which he had told to Johnson:--'Boswell in the year 1745 was a fine boy, wore a white cockade, and prayed for King James, till one of his uncles, General Cochrane, gave him a shilling on condition that he would pray for King George, which he accordingly did. So you see that Whigs of all ages are made the same way.' It may have been these early signs of perversity that led his father to be strict in dealing with him, for we cannot doubt that Boswell in the _London Magazine_ for 1781, is giving us a picture of domestic life when he writes as follows:--'I knew a father who was a violent Whig, and used to upbraid his son with being deficient in "noble sentiments of liberty," while at the same time he made this son live under his roof in such bondage, that he was not only afraid to stir from home without leave, but durst scarcely open his mouth in his father's presence.' For some time he was privately educated under the tuition of the Rev. John Dun, who was presented in 1752 to the living of Auchinleck by the judge, and finally at the High School and the University of Edinburgh. There he met with two friends with whom, to the close of his life, he was destined to have varied and close relations. One was Henry Dundas, first Lord Melville, and by "Harry the Ninth" Bozzy, in his ceaseless attempts to secure place and promotion, constantly attempted to steer, while that Pharos of Scotland, as Lord Cockburn calls him, was as constantly inclined to be diffident of the abilities, or at least the vagaries, of his suitor.