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For the satisfaction, however, of the reader, I will state that Dr. Reid's relatives, as well as those of Mrs. Reid, yielding to the strongly expressed desire of his medical friends, have given me every assistance. I have learned much in conversation from them, which is not formally authenticated in the succeeding pages; but to prevent any mistake, I have submitted this work in manuscript to Mrs. Reid, and to a sister of Dr. Reid's, so that its general accuracy may be trusted, although I alone. am responsible for the special contents. Dr. Skae has added to his other favours by reading the proofsheets along with me.

I owe it to my Publishers to add, that the delay which has attended the appearance of this Work is entirely owing to me; and in extenuation of myself I may plead, that when I undertook the work, I was engaged in writing another Life, which, in the end, proved a much more tedious undertaking than I expected it to be; and that I have given my first available leisure to the completion of this volume.

24, BROWN SQUARE,

Edinburgh, March 1852.

G. W.

LIFE OF JOHN REID, M.D.

CHAPTER I.

CHILDHOOD-SCHOOL AND STUDENT LIFE.

"He was fresh from Edinburgh, with college prizes, high character, and promise: he had come to see our Schoolmaster, who had also been his. We heard of famed professors, of high matters classical, mathematical,—a whole wonderland of knowledge: nothing but joy, health, hopefulness without end, looked out from the blooming young man."

Edward Irving, by Thomas Carlyle.

JOHN REID was the sixth child of Henry Reid and Jean Orr, and was born at Bathgate, in Linlithgowshire, on April 9, 1809. His father was a man of great shrewdness and sagacity, who in spite of many disadvantages raised himself to a position of repute and comparative wealth among his townsmen. He was a farmer, and also dealt largely in cattle, and his success was such, that he was able to secure for his children, and especially for the subject of this Memoir, a much better education than it had been his own fortune in early life to enjoy.

No marvellous tales are told of John Reid's youthful days so far, at least, as intellectual precocity is

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concerned. He was a quiet, healthy, rather heavylooking child, affectionate, and very obedient. Infant schools were unknown in the beginning of the century, and John's first instructions were received in the midst of a circle of little girls, who were learning to sew. I had some conversation with the venerable dame who, forty years before, presided, along with a sister, over this sewing-school. She had known John Reid from his very birth, and received him as a pupil before he was able to walk. She thought him gentle in his manners, singularly docile, and fond of books,-above all, of a folio copy of Ralph Erskine's works. To his parents he was specially dutiful and obedient. It is remembered in his family that on one occasion he had incurred punishment for some boyish offence. A sister advised him to run away, but he went up to his mother and submitted to chastisement. Such incidents would not be worth recording, did they not illustrate the earliest indications of two of the most strongly marked features of John Reid's mature character. The incipient bibliomania, which made the child prefer the tall folio to any smaller volume, grew with his growth, and became ingrained in his nature. In later life he was a great reader, as well as a considerable writer of books, but he retained almost to the last a love for a book merely as a book, and, next to his relatives and friends, he named his library as the object from which it cost him the sorest pang to part. His filial obedience also ripened with his

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