THE DAWN OF MEMORY. 11 



and law of the Culloden Forbes, forming an excellent 

 fabric, showed a border of Monro-anatomical cord, 

 fringed with the aesthetic Mackenzie and the medico- 

 classical Gregories and Alisons. 



The boy John Goodsir grew in stature and good 

 sense, and partook of the tender reciprocations of feel- 

 ing that seasoned the domestic hearth of a gladsome 

 and kindly-conducted home in Scottish life. His 

 mother was a person of superior education, who pos- 

 sessed many accomplishments, not the least of which 

 was good management of her household and the 

 affectionate guidance of her children. John used to 

 recall his babyhood — his mother's coaxing him to try 

 a dip in the sea, and of her guiding him so gently 

 beneath the "bonny waves;" then the daisied field, 

 so pearly and scarlet, in which he was allowed to 

 romp ; and, above all, he remembered the pure white 

 lily, the presentation of which elicited his first word- 

 utterance, to his own and others' delight ; — verily a 

 pleasant dawn of memory, happily associated with 

 nature, and inchoative of a larger acquaintance with 

 organic forms and a grander knowledge of the crea- 

 tive world. De Quincey wrote of his babyish me- 

 mories as the earliest on record — startled, however, 

 by a sudden burst of grief, the presage to a fitful 

 and unsettled life of opium in high revelry and anti- 

 podal remorse; but Goodsir had his primitive cognis- 

 ance called forth, and quite as early in life, by the open 

 sea, daisied pastures, and liveried Horn, and he lived 

 to enjoy equanimity and pleasure in watching progres- 



