ed at Craigcrook, a lovely English-looking
spot, with wooded slopes and green glades, near Edinburgh; and Cockburn
had, since 1811, set up his rural gods at Bonally, near Colinton, just
under the Pentland Hills, and he wrote, 'Unless some avenging angel
shall expel me, I shall never leave that paradise.' And a paradise it
was. Beneath those rough, bare hills, broken here and there by a
trickling burn, like a silver thread on the brown sward, stands a Norman
tower, the addition, by Playfair's skill, to what was once a scarcely
habitable farmhouse. That tower contained Lord Cockburn's fine library,
also his ordinary sitting-rooms. There he read and wrote, and received
such society as will never meet again, there or elsewhere--amongst them
Sydney Smith. Beneath--around the tower--stretches a delicious garden,
composed of terraces, and laurel-hedged walks, and beds of flowers, that
bloomed freely in that sheltered spot. A bowling-green, shaded by one of
the few trees near the house, a sycamore, was the care of many an hour;
for to make the turf velvety, the sods were fetched from the hills
above--from 'yon hills,' as Lord Cockburn would have called them. And
this was for many years one of the rallying points of the best Scottish
society, and, as each autumn came round, of what the host called his
Carnival. Friends were summoned from the north and the south--'death no
apology.' High jinks within doors, excursions without. Every Edinburgh
man reveres the spot, hallowed by the remembrance of Lord Cockburn.
'Every thing except the two burns, he wrote, 'the few old trees, and the
mountains, are my own work. Human nature is incapable of enjoying more
happiness than has been my lot here. I have been too happy, and often
tremble in the anticipation that the cloud must come at last.' And come
it did; but found him not unprepared, although the burden that he had to
bear in after-life was heavy. In their enlarged and philosophic minds,
in their rapid transition from sense to nonsense, there was an affinity
in the characters of Sydney Smith and of Lord Cockburn which was not
carried out in any other point. Smith's conversation was wit--Lord
Cockburn's was eloquence.

From the festivities of Edinburgh Sydney Smith returned contentedly to
Foston-le-Clay, and to Bunch. Amongst other gifted visitors was Mrs.
Marcet. 'Come here, Bunch,' cries Sydney Smith one day; 'come and repeat
your crimes to Mrs. Marcet.' Then Bunch, grave as a judge, be