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he probably recollected as a somewhat disreputable
adventurer on the streets of Edinburgh. The British
government, finding that the hostility of this power-
ful person injured their interests, found it necessary�
if a mean action can ever be necessary�to recal the
Earl of Stair, notwithstanding their high sense of his
meritorious services. He returned to his native
country in 1720, and for the next twenty-two years
lived in retirement at his beautiful seat of Newliston,
near Edinburgh, where he is said to have planted
several groups of trees in a manner designed to re-
present the arrangement of the British troops at one
of Marlborongh's victories. He also turned his
mind to agriculture, a science then just beginning to
be a little understood in Scotland, and it is a well-
attested fact that he was the first in this country to
plant turnips and cabbages in the open fields. On
the dissolution of the Walpole administration in
1742, his lordship was called by the king from his
retirement, appointed field-marshal, and sent as
ambassador and plenipotentiary to Holland. He
was almost at the same time nominated to the govern-
ment of Minorca. In the same year he was sent to
take the supreme command of the army in Flanders,
which he held till the king himself arrived to put
himself at the head of the troops. His lordship
served under the king at the battle of Dettingen,
June 16, 1743; but, to use the indignant language of
Lord Westmoreland, in alluding to the case in par-
liament, he was reduced to the condition of a statue
with a truncheon in its hand, in consequence of the
preference shown by his majesty for the Hanoverian
officers. Finding himself at once in a highly re-
sponsible situation, and yet disabled to act as a free
agent, he resigned his command. France, taking
advantage of the distraction of the British councils
respecting the partiality of his majesty for Hanoverian
councils, next year threatened an invasion; and the
Earl of Stair came spontaneously forward, and, on
mere grounds of patriotism, offered to serve in any
station. He was now appointed commander-in-chief
of the forces in Great Britain. In the succeeding year
his brother-in-law, Sir James Campbell, being killed
at the battle of Fontenoy, the earl was appointed his
successor in the colonelcy of the Scots Greys, a
command he had been deprived of thirty-one years
before by Queen Anne. His last appointment was
to the command of the marine forces, in May, 1746.
His lordship died at Queensberry House, Edinburgh,
on the 9th of May, 1747, and was buried with public
honours in the church at Kirkliston. It is matter of
just surprise that no monument has ever been erected
to this most accomplished and patriotic nobleman�
neither by the public, which was so much indebted
to him, nor by his own family, which derives such
lustre from his common name. His lordship left a
widow without children; namely, Lady Eleanor
Campbell, grand-daughter of the Lord-chancellor
Loudoun, and who had previously been married to
the Viscount Primrose.
DALYELL, SIR JOHN GRAHAM, Bart. This
accomplished student and expositor of Scottish anti-
quarianism, like many who are devoted to that
science, was the descendant of an ancient family of
historical note, being the second son of Sir Robert,
the fourth baronet of Binns, Linlithgowshire, while
his mother, Elizabeth Graham, was of the family of
Gartmore, and consequently a descendant of the
"great marquis." He was born in 1777. Being
devoted to more peaceful pursuits than his renowned
ancestors, he studied for the Scottish bar, and was
admitted a member of the Faculty of Advocates in
1797. His favourite occupation, however, instead of
inclining to that of a barrister on the boards of the
Parliament House, was to keep aloof from the din of
wordy war, and take refuge among the crypts of the
Advocates' Library, absorbed in the study of that
valuable collection of MSS. connected with Scottish
history and antiquities for which the library is so dis-
tinguished. The fruit of this was soon apparent;
for two years had not elapsed after his enrolment as
an advocate when he produced his first work in
quarto, entitled Fragments of Scottish History, con-
taining, among other valuable matter, the "Diary of
Robert Birrell, burgess of Edinburgh, from 1532 to
1608." Little more than two years afterwards (in
1801), he published, in two volumes octavo, a Collec-
tion of Scottish Poems of the Sixteenth Century. Of
the labour he underwent in the task, and the dili-
gence with which he discharged it, an estimate may
be formed from the fact, that in preparing this collec-
tion he had examined about 700 volumes of manu-
scripts. None, however, but those who are conver-
sant with this kind of literature can be fully aware of
its difficulties, owing to the loose manner in which
the Scottish poems of this period were transcribed,
and the variety of readings, as well as amount of in-
terpolated nonsense with which they are disfigured.
For these two works he found a fitting publisher in
Mr. Archibald Constable, at that time an antiquarian,
and the friend of antiquarians, whose old-book shop
at the Cross was the favourite haunt of those distin-
guished men by whose publications he afterwards
became a prince in the realms of literature.
The next work of Mr. Graham Dalyell was a
Tract chiefly relative to Monastic Antiquities, with
some Account of a Recent Search for the Remains of the
Scottish Kings interred in the Abbey of Dunfermline.
This work, which appeared in 1809, was the first of
a series of four or five thin octavos, illustrative of our
Scottish ecclesiastical records, which he issued at
various intervals; and the chartularies which he
severally illustrated were those of the bishoprics of
Aberdeen and Murray, the abbey of Cambuskenneth,
the chapel-royal of Stirling, and the preceptory of
St. Anthony at Leith�the series having been carried
on till 1828. But this was not his only occupation,
as during the long interval he published an edition of
the Fournal of Richard Bannatyne, the secretary and
amanuensis of John Knox; and another, of the Scot-
tish Chronicle of Lindsay of Pitscottie. By way of
literary divertisement amidst these labours in our
national antiquities, Mr. Dalyell also published, in
1811, Some Account of an Ancient Manuscript of
Martia's Epigrams, which was illustrated by an en-
graving, and anecdotes explanatory of the manners
and customs of the Romans. Of these only thirty
copies were printed, six of them being on vellum.
A more important work than any of the preceding,
and requiring a larger amount of original thought as
well as wider research, was published by Mr. Dalyell
in 1834, under the title of An Essay on the Darker
Superstitions of Scotland. Such a title sufficiently inti-
mates not only the extent of reading it required among
books the most trying to the patience of a diligent
investigator, but also into those depths of time where
he was compelled to grope, in the midst of darkness
and doubt, while he traced our national superstitions
to their primitive homes in the forests of Germany,
upon the shores of Norway, or even the more dismal
and unknown wilds of Scythia. The last work which
he published was the Musical Memoirs of Scotland.
This appeared in 1850, when he was now in his
seventy-third year; but the vivacity of style in which
it is written, and the sprightly character of the anec-
dotes with which the subject is illustrated, give no
indications either of the feebleness or the apathy of