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their services in hay-time and harvest, and at other stated periods. The whole, however, especially in remore situations, formed a sort of little independent community in themselves, deriving their subsistence almost exclusively from the produce of the farm. The master's household alone usually amounted to fifteen or twenty souls: and the whole population of the farm, or onstead, to double or treble that number; a number considerably greater, perhaps, than will now be commonly found on a farm of the same extent,—but maintained with much frugality, and always industriously occupied, though not oppressed with labour.

"Little of the jealous distinction of ranks which now subsists between the farming class and their hired servants, was then known. The connexion between master and servant had less of a commercial, and more of a patriarchal character. Every household formed but one society. The masters (at that time generally a sober, virtuous, and religious class,) extended a parental care over their servants, and the servants cherished a filial affection for their masters. They sat together, they ate together, they often wrought together; and after the labours of the day were finished, they assembled together around the blazing fire, in the farmer's ha',' conversing over the occurrences of the day, the floating rumours of the country, or 'auld warld stories;' and not unfrequently religious subjects were introduced, or the memory of godly men, and of those who, in evil times, had battled or suffered for the right, was affectionately commemorated. This familiar intercourse was equally decorous as it was kindly, for decent order and due subordination were strictly maintained. It

was the great concern of masters and mistresses, when new servants were required, to obtain such as were of sober and religious habits: if any one of a different character got in, his dismissal, at the first term, was certain. Servants in those days never thought of changing masters, unless something occurred which rendered the change indispensable.

"At ordinary meals, the master (or good-man, as he was termed,) took his seat at the head of the large hall table, the mistress sitting on his right hand, the children on his left, the men-servants next in station, and the maid-servants at the bottom, one of the latter serving. The use of tea was then unknown, except in the houses of the gentry. Porridge was the constant dish at breakfast and supper; at dinner broth and meat, milk, cheese, and butter. Twice in the year, exclusive of extraordinary occasions, there was a farm festival, in which every inhabitant of the place partook; namely, the kirn, or harvest home, at the close of autumn, and the celebration of the new year. On these occasions, an abundant feast of baked and CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 349.

boiled cheered the heart of the humblest labourer on the land, and was closed with decent hilarity by a cheerful beaker or two of home-brewed ale.

"But the religious order of the family was the distinguishing trait. The whole household assembled in the hall (or kitchen) in the morning before breakfast, for family worship, and in the evening before supper. The good-man, of course, led their devotions, every one having his Bible in his hand. This was the stated course even in seed-time and harvest: between five and six in the morning was the hour of prayer in these busy seasons.

"On Sabbath all went to church, however great the distance, except one person, in turn, to take care of the house or younger children, and others to tend the cattle. After a late dinner, on their return, the family assembled around the master, who first catechised the children and then the servants. Each was required to tell what he remembered of the religious services they had joined in at the house of God; each repeated a portion of the Shorter Catechism; and all were then examined on heads of divinity, from the mouth of the master. Throughout the whole of the Sabbath, all worldly concerns, except such as necessity or mercy required to be attended to, were strictly laid aside; and nothing was allowed to enter into conversation save subjects of religion.

These homely details may perhaps seem, at first sight, calculated to corroborate, in some respects, the exaggerated notions which prevail in England res pecting the religious austerity of the old Presbyterians; and readers, looking exclusively to the strictness of their discipline, their alleged proscription of all amusements,' the limited education, the want of books, and, above all, the want of refinement which, according to our modern notions, might be expected to be the necessary result of familiar association with menial servants,-may possibly picture to themselves a state of society altogether clownish, melancholy, and monotonous. Yet this would be a very false estimate of the real character and condition of the old Scottish tenantry.

"The life of the husbandman and his dependents, in those days, was so far from being unenlivened by mirth and enjoyment, that there was in truth much more real enjoyment than is now often to be witnessed. They had more leisure to be merry than their descendants, and there was, in reality, no proscription of innocent amusements. Spring and autumn were the only seasons that required very arduous labour in the old system of husbandry; and then those seasons came round with an air of more festivity, had more of a heart-stirring aspect about them, and their toils were encountered with a more grateful alacrity than in our days of

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regular rotations and improved machinery. At other seasons of the year the labours were comparatively light. The winning of peats and hay, ewe-milking, sheep-shearing, the dairy, and the tending of the flocks and herds, chiefly occupied the jocund days of summer. In winter their leisure was still greater, and their enjoyments not less diversified. Field sports were eagerly followed in the intervals of labour, or when frost and snow had stopped the progress of the plough; nor were the peasantry then restrained from such hardy amusements by the enforcement of demoralising game laws. At other times, the grave good-man would foot-ball or the kitticct, and bid them take a bout to warm their youthful blood. And in the long winter evenings, when seated around the fire, harmless mirth and jocularity pleasantly alternated with more grave and instructive conversation; nor did any puritanical sourness forbid the recitation of the old romantic border ballads and legends, or the singing of the sweet pastoral songs, of which both the poetry and the music were, like the broom and birch of the braes around them, the spontaneous and unsophisticated growth of their own beautiful country. And thus, with scarcely any books of amusement, without any games of chance, without stimulating liquors, and without ever seeing a newspaper, our simple ancestors managed to beguile their hours of leisure and relaxation cheerfully and innocently; and, on the whole perhaps, quite as rationally, if not quite so elegantly, as their more bustling and ambitious offspring. Amidst the manifold improvements of more recent times, (the value of which, in some respects, we are far from denying), it may yet be considered very questionable, whether all that has been abandoned of former manners has been equally well replaced, and whether even our progress in knowledge and refinement has not been but too dearly purchased by the sacrifice of qualities still more valuable.

toss down to his sons and servant-lads the

"This brief outline (for it is nothing more) of a state of rural society which many of our older readers must have witnessed in their youth, though few vestiges of it now remain, may perhaps to some persons seem here unnecessary or misplaced; but, besides our desire to present to English readers a picture, sketched from real life, of the lovely simplicity of the olden day, we think that it will serve as a key to much of what is most interesting in the subject of this memoir; for in such a household as we have described were spent the early years of Alexander Waugh; and to the influence of such scenes upon a heart of no ordinary sensibility, may be fairly ascribed many of the most valuable, as well as delightful, traits of his character." pp. 1-10.

Dr. Waugh's father was a de

vout and upright man, who trained his family with great prudence and affectionate solicitude in the fear of God and the love of Christ; in which delightful employment he was admirably assisted by his meek and pious partner, and the blessing of God rested upon their labours. Alexander, the youngest of the family, who was early devoted to the ministry, after learning all that was to be obtained at the parish school of his native place, was sent for five years to Earlstoun, a neighbouring village, to learn Latin and Greek, preparatory to his college studies. Earlstoun is situated in the most romantic regions of Scottish Arcadia; and Dr. Waugh never forgot the scenes and incidents impressed on his youthful feelings, by its cherished localities. says, years afterwards:

He

"As I believe that a sparrow falls not to the ground without the agency of Divine Providence, I think it right to preserve the memory of the care of that Providence about my life during the period of youthful rashness and inexperience. How often was I in danger of being dashed in pieces while I was climbing the tree, the loose fragments of old towers, and the rugged precipice jutting out over the river! I almost feel the trembling of my joints while I look back on these dangers at Cowdenknowes, Rhymer's Tower, and particularly the Gaitheugh opposite to Old Melrose.'

"In the midst, however, of these dangers, I was gathering health, and strengthening my constitution.

My

schoolmaster and I were accustomed to rise in the summer mornings sometimes at five o'clock, and to the number of ten or twenty, to visit the White Cleugh mile and a half from the village, where, Well,' a kind of mineral spring, about a if the waters did us no signal good, we were certainly much indebted, as somebody calls it, to the goddess of the waters.

"At the earlier season of the year, we were accustomed to rise very soon also, for the important business of drawing our fishing-lines, which had been set over night in the Leader.

To those and similar excursions, particularly bird-nesting in the country, the most pastoral and sweet that my eyes ever beheld, and where every brae is revocal,-is to be ascribed the good health plenished with bushes, and every bush which our youth generally enjoy, and the enthusiasm with which every native thinks

and speaks of Leaderhaughs and Tweedside.

I recollect the friendships of youth with reverence. They are the embraces of the heart of man ere vice has polluted, or interest diverted its operations. In the churchyard of Earlstoun lies the friend of my youth. John Anderson was a young man of the gentlest manners and of unassumed piety. Often, when the public service of the church was over have we

wandered among the broom of Cowdenknowes, and talked of the power of that Being by whose hands the foundations of the mountains we beheld were laid, and by whose pencil the lovely scene around us was drawn, and by whose breath the flowers among our feet were perfumed. On our knees have we many a time in succession lifted up our hearts to him for knowledge, for pardon, for the formation of his image in the soul. We looked forward to the days of coming prosperity, and fondly hoped it might please God that, hand in hand, we should pass through life to that world we were taught to love and aspire after. But Heaven thought otherwise, and by a consumption carried my friend to the grave in the bloom of life. I cannot, even at this distance of time, read his letters, but the recollection of the past overcomes my soul with weakness.

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"John Anderson had a sister: if ever piety and mildness of soul, with most becoming softness, inhabited a female form, it was the form of that excellent young woman. Through solicitude about her brother, she caught his disorder. I hurried to Earlstoun the moment I heard of her danger: she made an effort to rise up to receive me. My brother, my brother, he whom you so loved, is gone! I heard the trampling of the horses' feet as his funeral passed by the door. I shall soon be with him. My God will supply all my wants out of his fulness in glory by Christ Jesus.' Her strength was spent ;-in four days after, I held the cord which let her down into the grave. She was buried in the grave adjoining to her brother's, and but ten days after his interment. They were lovely in their lives, and in their deaths they were not divided.' They were the boast of the village. Their memory is still fragrant; reproach could not sully their fair character; I do not remember of an enemy they ever had. Their religion was truly like apples of gold in pictures of silver. Farewell, my earliest friend. I will hold up your image to my heart, and trace on my own the sincerity, friendship, love, and goodness of yours.' pp. 26-29.

Our readers will see in this passage a lovely portrait of the writer's tender and affectionate spirit. He had more of deep sentiment and pathos, without any of its cant,

than almost any man we ever knew; for knew him we did, and to know him was to love him. Without any artificial polish, and with not a little rusticity, there was a native elegance of mind, which displayed itself in all he said and did.-At school he was the most lively and playful boy in the company; the first at sports, and the first at work; and while rambling about mountains and glens for hours, from early dawn, "listening to the linnets," or mu sing in the ravine of Melrose, he contrived to pick up as much Greek and more Latin than any of his class-fellows. The love of natural scenery was in him, as in Legh Richmond, an enjoyment amounting almost to a passion; yet this excellent man, in the discharge of his solemn duties, contentedly, nay cheerfully, passed the greater part of his life pent up in a murky city; thus shewing how completely a sense of duty and the love of God, and of man for God's sake, can endear to the Christian, what otherwise would be repulsive to his feelings. Well he knew, by a sacred instinct, how to reconcile the apparently adverse feelings so beautifully described by that truly Christian poet Keeble. In the sublimer scenes of nature, amidst the silent loneliness of rocks and mountains, he would have said by anticipation, though he lived not to read the lines,

No sounds of worldly toil ascending there, Mar the full burst of prayer:

Lone Nature feels that she may freely breathe;

And round us, and beneath, Are heard her sacred tones; the fitful

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Then be ye sure his love can bless
Even in this crowded loneliness;
Where ever-moving myriads seems to say,
Go-thou art nought to us, nor we to
thee-away.

There are in this loud stunning tide

Of human care and crime, With whom the melodies abide Of the everlasting chime; Who carry music in their heart Through dusky lane and wrangling mart, Plying their daily task with busier feet, Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat.

Dr. Waugh's biographers ought to thank us for these lines, for expressively do they characterise their beloved friend. But we pass on; giving only one trait more of his boyish days, and that the best. "It is pleasant, amidst all the youthful sprightliness which characterised this spirited and lively boy, to find the principles of fervent piety deeply rooted in his heart. He read the Scriptures frequently and devoutly, delighted in secret prayer, and laboured to imbibe the holy temper of Him 'who increased in wisdom and stature, in favour with God and man.' It is stated by one of the few surviving companions of his boyhood, that it was their custom, perhaps in the spirit of a very natural desire to imitate their superiors in years, to meet together under the shade of an eldertree, whose withered trunk still remains, and with much decorum to conduct the ordinary services of a prayer-meeting. On these occasions, Alexander Waugh, being the eldest boy, generally offered up the prayers; and it was from observing the early indications of the opening qualities of his head and heart thus given, (and no doubt most gratefully listened to by his mother, who stood concealed in the vicinity), that her mind was first impressed with the desire of fitting him for the sacred ministry. We are also informed by one of his earliest associates at Gordon, that before he left Earlstoun school, when he was little more than fifteen years of age, he occasionally attended a religious society which met at East Gordon for fellowship and prayer, in the house of James Spence, an elder of the Secession church; and that, even at this early period, he was marked, both by the aged and the young, for his singularly appropriate and interesting manner of expressing himself in prayer. Our informant also recollects receiving a letter from him about this time, in commendation of such religious societies, full of serious thoughts and good advices.'

In 1770, when sixteen years of age, he joined the Secession congregation of Stitchell, of which he continued a member till 1779, when he was licensed to

preach the Gospel. He was wont, in after life, to speak with holy enthusiasm of the sacramental occasions on Stitchell Brae." pp. 30--32.

In 1770 Mr. Waugh entered the university of Edinburgh, where he continued four sessions prior to his theological studies. He made good progress in his pursuits, particularly in moral philosophy; which, unhappily, at that time was lamentably disjoined in the universities of Scotland from those disclosures of revelation on which alone it can be truly based.

After his college course he studied divinity under Mr. Brown, of Haddington, the well-known author of the Self-interpreting Bible. Dr. Belfrage and Mr. Hay take occasion, in this part of the narrative, to remark upon the want of specific theological training in the Church of England; and we only lament that we can give no better answer to their strictures than that we hope things are mending, Brown was indefatigable in his exertions with his pupils, and succeeded admirably in training them, both as to their intellectual and spiritual character. Hume, who once heard him preach, remarked of him, that "he spoke as if the Son of God stood at his elbow;" and he seemed to do every thing else in the same spirit. His habitual feeling was well expressed by himself: "After nearly forty years preaching of Christ, and his great and sweet salvation, I think that I would rather beg my bread all the labouring days of the week, for an opportunity of publishing the Gospel on the Sabbath to an assembly of sinful men, than, without such a privilege, enjoy the richest possessions on earth. By the Gospel do men live, and in it is the life of my soul."

Dr. Waugh owed much to this excellent tutor, and not least that he taught him to unlearn the miserably dry moral philosophy which Dr. Ferguson had poured into him at Edinburgh.

"He now studied the Scriptures with

close attention, and resolved to adopt no theological sentiments but such as were derived from the pure and uncontaminated fountain of Divine truth. Henceforth we behold him, in every subsequent period. sitting at the feet of the great Master of Israel, and listening with meekness and humility to the words of grace and life that fell from his lips. His philosophy, instead of leading him again into devious paths, now became subsidiary to the great object which constituted its chief value, by enabling him to illustrate, in a more forcible manner, those all-important truths which the Scriptures alone reveal, and the knowledge of which is necessary to make men wise unto eternal life.” p. 56.

In 1777 Mr. Waugh repaired to the University of Aberdeen, and studied under Dr. Beattie and Dr. Campbell. He took his Master's degree in 1778. One of his early associates thus describes his recollections of him at this period:

"He was at this period, on account of his prepossessing appearance, his constant cheerfulness, his affability to all, his talents in conversation, and his kindness of heart displayed in innumerable benevolent actions, the most universally beloved person I have ever known. His presence diffused a spirit of gladness; and all gloom, quarrelling, selfishness, and meanness, were banished wherever he appeared. He had high feelings of honour, far beyond most of his learned as well as unlearned associates; and in this respect, as well as in demeanour and address, was a perfect gentleman.' p. 67.

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But, add his biographers,

"With all this social cheerfulness, he did not neglect to apply himself with due diligence to those preparatory studies which every young man, whose chief ambition it is to be a faithful and efficient minister in the church of Christ, will deem of incalculable value.” p. 67.

But highly as his friends thought of him, it was not without many misgivings, and an arduous mental conflict, that he ventured upon the duties of the Christian ministry. At length, after much conscientious hesitation, he was admitted, in 1780, to that solemn office according to the rites of the communion to which he belonged; and after a short time spent in the pastoral charge of a congregation at Newtown, near Melrose, he was permitted by the Synod at Edinburgh to accept the thrice-repeated call, of the Presbyterian church at

in con

Wells-street, London; nexion with which he lived and died.

Dr. Waugh was to his last hour an enthusiast for Scotland; and his biographers inform us that this glowing predilection, added to his real loveliness of character, conduced not a little to the charm of his ministry among his expatriated countrymen.

"Mr. Waugh was, on many accounts, calculated to make a highly favourable impression upon the Scotch people in London ;-by his talents in the pulpit; the affectionate earnestness of his minis

try, both on public and private occasions; by his open generosity of disposition and pleasing urbanity of manners; and, more particularly, by the strong nationality of his character and feelings. This latter peculiarity was indeed fitted, in the most eminent degree, to awaken the dormant but deep-rooted sympathies of his countrymen; and to it we may, without derogating from qualifications of a more consecrated character, fairly ascribe no slight portion both of his immediate acceptability and his ulterior usefulness: for the in-' fluence of his personal intercourse with his hearers was aided exceedingly by the fervour of his national sympathies, and by, the tender, and touching, and pious associations which he possessed the happy art of awakening even in the most callous, bosoms." pp. 85, 86.

But Dr. Waugh did not consider natural talents, amiable qualities," and sterling piety, sufficient for the furniture of a minister of Christ,. without much prayer, study, and serious contemplation.

If our pages should chance to fall into the hands of any young man who fancies that academical pursuits are of little value to the Christian minister, that the best student of the Bible is he who spurns all human assistance in understanding it, and that considers loitering and lounging a better employment of time than, reading divines or commentators, we recommend to his attention the example and the advice of Dr. Waugh.

"For some years after his settlement in London he spent a great part of his. in reviewing his classical studies, in a time in retirement, and employed himself critical perusal of the sacred Scriptures, in reading various writers on doctrinal.

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