t, with which he served during several campaigns in
Flanders. From continued indisposition, and consequent inability to
undergo the fatigues of military life, he disposed of his commission,
and retired, with his wife and two children, to the villa of Rosebank,
of which he became the owner. A few years after the birth of his son
Hector, he felt necessitated, from straitened circumstances, to quit
this beautiful residence; and he afterwards occupied a farm on the banks
of Loch Lomond. Such a region of the picturesque was highly suitable for
the development of those poetical talents which had already appeared in
young Hector, amidst the rural amenities of Roslin. In his eleventh
year, he wrote a drama, after the manner of Gay; and the respectable
execution of his juvenile attempts in versification gained him the
approbation of Dr Doig, the learned rector of the grammar-school of
Stirling, who strongly urged his father to afford him sufficient
instruction, to enable him to enter upon one of the liberal professions.
Had Captain Macneill's circumstances been prosperous, this counsel might
have been adopted, for the son's promising talents were not unnoticed by
his father; but pecuniary difficulties opposed an unsurmountable
obstacle.

An opulent relative, a West India trader, resident in Bristol, had paid
the captain a visit; and, attracted by the shrewdness of the son Hector,
who was his namesake, offered to retain him in his employment, and to
provide for him in life. After two years' preparatory education, he was
accordingly sent to Bristol, in his fourteenth year. He was destined to
an adventurous career, singularly at variance with his early
predilections and pursuits. By his relative he was designed to sail in a
slave ship to the coast of Guinea; but the intercession of some female
friends prevented his being connected with an expedition so uncongenial
to his feelings. He was now despatched on board a vessel to the island
of St Christopher's, with the view of his making trial of a seafaring
life, but was provided with recommendatory letters, in the event of his
preferring employment on land. With a son of the Bristol trader he
remained twelvemonths; and, having no desire to resume his labours as a
seaman, he afterwards sailed for Guadaloupe, where he continued in the
employment of a merchant for three years, till 1763, when the island was
ceded to the French. Dismissed by his employer, with a scanty balance of
salary, h