and esteem of society. Three or four young barristers were
particularly prominent, all men of uncommon talents. The chief was
Francis Jeffrey, who died in 1850, in the seventy-seventh year of his
age, after having passed through a most brilliant career as a
practising lawyer and judge, and one still more brilliant, as the
conductor, for twenty-seven years, of the celebrated _Edinburgh
Review_. Another was Henry Cockburn, who has now become the biographer
of his great associate. It was verily a remarkable knot of men in many
respects, but we think in none more than a heroic probity towards
their principles, which were, after all, of no extravagant character,
as was testified by their being permitted to triumph harmlessly in
1831-2. These men anticipated by forty years changes which were
ultimately patronised by the great majority of the nation. They all
throve professionally, but purely by the force of their talents and
high character. As there was not any precisely equivalent group of men
at any other bar in the United Kingdom, we think Scotland is entitled
to take some credit to herself for her Jeffreys, her Cranstons, her
Murrays, and her Cockburns: at least, she will not soon forget their
names.

Lord Jeffrey--his judicial designation in advanced life--was of
respectable, but not exalted parentage. After a careful education at
Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Oxford, he entered at the bar in 1793, when
not yet much more than twenty years of age. His father, being himself
a Tory, desired the young lawyer to be so too, seeing that it would be
favourable to his prospects; but he could not yield in this point to
paternal counsel. The consequence was, that this able man practised
for ten years without gaining more than L. 100 per annum. All this
time, he cultivated his mind diligently, and was silently training
himself for that literary career which he subsequently entered upon.