Birth.—Ancestry.—Misfortune of Becoming Suddenly Rich.—A Religious Mother.—Fate of an Elder Brother.—Mathematics.—Purposes of Life.—Deportment in Youth.—Views of War.

Cast your eyes, reader, on a map of Scotland. Look towards the north-eastern part, and you will find distinctly marked, the Frith of Murray, a narrow channel of salt water, like a bay, penetrating a long distance into the interior of Scotland, and named after the Earl of Moray, or Murray.

Follow up this channel to the city of Inverness, once regarded as the capital of the Scottish Highlands. Near this city is the small and secluded parish of Petty, which we notice as the birth-place of Father Clark, on the 29th of November, 1758. Here his father, grandfather, and other ancestors, for several generations, were born, lived and died. A brother of his grandfather, whose name was John Clark, became an eminent scholar, and taught the parish school for many years. All the family connections, for many generations, were strict Presbyterians, who paid careful attention to the morals of their children. The classics and mathematics, the Presbyterian catechism, and their forms of religious worship were taught the children in the parish schools, and in families, in that part of Scotland. They were taught to do justly, love mercy, and always speak the truth.

The father of our John Clark was named Alexander, who, in the early part of his life, owned and worked a farm. He had a brother named Daniel, who was educated for the ministry in the Presbyterian church; but he had no taste for that business, and became qualified for a merchant. In this capacity he sailed for South Carolina; then went to Georgia in company with some Scottish traders by the name of Macgilvary, who monopolized the trade with the Creek Indians. In that connection he gathered a large fortune, and dying, left his estate to his brother Alexander, who had previously married a respectable and religious woman. They had two sons, Daniel and John, and three daughters, one of whom lived many years after her mother’s death.

The fortune of Daniel the elder proved the ruin of the father of our hero. He neglected his farm, kept open house for his friends, drank intoxicating liquors freely, lived in a style of luxury and grandeur, gave his name and credit on the notes of his companions; loaned his money to sharpers, and in a few years was reduced to bankruptcy. He lived to old age, and after a long period of intemperance and wretchedness, was reclaimed and died a penitent, past the age of three-score and ten.

The mother of John Clark became a very religious woman, and taught him to pray in early childhood, and that he was a sinner against God, and must have his heart changed, be converted and saved through Jesus Christ. Before he was eight years of age he had many serious impressions about his salvation, many alarming fears about death and hell, and thought he experienced a saving change at that early period of life. He often declared to his Christian friends, that to the instruction and prayers of his mother at that tender age, as means under God, he was indebted for his salvation. And rarely have we known a man more earnestly devoted to the religious instruction of children and youth. It would come out from a gushing heart in almost every sermon, and by kind and gentle hints and friendly expostulations leave a deep impression on every family he visited.

His elder brother Daniel was a moral and amiable youth while under the charge of his mother; but he was sent from home to a grammar school at an early age. He became an excellent scholar, was taught the mercantile business, went to Jamaica where he soon became rich. But he lost two ships, taken by privateers in the war between Great Britain and the American Colonies, became disheartened, gave way to temptation, and followed the footsteps of his father by becoming intemperate, and died a bankrupt and a miserable drunkard in the 37th year of his age.

John Clark’s father knew the benefits of a good education, and spared no pains or expense in providing his children with the best means of instruction that Inverness could afford. John was sent to school at the age of five years. He read the Scriptures and other English books before he was seven; and at that period was put to study Latin. He learned the grammar, read Corderius, and studied the elementary classics for two years; but he disliked the study of Latin and Greek, for which he often sorrowed in after life. During this time he was at a boarding school, away from home and all the kind influences of his affectionate mother.

“All these circumstances,” he writes in the sketches before us, “laid the foundation for an invincible prejudice against the acquisition of that useful language;—useful because much of the English tongue is derived from it. Also it disciplines the mind, corrects desultory habits, and forms a taste to imitate in oratory and composition, classical authors. I think it highly necessary for those, who aim at common education, to memorize a Latin vocabulary. Study mathematics to discipline the mind, and study well our English classic writers.

But my early and deep-rooted aversion to the dead languages prevented me from receiving much advantage from Latin and Greek authors, so that I acquired but a smattering knowledge of those languages.”

When his father learned his aversion to classical studies he sent him to an excellent school in the parish of Nairn, to learn arithmetic, book-keeping, mathematics and natural philosophy. The purpose of his father was to qualify him to join his brother in the mercantile business in the island of Jamaica. At this school he studied geometry, trigonometry, mensuration, surveying, astronomy, and navigation in all its branches.

Two objects occupied his youthful mind, and which he craved in all his studies. They engaged his thoughts by day and flitted through his dreams by night. They were the only airy castles his fancy ever built. First, to spend about eight years on ship-board, and visit foreign countries and see the manners and customs of other nations. And, secondly, then to settle for life in one of the American colonies. With his mind fixed on these objects, with a steadiness of purpose that never tired, he entered on those studies connected with navigation with an eagerness and zest rarely equalled in youth. He could not divest himself of this propensity to a sea-faring life for the period proposed. He had no inclination to be a mere sailor, or to spend his days with the profane and drunken of that class of men. He saw enough of such specimens of degraded humanity in the port of Inverness to excite feelings of disgust and sympathy. In all his longings to be on ship-board, his benevolent nature sympathised with the heedless and wicked sailors. He would often retire and weep over their miseries, and think of plans for their reform and relief, when he should attain the command of a ship.

During the period of youth, Clark was singularly amiable, moral, kind-hearted and generous. He lost no time by idleness, had no inclination to the vain amusements and frivolities of youth, and sustained an estimable character for personal sobriety, good order and morality. The unfortunate example of his father excited pity and disgust; the devoutly religious character of his mother confirmed and deepened the impressions of childhood. There was more of puritanical strictness, form, and rigid orthodoxy, than active piety and the outpourings of the religious emotions, in the Church of Scotland at that period, and young Clark neither felt nor manifested those feelings of ardent love to the Redeemer, and comfortings of the Holy Spirit, that had been awakened in his young heart at the early age of eight years, or which distinctly marked his religious character in after life.

Our youthful friend became an enthusiastic lover of liberty and of the rights of man, at an early age, and which continued the ruling passion during life. In the period of old age he records these facts.

“When I was very young, I deeply imbibed the spirit of war—owing chiefly from hearing much of the success that attended the British arms by land and sea, during the war in Canada. When in the seventeenth year of my age, the Revolutionary war between Great Britain and her Colonies commenced, and I soon found myself as much opposed to the spirit of war as I was formerly in favor of it.”

This feeling remained after he became connected with the navy, and caused him to desert the service, into which he had been forced by the press-gang. And yet, as if to show us that a young man so amiable, kind-hearted, and philanthropic as Clark, was far from perfection, or even consistency of character, he engaged in the business of privateering; a business now regarded by civilized nations as barbarous and immoral.