The place is fair, and while thou'rt here.
                         Thy land shall still be my land,
                   And all the Eden earth affords
                          Be ours in Staten Island."

DAVID ROBERTS

On the 24th of October, 1796, a certain honest
shoemaker and his wife, by name James and
Christina Roberts, living at Stockbridge near
Edinburgh, had born to them their fifth and
youngest child—a son. Things were cross and
times were hard enough with the village
cobbler; but he and his wife were douce,
worthy, God-fearing people, who worked on in
uncomplaining diligence through sun and shade
alike, by dint of thrift and good management
contriving to make both scanty ends meet in
some kind of cotter decency, and, though ever
acquainted with poverty, yet never losing the
self-respect of independence. They brought up
their children well—the two, at least, who
remained to them; paid threepence or fourpence
a week with David, the youngest boy, to
keep him at a dame's school, but more, as he
says, that he should not be run over by carts
or drowned in the Water of Leith, than for any
intellectual gain to be had for the money; took
them duly to kirk in braw duds honest-like;
and observed the Sabbath as few of their
neighbours did. For the Stockbridge men were a
godless race, Mrs. Roberts used to say—masons,
carters, quarrymen, carpenters, and the like;
and the quiet shoemaker and his wife had little
sympathy therewith.

At eight years of age young Davie was sent
to a school in Edinburgh, to be kicked and
cuffed as was and is too frequently the case. In
consequence of which rough treatment he took
a not unnatural dislike to schooling by rule of
stick, and expressed his determination to leave,
and become apprenticed to some trade. The
question was, to what trade? The parents
wanted him to be a shoemaker like his father
before him; but fortunately for the future Royal
Academician, his artistic powers had been
already discovered by friends and patrons capable
of judging; for long before this time, he says,
he had the most intense love for pictures,
although the masterpieces which so delighted
him were only halfpenny picture-books such as
the Life and Death of Cock Robin, Little Red
Riding Hood, and the like. Sometimes, indeed,
there were panoramas and wild-beast shows on
the Earthen Mound—the site of the future
Royal Scottish Academy's Exhibition—and the
booths and caravans were decorated with
magnificent representations of the treasures within:
affording glorious studies to the lad, who used
to show his mother what they were like "by
scratches on the whitewashed wall made with the
end of a burned stick and a bit of keel"—that is,
red chalk. In illustration of which, Mr. Ballantine,
from whose book* we are quoting, relates
the following anecdote, as it was told him by an
old gentleman still alive.
*Life of David Roberts.

"This gentleman employed Roberts's father
to make and mend his shoes, and on calling one
day he found the side of the wall covered with
representations of lions, tigers, &c., done with
red keel and charcoal on the wall, so boldly and
truly delineated that his attention and admiration
were both excited, and he inquired of Mrs.
Roberts who was the artist. 'Hoot,' said the
honest woman, 'it's our laddie Davie; he's been
up at the Mound seeing a wild-beast show, and
he's caulked them there to let me see them.'
'And what are you going to do with the boy?'
inquired my friend. 'I fancy,' said Mrs.
Roberts, 'he'll just need to sit down on the
stool aside his father there, and learn to mak'
and mend shoon.' 'That will never do,' said
my friend. 'Nature has made him an artist; he
must be a painter.' I may add that the result
of this and similar efforts on the part of the
boy was that he was apprenticed to Beugo, a
celebrated ornamental house-painter; and it is
a curious coincidence, and evinces the kindness
of the artist to his early friends, that in the
last years of his life the daughter of his
apprentice-master, and the person who
communicated this story, were both partakers of
his bounty."

At fourteen years of age, then, he was
apprenticed to this Mr. Gavin Beugo, for two
shillings a week wages for the first year, with a
rise of sixpence weekly every succeeding year;
and here, too, his treatment was somewhat of
the harshest, the master being a passionate,
fitful, and tyrannical man. But David
weathered all his difficulties in time; practised
drawing in after-hours; dodged the house-key
when it was flung at his head; ground his
colours diligently; frequented the Life
Academy got up by Beugo's apprentices among
themselves, and of which the most important
member and model was a donkey; and in every
way possible to him prepared himself for the
coming struggle of life; getting no sympathy
at home when he complained of his rough usage
at the shop, but, on the contrary, being pretty
well snubbed, and told to respect and obey his
master whatever happened.

But it was not all rough usage and hard
work in those apprentice-days. The association
of three or four ambitious lads, each burning
to become the future Raffaelle of his
generation, brought about many a pleasant hour, of
which those spent in the mutual adoration common
to enthusiastic boys were not the least
delightful. For are not the illusions of youth
more delicious than any after-knowledge?
When Roberts saw his first painting framed
—the frame to cost two-and-sixpence, to be
paid in weekly instalments of sixpence—he
experienced more intense happiness, perhaps,
than at any other practical evidence of success;
and what a picture of boyish faith he gives us,
when he speaks of his fellow-apprentices, Kidd
and Mitchell—and of Mitchell's half-brother, the
great John Dick, "who used to paint such
subjects as Mary Queen of Scots escaping from
Lochleven Castle, but was chiefly employed repairing
and copying pictures for a dealer called Anderson,