GLASGOW COLLEGE. 19 



notorious, and to a certain extent unimportant, alluding to names 

 of persons, the mention of which, save to a very few, will scarcely 

 awaken any familiar associations. 



The season is begun at home in Edinburgh, where his mother, 

 with the rest of the family, had now taken up her residence. A 

 happy band of brothers and sisters, and other relatives, there met 

 together to welcome in the new-year. So, for a while, the dingy 

 walls of Glasgow College, and its eight o'clock morning lectures, 

 were shut out from thought, and the bright-hearted boy rejoiced 

 with his friends. Before quoting from the memorandum-book its 

 brief record of those days, which gleams out from the past like 

 light seen from an aperture for the first time, let us hear him in ma- 

 turer years recalling the memory of such scenes : — 



" Merry Christmases they were indeed ; one lady always pre- 

 siding, with a figure that once had been the stateliest among the 

 stately, but then somewhat bent, without being bowed down, be- 

 neath an easy weight of most venerable years. Sweet was her 

 tremulous voice to all her grandchildren's ears. Nor did those 

 solemn eyes, bedimmed into a pathetic beauty, in any degree re- 

 strain the glee that sparkled in orbs that had as yet shed not many 

 tears, but tears of joy or pity. 



" Whether we were indeed all so witty as we thought ourselves 

 — uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins, and ' the 

 rest,' it might be presumptuous in us, who were considered by our- 

 selves and a few others not the least amusing of the whole set, at 

 this distance of time to decide — especially in the affirmative ; but 

 how the roof did ring with sally, pun, retort, and repartee ! Ay, 

 with pun — a species of impertinence for which we have therefore a 

 kindness even to this day. Had incomparable Thomas Hood had 

 the good fortune to have been born a cousin of ours, how with that 

 fine fancy of his would he have shone at those Christmas festivals, 

 eclipsing us all! Our family, through all its different branches, has 

 ever been famous for bad voices, but good ears ; and we think we 

 hear ourselves — all those uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, and 

 cousins — singing now ! Easy is it to ' warble melody' as to breathe 

 air. But we hope harmony is the most difficult of all things to 

 people in general, for to us it was impossible ; and what attempts 

 ours used to be at seconds! Yet the most woful failures were 

 rapturously encored ; and ere the night was done we spoke with 



