Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/29

Rh a soldier of a noble presence, had served in the Peninsular War, and was, three years after James' birth, to command his own regiment at Waterloo. His mother was the heiress of the Brouns of Colstoun in Haddingtonshire — an ancient Norman family tracing their descent upwards through many illustrious houses to the Counts of Poitou. One of James' brothers, the second son, died very young; and James, while still a child, was taken along with his eldest brother by his parents to Canada, of which province his father had been appointed Governor-General. Canada formed the happy childhood-land of James' memory, wistfully looked back to in later life; the bright opening scenes of a manhood of labour, success, and sorrow.

When ten years old he was sent home to England in a small sailing brig. He spent the next seven years at Harrow, for the most part of the time with his eldest brother as his fellow-pupil, and with Dr. George Butler as their private tutor and headmaster of the school.

'One incident of his school-boy days,' writes Captain Trotter, 'may have helped to kindle his young ambition. In 1833, the Marquis of Hastings returned home from India, which he had governed for nine years with rare ability alike as a soldier and a statesman. In the following year he paid a