Life, Letters, Lectures, and Addresses of Fredk. W. Robertson

Birth of F. W. Robertson.-Childhood.-Love of Nature.-Character as a Boy at the Academy in Edinburgh.-Youthful Interests.-Choice of Profession.--Military Enthusiasm.-Studies for the Indian Service.-Circumstances which led him into the Church.-Enters Oxford.-Contact with Tractarianism.-Religious Views and Christian Effort.-Reading.-Arnold and Wordsworth.-Speaking at the "Union."— His Opinion as to the Position of a Popular Preacher.-Two Letters recalling his College Life. Ferment of his Mind at Oxford.-Letter expressing his Opinion of the Tract School and his Desire for a Military Chaplaincy.-Examination for his Degree. He Studies for Ordination.-Letters reviewing the Position of the English

Church.

Letters from May, 1838, to June, 1840.

FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON, the eldest of the seven children of Frederick and Sarah Robertson, was born February 3, 1816, in London, at the house of his grandfather, Colonel Robertson, a distinguished officer, who was wounded in the service.

His father, who is still alive, was a captain in the Royal Artillery. Two of his brothers, Charles Duesbury, of the Royal Engineers,* and Harry, of the 60th Royal Rifles, won frequent "honorable mention" in the Kaffir War. The third, Struan, was a captain in the Royal South Lincoln Militia. They all survived him, but before he had reached his twentyfifth year he had grieved over the death of his three sisters. The first five years of his childhood were passed at Leith Fort. In 1821, his father, then captain in the Royal Artillery, retired on half pay in order to attend to the education of his children, left Leith and settled at Beverley, in Yorkshire. There he personally instructed his son for four years, and then sent him to the grammar-school of the town, under the Rev. G. P. Richards.

In 1829 the family went to Tours, where young Robertson

He is now Lieut.-Colonel in his corps. He received the brevet rank of Major for his services in the Kaffir War.

studied the classics with an English tutor, attended a French seminary, and laid the foundation of his accurate knowledge of the French language. In consequence of the revolution of 1830, his father returned to England, and placed the boy, now nearly sixteen years old, in the New Academy, Edinburgh, under the late Rev. John Williams, afterwards Archdeacon of Cardigan.

He owed much to the careful education and watchfulness of his parents. They kept him apart from evil influences, and made his home his most honored recollection. This seclusion, and the books he was induced to read in childhood, were both so calculated to develop his character in a true direction, that he mentions them afterwards in some MS. notes, written at Winchester, as two of the special mercies with which God had blessed his infancy. The loneliness which is more or less the lot of the eldest of the family, soon created in him a thoughtfulness full of imagination, and a spirit of inquiry which supplied him with the materials for a silent self-education. But on this account he became neither morbid nor unnatural. On the contrary, he was a radiant and eager child, full of healthy enjoyment of life, delighting in air, and sunlight, and active exercise. His happy childhood at Leith Fort was a cherished memory of his ministerial life, and he looked back upon it with a pleasure deepened by the necessarily sedentary nature of his profession. In 1849, he writes from Brighton:

My pony, and my cricket, and my rabbits, and my father's pointers, and the days when I proudly carried his game-bag, and my ride home with the old game-keeper by moonlight in the frosty evenings, and the boom of the cannon, and my father's orderly, the artilleryman who used to walk with me hand-inhand-these are my earliest recollections.

Even at that time there seems to have been nothing in external nature which did not give him pleasure, and awake in him a vivid interest. The fresh winds, and sunlight, and clear waters, which he enjoyed at Leith, seemed to have infused their own spirit into his receptive organization. He wandered over the country with an open eye and heart, and found in every walk and ride something to admire and to love. He had a child's affection and reverence for animals, and especially for birds. He studied their natural history; he watched them to their haunts; he rejoiced in the freedom of their life as if it had been his own; he even began a book in which he made drawings of them, with notes on their habits and habitations. Many will remember the passage in one of his lectures on poetry, in which he notices with enthusiasm Wilson's work on "Birds," and Waterton's "Wanderings,"

and describes with the minuteness of affection the series of stuffed birds which illustrated falconry in the Exhibition of 1851. "I have visited," he says, "the finest museums in Europe, and spent many a long day in watching the habits of birds in the woods, hidden and unseen by them; but I never saw the reproduction of life till I saw these."

He describes himself, in boyhood, "as iron in strength, broad and stout." He excelled in manly games and athletic exercises, and was the leader of all the daring exploits of his companions. To this he joined a love of reading and of quiet remarkable at his age. On the brightest day he would become entranced in some tale of chivalry or imagination which charmed him into stillness. He loved to fancy himself a knight-seeking adventure, redressing wrongs, laying down his life for maidens in distress; and often for hours together the vividness of these imaginary pictures would separate him from the commonly thoughtless activity of a boy's life, and exile him from his companions. Lying at the root of much of this dreaminess, was the sensitiveness of nerve and feeling which so strongly marked and influenced his whole existence. It betrayed its presence during boyhood in his shy and sometimes defiant manner, and in a settled self-mistrust, often sinking into hopelessness. "Deficiency of hope," he says himself, "is the great fault of my character."

Such a temperament, without his strong will and stern sense of duty, would naturally have led him into idleness. But it was not so with him. In childhood he learned quickly, and mastered fully what he had learnt. His memory was retentive, and in later years he could recall with ease page after page of books which he had not read since his boyhood. But this power never stole from him his conviction that perseverance in labor was the only foundation of real knowledge. He was an intense worker. He never left a subject till he had done his utmost to exhaust it, and to examine it in all its bearings. At the Academy in Edinburgh his toil was incessant, and he soon took a high place in his class. Though without the advantage of previous training in the lower forms, he gained at the end of the session the first prizes for Latin verse, English prose, the French language, and French recitation, and contested so sharply the prize given to the best Greek scholar, that the decision was referred to Professor Sandford, who gave it in favor of the Dux of the Academy-George Moncrieff, with whom, as boy and man, Robertson maintained an unbroken friendship.

All this success surprised no one more than himself; he continually wrote home in depreciation of his work. This

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