The Letters of John Stuart BlacKie to his Wife, With a few earlier ones to his Parents. Selected and Edited by his Nephew, A. STODART WALKER. SECOND IMPRESSION. Some Press Opinions. The Athenaeum. " This selection from his correspondence amply justifies its ap- pearance, so contagious is its optimism, so genuine its wisdom." Saturday Review. " His letters exhibit him with all his verve, humour, sagacity, naivete", and joy in life, in societies that are attractive to every class of reader. The letters of such a clever and versatile man, a pure and transparent moral character of high ideals and poetic sentiment, will have a far-reaching influence." The Scotsman. " Spontaneous, with the unfettered spontaneity which we would expect from even a cursory knowledge of his character, frank and sincere, they reveal his thoughts in a variety of situations and in diverse companies with a fulness and adequacy which will serve to increase an already high admiration. . . . The most de- lightful book of random recollections published for many years." 2 The Letters of John Stuart BlacKie Con tin ued. The Observer. " The book is an inspiriting revelation of a singularly beautiful and lovable character." The Westminster Gazette. " No one who reads the letters here brought together will have any doubt of the truth of the title which Mr Stodart Walker applies to Professor Blackie ' The happiest man of his century.' The letters cover a period of sixty years, and besides enabling us to come to close quarters with a very remarkable personality, they supply interesting glimpses of the most prominent men of the nineteenth century, in politics, art, and literature." The Daily Chronicle. " The letters display, on a scale of rare intellectual grandeur and winsomeness, the real Blackie as the prophet of beauty and the friend of freedom, and the Scot who was none the less a genuine patriot for claiming 'a world-wide Fatherland.'" The Glasgow Herald. (< Nothing that has been written upon the late Professor Blackie can be brought into even distant comparison with this volume as a revelation of a very remarkable personality." Bookman. " The ' meatiest,' wisest, and most entertaining volume of letters of recent years." WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON. NOTES OF A LIFE JOHN STUART BLACKIE IN 1835. NOTES OF A LIFE BY JOHN STUART BLACKIE EDITED BY HIS NEPHEW A. STODART WALKER WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MCMX ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DEDICATION TO THE RIGHT HON. THE EARL OF ROSE BE RY, K.G., K.T. DEAR LORD ROSEBERY, To no man living is the dedication of John Stuart Blackie's ' Notes of a Life ' more appropriate than to you. I was but a boy when I was brought into sympathy with your sane yet generous outlook upon life, by the enthusiasm so characteristic of him whose autobiographical notes are printed here. The impressions received in the past have been deepened by the study of your attitude in the present. Imperial and inclusive as your interests are, they have not made you forget that you are a Scotsman, who has wisely denned Patriotism as " the self-respect of race." The noble sentiments which you expressed to the under- graduates of Edinburgh University in 1882, you express as eloquently to-day. Amongst the many calls to sanity which you address to the people of these isles will not be missed those you direct more particularly 263118 vi DEDICATION to Scotsmen, and from that warm and inspiring, yet wise, standpoint which would, I am sure, have aroused the gratitude and admiration of John Stuart Blackie. German in training, Greek in spirit, and cosmopolitan in sympathy, my uncle remained ever a perfervid advocate for the land of his birth, which he loved with a passion that was invariably noble and seldom irrelevant. It would have been a gratification to him to know that you had accepted the dedication of the autobiography of one who viewed Scotland and Scotsmen in a kindred spirit, and who esteemed you so highly both as a wise patriot and a loyal friend. Yours very truly, A. STODART WALKER. November 1910. EDITOKIAL NOTE. IN 1869, at the age of 60, John Stuart Blackie commenced an Autobiography, and within two years completed seven chapters. From the earliest days of her acquaintance with the cousin who was to become her husband, Mrs Stuart Blackie had carefully pre- served the epistles he had addressed to her, along with a liberal selection from the letters written to John Stuart Blackie by his contemporaries. The accumu- lation of an astonishing amount of documentary material suggested to Mrs Blackie the alternative of a biography to that of a personal memoir. With that graceful adaptability, so characteristic in his domestic affairs, the person chiefly concerned consented to allow the analysis of his varied career to pass into the hands of another, not, it may be added, without a mild but genial protest as to the incapacity of an outsider to estimate aright the motives and forces which governed his ingenuous though apparently complex character. Accordingly the idea of an Autobiography was put aside, and Mrs Blackie, who, throughout a long married life viii EDITORIAL NOTE of unbroken felicity, had acted as the responsible guardian of her husband's interests, looked out for a suitable Clio. Eventually the choice fell upon Miss Anna Stoddart, whose biography of her father, the famed poet -angler of the Tweed, had more than assured her excellent qualifications for the task. Her gracefully penned, discriminate, yet sympathetic 'Life of John Stuart Blackie,' published in 1896 by Messrs Black- wood, a year after the " poet, patriot, and philosopher " had been laid to rest with all national honours, was an instant success, and passed rapidly into several editions. But, though founded partly upon the ' Notes of a Life ' here printed, the fact remains that these autobio- graphical records and reflections constitute in themselves a human document so worthy of appearing alone in their original form, that little apology seems needed for their publication by the House from which John Stuart Blackie made his first excursion into the world of letters. They form a fit supplement or, better, an effective prelude to ' The Letters of John Stuart Blackie to his Wife/ which I had the privilege of selecting and editing last year. Those letters opened out vistas of personal intercourse that these ' Notes ' do not attempt to reveal, although the analyses of certain characters famed in the Arts, in Learning, and in the Public service, are not wanting. With regard to one chapter, that dealing with Politics, the time seems particularly ripe for a re- statement of John Stuart Blackie's political creed. The EDITORIAL NOTE ix danger associated with the free play of an unlimited democracy, in shattering the stability and security of the State, is no longer a mere dream or the nebula of an academic mind ; and the point of view of a philo- sophical yet practical Liberal of the old school upon the evolution and progress of the ultra-democratic shibboleth, taken forty years ago, will be read with an appropriate freshness and fitness in the critical moments of the present. The principles of confiscation, based on com- munistic fallacies, inspired by no ideals higher than the crude aspirations of the doctrinaire or the brutally frank credentials of the demagogue, are being asserted in every phase of our economic and political life, and the reflections of a detached observer may arouse some spirit of enthusiasm amongst that large mass of moderate and reasonable opinion which seems, so far, content with a policy of drift or one of despair. Chapter viii. and onwards are chiefly taken up with notes of travel, and are altogether too voluminous for transcription here. They must remain in manuscript till such a time as there seems a call for the publica- tion of the extensive Wanderjahre of an impassioned yet discerning philosopher. A. STODART WALKEK. xii CONTENTS PACK Speculative Society Rhetorical Training Edward Horsman Public Speaking Sheriff Gordon Aytoun Moncrieff Campbell Swiuton Juridical Society, Law John Inglis Glassford Bell Logan Horn Andrew Jameson Artists Harvey D. 0. Hill Art Criticism Medical Men Phreno- logy, Combe Dr Samuel Brown Edward Forbes The Oineromathic Society George Wilson Dr John Brown The Rev. Dr Brown The Confession of Faith Periodical Writings and Criticism . . . . .67 CHAPTEE IV. 1839-1851. THE ABERDEEN CHAIR OF HUMANITY. Professor in Aberdeen A Whig Job Dr Melvin Confession of Faith, Subscription Introductory Lecture Grammatical Scholarship and large Philology Low state of Learning in Aberdeen Thomson of Banchory My aptitude for Teaching How to treat Boys Socratic Teaching The Professional Method, Lecturing English Scholarship Hellenic Society Classical Studies Popular Lectures Extempore Speaking George Dawson The Aberdeen Philosophical Society Duguid Milne, Mill, Dr Findlater My Wife The Water-CureVisit to Germany How ' ^Eschylus ' was published German Phil- ologers, Brandes, Welcher Max Duncker . . .118 CHAPTER V. 1851-1882. EDINBURGH. GREEK. Election to the Greek Chair University Patronage Teaching of Greek in Scottish Universities Visit to Greece Modern Greek Greek Pronunciation Professional Activity, Homer Book 'On Beauty,' ^Esthetics ' Lays and Legends of Ancient CONTENTS xiii PAGE Greece ' Highland Depopulation Lyrical Poems, ' Musa Burschicosa ' 'Lays of the Highlands and Islands' 'Wise Men of Greece ' On Poetical Publication, Advice to Young Rhymers Prose Works, ' Self-Culture ' ' Four Phases of Morals ' 157 CHAPTER VI. POLITICS. A non-Party Man Tory and Liberal The Reform Bill of 1832 Jeffrey and the ' Edinburgh ' Reviewers Lord Beaconsfield's Reform Bill Protest against Extreme Democracy Hailed as a Tory Disputation against Democracy, Ernest Jones The Constitutional Association Lord Beaconsfield 'Lothair' Lord Rowton Russo-Turkish War Criticism of Gladstone's Policy Liberal Party and Foreign Policy Gladstone and Disraeli Reform of the House of Lords Lord Rosebery Anti-Home Ruler Study of Gladstone's Character . . 208 CHAPTER VII. RELIGION. TYPES. Confessions: Personal The Fall: Gen. iii. The Atonement Principles of Hermeneutics : Paul and Jesus Churches : Episcopacy and Presbytery Dr Robert Lee The Disruption : The Free Church Dr Guthrie Dr Chalmers Dean Ramsay Dr Norman Macleod Pulpit Reform Confession of Faith : Ejection of Professor Robertson Smith Dr Begg The Church and the Theatre Sabbatarianism . . 262 NOTES OF A LIFE. CHAPTER I. 1809-1829. PARENTAGE BOYHOOD MEMORIES MARISCHAL COLLEGE, ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY RELIGIOUS MORBIDITY EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY "CHRISTOPHER NORTH" PROFESSORS MEARNS AND LAURENCE BROWN LATIN THE LEARNING OF LANGUAGES DR PATRICK FORBES SCIENCE EVANGELICALS AND MODERATES DR FORSYTH METHODS OF LIFE. I WRITE these notes for my own improvement in the great work of self-knowledge, and for the sake of others, if any care to know ; for surely a man, if he chooses, can tell more about himself than any other person, and really truthful biographies are, I suppose, amongst the rarest of recorded things. I desire to commence, like Marcus Antoninus, with thanking God for the good stock in trade, so to speak, which I inherited from my parents for the business of life. I derived from my parents a good constitution and a mind pretty fairly balanced between outward and in- A 2 NOTES OF A LIFE ward tendencies, though with a decided leaning to the latter. My father was a man of great vigour, both mental and bodily; made mainly for action and enjoy- ment, but with a discursive habit of thought, a turn for philosophical speculation, and freedom from all narrow ideas. He sang a good song, was the life of every party where he appeared, and would have been much the better of being in a larger sphere than as an Aberdeen banker. He had great sagacity and know- ledge of the world, and would have made a capital member of Parliament. My mother died when I was ten years old, and I remember her only as everything that was womanly and motherly. The Lanarkshire Stodarts, to whom she belonged, are a well -conditioned breed of people, and I have no doubt I owe much of what is best in my moral and emotional nature to her. Of my school years I have very little to record. I have no juvenile sorrows to lament, and no juvenile bliss to commemorate. In after years I never could understand why people talked of their infancy in such sentimental terms. My boyish years, on review, I consider to have been pleasant enough on the whole, but rather empty and stupid. I do not mean that I found them empty at the time. I only know certainly now that they were very empty, as compared with the wealth of incident and the intensity of enjoyment that belong to my manly years. I might wish to retain for ever the mixed elements of youth and manhood that SCHOOL 3 belong to middle age, to the season between twenty and forty, but I never could seriously desire to have been eternally a boy. A boy is a fruitful thing for a thoughtful spectator to contemplate, but a somewhat barren and very imperfect thing to be. However, I was quite happy in my boyhood in the measure that happiness belongs to that age, and have not a single memorial sorrow to recall. At school I learned my lessons carefully, kept at the top of my class or quite close to it, and enjoyed peg-tops, marbles, " Eobbers and Hangers," and other sports in their season, with that healthy gusto that belongs to all normally constituted British youths. Only in one thing, I think, was I superior to some of my schoolfellows I never had any fancy for cruel sports : I never assisted at hanging cats ; nor was I in the least given to fighting. I had a positive aversion to drawing blood from the face of a fellow- being; the sight of blood is naturally sickening to me. I have twice fainted in my life, and both times at the sight of blood ; once the blood of sheep in a slaughter- house, and at another time human blood, mine own, when I broke the neck of a bottle, and the broken glass cut my hand severely. The fainting in this latter case was not in the least from loss of blood, but from a mere mental revulsion. I got my lessons, as I said, carefully; but I cannot say that proceeded from any particular love either of books or lessons. I imagine it was merely from the natural energy of my character, with an ambitious 4 NOTES OF A LIFE impulse that did not like to be second where there was a fair chance of being first. I was put into a little world the school where action was the law, and it was contrary to my nature to be lazy or to be last. I was called up to act for honour and glory with my equals, and I did my best with decision. That was the whole secret of my school activity. Any particular appetite for such knowledge as books have to communi- cate, beyond what may be common to all intelligent boys, I do not recollect that I possessed. But a deter- mination to be first, a burning shame of being beaten, I can recall as an early instinct in my breast, and ambitious I have remained. I have always loved to do great things that is, that relatively to me were great things and difficult things, with a high, strong intensity of purpose, and a dogged determination not to be baffled. When left to myself, of course, I had my amusements, and reading no doubt was one of them, but I never was a voracious reader. I read ' Eobinson Crusoe/ ' Pere- grine Pickle/ 'Koderick Eandom/ and the 'Pilgrim's Progress/ Kollin's 'Ancient History/ and all Walter Scott's novels as they came out. Of poetry I read nothing except Burns and Shakespeare. My early devo- tion to the great dramatist depended, no doubt, less on my admiration of his poetical power than a pleasure I had in spouting sounding speeches, and a passion, common with most boys, which I always had for theatrical repre- sentations. When my father went to the play on any occasion, and did not take me with him, I revenged CHARACTERISTICS OF BOYHOOD 5 myself by going up to my room and reading the whole play through before the party came back. From this habit, and the love of spouting, I became perfectly familiar with the great speeches in Eichard III., Mac- beth, Hamlet, Othello, and the other acted plays of Shakespeare, at an early age. My love of spouting also displayed itself in an absurd, and, I am afraid, to those in my immediate neighbourhood, sometimes annoying fashion, by a habit I had of fastening upon some maxim or pithy sentence, and repeating it through the house again and again and again, more than a dozen of times a- day at least, till I became tired of it, and in due season got hold of another. " I tell you for the nine hundred and ninety -ninth time there is nothing like uncommon strength ! " " Dandy young buck, dost thou possess the beauties of nature ? " These are two of my favourite sentences that still ring in my ear, and they are characteristic, as I have always been a worshipper of energy to the detriment of tenderness, and a despiser of trimness and smugness in the apparel of men to a degree of one-sidedness, out of which I always require to reason myself. A spruce young gentleman, who looks as if he had newly come out of a bandbox, I am natur- ally inclined to hold cheap, from the presumption, I suppose, that an extraordinary amount of care bestowed on the outer man is not likely to be an indication of any great internal strength or serious occupation with more important matters. But external indications of this kind are not always true ; they are as liable to 6 NOTES OF A LIFE modifications from a thousand incalculable influences as handwriting; and even where neat dress is a genuine expression of a serious care for small externals, this may not imply any culpable neglect of more serious internals. A shaggy-maned horse is nothing the weaker for having its mane well combed. I am sorry I cannot follow the example of St Augustine, in mustering up the sins of my boyish days and launching a fulminating self - condemnation against them. I am not conscious of any great iniquity that I committed in those boyish days. Only one wicked habit I had, for which I remember several times being soundly flogged by my father, for in those days fathers thought it their duty to flog sometimes, and they were right, the wicked habit of persecuting one of the servant -girls, whom I chose not to like, by calling her certain opprobrious names. When- ever the poor girl appeared at the pantry - door, as certainly was I seen on the stair, shooting my verbal stigma at her with as keen a delight as a fox-hunter's chasing his game. I cannot recall any cause of offence this poor girl gave to me. I did not like her, and I would give vent to my dislike, and I would not be baffled. The persistent obstinacy with which I carried on this petty persecution notwithstanding the flog- ging this love of assault, and this determination not to be baffled, reveal a certain militant element in my character which has often given cause of lamentation to my friends, but of which I see no cause to be JUVENILE REFRACTORINESS. 7 ashamed. Only the altogether unreasonable and un- kindly exercise of those belligerent propensities in this case I acknowledge and lament. Other habitual sins in my earliest days I can recollect none. Once I told a lie ; but the occasion was an unusual one, and a severe trial to juvenile flesh. I had a notable hatred to broth, that is, vulgar Scotch broth, of which chopped vegetables are the chief ingredients; but this was a palatal fancy which the severe disciplinarians of those days did not think it proper to indulge; so I was forced by sheer compulsion to swallow my broth. One day, I recollect, in an upper chamber, the scene at this moment being distinctly graven in my brain the mid-day meal was being enacted between one and two o'clock ; then as usual I began to kick, and protest violently against the broth, and with such emphatic determination, that perhaps I might have succeeded for the time, had there not been present on that occasion one of those stern, hard-faced, unmarried ladies I do not remember whether it was an aunt or only a family friend who are always at hand to lend their aid to nerve the wavering arm of maternal discipline. This lady took the shortest and most efficient way to stop my protestations by putting a funnel into my mouth and forcing the hated concoction down my throat. Here was a victory gained by Spartan discipline over refractory boyhood ; but the trodden snake will sting, and the boy must have his revenge. So I roared my- self for an hour or more into a red - eyed rage truly 8 NOTES OF A LIFE terrific, and then instead of going to school at the usual hour three o'clock I hid myself in a press till the school hours were over, and then reappeared on the scene, without suspicion. Next day, going to school and being interrogated as to the cause of my absence, I said I had been unwell, and could not come. This of course was a lie, and the whole affair coming to the ear of my father, I was soundly flogged. Whether this flogging, or perhaps rather something radical and deep within, has been the cause of the profound abhor- rence which I have through life entertained of all forms and fashions of untruth, I will not inquire. Such are the few meagre scraps of reminiscences which I have brought with me from the first twelve years of my existence, so far as they have any signifi- cance on the development and formation of character. Only one thing I have omitted. I had my friends and favourites in those days, of course, and of both sexes ; with one interesting little pale - faced, dark- eyed girl I was decidedly in love, but she died quite young. At the age of twelve, like Melanchthon and Cardinal Wolsey, I left school and went to college ; not at all because I was a precociously clever fellow or any way advanced above my equals, but because it was the custom in Scotland in those days, and is so still to no small extent, to have no natural line of demarcation between school and college, and to make the lower classes of the latter do the work which, in well-regulated countries, is done in the upper classes COLLEGE 9 of the former. I had been educated not at the Aberdeen Grammar School, but at a private subscription school, supported by a few gentlemen who did not like the rough manners of the Burgh School, and conducted by a very efficient teacher, Peter Merson, who after- wards went to Elgin. I carried with me from a three years' course sufficient Latin to earn a small bursary, not very high up in the list, however, but no Greek at all. No man in Aberdeen dreamt of acquiring the elements of Greek at the Grammar School in those days, or for many years afterwards. So I found myself in the first Greek class, Marischal College, associated with young men, mostly a year or two older than myself, and the best of whom were armed completely with that panoply of Latin for which the Aberdeen Grammar School has been long famous. There were from eighty to ninety at that time in the class: a number which in after years dwindled down to sixty or fifty. The teaching in this class at that time, so far as my memory serves me, contained nothing above the elementary routine of a school. I did my work, or in school phrase " got my lessons," diligently enough, but acquired no distinction. The idea, indeed, never entered my head of being first at a public university in a class of ninety, because I had been first at a private school in a class of ten. I believe this to be one of the bad effects of small private schools : there a boy does not learn to measure himself against a number. So at least it was with me. For the first two years of 10 NOTES OF A LIFE my college course the idea of the overwhelming number over whom I should have to mount, completely quenched my ambition ; and it was not till the third year of the cur- riculum, in the Natural Philosophy class, that I plucked up courage, and asserted what I suppose was my natural place. In that class, then taught in a very instructive manner by Dr Knight, I took the third prize. That I had no special genius either for mechanics or mathe- matics, is quite certain ; but my diligence was great : and I wrote out a volume of notes with figures and proofs as trim as if I had meant to send them to a publisher. Of all these three years I have no other memory ; but at the end of this period my moral nature gained, through a crisis of which the effects have re- mained through life. At my father's house a frequent visitor was a Mr D , an advocate, a fine, well- grown, full-blown, jovial-looking man, not above thirty I should think. This florid personage, to me the image of a full and blooming vitality, suddenly disappeared encountering wet sheets, I believe, at some country inn, catching cold, and dying of consumption. This event came upon me like a thunderbolt, and set me seriously thinking 011 that most serious of all phenomena which we call death, and out of that grew the consideration of the deeper and far more important mystery which we call life. I became all at once, what is called in Scot- land in the language of a certain class of religious per- sons, " serious." Eeligion became to me the all-important question, and the salvation of my soul the only business CALVINISM 1 1 worth attending to. I devoted myself to religious books and religious exercises with an intensity and a persistency which I afterwards found to be a fundamental element in my character. I rose at five o'clock in the morning, and pored over Boston's ' Fourfold State,' and other books of the severe old Calvinistic school which were found in most well constituted Scottish families at that time. My father, indeed, was by no means what we call a religious man in Scotland; nor was there very marked display of extraordinary religiousness even on the female side of the house ; but, of course, the current religious books of the country were lying about, and these fell into my hands. The effect they had on me was to produce a profound impression of the worthlessness and vanity of all secular affairs, and to fix my attention on the other world, and on religion as a special training for it. The common amusements of the world such as dancing, card -playing, theatre - going, singing many songs, and the reading of novels or amusing books seemed to me particularly sinful. I concluded that all who had a wish for such things could be under no serious concern for their souls : that like moths and butterflies they saw only what was before their eyes, and had not had their inner sight opened to the great Heaven which shone above and the dread Hell which yawned beneath them. In these sentiments I went to an extreme that to many will appear scarcely credible. I recollect seriously questioning whether it was right to read such a worldly book as Kollin's * Ancient His- 12 NOTES OF A LIFE tory,' and after some severe Sunday exercise, I actually gave up the profane study ! In fact, I was exactly in Martin Luther's position, when under similar strong religious impressions he went into the cloister at Erfurt. Had I lived in a Catholic country at that time, I should infallibly have become a monk, except, perhaps, that I was too young for the actual assumption of the cowl, for I was not more than fifteen years old. At that time my father intended me for a lawyer, and I was put to a lawyer's office, where I remained a few months ; but the bent of my mind for serious spiritual verities was too strong to allow any taste for profane, worldly, low motives, or matters of pecuniary interest, to grow up. So I determined to study theology ; and my father, who was always kind to his children, and particularly so to me, notwithstanding all my godly oddities, humoured me in this matter. So I left the Aberdeen advocate's office and came to Edinburgh to complete my course in Arts, preparatory to entering the Divinity Hall. I attended two years at the University of Edinburgh, applying my- self to Greek, Logic, and Moral Philosophy as the most necessary drill for my future theological career. All this time I was labouring under a severe soul-concern, as we call it in Scotland, and so was but little attracted by my studies. No doubt, however, I was an attentive, diligent student, and even gained distinction, being third prize- man in the Logic class. I recollect writing an essay on " Conception " which called forth the special commenda- tion of Dr Kitchie, the then occupant of the chair, which REGENERATION 13 afterwards gained such lustre from the name of my friend, Sir William Hamilton. But with all this my heart was not really in my studies. I was vexing myself about regeneration. I recollect having fallen in with a hook which insisted as an indispensable point of Christian experience, that a man should be able to point out a moment in his life when he passed into a new state, as strongly and strikingly as a child does when it emerges from the darkness of the womb into the proud light of the living and winsome world. I could not find in my experience anything that fully realised the vivid description of the devotional writer. I was in despera- tion at the discovery. I had not been properly regener- ated, and therefore should infallibly be damned. I worked myself into a perfect fever with these conceptions. I fell upon my knees at my bedside I have the picture now vividly before me and with burning tears besought God to confer on me the conscious sensation of a full and perfect new birth. How I came out of this struggle I can- not tell ; but the thing I asked for was plainly impossible, and therefore God could not grant it. My devout alarm- ist was in the wrong, as I found afterwards from a care- ful consideration of the third chapter of John, where it is distinctly stated as one of the peculiarities of the change spoken of, that no one can lay the finger on its starting-point or its moments of progress. It is also not true that the change from internal existence to a free place in the lightsome air is so great to the child as the language of a quick fancy would paint it out. The change 14 NOTES OF A LIFE is sudden and great to the father and mother, and the spectators generally ; to the child it is more like the mere turn of a sleeper in a bed. These things I see now, but in those days I could merely go about vexing myself. Not being able to solve speculative difficulties, I was so much the more zealous to prove the reality of my religion by attending to that species of good works which receives such prominence in the well-known definition of the epistle, James i. 27. I sought the company of peculiarly pious persons, who took me into some of those dark dens in the Old Town of Edinburgh, where piety is often found clothed in rags and sistered with disease. I remember visiting one pale-faced, emaciated man in a high storey in the Cowgate, and another in a low cellar at the corner of Bristo Street. I read the Scrip- tures and prayed with these poor dying creatures, and perhaps gave them some physical help, though this cer- tainly was not the main object of my visit, as I had little in my power, being only sixteen or seventeen years of age, and having no large supply of pocket-money. When I look back on these matters now, my great wonder is how this sort of occupation did not become with me more systematic. I suppose, had I been four or five years older, I should have given myself altogether to home-mission work of this kind : for I considered that religion principally consisted in such work, and I was, above all things, anxious to be religious. In my second year at the University of Edinburgh this intense religion must have been with me at its climax, for I distinctly "CHRISTOPHER NORTH" 15 remember being so possessed by religious fears, and dis- tracted by pious perplexities, that I only wrote one essay during the whole winter session of the Moral Philosophy class. This was a distinct falling off from my academical position during the previous year. The work I had to show was so little that, according to the laws of discipline in the class, I was not allowed to compete for a prize. Of course, though my piety had overwhelmed me, it had not altogether smothered my intellectual ambition, and I was somewhat humiliated at the result. I remember well when I went into the Professor's room at the close of the session, as is the custom with us, to ask for my certificate, the glorious John of those days, then in all the freshness of poetical honours and academical dignity, looking me fully in the face with that florid grandeur of expression which belonged to him, said, " Well, Mr Blackie, what has been the matter with you ? there is something here that I cannot understand. You gave me in an essay, an excellent essay, one of the best I have received this session, and I fully expected to have you on my prize-list, but you have given me only one, and you know my rule." I could not stand this. I burst into tears, took my certificate, and walked down-headed out of the room. This was my introduction to John Wilson. Of his lectures I can say nothing. I was too deeply absorbed in more serious matters to care for speculations about hope, or love, or patriotism, however brilliantly expounded. What books I read in those days I cannot say. Certainly they were very few, and have 16 NOTES OF A LIFE left no impression on my mind. My life was all from within ; and a very self -puzzling, self-tormenting sort of life it was. Still, there was good in it. I had not crammed my brain with book-learning, but I had secured the one thing needful. I had puzzled and confounded my soul, but I had certainly not lost it. From the common snares of the world, the devil, and the flesh, I was kept free. They had not the slightest attraction for me. I was not happy, I was not wise ; but I did not go astray after vanities. I was constantly reading the Bible, and learned something more from that Book certainly than the art of puzzling myself with pious metaphysics. I grew up in the atmosphere of purity, and in a nest of innocence, which was a rich compensation for all the thorny theology which my morbid subjective- ness and my Calvinistic discipline had imported into it. All my spiritual troubles were, as I afterwards found, only a process of fermentation out of which the clear and mellow wine was to be worked. With all its sorrows, a youth of Calvinistic seriousness is in every way prefer- able to one spent in frivolity or sensual excess. My curriculum of Arts was now finished, but I did not take the degree of A.M. to which I was in the common course entitled, owing to some peculiarity in the Edinburgh degree regulations with which I was not able to comply. My next step was to enroll myself as a regular student of theology in one of our Divinity Halls, and go through the four years' course of professional study which the Scottish Church then required of all candidates for the PROFESSOR DUNCAN MEARNS 17 ministry. I did so at Aberdeen. Here I had the advan- tage of living in my father's family, and at the same time profiting by the instruction of two professors of no vul- gar talents and reputation, I mean Dr Duncan Mearns and Dr Laurence Brown. The former was a sombre, severe, quiet man, but of great and well-deserved repu- tation for judgment and discretion and sober-mindedness in all important matters. He was the leader of the Moderate party in the Church ; quite a type of the shrewd, cold, calculating Gamaliel; without passion or poetry or genial inspiration, or geniality of any kind; but very strong in the peculiarly Scottish virtue of sense. His lectures were grave, weighty, and serious ; and if they were more like a platter of cold pottage than a bottle of champagne, we had the consolation of knowing that pottage, even when cold, was the more salubrious and nutritious. I do not think he exercised any influ- ence on my mind, for his manner was rather repellent to students, and I was, besides, too much involved in my own " subjectivity/' as the Germans would say, to allow any man to pierce beneath my skin from without. Be- sides, he used to snub me publicly in the class-room, and no doubt thought that I required it. But I am certain I never showed any undue forwardness, and that the little I did show was altogether of his own making. He had a custom of calling in the students to express their opinions on the discourses which were publicly delivered by their fellows, a method of teaching which, under proper direc- tion, may be made most profitable. But the grave Doctor B 18 NOTES OF A LIFE wanted the kindliness and the geniality which is necessary for all who would attempt the highest style of teaching viz., the Socratic; and the students soon learned that though they were regularly asked to make criticisms, it would be more agreeable to the Professor, and less peril- ous for the student, to make no answer to the appeal. Whether I had sense to know this or not I cannot tell, but the constant asking of a question which was never answered, appeared to me an absurdity and a humbug ; so I broke through it bravely, and was bravely snubbed accordingly, and set down in the professor's books for a forward little puppy who required to be repressed. Once I met the Doctor more closely at the house of one of those country ministers of the Moderate party whom he visited in the summer months ; and I remember well, not with the least impertinence, but from a grave desire of knowledge, putting in a word at table, and asking something about Kamohun Eoy, a Hindoo convert, who, I believe, afterwards became a Deist ; when, instead of a kindly and considerate answer, such as a professor should have been happy to give to an inquiring student, I only got a little cold water and a look which seemed to say, " What the devil has a young puppy like you to do taking part in conversation with a Gamaliel like me, when I am making my annual visitation and holiday parley with my provincial doctors ? " So there was no love lost between the Moderate Doctor and me : I only learned from him that it was a grand thing in the world to be grave, sober, and judicious, even though accompanied with a little sul- DR LAURENCE BROWN 19 lenness ; and was fully convinced also that he had the right side of the argument in the little but weighty book which he wrote on the Evidences against the extravagance of Dr Chalmers' early views. This book, I believe, was the only exposition of himself with which the grave Doctor ever honoured the world withal; for, like many sound- headed, thinking Scottish clergymen, he was not at all prone to bookish display : a reticence often extremely convenient for those who have nothing very rare to ex- hibit, but which is also not seldom accompanied with the possession of intellectual stores far beyond what English- men are apt to give Scotch ministers credit for. Learned books, of course, are the only signs by which the learning of any body of men can be made known beyond the circle of their own immediate scholars and adherents ; and if Scottish theologians are often set down as more ignorant than they are, it is because they do not take the only method of making Englishmen and other foreigners aware of the knowledge which they possess. Of Dr Mearns' learning, in the technical sense of the word, I can, how- ever, say nothing, but so far as Greek and Latin were concerned, my other theological instructor, Dr Laurence Brown, was a man, most unquestionably, rigged out class- ically in a style of which our Scottish Divinity Halls have still too few examples. Dr Brown had been educated in Holland, and acquired there that familiar habit of think- ing and speaking in elegant Latin which the perverse pedantic methods stereotyped in the great English schools render it so difficult even now for the best English scholars 20 NOTES OF A LIFE to attain. Dr Brown's example acted as a useful spur to me in carrying on that course of Greek and Latin read- ing, without which no thorough theological training is possible. Every student in those days, and I believe still, had to compose a theological discourse in the Latin language, and this is done by the Divinity student bond fide, not pro forma only through a grinder, as used to be the case with young advocates and medical men in Edin- burgh. Being a born enemy of all hollow work, I, of course, worked up my Latin so high as to make a very respectable appearance in this exercise, and not only so, but I ventured on speaking Latin publicly, with some measure of success, which made me a sort of marked man in that department. As I have always maintained, and see more clearly every day, that the English and Scottish schoolmasters and professors make a great mistake in dropping the old element of conversation and free speaking out of their method of teaching the learned languages, I will mention here how it .was that I acquired that habit myself. Dr Brown, as I said, could think and speak Latin quite as readily as English, and had the habit of always criticising in Latin the Latin discourses delivered by the students. He had the habit also of insisting that no criticism should be made on the Latin exercise of any student except in the Latin language. The consequence of this was that no criticism was ever given on Latin discourses at all, except by the Professor. To me this appeared rather a cowardly and inglorious procedure, so I determined, SPEAKING IN LATIN 21 when a convenient opportunity should arise, to redeem the honour of the class from this blot. One day the usual appeal was made by the Professor, "Tarn vero, si quis habet quee de hac oratione dicat, in medium proferat ! " whereupon I rose up and began to make some observations in English, but the old Doctor, im- mediately striking his hand emphatically on the table, said, " At hoc non fas est, domine ; quse Latine scripta, ea et Latine judicanda sunt," an observation for which I was perfectly prepared, and came out at once with a few sentences of well-worded Ciceronian Latin, which elicited the admiration of the venerable old divine, and made me a notable man, even among Aberdeen Latinists. This habit of thinking and speaking readily in Latin I have never since lost, and have also applied the same method of learning to all languages whatso- ever; for I have not the slightest doubt of its being the only rational and philosophical method : a method at once the most natural, and, if properly managed, the most easy and the most accurate. I do not think I fell upon this method merely from the Doctor's example; it must have had its root in the plastic activity of my own mind, which always leads me to adopt a method of proceeding in everything, acting from within outwards. The mere receptive operation of reading I instinctively converted into a gymnastic of thinking and speaking : and I remember distinctly that, after reading several chapters of my favourite author Cicero, I used to spout his phrases, and form 22 NOTES OF A LIFE them on the spot into new sentences of my own, which, to fix them more vividly in my mind, I scrawled out upon the broad white wooden mantelpiece of the room where I studied. These things I have set down minutely for the benefit of those who may imagine that there is a peculiar organ or faculty by which languages are acquired. I believe there is no such thing. All that is necessary to acquire one, or two, or half a dozen languages, is only common -sense, favourable circum- stances, a fair amount of mental activity, and a natural pleasure in utterance. But from Dr Brown I learned something better than mere Latin. I was introduced to the Church Fathers, and learned their most excellent use in making the modern mind aware of the great lines of contrast between Christianity and Heathenism ; one of the most important steps in setting the mind free from partial and local rites of Christian truth, and teaching it to separate the essential from the accidental, the personal from the ephemeral in religious life. But there was one man in Aberdeen who did more to influence my course of theological study than either of my professional teachers, for he gave me a piece of advice which I systematically followed, and which could not fail to produce peculiar results. This man was Dr Patrick Forbes, minister of the parish of Old Machar, and Professor of Chemistry and Humanity in King's College, Aberdeen. He also was a Moderate ; one of that class of stout, well - seasoned, intellectual Moderates, who proceeded from the famous school of DR PATRICK FORBES 23 Campbell and Gerard. Dr Patrick was an intimate friend of my father's, and a man of that emphatic type which could not fail to make a strong impression on a moody and musing young man. He was decidedly dogmatic in his attitude and bellicose in his utterance, he seemed to think with a cudgel in his hand, and never differed from a person without considering it his duty to knock him down. He was a good hater, but without viciousness. The strong but, at the same time, bland contempt with which he denounced " that mad- man Tom Chalmers," or that other " ass " or " idiot " of the Evangelical party, has impressed itself with in- delible characters on my imagination. He held no opinions by halves. His Moderatism went the length of denouncing not only street -preaching and suchlike ebullitions of irregular enthusiasm, but even Sunday- schools, as the pests of Society and the taint of the Church. All this was directly opposed to my way of thinking and feeling ; nevertheless, I could not but feel a certain respect for the man, not only from old family associations, but because, in fact, he knew many things that most people did not know, and was very fluent in unfolding his chemical, arboricultural, and scientific notions of all sorts. Of learning, he had also a fair stock for a Scotsman and a man of such various occupations. His study was fenced bravely round with formidable-looking quartos and folios bound in vellum : and when I called upon him, as I occasionally did with a message from my father, or otherwise, I generally 24 NOTES OF A LIFE found him perched in this room among his books, with Horace on one hand and the Hebrew Bible on the other. However inexplicable some of his notions were to me, it was plain that he was a Christian, and that he set high value on the Scriptures. To this man my father sent me shortly after I had commenced my serious studies for the Church, that I might get some advice in the course of reading to be pursued. I had taken counsel with myself in the first place, and finding a big octavo called Boston's ' Body of Divinity ' in the house, imagined that, from the great repute of the pastor of Ettrick among religious people in Scotland, I could not do better than take a bird's-eye view of the great field of theology under his guidance. My notion was to keep myself from rambling by starting with a well -mixed surveyed field of orthodox doctrine, the great outlines of which it was wise to know before fastening more curiously down upon any of the details. A natural enough notion, no doubt and possibly the right one in studying a purely objective science such as geography, but not at all the right method in theology, as my dogmatic Gamaliel very soon taught me. " What," said he, " Boston's ' Body of Divinity ' ! what have you to do with Books of Divinity, by Boston or by any other beast ? Are you a Christian ? What should a Christian read before his Bible? Do you know Greek ? Whence should a student of theology fetch his Divinity in preference to the Greek Testa- ment ? " There was no answering such questions. METHODS OF STUDY 25 Little inclined as I was to take advice on any matter of religion from a Moderate clergyman, I could not but feel that there was both sense and gospel here. I immediately flung aside my ' Body of Divinity ' and forthwith had my Greek Testament interleaved, and commenced a course of Scripture study without the slightest reference to the Westminster Confession, or any other systematised essay on Christian doctrine. The foundation of all my studies was now the Greek Testament, upon which I made the results of my classical, theological, and general reading to bear, by the insertion of notes in the blank leaves written in the Latin language. The same plan I have since formed with other books, such as Plato's ' Eepublic ' and Aris- totle's ' Politics,' and have ever had cause to felicitate myself on the rich results of the single, direct, and businesslike method of study laid down for me by the stout, club-bearing Gamaliel of Old Aberdeen. Take your knowledge of the case from the evidence of the original witnesses, from them directly, and from them only in the first place ; come face to face with the primary facts of the matter you are going to deal with, you will then be in a condition to profit by the observa- tions and opinions of other men, which, without such a previous course of independent training, could only con- found and cripple you. This was what my Gamaliel taught me ; and, however common it may be in Scotland and elsewhere to substitute a traditional indoctrination about fundamental facts for a direct dealing with the 26 NOTES OF A LIFE facts themselves, there cannot be the slightest doubt that the latter is the only true method of scientific and philosophical investigation about an important matter of which our systematic books on all subjects are apt to act, either as a thick cloud which must be blown away, or a strong wall which must be knocked down, before the mind can be brought into living contact with the object of its cognitive activity. Another useful lesson, with regard to what I may call the theology of natural science, I learned from this sturdy Doctor, for, as I have already said, my Gamaliel was also a chemist. Like most Scotsmen who enjoy a liberal edu- cation, I had had the fortune to be brought up in a fair knowledge of the Physical Sciences. I had had lectures on Natural History, and on Mechanical Philosophy and Chemistry, besides carrying on Botanical studies in the country for my own convenience. During the course of all these studies I had constantly, of course, heard of laws and forces, attraction and repulsion, and compositions and resolutions, and so forth. Not having been told any- thing to the contrary, I naturally imagined that these forces were qualities of matter, and never dreamt of any difficulty in the affair. Of course I believed in God : that His omnipotence had by miraculous feat inoculated matter, so to speak, with these virtues : this was an explanation enough for a young Calvinistic theologian, who believed in sovereign volition and absolute deter- mination as the ruling attributes of God. But the Doctor removed the veil from my eyes in a single sentence, I FIEST PRINCIPLES 27 remember, by showing me the absurdity of supposing that such a thing as matter is denned to be, ever could have any active qualities at all, much less qualities so interpenetrated and systematically guided by reason and calculation as those which we perceive in the structure of the world. The so-called attractions of cohesion and gravitation, and all the nine mathematical forces that produce not only living bodies and beautiful flowers, but inorganic crystals, were in fact notifications of mind, and could be nothing else. If God were everywhere present, He must be present doing something, and what He did was manifest precisely in those forces which were superficially spoken of as qualities implanted in matter. Motion was of the very essence of the Supreme Being. Eternal, self -originating, calculating motion was the most philosophical definition of God ; it was not in His power to speak with reverence to endue a thing called matter, made up entirely of negatives, with qualities which were of His own absolute essence. As the force which we call steam can act upon certain mechanical arrangements, and form what we call a steam-engine, but cannot communicate the motive virtue of which it is possessed to the mere walls of brass or iron by which it is confined, so God cannot divest Himself of Himself, and clothe a dead man with permanent vital qualities. Wherever life is, God is. Wherever force is, God is. He only is a power. That this is the absolute and only possible truth with regard to that grand harmony of reasonable forces which we call the world, I have never 28 NOTES OF A LIFE since then had the slightest doubt. I found it afterwards indeed in Plato, but it did not appear to me a whit more evident under the touch of the imaginative genius of the great Greek idealist than when it came forth in full panoply from the hard head of the Aberdeen Doctor. When one fairly placed it before the mind, it appeared a postulate rather than a proposition that required to be proved. Eesting upon this* postulate, I have, since then, always looked on Materialism and Atheism as two forms of speculative nonsense : and a firm faith in God was made clear to me as the one keystone which makes thought coherent and the world intelligible. It is somewhat strange to me to think, when I look back on these times, how I have nothing to record of the influence of any theologian of the Evangelical party in the practice of my religious opinions. All that I can lay my fingers on came from the Moderates. But there were sufficient causes for this. First, there was the acci- dent that my father's clerical friends were chiefly of the Moderate party, and a young man of seventeen could not readily walk out of the family and make bishops for him- self. Again, the Moderates were decidedly the men of talent and culture. We had an Evangelical preacher who came about the house, but he had a sleepy, gaping air about him, not calculated to inspire a young man with much respect. But more than all this though my own tendencies were still decidedly Evangelical, and I had no natural kinship with the Moderates I was in reality now employed in working my way out of the DR ALEXANDER FORSYTH 29 peculiar Calvinistic system, under the influence of which my religious life had commenced. The weight of that severe orthodoxy had been too heavy for me, and I was now breaking my bands. I was not, therefore, particu- larly inclined to such counsel from the Evangelicals in Aberdeen, even had any apostle of that party, of a more inviting character than those with whom I came in contact, walked into my world. Some were too stern, and some were too stupid, and none of them had any savour of philosophy, of poetry, or intellectual culture. So I was left altogether to my own cogitations, and the few nudges I got from my father's Moderate friends. But they were only nudges ! I never dreamt of taking theological doctrine from men whom I suspected of being Socinian or something more. It was only on the border- land when theology rose into science that I was at all touched by the Moderate influence. But in this respect certainly I was indebted to them, and that to a much greater degree than I was then at all aware of. There was a very old friend of my father's, Dr Forsyth, min- ister of the parish of Belhelvie, nine miles north of Aberdeen, on the Peterhead road. This man was a cousin of Lord Brougham, and very like the great Chan- cellor in physiognomy as well as in scientific cast of mind. Forsyth was also one of the Moderates, and one of Prin- cipal Campbell's school, and, like all the men of that school, more remarkable for acuteness than for fervour. He had no eloquence in the pulpit, was evidently never meant for a preacher ; but in private intercourse he was 30 NOTES OF A LIFE remarkably lively and subtle, full of curious know- ledge and thinking, and always very original. At his house in the country, where I often spent a few weeks in the summer months, he had a laboratory, where, in a mysterious way to me, he worked like a regular old alchymist. His knowledge of physical science was not at all common. It was he who invented the Percussion Lock. I mention him here, along with sturdy old Dr Forbes, because from him also I learned a most useful lesson a lesson not taught at any of the schools I attended how to use my eyes. I was in those days rather a bookish creature, and had only two principal sources of intellectual and moral growth my own soul and printed paper. But in Alexander Forsyth I found a remarkable man, who knew a great deal and seemed to read little or nothing. I think I never saw him reading anything but ' The Edinburgh Eeview ' or ' The Philosophical Journal.' He had a place called the library, or lumber-room, or both, on the upper part of his abode. But the books in it were few and little. I remember fishing regularly out of it Lightfoot's ' Flora Scotica,' and I believe it was in this house and out of this book that I first learned those elements of Botany which I have through life often felt to be a valuable acquisition. I had got, or wished to get, some notions of the young science of Geology also, and, of course, came out with my vague wishes, and more vague notions on the subject, before this scientific person. He, with that frankness which was natural to him, proceeded to in- A LESSON IN GEOLOGY 31 struct my ignorance how a trap-vein ran through his parish down to the sea from the centre of the county; he lectured to me in the most advantageous way. I remember when I was perambulating this trap again with him one day, he, with hammer in hand, went up to one of the stone- dykes by which the fields are divided in that region. " Here," said he, " is the guide to the geology of a district. These dykes are made up of frag- ments of every kind of rock from the surrounding dis- trict, often carried from the high country by the flooded torrents in the rainy season. Here, in fact, you will commence your studies more beneficially than with my manual." Here was a very simple remark, and yet how true and how important ! How many teachers of youth have not learnt this simple wisdom ! I was a young man hankering after wisdom, and fumbling with all sorts of books, but had not yet begun to learn the first lesson in all really valuable knowledge of God's beautiful world the lesson to use my eyes, and to use them first on what lay immediately before me. The first lines of this great lesson I learnt on this occasion from the scientific pastor of Belhelvie. I hope that, though backward to learn in this world, I have not lived altogether without profit from it. As to my theological studies during these three years, I have little to say of them. I was a diligent student, but was too much given to thinking to be a regular librorum. I remember indeed very little of the course of study I then went through, but no doubt I 32 NOTES OF A LIFE was fairly equipped in all that a reputable young Scottish divine requires to satisfy the demands of a reasonable Presbytery. All Dr Paley's works I had read and digested. Hill's ' Lectures,' Horn's ' Introduc- tion/ Tillotson's ' Sermons,' Campbell's ' Dissertations,' and Warburton's ' Divine Legation ' were amongst the most notable books that I read. I recollect being astonished by Warburton, and much improved by Camp- bell. But my principal study was, as I mentioned above, the Greek New Testament. I also picked up a little Hebrew little or none was then required by the Church authorities, and here, as in other matters, I have to record my experience as exactly the reverse of Pope's famous maxim. My little knowledge of Hebrew I found not a dangerous, but a very useful thing. It enabled me afterwards to learn from Tuch, Gesenius, and Ewald ; and he is a wise man in this world, or at least on the way to wisdom, who, being ignorant, knows how to learn from those who know. As to personal religion in this period, I had learned from the New Testament, at an early age, that " one thing is needful," and have never allowed any other object seriously to interfere with that conviction. " What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? " This I interpreted by degrees to mean that a man's character must always be to him the one object of supreme concern, in comparison of which external acquisitions or intellectual attainments and dexterities of any kind are not entitled to a moment's BASIS OF CONDUCT 33 consideration. I wished neither for power, nor for wealth, nor for reputation in the world, so far as I remember, but only to be faithful and true to God, to put myself forth in some field of honourable activity ; and, above all, to do good to my fellow-men. I have always had a certain divine rage of apostleship about me, and had all the passion of a missionary, and yet Providence has ordered it quite otherwise with me. How did this happen ? All these three years of theo- logical study at Aberdeen I visited no sick persons and taught no Sabbath-schools. I had no separate sphere of moral and religious activity, and still I was remark- ably moral and particularly religious. This suspension of the aggressive element in my moral nature evidently arose from the fact that I was far from clear in the intellectual region. I was groping blindly and feeling tenderly. I was turning over fundamental principles, doubting, investigating, and building up, so far as I could. How could I preach to others what I did not know with an assured conviction myself ? In fact, there grew up in my nature, along with an ardent desire to do good, a large capacity for doubting. I was im- perious in my moral position, but diffident in my theo- logical creed. I was not in any way made up. I had companions in the Hall who seemed to march in with a red poker in their hands, ready to pitch into every- body's bowels with a " Believe or be damned ! " This sort of assurance was most remote from my character. I half envied the men who had it, half feared them. c 34 NOTES OF A LIFE Their presence always made me feel uncomfortable. They appeared so much more zealous than I was, so much more frank and forward in the confession of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nevertheless it could not be other- wise. My nature worked out my destiny. These men appeared afterwards on the stage of the Free Church as hot and strong Evangelicals. I found myself, after many years, thinking and feeling and acting in no church at all not a preacher of moral truth, towards which I had a strong natural bias, but a teacher of the art of knowing. The brain with me had not indeed usurped supremacy over the heart. Passion and practical energy were still with me supreme. I did not speculate merely for the sake of speculation, but the sceptical activity of the intellect learned in the meantime the decision of my will, and I could not go bravely forward on the direct road to ecclesiastical position and apostolic activity, because it did not appear to me to be the direct road to truth. Where others found firm footing, I felt that I should either founder in a bog or go wandering about in a mist. So I kept back, and my religious life was, for the season, confined to the chamber and to the social circle. In the devout reading of the Scriptures and in private prayer I was sincere and regular. I established a practice in those days which I have retained through life, and consider to be one of the greatest benefits in the formation of character. I examined myself every night with regard to the work and events of the day, and made them the subject of "KING IN MY OWN WORLD" 35 joyful or of sorrowful prayer, as the case might deserve. This practice of daily review for which, by the way, I afterwards found a most venerable precedent in Pythag- oras I combined with a sort of weekly prospectus, made regularly on Sunday night. I chalked out the week's work with a firm hand and a clear outline, and took care so to dispose matters that there should be a satisfactory conclusion or wind-up of some kind at the end of the week. In order to achieve this result, I generally worked hardest at the beginning of the week, to be prepared against the fortune of interruptions. These were most valuable habits, but like the habits of all young men, they were carried out somewhat in the extreme. The fundamental virtue of my character became, from its unchecked dominance, a great vice. I acted altogether from within. I was not sufficiently impressible from without. I did not easily adapt myself to the ways of other people. I was king in my own world, and not, therefore, so useful as I might have been in the world of every other body. The equilibrium of outer and inner influences, which makes a healthy moral nature, had been violently disturbed in my case, and was capable only of a very gradual and slow restor- ation. I recollect my father being much displeased with me for a habit I had of singing to myself, and, no doubt, in the company of other people, it was a most unsocial and ill - mannered usage. But it arose naturally from the incapacity which I then had of .throwing myself easily and joyfully into any schemes 36 NOTES OF A LIFE which did not originate with myself. "When I was immersed in some foolish cogitations, my father, who was a good angler, would come into my study on a fine breezy day, and ask me to go with him to the banks of the Don or the Deveron, to indulge in a few days' fishing. A reasonable young man and a good son would have jumped at this, but I obeyed with indifference, because that particular excursion did not suit my humour, or rather had not been shaped out in my plans ; and instead of being good company to my father, jogged on behind, humming a tune to myself ! . . . Such is the evil growth and the un- kindly fruit of every sort of self -absorption, however pious, or poetical, or philosophical. The worst kind of selfishness, no doubt, is that kind of aggressive greed which is never satisfied with its own, and feeds upon appropriating what belongs to others. But it is selfish- ness also, and of a most unhuman kind, when a man systematically denies himself to his fellows, and does not readily yield himself to the claims which one man, in a thousand shapes, is entitled to make on another. 37 CHAPTEE II. 1829-1832. FOREIGN TRAVEL, GOTTINGEN HEEREN MULLER BERLIN SCHLEIERMACHER NEANDER SABBATARIANISM RELIGIOUS LIFE THE GERMANS ROME, THE ARTISTS POPERY ITALY AND THE ITALIANS GERMANS IN ROME I BUN8EN, KESTNER, AND GERHARD THEOLOGY, ORTHODOXY, AND PIETY. I NOW come to what, in respect of training-power, was certainly the most important event in my life, my tour on the Continent and course of study in Germany and Italy. This great advantage I owed to the watchful kindness of my father, combined with the strong sense of that stout Gamaliel of the old school to whom I have already confessed my obligations. I was only nineteen years old, and had nearly completed the course of theological study required for ministers of the Gospel of the Church of Scotland; but I was too young for preaching. What was to be done with me ? The old recipe, practised so successfully from Ulysses down- wards, was obvious enough. Scotland is a small country and apt to be somewhat narrow and rigid in its type of 38 NOTES OF A LIFE thought. My jacket specially required a little widen- ing, so I was sent abroad to see the cities, and know the minds of many men. Two sons of the reverend Gamaliel and myself were lodged in a packet at Leith (steamers were not then common) and shipped across to Hamburg ; from there a lumbering German diligence, called a Schnell Wagen or Fly, trundled us across the Luneburger Heath, to the world - renowned University of Gottingen. What made my father's advisers fix precisely upon that site of Teutonic learning I do not know, but I have since had reason to note that the choice was in some respects a very wise one. No doubt, natural beauties are more luxuriant at Heidelberg and Bonn, but both of these places have the dis- advantage of being much frequented by the English; that means not mainly the studious, but the unsettled, lounging, and for various reasons, Continentalising, English, a dangerous companionship for a certain class of young men, and not particularly desirable for any. No wise traveller will go abroad to see his countrymen. Gottingen, on the other hand, though situ- ated in a pleasant neighbourhood, lies too much in a corner to be a convenient centre for an English settle- ment ; and for young men who wish to take an earnest plunge into Teutonic life, and not merely indulge in a little graceful sipping, is a far preferable residence. . . . Here, accordingly, I sat down, during the summer semester of 1829, and applied myself like a good boy and a very working Scotsman to the study of the LEARNING GERMAN 39 German language. I followed the example of the great epic poets, and plunged immediately in medias res; I matriculated as a student in the philosophical faculty, that is, anything which is not Law, Medicine, or Theology and commenced attending lectures without an hour's delay. Of course, I did not understand a single word at first ; but by regular attendance and diligent use of the lecturer's ' Handbook/ accompanied by a systematic study of the language under an accomplished private teacher, I very soon began to see light in the darkness; and got a startling revelation of the superi- ority of this method of studying a living language, to the scholastic methods by which the learned languages are taught in our great classical schools. In four months I was able to understand every spoken dis- course, to converse without embarrassment, to read the most difficult German classics, and to write the language with grammatical accuracy and a pretty copious vocab- ulary. . . . There was nothing wonderful in this ; any lad with fair application can do the same, but I note it merely to show the advantage of at once plunging into extensive practical exercise, and not perversely attempting to master a concrete art by a memorising of abstract rules. The rules are good, but the proper use of them is to organise intervals which have become our familiar possession by constant practice. The pro- fessors whom I attended in my Gottingen session were not many : for my purpose, indeed, one was enough, and I think I took out only one ticket ; with others I 40 NOTES OF A LIFE took an occasional lecture by the general right of " hospitising," which I was led to understand belonged to all students. My special professor, whom I attended daily, was Heeren, one of the few German historical writers whose works have enjoyed something more than an academical popularity in this country. Heeren at this time was a very pleasant, fluent - talking old gentleman, somewhat in the style of Lord Palmerston, whose political talk, for an hour daily, was always instructive and never wearisome. He spoke right on without paper, which I believe to be the natural and most efficient method of academical instruction on most subjects, certainly the best for history. The subject of lecture was the " Staaten System," or political system of Europe from the Keformation downwards. I learned much German from these lectures, and not a little modern history ; a sort of knowledge which proved of the utmost use to me as a young traveller, one who, brought up in the meagre routine of the Scottish Uni- versities, had hitherto no opportunity of extending his view in political matters beyond what was nearest and most local. Altogether, indeed, with reference to our Scottish system of education, the scales fell from my eyes very soon after I arrived at Gottingen. I per- ceived that at Marischal College they had degraded the university pretty much into a school : that they drilled boys when they ought to have been stimulating young men : that our academical system was promi- nently puerile, and our standard of attainment lament- OTTFRIED MULLER 41 ably low. I burned with indignation when I thought of these things, and from that moment became a Uni- versity Eeformer; though it was not till several years afterwards that I had occasion publicly to blow the trumpet of alarm to this key. I remember, however, uttering myself with great emphasis on the point, in a letter on the study of the German language, written during my stay at Gottingen, and printed in ' The Edin- burgh Literary Journal ' a clever periodical, at that time under the editorship of Mr Henry Glassford Bell, a man of great power of work, breadth of view and versatility, and since known as one of the most sound- headed of Scottish jurists. Among the other professors whom I saw at Gottingen, the man who made the most vivid and lasting impression on me was Ottfried Muller. I recollect calling upon him and finding him in his study in the middle of a grand circum of quartos and folios in all languages. He was a tall, blond, blue- eyed, open, cheerful, intelligent, fine-looking fellow, and moved about with the litheness of a young tiger; but the elasticity of his bodily motions were in no wise connected with any mere skirmishing quality of mind. In mental calibre he was as massive as he was limber : he could drag after him a whole train of heavy artillery, with no more labour than it costs a common man to move his finger. This was my first impression, and an acquaintance with his work of which I had no know- ledge at that time has made the original impression stronger. I do not know that any of the great German 42 NOTES OF A LIFE philologers had a more rich, graceful, and various sweep of living erudition. He wanted only a longer life to have contested with Wolf and Boeckh the highest honours of scholarship, in the most scholarly country of Europe in the nineteenth century. The summer session having happily come to a close, I followed the example, then common among the German students, of taking an autumnal pedestrian tour. . . . Gottingen lies close on the south - west corner of the Harz Mountains ; so the Harz offered themselves as the natural starting-point. I inspected the mines at Claus- thal and Goslar ; proceeded thence by the Tesenstein to the Brocken ; saw neither witches nor devils there, but only mist ; then eastward by Blinkenburg to Mansfeld and Eisleben, the birthplace of Martin Luther, who was always a great hero with me. Thence I trudged along to Halle : very wearisome in hot days were those long- stretching North German turnpikes, with tall poplars on each side, without variation and without turning, so that I was forced once or twice to leave my feet and accept of elevation on the top of a diligence. At Halle I saw the Waisenhaus, and at Leipzig the fair, where I visited the booksellers, and stared at strange- looking Jews, Armenians, and Greeks ; thence on to Dresden, where I took my first taste of picture-galleries. Being here, of course a tramp through the picturesque and far - famed scenery of the Saxon Switzerland was unavoidable ; but not being able to penetrate to Prague, on account of the deficiency of my pass and the Argus- A PEDESTRIAN TOUR 43 eyed vigilance of the Austrian police, I turned back westward through the beautiful valley of Tharandt to Freiberg, interesting me as the first great base of opera- tions of geological science. Thence through Chemnitz, Altenburg, Zeitz, and Jena to Weimar, where I looked at the house of the Olympian Goethe, but was too modest to intrude upon the god (not having at that time any dream of translating Faust '). A few stages more, Erfurt, Gotha, Eisenach, and Witzenhausen brought me back to my starting-point. Of course, at Eisenach I did not omit to climb the old castled crag, where my favourite Martin Luther, a prisoner for the public good, made his great translation of the Bible, and taught the devil to keep his distance from the sacred work, on what has always appeared to me the best possible plan viz., not to parley with him or propose terms of compromise, but meet him directly, in whatever shape he may appear, with the first strong weapon on which you can lay your hand. I was now lodged at Gottingen comfortably, and arranging for the winter campaign ; but, as Homer says, Jove does not realise all the intentions of mortal men. The parental power, from some prudent or benevolent motive, had arranged that I should spend the winter at Berlin. So to Berlin at the latter end of October I went, leaving at Gottingen the two sons of Gamaliel, who had not been made the subjects of any command to flit. I was nothing sorry for the change. Berlin was a bigger place, and, besides famous professors, had a theatre and 44 NOTES OF A LIFE an opera-house. The students, no doubt, were a more scattered body, and had less of a composite spirit in the metropolis than in a small academical town. But that was of less consequence, as I could now speak the lan- guage fluently, and found companionship in general soci- ety. But my life at Berlin no less than in Gottingen was that of the quiet, plodding, unpretending student. I was no bookworm, indeed, but books were my business for the present, and I had the habit of sticking to my business. As to the wide wide world of men, I had no ambition to plunge into it, farther than I was naturally floated. The meditative element in me was too strong to court any sort of racket, while the evangelical element- unequivocally proclaimed that " the world lieth in wicked- ness," and that the less one had to do with it, beyond what was pure and profitable, the better. The professors, whom I heard during the winter semester with great regularity, were Boeckh, Schleiermacher, JSTeander, and Kaumer. As I was left altogether to my own devices, the lectures which I picked out from the ample assort- ment spread out in the academic roll, offered a pretty fair indication of where my inclination lay, and certainly also of where I thought my duty led me ; for I had ac- quired a pretty firm habit of always doing what I thought I ought to do, even when I did not very much care for it. My two theological instructors were Schleiermacher and Neander; from them, of course, I ought to have learned most, if I had been disposed to learn from anybody but myself. No doubt I did learn something, though it is SCHLEIERMACHER 45 difficult for me at this distance of time to put my finger on it and say what it was. The most important, no doubt, was that by intercourse with strangers I was creeping gradually more and more out of my Scotch shell and widening my views on all subjects, specially theology. In Schleiermacher I saw the model of the fine subtle scholar and the graceful effective preacher. Besides his academical lectures on the Epistle to the Corinthians, he preached regularly in the Trinity Church, where I frequently heard him, for I was a strict Sab- batarian, and seldom without hearing sermons in some church or other. His manner was quiet and chaste, and both in matter and manner he was very much what in Scotland I had been accustomed to hear characterised as " Moderate." His personal appearance though any- thing but imposing acted, perhaps in the way of con- trast, in his favour. He was small and humpbacked, but with a keen intelligent eye and finely chiselled features. Beyond these public exhibitions I never had any connec- tion with this celebrated man, nor did I ever afterwards happen to read his works, though I was perfectly aware of the high position he occupied among German thinkers, and constantly heard his ' Eedex liber die Keligion ' spoken of as a work which had been very influential in creating a revival of religious faith among the higher and educated classes of Germany. With Neander I was more intimate, and his exposition of the Gospel of John made a deeper impression on my mind. He was a little, dark, very feeble-looking, blinking man. He sailed round the 46 NOTES OF A LIFE corner of the street from his house to the University with his head hanging sidewards, as Diogenes Laertius tells us of Zeno, as pithless as an animated straw, and during his lecture, at every other sentence, he coughed and spat on the ground as a regular part of the performance. He was of a most gentle and kindly nature, and in my memory lives as a sort of modern incarnation of the great apostle whom he interpreted. He had a custom of entertaining his students on Sunday evening, and at one of these meetings I remember his asking me some questions about our Scottish theology, and particularly about our way of spending the Sunday. " You have some Jewish notions," said he, " I understand, in Scotland with regard to the observance of the Lord's Day ? " I forget what my answer was, but I was distinctly startled by being told for the first time that one of the most significant observances of Scottish religiousness was not Christian, but Jewish. At that time to my mind, except with regard to the five points of the Synod of Dort, for I was an Arminian, Scottish theology and Christianity were convertible terms; and the severe notions of my countrymen, forbidding not only work but also amuse- ment on the Sunday, a point in which they go beyond both the letter and the spirit of the original command, were so rooted in my soul that I could on no account go to the theatre or the opera on a Sunday, though I had the strongest temptation to do so ; for I was naturally extremely fond of dramatic exhibitions, and the great plays of Schiller and Goethe were generally given on SABBATARIANISM 47 Sunday. Thus my Sabbatarianism and my Jewish notions stood seriously in the way, both of my amusements and of my improvement in German literature ; but I never had any cause to regret my conscientiousness, " Whatso- ever is not of faith is sin." Some years afterwards I studied the Sabbath question thoroughly, and saw, as any impartial man must, that Neander was right. Ou