retains a lively interest in the affairs of
his native city, which he visits at least once a year, while passing to
and from his beautiful marine residence at Kilcreggan.

EDWARD S. GORDON, M.P.

Mr. Edward Strathern Gordon, the member for the Glasgow and Aberdeen
Universities, is a son of the late Major John Gordon, of the 2d Queen's
Royal Regiment, by Catherine, daughter of Alexander Smith, Esq. Born at
Inverness in 1814, he is now in his fifty-seventh year, although he
wears so well that he would readily be mistaken for a much younger man.
After having received a very superior education, first at the Royal
Academy of his native town, and subsequently at the University of
Edinburgh, he was called to the Scotch bar in 1835, being then only in
his twenty-first year. He early discovered a peculiar aptitude for
mastering knotty points of law, and during the whole of his long and
distinguished legal career he has worked very hard, and spared no
effort, to acquire that knowledge of dry, technical, and abstruse
details with which the statute-books abound, and to be well grounded in
which is essential to soundness or eminence in jurisprudence. In 1858
Mr. Gordon entered upon the responsible duties of Sheriff of Perthshire.
In that capacity his decisions were awarded with an impartiality and
rigid adherence both to the letter and to the spirit of the _lex
scripti_ that caused them to be often quoted in the inferior courts. By
his superiors his talents were so far recognised that in 1866 he
received the appointment of Solicitor-General for Scotland, and his
place as Sheriff of Perthshire was allotted to Sheriff Barclay.

Mr. Gordon only held the Solicitor-Generalship for a single year, when
he was elevated to the still more distinguished post of Lord Advocate,
on the accession to political power of the Disraeli administration.
Coming in with the Tories, Mr. Gordon was likewise compelled to go out
with them; and as they were only allowed to hold the reins of office for
a year, his tenure of the Lord Advocateship was very short lived. Some
measure of compensation was, however, obtained for his loss of the
highest legal office in the Scottish administration, by Mr. Gordon's
appointment in November, 1869, as Dean of the Faculty of Advocates. This
is one of the most honourable, if not one of the most lucrative offices
in Scotland, and Mr. Gordon's selection as the successor of many of the
most distinguished pleaders at th