nary rapidity, taste and genius were discoverable; nor did he tread in only one or two walks of the art. In the difficult game of chess, though opposed by various competitors, and by some of long experience and tried skill, he was rarely conquered; and his handwriting, in ease, in decision of character, in exquisite beauty, was surpassed by very few men of the most acknowledged eminence in penmanship, But his sedentary or domestic amusements, no more than his studies, were permitted to impair the stoutness of his limbs, the clearness of his complexion, or the crimson colour of his cheeks. Of gardening he was peculiarly fond. Careless of fatigue, and patient of heat and cold, he spent much time in the open air, discovering, in his recrea, tions, an uncommon share of animation

and first principle of all religion, the being of a God."

When he attained his fifth or sixth year, and had as yet received no particular information with respect to the Author of his being, his father recurred to an ingenious device for this purpose. In a corner of a little garden, without informing any person of the circumstance, he wrote in the mould with his finger the three initials of his son's name, and sowing cresses in the furrows, covered up the seed, and smoothed the ground. On discovering "his name growing in the garden" the child was astonished, and on being told it might be accidental, he denied that such a circumstance could be the effect of chance. On this the doctor, alluding to his own person, and teaching him to reason from ana

logy, found that he already compre. hended, that what begins to be must have a cause, and what is formed with regularity must have an intelligent "I therefore told him," says

cause.

he," the name of the Great Being who made him and all the world; concerning whose adorable nature I gave him such information as I thought he could in some measure comprehend. The lesson affected him greatly, and he never forgot either it or the circumstance that introduced it."

His father and mother taught him to write, and they appear to have been studious to prevent a provincial accent: when he had attained his seventh he attended the grammaryear, school of Aberdeen, where he acquired the elements of the Latin tongue; he also studied Ovid and Vir