and bread, and lettuces, with a bowl of bishop (mulled port), were the modest supper. Cricket was not what it is now: there was no University match. Runs across country, with leaping poles, were a common amusement. Hamilton once rigged up a perfectly normal and "supraliminal" ghost, visible to the least sensitive, with a skull and a sheet. Studious men read very widely and freely, especially in Aristotle and Greek philosophy at large. Lockhart also studied English, the Elizabethans in particular, Italian, French, German, and Spanish. In fact, he qualified himself for the profession of letters in a manner now very unusual. His knowledge was already such as befits a critic. Mr. Gleig says, on the authority of Mr. Lawrence Lockhart-but the scantiness of Lockhart's correspondence does not illustrate the subject-that he wished to join the Spanish in their struggle against the French. He even offered to take Anglican orders, and go out as a chaplain, if his father would consent. But Dr. Lockhart had a son in the army already, and refused his permission. Lockhart's distaste for arms was confined to those of the flesh, which are used at town and gown rows. The following letter to his mother displays no martial sympathy for Spain, or for Mr. Gleig, who did take up arms in the Iberian cause :— LETTERS TO MRS. LOCKHART [Postmark, Dec. 3, 1812.] 49 "MY DEAR MOTHER,-. My life goes on in the old way to which I am now quite accustomed, and in which I believe I may be as happy as I am capable of being anywhere, unless when certain homeward-formed recollections obtrude on the privacy. My summer sojourn here has, I hope, been very useful to me. I have acquired the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese languages; the two former so as to read with the utmost ease, and the last more slightly, only from the want of books; and I am now busily engaged in Greek and Latin for my examination. I have already read everything which I mean to take up, but must do this often before I venture. . . . Who is likely to succeed Gleig here? That gentleman has embarked into the military life, by grasping at a pair of colours in the 3rd garrison battalion, stationed at the Cove of Cork.-Believe me, as ever, your affectionate dutiful son, "Balliol, Nov. 28." Here is a rather earlier epistle : “J. G. L. [Postmark, Oxford, Oct. 3] 1812. "MY DEAREST MOTHER,-I would have been unwilling to delay writing to some of you so long, but have put off day by day in the expectation of letters night, and Jenkyns has already made his appearance. I have no pleasure in the prospect, for excepting one or two friends, for whom I have every reason to entertain the most sincere affection, few places contain so few desirable to me as Balliol. At present we have nothing here but electioneering in all its glories-you are happily spared all such spectacles in the North. A namesake of ours, a glib lawyer-a silly country gentleman, who is just about to complete his folly by a hopeless effort—a young noble in the Marlborough interest, and a worthy Burdettite, summoned hither by the suffrages of a few blackguards, are the four candidates, and among them they continue at least to din our ears day and night with drums and fifes, and drunken halloos. "I was not a little astonished to see advertised, in the end of the last Edinburgh Review, 'Documents in favour of the Rev. D. D., junr., St. Cuthbert's, as touching the late election for a Hebrew Professor in Edinburgh.' Mr. Murray, who has succeeded, I have long heard mentioned as absolutely one of the very first Oriental scholars in Europe. Could the fat descendant of the be so presuming as to stand against such a man on the strength of a little ill-digested Greek and Latin, and about as much Hebrew, I daresay, as his Aunty Betty? O vanity! If I might quote Latin to you, Ne sutor, &c. Let Mr. Davy stick to the West Kirk, and the auld wifies, and the Religious |