became disgusted with the idea of the Presbyterian career, and determined to become an Advocate. In those days, however, that was not quite so easy a matter of attainment as it has since come to be. The Advocates at that time were accustomed to exercise a discretionary right, of excluding from their Faculty whomsoever they chose to consider as unfit to enter-not merely on the score of learning or talent, (for, in regard to these, the pretence still lingers)—but, if it so pleased their fancy, on the score of want of birth, or status in society-a notion, the revival of which, if attempted now-a-days, would probably be scouted by a very triumphant majority of their body. What Mr Forsyth's birth might be I know not; but so it was, that the admission of the young licentiate, against whose character no one could say one word, was opposed most stiffly in the Faculty meetings, and he did not succeed in his object till after repeated applications had testified the firmness of his purpose, and time had produced its proper effect, in making his opponents ashamed of contradicting it.

He became an Advocate, therefore; and, by degrees, the same inflexible pertinacity of will which had procured his admission into the Faculty, elevated him to a considerable share of

practice. Without making any one appearance that could ever be called splendid, and in the teeth of a great number of men that did make such appearances, Mr Forsyth was resolved that he should make a fortune at the Bar, and that was enough. From day to day, and from hour to hour, he was at his post. He came to the Court earlier than any one else, and he staid there later. His sagacious countenance was never amissing; and they who saw that countenance perpetually before then, could not fail to read its meaning. Other men laboured by fits and starts, and always with a view to some particular and immediate object of ambition; this man laboured continually, because it was his principle and his belief that he could not be happy without labouring, and because he knew and felt that it was impossible a man of his talents should labour long without being appreciated and rewarded in the end.

If he had no brief, he did not care for that want, or allow himself to take advantage of any pretence for idleness. His strong intellect could no more do without work, than his robust body could subsist without food. If he had not enough to occupy him in the affairs of individual men, he had always the species, and its

concerns, on which to exercise his strength. And at a time when nobody suspected him of possessing either ambition or ability for anything more than the drudgery of his profession, he published a book on the Principles of Moral Science, coarse indeed in many of its conceptions, and coarse in its language, but overflowing everywhere with the marks of most intense observation, and most masculine origina lity. From this time, the stamp of his intellect was ascertained, and those who had been most accustomed to speak slightingly of him, found themselves compelled to confess his power.

His natural want of high eloquence has prevented him from being the rival of the great lawyers I have described, in their finest field; and a certain impatience of all ornament, has prevented him from rivalling them in writing. Neither, as I am informed, has he ever been able to penetrate into the depths of legal arguments with the same clear felicity which some of those remarkable men have displayed. But he has been willing to task the vigour of an Herculean understanding to a species of work which these men would have thought themselves entitled to despise, and to slur over, if it did come into their hands, with comparative inattention; and it is

thus that his fortune has been made. He cannot do what some of his brethren can do ; but whatever he can do, he will do. While they reserve the full exertion of their fine energies for occasions that catch their fancy, and promise opportunity of extraordinary display, he allows his fancy to have nothing to say in the matter; and display is a thing of which he never dreams. He has not the magical sword that will shiver steel, nor the magical shield that will dazzle an advancing foe into blindness; but he is clothed cap-a-pee in harness of proof, and he has his mace always in his hand. He is contented to be ranged with the ordinary class of champions; but they who meet him, feel that his vigour might well entitle him to exchange thrusts with their superiors.

It would surely argue a very strange degree of obstinacy, to deny that all this speaks of an intellect of no ordinary cast. There is no walk of exertion which may not be dignified; and I imagine it is not often that such a walk as that of Mr Forsyth has found such an intellect as his willing to adorn it.

There are still several of the Scottish Advocates whom I ought to describe to you; but I reserve them, and their peculiarities, for matter of oral communication. My object was, in the mean time, to give you some general notion of those who at present make the most conspicuous figure among an order of men whose name is familiar to you, and celebrated everywhere, but of which very little is, in general, known accurately by such as have not personally visited the scene of their exertions. I suppose I have already said enough to convince you that the high reputation enjoyed by the Scottish jurisconsults is far from being an unmerited reputation; and that, taking the size and population of the country into view, Scotland has at least as much reason to be proud of her Bar as any country in Europe.

P. M.