Memoirs of a banking house

IV INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.
high taste and refinement^ and the practice of all the active virtues.
One would need to have lived through the last fifty years in Scot-
land, to be fully aware of the excellences of various kinds which
made people speak with such veneration of Sir William Forbes,
and maintain a faith in his modest private bank such as is now
scarcely given to the joint-stock of large copartneries. It was but
participation in a universal feeling which caused Scott to thus
refer to Sir William, in addressing one of the cantos of Marmion
to the amiable banker's son-in-law and the poet's friend, Mr Skene
of Rubislaw ;
' Scarce had lamented Forbes paid
The tribute to his Minstrel's shade,
The tale of friendship scarce was told.
Ere the narrator's heart was cold —
Far may we search before we find
A heart so manly and so kind !
But not around his honoured urn
Shall friends alone and kindred mourn ;
The thousand eyes his care had diied,
Pour at his name a bitter tide ;
And frequent falls the grateful dew.
For benefits the world ne'er knew.
If mortal charity dare claim
The Almighty's attributed name,
Inscribe above his mouldering clay,
" The widow's shield, the orphan's stay."
Nor, though it wake thy sorrow, deem
My verse mtrudes on this sad theme ; ;
For sacred was the pen that wrote,
" Thy father's friend forget thou not."
And grateful title may I plead
For many a kindly word and deed,
To bring my tribute to his grave : —
'Tis little— but 'tis all I have.'
And perhaps even a more expressive testimony is given to the
character of Sir William by James Boswell, when he makes the
following statement in his Tour to the Hebrides: 'Mr Scott came
to breakfast, at which I introduced to Dr Johnson and him my
friend Sir William Forbes, now of Pitsligo, a man of whom too
much good cannot be said ; Avho, with distinguished abilities and
application in his profession of a banker, is at once a good com-