WH1IAM AND MAKY.

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multitude of expectants. Scotland was one of the least wealthy chap.countries in Europe: yet no country in Europe contained a ■■greater number of clever and selfish politicians. The places inthe gift of the Crown were not enough to satisfy one twentiethpart of the placehunters, every one of whom thought that hisown services had been preeminent, and that, whoever might bepassed by, he ought to be remembered. William did his bestto satisfy these innumerable and insatiable claimants by puttingmany offices into commission. There were however a few greatposts which it was impossible to divide. Hamilton was declared Hamilton.Lord High Commissioner, in the hope that immense pecuniaryallowances, a residence in HolyroodPalace, and a pomp anddignity little less than regal, would content him. The Earlof Crawford was appointed President of the Parliament; and it Crawford,was supposed that this appointment would conciliate the rigidPresbyterians: for Crawford was what they called a professor.

His letters and speeches are, to use his own phraseology, ex-ceeding savoury. Alone, or almost alone, among the prominentpoliticians of that time, he retained the style which had beenfashionable in the preceding generation. He had a text of theOld Testament ready for every occasion. He filled his de-spatches with allusions to Ishmael and Hagar, Hannah and Eli,

Elijah, Nehemiah, and Zerubbabel, and adorned his oratorywith quotations from Ezra and Haggai. It is a circumstancestrikingly characteristic of the man, and of the school in whichhe had been trained, that, in all the mass of his writing w'hichhas come down to us, there is not a single word indicating thathe had ever in his life heard of the New Testament. Even inour own time some persons of a peculiar taste have been somuch delighted by the rich unction of his eloquence, that theyhave confidently pronounced him a saint. To those whosehabit is to judge of a man rather by his actions than by hiswords, Crawford will appear to have been a selfish, cruel