SQUATTERO-MASTIX 167 



century and embodied its energy and progressiveness, 

 while Wentworth, six years his senior, was always in 

 spirit a denizen of the eighteenth century. With grimy 

 Greenock as his birthplace, he was reared in the romantic 

 west of Scotland, on the shores of the Firth of Clyde, 

 and there he made the acquaintance of the sea in all 

 its moods, which his mobile spirit reflected ; perhaps 

 he there imbibed the vein of poetry that cast a faint 

 halo round his warrior figure. Like most clever Scottish 

 youths whose families were in comfortable circumstances, 

 he was bred for that grand arena of talent, the Kirk, 

 and in 1822 he was ordained one of its ministers. The 

 fiery energy of the young probationer could ill brook 

 waiting (as he himself expressed it) "for a dead man's 

 shoes," and, having no such " interest " as would com- 

 mand preferment, he stormily resolved that he would 

 migrate to a country where no Presbyterian minister 

 had yet settled. The resolution was aided by the 

 knowledge that his elder brother had gone out to 

 Australia, and was seemingly doing well. In 1823 he 

 landed in Sydney, and ever afterwards he was proud 

 to describe himself on his numerous title-pages as the 

 Senior Minister of the Church of Scotland in New South 

 Wales ; as if, it was said, he claimed to be the Pope 

 of Presbyterianism. He soon made his mark. He built 

 up a church — the famous Scots Church of Sydney, to 

 which Lang appears to have bequeathed his animosity 

 against Roman Catholicism. His incorrigible meddle- 

 someness soon got him into trouble. Though Governor 

 Sir Ralph Darling, as he himself tells, was evidently 

 wilhng to obhge the able young minister, Lang had not 

 been six months in the Colony before the authorities 

 placed him on the Ust of the proscribed. Like Robertson 

 of Brighton, he was to be a marked man, and that from 

 his early years. 



In 1826 he made the first of his many visits to the 

 " old country " — then at six months' distance — and 

 when he returned he brought out with him the first, but 

 by no means the last, of his eminently desirable imnii- 



