Excerpt from Forty Years' Recollections of Life, Literature, and Public Affairs, Vol. 1 of 2: From 1830 to 1870 I was born in the city of Perth, in the year 1814, but in my early manhood I was so ambitious of the tardy maturity that seemed to my impatient eagerness to be much too long in coming, that I endeavoured to persuade myself and others that I was at least three years older. My father was an officer in the Royal Artillery, the second son of Captain Hugh Mackay, of the Royal Marines, a member of the great Clan of Mackay, that at one time occupied nearly the whole county of Sutherland. He and his ancestors came from that part of the district called the Reay Forest, and the Mackay country. A few words about this gentleman and my father may not be out of place, as an introduction to the history of a life cast in a mould and amid scenes very different from theirs. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.