completely doubled inwards. However, the assurance was given that there was good hope; they could in time be brought to a proper shape. 'In time!' Alas! it was over those words that my poor mother wept, for she knew that they expressed a suffering infancy, and a childhood debarred from childhood's active enjoyment. She was full of faith and love, and perhaps God whispered to her heart that by those very means He would best form her child for the work He destined for him; for when she left her room to rejoin the little circle, which never felt right when she was absent, she brought with her the usual gentle cheerfulness; and the only outward sign of the misfortune was that the baby Archie was fondled and spoken of with an inexpressible tenderness. She was the most submissive of women, and so she found rest to the disquietude of her heart. She knew her husband to be the most energetic of men, and, thoroughly believing in him, she felt sure that all that could be done would be done. Many were the visits the baby received before he was a month old in the little apartment in which the old nurse held her court; but his first appearance in publicthat is to say, his christening-was the event to which we, the younger branches of the family, looked forward with the greatest interest. At length the day appointed arrived-the 10th of February 1812. Our mother was sufficiently recovered to receive her friends, and the usual little circle was gathered round her, while all her children, except the eldest, who had gone to Harrow after the Christmas holidays, dressed in their best, gazed with a little more than the usual amount of watchfulness on the well-remembered ceremony which added a new member to the visible Church of Christ and a new name to the chorus which already filled the nursery. The mysterious large china. bowl occupied once again its conspicuous place in the drawingroom, making the centre of the solemn group, where the father held up his infant, Archibald Campbell, to receive his baptism from the hands of the friendly minister of the Old Church of St. Giles', Dr. Thomas MacKnight, who had come once more to perform his loving office. The gentle mother and the seven brothers and sisters encircled him. The newly named Archibald Campbell was a lovely baby: his long robes hid the poor little feet; and if there was any difference in the welcome given to him from that which greeted his predecessors, it was only that it was more tender and loving; and as our mother passed her 1811-27] SUSAN TAIT II treasure from friend to friend, admiring smiles saluted him, and soothed the distress she had hid away in her heart. "And thus she returned to the daily duties of her life, bringing back with her the quiet influence that had on the family all the effect of an absolute rule. On looking back to her character, there shines out this remarkable difference between her and other women,-that no one ever saw her in the slightest bustle or fuss of any kind, nor can any one remember her voice raised in anger. Her memory comes back with a sort of moonlight radiance. Clouds in her daily life there must have been; but she passed through them all, brightening them to others, and by them herself undimmed. "I love to remember her kneeling in the large white oldfashioned chair which belonged to her bedroom. She often retired thither for private prayer; and among the memories of earliest childhood her figure shines out as in a picture, kneeling upon the cushion of the high-backed chair, her earnest face lifted up to God; but she never prayed aloud. It was only when we were very little children that she did not mind the presence of one of us when she carried her distresses to the Comforter. Everything she did was so quietly done that though we saw, when we were at Harviestoun, that she always kept in her bedroom a little bunch of daisies, carefully tended in a glass of water, not one of us knew until long afterwards that she gathered them from our little brother Willie's grave, and thus treasured them for his sake; yet he had died so long ago that few of us had the slightest recollection of his birth, and he had lived but for six months. She must have gone to the grave quite alone in the early morning, for no one ever saw her there. "Dear mother! She was so purely and innocently good. The modern language of what is called the religious world was unknown to her, but the true spirit of religion dwelt in her, and her right hand did not know what her left hand had done. Of her self-denying deeds of charity few were known until her death caused them to be missed, and I cannot remember ever to have heard her speak unkindly of a single human being. I remember her sympathising in the remark made to her by a poor woman, to whom she had lent a volume of Blair's Sermons. To my mother's inquiry whether she liked them, the reply was: "Deed, leddy, no that weel; for in a' that reading [turning over a number of pages] there's neither God nor Jesus Christ.' Her good-natured charity was so well understood by the poor around her country home that some of them did not hesitate to encroach on it. I remember her amusement at the answer made to her by a pensioner, as to whether she would like to have money or oatmeal. leddy,' she replied, with a curtsey, 'baith's best.' 'Weel, "The birth of Archibald was followed by two bright and happy years in the family circle. The two eldest boys came and went between Harrow and Harviestoun, the eldest daughter was growing into womanhood, and the nursery was full of cheery little faces. "The winters were spent, as usual, in the Edinburgh home, the summer and autumn at Harviestoun. Suddenly, on January 3, 1814, our mother died, almost in a moment. The overstrained heart had given way. We were summoned to her room, where she lay dead upon the sofa, on the very spot where I can first remember her. My earliest recollection is that of sitting, some ten or eleven years before, upon a little stool beside that sofa, pricking upon paper the outline of the chintz flowers on her dress, while she laid her hand upon my head, and repeated in a low voice Cowper's lines to his mother's picture. The two scenes-the beginning and the end-are, even now, inextricably blended in my mind. Dark and dreary were the clouds that now fell upon the happy home in Park Place. While we children crept about the house, and remarked to each other that the snow was falling upon mother's grave, relations and friends were anxiously discussing up-stairs what could be done for the best with the nine children thus thrown suddenly upon our father's care. Our father! O how well I remember his constant pacing up and down, care and grief altogether changing his countenance ! For now, at this very crisis, he had come to know that to this crowning sorrow of his life were added other causes of perplexity and trouble. While she was by his side there had been sunshine, and one difficulty after another had seemed to melt. But now he had to face the fact that, misled by his sanguine temperament, he had embarked in, and even carried through, enterprises which, while 1 The criticism is severe, but it is worth noting that more than half a century afterwards the Archbishop used frequently to describe a sermon which had dissatisfied him as 66 a trifle Blairy." 1811-27] BETTY MORTON 13 benefiting many, had ruined himself. The children soon came to understand that heavy trials lay ahead. The establishment was to be broken up, the servants whom we loved must go, including the dear old coachman whom we had known all our lives; his grey carriage-horses were now to work upon the farm. The schoolroom life came to an end. My younger sister and I were sent to school, and household cares of every sort devolved upon our eldest sister, Susan, who was barely seventeen years old. The constant care that little Archie required endeared him specially to us all. He soon became a well-grown child, with a touching look of appeal that went straight to the heart. He was naturally more lame than Campbell, who had only one limb affected, but both boys were unable for climbing or games, and became all in all to each other, while yet a complete contrast-the one with bright black eyes and hair, his face all rippling with fun; the other Archie-blue-eyed and fair-haired, watching the quicker movements of his brother as though they were necessary parts of his own existence." The nurse, Betty Morton by name, was a person so remarkable that she became almost the centre of the family life. She ruled her nursery with a strictness only equalled by her loyal devotion to the young mistress at its head. But little Archie was of course her special charge, and she was destined to take no unimportant part in his education for the work of life. She was a strict Sabbatarian, and the Sunday amusements were confined mainly to a study of the absorbing pictures in an ancient Family Bible, "dedicated to Catherine Parr, and full of such illustrations as that of a man with a beam as large as a rafter sticking straight out of his eye." To the systematic nursery study of this Bible, however, both the Archbishop and his sisters attributed in after years their unusually thorough acquaintance with the details of Scripture history. In the first three autumns after their mother's death the younger boys were taken by Betty Morton to Garscadden, a strange, weird old house, three miles from Sir Ilay Campbell's home at Garscube near Glasgow. The Archbishop frequently declared that this quaint old house, with its wonderful turreted gateway, its hideous carved faces grinning from every corner, and its trim old-fashioned garden, was the very first recollection of his life. His early reading-lessons were under the charge, not only of his eldest sister Susan, whose hands must have been more than full, but of Betty Morton, no despicable instructress, and one rigidly accurate in exacting the daily quota of lessons. In the autumn of 1818 Susan Tait was married to Sir George Sitwell of Renishaw, near Chesterfield, and Archie began a few months later to make acquaintance with the beautiful Derbyshire home which was to be the scene of many of his holidays for thirty years to come. Soon after her marriage Lady Sitwell invited her four youngest brothers to pay a long visit to Renishaw. Slow was their method of conveyance thither. Under the faithful charge of Betty Morton they were put on board a smack at Leith. A dead calm soon came on, and seven days and eight nights were passed upon the sea before the travellers in hungry plight reached Hull, whence they had to journey up the Humber to Gainsborough, and thence post. When the visit came to an end, a plan was carried out, at Lady Sitwell's instigation, which materially affected the whole life of the future Archbishop. Time and skill had hitherto done nothing towards curing the lameness of the two little boys. Campbell's right leg was shrunk and feeble, while Archie's feet were, to all appearance, hopelessly deformed. Sir George and Lady Sitwell were bent on sending the two children to Whitworth, in Lancashire, where dwelt two doctors, famous for their general skill, but especially for their cures effected upon twisted or broken limbs. The father's consent was obtained, and |