A Sketch of the Life and Times of Judge Haliburton

A SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF
In the absence of any suitable biography of the author of “The Clockmaker,” his centenary may lend an interest to the following brief sketch of his life and times.
Chief Justice William Hersey Otis Haliburton left an only child, the future author of “Sam Slick,” who was educated at the Grammar School, Windsor, and afterward, at the same place, at the University of King’s College, for Tory King’s College of the Colony of New York had migrated to Windsor, Nova Scotia, where, preserving the traditions of Oxford of olden times, it remained out and out Tory in its politics, and continued unchanged, even after Oxford itself had long felt the influence of modern ideas. In its collegiate school, as late at least as 1845, that venerable heirloom, “Lilly’s Latin Grammar,” which had not a word of English from cover to cover, and which was a familiar ordeal for boys long before Shakespeare was born (Cardinal Wolsey, it is said, assisted in its composition), was still employed. It even retained the quaint old frontispiece representing boys with knee-breeches and shoebuckles (probably a picture of the original “Blue-coat Boys”) climbing up the tree of knowledge, and throwing down the golden fruit. Daily, too, at the meals in the College Hall there was, and perhaps may be to this day, heard a quaint Latin grace, which was droned by the “senior scholar,” beginning, Oculi omnium ad te spectant, Domine; probably the same that was heard in some college halls in the days of the Crusades. It is to be hoped that the “spirit of the age” has not led it to discard this and other venerable heirlooms derived from an ancient ancestry. This truly conservative and orthodox institution, in which the future author was crammed with classics, and taught to “fear God and honour the King,” was then considered one of the most successful educational institutions in America, and it still ranks high in its reputation as a college. It is the oldest in the Colonies, and it is the only one that has a Royal Charter.