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of the highest class in the larger towns, and such as offered classical 
training to the youth, in the whole length and breadth of the 
country, in preparation for the Universities. In Edinburgh, Glas- 
gow, Aberdeen, and St Andrews, she gave university education to 
twice as large a proportion of her population as Prussia did ; and it 
is not to he wondered at that her sons have distinguished themselves 
in every corner of the globe. In settling in the north of Ireland, 
they introduced order and liberty, manufactures and prosperity, and 
raised one of its towns at least to take its place amongst the most 
enterprising and prosperous in the United Kingdom, whilst they 
themselves neither required soldiers nor police for the maintenance 
of order and securing the advantages of the administration of just 
laws. These were the days of Thomson’s youth. 
The mother’s fond affection for her son led her to anticipate his 
wishes — to supply his wants — and to present him to his father as 
almost faultless in every relation of his early life. The son’s de- 
votion to his parents led him to make many an effort for their 
gratification, no less than for his own success in life. His early 
training was at Merchiston Castle School, when it was under the 
management of Mr Charles Chalmers, brother of the famous divine. 
Mr Thomas Chalmers, of Longcroft, near Linlithgow, and son of 
the then proprietor of the school, stated at a meeting of the com- 
missioners of supply for the county of Linlithgow, that “when 
young Thomson entered the school he himself had passed from 
being a scholar to the position of a master, and thus became Thom- 
son’s first teacher in some of those branches of science in which he 
afterwards became so eminent.” Mr Chalmers adds — “Ho doubt 
the lessons he received were of a very elementary description, still I 
may he allowed to recall with some satisfaction, if not pride, the 
happy early days of our intercourse, when, with botanical boxes or 
geological hammers in hand, we rambled on Saturday holidays, or in 
the long summer evenings, among the woods of Braid and Colin - 
ton, or over the uplands of the beautiful Pentland Hills, in search 
of some of the interesting flora or geological and mineral speci- 
mens in which the neiglibourood of Edinburgh so richly abounds,” 
and then describes the exultation and satisfaction with which they 
returned with any new or rare specimen after a long day’s excursion. 
Mr Chalmers says that Thomson was a universal favourite with his 
