Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/91

Rh lay, and where he meant to show as little mercy as he expected to receive. And then succeeded the battle of Flodden, in which James and the best of the Scottish nobility fell; and after Flodden, a loss occurred which Barton would rather have died than witnessed. This was the utter extinction of the Scottish fleet, which was allowed to lie rotting in the harbours of France, or to be trucked away in inglorious sale, like common firewood. From that period, Scotland so completely ceased to be a naval power, that even at the time of the Union, she not only had no war vessels whatever, but scarcely any merchant ships—the few that lay in her ports being chiefly the property of the traders of Holland;—and full three centuries have to elapse before we find another distinguished Scottish seaman in the naval history of Great Britain.

, was born at Edinburgh in 1774. His father was a minister of the Scottish Episcopal Church, and held a small living at Doune, in the county of Perth. As the minister died while still young, his family, consisting of four sons, were thrown upon the maternal care; but this, instead of being a disadvantage, seems to have produced a contrary effect, by the early development of their talents, so that they all attained distinguished positions in society, the first as a writer to the signet, the second as an eminent surgeon, and the third as professor of Scots Law in the University of Edinburgh. Charles, the youngest, was less favourably situated than his brothers for a complete education, but his own observation and natural aptitude supplied the deficiency. "My education," he tells us, "was the example of my brothers." The care of his mother did the rest, so that her youngest and best-beloved child at last outstripped his more favoured seniors, and his grateful remembrance of her lessons and training continued to the end of his life. The history of such a family justifies the saying which the writer of this notice has often heard repeated by a learned professor of the University of Glasgow: "When I see," he said, "a very talented youth who makes his way in the world, I do not ask, Who was his father, but, Who was his mother?" On being removed to the High School of Edinburgh—where, by the way, he made no distinguished figure—Charles was chiefly under the charge of his brother, John, subsequently the eminent surgeon, and it was from him that he derived that impulse which determined his future career. He studied anatomy, and such was his rapid proficiency, that even before he had reached the age of manhood, he was able to deliver lectures on that science, as assistant of his brother, John, to a class of more than a hundred pupils. In 1799, even before he was admitted a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, he published the first part of his "System of Dissections." Longing, however, for a wider field of action, and disgusted with the medical controversies which were carried on in Edinburgh, he removed to London in 1804, and threw himself into the arena of the British metropolis. It was a bold step; for at this time, owing to political causes, a Scotsman of education was regarded with suspicion and dislike in this favourite field of Scottish adventure, and Charles Bell, like the rest of his countrymen, was looked upon as an interloper come to supplant the true children of the English soil. But he bravely held onward in his course, and won for himself the esteem of influential friends, the chief of whom were Sir Astley Cooper and Dr. Abernethy, and he soon extended the circle by his treatise on the "Anatomy of Expression," which was published in London in 1806. It was a work so admirably suited for painters, in their delineations of human feeling and passion, that the most distinguished artists of the day