A

XII

TAIT

THE WISe ruler

RCHIBALD CAMPBELL TAIT was

born on December 21st, 1811, in Park Place, Edinburgh, now the site of the new University buildings. His father, father, Tait, Writer to the Sheriff, belonged to "bonnet lairds," the Taits of Ludquharn, in Aberdeenshire. Crauford's father, John, had been Episcopalian, but was brought over by his wife to the Established Church of Scotland. Crauford married Susan, daughter of Sir Ilay Campbell, Lord President of the Court of Session, who held the highest judicial office in Scotland.

Crauford Signet, and afterwards an estimable family of

Archie was born club-footed, and his good and gentle mother died suddenly when he was three years old. His health needed the greatest care, and this was ably given by an experi

enced old Scottish nurse, of kind heart, strict discipline, and rigid principles, named Betty Morton. When he was seven, his eldest married sister, Susan, Lady Sitwell, of Renishaw, Derbyshire, insisted that he and

elder brother, Campbell, who had a shrunk leg, should be sent with Betty Morton to Whitworth, near Rochdale, in Lancashire, to be treated by a noted bone-setter, named Taylor. Both boys were perfectly cured.

In October 1821 Archie was admitted to the celebrated High School of Edinburgh, which was under Dr. Carson, with seven hundred boys. Here his progress was remarkably rapid. In 1824 his father removed him to the Edinburgh Academy, then newly founded for the promotion of classical education in Scotland. The first headmaster was the famous scholar John Williams, afterwards Archdeacon of Cardigan. Archie proved a brilliant and successful pupil; on Exhibition Day, 1827, Lord Cockburn, who gave away the prizes, concluded his address of congratulation to him as Dux, and winner of six of the foremost competitions, by the words, "Go forth, young man, and remember that wherever you go the eyes of your country are upon you."

That year Tait matriculated in the University of Glasgow. The principal was Dr. Macfarlane, the leading professor (Greek) was Daniel Sandford, and there were about twelve hundred students. Of Sandford, Tait said: "He possessed in a wonderful degree the power of quickening into life the latent intellect of his pupils. That he inspired and kept alive the spirit of absolute enthusiasm which stimulated a class of three hundred not very clever lads to press forward in their studies, as in a race, is no slight evidence of the ability and character of the man. To him and to Archdeacon Williams I owe more than to any other teachers." Betty Morton took charge of Tait's lodgings near the Old College, and was firm in repelling friends who wished to intrude on hours of study.

His father, whose financial affairs were in a state of great difficulty, wrote him numerous acute and interesting letters of instruction and advice, encouraging him in the habit of writing a journal, in which the Archbishop found great advantage throughout his life. The neighbourhood of Garscube, the family place of his uncle, Sir Archibald Campbell, gave an agreeable variety to the life of the hard-working student;

Sir Archibald was hospitable to the college professors and the best college society. After a brilliant career at Glasgow, the professors finally elected him as one of the exhibitioners from Glasgow to Balliol College, Oxford, on the foundation of John Snell, of the date 1679. From a certain seriousness of demeanour even from childhood, from the age of six Tait was called in the family "The little bishop"; but he was first brought back to the Episcopalian creed of his grandfather, John Tait, by his cousin, Ramsay Campbell, of Garscube, son of Sir Archibald, one of the companions of his boyhood in Edinburgh, with whom he attended St. John's Episcopal Church, at the end of Prince's Street, then under the pastorate of Bishop Sandford. Writing in 1879, the Archbishop thus refers to his first strong conviction of faith: "The earliest recollection I have of a deep religious impression made on my mind has often since recurred to me with a vividness of having heard a voice from above. I suppose I must have been some ten or twelve years old. I had ridden over with my brother Crauford from Harviestoun" (their country home) "to Glendevon, to visit old Miss Rutherford, and stayed the night in her

house.

I distinctly remember, in the middle of the night, awaking with a deep impression on my mind of the reality and nearness of the world unseen, such as, through as, through God's mercy, has never since left me. I have fallen into many sins of omission and commission; I have had many evil desires, and have gratified them; but this sense of the reality of the world unseen has remained with me through God's mercy. What the value of the impression was it is difficult to say; but that it was made by God the Holy Ghost working on my soul I have no doubt. O Lord, give me grace to preserve it to the end; and may that guiding and guarding Spirit of holiness and purity, from whom I believe it came, ever be with me, to give me an unfeigned repentance for the sins which have defaced the holy image of God in my soul, and worked on my natural corruption, leading me into evil! O Lord, keep me to the end, washing me in Christ's blood, and making me fit for that glorious and holy presence which at that early age I faintly realised!"

As soon as his residence at Balliol began, Tait applied to his tutor, Mr. Moberly (afterwards Bishop of Salisbury) as a candidate for