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influence great at the time, "and preserved by his own personal character long after political power had passed away from his patron." Short as Lord Bute's tenure of office was, he writes to Mure:-"I was long tired of the anxiety, envy, and disgust of a situation ill-suited to my temper or habitudes of life." His physical powers unfitted him for battling with the active, and sometimes unscrupulous, opponents by whom he was beset :-" Many reasons," his Lordship again wrote, "justify this resignation in a prudential light, but none of these should have had weight with me at present if my health had permitted my continuance; the state of that made it impossible, and I yield to necessity." ("Caldwell Papers," vol. i., p. 175-6.) Again, he writes on the death of one of his brothers :-" Attachment, gratitude, love, and real respect are too tender plants for Ministerial gardens: attempt to raise them, and they are either chilled on their first springing, or, if they once appear, they fade with the very nourishment that is given them." This fairly corresponds with, and even justifies, Macaulay's description of the mixed motives which he surmises may have led to Bute's sudden resignation. His habits, the historian explains, had not been such as were likely to fortify his mind against obloquy and public hatred. He had reached his forty-eighth year in dignified ease without knowing by personal experience what it was to be ridiculed and slandered, when all at once, without any previous initiation, he found himself exposed to such a storm of invective and satire as had never burst on the head of any statesman. But to linger with Mure and Bute detains us from a historical character of still greater and more permanent interest. Born seven years before William Mure, David Hume survived the Baron only a few months, but sufficiently long to deplore "as a loss irreparable the death of the oldest and best friend I had in the world;" adding, "I should be inconsolable, did I not see an event approaching which reduces all things to a level." The friendship appears to have been of a most cordial description in the philosopher's Paris days, when he acted as Secretary to the Embassy of Lord Hertford, and where, as Walpole puts it, Hume, Whist, and Richardson (of "Pamela" fame) was the only Trinity in fashion. The intimacy was renewed and kept up by personal intercourse in

Edinburgh, Mrs. Mure, who professed, no doubt sincerely, to "admeer" David, being always at home in her own house on the Abbey Hill when he called for a rubber at whist, or a friendly informal chat. His proficiency in the history of card kings, as set down in the "Caldwell Papers," would not appear to have been rated high by the professors of Hoyle in these days, although on this point Hume did not willingly bear criticism; Mrs. Mure, keen in the game as Sarah Battle herself, was often "down" on the philosopher without mercy. One night it is recorded they got into such a warm discussion on his play that even the good-natured Hume lost his temper, and would stand it no longer. Taking up his hat, and calling a pretty Pomeranian dog accompanying him, "Come away, Foxey," David walked out of the house in the middle of the rubber. The family were to start next morning for Caldwell; and Hume, who then lived in St. Andrew's Square, a good mile distant, was at the door before breakfast, hat in hand, with an apology.

Another card story connected with an intimate friend of the Mures, and showing David in another light, although hardly new at this time of day, should not be omitted. Before building his house in the New Town, Hume occupied a lodging in the lofty block, known as St. James's Court, on the Mound. On the floor below lived Mrs. Campbell, of Succoth (a Wallace of Elderslie), mother of the Lord President, Sir Ilay Campbell. One Sunday evening, Hume, who was on friendly habits with Mrs. Campbell's family, stepping down to take tea with her, found assembled a party of pious elderly ladies, met to converse on topics suitable for the Sabbath. David's unexpected entrance on such an occasion caused some dismay on the part of the landlady and her guests; but he sat down and chatted in so easy and appropriate a style that all embarrassment soon disappeared. On the removal of the tea-things, however, he gravely said to his hostess-" Well, Mrs. Campbell, where are the cards ?" "The cards, Mr. Hume! Surely you have forgot what day it is." "Not at all, madam," he replied; "you know we have often a quiet rubber on a Sunday evening." After vainly endeavouring to make him retract this calumny, she said to him, "Now, David, you'll just be pleased to

walk out of my house, for you're not fit company in it to-night." When young, Hume is said to have courted a well-born beauty of Edinburgh, and was rejected; but, records the historian of the house of Caldwell, several years afterwards, when he had obtained celebrity, it was hinted to him by a common friend that the lady had changed her mind. "So have I," dryly replied the philosopher. As became the best-natured man of his day, Hume quitted the world and his lady friends at peace. On taking leave of Mrs. Mure, with whom he had had many a critical rubber, he gave her as a parting gift a complete copy of his history. This tradition is circumstantially confirmed by the existence in the Caldwell library of his own last edition of the great work (8 vols. 8vo, 1773), inscribed on the title-page of the first volume, "From the Author." She thanked him, and added in her native dialect, which Mrs. Mure and the historian spoke in great purity, "O, David, that's a book you may weel be prood o'; but before ye dee, ye should burn a' your wee bookies!" To which, raising himself on his couch, he replied with some vehemence, half-offended, half in joke, "What for should I burn a' my wee bookies?" But feeling too weak for further discussion of the point, he shook her hand and bade her farewell. David Hume died August 25, 1776, fully five months after his friend, Baron Mure, who died the preceding 5th March.

When Baron Mure retired from Parliament to ascend the Exchequer Bench in 1761, he was succeeded in the representation of Renfrewshire, at the general election of that year, by Patrick Crawford of Auchinames. Three years afterwards Baron Mure was elected Lord Rector of Glasgow, an honour likewise conferred upon his son and successor, Colonel William of Caldwell (1793-4), friend of Sir John Mure, and by Anne, daughter of Sir J. Hunter Blair, Bart., of Dunskey, father of William Mure of Caldwell, D.C.L., another Lord Rector (1847-8), but wider known among students at home, on the Continent, and over Europe as one of the most profound scholars of the century, especially in all that concerned the language and literature of ancient Greece. It was intended to have noticed at some length the writings of this distinguished ornament of the house of Caldwell, the minuteness of his researches, and the extent to which they have been appreciated,

of his place and influence among Homeric scholars, and to give a glimpse, in addition, of the entirely new "setting" into which he fixed early legends, and of the clear light his researches have thrown on ancient customs and ancient habits of thought. But the space already occupied warns us at present from entering on such enchanted ground. One sentence more must suffice. Dr. Wm. Mure, who sat, as his grandfather had done, for Renfrewshire in Parliament, was succeeded on his death in April, 1860, by his eldest son, Lieut.-Colonel Wm. Mure, who twice successfully contested the county (1874, 1880), and died 9th November, 1880, leaving by his wife, Constance Elizabeth, third daughter of the first Lord Leconfield, one son, Wm. Mure (born 1870), the present youthful representative of his ancient and distinguished house.

Situate in parts of three parishes, Beith, Dunlop, and Neilston, the lands of Caldwell mark the boundary line of North Ayrshire and South Renfrewshire. The mansion house was commenced by Baron Mure in 1773 from designs by Robert Adam.

JOHN GLASSFORD OF DOUGALSTONE.

ALONG with William Cunningham of Lainshaw, James Ritchie of Busby, and Alexander Speirs of Elderslie, each to be noticed on another occasion, John Glassford of Dougalstone has always been reckoned as one of the merchant princes who planted the tree of commercial prosperity in Glasgow, and was happily spared not only to see it spread and flourish, but to enjoy an abundant store of its rich fruit. And yet neither his origin nor upbringing was in any way superior to that of hundreds of others who were then trying to cultivate such small trade as was carried on in the City. His father, James Glassford, was a worthy but not wealthy Magistrate and trader in Paisley, and, like many more in his walk of life, the best aid John ever received towards future greatness,

was a fair education at the ancient Grammar School of his native town. A peaceable man himself, and engaged in commercial pursuits which should always tend to peace, Glassford's life touches curiously enough upon some of the more threatening turbulent occurrences of his day. Born in 1715, a year when the peace of the country was seriously menaced by a Jacobite "rising" in favour of the exiled Stuarts, his earliest days corresponded with the period when Glasgow undertook to send into the field 500 men armed and provisioned, and also protected the City so skilfully by entrenchments, as to lead to a Royal recognition for the first time of the chief magistrate (Provost Bowman) as "My Lord." So much for the old Pretender. While one of Glassford's early Glasgow residences was the then superb mansion of Whitehill, north from Duke Street, he latterly, when still more prosperous, purchased the great fabric in Argyll Street, known as the Shawfield Mansion, which had been so seriously injured by the malt-tax rioters in 1725 as to warrant compensation money being paid almost equal in amount to what the owner, Daniel Campbell, paid for a large portion of the Island of Islay. Here, curiously enough, the old Pretender's son, Charles Edward, took up his quarters on entering Glasgow with his ragged, starved, retreating followers, that dismal day after Christmas, 1745.

Again, the revolt of the colonists in Virginia, and ultimate independence of the States, affected few merchants more seriously than John Glassford, whose tobacco trade, which this new 'rising" ultimately ruined, was amongst the most extensive in the world. Writing to a friend regarding his appearance

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before a committee of the House of Commons, selected to consider the involvements likely to arise through the resistance by colonists to pay claims made on them by British merchants, William Rouet of Belritero (now Auchindennan, Lochlomondside), records in February, 1766-"I heard Glassford say that his mere private debts in the colonies amounted to £50,000." In connection with an introduction to the great merchant, Smollett mentions in "Humphrey Clinker," the latest of his novels, that during the last war Glassford, whom he took to be one of the mightiest merchants in Europe, was said to have had

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