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he had in whose sympathy he reckoned, and | who had suffered similar expatriation, the late Sir Charles Bell; nor did he reckon in vain. Charles Bell received him on his arrival, and could not restrain his merriment at the rueful countenance he presented. From that day forward they continued on terms of constant intimacy; and for some time the companionship of this friend, and occasional visits to Campbell at Sydenham, were the chief distractions from his regrets. Gradually, however, although that in the large sphere of London was a slower process, he began again to form a circle of associates. Some offshoots of the Friday Club were to be found in London, comprising Hallam, William Murray, Brougham, Ward, Loch, and William Adam. He met Wordsworth more than once in 1807; on one occasion at breakfast, in company with Scott. He says of Wordsworth :

"His familiarity with the south of Scotland was remarkable, and he talked of it with great enthusiasm. He seemed imbued with all poetry, didactic and ballad. He repeated parts of 'Michael Bruce' with great feeling. Walter and he spouted and praised Hamilton of Bangour's Braes of Yarrow' as one of the first of human compositions."

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The progress of his friends, Horner and Brougham, became to him, as it did to all the circle, a subject of the greatest interest. He seems to have seen much of the former, and to have regarded him with unmingled admiration. He writes to Cockburn in 1808: "Horner rises daily in my mind. I never part from him without bearing away a deeper impression of his worth and excellence. If you were not my friend, I should envy Murray." He watched and noted down his progress year by year, and watched and noted too, with too just forebodings, his gradual decline.

The limits of this notice will not permit us to illustrate as we might, by further extracts, his musings on men and things during the first years of his London life. They were years of struggle; yet even in the course of them we find, in his memoranda, that he is more solicitous to record the progress of his friends than his own. That Horner has much business at Sessions; that Brougham is getting many briefs; that Cockburn's fee-book is larger this year than last; that Charles Bell's class is as good as ever: these, and such like notanda in his private journal exhibit the genial unselfish friendliness which marked him throughout life. Some ten years later, when his friends, from being struggling lawyers, had become the leaders of the Bar, we find him recording the triumphs of Cranstoun, Moncreiff, and

Murray at the bar of the House of Lords as if they had been personal distinctions. "Proud," he says in one passage, "that the Lords should see what men we have in Scotland." Indeed, a friend from Scotland was ever sure of a welcome from John Richardson: his house was a certain anchorage in the wide sea of London, and a neverfailing centre of hospitality. In the end, perseverance and courage had their reward. He succeeded, and in the year 1811, found himself in a position to offer his hand to Miss Elizabeth Hill, the cousin of Campbell, his first introduction to whom, by the poet, we have already mentioned. They were married by Sir Henry Moncreiff in 1811; and his friends Cockburn and Sir Charles Bell were also married in the course of that year. The union proved to Richardson one of the greatest felicity. His wife had a congenial taste for all his favourite pursuits, and no man was ever blessed with a happier

home.

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"On one occasion when I was looking wistgentleman from the city, approached and said, fully over the gate, the then tenant, a respectable You seem to take an interest in this place; would you choose to walk in and look at it? I said I gladly would, for I had lived twenty pleasant years there, and if he would permit me, would walk round the garden with hin he had proceeded a little way, I said, That (pointing to a bush) is from the garden of the that sweet-william, I said, is from the garden of author of the Pleasures of Hope at Sydenham; Miss Joanna Baillie, your neighbour. He seemed agreeably excited. I then pointed out some beautiful Scotch roses from Lord Meadowbank; but when I said, 'This rose is from the garden of Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford,' he was quite overpowered, and exclaimed cordially, engaged to Miss Joanna." you dine with me to-day, sir?' But I was

• Will

We find in the MS.: "1813.-Began a Hogmanay observance, the Bells having been with us to welcome in the year." What a "Hogmanay" is, doubtless the Saxon is ignorant. But let him, for his instruction, possess himself of Mr. Burton's two pleasant volumes called The Scot Abroad, and in these he will find, amid much other necessary information, a full pedigree of this un-English word, showing its undoubted origin from

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The loss of Charles Bell was a sad bereavement to him. As even this hurried sketch shows, they were for many years inseparable, and during the whole period most affectionate comrades. In 1860, when the shadows were beginning to deepen, he writes to Lady Bell, "Kindest thanks to you for your kind letter. It sent me a-dreaming back to times which owed their chief happiness to you and Charlie, in combination with the enjoyments of home. It was a blessed life when we lived so much together, and for each other. It cannot return; but it needs not, for memory gives it back in all its truth. One can treasure up no such wealth as those happy remembrances." Sir Charles Bell was a man of originality and genius, fine taste, and the warmest of hearts. The brother-like relations on which they stood are evinced by the story told of them, that when out fishing, the boys who accompanied them used to call out, "Run, John, Charlie has caught a fish." Lady Bell has survived her husband and her friend, and continued to the last the old familiar companionship. There were none of all the circle who engaged a greater portion of his regard, or who contributed more to the solace of his later years.

the French Equimené, or other cognate root. | the eternal blank created by the want of the Its vernacular meaning is the last day of the "old familiar faces." year, and so it is used in the memorandum.* These Hogmanay festivals were continued and commemorated for many years afterwards. The party were generally Joanna Baillie and her sister, and Sir Charles and Lady Bell, varied, however, as time went on, by other guests. The 1822 Hogmanay is "T. Campbell, the Baillies, and the Bells; I record it as a very happy meeting, and T. C. went off with the Billies, who housed him for the night." 1824 found the Hogmanay guests, Baillies, Bells, Lushingtons, Maithus." 1831, "Jeffrey, Joanna Baillie, Sir C. and Lady Bell, Bosanquet, and David Dundas." So passed the time, pleasantly and prosperously. As business increased, the memoranda become more curt and sometimes obscure; but we find new naines creeping into the dinner parties. Thus, in 1840, "Jeffrey, Empson, Rogers, Mount Stuart Elphinston, David Dundas, and Austin," come to dinner. 1841 has this notice, "Read the Mara Kalendæ, and breakfasted with Rogers; Hope and Helen" (Richardson's daughters) and Tom Moore being of the party. Rogers most affable, and walked home with the girls." Gradually the names change; 1847, "To dine with us on my birth-day, Loch, Rutherfurd, Lushington, David Dundas, Sir C. Vaughan, Lord and Lady Minto, and Lady Bell." 1848, "Macaulay, Hallam, and Lord Campbell dined with us." The same year, "After the outbreak in Paris Guizot came to us. I provided a quantity of books for him with a view to the history in hand." He became afterwards very intimate with Guizot, who visited him in Scotland.

66

In 1851 even these disjointed fragments stop. They had become, alas! as much an obitnary of his friends as a record of his intercourse with them. Time had not failed to overshadow his lot with melancholy change. The first half of the century had closed. It found Richardson fresh, vigorous, and animated as ever; but too many of his compeers had departed. Horner was the first to drop, in 1817; his wife, the partner of his joys and sorrows, he lost in 1836; Charles Bell died in 1842; Campbell in 1844; Sidney Smith in 1846; Jeffrey in 1850. The next few years lost him Cockburn and Rutherfurd; and the happy, lighthearted, brilliant band who had stood by each other through so many summers and winters of change is broken up. A new generation begin to surround the old man's genial table, not less than their predecessors charmed by his society, but all unequal to fill

Richardson's own derivation of the word was "Homme est nait."

Such is the touching record from which we have, for the most part, extracted this hurried sketch. One or two more passages, selected much at random, must conclude our drafts upon it. 1808, he says-

"I made my first and very pleasant visit to Finchley. Mr. Alexander told me that walking some thirty odd years ago in the Temple Gardens, wishing that he had £200 a year whereon to retire, instead of possessing his then gloomy prospects at the bar, he met his friend old Mr. Strachan, the printer, then worth £100,000, into his depression, bade him go and write down and a member of Parliament, who, inquiring in his commonplace-book that he, Mr. Strachan, in the beginning of life, when without any pecuniary means, had a prospect of doing some business, and went to Scotland and solicited five rich relations to aid him by lending him £100 a-piece, which they all refused. He came back and struggled through without assistance, and you see (he added) what it has come to. were two things, Mr. Strachan said, which in those days I could never believe, that a man did not know how much money he had in his pocket, and was not hungry when he sat down to dinner. I always knew to a farthing what was in mine, and I never wanted a good appetite."

There

1813. He tells the following story of the authors of the Rejected Addresses:

"In reference to the Rejected Addresses by the two Smiths, though they might be great lions, they despised the thing. Horace Twiss

being asked to dine with a fashionable literary | lady in the west end of the town, and knowing the Smiths well, endeavoured to enhance his own value with his entertainer, by undertaking to bring them to her party in the evening, and wrote to them accordingly, pressing them to come, and received an answer which he was fool enough at first to exhibit, to this effect, 'Dear Twiss, I am very sorry that we cannot have the honour of waiting upon Lady brother Jim being engaged to swallow fire at Bartholomew Fair, and I to roar at Bow.'

1815. “Playfair, Miss Barthes, and Alexander dined with us. The first remained the night. Betsy gave him porridge and peaches to supper, the former of which he attacked manfully, and he walked in with me next morning over Primrose Hill, with a step as vigorous as Cockburn's of old up Benledi,-a most delightful person." Same year: "James Chalmers took me over to Highgate to call on old T. Coutts, then 82. He was very kind, and asked us to stay dinner, which we did not. He remembered the Rebellion in 1745 quite distinctly. He told us when at Rome he received from the Pretender a tnedal of himself as King of England, which he afterwards presented to George the Third at St. James'"

Same year: "I dined in company with Southey, who praised highly the publication The Espagnol and its author. Southey, a very poetical-looking man, full of knowledge about Spain and Portugal, spoke of the curious article | in the then last Quarterly, about the colony of Pitcairn's Island, sprung from the mutineers against Bligh. To see Southey Poet-Laureate, and Stoddart writing in the Times, are curious facts in the history of men's opinion."

I

1822. "Within a few days of the first of the year, the Baillies, Dr. Lushington, Maria Edgeworth, and Barry Cornwall, dined with us. Mr. Proctor was very unwell, and sitting in our small room tended to increase his malady. Miss Edgeworth sat next to him. Dr. Lushington is always entertaining; but poor Proctor hardly spoke. When most of the guests were gone, was seated beside Miss Edgeworth in the drawing-room, and I asked her how she liked Barry Cornwall? Barry Cornwall!' she said, 'I never saw Barry Cornwall.' Yes, I said, you sat beside him at dinner to-day. And was that Barry Cornwall?' she said; and may I be split into seventynine pieces it I did not take him for a dull lawyer.' It was Jeffrey brought him to Hampstead, and made him and us acquainted, and we liked him, so far as we knew him, very much."

.

Miss Edgeworth was a friend and correspondent of Richardson. The following letter, though couched in jocular formality, may be interesting to our readers :

"Miss Edgeworth's compliments to Mr. Richardson. She hears with much regret and shame from her friend Miss Wren that she is out of favour with Mr. R.'s sons, from having omitted to perform her promise to send them the Sequel to Frank. She has now ordered her bookseller to send the little books immediately; and she hopes that the young gentlemen will

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forgive her, and permit her to think they are again her young friends.

"There is something, after all, gratifying to human vanity in their being angry about it. If they did not care for her or her books, it would not have been s). If the father be not affronted for the sons, Miss E. hopes he will write to ease her mind, if he can, upon a subject on which she is seriously very anxions. Sir Walter Scott,how much truth is there in these reports about Constable and his losses? She has not yet heard from any of her friends in Scotland on the subject. She entreats Mr. Richardson to write as soon as he can, and as fully. Miss Fanny and Miss Harriet Edgeworth beg to be very kinlly remembered to Mrs. Richardson. So does Miss E., in all humility and contrition; for she is sure if she is out of favour with the sons, she must be with the mother. She is conscious, too, it is a terrible length of time since she has written to two other friends at Hampstead, who might have pleaded for her, and two friends whom she loves dearly nevertheless, and who could never plead in vain with Mr. Richardson. The box from the lantern of Westminster Abbey will live in their family long after Maria Edgeworth is no more.

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Edgeworthstoun, Feb. 12, 1826."

Many years afterwards, in 1849, she wrote to Miss Richardson, his daughter:

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"Thank you for proving to me, by the number of links of connexion you have counted and mentioned to me, how I have been hooked on and held to your kindly recollections. Beauforts, Lockharts, and dear Charlotte, the Eliots, the Campbells, the Romillys, Lady Bell, and dear Joanna Baillie, Scotch and English, all our mutual friends, thank you for mentioning."

One letter from Joanna Baillie we extract a passage from. It is dated Hampstead, September 9th, 1827. After congratulating Richardson on the birth of a son, addressing him as "My good friend and some time neighbour," " she says:

"To make some set-off against all this desertion, we have the interest of amusement of Sir Walter's Napoleon, which helps us out wonderfully. I am now reading the sixth volume, and shall be sorry, I believe, when I finish the ninth,-even I, who am no reader at all, and could pass my life without books nearly as well as any country woman on the moors of Drumclog. The narrative is very clear, the spirit of the work is manly and impartial, and his remarks are excellent, to say nothing of his general views at his different halting-places, which are given, as far as I can judge, with great ability. The style certainly is very careless, and like a hurried task, and there are too many similes and metaphors, thongh generally very appropriate for my taste. But as these faults do not diminish my pleasure and profit in reading the while, I am little entitled to complain of him. If you see the author soon, thank him on my part for his last friendly letter, which I feel as I ought, though I respect his time and avocations too much to intrude upon

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The reader is not to suppose that the character we have attempted to sketch, though he was the friend of Scott as well as of Campbell, of Lockhart as well as of Jeffrey, was a meek assumer of things as they might happen to be: all things to all men, and nothing very definite in himself. He was greatly the reverse. He was a man of gentle manners and thoughts, but of firm, nay, fierce opinions. The old Covenanting blood which he inherited, developed itself in strong and firm views on all topics connected with personal or popular liberty. From the first he had cast in his lot with the remnant of Whiggery which had survived at the beginning of the century, and to it he had held without waver or misgiving throughout all its career in the shade. Roland Richardson would not have gone more cheerfully to the question before Lauderdale, than would his descendant have suffered martyrdom for his belief in Fox. He lived to see, and he had to live twenty-five years before it came, the true principles, as he held them, triumph at last. He saw Brougham Chancellor, Jeffrey Lord-Advocate, Cockburn SolicitorGeneral, a large contribution from his individual circle. And he himself had his reward, if hard work, great responsibility, the consciousness of usefulness, and the absence of tinsel notoriety can constitute a public man's reward. He became CrownAgent for Scotland in London, as well in the ordinary public business as in peerages; and for thirty years, with few intervals, he discharged that duty. He had, in the course of that period, the preparation of many of the great political measures affecting Scotland during those eventful and critical years; and no one who only saw him in his happier hours, could have surmised with how much interest, industry, clear and perspicacious discrimination, and never-failing spirit, he elaborated the Parliamentary relative to Scotland in his time.

measures

It was

a pleasure to work with him, he was SO patient, so clear, so thoroughly informed, so good-tempered, and so completely absorbed in his occupation. No dreaming

then-no reveries; worldly men and worldly cares, let them be poets, novelists, or who they might, were utterly shut out. The hard dry thing was to be done, and done it was; and looked the less hard and dry in the doing of it. It is a kind of work for which the public is ungrateful, because it knows nothing of it; but if the patriotic and successful legislator deserves well of his country, no one ever more fairly earned his laurels in that field than John Richardson.

As Crown adviser in Peerages, he was in an element very congenial to his habits. He had a genuine love of old books; and great taste and knowledge in that captivating pursuit. He was a diligent antiquarian, and early in his London life had rummaged out and copied manuscripts in the British Museum. These habits, and the information so acquired, he brought to bear on the peerage questions in the House of Lords, in a way most useful for the public service. We believe that he became one of the most learned peerage lawyers of his day.

One trait more, without which the picture would be incomplete. He, like his friend Sir Charles Bell, was a most devoted brother of the angle. With his rod, and on the burnside, he was "ower a' the ills o' life victorious;" a deadly foe to the speckled tribe, and a most wily and skilled deceiver of them. There the love of nature, and the love of sport; the love of dreaming and the love of action, found opportunity alike; and though the long years in which he had broken himself to run in harness, quenched the wild promptings of the poetic heresy within him, and set himself, with strong resolution, to unremitting toil, he ever indulged the hope that he might spend the evening of his days beside some tumbling stream, in a retreat where he might converse with Nature, and realize some at least of his early dreams. In the following sonnet, which seems to us full of beauty and feeling, he pours out the aspirations of his heart. It was written in his dingy chambers in Fludyer Street, which looked out on the old Foreign Office; not an exhilarating or poetical prospect, as we can attest:

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Where, in the mellow light of life's last beam,
I might repose me, ere I left the shore.
But fast the tide ebbs; when the hope I clasp,
The rainbow form flies far and farther from my
grasp."

In part, at least, his vision was fulfilled. He purchased in 1830 the little property of Kirklands, a beautiful spot on the river Ale in Roxburghshire, where the river winds round the knolls of Ancrum Park. The erection of his house, and the decoration of the pleasure-grounds, with pleasant fishing in the Ale, and pleasant visits to his Roxburghshire neighbours, formed the subjects of much thought, interest, and occupation of his later life. He bought the place on the recommendation of Sir Walter Scott; and as the letter written by Sir Walter about the purchase has been preserved, we give it entire:

“DEAR RICHARDSON,—-I went over Kirklands yesterday, and really never saw a place lying more beautifully compact, or more entirely suited for your purpose. It consists of about 76 acres, lying bounded on one side by a long sweep of the Ale, and on the other by a good parish road, resembling bow and string, excepting about a score or two of yards at the upper or western extremity, where a brook divides it from the Duke of Roxburgh's farm of Hobtown. There is a bank of about three acres of wood along the Ale, thriving, and in high order. The soil is the best turnip land in Roxburghshire. There is another bank of about three acres also planted, but with larch only. The opposite side of the Ale lies partly in the Park of Ancrum, partly green craggy pasture, beautifully mingled tions for building. The whole scene is retired and yet cheerful. I own I feared the vicinity of Ancrum, the villagers having no good character. But it is about a mile off, and totally out of sight, and Mr. Sheriff says he never lost fruit but once, though his orchard is only surrounded by a broken hedge, and but 200 yards from the house. On the other hand, you will never want labourers; and if you incline to set grass parks, being the best and safest mode of using the ground which you do not occupy, you will have plenty of bidding for them ainong the feuars; also a ready market for potatoes and turnips, if you incline to keep a plough. I do not anticipate a single objection to the place, except the price, which must be high. I suspect from some indications that Sheriff found he could get more than Captain Stewart had agreed for, and so picked a hole in the bargain. I told him to send you a statement of the farm, with measurements, price, etc. It is certainly a most desirable place. The present house is execrable, but would do for a farmer's, with some repair, or might serve you as a bachelor well enougli for a summer. A but and a ben, with two sto reys, is the accommodation; the ceiling is not even plastered.

with wood. There are several excellent situa

"I think if you come down and see the place you will be enchanted with it. Sheriff is a

sharp, spare man, with a thin countenance, grey worldly eyes, and a dd bargain-making look about him.

"If you come down I hope you will take quarters with us, as you can have all means of conveyance at command. I can get a valuation of the property from Brown of Rawflet, who has managed it on the part of Admiral Elliot and Miss Carnegie; but I am sure it will be lower than Sheriff will ask and probably get.

"I sincerely hope your dear patient is better; repose and affection does much in these cases. Charles came down loaded with rheumatism. Sophia is laid up with ditto. I have taken my wettings, which are almost daily, with impunity, taking care to change.-Yours in haste,

WALTER SCOTT."

"ABBOTSFORD, September 8, 1829.”

The inducements so urged, and painted by such a master, proved irresistible. Richardson became the master of Kirklands, and for this picturesque retreat, surrounded by friends thirty years he spent his autumn months in and visitors. It is in truth as pretty and picturesque a spot as his dreams could have imagined: the banks of the Ale, and the noble woods of Ancrum Park, forming the foreground of the landscape it commands, while Tweed and Teviot, within a couple of miles, hold out bright temptations to the angler. So far, the vision had come true, but something still remained, to shake off the weary harness-to escape from the tyranny of dust, parchment, and musty law, and raise the free spirit at length above them, in company with nature and his books. That, too, seemed within his reach. eightieth year he at length resolved to retire from active business; gave up his London residence; carried off his books to Kirklands; resolved there, in philosophic ease and literary relaxation, to spend what might be spared him of life. But, alas! for the vain hopes and aspirations of man. The end had been gained, but his reward was to be in the battle, not in the victory. Hardly had he established himself in his retreat, when the hand of sickness laid him on a bed from which he may be said never to have risen; and though he survived for more than three years, he was entirely unable to derive any enjoyment from the realization of the longcherished wishes of his heart. The "rainbow form❞ vanished, and melted in his grasp.

In his

Lord Campbell's seat of Hartrigg was in the immediate vicinity of Kirklands, and he and Richardson had been long on intimate terms. One evening, after Richardson's illness had lasted for some time, Lord Campbell, conversing after a dinner party at his house in London, happened to speak of his friend at Kirklands, and he remarked that he thought the Church Service should con

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