The trial of Deacon Brodie has many claims upon the attention of a later age. It is of value to the antiquarian for the vivid picture it presents of the manners and customs of our forbears at a time when the life of Edinburgh yet flowed in the ancient arteries of the old city on the ridge, although beginning to circulate more freely in the spacious thoroughfares of the New Town already invading the fields across the valley. To the lawyer it is notable as affording a singularly graphic view of the old-time practice of our criminal Courts, as well as for the galaxy of legal talent engaged upon its conduct--with such men as Braxfield on the bench and Henry Erskine and John Clerk at the bar the proceedings could lack neither picturesqueness nor importance. The psychologic interest of the chief actor’s character and the dramatic elements in which his career abounds make a more general appeal; and so long as human nature remains the same will the story of the Deacon’s downfall be accorded an indulgent hearing. That story had for Robert Louis Stevenson a strong attraction. As early as 1864 he prepared the draft of a play founded upon it, which--after being at various times re-cast--finally took shape in the melodrama, “Deacon Brodie, or the Double Life,” written in collaboration with the late W. E. Henley, and published in 1892. It may even be that the conception of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” was suggested to Stevenson by his study of the dual nature so strikingly exemplified in his earlier hero; while in other of his writings he has touched the Deacon with a felicitous and kindly hand. Introduction. The birth of Deacon Brodie is thus recorded in the Register of Births for the city of Edinburgh-- “Monday, 28th September, 1741. To Francis Brodie, wright, burgess, and Cecil Grant, his spouse, a son named William. Witnesses--William Grant, writer in Edinburgh, and Ludovick Brodie, Writer to the Signet. Born the same day.” It is an inexplicable circumstance, although by no means uncommon, that so goodly a family tree as that of the Brodies should, in due course of nature, bear such degenerate fruit as the subject of this entry was destined to prove. His great-grandfather, Francis Brodie of Milnton, Elginshire, was a member of a family well known in the North of Scotland, and his grandfather, Ludovick Brodie of Whytfield, was a much respected Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh, who, on his death in 1758, was the oldest member of the Society. His father, Francis Brodie, was born in 1708, and in 1740 married Cecil, daughter of William Grant, writer in Edinburgh, with whose family he was already connected. Both the Deacon’s grandfathers, therefore, were members of the legal profession.