(From the "Edinburgh Courant" Newspaper of the 16th of October, 1817.)

THE HONOURABLE HENRY ERSKINE.

DIED, at his seat of Ammondell, Linlithgowshire, on the 8th instant, in the 71st year of his age, the Honourable Henry Erskine, second son of the late Henry David, Earl of Buchan.

Mr. Erskine was called to the Scottish Bar, of which he was long the brightest ornament, in the year 1768, and was for several years Dean of the Faculty of Advocates: He was twice appointed Lord Advocate,-in 1782 and in 1806, under the Rockingham and the Grenville administrations. During the years 1806 and 1807 he sat in Parliament for the Dunbar and Dumfries district of boroughs.

In his long and splendid career at the bar, Mr. Erskine was distinguished not only by the peculiar brilliancy of his wit, and the gracefulness, ease, and vivacity of his eloquence, but by the still rarer power of keeping those seducing qualities in perfect subordination to his judgment. By their assistance he could not only make the most repulsive subject agreeable, but the most abstruse easy and intelligible. In his profession, indeed, all his wit was argument; and each of his delightful illustrations a material step in his reasoning. To himself, indeed, it seemed always as if they were recommended rather for their use than their beauty, and unquestionably they often enabled him to state a fine argument, or a nice distinction, not only in a more striking and pleasing way, but actually with greater precision than could have been attained by the severer forms of reasoning.

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HONOURABLE HENRY ERSKINE.

In this extraordinary talent, as well as in the charming facility of his eloquence, and the constant radiance of good humour and gaiety which encircled his manner of debate, he had no rival in his own times, and as yet has had no successor. That part of eloquence is now mute that honour in abeyance.

As a politician, he was eminently distinguished for the two great virtues of inflexible steadiness to his principles, and invariable gentleness and urbanity in his manner of asserting them. Such indeed was the habitual sweetness of his temper, and the fascination of his manners, that, though placed by his rank and talents in the obnoxious station of a Leader of opposition, at a period when political animosities were carried to a lamentable height, no individual, it is believed, was ever known to speak or to think of him with any thing approaching to personal hostility. In return, it may be said, with equal correctness, that, though baffled in some of his pursuits, and not quite handsomely disappointed of some of the honours to which his claim was universally admitted, he never allowed the slightest shade of discontent to rest upon his mind, nor the least drop of bitterness to mingle with his blood. He was so utterly incapable of rancour, that even the rancorous felt that he ought not to be made its victim.

He possessed, in an eminent degree, that deep sense of revealed religion, and that zealous attachment to the Presbyterian establishment, which had long been hereditary in his family. His habits were always strictly moral and temperate, and in the latter part of his life even abstemious. Though the life and ornament of every society into which he entered, he was always most happy and most delightful at home; where the buoyancy of his spirit and the kindness of his heart found all that they required of exercise or enjoyment; and though without taste for expensive pleasures in his own person, he was ever most indulgent and munificent to his children, and a liberal benefactor to all who depended on his bounty.

He finally retired from the exercise of that profession,

PERSONAL CHARACTER.

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the highest honours of which he had at least deserved, about the year 1812, and spent the remainder of his days in domestic retirement, at that beautiful villa which had been formed by his own taste, and in the improvement and adornment of which he found his latest occupation. Passing thus at once from all the bustle and excitement of a public life to a scene of comparative inactivity, he never felt one moment of ennui or dejection; but retained unimpaired, till within a day or two of his death, not only all his intellectual activity and social affections, but, when not under the immediate affliction of a painful and incurable disease, all that gaiety of spirit, and all that playful and kindly sympathy with innocent enjoyment, which made him the idol of the young, and the object of cordial attachment and unenvying admiration to his friends of all ages.

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NOTICE AND CHARACTER

OF

PROFESSOR PLAYFAIR.*

OF Mr. Playfair's scientific attainments,—of his proficiency in those studies to which he was peculiarly devoted, we are but slenderly qualified to judge: But, we believe we hazard nothing in saying that he was one of the most learned Mathematicians of his age, and among the first, if not the very first, who introduced the beautiful discoveries of the later continental geometers to the knowledge of his countrymen ; and gave their just value and true place, in the scheme of European knowledge, to those important improvements by which the whole aspect of the abstract sciences has been renovated since the days of our illustrious Newton. If he did not signalize himself by any brilliant or original invention, he must, at least, be allowed to have been a most generous and intelligent judge of the achievements of others; as well as the most eloquent expounder of that great and magnificent system of knowledge which has been gradually evolved by the successive labours of so many gifted individuals. He possessed, indeed, in the highest degree, all the characteristics both of a fine and a powerful understanding, at once penetrating and vigilant, but more distinguished, perhaps, for the caution and sureness of its march, than for the brilliancy or rapidity of its movements, and guided and adorned through all its pro

*Originally printed in an Edinburgh newspaper of August, 1819. A few introductory sentences are now omitted.

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gress, by the most genuine enthusiasm for all that is grand, and the justest taste for all that is beautiful in the Truth or the Intellectual Energy with which he was habitually conversant.

To what account these rare qualities might have been turned, and what more brilliant or lasting fruits they might have produced, if his whole life had been dedicated to the solitary cultivation of science, it is not for us to conjecture; but it cannot be doubted that they added incalculably to his eminence and utility as a Teacher; both by enabling him to direct his pupils to the most simple and luminous methods of inquiry, and to imbue their minds, from the very commencement of the study, with that fine relish for the truths it disclosed, and that high sense of the majesty with which they were invested, that predominated in his own bosom. While he left nothing unexplained or unreduced to its proper place in the system, he took care that they should never be perplexed by petty difficulties, or bewildered in useless details; and formed them betimes to those clear, masculine, and direct methods of investigation, by which, with the least labour, the greatest advances might be accomplished.

Mr. Playfair, however, was not merely a teacher; and has fortunately left behind him a variety of works; from which other generations may be enabled to judge of some of those qualifications which so powerfully recommended and endeared him to his contemporaries. It is, perhaps, to be regretted that so much of his time, and so large a proportion of his publications, should have been devoted to the subjects of the Indian Astronomy, and the Huttonian Theory of the Earth: And though it is impossible to think too highly of the ingenuity, the vigour, and the eloquence of those publications, we are of opinion that a juster estimate of his talent, and a truer picture of his genius and understanding, is to be found in his other writings; in the papers, both biographical and scientific, with which he has enriched the Transactions of our Royal Society; his account of Laplace, and other articles