words. After the death of the younger brother, it was determined to expose the works belonging to the academy to public sale. For this purpose Robert, accompanied by a confidential workman, went to London about the month of April, 1776. Contrary to the advice of the auctioneer, and at a period when the market was glutted by yearly importations of pictures from Paris, his collection was sold off,—and, as the reader may have anticipated, greatly under their supposed value. Irritated at the failure of this his last hope, arid with a constitution exhausted by calamities, he left London and reached Edinburgh on his way homeward. On the morning on which he intended setting out for Glasgow he expired almost instantaneously, in the 69th year of his age.
Robert Foulis was twice married. From his second marriage with a daughter of Mr Boutcher, a seedsman in Edinburgh, was descended the late Andrew Foulis, who died at Edinburgh, in great poverty, in 1829. He had, besides, by his first marriage with Elizabeth Moor, a sister of the celebrated Grecian, five daughters; all of whom are now dead.
Of the Scottish works produced at the Foulis press the greater number were ballads, some of them original, and all of them since published in the collections of bishop Percy, Ritson, Cromek, &c. The "Memorials and Letters relating to the History of Britain" in the reigns of James I. and Charles I., published by Lord Hailes, principally from the Denmylne MSS. in the Advocates' Library, were also published at Glasgow. But the greatest service that they could have performed for Scottish history, would have been the publication of Calderwood's MS. history. This they undoubtedly had in view. It appears from the records of the university of Glasgow that they got permission to borrow their MS.[1] in September, 1768. They did not, however, accomplish their patriotic purpose, and this valuable work still remains accessible only to the historian and the antiquary. Let us hope that the period is not far distant, when some of the clubs of the present day shall immortalize themselves by laying it before the public.[2]
FRASER, Simon, twelfth lord Lovat, a person too remarkable in history to be overlooked in this work, though his want of public or private virtue might otherwise have dictated his exclusion, was the second son of Thomas Fraser of Beaufort, by Sybilla Macleod, daughter of the laird of Macleod, and was born at Beaufort, near Inverness, in the year 1667. Of his early years we have no very distinct account. He has himself asserted that, at the age of thirteen, he was imprisoned for his exertions in the royal cause, though we do not well see how this could happen. That his elder brother, however, was in the insurrection of the viscount Dundee, and himself, after the death of Dundee, in that under general Buchan, is certain. After all the pains his lordship has been at to set forth his extreme zeal for the Stuarts, nothing can be more evident than that, from his earliest days, the sole purpose of his life was to promote his own power by all feasible means, this end being the only object of his solicitude. Agreeably to this view of his character, we find him in the year 1694, while yet a student at the university of Aberdeen, accepting of a commission in the regiment of lord Murray, afterwards earl of Tullibardine. This commission had been procured for him by his cousin, Hugh lord Lovat, who was brother-in-law to lord Murray, with the express view of bringing him "forward most advantageously in the world;" and though he professed to have scruples in going against the interest of king James, these were all laid asleep by an assurance, on the part of lord Murray, that the regiment, though ostensibly
