only
child of humble parents, and was born at Springfield, a suburb of
Dundee, in Forfarshire, Scotland, on the 12th of March, 1795. When he
was four weeks old his father died, leaving him and his mother wholly
unprovided for, insomuch that they were dependent upon the bounty of
relatives. To adopt his own language, poverty and adversity were his
nurses, and want and misery were his familiar friends. "It is among the
earliest of my recollections," wrote he in 1824, "that I lay in bed one
morning during the grievous famine in Britain in 1800-1, while my poor
mother took from our large kist the handsome plaid of the tartan of our
clan, which in her early life her own hands had spun, and went and sold
it for a trifle, to obtain for us a little coarse barley meal, whereof
to make our scanty breakfast; and of another time during the same famine
when she left me at home crying from hunger, and for (I think) eight
shillings sold a handsome and hitherto carefully preserved priest-gray
coat of my father's, to get us a little food." His mother, from whom he
inherited his most salient peculiarities, was a woman of strongly-marked
character. She was endowed by nature with a high temper, and with a
tendency to act from impulse rather than from reason. To these qualities
were added great energy and strength of will. She brought up her son in
the straitest of theological creeds, which left a certain permanent
mental impress upon him, though during the last quarter of a century of
his life he wandered far afield from the religious teachings of his
childhood. He seems to have been born with a genuine love for knowledge,
for, notwithstanding the inauspicious surroundings of his youth, he
contrived to acquire a better education than was commonly obtainable by
lads in his rank of life in Scotland in those times. The education thus
acquired was almost to the end of his days supplemented by reading and
study. As soon as he was old enough to enter upon employment he became
an assistant in a draper's shop, after which he filled various temporary
situations which led to nothing. When only nineteen he opened a small
store on his own account at Alyth, a village about twenty miles from
Dundee. This he conducted for about three years, by which time it had
become apparent that the business could not be successfully carried on,
so he abandoned it and removed to England. There he spent more than two
years, during some part of which he acted as clerk to