A SCOTTISH JUDGE.* MR. BUCHAN has performed his pious undertaking
with skill and with discretion. To attempt to put on paper the vigorous and distinctive personality of the late Lord Ardwall was no light task ; it would have been very easy to exaggerate, and not less easy to minimize, the light and shade of that unusual and remarkable temperament. Mr. Buchan has done neither; be has drawn a portrait which reveals and suggests what those who knew Lord Ardwall would expect to be revealed and sug- gested; with no single lapse of taste, with no hesitation, in all
simplicity, and in all fidelity, be has sketched the character of a man who hated humbug and sham with a ferocious hatred, and who bad no mercy on "the lie in the soul," however benevolent might be the intentions of the liar. Many an honest man has sat among the Senators of the College of Justice in Scotland; no honester man than Andrew Jameson ever sat there. A Scottish lawyer by tradition and inheritance, be was admitted an advocate in 1870, at the age of twenty-five, and entered upon a career the history of which is well known in Scotland. "His mind," says Mr. Buchan, "was massive rather than subtle, and his logic was of that stalwart type
which needs no finesse for its vindication," and he became un- rivalled in jury cases.
"He took a jury into his innermost confidence. 'Gentlemen,' his air seemed to say, 'you and I are sensible Scots folk who have to earn our living in this wicked world. Let us put our heads to- gether and see if we cannot knock some sense out of this foolish business.' He had a perfect genius for what the French call clenigrer-ing the evidence of the other side. He would restate it, quite fairly, but somehow it sounded less convincing • and then he would comment upon it, and it was apt to seem peculiarly foolish_ Finally he would put his own case in short, pithy sentences, and drive it home with hammer blows. . . . Ills candour was clearly no forensic device, and the ordinary man argued that if Andrew
• Andecto Jameson, Lord ArdtcaU. By John Buchan. London: William Blackwood and Sons. Ps. 6d, net.]
Jameson seemed BO sure that this or that was right, right it must be."
His legal eminence was recognized by sheriffdom and, in 1904, by a judgeship, and the essential fairness of his mind led to
a frequent demand for his services as an arbitrator; but, though he increased his reputation on the Bench, and though there are some pages in this book which will not be overlooked by historians either of Scots law or of the Scottish churches, Mr. Buchan's biography owes its existence rather to the man than to the lawyer or the controversialist. The candour which led him, as his contemporaries believed at the time, to sacrifice his prospects of promotion because he could not honestly follow his party on the Home Rule question, was characteristic of his daily life. "At all times liker a rosy Scots laird than the conventional tight-lipped lawyer," he taught his sons the essentials of his own inner life—in Mr. Buchan's words, "a complete fearlessness of man and beast, an ability to call things by their proper names, a profound knowledge of the Bible, and an abiding love of the history, the songs, and the ballads of Scotland." As a laird, or, as Mr. Buchan, him- self a lawyer, puts it more accurately, the husband of a " leddy," he put a Galloway estate into splendid condition; he was himself a good farmer and a breeder and" a county possession, a man whose obstinate virility was after the heart" of his Galloway neighbours. He was a great talker, and his tales are justly described as the best of his time. A deep and earnest religious spirit was compatible in him, as in many men of an older day, with a delight "in homely and fescennine phrase" and with a hatred of what was not regarded by most of his own generation as prudery. "He had much in common with the famous Secession minister in Edinburgh a hundred
years ago, whose life-work was a great Commentary on St. Paul's epistles, and who was wont to declare that he found Tons Jones grand stuff for taking the taste of the apostle out
of his mouth." Mr. Buchan justly attributes to his talk three great qualities :—
" There were those who shook their heads over such a mannerism in a pillar of the Kirk, but I do not believe that it caused the weakest brother to stumble. In the first place, it was too deeply humorous and too profoundly human. . . . Again, it had astonish- ing literary value. He loved the snot just.: in denunciation, and saw the artistic quality of many classic phrases which are banned by convention. Last and most important, it was wholly reverent. It was the language of a man who revered Heaven too sincerely to leave it out of his daily life. At morning prayers at Ardwall be would conclude his petitions for spiritual guidance, delivered in the tone and phrase of the old school of Scottish ministers, and on the word Amen,' and almost in the same breath, wnuld call down divine condemnation upon sons who were late for breakfast. The curious fact is that it was not incongruous?'
His biographer describes him as a "master of brilliant cora- mination," and he certainly hated folly as he hated meanness. Mr. Buchan's sketch of this large-brained and great-hearted Scotsman, who went through life with a good conscience and a rich and hilarious zest, is an achievement in the realistic art of the pen, and even readers who were not among those who knew and loved Andrew Jameson will, if they doubt the faithfulness of so striking a picture, be reassured by a com- parison of Mr. Buchan's vivid words with Sir George Reid's vivid painting reproduced in the volume.
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