free in Scotland until 1780, was indeed beginning to be a
luxury; it was no longer the ordinary beverage, as it was when as
Mackenzie, the author of the 'Man of Feeling,' described--it used, upon
the arrival of a cargo, to be sent through the town on a cart with a
horse before it, so that every one might have a sample, by carrying a
jug to be filled for sixpence: still even at the end of the eighteenth
century it was in frequent use. Whisky toddy and plotty (red wine mulled
with spices) came into the supper-room in ancient flagons or _stoups_
after a lengthy repast of broiled chickens, roasted moorfowl, pickled
mussels, flummery, and numerous other good things had been discussed by
a party who ate as if they had not dined that day. 'We will eat,' Lord
Cockburn used to say after a long walk, 'a profligate supper,'--a supper
without regard to discretion, or digestion; and he usually kept his
word.

In Edinburgh, Sydney Smith formed the intimate acquaintance of Lord
Jeffrey, and that acquaintance ripened into a friendship only closed by
death. The friendship of worthy, sensible men he looked upon as one of
the greatest pleasures in life.

The 'old suns,' Lord Cockburn tells us, 'were setting when the band of
great thinkers and great writers who afterwards concocted the "Edinburgh
Review," were rising into celebrity.' Principal Robertson, the
historian, had departed this life in 1793, a kindly old man. With
beaming eyes underneath his frizzed and curled wig, and a trumpet tied
with a black ribbon to the button-hole of his coat, for he was deaf,
this most excellent of writers showed how he could be also the most
zealous of diners. Old Adam Ferguson, the historian of Rome, had 'set,'
also: one of the finest specimens of humanity had gone from among his
people in him. Old people, not thirty years ago, delighted to tell you
how 'Adam,' when chaplain to the Black Watch, that glorious 42nd,
refused to retire to his proper place, the rear, during an action, but
persisted in being engaged in front. He was also gone; and Dugald
Stewart filled his vacant place in the professorship of moral
philosophy. Dr. Henry, the historian, was also at rest; after a long
laborious life, and the compilation of a dull, though admirable History
of England, the design of which, in making a chapter on arts, manners,
and literature separate from the narrative, appears to have suggested to
Macaulay his inimitable disquisition on the same topics. Dr. Hen