COLONEL TERROT to DEAN RAMSAY.—­Without date, but of the
     year 1872.

Very Rev. and dear Sir—­There is one little incorrect deduction in your kind memoir, or at least a deduction which may be made from what you say of my father deriving his intellect from his mother—–­that my grandfather was inferior in such respects.  From deep feeling and devotion to his memory, my grandmother never spoke of her husband to us, but from others I have heard that he was a bright, handsome and talented young man, who, with the very imperfect education given at that time to officers in the army, and employed in active service in America at the age of fourteen, was yet distinguished for ability, especially in mathematics and engineering matters, so that he was employed by those in command of the siege, and was actually riding with the engineer who was in charge of the sieging operations when a cannon-ball struck and killed him.  He was in an English infantry regiment, and not in the Indian service, except that the regiment was serving in India at the time.  He met my grandmother in the ship which took them to India.  She was going to a maternal uncle, Colonel Hughes, who was considerably displeased on her announcing at Madras that she was engaged to a poor young officer who had offered to her during the voyage.  But the young couple being determined, he gave his consent, and continued kind to his niece, and my father was born in his house, and at his father’s request called Hughes after him.  My grandfather was twenty-five and his bride eighteen at their marriage, and she was a widow before she was twenty, from which time till she died at eighty-five she was a widow indeed, making her son the chief object of her life, living in and for him.

His uncle William, whom he succeeded at Haddington, was never married, and was exceedingly attached to my father.  He was a singular man; in his early days very gay and handsome, and living in some matters, I know not what, so incorrectly, that on offering himself for holy orders, the then Bishop of Durham wrote to him mentioning something he had heard, and telling him if it was true he was not fitly prepared for taking orders.  My uncle acknowledged the accusation as far as it was true, and thanked the Bishop for his letter, and abstained from coming forward at that time, but took the admonition so to heart that it led to an entire conversion of heart and life.  He then came forward in a very different state to receive ordination, and was through his whole life a most zealous and devoted man, a friend of Milner and Wilberforce.  An old lady, Mrs. Logan of Seafield, told me that once when Mrs. Siddons was acting, uncle William walked twenty miles to see her and persuade her not to go, and, whether by arguments or eloquence, he succeeded.  Though kind and gentle he was a strong Calvinist, and by his zeal and energy in preaching such doctrines, injured himself in a worldly point of view.  He was always poor,