512 Some Reminiscences of Mr Carr- Ellison. 



attracting and interesting a child. It seemed to be his delight to 

 draw out the power of observation in his boy companion, and to 

 suggest the generalizations which might be drawn from the facts 

 observed, and this not on one, but on every subject of human 

 culture. 



As we walked through the woods, he would draw attention to 

 some plant or flower, and ask where I had seen that before, and 

 then notice the soil in which it was found. Not a bird was in 

 sight, but he asked its name, and told of its habits. He held 

 his gun that tlie boy might have his first shot at a rabbit. By 

 the banks of the Coquet, he would tell the life-history of ring- 

 dotterel or black -headed gull, and then as we watched the trout, 

 explain the various species of Salmo and their different habits. 

 If we passed the ruins of Brandon Chapel, there was sure to be 

 a story of the Great EebeUion, and the march of Cromwell to 

 Dunbar. Well do I remember a walk to Percy's Cross and to 

 the Percy Leap — how he rehearsed the ballad of Otterburn, and 

 sent me happy home, with Scott's "Tales of a Grandfather," which 

 I was not to return till I could say I had read them through. 

 A visit to the British Camp at Old Bewick was a text for a 

 lesson that could never be forgotten, on the difference of British 

 and Eoman remains, and' on the primaeval inhabitants of 

 Northumbria. 



Yet the man who could thus enjoy devoting himself to interest 

 boys, was one of the most generally accomplished and widely 

 read men I ever met. There was hardly a subject he did not 

 treat, and in none was he a mere dabbler. At a time when 

 Anglo-Saxon was hardly known even by its University Professors, 

 he had acquired no mean knowledge of the language, and applied 

 his knowledge to the elucidation of many local names, a very 

 favourite amusement with him. He had searched out all the 

 known Saxon remains in the north, and was the discoverer of 

 some inscriptions. Anglo-Saxon led him to investigate the struc- 

 ture of all the Gothic and Scandinavian developments ; and he 

 carried researches even further. Once when I had been visiting 

 Livonia, and produced a Lettish Grammar, I found he knew 

 some of the characteristics of that language, and he gave me a 

 Lettish Bible, with various notes of his own, as a souvenir of our 

 conversation. His continental visits, which had been leisurely, 

 had enabled him to become familiar with the ethnographic 

 features of Europe, from the Basques to the Magyars. 



