A Sketch of the Life and Times of Judge HaliburtonHaliburton, R. G. (Robert Grant)
History
A Sketch of the Life and Times of Judge Haliburton
Haliburton, R. G. (Robert Grant)
Haliburton, Thomas Chandler, 1796-1865; Nova Scotia -- Biography
Chief Justice William Hersey Otis Haliburton left an only child, the
future author of “Sam Slick,” who was educated at the Grammar School,
Windsor, and afterward, at the same place, at the University of King’s
College, for Tory King’s College of the Colony of New York had migrated
to Windsor, Nova Scotia, where, preserving the traditions of Oxford of
olden times, it remained out and out Tory in its politics, and continued
unchanged, even after Oxford itself had long felt the influence of
modern ideas. In its collegiate school, as late at least as 1845, that
venerable heirloom, “Lilly’s Latin Grammar,” which had not a word of
English from cover to cover, and which was a familiar ordeal for boys
long before Shakespeare was born (Cardinal Wolsey, it is said, assisted
in its composition), was still employed. It even retained the quaint old
frontispiece representing boys with knee-breeches and shoebuckles
(probably a picture of the original “Blue-coat Boys”) climbing up the
tree of knowledge, and throwing down the golden fruit. Daily, too, at
the meals in the College Hall there was, and perhaps may be to this day,
heard a quaint Latin grace, which was droned by the “senior scholar,”
beginning, _Oculi omnium ad te spectant, Domine_; probably the same that
was heard in some college halls in the days of the Crusades. It is to be
hoped that the “spirit of the age” has not led it to discard this and
other venerable heirlooms derived from an ancient ancestry. This truly
conservative and orthodox institution, in which the future author was
crammed with classics, and taught to “fear God and honour the King,” was
then considered one of the most successful educational institutions in
America, and it still ranks high in its reputation as a college. It is
the oldest in the Colonies, and it is the only one that has a Royal
Charter.
Mr. Haliburton used often to puzzle his friends by saying that _he and
his father were born twenty miles apart, and in the same house_.
The enigma throws some light on the early history of Windsor. His father
had extensive grants of land at Douglas, a place situated at the head
waters of the St. Croix, a tributary of the Avon, as to which there is a
gruesome tablet at St. Paul’s Church, Halifax, Nova Scotia, to the
memory of a nobleman, who lost his life “from exposure during an
inclement winter, while settling a band of brave Carolinians” at
Douglas.
The famous Flora McDonald, whose husband was a captain in that regiment,
spent a winter in Fort Edward, the old blockhouse of which still
overlooks the village of Windsor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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