by devoting them to screen villany from justice, or to the support of any cause which he did not conscientiously approve. His speech for the defendant at the trial of a case of adultery in the court of king's bench, may be considered as an exception to this remark. It must not be forgotten that it was delivered in behalf of a gentleman of high family who had been attached to a young lady, his equal in years and birth, but was prevented from marrying her by the sordid interference of her relatives, who induced or rather constrained her to an alliance with a nobler house. The marriage was, as might have been anticipated, a most unhappy one, and the original attachment seems never to have been replaced by any other, and ultimately produced the elopement which occasioned the action. Mr Erskine does not affect to palliate the crime of seduction ; on the contrary, he dwells at length on the miserable consequences occasioned by this crime ; but, after having adverted with exquisite delicacy to the sacrifice of affection and enjoyment which had been made in this case, he
charges the plaintiff with being the original seducer of a woman, whose affections he knew to be irretrievably bestowed upon and pledged to another.
In 1807, Mr Erskine was exalted to the peerage by the title of lord Erskine of Restormal castle, in Cornwall, and accepted of the seals as lord high chancellor; but resigned them on the dissolution of the short lived administration of that period, and retired upon a pension of £4000 per annum. Prom that time to the period of his death, his lordship steadily devoted himself to his duties in parliament, and never ceased to support, in his high station, those measures and principles which he had advocated in his younger years. It is deeply to be regretted, that, by an unhappy second marriage and some eccentricities of conduct, very incompatible with his years and honours, this nobleman should have at once embittered the declining years of his own life, and tarnished that high and unsullied character which he had formerly borne in public estimation. His death was produced by an inflammation of the chest, with which he was seized while on the voyage betwixt London and Edinburgh. He was landed at Scarborough, and proceeded to Scotland by short stages, but died on the 17th of November, 1823, at Ammondell house. Mr Erskine's peculiar sphere seems to have been oratorical advocacy; his appearance as a senator never equalled that which he made at the bar. Nor is he entitled, as a political writer, to much distinction. His pamphlet, entitled "A View of the Causes and Consequences of the War with France," which he published in support of Mr Fox's principles, indeed, ran through forty-eight editions; but owed its unprecedented sale more to the spirit of the times and the celebrity of its author's name, than to its own intrinsic merit. The preface to Mr Fox's collected speeches was also written by him, as well as a singular political romance, entitled "Armaba," and some spirited pamphlets in support of the Greek cause.
By his first wife, lord Erskine had three sons and five daughters. The eldest of his sons, David Montague, now lord Erskine, was for some time member plenipotentiary to the United States, and afterwards president at the court of Wirtemberg.
F
FALCONER, William, author of "The Shipwreck, a poem," was born in Edinburgh about the year 1730. His father was a barber and wig-maker, in a
