ticians of that time, he retained the style which had
been fashionable in the preceding generation. He had a text of the
Old Testament ready for every occasion. He filled his despatches with
allusions to Ishmael and Hagar, Hannah and Eli, Elijah, Nehemiah,
and Zerubbabel, and adorned his oratory with quotations from Ezra and
Haggai. It is a circumstance strikingly characteristic of the man, and
of the school in which he had been trained, that, in all the mass of his
writing which has come down to us, there is not a single word indicating
that he had ever in his life heard of the New Testament. Even in our own
time some persons of a peculiar taste have been so much delighted by the
rich unction of his eloquence, that they have confidently pronounced
him a saint. To those whose habit it is to judge of a man rather by his
actions than by his words, Crawford will appear to have been a selfish,
cruel politician, who was not at all the dupe of his own cant, and whose
zeal against episcopal government was not a little whetted by his desire
to obtain a grant of episcopal domains. In excuse for his greediness, it
ought to be said that he was the poorest noble of a poor nobility, and
that before the Revolution he was sometimes at a loss for a meal and a
suit of clothes, [310]

The ablest of Scottish politicians and debaters, Sir John Dalrymple, was
appointed Lord Advocate. His father, Sir James, the greatest of Scottish
jurists, was placed at the head of the Court of Session. Sir William
Lockhart, a man whose letters prove him to have possessed considerable
ability, became Solicitor General.

Sir James Montgomery had flattered himself that he should be the chief
minister. He had distinguished himself highly in the Convention. He
had been one of the Commissioners who had tendered the Crown and
administered the oath to the new Sovereigns. In parliamentary ability
and eloquence he had no superior among his countrymen, except the new
Lord Advocate. The Secretaryship was, not indeed in dignity, but in real
power, the highest office in the Scottish government; and this office
was the reward to which Montgomery thought himself entitled. But the
Episcopalians and the moderate Presbyterians dreaded him as a man
of extreme opinions and of bitter spirit. He had been a chief of
the Covenanters: he had been prosecuted at one time for holding
conventicles, and at another time for harbouring rebels: he had been
fined: he had been imprisoned: h