Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/33

BRUCE, James, a celebrated traveller, born on the 14th of December, 1730, at Kinnaird, in the county of Stirling. Bruce was by birth a gentleman, and might even be considered as nobly descended. He was the eldest son of David Bruce, Esq. of Kinnaird, who was in turn the son of David Hay of Woodcockdale, in Linlithgowshire, (descended from an old and respectable branch of the Hays of Errol,) and of Helen Bruce, the heiress of Kinnaird, who traced her pedigree to that noble Norman family, which, in the fourteenth century, gave a king to Scotland. It will thus be observed that the traveller's paternal name had been changed from Hay to Bruce, for the sake of succession to Kinnaird. The traveller was extremely vain regarding his alliance to the hero of Bannockburn, insomuch as to tell his engraver, on one occasion, that he conceived himself entitled to use royal livery! He took it very ill to be reminded, as he frequently was, that, in reality, he was not a Bruce, but a Hay, and, though the heir of line, not the heir male of even that branch of the family which he represented. In truth, the real Bruces of Kinnaird, his grandmother's ancestors, were but descended from a cadet of a cadet of the royal family of Bruce, and, as it will be observed, sprung off before the family became royal, though not before it had intermarried with royalty. His mother was the daughter of James Graham, Esq. of Airth, dean of the Faculty of Advocates, and judge of the High Court of Admiralty in Scotland—a man distinguished by his abilities and respected for his public and private virtues. Unfortunately, the traveller lost his mother at the early age of three years—almost the only worldly loss which cannot be fully compensated. His father marrying a second time, had an additional family of six sons and two daughters. In his earliest years, instead of the robust frame and bold disposition which he possessed in manhood, Bruce was of weakly health and gentle temperament. At the age of eight years, a desire of giving his heir-apparent the best possible education, and perhaps also the pain of seeing one motherless child amidst the more fortunate offspring of a second union, induced his father to send him to London, to be placed under the friendly care of his uncle, counsellor Hamilton. In that agreeable situation he spent the years between eight and twelve, when he was transferred to the public school at Harrow, then conducted by Dr Cox. Here he won the esteem of his instructors, as well as of many other individuals, by the extraordinary aptitude with which he acquired a knowledge of classic literature, and the singularly sweet and amiable dispositions which he always manifested. To this reputation, his weakly health, and the fear that he was destined, like his mother, to an early grave, seems to have given a hue of tenderness, which is seldom manifested for merely clever scholars. The gentleness of his character, the result solely of bad health, led him at this early period of his life to contemplate the profession of a clergyman: a choice in which he might, moreover, be further satisfied, from a recollection of his ancestor, Robert Bruce of Kinnaird, who was the leading divine in Scotland little more than a century before. So completely, however, do the minds of men take colour from their physical constitution, that on his health becoming confirmed with advancing manhood, this tame choice was abandoned for something of a bolder character; which, in its turn, appears to have given way, in still further increased strength, for something bolder still. He left Harrow, with the character of a first-rate scholar, in May 1746, and, after spending another year at an academy, in the study of French, arithmetic, and geometry, returned, May 1747, to Kinnaird, where he spent some months in the sports of the field, for which he suddenly contracted a deep and lasting attachment. It was now determined that he should prepare himself for the profession of an advocate; a road to distinction, which, as it was almost the only one left to Scotland by the Union, was then, and at a much later period, assumed by an immense proportion