led to his selection of the business he determined to follow,--that of a mathematical instrument maker. The boy at the same time prosecuted his education at school; his improving health enabling him to derive more advantage from the instructions of his masters than in the earlier part of his career. Not the least influential part of his training, as regarded the formation of his character, consisted, as already observed, in the example and conversation of his parents at home. His frequent illnesses brought him more directly and continuously under their influence than is the case with most boys of his age; and reading became one of his chief sources of recreation and enjoyment. His fathers library-shelf contained well-thumbed volumes of Boston, Bunyan, and ‘The Cloud of Witnesses,’ with Henry the Rymer’s ‘Life of Wallace,’ and other old ballads, tattered by frequent use. These he devoured greedily, and re-read until he had most of them by heart. His father would also recount to him the sufferings of the Covenanters,--the moors and mosses which lay towards the south of Greenock having been among their retreats during the times of the persecution. Then there were the local and traditionary stories of the neighbourhood,--such as the exploits of the Greenock men under Sir John Shaw, at Worcester, in 1651,[56]--together with much of that unwritten history, heard only around firesides, which kindles the Scotchman’s nationality, and influences his future life. [56] The Shaw baronetcy was the reward of the feudal superior’s services on the occasion. The banner carried by the tenantry in the civil war was long preserved in Greenock, and was hung up with the other town flags in one of the public rooms.