41+ BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.
various charitable institutions of this city; but he latterly began to concentrate
his exertions upon a single object of this kind. In 1818, a Parliamentary
Commission having been appointed to inquire into the state of education
throughout the United Kingdom, the chairman (Lord Brougham) requested the
countenance and aid of the General Assembly in obtaining returns from the
parochial clergy of Scotland. This was readily acceded to ; and, as convener
of the committee nominated by the Assembly, Dr. Baird took an active part
in furthering the object of the Commission. Deeply impressed with the statements
set forth in the returns, which were in the first instance forwarded to the
Principal, and by him transmitted to Lord Brougham, he was led to that enterprise
for the education of the Highlanders with which his name will ever be
most honourably associated. In 1824 he proposed to the General Assembly
a scheme for establishing schools in the Highlands, to be maintained on such
funds as the Church might raise by means of parochial collections and otherwise,
and to be superintended by a Committee of the General Assembly. The
project was well received, and a great and flourishing institution has been the
consequence. The General Assembly’s Education Committee has at present
an income of about 23000 per annum, with about 210,000 of capital, and an
establishment of more than one hundred schools, giving education to upwards
of, eight thousand children. Much of the success of this scheme depended on
the co-operation of heritors, in furnishing certain requisites of accommodation
to the schoolmasters ; and Dr. Baird zealously exerted himself to secure that
co-operation by means of frequent personal intercourse. It was with this view
he undertook several laborious journeys to the remotest parts of the Highlands
and Islands, at a very advanced period of life ; and the appearance of the venerable
Principal among their native hills and vales, on such a mission of benevolence,
will ever be remembered by the present generation of Highlanders,
and will not pass unrecorded to the next.
The Principal latterly retired in a great measure from the more active cares
and engagements of life ; and valued, as a good man naturally does, the privilege
of spending his later days among the remembered scenes of his boyhood:
connecting the present with the past in that manner of pleasing retrospect which
always argues a well-spent interval.
“ The child is father of the man ;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.”
His clerical career was on the whole eminently prosperous ; and he repaid
the favours of his fortune by a character of high respectability, and by some
distinguished contributions to the public good-his chief exertions taking their
direction from the benevolence of his disposition. Among the class of practical
philanthropists, he occupied a place scarcely inferior to that of any other
individual of his time.
This was at Manuel, in the neighbourhood of Linlithgow, whem‘he chiefly resided