A Journey to London in 1840. 157 



meeting with some accident or otlier. On the day after my arrival 

 his foot having slipped on the street he fell and injured himself. 

 On another occasion, having dined at the Row (Messrs Longman's 

 shop), he was knocked down, he said, on his way home, robbed of 

 his hat and <>t a breast pin which had cost him three guineas. 

 Whether it was from this accident or not he was next morning 

 seized with lumbago, and never was well afterwards while I was in 

 Lond< n. On one occasion he went to the Row an(.l dined there, 

 and though he had wiseh taken a cab going, he thoughtlessly 

 walked returning, a distance of three good miles; an act of impru- 

 dence for which he was punished by being seized with feverishness 

 during the night, which continued more or less for days. He was 

 not able to be out, but I ^■isited him almost daih. Conversation 

 was quite a fillip to him, and I always left him better than I found 

 him. These \isits I enjoyed much, and e\'erv time I saw him he 

 rose higher in m_\' esteem. Mrs M'Culloch or another of the 

 family visited him nearl\- as often as myself. He had no definite 

 complaint except debility, the result of a naturally feeble constitu- 

 tion. 



Of my friend Mr M'Culloch I shall now gi\e a comparatively 

 Inief account, i.e., comparatively to his very great merits. He is 

 the eldest surviving child of the late William M'Culloch, yr. of 

 Auchengool, and of Sarah Laing, eldest child of the Rev. Dr 

 James Laing, minister of Glasserton, and of Sarah, eldest 

 daughter of Andrew Ramsay, Lord Provost of Glasgow. He was 

 born at Isle of Whithorn, 1st March. 1789. His father having 

 died in 1794, and his j)aternal grandfather in the subsequent vear, 

 his motlier and her two sons, of whom my friend was the elder, 

 went to reside in Glasserton Manse. But they were not comfort- 

 able or happy there. Dr Laing was a man devoid of almost the 

 least trace of paternal affection. Philoprogenitiveness was an 

 organ almost unknown to his composition. He had never been 

 kind to his daughter. She hai1 married without his consent: 

 indeed, William M'Culloch and she made a species of elopement, 

 at least she had clandestinely to escape from her father's house in 

 order to get the marriage ceremony performed. Xeither father 

 nor mother recognised her for years afterwards, and I am not sure 

 if they e\er had any intercourse whatever with their son-in-law, 

 William M'Culloch. The truth is Dr Laing was a self-willed, 

 -selfish, des])otical, unprincipled man; perhaps the most unami- 



