It is not, however, with the memories of a child that I wish to entertain
my readers, except in so far as they may have some intrinsic interest of
their own. Dimly I can recall the year of storm and stress on the
Continent, when thrones were toppling and the tide of revolution
threatened a general catastrophe; vaguely, too, I remember the firing of
the guns from the old castle, which announced the death of Queen Adelaide
in 1849; but it was not until 1850 that my real life may be said to have
begun. In the spring of that year I went on a long visit to my paternal
grandfather at St. Andrews, where his family had been settled for many
generations. In the station of Berwick-upon-Tweed the luggage of
passengers was examined in order to see that whiskey was not being
smuggled across the Border, and I was filled with childish wonder as I
watched the process.

St. Andrews, as it was in 1850, bore little resemblance to the well-known
pleasure resort of to-day. So far as I can remember, there was not a
modern building in the city, and as a picture of an old-world Scottish
town it was without a flaw. No club-house faced the sea, nor were there
the fashionable residences which adorn the modern St. Andrews. The grass
grew and the oats ripened where now stretch the long terraces devoted to
summer lodgings for the visitors. North Street and South Street were the
two city thoroughfares, if thoroughfares they could be called, seeing
that even in them the green weeds grew freely. Antiquity and repose
characterised the place as a whole, though in the winter months the stir
of young life filled the little city, troops of red-cloaked students
passing to and fro between the grey, weather-beaten halls of the
University and their lodgings. At the end of South Street stood the ruins
of the cathedral with the fine tower, in which the beams of some great
vessel of the Spanish Armada, wrecked on the neighbouring Bell Rock, were
carefully preserved, and the graceful arches of the sacred building, for