CHAPTER II.
Biographical Sketch of the Rev. Dr Stuart up to the date of his leaving Home for Dunedin.
THE following biographical sketch of Dr Stuart cannot fail to be read with interest. It is copied from Cox's "Men of Mark of New Zealand," and Ross's "Education and Educationists in Otago":—"Mr Stuart was born in the year 1819, in a hamlet on the banks of the Tay, and began his education in the parish school of Kenmore, which was conducted by Mr Armstrong, a university man. In this school, which stands where the Tay issues from its parent loch, a succession of lads, bred on the slope of the Grampians, have been trained for the Universities for at least a century. 'Though in my first teens,' he said on a public occasion, 'before I had access to a newspaper, yet in no sense was I a waif, for I was within reach of church and school and such books as Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," Boston's "Fourfold State," Hervey's "Meditations," "The Scots Worthies," one or two histories, and Burns's poems. To these institutions and books I am a debtor to a degree more than I can express. Still, it was a red-letter day in my life when I was asked as a boy to become reader to an old couple who received the Scotsman newspaper from a son who had pushed his fortune in the South. I then heard for the first time the glowing words of Brougham and Russell, and Peel and Graham, and became acquainted with the questions and discussions which engaged the high court of Parliament. My little world, hitherto bounded by the Grampians, suddenly embraced London and Paris, the Indies and the Americas. In the Scotsman I found a schoolmaster with more force and greatness than Mr Armstrong, at whose feet I had sat for years.'
"Mr Stuart was instructed, in his village school, in Gaelic, English, Latin, Greek, and mathematics; and, with a view to acquiring fluency in speaking English, he was sent for two summers into the Lowlands. Like other young Highlanders who had set their hearts on getting to college, he, when a mere boy, took to school-teaching, a calling which then yielded little pay, but which afforded opportunities for reading and study. In order to keep himself abreast of the doings
