self-mistrust made him even then acutely conscious of small errors. In composition, he magnified slight failures in the rhythm and style of a sentence into grave faults; he was intolerant of a misplaced stop; he shrank with all the oversubtle purism of a boy from a mispronunciation or an antiquated pronunciation of words. He carried this humility and sensitiveness into morals: the slightest deviation from truthfulness in words or truthfulness in action was abhorrent to his nature. His mother said of him, "I never knew him tell a lie;" and he would rather have lost every prize at the Academy, than owe one to foreign help or to the usual aid which boys seek from translations.

The principal of the Academy soon recognized the character he had to deal with, and gave him repeated encouragement, and of this he speaks with grateful appreciation. Without sympathy he would have been hopeless, although he would not have ceased to work; for there was mingled in him the womanliness which seeks for external help, and the manliness which performs a duty even in loneliness. To romance, sensitiveness, delicacy, humility, great gentleness, he added, even at this early age, a practical view of life, calm good sense, steady adherence to right, unselfishness, and a courage at once enthusiastic and prudent. Two letters, written when he was sixteen years old, to his mother and brother, shortly after the cholera appeared at Edinburgh, will illustrate some of these points of character:

February 26, 1832.

MY DEAR MOTHER,—You need be under no apprehension concerning the cholera, as the cases here, upon an average, are one a week, or something of that kind. If, however, it should increase in violence, I have made up my mind to remain here. In the first place, I should bring infection home, and it would be extremely selfish to bring others into danger merely for my own private safety. In the next place, instead of escaping it, I might only rush into danger in my journey. I am sorry to say, that because I kept a good place at first in my class, the Rector said to several persons that he expected me to be second at the end of the year. He will, I am sorry to say, soon find out his mistake, as I am terribly behind-hand in several things. Ten o'clock P.M.-I have just finished fagging hard for to-morrow.

July 2, 1832.

MY DEAR BROTHER,-Tell papa that my suspicions about the French composition prize were but too well founded; for this morning, Monsieur Braed, after I had endeavored for a long time to get it out of him, acknowledged that he had given the prize to Moncrieff. He then put me in a very trying situation, by asking me to recite it (Moncrieff's) on the exhibition-day. I told him I could not decide, but would give him an answer to-morrow. Though it is hard upon me to be thus made the herald of my own defeat, I have determined to comply, partly for Moncrieff's sake, and partly because I am determined that whatever I feel, it shall not be visible. A few days ago the Academical Club, or rather a deputation, waited on the Rector to announce the decision upon the English verses given in a long time ago. The seventh, sixth, and fifth classes were summoned into the Rector's class-room,

and the prize was decided to have been gained by Terrot in my class. After he had recited his verses, we were told that all the other copies which had been given in were very meritorious, but that the two next in merit to Terrot's were so equal, that they had been unable to decide between them. I was astonished by hearing my motto read out as one of them, and still more so when I was called upon to recite them. Imagine me standing elevated upon the Rector's platform, and feeling more like a criminal than any thing else. I trembled so violently that I could not hold the paper steady, and do not know how I managed to get to the end. The deafening claps of the boys were the first thing that brought me to my senses. I can not imagine what I shall do when I recite the French in the public hall with several hundred spectators, when I felt so uncomfortable by just reading before a hundred and twenty boys, most of whom I knew, the masters, and a few of the directors, and the Academical Club.

At the end of the session he left the Academy, and, under the care of Mr. Terrot, afterwards Bishop of Edinburgh, attended the various classes at the University, and at the age of eighteen returned home, bringing with him a large amount of multifarious knowledge and many memories of a pleasant life and profitable study. Of his general reading at Edinburgh there is no record, but he had devoted himself eagerly to practical chemistry and physical geography. There remains among his papers a MS. book full of notes of Professor Jameson's lectures, and illustrated by drawings, which_manifest the artistic talents which he afterwards cultivated, and then, when he had attained to some excellence, characteristically despised.

But his interest in all these things was small in comparison with his enthusiasm for a military life. This was literally born with him. At Leith, before he was five years old, he drank in, with all the eagerness of a boy, the intoxicating aroma of his father's profession. "I was rocked and cradled," he writes, " to the roar of artillery, and the very name of such things sounds to me like home. A review, suggesting the conception of a real battle, impresses me to tears; I can not see a regiment manœuvre, nor artillery in motion, without a choking sensation."

*

The traditions of his family suggested and fostered this passionate love of arms. The conversation at home was full of recollections of bivouac and battle, and of the daring exploits of Sir Charles Napier, who was his father's personal friend and comrade in arms. He writes from the Academy to his brother, begging that the miniature fort in the garden at home might not be blown up till he arrived. He argued

⚫ Captain Robertson, in June, 1805, was embarked on board the Victory, when Nelson's fleet of twelve sail of the line took troops on board at Barbadoes and went in pursuit of the Toulon squadron, and whilst serving with the land and naval forces on the coast of North America in 1813, was mentioned in terms of commendation in four different dispatches. At the capture of Hampton, in Virginia, he stormed and captured, with signal bravery, the enemy's last field-piece.

It

daily with his French masters on military engineering. is no wonder that, on leaving Edinburgh, the secret wish of his heart to enter the army had grown into a settled purpose. This was not, however, the intention of his father, who considered that the character of his son, and his deep religious feeling, were unfitted for a barrack life. The Church was, therefore, proposed to him as a profession; but his answer was decisive" Any thing but that: I am not fit for it."

He was then (1833) articled to Mr. Borton, a solicitor at Bury St. Edmund's, and passed a year in his office. But the sedentary nature of the work broke down his health; and Captain Robertson discovered that his son had adopted a profession which he detested, only through a feeling of chival rous obedience. It was then resolved that he should follow the bent of his genius. An application was made to the Horse Guards for a commission. It was refused on the ground of age. But his mother's family had been fortunate enough to do the King, when Prince William, some service, and the refusal was retracted. His name was placed upon the list for a cavalry regiment serving in India. He was enraptured, and immediately began to study for his profession with enthusiasm. He went to stay with his brother in the Engineers at Chatham, to gain an insight into practical engineering. His whole soul was in his work. He recalls in later letters that time: "On that road I had walked and ridden, oh, how often; exulting in the future, fearless, full of hope, and feeling the perfection of the present; days when I was prodigal of happiness."

A spirit so buoyant and enthusiastic fitted him well for the army, and he became a first-rate rider, a good shot, and an excellent draughtsman. He omitted nothing likely to make him a faithful and useful officer. In hope and work two years were thus passed by, during which he lived with his family at Cheltenham. There it was that Captain Robertson, under the impression that his application to the King had been forgotten, again proposed to his son the profession of the Church, and again was answered by a firm refusal. The temptations to which he would be exposed in the army were strongly set before him, but he could not believe that they were any real barriers against his entrance into it; on the contrary, with his usual desire for some positive outward evil to contend with, he imagined that it was his peculiar vocation to bear witness to God, to set the example of a pure and Christian life in his corps, to be, as he said," the Cornelius of his regiment." The trained obedience of an army to one head harmonized with his own strong conception of the

beauty of order and the dignity of duty. All the impulses of his character to self-sacrifice, chivalry, daring, romantic adventure, the conquest of oppression, the living of life intensely, he looked forward to satisfying as a soldier; and he believed that the active out-door existence of a campaign, with its danger and excitement, would suit his physical temperament, and tend to neutralize his constitutional nervousness.

Associated in remarkable contrast with his vivid outward life and activity at this time, was an inward life, peculiarly sensitive, subtle in thought, more subtle still in feeling, full of poetical and religious sentiment. It was impossible to express in prose the minuter shades of feeling which passed over his heart as boyhood grew into youth, and he began at this period to read poetry with greater eagerness and to write verses. His own efforts are, strange to say, characterized by almost no imagination, and curiously devoid of poetical talent. The influence of Pope, of whom he was now an ardent admirer, seems to have clogged all his attempts at English verse. Striving after the terseness of thought and sharp clearness of expression which mark his model, he naturally became incapable of putting into verse delicate dreams of intuitive feeling. Perhaps it was owing to his discovery of this want that he ceased for a time to read Pope, and turned in preference to Byron and Shakspeare.

To two great objects-the profession of arms which he had chosen, and the service of Christ in that profession-he now devoted himself wholly. They filled his life, and for both of them he read carefully. It marks his honesty and sincerity of purpose, that, immediately on making sure of his commission in the Indian cavalry, he gave himself up to preparation for service in that country. He would have thought it a sin against truthfulness of character, if he had adopted a career without a special training for his work. With this purpose he studied the early history and geography of India, and the characters of its various populations. He mapped the campaigns, and made himself master of the strategical movements of the British generals in that country. The fortunes of India, and the constitution which the English had elaborated for their large dependency, became familiar to him. It is interesting to observe how fondly he recalled at Brighton these youthful studies, how he followed the course of the Sikh war, and read with careful pleasure the exploits of Napier and the story of Major Edwardes's career. In a series of lectures delivered at Brighton, and unfortunately

A picture of Sir Charles Napier was hung in his study, and he used to call it his household god.

lost, he treated of Christianity as it would come into contact with Hindooism with the same wide grasp of principles and in the same manner as he dealt with the advent of Christ to the Greek, Roman, and Barbarian. The seed of which these lectures were the flower was sown at this time.

Parallel with his military reading, in rather a strange contrast, ran his religious reading. Sometimes both glided into one another, as when, in the hope of advancing Christ's kingdom, he devoted a portion of his time to the history of Indian missions, and the study of the reasons of their small success; and with a rare wisdom, the need of which has at last been recognized, gained all the information accessible to him upon the religion of the Hindoos. At other times his reading was entirely theological. Towards the end of 1836 he seems to have almost given up the hope of hearing favorably from the Horse Guards, and, with a kind of presentiment, began to labor at books on Evidences and on Prophecy. Then again, as if the hope of a military life had reawakened, he analyzed the Jugurthine war. In his common-place book may be seen the fluctuations of his mind between the Church and the Army as professions, or, at least, his desire to bring Christianity into a soldier's life.

All these fair hopes were destined to disappointment. Looking back now on his career as a clergyman, and considering the wide influence which his published sermons have had in England, it is interesting to trace how he was apparently impelled by circumstances into the clerical profession.

In March, 1837, he met Mr. Davies, now Vicar of Tewkesbury, at the house of a common friend in Cheltenham. A close friendship soon sprung up between them. Mr. Davies, believing that he saw in Robertson all the elements which would form a successful and devoted minister of the Church, endeavored to dissuade him from entering the army.* He

*Mr. Davies thus relates the origin of their friendship: "The daughter of Lady Trench, at whose house I met my friend, had been seriously ill. She was prevented from sleeping by the barking of a dog in one of the adjoining houses. This house was Captain Robertson's. A letter was written to ask that the dog might be removed; and so kind and acquiescent a reply was returned, that Lady Trench called to express her thanks. She was much struck at that visit by the manner and bearing of the eldest son, and, in consequence, an intimacy grew up between the families."

This apparently trivial circumstance is mentioned, because in one of Mr. Robertson's papers a curious allusion to it has been found, which proves that this intimacy promoted the change of his profession. He is speaking of one of his favorite theories -that all great truths consist of two opposites which are not contradictory. "All is free," he says: "that is false; all is fated-that is false. All things are free and fated -that is true. I can not overthrow the argument of the man who says that every thing is fated, or, in other words, that God orders all things, and can not change that order. If I had not met a certain person, I should not have changed my profession: if I had not known a certain lady, I should not probably have met this person; if that lady had not had a delicate daughter who was disturbed by the barking of my dog; if my dog had not barked that night, I should now have been in the Dragoons, or fertilizing the soil of India. Who can say that these things were not ordered, and that, apparently, the merest trifles did not produce failure and a marred existence?"