on a much more rational and useful plan.  The biography of the illustrious of your country will be an honour to Scotland, to those illustrious, and to the authors:  and may contribute considerably to the general history; for the investigation of particular lives may bring out many anecdotes that may unfold secrets of state, or explain passages in such histories as have been already written; especially as the manners of the times may enter into private biography, though before Voltaire manners were rarely weighed in general history, though very often the sources of considerable events.  I shall be very happy to see such lives as shall be published, while I remain alive.  I cannot contribute any thing of consequence to your lordship’s meditated account of John Law.  I have heard many anecdotes of him, though none that I can warrant, particularly that of the duel for which he fled early.(493) I met the other day with an account in some French literary gazette, I forget which, of his having carried off the wife of another man.  Lady Catherine Law, his wife, lived, during his power in France, in the most stately manner.  Your lordship knows, to be sure, that he died and is buried at Venice.  I have two or three different prints of him, and an excellent head of him in crayons by Rosalba, the best of her portraits.  It is certainly very like, for, were the flowing wig converted into a female head-dress, it would be the exact resemblance of Lady Wallingford, his daughter, whom I See frequently at the Duchess of Montrose’s, and who has by no means a look of the age to which she is arrived.  Law was a very extraordinary man, but not at all an estimable one.

I don’t remember whether I ever told your lordship that there are many charters of your ancient kings preserved in the Scots College at Paris, and probably many other curiosities.  I think I did mention many paintings of the old house of Lenox in the ancient castle at Aubigny.

(492) Now first collected.

(493) Evelyn, in his Diary, gives the following account of this duel:—­“April 22 1694.  A very young man, named Wilson, the younger son of one who had not above two hundred pounds a-year estate, lived in the garb and equipage of the richest nobleman, for house, furniture, coaches, saddle-horses, and kept a table and all things accordingly, redeemed his father’s estate, and gave portions to his sisters, being challenged by one Laws, a Scotchman, was killed in a duel, not fairly.  The quarrel arose from his taking away his own sister from a lodging in a house where this Laws had a mistress , which the mistress of the house thinking a disparagement to it, and losing by it, instigated Laws to this duel.  He was taken, and condemned for murder.  The mystery is, how this so young a gentleman, very sober and of good fame, could live in such an expensive manner; it could not be discovered by all possible industry, or entreaty of his friends to make him reveal it.  It did not appear that