FOOTNOTES:

The autumn of this year brought me an unexpected but very welcome visitor, in my old Marcus' Cave friend Finlay; and when I visited all my former haunts, to take leave of them ere I quitted the place for the scene of my future labours, I had him to accompany me. Though for many years a planter in Jamaica, his affections were still warm, and his literary tastes unchanged. He was a writer, as of old, of sweet simple verses,and as sedulous a reader as ever; and, had time permitted, we found we could have kindled fires together in the caves, as we had done more than twenty years before, and have ranged the shores for shell-fish and crabs. He had had, however, in passing through life, his full share of its cares and sorrows. A young lady to whom he had been engaged in early youth had perished at sea, and he had remained single for her sake. He had to struggle, too, in his business relations, with the embarrassments incident to a sinking colony; and though a West Indian climate was beginning to tell on his constitution, his circumstances though tolerably easy, were not such as to permit his permanent residence in Scotland. He returned in the following year to Jamaica; and I saw, some time after, in a Kingston paper, an intimation of his election to the Colonial House of Representatives, and the outline of a well-toned sensible address to his constituents, in which he urged that the sole hope of the colony lay in the education and mental elevation of its negro population to the standard of the people at home. I have been informed that the latter part of his life was, like that of many of the Jamaica planters in their altered circumstances, pretty much a struggle; and his health at length breaking down, in a climate little favourable to Europeans, he died about three years ago—with the exception of my friend of the Doocot Cave, now Free Church minister of Nigg, the last of my Marcus' Cave companions. Their remains lie scattered over half the globe.

I closed my connexion with the bank at the termination of its financial year; gave a few weeks very sedulously to geology, during which I was fortunate enough to find specimens on which Agassiz has founded two of his fossil species; got, at parting, an elegant breakfast-service of plate from a kind and numerous circle of friends, of all shades of politics and both sides of the Church; and was entertained at a public dinner, at which I attempted a speech, that got on but indifferently, though itlooked quite well enough in my friend Mr. Carruthers' report, and which was, I suppose, in some sort apologized for by the fiddlers, who struck up at its close, "A man's a man for a' that." It was, I felt, not the least gratifying part of the entertainment, that old Uncle Sandy was present, and that his health was cordially drunk by the company in the recognised character of my best and earliest friend. And then, taking leave of my mother and uncle, of my respected minister, and my honoured superior in the bank, Mr. Ross, I set out for Edinburgh, and in a few days after was seated at the editorial desk—a point at which, for the present, the story of my education must terminate. I wrote for my paper during the first twelvemonth a series of geological chapters, which were fortunate enough to attract the notice of the geologists of the British Association, assembled that year at Glasgow, and which, in the collected form, compose my little work on the Old Red Sandstone. The paper itself rose rapidly in circulation, till it ultimately attained to its place among what are known as our first-class Scottish newspapers; and of its subscribers, perhaps a more considerable proportion of the whole are men who have received a university education, than can be reckoned by any other Scotch journal of the same number of readers. And during the course of the first three years, my employers doubled my salary. I am sensible, however, that these are but small achievements. In looking back upon my youth, I see, methinks, a wild fruit tree, rich in leaf and blossom; and it is mortifying enough to mark how very few of the blossoms have set, and how diminutive and imperfectly formed the fruit is into which even the productive few have been developed. A right use of the opportunities of instruction afforded me in early youth would have made me a scholar ere my twenty-fifth year, and have saved to me at least ten of the best years of life—years which were spent in obscure and humble occupations. But while my story must serve to show the evils which result from truant carelessness inboyhood, and that what was sport to the young lad may assume the form of serious misfortune to the man, it may also serve to show, that much may be done by after diligence to retrieve an early error of this kind—that life itself is a school, and Nature always a fresh study—and that the man who keeps his eyes and his mind open will always find fitting, though, it may be, hard schoolmasters, to speed him on in his lifelong education.

FOOTNOTES:[17]Thomas Hog of Kiltearn. See "Scots Worthies" or the cheap-publication volumes of the Free Church for 1846.[18]Peter Clark and Michael Tod were the only individuals who, in a population of three thousand souls, attached their signatures to thecallof the obnoxious presentee, Mr. Young, in the famous Auchterarder case.[19]The following is the passage which was honoured on this occasion by Chalmers, and which told, in his hands, with all the effect of the most powerful acting:—"Saunders Macivor, the mate of the 'Elizabeth,' was a grave and somewhat hard-favoured man, powerful in bone and muscle, even after he had considerably turned his sixtieth year, and much respected for his inflexible integrity and the depth of his religious feelings. Both the mate and his devout wife were especial favourites with Mr. Porteous of Kilmuir—a minister of the same class as the Pedens, Renwicks, and Cargils of a former age; and on one occasion when the sacrament was dispensed in his parish, and Saunders was absent on one of his Continental voyages, Mrs. Macivor was an inmate of the manse. A tremendous storm burst out in the night-time, and the poor woman lay awake, listening in utter terror to the fearful roarings of the wind, as it howled in the chimneys, and shook the casements and the doors. At length, when she could lie still no longer, she arose, and crept along the passage to the door of the minister's chamber. 'O, Mr. Porteous,' she said, 'Mr. Porteous, do ye no hear that?—and poor Saunders on his way back frae Holland! O, rise, rise, and ask the strong help o' your Master!' The minister accordingly rose, and entered his closet. The 'Elizabeth' at this critical moment was driving onwards through spray and darkness, along the northern shores of the Moray Firth. The fearful skerries of Shandwick, where so many gallant vessels have perished, were close at hand; and the increasing roll of the sea showed the gradual shallowing of the water Macivor and his old townsman, Robert Hossack, stood together at the binnacle. An immense wave came rolling behind, and they had but barely time to clutch to the nearest hold, when it broke over them half-mast high, sweeping spars, bulwarks, cordage, all before it, in its course. It passed, but the vessel rose not. Her deck remained buried in a sheet of foam, and she seemed settling down by the head. There was a frightful pause. First, however, the bowsprit and the butts of the windlass began to emerge—next the forecastle—the vessel seemed as if shaking herself from the load; and then the whole deck appeared, as she went tilting over the next wave. 'There are still more mercies in store for us,' said Macivor, addressing his companion: 'she floats still' 'O, Saunders, Saunders!' exclaimed Robert, 'there was surely some God's soul at work for us, or she would never havecowedyou.'"

[17]Thomas Hog of Kiltearn. See "Scots Worthies" or the cheap-publication volumes of the Free Church for 1846.

[18]Peter Clark and Michael Tod were the only individuals who, in a population of three thousand souls, attached their signatures to thecallof the obnoxious presentee, Mr. Young, in the famous Auchterarder case.

[19]The following is the passage which was honoured on this occasion by Chalmers, and which told, in his hands, with all the effect of the most powerful acting:—"Saunders Macivor, the mate of the 'Elizabeth,' was a grave and somewhat hard-favoured man, powerful in bone and muscle, even after he had considerably turned his sixtieth year, and much respected for his inflexible integrity and the depth of his religious feelings. Both the mate and his devout wife were especial favourites with Mr. Porteous of Kilmuir—a minister of the same class as the Pedens, Renwicks, and Cargils of a former age; and on one occasion when the sacrament was dispensed in his parish, and Saunders was absent on one of his Continental voyages, Mrs. Macivor was an inmate of the manse. A tremendous storm burst out in the night-time, and the poor woman lay awake, listening in utter terror to the fearful roarings of the wind, as it howled in the chimneys, and shook the casements and the doors. At length, when she could lie still no longer, she arose, and crept along the passage to the door of the minister's chamber. 'O, Mr. Porteous,' she said, 'Mr. Porteous, do ye no hear that?—and poor Saunders on his way back frae Holland! O, rise, rise, and ask the strong help o' your Master!' The minister accordingly rose, and entered his closet. The 'Elizabeth' at this critical moment was driving onwards through spray and darkness, along the northern shores of the Moray Firth. The fearful skerries of Shandwick, where so many gallant vessels have perished, were close at hand; and the increasing roll of the sea showed the gradual shallowing of the water Macivor and his old townsman, Robert Hossack, stood together at the binnacle. An immense wave came rolling behind, and they had but barely time to clutch to the nearest hold, when it broke over them half-mast high, sweeping spars, bulwarks, cordage, all before it, in its course. It passed, but the vessel rose not. Her deck remained buried in a sheet of foam, and she seemed settling down by the head. There was a frightful pause. First, however, the bowsprit and the butts of the windlass began to emerge—next the forecastle—the vessel seemed as if shaking herself from the load; and then the whole deck appeared, as she went tilting over the next wave. 'There are still more mercies in store for us,' said Macivor, addressing his companion: 'she floats still' 'O, Saunders, Saunders!' exclaimed Robert, 'there was surely some God's soul at work for us, or she would never havecowedyou.'"

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