(_East_, I think). Under him I made astonishing progress; and I
recollect to this day his mild manners and good-natured pains-taking.
The moment I could read, my grand passion was _history_, and, why I
know not, but I was particularly taken with the battle near the Lake
Regillus in the Roman History, put into my hands the first. Four years
ago, when standing on the heights of Tusculum, and looking down upon
the little round lake that was once Regillus, and which dots the
immense expanse below, I remembered my young enthusiasm and my old
instructor. Afterwards I had a very serious, saturnine, but kind young
man, named Paterson, for a tutor. He was the son of my shoemaker, but
a good scholar, as is common with the Scotch. He was a rigid
Presbyterian also. With him I began Latin in 'Ruddiman's Grammar,'
and continued till I went to the 'Grammar School, (_Scoticè_, 'Schule;
_Aberdonicè_, 'Squeel,') where I threaded all the classes to the
_fourth_, when I was recalled to England (where I had been hatched) by
the demise of my uncle. I acquired this handwriting, which I can
hardly read myself, under the fair copies of Mr. Duncan of the same
city: I don't think he would plume himself much upon my progress.
However, I wrote much better then than I have ever done since. Haste
and agitation of one kind or another have quite spoilt as pretty a
scrawl as ever scratched over a frank. The grammar-school might
consist of a hundred and fifty of all ages under age. It was divided
into five classes, taught by four masters, the chief teaching the
fourth and fifth himself. As in England, the fifth, sixth forms, and
monitors, are heard by the head masters."

Of his class-fellows at the grammar-school there are many, of course,
still alive, by whom he is well remembered;[14] and the general
impression they retain of him is, that he was a lively, warm-hearted,
and high-spirited boy--passionate and resentful, but affectionate and