(Francis), better known to the public by the title of Lord Gardenstone, was born at Edinburgh June 24th, in the year 1721. His father was Alexander Garden of Troup; an opulent landholder in Aberdeenshire; his mother was Jane, daughter of Sir Francis Grant of Cullen, S.C.I.

After passing through the usual course of liberal education at the school and the university, he betook himself to the study of law for his profession. In the year 1744 he was admitted a member of the Faculty of Advocates, and called to the Scottish bar.

In his practice as an advocate he soon began to be distinguished, by a strong, native repute of understanding; by that vivacity of apprehension and imagination, which is commonly denominated Genius; by manly candour in argument, often more persuasive than subtlety and sophistical artifice; by powers which, with diligence, might easily attain to the highest eminence of the profession. But the same strength, openness, and ardour of mind, which distinguished him so advantageously among the pleaders at the bar, tended to give him a fondness for the gay enjoyments of convivial intercourse, which was unfavourable to his progress in juridical erudition. Shining in the social and convivial circle, he became less solicitously ambitious than he might otherwise have been, of the character of an eloquent advocate, or of a profound and learned lawyer. The vivacity of his genius was averse from austere and plodding study, while it was captivated by the fascinations of polite learning, and of the fine arts. Nor did he always escape those excesses in the pursuit of pleasure into which the temptations of opening life are apt, occasionally, to seduce the most liberal and ingenious youth. But his cheerful conviviality, his wit, humour, taste, good-nature, and benevolence of heart, rendered him the delight of all his acquaintance. He became his Majesty's Solicitor July 3d, 1764.

At length the worth of his character, and his abilities as a lawyer, recommended him to the office of a judge in the Courts of Session and Judiciary, the supreme judicatures, civil and criminal, for Scotland. His place in the Court of Session he continued to occupy till his death; but had, some years before, resigned the office of a Commissioner of Judiciary, and in recompense got a pension of £200 per annum. Clear discernment, strong good sense, conscientious honesty, and amiable benevolence, remarkably distinguished all his opinions and conduct as a judge.

We not unfrequently see the gay young men of the present age, to turn, as they advance towards middle life, from the headlong pursuit of pleasure to a sober and contracted selfishness, which excludes even those few good qualities that seemed to accompany their first thoughtless days. Their life is divided between sensuality and that anxious insatiate avarice and ambition whose ultimate object is to provide gratifications to sensuality and pride. The kindling light of rectitude, and the first sparks of generous humanity, are extinguished in their breasts, as soon as those ebullitions of youthful passion and inexperience are over, by which the useful efficiency of their early good qualities was prevented. Hardly have they become tolerably well acquainted with mankind, when the milk of human kindness is turned into gall and venom in their hearts.

It was far otherwise with Lord Gardenstone. As he advanced in years, humanity, taste, public spirit, became still more and more eminently the predominant principles in his mind. He pitied the condition of the peasantry, depressed rather by their ignorance of the most skilful modes of labour, and by their remoteness from the sphere of improvement, than by any tyranny or extortion of their landlords. He admired, protected, and cultivated the polite arts. He was the ardent votary of political liberty, and friendly to every thing that promised a feasible amelioration of public economy, and the principles of government.

In the year 1762 he purchased the estate of Johnston, in the county of Kincardine. Within a few years after he began to attempt a plan of the most liberal improvement of the value of this estate, by an extension of the village of Laurencekirk, adjoining. He offered leases of small farms, and of ground for building upon, which were to last for the term of one hundred years; and of which the conditions were extremely inviting to the labourers and tradesmen of the surrounding country. These offers were eagerly listened to. More desirous to make the attempt beneficial to the country than to derive profit from it to himself, he was induced, within a few years, to reduce his ground-rents to one-half of the original rate.—Weavers, joiners, shoe-makers, and other artisans in a considerable number, returned to settle in the rising village. His Lordship's carelessness for the success of his project, and to promote the prosperity of the good people whom he had received under his protection, led him to engage in several undertakings by the failure of which he incurred considerable losses. Projects of a print-field, and of manufactures of linen and of stockings, attempted with sanguine hopes in the new village, and chiefly at his Lordship's risk and expense, misfired in such a manner as might well have finally disgusted a man of less steady and ardent philanthropy with every such engagement. But the village still continued to advance. It grew up under his Lordship's eye, and was the favourite object of his care. In the year 1779, he procured it to be erected into a burgh of barony; having a magistracy, an annual fair, and a weekly market. He provided in it a good inn for the reception of travellers; and with an uncommon attention to the entertainment of the guests who might resort to it, furnished this inn with a library of books for their amusement. He invited an artist for drawing, from the continent, to settle at Laurencekirk. He had the pleasure of seeing a considerable linen manufacture at length fixed in it. A bleachfield was also established as a natural counterpart to the linen-manufacture. Before his Lordship's death, he saw his plan of improving the condition of the labourers, by the formation of a new village at Laurencekirk, crowned with success beyond his most sanguine hopes. He has acknowledged, with an amiable frankness, in a memoir concerning this village, "That he had tried, in some measure, a variety of the pleasures which mankind pursue; but never relished any so much as the pleasure arising from the progress of his village."

In the year 1785, upon the death of his elder brother, ther, Alexander Garden of Troop, M.P. for Aberdeen-shire, Lord Gardenstone succeeded to the possession of the family estates, which were very considerable. Until this time his Lordship's income had never been more than adequate to the liberal expense into which his rank, and the generosity of his nature, unavoidably led him. But the addition of a fortune of about three thousand pounds a-year to his former revenue, gave him the power of performing many acts of benevolence with which he could not before gratify his good heart. It was happy, likewise, that his succession to this ample income, at a period when the vigour of his constitution was rapidly yielding to the infirmities of old age, enabled him to seek relief, by a partial cessation from business, by travel, and by other means, which could not have been easily compatible with the previous state of his fortune.

In the month of Sept., 1786, he set out from London for Dover, and passed over into France. After visiting Paris, he proceeded to Provence, and spent the winter months in the genial climate of Hyères. In the spring of 1787 he returned northwards, visiting Geneva, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the Dutch provinces, and passing through Germany into Italy. With a fond curiosity, attentive alike to the wonders of nature, to the noble monuments of the arts, and to the awful remains of ancient grandeur, with which Italy abounds, he visited all its great cities, and surveyed almost every remarkable and famous scene that it exhibits.

His first object, in these travels, was to obtain the restoration of his declining health by the influence of a milder climate, by gentle continued, and varied exercise; by that pleasing exhilaration of the temper and spirits, which is the best medicine to health, and is most successfully produced by frequent change of place, and of the objects of attention. But the curiosities of nature and art, in those countries through which he travelled, could not fail to attract, in a powerful manner, the curiosity of a mind cultivated and ingenious as his. He, whose breast glowed with the most ardent philanthropy, could not view the varied works and manners of a diversity of nations of his fellow men, without being deeply interested by all those circumstances which might appear to mark their fortunes as happy or wretched. He eagerly collected specimens of the spars, the shells, the flints, of rocks, and the veins of metals, in the several countries through which he passed. He amassed also cameos, medals, and paintings. He enquired into science, literature, and local institutions. He wrote down his observations, from time to time; not indeed with the minute care of a pedant, or the ostentatious labour of a man travelling with a design to publish an account of his travels; but simply to aid memory and imagination in the future remembrance of objects useful or agreeable.

After an absence of about three years, he returned to his native country. The last years were spent in the discharge of the duties of his office as a judge; in social intercourse with his friends, among whom was the venerable Lord Monboddo, and others of the most respectable characters that our country has to boast of; in the performance of a thousand generous offices of benevolence and humanity; in cherishing those fine arts, of which he was an eminent admirer and judge; and above all, in promoting the comfort, and encouraging the industry of his dependants, and in lending his aid to every rational attempt at the improvement of public economy and public virtue.

St Bernard's Well, in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, had been, long since, distinguished for the medicinal virtues of its waters. But various circumstances had also concurred of late to throw it into neglect. Yet its waters being strongly mineralized by a sulphurated hydrogenous gas, were, by this means, unquestionably qualified to operate, with highly beneficial effects, in the cure of various diseases. The qualities of this mineral water falling under Lord Gardenstone's notice, he was induced to purchase the property of the well, to direct it to be cleared from surrounding obstructions, which contaminated the virtues of the water, or made it inaccessible; to erect a beautiful and commodious edifice over it; and to appoint proper persons to distribute the water, for a very trivial compensation, to the public. The well lies at a distance from Edinburgh, which is very convenient for a summer morning's walk. Within the few years which have passed since Lord Gardenstone's benevolent care brought it into notice, it has attracted many of the inhabitants of that city to visit in the mornings of spring and summer. And, undoubtedly, the agreeable exercise to which they have thus been allured, and the salutary effects of the water, have contributed, in no mean degree, to dispel disease, and to confirm, or re-establish health. Such monuments are worthy to preserve the memory of a patriotic and a good man!

As an amusement for the last two or three years of his life, when his increasing infirmities precluded him from more active exercise, and from mingling so frequently in the society of his friends as was agreeable to his social and convivial temper, he bequeathed himself of revising some of the jeux d'esprit, and light fugitive pieces, in which he had indulged the gaiety of his fancy, in his earlier days; and a small volume of poems was published, in which the best pieces are, upon good authority, ascribed to Lord Gardenstone. He revised also the memorandums which he had made upon his travels, and permitted them to be sent to press. The two former volumes were published one after another while his Lordship was yet alive; the third after his death. They met with a very favourable reception in the world, and were honoured with the high approbation of the most respectable writers of periodical criticism. They convey much agreeable information, and bespeak an elegant, enlightened, and amiable mind. The last volume is filled chiefly with memorandums of his Lordship's travels in Italy; and contains many interesting criticisms upon some of the noblest productions of the fine arts of painting and sculpture.

His Lordship's health had long been declining; and he died a bachelor on the 22d of July 1793, lamented by his relations and friends, by his tenants and humble dependants, and by all true patriots and good men to whom his merits and virtues were known.

Such is the account of Lord Gardenstone's life, which was prefixed to the third volume of his travelling memorandums; and though it was no doubt an effusion of fond friendship, we believe that the praise which it bestows on his Lordship is not much exaggerated. In the latter years of his life, it must indeed be confessed, that he contracted intimacies with men unworthy worthy of his regard; and that his attachment to liberty made him form expectations from the French revolution, which even the events which he saw ought to have repressed. But his mind was by that time weakened by disease; and it would be very unjust to balance the imprudences of one or two years against the meritorious actions of a whole life. Besides his travelling memorandums and his poems, his Lordship published a Letter to the Inhabitants of Lawrencekirk, the most valuable, in our opinion, of all his publications; for it contains perhaps the most salutary advice which were ever offered to the inhabitants of a manufacturing town, for the regulation of their conduct towards each other. That the people of Lawrencekirk have followed these advice, it would give us pleasure to learn on good authority.