SOME ACCOUNT 
 
 ITINERATING LIBRARIES 
 
 AND THEIR 
 
 FOUNDEE 
 
 -^-r 
 
 We want public souls : we want thetD. — Bisnop Hackstt 
 
 EDINBURGH. MDCCCLVI 
 
^ 
 
 ^' 
 
 .t> 
 
 
MUS ELIZABETH BE OWN 
 
 MY DEAR MOTHER, 
 
 IF ANY PORTION OF THIS NARRATIVE PROVE 
 USEFUL, THAT PORTION I DEDICATE TO YOU. RECEIVE 
 IT WITH INDULGENCE, FOR IT IS THE GIFT OF YOUR 
 AFFECTIONATE SON, 
 
 SAMUEL BROWN. 
 
 Canaan Grove, Morningsidk, Edinburgh, 
 AfGUST 5th, 185f>. 
 
 1 J447 
 
PEEFATOEY NOTICE 
 
 This short Account was written seventeen years 
 ago for the United Secession Magazine of that 
 period. It was partly with the view of pre- 
 serving some slight memorial of an uncommonly 
 blameless and useful life, in the Literature of 
 the Church within the pale of which it was led, 
 that such a narrative was originally published. 
 But it was partly also, and perhaps in the mind 
 of the writer it was chiefly, with the purpose of 
 drawing the attention of the Reader to the per- 
 sonal history of the Itinerating Libraries of East 
 Lothian ; and that mainly in order to show how 
 large an amount of public beneficence is within 
 the reach of the most private situation in life. 
 
VI PREFATORY NOTICE 
 
 This end the Sketch has certainly subserved 
 pretty well. Since the decease of the Founder 
 of those Libraries, numerous applications have 
 been made to Mrs Brown, from year to year, 
 for information concerning them, generally with 
 a view to the Institution of the Plan elsewhere. 
 The readiest answer to such inquiries has hitherto 
 just been the sending of a copy of the description 
 given in these pages ; and in this way a con- 
 siderable number of copies, thrown oflp separately 
 at the time of publication, have been distributed 
 far and wide. But the stock is now exliausted : 
 and the object of this private Eeprint (in so far 
 as the Libraries are concerned) is simply and 
 solely to provide the family of the Inventor with 
 the means of replying to practical communications 
 of the nature just mentioned, without having 
 recourse to lengthy manuscript letters. 
 
 As this composition was the first piece of work 
 I ever did for the press, I have thought it right to 
 make not a few changes in point of style, omitting 
 
PREFATORY NOTICE Vll 
 
 some things, adding others, and even amplifying 
 the outline very largely here and there throughout. 
 Not content with this general enlargement and 
 chastening of the production as it stood, I have 
 almost changed the biographical j^art into a new 
 work altogether. Although printed again only 
 for the most private uses, therefore, it might 
 well be called a Second Edition, with Notes and 
 Emendations. Such as it is, it will serve its 
 present professed purpose just as well as it used 
 to do in its former shape, and it may possibly 
 serve some other purposes better. 
 
 If the more discerning reader detect (as detect 
 he will) the signs of a much enfeebled mind in 
 the conduct of the Account, or in the literary 
 treatment of the subject as a whole, or even in 
 the unsteadiness of hand but too observable in 
 many parts of the piece (short as it is), he is 
 requested to understand that it has been written 
 in the sick-room, during the intervals of a life of 
 some suffering. These intervals, indeed, this con- 
 
Vlll PREFATORY NOTICE 
 
 genial little labour of love has rendered still more 
 lucid ; and that alone were reward enough for any- 
 patient in such circumstances, even were there no 
 other. But I own to the enjoyment of a dearer 
 recompense in the occasional hope, springing up 
 within me while the thing went on taking shape 
 under my hand from day to day, that something 
 or other in these pages may yet prove useful, 
 especially to the young. The private spectacle of 
 so much solid good done by one hearty right- 
 hand, and that in circumstances of manifold dis- 
 advantage, were surely enough to fire any generous 
 mind with emulation ; and the generous will suffer 
 me at least to indulge the wish (if not the hope) 
 that those reflections and illustrations, with which 
 I have tried to bring about the callida junctura 
 or warm conjunction of the parts and particles of 
 the narrative, may help the enlightenment of the 
 less instructed. It is possible that (thanks to a 
 Spirit above the writer) there may be a word in 
 season fitted for even riper judgments and wiser 
 
PREFATORY NOTICE 
 
 hearts — " For they breathe truth that breathe 
 their words in pain." At all events, the seed- 
 basket is never out of place on the arm of even 
 the feeblest foot that treads this unfruited world ; 
 and one must just cast his own bread, such as it is, 
 upon the waters. He may and, alas, he generally 
 must go forth weeping ; but, so it be bearing the 
 precious seed, he '' shall doubtless come again with. 
 rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." 
 
 S. B. 
 
SOME ACCOUNT Ac 
 
 Samuel Brown was the eighth son of the Author of 
 the Self-Tnterpketing Bible, and was born at Had- 
 dington on the 30th of April, 1799. When little 
 more than seven years of age he lost his venerable 
 father, so that he enjoyed but few of the advantages 
 of that learned and holy man's living precept and ex- 
 ample. The only personal reminiscence he brought 
 from the Old Manse (and this he carried with him 
 through life as an early impression of peculiar sweet- 
 ness and pungency) seems to have been the habit of 
 sitting on the Commentator's knee of an evening, 
 and having his head stroked, and being called My 
 little Prophet. Indeed his older sister, the mother of 
 John Brown Paterson the lamented young scholar,* 
 
 * Bom at Alnwick Jan. 29, 1804 ; died at Edinburgh June 29, 
 1835, aged 31. After a school and college career of singular 
 facility and brilliance, his Essay on the National Character of the 
 A 
 
2 MEMENTO OF 
 
 could scarcely add anything to this reminiscence be- 
 yond the memorable circumstance (to her) of having 
 often sat upon the opposite knee, and listened with 
 ever-fresh delight to the good man's singing of his 
 favourite Latin song. It was Horace's famous 
 Aequam memento:'^ — this the wittiest and the 
 wisest, or at least the gayest and the sweetest, of 
 lioman court-poets and worldlings, giving thus an 
 evening voice to the peaceful feelings of the over- 
 wearied Scotch Divine, when resting from his labours 
 in the bosom of his family. It is really curious to 
 think of the writer of those ponderous editions and 
 Dictionaries of the Bible coming down stairs to tea 
 from his study, where he had been closely engaged 
 
 Athenians, &c. having won the Commissioners' prize of 100 
 guineas in 1827, he was presented by Peel to the large parish 
 of Falkirk in 1829 : — but he was gathered to his fathers before it 
 was possible to have realised the splendid promise of his youth. 
 See the Discourses of the late John B. Paterson, minister of Fal- 
 kirk ; to which is prefixed a Memoir of his Life, and select literary 
 and religious remains. Edin., Oliver and Boyd, J 837. What 
 is wanted to consolidate his young fame is a new edition of his 
 fine prize essay — for which he has left certain available materials. 
 * Lib. II. Carmen III. Ad Quintum Dellium. A kinsman 
 of the Singer's (Dr John Brown the physician, his great-grandson 
 in the line direct^ being the oldest son of his oldest son's oldest 
 son) says it is murder to do an ode by Q. Horatius Flaccus into 
 English verse ; but here is a bit of it in rather literal prose : 
 '' Remember to keep your mind easy in hard times, and restrain 
 it ft'om exultation in good fortune ; for, Dellius, you are sure to 
 die, whether you live all your span in sorrow, or bless yourself 
 
THE OLD MANSE 3 
 
 (from four or five in the morning*) perhaps inditing 
 one of his own terrible dehortations, or else adding 
 Scottish intensity to a dogma of John Calvin's, — and 
 then chanting among his children so graceful an ex- 
 hortation to equanimity in the season of afiiiction 
 from the page of the gayest and wisest of ancient 
 courtly moralists : — but such are some of the slen- 
 derer living threads, by which the far-stretching com- 
 munity of human life is maintained ! 
 
 John Brown had himself been left an orphan, when 
 only some ten jears of age ; but he used to aver in 
 his hyperbolical way that he had never missed his 
 parents, for when father and mother had forsaken him 
 the Lord had taken him up : and certainly, after a 
 series of comfortable places as herd-boy and shep- 
 herd, followed by a short trial of the pedlar-life, he 
 
 with choice Falemian lying on secluded swards the live-long 
 festive day. So where the tall pine and the white poplar love to 
 interweave a hospitable shade with their boughs, and the running 
 stream labours to tremble up the sloping bank, bid them carry 
 wines and oils, and the too short-lived flowers of the jjleasant 
 rose, as long as your purse and your age and the atrocious thread 
 of the Sisters Three permit," &c, &c. A jolly sweet song for the 
 manse of a Scottish puritan and nonconformist, all of the olden 
 time, is it not ! 
 
 * Memoirs and Select Remains of the Rev. John Brown, IMinister 
 of the Gospel, Haddington. Edited by the Rev. W. Brown, 
 M.D. : Edin., 1856. See this correct and excellent Memoir for 
 this and other following references to points of fact concerning its 
 subject. 
 
4 JOHN BROWN 
 
 passed without extraordinary impediment through 
 the successive professional phases of Student of 
 Divinity, Preacher of the Word, Minister of the 
 Gospel, Professor of Divinity, and widely-reputed 
 Author, all with credit to himself and some benefit to 
 society at large. The worldly fortunes of this son of 
 his were likewise favoured by providential circum- 
 stance. When his poor mother, a few years after his 
 father's death, removed to Edinburgh in order to 
 facilitate the college-education of her other sons, her 
 brother John Croumbie, a man of uncommon piety 
 and beneficence, took the boy to his house and treated 
 him as his son till his own death in 1816. When the 
 lad had become more than a middle-aged man, he 
 made a quaint calculation in black and white, intend- 
 ing to show in how liberal a style Providence had 
 dealt, in so far as regards pecuniary matters at least, 
 with the younger family of the deceased Professor ! 
 Knowing how his father had scrupulously devoted 
 one-tenth of his annual income to charitable purposes 
 from the date of his settlement, knowing exactly how 
 long he lived in his charge, and knowing also with 
 some accuracy the average of his little revenues dur- 
 ing that period, it was easy enough to compute the 
 sum dispensed in charity by him from first to last in 
 the course of his Haddington life. But it so hap- 
 pened that, incidental to his connexion with the good 
 
OF HADDINGTON 5 
 
 old burgh, the Divine had got him an excellent 
 second wife in the person of Violet Croumbie, certain 
 of whose relations duly left successive instalments of 
 money and gear to her surviving children. Well, 
 their testamentary substance did in all amount to a 
 sum so considerable as to cover the ostensible and 
 certain charity of the ]\Ianse twenty times over ; and 
 thus, without ever a stroke of work or a drop of 
 sweat on their parts, the children received 1900 per 
 cent on what the open-handed sire had given away ! 
 This is certainly but a mechanical mode of balancing 
 accounts with the law of Compensation and the Law- 
 giver. Yet it is wTitten, " He that giveth to the 
 poor lendeth to the Lord, and He will repay him," 
 Ordinarily the repayments of Heaven are in a nobler 
 style than this ; and, indeed, that richer recompense 
 was doubtless not omitted in this very instance. 
 Our God completes His payments with nothing lowxr 
 than Himself and His divine graces ; so that, in the 
 very highest imaginable sense, as well as in the 
 lowest, " it is more blessed to give than to receive." 
 At the same time a man must live, although he 
 cannot truly live by bread alone ; and it is a real 
 human comfort to feel assured that the common 
 wants of the liberal hand are peculiarly remembered 
 by Him who "careth for all the families of the 
 earth." " I have been young and now am old," com- 
 
6 JOHN CROUMBIE 
 
 placently sings the Psalmist David, of whom it must 
 be remembered that he was a man and a king of 
 men, as well as a saint and a poet — '' I have been 
 young and now am old ; yet have I not seen the 
 righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread." 
 Ps. xxxvii. 25. 
 
 This self-constituted guardian of our little Prophet, 
 John Croumbie namely, was an amiable, bountiful, 
 singularly jdIous, and every way memorable Christian 
 man ; as well as a rather ungainly, grim-visaged, 
 over-scrupulous, nervous, and eccentric old bachelor. 
 Haddington is redolent of his good name yet. He 
 too had been orphaned in childhood, together with 
 quite a troop of young brothers and sisters. They 
 were the childi-en, and he proved the last representa- 
 tive in kind,* of a family of what might be called 
 Wholesale Pedlars. The Croumbies of Stenton had 
 for generations supplied the travelling dealers of their 
 day and district with their miscellaneous wares ; — a 
 day of the minimum of centralisation, and a district 
 CO- extensive with the south of Scotland, and stretch- 
 ing down into the northern English counties. It was 
 
 * That is to say, of the same name and calling. Benjamin 
 Croumbie, the miniature-painter, came of the same family: — 
 born July 1803, died June 1847 ; the son of Andrew Croumbie, 
 an Edinburgh solicitor, cousin-germane to this John. He painted 
 the miniature from which the frontispiece has been engraved. 
 
THE GILU-RROTIIER 7 
 
 the business of peoi:)le following their way of trade to 
 stand between the manufacturer and merchant- 
 proper, on the one hand, and those wandering wares - 
 men of wdiom Wordsworth's moralising Pedlar is the 
 poetical type, on the other. In fact, though they did 
 not moimt the pack themselves, these Croumbies 
 regularly belonged to the Gild of Travelling Pack- 
 men. As locomotion and transportation became 
 easier, the process of centralisation advanced, and 
 small places such as Stenton lost the possibility of 
 importance ; and the like of Mr Croumbie is found 
 fairly settled in the county-tow^n, under the style of 
 what is still called a merchant in some parts of Scot- 
 land, a kind of tradesman now transformed into the 
 complaisant shopkeeper. There were other Croum- 
 bies in the county, kindred with these, and moving 
 in the same good middle walks of life. The original 
 name was Abercrombie ; and it has been supposed 
 that they were primarily brought to East Lothian in 
 the persons of two puritan brothers of that surname, 
 sentenced to the Bass Rock. 
 
 It appears that East Lothian was the great centre 
 of this extinct chapman trade, to which these Aber- 
 crombies and Croumbies belonged, before its removal 
 to Kent. The gild w\as large, far-travelled and rich. 
 Their rendezvous was at the foot of the fine old Cross 
 still extant at Preston Tower, the patrimonial relic 
 
8 THE GILU-BROTHER S 
 
 from vdiich that much-lamented philosopher, the late 
 Sir William Hamilton, Baronet, drew his title. There 
 they met in general assembly, elected their king and 
 his lords-depute (for such was the style), and ordered 
 their common affairs. The Bannatyne Club rescued 
 the Cross and its appendages from ruin some years 
 ago, revived the Gild, made gentleman - chapmen 
 (including Sir Walter Scott), chose kings, ate gild- 
 dinners, and otherwise played themselves on the 
 sacred spot after the manner of antiquarian Good- 
 fellows. But it was right to save the Cross ; where 
 anybody, descended like the present writer from the 
 real gild-brethren, may go and see perhaps the very 
 ink- bottle (cut there in the stone) in which some 
 wandering forefather was wont to dip his pen. Haply 
 one of my forbears was a king ! In the mean time, 
 I stand in possession of a document containing a list 
 of the lords-depute for Haddington and North Ber- 
 wick and for Dunbar, from 1721 to '53 inclusive ; 
 and my great -great -grandfather (and surely that's 
 great enough) with his son Thomas after him are 
 duly chronicled as at least nothing less than repre- 
 sentative lords at this the Court of the Nomads. 
 In 1725 the latter is written down as Lord Thomas 
 Abercroumbie ! 
 
 The most conspicuous feature in the secular cha- 
 
STRANGE ADVENTURE 9 
 
 racter of this last of the Hne in question was an 
 unbending and even chivah-ous integrity ; and the 
 richest, or at least the rarest, quality of his Chris- 
 tian nature was his real and almost prodigal libe- 
 rality in the cause of his Lord. So fine a soul could 
 almost afford to be peculiar, to live in a rough-spun 
 bodily presence, and to do without some of the con- 
 genial graces of manner and appearance. Then the 
 world never knows aught of those inward experiences 
 which sometimes modify the whole exterior of such 
 a deep, still spirit as this inflexible, sternly and ten- 
 derly pious, and (to Christ) open-handed country 
 merchant. To John Brown the Commentator, and 
 to some few more that knew him by heart, he was 
 both lovely and beloved in no common degree. 
 Talking of experiences too, he had at least one of the 
 most extraordinary kind to carry to the grave with 
 him, enough to make most men nervous and strange 
 for life. He sold gunpowder. The store was in a 
 cellar right below his shop. One summer evening, 
 as he sat at the shop-window over his ledger, an 
 apprentice went below stairs candle in hand. A 
 spark from the snuff did its work ; the barrel ex- 
 ploded ; the lad was killed ; the flooring and window 
 above were blown up ; and John Croumbie was shot 
 into the air and thrown up street the length of the 
 old Tron, where he was let down safe and sound, — but 
 
10 MEMENTO MORI 
 
 for the fall. This Tron. the public weighing-machine, 
 was just half-way between his window and the 
 Cross ; — a flight of some one-and-thirty yards. The 
 shoj) doors being supposed to be shut for the night, 
 the good man was doubtless projected by, and like- 
 wise safely carried within, the wind of the explosion, 
 the terrible fragments going with him and around 
 him, instead of dashing about him, — if not dashing 
 him to bits, as they might have done but for his 
 guardian angel, the Providence of God. It was, in 
 any case, a solemn event. Its influence on his sombre 
 and susceptible mind was deep and permanent. As 
 long as he lived he religiously observed its anniver- 
 sary. Kegularly as the date came round, he shut 
 himself within his bed-chamber the whole day long. 
 Had he been a Purgatorian, as he might have been 
 but for John Knox, the glory of Haddington,* it 
 would have been lavished in costly masses for his 
 poor boy. As it was, the day was spent in thanks- 
 giving for the mercy of not having been hurried all 
 too suddenly into the nearer and everlastingly fixed 
 presence of Him who is " of purer eyes than to 
 behold iniquity." He over-scrupulously but per- 
 
 * Mr Croumbie was once on the point of buying the reputed 
 birth-place of the Keformer, house and field, when Master Con- 
 science (ever too masterful for him) stept in and made him reseiTe 
 the purchase-money for the more immediate service of their 
 common Lord, 
 
MEMENTO VIVEKE 11 
 
 emptorilj decliued the amount for which he was 
 insured, because he judged himself guilty of a breach 
 of duty in having handed over the care of a cellar 
 containing combustibles to an inexperienced youth, 
 instead of having attended to it himself, seeing it 
 had always been possible some such an accident 
 might take place. The Company acknowledged this 
 unheard-of delicacy of conscience by a presentation 
 of plate. 
 
12 UNCLE NEPHEW 
 
 11. 
 
 Such was the shy, reserved, and noble Christian 
 enthusiast that took up the minister's young Samuel, 
 like another sort of Eli, when his mother betook 
 herself to Edinburgh with the rest of the family. 
 Such was the very man to direct the boy how to 
 answer the voice of the Lord, if the Lord should 
 call ; for Uncle Croumbie was a natural-born priest, 
 and there was something of the spirit of prophecy 
 upon him too, unceremonial and inarticulate as he 
 was. But such was hardly the man to train the 
 mind of a self-taught scholar's emulous and intelli- 
 gent son, fresh from one of the most learned manses 
 in Scotland, where knowledge had been duly held up 
 as almost the only secular thing to be desired. This 
 worthy Christian tutor seems accordingly to have 
 undervalued the benefits of even an ordinary educa- 
 tion at the Grammar School, for he withdrew the 
 poor boy from some still humbler academy as soon 
 as he got him fairly into his own hands, although he 
 had barely completed his eleventh year ; and appren- 
 ticed him (at this early age) to his own trade, which 
 had gradually become that of an ironmonger and 
 
SON AND MOTHER 13 
 
 drysalter. The memory of his bookish father not- 
 withstanding (a man who once made the honest and 
 extravagant boast of having " hunted after all the 
 lawful knowledges of the sons of men") the young 
 ironmonger's instruction by means of systematic 
 books was thus soon and sadly neglected. His only 
 attainments at this time, of the school kind that is 
 to say, consisted of the noble art of self-defence by 
 reading, writing and figuring. Yet his mother Violet 
 Croumbie, by the consenting accounts of all who 
 remember her, was a superior and even a remarkable 
 woman ; clear-headed, critical, and acute in percep- 
 tion, at the same time that she was frugal, indus- 
 trious, and a notable house-mother. In short, it is 
 well known among her surviving connexions and 
 relatives that, to a personal air and manners distin- 
 guished above her station in life, she added not only 
 great economy and tireless industry, but also the 
 charm of a stored and cultivated mind. She was 
 especially voracious of books, a thing not to be com- 
 mended perhaps ; and literally read the libraries 
 of the burgh dry after her return from the metro- 
 polis at this time. Knowing her husband's glorious 
 early pursuit of instruction on the hill-side, and in 
 those solitary places which his books had made glad, 
 one fancies the old lady might perhaps have seen to 
 a better provision being made for the intellectual 
 
14 EARLY CULTURE 
 
 wants of the young layman she was leaving with her 
 brother. To tell the truth however^ the means and 
 estate of education were wretchedly low at Hadding- 
 ton in those days, as I am painfully assured by a 
 contemporary, who knew and remembers the fact to 
 his proper cost ; and the more I inquire into the 
 matter, the more I suspect that my father just got 
 as good a school-education as was going : — reading, 
 writing, and a few figures. 
 
 It is interesting to notice how differently situated 
 the successive children of a single line may be in re- 
 spect of elementary instruction. This boy's grand- 
 father John Brown, the mahl-weaver of Kerpoo or 
 Carpow,* could not read a word at the same age, if 
 he could ever read properly at all. His father, 
 voluminous author though he afterwards became, 
 says of himself that he had " but a very few quarters 
 at school, for reading, writing, and arithmetic ; one 
 month of which, without their (his parents') allow- 
 ance, I bestowed upon the Latin : " — one little month, 
 poor fellow. On the other hand what scholastic 
 attainments John Brown Paterson, our apprentice's 
 nephew, had made by twelve years of age ! Yet 
 after all, the grand distinction betwixt the educated 
 and the uneducate lies in the acquirement by the 
 former of the art and habit of easy reading, as has 
 
 * A hamlet near Abcrnethy in Perthshire, where the Commen- 
 tator was born in 1722 :— he died at Haddington, June 19, 1787. 
 
AND EASY-READING 15 
 
 been asserted and illustrated with emphasis by an 
 able contributor to the North British Revieiv.* It is 
 this easy-reading that opens to a youth the inner and 
 proper World of Humanity, that poor but surpass- 
 ingly interesting and profitable human commentary 
 upon the Divine World of Nature and Life, now in- 
 carnate in printed books ; and in his own vernacular 
 tongue, depend on it, there is more to be discovered 
 than any man can master. The easy and ever-re- 
 peated reading of that sacred classic of the whole 
 world the Bible, for instance, will make any cap- 
 able person not only "wise unto salvation" (which is 
 its proper purpose) but also lettered, cultivated, re- 
 fined beyond " the guess of folly." And if there can 
 be added in good time (and the timing of the thing is 
 the great matter here) the universal secular classic of 
 Christendom, the Drama of Shakespeare, or even the 
 Poems of Milton, together with a sufficiency of what 
 is called Useful Knowledge, why, half-a-dozen volumes 
 may well build up a noble mind, if truly read. 
 
 It behoves the professional man to be largely studied 
 in the things belonging to his intellectual and bookish 
 craft, of course ; above all things the Scholar proper, 
 the philosopher, must be vastly read : but for the man 
 of common life, however high a place in life he maybe 
 called to, commend me to a few books, but these the 
 
 * Xorth British Review, No, XLII., Hugh Miller of Cromarty— 
 doubtless from the ably expository pen of Mr David Masson. 
 
16 THOROUGH CULTURE 
 
 very best, and read again and again, indeed con- 
 tinually. Even Coleridge, a man of letters, a poet, a 
 philosopher, has recorded how all that was best in 
 his cultivation had been done by the few great books 
 he had really read, marked, and inwardly digested, 
 not by the multitudes he had devoured. John Dal- 
 ton too used to boast how he could carry his whole 
 library on his back ; and he would add, by way of 
 emphasis, that he hadn't read it all yet. In short, 
 apprentices of every kind (and the large majority of 
 us are but apprentices, both in life and in knowledge, 
 till the end of the chapter) should be given to under- 
 stand once for all that desultory, widespread, unre- 
 peated reading, especially in what are commonly 
 called Periodicals (but better called Prodigals, on one 
 occasion, by the unlettered mother of a voracious 
 reader of that kind of Literature) is the bane of the 
 last intellectual movement of society. Everybody 
 reads far too much, and much too seldom. Voracity 
 for trash, or for what is slight and effervescing, takes 
 the place of an honest hunger for a sufficiency of the 
 best. Social life is therefore losing in solidity of 
 mind and character what it gains in information and 
 show ; for, in Scotland at least, all this light and 
 multifarious entertainment is but a sorry decline 
 from the Bible-reading age. Even in the secular 
 point of view, the habitual, ever-repeated contact of 
 
AND RIGHT READING 17 
 
 the mind with the perfect literary forms contained in 
 Holy Writ was once and long a noble discipline for 
 the Scottish intellect, w^hether in peasant or in peer ; 
 and the precious secular fruits of that truly classical 
 culture are not yet exhausted, to make no mention 
 whatever of the spiritual and everlasting functions of 
 the Bible in the present connection. 
 
 Our youthful brother-apparent of the honourable 
 Gild of Travelling Chapmen, however, had scarcely 
 fallen on the days of either cheap literature or over- 
 much and unrepeated reading. Besides, though both 
 intelligent and eager to learn, his talents (such as 
 they proved) w^ere not of the Brunonian turn, w^hich 
 was decidedly literary or bent on the finding of 
 knowledge through the medium of language and 
 books, but took more after the Croumbies, whose 
 bias w^as towards the instruction of the mind by 
 things rather than words. In fact, the lad was more 
 his '•' mother's bairn " than perhaps any of the rest of 
 her children, while he certainly exhibited, on the 
 other hand, not a little of his father's ardent and 
 charitable temper. The Croumbies were of that out- 
 ward and experimental tendency which, w^hen it 
 proves more intellectual, is prone to find at once its 
 satisfaction and its culture in such studies as me- 
 chanics and chemistry. One of John Croum bio's 
 
18 THE CROUMBIES' 
 
 (two) brothers became an eminent manufacturing 
 chemist at Glasgow. One of his sisters (Mrs Kamsay 
 a Haddington dyer's wife) had tliree sons all addicted 
 to Natural Science, and to Chemistry in particular. 
 One of these became known in commerce, as belong- 
 ing to the adventurous firm of Turnbull and Ramsay ; 
 and distinguished himself by bringing the method 
 of making vinegar by the destructive distillation of 
 wood to perfection. The plan of neutralising the 
 raw filthy product with lime, torrefying the crude 
 salt, next neutralising with oil of vitriol, and then 
 distilling the acetic acid, was of his invention. 
 Andrew Ramsay, the present Professor of Geology 
 at the Economical Museum, and now engaged in 
 the great Geological Survey under Murchison, is 
 one of his sons. 
 
 Such was also the unmistakable intellectual incli- 
 nation of this son of Violet Croumbie's. All un- 
 trained as he was by bookish discipline, he began the 
 learning of his business not without advantages under 
 his maternal, one might almost say his motherly, old 
 uncle's care. Fortunate in the enjoyment of more 
 leisure than would likely have fallen to his lot under 
 an ordinary master, he bestowed it on the cultivation 
 of a strongish natural bias towards mechanical pur- 
 suits, with the companionship (and probably under 
 the guidance) of his cousins the three Ramsays, whose 
 
EXPERIMENTAL TURN 19 
 
 talents in that way have just been noticed. During 
 those early years of self-tuition he rose early and sat 
 late, they say, making crude exj)eriments and read- 
 ing such manuals as he could get. It seems that he 
 made frequent visits to the most of the pieces of 
 machinery to be found in the neighbourhood, in order 
 to make sure that he understood their mechanism 
 and appreciated the adaptation of their parts. In 
 the second year of his apprenticeship indeed, among 
 other models, he managed to get up an air-pump. 
 The thing was perfect in its construction, and it 
 would have worked to admiration ; but alack-a-day ! 
 the basement, or floor under the bell, had been made 
 of wood instead of brass. As a matter of coui^se 
 (though not of course to him, till that sorry day and 
 thenceforward) the oak was quite too porous for the 
 purpose, and treacherously baffled every attempt at 
 exhaustion by the disapj^ointed pump ! In the mean 
 time, this was the simple and practical sort of edu- 
 cation which his ardent and otherwise neglected 
 mind found for itself. Doubtless, had he been born 
 with the burden of inventive genius, this might have 
 proved the best of schooling ; but even as it was, it 
 was excellent discipline for an active young head 
 without any pretension whatever to uncommon en- 
 dowment : and just such a course of intellectual self- 
 help were perhaps the best of schools and colleges for 
 
20 THE APPRENTICE 
 
 apprentices of every kind and degree, whether in the 
 great merchant's counting-house or upon the tailor's 
 shop-board. This particular apprentice, I know, 
 when advocating the cause of mechanics' and similar 
 Institutions long afterwards, used to remark, with 
 much fervour and gratitude of manner, that the ex- 
 perimental study of mechanical and chemical science 
 (in his own humble way) had been the only mental 
 training he had ever enjoyed. The Haddington 
 School of Arts was the first in Scotland after the In- 
 stitution of that in Edinburgh. It was founded by 
 Mr Samuel Brown. "^ It flourished bravely at first, 
 then languished a good many years, and then died 
 utterly — I had almost said out of the very memory of 
 the Town. "Ah," said some one once to the valiant 
 Great-heart of Scotland's modern Pilgrim's - Pro- 
 gress, " ah, if there were but a Chalmers in every 
 
 Parish !" 
 
 While always glad, however, to give his boyish 
 gains and gettings in exchange for the gratification 
 of intellectual desires naturally strong though not 
 overbearing, yet even in those early years the domi- 
 nant and really over-mastering principle of his cha- 
 racter was uppermost ; and that was the Love of 
 Man, as derived by congenial descent from the Love 
 of God his express image in the heavens, and as 
 
 * See Chambers's Gazetteer of Scotland, Art. " Haddington." 
 
A PHILANTHROPIST 21 
 
 manifested in ever-ready acts of modest beneficence. 
 He was what people call a philanthropist by nature, 
 a born lover ; — a lover of good men certainly, but more 
 characteristically just a lover of men. Had there 
 never been such a divine and man-loving personage 
 as Jesus the carpenter's apprentice of Nazareth, still 
 this Haddington apprentice w^ould have unfolded him- 
 self as being quite emphatically the friend of man- 
 kind, and become one of the helpers of humanity in 
 his degree. At all events this passionate and exceed- 
 ing goodwill to man was truly the key-note of his 
 character and life, lowly and undistinguished as they 
 were. This characteristic, in fact, which was really 
 unique in its degree (in so far as I have yet learned 
 to read the signs of character) lent nothing less than 
 a certain humble glory to his whole manner of being. 
 The feebleness of his vital stamina (of which more 
 hereafter), his want of splendid gifts, and perhaps the 
 absence of opportunity, confined his doings to a com 
 paratively limited sphere, and hindered him from 
 playing a shining part in the philanthropic annals of 
 humanity, but still this great Love was the secret of 
 all he was and did in the course of his pre-eminently 
 useful life ; and it is fine to see it indicated so early in 
 his career, provincial though this was. It was mainly 
 a natural gift, coming to him by the grace of God in 
 his birth and breeding ; — and, indeed, it showed itself 
 
22 THE GUINEA 
 
 even in his cranial physiognomy, the regions of Bene- 
 volence and Veneration being beautifully full and ob- 
 long in their development."^ But much was also owing 
 beyond a doubt to the living, ever-present example of 
 his devoted guardian and master, John Croumbie, who 
 grudged nothing to Christ and Christ's poor, though 
 he never attained to such enlightened views of prac- 
 tical charity as his ward. As for the latter, he seems 
 to have begun like his uncle, if he ended like himself. 
 It is affectionately and authentically recorded how he 
 put the first golden guinea he ever amassed under an 
 honest halfpenny-piece, and thought to have slipped 
 it unnoticed upon the collection-plate at a missionary 
 sermon. The timorous caution with which he only 
 too hastily, and therefore hurriedly, put down his 
 would-be-little contribution, attracted the notice of 
 the elder in waiting, who pushed aside the copper" 
 mite and discovered the fine gold of Havilah : — " The 
 boy is father to the man." Yet sometimes too, nay, 
 often if not generally (let the over-anxious mother be 
 thankful to remember) the Man is enabled to disown 
 and throw off certain ill-favoured particulars and 
 properties of the Boy in good time ; else what would 
 become of the silly hearts of us parents when watch- 
 
 * This without pronouncing on Phi-enology as a science of men- 
 tal phenomena. When limited in its scope by the name of Cra- 
 nial Physiognomy however, it is impossible to object to some of 
 its many admirable observations. 
 
AND THE SIXPENCE 23 
 
 ing the early indications of our children ! I know a 
 man myself, the last to do such a thing now, who 
 once upon a time, one hardly likes to think how 
 long ago, had a silver sixpence to cast into the trea- 
 sury on a similar occasion ; but he went away, and 
 got it privily changed into a handful of copper 
 pence, before dropping it on the brass plate ! But 
 in such noisy days of printed subscription-lists as 
 ours, the majority will perhaps admire this boy more 
 than that. 
 
24 ADOLESCENCE AND 
 
 III. 
 
 But boys are short-lived. Before you cau calculate 
 their ephemerides, they are young men. Adolescence 
 comes upon them unawares, yet with imperious tread ; 
 bringing new passions of the body, new longings of 
 the heart, and new strange questionings of the soul in 
 its train. Some natures are so feeble in vitality, and 
 so shallow in character, that those things touch them 
 but lightly ; others so coarse, that the bodily element 
 alone is agitated ; some so dainty of sensation and 
 affection, yet deficient in blood and spirit, as to expe- 
 rience nothing more than a sentimental revolution of 
 the heart ; and others so pure, gentle, and high, that 
 it is only by the new strange Doubt and Question 
 that their up-grown spirits are put upon the rack. 
 The last is especially the dowery that lies in wait for 
 the attainment of their natural majority by certain 
 noble women, who were only sprightly, critical and 
 provoking perhaps, when minors ; — and also of a cer- 
 tain noble sort of young man, slenderer, gentler, purer, 
 and often gayer than their stout companions. Fine 
 ladies and gentlemen, be it remarked here however, 
 (in case even two or three such useful persons should 
 
ITS TEMPTATION 25 
 
 happen to read these homely memorials of a homely 
 young man) are ready to suppose that such poetic- 
 looking things are to be said only of fine people, or, 
 at the utmost, of the children of genius, — even if they 
 do come from the mountain-side, the plough upon the 
 lea, the weaver's shuttle, or the cobbler's stall. But 
 God's thoughts are not as their thoughts : for we are 
 all His offspring ; and He is not far from any one of 
 us. We are all everlasting spirits, clothed in flesh 
 and steeped in blood for yet a little while ; and 
 all equally, seeing the Wonderful is our everlasting 
 Father, and He is no respecter of persons. Not only 
 the humblest lad that lives by the sweat of his brow, 
 but also the homeliest in quality and circumstance, 
 may (if not must) be met on the threshold of manhood 
 by such giants of contradiction as have just been in- 
 dicated above ; and he needs both the stout heart 
 and the prayer of faith, to do them battle withal. 
 
 Kemote by his very constitution and make from 
 the temptations of sensuality, and neither passionate 
 nor imaginative enough to suffer extravagantly from 
 one of those bitter disappointments in love which so 
 many folk experience in early life, it was the great 
 endemic Controversy with God, or utter Perplexity 
 concerning Religion, that shook the soul of our 
 experimentalist at this time. I call it the great 
 Endemic because, though by no means peculiar to 
 
26 THE ENDEMIC 
 
 Scotland, it seems native and peculiarly prevalent 
 there. Perhaps, indeed, grander and more historical 
 instances have appeared in English life ; witness the 
 memorable cases of Bunyan, Cromwell, Fox ; but 
 very few Scotchmen, religiously brought up, escape it 
 altogether. The struggle is of com'se proportionate 
 to the depth and complication of the individual 
 character engaged. Our present hero (and every 
 man that fights this fight is called to be a hero now, 
 were it only for this once in his endless life) was of a 
 deep, still, earnest spirit, and the crisis in question 
 was accordingly severe ; but the build of his whole 
 intellectual and moral nature being simj^le, and com- 
 posed of but a few healthy elements, it was never 
 desperate. Yet it must be mentioned how, without 
 deviating from the path of strict morality in which 
 his faithful master had led him, or slighting any of 
 the common observances of Scottish religion, he now 
 actually did pass through a long duration of darkness 
 and uncertainty. To use a sentence of his own upon 
 the point, '-'In consequence, partly, of not having 
 attended to the evidences of the truths of Chris- 
 tianity, my mind was thrown into much perplexity 
 about almost all its doctrines." 
 
 What a change is this from his father's experience 
 and that of his father's generation I John Brown, the 
 shepherd of the hills of Abernethyj struggling uncom- 
 
NOW AND THEN 27 
 
 pauioned with the diflSculties of Latin and Greek, and 
 really hungering and thirsting after knowledge, want- 
 ed no such evidences ! The faith of Scotland in the 
 old Doctrine was too universal and deep for the spirit 
 of scepticism to have reached the like of him ; the 
 very devils of society in those days believed and trem- 
 bled ; and neither his more literary than philosophical 
 bent, nor yet the nature of his early intellectual exer- 
 cises, would lead him spontaneously in the direction 
 of free-thinking and denial. The future Commentator 
 wanted no evidences, — except of his own saving inte- 
 rest in the Sacrifice for Sin, described and defined 
 with such exquisite and painful particularity in his 
 country's Theology. In fact, the new Criticism does * 
 not seem to have ever truly reached and stirred him. 
 His life seems rather to have been one long personal 
 conflict. " In short," he writes to an old friend when 
 himself some fifty years of age, — " my life is and has 
 been a kind of almost perpetual strife between God 
 and my soul. He strives to overcome my enmity 
 and wickedness with His mercies, and I strive to 
 overcome His mercy with my enmity and wicked- 
 ness."* Even on his death-bed he exclaims, " Oh ! I 
 think I could love to stand in the most public place 
 in heaven, having all the redeemed pointing to me as 
 the greatest sinner that ever was saved."t All his 
 * See Memoir, &c., p. 69. f lb., &c., p. 129. 
 
28 THE QUESTION OF 
 
 life through, indeed, his poor heart is occupied with 
 self-upbraidings so bitter, self-loathings (one had 
 almost said self-cursings) so harrowing, damnatory, 
 and really appalling that one can scarcely believe 
 them sincere, without supposing the wretch had 
 '• eaten of the insane root," and become touched with 
 madness. But it was not so. John Brown of Had- 
 dington and the large school, or rather church-seg- 
 ment, of holy men of old in Scotland, whom he may 
 be considered as representing here in contradistinction 
 to his son and the new order of things, were not mad, 
 most noble Festus ! Let any man of conscience, 
 possessed of the necessary Scottish fervour, nay, per- 
 fervour of character, construct for his incessant con- 
 templation an image of the Beauty of Holiness out 
 of the matchless elements to be found by the eye of 
 perfect reverence in the Scriptures of the Old and 
 New Testaments ; let him realise that image as once 
 and for ever alive and embodied in the Person of 
 Jesus, not only for his prostrate adoration, but for his 
 ceaseless imitation ; let his penitent heart, his broken 
 and contrite spirit, be perpetually insinuating and 
 insisting within him. Behold what manner of man I 
 ought to be : — and then let him (morning, noon, 
 evening, and even during the watches of the night 
 when only this very Jesus is near) turn to the reality 
 of his own mode of Being, and feel its beggarly con- 
 
OUR GRANDFATIIERS 29 
 
 trast with this Divine Ideal ! Let him do all this ; 
 and. if he be a man of anything like the depth of 
 nature these older Scotchmen were of, he will imder- 
 stand their sad and sorrowful mood, and he will share 
 their shame and confusion of face, perhaps even their 
 cruel self-reviling — unless his better taste withhold 
 him from speech and keep him dumb. 
 
 If the reader cannot do all this as it is here set 
 down, however, and it is not easy nowadays, he can 
 at least conceive of it as done (if he have suffi- 
 cient conceptive talent), and, in that case, at least 
 the logical coherence of our forefathers will be 
 amply vindicated to his mind. Living all their days 
 under so truly sublime a sense of sin (or short- 
 coming of that glory of God to which mankind are 
 called, for such and no meaner was their idea of 
 man's transgression of the Divine law), and likewise 
 penetrated to the quick by a sense of the mar- 
 vellous love of God in the scheme devised from un- 
 born eternity to win them back to that obedience 
 which makes man free and all but divine again, there 
 is surely no logical wonder (if so bold a phrase may 
 be permitted me for once) that these men should have 
 been continually exercised in self-examination and 
 consequently in self-abasement; — for who indeed 
 is sufficient for these things ? That they indulged in 
 such cruel talk, in the way of self-crimination and 
 
30 THE QUESTION OF 
 
 self-disgust, was the literary fault of an age and a 
 school fervent in passion and fancy, but deficient in 
 imagination and taste : and it was contagious ; going 
 down to Elders of the Kirk, who could scarcely read 
 the Bible they adored. It is recorded that John 
 Brown derived the greatest benefit in early youth 
 from a venerable elder, who kept his sheep in the 
 same walks, but could not read : the boy reading, 
 the untaught Presbyter communicating his expe- 
 rience and insight : — 
 
 " Old experience doth attain 
 Somewhat of prophetic strain." 
 
 After these cursory remarks, it will be more intelli- 
 gible, even to the youngest and therein most remote 
 reader of this narrative, how the father differed from 
 the son in the kind of religious perplexity that way- 
 laid them in their opening manhood. Between 
 eighteen and nineteen the herd of Abernethy hears a 
 sermon (and sermons played a much more vital part 
 in the life of the Church then than now), which 
 " pierced his conscience as if almost every sentence 
 had been directed to none but " him : it was on the 
 words " There are some of you that believe not ;" 
 and it actually made him conclude himself one 
 of the greatest unbelievers in the world. " This 
 sermon," says he, many a long year after, " threw 
 
OUU FATHERS 31 
 
 my soul into no small agony and concern, and made 
 me look on all my former experiences as nothing 
 but common operations of the spirit."* The agony 
 here, poor broken spirit, is all about experiences; 
 the doubt is about inward 02:)erations, whether com- 
 mon and therefore bootless for salvation, or specific 
 and therefore converting the soul. On the other 
 hand his fatherless son, the growing apprentice, has 
 been reading books rather than running after ser- 
 mons, though he heard plenty of them too ; and his 
 reading has not been confined to the Bible and a few 
 of its ultra-evangelical expounders, nor his private 
 studies directed to the learned tongues as the keys of 
 the ministry. He had been conversing in the most 
 intimate communion with young self-taught fellow- 
 students of natural things, and reading books of 
 Mechanics, Chemistry, and Natural Science in general; 
 — a half of knowledge which is dangerously over- 
 freighted with materialising conclusions, when un- 
 balanced by the other hemisphere. The study of 
 Nature is liberal and bracing, and intended to set 
 free the mind from many an ignominious bond ; but 
 when only half-mastered, and that without a wise 
 guide through its mazes, it has its own sinister incli- 
 nation. It is especially apt to accustom the student 
 to bring to the bar of its Method of Inquiry things 
 * Memoir, &c., p. 12. 
 
32 THE PATERNAL 
 
 that are not amenable to such a judicature, and 
 questions not competent before such a court. To 
 this pass it clearly brought our self-teaching Reader, 
 at an age when his father had been gravelled by pain- 
 ful personal distinctions betwixt the common and the 
 specific operations of the Holy Ghost. This is the 
 momentous and often fatal crisis to which many a 
 young man (and woman too perhaps) in more or less 
 similar circumstances, is frequently conducted nowa- 
 days by the crude and yet unmethodised plans of 
 popular tuition, now so prevalent in the land. To 
 such it could hardly fail to be interesting, and it 
 might well be useful, to know how another popular- 
 scientific Doubter felt and acted at the same stage of 
 the great Inquest : but the means of making a satis- 
 factory analysis of the movement are not extant in 
 this instance, simjDly because the Subject was not 
 much of a writer in early life, and never attained to 
 even the poorest mastery in the art at any time. 
 Happily, however, he has left a fragmentary notice or 
 two, from which his mode of procedure may be in- 
 ferred. Not to mingle any strictures of another mind 
 upon that mode with the original impression, the 
 prayerful and long process by which he was at length 
 extricated from the toils of the enemy had better be 
 shown in a few extracts from his own short manu- 
 script, threaded on a slender string of purely practical 
 
QUESTION PUT 33 
 
 aud explanatory remark. The critical reader had 
 better be reminded, however, that an intellectual pro- 
 cess may aud often (in this queer world) does conduct 
 the mind to the desired result, without being logically 
 valid. It is frequently something else than the visi- 
 ble chain of reasoning that, quite unconsciously to 
 the reasoner himself, makes out the completed proof ; 
 and that simply by supplementing the visible links 
 of the argument : — And now for the extracts without 
 one word of commentary. 
 
 " In the midst of my perplexity," he writes, " it 
 appeared rational to suppose that God could easily 
 suggest a train of thought which would enable 
 me to see plainly what was dark and inexplic- 
 able, — and I often prayed that He would." Here 
 the belief and hearty reception of Deity as a per- 
 sonal God, and therefore to be approached as prac- 
 tically his God, is humbly clung to. He had not 
 been dislodged from that central position as many 
 are, who, whenever they feebly doubt some of the 
 merely outside or circumferential truths of religion, 
 audaciously fly off at a tangent from the centre of 
 repose itself. Were such as are in the latter con- 
 dition, or are likely to be thrown into it, to emulate 
 the docility of spirit with which this questioner 
 opened on the inquiry, they would be more likely to 
 arrive at the same happy conclusion. " A year or 
 
34 THE PATERNAL 
 
 two before that, when on a visit to Edinburgh, I had 
 met with ' Scott's Force of Truth.' I procured a 
 copy. I was satisfied that his mode of searching out 
 the truth was honest and rational. I tried to follow 
 his example, and for about two years almost my 
 whole reading and serious reflection were on the 
 evidences of natural and revealed religion. ' Pciley's 
 Natural Theology' and ' Campbell on Miracles' were 
 of especial use to me. ^ Butler's Analogy' did much 
 to satisfy me with the limited views of God's spiritual 
 economy which we can at present obtain. My mind 
 gradually became more settled." He was not satis- 
 fied, however, with all this reading and pondering ; 
 but, following the natural tendency which his private 
 studies had confirmed, endeavoured to make undeni- 
 able observations of his own, and to draw the proper 
 inferences for himself. " There was one considera- 
 tion which imjjressed my mind. I knew several per- 
 sons wdio, I saw, firmly believed the depravity of 
 human nature ; who depended on Christ for the 
 divine favour, and the Holy Spirit for a change of 
 heart and ability to keep God's commandments : — I 
 saw these men honestly and habitually striving to 
 please God. On the other hand, I did not know (nor 
 have since known) any of contrary sentiments who 
 appeared, in a serious and permanent manner, to 
 study to please God in the same way, — especially in 
 
QUESTION SOLVED 35 
 
 governing the dispositions of their minds. Here was 
 the evidence of experiment ; not of one, but of ex- 
 periments made by a greater number of individuals 
 than anv in natural philosophy ; experiments which 
 proved that Jesus died to save His followers from 
 their sins." Nor did the anxious investigation stop 
 here ; but on these and such data he reasoned re- 
 garding himself, — a step which too many either shrink 
 from or neglect, even after having candidly examined 
 the evidences of Christianity, and having been satis- 
 fied about them too. Hence about this time he is 
 found to have written, — " I can thus see that a be- 
 lieving view of the love of God in the plan of salva- 
 tion is sufficient to constrain men to abhor every evil 
 and constantly study to please Him ' who so loved us ; ' 
 but I cannot excite these feelings of myself ; ' when 
 I would do good, evil is present with me ;' therefore 
 I seek a divine influence." He did not seek in vain : 
 but, some time after, he was able to add these blessed 
 and most comfortable words, — " I hope some change 
 has been made, though not all I wish, — but the hope 
 of that change being perfected, the prospect of being 
 yet enabled to love God with all my heart, and of 
 spending hereafter an eternity in examining His works 
 and ways, contemplating His excellences, and enjoying 
 His approbation, are the most delightful anticipations 
 that can enter my mind as to myself." 
 
36 BELIEF LOVE 
 
 Arrived by this process of honest, if summary in- 
 quisition, so near an abiding personal faith in the 
 Gospel of Christ as conceived and stated in the spirit 
 of a moderate Calvinism, he went on a visit to his 
 brother, Ebenezer Brown of Inverkeithing, a famous 
 preacher in his day, and nowhere forgotten in Scot- 
 land yet. It was a communion time ; and they 
 shared the society of their ministerial brothers, John 
 of Whitburn and Dr Thomas of Dalkeith, as well as 
 of some of the neighbouring ministers who had gone 
 to assist in the services of the sacrament. The sub- 
 ject of his misgiving's was now the all-concerning 
 question — whether or not he himself possessed the 
 marks of a genuine Christian. He enjoyed much of 
 the elevating society of the good men just alluded to 
 during his short stay ; and soon learned to draw the 
 comfort he needed from the happy consciousness, that 
 " By this we know that we have passed fi'om death to 
 life, because we love the brethren j" — an assurance of 
 saintship which never left him, and on the dawning 
 of which at this memorable season he looked back to 
 the last with unmingled delight. A brother Baptist 
 once wound up an enthusiastic magnification of their 
 tenets in the ear of John Bunyan (of all men !) by 
 declaring that Adult baptism is the very badge of 
 Christianity : " Nay," said the Dreamer, " this is the 
 
AND PEACE 37 
 
 badge of Christianity, Behold these Christians, how 
 they love one another."* There certainly is vastly 
 more benevolence and mutual goodwill in Christian- 
 ised than in Mahometan and Heathen countries ; and 
 at all events, such family affection is the characteris- 
 tic feature of the Church in those lands just in pro- 
 portion to its greater degree of purity ; or rather its 
 lesser degree of impurity, for positive purity in any 
 degree is still far to seek. But leaving countries and 
 churches out of the question, it is this secret family 
 love that the most surely betokens the advent of the 
 Spirit of Christ in His true disciples, few and scattered 
 as they are : and it is ever a delicious moment when 
 the convert feels the holy flame begin to glow within 
 him ; — a doubly delicious moment, not only for the 
 divine melting of the heart in itself, but also for 
 the soft assurance it brings. In that dewy hour of 
 summer prime, the first young summer of the soul, 
 he can lift his eyes to the East, where God the Son of 
 Man w^as born, and whisper, — I too am a Christian ! 
 Doubtless the rapture is not as sweet, and altogether 
 memorable, in one neophyte as in another ; and this 
 interesting novice was by no means addicted to rap- 
 turous emotions of any sort. It was not his nature, 
 which was still : but he was all the more capable of a 
 
 * See Phillips' Life of Bumjcui. 
 
38 INWARD PEACE 
 
 certain self-possest, silent joy. And it was thus, 
 faintly as the process has just been traced, that he 
 had found what he had sought with humility, anxiety, 
 and diligence, even that nameless peace " which pass- 
 eth all understanding." He lost little time in making 
 the public profession of his faith, hope, and charity : 
 and he never wavered in his convictions ; though 
 many things were duly changed within him, by the 
 progress of thought and experience. One thing 
 never changed, and will never change now : — " By 
 this we know that we have passed from death to life, 
 because we love the brethren." He joined the con- 
 gregation of his father, then under the ministry of 
 Mr Black.* 
 
 * Ordained Aug. 19, 1789 ; died June 16, 1828. Mr Brown and 
 he were as steadfast friends as they were near neighbours these 
 nine -and- thirty years : — their famiHesave now united by marriage. 
 
AND OUTWARD EXPERIENCE 39 
 
 IV. 
 
 Casting the eye over this slight sketch of the man- 
 ner in which the Paradise of lost Belief was in this 
 instance regained, one cannot but be struck by two 
 points in the movement. The first is his having 
 recourse, after or along with all this studying of the 
 merely external and consequently presumptive Evi- 
 dences in the current books, to the experimental or 
 observational method of common sense and common 
 science. It is at once his instinct and his habit. As 
 the bird takes to the air, the fish to the deep sea, the 
 beast of prey to the secret jungle, and the peaceful 
 herd to the open plain in the hour of peril or appre- 
 hension, so he looks abroad and makes his observations 
 on the living men around him, now that it behoves 
 him to test the power of principles. Unfortunately 
 for the plan, few are surrounded by such Christian 
 men as composed the social circle far and near of rare 
 old John Croumbie ; and, thank God, many of us can- 
 not deny that some of the most precious " fruits of 
 the Spirit" are borne by characters by no means 
 Christian, if Christians must '' firmly believe the 
 depravity of human nature, depend on Christ for the 
 
40 JESUS CHEIST 
 
 divine fayour," and so forth. Why, this very day 
 when (by way of experiment) offering this very argu- 
 ment to an ingenuous mind^ I was met at once by an 
 answer nearly the reverse of our young disciple's : — 
 " Well, but the loud-professing Christians of my 
 circle have been bitter disappointments for the most 
 part, and three at least of the best people I have 
 ever known are called Unbelievers." The assertion 
 could ill be gainsaid in this instance ; and for my 
 part, I would not for the world rest my plea for 
 Christ on anything so frail. 
 
 The other point that seems worthy of notice, in the 
 Extracts given above, is the weight}^ Italic stress laid 
 upon the conclusion that " Jesus died to save Bis fol- 
 lowers /ro?7i their sins." It was not the function, it 
 was not the mission (as they say now), in plain and 
 simple phrase it was not the business of this Teacher 
 only to explain a beautifid code of virtue like Socrates, 
 or unfold a sublime body of divinity like Plato, for 
 example. It was not even to deliver men from the 
 punishment of that load of iniquit}'^ under which 
 they groaned ; and knew they groaned, when awaken- 
 ed by the Gospel of repentance in the wilderness. 
 All that and more indeed it was, and all that He 
 divinely accomplished too ; but His mighty and pecu- 
 liar burden was to deliver from sin itself, to save men 
 from themselves, to set them free from the bondage 
 
THE KEST-BRINGER 41 
 
 of the Evil Will, to make them holy as He is holy, 
 and to give them rest. It is this Rest that the 
 Nations always want, this that the solitary single 
 heart is for ever yearning to find : Rest in the con- 
 sciousness of renewed participation in the Divine 
 Nature ; Rest in re-afiiliation to God, in brotherhood 
 to Christ the first-begotten Son of the Highest, in 
 communion with the Comfortress the still-descending 
 mother dove of Peace ; — for these are but the forms 
 under which the mystery of Adoption is expressed 
 (as well as words can do it) in the Book of Rest. 
 Such rest as this, even feebly realised, were sm'ely 
 nothing less than Heaven itself begim on this poor 
 Earth. Realised again, as it once was realised in 
 Jewiy for our ensample, and as it may have been 
 realised many times more than once when the world 
 knew it not, it were Heaven in no figure of speech, 
 real as Eternity and eternal as the Godhead. " In 
 Cicero and Plato," says St Augustine (as cited by Cole- 
 ridge from Leighton) '^ and other such wi-iters I meet 
 with many things acutely said, and things that excite 
 a certain warmth of emotion, but in none of them do I 
 find these words, Come unto me, all ye that labour 
 and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." * 
 
 * Apud Ciceronem et Platonem, aliosque ejusmodi scriptores, 
 multa sunt acute dicta, et leniter calentia, sed in iis omnibus hoc 
 non invenio, Venite ad me, kce. [Matt. xii. 28.] — Aids to 
 Re/lection, p. 34, 2d ed. 
 
42 THE NEW MAN 
 
 V. 
 
 To return to the subject of this sketch, his religious 
 character having thus been formed, he began to asso- 
 ciate more intimately with some of his acquaintances 
 at Haddington, especially one William Hunter a 
 baker, "who till his own death in 1836 continued his 
 faithful friend, adviser, and abettor in almost all his 
 subsequent undertakings. He now vigorously enter- 
 ed on the performance of some of the relative duties 
 of Christianity. Among other things, he commenced 
 the work of Sabbath-school teaching. His natural 
 facility in the communication of instruction, com- 
 bined with the earnest simplicity of his address, made 
 him a favourite with the pupils, and his classes were 
 crowded. Some years after, he fitted up a school- 
 room on his own premises, and was there surrounded 
 every Sunday evening by sixty or eighty boys. This 
 pleasant task he weekly plied for many years, till he 
 was forced by the state of his health to give it up. 
 He enjoyed considerable encouragement in the after- 
 lives of several of his scholars; of some who remained 
 at home in credit, and of others who wrote to him 
 from abroad with gratitude. Although he was forced 
 
AND SUNDAY-SCHOOLS 43 
 
 to resign his occupations as a teacher, howeyer, he 
 continued to take a lively interest in the success of 
 others, and drew up a Set of Hints as the result of 
 his own experience, of which the following brief 
 extracts may possibly be useful to some such as are 
 engaged in the same service : — 
 
 "In order to interest all the scholars in the atten- 
 dance, let the number and value of the quarterly pre- 
 miums given to each class be in direct proportion to 
 the number of scholars it may contain." .... 
 " Make the monitors inform when they know of any 
 of the scholars lying, cheating, cursing, swearing, 
 playing on the Sabbath, disobeying their parents, 
 or playing with wicked children ; and take an oppor- 
 tunity of warning them against such practices ; also 
 request their parents to make known their faults." 
 . . . . '• Often bring forward practical religion, 
 especially as exemplified in the lives of David, Paul, 
 and others ; and give as enlarged views of the laws of 
 God, particularly of the first table, as possible. This 
 will prepare them both for seeing their need of a 
 Saviour, and making the account of His work and 
 offices plain ; and also may be the means of prevent- 
 ing them from many sins of ignorance. Show the 
 justice and benevolence of those laws." 
 
 But it must also be mentioned here that his 
 humble studies in Natural Science were by no means 
 
44 MIND AND BODY 
 
 abandoned for the pious offices of the Sunday-school 
 and such works of charity. Science and piety went 
 hand in hand on this lowly and sequestered path of 
 life. He devoted a good deal of his spare time to 
 Chemistry about this period ; and this is again 
 alluded to here, as particularly suitable to these days 
 of Schools of Arts and People's Colleges, inasmuch as 
 Mr Brown afterwards came to derive much of his 
 income from the practical application of the scanty 
 principles he had mastered in his youth and early 
 manhood. He never, indeed, pursued this fine and 
 profound science otherwise than in a superficial and 
 practical way, having not even attempted to keep 
 pace with its brilliant progress after the Davian epoch 
 of its career under the Idea of Lavoisier ; and the 
 Daltonian Chemistry was almost unknown, until it 
 was expounded to him towards the close of his life by 
 one whom he had imbued with the love of science. 
 During the Highland famine in 1836, however, he 
 was the means of calling the attention of the Scottish 
 Society of Arts to the application of the gummy 
 matter of the sea-wares to the purposes of food and 
 commerce. The Society's committee characterised 
 his suggestions as " of the highest importance," 
 accorded them a vote of thanks, printed them, and 
 offered a medal to any practical person who should 
 carry them out with success. Nothing has come 
 
IN FULL DRESS 45 
 
 of it, perhaps because the necessity passed away ; 
 — but the attempt was good, and the thought in- 
 genious. 
 
 And what kind of a person was this notable young 
 country-merchant, to look at and to speak to, all 
 this time 1 It is hard to say, in the absence of any- 
 thing like a portrait or a written sketch, and in the 
 absence also of survivors that knew him then-a- 
 days, and are now possessed of a sufficiently true and 
 graphic tongue or pen. Nobody thought of treasur- 
 ing memorials of so obscure, though beloved a per- 
 sonage, I dare say : — but yet one can gather a few 
 hints from tradition ! Well, of the full middle-size 
 of this country, standing five feet nine, slender but 
 wiry and firm, dark and dark-grey-eyed yet ruddy, 
 marred by a very slight obliquity of vision, moder- 
 ately pitted by the small-pox, and altogether neither 
 ill-made nor ill-favoured, he had no pretensions 
 to manly beauty ; but he must always have looked, 
 and at this time did look manly, frank, intelligent, 
 cheery, and especially benign. Dressed in garments 
 partly made by his mother, long vest and loose small- 
 clothes innocent of a tailor's touch, with ribbed grey- 
 worsted hosen and country shoon, this somewhat 
 characteristic figure is said to have been the observed 
 of some observers as a genuine Rustic, when he would 
 
46 MERRIMENT AND 
 
 walk to Edinburgh of an afternoon ; — especially in 
 one large family of girls, the most sedate of whom 
 was the predestinate wife of the plainly apparelled, 
 but fresh and benign young Calvinist. As for his 
 manners they were not polished of course, but they 
 were cheery and even gay ; and his natural benignity 
 could not but shine through his deportment, when 
 once rendered transparent by the glow of easy inter- 
 course. In fact, he was addicted on the whole to 
 laughter and merriment before his marriage, or rather 
 until an alarming and protracted illness, which over- 
 whelmed him for life very soon after that auspicious 
 event ; while he really never lost the power of fol- 
 lowing cheerily in the wake of social glee, and that 
 more particularly in tlie way of hearty laughter. He 
 probably never raised a laugh in his life, but he cer- 
 tainly never failed to join in an honest one. Laughter 
 seemed the only outlet and expression he had for what 
 other men get out of themselves in the practical joke, 
 the odd gesture, the verbal play, the comic sketch, or 
 in some more intellectual sportive movement. Not a 
 touch of drollery, not a stroke of wit, not a glance of 
 humour ever came from lip or eye of his. lie could 
 not even tell an anecdote with point. Then there 
 was nothing laughable about himself, so that he might 
 have been only too neutral in the social circle,but for 
 this power of laughing right heartily at the fun of 
 
TWO FRIENDS 47 
 
 others. His friend William Hunter, though a man 
 of singular gravity of demeanour the live-long Sab- 
 bath-day, and at all those times (were it but for a 
 sudden passing minute or two) in which the Sabbath- 
 chord of his heart was struck or even breathed upon 
 from far, was a genuine natural wag ; and it w^as 
 surely one of the final causes of his existence to fur- 
 nish John Croumbie, our experimental Drysalter, and 
 their sportless circle with food for laughter, when 
 Solomon's time to laugh was come. Then his fjxvour- 
 ite brother-in-law Thomas Littlejohn (a man every 
 whit as famous in his day and way as the chef 
 d'oeuvrier of Lerne himself, for whom see the page of 
 Rabelais, aheuntibus puerisque puellis) was absolutely 
 a second Yorick, were there no third ! — and that 
 unrivalled social humourist (for he was nothing less) 
 was wont just to drench the spirit of his grave phi- 
 lanthropic kinsman in the gay and sportive element 
 of comedy, when they met. The grave kinsman could 
 not contribute so much as a syllable or even a jot to 
 the glee ; but he could at least laugh better than 
 most people : and these gay communions must have 
 been very good for them both, blessings on the twin- 
 memory of Yorick and his witless friend ! 
 
 Although the latter, however, was " neither witty 
 himself nor the cause that wit was in other men," as 
 being the express opposite of Sir John Falstaff in 
 
48 FROM GRAVE 
 
 everything but " babbling o' green fields " towards 
 the close (and well did Shakespeare know how " one 
 touch of Nature makes the whole World kin ") — he 
 could not hinder witty things happening to his proper 
 person, and to the properties of other people. Some few 
 years before the latest point this narrative has brought 
 him to, while yet in his teens somewhere, he was 
 intimate with one Forrest^ who afterwards distin- 
 guished himself in the East Indian army ; — at least 
 one fancies so, for those colonels are all distinguished 
 and gallant officers. They walked together early of 
 a morning, A string used to be tied to the appren- 
 tice his foot, and let over the window^ into the street. 
 It was his bell-pull, and the future colonel rung him 
 up. The house was next door to the George, the 
 window just over the stance of the mail, and the 
 mail drove off just as often before Forrest's appear- 
 ance under the window as after it. One morning 
 David was late, and his Jonathan lay unrung. The 
 mail was all right, the leaders were eager to be off, 
 crack went the long whip, and away they pranced : — 
 but more ruthless than Forrest himself, Jehu had 
 caught the bell-pull in his whip-lash, the bell was 
 not only pulled but dragged, up sprang the boy, 
 landed like a Tyne-trout at the window- chink in a 
 
 trice, and and what 1 why, and there an end ; for 
 
 how the adventure was wound up, and the lash wound 
 
TO GAY 49 
 
 off, my deponent saith not. I tell the tale as 'twas 
 told to me : — honi soit qui mal y j^eitse ! 
 
 It was while he was still a young man that the 
 Haddington Tract Society, which was the second in 
 Scotland, was formed by his circle of friends. (Every- 
 thing in Haddington used to be the second in Scot- 
 land in those days.) They made him their Depositary, 
 the honorary duties of whose office he diligently per- 
 formed through all the varying fortunes of the insti- 
 tution till his death, nearly forty years after. For 
 many years, in fact, he had the sole management and 
 responsibility on himself. The plan he followed 
 seems to be worthy of imitation, as it is certainly one 
 of the most economical at present in use. He pro- 
 cured a regular supply of the London Society's tracts, 
 and every quarter sent to subscribers of four shillings 
 annually shilling-packets at the Loudon cost-price. 
 The subscribers gave them away in their turn as they 
 chose ; and thus tracts were distributed in East 
 Lothian at less expense than in the metropolis whence 
 they issued. The number of tracts circulated in the 
 county, through this Depositary's instrumentality, 
 must have been immense ; especially including those 
 given to the Highland and Irish reapers, who annu- 
 ally resort to East Lothian. 
 
50 MARRIAGE AND 
 
 VI. 
 
 After having been two years in copartnership with 
 his friend and second father Mr Croumbie, he was 
 married on the oth of August in 1806, in the course 
 of his twenty-eighth year, just a jubilee ago. His 
 bride was Ehzabeth, one of seven long-surviving 
 daughters of the late Henry Duncan of Comely Gar- 
 dens ; but seeing she survives him in honoured 
 widowhood (and it is the cordial wish of all her de- 
 scendants that she may siu'vive him many a good 
 year to come) it will not do to say more than this, 
 namely, that she proved in all things an excellent 
 wife. It is not easy to be the right sort of mate for 
 a Projector ; witness the trials of Madame Palissy 
 the Potter's wife, as they are cunningly set forth by 
 Lady Willoughby in her charming book.* And a 
 projector this wife soon enough found her husband to 
 be ; in a small way, among chemical pots and pans ; 
 and on the larger scale, in connection with that plan 
 
 * The Provocations of Madame Faliss>/ : written, it is to be 
 presumed, in defence of the much-tried woman from the charges 
 of impatience, trustlessness, and obstruction insinuated against her 
 by Mr Morley in his Biography of Bernard Palissy, the heroic ex- 
 perimentalist. 
 
NEW CONNEXIONS 61 
 
 of Itinerating Libraries, the invention and establish- 
 ment of which are associated with his name : but she 
 stood the test with credit. She did not thwart him 
 in his countless chemical and mechanical devices for 
 the improvement of their own or somebody else's 
 comforts or conditions ; and she certainly helped him 
 truly in the proper work of his Life, the Library scheme, 
 with her sympathies and prayers. Her father was a 
 man of much active benevolence ; but in more of a 
 private way, among the closes and wynds of old Edin- 
 burgh, where he had his regular beats, having been a 
 man of duty, order, and manifold practical energy, 
 rather than of impulse and effusion. He was a cloth- 
 maker, literally like his father the Deacon before him ; 
 and one of the very last of the old trade. Deacon 
 Duncan had mixed himself up with the burgh-politics 
 of the city, having sat several years in the town- 
 council during the days of nominal election ; but his 
 son, having seceded from the Kirk, kept him to him- 
 self and to his really extensive round of duties in the 
 way of religious charity, especially in connection with 
 the Destitute Sick Society and other organs of bene- 
 ficence. One consequence of this, perhaps, was his 
 ability to retire from business comparatively early in 
 life ; when he left Warriston's Close and the purlieus 
 of the High Street, and bought Comely Gardens, 
 which had been a sort of petty Vauxhall (the house 
 
52 NEW CONNEXIONS 
 
 and park) for the entertainment of the lieges by 
 means of tea-and-toddy, oyster-ploys, dances, exhibi- 
 tions—and what not,'"' Of the yonng wife's mother, 
 one Rachel Anderson, it is not out of place just to 
 notice the fact, in passing, that she was a woman of 
 rare self-assertion and strength of character. Come 
 of an old line of good south-country farmer -peoj^le, 
 and counting among her forbears one of "the notable 
 women of Ettrick," mentioned with unction and 
 honour by the voluminous Thomas Boston of holy 
 memory, circumstances had taken her earl}^ to Edin- 
 burgh. Without mentioning the details of her life 
 there, which were certainly somewhat remarkable for 
 a person so private (such as her hearty communion 
 with the Friends of the People, and her personal 
 friendship for Gerrald and Palmer), suffice it that she 
 gave her daughter her share of those stout inherit- 
 ances of head and heart, of which the lot of the latter 
 was soon to stand in need at Haddington. 
 
 For this auspicious union was not long of being- 
 overclouded, and that more or less for the whole of a 
 
 * A brother of his had a small property on the Water of Leith 
 (did it come from Lethus ? — Lethi corripuit g radii m) where he 
 planted an ample garden, calling it Spring Gardens, for the love 
 he bore his wife Isabella Spring. This country retreat is now 
 built up in Stockbridge, and is a crowded jiart of Edinburgh ; but 
 the locality duly bears the printed name of Spring Gardens to this 
 dav. 
 
AND NEW TRIALS 53 
 
 pretty longlifetime. Within two little mouths, her hus- 
 band was seized in the gripe of iDleuro-pueumony, a 
 rapid inflammatory disease of the chest, which soon 
 dragged him to the brink of the grave. Thrown five 
 long months on bed by this malady, he continued all 
 that time in such a state of prostration as seemed to 
 render it impossible he should ever recover. Conscious 
 of his own condition, and facing the prospects of his 
 pitiable young partner in this sudden calamity, he 
 surrendered himself to the will of God without the 
 infirmity of a doubt. He was unable from very 
 weakness, of course, to ofier her any consolation. 
 One day however, in allusion to their affliction, he 
 lifted up his eyes to heaven and quite audibly said, 
 " Even so. Father, for so it hath seemed good in thy 
 sight." Ah, these too summary puttings asunder by 
 death of those whom God hath joined are terrible 
 things, especially in such touching circumstances. 
 They need the sj)irit of faith, and also the heart of 
 hope, to bear them with anything like the fortitude 
 and serenity to wiiich the Christian is summoned by 
 his profession ; but, the victory of true resignation 
 and consent once fairly won, the compensation may 
 well be unspeakable. " Thy will he done is better than 
 even health," wrote a friend to his miserable corre- 
 spondent once : — how much better then than life ! 
 
54 NEW SORKOWS 
 
 But it is the health, the life of another, and that 
 other the Beloved, that is the point of agony : — God 
 help the sufferer that watches and survives. 
 
 Their relatives and connexions naturally looked on 
 his pitiful case as being beyond all hope. So did his 
 medical adviser and (though standing in the very 
 opposite point of the compass in matters of belief) 
 very good friend Mr Welsh, a really able and eminent 
 surgeon. In welcome disappointment of their ap- 
 prehensions, however, he suddenly began to revive 
 after a long period of comparative insensibility. The 
 famous Dr Gregory saw him once in his extremity j 
 and having ascertained that his kindred had not been 
 in the way of dying by chest-diseases (but fevers), 
 pronounced with much decision that he would get 
 well, though only after a long process of recovery. His 
 progress was in fact so gi-adual as to be hardly per- 
 ceptible, and he lived on in exceeding weakness for 
 more than a year after these first five months of alarm- 
 ing illness. During this weary convalescence the 
 faith and patience of the Christian were painfully, if 
 triumphantly exercised. On one hand, he dreaded 
 the thought of being thrown a burden upon others ; 
 and on the other, he did really long to be about his 
 " Father's business," to borrow the phrase of the Boy- 
 Christ with reverence : — and such feelings are worse 
 to endure than pain and weariness, when the mood is 
 
AND NEW FRUITS 65 
 
 at its height. It is in these long dreary convales- 
 cences, and in chronic disease, that a man's more 
 secret powers are tried ; and that precisely in conflict 
 with such subtle demi-devils as vexed this sufferer on 
 his early sick-bed, the dread of dependence, the sense 
 of uselessness, coming in the guise of angels. 
 
 " Doing or suffering, to be weak is to be miserable f — 
 
 it is the suspirium de j^rofimdls, or deep-heaved groan 
 of the fallen Morning-Star ; and such is every man in 
 conscience, when Sin is translated into Sori'ow in his 
 proper body and soul ; and even when repentance 
 brings remission of Sin (but brings no remission of the 
 Misery) it is hard to change the key and incontinently 
 sing — 
 
 " They also serve, who only stand and wait." 
 
 It was during this long confinement to the house 
 that he began to sympathise, in a more particular and 
 practical manner, with such as are confined in punish- 
 ment for their crimes ; — himself a criminal, and him- 
 self confined. " But for the grace of God," said Wesley 
 once when he saw a murderer led out to execution, 
 '• but for the grace of God there goes John Wesley." 
 Haddington being then a military station, there were 
 generally a number of prisoners in the county jail. 
 
66 FRESH FIELDS 
 
 These he frequently visited after his recovery, pro- 
 vidiDg such as could read with suitable books, and 
 inducing some of them to teach their neighbours who 
 could not. This practice he resumed many long years 
 after, when he became provost of the burgh, having 
 catechised and instructed in the jail every other Sab- 
 bath in alternation with his life-long friend, the late 
 Bailie Hunter, till the beginning of his last illness. 
 They had good reason to believe that their prison- 
 laboui^s were not fruitless, having received many ex- 
 pressions of gratitude from prisoners themselves, both 
 in person and by letter. This weekly visit was for 
 some time after his decease continued to be made by 
 an active friend of Mr Brown's, an elder of the name 
 of Rae, well remembered yet for his patience and 
 good works. The necessity or desirableness of such 
 visits was then finally superseded by the regular 
 appointment of Dr Cook, the senior minister of the 
 parish, to the chaplaincy of the county jail. 
 
 This visitation of the prison-house was not the only 
 good thing that was educed in the providence of God 
 from this early adversity : for not only did he return, 
 with greater alacrity and devotion, to the doing of 
 every relative Christian duty on the performance of 
 which he had already entered, but it was during this 
 protracted recovery that he formed the first concep- 
 tion of the scheme of Itinerating; Libraries. As the 
 
AND PASTURES GREEN 57 
 
 development and institution of that ingenious plan for 
 the diffusion of useful and religious knowledge among 
 the people has made him well known in Scotland and 
 elsewhere, a succinct sketch of its origin and progress 
 must now be given. He did not in any degi-ee at- 
 tempt to put the plan which was then devised into 
 execution till 1817. 
 
58 EAST LOTHIAN 
 
 VII. 
 
 It "was his first design merely to put the same ad- 
 vantages, as the towns derived from the institution 
 of subscription and burgh libraries, within the reach 
 of the villages and rural districts of the county. To 
 the furtherance of this object he resolved to devote 
 " a number of balances of militia insurance," which 
 " notwithstanding of various advertisements and let- 
 ters sent to the parties to w^hom they belonged," had 
 not been required of him as the successor, in the 
 agency of the company, of Mr John Croumbie, who 
 had died the year before. 
 
 With a part of these balances he procured two 
 hundred select volumes, " about two-thirds of which 
 were of a moral and religious tendency, while the 
 remainder comprised books of travels, agriculture, 
 the mechanical arts, and popular sciences." With a 
 viev/ to effect the most sparing economy, and at the 
 same time secure the greatest possible amount of 
 benefit in the disposal of these, he divided them into 
 four assorted sets of fifty volumes each. These he 
 stationed respectively in the villages of Aberlady, 
 Salton, Tyninghame, and Garvald, under the superin- 
 tendence of gratuitous librarians, accompanied by the 
 
ITINERATING LIBRARIES 59 
 
 iutimatiou that each of them should be removed at 
 the end of two years, and its place supplied by one of 
 the other three successively. He meant in this way 
 to supply those villages, for eight years, with all the 
 advantages of four standing libraries of two hundred 
 volumes each, at one-fourth of the expense of four such 
 lihi'aries. But he found that he really effected some- 
 thing more : for, whereas the fixed subscription-libra- 
 ries of towns are generally well read during the first 
 years of their institution, and then gradually decline 
 until they are comparatively useless, the certainty of 
 their removal after two years combined with the 
 novelty of the fresh arrivals at the biennial terms to 
 keep alive the interest of the population in the 
 itinerating books. In this way the invaluable habit 
 of reading was not only developed, but fostered and 
 kept alive. Accordingly during 1817-19, the total 
 issues of the two hundred volumes were, for the first 
 year, 1461 ; for the second, 733 ; and, during 1819- 
 20 (after the first exchange) for the first year, 1313, 
 for the second, 928 ; there having been a very marked 
 falling-off in the second years of the terms, but none 
 in the sum total of the books taken out during the 
 second term, as compared with the whole number 
 taken out during the first term of two years ; — a re- 
 sult which the experience of subsequent years almost 
 uniformly confirmed. 
 
60 FIRST EXPERIMENTS 
 
 The returns of these two first biennial terms at 
 once increased his expectations and enlarged the 
 scope of his design. It was evident, at first sight, 
 that in the directly inverse proportion of the number 
 of exchanging stations would be the comparative 
 economy of the device. If four stations could be 
 furnished by it with more than the advantages of a 
 standing library, at one-fourth of the expense of 
 four such standing libraries, for eight years; then 
 eight stations could be supplied with 400 volumes, at 
 one-eighth of the proportional expense for sixteen 
 years ; sixteen with 800 volumes, at one-sixteenth, 
 for thirty-two years ; and so forth to any extent. 
 
 Moreover, taking thirty-two years as the average 
 reading term of human life, sixteen villages having 
 such a provision made for them could, at this easy 
 rate, enjoy the privilege of a constant standing libra- 
 ry of 800 volumes ; inasmuch as, before the circula- 
 tion of thirty-two years should be performed, an 
 entirely new reading population should have arisen ; 
 and the revolution of the simple mechanism would 
 never need to stop. Now supposing the villages of a 
 county were divided into five sections of sixteen each, 
 with its centre of egress and return, these sections 
 might make mutual exchanges to any desirable ex- 
 tent ; and an intestinal movement might thus be 
 kept up, which would furnish the equivalent benefits 
 
AND FIRST HOPES 61 
 
 of a standing library of 4000 volumes, at every point 
 of the county, at one-eightieth of the ordinary ex- 
 pense, with all the additional advantages, not easily 
 calculable, of sustained novelty and motion. What 
 may be said of a county may of course, and only with 
 greater force, be affirmed of a country ; and indeed 
 the Projector laboured at his task, ever after he first 
 seriously entered on it, under the influence of the 
 brilliant hope that his plan might actually become one 
 of the agents of the ultimate illumination of the 
 world, — a hope in which, it will be found, he was 
 encouraged by some of the greatest and best men of 
 the age. It was a devout imagination, did the desired 
 illumination depend on books ; but perhaps the effec- 
 tive value of mere books has been overrated in the pre- 
 sent age of the world. Yet they are mighty things in 
 their own place and in their own way ; and this plan, 
 for sending them in the state of perpetual motion over 
 the face of the earth, was a devout and a noble thought. 
 
 Such was the scheme in 1823, after the result of 
 his first and limited experiment. He now set himself 
 to discover how it might be worked out in its details, 
 how the first expenditure might be defrayed, how its 
 wastes might be compensated, and how the whole 
 machinery might be maintained in action. He soon 
 perceived that, on the one hand, only united societies 
 
62 DISCOURAGEMENT 
 
 (or a government) could accomplish his design on an 
 extended scale ; and, on the other, that he could lay- 
 no claim to the assistance of either the one or the 
 other, till he should have demonstrated its practica- 
 bility. He therefore made the attempt in his native 
 county with unremitting diligence, and in spite of 
 the discouragements he met with in many quarters. 
 It is strange (and hardly to be believed) that no 
 sooner does a less unloving man take it into his heart 
 to try and do some good thing for the world, or even 
 for his parish, than people do what they can to dis- 
 hearten and thwart him ; but the fact stares us in 
 the face, with all the certainty and universality of one 
 of the so-called laws of nature ; and the secret his- 
 tory of the Itinerating Libraries of East Lothian 
 offers no exception to the rule. Many a time was the 
 iron made to enter the soul of their projector, although 
 he was no mere system-builder, but put his hand to 
 the work like a man. Feeble in health, far from 
 rich, his hands full enough of an extensive and com- 
 plicated business (one would have thought), he toiled 
 and yearned over this work of love from month to 
 month, from week to week, all the rest of his delicate 
 and interrupted life. Kind friends he found in the 
 matter too ; but he also found apathy, misunderstand- 
 ing, enmity. Even William Hunter never went cor- 
 dially with him in this undertaking. 
 
AGAINST PERSEVERANCE 63 
 
 It were needless to detail the particulars of his 
 arduous progress ; for the introduction of the mechan- 
 ism into any other countryside (or some city perhaps) 
 will always imply peculiar new circumstances, to be 
 met by specific contrivances. Suffice it then to say 
 that by 1836, after twenty years of well-sustained 
 devotion to his enterprise, and by dint of much per- 
 sonal sacrifice of time, strength, money and heart, he 
 had set forty-seven libraries in circulatory motion 
 through the county, containing 2380 volumes, exclu- 
 sive of about 500 new books, which had not then 
 been thrown into the general circulation. At his 
 death there were 3850 volumes ; and if there had 
 been sixty divisions or book-cases, instead of only 
 forty-seven, no inhabitant would have been one mile 
 and a-half from one. This was something consider- 
 able for an agricultural shire. 
 
 The funds, with which these exertions were made, 
 were raised partly by the contributions of some who 
 approved of the plan, and were willing to aid in giv- 
 ing it a fair trial, and partly by small donations from 
 several missionary and other societies in the county, 
 the United Agricultural among the rest. The greater 
 part of his resources, however, was derived from the 
 following contrivance of his own : — The newly-pur- 
 chased books were kept two years in the towns (Had- 
 dington, North Berwick, Dunbar) for the use of 
 
64 THE PLAN SUCCESSFUL 
 
 annual subscribers of five shillings, before they were 
 merged in the general circulation ; and by these sub- 
 scriptions a great part of the expenditure of the gra- 
 tuitous circulation has been heretofore defrayed. 
 This plan might well be tried elsewhere ; for the 
 subscribers have the double gratification of contri- 
 buting to a praiseworthy object and, at the same time, 
 enjoying the benefit of a select and progressive, 
 though small supply of the most recent publications. 
 Indeed Mr Brown believed, from his own experience, 
 that the regular expenditure of a national institution, 
 were it once set a-going, could be completely met by 
 this contrivance. At all events, plans must every- 
 where be devised and put in motion, if at all possible, 
 for the self-supporting of the village or parish libra- 
 ries. Here it will be some such a device as this, 
 there it will be the direct charging of petty fees, and 
 elsewhere it will be something else. 
 
 Such is the plan of Itinerating Libraries; and 
 such the laborious but successful endeavours which 
 were made by the author to prove its practicability, 
 even in the disadvantageous circumstances of a first 
 and a single-handed attempt. 
 
 As to the first principle of movable libraries, I 
 believe it may be gathered fi'om Oberlin's Memoirs, 
 that he had fallen on the plan of shifting the scanty 
 
AND PRIORITY UNDERFOOT 65 
 
 book-shelves of the scattered villages of his charge 
 among the Alps, as early as the origin of the East 
 Lothian libraries. The general idea of carrying about 
 the means of instruction had certainly been embodied, 
 in 1730, by Griffith Jones, in the Circulating Schools 
 of Wales ; and, long after, in the General Assembly of 
 the Kirk of Scotland's similar institutions in the 
 Highlands and Islands. Nevertheless, and indepen- 
 dently of the claims to originality which might be 
 put forward on behalf of our convalescent Hadding- 
 ton inventor, the spirit of Paley's maxim, " that he 
 alone discovers who proves," is equally applicable to 
 the history of inventions and discoveries ; for certain- 
 ly he alone invents to any purpose, who satisfies the 
 world that the means he may have devised have been 
 found competent to the end proposed. Accordingly, as 
 it was by having for twenty years supplied them with 
 well-chosen reading, that he had gained the esteem 
 of the people of East Lothian, so it is because, at the 
 expense of so much heart and toil, he has provided 
 a direct and easily-apprehended proof of what might 
 otherwise have been deemed a mere speculatiouj that 
 this Inventor deserves the approbation of his country. 
 But sooth to say, these poor questions about priority 
 of invention grow impertinent at times. It is surely 
 too bad to disturb the very manes or memories of 
 giants like Newton and Leibnitz, Lavoisier and Watt, 
 
 ( 
 
 ot Trie 
 UNlVili^SITY 
 
G6 WILLIE MARTIN S GATES 
 
 and now of such sim^Dle and unambitious souls as 
 Oberlin and Samuel Browu, with questions so vexa- 
 tious. An Eugiish Company offered a premium some 
 years ago for the invention of a check-gate adapted 
 to a particular railway purpose, the necessity of 
 which had arisen out of certain local emergencies. 
 The best specification and model were those of Wil- 
 liam Martin, the member of a family sadly (though 
 also greatly) known to the public for its share of 
 the burden, the danger, and the doom of genius. It 
 did not suit the respectability of this Company to 
 award their money to a personage of William's repu- 
 tation ; and therefore they took his gateway plans, 
 but gave the prize to another. Spencer Hall condoled 
 with him one day by the road-side ; and that sin- 
 cerely, asking why the Company had not been pro- 
 secuted. Such a measure had never been seriously 
 entertained, it seemed. The want of money and 
 reputation had proved a fatal want. " But what of 
 that," exclaimed Martin as he went on his way 
 brandishing his staff, " what of that ! I know whose 
 gates they are in the kingdom of heaven — I know." 
 Better men (to speak conventionally) might perhaps 
 take a lesson from this their more unhappy brother. 
 Isor has the East Lothian exjjeriment been dis- 
 regarded either at home or abroad. The corres- 
 pondence which Mr Brown carried on with societies 
 
CAVEKS AND DU WILLIAM 07 
 
 and private individuals, far and near, was very large. 
 Lord Brougham, Mr Douglas of Cavers, his brother 
 Dr William Brown, and many other friends of popu- 
 lar education elsewhere than in East Lothian, 
 strengthened him mightily by their applause. His 
 brother wrote a lucid Pamphlet on the Institution, 
 which was translated into French and German, and 
 duly published at Paris and Berlin ; while extracts 
 from it were permitted to appear in the Journal de 
 St Petersburgh. The Christian patriot and philoso- 
 pher of Cavers has recorded his oj)inion of the Plan 
 in a note to the able Tract entitled The Prospects of 
 Great Britaiti. " Among all the various openings for 
 liberality," he writes, " none appears more satisfac- 
 tory than the plan of itinerating libraries ; at all 
 events, it must sooner or later be generally adopted." 
 Lord Brougham, whose noble exertions in the cause 
 of knowledge and its diffusion will ever constitute 
 one of his most sterling claims upon the memory 
 and homage of his country as one of her veritable 
 noblemen, not only made lengthened and minute 
 inquiries by letter on the subject, and expressed 
 himself highly satisfied wdth the inventor's explana- 
 tions, but actually advised (if not urged) him to 
 abandon his other avocations and give himself en- 
 tirely to this undertaking. His Lordship likewise 
 brought the project before the public in an essay 
 
68 LORD brougham's 
 
 entitled Practical Observations upon the Education 
 of the People, &c., which soon ran through nine 
 editions. " An excellent plan/' says the author of 
 this useful pamphlet, " was about ten years ago 
 adopted by Mr Samuel Brown, of Haddington, for 
 instructing the towns and villages of the county of 
 East Lothian, in succession, by means of the same 
 books." After a summary description of the device 
 and its results, the sagacious writer, " nothing if not 
 critical," adds this very suggestive sentence : " This 
 plan is now adopted in Berwickshire, by Mr Buchan 
 of Kelloe, with this very great improvement, that 
 the current expenses are defrayed by the readers, 
 who pay twopence a-month, and I hope choose the 
 books." — A ho^DC which were all the stronger, of 
 course, in a narrator who finishes so pleasant a para- 
 graph with the characteristic remark that it " is 
 peculiarly gratifying to observe that the original 
 scheme, from which the whole has followed, was 
 merely a library for religious tracts " — The sentiment 
 in italics being merely a pendicle of Brougham's 
 large private property in that kind ! All peculiar 
 gratification notwithstanding however (and this 
 specimen reminds one only of the jubilation of some 
 minor Exeter Hall over the conversion of some 
 Jew-broker's pawn-shop into a Pantechnicon, con- 
 ducted on the principles of the true Political 
 
PREFERENXE 69 
 
 Economy, as resuscitated by Adam Smith, and put 
 in force by Moses and son) — all such peculiar gratifi- 
 cation notwithstanding, I say, there can be no doubt 
 but our great schoolmaster is right in this matter. 
 These libraries must be relieved of their eleemosynary 
 character wherever and whenever it is possible. To do 
 their best they must be free ; to be free they must 
 be supported by those who use them ; and those who 
 buy the books will choose them. At the same time 
 the Plan, as a plan, is available under many forms ; 
 and, amongst other things, it offers itself as a splen- 
 did means of private beneficence. What a boon for 
 some gi'eat Patron, lord-lieutenant, county duke, or 
 knight of the shire, to confer upon a neighbourhood, 
 a countryside, or a county ! The inventor himself, 
 though no patron or patron's lieutenant of any kind, 
 but just a count r}^ merchant of the sort that has 
 been described above somewhere, bestowed it on the 
 broad and bonny acres of his dear East Lothian. 
 To how many in every county might it not be said 
 without either irrelevance or impertinence, " Go thou 
 and do likewise ! " In short, the attention of the 
 reading world has been frequently drawn to the 
 subject, and that by some of the leading friends of 
 adult education, through the instrumentality of the 
 periodical press. Among those friendly, though fugi- 
 tive abettings of the cause on the part of the jour- 
 
70 THE JOURNALISTS 
 
 nalist, may be noticed a generous article from the 
 practised pen of Dr Smiles, a Haddingtonian by 
 birth, in Howitts Journal, vol. i. 1847. The 
 same hand, if I am not mistaken, introduced the 
 subject to the readers of Eliza Cook's Weekly. Mr 
 Hole, the able and zealous author of a Prize Essay 
 on Literary, Scientific, and Mechanics' Institutions, 
 took the opportunity of its publication to call the 
 attention of his readers in the Appendix of his work 
 to the evidence of John Croumbie Brown (in the 
 Parliamentary Report on Fiihlic Libraries, p. Ill) 
 concerning the itinerating libraries of Scotland, Mr 
 Brown being the oldest son of the East Lothian 
 manager, and familiar with the details of the move- 
 ment in that county from its very beginning. 
 
 Nor have all these appreciations and hearty recom- 
 mendations of the scheme by philanthropists and 
 men of letters been without their effect. The mana- 
 ger's own printed reports of his successive experience 
 were so plain-dealing, and also so business-like and 
 successful, that they convinced many minds of the 
 practicability of the thing. About 1822 the plan 
 was introduced into Berwickshire imder the auspices 
 of George Buchan of Kelloe, Esquire ; but auspices 
 can't do much for either man or plan, be3'ond the 
 mere money they may be able to bestow, or have the 
 
AND LOCAL SOCIETIES 71 
 
 fascinatiou to draw. In 1826 a Society was formed 
 ill Edinburgh, the members of which, in the terms 
 of the resolutions they passed at their meetings, 
 expressed a sufficient sense of the importance of the 
 institution they had combined to support. Things 
 promised well at the outset ; but there was the fatal 
 want of working men, and the consequence has 
 been that the Mid - Lothian attempt has proved a 
 comjDlete failure. In 1829, after Mr Douglas had 
 corresponded with the originator, libraries were set 
 a-going in Roxburghshire, where they amounted to 
 the number of twent3-six in 1839. In 1828 the 
 Committee of the General Assembly had fifty-six 
 libraries circulating, in biennial terms, among their 
 Highland schools. The Hibernian School and the 
 London Religious Tract Societies have, for several 
 years, adopted an imitation of the East Lothian 
 plan ; and in the printed reports, their committees 
 characterise it as " seemingly most admirable." The 
 germs of the device have likewise been carried to 
 several other parts of Scotland, England, and Ire- 
 land ; as well as to Jamaica, Canada, South Africa, 
 and Russia; while in 1837, Sir John Franklin was 
 attempting to introduce it into Van Diemen's 
 Land. The more philanthroj^ic reader is referred 
 to the Appendix for certain gratifying notices anent 
 the introduction of two sets of circumambulatory 
 
72 YORKSHIRE AND 
 
 Village Libraries into Yorkshire under the espe- 
 cial auspices of Lord Carlisle and Mr Hole ; — as well 
 as for some other things connected with the Plan of 
 Itineration, which might only render the text less 
 interesting to those who read this slender piece of 
 biography more for the man than for his books. 
 
 The system of Itinerating Libraries has been tho- 
 roughly brought into action, however, nowhere but 
 in East Lothian as yet. Money, necessary as it is, is 
 not enough for the working of such machinery as this 
 — unless, indeed, money were forthcoming in such 
 plenty as to organise a staff of competent paid offi- 
 cials. As it is, every centre of local circulation must 
 have its manager as industrious, and imbued with the 
 same spirit of devotion and love, as the unwearied 
 founder ; else the whole movements of egress, return, 
 and exchange will be confused, retarded, and ineffi- 
 cient. Now Mr Brown had the enthusiasm of an 
 inventor, and the hope of the future appreciation of 
 his invention, to sustain him, while he exjjended more 
 time and toil on the elaboration of his favourite 
 scheme than it is perhaps possible that any one else 
 can bestow. It may reasonably be feared that qua- 
 lified volunteer managers of this stamj:* will never be 
 found in every county of Scotland. It was to be 
 feared, in fact, that even the East Lothian combina- 
 
EAST LOTHIAN 73 
 
 tion might have quite stagnated on the removal of its 
 originator from the scene of his labom-s. It has not 
 done so altogether^ thanks to the filial industry of 
 his elder daughter. But I venture to think that 
 such a task is too public and complicated for a 
 single-handed woman, as it had assuredly proved 
 itself too laborious for a delicately organised man. 
 
 But the grand consideration now is this: — The 
 institution itself, tested and warranted by experience 
 sufiiciently ample, is now left with a Christian public. 
 It is for them to decide whether it is to remain 
 amongst the organs of utility and honour which are 
 their country's pride, or to disappear after having 
 struggled into existence through obstacles which are 
 now removed. Be it clearly imderstood, however, 
 that it is only by the foundation of large and liberal 
 associations over the land that the proposed end can 
 be gained. These societies must originate, either 
 with such of the community as are willing to employ 
 a simple and effective engine for the mental eleva- 
 tion of their less favoured countrymen ; or, which is 
 probably the more hopeful anticipation, with such of 
 the latter themselves as may have the discernment to 
 appreciate the means by which they may acquire for 
 themselves, and confer on their neighbours, the 
 largest amount of educational benefit at the smallest 
 expense of money and trouble. Whatever be the 
 
74 AMERICAN SECRETARIES 
 
 issue of these suggestioDS, it may, in conclusion and 
 by way of example, be stated, that the American 
 Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge early 
 resolved to incorporate the plan of Itinerating Libra- 
 ries with their other operations. Mr Abbot, the 
 secretary of that great national association, closes a 
 letter on the subject, written some eighteen years ago, 
 with these words — " I have much hope of one day 
 seeing that system, in all its substantial advantages, 
 generally adopted over the millions of miles of our 
 national territory." I do not know what has been 
 done there for the system of Itineration of late years ; 
 but is America thus to take another of our inven- 
 tions, and anticipate us in its application ? 
 
 In the mean time there is no denying that it has 
 nothing like a history to offer in this country since 
 the death of the East Lothian founder. The idea 
 has made no substantial progress, although many an 
 experiment of it on the smaller scale has been insti- 
 tuted by beneficent hands here and there, both at 
 home and in the colonies. In these days of competi- 
 tive egotism if not selfishness, and of governmental 
 infirmity, the only hope for the realisation of this (as 
 of many an other) gentle thought lies in the future 
 co-operative energy of the men that are to read ; — 
 and one does not know beforehand to what class of 
 society this definition and that necessity will not then 
 
AND HADDINGTON JOURNEYMEN 75 
 
 apply, for tlie social distribution of mere money will 
 be strangely changed. That the better working class 
 of the present time, such as the skilled artisan, is 
 capable of appreciating the beauty and economy of the 
 Itinerating System, is not to be doubted. Indivi- 
 duals among them in East Lothian felt it deeply ; 
 but what can individuals do, until the mass be stirred ! 
 This very day, a master-builder was with me. He 
 had raised himself from the ranks, as they say. I 
 found he had worked journeyman a good many years 
 in Haddingtonshire ; had known Mr Brown well in 
 the way of business, but thought of him chiefly (it 
 was clear) as the book-provider of the county. At 
 Tyninghame, Salton, elsewhere, he had duly read 
 the books as they came ; "all the books," was his 
 phrase. "Well," said I, ''it is curious you should 
 mention this, for I have been writing an account of 
 those tramping Libraries this very afternoon." " Ah," 
 rejoined the former journeyman, "too much can 
 neither be said nor written about them." 
 
76 COMMON LIFE 
 
 VIII. 
 
 To return once more to the subject of memoir : After 
 he had become fairly established in business, and 
 begun to be surrounded by an increasing family, his 
 course was long unvaried, except by the ordinary 
 vicissitudes of life. Of these he had his share ;— 
 having been several times reduced to the last extremity 
 by sharp rheumatic fevers; having buried relatives, 
 friends, infants, like other men ; and having encoun- 
 tered disappointments, perplexities, contradictions, 
 and the other trials incident to the condition of 
 humanity, both in the private walk of life and in the 
 sphere of public labour. Habitually making these 
 things the burdens of secret prayer, he willingly 
 bowed himself to them all as being (known by faith 
 to be) the necessary items of an effectual education 
 for the everlasting life ; and seldom allowed them to 
 disturb his equanimity, or to infringe on the discharge 
 of whatever appeared to be the duty that lay nearest 
 him. Accordingly, while he laboured to the last at 
 his Itinerating Libraries, he did not neglect the other 
 opportunities of usefulness which came in his way, 
 but took both a deep interest and an active part in 
 
COMMON WORKS 77 
 
 the doings of all the beneficent societies that centred 
 in Haddington ; — and there were more then than 
 now. 
 
 In 1829, he lent his aid to the formation of the 
 East Lothian Bible Society, was appointed depositary, 
 and continued in the office till 1831. The East 
 Lothian Society for the Propagation of Christianity 
 was constituted a few years after the Bible Society, 
 and he was all his life a zealous director, Mr Hunter 
 had long the principal management of its transactions, 
 but after his death in 1836 they devolved on his 
 friend ; who, within two weeks of his own decease, 
 drew up and directed the publication of the last 
 report. He likewise made unwearied exertions in 
 behalf of Slavery-abolition and Slave-emancipation in 
 the town and county, calling public meetings, getting 
 up petitions, and circulating information, as opportu- 
 nity afforded. He was also instrumental in the origina- 
 tion of the Haddington School of Arts, over which he 
 presided several years. Like many so-called Schools 
 of the same kind, it soon fell into inanition, and 
 ended in death beginning at the brain. 
 
 It may be proper to notice too that, while always 
 ready for every more public work of sacred and secular 
 goodwill within his reach, he was by no means negli- 
 gent of the duties that attached to him (for example) 
 as a private member and manager of his late father's 
 
78 MANAGERS 
 
 congregation. The function of the managerial board 
 in a dissenting Presbyterian congregation is simply 
 the care of its secular affairs. In his managerial 
 capacity, then, he did all he could to promote the 
 comfort of his father's successors, and to animate the 
 rest of the board with the same liberality of spirit ; 
 while he emulously followed " such things as make for 
 peace," in all the temporalities of the Church. 
 
 He was more than once chosen to the eldership, 
 but never accepted the election. Although deeply 
 conscious of the solemn responsibility of tbe duties 
 of that sacred office, he shrank from neither that 
 responsibility nor the labours of the office in refusing 
 to comply with the repeated call of his brethren. He 
 refused because he could not comply with a good con- 
 science. When first elected, he proceeded to examine 
 the Confession and Formula with care, as every elder- 
 elect must do if he would be faithful to God, the 
 church, and himself. The results of this scrutiny are 
 given in the following curt extracts of letters addressed 
 to the Session : — " It is not in my power to answer 
 in the affirmative to the questions of the Formula, 
 without there being added such a qualifying clause 
 as — ' with such exceptions as I have notified to the 
 session.' " " In some parts of the Formula there are 
 expressions in which I cannot acquiesce." " There is 
 no reason to suppose that the Apostles, when they 
 
AND ELDERS-ELECT 79 
 
 ordained elders, required uniformity of sentiment in 
 such a multitude of particulars.'' " So far as I have 
 gone in examining the Confession, Catechisms, and 
 Form of Government, I very much admire (with a 
 few exceptions), the j)erspicuous, judicious, and 
 modest language of the compilers ; but I am sorry I 
 cannot extend the same remarks to our Formula. 
 My views of church government by Sessions, Presby- 
 teries, and Synods are that that system is exceedingly 
 wise and rational^ and that it is not contradicted by 
 the Scriptures ; and that presbyteries and synods 
 receive some countenance from the example of the 
 Apostles : but I am not prepared to use the strong- 
 language of the Third Question." That is, he was 
 not prepared to declare his solemn belief that " the 
 Presbyterial Form of Church Government is the only 
 form delivered and appointed by the Lord Jesus 
 Christ in His w^ord, to continue unalterable to the end 
 of the world," any more than to promise " never 
 directly or indirectly to endeavour the prejudice or 
 subversion of it, but to maintain, support, and defend 
 it in his station all the days of his life." 
 
 These scruples are recorded now, not to " endeavour 
 the prejudice or subversion" of the formulas of the 
 United or any other Presbyterian church ; but merely 
 as an illustration of the possibility of its insisting on 
 non-essentials to its own prejudice, and the exclusion 
 
80 OUR MANAGER 
 
 from its eldership of men who, by the very tender- 
 ness of conscience which compels them to decline ac- 
 ceptance of the office, are qualified to do it honour. 
 It has in justice to be added here, one cannot but be 
 pleased to think, that the United Secession Church 
 relaxed the stringency and self-assertion of their for- 
 mularies not many years after our u on- conformist's 
 congregational protest ; aDd certainly the whole ten- 
 dency of the counsels of that United Presbyterian 
 body, which has come of its union with the Relievers, 
 is towards more liberal constructions. 
 
 All this about repeated calls received to the elder- 
 ship (when they did not call such young men to that 
 venerable office as they do now) will be reminding 
 the reader that the little Proj)het of the Old Manse, 
 the constructor of the air-pump with a wooden floor, 
 the manly though ever-ailing jDrojector, and the suc- 
 cessful experimentalist of the ItineratiDg Libraries, 
 is no longer young ; and, truth to tell, he was old 
 before his time, owing to weakly health, ceaseless 
 working, and a consuming kind of spirit. He had 
 been born at the seventh month to begin with, un- 
 fortunate on the very threshold of life ; and although 
 he appeared (to the unscientific eye of friends and 
 lovers) to have surmounted it quite, the fact did cer- 
 tainly tell on him through life. Parents and friends 
 
IN RIPE AGE 81 
 
 continually do mistake the seeming vigom's of the 
 athletic-strumous temperament (ruddy complexion, 
 plumpness, mere muscular strength, resistance to or- 
 dinary morbific causes) for the signs of true health. 
 But manhood comes, some great disease invades, and 
 the unfortunate is laid low — if not in death, yet usu- 
 ally for life. This is the lot of thousands ; and none 
 know the miseries and the temptations of the delicate 
 man but himself. It was the lot of him whose Life is 
 now engaging our attention for a little. He never 
 truly recovered from the deadly shock of that first 
 great illness immediately after his marriage. He 
 enjoyed life dearly, indeed ; and, blessed be the God 
 of compensation, a large proportion of his peculiar 
 enjoyments (and they were peculiar, as well as deep- 
 drawn) arose out of the ver}^ circumstance of his 
 broken body : but independently of sundry attacks of 
 rheumatic fever (enough for any one life), the vestiges 
 of his chest-disease attended him all the rest of his 
 '' few and evil days " — or rather, as it has been finely 
 put, " evil and few," evil and therefore happily few. 
 He was always more or less a sufferer, were it only 
 from habitual cough and sputa. Yet his children 
 and their numerous cousins (all of whom, strange to 
 say, were ever welcome to him) remember him as 
 the most placid and kindly of fathers and uncles. 
 His benevolence; reverence, and aptitude to teach 
 
82 UNCLE AND NEPHEW 
 
 made liim fond of the young and them of him. He 
 was always teaching them ; in the workshop, in the 
 nursery, at table, in the garden, wheresoever and 
 whensoever he was with them. Even when he had 
 to punish, he did all he could to teach them. One of 
 his nephews, who had more occasion perhaps than any 
 other to be under his roof, remembers having once 
 been caught in the fact of some high misdemeanour, 
 in company with one of the children of the house. 
 The offence demanded the utmost rigour of law, and 
 off they were walked to a j^rivate place for punish- 
 ment. Having prayed aloud over them (as was his 
 wont) the poor father thrashed his own boy in the 
 orthodox fashion of the day, happily not yet alto- 
 gether obsolete ; and then explained to the other cri- 
 minal, how he dared not flog him because he was not 
 his son, but taking one of the lad's hands he smote 
 it slightly by way of sign and seal. " Ah," says the 
 wayward boy now grown a sorrowful middle-aged 
 man, '• that symbolical castigation was certainly the 
 most painful, and probably the most profitable I ever 
 received." One can well believe it : — but the uncle of 
 this affectionate nephew was no flogger ; only too 
 prone, on the contrary, to trust the efficacy of prayers 
 and admonitions ; and the bared extremity of pun- 
 ishment was reserved for the capital crimes and 
 nameless enormities of boyhood. 
 
THE uncle's dress 83 
 
 As for his external appearance after the birth of 
 the Hbrary scheme in '17, he had laid aside the ordi- 
 nary dress of a layman of his day and condition long 
 before the period I can recollect him from. And it 
 was high time, one may readily conjectnre : for Mrs 
 Brown happened to be at the seaside when his last 
 coloured coat and metal buttons came home ; and 
 away walked the absentee to church, as it seems, the 
 three or four back -buttons still duly wraj)ped in 
 paper. He now dressed habitually in a black broad- 
 brim, white neckerchief, and blacks with gaiters ; 
 his black grey-growing hair having been duly turned 
 and frizzed every morning after breakfast : and the 
 industrious townsman really looked more like a 
 somewhat formal minister than either a manager 
 or a provost, especially w^hen from home. It is 
 curious, almost contradictory to think of so altoge- 
 ther simple a being, as attired with even so slight an 
 approach to formality as this. He had been married 
 in top-boots, small clothes, shining vest, and one 
 knows not what manner of head-piece ! The parson- 
 style was better than that, because more in keeping ; 
 inasmuch as, though absolutely devoid of the profes - 
 sional clerical spirit, it was impossible to separate the 
 idea of religion from the man. So inwoven was it 
 with his character by birth, habit, and conviction, 
 
84 INWARD NATURE 
 
 that it was his secoDcl nature to a rare degree ; and 
 all who knew him well had read at least one living 
 epistle in their day. To love him was a lesson in 
 piety. 
 
 Nor could he ever himself learn to separate be- 
 tween religion and active life. The interior wish of 
 his heart was to effect religious good by his ever- 
 moving book-cases. It was by their instrumentality 
 that he hoped to do his (main) share of the preaching 
 work of Christianity, and at least turn some to right- 
 eousness ; and his brother John of Whitburn* used to 
 aver that, though not a minister, he had done as 
 much good in the world as any of them. There 
 can be no doubt, it appears, that the libraries w^ere 
 occasionally very useful in this way ; although it is 
 
 * In his day kindly known in Scotland within and beyond the 
 bonnds of his denomination, but to be better known now (at least 
 by name) as the father of John Brown, D.D., the learned Pro- 
 fessor of Exegetical Theology in the United Presbyterian Church, 
 whose jubilee in the ministry was lately celebrated at Edinburgh. 
 The kindly old man was among the last, if not the last of Scottish 
 preachers occasionally to chant his sermons, and especially his 
 communion-servdces, to a lilt in the minor key, full of pathos and 
 unction. The relations of this intoning or chant to the religious 
 sentiment on one hand, and to cant on the other, were matter of 
 much scientific interest, if rightly gone into. The tendency to it 
 is co-extensive with that sentiment, and proportionate to its depth 
 according to some law. The devout soul certainly falls a-singing 
 when deeply enough moved, and that how unmusical soever its 
 bodily organisation may be : but this is no place for such a dis- 
 cussion. But the auld Scottish sermon and communion chant was 
 sweet ; and the new generations can never understand its power. 
 
AND ASPIRATIONS 85 
 
 in the secular education of the people that the plan 
 is most likely to be of great service, for they must be 
 supported by the people, and the people must choose 
 their own books. There was one instance of their 
 spiritual utility, which may be recorded without irre- 
 levancy, though it is quite out of the sphere of an 
 institution for the working-classes. Robert Vetch 
 of Caponflat, Esquire, whose modest squirearchy 
 marches with the burgh, had lived a gay and miscel- 
 laneous life, broken in upon by fitful moods of senti- 
 mental thoughtfulness. The time came rather pre- 
 maturely when he could neither hunt nor make 
 merry, and among other things he took to reading 
 from the paying division of the itinerants, described 
 above as stationed two preliminary years at Hadding- 
 ton to help in getting up funds. He trusted the 
 manager a good deal to choose his books for him ; 
 and the old gentleman always traced an entire 
 change of view and feeling, in regard to the desti- 
 nation of man and his own everlasting fortunes, 
 to a particular book sent him through this chan- 
 nel, which he read and read again. Being a sad 
 sufferer for many years, the intercourse that sprang 
 from this incident was largely carried on by letters ; 
 and he always addressed Mr Brown, though much 
 his junior, as his beloved father. My hereditary 
 friend Colonel Vetch gives me to understand that, 
 
86 HIS SECOND NATURE 
 
 consentaneously with this Haddington movement in 
 his father's mind, there came a series of congenial 
 letters upon him from India at this time. They were 
 from a son who had ostensibly gone to serve the 
 Company as a soldier, but really (one would say) to 
 become the disciple, if not the convertite of Bishop 
 Corrie. So strangely are the warp and the woof of 
 that still mysterious Life, which man partly weaves for 
 himself and partly has woven for him, brought toge- 
 ther in the counsels of Heaven and on the face of the 
 earth ! Perhaps it should be noticed here that this 
 Robert Vetch had been so intimate, at one period of 
 early youth, with the lad that was blown up at John 
 Croumbie's that it was solely owing to an attack of 
 illness that day that he was not with him in the 
 cellar in the evening ; — such were then the amenities 
 and freedom of life in a country-town. His mother, 
 who had kept him at home whether he would or no, 
 always joined him in avowing this fact. 
 
 Yes, the religious or spiritual element was the pre- 
 ponderating principle in the Second .Nature of Samuel 
 Brown, during much the greater part of his busy 
 career. To write about him, even to speak of him 
 aright, was to bring religion into view ; nay, it was 
 almost to introduce theology, for he was typical of a 
 considerable class of laymen belono-iuo- to his time 
 
DISCUSSED IN EXTRACT 87 
 
 and condition. This was doubtless the constraining 
 reason why a writer who knew him well, in attempt- 
 ing to characterise that class, ventured to draw a 
 Uteral portrait of him under the professed fiction of 
 being his son, the class being psychologically the 
 fathers of the newer generation of thinkers and livers. 
 Dr Chalmers pronounced that portrait, taking it 
 literally, to be true to the life. " It's the very man," 
 said he one morning to a friend of mine. These cir- 
 cumstances and such a verdict seem to warrant its 
 reproduction here, — with the permission of the author. 
 '•' Well ! you must know," says this writer, unfor- 
 tunately as quaint as he is out-spoken, " you must 
 know that Christopher Analysis, my reverend father, 
 was essentially a man of faith, but was not aware of it. 
 I would describe him as a thin, dark, yearning man, 
 who worked hard and humbly all his days in the 
 ' service of Christ,' and was sustained under the 
 load of his labours by the incessant pulse of a 
 strong heart of faith, without ever knowing he had 
 such a heart at all : — like an old Hebrew man of God 
 in this respect. There was this essential distinction 
 between the Abrahamic kind of faith and his how- 
 ever : both unconscious, the former was quite unac- 
 companied by anything like analysis, as we have seen 
 and admired already;* while the latter was absolutely 
 * See Lai) Sermon, No. I. 
 
88 ITS INTELLECTUAL AND 
 
 hidden from its possessor, though not from Him who 
 ' seeth in secret/ by the overgrowth of modern science. 
 Standing before the altar, he loved to pursue the 
 planets in their invisible pathways round the sun ; 
 to track the flowing blood of life, from heart to heart 
 again, through the myriad smooth channels and 
 emunctories of the circulation in his own surpassing 
 frame ; and thence to think that he inferred the ex- 
 istence and attributes of a God, to the great corrobo- 
 ration of the truth of Revelation. I remember how 
 he would lead me away, yet a child, to some expanse 
 of seaside sand, when the tide had ebbed ; draw a 
 three-feet sun with his staff, put on all the planets, 
 satellites, and comets, at their right distances, and of 
 their proportional sizes ; trace their manifold inter- 
 weaving orbits ; and then, with glistening eye now 
 upturned to the blazing sun on high, and now bent 
 down on the radiated sand at our feet, set them all 
 a-swimming in their appointed courses among the 
 blue ether of Heaven : — and bid me conclude that 
 such stupendous mechanism and exquisite design 
 implied Divinity. Then those big, tortuous, and 
 purpled veins on the back of his aged hand, how 
 many a lesson about the Great Designer did he read 
 from them, blessed characters that they were, as I sat 
 upon his knee, with the clustering group of sisters 
 and brothers about us, when the Sabbath-days came 
 
REPRESENTATIVE FORM 89 
 
 round ! Our orreries upon the beach were swept 
 away, ahnost as soon as they were made ; and the 
 substance of the distended blood-vessels, which used 
 to be our diagrams of physiology, has long ago gone 
 down dust to dust, melted away into the common 
 ocean of organific matter, and sprung up anew in, 
 God only knows how many, beautiful forms of life ; 
 but there shall cease to be any unity in my succes- 
 sive days, when I forget those paternal instructions, 
 Heaven forbid it ! for what can we be without sim- 
 plicity of progress, from year to year, but suicidal 
 rebels against the deepest and widest of the laws of 
 the very world in which we have been appointed to 
 dwell ? 
 
 " The truth is that the beauty and magnificence of 
 the mere external machinery of the universej and the 
 power of the intellectual instrumentality by which 
 these have been expounded with such signal success 
 in our centuries, lay too heavy on my honoured 
 father's mind ; and that combined with his immov- 
 able faith in Christianity to produce a character, 
 which is very nearly universal among the religious 
 men of the present day in Britain. For example, he 
 thought that he believed the word, and consequently 
 the divinity, of the Christ (or Anointed One), because 
 the man Jesus had given irresistible ' evidence,' in 
 His miracles, of the divinity of His mission ; and that 
 
90 REPRESENTATIVE BELIEF 
 
 the proof accumulated to infinitude by the addition 
 of the ' evidence ' of prophec}^, the ' evidence ' of the 
 general fitness of the gospel of peace to the con- 
 stitution of man, and the like. Accordingly his con- 
 ception of the mysteries projDcr, such as the Holy 
 Trinity, was that they resemble the solar system 
 before the rise of Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton ; 
 and that they may all become comprehensible in 
 God's own good time, if not on earth, at least in 
 heaven. I say he thought that such was the foun- 
 dation of his belief, or rather perhaps that such might 
 be the foundation of a right Christian belief to others ; 
 for after all, this was only his scientific statement of 
 the theorem of Christianity, which is a very different 
 thing, for every man, from the reality of the Chris- 
 tian life. Abraham's religion was that of unconscious 
 faith without any analysis, and necessarily assumed 
 no spoken form ; but could neither be heard nor seen, 
 being his very self. My father's was the product of 
 unconscious faith and conscious analysis, and it has 
 been that of most reflective pious Britons since the 
 philosophy of Locke was infused into our theology." 
 
 Were it not beyond the province of the writer to 
 criticise, something might have been put in here 
 without disadvantage. Sufiice it that such were the 
 outer man and manners, and that such was also some- 
 
PRIVATE HOSPITALITY 91 
 
 thing of the interior make, of the Haddington phi- 
 lanthropist, as Chalmers called him, during the latter 
 half of his existence. Unmusical, unimaginative, yet 
 genial as music and hospitable as the imagination, 
 not only was the old man's heart (for old he was 
 before his time) open as day to melting charity ; but 
 open were his house and his heart too to all good 
 men, especially if they came from afar, where they 
 had been labouring in the common cause. Many a 
 missionary and minister (of every evangelical deno- 
 mination and of every grade of distinction) sat at 
 this good man's feasts and slept under his roof-tree, 
 particularly at the local anniversaries corresponding 
 with the May meetings of London ; yet the most 
 memorable (as they were the dearest) social seasons 
 of that low-ceiled, wooden-panelled, capacious old din- 
 ing-room, were furnished by the occasion of his bro- 
 thers' happy visits. They were all ministers except 
 David.^ 
 
 The comings and goings of Ebenezer above all (and 
 that is saying much) were little less than angel- 
 visits. The compass and pathos of his voice were 
 
 * This brother was the Benjamin of the family, in virtue of his 
 juniority, as well as his greater beauty of countenance and slen- 
 derness of person : — well known in Edinburgh (for but a few 
 years, alas) as a publisher ; and also as editing, and frequently 
 writing with much elegance in the Christian Gleaner. 
 
92 THE BLESSED SCOTCHMAN 
 
 famous and unmatchable throiigliout Scotland in the 
 pulpit ; but its tenderness in the family circle was a 
 new kind of music. "I have heard him speak far above 
 singing." Then the things he spoke were literally 
 always pure, lovely, of good report, holy, and often 
 lofty. One particular Sabbath evening comes to 
 mind with all its petty world of detail. He was 
 supping on rice-milk and a dash of sherry, after 
 a laborious day of prayer and preaching in his 
 father's church. It was in that pulpit he had 
 first opened his mouth, while yet a youth : — "Ay," 
 said his father, " John and I try to preach, but Eben 
 can preach." But there he sat now, — an aged man, 
 wearied with the day's work, his wig laid aside, night- 
 cap donned, knee-buckles undone, and his feet thrust 
 into slippers. He had been in town with some preach- 
 ing and conference deputation from Scotland or other. 
 (The crowds of Londoners who heard him called him 
 the Blessed Scotchman on this occasion, they say.) 
 Many a sweet incident of his visit he told us. Among 
 other things, he described his experience on the occa- 
 sion of an evening sermon he had preached before a 
 vast assembly (as it seemed to the minister of the 
 little town of Inverkeithing) in Rowland Hill's 
 chapel ; the reputed ministers and public men he 
 had seen m the ante-room or vestry, the vast chapel 
 itself, the bright lights, the crowding audience, the 
 
AND STORY OF ABEL 93 
 
 text and sermon, his excitement, his self-oblivion, 
 his sitting down solemnised and also exhausted to 
 the last degree — when the pealing organ (which he 
 had quite forgotten) struck up an anthem in the key 
 of his discourse. " And 0," said he in one of his 
 most charming tones, as we listened in silence to his 
 simple story, " And 0, I thought I was in heaven ! " 
 Both he and his full brother, the minister of Whit- 
 burn, excelled in anecdote ; and there is no wonder 
 that their society kindled even their somewhat inar- 
 ticulate half-brother into story. But he had only a few 
 anecdotes that he could tell with anything like effect. 
 One was his favourite little story : and he told it 
 hundreds of times, to his children and their cousins, 
 and even to his older brothers ; none of whom ever 
 tired of it, for his sake, if not for its own. His 
 mother was the voucher for its authenticity. When 
 alone he would tell it somewhat after this wise, as if 
 even the young one on the knee could always be taken 
 in by the surprise intended for us at the close. 
 " There w^ere once two herd-boys on the same hill- 
 sides in Perthshire. One was good, like Abel ; and 
 the other wicked, like Cain. One evening they had 
 to come dow^n a steep place together, where there w^as 
 only one narrow bit of roadway ; and this Perthshire 
 Cain had shoes on, but poor Abel had none. 
 ' Now's the time for fun,' thought wicked Cain ; 
 
94 A MILD ANSWER 
 
 and he got before, and strewed thorny whins and 
 things before the naked feet of his brother-herd. 
 And what did Abel do 1 Why, he said, ^ Eh, man ! 
 I would no' do that to you.' And Abel grew a 
 learned man ; and his name was John Brown, and he 
 was my father, and he was your own grandfather, 
 children." Such was his ftivourite story about his 
 father, and the fact is an anecdote characteristic of 
 himself; for though he revered his father's memory 
 to the border of idolatry, and bred his family in an 
 excess of veneration for the same, yet it was always 
 the moral excellences, rather than the intellectual 
 eminence, of the Divine that he dwelt upon. When 
 he told it before grown people, such as Uncle Eben 
 on the Sunday evening just described, he did it with 
 less art ; but the glistening of his happy eye was 
 ever the same as he proceeded, saying " Eh, man ! I 
 would no' do that to you." 
 
BURGH POLITICS 95 
 
 IX. 
 
 There is an aspect under which our Subject has not 
 yet been considered ; but it cannot well be omitted, 
 for it is one which every man presents in these days, 
 and this public-spirited citizen not less than his neigh- 
 bours. In a so-called constitutional country like this, 
 which thinks itself self-governing (and really is so in 
 some degi'ee) every man has his political opinions, get 
 them how he may. As might easily be inferred from 
 the analytical turn of his intellect and his sanguine 
 character, Mr Brown was all along decidedly liberal 
 (as it has grown customary to say) in his judgment 
 of the political questions of the times. He was what 
 used to be called a stanch reformer, not a radical. 
 Too fond of experiment, too sensitive of fault, and too 
 eager for improvement, to be a conservative in either 
 State or Churcli, he was on the other hand too timid 
 to make a good republican, friend of the people, radical, 
 or anything of that sort. In short, he was just a kind 
 of whig of the Edinburgh school, from first to last. 
 He had never taken any active part in the manage- 
 ment of the affairs of his own burgh, however ; but 
 such was the public esteem in which he was held that, 
 
96 THE PKOYOST 
 
 in that memorable year of 1 833, immediately after the 
 passing of the Reform Bill, he was at once elected to 
 the ProYOstship, without having passed through any of 
 the intermediate offices. The day of election through- 
 out the Scotch burghs was a Friday, the hour noon ; 
 but, owing to the great weekly corn-market being 
 held there soon after noon, the process began at 10 a.m. 
 at Haddington, so that he was actually the first Reform 
 Magistrate of Scotland in point of historic time ! 
 
 It was undoubtedly a disadvantage not to have 
 served any apprenticeship to civic ride, before his ele- 
 vation to the highest seat in the council- chamber ; 
 but he had always cherished a settled aversion to the 
 festive and jobbing propensities of the old councils. 
 Like many sincere reformers he did hope that now 
 things would be better ; and having accepted office 
 with hesitation, he conscientiously performed the 
 duties of his new position, accountably to God as well 
 as to man. It will be universally allowed now^ that 
 he played his part witli much credit to himself, and 
 some little benefit to his constituents. The new 
 Provost immediately economised the funds of the 
 burgh by abolishing many unnecessary expenditures, 
 and attempted the introduction of several improve- 
 ments, especially in connection with the subject of 
 education j but, having been met at every turn by 
 strenuous opposition, and having received only a 
 
HIS BURGIl-KEPORTS i)7 
 
 timid and qualified support from his own party, he 
 carried comparatively few of his designs into execu- 
 tion. 
 
 Finding himself foiled at the council-table, he 
 addressed several pamphlets to his townsmen ; and 
 in fact he made a point of annually presenting the 
 constituency with a printed report of their expendi- 
 ture, accompanied by a statement both of what had 
 been done, and of what had been left undone, during 
 the preceding year, — being of opinion that every 
 burgh has a right to expect such an account at the 
 hands of its magistrates. His first Burgh-report 
 was reprinted in London, as a model on the small 
 scale, by the committee of a society which had been 
 formed about that time by certain apparently influen- 
 tial citizens, for the purpose of effecting City Reform. 
 
 If ill-drained Haddington is not supplied with water 
 from the Lang-Cram above the upper mills upon the 
 Tyne, if the Burgh-schools have sunk into undeserved 
 neglect, &:c. &c., it is no fault of her first reform - 
 provost ; — although it might possibly be difficult to 
 find and point out the benefits accruing to the dear 
 old town from that grand promissory-note, commonly 
 called the Reform Bill. It were mere idleness to 
 dwell at greater length on the political whereabouts 
 of the ancient burgh, even with the help of Wishart's 
 famous prediction that Babes should rule over her. 
 
98 SIC TRANSIT 
 
 Suffice it that, when Sebastopol is taken, she drinks 
 to it ; when a treaty of peace with Russia is signed 
 at Paris, she drinks again ; and then asks Kossuth 
 to deUver a harangue against Rome, Vienna, Peters- 
 burg, and London, all round ; but finds, for her 
 example, that the eloquent Magyar can only reverse 
 the witty distich of Coleridge — 
 
 " Many like Fox can game, like Pitt can drink, 
 But few like Fox can speak, like Pitt can think." 
 
 When Provost Brown retired from the chief 
 magistracy, at the expiry of the ordinary term, he 
 published an address to the townsfolk and electors ; 
 stating clearly the changes his colleagues and he had 
 effected, the proposals for other improvements he had 
 failed to carry, and certain suggestions for future re- 
 formation which he begged to leave with the jDublic 
 at large. Nor did he now withdraw from all the 
 occupations he had engaged in while in office. 
 Amongst others, besides remaining in the Council as 
 Dean of Guild, he continued the practice which he 
 had resumed when first elected, namely that of in- 
 structing the county prisoners on the Sabbath even- 
 ings. It was at one of these jail-meetings, in the 
 succeeding January, that he was seized with In- 
 fluenza ; which overbore him so raj^idly that, by the 
 
GLORIA MUNDI 99 
 
 end of the following week, he seemed to be once more 
 near his end. Again he was prayed for in public as be- 
 ing at the A'ery close of life. Sunk as he was, however, 
 he did not apprehend such imj)ending danger him- 
 self ; and one day he whispered — " I see you all think 
 I am dying, but I am greatly mistaken if I have not 
 still much to suffer." Nor did he shrink from the 
 anticipated endurance of suffering ; for when asked 
 (as anxious Scottish friends will ask) if Christ were 
 precious even then, he fervently responded — " Yes, He 
 has long been so." Yes, Christ and all that was as- 
 sociated, nay, identified with that holy name in his 
 imagination, heart, and conscience, had long been pre- 
 cious : — else it had been no time this to ask such a 
 question. 
 
100 THE projector's 
 
 X. 
 
 Agreeably to his own impression, he soon gave 
 signs of temporary renewal : but the old chest-affec- 
 tion of his youth had been revived in such a harass- 
 ing, persevering form as promised only a retarded re- 
 covery at the best ; while it threatened the slow ex- 
 tinction of life, on the other hand, by a lengthened 
 and noisome process of disorganisation. He long lay 
 on a weary bed, in a state of extreme helplessness, 
 exhausted by incessant cough, tossed by the fever of 
 irritation. Meanwhile he bowed his head to it all 
 with singular meekness and fortitude ; and he would 
 often quote, with an air which bespoke the satisfying 
 sweetness of the sentiment, a death-bed saying of the 
 venerable Simeon of Cambridge — " All is ordered by 
 infinite wisdom and infinite love, and that's enough 
 for me." 
 
 In a few months, however, he was actually able to 
 move about a little ; and in the course of two long 
 years of excessive languor, chequered by the usual 
 fluctuations of amendment and relapse, he really im- 
 proved to such a degree that, by the autumn of 1838, 
 he had returned to many of his former engagements. 
 
LONG LATTER END 101 
 
 This partial recovery did not last. In the course of 
 November he fell back considerably, and the lost way 
 was never regained. The winter was spent in almost 
 entire confinement to the house ; the consequent in- 
 action of which was, as it had been all along, his 
 severest trial. " A little more strength for a little 
 more work" — was all he prayed for ; it was denied, 
 and he was content. In the mean time his friends, 
 trusting all too fondly to the recollection of his re- 
 peated restorations to them in circumstances ap- 
 parently as desperate, willingly indulged the hope 
 that he would revive with the following spring. 
 These expectations were never realised ; and his 
 malady steadily advanced by almost imperceptible 
 degrees, till it was evident, about April, that the 
 ceaseless irritation which preyed on his enfeebled 
 frame had at last induced a state of hectic fever, 
 that would soon wear him away. He suspected 
 as much himself : and he engaged in setting his 
 house in order with both anxiety and care, — a some- 
 what complicated duty, which he was enabled to do 
 to a remarkable degree ; although, for some months, 
 he could not write but by dictation. 
 
 Patience surely had its perfect work in him ; and 
 the gentle, uncomplaining resignation, with which he 
 bore the load of his accumulated distresses, will never 
 be forgotten by those who were by as he passed 
 
102 PRESENCE OF MIND 
 
 through " the valley and shadow " of this protracted 
 death. \Yilling himself " to depart and be with 
 Christ," as he expressed it from St Paul, the sanctity 
 of his love to others, and his concern for their earthly 
 as well as their everlasting happiness, shone most 
 sweetly through the shades of the night, that was now 
 quickly closing round him and us : and the radiance 
 of those blessed affections, like the moon and stars of 
 the night of nature, lightened and even beautified 
 the gloom of its approach, sad though the twilight 
 was. A beloved young friend (who eventually passed 
 away to her rest before him) in whom he owned a 
 paternal interest, lay abed at Edinburgh in as hope- 
 less a condition as himself ; and the father-like ear- 
 nestness with which, calmly biding his own time, he 
 nightly pled at the family-altar for her recovery, was 
 surpassed only by the brief but holy fervour with 
 which, feeling the bonds of life loosen within him, he 
 besought the God of his fathers to make him '• the 
 happy father of a happy family in heaven." 
 
 His sufferings now drew near an end ; and as the 
 summer advanced, he sank so rapidly that, by the 
 first week of July, he could not be raised from bed. 
 He now felt assured that his liberation was at hand ; 
 and spoke to one member of the family about certain 
 things he wished attended to, if possible, soon after 
 he should be gone ; to another, of the arrangements 
 
,EQUAM MEMENTO 103 
 
 of his funeral. Death seemed to have no sting for 
 him, nor could the grave boast of victory over one 
 who met the " king of terror " with such equanimity. 
 Aequam memento was the secular, almost sportive 
 lullaby with which his toil worn father amused and 
 soothed the little Prophet of an evening long ago ; 
 and now, in the tormented evening of life, he pos- 
 sessed his soul in patience, sustained by a faith as far 
 above the noblest heathen morality, as the peace of 
 God passes all understanding and transcends the 
 Muse. 
 
 On the evening of the same day, when reminded 
 that he had often been worse when he had not 
 despaired of life, he said he "now felt everything 
 within breaking up." " I trust, then, that you find 
 Christ to be altogether precious ? " — again was urged 
 upon him. Again he of course replied — " I have never 
 experienced the high excitements in religion which 
 some seem to have enjoyed ; but I have no fears." 
 After this he fell into a profound lethargy, in which 
 he was sensible only of oppressive exhaustion, dis- 
 turbed by fits of miserable restlessness and cough. 
 
 The next night his family was called to witness 
 his departure. It was whispered in his ear by his 
 wife, May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be 
 with your spirit ! He opened his eyes and said 
 A men. Looking kindly round on his weeping house- 
 
104 THE SILENT FAREWELL 
 
 hold he added these good words, not without the 
 pauses of the dying — " I am sensible of what must be 
 your feelings, but I wish to leave you quietly : — 
 Christ has been precious to live with and precious to 
 live for : — when you come to die, you will find Him 
 to be infinitely precious : — it has long been my ear- 
 nest desire to train you to His service on earth : — if 
 there be prayer in heaven, I will pray much for you 
 all." He now took an affectionate leave of such of his 
 family as were present, left messages of love for the 
 absent, and then relapsed into the torpor from which 
 the occasion had roused him for a time. 
 
 It was not, however, the will of God that he should 
 yet be delivered from the body of this death after 
 all. He longed to be gone. His wish was for a while 
 refused : — but let a veil be drawn over his last days, 
 peaceful (if also full of pain) though they were. Suf- 
 fice it that, having himg midway between life and 
 death a whole week after he had bidden adieu to 
 time, he expired at last on the morning of the 13th 
 of July, A.D. 1839, in the 61st year of his age. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 (a) The following extracts from Dr William Brown's 
 Pamphlet, Memoir Relative to Itinerating Libraries, 
 •will interest founders, especially as showing the honest 
 enthusiasm of the brothers anent the ultimate destina- 
 tion of the Scheme :— 
 
 " I. The primary feature of these libraries is theii* itinerating 
 character. * * * It is well known that stationary hbra- 
 ries in country places very commonly cease, after a few years, 
 to excite much interest, — that the fimds rapidly diminish, — 
 that the addition of new books which is made from time to 
 time becomes, in consequence of this, too small to inspire any 
 degree of curiosity,— and that most of the volumes lie undis- 
 turbed on the shelves, unread and uncalled for. To persons 
 acquainted with the issues from stationary libraries of a num- 
 ber of years standing, the following statement will appear al- 
 most incredible. The issues of new books at Haddington to 
 subscribers, have on an average of the last two yeare, been 
 nearly eight and a half times per annum for each volume : the 
 
106 DR William's 
 
 gratuitous issues at Haddington, Giflford, Salton, Aberlady, 
 North Berwick, Belhaven, and Spott have been seven times for 
 each volume ; and issues of the books of the whole establish- 
 ment (now amounting to upwards of 2000 volumes) have, so 
 far as reported, been five times for each volume, — or 10,000 
 issues of the whole. * * * Suchindeedhasbeen the interest 
 excited by the regular removal of the libraries, and the supply 
 of new divisions, that in several places, during the winter sea- 
 son, the whole of the books have been issued at once ; not a 
 volume has been left in the library. 
 
 " II. A second important feature of these libraries is their 
 cheapness. When the object is to supply not a single town or 
 village with a library, but a whole country or a whole king- 
 dom, cheaimess comes to be a primary desideratum. A single 
 library of fifty volumes, with book-case, catalogue, labels, ad- 
 vertisements and issuing-books, may be procured for from £10 
 to £12 ; but the cost will of course depend in a considerable 
 degree on the kind of books wanted, and whether they have 
 been recently published. Very good divisions may be selected 
 for from £8 to £10. Taking the medium of these rates, name- 
 ly £10, the following number of libraries might be established 
 for the sum stated : 
 
 1 for a village, . . £10 
 
 5 for a district of villages, . 50 
 
 50 for a county, . . 500 
 
 " Supposing the books in these libraries to be read on an aver- 
 age annually, in the proportion which has just been stated, 
 namely five times for each volume, — this in twenty years, the 
 period which a library is found to last, will amount to 100 
 issues for every volume, or 5000 issues for the whole of the 
 books in each library : and 250,000 issues for the whole of the 
 books in fifty libraries. 
 
PAMPHLET 107 
 
 •' III. It is an important characteristic of these Libraries that 
 there is in them a principle of Self-production. * * * 
 Originally all the libraries were entirely gratuitous ; a small 
 box was merely attached to each libi^ary, to afford the readers 
 an opportunity of giving any small donation they might think 
 proper ; but some years ago a plan was adopted of keeping new 
 books at Haddington for the use of all persons who gave a 
 small annual subscription, to the value of double the amount 
 of their whole contributions, and the plan was extended to 
 North Berwick and Dunbar. This arrangement has been ex- 
 tended with complete success. Previous to the adoption of 
 this meastu'e, the greatest number of annual subscribers did 
 not exceed eight; now they amount to 162. The following 
 statement will show that for several years past they have been 
 regularly on the increase. 
 
 1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1S2G 1827 1828 1829 
 8 64 61 54 99 110 135 145 162 
 
 " In consequence of there being stations for new books in 
 three different towns, it has been found practicable to furnish 
 the subscribers with a much greater number of recent publi- 
 cations, by means of a mutual exchange between these places, 
 than woTild have been pi'acticable had the plan been limited to 
 a single town. By the subscriptions too, the means are in part 
 furnished for providing new books for the following year. In 
 1829, the subscriptions and donations from these three places, 
 including an Agricultural branch, amounted to £39, 14s. 6d., 
 and the donations from gratuitous readers to £7, 12s. 3d., 
 making in all £47, 6s. 9d. 
 
 " Hitherto the books have been issued gratuitously from the 
 other libraries, but it is proposed in future, now that a spirit 
 of reading has been excited in the county, to issue the books 
 
108 DR tvilliam's 
 
 the first year that a division is in a place, at the rate of a penny 
 a volume ; but as a subscription, however small, might essen- 
 tially impede the success of the scheme, and as it is of immense 
 consequence to bring the books within the reach of the whole 
 population, particularly of the young, whom it is of peculiar 
 importance to form to habits of reading and reflection, they 
 Adll still continue to be issued gratuitously the second year. 
 By such a system, combined with the plan of lending out the 
 books when new to subscribers of 5s. — each division may, on 
 an average, be expected to produce the sum of 25s. a-year, 
 which, as the number of libraries increases, will prove the 
 fruitful parent of new libraries. 
 
 " If a British and Foreign Itinerating Library Society were 
 established in London, and were able to raise £5000 a-year for 
 the formation of such libraries, they might, within a moderate 
 period of time, cover the whole of Europe with such Institu- 
 tions, by getting up divisions of fifty volumes each, with book- 
 cases, &c., granting them on loan for 25s. a-year, which many 
 individuals would willingly pay, as they might more than reim- 
 burse themselves by lending out the books ; or by adopting 
 the plan which has just been suggested, a sum equal to this 
 would in most places be easily raised. To show the import- 
 ance of this scheme, it maybe useful to subjoin a tabular view 
 of the results in the course of fifty years." * 
 
 It is unnecessary to follow the Doctor into this elabo- 
 rate Tabular View, in case (as he ingenuously suggests 
 for his own part) " it might be supposed we got into the 
 regions of romance." The table extends to fifty years, 
 and (the author adds) " it is scarcely necessary, indeed, 
 
 * By the experiment which has been made in East Lothian, it lias been 
 found, as already stated, that a library will last about twenty years. 
 
PAMPHLET 109 
 
 to proceed further. Taking the population of our globe 
 at six hundred millions, we have already, in fifty years, 
 provided libraries for every six hundred of the inha- 
 bitants." And then follow other glowing speculations, 
 founded on other premises, and " matter of simple calcu- 
 lation " — so full of life and hope is a new thought while 
 yet young! This extract from p. 12 is calculated to be 
 more useful : — 
 
 ''If, however, it should be found impracticable to establish a 
 society with an income of £5000 a-year, the plan maybe carried 
 on, in consequence of this principle of self-production, in a 
 county or particular district, by a society or an individual who 
 is able to raise, say £50 annually, for this purpose. By the 
 regular application of such a sum yearly to this object, a 
 w^hole county, or even a still larger district, would, in the 
 course of no long period, be completely covered with libraries. 
 As it may be of consequence to exhibit the working of the 
 plan on a limited scale, with the view of inducing a society or 
 an individual to make the experiment in their own vicinity, we 
 shall subjoin a table exhibiting the results for twenty-five 
 
 Table 
 
no 
 
 MR HOLE S 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 New 
 
 Total 
 
 Years. 
 
 Annual 
 Contribu- 
 
 Revenue from 
 Libraries. 
 
 Total 
 Income. 
 
 
 Libraries 
 Esta- 
 
 Number 
 of 
 
 
 tion. 
 
 
 
 
 
 blished. 
 
 Libraries. 
 
 
 £ 
 
 £ s. 
 
 d. 
 
 £ s. 
 
 d. 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 50 
 
 
 
 
 50 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 5 
 
 2 
 
 50 
 
 6 5 
 
 
 
 56 5 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 10 
 
 3 
 
 50 
 
 12 10 
 
 
 
 62 10 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 16 
 
 4 
 
 50 
 
 20 
 
 
 
 70 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 23 
 
 5 
 
 50 
 
 28 15 
 
 
 
 78 15 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 31 
 
 6 
 
 50 
 
 38 15 
 
 
 
 88 15 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 40 
 
 7 
 
 50 
 
 50 
 
 
 
 100 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 50 
 
 8 
 
 50 
 
 62 10 
 
 
 
 112 10 
 
 
 
 11 
 
 61 
 
 9 
 
 50 
 
 76 5 
 
 
 
 126 5 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 74 
 
 10 
 
 50 
 
 92 10 
 
 
 
 142 10 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 88 
 
 11 
 
 50 
 
 110 
 
 
 
 160 
 
 
 
 16 
 
 104 
 
 19 
 
 50 
 
 130 
 
 
 
 180 
 
 
 
 18 
 
 122 
 
 13 
 
 50 
 
 152 10 
 
 
 
 202 10 
 
 
 
 21 
 
 143 
 
 14 
 
 50 
 
 178 15 
 
 
 
 228 15 
 
 
 
 22 
 
 165 
 
 15 
 
 50 
 
 206 5 
 
 
 
 256 5 
 
 
 
 26 
 
 191 
 
 16 
 
 50 
 
 238 15 
 
 
 
 288 15 
 
 
 
 29 
 
 220 
 
 17 
 
 50 
 
 275 
 
 
 
 325 
 
 
 
 32 
 
 252 
 
 18 
 
 50 
 
 315 
 
 
 
 365 
 
 
 
 37 
 
 289 
 
 19 
 
 50 
 
 361 5 
 
 
 
 411 5 
 
 
 
 41 
 
 330 
 
 20 
 
 50 
 
 412 10 
 
 
 
 462 10 
 
 
 
 46 
 
 376 
 
 21 
 
 50 
 
 470 
 
 
 
 520 
 
 
 
 52 
 
 423 
 
 22 
 
 50 
 
 528 15 
 
 
 
 578 15 
 
 
 
 58 
 
 476 
 
 23 
 
 50 
 
 593 15 
 
 
 
 643 15 
 
 
 
 65 
 
 535 
 
 24 
 
 50 
 
 666 5 
 
 
 
 716 5 
 
 
 
 71 
 
 599 
 
 25 
 
 50 
 
 745 
 
 
 
 795 
 
 
 
 80 
 
 671 
 
 
 1250 
 
 5771 5 
 
 
 
 7021 5 
 
 
 
 702 
 
 
 By means of these 702 libraries, there would be provided, at 
 the end of 25 years, a division of books for every 400 indivi- 
 duals in a population of 280,800. 
 
 (6.) The following is extracted from a letter by Mr 
 Hole of the Yorkshire Union of Institutes, dated Central 
 
LETTER 111 
 
 Committee Rooms, Leeds Mechanics' Institute, July 27, 
 1852 :— 
 
 " My object in these few observations is to propose a plan 
 which I think precisely attains the object to be aimed at, and 
 that is by means of an itinerating library, under the manage- 
 ment and control of the committee of the Yorkshire Union. 
 It may anticipate some of the objections to which all new pro- 
 posals are subjected, and render my meaning clearer, if I ex- 
 plain that such a plan is in successful operation in Cumber- 
 land. Nine villages are there united under the title of the 
 ' United Villages Perambulating Library.' It consists of 
 nearly 300 volumes, and has 400 members, each paying one 
 penny per month. The books are deposited at nine stations, 
 one in each village, under the care of a suitable person, and 
 every six weeks a paid messenger removes the books in boxes 
 provided for that purpose. All the stations are on a footing of 
 perfect equality as to priority in receiving the fresh books. At 
 first it was principally intended to benefit the younger portion 
 of the community, but its success slightly changed this 
 feature. 
 
 " From the Parliamentary Eeport on Public Libraries,* it 
 appeal's that the plan of itinerating libraries has prevailed exten- 
 sively in Scotland. It was introduced into the Highlands by 
 the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and into 
 Peeblesshire by the Free Church, owing to the success which 
 had attended it in East Lothian, where the plan has been in 
 operation twenty-five years. It was originated by Mr Samuel 
 Brown, of Haddington. In the latter district there were at 
 one time as many as fifty stations, at each of which fifty vol- 
 umes were deposited. The whole of the books were issued on 
 an average five times in the course of a year. Some of the 
 
 ♦ Evidence of Rev. John Croumbie Brown, p. 111. 
 
112 MR hole's letter 
 
 books were issued eighteen times, and some as many as thirty 
 times in two years. Very often there was not a single book 
 to be found in the libraries. The evidence as to the benefits 
 conferred by it was veiy favourable, and the witness stated 
 that the first Mechanics' Institution at Haddington and Dun- 
 bar originated out of the interest excited by those libraries. 
 The books were changed only every two years. And one 
 proof of the great importance of the tolerably frequent change 
 of books in such libraries is offered in the fact, that the cir- 
 culation always fell off in the second year, generally in the pro- 
 portion of one-third, and rose again with the introduction of 
 new books. Shopkeepers and schoolmasters were found to 
 make the most efi"ective librarians, from the facilities they 
 possessed of giving out the books. It was also stated that the 
 success of the plan mainly depended on the securing of zealous 
 librarians. As the librarians must have been the parties gene- 
 rally best cognisant of the utility of their labours, it is strong- 
 ly confirmative of the advantages, that no difficulty was foimd 
 in securing a sufficient number of persons willing to imdertake 
 the task without any remuneration, and simply as a means of 
 doing good. Much of the original success of the undertaking 
 seems to have been attributable to the energy of the founder 
 of the plan, the father of the witness. With the withdrawal 
 of his help, the library declined. Another cause is to be found 
 in the fact that no charge was made for the books for the space 
 of fourteen or fifteen years, and those who had the books gra- 
 tuitously, would, as is usual, consider it a hardship to be called 
 upon to pay. The plan, however, is in successful working in 
 about twenty divisions in the western district of East Lothian, 
 and the witness, after his long and extensive experience in 
 connection with its practical working, is as confident as ever 
 of the good results of the plan, and the practicability of a 
 much greater extension of it." 
 
yorkjsIIIre report 113 
 
 This from the Report of the Yorkshire Union, Arc, 
 for I800 seems to the purpose (pp. 10, 11) : — 
 
 " The next topic of importance is the Itinerating Village 
 Library. As far as it has yet been in operation, we think we 
 are warranted in anticipating that it will become an important 
 department of the future operations of the Union. The success 
 of the plan, however, depends much more upon the Local Lib- 
 rarians than upon the Central Committee. The Libraiy can 
 scarcely ever retain a place in any village where there is not 
 a person of some energy and personal influence, either as 
 Librarian, or at least taking an active part in its support. All 
 that the Central Committee offer is the loan of books, at the 
 cheapest possible rate, and the benefit of their experience when 
 it is asked for. The rest must be accomplished by the places 
 that I'eceive the books. The Village Libraiy is the adjunct of 
 the exertions of the clergyman, the schoolmaster, and of every 
 person labouring for the moral and intellectual progress of his 
 fellows. We regret to say that during the past year several 
 places have discontinued the Library, where there was a popu- 
 lation ample enough to have supported one of twice the extent, 
 and where, too, no Library existed. Other villages have closed 
 their connection with the Village Library on the very Scitisfac- 
 tory ground that they have been enabled to establish one of 
 their own. The present number of stations is 2'4 ; the total 
 number of books is 2100, divided into 42 sections, of which 
 17 sections are on hand." 
 
 The same Report contains valuable appendices 
 (A, B, C) concerning the Rules and working of the 
 Yorkshire Union and of the Castle Howard Libraries 
 (the latter under the propitious auspices of Lord Car- 
 lisle). The Union Report for I806 contains a still more 
 
114 MESSES DIXON AND FISH 
 
 satisfactory report of the Village Library by Mr Dixon, 
 the Librarian, as well of the Castle Howard United 
 Villages Itinerating Library, under the fostering care of 
 Ishmael Fish. A company of such men would soon do 
 this or any other good work, for a country or two, not 
 to say a county. 
 
 B 
 
 As this Memoir, so far as it is biographical, is in- 
 tended chiefly for relatives, and especially descendants 
 direct and lateral (while it is intended for strangers 
 chiefly in so far as it is taken up with libraries and 
 plans) this extract from the letter of a deceased son, 
 capable of such a judgment, pronouncing on the busi- 
 ness habits and work-a-day faculty of his father, will 
 interest those who delight in asking a speculator how 
 he managed his own affairs ! The writer was the 
 youngest member yet enrolled in the Manchester Cham- 
 ber of Commerce. 
 
 3Ianchester, 10th August 1846. 
 
 * * * I duly received yours of the 6th ciu'rent enclosing 
 my father's memoir. You ask me if I ever think of him. ? 
 Very often. His image is often before me. I daily wonder at 
 his character — uniting so much independence of thought with 
 so little assumption of superiority — so much decision of cha- 
 racter with so great a deference to the opinions of others. I 
 
A BUSINESS CHARACTER 115 
 
 cannot well tell you what I think of him. His self-denial and 
 his indefatigability in the furtherance of what he supposed the 
 welfare of others were veiy remarkable traits in a disposition 
 so much interested in his own pursuits, and so well gifted by 
 Nature for his own advancement in life. Since I came here I 
 have sometimes in my solitary walks imagined his arrival in 
 Manchester with the world all before him forty-five years ago. 
 With his diligent business-habits and fondness for chemical 
 inquiry he would naturally have taken to calico printing, at 
 which such enormous fortunes have been made. I believe 
 that long ere this he would have been among the richest men 
 in England. His business talents were certainly of a very high 
 order. You know the old letter-book that lies below your 
 desk in the shop. I have often read those letters of his with 
 great interest. They are so clear and decided, with no palaver 
 about them. Every one I have met in life has some humbug 
 about him or her. * * * 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH. 
 
(J) 
 
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