160 A Journey to London in 1840. 



successful authors of this country. As his education was caprici- 

 ously conducted, so his training otherwise was not either strict or 

 judicious. He was not brought up like a genteel boy, like one 

 who was born to a fair competency, for on the death of his grand- 

 father, Edward M'CuUoch of Auchengool, in 1795, he had suc- 

 ceeded to that property. Nor did he like his grandfather. He 

 mentioned to me when in London that he was early disgusted with 

 the vulgar selfishness of his relation, who rould never pay any 

 account however small without insisting on having a drawback. 

 M'Culloch has seen him higgling with a poor lx)dy about even a 

 penny as discount, and his generous nature was horrified at seeing 

 an old man who should have been venerable, both from his char- 

 acter and profession, thus taking advantage of the poor trades- 

 men whom he employed. He hated him on other grounds, and 

 as soon as he was of an age to nominate his own curators he took 

 advantage of that pri\-ilege and withdrew his grandfather's name 

 from the number. This only made matters worse. The grand- 

 father soon after claimed board for his own daughter and her 

 two sons from the moment they had come to his house. This 

 claim was not successful, but other causes of quarrel arose both 

 with his daughter and his grandsons, to which it is not necessary 

 further to refer. Only he had all along tried to deprive his 

 daughter, and consequently her children, of everything to which 

 they might be entitled either through him or his wife. Nay, .so 

 far did he afterwards carry his hostility that within a few months 

 of his death, when he was about bed-ridden, he married a third 

 time in order, as he said, to deprive his only daughter of the 

 sum (a bare £250) to which she would h:x\e been entitled from 

 the Ministers' Widows' Fund if he had died a widower, that is, 

 without leaving a Avidow a burden on the Fund. But he took 

 very good care to leave a widow, a young widow under twenty 

 years of age, to punish both his own daughter and the Fund, to 

 which he had paid for fifty-five years. 



Mr M'Culloch soon threw aside his connection with this self- 

 willed and unnatural relation, and went to reside with his mother 

 at Kinross. Here and from henceforth he felt the benefit and the 

 blessing of parental affection. Not merely was his mother kind, 

 but her husband, who was also her cousin-german and his step- 

 father, was no less kind. For about a year he attended the school 

 at Kinross taught bv a Mr Tavlor. He was then sent to the Col- 



