342 IN MEMORIAM.— DR HARDY 



man he was, within the compass of a few brief pages, 

 will be no easy task ; but those for whom the attempt 

 has been made can best appreciate its difficulty, and 

 will be most ready to condone its almost inevitable 

 imperfections. 



James Hardy was born at Bilsdean, East Lothian, 

 near the Berwickshire border, on the 1st of June 1815 ; 

 and it deserves to be noted that, save for a few years 

 during his early manhood, the whole of his long and 

 busy life was spent within a few miles of the place 

 of his birth. His " forbears " were natives of Old 

 Cambus, in the adjoining parish of Cocksburnspath, in 

 Berwickshire, and had for several generations been con- 

 nected with the estate of Dunglass. One of the family 

 traditions is to the effect that his great-grandmother, 

 Ann Allan, witnessed the country people driving 

 their cattle into Spot Wood, near Dunbar, for safety, 

 after the battle of Prestonpans, in 1745, the year of 

 his grandfather's birth. His parents belonged to the 

 farming class, from which so many notable Scotsmen 

 have sprung. His father, George Hardy, was a man 

 of shrewd business ability and sterling integrity, and 

 withal of strong religious convictions and deeply reverent 

 nature. For many years he was an office-bearer in 

 the little Secession Meeting-house at Stockbridge, near 

 Cockburnspath. His mother-, Elizabeth Halliday, was 

 a grand-daughter of James Wait, a shepherd of great 

 piety and intelligence, whose life, by the Rev. Robert 

 Maclaurin, Coldingham, was published in 1829, and ma}^ 

 still be read with profit. She was a woman of remark- 

 able strength of character, deeply religious, like her 

 husband, and most industrious and persevering. It 

 cannot be doubted that such a home would be a 

 nursery of all the sturdy virtues, where, by both precept 

 and example, the moral faculty would be disciplined 

 and developed. 



