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the greatest wealth, the highest honours, and a world-wide
reputation as patrons of art, science, and industry. Robert,
the elder, was born in Montrose in 1782, and came to
Göteborg in 1802. He commenced as a shipowner, but
he enlarged his sphere of activity by erecting iron-works,
saw-mills, etc., until his possessions had outgrown in size
many a small German principality. His brother James
worked in the same spirit, but being of a retiring
disposition, and hating publicity, his charitable gifts cannot well
be estimated. Partly during his lifetime, and partly by his
last will, he set aside 320,000 Thaler for workmen’s
buildings,1 besides leaving 40,000 for scholarship to the
two Universities of Lund and Upsala. Robert’s son
Charles, and James’s son and grandson, followed in the
same path. James, the second, founded Frobel schools,
housekeeping schools, and elementary public schools,
whilst Oscar, his son, inclined more to the promotion of
science and art. His munificent gifts to Goteborg’s
Museum, his fitting out Nordenskjold’s expedition to
Spitzbergen in 1872, as well as his energetic furtherance
of Nansen’s plans and of his voyage to the Arctic regions,
are too well known to need any repetition. He now
received his country’s and his king’s recognition: his
coat-of-arms as Baron Dickson hangs up in the Riddarhus,
next to that of Sven Hedin.2
Thus the town of Göteborg offers a very interesting
example of Scottish energy, activity, success, and public
spirit during a period of nearly three hundred years.
1 Known as the “ Dickson Stiftelse.”
2 A few other benefactors of Göteborg we can only mention in a
note, as a history of the present times, in which praise and blame alike
appear only too often overcharged, out of proportion, and in bad taste,
does not lie within the scope of our book. The names are Kennedy,
Seaton, Chalmers, and William Chambers, though the latter is of English
parentage.
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