Untitled - Electric Scotland

1827-33]
<THE LITTLE BISHOP 35
terian, and into the Established Church of Scotland
Archibald Campbell Tait had been baptized.
His father s
influence over him, admirable as it was in many ways,
had never been of a distinctly religious sort, and of his
mother he could have no remembrance. His earliest
education, both in religious and secular matters, had been
carried on by his elder sisters, Susan and Charlotte, with
the invaluable aid of the strict but faithful Betty Morton,
whose nursery regime has already been described. Desul
tory and unprofessional the teaching had necessarily been,
but of the loving motherly care bestowed by his sisters
on his early childhood he used all through life to speak
with earnest gratitude. Merry as he showed himself at
times, there seems to have been about the little boy from
the very first an almost pathetic seriousness. Certain it
is that, from whatever cause, or by whomsoever the name
was first given, he used to be called The little Bishop
from the time he was six years old.
There was nothing precocious about those early years.
"
he and
"
In his first
school-days," writes Lady Wake,
Campbell used, during their holidays, to have some sort of
lessons in my room. They might easily have had a wiser
teacher, for, with a young girl s want of judgment, I gave them
the books I was most fond of myself, and was greatly disgusted
to find that they could not be appreciated. I still possess a
copy of Milman s beautiful poem, The Fall of Jerusalem, in
which the passage beginning
There have been tears from holier eyes than mine,
Poured o er thee, Zion ! yea, the Son of Man,
This thy devoted hour foresaw and wept,
is all blotted and blurred with dear little Archie s own tears,
caused not because he was stupid, but because his sister, who
was old enough to know better, was so foolish as to expect a
little child to understand it. When Dean Milman, long years
afterwards, had become the Bishop of London s intimate friend
he was much amused at hearing of the Bishop s first association
with his name and works."