to £600 a-year was attached. In this year likewise, the office of Secretary of State for Scotland being abolished, the correspondence regarding the civil improvements began to be carried on by Mr. Forbes. This was continued for several years, in a manner highly creditable to his enlightened understanding; and which evinced the most ardent patriotism, joined to a very correct judgement, and deep research into, and knowledge of, the real interest of his country.

Scotland, indeed, required at this period the assistance of men of the first talents and public spirit, to reanimate her agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, which had sunk,. at the close of the 17th century, to the lowest ebb. The decline of these had rendered her,. in all probability, more impoverished and less productive than during the 12th century; for those new arts, which could only afford the means of gratifying the luxury of a few individuals of the highest rank, diffused little life or comfort throughout the kingdom; but rather tended, by withdrawing its capital to distant markets, to add to the extent of national misery. For 150 years the kingdom had been torn by civil war and faction, or borne down by an indifferent and tyrannical government. The principles promulgated by the triumphant sectarians tended to alienate the mind from the care of the concerns of this life, as sinful, and as interfering with the providence of the Deity. The new clergy, notwithstanding the superior learning and talents of a few who led on the first attacks against the dominion of Rome, were not generally more learned, and were confessedly less versed in the arts of life, than their prede cessors. The parliament, which during the reigns of the first five James's incessantly enacted measures in favour of agriculture, and for the benefit of the towns, almost entirely ceased to consider these objects as worthy of an attention which, it was pretended, a better world ought to occupy; while dissimulation, cautious timidity, and short-sighted selfishness, seemed to banish the antient national character. For 100 years the kingdom, by losing the presence of its sovereign, had lost that diffusion of riches, which a court, an opulent nobility, and a numerous gentry, occasioned during the happier period of its history. The culture of much of the arable land had been entirely abandoned; and what was still cultivated, either from negligence or ignorance, produced little; a scarcity of the means of life was always felt, and the terrible scourge of famine frequently spread horror and even death through the country. The cathedrals, the monasteries, and the palaces of the clergy, had long been in ruins ;, and the towns and the seats of the great landholders were falling, fast into decay; while the kingdom possessed neither the inclination nor the means of repairing the ravages of time, neglect, and violence.

Such is a short sketch of the state to which the causes mentioned, and some others, had reduced Scotland. The civil wars of York and Lancaster had perhaps, in some degree,

degree, left England in a similar state of desolation"; but her soil and climate, and the genius of her inhabitants, being more favourable, her recovery was more easily effected.

To restore a country reduced to such a state of poverty was impracticable, without waiting for the gradual effects of time; but even to sow the seeds of future prosperity was a work of labour, requiring enlightened views, nice discrimination, disinterestedness, and patience. The habits hostile to labour of a very obstinate people were only to be overcome by their experience of the sweets of industry; and even these, when seen, were often ineffectual, because the perverted principles of religion were called in to the aid of idleness. But even the wages of industry were difficult to be procured; there was little credit enjoyed in the kingdom; and those who had the means of raising money, wanted the knowledge and the desire of enlarging their fortunes by laying out their capitals on improvements, the advantages of which could not be immediate, and might be chimerical. This was the case with the landholders; but with those engaged, or who might be engaged, in commerce and manufactures the case was still more difficult: poverty was almost universal, and the want of trust in a proper return for industry and outlay was sufficient to deter the few who had the means of adventuring from risking their money. The recent event of Darien hung heavy upon the spirit of speculation; and it was a task of no easy accomplishment to draw the knowledge of arts and manufactures from those persons in other countries, who were liberally supported by the exercise of their skill or exclusive invention.

We are far from asserting, that every thing which has since rendered Scotland the wonder of every visitor; that what has covered her coasts with commerce, her hills with woods, her vallies with unrivalled cultivation, and reared her cities to a degree of splendour beyond the plans or ideas of the most visionary ;-derived foundations alone from the labour of Mr. Forbes; but it is not too much to say, that the fisheries, almost every manufacture (particularly that of linen), the circulation of money, the agriculture, and opening of the country by roads, all derived their first great stimulus from his incessant exertions; so that (to use the expression of the President Dalrymple, when writing to him on the subject of the Bank) he might call them " his own bairns." Of late years, the patronising of such affairs has become little

23 Land had fallen so much in value at the end of these wars, that an historian of the time says, that estates of £ico. a-year were given to adventurers by way of recompence, who would have preferred £200. in ready money.

24 “When it is in agitation to form an estimate of the public power, the man of taste visits the palaces of the prince, his ports, his troops, his arsenals, and his cities; the true politician surveys the farms, and enters the cottage of the labourer: the first sees what has been effected, the second what it is possible to effect." ROUSSEAU.

more

more than an occasion for festivity, because it now requires only the labour of putting into motion those means which have been already acquired.

Mr. Forbes's plan of life was now materially changed; his time being divided between his duties in London and Edinburgh, and his retreat at Bunchrew, a small estate belonging to his brother in the district of Aird, within three miles of Inverness. His predilection for the country was, indeed, always observable: when his duty called him to England, he usually passed much of his time at Hampstead; and he, for many years, occupied a country seat near Edinburgh, called Stoneyhill," which commanded an extensive view over the firth of Forth and the coast of Fife, and to which he retreated whenever the state of his business would permit him.

The year 1725 was remarkable for the commotions generally excited throughout Scotland by the introduction of the malt tax, which was finally enforced chiefly through the management of Mr. Forbes. These particularly bore a serious aspect in Glasgow, to which city a very large body of troops was sent; for it was justly suspected in this case, as in every other of civil disturbance at this period, that a spirit of Jacobitism was the chief stimulus to revolt 26. Mr. Forbes accompanied his friend General Wade and the troops to Glasgow; and though the insurrection had risen to a great height, and was supported by persons far above the humbler walks of life, it was soon suppressed; the chief instigators, through the activity of Mr. Forbes,. were arrested, and even the magistrates sent to Edinburgh. In paying him this tribute, we give no more than he received at the time from the voice of his country, and has received since from the impartial page of history.

During the 15 years that Mr. Forbes attended the House of Commons, his time must have been passed very pleasantly both in Edinburgh and London. His manners were extremely agreeable, his disposition was cheerful and convivial, and his opportunities of enjoying the society of those most respected for worth and literature were frequent. His uncle, Sir David Forbes, of Newhall, near Edinburgh, lived close to the estate rendered celebrated as the scene of The Gentle Shepherd; and a considerable part of his time was spent at the house of this gentleman, where, it is said, Mr. Ramsay composed and first recited his play before several friends, of whom the Lord Advocate was one. When in London, his attendance in the House of Commons, and at the bar of the House of Lords (where his practice was great), introduced him to the acquaintance of the most eminent persons; and there are few of the viri laudati of Pope with whom he

25 Stoneyhill was the property of the famous Colonel Charteris. Mr. Forbes most ably exerted himself in his behalf in the trial for a rape; and from his gratitude obtained the use of Stoneyhill, with some parks around the house, gratis, for life. To this place he afterwards used to retire from Saturday noon until Monday morning; happy, with one or two companions, to avoid the opes fumum strepitumque Romæ. He was left guardian to Colonel Charteris's heir.

26 The highlanders were disarmed by act of parliament in this year.

was not intimate. He likewise reckoned among his clients two of the most remarkable of those whom that poet has lashed in his satirical writings; viz. Charteris and Timon (the Duke of Chandos); and it may be mentioned as honourable to him, that after his situation in Scotland withdrew him from the company of his English acquaintances, their expressions of regret at the loss of his society were such as shewed that the heart dictated, and that empty compliment had no share in, their praise.

During his residence in London, he had the satisfaction of befriending his countryman Thomson, who was then in great poverty and without a patron, and whom he had previously known by some of his writings in Scotland. The recommendations which the poet received from him to his numerous friends were of the greatest use, and emboldened him to publish his Winter in 1726; which poem soon introduced him to the acquaintance and patronage of many persons of rank and literary eminence. In 1727 his Summer, and in 1728 his Spring, extended his reputation; and his Autumn, which came out in 1730, with a complete edition of his works, raised his name to its highest lustre; for he never published any thing afterwards equal to his Seasons. In his Autumn he takes an opportunity, after his beautiful eulogium on the Duke of Argyll, to shew his gratitude to Mr. Forbes in a manner very judicious, and which must have been the more agreeable because there is nothing overstrained in the compliment.

Thee, Forbes, too, whom every worth attends,
As truth sincere, as weeping friendship kind;
Thee, truly generous, and in silence great 27,
Thy country feels thro' her reviving arts,
Plann'd by thy wisdom, by thy soul inform'd;
And seldom has she known a friend like thee 28.

27 The latter part of this line seems, however, but an aukward compliment to a real orator, such as Mr. Forbes.

28 Mr. Thomson was not the only poet patronized by Mr. Forbes. He had himself a strong propensity towards poetry at every period; and wrote verses, at least of the highest standard of what are termed vers de société, at a very juvenile time of life. Those who possess real genius always feel, at the period when the sensual inclinations begin to gain force, a kind of soaring of the soul, as if it was emulous to keep pace with or to outstrip the impulse of the grosser passions: this gives birth to a thousand delightful deliriums and ecstatic hankerings after an undefinable excellence and happiness; a thousand noble and generous, lively, tender, melancholy, and aspiring thoughts, which Pope compares to those beautiful colours that sometimes appear to the eyes when shut, and which, once fled, cannot be recalled. Love and the muse may generally receive the first homage of genius of whatever kind; but these feelings are the real blossoms of true genius, even when those make but a transient impression: this elysium of the mind can only be felt by the favoured few, and never adequately described; each of these may exclaim at the time, because they feel it,

"Creation's heir, the world-the world is mine."

"Ask not what genius is; if you have it, it will itself tell you; if you have it not, explanation will be vain.". -ROUSSEAU.

During his attendance in Parliament, Mr. Forbes generally supported the measures of Sir Robert Walpole; a minister whose character has, by his opponents, been stigmatised as corrupt to a degree formerly unknown in England. The eloquence of a Pitt might excite the resentment of a senate against the vices which he had the power either to create to the imagination in all their deformity, or to exaggerate by the splendour of his diction 29. We may be certain, however, that his corrupt practices must have been chiefly directed to persons in the higher orders of life, and could not have been generally successful, without supposing a depravity so general as greatly to palliate the guilt of the minister: and when he retired to his woods, and drew comfort from the reflection that the beeches did not flatter, he had probably more cause for his disgust at the baseness of mankind, than the nation had reason in affixing so many imputations to his character. If we take it from Pope, we cannot but esteem the amiability of one of whom he says, and of whom Mr. Forbes might likewise have said

Seen him I have, but in his happier hour
Of social pleasure, ill exchang'd for power!
Seen him, uncumber'd by the venal tribe,

Smile without art, and win without a bribe 3o,

His son (the Earl of Orford), in drawing the character of his father, does not flatter when he calls him the mildest, most forgiving, and best natured of men. The nation owed him gratitude for establishing the House of Hanover on the throne; for 20 years of peace and internal tranquillity and prosperity; and for the confirmation of liberty by the exclusion of the Stuart race; under which, if at all tolerated, it is almost certain that it must have been sickly, mutable, and unproductive of any benefit. A long course of opposition at last deprived him of his influence in the House of Commons; and in 1741 he resigned his place, harassed by "clamours for liberty of which (Dr. Johnson says) no man felt the want, and with care for liberty which was not in danger." He died 40,000 pounds in debt, and had not fortune sufficient to leave his younger children much above indigence.

29 Mr. H. Walpole (who, it may be stated, was a client of Mr. Forbes) drew the following retort from Mr. Pitt, the sting of which was meant for Sir Robert Walpole: it is admirable for its ready eloquence, though Sir Robert was not the wretch described:-" I will not undertake to determine, whether youth can justly be imputed to any man as a reproach; but the wretch who, after having seen the consequences of repeated errors, continues still to blunder, and whose age has only added obstinacy to stupidity, is surely the object of either abhorrence or contempt, and deserves not that his grey head should secure him from insult much more is he to be abhorred, who, as he has advanced in age, has receded from virtue, and becomes more wicked with less temptations; who prostitutes himself for money which he cannot enjoy, and spends the remains of his life in the ruin of his country."

30 A vast sum of money was known to have been expended by Sir Robert upon writers, for their praises and defences of his administration; these have all sunk into oblivion, while Pope's lines, which probably cost him or the nation nothing, remain.