light hair, deep sea blue eye, tall athletic figure, and hearty hand grasp, his eagerness in debate, his violent passions, great genius, and irregular habits, rendered him a formidable partisan, a furious enemy, and an ardent friend. Of Bell, with one or two qualifications, the same description would hold good. Wilson has immortalised their intimacy and friendship in his "Noctes," where Bell is made to figure as "Tallboys," and where he is only mentioned with respect and affection. In the Six Foot Club, an institution which had a local habitation and a name in Edinburgh during the early part of the nineteenth century, and of which both Wilson and Bell were members, they had further opportunities for muscular exercise. It was an indispensable condition to membership in this club that the candidate should be over six feet in height; and it is surprising how many men who have made their mark in literature, science, and art had attained that _sine qua non_. Physical and intellectual greatness were so invariably combined in those days that the two were thought by many vulgar minds to go hand in hand; but even in the "Six Feet Club" there were few who presented in all respect a more _distingue_ appearance than the subject of these remarks. Another of Bell's most intimate friends during these years was James Hogg, the "Ettrick Shepherd." Along with Wilson and other friends he paid several visits to Hogg's native place, where they enjoyed pleasant ramblings by St Mary's Loch, and in the Vale of Yarrow, to which the Shepherd's muse has imparted quite a classic interest. There was, however, a species of vulgarity about Hogg, which marred his otherwise estimable qualities, and his uncouth Johnsonian habits were probably the means of erecting a barrier between himself and more cultivated friends. Lockhart, in his life of Scott, speaks of Hogg as a "a true son of nature and genius," and this he undoubtedly was. One who had taught himself to write by copyright the letters of a printed book as he lay watching his flock on the hill side, and whose vivacious imagination, as his own brother informs us, disqualified him from study or research, was not likely while alive to make many close friends in the exclusive and polished circles which formed the _elite_ of Edinburgh. But by Bell and a few others, who saw the diamond glittering in the rough casket, Hogg was duly appreciated. To the _Literary Journal_ he was a constant contributor both of prose and verse, and he took a warm interest in its success. When the proposal to erect a monument to the Shepherd in Ettrick Vale took a practical shape, Sheriff Bell was selected to inaugurate the structure. This he did on the 28th June, 1860. In fitting terms, his old friend panegyrised the virtues and the genius of The Shepherd, describing him "as a true poet--not equal to Burns, because no national poet was ever equal to Burns, because no national poet was ever