Should any one expect a defence or apology for the publication of this memoir and these remains, I am happy to be able to furnish it in the well chosen words of Dr. Campbell of London:- "It is meet that the tender tale of his short, bright career should be told to the praise of the power and grace that made him what he was: and that his literary remains should also be embodied, published, and handed down to the generations to come. I doubt not that the volume will be one full of interest, and eminently fitted to be useful. It is but seldom that any denomination has such a man to lose, and on the departure of such a one, there is something monumental due to his talents and virtues." CONTENTS. Page ALEXANDER CAMPBELL, the eldest son of Mr. John Campbell, pastor of the Congregational church in Oban, was born at Fort-William on the 9th of February, 1809. In the following year his father re moved to Oban, and in that romantic and beautiful village Alexander received his early education. Though at his birth the child had no symptoms of life till means of restoration were employed, he became in a few years strong and healthy; and, in addition to being remarkably quiet and tractable, exhibited no small acuteness and penetration. His description of a thunderstorm, when very young, was both natural and imaginative. Running into the house, he told his parents, in a state of great excitement and amazement, that the day had become dark like night, that fire had come out of the earth, and that he had heard the noise of a great gun from the sun.* The last *This circumstance will probably remind the reader, as it has done me, of an anecdote related of Sir Walter Scott. "There is a story, (says his biographer,) of his having been forgotten one day among the knolls when a thunderstorm came on; and his aunt part of the description will be appreciated only by those who have heard a gun fired in the midst of echoing and re-echoing mountains. It were difficult to distinguish its prolonged report from the rumbling sounds of thunder. In his fifth year Alexander was sent to school; and in four years after he began the study of Latin; but it was not till he had the advantage of being placed under a thoroughly qualified teacher, in 1822, that he made much progress in it. That gentleman, Mr. George Reddoch, now in Inverary, says of him, "He was a boy of a singularly modest and unobtrusive demeanour; his attainments in the classics were very creditable to his talents. There is one thing I must not omit to mention:-I took occasion to remark to him, on his paying me a visit after he had commenced his studies with a view to the ministry, that he must have got rusty in his Latin; he replied-No; that though he felt the study irksome when a boy, yet he had been so well grounded that when he began to revise his Latin all difficulties vanished like a mist, and he wondered how he had not formerly understood what then appeared to him so easy." It is but due to Mr. Reddoch to say, that Alexander Campbell often regretted that he had lost so many years before he enjoyed the advantage of his instructions. suddenly recollecting his situation, and running out to bring him home, is said to have found him lying on his back, clapping his hands at the lightning, and crying out, 'Bonny, bonny,' at every flash." |