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 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 AN OUTLINE SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR 
 BY E. T. M'L. 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
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 CONTENTS. 
 
 DR. JOHN BROWN. An Outline by E. T. M'L. . . 5 
 
 KAB AND HIS FRIENDS 21 
 
 OUR DOGS 42 
 
 MORE OF " OUR DOGS " 68 
 
 PLEA FOR A DOG HOME 74 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF BLACK AND TAN * ... 78 
 
 MARJORIE FLEMING 89 
 
 QUEEN MARY'S CHILD-GARDEN 124 
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. Letter to John Cairns, D. D. . 130 
 
 DR CHALMERS 233 
 
 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER 268 
 
 " OH, I 'M WAT, WAT ! " 286 
 
 HER LAST HALF-CROWN ... . 296
 
 DK. JOHN BROWN. 
 
 AN OUTLINE BY E. T. M L. 
 
 WHEN a school-girl I was standing one afternoon 
 in the lobby at Arthur Lodge, talking to Jane Brown, 
 my newest school friend. No doubt we had much 
 that was important to say to one another, and took 
 small notice of what doors were opened or shut, or 
 what footsteps came near. I remember no approach- 
 ing sound, when suddenly my arm was firmly grasped 
 from behind, and " What wretch is this ? " was asked 
 in a quiet, distinctive tone of voice. 
 
 The words were sufficiently alarming, but I had 
 no sense of fear, for my upturned eyes looked into 
 a face that told of gentleness as truly as of penetra- 
 tion and fun, and I knew as if by instinct that this 
 was Jane's " Brother John," a doctor whom every- 
 body liked. There was no " Rab and his Friends " 
 as yet. I must have stood quite still, looking up at 
 him, and so making his acquaintance, for I know it 
 was Jane who answered his question, telling him who 
 I was and where I lived. " Ah ! " he said, " I know 
 her father ; he is a very good man, a great deal bet-
 
 6 DR. JOHN BROWN. 
 
 ter than . . . , in whom he believes." He asked me 
 if I was going into town, and hearing I was said, 
 " I '11 drive you in." He took no notice of me as we 
 walked down to the small side gate, and I was plunged 
 in thought at the idea of driving home in a doctor's 
 carriage. We soon reached said carriage, and my 
 foot was on the step, when again my arm was seized, 
 and this time, "Are you a Homeopathist ? " was de- 
 manded. I stoutly answered " Yes," for I thought 
 I must not sail or drive under false colors. " Indeed ! 
 they go outside," was his reply. This was too much 
 for me ; so, shaking myself free I said, " No, they 
 don't, they can walk." He smiled, looked me rap- 
 idly all over from head to foot, and then said in the 
 same quiet voice, " For that I '11 take you in " and 
 in I went. 
 
 He asked me a little about school, but did not talk 
 much, and I remember with a kind of awe, that I 
 saw him lean back and shut his eyes. I did not then 
 know how characteristic of him at times this attitude 
 was, but I felt relieved that no speaking was ex- 
 pected. He brought me home, came in and saw my 
 mother, and before he left had established a friendly 
 footing all around. And so began a friendship 
 for he allowed me to call it that the remembrance 
 of which is a possession forever. 
 
 Many years after, when one day he spoke of driv- 
 ing with him as if it were only a dull thing to do, I 
 told him that when he asked me I always came most 
 gladly, and that I looked upon it as " a means of
 
 DR. JOHN BROWN. 7 
 
 grace." He smiled, but shook his head rather sadly, 
 and I was afraid I had ventured too far. We did 
 not refer to it again, but weeks after he came up to 
 me in the dining-room at Rutland Street, and with- 
 out one introductory remark, said, " Means of grace 
 to-morrow at half-past two." 
 
 And means of grace it was then and always. I 
 remember that afternoon distinctly, and could write 
 down recollections of it. But what words can con- 
 vey any idea of the sense of pleasure that intercourse 
 with him always gave ? It brought intensifying of 
 life within and around one, and the feeling of be- 
 ing understood, of being over-estimated, and yet this 
 over-estimation only led to humility and aspiration. 
 His kindly insight seemed to fasten rather on what 
 might yet be, than what already was, and so led one 
 on to hope and strive. " I '11 try to be good," must 
 have been the unspoken resolve of many a heart, 
 after being with him, though no one more seldom 
 gave what is called distinctively " good advice," med- 
 ical excepted. 
 
 It was to Colinton House he was going that after- 
 noon. As we drove along, sometimes there were 
 long silences, then gleams of the veriest nonsense 
 and fun, and then perhaps some true words of far- 
 stretching meaning. The day was one of those in 
 late winter that break upon us suddenly without any 
 prelude, deluding us into believing that spring has 
 come, cheering, but saddening too, in their passing 
 brightness. As we neared the Pentlands he spoke of
 
 8 DR. JOHN BROWN. 
 
 how he knew them in every aspect, and specially no- 
 ticed the extreme clearness and stillness of the atmos- 
 phere, quoting those lines which he liked so much, 
 
 " Winter, slumbering in the open air, 
 Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring." 
 
 and ending with a sigh for " poor Coleridge, so won- 
 derful and so sad." After his visit to the house he 
 took me to the garden, where he had a quiet, droll 
 talk with the gardener, introducing me to him as the 
 Countess of something or other. The gardener took 
 the Countess's visit very quietly he seemed to un- 
 derstand the introduction. I remember the interview 
 ended abruptly by Dr. Brown pulling out the gar- 
 dener's watch instead of his own. Looking at it, he 
 replaced it carefully, and, without a word said, he 
 walked away. As we were leaving the garden he 
 stopped for a moment opposite a bed of violets, and 
 quoted the lines, 
 
 ' ' Violets dim, 
 But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes ; " 
 
 then, after a minute, " What a creature he was, be- 
 yond all words ! " 
 
 I think it was the same afternoon that, in driving 
 home, he spoke of the difficulty we had in recalling, 
 so vividly as to hear it once more, the voice of one 
 who is gone. He said, " You can see the face," 
 and, putting out his hand, " you can feel their touch, 
 but to hear the voice is to me most difficult of all." 
 Then, after a pause, he said, " For three months I
 
 DR. JOHN BROWN. 9 
 
 tried to hear her voice, and could not ; but at last it 
 came, one word brought it back." He was going 
 to say the word, and then he stopped and said, " No, 
 it might spoil it." I told him I could recall very 
 vividly the only time I spoke to Mrs. Brown. He 
 asked me to tell him about it, and I did. The next 
 day I met him out at dinner, and by rare good for- 
 tune sat next him. We had only been seated a min- 
 ute or two when he turned to me and said, " What 
 you told me about her yesterday has been like a sil- 
 ver thread running through the day." 
 
 At one time he drove to Colinton two or three 
 times a week, and knew each separate tree on the 
 road or stone in the wall, and on suddenly opening 
 his eyes could tell within a yard or two what part of 
 the road he had reached. For if it were true that he 
 often closed his eyes as if to shut out sad thoughts, 
 or, as in listening to music, to intensify the impres- 
 sion, it was also true that no keener observer ever 
 lived. Nothing escaped him, and to his sensitive 
 nature the merest passing incident on the street be- 
 came a source of joy or sorrow, while in the same way 
 his keen sense of humor had endless play. Once, 
 when driving, he suddenly stopped in the middle 
 of a sentence, and looked out eagerly at the back of 
 the carriage. " Is it some one you know ? " I asked. 
 " No," he said, " it 's a dog I don't know." Another 
 day, pointing out a man who was passing, I asked 
 him if he could tell me his name. He merely glanced 
 at him, and then said, " No, I never saw him before,
 
 10 DR. JOHN BROWN. 
 
 but I can tell you what he is a deposed Estab- 
 lished Church minister." Soon after I heard that 
 this was an exact description of the man. 
 
 He often used to say that he knew every one in 
 Edinburgh except a few new-comers, and to walk 
 Princes Street with him was to realize that this was 
 nearly a literal fact. How he rejoiced in the beauty 
 of Edinburgh ! " She is a glorious creature," he said 
 one day, as he looked toward the Castle rock, and 
 then along the beautiful, familiar street shining in 
 the intense, sudden brightness that follows a heavy 
 spring shower ; " her sole duty is to let herself be 
 seen." He generally drove, but when he walked it 
 was in leisurely fashion, as if not unwilling to be ar- 
 rested. To some he spoke for a moment, and, though 
 only for a moment, he seemed to send them on their 
 way rejoicing ; to others he nodded, to some he merely 
 gave a smile in passing, but in each case it was a dis- 
 tinctive recognition, and felt to be such. He did not 
 always raise his hat, and sometimes he did not even 
 touch it ; and when laughingly accused of this, he 
 would say, " My nods are on the principle that my 
 hat is chronically lifted, at least to all women, and 
 from that I proceed to something more friendly." 
 
 Once, on meeting a very ceremonious lady, his hat 
 was undoubtedly raised, and, when she had passed, 
 he said, " I would defy any man in creation to keep 
 his hat near his head at the approach of that Being." 
 He was anything but careless as to small matters of 
 ceremony, but then with him that ceased to be mere
 
 
 DR. JOHN BROWN. 11 
 
 ceremony, and represented something real. His in- 
 variable habit of going to the door with each visitor 
 sprang from the true kindliness of his nature. Often 
 the very spirit of exhilaration was thrown into his 
 parting smile, or into the witty saying, shot after the 
 retreating figure, compelling a turning round for a 
 last look exhilaration to his friend ; but any one 
 who knew him well felt sure that, as he gently closed 
 the door, the smile would fade, and be succeeded by 
 that look of meditative pensiveness, so characteristic 
 of him when not actually speaking or listening. He 
 often spoke of " unexpectedness " as having a charm, 
 and he had it himself in a very unusual degree. Any- 
 thing like genuine spontaneity he hailed with all 
 his heart. "Drive this lady to Muttonhole " it 
 was an address he often gave he said to a cabman, 
 late one evening. " Ay, Doctor, I '11 dae that," the 
 man answered, as he vigorously closed the door and 
 prepared to mount without waiting for further in- 
 structions, knowing well what doctor he had to deal 
 with. " You 're a capital fellow," Dr. Brown said ; 
 " what's your name ? " And doubtless there would 
 he a kindly recognition of the man ever after. 
 
 In going to see him, his friends never knew what 
 style of greeting was in store for them, for he had no 
 formal method ; each thing he said and did was an 
 exact reflection of the moment's mood, and so it was 
 a true expression of his character. That it would be 
 a hearty greeting, if he were well, they knew ; for 
 when able for it, he did enjoy the coming and going
 
 12 DR. JOHN BROWN. 
 
 of friends. At lunch time he might often be met in 
 the lobby on one of his many expeditions to the door, 
 the ring of the coming guest suggesting to the one in 
 possession that he, or possibly she, must depart ; and 
 when encountered there, sometimes a droll introduc- 
 tion of the friends to one another would take place. 
 Often he sat in the dining-room at the foot of the 
 table with his back to the door, and resolutely kept 
 his eyes shut until his outstretched hand was clasped. 
 But perhaps the time and place his friends will 
 most naturally recall in thinking of him, is a winter 
 afternoon, the gas lighted, the fire burning clearly, 
 and he seated in his own chair in the drawing-room 
 (that room that was so true a reflection of his char- 
 acter), the evening paper in his hand, but not so 
 deeply interested in it as not to be quite willing to 
 lay it down. If he were reading, and you were un- 
 announced, you had almost reached his chair before 
 the adjustment of his spectacles allowed him to rec- 
 ognize who had come ; and the bright look, followed 
 by, " It 's you, is it ? " was something to remember. 
 The summary of the daily news of the town was 
 brought to him at this hour, and the varied charac- 
 ters of those who brought it out put him in possession 
 of all shades of opinion, and enabled him to look at 
 things from every point of view. If there had been 
 a racy lecture, or one with some absurdities in it, or a 
 good concert, a rush would be made to Rutland Street 
 to tell Dr. Brown, and no touch of enthusiasm or hu- 
 mor in the narration was thrown away upon him.
 
 DR. JOHN BROWN. 13 
 
 One other time will be remembered. In the even- 
 ing after dinner, when again seated in his own 
 chair, he would read aloud short passages from the 
 book he was specially interested in (and there was 
 always one that occupied his thoughts chiefly for the 
 time), or would listen to music, or would lead pleas- 
 ant talk. Or later still, when, the work of the day 
 over, and all interruptions at an end, he went up 
 to tho smoking-room (surely he was a very mild 
 smoker !), and giving himself up entirely to the 
 friends who happened to be with him, was all 
 those who knew him best now gladly and sorrowfully 
 remember, but can never explain, not even to them- 
 selves. 
 
 In trying to describe any one, it is usual to speak 
 of his manner; but that word applied to Dr. Brown 
 seems almost imnatural, for manner is considered as 
 a thing more or less consciously acquired, but thought 
 of apart from the man. Now in this sense of the 
 word he had no manner, for his manner was himself, 
 the visible and audible expression of his whole na- 
 ture. One has only to picture the ludicrousness as 
 well as hopelessness of any imitation of it, to know 
 that it was simply his own, and to realize this is to 
 feel in some degree the entire truthfulness of his 
 character : " If, therefore, thine eye be single, thy 
 whole body shall be full of light." Perhaps no one 
 who enjoyed mirth so thoroughly, or was so much 
 the cause of it in others, ever had a quieter bearing. 
 He had naturally a low tone of voice, and he seldom
 
 14 DR. JOHN BROWN. 
 
 raised it. He never shouted any one down, and did 
 not fight for a place in the arena of talk, but his 
 calm, honest tones claimed attention, and way was 
 gladly made for him. " He acts as a magnet in a 
 room," was sometimes said, and it was true ; gently, 
 but surely, he became the centre of whatever com- 
 pany he was in. 
 
 When one thinks of it, it was by his smile and his 
 smile alone (sometimes a deliberate " Capital ! " was 
 added), that he showed his relish for what was told 
 him ; and yet how unmistakable that relish was ! 
 " I '11 tell Dr. Brown," was the thought that came first 
 to his friends on hearing anything genuine, pathetic, 
 or queer, and the gleam as of sunlight that shone in 
 his eyes, and played round his sensitive mouth as he 
 listened, acted as an inspiration, so that friends and 
 even strangers he saw at their best, and their best 
 was better than it would have been without him. 
 They brought him of their treasure, figuratively and 
 literally too, for there was not a rare engraving, a 
 copy of an old edition, a valuable autograph, any- 
 thing that any one in Edinburgh greatly prized, but 
 sooner or later it found its way to Rutland Street, 
 " just that Dr. Brown might see it." It seemed to 
 mean more even to the owner himself when he had 
 looked at it and enjoyed it. 
 
 He was so completely free from real egotism that 
 in his writings he uses the pronouns " I " and " our " 
 with perfect fearlessness. His sole aim is to bring 
 himself into sympathy with his readers, and he
 
 DR. JOHN BROWN. 15 
 
 chooses the form that will do that most directly. The 
 most striking instance of this is in his Letter to Dr. 
 Cairns. In no other way could he so naturally have 
 told what he wishes to tell of his father and his 
 father's friends. In it he is not addressing the pub- 
 lic a thing he never did but writing to a friend, 
 and in that genial atmosphere thoughts and words 
 flow freely. He says towards the beginning, " Some- 
 times I have this " (the idea of his father's life) " so 
 vividly in my mind, that I think I have only to sit 
 down and write it off, and so it to the quick." He 
 did sit down and write it off, we know with what re- 
 sult. 
 
 Except when clouds darkened his spirit (which, 
 alas ! they too often did), and he looked inwai'ds and 
 saw no light, he seemed to have neither time nor oc- 
 casion to think of himself at all. His whole nature 
 found meat and drink in lovingly watching all man- 
 kind, men, women, and children, the lower animals, 
 too only he seldom spoke of them as lower, he 
 thought of them as complete in themselves. " Look 
 at that creature," he said on a bright, sunny day as 
 a cab-horse passed, prancing considerably and rear- 
 ing his head ; " that 's delightful ; he 's happy in the 
 sunshine, and wishes to be looked at ; just like some 
 of us here on the pavement." How many of us on 
 the pavement find delight in the ongoings of a cab- 
 horse ? His dog, seated opposite him one day in the 
 carriage, suddenly made a bolt and disappeared at 
 the open window. " An acquaintance must have
 
 16 DR. JOHN BROWN. 
 
 passed whom he wished to speak to," was Dr. 
 Brown's explanation of his unexpected exit. 
 
 In TJie Imitation it is said, "If thy heart were 
 sincere and upright, then every creature would be 
 unto thee a looking-glass of life." It was so with Dr. 
 Brown. His quick sympathy was truly personal in 
 each case, but it did not end there. It gladdened 
 him to call forth the child's merry laugh, for his 
 heart expanded with the thought that joy was world- 
 wide ; and in the same way sorrow saddened him, 
 for it too was everywhere. He discovered with keen- 
 est insight all that lay below the surface, dwelling on 
 the good, and bringing it to the light, while from 
 what was bad or hopelessly foolish he simply turned 
 aside. He had friends in all ranks of life, " from 
 the peasant to the peer," as the phrase is, and 
 higher. He was constantly forming links with those 
 whom he met, and they were links that held fast, for 
 he never forgot any one with whom he had had real 
 contact of spirit, and the way in which he formed 
 this contact was perhaps the most wonderful thing 
 about him. A word, a look, would put him in pos- 
 session of all that was best and truest in a character. 
 And it was character that he thought of ; surround- 
 ings were very secondary witli him. Though he 
 thoroughly appreciated a beautiful setting, the want 
 of it did not repel him. " Come and see a first-rate 
 man," he said to me one day as he met me at the 
 door. And here in the dining-room stood a stalwart 
 countryman, clad in rough homespun, with a brightly-
 
 DR. JOHN BROWN. 17 
 
 colored " cravat " about his neck, his face glowing 
 with pleasure as his friend (for he evidently consid- 
 ered Dr. Brown his friend) looked up at him. They 
 had met that morning, when the man came asking 
 admission for a child to the Infirmary, and now he 
 had returned to report his success. The look of 
 keen and kindly interest with which every word was 
 listened to might well encourage him to " go on," 
 as he was frequently told to do. " The wife " fig- 
 ured now and then in the narration, and as he rose 
 to go, the beaming look with which Dr. Brown said, 
 " And you 're fond of your wife ? " was met by a 
 broad smile of satisfaction, and "Ay, I 'm fond o' 
 her," followed by a hearty shake of the hand. " His 
 feelings are as delicate as his body is big," was Dr. 
 Brown's remark as he returned to the room after 
 going with him to the door. 
 
 It is Ruskin who says, " The greatest thing a hu- 
 man soul ever does is to see something, and tell what 
 it saw in a plain way. To see clearly is poetry, pro- 
 phecy, and religion all in one." Dr. Brown was con- 
 stantly seeing what others did not see, and the desire 
 to tell it, to make others share his feelings, forced 
 him to write, or made it impossible for him to do so 
 when not in writing mood. To prescribe a subject 
 to him was useless, and worse. What truer or 
 shorter explanation can be given of the fascination 
 of Rob and his Friends than that in James, in 
 Ailie, and in Rab he "saw something" that others 
 did not see, and told what he saw in " a plain way,"
 
 18 DR. JOHN BROWN. 
 
 in a perfect way, too. " Was n't she a grand 
 little creature ? " he said about " Marjorie," only a 
 few months before his death. " And grand that you 
 have made thousands know her, and love her, after 
 she has been in heaven for seventy years and more," 
 was the answer. " Yes, / am glad" he said, and 
 he looked it too. He was not thinking of Marjorie 
 Fleming one of his literary productions, as it would 
 be called, but of the bright, eager child herself. 
 
 But the words he applied to Dr. Chalmers are 
 true as regards myself : " We cannot now go very 
 curiously to work to scrutinize the composition of his 
 character : we cannot take that large, free, genial 
 nature to pieces, and weigh this and measure that, 
 and sum up and pronounce ; we are so near as yet 
 to him and to his loss, he is too dear to us to be 
 so handled. ' His death,' to use the pathetic words 
 of Hartley Coleridge, ' is a recent sorrow, his image 
 still lives in eyes that weep for him.' " Though 
 necessarily all his life coming into close contact with 
 sickness and death, he never became accustomed, as 
 so many seem to do, to their sorrowfulness and mys- 
 tery, and the tear and wear of spirit involved in so 
 many of his patients being also his close personal 
 friends, was, without doubt, a cause of real injury to 
 his own health. 
 
 I shall never forget the expression of his face as 
 he stood looking at his friend Sir George Harvey, 
 for the last time. He had sat for a long while hold- 
 ing the nearly pulseless wrist, then he rose, and with
 
 DR. JOHN BROWN. 19 
 
 folded hands stood looking down earnestly on the 
 face already stamped with the nobility of death, his 
 own nearly as pale, but weaving, too, the traces of 
 care and sorrow which had now forever vanished 
 from his friend's. For many minutes he stood quite 
 still as if rapt in thought ; then slowly stooping, he 
 reverently kissed the brow, and silently, without 
 speaking one word, he left the room. 
 
 I have spoken of the first time I saw him : shall I 
 tell of the last of that wet, dreary Sunday, so 
 unlike a day in spring, when with the church bells 
 ringing, John took me up to his room, and left me 
 there ? He was sitting up in bed, but looked weaker 
 * than one would have expected after only two days' 
 illness, and twice pointing to his chest, he said, " I 
 know this is something vital ; " and then musingly, 
 almost as if he were speaking of some one else, " It 's 
 sad, Cecy, is n't it ? " But he got much brighter 
 after a minute or two, noticed some change in my 
 dress, approved of it, then asked if I had been to 
 church, and, " What was the text ? " smiling as he 
 did so, as if he half expected I had forgotten it. I 
 told him, " In the world ye shall have tribulation ; 
 but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." 
 " Wonderful words," he said, folding his hands and 
 closing his eyes, and repeated slowly, " Be of good 
 cheer ; " then, after a pause, " And from Him, our 
 Saviour." In a minute or two I rose, fearing to stay 
 too long, but he looked surprised, and asked me what 
 1 meant by going so soon. So I sat down again. He
 
 20 DR. JOHN BROWN. 
 
 asked me what books I was reading, and I told him, 
 and he spoke a little of them. Then suddenly, as if 
 it had just flashed upon him, he said "Ah! I have 
 done nothing to your brother's papers but look at 
 them, and felt the material was splendid, and now it 
 is too late." Some months before, when he was ex- 
 ceedingly well and cheerful, he had told me to bring 
 him two manuscript books I had once shown him, 
 saying, " I have often felt I could write abont him, 
 as good a text as Arthur Hallam." I told him it 
 would be the greatest boon were he to do it ; but he 
 warned me not to hope too much. After a few min- 
 utes, again I rose to go. His " Thank you for com- 
 ing," I answered by, " Thank you for letting me 
 come ; " and then, yielding to a sudden impulse, for 
 I seldom ventured on such ground, I added, " And 
 I can never half thank you for all you have been to 
 me all these years." " No, yon must n't thank me," 
 he said sadly, and a word or two more, " but re- 
 member me when yon pray to God." I answered 
 more by look and clasp of his hand than by word ; 
 but he did feel that I had answered him, for " That 's 
 right," he said firmly, his face brightening, and as I 
 reached the door, " Come again soon." 
 
 The next time I was in that room, four days after, 
 it was to look on " that beautiful sealed face," and to 
 feel that the pure in heart had seen God. Sir George 
 Harvey once said, " I like to think what the first 
 glint of heaven will be to John Brown." He has 
 got it now. What more can or need we say ?
 
 RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 
 
 FOTJR-AJTD-THIRTY years ago, Bob Ainslie and I 
 were coming up Infirmary Street from the Edinburgh. 
 High School, our heads together, and our arms inter- 
 twisted, as only lovers and boys know how, or why. 
 
 When we got to the top of the street, and turned 
 north, we espied a crowd at the Tron Church. " A 
 dog-fight ! " shouted Bob, and was off ; and so was I, 
 both of us all but praying that it might not be over 
 before we got up ! And is not this boy-nature ? and 
 human nature too ? and don't we all wish a house on 
 fire not to be out before we see it ? Dogs like fight- 
 ing ; old Isaac says they " delight " in it, and for the 
 best of all reasons ; and boys are not cruel because 
 they like to see the fight. They see three of the great 
 cardinal virtues of dog or man courage, endurance, 
 and skill in intense action. This is very differ- 
 ent from a love of making dogs fight, and enjoying, 
 and aggravating, and making gain by their pluck. 
 A boy be he ever so fond himself of fighting, if he 
 be a good boy, hates and despises all this, but he 
 would have run off with Bob and me fast enough : it 
 is a natural, and a not wicked interest, that all boys 
 and men have in witnessing intense energy in action.
 
 22 RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 
 
 Does any curious and finely-ignorant woman wish 
 to know how Boh's eye at a glance announced a dog- 
 fight to his brain ? He did not, he could not see the 
 dogs fighting ; it was a flash of an inference, a rapid 
 induction. The crowd round a couple of dogs fight- 
 ing, is a crowd masculine mainly, with an occasional 
 active, compassionate woman, fluttering wildly round 
 the outside, and using her tongue and her hands 
 freely upon the men, as so many " brutes ; " it is a 
 crowd annular, compact, and mobile ; a crowd cen- 
 tripetal, having its eyes and its heads all bent down- 
 wards and inwards, to one common focus. 
 
 Well, Bob and I are up, and find it is not over : 
 a small thoroughbred, white Bull Terrier, is busy 
 throttling a large shepherd's dog, unaccustomed to 
 war, but not to be trifled with. They are hard at 
 it ; the scientific little fellow doing his work in great 
 style, his pastoral enemy fighting wildly, but with 
 the sharpest of teeth and a great courage. Science 
 and breeding, however, soon had their own ; the 
 Game Chicken, as the premature Bob called him, 
 working his way up, took his final grip of poor Yar- 
 row's throat, and he lay gasping and done for. 
 His master, a brown, handsome, big young shepherd 
 from Tweedsmuir, would have liked to have knocked 
 down any man, would " drink up Esil, or eat a croco- 
 dile," for that part, if he had a chance : it was no 
 nse kicking the little dog ; that would only make 
 him hold the closer. Many were the means shouted 
 out in mouthfuls, of the best possible ways of ending
 
 RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 23 
 
 it. " Water ! " but there was none near, and many 
 cried for it who might have got it from the well at 
 Blackfriars Wynd. " Bite the tail ! " and a large, 
 vague, benevolent, middle-aged man, more desirous 
 than wise, with some struggle got the bushy end of 
 Yarrow's tail into his ample mouth, and bit it with 
 all his might. This was more than enough for the 
 much-enduring, much-perspiring shepherd, who, with 
 a gleam of joy over his broad visage, delivered a ter- 
 rific facer upon our large, vague, benevolent, middle- 
 aged friend, who went down like a shot. 
 
 Still the Chicken holds ; death not far off. " Snuff ! 
 a pinch of snuff ! " observed a calm, highly-dressed 
 young buck, with an eye-glass in his eye. " Snuff, 
 indeed ! " growled the angry crowd, affronted and 
 glaring. " Snuff ! a pinch of snuff ! " again observed 
 the buck, but with more urgency ; whereon were pro- 
 duced several open boxes, and from a mull which 
 may have been at Culloden, he took a pinch, knelt 
 down, and presented it to the nose of the Chicken. 
 The laws of physiology and of snuff take their course ; 
 the Chicken sneezes, and Yarrow is free ! 
 
 The young pastoral giant stalks off with Yarrow 
 in his arms, comforting him. 
 
 But the Bull Terrier's blood is up, and his soul un- 
 satisfied ; he grips the first dog he meets, and discov- 
 ering she is not a dog, in Homeric phrase, he makes 
 a brief sort of amende, and is off. The boys, with 
 Bob and me at their head, are after him : down Nid- 
 dry Street he goes, bent on mischief ; up the Cow-
 
 24 EAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 
 
 gate like an arrow Bob and I, and our small men, 
 panting behind. 
 
 There, under the single arch of the South Bridge, 
 is a huge mastiff, sauntering down the middle of the 
 causeway, as if with his hands in his pockets : he is 
 old, gray, brindled, as big as a little Highland bull, 
 and has the Shakesperian dewlaps shaking as he 
 goes. 
 
 The Chicken makes straight at him, and fastens on 
 his throat. To our astonishment, the great creature 
 does nothing but stand still, hold himself up, and 
 roar yes, roar ; a long, serious, remonstrative 
 roar. How is this ? Bob and I are up to them. 
 He is muzzled ! The bailies had proclaimed a gen- 
 eral muzzling, and his master, studying strength and 
 economy mainly, had encompassed his huge jaws in 
 a home-made apparatus, constructed out of the leather 
 of some ancient breechin. His mouth was open as 
 far as it could ; his lips curled up in rage a sort 
 of terrible grin ; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out 
 the darkness ; the strap across his mouth tense as a 
 bowstring ; his whole frame stiff with indignation 
 and surprise ; his roar asking us all round, " Did 
 you ever see the like of this?" He looked a statue 
 of anger and astonishment, done in Aberdeen granite. 
 
 We soon had a crowd : the Chicken held on. " A 
 knife ! " cried Bob ; and a cobbler gave him his 
 knife : you know the kind of knife, worn away ob- 
 liquely to a point, and always keen. I put its edge 
 to the tense leather ; it ran before it ; and then !
 
 RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 25 
 
 one sudden jerk of that enormous head, a sort of 
 dirty mist about his mouth, no noise, and the 
 bright and fierce little fellow is dropped, limp, and 
 dead. A solemn pause : this was more than any of us 
 had bargained for. I turned the little fellow over, and 
 saw he was quite dead ; the mastiff had taken him 
 by the small of the back like a rat, and broken it. 
 
 He looked down at his victim appeased, ashamed, 
 and amazed ; snuffed him all over, stared at him, and 
 taking a sudden thought, turned round and trotted 
 off. Bob took the dead dog up, and said, " John, 
 we '11 bury him after tea." " Yes," said I, and was 
 off after the mastiff. He made up the Cowgate at a 
 rapid swing ; he had forgotten some engagement. 
 He turned up the Candlemaker Row, and stopped at 
 the Harrow Inn. 
 
 There was a carrier's cart ready to start, and a 
 keen, thin, impatient, black-a-vised little man, his 
 hand at his gray horse's head, looking about angrily 
 for something. " Rab, ye thief ! " said he, aiming a 
 kick at my great friend, who drew cringing up, and 
 avoiding the heavy shoe with more agility than dig- 
 nity, and watching his master's eye, slunk dismayed 
 under the cart, his ears down, and as much as he 
 had of tail down too. 
 
 What a man this must be thought I to whom 
 my tremendous hero turns tail ! The carrier saw the 
 muzzle hanging, cut and useless, from his neck, and I 
 eagerly told him the story, which Bob and I always 
 thought, and still think, Homer, or King David, or Sir
 
 26 RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 
 
 Walter alone were worthy to rehearse. The severe lit- 
 tle man was mitigated, and condescended to say, " Rab, 
 my man, puir Rabbie," whereupon the stump of a 
 tail rose up, the ears were cocked, the eyes filled, and 
 were comforted ; the two friends were reconciled. 
 " Hupp ! " and a stroke of the whip were given to 
 Jess ; and off went the three. 
 
 Bob and I buried the Game Chicken that night (we 
 had not much of a tea) in the back-green of his house 
 in Melville Street, No. 17, with considerable gravity 
 and silence ; and being at the time in the Iliad, and, 
 like all boys, Trojans, we called him Hector of 
 course. 
 
 Six years have passed, a long time for a boy and 
 a dog : Bob Ainslie is off to the wars ; I am a med- 
 ical student, and clerk at Minto House Hospital. 
 
 Rab I saw almost every week, on the Wednesday, 
 and we had much pleasant intimacy. I found the 
 way to his heart by frequent scratching of his huge 
 head, and an occasional bone. When I did not notice 
 him he would plant himself straight before me, and 
 stand wagging that bud of a tail, and looking up, with 
 his head a little to the one side. His master I occa- 
 sionally saw; he used to call me "Maister John," but 
 was laconic as any Spartan. 
 
 One fine October afternoon, I was leaving the 
 hospital, when I saw the large gate open, and in
 
 RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 27 
 
 walked Rab, with that great and easy saunter of his. 
 He looked as if taking general possession of the place ; 
 like the Duke of Wellington entering a subdued city, 
 satiated with victory and peace. After him came Jess, 
 now white from age, with her cart ; and in it a u - o- 
 man, carefully wrapped up, the carrier leading the 
 horse anxiously, and looking back. When he saw 
 me, James (for his name was James Noble) made a 
 curt and grotesque " boo," and said, " Maister John, 
 this is the mistress ; she 's got a trouble in her breest 
 some kind o' an income we 're thinking." 
 
 By this time I saw the woman's face ; she was sit- 
 ting on a sack filled with straw, her husband's plaid 
 round her, and his big-coat with its large white metal 
 buttons, over her feet. 
 
 I never saw a more unforgetable face pale, seri- 
 ous, lonely, 1 delicate, sweet, without being at all what 
 we call fine. She looked sixty, and had on a mutch, 
 white as snow, with its black ribbon ; her silvery, 
 smooth hair setting off her dark-gray eyes eyes 
 such as one sees only twice or thrice in a lifetime, full 
 of suffering, full also of the overcoming of it : her 
 eyebrows black and delicate, and her mouth firm, 
 patient, and contented, which few mouths ever are. 
 
 As I have said, I never saw a more beautiful coun- 
 tenance, or one more subdued to settled quiet. 
 " Ailie," said James, " this is Maister John, the young 
 doctor ; Rab's f reend, ye ken. We often speak aboot 
 
 1 It is not easy giving this look by one word ; it was expres-- 
 sive of her being so muck of her life alone.
 
 28 BAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 
 
 you, doctor." She smiled, and made a movement, 
 but said nothing ; and prepared to come down, put- 
 ting her plaid aside and rising. Had Solomon, in all 
 his glory, been handing down the Queen of Sheba at 
 his palace gate he could not have done it more dain- 
 tily, more tenderly, more like a gentleman, than did 
 James the Howgate carrier, when he lifted down 
 Ailie his wife. The contrast of his small, swarthy, 
 weather - beaten, keen, worldly face to hers pale, 
 subdued, and beautiful was something wonderful. 
 Rab looked on concerned and puzzled, but ready for 
 anything that might turn up, were it to strangle the 
 nurse, the porter, or even me. Ailie and he seemed 
 great friends. 
 
 " As I was sayin' she 's got a kind o' trouble in her 
 breest, doctor ; wull ye tak' a look at it ? " We 
 walked into the consulting-room, all four ; Rab grim 
 and comic, willing to be happy and confidential if 
 cause could be shown, willing also to be the reverse, 
 on the same terms. Ailie sat clown, undid her open 
 gown and her lawn handkerchief round her neck, and 
 without a word, showed me her right breast. I 
 looked at and examined it carefully, she and James 
 watching me, and Rab eying all three. What could 
 I say ? there it was, that had once been so soft, so 
 shapely, so white, so gracious and bountiful, so u full 
 of all blessed conditions," hard as a stone, a centre 
 of horrid pain, making that pale face, with its gray, 
 lucid, reasonable eyes, and its sweet resolved mouth, 
 express the full measure of suffering overcome. Why
 
 RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 29 
 
 was that gentle, modest, sweet woman, clean and 
 lovable, condemned by God to bear such a burden ? 
 
 I got her away to bed. " May Rab and me bide ? ' T 
 said James. " You may ; and Rab, if he will behave 
 himself." " I 'se warrant he 's do that, doctor ; " and 
 in slank the faithful beast. I wish you could have 
 seen him. There are no such dogs now. He be- 
 longed to a lost tribe. As I have said, he was 
 brindled and gray like Rubislaw granite ; his hair 
 short, hard, and close, like a lion's; his body thick 
 get, like a little bull a sort of compressed Hercules 
 of a dog. He must have been ninety pounds' weight, 
 at the least ; he had a large blunt head ; his muzzle 
 black as night, his mouth blacker than any night, a 
 tooth or two being all he had gleaming out of 
 his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred with the 
 records of old wounds, a sort of series of fields of 
 battle all over it ; one eye out, one ear cropped as 
 close as was Archbishop Leighton's father's ; the re- 
 maining eye had the power of two; and above it, and 
 in constant communication with it, was a tattered rag 
 of an ear, which was forever unfurling itself, like an 
 old flag ; and then that bud of a tail, about one inch 
 long, if it could in any sense be said to be long, being 
 as broad as long the mobility, the instantaneousness 
 of that bud were very funny and surprising, and its 
 expressive twinklings and winkings, the intercom- 
 munications between the eye, the ear, and it, were of 
 the oddest and swiftest. 
 
 Rab had the dignity and simplicity of great size;
 
 30 RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 
 
 and having fought his way all along the road to abso- 
 lute supremacy, he was as mighty in his own line as 
 Julius Caesar or the Duke of Wellington, and had the 
 gravity * of all great fighters. 
 
 You must have often observed the likeness of cer- 
 tain men to certain animals, and of certain dogs to 
 men. Now, I never looked at Rab without thinking 
 of the great Baptist preacher, Andrew Fuller. 2 The 
 same large, heavy, menacing, combative, sombre, 
 honest countenance, the same deep inevitable eye, 
 the same look, as of thunder asleep, but ready, 
 neither a dog nor a man to be trifled with. 
 
 Next day, my master, the surgeon, examined Ailie. 
 There was no doubt it must kill her, and soon. It 
 could be removed it might never return it would 
 give her speedy relief she should have it done. 
 
 1 A Highland game-keeper, when asked why a certain ter- 
 rier, of singular pluck, was so much more solemn than the other 
 dogs, said, " Oh, Sir, life 's full o' sairiousness to him he just 
 never can get enuff o' fechtin'." 
 
 2 Fuller was, in early life, when a farmer lad at Soham, 
 famous as a boxer ; not quarrelsome, but not without ' ' the 
 stern delight " a man of strength and courage feels in their 
 exercise. Dr. Charles Stewart, of Dunearn, whose rare gifts 
 and graces as a physician, a divine, a scholar, and a gentleman, 
 live only in the memory of those few who knew and survive 
 him, liked to tell how Mr. Fuller used to say, that when he 
 was in the pulpit, and saw a buirdly man come along the 
 passage, he would instinctively draw himself up, measure his 
 imaginary antagonist, and forecast how he would deal with 
 him, his hands meanwhile condensing into fists, and tending 
 to "square." He must have been a hard hitter if he boxed 
 as he preached what "The Fancy" would call "an ugly 
 customer."
 
 RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 31 
 
 She curtsied, looked at James, and said, " When ? " 
 " To-morrow," said the kind surgeon a man of few 
 words. She and James and Rab and I retired. I 
 noticed that he and she spoke little, but seemed to 
 anticipate everything in each other. The following 
 day, at noon, the students came in, hurrying up the 
 great stair. At the first landing-place, on a small 
 well-known blackboard, was a bit of paper fastened 
 by wafers and many remains of old wafers beside it. 
 On the paper were the words, " An operation to- 
 day. J. B. Clerk." 
 
 Up ran the youths, eager to secure good places ; in 
 they crowded, full of interest and talk. " What 's 
 the case ? " " Which side is it ? " 
 
 Don't think them heartless ; they are neither bet- 
 ter nor worse than you or I ; they get over their pro- 
 fessional horrors, and into their proper work and 
 in them pity as an emotion, ending in itself or at 
 best in tears and a long-drawn breath lessens, while 
 pity as a motive is quickened, and gains power and 
 purpose. It is well for poor human nature that it 
 is so. 
 
 The operating theatre is crowded ; much talk and 
 fun, and all the cordiality and stir of youth. The 
 surgeon with his staff of assistants is there. In comes 
 Ailie : one look at her quiets and abates the eager 
 students. That beautiful old woman is too much for 
 them ; they sit down, and are dumb, and gaze at her. 
 These rough boys feel the power of her presence. 
 She walks in quickly, but without haste ; dressed in
 
 32 RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 
 
 her mutch, her neckerchief, her white dimity short- 
 gown, her black bombazine petticoat, showing her 
 white worsted stockings and her carpet-shoes. Be- 
 hind her was James with Rab. James sat down in 
 the distance, and took that huge and noble head be- 
 tween his knees. Rab looked perplexed and danger- 
 ous ; forever cocking his ear and dropping it as fast. 
 
 Ailie stepped up on a seat, and laid herself on the 
 table, as her friend the surgeon told her ; arranged 
 herself, gave a rapid look at James, shut her eyes, 
 rested herself on me, and took my hand. The oper- 
 ation was at once begun ; it was necessarily slow ; 
 and chloroform one of God's best gifts to his suf- 
 fering children was then unknown. The surgeon 
 did his work. The pale face showed its pain, but 
 was still and silent. Rab's soul was working within 
 him ; he saw that something strange was going on, 
 blood flowing from his mistress, and she suffering; 
 his ragged ear was up, and importunate ; he growled 
 and gave now and then a sharp impatient yelp ; he 
 would have liked to have done something to that 
 man. But James had him firm, and gave him a glower 
 from time to time, and an intimation of a possible 
 kick ; all the better for James, it kept his eye and 
 his mind off Ailie. 
 
 It is over : she is dressed, steps gently and decently 
 down from the table, looks for James ; then, turning 
 to the surgeon and the students, she curtsies, and 
 in a low, clear voice, begs their pardon if she has 
 behaved ill. The students all of us wept like
 
 RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 33 
 
 children ; the surgeon happed her up carefully, 
 and, resting on James and me, Ailie went to her room, 
 Rab following. We put her to bed. James took 
 off his heavy shoes, crammed with tackets, heel-capt, 
 and toe-capt and put them carefully under the table, 
 saying, " Maister John, I 'm for nane o' yer strynge 
 nurse bodies for Ailie. I '11 be her nurse, and I '11 
 gang aboot on my stockin' soles as canny as pussy." 
 And so he did ; and handy and clever, and swift and 
 tender as any woman, was that horny-handed, snell, 
 peremptory little man. Everything she got he gave 
 her: he seldom slept; and often I saw his small 
 shrewd eyes out of the darkness, fixed on her. As 
 before, they spoke little. 
 
 Rab behaved well, never moving, showing us how 
 meek and gentle he could be, and occasionally, in his 
 sleep, letting us know that he was demolishing some 
 adversary. He took a walk with me every day, gen- 
 erally to the Candlemaker Row ; but he was sombre 
 and mild ; declined doing battle, though some fit 
 cases offered, and indeed submitted to sundry indig- 
 nities ; and was always very ready to turn, and came 
 faster back, and trotted up the stair with much light- 
 ness, and went straight to that door. 
 
 Jess, the mare, had been sent, with her weather- 
 worn cart, to Howgate, and had doubtless her own 
 dim and placid meditations and confusions, on the 
 absence of her master and Rab, and her unnatural 
 freedom from the road and her cart. 
 
 For some days Ailie did well. The wound healed
 
 34 RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 
 
 " by the first intention ; " for as James said, " Our 
 Ailie's skin 's ower clean to beil." The students 
 came in quiet and anxious, and surrounded her bed. 
 She said she liked to see their young, honest faces. 
 The surgeon dressed her, and spoke to her in his 
 own short kind way, pitying her through his eyes, 
 Rab and James outside the circle, Rab being now 
 reconciled, and even cordial, and having made up 
 his mind that as yet nobody required worrying, but, 
 as you may suppose, semper paratus. 
 
 So far well : but, four days after the operation, 
 my patient had a sudden and long shivering, a 
 " groosin','' as she called it. I saw her soon after ; 
 her eyes were too bright, her cheek colored ; she was 
 restless, and ashamed of being so ; the balance was 
 lost ; mischief had begun. On looking at the wound, 
 a blush of red told the secret : her pulse was rapid, 
 her breathing anxious and quick, she was n't herself, 
 as she said, and was vexed at her restlessness. We 
 tried what we could ; James did everything, was ev- 
 erywhere ; never in the way, never out of it ; Rab 
 subsided under the table into a dark place, and was 
 motionless, all but his eye, which followed every one. 
 Ailie got worse ; began to wander in her mind, 
 gently ; was more demonstrative in her ways to 
 James, rapid in her questions, and sharp at times. 
 He was vexed, and said, " She was never that way 
 afore ; no, never." For a time she knew her head 
 was wrong, and was always asking our pardon the 
 dear, gentle old woman : then delirium set in strong,
 
 RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 35 
 
 without pause. Her brain gave way, and then came 
 that terrible spectacle, 
 
 ' ' The intellectual power, through words and things, 
 Went sounding on its dim and perilous way," 
 
 she sang bits of old songs and Psalms, stopping sud- 
 denly, mingling the Psalms of David and the diviner 
 words of his Son and Lord, with homely odds and 
 ends and scraps of ballads. 
 
 Nothing more touching, or in a sense more 
 strangely beautiful, did I ever witness. Her tremu- 
 lous, rapid, affectionate, eager, Scotch voice, the 
 swift, aimless, bewildered mind, the baffled utter- 
 ance, the bright and perilous eye ; some wild words, 
 some household cares, something for James, the 
 names of the dead, Rab called rapidly and in a 
 " fremyt " voice, and he starting up surprised, and 
 slinking off as if he were to blame somehow, or had 
 been dreaming he heard ; many eager questions and 
 beseechings which James and I could make nothing 
 of, and on which she seemed to set her all, and then 
 sink back ununderstood. It was very sad, but better 
 than many things that are not called sad. James 
 hovered about, put out and miserable, but active and 
 exact as ever ; read to her when there was a lull, 
 short bits from the Psalms, prose and metre, chant- 
 ing the latter in his own rude and serious way, show- 
 ing great knowledge of the fit words, bearing up like 
 a man, and doating over her as his " ain Ailie." 
 " Ailie, ma woman ! " " Ma ain bonnie wee clawtie ! " 
 
 The end was drawing on : the golden bowl was
 
 36 RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 
 
 breaking ; the silver cord was fast being loosed 
 that animula blandula, vagula, hospes, comesque, was 
 about to flee. The body and the soul companions 
 for sixty years were being sundered, and taking 
 leave. She was walking alone, through the valley of 
 that shadow, into which one day we must all enter, 
 and yet she was not alone, for we know whose 
 rod and staff were comforting her. 
 
 One night she had fallen quiet, and as we hoped, 
 asleep ; her eyes were shut. We put down the gas, 
 and sat watching her. Suddenly she sat up in bed, 
 and taking a bed-gown which was lying on it rolled 
 up, she held it eagerly to her breast, to the right 
 side. We could see her eyes bright with a surpris- 
 ing tenderness and joy, bending over this bundle of 
 clothes. She held it as a woman holds her sucking 
 child ; opening out her night-gown impatiently, and 
 holding it close, and brooding over it, and murmur- 
 ing foolish little words, as over one whom his mother 
 comforteth, and who sucks and is satisfied. It was 
 pitiful and strange to see her wasted dying look, 
 keen and yet vague her immense love. 
 
 " Preserve me ! " groaned James, giving way. 
 And then she rocked back and forward, as if to 
 make it sleep, hushing it, and Avasting on it her in- 
 finite fondness. " Wae 's me, doctor ; I declare she 's 
 thinkin' it's that bairn." " What bairn ?" "The 
 only bairn we ever had ; our wee Mysie, and she 's 
 in the Kingdom, forty years and mair." It was 
 plainly true : the pain in the breast, telling its urgent
 
 RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 37 
 
 story to a bewildered, ruined brain, was misread and 
 mistaken ; it suggested to her the uneasiness of a 
 breast full of milk, and then the child ; and so again 
 once more they were together, and she had her ain 
 wee Mysie in her bosom. 
 
 This was the close. She sank rapidly : the delir- 
 ium left her ; but, as she whispered, she was " clean 
 silly ; " it was the lightening before the final darkness. 
 After having for some time lain still her eyes shut, 
 she said " James ! " He came close to her, and lift- 
 ing up her calm, clear, beautiful eyes, she gave him a 
 long look, turned to me kindly but shortly, looked for 
 Rab but could not see him, then turned to her hus- 
 band again, as if she would never leave off looking, 
 shut her eyes, and composed herself. She lay for 
 some time breathing quick, and passed away so 
 gently, that when we thought she was gone, James, 
 in his old-fashioned way, held the mirror to her face. 
 After a long pause, one small spot of dimness was 
 breathed out ; it vanished away, and never returned, 
 leaving the blank clear darkness of the mirror with- 
 out a stain. " What is our life ? it is even a vapor, 
 which appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth 
 away." 
 
 Rab all this time had been full awake and motion- 
 less ; he came forward beside us : Ailie's hand, 
 which James had held, was hanging down ; it was 
 soaked with his tears ; Rab licked it all over care- 
 fully, looked at her, and returned to his place under 
 the table.
 
 38 RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 
 
 James and I sat, I don't know how long, but for 
 some time, saying nothing : he started up abruptly, 
 and with some noise went to the table, and putting 
 his right fore and middle fingers each into a shoe, 
 pulled them out, and put them on, breaking one of 
 the leather latchets, and muttering in anger, " I never 
 did the like o' that afore ! " 
 
 I believe he never did ; nor after either. " Rab ! " 
 he said roughly, and pointing with his thumb to the 
 bottom of the bed. Rab leapt up, and settled him- 
 self ; his head and eye to the dead face. " Maister 
 John, ye '11 wait for me," said the carrier ; and disap- 
 peared in the darkness, thundering down-stairs in 
 his heavy shoes. I ran to a front window ; there 
 he was, already round the house, and out at the gate, 
 fleeing like a shadow. 
 
 I was afraid about him, and yet not afraid ; so I 
 sat down beside Rab, and being wearied, fell asleep. 
 I awoke from a sudden noise outside. It was No- 
 vember, and there had been a heavy fall of snow. 
 Rab was in statu quo ; he heard the noise too, and 
 plainly knew it, but never moved. I looked out ; 
 and there, at the gate, in the dim morning for the 
 sun was not up was Jess and the cart, a cloud 
 of steam rising from the old mare. I did not see 
 James ; he was already at the door, and came up the 
 stairs, and met me. It was less than three hours 
 since he left, and he must have posted out who 
 knows how ? to Howgate, full nine miles off ; 
 yoked Jess, and driven her astonished into town. He
 
 RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 39 
 
 had an armful of blankets, and was streaming with 
 perspiration. He nodded to me, spread out on the 
 floor two pairs of clean old blankets having at their 
 corners, " A. G., 1794," in large letters in red worsted. 
 These were the initials of Alison Graeme, and James 
 may have looked in at her from without himself 
 unseen but not unthought of when he was " wat, 
 wat, and weary," and after having walked many a 
 mile over the hills, may have seen her sitting, while 
 " a' the lave were sleepin' ; " and by the firelight 
 working her name on the blankets, for her ain 
 James's bed. 
 
 He motioned Rab down, and taking his wife in 
 his arms, laid her in the blankets, and happed her 
 carefully and firmly up, leaving the face uncovered ; 
 and then lifting her, he nodded again sharply to me, 
 and with a resolved but utterly miserable face, strode 
 along the passage, and down-stairs, followed by Rab. 
 I followed with a light ; but he did n't need it. I 
 went out, holding stupidly the candle in my hand in 
 the calm frosty air; we were soon at the gate. I 
 could have helped him, but I saw he was not to be 
 meddled with, and he was strong, and did not need 
 it. He laid her down as tenderly, as safely, as he 
 had lifted her out ten days before as tenderly as 
 when he had her first in his arms when she was only 
 " A. G.," sorted her, leaving that beautiful sealed 
 face open to the heavens ; and then taking Jess by 
 the head, he moved away. He did not notice me, 
 neither did Rab, who presided behind the cart.
 
 40 RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 
 
 I stood till they passed through the long shadow 
 of the College, and turned up Nicolson Street. I 
 heard the solitary cart sound through the streets, 
 and die away and come again ; and I returned, 
 thinking of that company going up Libberton Brae, 
 then along Roslin Muir, the morning light touching 
 the Pentlands and making them like on-looking 
 ghosts, then down the hill through Auchindinny 
 woods, past " haunted Woodhouselee ; " and as day- 
 break came sweeping up the bleak Lainmermuirs, 
 and fell on his own door, the company would stop, 
 and James would take the key, and lift Ailie up 
 again, laying her on her own bed, and, having put 
 Jess up, would return with Rab and shut the door. 
 
 James buried his wife, with his neighbors mourn- 
 ing, Rab inspecting the solemnity from a distance. 
 It was snow, and that black ragged hole would look 
 strange in the midst of the swelling spotless cush- 
 ion of white. James looked after everything ; then 
 rather suddenly fell ill, and took to bed ; was insen- 
 sible when the doctor came, and soon died. A sort 
 of low fever was prevailing in the village, and his 
 want of sleep, his exhaustion, and his misery, made 
 him apt to take it. The grave was not difficult to 
 reopen. A fresh fall of snow had again made all 
 things white and smooth ; Rab once more looked on, 
 and slunk home to the stable. 
 
 And what of Rab ? I asked for him next week 
 of the new carrier who got the goodwill of James's
 
 RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 41 
 
 business, and was now master of Jess and her cart. 
 " How 's Rab ? " He put me off, and said rather 
 rudely, " What 's your business wi' the dowg ? " I 
 was not to be so put off. " Where 's Rab ? " He, 
 getting- confused and red, and intermeddling with 
 his hair, said, " 'Deed, sir, Rab 's deid." " Dead ! 
 what did he die of ? " " Weel, sir," said he, getting 
 redder, " he did na exactly dee ; he was killed. I 
 had to brain him wi' a rack-pin ; there was nae doin' 
 wi' him. He lay in the treviss wi' the mear, and 
 wad na come oot. I tempit him wi' kail and meat, 
 but he wad tak naething, and keepit me frae feedin' 
 the beast, and he was aye gur gurrin,' and grup 
 gruppin' me by the legs. I was laith to make awa 
 wi' the auld dowg, his like was na atween this and 
 Thornhill, but, 'deed, sir, I could do naething 
 else." I believed him. Fit end for Rab, quick and 
 complete. His teeth and his friends gone, why 
 should he keep the peace, and be civil ?
 
 OUK DOGS. 
 
 I WAS bitten severely by a little dog when with my 
 mother at Moffat Wells, being then three years of 
 age, and I have remained " bitten " ever since in the 
 matter of dogs. I remember that little dog, and can 
 at this moment not only recall my pain and terror 
 I have no doubt I was to blame but also her face ; 
 and were I allowed to search among the shades in the 
 cynic Elysian fields, I could pick her out still. All 
 my life I have been familiar with these faithful crea- 
 tures, making friends of them, and speaking to them ; 
 and the only time I ever addressed the public, about 
 a year after being bitten, was at the farm of Kirklaw 
 Hill, near Biggar, when the text, given out from an 
 empty cart in which the ploughmen had placed me, 
 was " Jacob's dog," and my entire sermon was as fol- 
 lows : " Some say that Jacob had a black dog (the 
 o very long), and some say that Jacob had a white 
 dog, but / (imagine the presumption of four years !) 
 say Jacob had a brown dog, and a brown dog it shall 
 be." 
 
 I had many intimacies from this time onwards 
 Bawtie, of the inn ; Keeper, the carrier's bull terrier ; 
 Tiger, a huge tawny mastiff from Edinburgh, which
 
 OUR DOGS. 43 
 
 I think must have been an uncle of Rab's ; all the 
 sheep dogs at Callands Spring, Mavis, Yarrow, 
 Swallow, Cheviot, etc. ; but it was not till I was at 
 college, and my brother at the High School, that we 
 possessed a dog. 
 
 TOBY 
 
 Was the most utterly shabby, vulgar, mean-looking 
 cur I ever beheld : in one word, a tyke. He had not 
 one good feature except his teeth and eyes, and his 
 bark, if that can be called a feature. He was not 
 ugly enough to be interesting ; his color black and 
 white, his shape leggy and clumsy ; altogether what 
 Sydney Smith would have called an extraordinarily 
 ordinary dog ; and, as I have said, not even greatly 
 ugly, or, as the Aberdonians have it, bonnie wi' ill- 
 fauredness. My brother William found him the 
 centre of attraction to a multitude of small black- 
 guards who were drowning him slowly in Lochend 
 Loch, doing their best to lengthen out the process, and 
 secure the greatest amount of fun with the nearest ap- 
 proach to death. Even then Toby showed his great 
 intellect by pretending to be dead, and thus gaining 
 time and an inspiration. William bought him for 
 twopence, and as he had it not, the boys accompanied 
 him to Pilrig Street, when I happened to meet him, 
 and giving the twopence to the biggest boy, had the 
 satisfaction of seeing a general engagement of much 
 severity, during which the twopence disappeared ; 
 one penny going off with a very small and swift boy,
 
 44 OUR DOGS. 
 
 and the other vanishing hopelessly into the grating of 
 a drain. 
 
 Toby was for weeks in the house unbeknown to 
 any one but ourselves two and the cook, and from my 
 grandmother's love of tidiness and hatred of dogs 
 and of dirt I believe she would have expelled u him 
 whom we saved from drowning," had not he, in his 
 straightforward way, walked into my father's bedroom 
 one night when he was bathing his feet, and intro- 
 duced himself with a wag of his tail, intimating a 
 general willingness to be happy. My father laughed 
 most heartily, and at last Toby, having got his way 
 to his bare feet, and having begun to lick his soles 
 and between his toes with his small rough tongue, 
 my father gave such an unwonted shout of laughter 
 that we grandmother, sisters, and all of us went 
 in. Grandmother might argue with all her energy 
 and skill, but as surely as the pressure of Tom Jones' 
 infantile fist upon Mr. Allworthy's forefinger undid 
 all the arguments of his sister, so did Toby's tongue 
 and fun prove too many for grandmother's eloquence. 
 I somehow think Toby must have been up to all this, 
 for I think he had a peculiar love for my father ever 
 after, and regarded grandmother from that hour with 
 a careful and cool eye. 
 
 Toby, when full grown, was a strong, coarse dog ; 
 coarse in shape, in countenance, in hair, and in man- 
 ner. I used to think that, according to the Pythago- 
 rean doctrine, he must have been, or been going to be 
 a Gilmerton carter. He was of the bull terrier variety,
 
 OUR DOGS. 45 
 
 coarsened through much mongrelism and a dubious 
 and varied ancestry. His teeth were good, and he 
 had a large skull, and a 1'ich bark as of a dog three 
 times his size, and a tail which I never saw equaled 
 indeed it was a tail per se ; it was of immense 
 girth and not short, equal throughout like a police- 
 man's baton ; the machinery for working it was of 
 great power, and acted in a way, as far as I have 
 been able to discover, quite original. We called it 
 his ruler. 
 
 When he wished to get into the house, he first 
 whined gently, then growled, then gave a sharp bark, 
 and then came a resounding, mighty stroke which 
 shook the house ; this, after much study and watching, 
 we found was done by his bringing the entire length 
 of his solid tail flat upon the door, with a sudden and 
 vigorous stroke ; it was quite a tour de force or a 
 coup de queue, and he was perfect in it at once, his 
 first bang authoritative, having been as masterly and 
 telling as his last. 
 
 With all this inbred vulgar air, he was a dog of 
 great moral excellence affectionate, faithful, honest 
 up to his light, with an odd humor as peculiar and as 
 strong as his tail. My father, in his reserved way, 
 was very fond of him, and there must have been very 
 funny scenes with them, for we heard bursts of laugh- 
 ter issuing from his study when they two were by them- 
 selves ; there was something in him that took that 
 grave, beautiful, melancholy face. One can fancy 
 him in the midst of his books, and sacred work and
 
 46 OUR DOGS. 
 
 thoughts, pausing and looking at the secular Toby, 
 who was looking out for a smile to begin his rough 
 fun, and about to end by coursing and gurrirC round 
 the room, upsetting my father's books, laid out on the 
 floor for consultation, and himself nearly at times, as 
 he stood watching him and off his guard and shak- 
 ing with laughter. Toby had always a great desire 
 to accompany my father up to town ; this my father's 
 good taste and sense of dignity, besides his fear of 
 losing his friend (a vain fear!), forbade, and as the 
 decision of character of each was great and nearly 
 equal, it was often a drawn game. Toby ultimately, 
 by making it his entire object, triumphed. He usu- 
 ally was nowhere to be seen on my father leaving ; 
 he however saw him, and lay in wait at the head of 
 the street, and up Leith Walk he kept him in view 
 from the opposite side like a detective, and then, 
 when he knew it was hopeless to hound him home, he 
 crossed unblushingly over, and joined company, ex- 
 cessively rejoiced of course. 
 
 One Sunday he had gone with him to church, and 
 left him at the vestry door. The second psalm was 
 given out, and my father was sitting back in the 
 pulpit, when the door at its back, up which he came 
 from the vestry was seen to move, and gently open, 
 then, after a long pause, a black shining snout pushed 
 its way steadily into the congregation, and was fol- 
 lowed by Toby's entire body. He looked somewhat 
 abashed, but snuffing his friend, he advanced as if 
 on thin ice, and not seeing him, put his forelegs on
 
 OUR DOGS. 47 
 
 the pulpit, and behold there he was, his own familiar 
 chum. I watched all this, and anything more beau- 
 tiful than his look of happiness, of comfort, of entire 
 ease when he beheld his friend, the smoothing 
 down of the anxious ears, the swing of gladness of 
 that mighty tail, I don't expect soon to see. My 
 father quietly opened the door, and Toby was at his 
 feet and invisible to all but himself ; had he sent old 
 George Peaston, the " minister's man," to put him 
 out, Toby would probably have shown his teeth, and 
 astonished George. He slunk home as soon as he 
 could, and never repeated that exploit. 
 
 I never saw in any other dog the sudden transi- 
 tion from discretion, not to say abject cowardice, 
 to blazing and permanent valor. From his earliest 
 years he showed a general meanness of blood, in- 
 herited from many generations of starved, bekicked, 
 and down-trodden forefathers and mothers, resulting 
 in a condition of intense abjectness in all matters of 
 personal fear ; anybody, even a beggar, by a gowl 
 and a threat of eye, 'could send him off howling by 
 anticipation, with that mighty tail between his legs. 
 But it was not always so to be, and I had the privilege 
 of seeing courage, reasonable, absolute, and for life, 
 spring up in Toby at once, as did Athene from the 
 skull of Jove. It happened thus : 
 
 Toby was in the way of hiding his culinary bones 
 in the small gardens before his own and the neighbor- 
 ing doors. Mr. Scrymgeour, two doors off, a bulky, 
 choleric, red-haired, red-faced man torvo vultu
 
 48 OUR DOGS. 
 
 was, by the law of contrast, a great cultivator of 
 flowers, and he had often scowled Toby into all but 
 nonexistence by a stamp of his foot and a glare of 
 his eye. One day his gate being open, in walks Toby 
 with a huge bone, and making a hole where Scrymgeour 
 had two minutes before been planting some precious 
 slip, the name of which on paper and on a stick Toby 
 made very light of, substituted his bone, and was 
 engaged covering it, or thinking he was covering it 
 up with his shoveling nose (a very odd relic of para- 
 dise in the dog), when S. spied him through the 
 inner glass door, and was out upon him like the 
 Assyrian, with a terrible (jowl. I watched them. 
 Instantly Toby made straight at him with a roar too, 
 and an eye more torve than Scrymgeour's, who, re- 
 treating without reserve, fell prostrate, there is rea- 
 son to believe, in his own lobby. Toby contented 
 himself with proclaiming his victory at the door, and 
 returning finished his bone-planting at his leisure ; the 
 enemy, who had scuttled behind the glass-door, glaring 
 at him. 
 
 From this moment Toby was an altered dog. Pluck 
 at first sight was lord of all ; from that time dated 
 his first tremendous deliverance of tail against the 
 door which we called " come listen to my tail." That 
 very evening he paid a visit to Leo, next door's dog, 
 a big, tyrannical bully and coward, which its mas- 
 ter thought a Newfoundland, but whose pedigree we 
 knew better ; this brute continued the same system 
 of chronic extermination which was interrupted at
 
 OUR DOGS. 49 
 
 Lochend, having Toby down among his feet, and 
 threatening him with instant death two or three times 
 a day. To him Toby paid a visit that very evening, 
 down into his den, and walked about, as much as to 
 say " Come on, Macduff ! " but Macduff did not 
 come on, and henceforward there was an armed 
 neutrality, and they merely stiffened up and made 
 their backs rigid, pretended each not to see the other, 
 walking solemnly round, as is the manner of dogs. 
 Toby worked his new-found faculty thoroughly, but 
 with discretion. He killed cats, astonished beggars, 
 kept his own in his own garden against all comers, 
 and came off victorious in several well-fought battles ; 
 but he was not quarrelsome or foolhardy. It was 
 very odd how his carriage changed, holding his head 
 up, and how much pleasanter he was at home. To 
 my father, next to William, who was his Humane 
 Society man, he remained stanch. And what of his 
 end ? for the misery of dogs is that they die so soon, 
 or as Sir Walter says, it is well they do ; for if they 
 lived as long as a Christian, and we liked them in 
 proportion, and they then died, he said that was a 
 thing he could not stand. 
 
 His exit was miserable, and had a strange poetic 
 or tragic relation to his entrance. My father was 
 out of town ; I was away in England. Whether it 
 was that the absence of my father had relaxed his 
 power of moral restraint, or whether through neglect 
 of the servant he had been desperately hungry, or 
 most likely both being true, Toby was discovered
 
 50 OUR DOGS. 
 
 with the remains of a cold leg of mutton, on which 
 he had made an ample meal ; l this he was in vain en- 
 deavoring to plant as of old, in the hope of its remain- 
 ing undiscovered till to-morrow's hunger returned, 
 the whole shank hone sticking up unmistakahly. 
 This was seen hy our excellent and Rhadamanthine 
 grandmother, who pronounced sentence on the instant ; 
 and next day, as William was leaving for the High 
 School, did he in the sour morning, through an east- 
 erly haur, behold him " whom he saved from drown- 
 ing," and whom, with hetter results than in the case 
 of Launce and Crah, he had taught, as if one should 
 say, " thus would I teach a dog," dangling by his 
 own chain from his own lamp-post, one of his hind 
 feet just touching the pavement, and his body pre- 
 ternaturally elongated. 
 
 William found him dead and warm, and falling in 
 with the milk-boy at the head of the street, questioned 
 him, and discovered that he was the executioner, and 
 had got twopence, he Toby's every morning crony, 
 who met him and accompanied him up the street, and 
 licked the outside of his can had, with an eye to 
 speed and convenience, and a want of taste, not to 
 say principle and affection, horrible still to think of, 
 suspended Toby's animation beyond all hope. William 
 instantly fell upon him, upsetting his milk and cream, 
 
 1 Toby -was in the state of the shepherd boy whom George 
 Webster met in Glenshee, and asked, "My man, were you 
 ever fou' ? " " Ay, aince," speaking slowly, as if remembering 
 " Ay, aince.' ' " What on ? " " Cauld mutton ! ' '
 
 OUR DOGS. 51 
 
 and gave him a thorough licking, to his own intense 
 relief ; and, being late, he got from Pyper, who was 
 a martinet, the customary palmies, which he bore 
 with something approaching to pleasure. So died 
 Toby ; my father said little, but he missed and 
 mourned his friend. 
 
 There is reason to believe that by one of those curi- 
 ous intertwistings of existence, the milk-boy was that 
 one of the drowning party who got the penny of the 
 twopence. 
 
 WYLIE. 
 
 Our next friend was an exquisite shepherd's dog ; 
 fleet, thin-flanked, dainty, and handsome as a small 
 grayhound, with all the grace of silky waving black 
 and tan hair. We got him thus. Being then young 
 and keen botanists, and full of the knowledge and 
 love of Tweedside, having been on every hill-top from 
 Muckle Mendic to Hundleshope and the Lee Pen, and 
 having fished every water from Tarth to the Leithen, 
 we discovered early in spring that young Stewart, 
 author of an excellent book on natural history, a 
 young man of great promise and early death, had 
 found the Buxba^lm^a aphylla, a beautiful and odd- 
 looking moss, west of Newbie heights, in the very 
 month we were that moment in. We resolved to start 
 next day. We walked to Peebles, and then up Hay- 
 stoun Glen to the cottage of Adam Cairns, the aged 
 shepherd of the Newbie hirsel, of whom we knew,
 
 52 OUR DOGS. 
 
 and who knew of us from his daughter, Nancy Cairns, 
 a servant with Uncle Aitken of Callands. We found 
 our way up the burn with difficulty, as the evening 
 was getting dark ; and on getting near the cottage 
 heard them at worship. We got in, and made our- 
 selves known, and got a famous tea, and such cream 
 and oat cake! old Adam looking on us as "clean 
 dementit " to come out for " a bit moss," which, how- 
 ever, he knew, and with some pride said he would 
 take us in the morning to the place. As we were go- 
 ing into a box bed for the night, two young men came 
 in, and said they were " gaun to burn the water." 
 Off we set. It was a clear, dark, starlight, frosty 
 night. They had their leisters and tar torches, and 
 it was something worth seeing the wild flame, the 
 young fellows striking the fish coining to the light 
 how splendid they looked with the light on their 
 scales, coming out of the darkness the stumblings 
 and quenchings suddenly of the lights, as the torch- 
 bearer fell into a deep pool. We got home past mid- 
 night, and slept as we seldom sleep now. In the 
 morning Adam, who had been long up. and had been 
 up the " Hope " with his dog, when he saw we bad 
 wakened, told us there was four inches of snow, and 
 we soon saw it was too true. So we had to go home 
 without our cryptogamic prize. 
 
 It turned out that Adam, who was an old man and 
 frail, and had made some money, was going at Whit- 
 sunday to leave, and live with his son in Glasgow. 
 We had been admiring the beauty and gentleness and
 
 OUR DOGS. 53 
 
 perfect shape of Wylie, the finest colley I ever saw, 
 and said, " What are you going to do with Wylie ? " 
 " 'Deed," says he, " I hardly ken. I can na think o' 
 sellin' her, though she 's worth four pound, and she '11 
 no like the toun." I said, " Would you let me have 
 her ? " and Adam, looking at her fondly, she came 
 up instantly to him, and made of him, said, " Ay, I 
 wull, if ye '11 be gude to her ; " and it was settled that 
 when Adam left for Glasgow she should be sent into 
 Albany Street by the carrier. 
 
 She came, and was at once taken to all our hearts, 
 even grandmother liked her ; and though she was often 
 pensive, as if thinking of her master and her work on 
 the hills, she made herself at home, and behaved in 
 all respects like a lady. When out with me, if she 
 saw sheep in the streets or road, she got quite excited, 
 and helped the work, and was curiously useful, the 
 being so making her wonderfully happy. And so her 
 little life went on, never doing wrong, always blithe 
 and kind and beautiful. But some months after she 
 came, there was a mystery about her : every Tuesday 
 evening she disappeared ; we tried to watch her, but 
 in vain, she was always off by nine p. M., and was 
 away all night, coming back next day wearied and 
 all over mud, as if she had traveled far. She slept 
 all next day. This went on for some months and we 
 could make nothing of it. Poor dear creature, she 
 looked at us wistfully when she came in, as if she 
 would have told us if she could, and was especially 
 fond, though tired.
 
 54 OUR DOGS. 
 
 Well, one day I was walking across the Grass- 
 market, with Wylie at my heels, when two shepherds 
 started, and looking at her, one said, " That 's her ; 
 that 's the wonderfu' wee bitch that naebody kens." 
 I asked him what he meant, and he told me that for 
 months past she had made her appearance by the first 
 daylight at the " buchts " or sheep-pens in the cattle 
 market, and worked incessantly, and to excellent pur- 
 pose in helping the shepherds to get their sheep and 
 lambs in. The man said with a sort of transport, 
 " She 's a perfect meeracle ; flees about like a speerit, 
 and never gangs wrang ; wears but never grups, and 
 beats a' oor dowgs. She 's a perfect meeracle, and as 
 soople as a maukin." Then he related how they all 
 knew her, and said, " There 's that wee fell yin ; we '11 
 get them in noo." They tried to coax her to stop and 
 be caught, but no, she was gentle, but off ; and for 
 many a day that " wee fell yin " was spoken of by these 
 rough fellows. She continued this amateur work till 
 she died, which she did in peace. 
 
 It is very touching the regard the south - country 
 shepherds have to their dogs. Professor Syme one 
 day, many years ago, when living in Forres Street, 
 was looking out of his window, and he saw a young 
 shepherd striding down North Charlotte Street, as if 
 making for his house ; it was midsummer. The man 
 had his dog with him, and Mr. Syme noticed that he 
 followed the dog, and not it him, though he contrived 
 to steer for the house. He came, and was ushered 
 into his room ; he wished advice about some ailment,
 
 OUR DOGS. 55 
 
 and Mr. Syme saw that he had a bit of twine round 
 the dog's neck, which he let drop out of his hand 
 when he entered the room. He asked him the mean- 
 ing of this, and he explained that the magistrates had 
 issued a mad-dog proclamation, commanding all dogs 
 to be muzzled or led on pain of death. " And why do 
 you go about as I saw you did before you came in to 
 me ? " " Oh," said he, looking awkward, " I did na 
 want Birkie to ken he was tied." Where will you 
 find truer courtesy and finer feeling ? He did n't want 
 to hurt Birkie's feelings. 
 
 Mr. Carruthers of Inverness told me a new story 
 of these wise sheep dogs. A butcher from Inverness 
 had purchased some sheep at Dingwall, and giving 
 them in charge to his dog, left the road. The dog 
 drove them on, till coming to a toll, the toll -wife 
 stood before the drove, demanding her dues. The dog 
 looked at her, and, jumping on her back, crossed his 
 forelegs over her arms. The sheep passed through, 
 and the dog took his place behind them, and went on 
 his way. 
 
 RAB. 
 
 Of Rab I have little to say, indeed have little right 
 to speak of him as one of " our dogs ; " but nobody 
 will be sorry to hear anything of that noble fellow. 
 Ailie, the day or two after the operation, when she 
 was well and cheery, spoke about him, and said she 
 would tell me fine stories when I came out, as I prom-
 
 56 OUR DOGS. 
 
 ised to do, to see her at Howgate. I asked her how 
 James came to get him. She told me that one day 
 she saw James coming down from Leadburn with the 
 cart ; he had been away west, getting eggs and butter, 
 cheese and hens for Edinburgh. She saw he was in 
 some trouble, and on looking, there was what she 
 thought a young calf being dragged, or, as she called 
 it, " haurled," at the back of the cart. James was 
 in front, and when he came up, very warm and very 
 angry, she saw that there was a huge young dog tied 
 to the cart, struggling and pulling back with all his 
 might, and as she said "lookin' fearsom." James, 
 who was out of breath and temper, being past his 
 time, explained to Ailie, that this " muckle brute o' a 
 whalp " had been worrying sheep, and terrifying 
 everybody up at Sir George Montgomery's at Macbie 
 Hill, and that Sir George had ordered him to be 
 hanged, which, however, was sooner said than done, 
 as " the thief " showed his intentions of dying hard. 
 James came up just as Sir George had sent for his 
 gun, and as the dog had more than once shown a lik- 
 ing for him, he said he " wad gie him a chance ; " 
 and so he tied him to his cart. Young Rab, fearing 
 some mischief, had been entering a series of protests 
 all the way, and nearly strangling himself to spite 
 James and Jess, besides giving Jess more than usual 
 to do. " I wish I had let Sir George pit that charge 
 into him, the thrawn brute," said James. But Ailie 
 had seen that in his foreleg there was a splinter of 
 wood, which he had likely got when objecting to be
 
 OUR DOGS. 57 
 
 hanged, and that he was miserably lame. So she got 
 James to leave him with her, and go straight into 
 Edinburgh. She gave him water, and by her woman's 
 wit got his lame paw under a door, so that he could n't 
 suddenly get at her, then with a quick firm hand she 
 plucked out the splinter, and put in an ample meal. 
 She went in some time after, taking no notice of him, 
 and he came limping up, and laid his great jaws in her 
 lap ; from that moment they were " chief," as she 
 said, James finding him mansuete and civil when he 
 returned. 
 
 She said it was Rab's habit to make his appearance 
 exactly half an hour before his master, trotting in full 
 of importance, as if to say, " He 's all right, he '11 be 
 here." One morning James came without him. He 
 had left Edinburgh very early, and in coming near 
 Auchindinny, at a lonely part of the road, a man 
 sprang out on him, and demanded his money. James, 
 who was a cool hand, said, " Weel a weel, let me get 
 it," and stepping back, he said to Rab, " Speak till him, 
 my man." In an instant Rab was standing over him, 
 threatening strangulation if he stirred. James pushed 
 on, leaving Rab in charge ; he looked back, and saw 
 that every attempt to rise was summarily put down. 
 As he was telling Ailie the story, up came Rab with 
 that great swing of his. It turned out that the robber 
 was a Howgate lad, the worthless son of a neighbor, 
 and Rab knowing him had let him cheaply off ; the 
 only thing, which was seen by a man from a field, was, 
 that before letting him rise, he quenched (pro tern-
 
 58 OUR DOGS. 
 
 pore) the fire of the eyes of the ruffian, by a familiar 
 Gulliverian application of Hydraulics, which I need 
 not further particularize. James, who did not know 
 the way to tell an untruth, or embellish anything, told 
 me this as what he called " a fact positeevdy" 
 
 WASP 
 
 Was a dark brindled bull terrier, as pure in blood as 
 Cruiser or Wild Dayrell. She was brought by my 
 brother from Otley, in the West Riding. She was 
 very handsome, fierce, and gentle, with a small, com- 
 pact, finely-shaped head, and a pair of wonderful eyes, 
 as full of fire and of softness as Grisi's ; indeed 
 she had to my eye a curious look of that wonderful 
 genius at once wild and fond. It was a fine sight 
 to see her on the prowl across Bowden Moor, now 
 cantering with her nose down, now gathered up on the 
 top of a dyke, and with erect ears, looking across the 
 wild like a moss-trooper out on business, keen and fell. 
 She could do everything it became a dog to do, from 
 killing an otter or a polecat, to watching and playing 
 with a baby, and was as docile to her master as she 
 was surly to all else. She was not quarrelsome, but 
 " being in," she would have pleased Polonius as much, 
 as in being " ware of entrance." She was never 
 beaten, and she killed on the spot several of the 
 country bullies who came out upon her when follow- 
 ing her master in his rounds. She generally sent them
 
 OUR DOGS. 59 
 
 off howling with one snap, but if this was not enough, 
 she made an end of it. 
 
 But it was as a mother that she shone ; and to see 
 the gypsy, Hagar-like creature nursing her occasional 
 Ishmael playing with him, and fondling him all 
 over, teaching his teeth to war, and with her eye and 
 the curl of her lip daring any one but her master to 
 touch him, was like seeing Grisi watching her darling 
 " Gennaro," who so little knew why and how much 
 she loved him. 
 
 Once when she had three pups, one of them died. 
 For two days and nights she gave herself up to try- 
 ing to bring it to life licking it and turning it over 
 and over, growling over it, and all but worrying it 
 to awake it. She paid no attention to the living two, 
 gave them no milk, flung them away with her teeth, 
 and would have killed them, had they been allowed 
 to remain with her. She was as one possessed, and 
 neither ate, nor drank, nor slept, was heavy and miser- 
 able with her milk, and in such a state of excitement 
 that no one could remove the dead pup. 
 
 Early on the third day she was seen to take the 
 pup in her mouth, and start across the fields towards 
 the Tweed, striding like a race-horse she plunged 
 in, holding up her burden, and at the middle of the 
 stream dropped it and swam swiftly ashore ; then she 
 stood and watched the little dark lump floating away, 
 bobbing up and down with the current, and losing it 
 at last far down, she made her way home, sought out 
 the living two, devoured them with her love, carried
 
 60 OUR DOGS. 
 
 them one by one to her lair, and gave herself up 
 wholly to nurse them ; you can fancy her mental and 
 bodily happiness and relief when they were pulling 
 away and theirs. 
 
 On one occasion my brother had lent her to a wo- 
 man who lived in a lonely house, and whose husband 
 was away for a time. She was a capital watch. One 
 day an Italian with his organ came first begging, 
 then demanding money showing that he knew she 
 was alone and that he meant to help himself, if she 
 did n't. She threatened to " lowse the dowg ; " but 
 as this was Greek to him, he pushed on. She had 
 just time to set Wasp at him. It was very short 
 work. She had him by the throat, pulled him and 
 his organ down with a heavy crash, the organ giv- 
 ing a ludicrous sort of cry of musical pain. "Wasp, 
 thinking this was from some creature within, possi- 
 bly a ^vh^ttret, left the ruffian, and set to work tooth 
 and nail on the box. Its master slunk off, and with 
 mingled fury and thankfulness watched her disem- 
 boweling his only means of an honest living. The 
 woman good-naturedly took her off, and signed to the 
 miscreant to make himself and his remains scarce. 
 This he did with a scowl ; and was found in the even- 
 ing in the village, telling a series of lies to the watch- 
 maker, and bribing him with a shilling to mend his 
 pipes " his kist o' whussels."
 
 OUR DOGS. 61 
 
 JOCK 
 
 Was insane from his birth; at first an amab'dis insa- 
 nia, but ending in mischief and sudden death. He 
 was an English terrier, fawn-colored ; his mother's 
 name VAMP (Vampire), and his father's DEMOX. 
 He was more properly daft than mad ; his courage, 
 muscularity, and prodigious animal spirits making 
 him insufferable, and never allowing one sane feature 
 of himself any chance. No sooner was the street 
 door open, than he was throttling the first dog pass- 
 ing, bringing upon himself and me endless grief. Cats 
 he tossed up into the air, and crushed their spines as 
 they fell. Old ladies he upset by jumping over their 
 heads ; old gentlemen by running between their legs. 
 At home, he would think nothing of leaping through 
 the tea-things, upsetting the urn, cream, etc., and at 
 dinner the same sort of thing. I believe if I could 
 have found time to thrash him sufficiently, and let 
 him be a year older, we might have kept him ; but 
 having upset an Earl when the streets were muddy, 
 I had to part with him. He was sent to a clergyman 
 in the island of Westray, one of the Orkneys ; and 
 though he had a wretched voyage, and was as sick as 
 any dog, he signalized the first moment of his arrival 
 at the manse by strangling an ancient monkey, or 
 " puggy?" the pet of the minister, who was a bach- 
 elor, and the wonder of the island. Jock hence- 
 forward took to evil courses, extracting the kidneys
 
 62 OUR DOGS. 
 
 of the best young rams, driving whole hirsels down 
 steep places into the sea, till at last all the guns of 
 Westray were pointed at him, as he stood at bay 
 under a huge rock on the shore, and blew him into 
 space. I always regret his end, and blame myself 
 for sparing the rod. Of 
 
 DUCHIE 
 
 I have already spoken; her oddities were endless. 
 We had and still have a dear friend, " Cousin 
 Susan " she is called by many who are not her cous- 
 ins, a perfect lady, and, though hopelessly deaf, 
 as gentle and contented as was ever Griselda with the 
 full use of her ears ; quite as great a pet, in a word, 
 of us all as Duchie was of ours. One day we found 
 her mourning the death of a cat, a great playfellow 
 of the Sputchard's, and her small Grace was with^us 
 when we were condoling with her and we saw that 
 she looked very wistfully at Duchie. I wrote on the 
 slate, " Would you like her ? " and she through her 
 tears said, " You know that would never do." But 
 it did do. We left Duchie that very night, and 
 though she paid us frequent visits, she was Cousin 
 Susan's for life. I fear indulgence dulled her moral 
 sense. She was an immense happiness to her mis- 
 tress, whose silent and lonely days she made glad with 
 her oddity and mirth. And yet the small creature, 
 old, toothless, and blind, domineered over her gentle 
 friend threatening her sometimes if she presumed
 
 OUR DOGS. 63 
 
 to remove the small Fury from the inside of her own 
 bed, into which it pleased her to creep. Indeed, I 
 helieve it is too true, though it was inferred only, 
 that her mistress and friend spent a great part of a 
 winter night in trying to coax her dear little ruffian 
 out of the centre of the bed. One day the cook 
 asked what she would have for dinner : " I would 
 like a mutton chop, but then, you know, Duchie likes 
 minced veal better ! " The faithful and happy little 
 creature died at a great age, of natural decay. 
 
 But time would fail me, and I fear patience would 
 fail you, my reader, were I to tell you of CRAB, of 
 JOHN PYM, of PUCK, and of the rest. GRAB, the 
 Mugger's dog, grave, with deep-set, melancholy eyes, 
 as of a nobleman (say the Master of Ravenswood) in 
 disguise, large visaged, shaggy, indomitable, come of 
 the pure Piper Allan's breed. This Piper Allan, you 
 must know, lived some two hundred years ago in 
 Cocquet Water, piping like Homer, from place to 
 place, and famous not less for his dog than for his 
 music, his news, and his songs. The Earl of North- 
 umberland, of his day, offered the piper a small farm 
 for his dog, but after deliberating for a day Allan 
 said, " Na, na, ma Lord, keep yir ferum ; what wud 
 a piper do wi' a ferum ? " From this dog descended 
 Davidson of Hyndlee's breed, the original Dandie- 
 Dinmont, and Crab could count his kin up to him. 
 He had a great look of the Right Honorable Edward 
 Ellice, and had much of his energy and wecht ; had
 
 64 OUR DOGS. 
 
 there been a dog House of Commons, Crab would 
 have spoken as seldom, and been as great a power 
 in the house, as the formidable and faithful time-out- 
 of-mind member for Coventry. 
 
 JOHN PYM was a smaller dog than Crab, of more 
 fashionable blood, being a son of Mr. Somner's famous 
 SHEM, whose father and brother are said to have 
 been found dead in a drain into which the hounds 
 had run a fox. It had three entrances : the father 
 was put in at one hole, the son at another, and 
 speedily the fox bolted out at the third, but no ap- 
 pearance of the little terriers, and on digging, they 
 were found dead, locked in each other's jaws ; they 
 had met, and it being dark, and there being no time 
 for explanations, they had throttled each other. John 
 was made of the same sort of stuff, and was as com- 
 bative and victorious as his great namesake, and not 
 unlike him in some of his not so creditable qualities. 
 He must, I think, have been related to a certain dog 
 to whom " life was full o' sairiousness," but in John's 
 case the same cause produced an opposite effect. 
 John was gay and light-hearted, even when there was 
 not " enuff of fechtin," which, however, seldom hap- 
 pened, there being a market every week in Melrose, 
 and John appearing most punctually at the cross to 
 challenge all comers, and being short-legged he in- 
 veigled every dog into an engagement by first at- 
 tacking him, and then falling down on his back, in 
 which posture he latterly fought and won all his 
 battles. '
 
 OUR DOGS. 65 
 
 What can I say of PUCK 1 the thoroughbred 
 the simple-hearted the purloiner of eggs warm 
 from the hen the flutterer of all manner of Vol- 
 scians the bandy - legged, dear, old, dilapidated 
 buffer ? I got him from my brother, and only parted 
 with him because William's stock was gone. He had 
 to the end of life a simplicity which was quite touch- 
 ing. One summer day a dog-day when all dogs 
 found straying were hauled away to the police-office, 
 and killed off in twenties with strychnine, I met 
 Pirck trotting along Princes Street with a policeman, 
 a rope round his neck, he looking up in the fatal, 
 official, but kindly countenance in the most artless 
 and cheerful manner, wagging his tail and trotting 
 along. In ten minutes he would have been in the 
 next world ; for I am one of those who believe dogs 
 
 1 In The Dog, by Stonehenge, an excellent book, there is a 
 woodcut of Puck, and " Dr. Wm. Brown's celebrated dog 
 John Pym " is mentioned. Their pedigrees are given here 
 is Puck's, which shows his " strain "' is of the pure azure 
 blood " got by John Pym, out of Tib ; bred by Purves of 
 Leaderfoot ; sire, Old Dandie, the famous dog of old John 
 Stoddart of Selkirk dam, Whin." How Homeric all this 
 sounds ! I cannot help quoting what follows : " Sometimes 
 a Dandie pup of a good strain may appear not to be game at 
 an early age ; but he should not be parted with on this ac- 
 count, because many of them do not show their courage till 
 nearly two years old, and then nothing can beat them ; this 
 apparent softness arising, as I suspect, from kindness of heart" 
 a suspicion, my dear " Stonehenge," which is true, and 
 shows your own " kindness of heart," as well as sense.
 
 66 OUR DOGS. 
 
 have a next world, and why not? Puck ended his 
 days as the best dog in Roxburghshire, Placide 
 quiescas ! 
 
 DICK 
 
 Still lives, and long may he live ? As he was never 
 born, possibly he may never die ; be it so, he will 
 miss us when we are gone. I could say much of him, 
 but agree with the lively and admirable Dr. Jortin, 
 when, in his dedication of his Remarks on Eccle- 
 siastical History to the then (1752) Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, he excuses himself for not following the 
 modern custom of praising his Patron, by reminding 
 his Grace " that it was a custom amongst the an- 
 cients, not to sacrifice to heroes till after sunset. 1 " I 
 defer my sacrifice till Dick's sun is set. 
 
 I think every family should have a dog ; it is like 
 having a perpetual baby ; it is the plaything and 
 crony of the whole house. It keeps them all young. 
 All unite upon Dick. And then he tells no tales, be- 
 trays no secrets, never sulks, asks no troublesome 
 questions, never gets into debt, never coming down 
 late for breakfast, or coming in through his Chubb 
 too early to bed is always ready for a bit of fun, 
 lies in wait for it, and you may, if choleric, to your 
 relief, kick him instead of some one else, who would 
 not take it so meekly, and, moreover, would certainly 
 not, as he does, ask your pardon for being kicked. 
 
 Never put a collar on your dog it only gets him
 
 OUR DOGS. 
 
 67 
 
 stolen ; give him only one meal a day, and let that, 
 as Dame Dorothy, Sir Thomas Browne's wife, would 
 say, be " rayther under." Wash him once a week, 
 and always wash the soap out ; and let him be care- 
 fully combed and brushed twice a week. 
 
 By the bye, I was wrong in saying that it was 
 Burns who said Man is the God of the Dog he got 
 it from Bacon's Essay on Atheism.
 
 MORE OF "OUR DOGS." 
 PETER. 
 
 PETER died young, very quick and soon that 
 bright thing came to confusion. He died of excess 
 of life ; his vivacity slew him. Plucky and silent 
 under punishment, or any pain from without, pain 
 from within, in his own, precious, brisk, enjoying 
 body, was an insufferable offense, affront, and mys- 
 tery, an astonishment not to be borne, he dis- 
 dained to live under such conditions. 
 
 One day he came in howling with pain. There 
 was no injury, no visible cause, but he was wildly ill, 
 and in his eyes the end of all things had come. He 
 put so many questions to us at each pang what is 
 
 this? what the can it be? did you ever? 
 
 As each paroxysm doubled him up, he gave a sharp 
 cry, more of rage and utter exasperation than of suf- 
 fering ; he got up to run away from it why should 
 he die ? Why should he be shut up in darkness and 
 obstruction at that hour of his opening morn, his 
 sweet hour of prime? And so raging, and utterly 
 put out, the honest, dear little fellow went off in an 
 ecstasy of fury at death, at its absurdity in his case.
 
 MORE OF "OUR DOGS." 69 
 
 We never could explain his death ; it was not poi- 
 son or injury ; he actually expired when careering 
 round the green at full speed, as if to outrun his 
 enemy, or shake him off. We have not yet got over 
 his loss, and all the possibilities that lie buried in his 
 grave, in the Park, beneath a young chestnut-tree 
 where the ruddy-cheeked, fat, and cordial coachman, 
 who of old, in the grand old Reform days, used to 
 drive his master, Mr. Speaker Abercromby, down to 
 " the House " with much stateliness and bouquet, and 
 I dug it for him, that Park in which Peter had 
 often disported himself, fluttering the cocks and hens, 
 and putting to flight the squadron of Gleneagle's 
 wedders. 
 
 DICK. 
 
 He too is dead, he who, never having been 
 born, we had hoped never would die ; not that he 
 did like Rab " exactly " die ; he was slain. He 
 was fourteen, and getting deaf and blind, and a big 
 bully of a retriever fell on him one Sunday morning 
 when the bells were ringing. Dick, who always 
 fought at any odds, gave battle ; a Sabbatarian cab 
 turned the corner, the big dog fled, and Dick was run 
 over, there in his own street, as all his many 
 friends were going to church. His back was broken, 
 and he died on Monday night with us all about him ; 
 dear for his own sake, dearer for another's, whose 
 name Sine Qua, Non is now more than ever 
 true, now that she is gone.
 
 70 MORE OF " OUR DOGS." 
 
 I was greatly pleased when Dr. Getting of Rox- 
 bury came in yesterday and introduced himself to 
 me by asking, " Where is Dick ? " To think of our 
 Dick being known in Massachusetts ! 
 
 BOB. 
 
 If Peter was the incarnation of vivacity, Bob was 
 that of energy. He should have been called Thalaba 
 the Destroyer. He rejoiced in demolition, not 
 from ill temper, but from the sheer delight of ener- 
 gizing. 
 
 When I first knew him he was at Blinkbonny toll. 
 The tollman and his wife were old and the house 
 lonely, and Bob was too terrific for any burglar. He 
 was as tall and heavy as a foxhound, but in every 
 other respect a pure old-fashioned, wiry, short-haired 
 Scotch terrier, red as Rob Boy's beard, having 
 indeed other qualities of Rob's than his hair, chol- 
 eric, unscrupulous, affectionate, staunch, not in the 
 least magnanimous, as ready to worry a little dog 
 as a big one. Fighting was his " chief end," and he 
 omitted no opportunity of accomplishing his end. 
 Rab liked fighting for its own sake, too, but scorned 
 to fight anything under his own weight ; indeed, was 
 long-suffering to public meanness with quarrelsome 
 lesser dogs. Bob had no such weakness. 
 
 After much difficulty and change of masters, I 
 bought him, I am ashamed to say, for five pounds, and 
 brought him home. He had been chained for months, 
 was in high health and spirits, and the surplus power
 
 MORE OF "OUR DOGS." 71 
 
 and activity of this great creature, as he dragged me 
 and my son along the road, giving battle to every dog 
 he met, was something appalling. 
 
 I very soon found I could not keep him. He wor- 
 ried the pet dogs all around, and got me into much 
 trouble. So I gave him as night-watchman to a gold- 
 smith in Princess Street. This work he did famously. 
 I once, in passing at midnight, stopped at the shop 
 and peered in at the little slip of glass, and by the 
 gas-light I saw where he lay. I made a noise, and 
 out came he with a roar and a bang as of a sledge- 
 hammer. I then called his name, and in an instant 
 all was still except a quick tapping within that inti- 
 mated the wagging of the tail. He is still there, 
 has settled down into a reputable, pacific citizen, a 
 good deal owing, perhaps, to the disappearance in bat- 
 tle of sundry of his best teeth. As he lies in the sun 
 before the shop door he looks somehow like the old 
 Fighting Te'ine'raire. 
 
 I never saw a dog of the same breed ; he is a sort 
 of rough cob of a dog, a huge quantity of terrier in 
 one skin ; for he has all the fun and briskness and 
 failings and ways of a small dog, begging and hop- 
 ping as only it does. Once his master took him to 
 North Berwick. His first day he spent in careering 
 about the sands and rocks and in the sea, for he is a 
 noble swimmer. His next he devoted to worrying all 
 the dogs of the town, beginning, for convenience, with 
 the biggest. 
 
 This aroused the citizens, and their fury was brought
 
 72 MORE OF "OUR DOGS." 
 
 to a focus on the third day by its being reported al- 
 ternatively that he had torn a child's ear off, or torn 
 and actually eaten it. Up rose the town as one man, 
 and the women each as two, and, headed by Matthew 
 Cathie, the one-eyed and excellent shoemaker, with a 
 tall, raw divinity student, knock-kneed and six feet 
 two, who was his lodger, and was of course called 
 young Dominie Sampson, they bore down upon Bob 
 and his master, who were walking calmly on the 
 shore. 
 
 Bob was for making a stand, after the manner of 
 Coriolanus, and banishing by instant assault the 
 " common cry of curs ; " but his master saw sundry 
 guns and pistols, not to speak of an old harpoon, and 
 took to his heels, as the only way of getting Bob to 
 take to his. Aurifex, with much nous, made for the 
 police station, and, with the assistance of the consta- 
 bles and half a crown, got Thalaba locked up for the 
 night, safe and sulky. 
 
 Next morning, Sunday, when Cathie and his huge 
 student lay uneasily asleep, dreaming of vengeance, 
 and the early dawn was beautiful upon the Bass, with 
 its snowy cloud of sea-birds " brooding on the charmed 
 wave," Bob was hurried up to the station, locked into 
 a horse-box, him never shall that ancient Burgh 
 forget or see. 
 
 I have a notion that dogs have humor, and are per- 
 ceptive of a joke. In the North, a shepherd, having 
 sold his sheep at a market, was asked by the buyer to 
 lend him his dog to take them home. " By a' man-
 
 MORE OF "OUR DOGS." 73 
 
 ner o' means tak Birkie, and when ye 'r dune wi' him 
 just play so " (making a movement with his arm), 
 " and he '11 be hame in a jiffy." Birkie was so clever 
 and useful and gay that the borrower coveted him ; 
 and on getting to his farm shut him up, intending to 
 keep him. Birkie escaped during the night, and took 
 the entire hirsel (flock) back to his own master ! 
 Fancy him trotting across the moor with them, they 
 as willing as he.
 
 PLEA FOR A DOG HOME. 
 
 EDINBUBGH, December 8, 1862. 
 
 SIR, I am rejoiced to find Mr. William Cham- 
 bers has taken up this matter. There is no fear of 
 failure if Glenormiston sets himself to organize a 
 home for our destitute four-footed fellow-creatures, 
 from whom we get so much of the best enjoyment, 
 affection, and help. It need not be an expensive in- 
 stitution, if the value of the overplus of good eat- 
 ing that, from our silly over-indulgence, makes our 
 town dogs short-lived, lazy, mangy, and on a rare 
 and enlivening occasion mad, were represented by 
 money, all the homeless, starving dogs of the city 
 would be warmed and fed, and their dumb miseries 
 turned into food and gladness. When we see our 
 Peppers, and Dicks, and Muffs, and Nellys, and 
 Dandies, and who knows how many other cordial 
 little ruffians with the shortest and spiciest of names, 
 on the rug, warm and cozy, pursuing in their 
 dreams that imaginary cat, let us think of their 
 wretched brethren or sisters without food, without 
 shelter, without a master or a bone. It only needs 
 a beginning, this new ragged school and home, 
 where the religious element happily is absent, and
 
 PLEA FOR A DOG HOME. 75 
 
 Dr. Guthrie may go halves with me in paying for 
 the keep of a rescued cur. There is no town where 
 there are so many thoroughbred house-dogs. I could 
 produce from my own dog acquaintance no end of 
 first-class Dandie Dinmonts and Skyes ; and there is 
 no town where there is more family enjoyment 
 from dogs, from Paterfamilias down to the baby 
 whose fingers are poked with impunity into eyes as 
 fierce and fell as Dirk Hatteraick's or Meg Mer- 
 rilies's. / 
 
 Many years ago, I got a proof of the unseen, and, 
 therefore, unhelped miseries of the homeless dog. I 
 was walking down Duke Street, when I felt myself 
 gently nipped in the leg, I turned, and there was 
 a ragged little terrier crouching and abasing himself 
 utterly, as if asking pardon for what he had done. 
 He then stood up on end and begged as only these 
 coaxing little ruffians can. Being in a hurry, I 
 curtly praised his performance with " Good dog ! " 
 clapped his dirty sides, and, turning round, made 
 down the hill ; when presently the same nip, perhaps 
 a little nippier, the same scene, only more intense, 
 the same begging and urgent motioning of his short, 
 shaggy paws. " There 's meaning in this," said I to 
 myself, and looked at him keenly and differently. 
 He seemed to twig at once, and, with a shrill cry, 
 was off much faster than I could. He stopped every 
 now and then to see that I followed, and, by way of 
 putting off the time and urging me, got up on the 
 aforesaid portion of his body, and, when I came up,
 
 76 PLEA FOR A DOG HOME. 
 
 was off again. This continued till, after going 
 through sundry streets and by-lanes, we came to a 
 gate, under which my short -legged friend disap- 
 peared. Of course I couldn't follow him. This as- 
 tonished him greatly. He came out to me, and as 
 
 much as said, " Why the don't you come in ? " 
 
 I tried to open it, but in vain. My friend vanished 
 and was silent. I was leaving in despair and dis- 
 gust, when I heard his muffled, ecstatic yelp far off 
 round the end of the wall, and there he was, wild 
 with excitement. I followed and came to a place 
 where, with a somewhat burglarious ingenuity, I got 
 myself squeezed into a deserted coachyard, lying all 
 rude and waste. My peremptory small friend went 
 under a shed, and disappeared in a twinkling through 
 the window of an old coach-body, which had long 
 ago parted from its wheels and become sedentary. I 
 remember the arms of the Fife family were on its 
 panel ; and, I dare say, this chariot, with its C 
 springs, had figured in 1822 at the King's visit, when 
 all Scotland was somewhat Fifeish. I looked in, and 
 there was a pointer bitch with a litter of five pups ; 
 the mother, like a ghost, wild with maternity and 
 hunger ; her raging, yelling brood tearing away at 
 her dry dugs. I never saw a more affecting or 
 more miserable scene than that family inside the 
 coach. The poor bewildered mother, I found, had 
 been lost by some sportsman returning South, and 
 must have slunk away there into that deserted place, 
 when her pangs (for she has her pangs as well as a
 
 PLEA FOR A DOG HOME. 77 
 
 duchess) came, and there, in that forlorn retreat, had 
 she been with them, rushing out to grab any chance 
 garbage, running back fiercely to them, this going 
 on day after day, night after night. What the re- 
 lief was when we got her well fed and cared for, 
 and her children filled and silent, all cuddling about 
 her asleep, and she asleep too, awaking up to as- 
 sure herself that this was all true, and that there 
 they were, all the five, each as plump as a plum, 
 
 " All too happy in the treasure, 
 Of her own exceeding pleasure," 
 
 what this is in kind, and all the greater in amount 
 as many outnumber one, may be the relief, the hap- 
 piness, the charity experienced and exercised in a 
 homely, well - regulated Dog Home. Nipper for 
 he was a waif I took home that night, and gave 
 him his name. He lived a merry life with me, 
 showed much pluck and zeal in the killing of rats, 
 and incontinently slew a cat which had unnatural 
 brute, unlike his friend deserted her kittens, and 
 was howling offensively inside his kennel. He died, 
 aged sixteen, healthy, lean, and happy to the last. 
 As for Perdita and her pups, they brought large 
 prices, the late Andrew Buchanan, of Coltbridge, an 
 excellent authority and man the honestest dog- 
 dealer I ever knew having discovered that their 
 blood and her culture were of the best.
 
 THE MYSTERY OF BLACK AND TAN. 
 
 WE, the Sine Qua Non, the Duchess, the 
 Sputchard, the Dutchard, the Ricapicticapic, Oz and 
 Oz, the Maid of Lorn, and myself, left Crieff some 
 fifteen years ago, on a bright September morning, 
 soon after daybreak, in a gig. It was a morning still 
 and keen : the sun sending his level shafts across 
 Strathearn, and through the thin mist over its river 
 hollows, to the fierce Aberuchil Hills, and searching 
 out the dark blue shadows in the corries of Benvor- 
 lich. But who and how many are " we " ? To make 
 you as easy as we all were, let me tell you we were 
 four ; and are not these dumb friends of ours persons 
 rather than things ? Is not their soul ampler, as Plato 
 would say, than their body, and contains rather than 
 is contained ? Is not what lives and wills in them, 
 and is affectionate, as spiritual, as immaterial, as truly 
 removed from mere flesh, blood, and bones, as that 
 soul which is the proper self of their master ? And 
 when we look each other in the face, as I now look 
 in Dick's, who is lying in his " corny " by the fire- 
 side, and he in mine, is it not as much the dog within 
 looking from out his eyes the windows of his soul 
 as it is the man from his ?
 
 THE MYSTERY OF BLACK AND TAN. 79 
 
 The Sine Qua Non, who will not be pleased at 
 being spoken of, is such an one as that vain-glorious 
 and chivalrous Ulric von Hiitten the Reformation's 
 man of wit, and of the world, and of the sword, who 
 slew Monkery with the wild laughter of his Epistolce 
 Obscuromm Fm>rwm had in his mind when he 
 wrote thus to his friend Fredericus Piscator (Mr. 
 Fred. Fisher), on the 19th May, 1519, " Da mihi 
 uxorem, Friderice, et ut scias qualem, venustam, ado- 
 lescent ulam, probe educatam, hilarem, verecundam, 
 patientem." " Qualem," he lets Frederic understand 
 in the sentence preceding, is one " qud cum ludam, 
 qud jocos confer am, amceniores et leviusculas fabidas 
 misceam, ubi soilicitudinis aciem obtundam, curarum 
 cestus mitiyem." And if you would know more of 
 the Sine Qua Non, and in English, for the world is 
 dead to Latin now, you will find her name and nature 
 in Shakespeare's words, when King Henry the Eighth 
 says, " go thy ways." 
 
 The Duchess, alias all the other names till you 
 come to the Maid of Lorn, is a rough, gnarled, in- 
 comparable little bit of a terrier, three parts Dandie- 
 Dinmont, and one part chiefly in tail and hair 
 cocker : her father being Lord Rutherfurd's famous 
 " Dandie," and her mother the daughter of a Skye, 
 and a light-hearted Cocker. The Duchess is about 
 the si/e and weight of a rabbit ; but has a soul as big, 
 as fierce, and as faithful as had Meg Merrilies, with 
 a nose as black as Topsy's ; and is herself every bit 
 as game and queer as that delicious imp of darkness
 
 80 THE MYSTERY OF BLACK AND TAN. 
 
 and of Mrs. Stowe. Her legs set her long slim body 
 about two inches and a half from the ground, making 
 her very like a huge caterpillar or hairy oobit her 
 two eyes, dark and full, and her shining nose, being 
 all of her that seems anything but hair. Her tail 
 was a sort of stump, in size and in look very much 
 like a spare foreleg, stuck in anywhere to be near. 
 Her color was black above and a rich brown below, 
 with two dots of tan above the eyes, which dots are 
 among the deepest of the mysteries of Black and 
 Tan. 
 
 This strange little being I had known for some 
 years, but had only possessed about a month. She 
 and her pup (a young lady called Smoot, which means 
 smolt, a young salmon), were given me by the widow 
 of an honest and drunken as much of the one as of 
 the other Edinburgh street-porter, a native of Ba- 
 denoch, as a legacy from him and a fee from her for 
 my attendance on the poor man's death-bed. But my 
 first sight of the Duchess was years before in Brough- 
 ton Street, when I saw her sitting bolt upright, beg- 
 ging, imploring, with those little rough four leggies, 
 and those yearning, beautiful eyes, all the world, or 
 any one, to help her master, who was lying " mortal " 
 in the kennel. I raised him, and with the help of a 
 ragged Samaritan, who was only less drunk than he, 
 I got Macpherson he held from Glen Truim 
 home ; the excited doggie trotting off, and looking 
 back eagerly to show us the way. I never again 
 passed the Porters' Stand without speaking to her.
 
 THE MYSTERY OF BLACK AND TAN. 81 
 
 After Malcolm's burial I took possession of her ; she 
 escaped to the wretched house, but as her mistress 
 was oft' to Kingussie, and the door shut, she gave a 
 pitiful howl or two, and was forthwith back at my 
 door, with an impatient, querulous bark. And so 
 this is our second of the four ; and is she not deserv- 
 ing of as many names as any other Duchess, from 
 her of Medina Sidonia downwards ? 
 
 A fierier little soul never dwelt in a queerer or 
 stancher body ; see her huddled up, and you would 
 think her a bundle of hair, or a bit of old mossy 
 wood, or a slice of heathery turf, with some red soil 
 underneath ; but speak to her, or give her a cat to 
 deal with, be it bigger than herself, and what an in- 
 carnation of affection, energy, and fury what a fell 
 unquenchable little ruffian. 
 
 The Maid of Lorn was a chestnut mare, a broken- 
 down racer, thoroughbred as Beeswing, but less for- 
 tunate in her life, and I fear not so happy occasione 
 mortis : unlike the Duchess, her. body was greater 
 and finer than her soul ; still she was a ladylike crea- 
 ture, sleek, slim, nervous, meek, willing, and fleet. 
 She had been thrown down by some brutal half- 
 drunk Forfarshire laird, when he put her wildly and 
 with her wind gone, at the last hurdle on the North 
 Inch at the Perth races. She was done for, and 
 bought for ten pounds by the landlord of the Drum- 
 mond Arms, Crieff, who had been taking as much 
 money out of her, and putting as little corn into her 
 as was compatible with life, purposing to run her for
 
 82 THE MYSTERY OF BLACK AND TAN. 
 
 the Consolation Stakes at Stirling. Poor young lady, 
 she was a sad sight broken in back, in knees, in 
 character, and wind in everything but temper, 
 which was as sweet and all-enduring as Penelope's or 
 our own Enid's. 
 
 Of myself, the fourth, I decline making any ac- 
 count. Be it sufficient that I am the Dutchard's 
 master, and drove the gig. 
 
 It was, as I said, a keen and bright morning, and 
 the S. Q. N. feeling chilly, and the Duchess being 
 away after a cat up a back entry, doing a chance 
 stroke of business, and the mare looking only half 
 breakfasted, I made them give her a full feed of meal 
 and water, and stood by and enjoyed her enjoyment. 
 It seemed too good to be true, and she looked up 
 every now and then in the midst of her feast, with 
 a mild wonder. Away she and I bowled down the 
 sleeping village, all overrun with sunshine, the dumb 
 idiot man and the birds alone up, for the ostler was 
 off to his straw. There was the S. Q. N. and her 
 small panting friend, who had lost the cat, but had 
 got what philosophers say is better the chase. 
 " Noiis ne cherchons jamais les choses, mats la 
 recherche des choses," says Pascal. The Duchess 
 would substitute for les choses les chats. Pursuit, 
 not possession, was her passion. We all got in, and 
 off set the Maid, who was in excellent heart, quite 
 gay, pricking her ears and casting up her head, and 
 rattling away at a great puce. 
 
 We baited at St. Fillans, and again cheered the
 
 THE MYSTERY OF BLACK AND TAN. 83 
 
 heart of the Maid with unaccustomed corn the S. 
 Q. N., Duchie, and myself, going up to the beautiful 
 rising ground at the back of the inn, and lying on 
 the fragrant heather looking at the loch, witli its 
 mild gleams and shadows, and its second heaven 
 looking out from its depths, the wild, rough mountains 
 of Glenartney towering opposite. Duchie, I believe, 
 was engaged in minor business close at hand, and 
 caught and ate several large flies and a humble-bee ; 
 she was very fond of this small game. 
 
 There is not in all Scotland, or as far as I have 
 seen in all else, a more exquisite twelve miles of 
 scenery than that between Crieff and the head of 
 Lochearn. Ochtertyre, and its woods ; Benchonzie, 
 the headquarters of the earthquakes, only lower than 
 Benvorlich - Strowan ; Lawers, with its grand old 
 Scotch pines ; Comrie, with the wild Lednoch ; 
 Dunira ; and St. Fillans, where we are now lying, 
 and where the poor thoroughbred is tucking in her 
 corn. We start after two hours of dreaming in the 
 half sunlight, and rumble ever and anon over an 
 earthquake, as the common folk call these same 
 hollow, resounding rifts in the rock beneath, and ar- 
 riving at the old inn at Lochearnhead, have a tousle 
 tea. In the evening, when the day was darkening 
 into night, Duchie and I, the S. Q. N. remaining 
 to read and rest walked up Glen Ogle. It was 
 then in its primeval state, the new road non-existent, 
 and the old one staggering up and down and across 
 that most original and Cyclopean valley, deep, 
 threatening, savage, and yet beautiful
 
 84 THE MYSTERY OF BLACK AND TAN. 
 
 " Where rocks were rudely heaped, and rent 
 As by a spirit turbulent ; 
 
 Where sights were rough, and sounds were wild, 
 And everything 1 unreconciled ; " 
 
 with flocks of mighty boulders, straying all over it. 
 Some far up, and frightful to look at, others huddled 
 down in the river, immane pecus, and one huge un- 
 loosened fellow, as hig as a manse, up aloft watching 
 them, like old Proteus with his calves, as if they had 
 fled from the sea by stress of weather, and had been 
 led by their ancient herd altos visere monies a 
 wilder, more " unreconciled " place I know not ; and 
 now that the darkness was being poured into it, those 
 big fellows looked bigger, and hardly " canny." 
 
 Just as we were turning to come home Duchie 
 unwillingly, as she had much multifarious, and as 
 usual fruitless hunting to do she and I were startled 
 by seeing a dog in the side of the hill, where the 
 soil had been broken. She barked and I stared ; she 
 trotted consequentially up and snuffed more canino, 
 and I went nearer : it never moved, and on coming 
 quite close I saw as it were the image of a terrier, a 
 something that made me think of an idea wwrealized ; 
 the rough, short, scrubby heather and dead grass, 
 made a color and a coat just like those of a good 
 Highland terrier a sort of pepper and salt this one 
 was and below, the broken soil, in which there was 
 some iron and clay, with old gnarled roots, for all the 
 world like its odd, bandy, and sturdy legs. Duchie 
 seemed not so easily unbeguiled as I was, and kept
 
 THE MYSTERY OF BLACK AND TAN. 85 
 
 staring, and snuffing, and growling, but did not touch 
 it, seemed afraid. I left and looked again, and 
 certainly it was very odd the growing resemblance 
 to one of the indigenous, hairy, low-legged dogs, one 
 sees all about the Highlands, terriers, or earthy ones. 
 We came home, and told the S. Q. N. our joke. I 
 dreamt of that visionary terrier, that son of the 
 soil, all night; and in the very early morning, leav- 
 ing the S. Q. N. asleep, I walked up with the Duch- 
 ess to the same spot. What a morning ! it was 
 before sunrise, at least before he had got above Ben- 
 vorlich. The loch was lying in a faint mist, beautiful 
 exceedingly, as if half veiled and asleep, the cataract 
 of Edinample roaring less loudly than in the night, 
 and the old castle of the Lords of Lochow, in the 
 shadow of the hills, among its trees, might be seen 
 
 " Sole sitting by the shore of old romance." 
 
 There was still gloom in Glen Ogle, though the beams 
 of the morning were shooting up into the broad fields 
 of the sky. I was looking back and down, when I 
 heard the Duchess bark sharply, and then give a cry 
 of fear, and on turning round, there was she with as 
 much as she had of tail between her legs, where I 
 never saw it before, and her small Grace, without 
 noticing me or my cries, making down to the inn and 
 her mistress, a hairy hurricane. I walked on to see 
 what it was, and there in the same spot as last night, 
 in the bank, was a real dog no mistake ; it was not, 
 as the day before, a mere surface or spectrum, or
 
 86 THE MYSTERY OF BLACK AND TAN. 
 
 ghost of a dog ; it was plainly round and substantial ; 
 it was much developed since eight P. M. As I looked, 
 it moved slightly, and as it were by a sort of shiver, 
 as if an electric shock (and why not ?) was being ad- 
 ministered by a law of nature ; it had then no tail, or 
 rather had an odd amorphous look in that region ; its 
 eye, for it had one it was seen in profile looked 
 to my profane vision like (why not actually ?) a huge 
 blaeberry (vaccinium Myrtillits, it is well to be scien- 
 tific), black and full ; and I thought, but dare not 
 be sure, and had no time or courage to be minute, 
 that where the nose should be, there was a small shin- 
 ing black snail, probably the Limax niyer of M. de 
 Ferussac, curled up, and if you look at any dog's 
 nose you will be struck with the typical resemblance, 
 in the corrugations and moistness and jetty blackness 
 of the one to the other, and of the other to the one. 
 He was a strongly - built, wiry, bandy, and short- 
 legged dog. As I was staring upon him, a beam 
 Oh, first creative beam ! sent from the sun 
 
 " Like as an arrow from a bow, 
 Shot by an archer strong " 
 
 as he looked over Benvorlich's shoulder, and piercing 
 a cloudlet of mist which clung close to him, and fill- 
 ing it with whitest radiance, struck upon that eye or 
 berry, and lit up that nose or snail : in an instant he 
 sneezed (the nisus (sneezus ?) formativus of the an- 
 cients) ; the eye quivered and was quickened, and 
 with a shudder such as a horse executes with that 
 curious muscle of the skin, of which we have a mere
 
 THE MYSTERY OF BLACK AND TAN. 87 
 
 fragment in our neck, the Platysma Myoides, and 
 which doubtless has been lessened as we lost our dis- 
 tance from the horse-type which dislodged some 
 dirt and stones and dead heather, and doubtless end- 
 less beetles, and, it may be, made some near weasel 
 open his other eye, up went his tail, and out he came, 
 lively, entire, consummate, warm, wagging his tail, I 
 was going to say like a Christian, I mean like an or- 
 dinary dog. Then flashed upon me the solution of 
 the Mystery of Black and Tan in all its varieties : 
 the body, its upper part gray or black or yellow ac- 
 cording to the upper soil and herbs, heather, bent, 
 moss, etc. ; the belly and feet, red or tan or light 
 fawn, according to the nature of the deep soil, be it 
 ochrey, ferruginous, light clay, or comminuted mica 
 slate. And wonderfullest of all, the DOTS of TAN 
 above the eyes and who has not noticed and won- 
 dered as to the philosophy of them ? I saw made 
 by the two fore feet, wet and clayey, being put 
 briskly up to his eyes as he sneezed that genetic, viv- 
 ifying sneeze, and leaving their mark, forever. 
 
 He took to me quite pleasantly, by virtue of 
 " natural selection," and has accompanied me thus 
 far in our " struggle for life," and he, and the S. Q. 
 N., and the Duchess, and the Maid, returned that 
 day to Crieff, and were friends all our days. I was 
 a little timid when he was crossing a burn lest he 
 should wash away his feet, but he merely colored the 
 water, and every day less and less, till in a fortnight 
 I could wash him without fear of his becoming a so-
 
 88 THE MYSTERY OF BLACK AND TAN. 
 
 lution, or fluid extract of dog, and thus resolving the 
 mystery back into itself. 
 
 The mare's days were short. She won the Conso- 
 lation Stakes at Stirling, and was found dead next 
 morning in Gibb's stables. The Duchess died in a 
 good old age, as may be seen in the history of Our 
 Dogs. The S. Q. N., and the parthenogenesic earth- 
 born, the Cespes Vivus whom we sometimes called 
 Joshua, because he was the Son of None (Nun), and 
 even Melchisedec has been whispered, but only that, 
 and Fitz Memnon, as being as it were a son of the 
 Sun, sometimes the Autochthon avro^6ovo<; ; (indeed, 
 if the relation of the coup de soleil and the blae- 
 berry had not been plainly causal and effectual, I 
 might have called him Filius Gunni, for at the very 
 moment of that shudder, by which he leapt out of 
 non-life into life, the Marquis's gamekeeper fired his 
 rifle up the hill, and brought down a stray young 
 stag,) these two are happily with me still, and at this 
 moment she is out on the grass in a low easy-chair, 
 reading Emilie Carlen's Brilliant Marriage, and 
 Dick is lying at her feet, watching, with cocked ears, 
 some noise in the ripe wheat, possibly a chicken, for, 
 poor fellow, he has a weakness for worrying hens, 
 and such small deer, when there is a dearth of 
 greater. If any, as is not unreasonable, doubt me 
 and my story, they may come and see Dick. I as- 
 sure them he is well worth seeing.
 
 MARJORIE FLEMING. 
 
 ONE November afternoon in 1810 the year in 
 which Waverley was resumed and laid aside again, to 
 be finished off, its last two volumes in three weeks, 
 and made immortal in 1814, and when its author, by 
 the death of Lord Melville, narrowly escaped getting 
 a civil appointment in India three men, evidently 
 lawyers, might have been seen escaping like school- 
 boys from the Parliament House, and speeding arm- 
 in-arm down Bank Street and the Mound, in the teeth 
 of a surly blast of sleet. 
 
 The three friends sought the bield of the low wall 
 old Edinburgh boys remember well, and sometimes 
 miss now, as they struggle with the stout west wind. 
 
 The three were curiously unlike each other. One, 
 " a little man of feeble make, who would be unhappy 
 if his pony got beyond a foot pace," slight, with 
 " small, elegant features, hectic cheek, and soft hazel 
 eyes, the index of the quick, sensitive spirit within, as 
 if he had the warm heart of a woman, her genuine 
 enthusiasm, and some of her weaknesses." Another, 
 as unlike a woman as a man can be ; homely, almost 
 common, in look and figure ; his hat and his coat, and 
 indeed his entire covering, worn to the quick, but all
 
 90 MARJORIE FLEMING. 
 
 of the best material; what redeemed him from vul- 
 garity and meanness were his eyes, deep set, heavily 
 thatched, keen, hungry, shrewd, with a slumbering 
 glow far in, as if they could be dangerous ; a man to 
 care nothing for at first glance, but somehow, to give 
 a second and not-forgetting look at. The third was 
 the biggest of the three, and though lame, nimble, and 
 all rough and alive with power ; had you met him 
 anywhere else, you would say he was a Liddesdale 
 store-farmer, come of gentle blood ; " a stout, blunt 
 carle," as he says of himself, with the swing and stride 
 and the eye of a man of the hills, a large, sunny, 
 out-of-door air all about him. On his broad and some- 
 what stooping shoulders was set that head which, with 
 Shakespeare's and Bonaparte's, is the best known in 
 all the world. 
 
 He was in high spirits, keeping his companions and 
 himself in roars of laughter, and every now and then 
 seizing them, and stopping, that they might take their 
 fill of the fun ; there they stood shaking with laugh- 
 ter, " not an inch of their body free " from its grip. 
 At George Street they parted, one to Rose Court, be- 
 hind St. Andrew's Church, one to Albany Street, the 
 other, our big and limping friend, to Castle Street. 
 
 We need hardly give their names. The first was 
 William Erksine, afterwards Lord Kinnedder, chased 
 out of the world by a calumny, killed by its foul 
 breath, 
 
 " And at the touch of wrong, without a strife 
 Slipped in a moment out of life."
 
 MARJORIE FLEMING. 91 
 
 There is nothing in literature more beautiful or more 
 pathetic than Scott's love and sorrow for this friend 
 of his youth. 
 
 The second was William Clerk, the Darsie Lati- 
 mer of JKedgauntlet ; "a man," as Scott says, "of 
 the most acute intellects and powerful apprehension," 
 but of more powerful indolence, so as to leave the 
 world with little more than the report of what he 
 might have been, a humorist as genuine, though not 
 quite so savagely Swiftian as his brother Lord Eldin, 
 neither of whom had much of that commonest and 
 best of all the humors, called good. 
 
 The third we all know. What has he not done for 
 every one of us ? Who else ever, except Shakespeare, 
 so diverted mankind, entertained and entertains a 
 world so liberally, so wholesomely ? We are fain to 
 say, not even Shakespeare, for his is something deeper 
 than diversion, something higher than pleasure, and 
 yet who would care to split this hair ? 
 
 Had any one watched him closely before and after 
 the parting, what a change he would see ! The bright, 
 broad laugh, the shrewd, jovial word, the man of the 
 Parliament House and of the world ; and next step, 
 moody, the light of his eye withdrawn, as if seeing 
 things that were invisible ; his shut mouth, like a 
 child's, so impressionable, so innocent, so sad ; he was 
 now all within, as before he was all without ; hence 
 his brooding look. As the snow blattered in his face, 
 he muttered, " How it raves and drifts ! On-ding o' 
 snaw, ay that 's the word, on-ding " He was
 
 92 MARJORIE FLEMING. 
 
 now at his own door, " Castle Street, No. 39." He 
 opened the door, and went straight to his den ; that 
 wondrous workshop, where, in one year, 1823, when 
 he was fifty-two, he wrote Peveril of the Peak, 
 Quentin Durward, and St. Ronan's Well, besides 
 much else. We once took the foremost of our novel- 
 ists, the greatest, we would say, since Scott, into this 
 room, and could not but mark the solemnizing effect 
 of sitting where the great magician sat so often and 
 so long, and looking out upon that little shabby bit 
 of sky and that back green, where faithful Camp 
 lies. 1 
 
 He sat down in his large green morocco elbow-chair, 
 drew himself close to his table, and glowered and 
 gloomed at his writing apparatus, " a very handsome 
 old box, richly carved, lined with crimson velvet, and 
 containing ink-bottles, taper-stand, etc., in silver, the 
 whole in such order, that it might have come from 
 the silversmith's window half an hour before." He 
 took out his paper, then starting up angrily, said, 
 " ' Go spin, you jade, go spin.' No, d it, it won't 
 do, 
 
 ' My spinnin' wheel is auld and stiff, 
 The rock o't wunna stand, sir, 
 
 1 This favorite dog- "died about January, 1809, and was 
 buried in a fine moonlight night in the little garden behind the 
 house in Castle Street. My Avife tells me she remembers the 
 whole family in tears about the grave as her father himself 
 smoothed the turf above Camp, -with, the saddest face she had 
 ever seen. He had been engaged to dine abroad that day, but 
 apologized, on account of the death of ' a dear old friend.' " 
 Lockhart's Life of Scott.
 
 MARJORIE FLEMING. 93 
 
 To keep the temper-pin in tiff 
 Employs ower aft my hand, sir. ' 
 
 I am off the fang. 1 I can make nothing of Waverley 
 to-day ; I '11 awa' to Marjorie. Come wi' me, Maida, 
 you thief." The great creature rose slowly, and the 
 pair were off, Scott taking a maud (a plaid) with 
 him. " White as a frosted plum-cake, by jingo ! " 
 said he, when he got to the street. Maida gamboled 
 and whisked among the snow, and her master strode 
 across to Young Street, and through it to 1 North 
 Charlotte Street, to the house of his dear friend, Mrs. 
 William Keith, of Corstorphine Hill, niece of Mrs. 
 Keith, of Ravelston, of whom he said at her death, 
 eight years after, " Much tradition, and that of the 
 best, has died with this excellent old lady, one of the 
 few persons whose spirit and cleanliness and fresh- 
 ness of mind and body made old age lovely and de- 
 sirable." 
 
 Sir Walter was in that house almost every day, 
 and had a key, so in he and the hound went, shak- 
 ing themselves in the lobby. " Marjorie ! Marjorie ! " 
 shouted her friend, " where are ye, my bonnie wee 
 croodlin doo ? " In a moment a bright, eager child 
 of seven was in his arms, and he was kissing her all 
 over. Out came Mrs. Keith. " Come yer ways in, 
 Wattie." " No, not now. I am going to take Mar- 
 jorie wi' me, and you may come to your tea in Dun- 
 
 1 Applied to a pump when it is dry, and its valve has lost 
 its " fang ; " from the German fangen, to hold.
 
 94 MARJORIE FLEMING. 
 
 can Roy's sedan, and bring the bairn home in your 
 lap. " Tak' Marjorie, and it on-ding o" snaw ! " said 
 Mrs. Keith. He said to himself, " On-ding, that 's 
 odd, that is the very word." "Hoot, awa ! look 
 here," and he displayed the corner of his plaid, 
 made to hold lambs (the true shepherd's plaid, con- 
 sisting of two breadths sewed together, and uncut at 
 one end, making a poke or cul de sac). " Tak' yer 
 lamb," said she, laughing at the contrivance, and so 
 the Pet was first well happit up, and then put, laugh- 
 ing silently, into the plaid neuk, and the shepherd 
 strode off with his lamb, Maida gamboling through 
 the snow, and running races in her mirth. 
 
 Did n't he face " the angry airt," and make her 
 bield his bosom, and into his own room with her, and 
 lock the door, and out with the warm, rosy, little 
 wifie, who took it all with great composure ! There 
 the two remained for three or more hours, making 
 the house ring with their laughter ; you can fancy 
 the big man's and Maidie's laugh. Having made 
 the fire cheery, he set her down in his ample chair, 
 and standing sheepishly before her, began to say his 
 lesson, which happened to be, " Ziccotty, diccotty, 
 dock, the mouse ran up the clock, the clock struck 
 wan, down the mouse ran, ziccotty, diccotty, dock." 
 This done repeatedly till she was pleased, she gave 
 him his new lesson, gravely and slowly, timing it 
 upon her small fingers, he saying it after her, 
 
 " Wonery, twoery, tickery, seven; 
 Alibi, crackaby, ten, and eleven ;
 
 MARJORIE FLEMING. 95 
 
 Pin, pan, musky, dan ; 
 Tweedle-um, twoddle-um, 
 Twenty-wan ; eerie, orie, ourie, 
 You, are, out." 
 
 He pretended to great difficulty, and she rebuked 
 him with most comical gravity, treating him as a 
 child. He used to say that when he came to Alibi 
 Crackaby he broke down, and Pin-Pan, Musky- 
 Dan, Tweedle-um Twoddle-um made him roar with 
 laughter. He said Musky-Dan especially was be- 
 yond endurance, bringing up an Irishman and his 
 hat fresh from the Spice Islands and odoriferous 
 Ind ; she getting quite bitter in her displeasure at 
 his ill-behavior and stupidness. 
 
 Then he would read ballads to her in his own 
 glorious way, the two getting wild with excitement 
 over Gil Morrice or the Baron of Smailholm ; and 
 he would take her on his knee, and make her repeat 
 Constance's speeches in King John, till he swayed 
 to and fro, sobbing his fill. Fancy the gifted little 
 creature, like one possessed, repeating, 
 
 " For I am sick, and capable of fears, 
 
 Oppressed with wrong, and therefore full of fears ; 
 A widow, husbandless, subject to fears ; 
 A woman, naturally born to fears. 
 
 " If thou that bidst me be content, wert grim, 
 Ugly and slanderous to thy mother's womb, 
 Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious " 
 
 Or, drawing herself up " to the height of her 
 great argument,"
 
 96 MARJORIE FLEMING. 
 
 " I will instruct my sorrows to be proud, 
 
 For grief is proud, and makes his owner stout 
 Here I and sorrow sit." 
 
 Scott used to say that he was amazed at her power 
 over him, saying to Mrs. Keith, " She 's the most ex- 
 traordinary creature I ever met with, and her repeat- 
 ing of Shakespeare overpowers me as nothing else 
 does." 
 
 Thanks to the unforgetting sister of this dear 
 child, who has much of the sensibility and fun of her 
 who has been in her small grave these fifty and more 
 years, we have now before us the letters and journals 
 of Pet Marjorie, before us lies and gleams her 
 rich brown hair, bright and sunny as if yesterday's, 
 with the words on the paper, " Cut out in her last 
 illness," and two pictures of her by her beloved Isa- 
 bella, whom she worshiped ; there are the faded old 
 scraps of paper, hoarded still, over which her warm 
 breath and her warm little heart had poured them- 
 selves ; there is the old water-mark, " Lingard, 1808." 
 The two portraits are very like each other, but plainly 
 done at different times ; it is a chubby, healthy face, 
 deep-set, brooding eyes, as eager to tell what is going 
 on within as to gather in all the glories from without ; 
 quick with the wonder and the pride of life ; they 
 are eyes that would not be soon satisfied with seeing ; 
 eyes that would devour their object, and yet child- 
 like and fearless ; and that is a mouth that will not 
 be soon satisfied with love ; it has a curious likeness 
 to Scott's own, which has always appeared to us his 
 sweetest, most mobile, and speaking feature.
 
 MARJORIE FLEMING. 97 
 
 There she is, looking straight at us as she did at 
 him, fearless and full of love, passionate, wild, 
 wilful, fancy's child. One cannot look at it with- 
 out thinking of Wordsworth's lines on poor Hartley 
 Coleridge : 
 
 ' ' blessed vision, happy child ! 
 Thou art so exquisitely wild, 
 I thought of thee with many f ears, 
 Of what might be thy lot in future years. 
 I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest, 
 Lord of thy house and hospitality ; 
 And Grief, uneasy lover! ne'er at rest, 
 But when she sat within the touch of thee. 
 Oh, too industrious folly ! 
 Oh, vain and causeless melancholy ! 
 Nature will either end thee quite, 
 Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, 
 Preserve for thee by individual right, 
 A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flock." 
 
 And we can imagine Scott, when holding his warm, 
 plump little playfellow in his arms, repeating that 
 stately friend's lines : 
 
 " Loving she is, and tractable, though wild, 
 And innocence hath privilege in her, 
 To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes, 
 And feats of cunning ; and the pretty round 
 Of trespasses, affected to provoke 
 Mock chastisement and partnership in play. 
 And, as a fagot sparkles on the hearth, 
 Not less if unattended and alone, 
 Than when both young and old sit gathered round, 
 And take delight in its activity, 
 Even so this happy creature of herself 
 Is all-sufficient ; solitude to her
 
 98 MABJORIE FLEMING. 
 
 Is blithe society ; she fills the air 
 With gladness and involuntary songs." 
 
 But we will let her disclose herself. We need 
 hardly say that all this is true, and that these letters 
 are as really Marjorie's as was this light brown hair ; 
 indeed, you could as easily fabricate the one as the 
 other. 
 
 There was an old servant, Jeanie Robertson, who- 
 was forty years In her grandfather's family- Marjorie 
 Fleming, or, as she is called in the letters, and by 
 Sir Walter, Maidie, was the last child she kept. 
 Jeanie's wages never exceeded 3 a year, and, when 
 she left service, she had saved 40. She was devot- 
 edly attached to Maidie, rather despising and ill-using 
 her sister Isabella, a beautiful and gentle child. 
 This partiality made Maidie apt at times to domineer 
 over Isabella. " I mention this " (writes her surviv- 
 ing sister) " for the purpose of telling you an instance 
 of Maidie's generous justice. When only five years 
 old, when walking in Raith grounds, the two children 
 had run on before, and old Jeanie remembered they 
 might come too near a dangerous mill - lade. She 
 called to them to turn back. Maidie heeded her not, 
 rushed all the faster on, and fell, and would have 
 been lost, had her sister not pulled her back, saving 
 her life, but tearing her clothes. Jeanie flew on Isa- 
 bella to ' give it her ' for spoiling her favorite's dress ; 
 Maidie rushed in between, crying out, ' Pay (whip) 
 Maidjie as much as you like, and I '11 not say one 
 word ; but touch Isy, and I '11 roar like a bull ! '
 
 MARJORTE FLEMING. 99 
 
 Years after Maidie was resting in her grave, my 
 mother used to take me to the place, and told the 
 story always in the exact same words." This Jeanie 
 must have been a character. She took great pride 
 in exhibiting Maidie's brother William's Calvinistic 
 acquirements, when nineteen months old, to the offi- 
 cers of a militia regiment then quartered in Kirk- 
 caldy. This performance was so amusing that it 
 was often repeated, and the little theologian was pre- 
 sented by them with a cap and feathers. Jeanie's 
 glory was " putting him through the carritch " (cat- 
 echism) in broad Scotch, beginning at the beginning 
 with, " Wha made ye, ma bonnie man ? " For the 
 correctness of this and the three next replies Jeanie 
 had no anxiety, but the tone changed to menace, and 
 the closed nleve (fist) was shaken in the child's 
 face as she demanded, " Of what are you made ? " 
 " DIRT," was the answer uniformly given. " Wull 
 ye never learn to say dust, ye thrawn deevil ? " with 
 a cuff from the opened hand, was the as inevitable 
 rejoinder. 
 
 Here is Maidie's first letter before she was six. 
 The spelling unaltered, and there are no '" commoes." 
 
 " MY DEAR ISA, I now sit down to answer all 
 your kind and beloved letters which you was so good 
 as to write to me. This is the first time I ever wrote 
 a letter in my Life. There are a great many Girls 
 in the Square and they cry just like a pig when we 
 are under the painfull necessity of putting it to 
 Death. Miss Potune a Lady of my acquaintance
 
 100 MARJOR1E FLEMING. 
 
 praises me dreadfully. I repeated something out of 
 Dean Swift, and she said I was fit for the stage, and 
 you may think I was primmed up with majestick 
 Pride, but upon my word I felt myselfe turn a little 
 birsay birsay is a word which is a word that Wil- 
 liam composed which is as you may suppose a little 
 enraged. This horrid fat simpliton says that my 
 Aunt is beautifull which is intirely impossible for 
 that is not her nature." 
 
 What a peppery little pen we wield ! What could 
 that have been out of the Sardonic Dean ? what 
 other child of that age would have used " beloved " 
 as she does ? This power of affection, this faculty of 
 Seloving, and wild hunger to be beloved, conies out 
 more and more. She periled her all upon it, and it 
 may have been as well we know, indeed, that it 
 was far better for her that this wealth of love was 
 so soon withdrawn to its one only infinite Giver and 
 Receiver. This must have been the law of her 
 earthly life. Love was indeed " her Lord and 
 King ; " and it was perhaps well for her that she 
 found so soon that her and our only Lord and King 
 Himself is Love. 
 
 Here are bits from her Diary at Braehead : 
 " The day of my existence here has been delightful 
 and enchanting. On Saturday I expected no less 
 than three well-made Bucks the names of whom is 
 here advertised. Mr. Geo. Crakey [Craigie], and 
 Wm. Keith and Jn. Keith the first is the funniest 
 of every one of them. Mr. Crakey and [I] walked to
 
 MARJORIE FLEMING. 101 
 
 Crakyhall [Craigiehall] hand in hand in Innocence 
 and matitation [meditation] sweet thinking on the 
 kind love which flows in our tenderhearted mind 
 which is overflowing with majestic pleasure no one 
 was ever so polite to me in the hole state of my exist- 
 ence. Mr. Craky you must know is a great Buck 
 and pretty good-looking. 
 
 " I am at Ravelston enjoying nature's fresh air. 
 The birds are singing sweetly the calf doth frisk 
 and nature shows her glorious face." 
 
 Here is a confession : "I confess I have been 
 very more like a little young divil than a creature for 
 when Isabella went up stairs to teach me religion and 
 my multiplication and to be good and all my other 
 lessons I stamped with my foot and threw my new 
 hat which she had made on the ground and was sulky 
 and was dreadfully passionate, but she never whiped 
 me but said Marjory go into another room and think 
 what a great crime you are committing letting your 
 temper git the better of you. But I went so sulkily 
 that the Devil got the better of me but she never 
 never never whips me so that I think I would be the 
 better of it and the next time that I behave ill I 
 think she should do it for she never does it. ... 
 Isabella has given me praise for checking my tem- 
 per for I was sulky even when she was kneeling an 
 hole hour teaching me to write." 
 
 Our poor little wifie, she has no doubts of the per- 
 sonality of the Devil ! " Yesterday I behave ex- 
 tremely ill in God's most holy church for I would
 
 102 MARJORIE FLEMING. 
 
 never attend myself nor let Isabella attend which was 
 a great crime for she often, often tells me that when 
 to or three are geathered together God is in the midst 
 of them, and it was the very same Divil that tempted 
 Job that tempted me I am sure ; but he resisted Sa- 
 tan though he had boils and many many other misfor- 
 tunes which I have escaped. ... I am now going 
 to tell you the horible and wretched plaege [plague] 
 that my multiplication gives me you can't conceive 
 it the most Devilish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7 
 it is what nature itself cant endure." 
 
 This is delicious ; and what harm is there in her 
 " Devilish " ? it is strong language merely ; even old 
 Rowland Hill used to say " he grudged the Devil 
 those rough and ready words." "I walked to that 
 delightful place Crakyhall with a delightful young 
 man beloved by all his friends especially by me his 
 loveress, but I must not talk any more about him 
 for Isa said it is not proper for to speak of gentalmen 
 but I will never forget him ! . . . I am very very 
 glad that satan has not given me boils and many 
 other misfortunes In the holy bible these words 
 are written that the Devil goes like a roaring lyon in 
 search of his pray but the lord lets us escape from 
 him but we " (pauvre petite!) "do not strive with 
 this awfull Spirit. . . . To-day I pronunced a word 
 which should never come out of a lady's lips it was 
 that I called John a Impudent Bitch. I will tell you 
 what I think made me in so bad a humor is I got one 
 or two of that bad bad sina [senna] tea to-day," a
 
 MARJORIE FLEMING. 103 
 
 better excuse for bad humor and bad language than 
 most. 
 
 She has been reading the Book of Esther : " It 
 was a dreadful thing that Haman was hanged on the 
 very gallows which he had prepared for Mordeca to 
 hang him and his ten sons thereon and it was very 
 wrong and cruel to hang his sons for they did not 
 commit the crime ; but then Jesus was not then come 
 to teach us to be merciful." This is wise and beauti- 
 ful, has upon it the very dew of youth and of holi- 
 ness. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings He 
 perfects his praise. 
 
 " This is Saturday and I am very glad of it because 
 I have play half the Day and I get money too but 
 alas I owe Isabella 4 pence for I am finned 2 pence 
 whenever I bite my nails. Isabella is teaching me to 
 make simme colings nots of interrigations peorids 
 commoes, etc. . . . As this is Sunday I will meditate 
 upon Senciable and Religious subjects. First I should 
 be very thankful I am not a begger." 
 
 This amount of meditation and thankfulness seems 
 to have been all she was able for. 
 
 " I am going to-morrow to a delightfull place, Brae- 
 head by name, belonging to Mrs. Crraford, where 
 there is ducks cocks hens bubblyjocks 2 dogs 2 cats 
 and swine which is delightful. I think it is shocking 
 to think that the dog and cat should bear them " (this 
 is a meditation physiological), " and they are drowned 
 after all. I would rather have a man-dog than a wo- 
 man-dog, because they do not bear like women-dogs ;
 
 104 MARJORIE FLEMING. 
 
 it is a hard ease it is shocking. I cam here to en- 
 joy natures delightful breath it is sweeter than a fial 
 [phial J of rose oil." 
 
 Braehead is the farm the historical Jock Howison 
 asked and got from our gay James the Fifth, " the 
 gudeman o' Ballengiech," as a reward for the services 
 of his flail when the King had the worst of it at Cra- 
 mond Brig with the gypsies. The farm is unchanged 
 in size from that time, and still in the unbroken line 
 of the ready and victorious thrasher. Braehead is 
 held on the condition of the possessor being ready to 
 present the King with a ewer and basin to wash his 
 hands, Jock having done this for his unknown king 
 after the splore, and when George the Fourth came 
 to Edinburgh this ceremony was performed in silver 
 at Holyrood. It is a lovely neuk this Braehead, pre- 
 served almost as it was two hundred years ago. 
 " Lot and his wife," mentioned by Maidie, two 
 quaintly cropped yew-trees still thrive ; the burn 
 runs as it did in her time, and sings the same quiet 
 tune, as much the same and as different as Now 
 and Then, The house full of old family relics and 
 pictures, the sun shining on them through the small 
 deep windows with their plate glass ; and there, blink- 
 ing at the sun, and ch altering contentedly, is a parrot, 
 that might, for its looks of eld, have been in the ark, 
 and domineered over and deaved the dove. Every- 
 thing about the place is old and fresh. 
 
 This is beautiful : " I am very sorry to say that 
 I forgot God that is to say I forgot to pray to-day
 
 MARJORIE FLEMING. 105 
 
 and Isabella told me that I should be thankful that 
 God did not forget me if he did, O what become 
 of me if I was in danger and God not friends with me 
 I must go to unquenchable fire and if I was 
 tempted to sin how could I resist it O no I will 
 never do it again no no if I can help it." 
 (Canny wee wifie !) " My religion is greatly falling 
 off because I dont pray with so much attention when 
 I am saying my prayers, and my character is lost 
 among the Braehead people. I hope I will be 
 religious again but as for regaining my .character 
 I despare for it." (Poor little " habit and repute ! ") 
 
 Her temper, her passion, and her " badness " are 
 almost daily confessed and deplored : "I will never 
 again trust to my own power, for I see that I, cannot 
 be good without God's assistance I will not trust in 
 my own selfe, and Isa's health will be quite ruined 
 by me it will indeed." " Isa has giving me advice, 
 which is, that when I feal Satan beginning to tempt 
 me, that I flea him and he would flea me." " Remorse 
 is the worst thing to bear, and I am afraid that I will 
 fall a marter to it." 
 
 Poor dear little sinner ! Here comes the world 
 again : "In my travels I met with a handsome lad 
 named Charles Balfour Esq., and from him I got 
 of ers of mjtrage offers of marage, did I say ? Nay 
 plenty heard me." A fine scent for "breach of 
 promise ! " 
 
 This is abrupt and strong : " The Divil is curced 
 and all works. 'T is a fine work Newton on the pro-
 
 106 MARJORIE FLEMING. 
 
 fecies. I wonder if there is another book of poems 
 comes near the Bible. The Divil always girns at the 
 sight of the Bible." " Miss Potune " (her " simpliton " 
 friend) "is very fat; she pretends to be very learned. 
 She says she saw a stone that dropt from the skies ; 
 but she is a good Christian." Here come her views 
 on church government : " An Annibabtist is a thing 
 I am not a member of I am a Pisplekan (Episco- 
 palian) just now, and " (O you little Laodicean and 
 Latitudinarian 1) " a Prisbeteran at Kirkcaldy ! " 
 (Blandula ! Vagula ! cesium et animum mutas quce 
 tra?is mare (i. e. trans Bodotriam) curris /) " my 
 native town." " Sentiment is not what I am ac- 
 quainted with as yet, though I wish it, and should 
 like tq practise it." (!) "I wish I had a great, great 
 deal of gratitude in my heart, in all my body." 
 "There is a new novel published, named Self- 
 Control " (Mrs. Brunton's) "a very good maxim 
 forsooth ! " This is shocking : " Yesterday a marrade 
 man, named Mr. John Balfour, Esq., offered to kiss 
 me, and offered to marry me, though the man " (a 
 fine directness this !) " was espused, and his wife was 
 present and said he must ask her permission ; but he 
 did not. I think he was ashamed and confounded 
 before 3 gentelman Mr. Jobson and 2 Mr. Kings." 
 "Mr. Banester's " [Bannister's] " Budjet^e to-night; 
 I hope it will be a good one. A great many authors 
 have expressed themselves too sentimentally." You 
 are right, Marjorie. " A Mr. Burns writes a beauti- 
 ful song on Mr. Cunhaming, whose wife desarted him
 
 MARJORIE FLEMING. 107 
 
 truly it is a most beautiful one." " I like to read 
 the Fabulous historys, about the histerys of Robin, 
 Dickey, flapsay, and Peccay, and it is very amusing, 
 for some were good birds and others bad, but Peccay 
 was the most dutiful and obedient to her parients." 
 " Thomson is a beautiful author, and Pope, but noth- 
 ing to Shakespear, of which I have a little knolege. 
 Macbeth is a pretty composition, but awful one." 
 "The Newgate Calender is very instructive" (!) 
 " A sailor called here to say farewell ; it must be 
 dreadful to leave his native country when he might 
 get a wife ; or perhaps me, for I love him very much. 
 But O I forgot, Isabella forbid me to speak abdut 
 love." This antiphlogistic regimen and lesson is ill to 
 learn by our Maidie, for here she sins again : " Love 
 is a very papithatick thing " (it is almost a pity to cor- 
 rect this into pathetic), " as well as troublesome and 
 tiresome but Isabella forbid me to speak of it." 
 Here are her reflections on a pine-apple : " I think 
 the price of a pine-apple is very dear : it is a whole 
 bright goulden guinea, that might have sustained a 
 poor family." Here is a new vernal simile : " The 
 hedges are sprouting like chicks from the eggs when 
 they are newly hatched or, as the vulgar say, clacked" 
 u Doctor Swift's works are very funny ; I got some 
 of them by heart." " Moreheads sermons are I hear 
 much praised, but I never read sermons of any kind ; 
 but I read novelettes and my Bible, and I never for- 
 get it, or my prayers." Bravo Marjorie ! 
 
 She seems now, when still about six, to have 
 broken out into song :
 
 108 MARJORIE FLEMING. 
 
 " EPHIBOL (EPIGRAM OK EPITAPH WHO KNOWS WHICH?) 
 ON MY DEAR LOVE ISABELLA. 
 
 "Here lies sweet Isabell in bed, 
 
 With a night-cap on her head ; 
 
 Her skin is soft, her face is fair, 
 And she has very pretty hair ; 
 
 She and I in bed lies nice, 
 
 And undisturbed by rats or mice ; 
 
 She is disgusted with Mr. Worgan, 
 
 Though he plays upon the organ. 
 
 Her nails are neat, her teeth are white, 
 
 Her eyes are very, very bright, 
 
 In a conspicuous town she lives, 
 
 And to the poor her money gives : 
 
 Here ends sweet Isabella's story, 
 And may it be much to her glory." 
 
 Here are some bits at random : 
 
 " Of summer I am very fond, 
 And love to bathe into a pond ; 
 The look of sunshine dies away, 
 And will not let me out to play ; 
 I love the morning's sun to spy 
 Glittering through the casement's eye, 
 The rays of light are very sweet, 
 And puts away the taste of meat ; 
 The balmy breeze comes down from heaven, 
 And makes us like for to be living." 
 
 " The casawaiy is an curious bird, and so is the 
 gigantic crane, and the pelican of the wilderness, 
 whose mouth holds a bucket of fish and water. 
 Fighting is what ladies is not qualyfied for, they 
 would not make a good figure in battle or in a duel. 
 Alas ! we females are of little use to our country.
 
 MARJORIE FLEMING. 109 
 
 The history of all the malcontents as ever was hanged 
 is amusing." Still harping on the Neivgate Cal- 
 endar ! 
 
 " Braehead is extremely pleasant to me by the 
 companie of swine, geese, cocks, etc., and they are 
 the delight of my soul." 
 
 " I am going to tell you of a melancholy story. A 
 young turkie of 2 or 3 months old, would you be- 
 lieve it, the father broke its leg, and he killed an- 
 other ! I think he ought to be transported or 
 hanged." 
 
 " Queen Street is a very gay one, and so is Princes 
 Street, for all the lads and lasses, besides bucks and 
 beggars, parade there." 
 
 " I should like to see a play very much, for I 
 never saw one in all my life, and don't believe I ever 
 shall ; but I hope I can be content without going to 
 one. I can be quite happy without my desire being 
 granted." 
 
 " Some days ago Isabella had a terrible fit of the 
 toothake, and she walked with a long night-shift at 
 dead of night like a ghost, and I thought she was 
 one. She prayed for nature 's sweet restorer 
 balmy sleep but did not get it a ghostly figure 
 indeed she was, enough to make a saint tremble. It 
 made me quiver and shake from top to toe. Super- 
 stition is a very mean thing, and should be despised 
 and shunned." 
 
 Here is her weakness and her strength again : 
 " In the love-novels all the heroines are very desper-
 
 110 MARJORIE FLEMING. 
 
 ate. Isabella will not allow me to speak about lov- 
 ers and heroins, and 'tis too refined for my taste." 
 " Miss Egward's [Edgeworth's] tails are very good, 
 particularly some that are very much adapted for 
 youth (!) as Las, Laurance and Tarelton, False 
 Keys, etc. etc." 
 
 " Tom (Tones and Grey's Elegey in a country 
 churchyard are both excellent, and much spoke of 
 by both sex, particularly by the men." Are our 
 Marjories now-a-days better or worse because they 
 cannot read Tom Jones unharmed ? More better 
 than worse ; but who among them can repeat Gray's 
 Lines on a Distant Prospect of Eton College as 
 could our Maidie ? 
 
 Here is some more of her prattle : "I went into 
 Isabella's bed to make her smile like the Genius 
 Demedicus " (the Venus de Medicis) "or the statute 
 in an ancient Greece, but she fell asleep in my very 
 face, at which my anger broke forth, so that I awoke 
 her from a comfortable nap. All was now hushed up 
 again, but again my anger burst forth at her biding 
 me get up." 
 
 She begins thus loftily, 
 
 " Death the righteous love to see, 
 But from it doth the wicked flee." 
 
 Then suddenly breaks off (as if with laughter), 
 " I am sure they fly as fast as their legs can carry them! " 
 
 " There is a thing I love to see, 
 That is out monkey catch a flee."
 
 MARJORIE FLEMING. Ill 
 
 " I love in Isa's bed to lie, 
 Oh, such a joy and luxury ! 
 The bottom of the bed I sleep, 
 And with great care within I creep ; 
 Oft I embrace her feet of lillys, 
 But she has gottni all the pillys. 
 Her neck I never can embrace, 
 But I do hug her feet in place." 
 
 How childish and yet how strong and free is her 
 use of words ! "I lay at the foot of the bed be- 
 cause Isabella said I disturbed her by continial fight- 
 ing and kicking, but I was very dull, and continially 
 at work reading the Arabian Nights, which I could 
 not have done if I had slept at the top. I am read- 
 ing the Mysteries of Udolpho. I am much inter- 
 ested in the fate of poor, poor Emily." 
 
 Here is one of her swains : 
 
 " Very soft and white his cheeks, 
 His hair is red, and grey his breeks ; 
 His tooth is like the daisy fair, 
 His only fault is in hia hair." 
 
 This is a higher flight : 
 
 " DEDICATED TO MRS. H. CRAWFORD BY THE AUTHOR, M. V. 
 
 " Three turkeys fair their last have breathed, 
 And now this world forever leaved ; 
 Their father, and their mother too, 
 They sigh and weep as well as you ; 
 Indeed, the rats their bones have crunched, 
 Into eternity theire laanched. 
 A direful death indeed they had, 
 As wad put any parent mad ;
 
 112 MARJORIE FLEMING. 
 
 But she -was more than usual calm, 
 She did not give a single dam." 
 
 This last word is saved from all sin by its tender 
 age, not to speak of the want of the n. We fear 
 " she " is the abandoned mother, in spite of her pre- 
 vious sighs and tears. 
 
 " Isabella says when we pray we should pray fer- 
 vently, and not rattel over a prayer for that we 
 are kneeling at the footstool of our Lord and Creator, 
 who saves us from eternal damnation, and from un- 
 questionable fire and brimston." 
 
 She has a long poem on Mary Queen of Scots : 
 
 " Queen Mary was much loved by all, 
 Both by the great and by the small, 
 But hark ! her soul to heaven doth rise ! 
 And I suppose she has gained a prize 
 For I do think she would not go 
 Into the awful place below ; 
 There is a thing that I must tell, 
 Elizabeth went to fire and hell ; 
 He who would teach her to be civil, 
 It must be her great friend the devil ! " 
 
 She hits off Darnley well : 
 
 " A noble's son, a handsome lad, 
 By some queer way or other, had 
 Got quite the better of her heart, 
 With him she always talked apart ; 
 Silly he was, but very fair, 
 A greater buck was not found there." 
 
 " By some queer way or other " ; is not this the 
 general case and the mystery, young ladies and gen-
 
 MARJORIE FLEMING. 113 
 
 tlemen ? Goethe's doctrine of " elective affinities " 
 discovered by our Pet Maidie. 
 
 " SONNET TO A MONKEY. 
 
 " O lively, O most charming 1 pug 
 Thy graceful air, and heavenly mug ; 
 The beauties of his mind do shine, 
 And every bit is shaped and fine. 
 Your teeth are whiter than the snow, 
 Your a great buck, your a great beau ; 
 Your eyes are of so nice a shape, 
 More like a Christian's than an ape ; 
 Your cheek is like the rose's blume, 
 Your hair is like the raven's plume ; 
 His nose's cast is of the Roman, 
 He is a very pretty woman. 
 I could not get a rhyme for Roman, 
 So was obliged to call him woman." 
 
 This last joke is good. She repeats it when writ- 
 ing of James the Second being killed at Roxburgh : 
 
 " He was killed by a cannon splinter, 
 Quite in the middle of the winter ; 
 Perhaps it AVRS not at that time, 
 But I can get no other rhyme ! " 
 
 Here is one of her last letters, dated Kirkcaldy, 
 12th October, 1811. You can see how her nature is 
 deepening and enriching : " MY DEAR MOTHER, 
 You will think that I entirely forget you but I assure 
 you that you are greatly mistaken. I think of you 
 always and often sigh to think of the distance be- 
 tween us two loving creatures of nature. We have 
 regular hours for all our occupations first at 7 o'clock
 
 114 MAR.IORIE FLEMING. 
 
 we go to the dancing and come home at 8 we then 
 read our Bible and get our repeating and then play 
 till ten then we get our music till 11 when we get our 
 writing and accounts we sew from 12 till 1 after 
 which I get my gramer and then work till fiVe. At 
 7 we come and knit till 8 when we dont go to the 
 dancing. This is an exact description. I must take 
 a hasty farewell to her whom I love, reverence and 
 doat on and who I hope thinks the same of 
 
 " MARJORY FLEMING. 
 
 " P. S. An old pack of cards (!) would be very 
 exeptible." 
 
 This other is a month earlier : " MY DEAR LIT- 
 TLE MAMA, I was truly happy to hear that you were 
 all well. We are surrounded with measles at present 
 on every side, for the Herons got it, and Isabella 
 Heron was near Death's Door, and one night her 
 father lifted her out of bed, and she fell down as 
 they thought lifeless. Mr. Heron said, ' That lassie 's 
 deed noo' ' I 'm no deed yet.' She then threw up 
 a big worm nine inches and a half long. I have be- 
 gun dancing, but am not very fond of it, for the boys 
 strikes and mocks me. I have been another night 
 at the dancing ; I like it better. I will write to you 
 as often as I can ; but I am afraid not every week. / 
 long for you with the longings of a child to embrace 
 you to fold you in my arms. I respect you with 
 all the respect due to a mother. You dont know 
 how I love you. So I shall remain, your loving 
 child M. FLEMING."
 
 MARJORIE FLEMING. 115 
 
 What rich involution of love in the words marked ! 
 Here are some lines to her beloved Isabella, in July, 
 1811: 
 
 " There is a thing that I do want, 
 With you these beauteous walks to haunt, 
 We would be happy if you would 
 Try to come over if you could. 
 Then I would all quite happy be 
 Now and for all eternity. 
 My mother is so very sweet, 
 And checks my appetite to eat ; 
 My father shows us what to do ; 
 But O I 'm sure that I want you. 
 I have no more of poetry ; 
 O Isa do remember me, 
 And try to love your Marjory." 
 
 In a letter from " Isa " to 
 
 "Miss Muff Maidie Marjory Fleming, 
 favored by Rare Rear-Admiral Fleming,'' 
 
 she says : " I long much to see you, and talk over all 
 our stories together, and to hear you read and repeat. 
 I am pining for my old friend Cesario, and poor 
 Lear, and wicked Richard. How is the dear Multi- 
 plication table going on? are you still as much at- 
 tached to 9 times 9 as you used to be ? " 
 
 But this dainty, bright thing is about to flee, to 
 come " quick to confusion." The measles she writes 
 of seized her, and she died on the 19th of December, 
 1811. The day before her death, Sunday, she sat up 
 in bed, worn and thin, her eye gleaming as with the 
 light of a coming world, and with a tremulous, old
 
 116 MARJORIE FLEMING. 
 
 voice repeated the following lines by Burns, heavy 
 with the shadow of death, and lit with the fantasy of 
 the judgment-seat, the publican's prayer in para- 
 phrase : 
 
 " Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene ? 
 
 Have I so found it full of pleasing charms ? 
 Some drops of joy, with draughts of ill between, 
 Some gleams of sunshine 'mid renewing storms. 
 Is it departing pangs my soul alarms ? 
 Or death's unlovely, dreary, dark abode ? 
 
 For guilt, for GUILT my terrors are in anus ; 
 I tremble to approach an angry God, 
 And justly smart beneath his sin-avenging rod. 
 
 " Fain would I say, forgive my foul offense, 
 
 Fain promise never more to disobey ; 
 But should my Author health again dispense, 
 Again I might forsake fair virtue's way, 
 Again in folly's path might go astray, 
 Again exalt the brute and sink the man. 
 
 Then how should I for heavenly mercy pray, 
 Who act so counter heavenly mercy's plan, 
 Who sin so oft have mourned, yet to temptation ran ? 
 
 " O thou great Governor of all below, 
 
 If I might dare a lifted eye to thee, 
 Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow, 
 And still the tumult of the raging sea ; 
 With that controlling power assist even me 
 Those headstrong furious passions to confine, 
 
 For all unfit I feel my powers to be 
 To rule their torrent in the allowed line ; 
 O aid me with thy help, OMNIPOTENCE DIVINE." 
 
 It is more affecting than we care to say to read her
 
 MARJORIE FLEMING. 117 
 
 mother's and Isabella Keith's letters written imme- 
 diately after her death. Old and withered, tattered 
 and pale, they are now : but when you read them, 
 how quick, how throbbing with life and love ! how 
 rich in that language of affection which only women 
 and Shakespeare, and Luther can use, that power 
 of detaining the soul over the beloved object and its 
 loss. 
 
 '" K. Philip to Constance. You are as fond of grief as of your 
 child. 
 
 " Const. Grief fills the room up of my absent child, 
 
 Lies ill his bed, walks up and down with me ; 
 Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, 
 Remembers me of all his gracious parts, 
 Stuffs out his vacant garments with his f onn. 
 Then I have reason to be fond of grief." 
 
 What variations cannot love play on this one 
 string ! 
 
 In her first letter to Miss Keith, Mrs. Fleming 
 says of her dead Maidie : " Never did I behold so 
 beautiful an object. It resembled the finest wax- 
 work. There was in the countenance an expression 
 of sweetness and serenity which seemed to indicate 
 that the pure spirit had anticipated the joys of 
 heaven ere it quitted the mortal frame. To tell you 
 what your Maidie said of you would fill volumes ; for 
 you were the constant theme of her discourse, the sub- 
 ject of her thoughts, and ruler of her actions. The 
 last time she mentioned you was a few hours before 
 all sense save that of suffering was suspended, when
 
 118 MARJORIE FLEMING. 
 
 she said to Dr. Johnstone, ' If you will let me out 
 at the New Year, I will be quite contented.' I 
 asked what made her so anxious to get out then. ' I 
 want to purchase a New Year's gift for Isa Keith 
 with the sixpence you gave me for being patient in 
 the measles ; and I would like to choose it myself.' 
 I do not remember her speaking afterwards, except 
 to complain of her head, till just before she expired, 
 when she articulated, ' O mother ! mother ! ' ' 
 
 Do we make too much of this little child, who has 
 been in her grave in Abbotshall Kirkyard these fifty 
 and more years '( We may of her cleverness, not 
 of her affectionateness, her nature. What a picture 
 the animosa infans gives us of herself, her vivacity, 
 her passionateness, her precocious love-making, her 
 passion for nature, for swine, for all living things, 
 her reading, her turn for expression, her satire, her 
 frankness, her little sins and rages, her great repent- 
 ances ! We don't wonder Walter Scott carried her 
 off in the neuk of his plaid, and played himself with 
 her for hours. 
 
 The year before she died, when in Edinburgh, she 
 was at a Twelfth Night supper at Scott's, in Castle 
 Street. The company had all come, all but Mar- 
 jorie. Scott's familiars, whom we all know, were 
 there, all were come but Marjorie ; and all were 
 dull because Scott was dull. " Where 's that bairn ? 
 what can have come over her ? I '11 go myself and 
 see." And he was getting up, and would have gone ;
 
 MARJORIE FLEMING. 119 
 
 when the bell rang, and in came Duncan Roy and 
 his henchman Tougald, with the sedan chair, which 
 was brought right into the lobby, and its top raised. 
 And there, in its darkness and dingy old cloth, sat 
 Maidie in white, her eyes gleaming, and Scott bend- 
 ing over her in ecstasy, " hung over her enam- 
 ored." " Sit ye there, my dautie, till they all see 
 you " ; and forthwith he brought them all. You can 
 fancy the vscene. And he lifted her up and marched 
 to his seat with her on his stout shoulder, and set her 
 down beside him ; and then began the night, and 
 such a night ! Those who knew Scott best said, that 
 night was never equaled ; Maidie and he were the 
 stars ; and she gave them Constance's speeches and 
 Helvellyn, the ballad then much in vogue, and all 
 her repertoire, Scott showing her off, and being 
 ofttimes rebuked by her for his intentional blunders. 
 
 We are indebted for the following and our read- 
 ers will not be unwilling to share our obligations to 
 her sister : " Her birth was 15th January, 1803 ; 
 her death 19th December, 1811. I take this from 
 her Bibles. 1 I believe she was a child of robust 
 health, of much vigor of body, and beautifully formed 
 arms, and until her last illness, never was an hour in 
 bed. She was niece to Mrs. Keith, residing in No. 1 
 North Charlotte Street, who was not Mrs. Murray 
 
 1 "Her bible is before me; a pair, as then called; the 
 faded marks are just as she placed them. There is one at 
 David's lament over Jonathan."
 
 120 MAHJORIE FLEMING. 
 
 Keith, although very intimately acquainted with that 
 old lady. My aunt was a daughter of Mr. James 
 Rae, surgeon, and married the younger son of old 
 Keith of Ravelstone. Corstorphiue Hill belonged to 
 my aunt's husband ; and his eldest son, Sir Alexander 
 Keith, succeeded his uncle to both Ravelstone and 
 Dunnottar. The Keiths were not connected by re- 
 lationship with the Howisons of Braehead ; but my 
 grandfather and grandmother (who was), a daughter 
 of Cant of Thurston and Giles-Grange, were on the 
 most intimate footing with our Mrs. Keith's grand- 
 father and grandmother ; and so it has been for 
 three generations, and the friendship consummated 
 by my cousin William Keith marrying Isabella Crau- 
 furd. 
 
 " As to my aunt and Scott, they were on a very 
 intimate footing. He asked my aunt to be god- 
 mother to his eldest daughter Sophia Charlotte. I 
 had a copy of Miss Edgeworth's Rosamond, and 
 Harry and Lucy for long, which was ' a gift to Mar- 
 jorie from Walter Scott,' probably the first edition 
 of that attractive series, for it wanted Frank, which 
 is always now published as part of the series, under 
 the title of Early Lessons. I regret to say these 
 little volumes have disappeared. 
 
 " Sir Walter was no relation of Marjorie's, but of 
 the Keiths, through the Swintons ; and, like Mar- 
 jorie, he stayed much at Ravelstone in his early days, 
 with his grand-aunt Mrs. Keith ; and it was while 
 seeing him there as a boy that another aunt of mine
 
 MARJORIE FLEMING. 121 
 
 composed, when he was about fourteen, the lines 
 prognosticating his future fame that Lockhart as- 
 cribes in his Life to Mrs. Cockburn, authoress of 
 The Flowers of the Forest : 
 
 ' Go on, dear youth, the glorious path pursue 
 Which bounteous Nature kindly smooths for you ; 
 Go bid the seeds her hands have sown arise, 
 By timely culture, to their native skies ; 
 Go, and employ the poet's heavenly art, 
 Not merely to delight, but mend the heart.' 
 
 Mrs. Keir was my aunt's name, another of Dr. Rae's 
 daughters." We cannot better end than in words 
 from this same pen : " I have to ask you to forgive 
 my anxiety in gathering up the fragments of Mar- 
 jorie's last days, but I have an almost sacred feeling 
 to all that pertains to her. You are quite correct in 
 stating that measles were the cause of her death. 
 My mother was struck by the patient quietness mani- 
 fested by Marjorie during this illness, unlike her ar- 
 dent, impulsive nature ; but love and poetic feeling 
 were unquenched. When Dr. Johnstone rewarded 
 her submissiveness with a sixpence, the request 
 speedily followed that she might get out ere New 
 Year's day came. When asked why she was so de- 
 sirous of getting out, she immediately rejoined, ' Oh, 
 I am so anxious to buy something with my sixpence 
 for my dear Isa Keith.' Again, when lying very 
 still, her mother asked her if there was anything she 
 wished ; ' Oh yes ! if you would just leave the room 
 door open a wee bit, and play u The Land o' the
 
 122 MAEJORIE FLEMING. 
 
 Leal," and I will lie and think, and enjoy myself ' 
 (this is just as stated to me by her mother and 
 mine). Well, the happy day came, alike to parents 
 and child, when Marjorie was allowed to come forth 
 from the nursery to the parlor. It was Sabbath 
 evening, and after tea. My father, who idolized this 
 child, and never afterwards in my hearing mentioned 
 her name, took her in his arms ; and while walking 
 her up and down the room, she said, ' Father, I will 
 repeat something to you ; what would you like ? ' 
 He said, ' Just choose yourself, Maidie.' She hesi- 
 tated for a moment between the paraphrase, ' Few 
 are thy days, and full of woe,' and the lines of Burns 
 already quoted, but decided on the latter, a remark- 
 able choice for a child. The repeating these lines 
 seemed to stir up the depths of feeling in her soul. 
 She asked to be allowed to write a poem ; there was 
 a doubt whether it would be right to allow her, in 
 case of hurting her eyes. She pleaded earnestly, 
 ' Just this once ' ; the point was yielded, her slate 
 was given her, and with great rapidity she wrote an 
 address of fourteen lines, ' to her loved cousin on the 
 author's recovery,' her last work on earth : 
 
 Oh ! Isa, pain did visit me, 
 I was at the last extremity ; 
 How often did I think of you, 
 I wished your graceful form to view, 
 To clasp you in my weak embrace, 
 Indeed I thought I 'd run my race : 
 Good care, I 'm sure, was of me taken, 
 But still indeed I was much shaken,
 
 MARJORIE FLEMING. 123 
 
 At last I daily strength did gain, 
 And oh ! at last, away went pain ; 
 At length the doctor thought I might 
 Stay in the parlor all the night ; 
 I now continue so to do, 
 Farewell to Nancy and to you.' 
 
 She went to bed apparently well, awoke in the 
 middle of the night with the old cry of woe to a 
 mother's heart, ' My head, my head ! ' Three days 
 of the dire malady, ' water in the head,' followed, and 
 the end came." 
 
 "Soft, silken primrose, fading tunelessly." 
 
 It is needless, it is impossible, to add anything to 
 this : the fervor, the sweetness, the flush of poetic 
 ecstasy, the lovely and glowing eye, the perfect na- 
 ture of that bright and warm intelligence, that dar- 
 ling child, Lady Nairne's words, and the old tune, 
 stealing up from the depths of the human heart, deep 
 calling unto deep, gentle and strong like the waves of 
 the great sea hushing themselves to sleep in the dark ; 
 the words of Burns touching the kindred chord, 
 her last numbers " wildly sweet " traced, with thin 
 and eager fingers, already touched by the last enemy 
 and friend, moriens canit, and that love which 
 is so soon to be her everlasting light, is her song's 
 burden to the end, 
 
 " She set as sets the morning star, which goes 
 Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides 
 Obscured among the tempests of the sky, 
 But melts away into the light of heaven."
 
 QUEEN MARY'S CHILD-GARDEN. 
 
 IF any one wants a pleasure that is sure to please, 
 one over which he need n't growl the sardonic beati- 
 tude of the great Dean, let him, when the Mercury is 
 at " Fair," take the nine A. M. train to the North 
 and a return-ticket for Callander, and when he arrives 
 at Stirling let him ask the most obliging and knowing 
 of station-masters to telegraph to " the Dreadnought " 
 for a carriage to he in waiting. When passing Dun- 
 blane Cathedral, let him resolve to write to the Scots- 
 man, advising the removal of a couple of shabby 
 trees which obstruct the view of that beautiful triple 
 end window which Mr. Ruskin and everybody else 
 admires, and by the time he has written this letter 
 in his mind, and turned the sentences to it, he will 
 find himself at Callander and the carriage all ready. 
 Giving the order for the Port of Monteith, he will 
 rattle through this hard - featured, and to our eye 
 comfortless village, lying ugly amid so much gran- 
 deur and beauty, and let him stop on the crown of 
 the bridge, and fill his eyes with the perfection of the 
 view up the Pass of Leny the Teith lying diffuse 
 and asleep, as if its heart were in the Highlands and 
 it were loath to go, the noble Ben Ledi imaged in its
 
 QUEEN MARY'S CHILD-GAKDEN. 125 
 
 broad stream. Then let him make his way across a 
 bit of pleasant moorland, flushed with maiden-hair 
 and white with cotton-grass, and fragrant with the 
 Orchis conopsia, well deserving its epithet odora- 
 tissima. 
 
 He will see from the turn of the hill-side the Blair 
 of Drummond waving with corn and shadowed with 
 rich woods, where eighty years ago there was a black 
 peat-moss ; and far off, on the horizon, Damyat and 
 the Touch Fells ; and at his side the little loch of 
 Ruskie, in which he may see five Highland cattle, 
 three tawny brown and two brindled, standing in 
 the still water themselves as still, all except their 
 switching tails and winking ears the perfect images 
 of quiet enjoyment. By this time he will have come 
 in sight of the Lake of Monteith, set in its woods, 
 with its magical shadows and soft gleams. There is 
 a loveliness, a gentleness and peace about it more like 
 " lone St. Mary's Lake," or Derwent Water, than of 
 any of its sister lochs. It is lovely rather than beau- 
 tiful, and is a sort of gentle prelude, in the minor 
 key, to the coming glories and intenser charms of 
 Loch Ard and the true Highlands beyond. 
 
 You are now at the Poi-t, and have passed the 
 secluded and cheerful manse, and the parish kirk 
 with its graves, close to the lake, and the proud aisle 
 of the Grahams of Gartmore washed by its waves. 
 Across the road is the modest little inn, a Fisher's 
 Tryst. On the unruffled water lie several islets, 
 plump with rich foliage, brooding like great birds of
 
 126 QUEEN MARY'S CHILD-GARDEN. 
 
 calm. You somehow think of them as on, not in the 
 lake, or like clouds lying in a nether sky " like 
 ships waiting for the wind." You get a coble, and a 
 yauld old Celt, its master, and are rowed across to 
 'Inchmahome, the Isle of Rest. Here you find on 
 landing huge Spanish chestnuts, one lying dead, others 
 standing stark and peeled, like gigantic antlers, and 
 others flourishing in their viridis senectus, and in a 
 thicket of wood you see the remains of a monastery 
 of great beauty, the design and workmanship ex- 
 quisite. You wander through the ruins, overgrown 
 with ferns and Spanish filberts, and old fruit-trees, 
 and at the corner of the old monkish garden you 
 come upon one of the strangest and most touching 
 sights you ever saw an oval space of about eighteen 
 feet by twelve, with the remains of a double row of 
 boxwood all round, the plants of box being about four- 
 teen feet high, and eight or nine inches in diameter, 
 healthy, but plainly of great age. 
 
 What is this ? it is called in the guide-books Queen 
 Mary's Bower ; but besides its being plainly not in 
 the least a bower, what could the little Queen, then 
 five years old, and " fancy free," do with a bower ? 
 It is plainly, as was, we believe, first suggested by 
 our keen-sighted and diagnostic Professor of Clinical 
 Surgery, 1 the Child-Queen's Garden, with her little 
 
 1 The same seeing eye and understanding mind, when they 
 were eighteen years of age, discovered and published the Sol- 
 vent of Caoutchouc, for which a patent was taken out after- 
 wards by the famous Mackintosh. If the young discoverer
 
 QUEEN MARY'S CHILD-GARDEN. 127 
 
 walk, and its rows of boxwood, left to themselves 
 for three hundred years. Yes, without doubt, " here 
 is that first garden of her simpleness." Fancy the 
 little, lovely royal child, with her four Marys, her 
 playfellows, her child maids of honor, with their little 
 hands and feet, and their innocent and happy eyes, 
 pattering about that garden all that time ago, laugh- 
 ing and running, and gardening as only children do 
 and can. As is well known, Mary was placed by 
 her mother in this Isle of Rest before sailing from 
 the Clyde for France. There is something " that 
 tirls the heartstrings a' to the life " in standing and 
 looking on this unmistakable living relic of that 
 strange and pathetic old time. Were we Mr. Tenny- 
 son, we would write an Idyll of that child-Queen, in 
 that garden of hers, eating her bread and honey 
 getting her teaching from the holy men, the monks of 
 old, and running off in wild mirth to her garden and 
 her flowers, all unconscious of the black, lowering 
 thunder-cloud on Ben Lomond's shoulder. 
 
 " Oh, blessed vision! happy child! 
 Thou art so exquisitely wild ; 
 I think of thee with many fears 
 Of what may be thy lot in future years. 
 I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest, 
 Lord of thy house and hospitality. 
 And Grief, uneasy lover ! never rest 
 But when she sat within the touch of thce. 
 
 had secured the patent, he might have made a fortune as large 
 as his present reputation I don't suppose he much regrets 
 that he did n't.
 
 128 QUEEN MARY'S CHILD-GARDEN. 
 
 What hast thou to do with sorrow, 
 Or the injuries of to-morrow ? " 
 
 You have ample time to linger there amid 
 
 " The gleams, the shadows, and the peace profound," 
 
 and get your mind informed with quietness and 
 beauty, and fed with thoughts of other years, and of 
 her whose story, like Helen of Troy's, will continue 
 to move the hearts of men as long as the gray hills 
 stand round about that gentle lake, and are mirrored 
 at evening in its depths. You may do and enjoy all 
 this, and be in Princes Street by nine p. M. ; and we 
 wish we were as sure of many things as of your say- 
 ing, " Yes, this -is a pleasure that has pleased, and 
 will please again ; this was something expected which 
 did not disappoint." 
 
 There is another garden of Queen Mary's, which 
 may still be seen, and which has been left to itself 
 like that in the Isle of Rest. It is in the grounds at 
 Chatsworth, and is moated, walled round, and raised 
 about fifteen feet above the park. Here the Queen, 
 when a prisoner under the charge of " Old Bess of 
 Hardwake," was allowed to walk without any guard. 
 How different the two ! and how different she who 
 took her pleasure in them !
 
 QUEEN MAEY'S CHILD-GARDEN. 129 
 
 Lines written on the steps of a small moated garden at 
 Chatsworth, called 
 
 "QUEEN MARY'S BOWER. 
 
 " The moated bower is -wild and drear, 
 
 And sad the dark yew's shade ; 
 The flowers which bloom in silence here, 
 In silence also fade. 
 
 " The woodbine and the light wild rose 
 
 Float o'er the broken wall ; 
 And here the mournful nightshade blows, 
 To note the garden's fall. 
 
 " Where once a princess wept her woes, 
 
 The bird of night complains ; 
 And sighing trees the tale disclose 
 They learnt from Mary's strains. 
 
 "A. H."
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 LETTER TO JOHN CAIRNS, D. D. 
 
 23 RUTLAND STREET, lo<A August, 1860. 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND, When, at the urgent request 
 of his trustees and family, and in accordance with 
 what I believe was his own wish, you undertook my 
 father's Memoir, it was in a measure on the under- 
 standing that I would furnish you with some domes- 
 tic and personal details. This I hoped to have done 
 but was unable. 
 
 Though convinced more than ever how little my 
 hand is needed, I will now endeavor to fulfill my 
 promise. Before doing so, however, you must per- 
 mit me to express our deep gratitude to you for this 
 crowning proof of your regard for him 
 
 " Without whose life we had not been ; " 
 
 to whom for many years you habitually wrote as 
 " My father," and one of whose best blessings, when 
 he was " such an one as Paul the aged," was to know 
 that you were to him " mine own son in the gospel." 
 With regard to the manner in which you have 
 done this last kindness to the dead, I can say noth- 
 ing more expressive of our feelings, and, I am sure,
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 131 
 
 nothing more gratifying to you, than that the record 
 you have given of my father's life, and of the series 
 of great public questions in which he took part, is 
 done in the way which would have been most pleas- 
 ing to himself that which, with his passionate love 
 of truth and liberty, his relish for concentrated, just 
 thought and expression, and his love of being loved, 
 he would have most desired, in any one speaking of 
 him after he was gone. He would, I doubt not, say, 
 as one said to a great painter, on looking at his por- 
 trait, " It is certainly like, but it is much better look- 
 ing ; " and you might well reply as did the painter, 
 " It is the truth told lovingly " and all the more 
 true that it is so told. You have, indeed, been ena- 
 bled to speak the truth, or as the Greek has it, 
 dXrjOtveiv iv ayd-mj to truth it in love. 
 
 I have over and over again sat down to try and do 
 what I promised and wished to give some faint ex- 
 pression of my father's life ; not of what he did or 
 said or wrote, not even of what he was as a man of 
 God and a public teacher ; but what he was in his 
 essential nature what he would have been had he 
 been anything else than what he was, or had lived a 
 thousand years ago. 
 
 Sometimes I have this so vividly in my mind that 
 I think I have only to sit down and write it off, and 
 do it to the quick. " The idea of his life," what he 
 was as a whole, what was his self, all his days, would, 
 to go on with words which not time or custom can 
 ever wither or make stale,
 
 132 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 " Sweetly creep 
 
 Into my study of imagination ; 
 And every lovely organ of his life 
 Would come appareled in more precious habit 
 More moving delicate, and full of life, 
 Into the eye and prospect of my soul, 
 Than when he lived indeed," 
 
 as if the sacredness of death and the bloom of eternity 
 were on it ; or as you may have seen in an untroub- 
 led lake the heaven reflected with its clouds, brighter, 
 purer, more exquisite than itself ; but when you try 
 to put this into words, to detain yourself over it, it is 
 by this very act disturbed, broken, and bedimmed, 
 and soon vanishes away, as would the imaged heav- 
 ens in the lake, if a pebble were cast into it, or a 
 breath of wind stirred its face. The very anxiety to 
 transfer it, as it looked out of the clear darkness of 
 the past, makes the image grow dim and disappear. 
 
 Every one whose thoughts are not seldom with the 
 dead must have felt both these conditions : how, in 
 certain passive, tranquil states, there comes up into 
 the darkened chamber of the mind its " chamber 
 of imagery," uncalled, as if it blossomed out of 
 space, exact, absolute, consummate, vivid, speaking, 
 not darkly as in a glass, but face to face, and " mov- 
 ing delicate," this " idea of his life ; " and then 
 how an effort to prolong and perpetuate and record 
 all this troubles the vision and kills it ! It is as if 
 one should try to paint in a mirror the reflection of a 
 dear and unseen face ; the coarse, uncertain, passion-
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR, 133 
 
 ate handling and color, ineffectual and hopeless, shut 
 out the very thing itself. 
 
 I will therefore give this up as in vain, and try by 
 some fragmentary sketches, scenes, and anecdotes, to 
 let you know in some measure what manner of man 
 my father was. Anecdotes, if true and alive, are al- 
 ways valuable ; the man in the concrete, the totus quis 
 comes out in them ; and I know you too well to think 
 that you will consider as trivial or out of place any- 
 thing in which his real nature displayed itself, and 
 your own sense of humor as a master and central 
 power of the human soul, playing about the very es- 
 sence of the man, will do more than forgive anything 
 of this kind which may crop out here and there, 
 like the smile of wild-flowers in grass or by the way- 
 side. 
 
 My first recollection of my father, my first impres- 
 sion, not only of his character, but of his eyes and 
 face and presence, strange as it may seem, dates from 
 my fifth year. Doubtless I had looked at him often 
 enough before that, and had my own childish thoughts 
 about him ; but this was the time when I got my fixed, 
 compact idea of him, and the first look of him which 
 I felt could never be forgotten. I saw him, as it were, 
 by a flash of lightning, sudden and complete. A child 
 begins by seeing bits of everything ; it knows in part 
 here a little, there a little ; it makes up its wholes 
 out of its own littles, and is long of reaching the full- 
 ness of a whole ; and in this we are children all our 
 lives in much. Children are long of seeing, or at
 
 134 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 least of looking at what is above them ; they like the 
 ground, and its flowers and stones, its " red sodgers " 
 and lady-birds, and all its queer things ; their world 
 is about three feet high, and they are more often 
 stooping than gazing up. I know I was past ten be- 
 fore I saw, or cared to see, the ceilings of the rooms 
 in the manse at Biggar. 
 
 On the morning of the 28th May, 1816, my eldest 
 sister Janet and I were sleeping in the kitchen-bed 
 with Tibbie Meek, 1 our only servant. We were all 
 three awakened by a cry of pain sharp, insufferable, 
 as if one were stung. Years after we two confided 
 to each other, sitting by the burnside, that we thought 
 that " great cry " which arose at midnight in Egypt 
 must have been like it. We all knew whose voice it 
 was, and, in our night-clothes, we ran into the passage, 
 and into the little parlor to the left-hand, in which 
 was a closet-bed. We found my father standing be- 
 fore us, erect, his hands clenched in his black hair, his 
 eyes full of misery and amazement, his face white as 
 that of the dead. He frightened us. He saw this, 
 
 1 A year ago, I found an elderly countrywoman, a widow, 
 waiting for me. Rising up, she said, " D' ye mind me ? " I 
 looked at her, but could get nothing from her face ; but the 
 voice remained in my ear, as if coming from "the fields of 
 sleep," and I said by a sort of instinct, " Tibbie Meek ! " I had 
 not seen her or heard her voice for more than forty years. She 
 had come to get. some medical advice. Voices are often like 
 the smells of flowers and leaves, the tastes of wild f mits they 
 touch and awaken memory in a strange way. " Tibbie ' ' is now 
 living at Thankerton.
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 135 
 
 or else his intense will had mastered his agony, for, 
 taking his hands from his head, he said, slowly and 
 gently, " Let us give thanks," and turned to a little 
 sofa in the room ; there lay our mother dead. 1 She 
 had long heen ailing. I remember her sitting in a 
 shawl, an Indian one with little dark green spots 
 on a light ground, and watching her growing pale 
 with what I afterwards knew must have been strong 
 pain. She had, being feverish, slipped out of bed, 
 and "grandmother," her mother, seeing her "change 
 come," had called my father, and they two saw her 
 open her blue, kind, and true eyes, " comfortable " to 
 us all " as the day," I remember them better than 
 those of any one I saw yesterday, and, with one 
 faint look of recognition to him, close them till the 
 time of the restitution of all things. 
 
 " She had another morn than onrs." 
 
 Then were seen in full action his keen, passionate 
 nature, his sense of mental pain, and his supreme will, 
 instant and unsparing, making himself and his ter- 
 rified household give thanks in the midst of such a 
 desolation, and for it. Her warfare was accom- 
 plished, her iniquities were pardoned : she had al- 
 ready received from her Lord's hand double for all 
 her sins ; this was his supreme and over - mastering 
 thought, and he gave it utterance. 
 
 No man was happier in his wives. My mother 
 
 1 This sofa, which was henceforward sacred in the house, he 
 had always beside him. He used to tell us he set her down 
 upon it when he brought her home to the manse.
 
 136 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 was modest, calm, thrifty, reasonable, tender, happy- 
 hearted. She was his student-love, and is even now 
 remembered in that pastoral region, for " her sweet 
 gentleness and wife -like government." Her death, 
 and his sorrow and loss, settled down deep into the 
 heart of the countryside. He was so young and 
 bright, so full of fire, so unlike any one else, so de- 
 voted to his work, so chivalrous in his look and 
 manner, so fearless, and yet so sensitive and self- 
 contained. She was so wise, good and gentle, gra- 
 cious and frank. 
 
 His subtlety of affection, and his almost cruel 
 self-command, were shown on the day of the funeral. 
 It was to Symington, four miles off, a quiet little 
 churchyard, lying in the shadow of Tinto ; a place 
 where she herself had wished to be laid. The funeral 
 was chiefly on horseback. "We, the family, were in 
 coaches. I had been since the death in a sort of stu- 
 pid musing and wonder, not making out what it all 
 meant. I knew my mother was said to be dead. I 
 saw she was still, and laid out, and then shut up, and 
 did n't move ; but I did not know that when she was 
 carried out in that long black box, and we all went 
 with her, she alone was never to return. 
 
 When we got to the village all the people were at 
 their doors. One woman, the blacksmith Thomas 
 Spence's wife, had a nursing baby in her arms, and 
 he leapt up and crowed with joy at the strange sight, 
 the crowding horsemen, the coaches, and the nodding 
 plumes of the hearse. This was my brother William,
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 137 
 
 then nine months old, and Margaret Spence was his 
 foster-mother. Those with me were overcome at this 
 sight ; he of all the world whose, in some ways, was 
 the greatest loss, the least conscious, turning it to his 
 own childish glee. 
 
 We got to the churchyard and stood round the 
 open grave. My dear old grandfather was asked by 
 my father to pray ; he did. I don't remember his 
 words ; I believe he, through his tears and sobs, 
 repeated the Divine words, "All flesh is grass, and 
 all the glory of man as the flower of the grass ; the 
 grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away, 
 but the word of the Lord endureth forever ; " adding, 
 in his homely and pathetic way, that the flower 
 would again bloom, never again to fade ; that what 
 was now sown in dishonor and weakness, would be 
 raised in glory and power, like unto His own glorious 
 body. Then to my surprise and alarm, the coffin, 
 resting on its bearers, was placed over that dark hole, 
 and I watched with curious eye the unrolling of those 
 neat black bunches of cords, which I have often 
 enough seen since. My father took the one at the 
 head, and also another much smaller springing from 
 the same point as his, which he had caused to be put 
 there, and unrolling it, put it into my hand. I 
 twisted it firmly round my fingers, and awaited the 
 result ; the burial men with their real ropes lowered 
 the coffin, and when it rested at the bottom, it was 
 too far down for me to see it, the grave was made 
 very deep, as he used afterwards to tell us, that it
 
 138 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 might hold us all, my father first and abruptly let 
 his cord drop, followed by the rest. This was too 
 much. I now saw what was meant, and held on and 
 fixed my fist and feet, and I believe my father had 
 some difficulty in forcing open my small fingers ; he 
 let the little black cord drop, and I remember, in my 
 misery and anger, seeing its open end disappearing 
 in the gloom. 
 
 My mother's death was the second epoch in my 
 father's life ; it marked a change at once and for 
 life ; and for a man so self-reliant, so poised upon 
 a centre of his own, it is wonderful the extent of 
 change it made. He went home, preached her fune- 
 ral sermon, every one in the church in tears, him- 
 self outwardly unmoved. 1 But from that time dates 
 an entire, though always deepening, alteration in his 
 manner of preaching, because an entire change in 
 his way of dealing with God's Word. Not that his 
 abiding religious views and convictions were then 
 originated or even altered. I doubt not that from a 
 child he not only knew the Holy Scriptures, but was 
 " wise unto salvation," but it strengthened and 
 clarified, quickened and gave permanent direction to, 
 his sense of God as revealed in His Word. He took 
 as it were to subsoil ploughing ; he got a new and 
 adamantine point to the instrument with which he 
 bored ; and with a fresh power, with his whole 
 might, he sunk it right down into the living rock to 
 
 1 T have been told that once in the course of the sermon his 
 voice trembled, and many feared he was about to break down.
 
 MY FATHER'S S:EMOIR. 139 
 
 the virgin gold. His entire nature had got a shock, 
 and his blood was drawn inwards, his surface was 
 chilled ; but fuel was heaped all the more on the in- 
 ner fires, and his zeal, that TL Beppov 7rpayju,a, burned 
 with a new ardor ; indeed had he not found an out- 
 let for his pent-up energy his brain must have given 
 way, and his faculties have either consumed them- 
 selves in wild, wasteful splendor and combustion, or 
 dwindled into lethargy. 1 
 
 The manse became silent ; we lived and slept and 
 played under the shadow of that death, and we saw, 
 or rather felt, that he was another father than before. 
 No more happy laughter from the two in the parlor, 
 as he was reading Larry, the Irish postboy's letter 
 in Miss Edgeworth's tale, or the last Waverly novel ; 
 no more visitings in a cart with her, he riding beside 
 us on his white thorough-bred pony, to Kilbucho, or 
 Rachan Mill, or Kirklawhill. He went among his 
 people as usual when they were ill ; he preached bet- 
 ter than ever they were sometimes frightened to 
 think how wonderfully he preached ; but the sun- 
 shine was over the glad and careless look, the 
 joy of young life and mutual love. He was little 
 
 1 There is a story illustrative of this altered manner and 
 matter of preaching. He had been preaching when very 
 young at Galashiels, and one wife said to her " neebor," 
 "Jean, what think ye o' the lad?" "J<'s maist o' '< tinsel 
 wark," said Jean, neither relishing nor appreciating his fine 
 sentiments and figures. After my mother's death, he preached 
 in the same place, and Jean, running to her friend, took the 
 first word, " It 's a' goivd noo."
 
 140 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 with us, and, as I said, the house was still, except 
 when he was mandating his sermons for Sabbath. 
 This he always did, not only viva voce, but with as 
 much energy and loudness as in the pulpit ; we felt 
 his voice was sharper, and rang keen through the 
 house. 
 
 What we lost, the congregation and the world 
 gained. He gave himself wholly to his work. As 
 you have yourself said, he changed his entire system 
 and fashion of preaching ; from being elegant, rhe- 
 torical, and ambitious, he became concentrated, ur- 
 gent, moving (being himself moved), keen, searching, 
 unswerving, authoritative to fierceness, full of the 
 terrors of the Lord, if he could but persuade men. 
 The truth of the words of God had shone out upon 
 him with an immediateness and infinity of meaning 
 and power, which made them, though the same 
 words he had looked on from childhood, other and 
 greater and deeper words. He then left the ordi- 
 nary commentators, and men who write about mean- 
 ings and flutter around the circumference and cor- 
 ners ; he was bent on the centre, on touching with 
 his own fingers, on seeing with his own eyes, the 
 pearl of great price. Then it was that he began to 
 dig into the depths, into the primary and auriferous 
 rock of Scripture, and take nothing at another's 
 hand ; then he took up with the word " apprehend ; " 
 he had laid hold of the truth, there it was, with 
 its evidence, in his hand ; and every one who knew 
 him must remember well how, in speaking with ear-
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 141 
 
 nestness of the meaning of a passage, he in his 
 ardent, hesitating way, looked into the palm of his 
 hand as if he actually saw there the truth he was 
 going to utter. This word apprehend played a large 
 part in liis lectures, as the thing itself did in his 
 processes of investigation, or, if I might make a 
 word, indigation. Comprehension, he said, was for 
 few ; apprehension was for every man who had hands 
 and a head to rule them, and an eye to direct 
 them. Out of this arose one of his deficiencies. He 
 could go largely into the generalities of a subject, 
 and relished greatly others doing it, so that they 
 did do it really and well ; hut he was averse to ab- 
 stract and wide reasonings. Principles he rejoiced 
 in : he worked with them as with his choicest weap- 
 ons ; they were the polished stones for his sling, 
 against the Goliaths of presumption, error, and tyr- 
 anny in thought or in polity, civil or ecclesiastical, 
 but he somehow divined a principle, or got at it 
 naked and alone, rather than deduced it and brought 
 it to a point from an immensity of particulars, and 
 then rendered it back so as to bind them into one 
 cosmos. One of my young friends now dead, who 
 afterwards went to India, used to come and hear him 
 in Broughton Place with me, and this word appre- 
 hend caught him, and as he had a great love for my 
 father, in writing home to me he never forgot to ask 
 how " grand old Apprehend " was. 
 
 From this time dates my father's possession and 
 use of the German Exegetics. After my mother's
 
 142 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 death I slept with him ; his hed was in his study, a 
 small room, 1 with a very small grate ; and I remem- 
 her well his getting those fat, shapeless, spongy Ger- 
 man books, as if one would sink in them, and be 
 bogged in their bibulous, unsized paper ; and watch- 
 ing him as he impatiently cut them up, and dived into 
 them in his rapid, eclectic way, tasting them, and 
 dropping for my play such a lot of soft, large, curled 
 bits from the paper-cutter, leaving the edges all 
 shaggy. He never came to bed when I was awake, 
 which was not to be wondered at ; but I can remem- 
 ber often awaking far on in the night or morning, and 
 seeing that keen, beautiful, intense face bending over 
 these Rosenmtillers, and Ernestis, and Storrs, and 
 Kuinoels, the fire out, and the gray dawn peering 
 through the window ; and when he heard me move, 
 he would speak to me in the foolish words of endear- 
 ment my mother was wont to use, and come to 
 bed, and take me, warm as I was, into his cold 
 bosom. 
 
 Vitrinya in Jesaiam I especially remember, a noble 
 folio. Even then, with that eagerness to communicate 
 what he had himself found, of which you must often 
 have been made the subject, he went and told it. He 
 would try to make me, small man as I was, " appre- 
 hend " what he and Vitringa between them had made 
 out of the fifty-third chapter of his favorite prophet, 
 
 1 On a low chest of drawers in this room there lay for many 
 years my mother's parasol, by his orders I daresay for long 
 the only one in Biggar.
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 143 
 
 the princely Isaiah. 1 Even then, so far as I can re- 
 call, he never took notes of what he read. He did 
 not need this, his intellectual force and clearness were 
 so great ; he w,as so totus in illo, whatever it was, that 
 
 1 His reading aloud of everything from John Gilpin to John 
 Howe was a fine and high art, or rather gift. Henderson could 
 not have given 
 
 " The dinner waits, and we are tired ; " 
 Says Gilpin, " So am I," 
 
 better ; and to hear him sounding the depths and cadences of 
 the Living Temple, " bearing on its front this doleful inscrip- 
 tion, 'Here God once dwelt,' " was like listening to the recita- 
 tive of Handel. But Isaiah was his masterpiece ; and I 
 remember quite well his startling us all when reading at family 
 worship, "His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, 
 the mighty God," by a peremptory, explosive sharpness, as of 
 thunder overhead, at the words " the mighty God," similar to 
 the rendering now given to Handel's music, and doubtless so 
 meant by him ; and then closing with " the Prince of Peace," 
 soft and low. No man who wishes to feel Isaiah, as well as 
 Understand him, should be ignorant of Handel's " Messiah.' 1 '' 
 His prelude to " Comfort ye " its simple theme, cheerful and 
 infinite, as the ripple of the unsearchable sea gives a deeper 
 meaning to the words. One of my father's great delights in his 
 dying months was reading the lives of Handel and of Michael 
 Angelo, then newly out. He felt that the author of " He was 
 despised," and "He shall feed hia flock," and those other 
 wonderful airs, was a man of profound religious feeling, of 
 which they were the utterance ; and he rejoiced over the war- 
 like airs and choruses of " Judas Maccabseus." You have re- 
 corded his estimate of the religious nature of him of the 
 terribile via ; he said it was a relief to his mind to know that 
 such a mighty genius walked humbly with his God.
 
 144 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 he recorded by a secret of its own, his mind's results 
 and victories and memoranda, as he went on ; he did 
 not even mark his books, at least very seldom ; he 
 marked his mind. 
 
 He was thus every year preaching with more and 
 more power, because with more and more knowledge 
 and " pureness ; " and, as you say, there were probably 
 nowhere in Britain such lectures delivered at that time 
 to such an audience, consisting of country people, 
 sound, devout, well-read in their Bibles and in the 
 native divinity, but quite unused to persistent, deep, 
 critical thought. 
 
 Much of this most of it was entirely his own, 
 self - originated and self - sustained, and done for its 
 own sake, 
 
 " All too happy in the pleasure 
 Of his own exceeding treasure." 
 
 But he often said, with deep feeling, that one thing 
 put him always on his mettle, the knowledge that 
 "yonder in that corner, under the gallery, sat, Sab- 
 bath after Sabbath, a man who knew his Greek Testa- 
 ment better than I did." 
 
 This was his brother-in-law, and one of his elders, 
 Mr. Robert Johnston, married to his sister Violet, a 
 merchant and portioner in Biggar, a remarkable man, 
 of whom it is difficult to say to strangers what is true, 
 without being accused of exaggeration. A shopkeeper 
 in that remote little town, he not only intermeddled 
 fearlessly with all knowledge, but mastered more than 
 many practiced and university men do in their own
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 145 
 
 lines. Mathematics, astronomy, and especially what 
 may be called selenology, or the doctrine of the moon, 
 and the higher geometry and physics ; Hebrew, San- 
 skrit, Greek, and Latin, to the veriest rigors of prosody 
 and metre ; Spanish and Italian, German, French, 
 and any odd language that came in his way ; all these 
 he knew more or less thoroughly, and acquired them 
 in the most leisurely, easy, cool sort of way, as if he 
 grazed and browsed perpetually in the field of letters, 
 rather than made formal meals, or gathered for any 
 ulterior purpose his fruits, his roots, and his nuts 
 he especially liked mental nuts much less bought 
 them from any one. 
 
 With all this, his knowledge of human, and espe- 
 cially of Biggar human nature, the ins and outs of its 
 little secret on-goings, the entire gossip of the place, 
 was like a woman's ; moreover, every personage great 
 or small, heroic or comic, in Homer, whose poems 
 he made it a matter of conscience to read once every 
 four years, Plautus, Suetonius, Plutarch, Tacitus, 
 and Lucian, down through Boccaccio and Don Quix- 
 ote, which he knew by heart and from the living 
 Spanish, to Joseph Andrews, the Spectator, Goldsmith 
 and Swift, Miss Austen, Miss Edgeworth, and Miss 
 Ferrier, Gait and Sir Walter, he was as familiar 
 with, as with David Crockat the nailer, or the parish 
 minister, the town-drummer, the mole-catcher, or the 
 poaching weaver, who had the night before leistered 
 a prime kipper at Rachan Mill, by the flare of a tarry 
 wisp, or brought home his surreptitious gray hen or
 
 146 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 maukin from the wilds of Dunsyre or the dreary 
 Lang Whang. 1 
 
 This singular man came to the manse every Friday 
 evening for many years, and he and my father dis- 
 cussed everything and everybody ; beginning with 
 tough, strong headwork a bout at wrestling, be it 
 Caesar's Bridge, the Epistles of Phalaris, the import 
 of yu,eV and Se, the Catholic Question, or the great roots 
 of Christian faith ; ending with the latest joke in the 
 town or the West Haw, the last effusion by Affleck, 
 tailor and poet, the last blunder of ./Esop the apothe- 
 cary, and the last repartee of the village fool, with 
 the week's Edinburgh and Glasgow news by their 
 respective carriers ; the whole little life, sad and 
 humorous who had been born, and who was dying 
 or dead, married or about to be, for the past eight 
 days. 2 
 
 This amused, and, in the true sense, diverted my 
 father, and gratified his curiosity, which was great, 
 and his love of men, as well as for man. He was 
 
 1 With the practices of this last worthy, when carried on 
 moderately, and for the sport's sake, he had a special 
 sympathy. 
 
 2 I believe this was the true though secret source of much 
 of my father's knowledge of the minute personal history of 
 every one in his region, which, to his people knowing his re- 
 served manner and his devotion to his studies, and his so rarely 
 meeting them or speaking to them except from the pulpit, or 
 at a diet of visitation, was a perpetual wonder, and of which 
 he made great use in his dealings with his afflicted or erring 
 " members."
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 147 
 
 shy, and unwilling to ask what he longed to know, 
 liking better to have it given him without the asking ; 
 and no one could do this better than " Uncle John- 
 ston." 
 
 You may readily understand what a thorough ex- 
 ercise and diversion of an intellectual and social kind 
 this was, for they were neither of them men to shirk 
 from close gripes, or trifle and flourish with their 
 weapons ; they laid on and spared not. And then 
 my uncle had generally some special nut of his own 
 to crack, some thesis to fling down and offer battle on, 
 some " particle " to energize upon ; for though quiet 
 and calm, he was thoroughly combative, and enjoyed 
 seeing his friend's blood up, and hearing his emphatic 
 and bright speech, and watching his flashing eye. 
 Then he never spared him ; criticised and sometimes 
 quizzed for he had great humor his style, as well 
 as debated and weighed his apprehendings and ex- 
 egeses, shaking them heartily to test their strength. 
 He was so thoroughly independent of all authority, 
 except that of reason and truth, and his own humor ; 
 so ready to detect what was weak, extravagant, or 
 unfair ; so full of relish for intellectual power and 
 accuracy ; and so attached to and proud of my father, 
 and bent on his making the best of himself, that this 
 trial was never relaxed. His firm and close-grained 
 mind was a sort of whetstone on which my father 
 sharpened his wits at this weekly " setting." 
 
 The very difference of their mental tempers and 
 complexions drew them together the one impatient,
 
 148 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 nervous, earnest, instant, swift, vehement, regardless 
 of exertion, bent on his goal, like a thorough-bred 
 racer, pressing to the mark ; the other leisurely to 
 slowness and provokingness, with a constitution which 
 could stand a great deal of ease, unimpassioned, still, 
 clear, untroubled by likings or dislikings. dwelling 
 and working in thought and speculation and observa- 
 tion as ends in themselves, and as their own rewards : 1 
 the one hunting for a principle or a "divine method ; " 
 the other sapping or shelling from a distance, and for 
 his pleasure, a position, or gaining a point, or settling 
 a rule, or verifying a problem, or getting axiomatic 
 and proverbial. 
 
 In appearance they were as curiously unlike ; my 
 uncle short and round to rotundity, homely and florid 
 in feature. I used to think Socrates must have been 
 like him in visage as well as in much of his mind. 
 
 1 He was curiously destitute of all literary ambition or show; 
 like the cactus in the desert, always plump, always taking in 
 the dew of heaven, and caring little to give it out. He wrote 
 many papers in the Repository and Monitor, an acute and 
 clever tract on the Voluntary controversy, entitled Calm 
 Answers to Angry Questions, and was the author of a capital 
 bit of literary banter a Congratulatory Letter to the Minis- 
 ter of Liberton, who had come down upon my father in a 
 pamphlet, for his sermon on " There remaineth much land to 
 be possessed." It is a mixture of Swift and Arbuthnot. I 
 remember one of the flowers he culls from him he is congratu- 
 lating, in which my father is characterized as one of those 
 " shallow, sallow souls that would swallow the bait, without 
 pRrceiving the cloven foot ! " But a man like this never is 
 best in a book ; he is always greater than his work.
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 149 
 
 He was careless in his dress, his hands in his pockets 
 as a rule, and strenuous only in smoking or in sleep ; 
 with a large, full skull, a humorous twinkle in his cold, 
 blue eye, a soft, low voice, expressing every kind of 
 thought in the same, sometimes plaguily douce tone ; 
 a great power of quiet and telling sarcasm, large 
 capacity of listening to and of enjoying other men's 
 talk, however small. 
 
 My father tall, slim, agile, quick in his move- 
 ments, graceful, neat to nicety in his dress, with 
 much in his air of what is called style, with a face 
 almost too beautiful for a man's, had not his eyes 
 commanded it and all who looked at it, and his close, 
 firm mouth been ready to say what the fiery spirit 
 might bid ; his eyes, when at rest, expressing more 
 than almost any other's I ever saw sorrow and 
 tender love, a desire to give and to get sympathy, 
 and a sort of gentle, deep sadness, as if that was their 
 permanent state, and gladness their momentary act ; 
 but when awakened, full of fire, peremptory, and not 
 to be trifled with ; and his smile, and flash of gayety 
 and fun, something no one could forget ; his hair in 
 early life a dead black ; his eyebrows of exquisite 
 curve, narrow and intense ; his voice deep when un- 
 moved and calm ; keen and sharp to piercing fierce- 
 ness when vehement and roused in the pulpit, at 
 times a shout, at times a pathetic wail ; his utterance 
 hesitating, emphatic, explosive, powerful, each sen- 
 tence shot straight and home ; his hesitation arising 
 from his crowd of impatient ideas, and his resolute
 
 150 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 will that they should come in their order, and some 
 of them not come at all, only the best, and his settled 
 determination that each thought should be dressed in 
 the veiy and only word which he stammered on till it 
 came, it was generally worth his pains and ours. 
 
 Uncle Johnston, again, flowed on like Caesar's Arar, 
 incredibili lenitate, or like linseed out of a poke. 
 You can easily fancy the spiritual and bodily contrast 
 of these men, and can fancy, too, the kind of engage- 
 ments they would have with their own proper weapons 
 on these Friday evenings, in the old manse dining- 
 room, my father showing uncle out into the darkness 
 of the back-road, and uncle, doubtless, lighting his 
 black and ruminative pipe. 
 
 If my uncle brought up nuts to crack, my father 
 was sure to have some difficulties to consult about, or 
 some passages to read, something that made him put 
 his whole energy forth ; and when he did so, I never 
 heard such reading. To hear him read the story of 
 Joseph, or passages in David's history, and Psalms 
 6th, llth, and 15th, or the 52d, 53d, 54th, 55th, 63d, 
 64th, and 40th chapters of Isaiah, or the Sermon on 
 the Mount, or the Journey to Emmaus, or our Saviour's 
 prayer in John, or Paul's speech on Mars' Hill, or 
 the first three chapters of Hebrews and the latter 
 part of the llth of Job, or the Apocalypse ; or, to 
 pass from those divine themes, Jeremy Taylor, or 
 George Herbert, Sir Walter Raleigh, or Milton's 
 prose, such as the passage beginning " Come forth 
 out of thy royal chambers, O thou Prince of all the
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 151 
 
 kings of the earth ! " and " Truth, indeed, came once 
 into the world with her divine Master," or Charles 
 Wesley's Hymns, or, most loved of all, Cowper, from 
 the rapt " Come thou, and, added to thy many crowns," 
 or '' O that those lips had language ! " to the Jack- 
 daw, and his incomparable Letters ; or Gray's Poems, 
 Burns's Tarn O'Shanter, or Sir Walter's Eve of St. 
 John, 1 and The Gray Brother. 
 
 But I heg your pardon : Time has run back with 
 me, and fetched that blessed past, and awakened its 
 echoes. I hear his voice ; I feel his eye ; I see his 
 whole nature given up to what he is reading, and 
 making its very soul speak. 
 
 Such a man, then, as I have sketched, or washed 
 faintly in, as the painters say, was that person who 
 sat in the corner under the gallery every Sabbath-day, 
 and who knew his Greek Testament better than his 
 minister. He is dead, too, a few months ago, dying 
 surrounded with his cherished hoard of books of all 
 sizes, times, and tongues, tatterdemalion many ; all 
 
 J Well do I remember when driving him from Melrose to 
 Kelso long ago, we came near Sandyknowe, that grim tower 
 of Smailholm standing erect like a warder turned to stone, 
 defying time and change, his bursting into that noble ballad, 
 
 " The Baron of Smaylho'me rose with day, 
 
 He spurr'd his courser on, 
 Without stop or stay, down the rocky way, 
 That leads to Brotherstone ; " 
 
 and pointing out the "Watchfold height," " the eiry Beacon 
 Hill," and "Brotherstone."
 
 152 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 however drawn up in an order of his own ; all thor- 
 oughly mastered and known ; among them David 
 Hume's copy of Shaftesbury's Characteristics, with 
 his autograph, which he had picked up at some stall. 
 I have said that my mother's death was the second 
 epoch in my father's life. I should perhaps have said 
 the third ; the first being his mother's long illness 
 and death, and the second his going to Elie, and be- 
 ginning the battle of life at fifteen. There must 
 have been something very delicate and close and ex- 
 quisite in the relation between the ailing, silent, beau- 
 tiful, and pensive mother and that dark-eyed, dark- 
 haired, bright, and silent son ; a sort of communion 
 it is not easy to express. You can think of him at 
 eleven slowly writing out that small book of promises 
 in a distinct and minute hand, quite as like his ma- 
 ture hand, as the shy, lustrous-eyed boy was to his 
 after-self in his manly years, and sitting by the bed- 
 side while the rest were out and shouting, playing at 
 hide-and-seek round the little church, with the winds 
 from Benlomond or the wild uplands of Ayrshire 
 blowing through their hair. He played seldom, but 
 when he did run out, he jumped higher and farther 
 and ran faster than any of them. His peculiar 
 beauty must have come from his mother. He used 
 at rare times, and with a sort of shudder, to tell of 
 her when a lovely girl of fifteen, having been seen 
 by a gentleman of rank, in Cheapside, hand in hand 
 with an evil woman, who was decoying her to ruin, 
 on pretense of showing her the way home , and how
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 153 
 
 he stopped his carriage and, taking in the unconscious 
 girl, drove her to her uncle's door. But you have 
 said all this better than I can. 
 
 His time with his mother, and the necessary con- 
 finement and bodily depression caused by it, I doubt 
 not deepened his native thoughtful turn, and his ten- 
 dency to meditative melancholy, as a condition under 
 which he viewed all things, and quickened and inten- 
 sified his sense of the suffering of this world and of 
 the profound seriousness and mystery in the midst of 
 which we live and die. 
 
 The second epoch was that of his leaving home 
 with his guinea, the last he ever got from any one 
 but himself ; and his going among utter strangers to 
 be master of a school one half of the scholars of 
 which were bigger and older than himself, and all 
 rough colts willful and unbroken. This was his 
 first fronting of the world. Besides supporting him- 
 self, this knit the sinews of his mind, and made him 
 rely on himself in action as well as in thought. He 
 sometimes, but not often, spoke of this, never lightly, 
 though he laughed at some of his predicaments. He 
 could not forget the rude shock. Generally those 
 familiar revelations were at supper, on the Sabbath 
 evening, when, his work over, he enjoyed and lin- 
 gered over his meal. 
 
 From his young and slight, almost girlish look, 
 and his refined, quiet manners, the boys of the school 
 were inclined to annoy and bully him. He saw this, 
 and felt it was now or never, nothing between. So
 
 154 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 he took his line. The biggest boy, much older and 
 stronger, was the rudest, and infected the rest. The 
 " wee malster " ordered him, in that peremptory 
 voice we all remember, to stand up and hold out his 
 hand, being not at all sure but the big fellow might 
 knock him down on the word. To the astonishment 
 of the school, and to the big rebel's too, he obeyed 
 and was punished on the instant, and to the full ; out 
 went the hand, down came the " taivs " and bit like 
 fire. From that moment he ruled them by his eye, 
 the taws vanished. 
 
 There was an incident at this time of his life which 
 I should perhaps not tell, and yet I don't know why 
 I should n't, it so perfectly illustrates his character in 
 many ways. He had come home during the vaca- 
 tion of his school to Langrig, and was about to go 
 back ; he had been renewing his intercourse with his 
 old teacher and friend whom you mention, from 
 whom he used to say he learned to like Shakespeare, 
 and who seems to have been a man of genuine liter- 
 ary tastes. He went down to bid him good-by, and 
 doubtless they got on their old book loves, and would 
 be spouting their pet pieces. The old dominie said, 
 " John, my man, if you are walking into Edinburgh, 
 I '11 convoy you a bit." "'John " was too happy, so 
 next morning they set off, keeping up a constant fire 
 of quotation and eager talk. They got past Mid- 
 Calder to near East, when my father insisted on his 
 friend returning, and also on going back a bit with 
 him ; on looking at the eld man, he thought he was
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 155 
 
 tired, so on reaching the well-known " Kippen's Inn," 
 he stopped and insisted on giving him some refresh- 
 ment. Instead of ordering bread and cheese and a 
 bottle of ale, he, doubtless full of Shakespeare, and 
 great upon sack and canary, ordered a bottle of wine ! 
 Of this, you may be sure, the dominie, as he most 
 needed it, had the greater share, and doubtless it 
 warmed the cockles of his old heart. " John " mak- 
 ing him finish the bottle, and drink the health of 
 " Gentle Will," saw him off, and went in to pay the 
 reckoning. What did he know of the price of wine ! 
 It took exactly every penny he had. I doubt not, 
 most boys, knowing that the landlord knew them, 
 would have either paid a part, or asked him to score 
 it up. This was not his way ; he was too proud and 
 shy and honest for such an expedient. By this time, 
 what with discussing Shakespeare, and witnessing his 
 master's leisurely emptying of that bottle, and re- 
 leasing the 
 
 " Dear prisoned spirits of the impassioned grape," 
 he found he must run for it to Edinburgh, or rather 
 Leith, fourteen miles ; this he did, and was at the 
 pier just in time to jump into the Elie pinnace, which 
 was already off. He often -wondered what he would 
 have done if he had been that one moment late. 
 You can easily pick out the qualities this story un- 
 folds. 
 
 His nature, capable as it was of great, persistent, 
 and indeed dogged labor, was, from the predominance 
 of the nervous system in his organization, excitable,
 
 156 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 and therefore needed and relished excitement the 
 more intense the better. He found this in his keen 
 political tastes, in imaginative literature, and in fiction. 
 In the highest kind of poetry he enjoyed the sweet 
 pain of tears ; and he all his life had a steady liking, 
 even a hunger, for a good novel. This refreshed, 
 lightened, and diverted his mind from the strain of 
 his incessant exegesis. He used always to say that 
 Sir Walter and Goldsmith, and even Fielding, Miss 
 Edgeworth, Miss Austen, and Miss Ferrier, were true 
 benefactors to the race, by giving such genuine, such 
 secure and innocent pleasure ; and he often repeated 
 with admiration Lord Jeffrey's words on Scott, in- 
 scribed on his monument. He had no turn for gar- 
 dening or for fishing or any field sports or games ; his 
 sensitive nature recoiled from the idea of pain, and 
 above all, needless pain. He used to say the lower 
 creation had groans enough, and needed no more bur- 
 dens ; indeed, he was fierce to some measure of un- 
 fairness against such of his brethren Dr. Wardlaw, 
 for instance 1 as resembled the apostles in fishing 
 for other things besides men. 
 
 But the exercise and the excitement he most of all 
 others delighted in was riding ; and had he been a 
 country gentleman and not a clergyman, I don't think 
 he could have resisted fox-hunting. With the excep- 
 tion of that great genius in more than horsemanship, 
 
 1 After a tight discussion between these two attached friends, 
 Dr. Wardlaw said, " Well, I can't answer you, but fish I must 
 and shall."
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 157 
 
 Andrew Ducrow, I never saw a man sit a horse as he 
 did. He seemed inspired, gay, erect, full of the joy 
 of life, fearless, and secure. I have heard a farmer 
 friend say if he had not been a preacher of the gospel 
 he would have heen a cavalry officer, and would have 
 fought as he preached. 
 
 He was known all over the Upper Ward and down 
 Tweeddale for his riding. " There goes the minister," 
 as he rode past at a swift canter. He had generally 
 well-bred horses, or, as I would now call them, ponies ; 
 if he had not, his sufferings from a dull, hardmouthed, 
 heavy-hearted and footed, plebeian horse were almost 
 comic. On his gray mare, or his little blood bay 
 horse, to see him setting off and indulging it and him- 
 self in some alarming gambols, and in the midst of 
 his difficulties, partly of his own making, taking off 
 his hat or kissing his hand to a lady, made one think 
 of " young Harry with his beaver up." He used to 
 tell with much relish, how, one fine summer Sabbath 
 evening after preaching in the open air for a collec- 
 tion, in some village near, and having put the money, 
 chiefly halfpence, into his handkerchief, and that into 
 his hat, he was taking a smart gallop home across the 
 moor, happy and relieved, when three ladies I 
 think the Miss Bertrams of Kersewell came sud- 
 denly upon him ; off went the hat, down bent the 
 head, and over him streamed the cherished collection, 
 the ladies busy among the wild grass and heather 
 picking it up, and he full of droll confusion and 
 laughter.
 
 158 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 The gray mare he had for many years. I can re- 
 member her small head and large eyes ; her neat, 
 compact body, round as a barrel ; her finely flea-bitten 
 skin, and her thorough-bred legs. I have no doubt 
 she had Arabian blood. My father's pride in her 
 was quite curious. Many a wild ride to and from the 
 Presbytery at Lanark, and across flooded and shifting 
 fords, he had on her. She was as sweet-tempered and 
 enduring, as she was swift and sure ; and her powers 
 of running were appreciated and applied in a way 
 which he was both angry and amused to discover. 
 You know what riding the bruse means. At a country 
 wedding the young men have a race to the bride- 
 groom's home, and he who wins brings out a bottle 
 and glass and drinks the young wife's health. I wish 
 Burns had described a bruse : all sorts of steeds, 
 wild, unkempt lads as Avell as colts, old broken-down 
 thorough-breds that did wonders when soopled, huge, 
 grave cart-horses devouring the road with their shaggy 
 hoofs, willful ponies, etc. You can imagine the wild 
 hurry-scurry and fun, the cornic situations and upsets 
 over a rough road, up and down places one would be 
 giddy to look at. 
 
 Well, the young farmers were in the habit of com- 
 ing to my father, and asking the loan of the mare to 
 go and see a friend, etc., etc., praising knowingly the 
 fine points and virtues of his darling. Having tlirough 
 life, with all his firmness of nature, an abhorrence of 
 saying " No " to any one, the interview generally 
 ended with, " Well, Robert, you may have her, but
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 159 
 
 take care of her, and don't ride her fast." In an 
 hour or two Robert was riding the bruse, and flying 
 away from the crowd, Gray first, and the rest no- 
 where, and might be seen turning the corner of the 
 farmhouse with the victorious bottle in his uplifted 
 hand, the motley pack panting vainly up the hill. 
 This went on for long, and the gray was famous, al- 
 most notorious, all over the Upper Ward ; sometimes 
 if she appeared, no one would start, and she trotted 
 the course. Partly from his own personal abstraction 
 from outward country life, and partly from Uncle 
 Johnston's sense of waggery keeping him from telling 
 his friend of the gray's last exploit at Hartree Mill, 
 or her leaping over the " best man " at Thriepland, 
 my father was the last to hear of this equivocal glory 
 of " the minister's meer." Indeed, it was whispered 
 she had once won a whip at Lanark races. They still 
 tell of his feats on this fine creature, one of which he 
 himself never alluded to without a feeling of shame. 
 He had an engagement to preach somewhere beyond 
 the Clyde on a Sabbath evening, and his excellent and 
 attached friend and elder, Mr. Kello, of Lindsay-lands, 
 accompanied him on his big plough horse. It was to 
 be in the open air, on the river side. When they got 
 to the Clyde they found it in full flood, heavy and 
 sudden rains at the head of the water having brought 
 it down in a wild spate. On the opposite side were 
 the gathered people and the tent. Before Mr. Kello 
 knew where he was, there was his minister on the 
 mare swimming across, and carried down in a long
 
 160 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 diagonal, the people looking on in terror. He landed, 
 shook himself, and preached with his usual fervor. 
 As I have said, he never liked to speak of this hit of 
 hardihood, and he never repeated it ; but it was like 
 the man there were the people, that was what he 
 would be at, and though timid for anticipated danger 
 as any woman, in it he was without fear. 
 
 One more illustration of his character in connection 
 with his riding. On coming to Edinburgh he gave 
 up this kind of exercise ; he had no occasion for it, 
 and he had enough, and more than enough of excite- 
 ment in the public questions in which he found him- 
 self involved, and in the miscellaneous activities of a 
 popular town minister. I was then a young doctor 
 it must have been about 1840 and had a patient, 
 Mrs. James Robertson, eldest daughter of Mr. Pirie, 
 the predecessor of Dr. Dick in what was then 
 Shuttle Street congregation, Glasgow. She was one 
 of my father's earliest and dearest friends, a mo- 
 ther in the Burgher Israel, she and her cordial hus- 
 band " given to hospitality," especially to " the 
 Prophets." She was hopelessly ill at Juniper Green, 
 near Edinburgh. Mr. George Stone, then living at 
 Muirhouse, one of my father's congregation in Brough- 
 ton Place, a man of equal originality and worth, and 
 devoted to his minister, knowing my love of riding, 
 offered me his blood-chestnut to ride out and make 
 my visit. My father said, " John, if you are going, I 
 would like to ride out with you ; " he wished to see 
 his dying friend. " You ride ! " said Mr. Stone, who
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 161 
 
 was a very Yorkshireman in the matter of horses. 
 " Let him try," said I. The upshot was, that Mr. 
 Stone sent the chestnut for me, and a sedate pony 
 called, if I forget not, Goliath for his minister, 
 with all sorts of injunctions to me to keep him off 
 the thorough-bred, and on Goliath. 
 
 My father had not been on a horse for nearly 
 twenty years. He mounted and rode off. He soon 
 got teased with the short, pattering steps of Goliath, 
 and looked wistfully up at me, and longingly to the 
 tall chestnut, stepping once for Goliath's twice, like 
 the Don striding beside Sancho. I saw what he was 
 after, and when past the toll he said ip a mild sort of 
 way, " John, did you promise absolutely I was not to 
 ride your horse ? " " No, father, certainly not. Mr. 
 Stone, I dare say, wished me to do so, but I did n't." 
 " Well, then, I think we '11 change ; this beast shakes 
 me." So we changed. I remember how noble he 
 looked ; how at home : his white hair and his dark 
 eyes, his erect, easy, accustomed seat. He soon let 
 his eager horse slip gently away. It was first evasit, 
 he was off, Goliath and I jogging on behind ; then, 
 erupit, and in a twinkling evanuit. I saw them 
 last flashing through the arch under the Canal, his 
 white hair flying. I was uneasy, though from his 
 riding I knew he was as yet in command, so I put 
 Goliath to his best, and having passed through Slate- 
 ford, I asked a stonebreaker if he saw a gentleman 
 on a chestnut horse. "' Has he white hair ? " u Yes." 
 "And een like a gled's ? " "Yes." "Weel then,
 
 162 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 he 's fleein' up the road like the wund ; he '11 be at 
 Little Vantage (about nine miles off) in nae time if 
 he baud on." I never once sighted him, but on com- 
 ing into Juniper Green there was his steaming chest- 
 nut at the gate, neighing cheerily to Goliath. I went 
 in, he was at the bedside of his friend, and in the 
 midst of prayer ; his words as I entered were, 
 " When thou passest through the waters I will be 
 with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not 
 overflow thee ; " and he was not in the least instant in 
 prayer that his blood was up with his ride. He never 
 again saw Mrs. Robertson, or as she was called when 
 they were young, Sibbie (Sibella) Pirie. On coming 
 out he said nothing, but took the chestnut, mounted 
 her, and we came home quietly. His heart was 
 opened ; he spoke of old times and old friends ; he 
 stopped at the exquisite view at Hailes into the val- 
 ley, and up the Pentlands beyond, the smoke of 
 Kate's Mill rising in the still and shadowy air, and 
 broke out into Cowper's words, " Yes, 
 
 " HE sets the bright procession on its way, 
 And marshals all the order of the year ; 
 And ere one flowery season fades and dies, 
 Designs the blooming wonders of the next" 
 
 Then as we came slowly in, the moon shone behind 
 Craiglockhart hill, among the old Scotch firs ; he 
 pulled up again, and gave me Collins's Ode of E veil- 
 ing, beginning,
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 163 
 
 " If aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song, 
 May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear, 
 Thy springs, and dying gales ; ' ' 
 
 repeating over and over some of the lines, as 
 
 " Thy modest ear, 
 Thy springs, and dying gales." 
 
 " And marks o'er all 
 Thy dewy fingers draw 
 The gradual dusky veil." 
 
 And when she looked out on us clear and full, 
 " Yes, 
 
 " The moon takes up the wondrous tale, 
 And nightly to the listening earth 
 Repeats the story of her birth." 
 
 As we passed through Slateford, he spoke of Dr. 
 Belfrage, his great-hearted friend, of his obligations 
 to him, and of his son, my friend, both lying together 
 in Colinton churchyard ; and of Dr. Dick, who was 
 minister before him, of the Coventrys, and of Stitchel 
 and Sprouston, of his mother, and of himself, his 
 doubts of his own sincerity in religion, his sense of 
 sin, of God, reverting often to his dying friend. 
 Such a thing only occurred to me with him once or 
 twice all my life ; and then when we were home, he 
 was silent, shut up, self - contained as before. He 
 was himself conscious of this habit of reticence, and 
 what may be called selfism to us, his children, and la- 
 mented it. I remember his saying in a sort of mourn- 
 ful joke, " I have a well of love ; I know it ; but it 
 is a well, and a draw-well, to your sorrow and mine.
 
 164 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 and it seldom overflows, but," looking with that 
 strange power of tenderness as if he put his voice 
 and his heart into his eyes, "you may always come 
 hither to draw ; " he used to say he might take to 
 himself Wordsworth's lines, 
 
 " I am not one who much or oft delights 
 To season my fireside with personal talk." 
 
 And changing " though " into " if," 
 
 " A well of love it may be deep, 
 I trust it is, and never dry ; 
 What matter, though its waters sleep 
 In silence and obscurity ? " 
 
 The expression of his affection was more like the 
 shock of a Leyden jar than the continuous current of 
 a galvanic circle. 
 
 There was, as I have said, a permanent chill given 
 by my mother's death, to what may be called the 
 outer surface of his nature, and we at home felt it 
 much. The blood was thrown in upon the centre, 
 and went forth in energetic and victorious work, in 
 searching the Scriptures and saving souls ; but his 
 social faculty never recovered that shock ! it was 
 blighted ; he was always desiring to be alone and at 
 his work. A stranger who saw him for a short time, 
 bright, animated, full of earnest and cordial talk, 
 pleasing and being pleased, the life of the company, 
 was apt to think how delightful he must always be, 
 and so he was ; but these times of bright talk were 
 like angels' visits ; and he smiled with peculiar benig-
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 165 
 
 nity on his retiring guest, as if blessing him not the 
 less for leaving him to himself. I question if there 
 ever lived a man so much in the midst of men and in 
 the midst of his own children, 1 in whom the silences, 
 as Mr. Carlyle would say, were so predominant. 
 Every Sabbath he spoke out of the abundance of his 
 heart his whole mind ; he was then communicative 
 and frank enough : all the week, before and after, 
 he would not unwillingly have never opened his 
 mouth. Of many people we may say that their 
 mouth is always open except when it is shut ; of him 
 that his mouth was always shut except when it was 
 opened. Every one must have been struck with the 
 seeming inconsistency of his occasional brilliant, 
 happy, energetic talk, and his habitual silentness, 
 his difficulty in getting anything to say. But, as I 
 have already said, what we lost, the world and the 
 church gained. 
 
 When traveling he was always in high spirits and 
 full of anecdote and fun. Indeed I knew more of 
 his inner history in this one way than during years 
 of living with him. I recollect his taking me with 
 him to Glasgow when I must have been about four- 
 teen ; we breakfasted in " The Ram's Horn Tav- 
 ern," and I felt a new respect for him at his com- 
 manding the waiters. He talked a great deal during 
 our short tour, and often have I desired to recall the 
 many things he told me of his early life, and of his 
 own religious crises, my mother's death, his fear of 
 1 He gave us all the education we got at Biggar.
 
 166 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 his own death, and all this intermingled with the 
 drollest stories of his boy and student life. 
 
 We went to Paisley and dined, I well remember, 
 we two alone, and, as I thought, magnificently, in a 
 great apartment in " The Saracen's Head," at the 
 end of which was the county ball-room. We had 
 come across from Dunoon and landed in a small 
 boat at the Water Neb along with Mrs. Dr. Hall, 
 a character Sir Walter or Gait would have made im- 
 mortal. My father with characteristic ardor took an 
 oar, for the first time in his life, and I believe for 
 the last, to help the old boatman on the Cart, and 
 wishing to do something decided, missed the water, 
 and went back head over heels to the immense en- 
 joyment of Mrs. Hall, who said, " Less pith, and 
 mair to the purpose, my man." She didn't let the 
 joke die out. 
 
 Another time it was when his second marriage 
 was fixed on, to our great happiness and his I had 
 just taken my degree of M. D., and he took Isabella, 
 William, and myself to Moffat. By a curious felicity 
 we got into Miss Geddes' lodgings, where the village 
 circulating library was kept, the whole of which we 
 aver he read in ten days. I never saw him so happy, 
 so open and full of mirth, reading to us, and reciting 
 the poetry of his youth. On these rare but delight- 
 ful occasions he was fond of exhibiting, when asked, 
 his powers of rapid speaking, in which he might 
 have rivaled old Matthews or his son. His favorite 
 feat was repeating " Says I to my Lord, quo' I
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 167 
 
 what for will ye no grund ma barley-meal mouter- 
 free, says I to my Lord, quo' I, says I, I says." He 
 was brilliant upon the final, "I says." Another 
 chef-d'oeuvre was, " On Tintock tap there is a mist, 
 and in the mist there is a kist (a chest), and in the 
 kist there is a cap (a wooden bowl), and in the cap 
 there is a drap, tak' up the cap, and sup the drap, 
 and set the cap on Tintock tap." This he could say, 
 if I mistake not, five times without drawing breath. 
 It was a favorite passage this, and he often threatened 
 to treat it exegetically ; laughing heartily when I said, 
 in that case, he would not have great trouble with the 
 context, which in others cost him a good deal. 
 
 His manners to ladies, and indeed to all women, 
 was that of a courtly gentleman ; they could be ro- 
 mantic in their empressement and devotion, and I 
 used to think Sir Philip Sydney, or Ariosto's knights 
 and the Paladins of old, must have looked and 
 moved as he did. He had great pleasure in the com- 
 pany of high - bred, refined thoughtful women ; and 
 he had a peculiar sympathy with the sufferings, the 
 necessary mournfulness of women, and with all in 
 their lot connected with tbe fruit of that forbidden 
 tree their loneliness, the sorrows of their time, and 
 their pangs in travail, their peculiar relation to their 
 children. I think I hear him reading the words, 
 " Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she 
 should not have compassion on the son of her womb ? 
 Yea" (as if it was the next thing to impossible)* 
 11 she may forget, yet will not I forget thee." In-
 
 168 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 deed, to a man who saw so little of, and said so little 
 to his own children, perhaps it may be because of all 
 this, his sympathy for mothers under loss of children, 
 his real suffering for their suffering, not only en- 
 deared him to them as their minister, their consoler, 
 and gave him opportunities of dropping in divine and 
 saving truth and comfort, when the heart was full 
 and soft, tender, and at his mercy, but it brought 
 out in his only loss of this kind the mingled depth, 
 tenderness, and also the peremptoriness of his nature. 
 In the case of the death of little Maggie a child 
 the very image of himself in face, lovely and pensive, 
 and yet ready for any fun, with a keenness of affec- 
 tion that periled everything on being loved, who 
 must cling to some one and be clasped, made for a 
 garden, for the first garden, not for the rough world, 
 the child of his old age this peculiar meeting of 
 opposites was very marked. She was stricken with 
 sudden illness, malignant sore throat ; her mother 
 was gone, and so she was to my father as a flower 
 he had the sole keeping of ; and his joy in her wild 
 mirth, his watching her childish moods of sadness, as 
 if a shadow came over her young heaven, were them- 
 selves something to watch. Her delicate life made 
 no struggle with disease ; it, as it were, declined to 
 stay on such conditions. She therefore sunk at once 
 and without much pain, her soul quick and unclouded, 
 and her little forefinger playing to the last with my 
 father's silvery curls, her eyes trying in vain to 
 brighten his :
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 169 
 
 " Thou wert a dew-drop which the morn brings forth, 
 Not fitted to he trailed along the soiling earth ; 
 But at the touch of wrong, without a strife, 
 Slips in a moment out of life." 
 
 His distress, his anguish at this stroke, was not only 
 intense, it was in its essence permanent ; he went 
 mourning and looking for her all his days ; but after 
 she was dead, that resolved will compacted him in an 
 instant. It was on a Sabbath morning she died, and 
 he was all day at church, not many yards from where 
 lay her little corpse alone in the house. His colleague 
 preached in the forenoon, and in the afternoon he took 
 his turn, saying before beginning his discourse : " It 
 has pleased the Father of Lights to darken one of the 
 lights of my dwelling had the child lived I would 
 have remained with her, but now I have thought it 
 right to arise and come into the house of the Lord and 
 worship." Such violence to one part of his nature by 
 that in it which was supreme injured him : it was 
 like pulling up on the instant an express train ; the 
 whole inner organization is minutely, though it may 
 be invisibly hurt ; its molecular constitution damaged 
 by the cruel stress and strain. Such things are not 
 right; they are a cruelty and injustice and injury 
 from the soul to the body, its faithful slave, and they 
 bring down, as in his case they too truly did, their 
 own certain and specific retribution. A man who 
 did not feel keenly might have preached ; a man 
 whose whole nature was torn, shattered, and aston- 
 ished as his was, had in a high sense no right so to
 
 170 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 use himself ; and when too late he opened his eyes to 
 this. It was part of our old Scottish severe unspar- 
 ing character calm to coldness outside, burning to 
 fierceness, tender to agony, within. 
 
 I was saying how much my father enjoyed women's 
 company. He liked to look on them, and watch 
 them, listening 1 to their keen, unconnected, and un- 
 reasoning, but not unreasonable talk. Men's argu- 
 ment, or rather arguing, and above all debating, he 
 disliked. He had no turn for it. He was not com- 
 bative, much less contentious. He was, however, 
 warlike. Anything that he could destroy, any false- 
 hood or injustice, he made for, not to discuss, but to 
 expose and kill. He could not fence with his mind 
 much less with his tongue, and had no love for the 
 exploits of a nimble dialectic. He had no readiness 
 either in thought or word for this ; his way was slowly 
 to think out a subject, to get it well " bottomed," as 
 Locke would say ; he was not careful as to recording 
 the steps he took in their order, but the spirit of his 
 
 1 One day my mother and her only sister, Agnes, married 
 to James Aitken, of Cullands, a man before his class and his 
 time, for long the only Whig and Seceder laird in Peeblesshire, 
 and with whom my father shared the Edinburgh Review from 
 its beginning, the two sisters who were, the one to the other, 
 as Martha was to Mary, sat talking of their household doings ; 
 my aunt was great upon some things she could do ; my father 
 looked up from his book, and said, " There is one thing, Mrs. 
 Aitken, you cannot do : you cannot turn the heel of a stock- 
 ing ; " and he was right, he had noticed her make over this 
 " kittle " turn to her mother.
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 171 
 
 mind was logical, as must be that of all minds who 
 seek and find truth, for logic is nothing else than the 
 arithmetic of thought ; having therefore thought it 
 out, he proceeded to put it into formal expression. 
 This he did so as never again to undo it. His mind 
 seemed to want the wheels by which this is done, 
 vestigia nulla retrorsum, and having stereotyped it> 
 he was never weary of it ; it never lost its life and 
 freshness to him, and he delivered it as emphatically 
 thirty years after it had been cast as the first hour 
 of its existence. 
 
 I have said he was no swordsman, but he was a 
 heavy shot ; he fired off his ball, compact, weighty, 
 the maximum of substance in the minimum of 
 bulk ; he put in double charge, pointed the muzzle, 
 and fired, with what force and sharpness we all re- 
 member. If it hit, good ; if not, all he could do was 
 to load again, with the same ball, and in the same 
 direction. You must come to him to be shot, at 
 least you must stand still, for he had a want of mo- 
 bility of mind in great questions. He could not stalk 
 about the field like a sharp-shooter ; his was a great 
 sixty-eight pounder, and it was not much of a swivel. 
 Thus it was that he rather dropped into the minds of 
 others his authoritative assertions, and left them to 
 breed conviction. If they gave them entrance and 
 cherished them, they would soon find how full of 
 primary truth they were, and how well they would 
 serve them, as they had served him. With all this 
 heavy artillery, somewhat slow and cumbrous, on
 
 172 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 great questions, he had no want, when he was speak- 
 ing off-hand, of quick, snell remark, often witty and 
 full of spirit, and often, too, unexpected, like lightning 
 flashing, smiting, and gone. In Church Courts 
 this was very marked. On small ordinary matters, a 
 word from him would settle a long discussion. He 
 would, after lively, easy talk with his next neighbor, 
 set him up to make a speech, which was conclusive. 
 But on great questions he must move forward his 
 great gun with much solemnity and effort, partly 
 from his desire to say as much of the truth at once 
 as he could, partly from the natural concentration 
 and rapidity of his mind in action, as distinguished 
 from his slowness when incubating, or in the process 
 of thought, and partly from a sort of self -conscious- 
 ness I might almost call it a compound of pride 
 and nervous diffidence which seldom left him. He 
 desired to say it so that it might never need to be 
 said again or otherwise by himself, or any one else. 
 
 This strong personality, along with a prevailing 
 love to be alone and dwell with thoughts rather than 
 with thinkers, pervaded his entire character. His 
 religion was deeply personal, 1 not only as affecting 
 himself, but as due to a personal God, and presented 
 through the sacrifice and intercession of the God-man ; 
 and it was perhaps owing to his " conversation " being 
 so habitually in heaven his social and affectionate 
 
 1 In his own words, ' ' A personal Deity is the soul of Natural 
 Religion; a personal Saviour the real living Christ is the 
 soul of Revealed Religion."
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 173 
 
 desires filling themselves continually from " all the 
 fulness of God," through living faith and love that 
 he the less felt the need of giving and receiving 
 human affection. I never knew any man who lived 
 more truly under the power, and sometimes under 
 the shadow, of the world to come. This world had 
 to him little reality, except as leading to the next ; 
 little interest, except as the time of probation and 
 sentence. A child brought to him to be baptized was 
 in his mind, and in his words, " a young immortal to 
 be educated for eternity ; " a birth was the beginning 
 of what was never to end ; sin his own and that of 
 the race was to him, as it must be to all men who 
 can think, the great mystery, as it is the main curse 
 of time. The idea of it of its exceeding sinf ulness 
 haunted and oppressed him. He used to say of 
 John Foster, that this deep and intense, but some- 
 times narrow and grim thinker, had, in his study of 
 the disease of the race, been, as it were, fascinated by 
 its awful spell, so as almost to forget the remedy. 
 This was not the case with himself. As you know, 
 no man held more firmly to the objective reality of 
 his religion, that it was founded upon fact. It was 
 not the pole-star he lost sight of, or the compass he 
 mistrusted ; it was the sea-worthiness of the vessel. 
 His constitutional deficiency of hope, his sensibility 
 to sin, made him not unfrequently stand in doubt of 
 himself, of his sincerity and safety before God, and 
 sometimes made existence the being obliged to con- 
 tinue to be a doubtful privilege.
 
 174 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 When oppressed with this feeling, " the burden 
 and the mystery of all this unintelligible world," the 
 hurry of mankind out of this brief world into the 
 unchangeable and endless next, I have heard him, 
 with deep feeling, repeat Andrew *Marvell's strong 
 lines : 
 
 ' ' But at my back I always hear 
 
 Time's winged chariots hurrying near ; 
 
 And yonder all before me lie 
 
 Deserts of vast eternity." 
 
 His living so much on books, and his strong personal 
 attachment to men, as distinct from his adhesion to 
 their principles and views, made him, as it were, live 
 and commune with the dead ; made him intimate, 
 not merely with their thoughts, and the public events 
 of their lives, but with themselves, Augustine, Mil- 
 ton, Luther, Melancthon, George Herbert, Baxter, 
 Howe, Owen, Leighton, Barrow, Bunyan, Philip and 
 Matthew Henry, Doddridge, Defoe, Marvell, Locke, 
 Berkeley, Halliburton, Cowper, Gray, Johnson, Gib- 
 bon, and David Hume, 1 Jortin, Boston, Bengel, Ne- 
 ander, etc., not to speak of the apostles, and above 
 all, his chief friend the author of the Epistle to the 
 Romans, whom he looked on as the greatest of men, 
 with all these he had personal relations as men, he 
 
 1 David Hume's Treatise on Human Nature he knew 
 thoroughly, and read it carefully during his last illness. He 
 used to say it not only was a miracle of intellectual and literary 
 power for a man of twenty-eight, but contained the essence of 
 all that was best on the philosophy of mind : " It's all there, 
 if you will think it out."
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 175 
 
 cordialized with them. He had thought much more 
 about them, would have had more to say to them 
 had they met, than about or to any but a very few 
 living men. 1 He delighted to possess books which 
 any of them might have held in their hands, on which 
 they had written their names. He had a number of 
 these, some very curious ; among others, that wild 
 
 1 This tendency was curiously seen in his love of portraits, 
 especially of men whose works he had and liked. He often 
 put portraits into his books, and he seemed to enjoy this way 
 of realizing 1 their authors ; and in exhibitions of pictures he 
 was more taken up with what is usually and justly the most 
 tiresome departments, the portraits, than with all else. He 
 was not learned in engravings, and made no attempt at col- 
 lecting them, so that the following- list of portraits in his 
 rooms shows his liking for the men much more than for the 
 art which delineated them. Of course they by no means 
 include all his friends, ancient and modern, but they all were 
 his friends : 
 
 Robert Hall Dr. Carey Melancthon Calvin Pollok 
 
 Erasmus (very like "Uncle Ebenezer") John Knox 
 Dr. Waugh John Milton (three, all framed) Dr. Dick 
 Dr. Hall Luther (two) Dr. Heugh Dr. Mitchell Dr. 
 Balmer Dr. Henderson Dr. Wardlaw Shakespeare (a 
 small oil painting which he had since ever I remember) 
 Dugald Stewart Dr. Innes Dr. Smith, Biggar the 
 two Erskines and Mr. Fisher Dr. John Taylor of Toronto 
 Dr. Chalmers Mr. William Ellis Rev. James Elles J. 
 B. Patterson Vinet Archibald M'Lean Dr. John Erskine 
 
 Tholuck John Pym Gesenius Professor Finlayson 
 Richard Baxter Dr. Lawson Dr. Peddle (two, and a copy 
 of Joseph's noble bust) ; and they were thus all about him 
 for no other reason than that he liked to look at and think of 
 them through their countenances.
 
 176 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 soldier, man of fashion and wit among the reformers, 
 Ulric von Hiitten's autograph on Erasmus' beautiful 
 folio Greek Testament, and John Howe's (spelt How) 
 on the first edition of Milton's Speech on Unlicensed 
 Printing.* He began collecting books when he was 
 
 1 In a copy of Baxter's Life and Times, which he picked up 
 at Maurice Ogle's shop in Glasgow, which had belonged to 
 Anna, Countess of Argyll, besides her autograph, there is a 
 most affecting and interesting note in that venerable lady's 
 handwriting. It occurs on the page where Baxter brings a 
 charge of want of veracity against her eldest and name-daugh- 
 ter who was perverted to Popery. They are in a hand tremu- 
 lous with age and feeling : "I can say w* truth I neuer in 
 all my lyff did hear hir ly, and what she said, if it was not 
 trew, it was by others sugested to hir, as y' she wold embak 
 on Wedensday. She belived she wold, hot thy took hir, 
 alles ! from me who never did sie her mor. The minester of 
 Cuper, Mr. John Magill, did sie hir at Paris in the convent. 
 Said she was a knowing and vertuous person, and hed retined 
 the living principels of our relidgon, which made him say it 
 was good to grund young persons weel in ther relidgion, as she 
 was one it appired weel grunded." 
 
 The following is Lord Lindsay's letter, on seeing this re- 
 markable marginal note : 
 
 EDINBURGH, DOUGLAS' HOTEL, 
 26th December, 1856. 
 
 Mv DEAR SIR, I owe you my sincerest thanks for your 
 kindness in favoring me with a sight of the volume of Baxter's 
 Life, which formerly belonged to my ancestrix, Anna, Countess 
 of Argyll. The MS. note inserted by her in it respecting her 
 daughter is extremely interesting. I had always been under 
 (lie impression that the daughter had died very shortly after 
 her removal to France, but the contrary appears from Lady 
 Argyll's memorandum. That memorandum throws also a
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 177 
 
 twelve, and he was collecting up to his last hours. 
 He cared least for merely fine books, though he en- 
 joyed, no one more so, fine type, good binding, and 
 all the niceties of the book-fancier. What lie liked 
 were such books as were directly useful in his work, 
 and such as he liked to live in the midst of; such, 
 also, as illustrated any great philosophical, historical, 
 or ecclesiastical epoch. His collection of Greek Tes- 
 taments was, considering his means, of great extent 
 and value, and he had a quite singular series of books, 
 pamphlets, and documents, referring not merely to 
 his own body the Secession, with all its subdivisions 
 and reunions but to Nonconformity and Dissent 
 everywhere, and, indeed, to human liberty, civil and 
 religious, in every form, for this, after the great 
 truths, duties, and expectations of his faith, was the 
 one master-passion of his life liberty in its greatest 
 sense, the largest extent of individual and public 
 spontaneity consistent with virtue and safety. He 
 was in this as intense, persistent in his devotion, as 
 Sydney, Locke, or old Hollis. For instance, his ad- 
 miration of Lord Macaulay as a writer and a man of 
 
 pleasing 1 light on the later life of Lady Anna, and forcibly 
 illustrates the undying love and tenderness of the aged mother, 
 who must have been very old when she penned it, the book 
 having been printed as late as 1696. 
 
 I am extremely obliged to you for communicating to me 
 this new and very interesting information. Believe me, my 
 dear Sir, your much obliged and faithful servant, 
 
 LINDSAY. 
 
 JOHN BROWN, Esq., M. D.
 
 178 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 letters, an orator and a statesman, great as it was, 
 was as nothing to his gratitude to him for having 
 placed permanently on record, beyond all risk of ob- 
 scuration or doubt, the doctrine of 1688, the right 
 and power of the English people to be their own law- 
 givers, and to appoint their own magistrates, of whom 
 the sovereign is the chief. 
 
 His conviction of the sole right of God to be Lord 
 of the conscience, and his sense of his own absolute 
 religious independence of every one but his Maker, 
 were the two elements in building up his beliefs on all 
 Church matters ; they were twin beliefs. Hence the 
 simplicity and thoroughness of his principles. Sitting 
 in the centre, he commanded the circumference. But 
 I am straying out of my parish into yours. I only 
 add to what you have said, that the longer he lived, 
 the more did he insist upon it being not less true and 
 not less important, that the Church must not inter- 
 meddle with the State, than that the State must not 
 intermeddle with the Church. He used to say, " Go 
 down into the world, with all its complications and 
 confusions, with this double-edged weapon, and you 
 can cut all the composite knots of Church and State." 
 The element of God and of eternity predominates in 
 the religious more than in the civil affairs of men, 
 and thus far transcends them ; but the principle of 
 mutual independence is equally applicable to each. 
 All that statesmen, as such r have to do with religion, 
 is to be themselves under its power ; all that Chris- 
 tians, as such, have to do with the State, is to be good 
 citizens.
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 179 
 
 The fourth epoch of his personal life I would date 
 from his second marriage. As I said before, no man 
 was ever happier in his wives. They had much alike 
 in nature, only one could see the divine wisdom of 
 his first wife being his first, and his second his second ; 
 each did best in her own place and time. His mar- 
 riage with Miss Crum was a source of great happiness 
 and good not only to himself, but to us his first chil- 
 dren. She had been intimately known to us for many 
 years, and was endeared to us long before we saw her, 
 by her having been, as a child and girl, a great favor- 
 ite of our own mother. The families of my grand- 
 father Nimmo, and of the Crums, Ewings, and 
 Maclaes, were very intimate. I have heard my fa- 
 ther tell, that being out at Thornliebank with my 
 mother, he asked her to take a walk with him to the 
 Rouken, a romantic waterfall and glen up the burn. 
 My mother thought they might take "Miss Margaret" 
 with them, and so save appearances, and with Miss 
 Crum, then a child of ten, holding my father's hand, 
 away the three went ! 
 
 So you may see that no one could be nearer to be- 
 ing our mother ; and she was curiously ingenious, and 
 completely successful in gaining our affection and 
 regard. I have, as a boy, a peculiarly pleasant re- 
 membrance of her, having been at Thornliebank 
 when about fourteen, and getting that impression of 
 her gentle, kind, wise, calm, and happy nature, her 
 entire lovableness, which it was our privilege to see 
 ministering so much to my father's comfort. That
 
 180 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 fortnight in 1824 or 1825 is still to me like the mem- 
 ory of some happy dream : the old library, the big 
 chair in which I huddled myself up for hours with the 
 new Arabian Nights, and all the old-fashioned and 
 unforgotten books I found there, the ample old gar- 
 den, the wonders of machinery and skill going on in 
 " the works," the large water-wheel going its stately 
 rounds in the midst of its own darkness, the petrifac- 
 tions I excavated in the bed of the burn, ammonites, 
 etc., and brought home to my museum (!) ; the hospi- 
 table lady of the house, my hereditary friend, dig- 
 nified, anxious, and kind ; and above all, her only 
 daughter who made me a sort of pet, and was always 
 contriving some unexpected pleasure, all this feels 
 to me even now like something out of a book. 
 
 My father's union with Miss Crum was not only one 
 of the best blessings of his life, it made him more 
 of a blessing to others than it is likely he would other- 
 wise have been. By her cheerful, gracious ways, her 
 love for society as distinguished from company, her 
 gift of making every one happy and at ease when 
 with her, and her tender compassion for all suffering, 
 she in a measure won my father from himself and his 
 books, to his own great good, and to the delight and 
 benefit of us all. It was like sunshine and a glad 
 sound in the house. She succeeded in what is called 
 " drawing out " the inveterate solitary. Moreover, 
 she encouraged and enabled him to give up a moiety 
 of his ministerial labors, and thus to devote himself to 
 the great work of his later years, the preparing for
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 181 
 
 and giving to the press the results of his life's study 
 of God's Word. We owe entirely to her that im- 
 mense armamentarium libertatis, the third edition of 
 his treatise on Civil Obedience. 
 
 One other source of great happiness to my father 
 by this marriage was the intercourse he had with the 
 family at Thornliebank, deepened and endeared as 
 this was by her unexpected and irreparable loss. 
 But on this I must not enlarge, nor on that death it- 
 self, the last thing in the world he ever feared, 
 leaving him once more, after a brief happiness, and 
 when he had still more reason to hope that he would 
 have "grown old with her, leaning on her faithful 
 bosom." The urn was again empty and the only 
 word was vale ! he was once more viduus, bereft. 
 
 " God gives us love ; something to love 
 He lends us ; but, when love is grown 
 
 To ripeness, that on which it throve 
 Falls off, and love is left alone. 
 
 This is the curse of time." 
 
 But Still 
 
 " 'Tis better to have loved and lost, 
 Than never to have loved at all." 
 
 It was no easy matter to get him from home and 
 away from his books. But once off, he always en- 
 joyed himself, especially in his visits to Thornlie- 
 bank, Busby, Crofthead, Biggar, and Melrose. He 
 was very fond of preaching on these occasions, and 
 his services were always peculiarly impressive. He 
 spoke more slowly and with less vehemence than in
 
 182 MY FATHER'S MKMOIR. 
 
 his own pulpit, and, as I often told him, with all the 
 more effect. When driving about Biggar, or in the 
 neighborhood of Langrig, he was full of the past, 
 showing how keenly, with all his outward reserve, he 
 had observed and felt. He had a quite peculiar in- 
 terest in his three flocks, keeping his eye on all their 
 members, through long years of absence. 
 
 His love for his people and for his " body '' was a 
 special love ; and his knowledge of the Secession, 
 through all its many divisions and unions, his 
 knowledge, not only of its public history, with its 
 immense controversial and occasional literature, but 
 of the lives and peculiarities of its ministers, was 
 of the most minute and curious kind. He loved all 
 mankind, and specially such as were of " the house- 
 hold of faith ; " and he longed for the time when, as 
 there was one Shepherd, there would be but one 
 sheepfold ; but he gloried in being not only a Se- 
 ceder, but Burgher ; and he often said that, take 
 them all in all, he knew no body of professing Chris- 
 tians in any country or in any time, worthier of all 
 honor than that which was founded by the Four 
 Brethren, not only as God-fearing, God-serving men, 
 but as members of civil society ; men who on every 
 occasion were found on the side of liberty and order, 
 truth and justice. He used to say he believed there 
 was hardly a Tory in the Synod, and that no one 
 but He whose service is perfect freedom knew the 
 public good done, and the public evil averted, by the 
 lives and the principles, and when need was, by the
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 183 
 
 votes of such men, all of whom were in the working- 
 classes, or in the lower half of the middle. The 
 great Whig leaders knew this, and could always de- 
 pend on the Seceders. 
 
 There is no worthy portrait of my father in his 
 prime. I believe no man was ever more victimized 
 in the way of being asked to " sit ; " indeed, it was 
 probably from so many of them being of this kind, 
 that the opportunity of securing a really good one 
 was lost. The best the one portrait of his habit- 
 ual expression is Mr. Harvey's, done for Mr. 
 Crum of Busby : it was taken when he was failing, 
 but it is an excellent likeness as well as a noble pic- 
 ture ; such a picture as one would buy without know- 
 ing anything of the subject. So true it is, that imagi- 
 native painters, men gifted and accustomed to render 
 their own ideal conceptions in form and color, grasp 
 and impress on their canvas the features of real men 
 more to the quick, more faithfully as to the central 
 qualities of the man, than professed portrait painters. 
 
 Steell's bust is beautiful, but it is wanting in ex- 
 pression. Slater's, though rude, is better. Angus 
 Fletcher's has much of his air, but is too much like a 
 Grecian god. There is a miniature by Mrs. Robert- 
 son, of London, belonging to my sister, Mrs. Young, 
 which I always liked, though more like a gay, bril- 
 liant French Abbe", than the Seceder minister of 
 Rose Street, as he then was. It gives, however, 
 more of his exquisite brightness and spirit, the dan- 
 cing light in his dark eyes, and his smile, when
 
 184 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 pleased and desiring to please, than any other. I 
 have a drawing by Mr. Harvey, done from my 
 father for his picture of the Minister's Visit, which 
 I value very much, as giving the force and depth, 
 the momentum, so to speak, of his serious look. He 
 is sitting in a cottar's house, reading the Bible to an 
 old bedridden woman, the farm servants gathered 
 round to get his word. 
 
 Mungo Burton painted a good portrait which my 
 brother William has ; from his being drawn in a 
 black neckcloth, and standing, he looks, as he some- 
 times did, more like a member of Pai'liament than a 
 clergyman. The print from this is good and very 
 scarce. Of photographs, I like D. O. Hill's best, in 
 which he is represented as shaking hands with the 
 (invisible) Free Church it is full of his earnest, 
 cordial power ; that by Tunny, from which the beau- 
 tiful engraving by Lumb Stocks in the Memoir was 
 taken, is very like what he was about a year and a 
 half before his death. All the other portraits, as far 
 as I can remember, are worthless and worse, missing 
 entirely the true expression. He was very difficult 
 to take, partly because he was so full of what may 
 be called spiritual beauty, evanescent, ever changing, 
 and requiring the highest kind of genius to fix it ; 
 and partly from his own fault, for he thought it was 
 necessary to be lively, or rather to try to be so to his 
 volunteering artist, and the consequence was, his giv- 
 ing them, as his habitual expression, one which was 
 rare, and in this particular case more made than 
 born.
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 185 
 
 The time when I would have liked his look to have 
 been perpetuated was that of all others the least 
 likely, or indeed possible; it was when, after ad- 
 ministering the Sacrament to his people, and having 
 solemnized every one, and been himself profoundly 
 moved by that Divine, everlasting memorial, he left 
 the elder's seat and returned to the pulpit, and after 
 giving out the psalm, sat down wearied and satisfied, 
 filled with devout gratitude to his Master, his face 
 pale, and his dark eyes looking out upon us all, his 
 whole countenance radiant and subdued. Any like- 
 ness of him in this state, more like that of the proto- 
 martyr, when his face was as that of an angel, than 
 anything I ever beheld, would have made one feel 
 what it is so impossible otherwise to convey. the 
 mingled sweetness, dignity, and beauty of his face. 
 When it was winter, and the church darkening, and 
 the lights at the pulpit were lighted so as to fall upon 
 his face and throw the rest of the vast assemblage 
 into deeper shadow, the effect of his countenance was 
 something never to forget. 
 
 He was more a man of power than of genius in the 
 ordinary sense. His imagination was not a primary 
 power ; it was not originative, though in a quite un- 
 common degree receptive, having the capacity of 
 realizing the imaginations of others, and through 
 them bodying forth the unseen. When exalted and 
 urged by the understanding, and heated by the affec- 
 tions, it burst out with great force, but always as ser- 
 vant, not master. But if he had no one faculty that
 
 186 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 might be, to use the loose words of common speech, 
 original, he was so as a whole, such a man as 
 stood alone. No one ever mistook his look, or would 
 had they been blind, have mistaken his voice or words 
 for those of any one else or any one else's for his. 
 
 His mental characteristics, if I may venture on 
 such ground, were clearness and vigor, intensity, 
 fervor, 1 concentration, penetration, and perseverance, 
 more of depth than width. 2 The moral conditions 
 
 1 This earnestness of nature pervaded all his exercises. A 
 man of great capacity and culture, with a head like Benjamin 
 Franklin's, an avowed unbeliever in Christianity, came every 
 Sunday afternoon, for many years, to hear him. I remember 
 his look well, as if interested, but not impressed. He was 
 often asked by his friends why he went when he did n't be- 
 lieve one word of what he heard. " Neither I do, but I like 
 to hear and to see a man earnest once a week, about any- 
 thing." It is related of David Hume, that having heard my 
 great-grandfather preach, he said, "That's the man for me, 
 he means what he says, he speaks as if Jesus Christ was at his 
 elbow." 
 
 2 The following note from the pen to which we owe St. 
 Paul's Thorn in the Flesh is admirable, both for its reference 
 to my father, and its own beauty and truth : 
 
 " One instance of his imperfect discernment of associations 
 of thought that were not of a purely logical character was 
 afforded, we used to think, by the decided and almost con- 
 temptuous manner in which he always rejected the theory of 
 what is called the double interpretation of prophecy. This, of 
 course, is not the place to discuss whether he was absolutely 
 right or wrong in his opinion. The subject, however, is one 
 of somewhat curious interest, and it has also a strictly literary 
 as well as a theological aspect, and what we have to say about 
 it shall relate exclusively to the former. When Dr. Brown
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 187 
 
 under which he lived were the love, the pursuit, and 
 the practice of truth in everything ; strength and 
 
 then said, as he was accustomed in his strong way to do, that 
 ' if prophecy was capable of two senses, it wa3 impossible it 
 could have any sense at all,' it is plain, we think, that he for- 
 got the specific character of prophetic literature, viz., its be- 
 ing in the highest degree poetic. Now every one knows that 
 poetry of a very elevated cast almost invariably possesses 
 great breadth, variety, we may say multiplicity, of meaning. 
 Its very excellence consists in its being capable of two, three, 
 or many meanings and applications. Take, for example, these 
 familiar lines in the Midsummer Night's Dream : 
 ' Ah me ! for aught that ever I could read, 
 
 Could ever hear by tale or history, 
 
 The course of true love never did run smooth : 
 
 But either it was different in blood, 
 
 Or else misgraffed in respect of years, 
 
 Or else it stood upon the choice of friends ; 
 
 Or if there were a sympathy in choice, 
 
 War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, 
 
 Making it momentary as a sound, 
 
 Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, 
 
 Brief as the lightning in the collied night, 
 
 That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth, 
 
 And ere a niau hath power to say " Behold ! " 
 
 The jaws of darkness do devour it up ; 
 
 So quick bright things come to confusion.' 
 
 We remember once quoting these lines to a lady, and being 
 rather taken aback by her remark, ' They are very beautiful, 
 but I don't think they are true.' We really had forgot for 
 the moment the straightforward, matter-of-fact sense of which 
 they are capable, and were not adverting to the possibility of 
 their being understood to mean that nothing but love-crosses 
 are going, and that no tolerable amount of comfort or happi- 
 ness is to be found in the life matrimonial, or in any of the 
 approaches towards it. Every intelligent student of Shake- 
 speare's, however, will at once feel that the poet's miiid speed-
 
 188 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 depth, rather than external warmth of affection ; 
 fidelity to principles and to friends. He used often 
 to speak of the moral obligation laid upon every man 
 to think truly, as well as to speak and act truly, and 
 said that much intellectual demoralization and ruin 
 resulted from neglecting this. He was absolutely 
 tolerant of all difference of opinion, so that it was 
 sincere ; and this was all the more remarkable from 
 his being the opposite of an indifferentist, being very 
 strong in his own convictions, holding them keenly, 
 even passionately, while, from the structure of his 
 mind, he was somehow deficient in comprehending, 
 much less of sympathizing, with the opinions of men 
 who greatly differed from him. This made his hom- 
 age to entire freedom of thought all the more gen- 
 uine and rare. In the region of theological thought 
 he was scientific, systematic, and authoritative, rather 
 
 ily passes away from the idea with which he starts, and 
 becomes merged in a far wider theme, viz., in the disenchant- 
 ment to which all lofty imaginations are liable, the disappoint- 
 ment to which all extravagant earthly hopes and wishes are 
 doomed. This, in fact, is distinctly expressed in the last line, 
 and in this sense alone can the words be regarded as at all 
 touching or impressive. Sudden expansions and transitions of 
 thought, then, are nothing more than what is common to all 
 poetry ; and when we find the Hebrew bards, in their prophetic 
 songs, mingling in the closest conjunction the anticipations of 
 the glories of Solomon's reign, or the happy prospects of a re- 
 turn from Babylon, with the higher glory and happiness of 
 Messiah's advent, such transitions of thought are in perfect 
 accordance with the ordinary laws of poetry, and ought not to 
 perplex even the most unimaginative student of the Bible."
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 189 
 
 than philosophical and speculative. He held so 
 strongly that the Christian religion was mainly a re- 
 ligion of facts, that he perhaps allowed too little to 
 its also being a philosophy that was ready to meet, 
 out of its own essence and its ever unfolding powers, 
 any new form of unbelief, disbelief, or misbelief, and 
 must front itself to them as they moved up. 
 
 With devotional feeling with everything that 
 showed reverence and godly fear -j- he cordialized 
 wherever and in whomsoever it was found, Pagan 
 or Christian, Romanist or Protestant, bond or free ; 
 and while he disliked, and had indeed a positive an- 
 tipathy to intellectual mysticism, he had a great 
 knowledge of and relish for such writers as Dr. 
 Henry More, Culverwel, Scougall, Madame Guyon, 
 whom (besides their other qualities) I may perhaps 
 be allowed to call affectionate mystics, and for such 
 poets as Herbert and Vaughan, whose poetry was 
 pious, and their piety poetic. As I have said, he 
 was perhaps too impatient of all obscure thinking, 
 from not considering that on certain subjects, neces- 
 sarily in their substance, and on the skirts of all sub- 
 jects, obscurity and vagueness, difficulty and uncer- 
 tainty, are inherent, and must therefore appear in 
 their treatment. Men who rejoiced in making clear 
 things obscure, and plain things the reverse, he could 
 not abide, and spoke with some contempt of those 
 who were original merely from their standing on their 
 heads, and tall from walking upon stilts. As you 
 have truly said, his character mellowed and toned
 
 190 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 down in his later years, without in any way losing 
 its own individuality, and its clear, vigorous, unflinch- 
 ing perception of and addiction to principles. 
 
 His affectionate ways with the students were often 
 very curious : he contrived to get at their hearts, and 
 find out all their family and local specialities, in a 
 sort of short-hand way, and he never forgot them 
 in after life ; and watching him with them at tea, 
 speaking his miad freely and often jocularly upon all 
 sorts of subjects, one got a glimpse of that union of 
 opposites which made him so much what he was 
 he gave out far more liberally to them the riches of 
 his learning and the deep thoughts of his heart, than 
 he ever did among his full-grown brethren. It was 
 like the flush of an Arctic summer, blossoming all 
 over, out of and into the stillness, the loneliness, and 
 the chill rigor of winter. Though authoritative in his 
 class without any effort, he was indulgent to every- 
 thing but conceit, slovenliness of mind and body, 
 irreverence, and above all handling the Word of God 
 deceitfully. On one occasion a student having de- 
 livered in the Hall a discourse tinged with Arminian- 
 ism, he said, " That may be the gospel according to 
 Dr. Macknight, or the gospel according to Dr. Tay- 
 lor, of Norwich, but it is not the gospel according to 
 the Apostle Paul ; and if I thought the sentiments 
 expressed were his own, if I had not thought he has 
 taken his thoughts from commentators without care- 
 fully considering them, I would think it my duty to 
 him and to the church to make him no longer a stu-
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 191 
 
 dent of divinity here." He was often unconsciously 
 severe, from his saying exactly what he felt. On a 
 student's ending his discourse, his only criticism was r 
 " The strongest characteristic of this discourse is 
 weakness," and feeling that this was really all he had 
 to say, he ended. A young gentleman on very good 
 terms with himself stood up to pray with his hands 
 in his pockets, and among other things he put up a 
 petition that he might " be delivered from the fear 
 of man, which bringeth a snare ; " my father's only 
 remark was that there was part of his prayer which 
 seemed to be granted before it was asked. But he 
 always was unwilling to criticise prayer, feeling it to 
 be too sacred, and, as it were, beyond his province, ex- 
 cept to deliver the true principles of all prayer, which 
 he used to say were admirably given in the Shorter 
 Catechism: "Prayer is an offering up of the desires 
 of the heart to God, for things agreeable to his will, 
 in the name of Christ ; with confession of our sins, 
 and thankful acknowledgment of his mercies." 
 
 For the " heroic " old man of Haddington my fa- 
 ther had a peculiar reverence, as indeed we all have, 
 as well we may. He was our king, the founder 
 of our dynasty ; we dated from him, and he was 
 " hedged " accordingly by a certain sacredness or 
 " divinity." I well remember with what surprise and 
 pride I found myself asked by a blacksmith's wife in 
 a remote hamlet among the hop-gardens of Kent, if I 
 was " the son of the Self-interpreting Bible." I pos- 
 sess, as an heirloom, the New Testament which my
 
 192 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 father fondly regarded as the one his grandfather, 
 when a herd laddie, got from the Professor who 
 heard him ask for it, and promised him it if he could 
 read a verse ; and he has in his beautiful small hand 
 written in it what follows. " He (John Brown of 
 Haddington) had now acquired so much of Greek as 
 encouraged him to hope that he might at length be 
 prepared to reap the richest of all rewards which 
 classical learning could confer on him, the capacity of 
 reading in the original tongue the blessed New Testa- 
 ment of our Lord and Saviour. Full of this hope, he 
 became anxious to possess a copy of the invaluable 
 volume. One night, having committed the charge of 
 his sheep to a companion, he set out on a midnight 
 journey to St. Andrews, a distance of twenty-four 
 miles. He reached his destination in the morning, 
 and went to the book-seller's shop asking for a copy 
 of the Greek New Testament. The master of the 
 shop, surprised at such a request from a shepherd boy, 
 was disposed to make game of him. Some of the 
 professors coming into the shop questioned the lad 
 about his employment and studies. After hearing his 
 tale, one of them desired the book-seller to bring the 
 volume. He did so, and drawing it down, said, ' Boy, 
 read this, and you shall have it for nothing.' The 
 boy did so, acquitted himself to the admiration of his 
 judges, and carried off his Testament, and when the 
 evening arrived, was studying it in the midst of his 
 flock on the braes of Abernethy." } 
 
 1 Memoir of Rev. John Rroicn of Haddington, by Rev. J. B. 
 Patterson.
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 193 
 
 " There is reason to believe this is the New Testa- 
 ment referred to. The name on the opposite page was 
 written on the fly-leaf. It is obviously the writing of 
 a boy, and bears a resemblance to Mr. Brown's hand- 
 writing in mature life. It is imperfect, wanting a 
 great part of the Gospel of Matthew. The autograph 
 at the end is that of his son, Thomas, when a youth 
 at college, afterwards Rev. Dr. Thomas Brown of 
 Dalkeith. J. B." 
 
 I doubt not my father regarded this little worn old 
 book, the sword of the Spirit which his ancestor so 
 nobly won, and wore, and warred with, with not less 
 honest veneration and pride than does his dear friend 
 James Douglas of Cavers the Percy pennon borne away 
 at Otterbourne. When I read, in Uncle William's 
 admirable Life of his father, his own simple story of 
 his early life, his loss of father and mother before 
 he was eleven, his discovering (as true a discovery as 
 Dr. Young's of the characters of the Rosetta stone, or 
 Rawlinson's of the cuneiform letters) the Greek char- 
 acters, his defense of himself against the astonishing 
 and base charge of getting his learning from the devil 
 (that shrewd personage would not have employed 
 him on the Greek Testament), his eager, indomitable 
 study, his running miles to and back again to hear a 
 sermon after folding his sheep at noon, his keeping 
 his family creditably on never more than 50, and 
 for long on 40 a year, giving largely in charity, and 
 never wanting, as he said, " lying money," when I 
 think of all this I feel what a strong, independent,
 
 194 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 manly nature he must have had. We all know his 
 saintly character, his devotion to learning, and to the 
 work of preaching and teaching : but he seems to have 
 been, like most complete men, full of humor and keen 
 wit. Some of his snell sayings are still remembered. 
 A lad of an excitable temperament waited on him, 
 and informed him he wished to be a preacher of the 
 gospel. My great-grandfather, finding him as weak 
 in intellect as he was strong in conceit, advised him 
 to continue in his present vocation. The young man 
 said, " But I wish to preach and glorify God." " My 
 young friend, a man may glorify God making broom 
 besoms ; stick to your trade, and glorify God by your 
 walk and conversation." 
 
 The late Dr. Husband of Dunfermline called on 
 him when he was preparing to set out for Gifford, and 
 was beginning to ask him some questions as to the 
 place grace held in the Divine economy. " Come 
 away wi' me, and 1 11 expound that ; but when I 'm 
 speaking, look you after my feet." They got upon a 
 rough bit of common, and the eager and full-minded 
 old man was in the midst of his unfolding the Divine 
 scheme, and his student was drinking in his words, 
 and forgetting his part of the bargain. His master 
 stumbled and fell, and getting up, somewhat sharply 
 said, " James, the grace o' God can do much, but it 
 canna gi'e a man common sense ; " which is as good 
 theology as sense. 
 
 A scoffing blacksmith seeing him jogging up to a 
 house near the smithy on his pony, which was halting,
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 195 
 
 said to him, " Mr. Brown, ye 're in the Scripture line 
 the day ' the legs o' the lame are not equal.' " " So 
 is a parable in the mouth of a fool." 
 
 On his coming to Haddington, there was one man 
 who held out against his " call." Mr. Brown meeting 
 him when they could not avoid each other, the non- 
 content said, " Ye see, sir, I canna say what I dinna 
 think, and I think ye 're ower young and inexperi- 
 enced for this charge." " So I think too, David, but 
 it would never do for you and me to gang in the face 
 0' the hale congregation ! " 
 
 The following is a singular illustration of the pre- 
 vailing dark and severe tone of the religious teach- 
 ing of that time, and also of its strength : A poor old 
 woman, of great worth and excellent understanding, 
 in whose conversation Mr. Brown took much pleasure, 
 was on her death-bed. Wishing to try her faith, he 
 said to her, " Janet, what would you say if, after all 
 He has done for you, God should let you drop into, 
 hell ? " " E'en 's (even as) He likes ; if He does, He 'II 
 lose mair than 1 'II do." There is something not 
 less than sublime in this reply. 
 
 Than my grandfather and "Uncle Ebenezer," no 
 two brothers could be more different in nature or 
 more united in affection. My grandfather was a man 
 of great natural good sense, well read and well know- 
 leclged, easy but not indolent, never overflowing but 
 never empty, homely but dignified, and fuller of love 
 to all sentient creatures than any other human being 
 I ever knew. I had, when a boy of ten, two rabbits,
 
 196 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 Oscar and Livia ; why so named is a secret I have 
 lost ; perhaps it was an Ossianic union of the Roman 
 with the Gael. Oscar was a broad -nosed, manly, 
 rather brusque husband, who used to snort when an- 
 gry, and bite too ; Livia was a thin-faced, meek, and, 
 I fear, deceitfulish wife, who could smile, and then 
 bite. One evening I had lifted both these worthies, 
 by the ears of course, and was taking them from their 
 clover to their beds, when my grandfather, who had 
 been walking out in the cool of the evening, met me. 
 I had just kissed the two creatures, out of mingled 
 love to them and pleasure at having caught them 
 without much trouble. He took me by the chin, and 
 kissed me, and then Oscar and Livia ! Wonderful 
 man, I thought, and still think ! Doubtless he had 
 seen me in my private fondness, and wished to please 
 me. 
 
 He was forever doing good in his quiet yet earnest 
 way. Not only on Sunday when he preached solid 
 gospel sermons, full of quaint familiar expressions, 
 such as I fear few of my readers could take up, full 
 of solemn, affectionate appeals, full of his own sim- 
 plicity and love, the Monday also found him ready 
 with his every-day gospel. If he met a drover from 
 Lochaber who had crossed the Campsie Hills, and 
 was making across Carmvath Moor to the Calstane 
 Slap, and thence into England by the drove-rode, he 
 accosted him with a friendly smile, gave him a 
 reasonable tract, and dropped into him some words 
 of Divine truth. He was thus continually doing
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 197 
 
 good. Go where he might, he had his message to 
 every one : to a servant lass, to a poor wanderer on 
 the bleak streets, to gentle and simple, he flowed 
 forever pleno rivo. 
 
 Uncle Ebenezer, on the other hand, flowed per 
 saltum ; he was always good and saintly, but he was 
 great once a week ; six days he brooded over his 
 message, was silent, withdrawn, self-involved ; on the 
 Sabbath, that downcast, almost timid man, who 
 shunned men, the instant he was in the pulpit, stood 
 up a son of thunder. Such a voice ! such a piercing 
 eye ! such an inevitable forefinger, held out trembling 
 with the terrors of the Lord ; such a power of asking 
 questions and letting them fall deep into the hearts of 
 his hearers, and then answering them himself, with 
 an "Ah, sirs ! " that thrilled and quivered from him 
 to them. 
 
 I remember his astonishing us all with a sudden 
 burst. It was a sermon upon the apparent pi/is of 
 evil in this world, and he had driven himself and us 
 all to despair, so much sin, so much misery, 
 when, taking advantage of the chapter he had read, 
 the account of the uproar at Ephesus in the Thea- 
 tre, he said, " Ah, sirs ! what if some of the men 
 who, for ' about the space of two hours,' cried out, 
 ' Great is Diana of the Ephesians,' have for the 
 space of eighteen hundred years and more been 
 crying day and night, ' Great and marvelous are 
 thy works, Lord God Almighty ; just and true are 
 all thy ways, Thou king of saints ; who shall not fear
 
 198 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 Thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name ? for Thou only 
 art holy.' " 
 
 You have doubtless heard of the story of Lord 
 Brougham going to hear him. It is very character- 
 istic, and as I had it from Mrs. Cuninghame, who 
 was present, I may be allowed to tell it. Brougham 
 and Denman were on a visit to James Stuart of Dun- 
 earn, about the time of the Queen's trial, They had 
 asked Stuart where they should go to church ; he said 
 he would take them to a Seceder minister at Inver- 
 keithing. They went, and as Mr. Stuart had de- 
 scribed the saintly old man, Brougham said he would 
 like to be introduced to him, and arriving before ser- 
 vice time, Mr. Stuart called, and left a message that 
 some gentlemen wished to see him. The answer was 
 that " Maister " Brown saw nobody before divine 
 worship. He then sent in Brougham and Denman's 
 names. " Mr. Brown's compliments to Mr. Stuart, 
 and he sees nobody before sermon, and in a few min- 
 utes out came the stooping, shy old man, and passed 
 them, unconscious of their presence. They sat in 
 the front gallery, and he preached a faithful sermon, 
 full of fire and of native force. They came away 
 greatly moved, and each wrote to Lord Jeffrey to 
 lose not a week in coming to hear the greatest nat- 
 ural orator they had ever heard. Jeffrey came next 
 Sunday, and often after declared he never heard such 
 words, such a sacred, untaught gift of speech. Noth- 
 ing was more beautiful than my father's admiration 
 and emotion when listening to his uncle's rapt pas-
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 199 
 
 sages, or than his childlike faith in my father's exe- 
 getical prowess. He used to have a list of difficult 
 passages ready for "my nephew," and the moment 
 the oracle gave a decision, the old man asked him to 
 repeat it, and then took a permanent note of it, and 
 would assuredly preach it some day with his own 
 proper unction and power. One story of him I must 
 give ; my father, who heard it not long before his 
 own death, was delighted with it, and for some days 
 repeated it to every one. Uncle Ebenezer, with all 
 his mildness and general complaisance, was, like most 
 of the Browns, tenax propositi, firm to obstinacy. 
 He had established a week-day sermon at the North 
 Ferry, about two miles from his own town, Inver- 
 keithing. It was, I think, on the Tuesdays. It was 
 winter, and a wild, drifting, and dangerous day ; his 
 daughters his wife was dead besought him not 
 to go ; he smiled vaguely, but continued getting into 
 his big-coat. Notliing would stay him, and away he 
 and the pony stumbled through the dumb and blind- 
 ing snow. He was half way on his journey, and had 
 got into the sermon he was going to preach, and was 
 utterly insensible to the outward storm: his pony 
 getting its feet batted, staggered about, and at last 
 upset his master and himself into the ditch at the 
 roadside. The feeble, heedless, rapt old man might 
 have perished there, had not some carters, bringing up 
 whiskey casks from the Ferry, seen the catastrophe, 
 and rushed up, raising him, and dichtin' him, with 
 much commiseration and blunt speech : " Puir auld
 
 200 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 man, what broeht ye here in sic a day ? " There 
 they were, a rough crew, surrounding the saintly 
 man, some putting on his hat, sorting and cheering 
 him, and others knocking the balls off the pony's 
 feet and stuffing them with grease. He was most po- 
 lite and grateful, and one of these cordial ruffians 
 having pierced a cask, brought him a horn of whiskey, 
 and said, "Tak that, it '11 hearten ye." He took the 
 horn, and bowing to them, said, " Sirs, let us give 
 thanks ! " and there, by the roadside, in the drift and 
 storm, with these wild fellows, he asked a blessing on 
 it, and for his kind deliverers, and took a tasting of 
 the horn. The men cried like children. They lifted 
 him on his pony, one going with him, and when the 
 rest arrived in Inverkeithing, they repeated the story 
 to everybody, and broke down in tears whenever 
 they came to the blessing. " And to think o' askin' 
 a blessin' on a tass o' whiskey ! " Next Presbytery 
 day, after the ordinary business was over, he rose up 
 he seldom spoke and said, " Moderator, I have 
 something personal to myself to say. I have often 
 said that real kindness belongs only to true Chris- 
 tians, but" and then he told the story of thesp 
 men ; "but more true kindness I never experienced 
 than from these lads. They may have had the grace 
 of God, I don't know ; but I never mean again to be 
 so positive in speaking of this matter." 
 
 When he was on a missionary tour in the north 
 he one morning met a band of Highland shearers on 
 their way to the harvest ; he asked them to stop and
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 201 
 
 hear the word of God. They said they could not, as 
 they had their wages to work for. He offered them 
 what they said they would lose ; to this they agreed, 
 and he paid them, and closing his eyes engaged in 
 prayer ; when he had ended, he looked up, and his 
 congregation had vanished ! His shrewd brother 
 Thomas, to whom he complained of this faithlessness, 
 said, " Ehen, the next time ye pay folk to hear you 
 preach, keep your eyes open, and pay them when you 
 are done." I remember, on another occasion, in 
 Bristo Church, with an immense audience, he had 
 been going over the Scripture accounts of great sin- 
 ners repenting and turning to God, repeating their 
 names, from Manasseh onwards. He seemed to have 
 closed the record, when, fixing his eyes on the end of 
 the central passage, he called out abruptly, " I see a 
 man ! " Every one looked to that point. " I see a 
 man of Tarsus ; and he says, Make mention of me ! " 
 It must not be supposed that the discourses of " Un- 
 cle Ebenezer," with these abrupt appeals and sudden 
 starts, were unwritten or extempore ; they were care- 
 fully composed and written out, only these flashes 
 of thought and passion came on him suddenly when 
 writing, and were therefore quite natural when deliv- 
 ered they came on him again. 
 
 The Rev. John Belfrage, M. D., had more power 
 over my father's actions and his relations to the 
 world, than any other of his friends: over his 
 thoughts and convictions proper, not much, few 
 living men had, and eveu among the mighty dead,
 
 202 MY FATHER'S . MEMOIR. 
 
 he called no man master. He used to say that the 
 three master intellects devoted to the study of divine 
 truth since the apostles were Augustine, Calvin, and 
 Jonathan Edwards ; but that even they were only 
 primi inter pares, this by the by. 
 
 On all that concerned his outward life as a public 
 teacher, as a father, and as a member of society, he 
 consulted Dr. Belfrage, and was swayed greatly by 
 his judgment, as, for instance, the choice of a profes- 
 sion for myself, his second marriage, etc. He knew 
 him to be his true friend, and not only wise and hon- 
 est, but preeminently a man of affairs, capax rerum. 
 Dr. Belfrage was a great man in posse, if ever I saw 
 one, "a village Hampden." Greatness was of his 
 essence ; nothing paltry, nothing secondary, nothing 
 untrue. Large in body, large and handsome in face, 
 lofty in manner to his equals or superiors ; l homely, 
 familiar, cordial with the young and the poor, I 
 never met with a more truly royal nature more na- 
 tive and endued to rule, guide, and benefit mankind. 
 He was forever scheming for the good of others, and 
 chiefly in the way of helping them to help themselves. 
 From a curious want of ambition his desire for ad- 
 vancement was for that of his friends, not for his 
 
 1 On one occasion, Mr. Hall of Kelso, an excellent but very 
 odd man, in whom the ego was very strong-, and who, if he 
 had been born a Spaniard, would, to adopt Coleridge's story, 
 have taken off or touched his hat whenever he spoke of him- 
 self, met Dr. Belfrage in the lobby of the Synod, and drawing 
 himself up as he passed, he muttered, "high and michty 1 " 
 "There 's a pair of us, Mr. Hall."
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 203 
 
 own, and here he was ambitious and zealous enough, 
 from non-concentration of his faculties in early life, 
 and from an affection of the heart which ultimately 
 killed him it was too big for his body, and, under 
 the relentless hydrostatic law, at last shattered the 
 tabernacle it moved, like a steam-engine too power- 
 ful for the vessel it finds itself in his mental heart 
 also was too big for his happiness, from these 
 causes, along with a love for gardening, which was a 
 passion, and an inherited competency, which took 
 away what John Hunter calls " the stimulus of neces- 
 sity," you may understand how this remarkable man, 
 instead of being a Prime Minister, a Lord Chan- 
 cellor, or a Dr. Gregory, a George Stephenson, or 
 likeliest of all, a John Howard, without some of his 
 weaknesses, lived and died minister of the small con- 
 gregation of Slateford, near Edinburgh. It is also 
 true that he was a physician, and an energetic and 
 successful one, and got rid of some of his love of 
 doing good to and managing human beings in this 
 way ; he was also an oracle in his district, to whom 
 many had the wisdom to go to take as well as ask 
 advice, and who was never weary of entering into 
 the most minute details, and taking endless pains, 
 being like Dr. Chalmers a strong believer in " the 
 power of littles." It would be out of place, though 
 it would be not uninteresting, to tell how this great 
 resident power this strong will and authority, this 
 capacious, clear, and beneficent intellect dwelt in 
 its petty sphere, like an oak in a flower-pot ; but I
 
 204 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 cannot help recalling that signal act of friendship and 
 of power in the matter of my father's translation 
 from Rose Street to Broughton Place, to which you 
 have referred. 
 
 It was one of the turning-points of my father's his- 
 tory. Dr. Belfrage, though seldom a speaker in the 
 public courts of his church, was always watchful of 
 the interests of the people and of his friends. On 
 the Rose Street question he had from the beginning 
 formed a strong opinion. My father had made his 
 statement, indicating his leaning, but leaving himself 
 absolutely in the hands of the Synod. There was 
 some speaking, all on one side, and for a time the 
 Synod seemed to incline to be absolute, and refuse 
 the call of Broughton Place. The house was every- 
 where crowded, and breathless with interest, my 
 father sitting motionless, anxious, and pale, prepai-ed 
 to submit without a word, but retaining his own 
 mind ; everything looked like a unanimous decision 
 for Rose Street, when Dr. Belfrage rose up and 
 came forward into the " passage," and with his first 
 sentence and look took possession of the house. He 
 stated, with clear and simple argument, the truth and 
 reason of the case ; and then having fixed himself 
 there, he took up the personal interests and feelings 
 of his friend, and putting before them what they 
 were about to do in sending back my father, closed 
 with a burst of indignant appeal "I ask you now, 
 not as Christians, I ask you as gentlemen, are you 
 prepared to do this ? " Every one felt it was settled,
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 205 
 
 and so it was. My father never forgot this great 
 act of his friend. 
 
 This remarkable man, inferior to my father in 
 learning, in intensity, in compactness, and in power 
 of so to speak focusing himself, admiring 
 his keen eloquence, his devotedness to his sacred art, 
 rejoicing in his fame, jealous of his honor, was, by 
 reason of his own massive understanding, his warm 
 and great heart, and his instinctive knowledge of 
 men, my father's most valued friend, for he knew 
 best and most of what my father knew least ; and on 
 his death, my father said he felt himself thus far un- 
 protected and unsafe. He died at Rothesay of hy- 
 pertrophy of the heart. I had the sad privilege of 
 being with him to the last ; and any nobler spectacle 
 of tender, generous affection, high courage, childlike 
 submission to the Supreme Will, and of magnanimity 
 in its true sense, I do not again expect to see. On 
 the morning of his death he s-aid to me, "John, come 
 and tell me honestly how this is to end ; tell me the 
 last, symptoms in their sequence." I knew the man, 
 and was honest, and told him all I knew. " Is there 
 any chance of stupor or delirium ? " " I think not. 
 Death (to take Bichat's division) will begin at the 
 heart itself, and you will die conscious." " I am 
 glad of that. It was Samuel Johnson, was n't it, who 
 wished not to die unconscious, that he might enter 
 the eternal world with his mind unclouded ; but you 
 know, John, that was physiological nonsense. We 
 leave the brain, and all this ruined body, behind ;
 
 206 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 but I would like to be in my senses when I take my 
 last look of this wonderful world," looking across the 
 still sea towards the Argyleshire hills, lying in the 
 light of sttnrise, " and of my friends, of you," fix- 
 ing his eyes on a faithful friend and myself. And 
 it was so ; in less than an hour he was dead, sitting 
 erect in his chair, his disease had for weeks pre- 
 vented him from lying down, all the dignity, sim- 
 plicity, and benignity of its master resting upon, and, 
 as it were, supporting that " ruin," which he had 
 left. 
 
 I cannot end this tribute to my father's friend and 
 mine, and my own dear and earliest friend's father, 
 without recording one of the most extraordinary in- 
 stances of the power of will, under the pressure of 
 affection, I ever witnessed or heard of. Dr. Belfrage 
 was twice married. His second wife was a woman 
 of great sweetness and delicacy, not only of mind, 
 but, to his sorrow, of constitution. She died after 
 less than a year of singular and unbroken happiness. 
 There was no portrait of her. He resolved there 
 should be one ; and though utterly ignorant of draw- 
 ing, he determined to do it himself. No one else 
 could have such a perfect image of her in his mind, 
 and he resolved to realize this image. He got the 
 materials for miniature painting, and, I think, eight 
 prepared ivory plates. He then shut himself up from 
 every one and from everything, for fourteen days, and 
 came out of his room, wasted and feeble, with one of 
 the plates (the others he had used and burnt), on
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 207 
 
 which was a portrait, full of subtle likeness, and drawn 
 and colored in a way no one could have dreamt of, 
 having had such an artist. I have seen it ; and though 
 I never saw the original I felt that it must be like, as 
 indeed every one who knew her said it was. I do 
 not, as I said before, know anything more remark- 
 able in the history of human sorrow and resolve. 
 
 I remember well that Dr. Belfrage was the first 
 man I ever heard speak of Free-trade in religion and 
 in education. It was during the first election after 
 the Reform Bill, when Sir John Dalrymple, after- 
 wards Lord Stair, was canvassing the county of Mid- 
 Lothian. They were walking in the doctor's garden, 
 Sir John anxious and gracious. Dr. Belfrage, like, 
 I believe, every other minister in his body, was a 
 thorough-going Liberal, what was then called a 
 Whig ; but partly from his natural sense of humor 
 and relish of power, and partly, I believe, for my 
 benefit, he was putting the Baronet through his fac- 
 ings with some strictness, opening upon him startling 
 views, and ending by asking him, " Are you, Sir 
 John, for free-trade in corn, free-trade in education, 
 free -trade in religion? I am." Sir John said, 
 " Well, doctor, I have heard of free-trade in corn, 
 but never in the other two." " You '11 hear of them 
 before ten years are gone, Sir John, or I 'm mis- 
 taken." 
 
 I have said thus much of this to me memorable man, 
 not only because he was my father's closest and most 
 powerful personal friend, but because by his word he
 
 208 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 probably changed the whole future course of his life. 
 Devotion to his friends was one of the chief ends of 
 his life, not caring much for, and having in the affec- 
 tion of his heart a warning against, the perils and ex- 
 citement of distinction and energetic public work, he 
 set himself far more strenuously than for any selfish 
 object to promote the triumphs of those whom his ac- 
 quired instinct for he knew a man as a shepherd 
 knows a sheep, or " Caveat Emptor " a horse 
 picked out as deserving them. He rests in Colinton 
 churchyard, 
 
 " Where all that mighty heart is lying still," 
 his only child William Henry buried beside him. I 
 the more readily pay this tribute to Dr. Belfrage, thrft 
 I owe to him the best blessing of my professional and 
 one of the best of my personal life, the being ap- 
 prenticed to Mr. Syrne. This was his doing. With 
 that sense of the capacities and capabilities of other 
 men, which was one of his gifts, he predicted the ca- 
 reer of this remarkable man. He used to say, " Give 
 him life, let him live, and I know what and where he 
 will be thirty years hence ; " and this long before our 
 greatest clinical teacher and wisest surgeon had made 
 the public and the profession feel and acknowledge 
 the full weight of his worth. 
 
 Another life-long and ever strengthening friendship 
 was that with James Henderson, D. D., Galashiels, 
 who survived my father only a few days. This re- 
 markable man and exquisite preacher, whose intellect 
 and worth had for nearly fifty years glowed with a
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 209 
 
 pure, steady, and ever-growing warmth and lustre in 
 his own region, died during the night and probably 
 asleep, when, like Moses, no one but his Maker was 
 with him. He had for years labored under that form 
 of disease of the heart called angina pectoris (Dr. 
 Arnold's disease), and for more than twenty years 
 lived, as it were, on the edge of instant death ; but 
 during his later years his health had improved, though 
 he had always to "walk softly," like one whose next 
 step might be into eternity. This bodily sense of peril 
 gave to his noble and leonine face a look of suffering 
 and of seriousness, and of what, in his case, we may 
 truly call godly fear, which all must remember. He 
 \ised to say he carried his grave beside him. He 
 came in to my father's funeral, and took part in the 
 services. He was much affected, and we fear the long 
 walk through the city to the burial-place was too much 
 for him ; he returned home, preached a sermon of 
 surpassing beauty on his old and dear friend's death. 
 The text was, " For me to live is Christ, and to die is 
 gain." It was, as it were, his own funeral sermon 
 too, and there was, besides its fervor, depth, and heav- 
 enly-mindedness, a something in it that made his old 
 hearers afraid as if it were to be the last crush of 
 the grapes. In a letter to me soon after the funeral, 
 he said : " His removal is another memento to me that 
 my own courseis drawing near to its end. Nearly all 
 of my contemporaries and of the friends of my youth 
 are now gone before me. Well ! I may say, in the 
 words of your friend Vaughan,
 
 210 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 They are all gone to that world of light, 
 
 And I alone sit lingering here ; 
 Their very memory 's calm and bright, 
 
 And my sad thoughts doth cheer.' " 
 
 The evening before his death he was slightly unwell, 
 and next morning, not coming down as usual, was 
 called, but did not answer ; and on going in, was found 
 in the posture of sleep, quite dead : at some unknown 
 hour of the night dbilt adplures he had gone over 
 to the majority, and joined the famous nations of the 
 dead. Tn vero felix non vitce tantum claritate, sed 
 etiam opportunitate mortis ! dying with his lamp 
 burning, his passport made out for his journey ; death 
 an instant act, not a prolonged process of months, as 
 with his friend. 
 
 I have called Dr. Henderson a remarkable man 
 and an exquisite preacher ; he was both, in the strict 
 senses of the words. He had the largest brain I ever 
 saw or measured. His hat had to be made for him ; 
 and his head was great in the nobler regions, the an- 
 terior and upper were full, indeed immense. If the 
 base of his brain and his physical organization, espe- 
 cially his circulating system, had been in proportion, 
 he would have been a man of formidable power, but 
 his defective throb of the heart, and a certain lenti- 
 tude of temperament, made this impossible ; and his 
 enormous organ of thought and feeling, being thus 
 shut from the outlet of active energy, became intensely 
 meditative, more this than even reflective. The con- 
 sequence was, in all his thoughts an exquisiteness and
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 211 
 
 finish, a crystalline lustre, purity and concentration ; 
 but it was the exquisiteness of a great nature. If the 
 first edge was fine, it was the sharp end of the wedge, 
 the hroad end of which you never reached, but might 
 infer. This gave momentum to everything he said. 
 He was in the true sense what Chalmers used to call 
 " a man of wecht" His mind acted by its sheer ab- 
 solute power ; it seldom made an effort ; it was the hy- 
 draulic pressure, harmless, manageable, but irresisti- 
 ble ; not the perilous compression of steam. Therefore 
 it was that he was untroubled and calm, though rich ; 
 clear, though deep; though gentle, never dull ; "strong 
 without rage, without o'erflowing full." Indeed this 
 element of water furnishes the best figure of his mind 
 and its expression. His language was like the stream 
 of his own Tweed ; it was a translucent medium, only 
 it brightened everything seen through it, as wetting 
 a pebble brings out its lines and color. That lovely, 
 and by him much-loved river was curiously like him, 
 or he like it, gentle, great, strong, with a prevailing 
 mild seriousness all along its course, but clear and 
 quiet ; sometimes, as at old Melrose, turning upon it- 
 self, reflecting, losing itself in beauty, and careless to 
 go, deep and inscrutable, but stealing away cheerily 
 down to Lessudden, all the clearer of its rest ; and 
 then again at the Trows, showing unmistakably its 
 power in removing obstructions and taking its own 
 way, and chafing nobly with the rocks, sometimes, too, 
 like him, its silver stream rising into sudden flood, 
 and rolling irresistibly on its way. 1 
 
 1 Such an occasional paroxysm of eloquence is thus described
 
 212 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 We question if as many carefully thought and 
 worded, and rapidly and by no means laboriously 
 written sermons, were composed anywhere else in 
 Britain during his fifty years every Sunday two 
 new ones ; the composition faultless such as Cicero 
 or Addison would have made them, had they been 
 TJ. P. ministers ; only there was always in them more 
 soul than body, more of the spirit than of the letter. 
 What a contrast to the much turbid, hot, hasty, per- 
 ilous stuff of our day and preachers ! The original 
 power and size of Dr. Henderson's mind, his roomi- 
 ness for all thoughts, and his still reserve, his lenti- 
 tude, made, as we have said, his expressions clear 
 and quiet, to a degree that a coarse and careless man, 
 spoiled by the violence and noise of other pulpit men, 
 might think insipid. But let him go over the words 
 slowly, and he would not say this again ; and let him 
 
 by Dr. Cairns : " At certain irregular intervals, when the 
 loftier themes of the gospel ministry were to be handled, his 
 manner underwent a transformation which was startling, and 
 even electrical. He became rapt and excited as with new 
 inspiration ; his utterance grew thick and rapid ; his voice 
 trembled and faltered with emotion ; his eye gleamed with a 
 wild unearthly lustre, in which his countenance shared ; and 
 his whole frame heaved to and fro, as if each glowing thought 
 and vivid figure that followed in quick succession were only a 
 fragment of some greater revelation which he panted to over- 
 take. The writer of this notice has witnessed nothing similar 
 in any preacher, and numbers the effects of a passage \vhich 
 he once heard upon the scenes and exercises of the heavenly 
 world among his most thrilling recollections of sacred oratory." 
 Memoir prefixed to posthumous volume of Discourses.
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 213 
 
 see and feel the solemnizing, commanding power of 
 that large, square, leonine countenance, the broad 
 massive frame, as of a compressed Hercules, and the 
 living, pure, melodious voice, powerful, but not by 
 reason of loudness, dropping out from his compressed 
 lips the words of truth, and he would not say this 
 again. His voice had a singular pathos in it ; and 
 those who remember his often-called-for sermon on 
 "The Bright and the Morning Star," can reproduce 
 in their mind its tones and refrain. The thoughts of 
 such men so rare, so apt to be unvisited and un- 
 valued often bring into my mind a spring of pure 
 water I once saw near the top of Cairngorm ; always 
 the same, cool in summer, keeping its few plants alive 
 and happy with its warm breath in winter, floods and 
 droughts never making its pulse change ; and all this 
 because it came from the interior heights, and was 
 distilled by nature's own cunning, and had taken its 
 time, was indeed a well of living water. And with 
 Dr. Henderson this of the mountain holds curiously ; 
 he was retired, but not concealed ; and he was of the 
 primary formation, he had no organic remains of 
 other men in him ; he liked and fed on all manner of 
 literature ; knew poetry well ; but it was all outside 
 of him ; his thoughts were essentially his own. 
 
 He was peculiarly a preacher for preachers, as 
 Spenser is a poet for poets. They felt he was a 
 master. He published, after the entreaties of years, 
 a volume of sermons which has long been out of print, 
 and which he would never prepare for a second
 
 214 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 edition ; he had much too little of the love of fame, 
 and though not destitute of self - reliance and self- 
 value, and resolved and unchangeable to obstinacy, 
 he was not in the least degree vain. 
 
 But you will think I am writing more about my 
 father's friends and myself than about him. In a 
 certain sense we may know a man by his friends ; a 
 man chooses his friends from harmony, not from 
 sameness, just as we would rather sing in parts than 
 all sing the air. One man fits into the mind of an- 
 other not by meeting his points, but by dovetailing ; 
 each finds in the other what he in a double sense 
 wants. This was true of my father's friends. Dr. 
 Balmer was like him in much more than perhaps 
 any, in love of books and lonely study, in his gen- 
 eral views of divine truth, and in their metaphysical 
 and literary likings, but they differed deeply. Dr. 
 Balmer was serene and just rather than subtle and 
 profound ; his was the still, translucent stream, my 
 father's the rapid, and it might be deep ; on the one 
 you could safely sail, the other hurried you on, and 
 yet never were two men, during a long life of inti- 
 mate intercourse, more cordial. 
 
 I must close the list ; one only and the best the 
 most endeared of them all Dr. Heugh. He was, 
 in mental constitution and temper, perhaps more un- 
 like my father than any of the others I have men- 
 tioned. His was essentially a practical understanding ; 
 he was a man of action, a man for men more than for 
 man, the curious reverse in this of my father. He
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 215 
 
 delighted in public life, had a native turn for affairs, 
 for all that society needs and demands, clear- 
 headed, ready, intrepid, adroit ; with a fine temper, 
 but keen and honest, with an argument and a question 
 and a joke for every one ; not disputatious, but de- 
 lighting in a brisk argument, fonder of wrestling than 
 of fencing, but ready for action ; not much of a long 
 shot, always keeping his eye on the immediate, the 
 possible, the attainable, but in all this guided by 
 genuine principle, and the finest honor and exactest 
 truth. He excelled in the conduct of public business, 
 saw his way clear, made other men see theirs, was 
 forever getting the Synod out of difficulties and con- 
 fusions, by some clear, tidy, conclusive " motion ; " 
 and then his speaking, so easy and bright and pithy, 
 manly and gentlemanly, grave when it should be, 
 never when it should not ; mobile, fearless, rapid, 
 brilliant as Saladin : his silent, pensive, impassioned 
 and emphatic friend was more like the lion-hearted 
 Richard, with his heavy mace ; he might miss, but 
 let him hit, and there needed no repetition. Each 
 admired the other ; indeed Dr. Heugh's love of my 
 father was quite romantic ; and though they were 
 opposed on several great public questions, such as the 
 Apocrypha controversy, the Atonement question at 
 its commencement ; and though they were both of 
 them too keen and too honest to mince matters or be 
 mealy-mouthed, they never misunderstood each other, 
 never had a shadow of estrangement, so that our 
 Paul and Barnabas, though their contentions were
 
 216 MY FATHER'S MKMOIR. 
 
 sometimes sharp enough, never " departed asunder ; " 
 indeed they loved each other the longer the more. 
 
 Take him all in all, as a friend, as a gentleman, 
 as a Christian, as a citizen, I never knew a man 
 so thoroughly delightful as Dr. Heugh. Others had 
 more of this or more of that, but there was a sym- 
 metry, a compactness, a sweetness, a true delightful- 
 ness about him I can remember in no one else. No 
 man, with so much temptation to be heady and high- 
 minded, sarcastic, and managing, from his overflowing 
 wit and talent, was ever more natural, more honest, 
 or more considerate, indeed tender-hearted. He was 
 full of animal spirits and of fun, and one of the best 
 wits and jokers I ever knew ; and such an asker of 
 questions, of posers ! "VVe children had a pleasing 
 dread of that nimble, sharp, exact man, who made us 
 explain and name everything. Of Scotch stories he 
 had as many original ones as would make a second 
 volume for Dean Ramsay. How well I remember the 
 very corner of the room in Biggar manse, forty years 
 ago, when from him I got the first shock and relish 
 of humor, became conscious of mental tickling, 
 of a word being made to carry double, and being all 
 the lighter of it. It is an old story now, but it was 
 new then : a big, perspiring countryman rushed into 
 the Black Bull coach-office, and holding the door, 
 shouted, " Are yer insides a' oot ? " This was my 
 first tasting of the flavor of a joke. 
 
 Had Dr. Heugh, instead of being the admirable 
 clergyman he was, devoted himself to public civil
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 217 
 
 life, and gone into Parliament, he would have taken 
 a high place as a debater, a practical statesman and 
 patriot. He had many of the best qualities of Can- 
 ning, and our own Premier, with purer and higher 
 qualities than either. There is no one our church 
 should be more proud of than of this beloved and 
 excellent man, the holiness and humility, the jealous, 
 godly fear in whose nature was not known fully even 
 to his friends till he was gone, when his private daily 
 self-searchings and prostrations before his Master 
 and Judge were for the first time made known. 
 There are few characters, both sides of which are so 
 unsullied, so pure, and without reproach. 
 
 I am back at Biggar at the old sacramental times ; 
 I see and hear my grandfather, or Mr. Home of 
 Braehead, Mr. Leckie of Peebles, Mr. Harper of 
 Lanark, as inveterate in argument as he was warm 
 in heart, Mr. Comrie of Penicuik, with his keen, Vol- 
 taire-like face, and much of that unhappy and unique 
 man's wit and sense, and perfection of expression, 
 without his darker and baser qualities. I can hear 
 their hearty talk, can see them coming and going be- 
 tween the meeting-house and the Tent on the side of 
 the burn ; and then the Monday dinner, and the cheer- 
 ful talk, and the many clerical stories and pleasant- 
 ries, and their going home on their hardy little 
 horses, Mr. Comrie leaving his curl-papers till the 
 next solemnity, and leaving also some joke of his 
 own, clear and compact as a diamond, and as cutting. 
 
 I am in Rose Street on the monthly lecture, the
 
 218 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 church crammed, passages and pulpit stairs. Exact 
 to a minute, James Chalmers the old soldier and 
 beadle, slim, meek, but incorruptible by proffered 
 half crowns from ladies who thus tried to get in be- 
 fore the doors opened appears, and all the people 
 in that long pew rise up, and he, followed by his min- 
 ister, erect and engrossed, walks in along the seat, 
 and they struggle up to the pulpit. We all know 
 what he is to speak of ; he looks troubled even to dis- 
 tress ; it is the matter of Uriah the Hittite. He 
 gives out the opening verses of the 51st Psalm, and 
 offering up a short and abrupt prayer, which every one 
 takes to himself, announces his miserable and dread- 
 ful subject, fencing it, as it were, in a low penetra- 
 ting voice, daring any one of us to think an evil 
 thought. There was little need at that time of the 
 warning ; he infused his own intense, pure spirit into 
 us all. 
 
 He then told the story without note or comment, 
 only personating each actor in the tragedy with ex- 
 traordinary effect, above all, the manly, loyal, simple- 
 hearted soldier. I can recall the shudder of that 
 multitude as of one man when he read, " And it came 
 to pass in the morning, that David wrote a letter to 
 Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. And he 
 wrote in the letter, saying, Set ye Uriah in the fore 
 front of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, 
 that he may be smitten and die." And then, after a 
 long and utter silence, his exclaiming, " Is this the 
 man according to God's own heart ? Yes, it is ; we
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 219 
 
 must believe that both are true." Then came Nathan. 
 " There were two men in one city ; the one rich, and 
 the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many 
 flocks and herds ; but the poor man had nothing, save 
 one little ewe lamb," and all that exquisite, that 
 divine fable, ending like a thunder -clap with " Thou 
 art the man ! " Then came the retribution, so 
 awfully exact and thorough, the misery of the 
 child's death ; that brief tragedy of the brother and 
 sister, more terrible than anything in ^Eschylus, in 
 Dante, or in Ford ; then the rebellion of Absalom, 
 with its hideous dishonor, and his death, and the king 
 covering his face, and crying in a loud voice, " O my 
 son Absalom ! O Absalom ! my son ! my son ! " 
 and David's psalm, " Have mercy upon me, O God, 
 according to thy loving-kindness ; according unto the 
 multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my trans- 
 gressions," then closing with, " Yes ; ' when lust 
 hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin ; and sin, when 
 it is finished, bringeth forth death. Do not err,' do 
 not stray, do not transgress (/xr/ TrXavacrOe), 1 ' my be- 
 loved brethren,' it is first ' earthly, then sensual, then 
 devilish ; ' " he shut the book, and sent us all away 
 terrified, shaken, and humbled like himself. 
 
 I would fain say a few words on my father's last ill- 
 ness, or rather on what led to it, and I wish you and 
 others in the ministry would take to heart, as mat- 
 ter of immediate religious duty, much of what I am 
 
 1 James i. 15, 16. It is plain that " Do not err " should have 
 been in verse 15th.
 
 220 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 going to say. My father was a seven months' child, 
 and lay, I believe, for a fortnight in black wool, un- 
 dressed, doing little but breathe and sleep, not capa- 
 ble of being fed. He continued all his life slight in 
 make, and not robust in health, though lively, and 
 capable of great single efforts. His attendance upon 
 his mother must have saddened his body as well as 
 his mind, and made him willing and able to endure, 
 in spite of his keen and ardent spirit, the sedentary 
 life he in the main led. He was always a very small 
 eater, and nice in his tastes, easily put off from his 
 food by any notion. He therefore started on the full 
 work of life with a finer and more delicate mechan- 
 ism than a man's ought to be ; indeed, in these re- 
 spects, he was much liker a woman, and being very 
 soon " placed," he had little traveling, and little of 
 that tossing about the world which, in the transition 
 from youth to manhood, hardens the frame as well 
 as supples it. Though delicate he was almost never 
 ill. I do not remember, till near the close of his life, 
 his ever being in bed a day. 
 
 From his nervous system, and his brain predomi- 
 nating steadily over the rest of his body, he was ha- 
 bitually excessive in his professional work. As to 
 quantity, as to quality, as to manner and expression, 
 he flung away his life without stint every Sabbath- 
 day, his sermons being laboriously prepared, loudly 
 mandated, and at great expense of body and mind, 
 and then delivered with the utmost vehemence and 
 rapidity. He was quite unconscious of the state he
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 221 
 
 worked himself into, and of the loud piercing voice 
 in which he often spoke. This I frequently warned 
 him about, as being, I knew, injurious to himself, and 
 often painful to his hearers, and his answer always 
 was, that he was utterly unaware of it ; and thus it 
 continued to the close, and very sad it was to me who 
 knew the peril, and saw the coming end, to listen to 
 his noble, rich, persuasive, imperative appeals, and to 
 know that the surplus of power, if retained, would, 
 by God's blessing, retain him, while the effect on his 
 people would, I am sure, not have lost, but in some 
 respects have gained, for much of the discourse which 
 was shouted and sometimes screamed at the full pitch 
 of his keen voice was of a kind to be better rendered 
 in his deep, quiet, settled tones. This, and the great 
 length of his public services, I knew he himself felt, 
 when too late, had injured him, and many a smile he 
 had at my proposal to have a secret sub-congrega- 
 tional string from him to me in the back seat, to be 
 authoritatively twitched when I knew he had done 
 enough ; but this string was never pulled, even in his 
 mind. 
 
 He went on in this expensive life, sleeping very 
 little, and always lightly, eating little, never walking 
 except of necessity ; little in company, when he would 
 have eaten more and been, by the power of social rel- 
 ish, made likelier to get the full good out of his food ; 
 never diverting his mind by any change but that of 
 one book or subject for another ; and every time that 
 any strong affliction came on him, as when made
 
 222 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 twice a widower, or at his daughter's death, or from 
 such an outrage upon his entire nature and feelings as 
 the Libel, then his delicate machinery was shaken and 
 damaged, not merely by the first shock, but even 
 more by that unrelenting self-command by which he 
 terrified his body into instant submission. Thus it 
 was, and thus it ever must be, if the laws of our bod- 
 ily constitution, laid down by Him who knows our 
 frame, and from whom our substance is not hid, are 
 set at nought, knowingly or not, if knowingly, the 
 act is so much the more spiritually bad ; but if not, 
 it is still punished with the same unerring nicety, the 
 same commensurate meting out of the penalty, and 
 paying " in full tale," as makes the sun to know his 
 time, and splits an erring planet into fragments, driv- 
 ing it into space " with hideous ruin and combustion." 
 It is a pitiful and a sad thing to say, but if my father 
 had not been a prodigal in a true but very different 
 meaning, if he had not spent his substance, the portion 
 of goods that fell to him, the capital of life given him 
 by God, in what we must believe to have been need- 
 less and therefore preventable excess of effort, we 
 might have had him still with us, shining more and 
 more, and he and they who were with him would 
 have been spared those two years of the valley of the 
 shadow, with its sharp and steady pain, its fallings 
 away of life, its longing for the grave, its sleepless 
 nights and days of weariness and languor, the full ex- 
 pression of winch you will find nowhere but in the 
 Psalms and in Job.
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 223 
 
 I have said that though delicate he was never ill : 
 this was all the worse for him, for, odd as it may seem, 
 many a man's life is lengthened by a sharp illness ; 
 and this in several ways. In the first place, he is laid 
 up, out of the reach of all external mischief and exer- 
 tion ; he is like a ship put in dock for repairs ; time is 
 gained. A brisk fever clarifies the entire man ; if it 
 is beaten and does not beat, it is like cleaning a chim- 
 ney by setting it on fire ; it is perilous but thorough. 
 Then the effort to throw off the disease often quickens 
 and purifies and corroborates the central powers of 
 life ; the flame burns more clearly ; there is a clean- 
 ness, so to speak, about all the wheels of life. More- 
 over, it is a warning, and makes a man meditate on 
 his bed, and resolve to pull up ; and it warns his 
 friends, and likewise, if he is a clergyman, his people, 
 who if their minister is always with them, never once 
 think he can be ever anything but as able as he is. 
 
 Such a pause, such a breathing-time my father 
 never got during that part of his life and labors when 
 it would have availed most, and he was an old man in 
 years before he was a regular patient of any doctor. 
 He was during life subject to sudden headaches, af- 
 fecting his memory and eyesight, and even his speech ; 
 these attacks were, according to the thoughtless phrase 
 of the day, called bilious ; that is, he was sick, and 
 was relieved by a blue pill and smart medicine. 
 Their true seat was in the brain ; the liver suffered 
 because the brain was ill, and sent no nervous energy 
 to it, or poisoned what it did send. The sharp rack-
 
 224 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 ing pain in the forehead was the cry of suffering from 
 the anterior lobes, driven hy their master to distrac- 
 tion, and turning on him wild with weakness and fear 
 and anger. It was well they did cry out ; in some 
 brains (large ones) they would have gone on dumb 
 to sudden and utter ruin, as in apoplexy or palsy ; 
 but he did not know, and no one told him their true 
 meaning, and he sate about seeking for the outward 
 cause in some article of food, in some recent and quite 
 inadequate cause. 
 
 He used, with a sort of odd shame and distress, to 
 ask me why it was that he was subjected to so much 
 suffering from what he called the lower and ignoble 
 regions of his body ; and I used to explain to him 
 that he had made them suffer by long years of neglect, 
 and that they were now having their revenge, and in 
 their own way. I have often found that the more 
 the nervous centres are employed in those offices of 
 thought and feeling the most removed from material 
 objects, the more the nervous energy of the entire 
 nature is concentrated, engrossed, and used up in such 
 offices, so much the more, and therefore, are those 
 organs of the body which preside over that organic life, 
 common to ourselves and the lowest worm, defrauded 
 of their necessary nervous food ; and being in the 
 organic and not in the animal department, and having 
 no voice to tell their wants or wrongs, till they wake 
 up and annoy their neighbors who have a voice, that 
 is, who are sensitive to pain, they may have been long 
 ill before they come into the sphere of consciousness.
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 225 
 
 This is the true reason along with want of purity 
 and change of air, want of exercise, 1 want of shifting 
 the work of the body why clergymen, men of let- 
 ters, and all men of intense mental application, are so 
 liable to be affected with indigestion, constipation, 
 lumbago, and lowness of spirits, melancholia, black 
 bile. The brain may not give way for long, because 
 for a time the law of exercise strengthens it ; it is fed 
 high, gets the best of everything, of blood and nervous 
 pabulum, and then men have a joy in the victorious 
 work of their brain, and it has a joy of its own, too, 
 which deludes and misleads. 
 
 All this happened to my father. He had no formal 
 disease when he died, no structural change ; his 
 sleep and his digestion would have been quite sufficient 
 for life even up to the last ; the mechanism was entire, 
 but the motive-power was gone, it was expended. 
 The silver cord was not so much loosed as relaxed. 
 The golden bowl, the pitcher at the fountain, the 
 wheel at the cistern, were not so much broken as 
 emptied and stayed. The clock had run down before 
 its time, and there was no one but He who first wound 
 it up and set it who could wind it up again ; and this 
 He does not do, because it is His law an express 
 injunction from Him that, having measured out to 
 
 " The youth Story was in all respects healthy, and even ro- 
 bust ; he died of overwork, or rather, as I understand, of a two 
 years' almost total want of exercise, which it was impossible to 
 induce him to take." Arnold's Report to the Committee of 
 Council on Education, 1860.
 
 226 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 his creatures each his measure of life, and left him to 
 the freedom of his own will and the regulation of his 
 reason, He also leaves him to reap as he sows. 
 
 Thus it was that ray father's illness was not so 
 much a disease as a long death ; life ebbing away, 
 consciousness left entire, the certain issue never out 
 of sight. This, to a man of my father's organization, 
 with a keen relish for life, and its highest pleas- 
 ures and energies, sensitive to impatience, and then 
 over-sensitive of his own impatience ; cut to the heart 
 with the long watching and suffering of those he 
 loved, who, after all, could do so little for him ; with 
 a nervous system easily sunk, and by its strong play 
 upon his mind darkening and saddening his most 
 central beliefs, shaking his most solid principles, tear- 
 ing and terrifying his tenderest affections ; his mind 
 free and clear, ready for action if it had the power, 
 eager to be in its place in the work of the woi-ld and 
 of its Master ; to have to spend two long years in this 
 ever-descending road, here was a combination of 
 positive and negative suffering not to be thought of 
 even now, when it is all sunk under that "far more 
 exceeding and eternal weight of glory." 
 
 He often spoke to me freely about his health, 
 went into it with the fearlessness, exactness, and per- 
 sistency of his nature ; and I never witnessed, or 
 hope to witness, anything more affecting than when, 
 after it had been dawning upon him, he apprehended 
 the true secret of his death. He was deeply hum- 
 bled, felt that he had done wrong to himself, to his
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 227 
 
 people, to us all, to his faithful and long-suffering 
 Master ; and he often said, with a dying energy 
 lighting up his eye, and nerving his voice and ges- 
 ture, that if it pleased God to let him again speak in 
 his old place, he would not only proclaim again, and, 
 he hoped, more simply and more fully, the everlast- 
 ing gospel to lost man, but proclaim also the gospel 
 of God to the body, the religious and Christian duty 
 and privilege of living in obedience to the divine 
 laws of health. He was delighted when I read to 
 him, and turned to this purpose that wonderful pas- 
 sage of St. Paul : " For the body is not one mem- 
 ber, but many. If the whole body were an eye, 
 where were the hearing ? If the whole were hearing, 
 where were the smelling? But now hath God set 
 the members every one of them in the body, as it 
 hath pleased him. And the eye cannot say unto the 
 hand, I have no need of thee ; nor again the head to 
 the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much more 
 those members of the body, which seem to be more 
 feeble, are necessary ; " summing it all up in words 
 with life and death in them : " that there should 
 be no schism in the body ; but that the members 
 should have the same care one for another. And 
 whether one member suffer, all the members suffer 
 with it ; or one member be honored, all the mem- 
 bers rejoice with it." 
 
 The lesson from all this is, Attend to your bodies, 
 study their structure, functions, and laws. This 
 does not at all mean that you need be an anatomist,
 
 228 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 or go deep into physiology, or the doctrines of pre- 
 vention and cure. Not only has each organism a 
 resident doctor, placed there by Him who can thus 
 heal all our diseases, but this doctor, if watched and 
 waited on, informs any man or woman of ordinary 
 sense what things to do, and what things not to do. 
 And I would have you, who, I fear, not un frequently 
 sin in the same way, and all our ardent, self-sacrificing 
 young ministers, to reflect whether, after destroying 
 themselves and dying young, they have lost or gained. 
 It is said that God raises up others in our place. 
 God gives you no title to say this. Men such men 
 as I have in my mind are valuable to God in pro- 
 portion to the time they are here. They are the 
 older, the better, the riper and richer, and more en- 
 riching. Nothing will make up for this absolute loss 
 of life. For there is something which every man 
 who is a good workman is gaining every year just 
 because he is older, and this nothing can replace. 
 Let a man remain on his ground, say a country par- 
 ish, during half a century or more, let him be 
 every year getting fuller and sweeter in the knowl- 
 edge of God and man, in utterance and in power, 
 can the power of that man for good over all his time, 
 and especially towards its close, be equaled by that 
 of three or four young and, it may be, admirable 
 men, who have been succeeding each other's untimely 
 death, during the same space of time ? It is against 
 all spiritual as well as all simple arithmetic to say so. 
 You have spoken of my father's prayers. They
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 229 
 
 were of two kinds : the one, formal, careful, system- 
 atic, and almost stereotyped, remarkable for fullness 
 and compression of thought ; sometimes too mani- 
 festly the result of study, and sometimes not purely 
 prayer, but more of the nature of a devotional and 
 even argumentative address; the other, as in the fam- 
 ily, short, simple, and varied. He used to tell of his 
 master, Dr. Lawson, reproving him, in his honest 
 but fatherly way, as they were walking home from 
 the Hall. My father had in his prayer the words, 
 " that through death he might destroy him that had 
 the power of death, that is, the devil." The old 
 man, leaning on his favorite pupil, said, " John, my 
 man, you need not have said ' that is the devil ; ' you 
 might have been sure that He knew whom you 
 meant." My father, in theory, held that a mixture 
 of formal, fixed prayer, in fact, a liturgy, along 
 with extempore prayer, was the right thing. As you 
 observe, many of his passages in prayer all who 
 were in the habit of hearing him could anticipate, 
 such as " the enlightening, enlivening, sanctifying, 
 and comforting influences of the good Spirit," and 
 many others. One in especial you must remember ; 
 it was only used on very solemn occasions, and curi- 
 ously unfolds his mental peculiarities ; it closed his 
 prayer : " And now, unto Thee, O Father, Son, and 
 Holy Ghost, the one Jehovah and our God, we would 
 as is most meet with .the church on earth and 
 the church in heaven, ascribe all honor and glory, 
 dominion and majesty, as it was in the beginning, is
 
 230 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen." 
 Nothing could be liker him than the interjection, " as 
 is most meet." Sometimes his abrupt, short state- 
 ments in the Synod were very striking. On one oc- 
 casion, Mr. James Morison having stated his views 
 as to prayer very strongly, denying that a sinner 
 can pray, my father, turning to the Moderator, said, 
 " Sir, let a man feel himself to be a sinner, and, for 
 anything the universe of creatures can do for him, 
 hopelessly lost, let him feel this, sir, and let him 
 get a glimpse of the Saviour, and all the eloquence 
 and argument of Mr. Morison will not keep that 
 man from crying out, ' God be merciful to me a 
 sinner.' That, sir, is prayer, that is acceptable 
 prayer." 
 
 There must be, I fear, now and then an apparent 
 discrepancy between you and me, especially as to the 
 degree of mental depression which at times over- 
 shadowed my father's nature. You will understand 
 this, and I hope our readers will make allowance for 
 it. Some of it is owing to my constitutional tendency 
 to overstate, and much of it to my having had per- 
 haps more frequent, and even more private, insights 
 into this part of his life. But such inconsistency as 
 that I speak of the coexistence of a clear, firm 
 faith, a habitual sense of God and of his infinite 
 mercy, the living a life of faith, as if it was in his 
 organic and inner life, more than in his sensational 
 and outward is quite compatible with that tendency 
 to distrust himself, that bodily darkness and mourn-
 
 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 231 
 
 fulness, which at times came over him. Any one 
 who knows " what a piece of work is man ; " how 
 composite, how varying, how inconsistent human 
 nature is, that we each of us are 
 
 " Some several men, all in an hour," 
 
 will not need to be told to expect, or how to har- 
 monize, these differences of mood. You see this in 
 that wonderful man, the Apostle Paul, the true typical 
 fullness, the kumanness, so to speak, of whose nature 
 comes out in such expressions of opposites as these : 
 " By honor and dishonor, by evil report and good 
 report : as deceivers, and yet true ; as unknown, and 
 yet well known ; as dying, and, behold, we live ; as 
 chastened, and not. killed ; as sorrowful, yet ahvay 
 rejoicing ; as poor, yet making many rich ; as having 
 nothing, and yet possessing all things." 
 
 I cannot and after your impressive and exact his- 
 tory of his last days I need not say anything of the 
 close of those long years of suffering, active and pas- 
 sive, and that slow ebbing of life ; the body, without 
 help or hope, feeling its doom steadily though slowly 
 drawing on ; the mind mourning for its suffering 
 friend, companion, and servant ; mourning also, some- 
 times, that it must be " unclothed," and take its flight 
 all alone into the infinite unknown ; dying daily, not 
 in the heat of fever, or in the insensibility or lethargy 
 of paralytic disease, but having the mind calm and 
 clear, and the body conscious of its own decay, 
 dying, as it were, in cold blood. One thing I must
 
 232 MY FATHER'S MEMOIR. 
 
 add. That morning when you were obliged to leave, 
 and when " cold obstruction's apathy " had already 
 begun its reign, when he knew us, and that was all, 
 and when he followed us with his dying and loving 
 eyes, but could not speak, the end came ; and then, 
 as through life, his will asserted itself supreme in 
 death. With that love of order and decency which 
 was a law of his life, he deliberately composed him- 
 self, placing his body at rest, as if setting his house 
 in order before leaving it, and then closed his eyes 
 and mouth, so that his last look the look his body 
 carried to the grave and faced dissolution in was 
 that of sweet, dignified self-possession. 
 
 I have made this letter much too long, and have 
 said many things in it I never intended saying, and 
 omitted much I had hoped to be able to say. But I 
 must end. 
 
 Yours ever affectionately, 
 
 J. BROWN.
 
 DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 WHEN, towards the close of some long summer day, 
 we come suddenly, and, as we think, before his time, 
 upon the broad sun, " sinking down in his tranquillity " 
 into the unclouded west, we cannot keep our eyes 
 from the great spectacle ; and when he is gone the 
 shadow of him haunts our sight : we see everywhere 
 
 upon the spotless heaven, upon the distant moun- 
 tains, upon the fields, and upon the road at our feet 
 
 that dim, strange, changeful image; and if our 
 eyes shut, to recover themselves, we still find in them, 
 like a dying flame, or like a gleam in a dark place, 
 the unmistakable phantom of the mighty orb that 
 has set ; and were we to sit down, as we have often 
 done, and try to record by pencil or by pen our im- 
 pression of that supreme hour, still would IT be there. 
 We must have patience with our eye, it will not let 
 the impression go ; that spot on which the radiant 
 disk was impressed is insensible to all other outward 
 things, for a time : its best relief is, to let the eye 
 wander vaguely over earth and sky, and repose itself 
 on the mild shadowy distance. 
 
 So it is when a great and good and beloved man 
 departs, sets, it may be suddenly, and to us who
 
 234 DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 know not the times and the seasons, too soon. We 
 gaze eagerly at his last hours, and when he is gone, 
 never to rise again on our sight, we see his image 
 wherever we go, and in whatsoever we are engaged, 
 and if we try to record by words our wonder, our sor- 
 row, and our affection, we cannot see to do it, for the 
 " idea of his life " is forever coming into our " study 
 of imagination," into all our thoughts, and we can 
 do little else than let our mind, in a wise passiveness, 
 hush itself to rest. 
 
 The sun returns ; he knows his rising, 
 
 " To-morrow he repairs his drooping head, 
 
 And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore 
 Flames in the forehead of the morning sky ; " 
 
 but man lieth down, and riseth not again till the 
 heavens are no more. Never again will he whose 
 "Meditations" are now hefore us lift up the light of 
 his countenance upon us. 
 
 We need not say we look upon him as a great man, 
 at> a good man, as a beloved man, quis des'ulnrln 
 sit pudor tarn cari capitis ? We cannot now go 
 very curiously to work to scrutinize the composition 
 of his character, we cannot take that large, free, 
 genial nature to pieces, and weigh this and measure 
 that, and sum up and pronounce ; we are too near as 
 yet to him and to his loss, he is too dear to us to be 
 so handled. " His death," to use the pathetic words 
 of Hartley Coleridge, " is a recent sorrow ; his image 
 still lives in eyes that weep for him." The prevailing 
 feeling is, He is gone "abiit ad plures he has
 
 DR. CHALMERS. 235 
 
 gone over to the majority, he has joined the famous 
 nations of the dead." 
 
 It is no small loss to the world, when one of its 
 master spirits, one of its great lights, a king among 
 the nations, leaves it. A sun is extinguished ; a great 
 attractive, regulating power is withdrawn. For though 
 it be a common, it is also a natural thought, to com- 
 pare a great man to the sun ; it is in many respects 
 significant. Like the sun, he rules his day, and he 
 is " for a sign and for seasons, and for days and for 
 years ; " he enlightens, quickens, attracts, and leads 
 after him his host, his generation. 
 
 To pursue our image. When the sun sets to us, he 
 rises elsewhere he goes on rejoicing, like a strong 
 man, running his race. So does a great man : when 
 he leaves us and our concerns, he rises elsewhere ; 
 and we may reasonably suppose that one who has in 
 this world played a great part in its greatest histories, 
 who has through a long life been preeminent for 
 promoting the good of men and the glory of God, 
 will be looked upon with keen interest when he joins 
 the company of the immortals. They must have 
 heard of his fame ; they may in their ways have seen 
 and helped him already. 
 
 Every one must have trembled when reading that 
 passage in Isaiah, in which Hell is described as moved 
 to meet Lucifer at his coming : there is not in human 
 language anything more sublime in conception, more 
 exquisite in expression ; it has on it the light of the 
 terrible crystal. But may we not reverse the scene ?
 
 236 DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 May we not imagine, when a great and good man, a 
 son of the morning, enters on his rest, that Heaven 
 would move itself to meet him at his coming ? That 
 it would stir up its dead, even all the chief ones of 
 the earth, and that the kings of the nations would 
 arise each one from his throne to welcome their bro- 
 ther ? that those who saw him would ' ; narrowly con- 
 sider him," and say, " Is this he who moved nations, 
 enlightened and bettered his fellows, and whom the 
 great Taskmaster welcomes with ' Well done ! ' ' 
 
 We cannot help following him whose loss we now 
 mourn into that region, and figuring to ourselves his 
 great, childlike spirit, when that unspeakable scene 
 bursts upon his view, when, as by some inward, in- 
 stant sense, he is conscious of God, of the imme- 
 diate presence of the All-seeing Unseen ; when he 
 beholds " His honorable, true, and only Son," face to 
 face, enshrined in " that glorious form, that light un- 
 sufferable, and that far-beaming blaze of majesty," 
 that brightness of His glory, that express image of 
 His person ; when he is admitted into the goodly fel- 
 lowship of the apostles, the glorious company of the 
 prophets, the noble army of martyrs, the general as- 
 sembly of just men, and beholds with his loving eyes 
 the myriads of " little ones," outnumbering their 
 elders as the dust of stars with which the galaxy is 
 filled exceeds in multitude the hosts of heaven. 
 
 What a change ! death the gate of life a second 
 birth, in the twinkling of an eye : this moment, weak, 
 fearful, in the amazement of death ; the next, strong,
 
 DR. CHALMERS. 237 
 
 joyful, at rest, all things new ! To adopt his 
 own words : all his life, up to the last, " knocking at 
 a door not yet opened, with an earnest indefinite 
 longing, his very soul breaking for the longing, 
 drinking of water, and thirsting again " and then 
 suddenly and at once a door opened into 
 heaven, and the Master heard saying, " Come in, 
 and come up hither ! " drinking of the river of 
 life, clear as crystal, of which if a man drink he 
 will never thirst, being filled with all the fullness of 
 God! 
 
 Dr. Chalmers was a ruler among men : this we 
 know historically ; this every man who came within 
 his range felt at once. He was like Agamemnon, a 
 native ava dvSpwr, and with all his homeliness of fea- 
 ture and deportment, and his perfect simplicity of ex- 
 pression, there was about him " that divinity that doth 
 hedge a king." You felt a power in him and going 
 from him, drawing you to him in spite of yourself. 
 He was in this respect a solar man ; he drew after him 
 his own firmament of planets. They, like all free 
 agents, had their centrifugal forces acting ever to- 
 wards an independent, solitary course, but the centrip- 
 etal also was there, and they moved with and around 
 their imperial sun, gracefully or not, willingly or 
 not, as the case might be, but there was no breaking 
 loose ; they again, in their own spheres of power, 
 might have their attendant moons, but all were bound 
 to the great massive luminary in the midst.
 
 238 DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 There is to us a continual mystery in this power of 
 one man over another. We find it acting everywhere, 
 with the simplicity, the ceaselessness, the energy of 
 gravitation ; and we may be permitted to speak of 
 this influence as obeying similar conditions ; it is pro- 
 portioned to bulk, for we hold to the notion of a 
 bigness in souls as well as bodies, one soul differing 
 from another in quantity and momentum as well as in 
 quality and force, and its intensity increases by near- 
 ness. There is much in what Jonathan Edwards says 
 of one spiritual essence having more being than an- 
 other, and in Dr. Chalmers's question, " Is he a man 
 of ivecht ? " 
 
 But when we meet a solar man of ample nature 
 soul, body, and spirit ; when we find him from his 
 earliest years moving among his fellows like a king, 
 moving them whether they will or not this feeling 
 of mystery is deepened ; and though we would not, 
 like some men (who should know better), worship the 
 creature and convert a hero into a god, we do feel 
 more than in other cases the truth, that it is the in- 
 spiration of the Almighty which has given to that 
 man understanding, and that all power, all energy, 
 Jill light, come to him from the First and the Last, 
 the Living One. God comes to be regarded by us, 
 in this instance, as he ought always to be, " the final 
 centre of repose," the source of all being, of all life, 
 the Terminus ad quern and the Terminus a quo. 
 And assuredly, as in the firmament that simple law 
 of gravitation reigns supreme making it indeed a
 
 DE. CHALMERS 239 
 
 kosmos, majestic, orderly, comely in its going ; rul- 
 ing and binding not the less the fiery and nomadic 
 comets than the gentle, punctual moons, so cer- 
 tainly, and to us moral creatures to a degree tran- 
 scendently more important, does the whole intelligent 
 universe move around and move towards and in the 
 Father of Lights. 
 
 It would be well if the world would, among the 
 many other uses they make of its great men, make 
 more of this : that they are manifestors of God, 
 revealers of His will, vessels of His omnipotence, 
 and are among the very chief est of His ways and 
 works. 
 
 As we have before said, there is a perpetual wonder 
 in this power of one man over his fellows, especially 
 when we meet with it in a great man. You see its 
 operations constantly in history, and through it the 
 Great Ruler has worked out many of His greatest and 
 strangest acts. But however we may understand the 
 accessory conditions by which the one man rules the 
 many, and controls, and fashions them to his purposes, 
 and transforms them into his likeness, multiplying 
 as it were himself, there remains at the bottom of 
 it all a mystery, a reaction between body and soul 
 that we cannot explain. Generally, however, we find 
 accompanying its manifestation a capacious under- 
 standing, a strong will, an emotional nature quick, 
 powerful, urgent, undeniable, in perpetual communica- 
 tion with the energetic will and the large resolute 
 intellect, and a strong, hearty, capable body ; a couu-
 
 240 DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 tenance and person expressive of this combination, 
 
 the mind finding its way at once and in full force 
 to the face, to the gesture, to every act of the body. 
 He must have what is called a "presence ; " not that 
 he must be great in size, beautiful, or strong ; but he 
 must be expressive and impressive, his outward man 
 must communicate to the beholder at once and with- 
 out fail something of indwelling power, and he must 
 be and act as one. You may in your mind analyze 
 him into his several parts ; but practically he acts in 
 everything with his whole soul and his whole self ; 
 whatsoever his hand finds to do, he does it with his 
 might. Luther, Moses, David, Mahomet, Cromwell, 
 
 all verified these conditions. 
 
 And so did Dr. Chalmers. There was something 
 about his whole air and manner that disposed you at 
 the very first to make way where he went ; he held 
 you before you were aware. That this depended 
 fully as much upon the activity and the quantity 
 if we may so express ourselves of his affections, 
 upon that combined action of mind and body which 
 we call temperament, and upon a straightforward, 
 urgent will, as upon what is called the pure intellect, 
 will be generally allowed ; but with all this, he could 
 not have been and done what he was and did, had 
 he not had an understanding, in vigor and in capac- 
 ity, worthy of its great and ardent companions. It 
 was large and free, mobile and intense, rather than 
 penetrative, judicial, clear, or fine ; so that in one 
 sense he was more a man to make others act than
 
 DR. CHALMERS. 241 
 
 think ; but his own actings had always their origin 
 in some fixed, central, inevitable proposition, as he 
 would call it, and he began his onset with stating 
 plainly, and with lucid calmness, what he held to be 
 a great seminal truth ; from this he passed at once, 
 not into exposition, but into illustration and enforce- 
 ment, into, if we may make a word, overwhelming 
 insistance. Something was to be done rather than 
 explained. 
 
 There was no separating his thoughts and expres- 
 sions from his person, and looks, and voice. How 
 perfectly we can at this moment recall him ! Thun- 
 dering, flaming, lightening, in the pulpit ; teaching, 
 indoctrinating, drawing after him his students, in his 
 lecture - room ; sitting among other public men, the 
 most unconscious, the most king-like of them all, 
 with that broad leonine countenance, that beaming, 
 liberal smile ; or on the way out to his home, in his 
 old-fashioned great-coat, with his throat muffled up, 
 his big walking-stick moved outwards in an arc, its 
 point fixed, its head circumferential, a sort of com- 
 panion and playmate, with which, doubtless, he de- 
 molished legions of imaginary foes, errors, and stu- 
 pidities in men and things, in Church and State. 
 His great look, large chest, large head, his amplitude 
 every way ; his broad, simple, childlike, inturned 
 feet ; his short, hurried, impatient step ; his erect, 
 royal air ; his look of general good-will ; his kindling 
 up into a warm but vague benignity when one he did 
 not recognize spoke to him ; the addition, for it was
 
 242 DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 not a change, of keen specialty to his hearty recog- 
 nition ; the twinkle of his eyes ; the immediately say- 
 ing something very personal to set all to rights, and 
 then the sending you off with some thought, some 
 feeling, some remembrance making your heart hurn 
 within you ; his voice indescribable ; his eye that 
 most peculiar feature not vacant, but asleep, in- 
 nocent, mild, and large ; and his soul, its great in- 
 habitant, not always at his window ; but then, when 
 lie did awake, how close to you was that burning 
 vehement soul ! how it penetrated and overcame you ! 
 how mild, and affectionate, and genial its expression 
 at his own fireside ! 
 
 Of his portraits worth mentioning, there are Wat- 
 son Gordon's, Duncan's, the calotypes of Mr. Hill, 
 Kenneth M'Leay's miniatures, the daguerreotype, 
 and Steele's bust. These are all good, and all give 
 bits of him, some nearly the whole, but not one of 
 them that rl 6cp(j.6v, that fiery particle, that in- 
 spired look, that " diviner mind," the poco pih, or 
 little more. Watson Gordon's is too much of the 
 mere clergyman, is a pleasant likeness, and has the 
 shape of his mouth, and the setting of his feet very 
 good. Duncan's is a work of genius, and is the 
 giant looking up, awakening, but not awakened, 
 it is a very fine picture. Mr. Hill's calotypes we like 
 better than all the rest, because ^vliat in them is 
 true, is absolutely so, and they have some delicate 
 renderings which are all but beyond the power of 
 any human artist ; for though man's art is mighty,
 
 DR. CHALMERS. 243 
 
 nature's is mightier. The one of the Doctor sitting 
 with his grandson " Tommy " is to us the best ; 
 we have the true grandeur of his form, his bulk. 
 M'Leay's is admirable, spirited, and has that look 
 of shrewdness and vivacity and immediateness which 
 he had when he was observing and speaking keenly ; 
 it is, moreover, a fine, manly bit of art. M'Leay 
 is the Raeburn of miniature painters ; he does a 
 great deal with little. The daguerreotype is, in its 
 own way, excellent ; it gives the externality of the 
 man to perfection, but it is Dr. Chalmers at a stand- 
 still, his mind and feelings " pulled up " for 
 the second that it was taken. Steele's is a noble 
 bust, has a stern heroic expression and pathetic 
 beauty about it, and from wanting color and shadow 
 and the eyes, it relies upon a certain simplicity and 
 grandeur ; in this it completely succeeds ; the mouth 
 is handled with extraordinary subtlety and sweetness, 
 and the hair hangs over that huge brow like a glorious 
 cloud. We think this head of Dr. Chalmers the 
 artist's greatest bust. 
 
 In reference to the assertion we have made as to 
 bulk forming one primary element of a powerful 
 mind, Dr. Chalmers used to say, when a man of ac- 
 tivity and public mark was mentioned, " Has he 
 ivecht ? he has promptitude, has he power ? he has 
 power, has he promptitude ? and, moreover, has he 
 a discerning spirit ? " 
 
 These are great practical, universal truths. How 
 few even of our greatest men have had all these
 
 244 DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 faculties large, fine, sound, and in " perfect diapa- 
 son." Your men of promptitude, without power or 
 judgment, are common and are useful. But they are 
 npt to run wild, to get needlessly brisk, unpleasantly 
 incessant. A weasel is good or bad, as the case 
 may be, good against vermin, bad to meddle with ; 
 but inspired weasels, weasels on a mission, are ter- 
 rible indeed, mischievous and fell, and swiftness mak- 
 ing up for want of momentum by inveteracy ; " fierce 
 as wild bulls, untamable as flies." Of such men we 
 have nowadays too many. Men are too much in the 
 way of supposing that doing is being / that theology, 
 and excogitation, and fierce dogmatic assertion of 
 what they consider truth, is godliness ; that obedience 
 is merely an occasional great act, and not a series of 
 acts, issuing from a state, like the stream of water 
 from its well. 
 
 " Action is transitory, a step, a blow, 
 
 The motion of a muscle this way or that ; 
 
 'T is done ; and in the after vacancy, 
 
 We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed. 
 
 Suffering " obedience, or being as opposed to doing 
 
 " Suffering is permanent, 
 
 And has the nature of infinity." 
 
 Dr. Chalmers was a man of genius ; he had his 
 own way of thinking, and saying, and doing, and 
 looking everything. Men have vexed themselves in 
 vain to define what genius is : like every ultimate 
 term we may describe it by giving its effects ; we can 
 hardly succee 1 in reaching its essence. Fortunately,
 
 DR. CHALMERS. 245 
 
 though we know not what are its elements, we know 
 it when we meet it ; and in him, in every movement 
 of his mind, in every gesture, we had its unmistakable 
 tokens. Two of the ordinary accompaniments of 
 genius enthusiasm and simplicity he had in rare 
 measure. 
 
 He was an enthusiast in the true and good sense ; 
 he was " entheat," as if full of God, as the old poets 
 called it. It was this ardor, this superabounding life, 
 this immediateness of thought and action, idea and 
 emotion, setting the whole man agoing at once, 
 that gave a power and a charm to everything he did. 
 To adopt the old division of the Hebrew Doctors, as 
 given by Nathanael Culverwel, in his "Light of 
 Nature : " In man we have, ls, wevfia ^COOTTOIOW, 
 the sensitive soul, that which lies nearest the body, 
 the very blossom and flower of life ; 2d, TOV vovv, an- 
 imam rationis, sparkling and glittering with intellec- 
 tuals, crowned with light ; and 3</, TOV 6v/*ov, impetum 
 animi, motum mentis, the vigor and energy of the 
 soul, its temper, the mover of the other two ; the 
 first being, as they said, resident in hepate, the sec- 
 ond in cerebro, the third in corde, where it pre- 
 sides over the issues of life, commands the circulation, 
 and animates and sets the blood a-moving. The first 
 and second are informative, explicative, they " take 
 in and do ; " the other " gives out." Now in Dr. 
 Chalmers, the great ingredient was the 6 $U/AOS as in- 
 dicating vis animce et vitce, and in close fellow- 
 ship with it, and ready for its service, was a large,
 
 246 DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 capacious 6 voDs, and an energetic, sensuous, rapid TO 
 Trvevfj.0.. Hence his energy, his contagious enthusi- 
 asm ; this it was which gave the peculiar character to 
 his religion, to his politics, to his personnel ; every- 
 thing he did was done heartily, if he desired 
 heavenly blessings he " panted " for them, " his soul 
 broke for the longing." To give again the words 
 of the spiritual and subtle Culverwel, " Religion 
 (and indeed everything else) was no matter of indif- 
 ferency to him. It was 6(p/j.6v n 7rpay/za, a certain 
 fiery thing, as Aristotle calls love ; it required and it 
 got the very flower and vigor of the spirit the 
 strength and sinews of the soul the prime and top 
 of the affections this is that grace, that panting 
 grace we know the name of it and that 's all 't is 
 called zeal a flaming edge of the affection the 
 ruddy complexion of the soul." Closely connected 
 with this temperament, and with a certain keen sen- 
 sation of truth, rather than a perception of it, if we 
 may so express ourselves, an intense consciousness of 
 objective reality, was his simple, animating faith. 
 He had faith in God, faith in human nature, faith, 
 if we may say so, in his own instincts, in his ideas 
 of men and things, in himself ; and the result was 
 that unhesitating bearing up and steering right on- 
 ward, " never bating one jot of heart or hope," so 
 characteristic of him. He had " the substance of things 
 hoped for." He had " the evidence of things not seen." 
 By his simplicity we do not mean the simplicity of 
 the head ; of that he had none ; he was eminently
 
 DR. CHALMERS. 247 
 
 shrewd and knowing, more so than many thought ; 
 but we refer to that quality of the heart and of the 
 life, expresvsed by the words, " in simplicity a child." 
 In his own words, from his Daily Readings, 
 
 "When a child is filled with any strong emotion by a sur- 
 prising event or intelligence, it runs to discharge it on others, 
 impatient of their sympathy ; and it marks, I fancy, the sim- 
 plicity and greater naturalness of this period (Jacob's), that 
 the grown-up men and women ran to meet each other, giving 
 way to their first impulses even as children do." 
 
 His emotions were as lively as a child's, and he 
 ran to discharge them. There was in all his ways 
 a certain beautiful unconsciousness of self, an out- 
 going of the whole nature, that we see in children, 
 who are by learned men said to be long ignorant of 
 the EGO blessed in many respects in their ignorance ! 
 this same Ego, as it now exists, being perhaps part 
 of " the fruit of that forbidden tree ; " that mere 
 knowledge of good as well as of evil, which our great 
 mother bought for us at such a price. In this mean- 
 ing of the word, Dr. Chalmers, considering the size 
 of his understanding, his personal eminence, his 
 dealings with the world, his large sympathies, his 
 scientific knowledge of mind and matter, his relish 
 for the practical details and for the spirit of public 
 business, was quite singular for his simplicity ; and 
 taking this view of it, there was much that was plain 
 and natural in his manner of thinking and acting, 
 which otherwise was obscure, and liable to be mis- 
 understood. We cannot better explain what we mean
 
 248 DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 than by giving a passage from Fe'nelon, which 
 D'Alembert, in his Eloge, quotes as characteristic of 
 that " sweet- souled " prelate. We give the passage 
 entire, as it seems to us to contain a very beautiful 
 and by no means commonplace truth : 
 
 "Fe'nelon," says D'Alembert, " a caracte'rise* lui-meme en 
 pen de mots cette simplicity qui se rendoit si cher :\ tous les 
 cceurs: 'La simplicity est la droiture d'nne ame qui s'interdit 
 tout retour sur elle et sur ses actions ; cette vertu est dif- 
 feVente de la since'rite', et la snrpasse. On voit beaucoup de 
 gens qui sont sinceres sans etre simples. Us ne veulent passer 
 que pour ce qu'ils sont, mais ils craignent sans cesse de passer 
 pour ce qu'ils ne sont pas. L'homme simple n'affecte ni 
 la vertu, ni la ve'rite' meme ; 51 n'est jamais occup4 de lui, il 
 senible d'avoir perdu ce jnoi dout on est si jaloux.' " 
 
 What delicacy and justness of expression ! how 
 true and clear ! how little we see nowadays, among 
 grown-up men, of this straightness of the soul of 
 this losing or never finding " ce moi ! " There is 
 more than is perhaps generally thought in this. Man 
 in a state of perfection would no sooner think of 
 asking himself, Am I right? am I appearing to be 
 what inwardly I am ? than the eye asks itself, Do I 
 see ? or a child says to itself, Do I love my mother ? 
 We have lost this instinctive sense ; we have set one 
 portion of ourselves aside to watch the rest ; we must 
 keep up appearances and our consistency ; we must 
 respect that is, look back upon ourselves, and be 
 respected, if possible ; we must, by hook or by crook, 
 be respectable. 
 
 Dr. Chalmers would have made a sorry Balaam ;
 
 DR. CHALMERS. 249 
 
 he was made of different stuff, and for other pur- 
 poses. Your "respectable" men are ever doing their 
 best to keep their status, to maintain their position. 
 He never troubled himself about his status ; indeed, 
 we would say status was not the word for him. He 
 had a sedes on which he sat, and from which he spoke ; 
 he had an imperi/um, to and fro which he roamed as 
 he listed ; but a status was as little in his way as in 
 that of a Mauritanian lion. Your merely " sincere " 
 men are always thinking of what they said yesterday, 
 and what they may say to-morrow, at the very moment 
 when they should be putting their whole self into 
 to-day. Full of his idea, possessed by it, moved 
 altogether by its power, believing, he spoke, and 
 without stint or fear, often apparently contradicting 
 his former self, careless about everything, but 
 speaking fully his mind. One other reason for his 
 apparent inconsistencies was, if one may so express 
 it, the spaciousness of his nature. He had room in 
 that capacious head, and affection in that great, hos- 
 pitable heart, for relishing and taking in the whole 
 range of human thought and feeling. He was several 
 men in one. Multitudinous but not multiplex, in him 
 odd and apparently incongruous notions dwelt peace- 
 ably together. The lion lay down with the lamb. 
 Voluntaryism and an endowment, both were best. 
 
 He was childlilie in his simplicity ; though in un- 
 derstanding a man, he was himself in many things a 
 child. Coleridge says, every man should include all 
 his former selves in his present, as a tree has its
 
 250 DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 former years' growths inside its last ; so Dr. Chalm- 
 ers bore along with him his childhood, his youth, 
 his early and full manhood into his mature old age. 
 This gave himself, we doubt not, infinite delight, 
 multiplied his joys, strengthened and sweetened his 
 whole nature, and kept his heart young and tender ; 
 it enabled him to sympathize, to have a fellow-feeling 
 with all, of whatever age. Those who best knew 
 him, who were most habitually with him, know how 
 beautifully this point of his character shone out in 
 daily, hourly life. We well remember long ago lov- 
 ing him before we had seen him, from our having 
 been told that being out one Saturday at a friend's 
 house near the Pentlands, he collected all the chil- 
 dren and small people, the other bairns, as he 
 called them, and with no one else of his own 
 growth, took the lead to the nearest hill-top, how 
 he made each take the biggest and roundest stone he 
 could find and carry, how he panted up the hill 
 himself with one of enormous size, how he kept up 
 their hearts, and made them shout with glee, with the 
 light of his countenance, and with all his pleasant 
 and strange ways and words, how, having got the 
 breathless little men and women to the top of the 
 hill, he, hot and scant of breath, looked round on 
 the world and upon them with his broad benig- 
 nant smile like the <ivqpi.6 "p.ov Kvp.drwv yeXaa^a the 
 unnumbered laughter of the sea, how he set off 
 his own huge " fellow," how he watched him set- 
 ting out on his race, slowly, stupidly, vaguely at first,
 
 DR. CHALMERS. 251 
 
 almost as if he might die before he began to live, 
 then suddenly giving a spring and off like a shot, 
 bounding, tearing, avrts eTretra TreSovSe KvXti'&cro 
 Aaa.9 avails, vires acquirens eundo ; how the great 
 and good man was totus in illo ; how he spoke to 
 him, upbraided him, cheered him, gloried in him, all 
 but prayed for him ; how he joked philosophy to his 
 wondering and ecstatic crew, when he (the stone) 
 disappeared among some brackens. telling them 
 they had the evidence of their senses that he was in, 
 they might even know he was there by his effects, by 
 the moving brackens, himself unseen ; how plain it 
 became that he had gone in, when he actually came 
 out ! how he ran up the opposite side a bit, and 
 then fell back, and lazily expired at the bottom, 
 how to their astonishment, but not displeasure, for 
 he "set them off so well," and "was so funny," - 
 he took from each his cherished stone, and set it off 
 himself ! showing them how they all ran alike, yet 
 differently ; how he went on, " making," as he said, 
 " an induction of particulars," till he came to the 
 Benjamin of the flock, a wee wee man, who had 
 brought up a stone bigger than his own big head ; then 
 how he let him, unicus omnium, set off his own, and 
 how wonderfully IT ran ! what miraculous leaps ! 
 what escapes from impossible places ! and how it ran 
 up the other side farther than any, and by some 
 felicity remained there. 
 
 He was an orator in its specific and highest sense.
 
 252 DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 We need not prove this to those who have heard him ; 
 we cannot to those who have not. It was a living 
 man sending living, burning words into the minds 
 and hearts of men before him, radiating his intense 
 fervor upon them all ; but there was no reproducing 
 the entire effect when alone and cool ; some one of 
 the elements was gone. We say nothing of this part 
 of his character, because upon this all are agreed. 
 His eloquence rose like a tide, a sea, setting in, bear- 
 ing down upon you, lifting up all its waves " deep 
 calling unto deep ; " there was no doing anything 
 but giving yourself up for the time to its will. Do 
 our readers remember Horace's description of Pin- 
 dar ? 
 
 " Monte decurrens velut amnis, imbres 
 Quern super notas aluere ripas, 
 Fervet, immensusque ruit profundo 
 Piudarus ore : 
 
 ' per audaces nova ditliyrambos 
 
 Verba devolvit, numerisque f ertur 
 Lege solutis.' " 
 
 This is to our mind singularly characteristic of our 
 perfervid Scotsman. If we may indulge our conceit 
 we would paraphrase it thus. His eloquence was 
 like a flooded Scottish river, it had its origin in 
 some exalted region, in some mountain-truth, some 
 high, immutable reality ; it did not rise in a plain, 
 and quietly drain its waters to the sea ; it came 
 sheer down from above. He laid hold of some sim- 
 ple truth, the love of God, the Divine method of
 
 DR. CHALMERS. 253 
 
 justification, the unchangeableness of human nature, 
 the supremacy of conscience, the honorableness of all 
 men ; and having got this vividly before his mind, on 
 he moved ; the river rose at once, drawing every- 
 thing into its course 
 
 ' ' All thoughts, all passions, all desires, 
 Whatever stirs this mortal frame," 
 
 things outward and things inward, interests immedi- 
 ate and remote, God and eternity, men, miserable and 
 immortal, this world and the next, clear light and 
 unsearchable mystery, the word and the works of 
 God, everything contributed to swell the volume and 
 add to the onward and widening flood. His river 
 did not flow like Denham's Thames, 
 
 " Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull ; 
 Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full." 
 
 There was strength, but there was likewise rage ; a 
 fine frenzy not unoften due mainly to its rapidity 
 and to its being raised suddenly by his affections ; 
 there was son)e confusion in the stream of his 
 thoughts, some overflowing of the banks, some turbu- 
 lence, and a certain noble immensity ; but its origin 
 was clear and calm, above the region of clouds and 
 storms. If you saw it ; if you took up and admitted 
 his proposition, his starting idea, then all else moved 
 on ; but once set a-going, once on his way, there was 
 no pausing to inquire, why or how, fervet ruit 
 fertur, he boils he rushes he is borne along ; 
 and so are all who hear him.
 
 254 DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 To go on with our figure : There was no possibil- 
 ity of sailing up his stream. You must go with him, 
 or you must go ashore. This was a great peculiarity 
 with him, and puzzled many people. You could 
 argue with him, and get him to entertain your ideas 
 on any purely abstract or simple proposition, at 
 least for a time ; but once let him get down among 
 practicals, among applications of principles, into the 
 regions of the affections and active powers, and such 
 was the fervor and impetuosity of his nature, that he 
 could not stay leisurely to discuss, he could not then 
 entertain the opposite ; it was hurried off, and made 
 light of, and disregarded, like a floating thing before 
 a cataract. 
 
 To play a little more with our conceit : The great- 
 est man is he who is both born and made, who is at 
 once poetical and scientific, who has genius and tal- 
 ent, each supporting the other. So with rivers. 
 Your mighty world's river rises in high and lonely 
 places, among the everlasting hills ; amidst clouds, or 
 inaccessible clearness. On be move*, gathering to 
 himself all waters ; refreshing, cheering all lands. 
 Here a cataract, there a rapid ; now lingering in some 
 corner of beauty, as if loath to go. Now shallow and 
 wide, rippling and laughing in his glee ; now deep, 
 silent, and slow ; now narrow and rapid and deep, 
 and not to be meddled with. Now in the open 
 country ; not so clear, for other waters have come in 
 upon him, and he is becoming useful, no longer turbu- 
 lent, traveling more contentedly ; now he is navi-
 
 DR. CHALMERS. 255 
 
 gable, craft of all kinds coming and going upon his 
 surface forever ; and then, as if by some gentle and 
 great necessity, " deep and smooth, passing with a still 
 foot and a sober face," he pays his last tribute to " the 
 Fisciis. the great Exchequer, the sea," running out 
 fresh, by reason of his power and volume, into the 
 main for many a league. 
 
 Your mere genius, who has instincts, and is poetical 
 and not scientific, who grows from within he is like 
 our mountain river, clear, willful, odd ; running round 
 corners ; disappearing it may be under ground, com- 
 ing up again quite unexpectedly and strong, as if fed 
 from some unseen spring, deep down in darkness ; 
 rising in flood without warning, and coming down like 
 a lion ; often all but dry ; never to be trusted to for 
 driving mills ; must at least be tamed and led off to 
 the mill ; and going down full pace, and without stop 
 or stay, into the sea. 
 
 Your man of talent, of acquirements, of science, 
 who is made, who is not so much educed as edified; 
 who, instead of acquiring his vires eundo, gets his 
 vires eundi, from acquirement, and grows from with- 
 out ; who serves his brethren and is useful ; he rises 
 often no one knows where or cares ; has perhaps no 
 proper fountain at all, but is the result of the gathered 
 rain-water in the higher flats ; he is never quite clear, 
 never brisk, never dangerous ; always from the first 
 useful, and goes pleasantly in harness ; turns mills ; 
 washes rags, makes them into paper ; carries down 
 all manner of dye-stuffs and feculence ; and turns a
 
 256 DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 bread-mill to as good purpose as any clearer stream ; 
 is docile, and has, as he reaches the sea, in his deal- 
 ings with the world, a river trust, who look after his 
 and their own interests, and dredge him, and deepen 
 him, and manage him, and turn him off into docks, 
 and he is in the sea before he or you know it. 
 
 Though we do not reckon the imagination of Dr. 
 Chalmers among his master faculties, it was powerful, 
 effective, magnificent. It did not move him, he took 
 it up as he went along ; its was not that imperial, 
 penetrating, transmuting function that we find it in 
 Dante, in Jeremy Taylor, in Milton, or in Burke ; he 
 used it to emblazon his great central truths, to hang 
 clouds of glory on the skirts of his illustration ; but it 
 was too passionate, too material, too encumbered with 
 images, too involved in the general melee of the soul, 
 to do its work as a master. It was not in him, as 
 Thomas Fuller calls it, " that inward sense of the 
 soul, its most boundless and restless faculty ; for 
 while the understanding and the will are kept as it 
 were in liberd custodid to their objects of ventm et 
 bonum, it is free from all engagements, digs with- 
 out spade, flies without wings, builds without charges, 
 in a moment striding from the centre to the circum- 
 ference of the world by a kind of omnipotency, 
 creating and annihilating things in an instant, rest- 
 less, ever working, never wearied." We may say, 
 indeed, that men of his temperament are not gener- 
 ally endowed with this power in largest measure ; in
 
 DR. CHALMERS. 257 
 
 one sense they can do without it, in another they 
 want the conditions on which its highest exercise de- 
 pends. Plato and Milton, Shakespeare and Dante, 
 and Wordsworth, had imaginations tranquil, sedate, 
 cool, originative, penetrative, intense, which dwelt in 
 the " highest heaven of invention." Hence it was 
 that Chalmers could personify or paint a passion ; he 
 could give it in one of its actions ; he could not, or 
 rather he never did, impassionate, create, and vivify a 
 person, a very different thing from personifying a 
 passion, all the difference, as Henry Taylor says, 
 between Byron and Shakespeare. 
 
 In his impetuosity, we find the rationale of much 
 that is peculiar in the style of Dr. Chalmers. As a 
 spoken style it was thoroughly effective. 1 He seized 
 
 1 We have not noticed his itsrativeness, his reiterativeness, 
 because it flowed naturally from his primary qualities. In 
 speaking it was effective, and to us pleasing 1 , because there 
 was some new modulation, some addition in the manner, just 
 as the sea never sets up one wave exactly like the last or the 
 next. But in his books it did somewhat encumber his 
 thoughts, and the reader's progress and profit. It did not 
 arise, as in many lesser men, from his having said his say 
 from his having no more in him ; much less did it arise from 
 conceit, either of his idea or of his way of stating it ; but from 
 the intensity with which the sensation of the idea if we 
 may use the expression made its first mark on his mind. 
 Truth to him never seemed to loss its first freshness, its edge, 
 its flavor ; and Divine truth, we know, had come to him so 
 suddenly, so fully, at mid-day, when he was in the very prime 
 of his knowledge and his power and quickness, had so pos- 
 sessed his entire nature, as if, like him who was journeying to
 
 258 DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 the nearest weapons and smote down whatever he hit. 
 But from this very vehemence, this haste, there was 
 in his general style a want of correctness, of select- 
 ness, of nicety, of that curious felicity which makes 
 thought immortal, and enshrines it in imperishable 
 crystal. In the language of the affections he was 
 singularly happy ; but in a formal statement, rapid 
 argumentation and analysis, he was often as we 
 might think, uncouth, and imperfect, and incorrect ; 
 chiefly owing to his temperament, to his fiery, impa- 
 tient, swelling spirit, this gave his orations their fine 
 
 Damascus, a Great Light had shone round about him, that 
 whenever he reproduced that condition, he began afresh, and 
 with his whole utterance, to proclaim it. He could not but 
 speak the things he had seen and felt, and heard and be- 
 lieved ; and he did it much in the same way, and in the same 
 words, for the thoughts and affections and posture of his soul 
 were the same. Like all men of vivid perception and keen 
 sensibility, his mind and his body continued under impressions, 
 both material and spiritual, after the objects were gone. A 
 curious instance of this occurs to us. Some years ago, he 
 roamed up and down through the woods near Auchindinny, 
 with two boys as companions. It was the first burst of sum- 
 mer, and the trees were more than usually enriched with 
 leaves. He wandered about delighted, silent, looking at the 
 leaves, "thick and numberless." As the three went on, they 
 came suddenly upon a high brick wall, newly built, for peach- 
 trees, not 3 r et planted. Dr. Chalmers halted, and looking 
 steadfastly at the wall, exclaimed most earnestly, " What fo- 
 liage ! what foliage! " The boys looked at one another, and 
 said nothing ; but on getting home expressed their astonish- 
 ment at this very puzzling phenomenon. What a difference ! 
 leaves and parallelograms ; a forest and a brick wall !
 
 DR. CHALMERS. 259 
 
 audacity, this brought out hot from the furnace his 
 new words, this made his numbers run wild lege 
 solutis. We are sure this view will be found con- 
 firmed by these " Daily Readings," when he wrote 
 little, and had not time to get heated, and when the 
 nature of the work, the hour at which it was done, 
 and his solitariness, made his thoughts flow at their 
 ' own sweet will ; " they are often quite as classical 
 in expression as they are deep and lucid in thought, 
 reflecting heaven with its clouds and stars, and 
 letting us see deep down into its own secret depths : 
 this is to us one great charm of these volumes. Here 
 he is broad and calm ; in his great public perform- 
 ances by mouth and pen, he soon passed from the 
 lucid into the luminous. 
 
 What, for instance, can be finer in expression than 
 this ? " It is well to be conversant with great ele- 
 ments life and death, reason and madness." " God 
 forgets not his own purposes, though he executes 
 them in his own way, and maintains his own pace, 
 which he hastens not and shortens not to meet our 
 impatience." "I find it easier to apprehend the 
 greatness of the Deity than any of his moral per- 
 fections, or his sacredness ; " and this : 
 
 " One cannot but feel an interest in Ishmael, figuring- him 
 to be a noble of nature, one of those heroes of the wilder- 
 ness who lived on the produce of his bow, and whose spirit 
 was nursed and exercised among the wild adventures of the 
 life he led. And it does soften our conception of him whose 
 hand was against every man, and every man's hand against 
 him, when we read of his mother's influence over him, in the
 
 260 DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 deference of Ishmael to whom we read another example of 
 the respect yielded to females even in that so-called barbarous 
 period of the world. There was a civilization, the immediate 
 effect of religion, in these days, from which men fell away as 
 the world grew older." 
 
 That he had a keen relish for material and moral 
 beauty and grandeur we all know ; what follows 
 shows that he had also the true ear for beautiful 
 words, as at once pleasant to the ear and suggestive 
 of some higher feelings: "I have often felt, in 
 reading Milton and Thomson, a strong poetical effect 
 in the bare enumeration of different countries, and 
 this strongly enhanced by the statement of some 
 common and prevailing emotion which passed from 
 one to another." This is set forth with great beauty 
 and power in verses 14th and 15th of Exodus xv., 
 " The people shall hear and be afraid : sorrow shall 
 take hold on the inhabitants of Philistia. Then the 
 dukes of Edom shall be amazed ; the mighty men 
 of Moab, trembling shall take hold of them : the in- 
 habitants of Canaan shall melt away." Any one 
 who has a tolerable ear and any sensibility, must re- 
 member the sensation of delight in the mere sound, 
 like the colors of a butterfly's wing, or the shapeless 
 glories of evening clouds, to the eye, in reading 
 aloud such passages as these : " Heshbon shall cry 
 and Elealeh ; their voice shall be heard to Jahaz : . . . 
 for by the way of Luhith with weeping shall they go 
 up ; for in the way of Horonaim they shall raise a 
 cry." " God came from Teman, the Holy One from
 
 DR. CHALMERS. 261 
 
 Mount Paran." " Is not Calno as Carchemish ? is not 
 Hamath as Arpacl ? is not Samaria as Damascus ? . . . 
 He is gone to Aiath, he is passed through Migron ; at 
 Michmash he hath laid up his carriages : . . . Ramath 
 is afraid ; Gibeah of Saul is fled. Lift up thy voice, 
 O daughter of Gallim ! cause it to be heard unto 
 Laish, O poor Anathoth. Madmenah is removed ; the 
 inhabitants of Gebim gather themselves to flee. . . . 
 The fields of Heshbon languish, the vine of Sib- 
 mah. ... I will water thee with my tears, O Heshbon 
 and Elealeh." Any one may prove to himself that 
 much of the effect and beauty of these passages de- 
 pends on these names ; put others in their room and 
 try them. 
 
 We remember well our first hearing Dr. Chalmers. 
 We were in a moorland district in Tweeddale, rejoi- 
 cing in the country, after nine months of the High 
 School. We heard that the famous preacher was to 
 be at a neighboring parish church, and off we set, a 
 cartful of irrepressible youngsters. " Calm was all 
 nature as a resting wheel." The crows, instead of 
 making wing, were impudent and sat still ; the cart- 
 horses were standing, knowing the day, at the field- 
 gates, gossiping and gazing, idle and happy ; the 
 moor was stretching away in the pale sunlight 
 vast, dim, melancholy, like a sea ; everywhere were 
 to be seen the gathering people, " sprinklings of 
 blithe company ; " the country-side seemed moving to 
 one centre. As we entered the kirk we saw a noto- 
 rious character, a drover who had much of the brutal
 
 262 DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 look of what he worked in, with the knowing eye of 
 a man of the city, a sort of big Peter Bell, 
 
 " He had a hardness in his eye, 
 He had a hardness in his cheek." 
 
 He was our terror, and we not only wondered, but 
 were afraid when we saw him going in. The kirk 
 was full as it could hold. How different in looks to 
 a brisk town congregation ! There was a fine lei- 
 sureliness and vague stare ; all the dignity and va- 
 cancy of animals ; eyebrows raised and mouths open, 
 as is the habit with those who speak little and look 
 much, and at far-off objects. The minister comes in, 
 homely in his dress and gait, but having a great look 
 about him, like a mountain among hills. The High 
 School boys thought him like a " big one of our- 
 selves ; " he looks vaguely round upon his audience, as 
 if he saw in it one great object, not many. We shall 
 never forget his smile, its general benignity, how 
 he let the light of his countenance fall on us ! He 
 read a few verses quietly ; then prayed briefly, sol- 
 emnly, with his eyes wide open all the time, but not 
 seeing. Then he gave out his text ; we forget it, but 
 its subject was " Death reigns." He stated slowly, 
 calmly, the simple meaning of the words ; what death 
 was, and how and why it reigned ; then suddenly he 
 stalled and looked like a man who had seen some 
 great sight, and was breathless to declare it ; he told 
 us how death reigned, everywhere, at all times, in 
 all places ; how we all know it, how we would yet 
 know more of it. The drover, who had sat down in
 
 DR. CHALMERS. 26o 
 
 the table-seat opposite, was gazing up in a state of 
 stupid excitement ; he seemed restless, but never kept 
 his eye from the speaker. The tide set in ; every- 
 thing added to its power, deep called to deep, imagery 
 and illustration poured in ; and every now and then 
 the theme, the simple, terrible statement, was re- 
 peated in some lucid interval. After overwhelming 
 us with proofs of the reign of Death, and transfer- 
 ring to us his intense urgency and emotion ; and after 
 shrieking, as if in despair, these words, " Death is a 
 tremendous necessity," he suddenly looked beyond 
 us as if into some distant region, and cried out, " Be- 
 hold a mightier ! who is this ? He cometh from 
 Edorn, with dyed garments from Bozrah, glorious in 
 his apparel, speaking in righteousness, traveling in 
 the greatness of his strength, mighty to save." Then, 
 in a few plain sentences, he stated the truth as to sin 
 entering, and death by sin, and death passing upon 
 all. Then he took fire once more, and enforced, with 
 redoubled energy and richness, the freeness, the sim- 
 plicity, the security, the sufficiency of the great 
 method of justification. How astonished and im- 
 pressed we all were ! He was at the full thunder of 
 his power ; the whole man was in an agony of ear- 
 nestness. The drover was weeping like a child, the 
 tears running down his ruddy, coarse cheeks, his 
 face opened out and smoothed like an infant's ; his 
 whole body stirred with emotion. We all had insen- 
 sibly been drawn out of our seats, and were conver- 
 ging towards the wonderful speaker. And when he
 
 2G4 DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 sat down, after warning each one of us to remember 
 who it was, and what it was, that followed death on 
 his pale horse, 1 and how alone we could escape we 
 all sunk back into our seats. How beautiful to our 
 eyes did the thunderer look, exhausted, but sweet 
 and pure ! How he poured out his soul before his 
 God in giving thanks for sending the Abolisher of 
 Death ! Then, a short psalm, and all was ended. 
 
 We went home quieter than we came ; we did not 
 re-count the foals with their long legs and roguish 
 eyes, and their sedate mothers ; we did not speculate 
 upon whose dog that was, and whether that was a 
 crow or a man in the dim moor, we thought of 
 other things. That voice, that face ; those great, 
 simple, living thoughts, those floods of resistless elo- 
 quence ; that piercing, shattering voice, ' that 
 tremendous necessity." 
 
 Were we desirous of giving to one who had never 
 seen or heard Dr. Chalmers an idea of what manner 
 of man he was, what he was as a whole, in the full 
 round of his notions, tastes, affections, and powers, 
 we would put this book into their hands, and ask them 
 to read it slowly, bit by bit, as he wrote it. In it he 
 puts down simply, and at once, what passes through 
 his mind as he reads ; there is no making of himself 
 feel and think no getting into a frame of mind ; he 
 
 1 " And I looked, and behold, a pale horse ; and his name 
 that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him." 
 Rev. vi. 8.
 
 DR. CHALMERS. 265 
 
 was not given to frames of mind ; he preferred states- 
 to forms, substances to circumstances. There is some- 
 thing of everything in it, his relish for abstract 
 thought his love of taking soundings in deep places 
 and finding no bottom his knack of starting subtle 
 questions, which he did not care to run to earth 
 his penetrating, regulating godliness his delight in 
 nature his turn for politics, general, economical, 
 and ecclesiastical his picturesque eye his human- 
 ity his courtesy his warm-heartedness his im- 
 petuosity his sympathy with all the wants, pleasures, 
 and sorrows of his kind his delight in the law of 
 God, and his simple, devout, manly treatment of it 
 his acknowledgment of difficulties his turn for the 
 sciences of quantity and number, and indeed for nat- 
 ural science and art generally his shrewdness his 
 worldly wisdom his genius, all these come out ; 
 you gather them like fruit, here a little, and there 
 a little. He goes over the Bible, not as a philosopher, 
 or a theologian, or a historian, or a geologist, or a 
 jurist, or a naturalist, or a statist, or a politician, 
 picking out all that he wants, and a great deal more 
 than he has any business with, and leaving everything 
 else as barren to his reader as it has been to himself ; 
 but he looks abroad upon his Father's word as he 
 used so pleasantly to do on his world as a man, 
 and as a Christian ; he submits himself to its influ- 
 ences, and lets his mind go out fully and naturally in 
 its utterances. It is this which gives to this work all 
 the charm of multitude in unity, of variety in har-
 
 266 DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 mony ; and that sort of unexpectedness and ease of 
 movement which we see everywhere in nature and in 
 natural men. 
 
 Our readers will find in these delightful Bible 
 Readings not a museum of antiquities and curiosities 
 and laborious trifles, nor of scientific specimens, 
 analyzed to the last degree, all standing in order, 
 labeled and useless. They will not find in it an 
 armory of weapons for fighting with and destroying 
 their neighbors. They will get less of the physic of 
 controversy than of the diet of holy living. They 
 will find much of what Lord Bacon desired, when he 
 said, " We want short, sound, and judicious notes 
 upon Scripture, without running into commonplaces, 
 pursuing controversies, or reducing those notes to 
 artificial method, but leaving them quite loose and 
 native. For certainly, as those wines which flow from 
 the first treading of the grape are sweeter and better 
 than those forced out by the press, which gives them 
 the roughness of the husk and the stone, so are those 
 doctrines best and sweetest which flow from a gentle 
 crush of the Scriptures, and are not wrung into con- 
 troversies and commonplaces." They will find it as 
 a large pleasant garden ; no great system ; not trim, 
 but beautiful, and in which there are things pleasant 
 to the eye as well as good for food, flowers and 
 fruits, and a few good, esculent, wholesome roots. 
 There are Honesty, Thrift, Eye-bright (Euphrasy 
 that cleanses the sight), Heart's-ease. The good seed 
 in abundance, and the strange mystical Passion-
 
 DR. CHALMERS. 267 
 
 flower ; and in the midst, and seen everywhere, if we 
 but look for it, the Tree of Life, with its twelve man- 
 ner of fruits, the very leaves of which are for the 
 healing of the nations. And, perchance, when they 
 take their walk through it at evening time, or at " the 
 sweet hour of prime," they may see a happy, wise, 
 beaming old man at his work there, they may hear 
 his well-known voice ; and if they have their spiritual 
 senses exercised as they ought, they will not fail to 
 see by his side " one like unto the Son of Man."
 
 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 
 
 WHEN my father was in Brougliton Place Church, 
 we had a door-keeper called Jeems, and a formidable 
 little man and door-keeper he was ; of unknown age 
 and name, for he existed to us, and indeed still exists 
 to me, though he has been in his grave these six- 
 teen years, as Jeems, absolute and per se, no more 
 needing a surname than did or do Abraham or Isaac, 
 Samson or Nebuchadnezzar. We young people of 
 the congregation believed that he was out in '45, and 
 had his drum shot through and quenched at Cullo- 
 den ; and as for any indication on his huge and gray 
 visage of his ever having been young, he might safely 
 have been Bottom the weaver in A Midsummer 
 Night's Dream, or that excellent, ingenious, and 
 ''wise-hearted " Bezaleel, the son of Uri, whom Jeems 
 regarded as one of the greatest of men and of weavers, 
 and whose "ten curtains of fine twined linen, and 
 blue, and purple, and scarlet, each of them with fifty 
 loops on the edge of the selvedge in the coupling, 
 with their fifty taches of gold," he, in confidential 
 moments, gave it to be understood were the sacred 
 triumphs of his craft ; for, as you may infer, my 
 friend was a man of the treadles and the shuttle, as 
 well as the more renowned grandson of Hur.
 
 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 269 
 
 Jeems's face was so extensive, and met you so for- 
 midably and at once, that it mainly composed his 
 whole ; and such a face ! Sydney Smith used to say 
 of a certain quarrelsome man, " His very face is a 
 breach of the peace." Had he seen our friend's he 
 would have said he was the imperative mood on two 
 (very small) legs, out on business in a blue great-coat. 
 It was in the nose and the keen small eye that his 
 strength lay. Such a noae of power, so undeniable, 
 I never saw, except in what was said to be a bust 
 from the antique, of Rhadamanthus, the well-known 
 Justice Clerk of the Pagan Court of Session ! In- 
 deed when I was in the Rector's class, and watched 
 tTeems turning interlopers out of the church seats by 
 merely presenting before them this tremendous or- 
 gan, it struck me that if Rhadamanthus had still 
 been here, and out of employment, he would have 
 taken kindly to Jeems's work ; and that possibly he 
 was that potentate in a TJ. P. disguise. 
 
 Nature having fashioned the huge face, and laid 
 out much material and idea upon it, had finished off 
 the rest of Jeems somewhat scrimply, as if she had 
 run out of means ; his legs especially were of the 
 shortest, and as his usual dress was a very long blue 
 great-coat, made for a much taller man, its tails rest- 
 ing upon the ground, and its large hind buttons in a 
 totally preposterous position, gave him the look of 
 being planted, or rather after the manner of Milton's 
 beasts at the creation, in the act of emerging pain- 
 fully from his mother earth.
 
 270 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 
 
 Now, you may think this was a very ludicrous old 
 object. If you had seen him, you would not have 
 said so ; and not only was he a man of weight and 
 authority, he was likewise a genuine, indeed, a 
 deeply spiritual Christian, well-read in his Bible, in 
 his own heart and in hdman nature and life, know- 
 ing both its warp and woof ; more peremptory in mak- 
 ing himself obey his Master than in getting himself 
 obeyed, and this is saying a good deal ; and, like 
 all complete men, he had a genuine love and gift of 
 humor, 1 kindly and uncouth, lurking in those small, 
 deep-set gray eyes, shrewd and keen, which, like two 
 sharpest of shooters, enfiladed that massive and re- 
 doubtable bulwark, the nose. 
 
 One day two strangers made themselves over to 
 tTeems to be furnished with seats. Motioning them to 
 follow, he walked majestically to the farthest-in cor- 
 ner, where he had decreed they should sit. The 
 couple found seats near the door, and stepped into 
 them, leaving Jeems to march through the passages 
 alone, the whole congregation watching him with 
 some relish and alarm. He gets to his destination, 
 opens the door, and stands aside ; nobody appears. 
 He looks sharply round, and then gives a look of 
 
 1 On one occasion a descendant of Nabal having put a 
 crown piece into "the plate " instead of a penny, and start- 
 ing at its white and precious face, asked to have it back, and 
 was refused, "In once, in forever." "A weel, a \vcel," 
 grunted he, " I '11 get credit for it in heaven." " Na, na," said 
 Jeems, " ye '11 get credit only for the penny ! "
 
 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 271 
 
 general wrath " at lairge." No one doubted his vic- 
 tory. His nose and eye fell, or seemed to fall, on 
 the two culprits, and pulled them out instantly, hurry, 
 ing them to their appointed place ; Jeems snibbed 
 them slowly in, and gave them a parting look they 
 were not likely to misunderstand or forget. 
 
 At that time the crowds and the imperfect ventila- 
 tion made fainting a common occm'rence in Broughton 
 Place, especially among u thae young hizzies," as 
 Jeems called the servant girls. He generally came 
 to me, " the young Doctor," on these occasions with 
 a look of great relish. I had indoctrinated him in the 
 philosophy of syncopes, especially as to the propriety 
 of laying the " hizzies " quite flat on the floor of the 
 lobby, with the head as low as the rest of the body ; 
 and as many of these cases were owing to what Jeems 
 called " that bitter yerkin " of their bodices, he and 
 I had much satisfaction in relieving them, and giving 
 them a moral lesson, by cutting their stay-laces, 
 which ran before the knife, and cracked " like a bow- 
 string," as my coadjutor said. One day a young 
 lady was our care. She was lying out, and slowly 
 coming to. Jeems, with that huge terrific visage, 
 came round to me with his open gully in his hand, 
 whispering, " Wull oo ripp 'er up noo ? " It hap- 
 pened not to be a case for ripping up. The gully 
 was a great sanitary institution, and made a decided 
 inroad upon the yerking system, Jeems having, 
 thanks to this and Dr. Combe, every year fewer op- 
 portunities of displaying and enjoying its powers.
 
 272 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 
 
 He was sober in other things besides drink, could 
 be generous on occasion, but was careful of his siller ; 
 sensitive to fierceness (" we 're uncommon zeelyous 
 the day," was a favorite phrase when any church 
 matter was stirring) for the honor of his church and 
 minister, and to his too often worthless neighbors a 
 perpetual moral protest and lesson, a living epistle. 
 He dwelt at the head of Big Lochend's Close in the 
 Canongate, at the top of a long stair, ninety-six 
 steps, as I well know, where he had dwelt, all by 
 himself, for five and thirty years, and where, in the 
 midst of all sorts of Sittings and changes, not a day 
 opened or closed without the well-known sound of 
 Jeenis at his prayers, his "exercise," at "the 
 Books." His clear, fearless, honest voice in psalm and 
 chapter and strong prayer come sounding through 
 that wide " land," like that of one crying in the wil- 
 derness. 
 
 Jeems and I got great friends ; he called me John, 
 as if he was my grandfather ; and though as plain in 
 speech as in feature, he was never rude. I owe him 
 much in many ways. His absolute downrightness 
 and yaefauldness ; his energetic, unflinching fulfill- 
 ment of his work ; his rugged, sudden tenderness ; 
 his look of sturdy age, as the thick silver-white hair 
 lay on his serious and weatherworn face, like moon- 
 light on a stout old tower ; his quaint Old Testament 
 exegetics ; his lonely and contented life ; his simple 
 godliness, it was no small privilege to see much of 
 all this.
 
 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 273 
 
 But I must stop. I forget that you did n't know 
 him ; that he is not your Jeems. If it had been so, 
 you would not soon have wearied of telling or of 
 being told of the life and conversation of this " fell 
 body." He was not communicative about his early 
 life. He would sometimes speak to me about " her," 
 as if I knew who and where she was, and always 
 with a gentleness and solemnity unlike his usual gruff 
 ways. I found out that he had been married when 
 young, and that " she " (he never named her) and 
 their child died on the same day, the day of its 
 birth. The only indication of married life in his 
 room was an old and strong cradle, which he had cut 
 down so as to rock no more, and which he made the 
 depository of his books, a queer collection. 
 
 I have said that he had what he called, with a grave 
 smile, family worship, morning and evening, never 
 failing. He not only sang his psalm, but gave out or 
 chanted the line in great style ; and on seeing me one 
 morning surprised at this, he said, " Ye see, John, 00," 
 meaning himself and his wife, "began that way." 
 He had a firm, true voice, and a genuine though 
 roughish gift of singing ; and being methodical in all 
 things, he did what I never heard of in any one else, 
 he had seven fixed tunes, one of which he sang on 
 its own set day. Sabbath morning it was French, 
 which he went through with great birr. Monday, 
 Scarborough, which, he said, was like my father can- 
 tering. ^Tuesday, Coleshill, that soft, exquisite air, 
 monotonous and melancholy, soothing and vague, like
 
 274 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 
 
 the sea. This day, Tuesday, was the day of the week 
 on which his wife and child died, and he always sang 
 more verses then than on any other. Wednesday 
 was Irish ; Thursday, Old Hujidred ; Friday, Ban- 
 f/or ; and Saturday, Blackburn, that liumdrummest 
 of tunes, " as long, and lank, and lean, as is the ribbed 
 sea-sand." He could not defend it, but had some 
 secret reason for sticking to it. As to the evenings, 
 they were just the same tunes in reversed order, only 
 that on Tuesday night he sang Coleshill again, thus 
 dropping Blackburn for evening work. The children 
 could tell the day of the week by Jeems's tune, and 
 would have been as much astonished at hearing Ban- 
 gor on Monday, as at finding St. Giles's half-way 
 down the Canongate. 
 
 I frequently breakfasted with him. He made cap- 
 ital porridge, and I wish I could get such buttermilk, 
 or at least have such a relish for it, as in those days. 
 tleems is away, gone over to the majority ; and I 
 hope I may never forget to be grateful to the dear 
 and queer old man. I think I see and hear him 
 saying his grace over our bickers with their brats on, 
 then taking his two books out of the cradle and read- 
 ing, not without a certain homely majesty, the first 
 verse of the 99th Psalm, 
 
 ' ' Th' eternal Lord doth reign as king 1 , 
 
 Let all the people quake ; 
 He sits between the cherubims, 
 
 Let th' earth be moved and shake ; " 
 
 then launching out into the noble depths of Irish.
 
 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 275 
 
 His chapters were long, and his prayers short, very 
 scriptural, but by no means stereotyped, and wonder- 
 fully real, immediate, as if he was near Him whom he 
 addressed. Any one hearing the sound and not the 
 words, would say, "That man is speaking to some 
 one who is with him, who is present," as he 
 often said to me, " There 's nae gude dune, John, till 
 ye get to close grups" 
 
 Now, I dare say you are marveling, first, Why I 
 brought this grim old Rhadamanthus, Bezaleel, U. P. 
 Naso of a door-keeper up before you ; and secondly, 
 How I am to get him down decorously in that ancient 
 blue great-coat, and get at my own proper text. 
 
 And first of the first. I thought it would do you 
 young men the hope of the world no harm to let 
 your affections go out toward this dear, old-world 
 specimen of homespun worth. And as to the second, 
 I am going to make it my excuse for what is to come. 
 One day soon after I knew him, when I thought he 
 was in a soft, confidential mood, I said, "deems, 
 what kind of weaver are you? " " I'm in thefanci- 
 cal line, maister John," said he, somewhat stiffly; 
 " I like its leecence." So exit deems impiger, 
 iracundus, acer torvus visu placide quiescat ! 
 
 Now, my dear friends, I am in thefancical line as 
 well as deems, and in virtue of my leecence, I begin 
 my exegetical remarks on the pursuit of truth. By 
 the by, I should have told Sir Henry that it is truth, 
 not knowledge, I was to be after. Now all knowledge 
 should be true, but it is n't ; much of what is called
 
 276 JEEMS THE DOOR-KKEPER. 
 
 knowledge is very little worth even when true, and 
 much of the best truth is not in a strict sense know- 
 able, rather it is felt and believed. 
 Exegetical, you know, is the grand and fashionable 
 word now-a-days for explanatory ; it means bringing 
 out of a passage all that is in it, and nothing more. 
 For my part, being in Jeems's line, I am not so par- 
 ticular as to the nothing more. We fancical men 
 are much given to make somethings of nothings ; in- 
 deed, the noble Italians call imagination and poetic 
 fancy the little more ; its very function is to embel- 
 lish and intensify the actual and the common. Now 
 you must not laugh at me, or it, when I announce 
 the passage from which I mean to preach upon the 
 pursuit of truth, and the possession of wisdom : 
 
 " On Tintock tap there is a Mist, 
 And in the Mist there is a Kist, 
 And in the Kist there is a Cap ; 
 Tak' up the Cap and sup the drap, 
 And set the Cap on Tintock tap.'' 
 
 As to what Sir Henry * would call the context, we 
 are saved all trouble, there being none, the passage 
 being self-contained, and as destitute of relations as 
 Melchisedec. 
 
 Tintock, you all know, or should know, is a big 
 porphyritic hill in Lanarkshire, standing alone, and 
 dominating like a king over the Upper Ward. Then 
 we all understand what a mist is ; and it is worth 
 
 1 This was read to Sir Henry W. Moncrieff's Young Men's 
 Association. November, 18G2.
 
 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 277 
 
 remembering that as it is more difficult to penetrate, 
 to Illuminate, and to see through mist than darkness, 
 so it is easier to enlighten and overcome ignorance 
 than error, confusion, and mental mist. Then a kist 
 is Scotch for chest, and a cap the same for cup, and 
 drap for drop. Well, then, I draw out of these queer 
 old lines, 
 
 First, That to gain real knowledge, to get it at 
 first-hand, you must go up the Hill Difficulty, some 
 Tintock, something you see from afar, and you 
 must climb: you must energize, as Sir William Ham- 
 ilton and Dr. Chalmers said and did ; you must turn 
 your back upon the plain, and you must mainly go 
 alone, and on your own legs. Two boys may start 
 together on going up Tinto, and meet at the top ; but 
 the journeys are separate, each takes his own line. 
 
 Secondly, You start for your Tintock top with a 
 given object, to get into the mist and get the drop, 
 and you do this chiefly because you have the truth- 
 hunting instinct ; you long to know what is hidden 
 there, for there is a wild and urgent charm in the 
 unknown ; and you want to realize for yourself what 
 others, it may have been ages ago, tell they have 
 found there. 
 
 Thirdly, There is no road up ; no omnibus to the 
 top of Tinto ; you must zigzag it in your own way, 
 and as I have already said, most part of it alone. 
 
 Fourthly, This climbing, this exaltation, and buck- 
 ling to of the mind, of itself does you good ; : it is 
 
 1 "In this pursuit, whether we take or whether we lose our 
 game, the chase is certainly of service." Burke.
 
 278 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 
 
 capital exercise, and you find out many a thing by 
 the way. Your lungs play freely ; your mouth fills 
 with the sweet waters of keen action ; the hill tries 
 your wind and mettle, supples and hardens your 
 joints and limbs ; quickens and rejoices, while it tests 
 your heart. 
 
 Fifthly, You have many a fall, many a false step ; 
 you slip back, you tumble into a mosshagg ; you 
 stumble over the baffling stones ; you break your 
 shins and lose your temper, and the finding of it 
 makes you keep it better the next time ; you get 
 more patient, and yet more eager, and not unoften 
 you come to a stand-still ; run yourself up against, or 
 to the edge of some impossible precipice, some insolu- 
 ble problem, and have to turn for your life ; and you 
 may find yourself overhead in a treacherous wellec, 
 whose soft inviting cushion of green has decoyed 
 many a one before you. 
 
 Sixthly, You are forever mistaking the top ; think- 
 ing you are at it, when, behold ! there it is, as if far- 
 ther off than ever, and you may have to humble 
 yourself in a hidden valley before reascending ; and 
 so on you go, at times flinging yourself down on the 
 elastic heather, stretched panting with your face to 
 the sky, or gazing far away athwart the widening 
 horizon. 
 
 Seventhly, As you get up, you may see how the 
 world below lessens and reveals itself, comes up to 
 you as a whole, with its just proportions and rela- 
 tions ; how small the village you live in looks, and
 
 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 279 
 
 the house in which you were born ; how the plan of 
 the place comes out : there is the quiet churchyard, 
 and a lamb is nibbling at that infant's grave ; there, 
 close to the little church, your mother rests till the 
 great day ; and there far off you may trace the river 
 winding through the plain, coming like human life, 
 from darkness to darkness, from its source in some 
 wild, upland solitude to its eternity, the sea. But 
 you have rested long enough, so, up and away ! take 
 the hill once again ! Every effort is a victory and 
 joy, new skill and power and relish, takes you 
 farther from the world below, nearer the clouds and 
 heavens ; and you may note that the more you move 
 up towards the pure blue depths of the sky, the 
 more lucid and the more unsearchable, the farther 
 off, the more withdrawn into their own clear infinity 
 do they seem. Well, then, you get to the upper 
 story, and you find it less difficult, less steep than 
 lower down ; often so plain and level, that you can 
 run off in an ecstasy to the crowning cairn, to the 
 sacred mist, within whose cloudy shrine rests the 
 unknown secret ; some great truth of God and of 
 your own soul ; something that is not to be gotten 
 for gold down on the plain, but may be taken here ; 
 sometliing that no man can give or take away ; some- 
 thing that you must work for and learn yourself, and 
 which, once yours, is safe beyond the chances of 
 time. 
 
 Eighthly, You enter that luminous cloud, stooping 
 and as a little child, as, indeed, all the best king-
 
 280 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 
 
 doins are entered, and pressing on, you come in 
 the shadowy light, to the long-dreamt-of ark, the 
 chest. It is shut, it is locked ; but if you are the 
 man I take you to be, you have the key, put it gently 
 in, steadily, and home. But what is the key ? It is 
 the love of truth ; neither more nor less ; no other 
 key opens it ; no false one, however cunning, can 
 pick that lock ; no assault of hammer, however stout, 
 can force it open. But with its own key, a little 
 child may open it, often does open it, it goes so 
 sweetly, so with a will. You lift the lid ; you are all 
 alone; the cloud is round you with a sort of tender 
 light of its own, shutting out the outer world, filling 
 you with an eerie joy, as if alone and yet not alone. 
 You see the cup within, and in it the one crystalline, 
 unimaginable, inestimable drop ; glowing and tremu- 
 lous, as if alive. You take up the cup, you sup the 
 drop ; it enters into, and becomes of the essence of 
 yourself ; and so in humble gratitude and love, " in 
 sober certainty of waking bliss," you gently replace 
 the cup. It will gather again, it is forever ever 
 gathering ; no man, woman, or child ever opened 
 that chest, and found no drop in the cup. It might 
 not be the very drop expected ; it will serve their 
 purpose none the worse, often much the better. 
 
 And now, bending down, you shut the lid, which 
 you hear locking itself afresh against all but the sa- 
 cred key. You leave the now hallowed mist. You 
 look out on the old familiar world again, which some- 
 how looks both new and old. You descend, making
 
 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 281 
 
 your observations over again, throwing the light of 
 the present on the past ; and past and present set 
 against the boundless future. You hear coming up 
 to you the homely sounds the sheep-dog's bark, 
 " the cock's shrill clarion " from the farm at the 
 hill-foot ; you hear the ring of the blacksmith's study, 
 you see the smoke of his forge ; your mother's grave 
 has the long shadows of evening lying across it, the 
 sunlight falling on the letters of her name, and on 
 the number of her years ; the lamb is asleep in the 
 bield of the infant's grave. Speedily you are at 
 your own door. You enter with wearied feet, and 
 thankful heart ; you shut the door, and you kneel 
 down and pray to your Father in heaven, the Father 
 of lights, your reconciled Father, the God and Fa- 
 ther of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and our 
 God and Father in and through him. And as you 
 lie down on your own delightful bed, before you fall 
 asleep you think over again your ascent of the Hill 
 Difficulty, its baffling heights, its reaches of dreary 
 moorland, its shifting gravel, its precipices, its quag- 
 mires, its little wells of living waters near the top, 
 and all its " dread magnificence ; " its calm, restful 
 summit, the hush of silence there, the all-aloneness of 
 the place and hour ; its peace, its sacredness, its di- 
 vineness. You see again the mist, the ark, the cup, 
 the gleaming drop, and recalling the sight of the 
 world below, the earth and all its fullness, you say to 
 yourself,
 
 282 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 
 
 " These are thy glorious works, Parent of good, 
 Almighty, thine this universal frame, 
 Thus wondrous fair ; thyself how wondrous then ! 
 Unspeakable, who sitt'st above these heavens." 
 
 And finding the burden too heavy even for these glo- 
 rious lines, you take refuge in the Psalms, 
 
 " Praise ye the Lord. 
 
 Praise ye the Lord from the heavens : praise him in the 
 
 heights. 
 
 Praise him in the firmament of his power. 
 Praise ye him, all his angels : praise ye him, all his hosts. 
 Praise ye him, sun and moon : praise him, all ye stars of 
 
 light. 
 
 Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps ; 
 Fire and hail ; snow and vapor ; stormy wind fulfilling his 
 
 word : 
 
 Mountains, and all hills ; fruitful trees, and all cedars ; 
 Beasts, and all cattle ; creeping things, and flying fowl : 
 Kings of the earth, and all people ; princes and all judges of 
 
 the earth ; 
 
 Both young men and maidens ; old men and children : 
 Let them praise the name of the Lord : 
 For his name alone is excellent ; his glory is above the earth 
 
 and heaven. 
 
 Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. 
 BLESS THE LORD, my soul ! " 
 
 I need hardly draw the moral of this our some- 
 what fancical exercitation and exegesis. You can all 
 make it out, such as it is. It is the toil, and the joy, 
 and the victory in the search of truth ; not the taking 
 on trust, or learning by rote, not by heart, what other 
 men count or call true ; but the vital appropriation,
 
 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 288 
 
 the assimilation of truth to ourselves, and of ourselves 
 to truth. All truth is of value, but one truth differs 
 from another in weight and in brightness, in worth ; 
 and you need not me to tell you that spiritual and 
 eternal truth, the truth as it is in Jesus, is the best. 
 And don't think that your own 'hand has gotten you 
 the victory, and that you had no unseen, and it may 
 be unfelt and unacknowledged, hand guiding you up 
 the hill. Unless the Lord had been at and on your 
 side, all your labor would have been in vain, and 
 worse. No two things are more inscrutable or less 
 uncertain than man's spontaneity and man's helpless- 
 ness, Freedom and Grace as the two poles. It 
 is his doing that you are led to the right hill and the 
 right road, for there are other Tintocks, with other 
 kists, and other drops. Work out, therefore, your 
 own knowledge with fear and trembling, for it is 
 God that worketh in you both to will and to do, and 
 to know of his good pleasure. There is no explaining 
 and there is no disbelieving this. 
 
 And now, before bidding you good by, did you 
 ever think of the spiritual meaning of the pillar of 
 cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night, as con- 
 nected with our knowledge and our ignorance, our 
 light and darkness, our gladness and our sorrow? 
 The every-day use of this divine alternation to the 
 wandering children of Israel is plain enough. Dark- 
 ness is best seen against light, and light against 
 darkness ; and its use, in a deeper sense of keeping 
 forever before them the immediate presence of God
 
 284 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 
 
 in the midst of them, is not less plain ; but I sometimes 
 think, that we who also are still in the wilderness, and 
 coming up from our Egypt and its flesh-pots, and on 
 our way, let us hope, through God's grace to the celes- 
 tial Canaan, may draw from these old-world signs and 
 wonders that, in the midday of knowledge, with day- 
 light all about us, there is, if one could but look for it, 
 that perpetual pillar of cloud, that sacred dark- 
 ness which haunts all human knowledge, often the 
 most at its highest noon ; that " look that threatens 
 the profane ; " that something, and above all, that 
 sense of Some One, that Holy One, who inhabits eter- 
 nity and its praises, who makes darkness his secret 
 place, his pavilion round about, darkness and thick 
 clouds of the sky. 
 
 And again, that in the deepest, thickest night of 
 doubt, of fear, of sorrow, of despair ; that then, and 
 all the most then, if we will but look in the right 
 airt, and with the seeing eye and the understanding 
 heart, there may be seen that Pillar of fire, of 
 light and of heat, to guide and quicken and cheer ; 
 knowledge and love, that everlasting love which we 
 know to be the Lord's. And how much better off 
 are we than the chosen people ; their pillars were on 
 earth, divine in their essence, but subject doubtless 
 to earthly perturbations and interferences ; but our 
 guiding light is in the heavens, towards which may 
 we take earnest heed that we are journeying. 
 
 " Once on the raging seas I rode, 
 
 The storm was loud, the night was dark ;
 
 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 
 
 The ocean yawned, and rudely Mowed 
 The wind that tossed my foundering bark. 
 
 " Deep horror then ray vitals froze, 
 
 Death-struck, I ceased the tide to stem, 
 When suddenly a star arose, 
 It was the Star of Bethlehem ! 
 
 " It was my guide, my light, my all, 
 
 It bade my dark foreboding cease ; 
 And through the storm and danger's thrall 
 It led me to the port in peace. 
 
 " Now safely moored, my perils o'er 
 I '11 sing first in night's diadem, 
 Forever and forevermore 
 
 The Star, the Star of Bethlehem ! " 
 
 285
 
 "OH, I'M WAT, WAT!" 
 
 " WHAT is love, Mary ? " said Seventeen to Thir- 
 teen, who was busy with her English lessons. 
 
 " Love ! what do you mean, John ? " 
 
 " I mean what 's love ? " 
 
 " Love 's just love, I suppose." 
 
 (Yes, Mary, you are right to keep by the concrete ; 
 analysis kills love as well as other things. I once 
 asked a useful - information young lady what her 
 mother was. " Oh, mamma 's a biped ! " I turned in 
 dismay to her younger sister, and said, What do you 
 say ? " Oh, my mother 's just my mother.") 
 
 " But what part of speech is it ? " 
 
 " It 's a substantive or a verb." (Young Home 
 Tooke did n't ask her if it was an active or passive, 
 an irregular or defective verb ; an inceptive, as ecu- 
 lesco, I grow warm, or dulcesco, I grow sweet ; a fre- 
 quentative or a desiderative, as nupturio, I desire to 
 marry.) 
 
 " I think it is a verb," said John, who was deep in 
 other diversions, besides those of Purley ; " and I 
 think it must have been originally the Perfect of 
 Live, like thrive throve, strive strove." 
 
 " Capital, John ! " suddenly growled Uncle Old-
 
 "OH, I'M WAT, WAT!" 287 
 
 buck, who was supposed to be asleep in his arm-chair 
 by the fireside, and who snubbed and supported the 
 entire household. " It was that originally, and it 
 will be our own faults, children, if it is not that at 
 last, as well as, ay, and more than at first. What 
 does Richardson say, John? read him out." John 
 reads 
 
 LOVE, v. s. To prefer, to desire, as an 
 
 -LESS. object of possession or enjoy- 
 
 -LY, ad. av. ment ; to delight in, to be 
 
 -LILY. pleased or gratified with, to 
 
 -LINESS. take pleasure or gratification 
 
 -ER hi, delight in. 
 
 -ING Love, the s. is app. emph. to 
 
 -INGLY. the passion between the sexes. 
 
 -INGNESS. Lover is, by old writers, app. 
 
 -ABLE. 1 as friend by male to male. 
 
 -SOME. 2 Love is much used pref. 
 
 -ERED. 8 ! Wiclif. 2 Chaucer. 3 Shak. 
 
 Love-locks, locks (of hair) to set off 
 the beauty ; the loveh'ness. 
 
 A. S. Luf-ian ; D. Lie-ven ; Ger. -ben, amare, 
 diligere. Waeh. derives from lieb, bonura, be- 
 cause every one desires that which is good : lieb, 
 it is more probable, is from lie!>-en, grateful, and 
 therefore good. It may at least admit a conjec- 
 ture that A. S. Liifian, to love, has a reason for 
 its application similar to th'at of L. Di-ligere (le- 
 gere, to gather), to take up or out (of a number), 
 to choose, sc. one in preference to another, to pre- 
 fer ; and that it is formed upon A. S. Hlif-ian, to 
 lift or take up, to pick up, to select, to prefer. 
 Be- Over- Un-
 
 288 "OH, I'M WAT, WAT!" 
 
 Uncle, impatiently. " Stuff ; ' grateful ! ' ' pick 
 up ! ' stuff ! These word-mongers know nothing about 
 it. Live, love ; that is it, the perfect of live." 1 
 
 After this, Uncle sent the cousins to their beds. 
 Mary's mother was in hers, never to rise from it 
 again. She was a widow, and Mary was her hus- 
 band's niece. The house quiet, Uncle sat down in 
 his chair, put his feet on the fender, and watched the 
 dying fire ; it had a rich central glow, but no flame 
 and no smoke, it was flashing up fitfully, and bit by 
 bit falling in. He fell asleep watching it, and when 
 he slept, he dreamed. He was young ; he was seven- 
 teen ; he was prowling about the head of North St. 
 David Street, keeping his eye on a certain door, 
 we call them common stairs in Scotland. He was 
 waiting for Mr. White's famous English class for 
 girls coming out. Presently out rushed four or five 
 girls, wild and laughing ; then came one, bounding 
 like a roe : 
 
 " Such eyes were in her head, 
 And so imicli grace and power ! " 
 
 She was surrounded by the rest, and away they 
 went laughing, she making them always laugh the 
 more. Seventeen followed at a safe distance, stucly- 
 
 1 They are strange beings, these lexicographers. Richard- 
 son, for instance, under the word SNAIL, gives this quotation 
 from Beaumont and Fletcher's Wit at Several Weapons, 
 
 " Oh, Master Poinpey ! how is 't, man ? 
 Claim. SNAILS, I 'm almost starved with love and cold, and one thin); 
 
 or other." 
 
 Any one else knows of course that it is " 's nails " the con- 
 traction of the old oath or interjection God's nails.
 
 " OH, i 'M WAT, WAT ! " 289 
 
 ing her small, firm, downright heel. The girls 
 dropped off one by one, and she was away home by 
 herself, swift and reserved. He, impostor as he was, 
 disappeared through Jamaica Street, to reappear and 
 meet her, walking as if on urgent business, and get- 
 ting a cordial and careless nod. This beautiful girl 
 of thirteen was afterwards the mother of our Mary, 
 and died in giving her birth. She was Uncle Old- 
 buck's first and only sweetheart : and here was he, 
 the only help our young Home Tooke and his 
 mother and Mary had. Uncle awoke, the fire dead, 
 and the room cold. He found himself repeating 
 Lady John Scott's lines 
 
 ' ' When thou art near me, 
 
 Sorrow seems to fly, 
 And then I think, as well I may, 
 That on this earth there is no one 
 
 More blest than I. 
 
 " But when thou leav'st me, 
 
 Doubts and fears arise, 
 And darkness reigns, 
 
 Where all before was light. 
 The sunshine of my soul 
 
 Is in those eyes, 
 And when they leave me 
 
 All the world is night. 
 
 " But when thou art near me, 
 
 Sorrow seems to fly, 
 And then I feel, as well I may, 
 That on this earth there dwells not one 
 
 So blest as I." 1 
 
 1 Can the gifted author of these lines and of their music not
 
 290 " OH, I 'M WAT, WAT ! " 
 
 Then taking down Chambers's Scottish Songs, he 
 read aloud : 
 
 " O I 'm wat, wat, 
 
 O I 'm wat and weary ; 
 Yet fain wad I rise and rin, 
 
 If I thocht I would meet my dearie. 
 Aye waukin,' O ! 
 
 Waukin' aye, and weary ; 
 Sleep I can get nane 
 
 For thinkin' o' my dearie. 
 
 " Simmer 's a pleasant time, 
 Flowers o' every color ; 
 The winter rins ower the heugh, 
 And I long for my true lover. 
 
 " When I sleep I dream, 
 
 When I wauk I 'm eerie, 
 Sleep I can get nane, 
 
 For thinkin' o' my dearie. 
 
 " Lanely nicht comes on, 
 
 A' the lave are sleepin ' ; 
 I think on my true love, 
 
 And blear my e'en wi' greetiii'. 
 
 " Feather beds are saf t 
 
 Pentit rooms are bonnie ; 
 But ae kiss o' my dear love 
 Better 's far than ony. 
 
 " O for Friday nicht ! 
 
 Friday at the gloamin' ; 
 O for Friday nicht 
 
 Friday 's lang o' comin' ! " 
 
 be prevailed on to give them and others to the world, as well 
 as her friends ?
 
 "OH, I'M WAT, WAT!" 291 
 
 This love-song, which Mr. Chambers gives from 
 recitation, is, thinks Uncle to himself, all but perfect ; 
 Burns, who in almost every instance not only adorned, 
 but transformed and purified, whatever of the old he 
 touched, breathing into it his own tenderness and 
 strength, fails here as may be seen in reading his 
 version. 
 
 " Oh, spring 1 's a pleasant time ! 
 
 Flowers o' every color 
 The sweet bird builds her nest, 
 
 And I lang for my lover. 
 Aye wakin', oh ! 
 
 Wakin' aye and wearie ; 
 Sleep I can get nane, 
 
 For thinkin' o' my dearie ! 
 
 " When I sleep I dream, 
 
 When I wauk I 'm eerie, 
 Rest I canna get, 
 
 For thinkin' o' my dearie. 
 Aye wakin', oh ! 
 
 Wakin' aye and weary ; 
 Come, come, blissful dream, 
 
 Bring me to my dearie. 
 
 u Darksome nicht comes doun 
 
 A' the lave are sleepin' ; 
 I think on my kind lad, 
 
 And blin' my een wi' greetin'. 
 Aye wakin', oh ! 
 
 Wakin' aye and wearie ; 
 Hope is sweet, but ne'er 
 
 Sae sweet as my dearie ! " 
 
 How weak these italics ! No one can doubt which of
 
 292 "OH, I'M WAT, WAT!" 
 
 these is the better. The old song is perfect in the 
 procession, and in the simple beauty of its thoughts 
 and words. A ploughman or shepherd for I hold 
 that it is a man's song comes in " wat, wat " after 
 a hard day's work among the furrows, or on the hill. 
 The watness of wat, wat, is as much wetter than wet 
 as a Scotch mist is more of a mist than an English 
 one ; and he is not only wat, wat, but " weary," long- 
 ing for a dry skin and a warm bed and rest ; but no 
 sooner said and felt, than, by the law of contrast, he 
 thinks on " Mysie " or " Ailie," his Genevieve ; and 
 then " all thoughts, all passions, all delights," begin 
 to stir him, and "fain wad I rise and rin (what a 
 swiftness beyond run is "rin"!). Love now makes 
 him a poet ; the true imaginative power enters and 
 takes possession of him. By this time his clothes are 
 off, and he is snug in bed ; not a wink can he sleep ; 
 that " fain " is domineering over him, and he 
 breaks out into what is as genuine passion and poetry 
 as anything from Sappho to Tennyson abrupt, 
 vivid, heedless of syntax. " Simmer 's a pleasant 
 time." Would any of our greatest geniuses, being 
 limited to one word, have done better than take 
 " pleasant ? " and then the fine vagueness of " time " ! 
 " Flowers o' every color ; " he gets a glimpse of 
 " herself a fairer flower," and is off in pursuit. 
 " The water rins ower the heugh " (a steep precipice) ; 
 flinging itself wildly, passionately over, and so do I 
 long for my true lover. Nothing can be simpler and 
 finer than
 
 " OH, i 'M WAT, WAT ! " 293 
 
 " When I sleep, I dream ; 
 
 When I wauk, I 'm eerie." 
 
 "Lanely nicht ; " how much richer and touching than 
 " darksome." " Feather beds are saft ; " " paintit 
 rooms are bonnie ; " I would infer from this, that his 
 " dearie," his " true love," was a lass up at " the 
 big house " a dapper Abigail possibly at Sir 
 William's at the Castle, and then we have the final 
 paroxysm upon Friday nicht Friday at the gloam- 
 in' ! for Friday nicht ! Friday 's laug o'comin' ! 
 it being very likely Thursday before daybreak, 
 when this affectionate ululatus ended in repose. 
 
 Now, is not this rude ditty, made very likely by 
 some clumsy, big-headed Galloway herd, full of the 
 real stuff of love ? He does not go off upon her eye- 
 brows, or even her eyes ; he does not sit down, and 
 in a genteel way announce that " love in thine eyes 
 forever sits," etc., etc., or that her feet look out from 
 under her petticoats like little mice : he is far past 
 that ; he is not making love, he is in it. This is one 
 and a chief charm of Burns's love-songs, which are 
 certainly of all love-songs except those wild snatches 
 left to us by her who flung herself from the Leucadian 
 rock, the most in earnest, the tenderest, the " most 
 moving delicate and full of life." Burns makes you 
 feel the reality and the depth, the truth of his passion ; 
 it is not her eyelashes, or her nose, or her dimple, or 
 even 
 
 " A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops 
 I' the bottom of a cowslip,''
 
 294 "OH, I'M WAT, WAT!" 
 
 that are " winging the fervor of his love ; " not even 
 her soul ; it is herself. This concentration and 
 earnestness, this perfervor of our Scottish love poetry, 
 seems to me to contrast curiously with the light, 
 trifling philandering of the English ; indeed, as far 
 as I remember, we have almost no love -songs in 
 English, of the same class as this one, or those of 
 Burns. They are mostly either of the genteel, or of 
 the nautical (some of these capital), or of the comic 
 school. Do you know the most perfect, the finest 
 love-song in our or in any language ; the love being 
 affectionate more than passionate, love in possession 
 not in pursuit ? 
 
 " Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast 
 
 On yonder lea, on yonder lea, 
 My plaidie to the angry airt, 
 
 I 'd shelter thee, I 'd shelter thee : 
 Or did Misfortune's bitter storms 
 
 Around thee blaw, around thee blaw, 
 Thy bield should be my bosom, 
 
 To share it a', to share it a'. 
 
 " Or were I in the wildest waste, 
 
 Sae black and bare, sae black and bare, 
 The desert were a paradise, 
 
 If thou wert there, if thou wert there : 
 Or were I monarch o' the globe, 
 
 Wi' thee to reign, wi' thee to reign, 
 The brightest jewel in my crown 
 
 Wad be my queen, wad be my queen." 
 
 The following is Mr. Chambers's account of the 
 origin of this song : Jessy Lewars had a call one
 
 " OH, i 'M WAT, WAT ! " 295 
 
 morning from Burns. He offered, if she would play 
 him any tune of which she was fond, and for which 
 she desired new verses, that he would do his best to 
 gratify her wish. She sat down at the piano, and 
 played over and over the air of an old song, begin- 
 ning with the words, 
 
 " The robin cam' to the wren's nest 
 
 And keekit in, and keekit in : 
 ' weel 's me on your auld pow ! 
 Wad ye be in, wad ye be in ? 
 Ye'se ne'er get leave to lie without, 
 
 And I within, and I within, 
 As lung 's I hae an auld clout, 
 To row ye in, to row ye in. ' " 
 
 Uncle now took his candle, and slunk off to bed, 
 slipping up noiselessly that he might not disturb the 
 thin sleep of the sufferer, saying to himself " I 'd 
 shelter thee, I 'd shelter thee ; " " If thou wert there, 
 if thou wert there ; " and though the morning was at 
 the window, he was up by eight, making breakfast 
 for John and Mary. 
 
 Love never f aileth ; but whether there be prophe- 
 cies, they shall fail ; whether there be tongues, they 
 shall cease ; whether there be knowledge, it shall 
 vanish away ; but love is of God, and cannot fail.
 
 HER LAST HALF-CROWN. 
 
 HUGH MILLER, the geologist, journalist, and man 
 of genius, was sitting in his newspaper office late one 
 dreary winter night. The clerks had all left and he 
 was preparing to go, when a quick rap came to the 
 door. He said " Come in," and looking towards the 
 entrance, saw a little ragged child all wet with sleet. 
 "Are ye Hugh Miller?" "Yes." "Mary Duff 
 wants ye." " What does she want ? " " She 's deein." 
 Some misty recollection of the name made him at 
 once set out, and with his well-known plaid and stick, 
 he was soon striding after the child, who trotted 
 through the now deserted High Street, into the Can- 
 ongate. By the time he got to the Old Playhouse 
 Close, Hugh had revived his memory of Mary Duff : 
 a lively girl who had been bred up beside him in 
 Cromarty. The last time he had seen her was at a 
 brother mason's marriage, where Mary was " best 
 maid," and he " best man." He seemed still to see 
 her bright young careless face, her tidy short gown, 
 and her dark eyes, and to hear her bantering, merry 
 tongue. 
 
 Down the close went the ragged little woman, and 
 up an outside stair, Hugh keeping near her with diffi-
 
 HER LAST HALF-CROWN. 297 
 
 culty; in the passage she held out her hand and 
 touched him ; taking it in his great palm, he felt that 
 she wanted a thumb. Finding her way like a cat 
 through the darkness, she opened a door, and saying 
 " That 's her ! " vanished. By the light of a dying 
 fire he saw lying in the corner of the large empty 
 room something like a woman's clothes, and on draw- 
 ing nearer became aware of a thin pale face and two 
 dark eyes looking keenly but helplessly up at him. 
 The eyes were plainly Mary Duff's, though he could 
 recognize no other feature. She wept silently, gazing 
 steadily at him. " Are you Mary Duff ? " " It 's a' 
 that's o' me, Hugh." She then tried to speak to 
 him, something plainly of great urgency, but she 
 could n't, and seeing that she was very ill, and was 
 making herself worse, he put half-a-crown into her 
 feverish hand, and said he would call again in the 
 morning. He could get no information about her 
 from the neighbors ; they were surly or asleep. 
 
 When he returned next morning, the little girl met 
 him at the stair-head, and said " She 's deid." He 
 went in, and found that it was true ; there she lay, 
 the fire out, her face placid, and the likeness to her 
 maiden self restored. Hugh thought he would have 
 known her now, even with those bright black eyes 
 closed as they were, in ceternum. 
 
 Seeking out a neighbor, he said he would like to 
 bury Mary Duff, and arranged for the funeral with 
 an undertaker in the close. Little seemed to be 
 known of the poor outcast, except that she was a
 
 298 HER LAST HALF-CROWN. 
 
 " licht," or, as Solomon would have said, a " strange 
 woman." " Did she drink ? " " Whiles." 
 
 On the day of the funeral one or two residents in 
 the close accompanied him to the Canongate Church- 
 yard. He observed a decent-looking little old woman 
 watching them, and following at a distance, though 
 the day was wet and bitter. After the grave was 
 filled, and he had taken off his hat, as the men fin- 
 ished their business by putting on and slapping the 
 sod, he saw this old woman, remaining. She came 
 up and, courtesying, said, " Ye wad ken that lass, 
 sir ? " " Yes ; I knew her when she was young." 
 The woman then burst into tears, and told Hugh that 
 she " keepit a bit shop at the Closemooth, and Mary 
 dealt wi' me, and aye paid reglar, and I was feared 
 she was dead, for she had been a month awin' me 
 half-a-crown : " and then with a look and voice of 
 awe, she told him how on the night he was sent for, 
 and immediately after he had left, she had been 
 awakened by some one in her room ; and by her 
 bright fire for she was a bein, well-to-do body 
 she had seen the wasted, dying creature, who came 
 forward and said, " Was n't it half-a-crowu ?" " Yes." 
 " There it is," and putting it under the bolster, van- 
 ished ! 
 
 Alas for Mary Duff ! her career had been a sad 
 one since the day when she had stood side by side with 
 Hugh at the wedding of their friends. Her father 
 died not long after, and her mother supplanted her 
 in the affections of the man to whom she had given
 
 HER LAST HALF-CROWN. 299 
 
 her heart. The shock was overwhelming, and made 
 home intolerable. Mary fled from it blighted and 
 embittered, and after a life of shame and sorrow, 
 crept into the corner of her wretched garret, to die 
 deserted and alone ; giving evidence in her latest act 
 that honesty had survived amid the wreck of nearly 
 every other virtue. 
 
 " My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are 
 your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the 
 heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways 
 higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your 
 thoughts."
 
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