Obituary Notices. 
Ixiii 
Andrew Young, F.G.S. By Professor Flint, D.D. 
(Read December 21, 1891.) 
Andrew Young, the subject of this notice, was born at Edinburgh 
in 1807. His first instructor was his father, David Young, a success- 
ful teacher in the city during half a century. He early entered the 
University, and passed with distinction through the curricula of 
Arts and Theology. He had University Prizes awarded him for no 
less than five poems. These poems show a facility and skill in the 
metrical expression of his thoughts and feelings remarkable in a 
youth of from fifteen to seventeen years of age, and only to be 
explained by a naturally poetical disposition having prompted him 
almost from childhood to cultivate the art of versification. The 
poem on “ The Scottish Highlands,” warmly commended by Pro- 
fessor Wilson when declaring him Laureate of the Moral Philosophy 
Class, is not only the longest and most laboured of his compositions, 
but the one which gives the highest conception and fullest measure 
of his poetical talent and resources. 
Having completed his course at the University he chose teaching 
as his profession in preference to the ministry. At the age of 
twenty-one he was appointed by the Town Council of Edinburgh to 
the head-mastership of Hiddry Street School, a position which he 
held for eleven years. It was during this period that he composed 
that delightful Sabbath-school hymn, “ The Happy Land,” which 
has been so widely and richly productive of good, and which has 
endeared his name to multitudes in all parts of the world. It well 
deserves its success and influence, although it owes them not to any 
rare or remarkable felicities either of thought or expression, but to 
the admirable adjustment of the words to the melody, and of both 
to the minds and voices of the young. The secret of its charm and 
power reveals itself at once when heard sung by a fairly large 
number of children. As to the circumstances in which it was 
written I need only refer to Mr Young’s own account of them in 
the preface to his “ Poems.” 
In 1840 he was appointed head-master of the English Depart- 
ment in Madras College, St Andrews. After teaching there with 
