252 PETER SPENCE 



his father commanded the greatest veneration, 

 he was a man of wisdom and sound judgment, 

 of great purity and uprightness. 



Peter Spence was born at Brechin, on the 

 1 9th February, 1806, and in the parish school 

 of that town he acquired the rudiments of 

 knowledge; he was trained to a life of hardi- 

 hood and industry, and from his earliest years 

 was made familiar with a religious life and 

 doctrine that had in them much that was 

 stern and narrow, but which, nevertheless, pro- 

 duced characters of great strength and beauty. 



At an early age he left home for the city of 

 Perth, where he was apprenticed to a grocer. 

 During these years he manifested a great 

 love of reading, works on science having a 

 peculiar attraction for him. 



It is sometimes thought that there is little 

 in common between the poet and the man of 

 science, but how far is this from the truth ! 

 The genuine philosopher of nature must be a 

 seer; the geologist must have the fancy that 

 can call up, instinct with life, the successive 

 stages of the world's story; the astronomer 

 has to do not merely with weights and 

 distances of inconceivable magnitude, he has 

 to dwell amidst the splendours of an infinite 

 realm of light; and the chemist, his 



