prospect that the youth, attracted thither from so many quarters of the world, will at last receive the expected instruction, in apartments properly adapted for the purpose. Then a commodious receptacle will also be provided for the books, and a new arrangement of them be devised, which may render them of still greater utility than they are at present; and still better calculated to promote the renown of the university, of which they form so im portant a part. "Mr. Gordon continued to perform his duty in the library faithfully and punctually, till within these few years, when his health began to decline; which obliged him to be sometimes absent on the public days. On those occasions Mr. Dalzel supplied his place, and endeavoured to alleviate his situation as much as possible in every respect. But he could not suffer to see a professor whom he so much respected, in addition to his own duty, submitting to do also every part of the drudgery incident to the keeping of the library; and he was evidently dejected and unhappy. They therefore agreed to unite their endeavours in training a young assistant, who might in a great measure relieve them both. But the circulation of books had of late increased so much, that they were convinced that two active persons of that description, instead of one, would soon become necessary for performing the duty well. In the mean time, when they had succeeded in the initiation of one deserving young man into the business, who was soon able to perform a considerable part of the duty, Mr. Gordon, feeling his health still on the decline, confined him self for some months to his chamber, and too much indulged a disposition for solitude; refusing the advice of a physician, though all the medical professors in the university would, upon an hint given, have attended him with the greatest readiness: but on this subject he was obstinate to the last, and insisted that no physician could be of the smallest benefit to him. The regimen he observed, and the habit of retirement he continued to indulge, were not calculated to promote the restoration of his health. He died on the last day but one of the year 1900, in the 624 of his age. year "He was a man of the strictest probity; and practised frugality as the only mode of arriving at a situation of independence, by which he might be enabled to live in his own way, and according to his own peculiar humour. After his decease, his private affairs were found to be arranged with the same accuracy and distinctness, which had marked his transactions in the library. The emolument which could be afforded for all the toil he underwent there was so extremely small, that unless he had taken pleasure in the exercise of the duty, it could not be supposed that he would have continued long to perform it. But he evidently took delight in that, which, to most other men, would have been intolerable drudgery; he seemed fond of spending much of his time among books, and of possessing the power of obliging men of letters, as well as students, in the prosecution of their several studies; and, being entirely free from ambition, he would have willingly contented himself with the humble but useful station of assistant librarian, as. a sole and ultimate object. But as what he earned in this way was quite inadequate to his decent maintenance, he found it necessary to seek seck for an addition to his income, by teaching, privately, the Latin and Greek languages. "For some years after he undertook his charge in the library, he resided in the family of the late worthy Mr. Alexander Tait, clerk of session, as private tutor to his sons; and had a chief hand in the education of the late Mr. William Tait, advocate and member of parliament. Mr. Tait the father, always treated him with great liberality and kindness; and Mr. Gordon in his turn, was much attached to the family, and took a great interest in Mr. William Tait's success in life. This young gentleman possessed excellent abilities for the bar, and became a very fluent and eloquent pleader; and Mr. Gordon was, for some time, much gratified in ob. serving his pupil's success. On one occasion, he even contributed con siderable assistance in enabling him to make a most brilliant appearance at the bar, in a cause respecting literary property, in which the pleader surprised the court, by a great display of etymological erudition. At last a suspicion of a want of attention on the part of Mr. Tait, and afterwards his premature death, proved a great source of affliction to Mr. Gordon. So severe a trial, seemed at times to affect his intellectual faculties; and, it was observed, that his constitution never completely recovered from the shock. "After he quitted the family of Mr. Tait's father, he had devoted many of his spare hours to the pri-vate instruction of young gentlemen attending the high school, or the university; and he found much employment in bringing forward students of physic, whose previous education had been neglected, in a knowledge of Latin and Greek, with a view to their taking the doc tor's degree. Some of these he used to assist in composing their La tin inaugural dissertations; though he did not set up for a professed adept in this line, a character well known among the medical students, by the cant appellation of Grinder. "He had a familiar acquaintance with the Latin classics; and, in particular, he had studied with great care the writings of Celsus, which enabled him to be of singular use to his medical scholars. To many students he taught also the principles of Greek, and assisted them privately in preparing their tasks for the Greek classes in the university. As a private teacher, he showed the same diligence, accu racy and fidelity, which distinguish ed him as keeper of the library. "Augmented thus, as his income was, from the rewards of private teaching, still it could not be great; but having no family, and choosing to remain a bachelor, his household expense must have been extremely small. His emo luments as assistant-librarian never exceeded 351. per annum; for near twenty years they were not more than 15. The Senatus Academicus, sensible of his great merit, al lowed him 10. in addition; and on professor Dalzel's becoming li brarian he began to receive in all 357. annually. It was chiefly then from his earnings as a teacher, that he raised himself to a state of inde pendence, and indeed opulence, to a man who had so few wants as Mr. Gordon. Having once secured a competency, and to spare, his habits of frugality did not restrain him from the exercise of generosity; and he has been frequently known to relieve, with the utmost readi ness, the wants of the indigent. "A taste "A taste for books was his chief indulgence; and of those he had gradually provided a select collection, chiefly classical. His reading was very extensive; but he has left no specimens of original composition, an exercise at which he seldom seems to have aimed. What he wrote down, consisted of striking passages, selected from various authors, which he transcribed into volumes, without any attention to arrangement; and therefore the title he gave them was Chaos. The blank leaves of most of his books he filled with such anecdotes concerning their authors, some of them extremely curious, as he had gleaned in the course of his reading. In the Glasgow Horace, commonly ́stiled immaculate, he detected three errors; a discovery by which he was much amused, and which furnished him with one topic for a vein of sarcastic humour, which, in the hours of festivity, he sometimes used to indulge. But his Gesner's Thesaurus remains the most conspicuous proof of his industry, its blank leaves being completely covered with an account of the tenses of the Latin verb from Schellerus; and the margins of almost every page of the book crowded with additional examples and illustrations. "To three of his particular friends, professor Dalzel, for whom he en tertained a great respect and esteem; the reverend Andrew Johnston, minister of Salton, in whose education, and fortune in life, he had taken an early interest; and Mr. William Whyte, writer in Edinburgh, to whom he considered himself as under great obligations; he disponed or conveyed, by his will, all the effects which he possessed at the time of his death, burdened with a life-annuity to his only sister, Aitken, and her hus band, Nicol Munro, a reputable shoemaker; together with several other private legacies, of which the detail cannot excite any interest. His public bequests were 500l. to the royal infirmary of Edinburgh; the reversion of a tenement of houses of nearly the same value, to the poor of the parish of St. Cuthbert's; and such of his books, to the library of the university of Edinburgh, as the librarian should think proper to be added to that collection. "The minuteness of this narrative may to some require an apology. No more was at first intended, than a very brief memorial of a man, whose singular merit in a most useful, though humble sphere, entitled him to an honourable remembrance. But as his character could not be well described, detached from a particular account of that sort of duty which he had to perform, it was found necessary to introduce a variety of literary detail, not uninteresting, it is hoped, to those who have received their education in the university of Edinburgh; and who will be soothed with the recollection of those happy days, when they used to be furnished with the instruments of knowledge by the hands of Mr. Duke Gordon. "The following is an inscription written by Mr. Dalzel, for a monument to be erected to his memory, in the church-yard of St. Cuthbert's. "Hic jacet DUKE GORDON, A. M. Accuratus, Accuratus, officiosus,-interdum austerus; Austeritatem comitate tam prudenter temperans, Ut omnium academicorum laudem et gratiam adipisceretur. Ex horis subsecivis, quas ingenuæ juventuti privatim erudiendæ sacravit, Vivendi rationem suo arbitrio sibi instituendam decrevit: De facultatibus, quas honesto labore acquisitas pepercerat, (Almæ suæ matris academiæ non immemor) Quique hoc marmor, memoriæ ejus sacrum, ponendum curarunt, MANNERS MANNERS OF NATIONS. INTERVIEW With the KAFFER KING; and MANNERS of the KAFFERS. [From BARROW's TRAVELS into the INTERIOR of SOUTHERN AFRICA, in the Years 1797 and 1798.] "ON N arriving at his place of residence, we found that the king, not having expected us until the following day, had gone to his grazing-village ten or twelve miles to the northward, in consequence of some intelligence he had received of the wolves having committed great depredations among his young cattle on the preceding night. A messenger was therefore immediately dispatched after him; and in the mean time the king's mother, a well-looking woman, apparently about five-and-thirty, and his queen, a very pretty Kaffer girl, about fifteen, with their female attendants, to the number of fifty or sixty, formed a circle round us, and endeavoured to entertain us with their good-humored and lively conversation. It was not long before Gaika, the king, made his appearance riding on an ox in full gallop, attended by five or six of his people. Our business commenced with little ceremony under the shade of a spreading mimosa. He requested that we might all be seated in a circle on the ground, not as any mark of civility, but that it might the more distinctly be heard what cach party had to say. The manner, however, in which he received us sufficiently marked the pleasure he derived from the visit: of the nature of this he was already aware, and entered immediately upon the subject, by expressing the satisfaction he felt in having an opportunity of explaining to us that none of the Kaffers who had passed the boundary established between the two nations were to be considered as his subjects: he said they were chiefs as well as himself, and entirely independent of him; but that his ancestors had always held the first rank, and their supremacy had been acknowledged on all occa sion by the colonists: that all those Kaffers and their chiefs, who had at any time been desirous to enter under the protection of his family, had been kindly received; and that those who chose rather to remain independent had been permitted to do so, without being considered in the light of enemies. He then informed us, that his father died, and left him, when very young, under the guardianship of Zambie, one of his first chiefs and own brother, who had acted as regent during his minority; but that having refused to resign to him his right on coming at years of discretion, his |