torians, do not possess sufficient individuality, and there are few or no Scottish portraits belonging to this early period. One other however we must advert to, it is No Pitscottie has transmitted to us the name of James V.'s fool, and we have little doubt that the admirable full length portrait, which is there given, No of one of those wearers of the motley, is none other than the individual Mr John Mackilrie, who has been snatched from oblivion by Pitscottie. If so, Mr Mackilrie must have been no common fool. He has a face of broad humour, with a look of sly cunning about it which marks him for a Scotch fool, and the expression with which he is drawn, his tongue half thrown into his cheek, with the tip insinuated between his teeth, and the laughing little eyes answering to the knavery of the mouth, is expressive of genuine though vulgar humour.
The borders which surrounded these different carvings are rich and beautiful; they are infinitely varied, and exhibit a profusion of fanciful and elegant mouldings, which it is wonderful to find, at this early era of our Scottish architecture.
MR EDITOR,
It would be foolish to expect that courts of criminal justice should ever be wholly free from the influence of those causes that so frequently introduce error into human deliberations, and so generally deny complete certainty to their results. Compose the court, select its members, and distribute their offices, with all possible wisdom; adopt, as the basis of procedure, the most liberal and approved general principles of jurisprudence; and regulate, with the utmost nicety, the degree in which official responsibility and the moral control of public opinion shall be admitted to purify, without agitating, the forensic atmosphere;—after all, every judicial determination must be the result of the opinions of fallible men, deduced from the information supplied by persons generally more fallible than themselves. The principle so generally enforced by wise jurists, and adopted by civilized states, that "it is better that ten guilty persons should escape, than that one innocent man should unjustly suffer," strongly recognises the danger of those errors to which criminal courts are liable, and indicates their best and wisest remedy. In every civilized country the danger of such error has been anxiously guarded against; and in almost every country of the world, I believe, the courts of justice have been more wisely and admirably constituted than any of the other municipal establishments. The judicial office was the only one which the ancients supposed to have been ever discharged with such excellence in this world, as to entitle a mortal to retain it in the world below, and to dispose there of the eternal, as he had done on earth of the temporal, interests and destinies of his fellow creatures. The Areopagus retained its purity amidst the corruption of the Athenian commonwealth; and the tribunals of Rome preserved among the people a sense of justice and moral principle which their military policy might have wholly subverted.
The superior care and prudence with which judicial establishments have been framed, I am far from considering disproportionate to their objects. The character and the happiness of a people are more powerfully and variously affected by the state of its courts of justice, than by the condition of any other of its municipal establishments. If life be not tenderly respected within the court, it will be but little respected by the people at large. If property be not strictly defended by law, it will neither be enjoyed nor improved; and if courts cease to command veneration and confidence, perjury and a universal dissolution of faith will infallibly prevail. "I would rather trust my soul to the mercy of God, than the prisoner to the justice of that court," is said to have been the apology of a witness who perjured himself on the trial of a state-prisoner in this country.
The peaceful administration of justice is the foundation of civil society—a truth very well illustrated by the noted observation of Hume, that all the great establishments of the British empire,—its armies, fleets, ministers, ambassadors, taxes, &c.—were ultimately good for nothing but for enabling the judges
