In 1811 Lord Justice-Clerk Hope was, on the death of Lord President Blair in May of that year, appointed his successor. Erskine, who was fifteen years Hope’s senior at the bar, being disappointed of the preferment to which his professional standing and abilities entitled him, after a brilliant career extending over a period of forty-four years, retired from public life to his residence of Almond-dell in West Lothian, where he died on 8th October, 1817, in the seventy-first year of his age. Erskine resided at one time in George Square, Edinburgh, next door to No. 25, where Scott’s father lived. He removed in 1789 to No. 27 Princes Street. Lord Cockburn calls Erskine “the brightest luminary at our bar,” and adds, “His name can no sooner be mentioned than it suggests ideas of wit, with which, in many memories, the recollection of him is chiefly associated. A tall and slender figure, a face sparkling with vivacity, a clear, sweet voice, and a general suffusion of elegance, gave him a striking and pleasing appearance” (“Life of Jeffrey,” vol. i., p. 91). Erskine was twice married; his first wife, Christian, was the only daughter of George Fullerton of Broughton Hall, by whom he had several children, one of whom, Henry David, succeeded to the Earldom of Buchan on the death of his uncle, David Steuart Erskine, eleventh earl, in 1829. By his second wife he had no children. * * * * * ALEXANDER WIGHT, advocate (died 1793), was the son of David Wight, writer, Edinburgh. He was admitted a member of the Faculty of Advocates on 2nd March, 1754, and was subsequently appointed Solicitor-General to the Prince of Wales. He was vice-president of the Antiquarian Society, and was also a director of the Musical Society. He is said to have been long distinguished as an eminent counsel. He died at Edinburgh on 18th March, 1793. Wight was well known as a legal writer, and was the author of “A Treatise on the Laws Concerning the Election of the Different Representatives sent from Scotland to the Parliament of Great Britain, with a Preliminary View of the Constitution of the Parliaments of England and Scotland before the Union of the two Kingdoms,” dedicated to Lord Mansfield (Edinburgh, 1773, 8vo); and also of “An Inquiry into the Rise and Progress of Parliament chiefly in Scotland, and a Complete System of the Law Concerning the Election of the Representatives from Scotland to the Parliament of Great Britain” (Edinburgh, 1784, fol.).