361 New Haileal LORI) HAILES.
made condemnation seem just as the doom of
Providence to the criminals themselves, and raised
a salutary horror of crime in the breasts of the
audience. Conscious of the dignity and importance
of the high office he held, he never departed
from the decorum that becomes that reverend
character, which, indeed, it cost him no effort to
,support, because he acted from principle and sentiment,
both public and private. Affectionate to
his family and relations, simple and mild in his
manners, pure and conscientious in his morals,
enlightened and entertaining in his conversation,
he left society only to regret that, devoted as he
was to more important employments, he had so
little time to spare for intercourse with them.?
(?Sermon on Lord Hailes?s Death,? by Rev. Dr.
Carlyle. Edin. 1792.)
An anecdote of him when at the bar is noted
as being illustrative of his goodness of heart.
When he held the office of Advocate-Depute, he
had gone to Stirling in his official capacity. On
the first day of the court he seemed in no haste
to urge on proceedings, and was asked by a
brother advocate why there was no trial this forenoon
?
?? There are,? said he, ? several unhappy creatures
to be tried for their lives, and therefore it is
but proper and just that they should have a little
time to confer with their men of law.?
?That is of very little consequence,? said the
ather. ? Last year, when I was here on the circuit,
Lord Kames appointed me counsel for a man
accused of a capital offence, and though I had very
little time to prepare, I made a very fair speech.?
?? And was your client acquitted ? ? ?? No ; he was most unjustly condemned.?
(? That, sir,? said the advocate-depute, (? is
certainly no good argument for hurrying on
trials.?
When Sibbald started the Rdinbargh Magazine,
in 1783, Lord Hailes became a frequent contributor
to its pages.
Lords Hailes, Eskgrove, Stonefield, and Swinton,
were the judges of justiciary before whom Deacon
Brodie and his compatriot were tried, and by whom
they were sentenced to death in 1788.
He died in the house of New Hailes, in his
sixty-sixth year, on the 29th of November, 1792,
leaving behind him a high reputation in literary and
legal society. He had been appointed a judge, in
succession to Lord Nisbet, in r766, and a commissioner
of justiciary in 1777, in place of Lord
Coalston, whose daughter, Anne, was his first
wife. His grandfather was fifth brother of the
Earl of Stair, and was Lord Advocate in the reign
of George I., and his father had been Auditor of
the Exchequer for life.
His second wife was Helen Fergusson, a daughter
of Lord Kilkerran, who suMved him eighteen years,
and died in the house of New Hailes on the
10th November, 1810.
It was long the residence of his daughter, and
after her death became the property of her heir
and relative, Sir C. Dalrymple Fergusson, Bart., of
Kilkerran. Having no male issue, Lord Hailes?s
baronetcy (which is now extinct) descended to his
nephew, eldest son of his brother John, who held
the office of Lord Provost of Edinburgh in 1770
and 1771.
Our task-to us a labour of love-is ended. It
has been our earnest effort to trace out and faithfully
describe how ? the Queen of the North,? the royal
metropolis of Scotland, from the Dunedin or rude
hill-fort of the Celts, with its thatched huts amid
the lonely forest of Drumsheugh, has, in the
progress. of time, expanded into the vast and
magnificent city we find it now, with its schools of
learning, its academies of art, its noble churches
and marts of industry, and its many glorious institutions
of charity and benevolence ;-the city
that Burns hailed in song, as ?Edina, Scotiq?s
darling seat,? the centre of memories which make
it dear to all Scotsmen, wherever their fate or their
fortune may lead them. For the stately and beautiful
Edinburgh, which now spreads nearly from the
base of the Braid Hills to the broad estuary of
the Forth, is unquestionably the daughter of the
old fortress on the lofty rock, as the arms in her
shield-the triple castle-serve to remind us.
We have attempted to depict a prehistoric
Edinburgh, before coming to the ten centuries of
veritable histov, when a Christian church rose on
the ridge or Edin of the Celts, to replace the
heathen rites that were celebrated on Arthur?s Seat
and other hills ; and no royal city in Europe can
boast ten centuries of such stirring, warlike, and
glorious annals-in which, however, the sad or sorrowful
is strangely commingled-as were transacted
in the living drama of many ages, the actors in
which it has been our endeavour to portray. We
have sought to recall not only the years that have
passed away, but also the successive generations
of dwellers in the old walled city of the middle
ages, and their quaint lives and habits, with the
change of these as time rolled on.
The history of Edinburgh is, in many respects, a
history of Scotland from the time it became the
residence of her kings, but one in which the
peculiar domestic annals of the people are ne
368 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH.
cessarily woven up with the warlike, even from the
days when our forefathers, with their good swords
and true hearts, were enabled to defend their homes
and hills against all the might of England, aided,
? as albeit the latter often was, by Ireland, Wales,
and all the chivalry of Normandy and Aquitaine ;
and to hand down to future times the untarnished
crown of a regal race as an emblem of what Scotland
was, ere she peacefully quartered her royal arms
and insignia with those of her adversary, with whom
she shared her kings, and as an emblem of what
she is still, with her own Church, laws, and constitution,
free and unfettered.
The Old city-with its ?stirring memories of
a thousand years ?-has records which are, in tenor,
widely apart from those of the New; yet, in the
former, we may still see the massive, picturesque,
quaint and time-worn abodes of those who bore their
part in the startling events of the past-fierce combats,
numerous raids, cruelties and crimes that
tarnish the?histonc page j while in the New city,
with its stately streets, its squares and terraces,
the annals are all recent,?and refer to the arts of
Peace alone-to a literary and intellectual supremacy
hitherto unsurpassed.
Yet, amid the thousands of its busy population,
life is leisurely there ; but, as has been well said,
?it is not the leisure of a village arising from the
deficiency of ideas and motives-it is the leisure of
a city reposing grandly on tradition and history,
which has done its work, and does not require to
weave its own clothing, to dig its own coals, or smelt
its own iron. And then in Edinburgh, above all
British cities, you are released from the vulgarising
dominion of the hour.? For, as has been abundantly
shown throughout this work, there every step
is historical, and the past and present are ever face
to face.
The dark shadow cast by the Union has long
since passed away; but we cannot forget that
Edinburgh, like Scotland generally, was for generations-
neglected by Government, and her progress
obstructed by lame legislation ; that it is no longer
the chief place where landholders dwell, or the
revenue of a kingdom is disbursed ; and that it is
owing alone to the indomitable energy, the glorious
spirit of self-reliance, and the patriotism of her
people, that we find the Edinburgh of to-day what
sheis, in intellect and beauty, second to no city in
the world.
