is written very neatly with lines, and in a plain schoolboy's hand, and considering the age of the embryo Chancellor of England, the mistakes of orthography and grammar are not to be complained of; there was, however, very little or no punctuation, a point on which Mr. Douglas, probably, did not care to weary his spirited and clever pupil.. Two years. after this capital specimen of his epistolary powers was written, young Erskine went to sea in the Tartar, with Commodore Sir John Lindsay, which was ordered in the first instance to Pensacola, in the Gulf of Mexico, and subsequently to Jamaica, from whence the following letter was despatched to his brother :

"KINGSTON IN JAMAICA, July 1764."

"MY DEAREST CARDROSS,-I wrote to you about ten days ago, giving you some small account of what I had seen here. I am still with Dr. Butt, but shall sail now in about ten days; he is appointed Physician General to the Militia of the Island of Jamaica, by his Excellency Governor Lyttleton,2 whom I waited upon at Spanish Town, along with the doctor, some days ago. He is a very affable

1 Sir John Lindsay, K.B., died at Marlborough House, on his way to Bath, June the 4th, 1778, aged fifty-one years.

2 Sir William Henry Lyttleton, elevated to the Peerage of Ireland, in July 1776, by the title of Baron Westcote, and afterwards to that of England by that of Lord Lyttleton, which title had expired with his nephew and predecessor. His Lordship was Governor of South Carolina in 1755, of Jamaica in 1760, and Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Portugal, in 1776. Lord Lyttleton died in September 1808.

and agreeable man, as I ever saw, and one of great learning. The longer I stay in the West Indies, I find the country more healthful, and the climate more agreeable; I could not help smiling when Mama mentioned in her letter, how much reason you had to be thankful, that you gave up your commission, or you would have gone to the most wretched climate on the earth. I don't know indeed, as to the rest of the West Indian Islands, but sure I am, if you had come here you would have no reason to repent it. To be sure, to stay here too long, might weaken a constitution, though hardly that; but to stay here some time is extremely serviceable. As for me, I

have great reasons to like the West Indies; I have never had an hour's sickness in them, never enjoyed better spirits, and found in them so good a friend as ever I desired to meet with, as I mentioned in my last letter. She supplies the place of mother when at a distance from all my relations, and behaves to me in every respect better than many relatives, whom, from their kindred to my parents, ought to do; that is a great advantage, especially when one is in a foreign country.

"I suppose you will by this time be thinking of going abroad, as it draws near the time you intended going: I suppose you will go first to Italy. Remember to write to me from these places; you will have many opportunities when you are in Portugal, or Spain, as they have great trade with the West Indies; so that I expect you won't forget the poor Pots, for I

assure you, he always dearly remembers his own Cowly.

"I begin now to draw indifferently: I am studying Botany with Doctor Butt, so I will bring you home drawings of all the curious plants, &c., &c., and everything that I see. I have sent Mama home a land turtle, to walk about Walcot garden; it is very pretty, particularly its back, which is all divided into square lozenges, and the shell is as hard as a coat of mail. If you have got anything that you wish to send me, you need only direct it to Dr. Butt in the same manner you direct letters, and put it into a merchantman bound for the West Indies, and it can't fail coming safe. Doctor Butt desires his best compliments to you, and will be obliged to you, if you will send him out such a profile of you as you copied from Mr. Hoar's. Pray give my compliments to all, and know and believe me to be, my dear Cardross,

"Your affectionate brother,

"THOMAS ERSKINE."

Both these letters evince an affectionate, studious, and active disposition, and, from the young sailor's having been made an acting-lieutenant by Sir John Lindsay, it is only reasonable to suppose that he did not abandon his profession on account of either inefficiency or insubordination: this decided step was, however, taken by Erskine soon after Sir John was relieved by Commodore Johnson, and the cause which led to it was Isaid to be the harsh conduct of his new commander.

CHAPTER XXI.

Lord Erskine Enters the Army-His Slow Promotion-Leaves the Service -Enters at Cambridge-His great Admiration and Friendship for Fox-Lines written by him at Oatlands on receiving from the Duchess of York a Lock of that Statesman's Hair-Lord ByronTwo Fragments of his Unpublished Poetry-Stanzas on the Murder of Mr. Weir, by the Rev. J. Mitford-The Younger Brother's Claim -Les Mille Colonnes-Epigrams.

AFTER his return home, young Erskine tried the sister service, and on the 1st of September 1768 obtained an Ensign's commission in the second battalion of the First, or Royal Regiment of Foot, most of the officers of which corps, as well as the Colonel, John Duke of Argyle, were his countrymen. In this regiment he remained seven years, having been promoted in 1770, at the early age of twenty, to the rank of Benedict, and to a lieutenancy on the 21st of April 1773.

It was possibly this slow promotion which induced Lieutenant Erskine to quit the army two years after, added to the encomiums that his talents elicited from clever and intellectual men; which possibly encouraged the idea, that he might distinguish himself in an arena more suited to his genius. Dr. Johnson, when on his tour in Scotland, and at the time sixty-three years of

age, dined at Sir Alexander Macdonald's, where, as Boswell says, "was a young officer in the regimentals of the Scots Royals, who talked with a vivacity, fluency, and precision so uncommon, that he attracted particular attention; he proved to be the Honourable T. Erskine, youngest brother to the Earl of Buchan, who has risen into such brilliant reputation at the bar of Westminster Hall. Erskine told us," says Boswell, "that when he was in the island of Minorca, he not only read prayers, but preached two sermons to the regiment;" on which Mr. Croker observes, "Lord Erskine was fond of this anecdote; he told it to me the first time that I had the honour of being in his company, and often repeated it, with an observation that he had been a sailor and a soldier, was a lawyer and a parson; the latter he affected to think the greatest of his efforts, and to support that opinion would quote the prayer for the clergy in the Liturgy, from the expression of which he would (in no commendable spirit of jocularity) infer, that the enlightening them was one of the greatest marvels 'which could be worked.""

This anecdote completes the illustration of the line,

"Tom Erskine sat last-sailor, soldier, and lawyer,"

with the addition of another profession; and as Lord Erskine, in his letter to his brother, says that he "studied botany with Dr. Butt, the PhysicianGeneral," it is not impossible that he practised under him, and took a degree. This would establish his