Untitled - Electric Scotland

48 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. n.
over the Salisbury Crags and Arthur s Seat, he had
drawn infinite stores of information on facts both past
and present from the ceaseless flow of his father s
conversation. Mr. Tait, whose memory was singularly
retentive, had been an omnivorous reader, and he
liked nothing
so well as an attentive listener. Eccen
tric and unbusiness-like he certainly was. His son
my
recounts, for example, how,
" when brother Tom left
home for India in 1826, my father took James, Craufurd,
and myself with him to accompany Tom upon the first
part of his journey. Together we embarked at Leith in
the London steamer. Suddenly,
in the middle of the
night, my father decided to go on shore at Berwick, by
means of a boat which had accidentally put out with a
passenger. Next day he took us for a long walk into
England, and falling in with a stranger on our walk, we
all accepted for a night his equally sudden hospitality,
and returned next day to Edinburgh." Of course these
unplanned excursions were full of charm for the boys,
who immensely enjoyed their father s companionship.
To Archie he specially devoted himself. His letters are
a curious mixture of shrewd precision and strange fancies ;
and he continued till his death to write to Archie as
though he were still a little boy. He enjoins him to be
sure to
"
to the horses
a cheap one ";
wrap up well
"
;
"
"
;
"
to sit in the coach with his back-
to buy a road-book, and to be sure to get
not to be imposed on by coachmen or guards
(this is followed by a tariff of what he ought to give) ; to
read some entertaining book in the coach
"
perhaps the
two last volumes of Chesterfield s Letters, or Hume s
Essays, or Addison s papers in the "
Spectator ; to go to
bed early ; to work hard at his Greek
"
for ancient Greek
is not unlikely to become the living language of modern
Greece, especially if a proper system
of Infant and Ele-