Ar the age of seven, he began to learn LATIN. My friend, Mr. B, of S, for whom my dear boy, who could almost divine the characters of his fellow-creatures, felt, to the end of life, unbounded admiration-afforded me the benefit of his advice, at the commencement of this part of William's education. I was a novice at teaching; but, aided by my friend, I entered upon it with confidence and pleasure. My first intention was, merely to have trained him myself till ten or eleven, and then send him to S

From this I was afterwards deterred by the express desire of Mr. B, who, modestly, and, I believe sincerely, however incorrectly, thought, and assured me, that we could do much more for him at home, than, under his circumstances, he could accomplish for him at school. His advance through the grammar was sure, not rapid. In the declensions of his nouns, or the conjugations of his verbs, I would sometimes bet him ten kisses that I could go through them faster and more accurately

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than he. And this was a stimulus which he was eminently formed to feel no severity could have urged him to so much diligence: his heart could always be touched by an appeal to his affections. After he had fairly mastered "The Accidence, As in præsenti, Propria quæ maribus, Syntax, and Prosody," I divided the whole into twenty-four parts, which he repeated daily;-thus accomplishing his task every month. This, I find, he continued to do till the end of his life. He parsed, of course, as he read, and thus applied his rules but the practice of monthly repetition kept them ever ready for application. Before he went to College, at the age of a little more than fifteen, he had read through the elementary books of the Valpys,* with Eutropius, Nepos, Florus, Justin, (twice) Cæsar, (twice) Sallust, (twice) Livy, Tacitus, several orations

* Mr. B. recommended double translations through Valpy, and some other elementary books---a plan pursued by Roger Ascham. As I was guided by his advice in almost every part of my son's classical education, it is probable that this sug gestion was attended to. Of its great utility, there can be no question but I am unable, at the distance of eleven or twelve years, to say how far it was carried with him.

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and some philosophical pieces of Cicero. He read frequently the Eclogues, Georgics and Eneid of Virgil; with Lucan's Pharsalia; Excerpta of Ovid, which contain most of the unexceptionable parts; and such parts of Terence, Martial, Persius and Juvenal, as prudence permitted. All the finest parts of those poets-especially their bold and tender descriptions, he had committed to memory. My friend had furnished me with Didot's edition of Horace, printed at Paris, from which all the Pagan filthiness of that beautiful author is ejected :—and can it be worth while, for the purpose of maintaining the integrity of his writings, to publish edition after edition for our seminaries of instruction, and to thrust upon the attention of the young, scenes and language which, however popular at Rome in the days of Augustus, or in England during the reign of Charles II. are fit only for a brothel, and are condemned equally by the sober dictates of common morality and the authoritative mandate of divine revelation?*

"Let no CORRUPT COMMUNICATION proceed out of your mouth; put off all these,---anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy,

This expungated copy he generally used; and, as I had fixed with a pen the mark of reprobation on all the indecent passages in my own complete editions, on which he might occasionally light, he never read one line that could awaken a passion which christianity teaches us to suppress. He committed to memory the whole of Horace's Odes, the Carmen Sæculare, and De Arte Poetica; all which he repeated, at least, four times every year.

At his first Session in Glasgow, he gained the chief Latin prize at the Black Stone examination; and made one of the largest "professions" that any of his age, had ever been known to make. The profession for competition* consists in meeting several of the professors: with fellow-students as judges; and the person who "competes" recites to the professor of his class a list of authors, of which

FILTHY COMMUNICATION, out of your mouth." Eph. iv. 29. Col. iii. 8.

* A full and almost ludicrous description of this will be found in a future extract from a letter of the first series from Scotland.

he professes himself the master; and offers to read, ad aperturam libri―the examiner opening as many of the authors, in what places he pleases, or to which chance may direct him. I have before me a list of thirty-nine authors, which he professed on that occasion. All who pass from a lower to a higher class, undergo a Black Stone examination, (so called from the students' sitting at the end of a long table on a black marble slab); but the competition for prizes lies among those few who have the courage to dare bravely, and to meet the cleverest and boldest of their companions in literature.

At the age of nine, he began to learn FRENCH, under his beloved mother, who spoke that language with fluency and correctness. After his progress in Latin, he found this very easy; and soon read through many of the Poets, Racine, Moliere, Crebillon, Delille, &c.; together with Pascal, Fenelon, Du Bosc, Saurin, &c. It was originally intended that, after he had been four years at Glasgow, he should spend a year either at