[Too late for previous insertion.]

OBITUARY-1819.

From BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, Sept. 1819.

ADAM ROLLAND, Esq., ADVOCATE.

Aug. 18.-At his house, Queen Street, Edinburgh, Adam Rolland of Gask, Esq. advocate, and Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Scotland. The death of Mr Rolland makes one of those blanks which cannot easily be suppliedan accomplished gentleman, an elegant scholar, an eminent lawyer, a truly sincere and pious Christian, a man of unsullied probity and honour, of liberal and beneficent habits, and an ardent lover of his country.

He received the first rudiments of his education at Dunfermline, near which lies his paternal estate of Gask. He went through a regular course of study at the University of Edinburgh, and early gave promise of that character which he afterwards so eminently maintained. The study of theology, he used to say, had never been to his liking, and he followed it in deference to the opinion of his friends. He passed advocate in 1758, the same year with Sir Ilay Campbell, Bart. and the late Mr Andrew Crosbie, and though he did not fall so immediately into general practice as those two great lawyers and celebrated pleaders, yet his worth and talents were at length duly appreciated; and for many years before he retired from the bar, he stood in the very foremost rank of those lines of practice to which he confined himself. No lawyer was more resorted to for written pleadings and for opinions— particularly in feudal questions and in arbitrations of importance and intricacy.

The leading features of his mind were strength of judgment, a correct and delicate taste, a strong sense of propriety, a high feeling for, and constant attention to, personal dignity, honour, and independence. His understanding was clear and exact, and his memory retentive. In few minds was treasured up more various and useful knowledge, better arranged, and more at command. An acute observer of men and manners, he had an inexhaustible fund of anecdote, which was never introduced but with point and effect. He had an exact and critical knowledge of the Latin language. The classical epitaph on his father's monument in the Dunfermline cemetery [Abbey Porch] will now be perused with peculiar interest from the affecting circumstance, that there, mutatis mutandis, is drawn with a master's hand his own character. The English language, though in his youth it had not been much attended to in this country, he, from the very first, made it his particular study to speak, as well as write, with purity and elegance. The habit became quite natural to him. In conversation, he spoke with ease and fluency, in the most appropriate and significant words, the most elegant turn of expression, the justest