concile itself with the atmosphere around it; and while the surface continues to offend the eye by its first cold glare of chalky whiteness, it is not quite easy for an ordinary connoisseur to form a proper idea of the lines and forms set forth in this unharmonious material. Making allowance for all this, however, I can scarcely bring myself to imagine, that the statue of Melville will ever be thought to do honour to the genius of Chantry. There is some skill displayed in the management of the Viscount's robes; and in the face itself, there is a very considerable likeness to Lord Melville-which is enough, as your recollection must well assure you, to save it from any want of expressiveness. But the effect of the whole is, I think, very trivial, compared with what such an artist might have been expected to produce, when he had so fine a subject as Dundas to stimulate his energies. It is not often, now-a-days, that an artist can hope to meet with such a union of intellectual and corporeal grandeur, as were joined together in this Friend and Brother of William Pitt.

This statue has been erected entirely at the expence of the gentlemen of the Scottish Bar, and it is impossible not to admire and honour the

feelings, which called forth from them such a magnificent mark of respect for the memory of their illustrious Brother. Lord Melville walked the boards of the Parliament House during no less than twenty years, before he began to reside constantly in London as Treasurer of the Navy; and during the whole of this period, his happy temper and manners, and friendly open-hearted disposition, rendered him a universal favourite among all that followed the same course of life. By all true Scotchmen, indeed, of whatever party in church or state, Melville was always regarded with an eye of kindliness and partiality. Whig and Tory agreed in loving him; and how could it be otherwise, for although nobody surely could be more firm in his political principles than he himself was, he allowed no feelings, arising out of these principles, to affect his behaviour in the intercourse of common life. He was always happy to drink his bottle of port with any wor thy man of any party; and he was always happy to oblige personally those, in common with whom he had any recollections of good-humoured festivity. But the great source of his popularity was unquestionably nothing more than his intimate and most familiar acquaintance with the actual state of Scotland, and its inhabitants, and

all their affairs.

Here in Edinburgh, unless Mr W exaggerates very much, there was no person of any consideration, whose whole connections and concerns were not perfectly well known to him. And I already begin to see enough of the structure of Scottish society, to appreciate somewhat of the advantages which this knowledge must have placed in the hands of so accomplished a statesman. The services which he had rendered to this part of the island were acknowledged by the greater part of those, who by no means approved of the general system of policy in which he had so great a share; and among the subscribers to his statue were very many, whose names no solicitation could have brought to appear under any similar proposals with regard to any other Tory in the world.*

* As one little trait, illustrative of Lord Melville's manner of conducting himself to the people of Scotland, I may mention, that to the latest period of his life, whenever he came to Edinburgh, he made a point of calling in person on all the old ladies with whom he had been acquainted in the days of his youth. He might be seen going about, and climbing up to the most aërial habitacula of ancient maidens and widows; and it is probable he gained more by this, than he could have gained by almost any other thing, even in the good opinion of people who might themselves be vainly desirous of having an interview with the great statesman,

STATUES OF FORBES AND BLAIR.

39

In the two Inner Houses, as they are called, (where causes are ultimately decided by the two great Divisions of the Court,) are placed statues of two of the most eminent persons that have ever presided over the administration of justice in Scotland. In the hall of the Second Division, behind the chair of the Lord Justice Clerk, who presides on that bench, is placed the statue of Duncan Forbes of Culloden; and in a similar situation, in the First Division, that of the Lord President Blair, who died only a few years ago. The statue of Culloden is by Roubilliac, and executed quite in his usual style as to its detail; but the earnest attitude of the Judge, stooping forward and extending his right hand, and the noble character of his physiognomy, are sufficient to redeem many of those defects which all must perceive. The other statue-that of Blair, is another work of Chantry, and, I think, a vastly superior one to the Melville. The drapery, indeed, is very faulty-it is narrow and scanty, and appears to cling to the limbs like the wet tunic of the Venus Anadyomene, But nothing can be grander than the attitude and whole air of the figure. The Judge is not represented as leaning forward, and speaking with eagerness like Forbes, but as bending his head towards the

40 STATUE OF LORD PRESIDENT BLAIR.

ground, and folded in the utmost depth of quiet meditation; and this, I think, shews the con ception of a much greater artist than the Frenchman. The head itself is one of the most superb things that either Nature or Art has produced in modern times. The forehead is totally bald, and shaped in a most heroic style of beautythe nose springs from its arch with the firmness and breadth of a genuine antique-the lips are drawn together and compressed in a way that gives the idea of intensest abstraction—and the whole head is such, that it might almost be placed upon the bust of the Theseus, without offence to the majesty of that inimitable torso. The most wonderful circumstance is, that, unless all my friends be deceived, the statue, in all these points, is a most faithful copy of the original. Nor, to judge from the style in which the memory of the man is spoken of by all with whom I have conversed on the subject of his merits, am I inclined to doubt that it may have been so. He died very suddenly, and in the same week with Lord Melville, who had been through life his most dear and intimate friend; and the sensation produced all over Scotland by this two-fold calamity, is represented to have been one of the most impressive and awful things in the world.