Scottish Poets in America Author:John Dawson Ross Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PROF. JAMES C. MOFFAT. —The warrior's name, Tho' pealed and chim'd on all the tongues of fame, Sounds less harmonious to the grateful mind Than his, who fa... more »shions and improves mankind. At Glencree, in the South of Scotland, on the thirtieth day of May, 1811, there was born of poor but honest and industrious parents a child, who in course of time grew up, and at an early age began the battle of life as a shepherd's boy. Tending his flocks day by day among the hills and glens, far from his home and his friends, he was thus led into a closer companionship with nature in all her wonderful beauties than he would otherwise have been, and soon he began to discover that there were " Books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, And good in everything." Gradually his mind expanded, and imperceptibly a desire for knowledge and an earnest wish to become something better and nobler than what he was naturally took possession of his heart. Up to his sixteenth year he had received little, or, at all events, a very imperfect education, but at this age he apprenticed himself to a printer, not with a view of learning that trade, but simply as a means of obtaining access to books. His duties here occupied his attention for ten hours each day, yet so willing a scholar was he that during his spare hours in the course of a few years he had mastered Latin, Greek, Hebrew, a little of Persian and several other European languages. Such in brief was the boyhood of James C. Moffat, the now venerable and greatly respected Professor of Church History in the Theological Seminary at Princeton. In 1833 he emigrated to America, and shortly after his arrival in New York, through the advice and assistance of a few friends, entered the junior class at Princeton College and graduated in 1835. He was ...« less