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LETTER XXXII,

TO THE SAME.

I BELIEVE I repeated to you, at the close of my last letter, a remark of Mr Clerk concerning the President Blair. This Mr Clerk is unquestionably, at the present time, the greatest man among those who derive their chief fame from their appearances at the Scottish Bar. His face and figure attracted my particular attention, before I had the least knowledge of his name, or suspicion of his surpassing celebrity. He has, by some accident in infancy, been made lame in one of his limbs; but he has notwithstanding every appearance of great bodily vigour and ac tivity.

I remember your instructions concerning the Barristers of Scotland, and after having visited their Courts with great assiduity, during the greater part of my stay in this place, shall now proceed to draw you portraits of the most emi

nent, as nearly as I can hit it, in the style you wish me to employ. I must begin with Mr Clerk, for, by the unanimous consent of his brethren, and indeed of the whole of the profession, he is the present Coryphæus of the Bar-Juris consultorum sui seculi facile princeps. Others there are that surpass him in a few particular points, both of learning and of practice; but, on the whole, his superiority is entirely unrivalled and undisputed. Those who approach the nearest to him, are indeed so much his juniors, that he cannot fail to have an immense ascendency over them, both from the actual advantages of his longer study and experience, and, without offence to him or them be it added, from the effects of their early admiration of him, while he was as yet far above their sphere. Do not suppose, however, that I mean to represent any part of the respect with which these gentlemen treat their senior, as the result of empty prejudice. Never was any man less of a quack than Mr Clerk ; the very essence of his character is scorn of ornament, and utter loathing of affectation. He is the plainest, the shrewdest, and the most sarcastic of men; his sceptre owes the whole of its power to its weight-nothing to glitter.

It is impossible to imagine a physiognomy

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more expressive of the character of a great lawyer and barrister. The features are in themselves good at least a painter would call them so; and the upper part of the profile has as fine lines as could be wished. But then, how the habits of the mind have stamped their traces on every part of the face! What sharpness, what razor-like sharpness, has indented itself about the wrinkles of his eye-lids; the eyes themselves so quick, so gray, such bafflers of scrutiny, such exquisite scrutinizers, how they change their expression-it seems almost how they change their colour-shifting from contracted, concentrated blackness, through every shade of brown, blue, green, and hazel, back into their own open, gleaming gray again! How they glisten into a smile of disdain!-Aristotle says, that all laughter springs from emotions of conscious superiority. I never saw the Stagyrite so well illustrated, as in the smile of this gentleman. He seems to be affected with the most delightful and balmy feelings, by the contemplation of some softheaded, prosing driveller, racking his poor brain, or bellowing his lungs out-all about something which he, the smiler, sees through so thoroughly, so distinctly. Blunder follows blunder; the mist thickens about the brain of the bewildered hammerer; and every plunge of the bog-trotter—

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