on to the
very end. The work a man may do belongs to his own generation; the
spirit in which he does it, his faith, his fortitude, to all
generations. Melville conferred many signal and enduring benefits on his
country: the one which transcended all others was the inspiration he
left to her in his own rare nobility of character.

CHAPTER II

BIRTH--EDUCATION--YEARS ABROAD

'Fashioned to much honour from his cradle.'

_Henry VIII._

Melville's birthplace was Baldovy, an estate in the immediate
neighbourhood of Montrose, of which his father was laird. He was born on
1st August 1545--a year memorable as that of Knox's emergence to public
life--the youngest of nine sons, most of whom came to fill honourable
positions in the Church and commonwealth.

Montrose and the district around it early showed sympathy with the
Reformed Faith. George Wishart was a native of Angus, and his influence
was nowhere greater than there. The family seat of John Erskine--Dun
House--was in the same vicinity, and he too by his warm espousal of
Protestantism strengthened its hold on the district. The Baldovy family
itself had been identified with the Reformed movement from the
beginning. Melville's eldest brother, Richard, who became minister of
Maryton, was travelling tutor to Erskine, and the two studied together
at Wittenberg under Melanchthon. The Melvilles were intimate with
Wishart; and Baldovy and Dun House were the resorts of other leading
spirits among the Reformers. In 1556 Knox was Erskine's guest when he
was preaching in the district, and his personal influence intensified
the attachment of the Melvilles to the cause to which they were already
committed.

Melville was only two years old when his father was killed fighting
among the Angus men on the field of Pinkie, a battle which made many
orphans; and in his twelfth year he lost his mother, when he was taken
by his eldest brother to Maryton Manse, and as tenderly cared for by the
minister and his wife as though he had been a child of their own. One of
the sons of the manse was James Melville, between whom and his 'Uncle
Andro' the most endeared affection sprang up. The two lived in each
other's lives and shared each other's work, alike as teachers in the two
principal Universities, and as leaders in the Council of the Church.
_Corque unum in duplici corpore et una anima_--so the elder, after the
younger's death, described their relat