8 THE LIFE OF JAMES D. FORBES. [CHAP. 



retained the most tender regard, his mother's favourite 

 maid and his own nurse, Lizzie Jervis, a remarkable 

 woman in her way ; of the old Scotch type, stately and 

 reserved, strict and conscientious, one who never went 

 out to walk without her small, well-worn Bible in her 

 pocket. 



Writing to her daughter, his mother says : 'Dear James 

 is a sweet, thriving, merry pet;' and again: 'He is 

 really the dearest and the best baby you ever saw/ 



But he was never to be conscious of the blessing of 

 such a mothers love and care. She died 5th December, 

 1810, when he was little more than a year and a half 

 old. But though too young to know his irreparable 

 loss, or to retain the slightest recollection of that 

 lovely spot where his mother died, he never ceased 

 to regard it with a sacred and almost romantic vene- 

 ration. Witness the pilgrimage made to Lympstone 

 in his twenty-sixth year, so touchingly described in 

 a letter to his sister, which few could read unmoved. 

 An intense sensibility to the associations of the past, a 

 clinging fondness for the scenes of his youth and the 

 memories of his early days, were among his most 

 amiable and abiding qualities. Little relics, which many 

 men would have despised as childish, were preserved by 

 him with a loving appreciation of the value once attached 

 to them. And this taste for the simplest and most 

 innocent pleasures he retained unimpaired to the last. 



The return to Colinton House was melancholy in the 

 extreme to the bereaved husband, and such of his family 

 as could sympathise, young as they were, in the over- 

 whelming sorrow that clouded his life even to its last 

 day. 



Under these circumstances, that fair young face and 

 joyous spirit seemed sent to brighten the nursery like a 

 sunbeam. His father idolized him as the last precious 

 legacy of a beloved wife ; while his two sisters and three 

 elder brothers welcomed him home as the cherished 

 Benjamin of the family : no shade of jealousy was ever 

 awakened by the peculiar place he held in his father's 





