collected and condensed the fruits of accurate observation and long experience. Enriched by all the opportunities of information which he had enjoyed, and by all the discernment which he was capable of exerting, they were justly considered as his most finished production.

For a period of more than twenty years, during which he was justly held in the highest esteem as a lecturer at Edinburgh, it may readily be supposed that the extent of his practice corresponded to his reputation. In fact, he both received the emoluments and the highest honours that could be obtained. With extensive practice in Edinburgh, he had numerous consultations from other places. His opinion on medical subjects was daily requested by his most eminent contemporaries in every part of Britain. Foreigners of the first distinction, and celebrated physicians in the most remote parts of the British empire, courted an intercourse with him by letter. Besides private testimonies of esteem, many public marks of honour were conferred upon him both at home and abroad. 1752, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London; in 1761, he was appointed first physician to the king in Scotland; and in 1764, he was chosen president of the Royal College of Physicians at Edinburgh.

In

from the time that he had finished his academical course, and obtained a degree in medicine: but the delay of this publication was fully compensated by the matter which it contained, and the improved form under which it appeared.

The next subject which employed the pen of Dr Whytt was one of a nature more immediately practical. His Essay on the Virtues of Limewater and Soap in the Cure of the Stone, first made its appearance in a separate volume in 1752. Part of this second work had appeared several years before in the Edinburgh Medical Essays; but it was now presented to the world as a distinct publication, with many improvements and additions.

His third work, entitled, Physiological Essays, was first published in the year 1755. This treatise consisted of two parts: 1st, An Inquiry into the Causes which promote the Circulation of the Fluids in the very small Vessels of Animals, occasioned by Dr Haller's treatise on that subject. The former of these may be considered as an extension and farther illustration of the sentiments which he had already delivered in his Essay on the Vital Motions, while the latter was a subject of a controversial nature. In both he displayed that acuteness of genius and strength of judgment which appeared in his former writings.

From the time at which his Physiological Essays were published, several years were probably employed by our author in preparing for the press a larger and perhaps a more important work than any yet mentioned his Observations on the Nature,. Causes, and Cure of those Disorders which are commonly called Nervous, Hypochondriac, and Hysteric. This elaborate and useful work was published in the year 1765.

The last of Dr Whytt's writings

is entitled, Observations on the Dropsy in the Brain. This treatise did not appear till two years after his death, when all his other works were collected and published in one quarto volume, under the direction of his son and of his intimate friend the late Sir John Pringle.

Besides these five works, he wrote many other papers which appeared in different periodical publications, particularly in the Philosophical Transactions, the Medical Essays, the Medical Observations, and the Physical and Literary Essays.

At an early period of life, soon after he had settled as a medical practitioner in Edinburgh, he entered into the married state. His first wife was Miss Robertson, sister to General Robertson, governor of New York; by her he had two children, both of whom died in early infancy, and their mother did not long survive them. A few years after the death of his first wife, he married, as a second wife, Miss Balfour, sister to James Balfour, Esq. of Pilrig. By her he had fourteen children; but in these also he was in some respects unfortunate; for six of them only survived him, three sons and three daughters, and of the former, two are since dead. Although the feeling heart of Dr Whytt, amidst the distresses of his family, must have often suffered that uneasiness and anxiety which in such circumstances is the unavoidable consequence of parental and conjugal love, yet he enjoyed a large share of matrimonial felicity. But his course of happiness was terminated by the death of his wife, which happened in the year 1765; and it is not improbable that this event had some share in hastening his own death; for, in the beginning of the year 1765, his health was so far impaired, that he became incapable of his former exertions. A tedious

complication of chronical ailments, which chiefly appeared under the form of diabetes, was not to be resisted by all the medical skill which Edinburgh could afford, and at length terminated in death, on the 15th of April 1766, in the 52d year of his age.

Dr Whytt's eldest son Robert, who died at Naples 1776, in the 27th year of his age, had erected a monument in the private burying-ground of the family in Greyfriars church-yard, to the memory of his father and mother, on which was inscribed the following elegant epitaph:

&c

Remarks on the Prejudices entertained against the House of Stuart.

TO THE EDITOR.

SIR-The following was written as a note, at the end of the last volume of Hume's history. As it may tend to correct some mistakes prevalent on a subject, certainly very in teresting to Scotland, I should be happy to see it inserted in your Miscellany :

W

S.

HILE the House of Commons were stripping Charles of his illegal exercise of regal power, they were doing so likewise with respect to those rights and prerogatives which he was justly entitled to; these he held by the same tenure that they did theirs as members of parliament; which rights and prerogatives they had repeatedly sworn to maintain to him and his successors. And while thus employed, they were usurping and assuming to themselves privile ges unheard of till then, and contrary to Magna Charta, the then laws of the kingdom. Some of these privileges are continued to this day, and have been exerted with a vigour truly astonishing, especially in the case of what is called breach of privilege. There was no definition of this offence, which might also be extended to any length the house chose to vate it, and at the same time, was not cognisable in any court of law. Besides, it cannot be denied, that Charles had not carried these stretches of power so far as the Tudor family did, who are as much extolled by the English of this day, as the Stuart family are vilified. And he was driven to these irregularities by the commons, who, from the very first year of his reign, withheld from him those supplies which were necessary for carrying on the affairs of the nation;

add to this, that the commons engaged him in expensive wars, as far as we can judge, for the purpose of increasing his pecuniary embarrassments. The very monies raised by him in an objectionable manner, were applied to the exigencies of the state, not to his own private purposes; one of his greatest errors was, in making this application to the extent he did.

Had William been placed in his situation, he would have probably made a different application of this money. It is remarkable, that the tax-gatherers of that day were as much bent on reducing the amount of the receipts, as those of the present day are in increasing theirs; probably they did not, in Charles's time, get a per centage on the amount of their collections. By these manoeuvres, a subsidy, which was originally 700,000L. when the vaule of money was three times more than in 1642, was dwindled down in Charles'sreign to 50,000l. while the commons affected to consider a subsidy then, as equal to one in that of Elizabeth, a mockery of terms, which shows the spirit by which they were actuate d.

This interesting period should be studied by every British subject. Unfortunately, the prejudices entertained by Englishmen against the Stuart family, fomented, no doubt, by the endeavours of the descendants of those men who opposed Charles and his sons, do not allow them to give these princes, particularly Charles I. and II. any credit for those inestimable benefits they conferred on the English nation. To mention a few of them only, I shall state the abolition of the high commission and the star-chamber-the habeas corpus and navigation actsCharles I. never interfering in the elections of members of parliament their great attention to the improve. ment of the navy, the signals now in

use being invented by James II.-their. expending moneyalmost entirely forthe use of the public, at a time when it was withheld by the House of Commons, for the purpose of destroying the regal power and authority. That these princes committed great faults cannot be denied; but if it shall be considered how much they gave away in the course of 10 years, of those privileges exercised by their predecessors, some allowance should be made for their errors. The English drove Charles II. and his brother James into the arms of Roman Catholic princes, who be friended them in their adversity, yet the very people, who, after murdering their father drove them to form these connexions, made it a crime in them to have allowed the religion and the habits of their benefactors to make any impression on minds, then so young, and liable to the impressions of those about them.

It is to the oppression of the English, and the avarice and venality of the Scots, that the partiality of these two kings to the Roman Catholic religion was owing; for both Charles I. and his father James were extremely attached to the tenets and discipline of the Church of England; and this attachment was imputed to the former as a crime, both by the Scots nation, and the leading party in Eng land, the Puritans, particularly by the great body of the citizens of London, worse, if possible, than the others, and more dangerous from their local situation.

forgotten how much the English nation were benefited by the concessions, voluntary, in many instances, made by them in favour of their people, and their efforts to raise England in the scale of European nations.

The Observer. No. XXIII.

Consilium proprium. HOR. HERE is nothing by which, on

THE

many occasions, a man may render himself more useful to others, than by giving them advice. It often happens that persons have abundance, nay, even a superfluity, of every thing external, who yet are very defective' in regard to that good sense and knowledge of the proper mode of conducting themselves, from the want of which the possession of these advantages may in effect rather be detrimental to them than otherwise, and serve only to make their follies more glaring, and to give a wider range of destructive consequence to their errors and their vices. In these circumstances, the benefit is incalculable that may be derived from the friendly admonitions of a judicious counsellor, whose experience at once qualifies him to instruct, and gives him the authority necessary to render his instruction effectual. Under this happy influence, the wild sallies of irregular passion may be seasonably. checked; the fatal effects prevented of a blind temerity; and that regular and orderly conduct maintained which is both most respectable in itself, and of which, in every view, the results are most salutary and beneficial. An ́ office of so much importance for those in behalf of whom it is exercised, is naturally honourable to him who discharges it. The qualifications necessary to his doing so with advantage are of that kind which are least accidental or fortuitous. They are in every case the fruit of volun

tary