COL. ANSTRUTHER THOMSON 17 



Wilkinson was captain of the school. George 

 Lane Fox was sixth form or Upper Division. God- 

 frey Arkwright was captain of the boats, and Hare 

 was captain of the second boat. 



Frank Charteris (Lord Wemyss), Charles Scott 

 and Andrew Blackburne went from the Edinburgh 

 Academy at the same time Scott and I went to Cole- 

 ridge's. I was placed in the Upper Remove fourth 

 form. 



Mr. Coleridge to my uncle, W. Adam : — 



"Eton, 2ird September, 1832. 



"My Dear Sir,— 



" I send you these few lines, according to 

 my promise, to inform you that Dr. Keate has placed 

 Thomson in the Upper Remove of the fourth form, 

 for which station he is well fitted by his general 

 knowledge of Greek and Latin, but by no means so 

 by his powers of composition in verse or prose. He 

 is however, I trust, fully sensible of his own deficiency, 

 and will do his utmost to make up what is now want- 

 ing from the anomalous system in which he has been 

 trained. Can it be right or advisable to defer the 

 practical application of any knowledge so long as it 

 is usual to do at the Edinburgh Academy.'* Scott, 

 who has just come to me from the sixth form, has 

 been admirably trained in Latin and Greek, and is 

 in all respects a very clever, well-informed and 

 thoughtful hoy, and yet during the whole five years 

 he has been at the Academy he has not put pen to 



paper once. I am no bigot to our own system ; I 

 VOL. I. 2 



