EARLY LIFE. 4! 



a way of speaking ; but it lets the wretches off too 

 easily. They never let them get to the foot of the 

 altar, but murdered them in the streets or the prisons/' 

 Dr Adam was a teacher of the greatest merit, and 

 a man distinguished by qualities very rarely found in 

 combination with his literary eminence. The hard- 

 ships which he endured from poverty in his early life 

 have seldom been equalled, never exceeded. When 

 he was endeavouring to educate himself, he for some 

 years suffered from actual hunger, his only means of 

 subsistence being the small sum of three guineas a- 

 quarter received from teaching, and out of which he 

 had to pay fourpence a-week for a miserable lodging, 

 two miles out of the town, and his daily food was 

 oatmeal-porridge and penny rolls. He dispensed 

 with fire and candles : the former, by severe exercise 

 when the weather permitted when it was bad, by 

 climbing one of the highest staircases in which Edin- 

 burgh abounds ; the latter, by reading at the room of 

 some fellow-student. His temper was never soured 

 nor his spirits distressed ; the zeal of studying and 

 success in it, sustaining him, and even making him 

 feel happy. These particulars have been related by 

 his pupils, among others the first Lord Meadowbank, 

 but were very rarely even alluded to by himself, and 

 only in general terms when illustrating in his class 

 the value of industrious habits, and the comforts they 

 bring under the most adverse circumstances. For it 

 was one of the greatest merits of his teaching that he 

 constantly lectured his pupils on moral and religious 



