it to Dumbarton, and the old
minister, who insisted on our eating a bit of cake with him, and said
a grace over it which might have been prologue to a dinner of the
Fishmongers' Company, or the Grocers' Company."] I think, with all the
love and reverence with which your uncle regarded his father's memory,
there mingled a shade of bitterness that he had not met quite the
encouragement and appreciation from him which he received from others.
But such a son as he was! Never a disrespectful word or look; always
anxious to please and amuse; and at last he was the entire stay and
support of his father's declining years.

"Your uncle was of opinion that the course pursued by his father towards
him during his youth was not judicious. But here I am inclined to
disagree with him. There was no want of proof of the estimation in which
his father held him, corresponding with him from a very early age as
with a man, conversing with him freely, and writing of him most fondly.
But, in the desire to keep down any conceit, there was certainly in my
father a great outward show of repression and depreciation. Then
the faults of your uncle were peculiarly those that my father had no
patience with. Himself precise in his arrangements, writing a beautiful
hand, particular about neatness, very accurate and calm, detesting
strong expressions, and remarkably self-controlled; while his eager
impetuous boy, careless of his dress, always forgetting to wash his
hands and brush his hair, writing an execrable hand, and folding
his letters with a great blotch for a seal, was a constant care and
irritation. Many letters to your uncle have I read on these subjects.
Sometimes a specimen of the proper way of folding a letter is sent him,
(those were the sad days before envelopes were known,) and he is desired
to repeat the experiment till he succeeds. General Macaulay's fastidious
nature led him to take my father's line regarding your uncle, and my
youthful soul was often vexed by the constant reprimands for venial
transgressions. But the great sin was the idle reading, which was a
thorn in my father's side that never was extracted. In truth, he really
acknowledged to the full your uncle's abilities, and felt that if he
could only add his own morale, his unwearied industry, his power of
concentrating his energies on the work in hand, his patient painstaking
calmness, to the genius and fervour which his son possessed, then a
being might be formed who could