Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1887 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

Some Portraits by Raeburn 2 1 7
laymen as a Rembrandt ; and close by, you
saw the white head of John Clerk, of Eldin,
that country gentleman who, playing with
pieces of cork on his own dining-table, in-
vented modern naval warfare. There was
that portrait of Neil Gow, to sit for which
the old fiddler walked daily through the
streets of Edinburgh arm in arm with the
Duke of Athole. There was good Harry
Erskine, with his satirical nose and upper lip,
and his mouth just open for a witticism to
pop out ; Hutton the geologist, in quakerish
raiment, and looking altogether trim and
narrow, and as if he cared more about fossils
than young ladies ; full-blown John Robieson,
in hyperbolical red dressing-gown, and, every
inch of him, a fine old man of the world ;
Constable the publisher, upright beside a
table, and bearing a corporation with com-
mercial dignity ; Lord Bannatyne hearing a
cause, if ever anybody heard a cause since
the world began ; Lord Newton just awakened
from clandestine slumber on the bench ; and
the second President Dundas, with every