104 Life and Letters of Francis Gallon 



his whip and shook it (it is a common horse hair one, but very large, not heavy), and 

 helped to draw the Lions' Cages off afterwards. I am rather badly off for soap. My 

 Books cost a wee and there is my British Association fee 1 (I have kept regular 

 Accounts ! !) Amongst others of my entries is one : Various Charities 4rf. I must look 

 you up some of these fine days. I have got no news watsumever. So bye bye. 



Your affectionate Son, 



FBAS. G ALTON. 

 P.S. Mr Thomas Knott the Editor of Aris' Gazette has died suddenly of apoplexy. 



Of Samuel Tertius Galton it must be said that he knew what his 

 son Francis could stand. The summer trip did come off and what is 

 more Francis did not return in the autumn to the Birmingham General 

 Hospital. 



On September 2 1 , Francis started with his father and Sister Bessy 

 via Coventry to Liverpool and thence by packet to the Clyde and 

 Dumbarton. The tour went through what is now very familiar country, 

 Loch Lomond, Loch Long, Loch Katrine, Oban and then across to 

 Aberdeen, and Ury, the home of the Barclays. Francis' diary of the 

 tour is still extant, and it comes to an abrupt end on Sept. 10, 

 apparently because he had already filled in the bulk of the remainder 

 of the book with sketches. We know from these that the party were 

 at Inverlochy Castle on Sept. 17th and at Ury on Sept. 21st. There 

 are no less than six unfinished sketches of Ury, three of the outside 

 of the house, one of the chapel and burial ground of the ancestral 

 Barclays, one of the wall a tremendous looking structure over which 

 Captain Barclay's grandfather is reputed to have thrown a bull, and 

 lastly the inside of the gothic window above the porch with the deep 

 window recess showing the thickness of the walls where Francis' 

 grandmother, Lucy, had sat to work her sampler, according to the 

 custom of the family. Ury must have been a fascinating spot to those 

 whose ancestry had dwelt there, and thus Sister Bessy describes it : 



" We left Inverness at six o'clock in the morning passed Forres, where the witches 

 met Macbeth, arrived at Aberdeen at 7 o'clock, drank tea at the Inn and then came on 

 to Stonehaven where we slept. After breakfast we drove up to Ury which had belonged 

 to the Barclays for some centuries. Margaret Barclay showed us over the curious old 

 hous (now blown up and a modern house built by the Bairds), she showed us the 

 Meeting House of the Quakers, close to the house, which all Quakers when travelling 

 in Scotland, came to see ; a tiny closet, out of the large sitting room, is where my 



1 The British Association met in Birmingham this August ; and there is evidence 

 from Gallon's accounts that he attended it it was probably his first meeting. 



