xiv BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



appear as one of the men of light and leading to whom the country turns for assistance when 

 there is danger in the distance. 



There were probably few men of such ancient lineage as Arthur Hay who felt so strongly 

 as he did that honourable ancestry is an obligation, and not a patent of personal superiority to 



one's fellow men ; 



" Nam genus et proavos ot quae non fecimus ipsi, 

 Vix ea nostra voco." 



But he was not indifferent to the duties which were imposed upon him as the inheritor of 

 illustrious traditions, local and imperial. For four centuries the Hays of Yester have been noble ; 

 and in the history of Scotland the name of members of the family appears from time to time in 

 connexion with great events and high offices in the State. They were charged with important 

 functions in war and peace ; and after the union of the two countries they were entrusted with 

 the discharge of various duties, civil and militarj-, which are celebrated in the annals of the times. 

 In the main the Hays were possessed of the politic faculty which recognizes the force of accom- 

 plished facts ; but they were not obsequious courtiers or visionary theorists, and there were at all 

 times scions of the House ready to tempt fortune in the court or in the field. It was a Hay of 

 Yester who stepped out in front of the English Guards at Fontenoy to meet the not less chivalrous 

 Frenchman of the Maison du Roi, to exchange the famous compliment which has been recorded 

 in every account of the battle ; and the writer of this sketch has heard General Scott, the 

 Commander-in-Chief of the Array of the United States, describe a scene at the battle of Lundy's 

 Lane, where a young English officer, badly wounded and streaming with blood, stood at bay, 

 with his back to a wall, striking fiercely with his sword against the bayonets of a host of Americans, 

 and exclaiming " I will never surrender," till the kindly Virginian, who, by a strange coincidence, 

 had captured his brother a short time before on the banks of the Potomac, came up and saved his 

 life. The young officer of whom I speak was George, the eighth Marquis of Tweeddale, 

 the father of Arthur Hay — a man of extraordinary natural ability and force of character, 

 throwing himself with energy into the pursuits of the chase or of agriculture or of war, and of 

 masterful will and purpose. He entered the army in 1804, being then seventeen years old; and 

 on the outbreak of the Peninsular War he proceeded with his regiment to Spain, and was speedily 

 distinguished as an intelligent officer. He was wounded at Busaco, and in consequence was 

 for some time incapacitated from service in the field ; but he was on the Stafi" of Wellington's 

 army in the Quartermaster-General's Department at the battle of Vittoria ; and when the war with 

 France was over for the time, he was sent with his battalion to America, where we have just read 

 of him wounded and a prisoner, and thus he had not the good fortune to be one of those officers 

 whose Peninsular services were immeasurably enhanced by their participation in the glories of 



