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    Dr. Waughs Memoirs. 815

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    Memoir Of The Rev. Alexander Waugh, D. D...

    be taken as a general rule 4 hat those reverend biogTaplhers who have of late come before the public either do not understand the man they describe , or do not intend that the public should . For instance , a simple , straight-forward reader will not know what to make of the book before us till he gets to the end ; and what he learns at the end compels him to unlearn what he was told at the beginning ., There is a very fine portrait of Dr . Waugh , full of spirit and truth , so as to impress a conviction of likeness ; and conveying an expression of such intellectual power and beauty as to arrest one at setting out . But there is no reconciling the tone of the Memoir with the

    tone of the portrait . We are told the extent of parental discipline which was practised among the class of society in Scotland to which the Waugh family belonged , and that young Alexander was subjected to its utmost strictness ; we begin to wonder how he came hy such a countenance . We are told of his repentance for having mixed philosophy with his youthful religion ; we see nothing like this in the portrait . We hear of his struggles .,

    and strivings , and despondency ; we deny nothing of this ; but there were intervals , large intervals in which he was easy , happy—in which he revelled in life . How do we know ? Why , from the portrait . Judging from the comments and panegyrics of the writers alone we should have the general impression of an anxious , melancholy dispenser of the gospel threats and

    promises , a humble slave of the powers of the Secession a mourner over the Heathen , a man whose happiness must abide in heaven ^ because certainly there was none of it on earth . This would be our notion , in the face of occasional protestations that he was very cheerful . But this general impression is in contradiction to the portrait , and therefore it is false . When we come to the letters all is clear * When he rested on the Gospel , he was

    happy ; when he turned to the Session , he was sad ; when he wrote for the Evangelical Magazine ., he was a Scotch Presbyterian ; when to his wife , a happy lover , a poet , and a wit ; when he preached for the Missionary Society , the arbitrary dictates of his religious creed put words of lamentation ( which we should call almost impious ) into his mouth , but when resigning himself to the spontaneous influence of his feelings , a hetter faith prompted him to look round evermore and evermore to rejoice .

    This last was the natural consequence of some propitious circumstances of his early lite , A . t the age of twelve he was sent to school at Earlstoun , a village in Berwickshire , overhung on one side by the hill of Cowdenknowes , and on the other by the " pastoral haughs of Leader , " crowned with the ruins of the Rhymer ' s Tower . The Tweed rolls near , its tide swelled by the streams of Ettrick and Gala-water , and dignified by the monastic

    remains of Dryburgh and Melrose . One of Waugh ' s class-fellows says , " Alexander Waugli was the most active , lively boy at the school , and the

    leader of all frolics . It was impossible to detain him at home iis the morn * ino-s ; he was often out before sunrise ; and the places he visited were Gsirrah sic ? e , Cowdenknowes , but more generally Gaitk , eugh , distant , about two miles—a steep ravine opposite Old Melrose , for ages noted ^ t jxetbest coy « r . for foxes in all the country . When asked , on his returia at break s f ^ st , -tim , e where he had been , his answer generally was , ' I have teen seeing foxvk < jnu hearing Che linnets / His taste tor the beauties of nattire ivflte b & tn wftll liiiif , and constituted a leading feature of his mind , ffwafcrat GaftfteuiHi tliit , ' ohe

    morning " , he fell from a tree , when climbing fora glee ' s nesrt , and lay for Home time insensible , no one being with him . In the midst of all his rambles and frolics , lie was ihe best scholar sit school , especially in JLatiiij and equal to any of " the other boys in Greek . "—P . 29 .

    Dr. Waughs Memoirs. 815

    Dr . Waughs Memoirs . 815

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1830, page 815, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/mrp_02121830/page/15/