WILLIAM Nelson was a pupil in the High School of Edinburgh when one great cycle in its history was completed. It had occupied the site of the old Blackfriars’ Monastery for upwards of two hundred and seventy years. In 1555 the town house of Cardinal Beaton, at the foot of the Blackfriars’ Wynd, which continued to be one of the most interesting historical buildings in Edinburgh till its demolition in 1871, was rented by the city for the use of the Grammar School, while a building for its permanent occupation was “being biggit on the east side of the Kirk-of-Field,” the scene, a few years later, of Lord Darnley’s mysterious assassination. Its rector was David Vocat, a prebendary of the neighbouring collegiate church of St. Mary-in-the-Field; and under his rule the cloisters of the Dominicans, built for them in 1230 by Alexander II., gave place to the halls and playground of the High School boys. But it was a turbulent age, and before the century closed the Yards became the scene of a tragic event which retained a prominent place among the traditions of the school so long as it remained on the old site. In 1598 Bailie Macmoran, one of the city magistrates, was shot in a barring out of the schoolboys by William Sinclair, a son of the Chancellor of Caithness. The contemporary diarist, Birrel, notes that “there was ane number of scholaris, being gentlemen’s bairns, made a mutinie;” and on the poor bailie interposing, the schoolboy revolt ended in dire tragedy.

Great as were the changes that time had wrought on the locality where the old monastery of the Black Friars gave place to the City Grammar School, a flavour of historic antiquity pervaded it to the last. The episcopal palace of the Beatons, where the school work had been carried on for a time, still stood at the foot of the High School Wynd; and near by was the site of that of Gawain Douglas, who, while still provost of St. Giles’s collegiate church—

It was probably due to the vicinity of their lodgings that the poet interposed on behalf of the militant archbishop when, after the famous street feud of “Cleanse the Causeway,” Beaton had vainly sought sanctuary behind the altar of the Blackfriars’ Church, and, but for the interposition of the poet, would have been slain. His vigorous translation of the Æneid into the Scottish vernacular was a favourite with William Nelson in later years. But the associations of the locality in his school days were for the most part of more recent date.

The High School Yards had been the playground of Hume, Robertson, Erskine, Horner, Jeffrey, Cockburn, Brougham, and Scott, and of many a notability before them. The memory of its gentle, scholarly rector, Dr. Adam, author of “Roman Antiquities” and other works, was still fresh; and the old school seemed a link between past generations and the living age. But neither the site, with its picturesque surroundings, nor the building, accorded with the ideas of civic reformers who had organized a crusade against whatever was out of keeping with the brand-new town. The age had not then reverted to the mediÆval models which have since come into vogue. Classic art was regarded as most suited to academic requirements; and so a beautiful Grecian building—the finest specimen of Thomas Hamilton’s architectural skill, in the designing of which his artist friend, David Roberts, was understood to have contributed valuable aid,—had been erected on the southern slope of the Calton Hill, as a more fitting home for the city Grammar School.

The migration from the antiquated building at the head of the High School Wynd to this splendid edifice in the New Town was an important change in many ways besides the mere removal to more commodious and sightly halls. It brought to an end a host of old customs and traditions; and, among the rest, to the hereditary feud between the Cowgate “blackguards” and the High School “puppies.” A grand civic ceremonial marked this transfer of the school to its new domicile. On the 23rd of June 1829—a bright, auspicious day—William Nelson, the head boy of his class, with his schoolmates, under the leadership of the rector and masters, walked in procession, each bearing an osier wand, with music, military escort, and all the civic glories that the Lord Provost and magistrates could command, to do honour to the occasion. It was a memorable epoch in schoolboy life. But it seemed to the old boys as though they never were quite at home in their stately New Town quarters. Old “Blackie,” with her famous “gib” or toffy stall, was out of place there; and as for Brown’s famous subterranean pie-shop in the old High School Wynd, it necessarily tarried behind, to the inevitable ruin of a once flourishing business. Not the building only, but the entire scholastic system carried on within its walls, soon after underwent a complete revolution; and the work of the venerable Grammar School of Prebendary Vocat, the classic arena of Adam, Pillans, and Carson, has since devolved on Fettes College, a creation of the present century.

But the old classic system still prevailed in William Nelson’s time; and, notwithstanding some glaring defects, was turned by him to good account. As to the school itself, it must be owned that it stood in need of reform. The class of Mr. Benjamin Mackay, under whose training William Nelson remained for four years, numbered upwards of a hundred boys. Those in the two front forms worked with more or less persistency under a somewhat coercive system; the remainder idled in the most flagrant fashion, and not a few of them looked back in later years on those dreary hours with an indignant sense of wasted time. But William Nelson was foremost among the studious workers. The same quiet, resolute perseverance which marked his later career in business characterized him as a schoolboy. He maintained his place as the dux of his class, carried off the chief prizes of the school, and at the close of his course under the rector, Dr. Carson, he passed to the university with the highest honours, as classical gold medalist.

Among the carefully preserved papers of his early years are a bundle of old letters from schoolmates, enclosed in an envelope addressed to his mother, with an endorsation begging her to see to their safe keeping. They furnish pleasant glimpses of the affectionate relations already established with more than one of the friends of later years. The solemn protest of the learned Principal, Dr. Lee, against “that most objectionable and pernicious practice of making balls of snow,” is humorously commented on, along with graver matters, such as pertained to the themes and discussions of the Juvenile Literary Society, and the more ambitious debating societies of the university. His own sense of humour found free play both in early and later years; but above all, his youthful letters are full of pleasant gossip of the old sailors of Kinghorn, who told him yarns of the victories in which they had shared in the great French war, and the pranks they indulged in when flush with prize-money. Old Charlie Mackenzie had been in the Mars in her action with the Hercules, one of the bloodiest naval conflicts of the war. Another of the Kinghorn story-tellers—Orrock, who died in 1836, upwards of ninety years of age—claimed to have known the man who acted as drummer at the Porteous mob, and to have learned from him some details of the burning of the doors, and so gaining admission to the Tolbooth. The intense feeling of local attachment which such reminiscences reveal manifested itself in later years in the interest he took in improvements at Kinghorn, as well as in the more costly restorations in his native city. But one of the first fruits of his intercourse with the old pensioners of Kinghorn, who, as he says, “were great fishers for podlies from certain rocks on the sea-shore,” was the capture of a crab with a double claw, a lusus naturÆ, which furnished a novel subject for discussion at a meeting of the Juvenile Literary Society. His contributions to its collections and learned discussions were generally of the same class—algÆ, shells, or other marine curiosities, the fruits of his last holiday ramble by the sea.

Among stray waifs that have survived from those old days is a letter, bearing date February 20, 1829, addressed to the secretary of the Juvenile Society by the elder brother of one of its members. With all the condescension of an undergraduate placing his mature knowledge at the service of schoolboys, the writer sets forth “the very great pleasure I take in hearing of the proceedings of your society, and my unqualified approbation of your plan of keeping a journal as a sort of record of your proceedings.” He proceeds: “I daresay you are unaware that the duties of a student of medicine are of a very arduous nature.” But, as he goes on to state, he had laid before the Plinian Society in the previous summer a paper on certain “Discoveries made behind Edinburgh Castle in digging the foundation of the new bridge,”—part of the terraced road which involved the destruction of Trotter’s Close and the Nelson homestead,—and this, he says, “I shall copy out in a style which I hope will prove interesting to my young friends, and which may, perhaps, form a contribution to their journal.” The writer, whose seniority, by the years that separate the College student from the High School boy, entitled him thus condescendingly to address his brother Philip and the other juvenile savants, is now Sir Douglas Maclagan, the genial veteran Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in his own university; and, it may be added, the author of some of the most popular of a younger generation’s student-songs.

At a later stage the juvenile debaters awoke to an interest in the stirring questions of the day. Mr. Alexander Sprunt, writing from Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1859, says: “During the period of our High School curriculum, questions were occupying the public mind, and startling events taking place in Europe: the final struggle of the Poles, the French ‘Three Days of July,’ the reform movement, etc. The subject of the immediate or gradual emancipation of the negro slaves in the colonies was also keenly discussed about that time. Some of us, being related to families of the colonists, were familiar with the arguments for a gradual abolition of slavery.” William Nelson took up the question warmly, and was an uncompromising advocate for immediate emancipation. As to the oft-renewed struggle in France between Bourbon Royalists, Imperialists, and Red Republicans, it was forcibly brought home to the realization of the young debaters by the presence of the exiled Charles X. and his little court at Holyrood; and by the occasional sight of the royal refugee as he passed the High School Yards on foot, in company with one or two of his suite, to enjoy the magnificent panorama from the Calton Hill.

The fruits of those early experiences could be discerned in later years. The boy’s education was progressing under other teachings besides those of the schoolmaster. It was altogether alien to the unobtrusiveness of William Nelson’s sensitive nature to take, in later years, a prominent share in political life; but his generous support was extended in the most practical form to all philanthropic movements. He manifested the keenest interest in all questions of liberal politics: in the emancipation of the slaves; in the prolonged controversies which led to the disruption of the Scottish Church; and in the more recent struggle between the Slave and Free States in the great American Civil War. Most of those questions belong to periods long subsequent to the time when James and Alexander Sprunt were the champions of the West Indian planters, and William Nelson and other juvenile debaters maintained the cause of the enslaved negro.

But the members of the Literary Society, as already noted, had their field-days as well as their Friday night sessions; and in pursuit of material for their papers, as well as in the free use of the Saturday and other holidays, the schoolmates had many an exciting ramble. In spite of its uncertain climate, Edinburgh presents an unequalled variety of choice holiday excursions; and as to the rain, it required a good deal more than an ordinary shower to put a stop to any projected excursion. In walking, climbing, and all the ordinary feats of healthy boyhood, William Nelson was unsurpassed. To make our way to the summit of Salisbury Crags by the famous Cat-Nick, or outrival each other in the attempt to scale Samson’s Ribs, and sit supreme on some overhanging ledge of the basaltic columns, were among the most favourite pastimes. Or a leisurely climb along the slopes to the summit of Arthur’s Seat, and a survey of the magnificent landscape spread out to view, were a prelude, at the word, to a dash down the hill, scrambling like so many goats over the western cliffs and the rough slope below, and so by the Hunter’s Bog, for the first draught at St. Anthony’s Well. In all such feats William Nelson was a match for any schoolmate. His coolness equalled his courage, and he had a love for daring feats such as those who only knew him in later years will hardly realize. When the old home at the Bowhead was displaced by the Assembly Hall, and its lofty spire was in process of erection, he made friends with the contractor, and I accompanied him in more than one ascent. A steam hoist carried us up the main portion of the way; and then came the trying ordeal on the ladders. But as the tapering spire approached completion, it was no longer possible to reach the summit from within; and I still recall with vividness the composure with which, all unconscious of danger, he walked out on the narrow plank, over a depth of upwards of two hundred feet, and stood at the extreme end of it, noting and commenting on the various objects spread out below.

A future career for life was as yet unthought of. But while aiming solely at pleasure, and rejoicing in a holiday’s escape from school, the boy was unconsciously educating himself. Already the botanical box and the geological hammer were in vogue. Not, indeed, the luxurious appliances with which amateur naturalists are now furnished. Any hammer sufficed for getting at a coveted fossil; and as for our hortus siccus, an old candle-box was appropriated by the botanical collector. But the archÆological tastes in which more than one of William Nelson’s schoolmates sympathized, and to which he gave such practical expression in later years, were already in process of development. The pleasurable associations with historic scenes and picturesque ruins found ample scope in those holiday rambles. Craigmillar Castle was close at hand; and within easy distance was old Roman Cramond, with chances of a numismatic prize to the fortunate explorer, and with the sculptured eagle of the legionaries of the second century still visible on the cliff at the mouth of the river Almond. This had a special charm for boys fresh from their CÆsar and Tacitus, giving a sense of reality to those forgotten centuries. It was an object-lesson, better even than the Roman altar dedicated to the goddess Epona—DEÆ EPONÆ—which Dr. Carson, the Rector of the High School, produced to his class, and won their attentive admiration as he pointed to the focus in which the Roman horse-jockey had poured a libation; and adduced passages from the Satires of Juvenal in confirmation of his theme.

Farther afield lay Woodhouselee, Seton and Roslin chapels; Niddry, Borthwick, and Crichton castles; Preston Cross and Tower; and many another storied ruin associated with familiar historic events. Pinkie Cleugh, Carberry Hill, Lasswade, Dalkeith, and Prestonpans, were each linked with song or story. Maclagan was an ardent collector of plants and insects; geology divided with botany the interest of George Wilson; John A. Smith had already begun the collection of coins; and William Nelson was forming the tastes which manifested themselves in later years in his love for every venerable nook of his native city, and in his zeal for the preservation of its historic memorials.

The change from school to college life is in every case an important one. With the majority it involves emancipation, in a large degree, from enforced and distasteful studies, and their exchange for congenial pursuits. The youth begins for the first time to estimate knowledge at its real worth, and to shape out plans of study for himself. But the novel arena is no less important as that in which the companionships of the playground give place to that discriminating choice of congenial associates in which life-long friendships have so often originated. It is the joyous season in which the springtide is just merging into life’s early summer; when youth is animated by all generous aspirations, and hope’s rainbow arch spans the horizon.

The period of William Nelson’s admission as an undergraduate of the University of Edinburgh was in some respects a brilliant one in its history; and even more so in relation to its students than its professors. Dr. John Lee, the learned Church historian and black-letter scholar, was principal, and Dr. Chalmers occupied the chair of divinity; the chair of natural philosophy was successively occupied by Sir John Leslie and by James D. Forbes. Before the abrupt close of William Nelson’s academic career, Sir William Hamilton had assumed the lead in its school of mental science; and the fame of John Wilson, its professor of moral philosophy, under his pseudonym of “Christopher North,” attracted many to his class-room for whom his professed theme would have had no charm. But in the department of classics, for which all William Nelson’s previous training had been specially directed, the faculty was imperfectly equipped. Dunbar, a poor representative of Hellenic scholarship, had then filled the Greek chair for upwards of a quarter of a century. On the other hand, the professor of humanity was James Pillans, an elegant scholar, and, in the words of Sir Alexander Grant, “a born teacher and educator;” though latterly more prone to dwell on little critical niceties than to give himself up to the drudgery which was indispensable for the training of his large and often inadequately prepared class. Among other traits that his old pupils will recall was the never-failing protest at the opening of a new session, which reminded the class that he enjoyed the dubious fame of being pilloried by Byron in his “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.” The irate bard, in his indiscriminate furor, had characterized the professor of humanity as “Paltry Pillans;” and William Nelson used to quote this incident of his own experience in justification of the title:—He had an essay to give in on a certain day, and not having finished it till late on the previous night, instead of walking to the professor’s remote residence at Inverleith Row, he dropped his manuscript into the nearest post-box. Next day, when the class assembled, the first intimation from the professor was, “I will thank Mr. William Nelson to hand twopence to the janitor for the postage of his essay!” Notwithstanding some amusing eccentricities, Professor Pillans was held in great esteem by his old pupil as an apt and painstaking enthusiast in his profession; and the good feeling was mutual. William Nelson was a favourite pupil, in whose progress he took a lively interest, and it was in spite of his most urgent remonstrances that the classic muse was abandoned at the call of filial duty.

But it was the fortune of William Nelson, in those happy days of student life, to find himself among a rare band of undergraduates, many of whom subsequently won a name for themselves in ampler fields. Edward Forbes was then a zealous volunteer on the staff of the University Maga, contributing with pen and pencil, in prose and verse, to its columns. He had a rare power of winning co-operation in whatever he set on foot; and he gathered around him a band of kindred spirits, who, as sharers in the exuberant frolic and satire of the Maga, formed themselves at length into the Magi, or members of the Maga Club. Out of this grew the famous “Brotherhood of the Friends of Truth,” with its archimagus, its ribbon, and its mystic motto:-

which still survives under its later guise of the Red Lions of the British Association gatherings. There was a curious admixture of youthful exuberance and frolic with a lofty earnestness of aim in the Brotherhood. The search after truth was declared, in its programme, not only to be man’s noblest occupation, but his duty; and the spirit of the order is thus set forth: “This brotherhood is a union of the searchers after truth, for the glory of God, the good of all, and the honour of the order, to the end that mind may hold its rightful sway in the world.”

Of the youthful band of undergraduates, John Goodsir, Bennett, Blackie, Lyon Playfair, George Wilson, and Edward Forbes, all ultimately filled chairs in their own university. Day succeeded to a professorship in St. Andrews, and Struthers to one in Aberdeen. Henry Goodsir, a youth of high ability, accompanied Sir John Franklin as naturalist in the ill-fated Arctic expedition, from which none returned. Dr. Stanger distinguished himself, with better fortune, in the Niger expedition of 1844; Andrew Ramsay rose to be chief of the Geological Survey; and other fellow-students and members of the order have occupied professors’ chairs in Canada and in India, have represented their university in Parliament, or made their mark in no less useful ways. Among the latter the name of William Nelson claims an honourable rank. For the scheme of the brotherhood required each member “to devote his time and his energies to the department for which he feels and proves himself best fitted, communicating his knowledge to all, so that all may benefit thereby, casting away selfishness, and enforcing precepts of love.” Assuredly when those maxims came to be tested in the daily business of life, no one gave their spirit of unselfishness more practical manifestation than the subject of this memoir.

In Professor Pillans’s class he maintained the standing which he had achieved at the High School. His foremost but unequal rival in the composition of Latin verse was the late George Paxton Young, the esteemed Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Toronto. It was while William Nelson was still a student that John Cairns—the friend and fellow-student both at Edinburgh and Berlin of his younger brother, John Nelson, and now the venerable Principal and Professor of Systematic Theology in the Divinity Hall of the United Presbyterian Church—came fresh from the pastoral hills of Berwickshire to win for himself a distinguished place among the men of his time.

Amid the stimulus and rivalry of such competitors for fame, the young student devoted himself with renewed zeal to the classics, with undefined visions of some honourable professional or academic reward as his life-prize; and fulfilled the high anticipations of his earlier career. But while thus steadily pursuing a course which gave abundant promise of triumph, his father was suddenly prostrated by disease; and William, as the eldest son of a large family, abandoned all the bright prospects of his university career, and the dream of professional or academic achievements, to grapple with the unfamiliar difficulties of a commercial enterprise, till then conducted on a scale commensurate with the modest aims of an elder generation in the Old Town of Edinburgh.

The business of Mr. Thomas Nelson was a curious survival of the system borrowed from the great fairs of the Middle Ages, and grafted on to their older traffic by the successors of Guttenburg and Fust; of Caxton, Wynkin de Worde, and Chepman and Miller. Allan Ramsay had followed in their steps, with his booth at the sign of the Mercury, opposite the head of Niddry’s Wynd, from whence he transferred it to the Luckenbooths at the City Cross. It was in just such another luckenbooth at the Bowhead that Mr. Thomas Nelson originated the business which has since developed into such great proportions.

William Nelson threw himself at once, with characteristic singleness of aim, into his new vocation; nor did he ever express regret at his enforced desertion of scholarship for trade. But few men have carried away from school or college a keener sense of the attachments of student life. To the last the plea of an old schoolmate ever presented an irresistible claim which scarcely any demerit could cancel. The fate of one whose life, by his own misconduct, had closed in miserable failure is thus charitably noted in one of his letters: “Poor —— died two days ago of congestion of the lungs; and it is a wonder that he hung on so long, as he has been in a very dilapidated condition for years. The last time I saw him, his condition was truly pitiable. I sent him a fresh bolster and bedding, for the ones he had were hard and foul. Poor fellow! he did a great deal to hasten the approach of the last enemy.” His loyalty to early friends was unfailing. He kept a record of his classmates in the High School, and noted with keenest interest their success or failure in life. He told with kindly humour of the refusal of a liberal “tip” offered to a porter at Cairo who had been specially serviceable, and then claimed fellowship by reminding him of old High School doings. B—— was the ne’er-do-weel of Mackay’s class, who had thus found his vocation in the land of the Pharaohs. His sympathy was unbounded in any honour or good fortune achieved by a schoolmate; and latterly, as he watched the rapidly diminishing numbers of the old group of school and college companions, he recorded at the close of each year the minutes of Death’s roll-call. To one who entered so keenly into academic life, and whose career was so replete with promise, it was a trying ordeal to abandon college for the uncongenial drudgery of a trading venture for which such experiences seemed to promise no helpful training. But in Scotland a university career is by no means regarded as unsuitable preparation for trade and commerce; and William Nelson was speedily to show what success the classical gold medalist of the High School and the best writer of Latin verse in the College could achieve in business life.