Untitled - Electric Scotland

i8 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. i.
doctors were famous. One of the brothers kept what he called
a pack of hounds, which were of course a continual
amusement. He went out with them after he had
source of
seen his
patients in the early morning, and in the evening, when the sport
was over, spent the hours in the midst of an admiring circle
in the tap-room of the Red Lion. This was the mode of life
of both the Taylors, yet to these men, under Providence, we
owed our restoration to the perfect use of our limbs. Probably
my brother s dear Camie s case was more difficult than mine,
for, though much deformed in shape, my feet were possessed,
I imagine, of each bone and tnuscle in full vigour ; therefore
they had only, as it were, to be formed into their proper
natural shape by continual gentle force, the force that comes
from constant pressure, while Campbell s limb had, from paralysis
while yet a baby, been weakened to that degree that its growth
had never kept pace with the rest of his body. Yet by the
strange treatment of these men it was perfectly restored, and
at the end of a year his lameness gradually wore off."
Returning to Edinburgh in amended health, Archibald
Tait was admitted in October I82I 1 to the celebrated
High School of the city. Up to the time of which we
write, and for many years afterwards,
it was the habit of
most of the best-known families in Scotland to spend the
winter half of the year in Edinburgh, or, if not themselves
living there, to send their sons thither for education. It is
scarcely ah exaggeration to say that almost every Scotch
man of literary or political eminence during the previous
century and a half had received his education within
the walls of the High School of Edinburgh. Of men
then living it may suffice to name Walter Scott, Henry
Brougham, Francis Jeffrey, and Henry Cockburn. At
the banquet given to Brougham on April 25th, 1825, the
future Lord Chancellor thus characteristically described
his former school :-
There is some little doubt about the precise date, and unfortunately the
High School Registers for these years have been lost. But the above is
probably accurate.