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 unquestion-ably, 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 activity.

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 eminent, 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.