intimation of such a decision, is what I cannot comprehend. I am bold to say (and I should not deserve the honour of serving the king as his minister at the first court of Germany if I refrained from saying it loudly} that such concealment is disgraceful to me in the position in which the king has placed me, and likewise prejudicial to his service." The conclusion to this remonstrance was inevitable:—unless the injury was "immediately repaired by confidential information and instructions," he must tender his resignation of an office for which he was thus declared unfit. The integrity and decision of the justly offended statesman were too well known to be trifled with, and his appeal was followed with due acknowledgment.
The political career of Sir Robert Murray Keith was closed with the pacification of Austria, Russia, and Turkey, previous to the excesses of the French Revolution a pacification which his labours tended greatly to accomplish. He died at Hammersmith, near London, in 1795, in the sixty-fifth year of his age.
KEMP, George Meikle.—This architect, whose great work, the Scott Monument, one of the noblest ornaments of Edinburgh, has secured the admiration of
Europe, and the approbation of the highest judges of architectural excellence in
every country, was the son of a lowly shepherd, who pursued his occupation on
the southern slope of the Pentland Hills. Such a scenery, where nothing but
nature predominated, in the form of bare brown mountains and dashing waterfalls, was the least of all adapted to create a perception of the beautiful in art;
so that, had not Kemp been born an architect, he would probably have been to
the end of his days a shepherd or a mechanic. But at the age of ten years,
having been sent on a message to Roslin, only six miles distant, he then, and
for the first time, beheld the creative power of man, in the remains of the ancient
castle of Roslin, and above all, in its exquisite gem, the chapel. The delight
he experienced at this new revelation, and the earnestness with which he gazed
at each portion of the work, not only confirmed his choice of life, but abode
with him as vivid remembrances to the end of his days. The present, however,
had to be eared for in the meantime; and young Kemp, as soon as he was fit for work, became apprentice to a joiner near Eddlestone; and when his term of service had expired he went to Galashiels, where he was employed nearly a twelve-month in the workshop of a millwright. This last-mentioned locality brought him into the neighbourhood of those districts where some of the richest specimens of ancient cathedral architecture which our island contains are all but grouped together; and thus he had many an opportunity of inspecting the remains of the abbeys of Melrose, Dryburgh, Kelso, and Jedburgh. After having fully studied these inspiring lessons, until Kemp, the humble millwright, had become heart and soul an architect, he went to England, where he worked a short time as a joiner, but omitting no opportunity of pursuing his natural
vocation by studying the remains of Gothic architecture, A specimen of his zeal in this way was his walking fifty miles to York, to inspect its cathedral, and afterwards returning on foot. From Lancashire he removed to Glasgow, where he lived some time as a journeyman at his craft, and as a student within the massive shadows of the cathedral. Mr. Kemp came to Edinburgh in 1816 or 1817, and remained in the employment of the same party, as a joiner, until May, 1824, when he went to London. During this period he displayed the same bent of mind, as he was in the constant habit of making excursions into the country, even to remote districts, to examine some object of interest. A Roman camp, a fragment of Norman or early Gothic architecture, a battle-field,
