BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF HEW SCOTT, D.D. xv impropriety, which gave offence to her hostess. This caused considerable ill-feeling, and laid the foundation for disputes of various kinds in the Presbytery, which at length terminated in the Secession of 1843, inflicting a severe wound on the Church of Scotland." The author of the Fasti had no leaning towards the popular party. He stoutly opposed the measures of the non-Intrusionists, and supported Charles Rogers (after- wards his assistant) in the attempt to depose Sir David Brewster from the Principalship of St Andrews for his adherence to the Free Church. Hew Scott received the honorary degree of D.D. from St Andrews in 1867. He was an exemplary minister of the old school—" his preaching much, but more his practice wrought, a living sermon of the truths he taught." Into all his work—both in the pulpit and out of it—he put his best. Parochial movements were assured successes under his sagacious pilotage. He had his peculiarities and foibles. From the established mode of worship he would brook no variation. A "repeating" tune was anathema—and he declined to preach in a church where the Doxology was sung. He was the strictest of disciplinarians, but behind all his outward severity beat a heart that was warm, and true, and kind. He was penu- rious to a proverb—his besetting fault—a relic, doubtless, of less fortunate days. "No nail, or potato, or turnip, or piece of coalwas ever left on the road by Hew Scott." Dr Rogers declared that he never bought writing paper, but wrote all the Fasti on letter-backs—a precursor of the modern card index method, quaint, but in his hands thoroughly effective, the result showing a marvellous mastery of the multifarious materials collected at divers times and places. He used turned envelopes for his correspond- ence, a fact which was demonstrated after his death, when his desk was opened and disclosed " nearly 2000 envelopes all reversed, the stamps and addresses being in the inside, according to which the old economist had been in the habit, almost from the day of Sir Rowland Hill's penny postage, of refolding the covers of his correspondence for future use." It has been hinted that he was the hero of the story told by Dr William Chambers, about a minister who married the schoolmaster's widow for the sake of the dead dominie's new coat. That, however, is baseless. He married the lady (one who knew him well, told Dr Hay Fleming) "because she had shown so much kindness to her husband [Alexander M'Dougall] in his illness, and because if he married her she would receive a substantial allowance from the Ministers' Widows' Fund, and thus be rewarded for her untiring devotion to the schoolmaster." Dr Scott died at Anstruther, 12th July 1872 ; his widow, Sarah (daughter of James