and he was about to run and reveal his wrongs, she stopped him, and petted him, and poured over him a "perfect flood of affected tenderness," extorting from him a promise that he would not tell and then, safe behind the extorted promise, treated him worse than ever. The promise was never broken; yet never could he forget the injustice of its exaction, or the cruelties of its abuse. And it had another effect the treatment to which he was thus exposed-besides that of testing his own truthfulness, and enkindling a strong feeling of indignation: it sent him at that early age to school, to which he went of his own accord, when only three years of age; not drawn by his love of learning, but driven by the fear of domestic persecution. Neither of his parents had much time to devote to the personal instruction of their children. The young scholar was left to imbibeas he would, or as he could-the instructions of the schoolroom. These were not of a kind either to engender early habits of industry, or to quicken an early thirst for knowledge. The parish schoolmaster, Mr. Bryce, had a fair enough reputation as a Latin scholar, but his days as an effective teacher were over when Dr. Chalmers became his pupil. His sight, which afterward he totally lost, was beginning to fail. Not so, however, his thirst for flogging, which grew with the decline, and survived the loss of vision. Eager in the pursuit, the sightless tyrant used to creep stealthily along behind a row of his little victims, listening for each indication given by word or motion of punishable offense, and ready, soon as ever the center of emanation was settled, to inflict the avenging blow. But the quicksighted urchins were too cunning for him, and soon fell upon a plan to defraud him of his prey. In the row opposite to that behind which the master took his furtive walk, one of the boys was set to watch, and whenever, by sudden stop or uplifted arm, any token of the intention to strike appeared, a preconcerted sign given quickly to the intended victim enabled him to slip at once but noiselessly out of his place, so that, to Mr. Bryce's enraged discomfiture, and to the no small amusement of his scholars, his best-aimed blows fell not unfrequently upon the hard, unflinching desk. Though he continued for many years afterward to preside, Mr. Bryce had furnished himself with an assistant, Mr. Daniel Ramsay, afterward parochial schoolmaster at Corstorphine, to whose care all the younger children were in the first instance consigned. The assistant was as easy as his superior was harsh. As teachers they were about equally inefficient. Mr. Ramsay sought distinction in his profession by becoming the author of a treatise on "Mixed Schools." His work won for him but little reputation, and an unfortunate act, in which, perhaps, there was more imprudence than guilt, lost him his situation, and plunged him in poverty. For many years Dr. Chalmers contributed regularly for his support. His latter days were spent in Gillespie's Hospital, where he died about four years ago. The Rev. Dr. Steven, who visited him frequently while upon his deathbed, in a letter with which I have been favored, says: "On one occasion he spoke to me in a very feeling manner indeed of Dr. Chalmers, and the impression made upon my mind was such that I have not yet forgotten the words which he employed. 'No man,' exclaimed he, knows the amount of kindness which I have received from my old pupil. He has often done me good both as respects my soul and my body; many a pithy sentence he uttered when he threw himself in my way; many a pound note has the doctor given me, and he always did the thing as if he were afraid that any person should see him. May God reward him!' The feeble old man was quite overpowered, and wept like a child when he gave utterance to these words." * There had been a dash of eccentricity about Ramsay. Some years ago, when the whole powers of the empire lodged for a short time in the single hand of the Duke of Wellington, he wrote to his grace in the true dominie spirit, but with almost as much wisdom as wit, that he could tell him how to do the most difficult thing he had By. those of his school-fellows, few now in number, who survive, Dr. Chalmers is remembered as one of the idlest, strongest, merriest, and most generous-hearted boys in Anstruther school. Little time or attention would have been required from him to prepare his daily lessons, so as to meet the ordinary demands of the school-room; for when he did set himself to learn, not one of all his school-fellows could do it at once so quickly and so well. When the time came, however, for saying them, the lessons were often found scarcely half-learned, sometimes not learned at all. The punishment inflicted in such cases was to send the culprit into the coalhole, to remain there in solitude till the neglected duty was discharged. If many of the boys could boast over Thomas Chalmers that they were seldomer in the place of punishment, none could say that they got more quickly out of it. Joyous, vigorous, and humorous, he took his part in all the games of the play-ground, ever ready to lead or to follow, when school-boy expeditions were planned and executed; and wherever, for fun or for frolic, any little group of the merry-hearted was gathered, his full, rich laugh might be heard rising amid. their shouts of glee. But he was altogether unmischievous in his mirth. He could not bear that either falsehood or blasphemy should mingle with it. His own greater strength he always used to defend the weak or the injured, who looked to him as their natural protector; and whenever in its heated overflow play passed into passion, he hastened from the ungenial region, rushing once into a neighboring house, when a whole storm of muscle-shells was flying to and fro, which the angry little hands that flung them meant in hand, namely, to cure the ills of Ireland; he should just take, he told him, "the taws in the tae hand, and the Testament in the tither." Engrossed as he was, the duke sent an acknowledgment signed by himself, and for some time it was difficult to say which of the two Daniel Ramsay was proudest of—having taught Dr. Chalmers, and so laid, as he was always accustomed to boast, the foundation of his fame -or having instructed the Duke of Wellington as to the best way of governing Ireland, and having got an answer from the duke himself. to do all the mischief that they could; and exclaiming, as he sheltered himself in his retreat, "I'm no for powder and ball," a saying which the good old woman, beside whose ingle he found a refuge, was wont, in these later years, to quote in his favor when less friendly neighbors were charging him with being a man of strife, too fond of war. The ability to read, very soon acquired by him, was speedily turned to other than school purposes. Among the books. earliest read, the two which took the strongest hold upon his thoughts, filling and swelling out his childish imagination, were Gaudentia di Lucca and the Pilgrim's Progress. He has himself told us of other impressions made at the same period. Writing more than fifty years afterward, he says: "I feel quite sure that the use of the sacred dialogues as a school-book, and the pictures of Scripture scenes which interested my boyhood, still cleave to me, and impart a peculiar tinge and charm to the same representations when brought within my notice."* Even before he could himself read its stories, or understand thoroughly any of its pictured scenes, some of the sayings of the Bible had fallen upon an ear which felt, even in infancy, the charm which dwells in the cadence of choice and tender words. He was but three years old, when one evening, after it had grown dark, missed and sought for, he was found alone in the nursery, pacing up and down, excited and absorbed, repeating to himself, as he walked to and fro, the words of David-"O my son Absalom! Absalom, my son, my son!" Though both parents were decidedly pious, his father, all through life, particularly and pre-eminently so, yet it does not appear that the Bible had made upon him any deeper impression than that which the beauty of its language and the pathos of its narratives were so well fitted to imprint upon so susceptible a mind and heart. Almost as soon, however, as he could form or announce a purpose, he declared *Horæ Quot., vol. i., p. 20. He saw and heard too much that he would be a minister. of ministers not to have early suggested to him the idea of becoming one; and as soon as it was suggested, it was embraced. The sister of one of his school-fellows at Anstruther still remembers breaking in upon her brother and him, in a room to which they had retired together, and finding the future great pulpit orator (then a very little boy) standing upon a chair, and preaching most vigorously to his single auditor below. He had not only resolved to be a minister -he had fixed upon his first text "Let brotherly love continue.". Altogether, though the school did little for him, and his parents' wishes and prayers as to his spiritual estate were as yet ungranted, that free, fresh, unconstrained, social, and happy boyhood spent by him at Anstruther was not without its fruits; nor can we tell how much, in the building up of his natural character during these earlier years, was due to the silent impress of parental example, or to that insensible education, more important and influential by far than the education of the school-room, daily carried on by the general spirit and order of a well-regulated and very cheerful home. In November, 1791, while not yet twelve years of age, accompanied by his elder brother, William, he enrolled himself as a student in the United College of St. Andrew's. He had but one contemporary there who had entered college at an earlier age, John, Lord Campbell, and the two youngest students became each, in future life, the most distinguished in his separate sphere. However it may have been in Lord Campbell's case, in Dr. Chalmers extreme youth was not compensated by any prematureness or superiority of preparation. A letter written to his eldest brother James, during the summer which succeeded his first session at college, is still preserved the earliest extant specimen of his writing. It abounds in errors both in orthography and grammar, and abundantly proves that the work of learning to write his own tongue with ordinary correctness had still to be begun. |