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should always be attached to the staff of the larger commands, and that he should be answerable for the well-being of the troops under such command. Sanitary measures should be his sole duty; and, as the appointment must be no sinecure, he should be granted liberal pay and allowances. He should also correspond directly with the Government of his Presidency.

Although the peculiarities of the Indian Government may have rendered expedient the appointment of a Commission to carry out the needful improvements, we earnestly hope that they will be carefully superintended by the Government, and will be guided by medical officers in deciding upon local improvements. The medical officers of the Indian army possess the intelligence, the will, and the capacity to carry out all that may be required of them. It is to the Government, and not to them, that the backwardness of India in sanitary matters is to be attributed; and, with the aid of the able engineers at command in India, they can best carry out the improvements suggested or considered necessary. How far the Government is likely to secure, under the present rules, medical officers of tried skill and ability, is another question; but nevertheless one of some moment, if sanitary measures are to be a reality.

Good drainage, proper police as regards removal of sewage, and pure water-supply, are the elements of successful sanitary improvements in every cantonment in India, and are required in all. Hill stations for European troops and invalids; location of all recently arrived English soldiers in such stations; these are the great features of improvement which the Government of India may advantageously turn its attention to. This change cannot be effected without good men to direct and carry it out. It cannot be completed without a large outlay of money. But surely it is the first duty of the Government to save life, let the cost be what it may. Few governments move rapidly in the direction of improvement without some pressure from without; but we hope that the Government of India is now rousing itself to some sense of its responsibilities.

The general principles of the Report are not in the least impeached, though it may be the case, as is thought by some officers of experience, that the figures adopted by the Commissioners are too unfavourable to the sanitary condition of the British troops in India for the period preceding the mutiny of 1857; and those principles are greatly confirmed by the unquestionable fact, that even before the appointment of the Commission, the great increase of the British troops in India had led to better sanitary arrangements, and that during the last three years in particular the increased attention to these subjects has been

attended

attended with the most gratifying success.* We earnestly hope that the Government will not weigh life against money, nor falter in pursuing a career of improvement in which every step must add to human happiness.

ART. VI.-1. Lectures on the History of Literature, Ancient and Modern. From the German of Frederick Schlegel.

2. Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk. 3rd Edition. Edinburgh, 1819. 3. Valerius: a Roman Story. Edinburgh, 1842.

4. Reginald Dalton. Edinburgh, 1842.

5. Some Passages in the Life of the Rev. Adam Blair, and History of Mathew Wald. Edinburgh, 1843.

6. The Life of Robert Burns. 5th ed. London, 1847.

JOH

OHN GIBSON LOCKHART was born in the manse or parsonage-house of Cambusnethan, on the 14th of July, 1794. His father, the minister of the parish, came of a good stock, being a younger son of William Lockhart, Esq., of Birkhill, in Lanarkshire. His mother was the daughter of the Rev. John Gibson, minister of St. Cuthbert's, in Edinburgh, who married one of the Miss Erskines of Cardross. The father of the subject of our present sketch was twice married. By his first wife, as well as by his second, he had a family; but of the children of the first marriage only one, the late Laird of MiltonLockhart, and member for the county, attained to mature age; and of the children of the second marriage, John Gibson was the eldest.

Lockhart appears from his birth to have been a delicate child. Had his first decade been spent amid the bracing air of his native place, this delicacy of constitution might perhaps have

* While these sheets are passing through the press, we learn that the returns which have been issued from the Army Medical Department relating to the health of the European forces in India in 1862, show the deaths to have been only 25.68 per 1000, being nearly a third under the proportion of 1861. The mortality in the Madras Presidency was 20'83 per 1000; Bombay, 24'60; and Bengal (where the majority of the troops are quartered), 27.55. These statements include the deaths of invalids on their passage home, or while waiting their discharge in England.

Assuming 69 per 1000-the rate adopted by the Commissioners-to be correct, or even not very incorrect, the figures we have just quoted show an immense diminution of mortality, and we are informed that later returns will prove that a steadily progressive improvement is taking place. Of course in years when an epidemic prevails, the rate of mortality must be much larger. Thus we find that the mortality of 1860 and 1861 (taken together) in Bengal, averaged 42:27; but the troops suffered severely from cholera in 1861, the deaths from that cause alone being 23.73 per 1000. We have already mentioned (p. 418, note) that the Bombay rate in 1863 was only 12 per 1000.

been

been overcome; but he had scarcely attained his second year when his father became minister of the College Kirk, in Glasgow ; and the close atmosphere of a town, already beginning to be one of the chief seats of Scottish manufacture, could hardly fail to affect the little fellow injuriously. Be this as it may, the fact is certain that Lockhart as a boy was singularly open to the influences of contagion. To some juvenile illness he used to attribute the partial deafness under which he ever afterwards laboured.

His early education was conducted through that series of dayschools at which it was customary, in the beginning of the present century, for Scottish children of his condition in life to attend. When a mere child, from four to six years old, he toddled to the English school, as it was called, and to the writing-school-the former being a seminary in which reading and spelling were exclusively taught; the latter, the great hotbed-to girls and boys alike—of writing, geography, and arithmetic. His first remove was into the High School, where the elements of Latin and Greek were taught by competent masters ; and, finally, at the age of twelve, or something under it, he put on the red-frieze gown, and became a matriculated member of the College and University of Glasgow. He is described by his contemporaries, some of whom still survive, as having been a clever, though by no means an industrious boy. He contrived indeed, in spite of frequent absences, occasioned by illness, to keep his place at the head of his class; yet how this was done, nobody was ever able to discover. I really don't know how he contrived it,' writes one who sat on the same form with him at the High School, 'but he always kept his place as dux. He never seemed to learn anything when the class was sitting down; and on returning after one of his illnesses, he went of course to the bottom; but we had not been five minutes up when he began to take places, and he invariably succeeded, sometimes before the class was dismissed at noon, in getting to the top of it again.'

The secret of Lockhart's success at school-the secret indeed of all his successes through life-lay in this, that he possessed in no common degree the power of concentrating his thoughts, and keeping them steadily fixed upon the subject to which they were from time to time directed. His lessons thus gave him very little trouble; and, having conquered these, he was not unapt, for mere amusement's sake, to follow up to its legitimate conclusion the argument to which they had introduced him. It may be almost said of him indeed, that he never knew what it was to be absolutely idle. His reading, like that of clever children

children in general, was to be sure miscellaneous enough; for whatever came in his way he devoured. But whatever he had once devoured he never forgot. This was an advantage over other boys which he owed in part at least to nature. His memory was retentive in the extreme, and continued so through life. Like Lord Macaulay and Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Lockhart, in the maturity of his days, seldom thought it necessary to verify a quotation of which he desired to make use. In like manner, as a child, he seemed always ready to draw from the little store of knowledge which he had accumulated, and to turn it to account at a moment's notice. Hence the slight interruption to his onward progress which illness itself occasioned. When the sick boy could not read, he could think; and his thoughts appear to have ranged themselves in such order, that as soon as the opportunity offered of resuming his studies, he did so having forgotten nothing. He was never therefore at a loss where to begin, and in what order to go forward.

The clever child, the gifted boy, had however a character of his own, and, in essentials at least, it continued unchanged throughout the whole of his not very protracted existence. Full of fun, overflowing with humour, he was yet averse to rough sports, and hated quarrelling. An intense perception of the ludicrous made him a capital caricaturist. The same exuberance of animal spirits rendered him incapable of stifling a jest, even if thereby he was sure to make a lasting enemy. In all this there was not one spark of malice; it was the mere outpouring of glee, which could not be restrained, of which it was never the object to inflict a wound, and which sometimes could not even see the wound after it had been inflicted. At the same time the humorous, gleeful, merry boy was proud and reserved. A natural disposition more than commonly affectionate he kept under perpetual restraint, considering it unmanly to make any violent display either of joy or of sorrow. The effort necessary to accomplish this often cost him dear, and on one occasion had well-nigh proved fatal to him. He was very much attached to a younger brother and sister, particularly to the latter, both of whom died within a few days of each other. John would not weep as the rest of the family did, nor in any other way make a display of his feelings, and the consequence was that he became so ill as seriously to alarm, not his parents only, but his medical

attendants.

From this illness, which sowed the seeds of what appeared for a while to be consumption, John recovered very slowly. He was removed for change of air to the sea-side, and ceased, as a matter of course, to take his accustomed place in the High

School;

School; but his education suffered thereby no interruption. Dr. Lockhart, himself a good classical scholar, took the boy in hand, and the progress which he made under such tender guidance proved most satisfactory. The result was, that when the invalid regained his strength, it was considered unnecessary to send him back to school, and he was entered at College, though still under twelve years of age.

Of his appearance and manner at this period of life, and of the place which he took in the society to which it introduced him, one of his early friends, Dr. Rainy, Professor of Forensic Medicine in the University of Glasgow, gives the following graphic account :—

'I became acquainted with John Lockhart in 1805: he was then about twelve. He had just recovered from a protracted illness, was of small size, thin and pale, with delicate, rather feminine features, but with sharp bright eyes, and altogether a very expressive countenance. Like most boys of his age at that period, he was rather slovenly in his dress, and ridiculed any of his companions who devoted much attention to his personal appearance. As he was rather delicate, he seldom engaged in the games and athletic exercises with which the students generally amused themselves. He preferred taking a quiet walk with some congenial companion in the college garden. He was well informed for a boy of his age; had a decided fondness for poetry; had remarkable conversational powers, and expressed his views with great fluency and distinctness. His most marked peculiarity was a strong sense-I may say a morbidly strong sense of the ludicrous. Anything odd in appearance, language, or conduct, struck him forcibly, and was depicted by him with great humour, though often with some exaggeration and a good deal of sarcasm. It made little difference to him whether the object of his ridicule was a stranger, an intimate friend, or a near relative. Any one was fair game if he showed any ludicrous peculiarity of manner or deportment. At the same time I do not think that there ever was anything ill-natured in the spirit of his remarks; in fact, he seemed unconscious that his remarks might give pain to others.

He attended the junior Latin in 1805-6, and the senior Latin and junior Greek in 1806-7. His appearances at the oral examinations were always highly respectable-I think, rather in consequence of his ability than his assiduity, for he did not appear to me to exert himself to sustain a prominent position in the class. He occasionally got into discredit with the Professor from talking to his neighbours, and especially for sketching caricatures, of which the Professor himself was frequently the subject. On some of these occasions the sketch was noticed by the Professor, and had to be handed up for his inspection.

At the close of the session 1805-6, two prizes were given to the junior Latin class. They were adjudged by the votes of the students

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