EARLY LIFE. / 



wedding -coach, bought, and all the paraphernalia 

 prepared. 



The very day before the wedding Mary Whelpdale 

 died. My father, struck down by the shock, lost for 

 a time the use of his reason. He was again sent 

 abroad, but on his return to "Westmorland, found the 

 scene of his calamity unendurable. A very intimate 

 friend of my grandfather, Lord Buchan, lived some- 

 times at Dryburgh Abbey, in Scotland, and sometimes 

 in Edinburgh. To him my father was consigned, in 

 the hopes that, introduced by him to the best Edin- 

 burgh society, he might find occupation and distrac- 

 tion enough to dissipate his grief."* 



Accordingly to Edinburgh he went, and there, among 

 other distinguished personages, made the acquaintance 

 of Dr Kobertson, at whose house he met his eldest 

 sister, then a widow, and her only child Eleanor. This 

 acquaintance ended in a marriage, and then my father 

 and his bride moved to St Andrew's Square, to the 

 house in which Lord and Lady Buchan lived, and 

 there I was born on the 19th September 1778.t 



It has often struck me that what seemed to my 

 father an irretrievable calamity, may have been the 

 means of saving me from obscurity. If Mary Whelp- 

 dale had been my mother, she would no doubt have 

 materially enriched the Saxon blood I derived from 

 my father ; but I should have remained in the state 

 of respectable mediocrity which seems to have charac- 

 terised my many ancestors, none of whom, so far as I 



* Lord Buchan see Appendix I. f Dr Robertson see App. II. 



