sel was chased by a French privateer, and for some time the little
family had reason to fear becoming inmates of a French prison. It was
this incident which Dr Burton used in his later life to say entitled him
to assert that he had been in the Peninsular War. The homeward journey
from Jersey was to Aberdeen, which it is believed Lieutenant Burton and
his family never left again till his death. His failing health obliged
him to retire from active service on the half-pay of a lieutenant. His
wife, from some writings to be hereafter mentioned, seems also to have
enjoyed an allowance of L40 per annum from her father.

Besides William and John Hill, there were born in Aberdeen to William
Burton and Eliza Paton three sons--two of whom died early, one of them
being accidentally drowned in the Don at Grandholm--and one daughter.
The surviving brother of Dr Burton is a retired medical officer of the
East India Company. The sister, Mary, remains unmarried.

The little household established in Aberdeen about the year 1812 knew
the woes of failing health and narrow means, part of the latter doled
out to them by an unwilling hand. Lieutenant Burton's health continued
to decline till his death, about the year 1819. His son John was then
ten years old, and had begun his school education.

His recollections of schools and schoolmasters were vivid and
picturesque. The one schoolmaster--almost the only teacher--to whom he
acknowledged any obligation, was James Melvin. To him, he was wont to
say, he owed his good Scotch knowledge of Latin; and he delighted even
till the end of his life in dwelling on Dr Melvin's methods of teaching,
and on the fine spirit of generous emulation and eagerness for knowledge
which inspired his pupils.

Both before and after the time of his studies under Dr Melvin he had
experience of schoolmasters of a different type. The tales of flogging
under these pedagogues were so absolutely sickening, that Dr Burton's
family used to beg him to stop his narrations to spare their feelings.
He had beheld, though he had never undergone, the old-fashioned process
of flogging by _heezing up_ the culprit on the back of the
school-porter, so as to bring his bare back close to the master's lash.
The trembling victim, anticipating such punishment, used to be sent to
summon the porter. He frequently returned with a half-sobbing message,
"Please, sir, _he says_ he's not in." The fiction did not lead to
escape. Cromar was the na