{"collection":"folklore-oral-tradition","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_27153/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_27153","id":"gutenberg_27153","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27153","summary":null,"tags":["Art criticism","Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography","Brown, John, 1810-1882 -- Childhood and youth","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Humour","Dogs -- Folklore","English essays"],"text":"Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n _HORAE SUBSECIVAE._\n\n\n \"_A lady, resident in Devonshire, going into one of her parlors,\n discovered a young ass, who had found his way into the room, and\n carefully closed the door upon himself. He had evidently not\n been long in this situation before he had nibbled a part of\n Cicero's Orations, and eaten nearly all the index of a folio\n edition of Seneca in Latin, a large part of a volume of La\n Bruyere's Maxims in French, and several pages of Cecilia. He\n had done no other mischief whatever, and not a vestige remained\n of the leaves that he had devoured._\"--PIERCE EGAN.\n\n \"_The treatment of the illustrious dead by the quick, often\n reminds me of the gravedigger in Hamlet, and the skull of poor\n defunct Yorick._\"--W. H. B.\n\n \"_Multi ad sapientiam pervenire potuissent, nisi se jam\n pervenisse putassent._\"\n\n \"_There's nothing so amusing as human nature, but then you must\n have some one to laugh with._\"\n\n\n\n\n SPARE HOURS\n\n\n\n BY JOHN BROWN, M. D.\n\n\n\n If thou be a severe sour-complexioned man, then I here disallow\n thee to be a competent judge.--IZAAK WALTON\n\n\n\n BOSTON\n TICKNOR AND FIELDS\n 1864\n\n\n\n Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by\n TICKNOR AND FIELDS,\n In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the\n District of Massachusetts\n\n\n\n RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:\n STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON\n\n\n\n\nNOTE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.\n\n\nThe author of \"Rab and his Friends\" scarcely needs an introduction to\nAmerican readers. By this time many have learned to agree with a writer\nin the \"North British Review\" that \"Rab\" is, all things considered, the\nmost perfect prose narrative since Lamb's \"Rosamond Gray.\"\n\nA new world of doctors, clergymen, shepherds, and carriers is revealed\nin the writings of this cheerful Edinburgh scholar, who always brings\ngenuine human feeling, strong sense, and fine genius to the composition\nof his papers. Dogs he loves with an enthusiasm to be found nowhere else\nin canine literature. He knows intimately all a cur means when he winks\nhis eye or wags his tail, so that the whole barking race,--terrier,\nmastiff, spaniel, and the rest,--finds in him an affectionate and\ninterested friend. His genial motto seems to run thus--\"I cannot\nunderstand that morality which excludes animals from human sympathy, or\nreleases man from the debt and obligation he owes to them.\"\n\nWith the author's consent we have rejected from his two series of \"Horae\nSubsecivae\" the articles on strictly professional subjects, and have\ncollected into this volume the rest of his admirable papers in that\nwork. The title, \"Spare Hours,\" is also adopted with the author's\nsanction.\n\nDr. Brown is an eminent practising physician in Edinburgh, with small\nleisure for literary composition, but no one has stronger claims to be\nranked among the purest and best writers of our day.\n\n_BOSTON, December 1861._\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\n RAB AND HIS FRIENDS\n \"WITH BRAINS, SIR\"\n THE MYSTERY OF BLACK AND TAN\n HER LAST HALF-CROWN\n OUR DOGS\n QUEEN MARY'S CHILD-GARDEN\n PRESENCE OF MIND AND HAPPY GUESSING\n MY FATHER'S MEMOIR\n MYSTIFICATIONS\n \"OH, I'M WAT, WAT!\"\n ARTHUR H. HALLAM\n EDUCATION THROUGH THE SENSES\n VAUGHAN'S POEMS\n DR. CHALMERS\n DR. GEORGE WILSON\n ST. PAUL'S THORN IN THE FLESH\n THE BLACK DWARF'S BONES\n NOTES ON ART\n\n\n\n\nAUTHOR'S PREFACE.\n\n\nIn that delightful and provoking book, \"THE DOCTOR, &c.,\" Southey says:\n\"'Prefaces,' said Charles Blount, Gent., 'Prefaces,' according to this\nflippant, ill-opinioned, and unhappy man, 'ever were, and still are, but\nof two sorts, let the mode and fashions vary as they please,--let the\nlong peruke succeed the godly cropt hair; the cravat, the ruff;\npresbytery, popery; and popery, presbytery again,--yet still the author\nkeeps to his old and wonted method of prefacing; when at the beginning\nof his book he enters, either with a halter round his neck, submitting\nhimself to his readers' mercy whether he shall be hanged or no, or else,\nin a huffing manner, he appears with the halter in his hand, and\nthreatens to hang his reader, if he gives him not his good word. This,\nwith the excitement of friends to his undertaking, and some few\napologies for the want of time, books, and the like, are the constant\nand usual shams of all scribblers, ancient and modern.' This was not\ntrue then,\" says Southey, \"nor is it now.\" I differ from Southey, in\nthinking there is some truth in both ways of wearing the halter. For\nthough it be neither manly nor honest to affect a voluntary humility\n(which is after all, a sneaking vanity, and would soon show itself if\ntaken at its word), any more than it is well-bred, or seemly to put on\n(for it generally is put on) the \"huffing manner,\" both such being truly\n\"shams,\"--there is general truth in Mr. Blount's flippancies.\n\nEvery man should know and lament (to himself) his own\nshortcomings--should mourn over and mend, as he best can, the\n\"confusions of his wasted youth;\" he should feel how ill he has put out\nto usury the talent given him by the Great Taskmaster--how far he is\nfrom being \"a good and faithful servant;\" and he should make this rather\nunderstood than expressed by his manner as a writer; while at the same\ntime, every man should deny himself the luxury of taking his hat off to\nthe public, unless he has something to say, and has done his best to say\nit aright; and every man should pay not less attention to the dress in\nwhich his thoughts present themselves, than he would to that of his\nperson on going into company.\n\nBishop Butler, in his \"Preface to his Sermons,\" in which there is\nperhaps more solid living sense than in the same number of words\nanywhere else after making the distinction between \"obscurity\" and\n\"perplexity and confusion of thought,\"--the first being in the subject,\nthe others in its expression, says,--\"confusion and perplexity are, in\nwriting, indeed without excuse, because any one may, if he pleases, know\nwhether he understands or sees through what he is about, and it is\nunpardonable in a man to lay his thoughts before others, when he is\nconscious that he himself does not know whereabouts he is, or how the\nmatter before him stands. _It is coming abroad in disorder, which he\nought to be dissatisfied to find himself in at home._\"\n\nThere should therefore be in his Preface, as in the writer himself, two\nelements. A writer should have some assurance that he has something to\nsay, and this assurance should, in the true sense, not the Milesian, be\nmodest.\n\n * * * * *\n\nI have to apologize for bringing in \"Rab and his Friends.\" I did so,\nremembering well the good I got then, as a man and as a doctor. It let\nme see down into the depths of our common nature, and feel the strong\nand gentle touch that we all need, and never forget, which makes the\nworld kin; and it gave me an opportunity of introducing, in a way which\nhe cannot dislike, for he knows it is simply true, my old master and\nfriend, Professor Syme, whose indenture I am thankful I possess, and\nwhose first wheels I delight in thinking my apprentice-fee purchased,\nthirty years ago. I remember as if it were yesterday, his giving me the\nfirst drive across the west shoulder of Corstorphine Hill. On starting,\nhe said, \"John, we'll do one thing at a time, and there will be no\ntalk.\" I sat silent and rejoicing, and can remember the very complexion\nand clouds of that day and that matchless view: _Damyat_ and _Benledi_\nresting couchant at the gate of the Highlands, with the huge Grampians,\n_immane pecus_, crowding down into the plain.\n\nThis short and simple story shows, that here, as everywhere else,\npersonally, professionally, and publicly, reality is his aim and his\nattainment. He is one of the men--they are all too few--who desire to be\non the side of truth more than to have truth on their side; and whose\npersonal and private worth are always better understood than expressed.\nIt has been happily said of him, that he never wastes a word, or a drop\nof ink, or a drop of blood; and his is the strongest, exactest, truest,\nimmediatest, safest intellect, dedicated by its possessor to the\nsurgical cure of mankind, I have ever yet met with. He will, I firmly\nbelieve, leave an inheritance of good done, and mischief destroyed, of\ntruth in theory and in practice established, and of error in the same\nexposed and ended, such as no one since John Hunter has been gifted to\nbequeath to his fellow-men. As an instrument for discovering truth, I\nhave never seen his perspicacity equalled; his mental eye is\n_achromatic_, and admits into the judging mind a pure white light, and\nrecords an undisturbed, uncolored image, undiminished and unenlarged in\nits passage; and he has the moral power, courage, and conscience, to use\nand devote such an inestimable instrument aright. I need hardly add,\nthat the story of \"Rab and his Friends\" is in all essentials strictly\nmatter of fact.\n\nThere is an odd sort of point, if it can be called a point, on which I\nwould fain say something--and that is an occasional outbreak of sudden,\nand it may be felt, untimely humorousness. I plead guilty to this,\nsensible of the tendency in me of the merely ludicrous to intrude, and\nto insist on being attended to, and expressed: it is perhaps too much\nthe way with all of us now-a-days, to be forever joking. _Mr. Punch_, to\nwhom we take off our hats, grateful for his innocent and honest fun,\nespecially in his Leech, leads the way; and our two great novelists,\nThackeray and Dickens, the first especially, are, in the deepest and\nhighest sense, essentially humorists,--the best, nay, indeed the almost\nonly good thing in the latter, being his broad and wild fun; Swiveller,\nand the Dodger, and Sam Weller, and Miggs, are more impressive far to my\ntaste than the melo-dramatic, utterly unreal Dombey, or his strumous and\nhysterical son, or than all the later dreary trash of \"Bleak House,\" &c.\n\nMy excuse is, that these papers are really what they profess to be, done\nat bye-hours. _Dulce est desipere_, when in its fit place and time.\nMoreover, let me tell my young doctor friends, that a cheerful face, and\nstep, and neckcloth, and button-hole, and an occasional hearty and\nkindly joke, a power of executing and setting agoing a good laugh, are\nstock in our trade not to be despised. The merry heart does good like a\nmedicine. Your pompous man, and your selfish man, don't laugh much, or\ncare for laughter; it discomposes the fixed grandeur of the one, and has\nlittle room in the heart of the other, who is literally self-contained.\nMy Edinburgh readers will recall many excellent jokes of their\ndoctors--\"Lang Sandie Wood,\" Dr. Henry Davidson our _Guy Patin_ and\nbetter, &c.\n\nI may give an instance, when a joke was more and better than itself. A\ncomely young wife, the \"cynosure\" of her circle, was in bed, apparently\ndying from swelling and inflammation of the throat, an inaccessible\nabscess stopping the way; she could swallow nothing; everything had been\ntried. Her friends were standing round her bed in misery and\nhelplessness. \"_Try her wi' a compliment_,\" said her husband, in a not\nuncomic despair. She had genuine humor, as well as he; and as\nphysiologists know, there is a sort of mental tickling which is beyond\nand above control, being under the reflex system, and instinctive as\nwell as sighing. She laughed with her whole body and soul, and burst the\nabscess, and was well.\n\nHumor, if genuine (and if not, it is not humor), is the very flavor of\nthe spirit, its rich and fragrant _ozmazome_--having in its aroma\nsomething of everything in the man, his expressed juice; wit is but the\nlaughing flower of the intellect or the turn of speech, and is often\nwhat we call a \"gum-flower,\" and looks well when dry. Humor is, in a\ncertain sense, involuntary in its origin in one man, and in its effect\nupon another; it is systemic, and not local.\n\nSydney Smith, in his delightful and valuable _Sketches of Lectures on\nMoral Philosophy_, to which I have referred, makes a touching and\nimpressive confession of the evil to the rest of a man's nature from the\npredominant power and cultivation of the ludicrous. I believe Charles\nLamb could have told a like, and as true, but sadder story. He started\non life with all the endowments of a great, ample, and serious nature,\nand he ended in being little else than the incomparable joker and\nhumorist, and was in the true sense, \"of large discourse.\"[1]\n\n [1] Many good and fine things have been said of this wonderful\n and unique genius, but I know none better or finer than\n these lines by my friend John Hunter of Craigcrook. They are\n too little known, and no one will be anything but pleased to\n read them, except their author. The third line might have\n been Elia's own:--\n\n \"... Humor, wild wit,\n Quips, cranks, puns, sneers,--with clear sweet thought profound;--\n _And stinging jests, with honey for the wound_,\"--\n The subtlest lines of ALL fine powers, split\n To their last films, then marvellously spun\n In magic web, whose million hues are ONE!\"\n\n I knew one man who was almost altogether and absolutely\n comic, and yet a man of sense, fidelity, courage, and worth,\n but over his entire nature the comic ruled supreme--the late\n Sir Adam Ferguson, whose very face was a breach of\n solemnity; I dare say, even in sleep he looked a wag. This\n was the way in which everything appeared to him first, and\n often last too, with a serious enough middle saw him not\n long before his death, when he was of great age and knew he\n was dying; there was no levity in his manner, or\n thoughtlessness about his state; he was kind, and shrewd as\n ever; but how he flashed out with utter merriment when he\n got hold of a joke, or rather when it got hold of him, and\n shook him, not an inch of his body was free of its power--it\n possessed him, not he it. The first attack was on showing me\n a calotype of himself by the late Adamson (of Hill and\n Adamson; the Vandyke and Raeburn of photography), in the\n corner of which he had written, with a hand trembling with\n age and fun, \"Adam's-sun _fecit_\"--it came back upon him and\n tore him without mercy.\n\n Then, his blood being up, he told me a story of his uncle,\n the great Dr. Black the chemist; no one will grudge the\n reading of it in my imperfect record, though it is to the\n reality what reading music is to hearing it.\n\n Dr. Black, when Professor of Chemistry in Edinburgh\n University, had a gruff old man as his porter, a James\n Alston. James was one of the old school of chemistry, and\n held by phlogiston, but for no better reason than the\n endless trouble the new-fangled discoveries brought upon him\n in the way of apparatus.\n\n The Professor was lecturing on Hydrogen Gas, and had made\n arrangements for showing its lightness, what our preceptor,\n Dr. Charles Hope, called, in his lofty way, its \"principle\n of absolute levity.\" He was greatly excited, the good old\n man of genius. James was standing behind his chair, ready\n and sulky. His master told his young friends that the\n bladder he had filled with the gas must, on principle,\n ascend; but that they would see practically if it did, and\n he cut the string. Up it rushed, amid the shouts and\n upturned faces of the boys, and the quiet joy of their\n master; James regarding it with a glum curiosity.\n\n Young Adam Ferguson was there, and left at the end of the\n hour with the rest, but finding he had forgotten his stick,\n went back; in the empty room, he found James perched upon a\n lofty and shaky ladder, trying, amid much perspiration, and\n blasphemy, and want of breath, to hit down his enemy, who\n rose at each stroke--the old battling with the new. Sir\n Adam's reproduction of this scene, his voice and screams of\n rapture, I shall never forget.\n\n Let me give another pleasant story of Dr. Black and Sir\n Adam, which our Principal (Dr. Lee) delights to tell; it is\n merely its bones. The doctor sent him to the bank for\n L5--four in notes, and one in silver; then told him that he\n must be paid for his trouble with a shilling, and next\n proceeded to give him good advice about the management of\n money, particularly recommending a careful record of every\n penny spent, holding the shilling up before him all the\n time. During this address, Sir Adam was turning over in his\n mind all the trash he would be able to purchase with the\n shilling, and his feeling may be imagined when the doctor\n finally returned it to his own pocket.\n\nIt only remains now for me to thank my cousin and life-long friend, John\nTaylor Brown, the author of the tract on \"St. Paul's Thorn in the\nFlesh.\" I am sure my readers will thank me not less heartily than I now\ndo him. The theory that the thorn of the great apostle was an affection\nof the eyes is not new; it will be found in \"Hannah More's Life,\" and in\n\"Conybeare and Howson;\" but his argument and his whole treatment, I have\nreason to believe, from my father and other competent judges, is\nthoroughly original; it is an exquisite monograph, and to me most\ninstructive and striking. Every one will ask why such a man has not\nwritten more--a question my fastidious friend will find is easier asked\nthan answered.\n\n * * * * *\n\nThis Preface was written, and I had a proof ready for his pencil, when I\nwas summoned to the death of him to whom I owe my life. He had been\ndying for months, but he and I hoped to have got and to have given into\nhis hands a copy of these _Horae_, the correction of which had often\nwhiled away his long hours of languor and pain. God thought otherwise. I\nshall miss his great knowledge, his loving and keen eye--his _ne quid\nnimis_--his sympathy--himself. Let me be thankful that it was given to\nme _assidere valetudini, fovere deficientem, satiari vultu, complexu_.\n\n _Si quis piorum manibus locus; si, ut sapientibus placet, non cum\ncorpore extinguuntur magnae animae; placide quiescas!_\n\nOr, in more sacred and hopeful words, which, put there at my father's\nrequest, may be found at the close of the paper on young Hallam: \"O man\ngreatly beloved, go thou thy way till the end; for thou shalt rest, and\nstand in thy lot at the end of the days.\"\n\nIt is not for a son to speak what he thinks of his father so soon after\nhis death. I leave him now with a portrait of his spiritual lineaments,\nby Dr. Cairns,--which is to them what a painting by Velasquez and Da\nVinci combined would have been to his bodily presence.\n\n \"As he was of the Pauline type of mind, his\n Christianity ran into the same mould. A strong,\n intense, and vehement nature, with masculine\n intellect and unyielding will, he accepted the Bible\n in its literal simplicity as an absolute revelation,\n and then showed the strength of his character in\n subjugating his whole being to this decisive\n influence, and in projecting the same convictions\n into other minds. He was a believer in the sense of\n the old Puritans, and, amid the doubt and skepticism\n of the nineteenth century, held as firmly as any of\n them by the doctrines of atonement and grace. He had\n most of the idiosyncrasy of Baxter, though not\n without the contemplation of Howe. The doctrines of\n Calvinism, mitigated but not renounced, and received\n simply as dictates of Heaven, without any effort or\n hope to bridge over their inscrutable depths by\n philosophical theories, he translated into a\n fervent, humble, and resolutely active life.\n\n \"There was a fountain of tenderness in his nature as\n well as a sweep of impetuous indignation; and the\n one drawn out, and the other controlled by his\n Christian faith, made him at once a philanthropist\n and a reformer, and both in the highest departments\n of human interest. The union of these ardent\n elements, and of a highly devotional temperament,\n not untouched with melancholy, with the patience of\n the scholar, and the sobriety of the critic, formed\n the singularity and almost the anomaly of his\n personal character. These contrasts were tempered by\n the discipline of experience; and his life, both as\n a man and a Christian, seemed to become more rich,\n genial, and harmonious as it approached its\n close.\"--_Scotsman_, October 20th.\n\n J. B.\n\n 23, RUTLAND STREET, _October 30, 1858_.\n\n\n\nPOST PREFACE.\n\n\nI have to thank the public and my own special craft cordially and much\nfor their reception of these Idle Hours--Brown Studies, as a friendly\nwag calls them--and above all, for their taking to their hearts that\ngreat old dog and his dead friends,--for all which the one friend who\nsurvives thanks them. There is no harm and some good in letting our\nsympathy and affection go forth without stint on such objects, dead and\nhomely though they be.\n\nWhen I think of that noble head, with its look and eye of boundless\naffection and pluck, simplicity and single-heartedness, I feel what it\nwould be for us, who call ourselves the higher animals, to be in our\nways as simple, affectionate, and true, as that old mastiff; and in the\nhighest of all senses, I often think of what Robert Burns says\nsomewhere, \"Man is the god of the dog.\" It would be well for man if his\nworship were as immediate and instinctive--as absolute as the dog's. Did\nwe serve our God with half the zeal Rab served his, we might trust to\nsleep as peacefully in our graves as he does in his. When James turned\nhis angry eye and raised his quick voice and foot, his worshipper slunk\naway, humbled and afraid, angry with himself for making _him_ angry;\nanxious by any means to crouch back into his favor, and a kind look or\nword. Is that the way we take His displeasure, even when we can't think,\nas Rab couldn't, we were immediately to blame? It is, as the old worthy\nsays, something to trust our God in the dark, as the dog does his.\n\nA dear and wise and exquisite child, drew a plan for a headstone on the\ngrave of a favorite terrier, and she had in it the words \"WHO died\" on\nsuch a day; the older and more worldly-minded painter put in \"WHICH;\"\nand my friend and \"Bossy's\" said to me, with some displeasure, as we\nwere examining the monuments, \"Wasn't he a Who as much as they?\" and\nwasn't she righter than they? and\n\n \"Quis desiderio sit aut pudor aut modus\n Tam cari capitis\"--\n\nas that of \"Rab.\"\n\nWith regard to the quotations--and the much Latin and some Greek, the\nworld of men, and especially of women, is dead against me. I am sorry\nfor it. As he said, who was reminded in an argument that the facts were\nagainst him, \"So much the worse for them,\" and I may add for me. Latin\nand Greek are not dead--in one sense, they are happily immortal; but the\npresent age is doing its worst to kill them, and much of their own best\ngood and pleasure.\n\n 23, RUTLAND STREET,\n _October 13, 1859_.\n\n\n\n\n_RAB AND HIS FRIENDS._\n\n _To MY TWO FRIENDS\n at Busby, Renfrewshire,\n In Remembrance of a Journey from Carstairs Junction\n to Toledo and back,\n The Story of \"Rab and his Friends\" is inscribed._\n\n\nFour-and-thirty years ago, Bob Ainslie and I were coming up Infirmary\nStreet from the Edinburgh High School, our heads together, and our arms\nintertwisted, as only lovers and boys know how, or why.\n\nWhen we got to the top of the street, and turned north, we espied a\ncrowd at the Tron Church. \"A dog-fight!\" shouted Bob, and was off; and\nso was I, both of us all but praying that it might not be over before we\ngot up! And is not this boy-nature? and human nature too? and don't we\nall wish a house on fire not to be out before we see it? Dogs like\nfighting; old Isaac says they \"delight\" in it, and for the best of all\nreasons; and boys are not cruel because they like to see the fight. They\nsee three of the great cardinal virtues of dog or man--courage,\nendurance, and skill--in intense action. This is very different from a\nlove of making dogs fight, and enjoying, and aggravating, and making\ngain by their pluck. A boy--be he ever so fond himself of fighting, if\nhe be a good boy, hates and despises all this, but he would have run off\nwith Bob and me fast enough: it is a natural, and a not wicked interest,\nthat all boys and men have in witnessing intense energy in action.\n\nDoes any curious and finely-ignorant woman wish to know how Bob's eye at\na glance announced a dog-fight to his brain? He did not, he could not\nsee the dogs fighting; it was a flash of an inference, a rapid\ninduction. The crowd round a couple of dogs fighting, is a crowd\nmasculine mainly, with an occasional active, compassionate woman,\nfluttering wildly round the outside, and using her tongue and her hands\nfreely upon the men, as so many \"brutes;\" it is a crowd annular,\ncompact, and mobile; a crowd centripetal, having its eyes and its heads\nall bent downwards and inwards, to one common focus.\n\nWell, Bob and I are up, and find it is not over: a small thoroughbred,\nwhite bull-terrier, is busy throttling a large shepherd's dog,\nunaccustomed to war, but not to be trifled with. They are hard at it;\nthe scientific little fellow doing his work in great style, his pastoral\nenemy fighting wildly, but with the sharpest of teeth and a great\ncourage. Science and breeding, however, soon had their own; the Game\nChicken, as the premature Bob called him, working his way up, took his\nfinal grip of poor Yarrow's throat,--and he lay gasping and done for.\nHis master, a brown, handsome, big young shepherd from Tweedsmuir, would\nhave liked to have knocked down any man, would \"drink up Esil, or eat a\ncrocodile,\" for that part, if he had a chance: it was no use kicking the\nlittle dog; that would only make him hold the closer. Many were the\nmeans shouted out in mouthfuls, of the best possible ways of ending it.\n\"Water!\" but there was none near, and many cried for it who might have\ngot it from the well at Blackfriars Wynd. \"Bite the tail!\" and a large,\nvague, benevolent, middle-aged man, more desirous than wise, with some\nstruggle got the bushy end of _Yarrow's_ tail into his ample mouth, and\nbit it with all his might. This was more than enough for the\nmuch-enduring, much-perspiring shepherd, who, with a gleam of joy over\nhis broad visage, delivered a terrific facer upon our large, vague,\nbenevolent, middle-aged friend,--who went down like a shot.\n\nStill the Chicken holds; death not far _off_. \"Snuff! a pinch of snuff!\"\nobserved a calm, highly-dressed young buck, with an eye-glass in his\neye. \"Snuff, indeed!\" growled the angry crowd, affronted and glaring.\n\"Snuff! a pinch of snuff!\" again observes the buck but with more\nurgency; whereon were produced several open boxes, and from a mull which\nmay have been at Culloden, he took a pinch, knelt down, and presented it\nto the nose of the Chicken. The laws of physiology and of snuff take\ntheir course; the Chicken sneezes, and Yarrow is free!\n\nThe young pastoral giant stalks off with Yarrow in his arms,--comforting\nhim.\n\nBut the Bull Terrier's blood is up, and his soul unsatisfied; he grips\nthe first dog he meets, and discovering she is not a dog, in Homeric\nphrase, he makes a brief sort of _amende_, and is off. The boys, with\nBob and me at their head, are after him: down Niddry Street he goes,\nbent on mischief; up the Cowgate like an arrow--Bob and I, and our small\nmen, panting behind.\n\nThere, under the single arch of the South Bridge, is a huge mastiff,\nsauntering down the middle of the causeway, as if with his hands in his\npockets: he is old, gray, brindled, as big as a little Highland bull,\nand has the Shaksperian dewlaps shaking as he goes.\n\nThe Chicken makes straight at him, and fastens on his throat. To our\nastonishment, the great creature does nothing but stand still, hold\nhimself up, and roar--yes, roar; a long, serious, remonstrative roar.\nHow is this? Bob and I are up to them. _He is muzzled!_ The bailies had\nproclaimed a general muzzling, and his master, studying strength and\neconomy mainly, had encompassed his huge jaws in a home-made apparatus,\nconstructed out of the leather of some ancient _breechin_. His mouth was\nopen as far as it could; his lips curled up in rage--a sort of terrible\ngrin; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out the darkness; the strap across\nhis mouth tense as a bowstring; his whole frame stiff with indignation\nand surprise; his roar asking us all round; \"Did you ever see the like\nof this?\" He looked a statue of anger and astonishment, done in Aberdeen\ngranite.\n\nWe soon had a crowd: the Chicken held on. \"A knife!\" cried Bob; and a\ncobbler gave him his knife: you know the kind of knife, worn away\nobliquely to a point, and always keen. I put its edge to the tense\nleather; it ran before it; and then!--one sudden jerk of that enormous\nhead, a sort of dirty mist about his mouth, no noise,--and the bright\nand fierce little fellow is dropped, limp, and dead. A solemn pause:\nthis was more than any of us had bargained for. I turned the little\nfellow over, and saw he was quite dead; the mastiff had taken him by the\nsmall of the back like a rat, and broken it.\n\nHe looked down at his victim appeased, ashamed, and amazed; snuffed him\nall over, stared at him, and taking a sudden thought, turned round and\ntrotted off. Bob took the dead dog up, and said, \"John, we'll bury him\nafter tea.\" \"Yes,\" said I, and was off after the mastiff. He made up the\nCowgate at a rapid swing; he had forgotten some engagement. He turned up\nthe Candlemaker Row, and stopped at the Harrow Inn.\n\nThere was a carrier's cart ready to start, and a keen, thin, impatient,\nblack-a-vised little man, his hand at his gray horse's head, looking\nabout angrily for something. \"Rab, ye thief!\" said he, aiming a kick at\nmy great friend, who drew cringing up, and avoiding the heavy shoe with\nmore agility than dignity, and watching his master's eye, slunk dismayed\nunder the cart,--his ears down, and as much as he had of tail down too.\n\nWhat a man this must be--thought I--to whom my tremendous hero turns\ntail! The carrier saw the muzzle hanging, cut and useless, from his\nneck, and I eagerly told him the story, which Bob and I always thought,\nand still think, Homer, or King David, or Sir Walter alone were worthy\nto rehearse. The severe little man was mitigated, and condescended to\nsay, \"Rab, my man, puir Rabbie,\"--whereupon the stump of a tail rose up,\nthe ears were cocked, the eyes filled, and were comforted; the two\nfriends were reconciled. \"Hupp!\" and a stroke of the whip were given to\nJess; and off went the three.\n\n * * * * *\n\nBob and I buried the Game Chicken that night (we had not much of a tea)\nin the back-green of his house in Melville Street, No. 17, with\nconsiderable gravity and silence; and being at the time in the Iliad,\nand, like all boys, Trojans, we called him Hector of course.\n\n * * * * *\n\nSix years have passed,--a long time for a boy and a dog: Bob Ainslie is\noff to the wars; I am a medical student, and clerk at Minto House\nHospital.\n\nRab I saw almost every week, on the Wednesday; and we had much pleasant\nintimacy. I found the way to his heart by frequent scratching of his\nhuge head, and an occasional bone. When I did not notice him he would\nplant himself straight before me, and stand wagging that bud of a tail,\nand looking up, with his head a little to the one side. His master I\noccasionally saw; he used to call me \"Maister John,\" but was laconic as\nany Spartan.\n\nOne fine October afternoon, I was leaving the hospital, when I saw the\nlarge gate open, and in walked Rab, with that great and easy saunter of\nhis. He looked as if taking general possession of the place; like the\nDuke of Wellington entering a subdued city, satiated with victory and\npeace. After him came Jess, now white from age, with her cart; and in it\na woman, carefully wrapped up,--the carrier leading the horse anxiously,\nand looking back. When he saw me, James (for his name was James Noble)\nmade a curt and grotesque \"boo,\" and said, \"Maister John, this is the\nmistress; she's got a trouble in her breest--some kind o' an income\nwe're thinking'.\"\n\nBy this time I saw the woman's face; she was sitting on a sack filled\nwith straw, her husband's plaid round her, and his big-coat with its\nlarge white metal buttons, over her feet.\n\nI never saw a more unforgettable face--pale, serious, _lonely_,[2]\ndelicate, sweet, without being at all what we call fine. She looked\nsixty, and had on a mutch, white as snow, with its black ribbon; her\nsilvery, smooth hair setting off her dark-gray eyes--eyes such as one\nsees only twice or thrice in a lifetime, full of suffering, full also of\nthe overcoming of it: her eyebrows black and delicate, and her mouth\nfirm, patient, and contented, which few mouths ever are.\n\n [2] It is not easy giving this look by one word; it was\n expressive of her being so much of her life alone.\n\nAs I have said, I never saw a more beautiful countenance, or one more\nsubdued to settled quiet. \"Ailie,\" said James, \"this is Maister John,\nthe young doctor; Rab's freend, ye ken. We often speak aboot you,\ndoctor.\" She smiled, and made a movement, but said nothing; and prepared\nto come down, putting her plaid aside and rising. Had Solomon, in all\nhis glory, been handing down the Queen of Sheba at his palace gate, he\ncould not have done it more daintily, more tenderly, more like a\ngentleman, than did James the Howgate carrier, when he lifted down Ailie\nhis wife. The contrast of his small, swarthy, weather-beaten, keen,\nworldly face to hers--pale, subdued, and beautiful--was something\nwonderful. Rab looked on concerned and puzzled, but ready for anything\nthat might turn up,--were it to strangle the nurse, the porter, or even\nme. Ailie and he seemed great friends.\n\n\"As I was sayin' she's got a kind o' trouble in her breest, doctor; wull\nye tak' a look at it?\" We walked into the consulting-room, all four; Rab\ngrim and comic, willing to be happy and confidential if cause could be\nshown, willing also to be the reverse, on the same terms. Ailie sat\ndown, undid her open gown and her lawn handkerchief round her neck, and\nwithout a word, showed me her right breast. I looked at and examined it\ncarefully,-she and James watching me, and Rab eying all three. What\ncould I say? there it was, that had once been so soft, so shapely, so\nwhite, so gracious and bountiful, so \"full of all blessed\nconditions,\"--hard as a stone, a centre of horrid pain, making that pale\nface, with its gray, lucid, reasonable eyes, and its sweet resolved\nmouth, express the full measure of suffering overcome. Why was that\ngentle, modest, sweet woman, clean and lovable, condemned by God to bear\nsuch a burden?\n\nI got her away to bed. \"May Rab and me bide?\" said James. \"_You_ may;\nand Rab, if he will behave himself.\" \"I'se warrant he's do that,\ndoctor;\" and in slank the faithful beast. I wish you could have seen\nhim. There are no such dogs now. He belonged to a lost tribe. As I have\nsaid, he was brindled and gray like Rubislaw granite; his hair short,\nhard, and close, like a lion's; his body thick set, like a little\nbull--a sort of compressed Hercules of a dog. He must have been ninety\npounds' weight, at the least; he had a large blunt head; his muzzle\nblack as night, his mouth blacker than any night, a tooth or two--being\nall he had--gleaming out of his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred\nwith the records of old wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all\nover it; one eye out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop\nLeighton's father's; the remaining eye had the power of two; and above\nit, and in constant communication with it, was a tattered rag of an ear,\nwhich was forever unfurling itself, like an old flag; and then that bud\nof a tail, about one inch long, if it could in any sense be said to be\nlong, being as broad as long--the mobility, the instantaneousness of\nthat bud were very funny and surprising, and its expressive twinklings\nand winkings, the intercommunications between the eye, the ear, and it,\nwere of the oddest and swiftest.\n\nRab had the dignity and simplicity of great size; and having fought his\nway all along the road to absolute supremacy, he was as mighty in his\nown line as Julius Caesar or the Duke of Wellington, and had the\ngravity[3] of all great fighters.\n\n [3] A Highland game-keeper, when asked why a certain terrier, of\n singular pluck, was so much more solemn than the other dogs,\n said, \"Oh, Sir, life's full o' sairiousness to him--he just\n never can get enuff o' fechtin'.\"\n\nYou must have often observed the likeness of certain men to certain\nanimals, and of certain dogs to men. Now, I never looked at Rab without\nthinking of the great Baptist preacher, Andrew Fuller.[4] The same\nlarge, heavy, menacing, combative, sombre, honest countenance, the same\ndeep inevitable eye, the same look,--as of thunder asleep, but\nready,--neither a dog nor a man to be trifled with.\n\n [4] Fuller was, in early life, when a farmer lad at Soham, famous\n as a boxer; not quarrelsome, but not without \"the stern\n delight\" a man of strength and courage feels in their\n exercise. Dr. Charles Stewart, of Dunearn, whose rare gifts\n and graces as a physician, a divine, a scholar, and a\n gentleman, live only in the memory of those few who knew and\n survive him, liked to tell how Mr. Fuller used to say, that\n when he was in the pulpit, and saw a _buirdly_ man come\n along the passage, he would instinctively draw himself up,\n measure his imaginary antagonist, and forecast how he would\n deal with him, his hands meanwhile condensing into fists,\n and tending to \"square.\" He must have been a hard hitter if\n he boxed as he preached--what \"The Fancy\" would call \"an\n ugly customer.\"\n\nNext day, my master, the surgeon, examined Ailie. There was no doubt it\nmust kill her, and soon. It could be removed--it might never return--it\nwould give her speedy relief--she should have it done. She curtsied,\nlooked at James, and said, \"When?\" \"To-morrow,\" said the kind surgeon--a\nman of few words. She and James and Rab and I retired. I noticed that he\nand she spoke little, but seemed to anticipate everything in each other.\nThe following day, at noon, the students came in, hurrying up the great\nstair. At the first landing-place, on a small well-known blackboard, was\na bit of paper fastened by wafers, and many remains of old wafers beside\nit. On the paper were the words,--\"An operation to-day. J. B. _Clerk_.\"\n\nUp ran the youths, eager to secure good places: in they crowded, full of\ninterest and talk. \"What's the case?\" \"Which side is it?\"\n\nDon't think them heartless; they are neither better nor worse than you\nor I; they get over their professional horrors, and into their proper\nwork--and in them pity--as an _emotion_, ending in itself or at best in\ntears and a long-drawn breath, lessens, while pity as a _motive_, is\nquickened, and gains power and purpose. It is well for poor human nature\nthat it is so.\n\nThe operating theatre is crowded; much talk and fun, and all the\ncordiality and stir of youth. The surgeon with his staff of assistants\nis there. In comes Ailie: one look at her quiets and abates the eager\nstudents. That beautiful old woman is too much for them; they sit down,\nand are dumb, and gaze at her. These rough boys feel the power of her\npresence. She walks in quickly, but without haste; dressed in her mutch,\nher neckerchief, her white dimity short-gown, her black bombazine\npetticoat, showing her white worsted stockings and her carpet-shoes.\nBehind her was James with Rab. James sat down in the distance, and took\nthat huge and noble head between his knees. Rab looked perplexed and\ndangerous; forever cocking his ear and dropping it as fast.\n\nAilie stepped up on a seat, and laid herself on the table, as her friend\nthe surgeon told her; arranged herself, gave a rapid look at James, shut\nher eyes, rested herself on me, and took my hand. The operation was at\nonce begun; it was necessarily slow; and chloroform--one of God's best\ngifts to his suffering children--was then unknown. The surgeon did his\nwork. The pale face showed its pain, but was still and silent. Rab's\nsoul was working within him; he saw that something strange was going\non,--blood flowing from his mistress, and she suffering; his ragged ear\nwas up, and importunate; he growled and gave now and then a sharp\nimpatient yelp; he would have liked to have done something to that man.\nBut James had him firm, and gave him a _glower_ from time to time, and\nan intimation of a possible kick;--all the better for James, it kept his\neye and his mind off Ailie.\n\nIt is over: she is dressed, steps gently and decently down from the\ntable, looks for James; then, turning to the surgeon and the students,\nshe curtsies,--and in a low, clear voice, begs their pardon if she has\nbehaved ill. The students--all of us--wept like children; the surgeon\nhapped her up carefully,--and, resting on James and me, Ailie went to\nher room, Rab following. We put her to bed. James took off his heavy\nshoes, crammed with tackets, heel-capt and toe-capt, and put them\ncarefully under the table, saying, \"Maister John, I'm for nane o' yer\nstrynge nurse bodies for Ailie. I'll be her nurse, and I'll gang aboot\non my stockin' soles as canny as pussy.\" And so he did; and handy and\nclever, and swift and tender as any woman, was that horny-handed, snell,\nperemptory little man. Everything she got he gave her: he seldom slept;\nand often I saw his small shrewd eyes out of the darkness, fixed on her.\nAs before, they spoke little.\n\nRab behaved well, never moving, showing us how meek and gentle he could\nbe, and occasionally, in his sleep, letting us know that he was\ndemolishing some adversary. He took a walk with me every day, generally\nto the Candlemaker Row; but he was sombre and mild; declined doing\nbattle, though some fit cases offered, and indeed submitted to sundry\nindignities; and was always very ready to turn, and came faster back,\nand trotted up the stair with much lightness, and went straight to that\ndoor.\n\nJess, the mare, had been sent, with her weatherworn cart, to Howgate,\nand had doubtless her own dim and placid meditations and confusions, on\nthe absence of her master and Rab, and her unnatural freedom from the\nroad and her cart.\n\nFor some days Ailie did well. The wound healed \"by the first intention;\"\nfor as James said, \"Oor Ailie's skin's ower clean to beil.\" The students\ncame in quiet and anxious, and surrounded her bed. She said she liked to\nsee their young, honest faces. The surgeon dressed her, and spoke to her\nin his own short kind way, pitying her through his eyes, Rab and James\noutside the circle,--Rab being now reconciled, and even cordial, and\nhaving made up his mind that as yet nobody required worrying, but, as\nyou may suppose, _semper paratus_.\n\nSo far well: but, four days after the operation, my patient had a sudden\nand long shivering, a \"groosin',\" as she called it. I saw her soon\nafter; her eyes were too bright, her cheek colored; she was restless,\nand ashamed of being so; the balance was lost; mischief had begun. On\nlooking at the wound, a blush of red told the secret: her pulse was\nrapid, her breathing anxious and quick, she wasn't herself, as she said,\nand was vexed at her restlessness. We tried what we could. James did\neverything, was everywhere; never in the way, never out of it; Rab\nsubsided under the table into a dark place, and was motionless, all but\nhis eye, which followed every one. Ailie got worse; began to wander in\nher mind, gently; was more demonstrative in her ways to James, rapid in\nher questions, and sharp at times. He was vexed, and said, \"She was\nnever that way afore; no, never.\" For a time she knew her head was\nwrong, and was always asking our pardon--the dear, gentle old woman:\nthen delirium set in strong, without pause. Her brain gave way, and then\ncame that terrible spectacle,--\n\n \"The intellectual power, through words and things,\n Went sounding on its dim and perilous way;\"\n\nshe sang bits of old songs and Psalms, stopping suddenly, mingling the\nPsalms of David and the diviner words of his Son and Lord, with homely\nodds and ends and scraps of ballads.\n\nNothing more touching, or in a sense more strangely beautiful, did I\never witness. Her tremulous, rapid, affectionate, eager, Scotch\nvoice,--the swift, aimless, bewildered mind, the baffled utterance, the\nbright and perilous eye; some wild words, some household cares,\nsomething for James, the names of the dead, Rab called rapidly and in a\n\"fremyt\" voice, and he starting up surprised, and slinking off as if he\nwere to blame somehow, or had been dreaming he heard; many eager\nquestions and beseechings which James and I could make nothing of, and\non which she seemed to set her all, and then sink back ununderstood. It\nwas very sad, but better than many things that are not called sad. James\nhovered about, put out and miserable, but active and exact as ever; read\nto her when there was a lull, short bits from the Psalms, prose and\nmetre, chanting the latter in his own rude and serious way, showing\ngreat knowledge of the fit words, bearing up like a man, and dealing\nover her as his \"ain Ailie.\" \"Ailie, ma woman!\" \"Ma ain bonnie wee\ndawtie!\"\n\nThe end was drawing on: the golden bowl was breaking; the silver cord\nwas fast being loosed--that _animula blandula_, _vagula_, _hospes_,\n_comesque_, was about to flee. The body and the soul--companions for\nsixty years--were being sundered, and taking leave. She was walking\nalone, through the valley of that shadow, into which one day we must all\nenter,--and yet she was not alone, for we know whose rod and staff were\ncomforting her.\n\nOne night she had fallen quiet, and as we hoped, asleep; her eyes were\nshut. We put down the gas, and sat watching her. Suddenly she sat up in\nbed, and taking a bed-gown which was lying on it rolled up, she held it\neagerly to her breast,--to the right side. We could see her eyes bright\nwith a surprising tenderness and joy, bending over this bundle of\nclothes. She held it as a woman holds her sucking child; opening out her\nnight-gown impatiently, and holding it close, and brooding over it, and\nmurmuring foolish little words, as over one whom his mother comforteth,\nand who sucks and is satisfied. It was pitiful and strange to see her\nwasted dying look, keen and yet vague--her immense love.\n\n\"Preserve me!\" groaned James, giving way. And then she rocked back and\nforward, as if to make it sleep, hushing it, and wasting on it her\ninfinite fondness. \"Wae's me, doctor; I declare she's thinkin' it's that\nbairn.\" \"What bairn?\" \"The only bairn we ever had; our wee Mysie, and\nshe's in the Kingdom, forty years and mair.\" It was plainly true: the\npain in the breast, telling its urgent story to a bewildered, ruined\nbrain, was misread and mistaken; it suggested to her the uneasiness of a\nbreast full of milk, and then the child; and so again once more they\nwere together, and she had her ain wee Mysie in her bosom.\n\nThis was the close. She sank rapidly: the delirium left her; but, as she\nwhispered, she was \"clean silly;\" it was the lightening before the final\ndarkness. After having for some time lain still--her eyes shut, she said\n\"James!\" He came close to her, and lifting up her calm, clear, beautiful\neyes, she gave him a long look, turned to me kindly but shortly, looked\nfor Rab but could not see him, then turned to her husband again, as if\nshe would never leave off looking, shut her eyes, and composed herself.\nShe lay for some time breathing quick, and passed away so gently, that\nwhen we thought she was gone, James, in his old-fashioned way, held the\nmirror to her face. After a long pause, one small spot of dimness was\nbreathed out; it vanished away, and never returned, leaving the blank\nclear darkness of the mirror without a stain. \"What is our life? it is\neven a vapor, which appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth\naway.\"\n\nRab all this time had been full awake and motionless; he came forward\nbeside us: Ailie's hand, which James had held, was hanging down; it was\nsoaked with his tears; Rab licked it all over carefully, looked at her,\nand returned to his place under the table.\n\nJames and I sat, I don't know how long, but for some time,--saying\nnothing: he started up abruptly, and with some noise went to the table,\nand putting his right fore and middle fingers each into a shoe, pulled\nthem out, and put them on, breaking one of the leather latchets, and\nmuttering in anger, \"I never did the like o' that afore!\"\n\nI believe he never did; nor after either. \"Rab!\" he said roughly, and\npointing with his thumb to the bottom of the bed. Rab leapt up, and\nsettled himself; his head and eye to the dead face. \"Maister John, ye'll\nwait for me,\" said the carrier; and disappeared in the darkness,\nthundering down-stairs in his heavy shoes. I ran to a front window;\nthere he was, already round the house, and out at the gate, fleeing like\na shadow.\n\nI was afraid about him, and yet not afraid; so I sat down beside Rab,\nand being wearied, fell asleep. I awoke from a sudden noise outside. It\nwas November, and there had been a heavy fall of snow. Rab was _in statu\nquo_; he heard the noise too, and plainly knew it, but never moved. I\nlooked out; and there, at the gate, in the dim morning--for the sun was\nnot up--was Jess and the cart,--a cloud of steam rising from the old\nmare. I did not see James; he was already at the door, and came up the\nstairs, and met me. It was less than three hours since he left, and he\nmust have posted out--who knows how?--to Howgate, full nine miles off;\nyoked Jess, and driven her astonished into town. He had an armful of\nblankets, and was streaming with perspiration. He nodded to me, spread\nout on the floor two pairs of clean old blankets having at their\ncorners, \"A. G., 1794,\" in large letters in red worsted. These were the\ninitials of Alison Graeme, and James may have looked in at her from\nwithout--himself unseen but not unthought of--when he was \"wat, wat, and\nweary,\" and after having walked many a mile over the hills, may have\nseen her sitting, while \"a' the lave were sleepin';\" and by the\nfirelight working her name on the blankets, for her ain James's bed.\n\nHe motioned Rab down, and taking his wife in his arms, laid her in the\nblankets, and happed her carefully and firmly up, leaving the face\nuncovered; and then lifting her, he nodded again sharply to me, and with\na resolved but utterly miserable face, strode along the passage, and\ndown-stairs, followed by Rab. I followed with a light; but he didn't\nneed it. I went out, holding stupidly the candle in my hand in the calm\nfrosty air; we were soon at the gate. I could have helped him, but I saw\nhe was not to be meddled with, and he was strong, and did not need it.\nHe laid her down as tenderly, as safely, as he had lifted her out ten\ndays before--as tenderly as when he had her first in his arms when she\nwas only \"A. G.,\"--sorted her, leaving that beautiful sealed face open\nto the heavens; and then taking Jess by the head, he moved away. He did\nnot notice me, neither did Rab, who presided behind the cart.\n\nI stood till they passed through the long shadow of the College, and\nturned up Nicolson Street. I heard the solitary cart sound through the\nstreets, and die away and come again; and I returned, thinking of that\ncompany going up Libberton Brae, then along Roslin Muir, the morning\nlight touching the Pentlands and making them like on-looking ghosts;\nthen down the hill through Auchindinny woods, past \"haunted\nWoodhouselee;\" and as daybreak came sweeping up the bleak Lammermuirs,\nand fell on his own door, the company would stop, and James would take\nthe key, and lift Ailie up again, laying her on her own bed, and, having\nput Jess up, would return with Rab and shut the door.\n\nJames buried his wife, with his neighbors mourning, Rab inspecting the\nsolemnity from a distance. It was snow, and that black ragged hole would\nlook strange in the midst of the swelling spotless cushion of white.\nJames looked after everything; then rather suddenly fell ill, and took\nto bed; was insensible when the doctor came, and soon died. A sort of\nlow fever was prevailing in the village, and his want of sleep, his\nexhaustion, and his misery, made him apt to take it. The grave was not\ndifficult to reopen. A fresh fall of snow had again made all things\nwhite and smooth; Rab once more looked on, and slunk home to the stable.\n\n * * * * *\n\nAnd what of Rab? I asked for him next week at the new carrier who got\nthe goodwill of James's business, and was now master of Jess and her\ncart. \"How's Rab?\" He put me off, and said rather rudely, \"What's _your_\nbusiness wi' the dowg?\" I was not to be so put off. \"Where's Rab?\" He,\ngetting confused and red, and intermeddling with his hair, said, \"'Deed,\nsir, Rab's deid.\" \"Dead! what did he die of?\" \"Weel, sir,\" said he,\ngetting redder, \"he didna exactly dee; he was killed. I had to brain him\nwi' a rack-pin; there was nae doin' wi' him. He lay in the treviss wi'\nthe mear, and wadna come oot. I tempit him wi' kail and meat, but he wad\ntak naething, and keepit me frae feedin' the beast, and he was aye gur\ngurrin', and grup gruppin' me by the legs. I was laith to make awa wi'\nthe auld dowg, his like wasna atween this and Thornhill,--but, 'deed,\nsir, I could do naething else.\" I believed him. Fit end for Rab, quick\nand complete. His teeth and his friends gone, why should he keep the\npeace, and be civil?\n\n\n\n\n\"_With BRAINS, Sir._\"\n\n \"_Multi multa sciunt, pauci multum._\"\n\n \"_It is one thing to_ wish to have truth on our side, _and\n another thing to wish to be_ on the side of truth.\"--WHATELY.\n\n \"{Atalaiporos tois pollois he zetesis tes alepheias, kai\n epi ta hetoima mallon trepontai.}\"--THUCYDIDES.\n\n \"_The most perfect philosophy of the_ natural _kind, only staves\n off our_ IGNORANCE _a little longer; as, perhaps, the most\n perfect philosophy of the_ moral or metaphysical _kind, serves\n only to discover larger portions of it._\"--DAVID HUME.\n\n\n\"Pray, Mr. Opie, may I ask what you mix your colors with?\" said a brisk\ndilettante student to the great painter. \"With _Brains_, sir,\" was the\ngruff reply--and the right one. It did not give much of what we call\ninformation; it did not expound the principles and rules of the art;\nbut, if the inquirer had the commodity referred to, it would awaken him;\nit would set him a-going, a-thinking, and a-painting to good purpose. If\nhe had not the wherewithal, as was likely enough, the less he had to do\nwith colors and their mixture the better. Many other artists, when asked\nsuch a question, would have either set about detailing the mechanical\ncomposition of such and such colors, in such and such proportions,\nrubbed up so and so; or perhaps they would (and so much the better, but\nnot the best) have shown him how they laid them on; but even this would\nleave him at the critical point. Opie preferred going to the quick and\nthe heart of the matter: \"With _Brains_, sir.\"\n\nSir Joshua Reynolds was taken by a friend to see a picture. He was\nanxious to admire it, and he looked it over with a keen and careful but\nfavorable eye. \"Capital composition; correct drawing; the color, tone,\nchiaroscuro excellent; but--but--it wants, hang it, it wants--_That!_\"\nsnapping his fingers; and, wanting \"that,\" though it had everything\nelse, it was worth nothing.\n\nAgain, Etty was appointed teacher of the students of the Royal Academy,\nhaving been preceded by a clever, talkative, scientific expounder of\naesthetics, who delighted to tell the young men _how_ everything was\ndone, how to copy this, and how to express that. A student came up to\nthe new master, \"How should I do this, sir?\" \"Suppose you try.\" Another,\n\"What does this mean, Mr. Etty?\" \"Suppose you look.\" \"But I have\nlooked.\" \"Suppose you look again.\" And they did try, and they did look,\nand looked again; and they saw and achieved what they never could have\ndone, had the how or the what (supposing this possible, which it is not\nin its full and highest meaning) been told them, or done for them; in\nthe one case, sight and action were immediate, exact, intense, and\nsecure; in the other mediate, feeble, and lost as soon as gained. But\nwhat are \"_Brains_\"? what did Opie mean? and what is Sir Joshua's\n\"_That_\"? What is included in it? and what is the use, or the need of\ntrying and trying, of missing often before you hit, when you can be told\nat once and be done with it; or of looking when you may be shown?\nEverything in medicine and in painting--practical arts--as means to\nends, let their scientific enlargement be ever so rapid and immense,\ndepends upon the right answers to these questions.\n\nFirst of all, \"brains,\" in the painter, are not diligence, knowledge,\nskill, sensibility, a strong will, or a high aim,--he may have all\nthese, and never paint anything so truly good and effective as the\nrugged woodcut we must all remember, of Apollyon bestriding the whole\nbreadth of the way, and Christian girding at him like a man, in the old\nsixpenny _Pilgrim's Progress_; and a young medical student may have\nzeal, knowledge, ingenuity, attention, a good eye and a steady hand--he\nmay be an accomplished anatomist, stethoscopist, histologist, and\nanalyst; and yet, with all this, and all the lectures, and all the\nbooks, and all the sayings, and all the preparations, drawings, tables,\nand other helps of his teachers, crowded into his memory or his\nnote-books, he may be beaten in treating a whitlow or a colic, by the\nnurse in the wards where he was clerk, or by the old country doctor who\nbrought him into the world, and who listens with such humble wonder to\nhis young friend's account, on his coming home after each session, of\nall he had seen and done,--of all the last astonishing discoveries and\noperations of the day. What the painter wants, in addition to, and as\nthe complement of, the other elements, is _genius and sense_; what the\ndoctor needs to crown and give worth and safety to his accomplishments,\nis _sense and genius_: in the first case, more of this, than of that; in\nthe second, more of that, than of this. These are the \"_Brains_\" and the\n\"_That_.\"\n\nAnd what is genius? and what is sense? Genius is a peculiar native\naptitude, or tendency, to any one calling or pursuit over all others. A\nman may have a genius for governing, for killing, or for curing the\ngreatest number of men, and in the best possible manner: a man may have\na genius for the fiddle, or his mission may be for the tight-rope, or\nthe Jew's harp; or it may be a natural turn for seeking, and finding,\nand teaching truth, and for doing the greatest possible good to mankind;\nor it may be a turn equally natural for seeking, and finding, and\nteaching a lie, and doing the _maximum_ of mischief. It was as natural,\nas inevitable, for Wilkie to develop himself into a painter, and such a\npainter as we know him to have been, as it is for an acorn when planted\nto grow up into an oak, a specific _quercus robur_. But _genius_, and\nnothing else, is not enough, even for a painter; he must likewise have\n_sense_; and what is sense? _Sense_ drives, or ought to drive, the\ncoach; sense regulates, combines, restrains, commands, all the\nrest--even the genius; and sense implies exactness and soundness, power\nand promptitude of mind.\n\nThen for the young doctor, he must have as his main, his master faculty,\nSENSE--Brains--{nous}, justness of mind, because his subject-matter is\none in which principle works, rather than impulse, as in painting; the\nunderstanding has first to do with it, however much it is worthy of the\nfull exercise of the feelings, and the affections. But all will not do,\nif GENIUS is not there,--a real turn for the profession. It may not be a\nliking for it--some of the best of its practitioners never really liked\nit, at least liked other things better; but there must be a fitness of\nfaculty of body and mind for its full, constant, exact pursuit. This\nsense and this genius, such a special therapeutic gift, had Hippocrates,\nSydenham, Pott, Pinel, John Hunter, Delpech, Dupuytren, Kellie, Cheyne,\nBaillie, and Abercrombie. We might, to pursue the subject, pick out\npainters who had much genius and little or no sense, and _vice versa_;\nand physicians and surgeons, who had sense without genius, and genius\nwithout sense, and some perhaps who had neither, and yet were\nnoticeable, and, in their own sideways, useful men.\n\nBut our great object will be gained if we have given our young readers\n(and these remarks are addressed exclusively to students) any idea of\nwhat we mean, if we have made them think, and look inwards. The noble\nand sacred science you have entered on is large, difficult, and deep,\nbeyond most others; it is every day becoming larger, deeper, and in many\nsenses more difficult, more complicated and involved. It requires _more\nthan the average_ intellect, energy, attention, patience, and courage,\nand that singular but imperial quality, at once a gift and an\nacquirement, _presence of mind_--{anchinoia}, or nearness of the {nous},\nas the subtle Greeks called it--than almost any other department of\nhuman thought and action, except perhaps that of ruling men. Therefore\nit is, that we hold it to be of paramount importance that the parents,\nteachers, and friends of youths intended for medicine, and above all,\nthat those who examine them on their entering on their studies, should\nat least (we might safely go much farther) satisfy themselves as far as\nthey can, that they are not below _par_ in intelligence; they may be\ndeficient and unapt, _qua medici_, and yet, if taken in time, may make\nexcellent men in other useful and honorable callings.\n\nBut suppose we have got the requisite amount and specific kind of\ncapacity, how are we to fill it with its means; how are we to make it\neffectual for its end? On this point we say nothing, except that the\nfear now-a-days, is rather that the mind gets too much of too many\nthings, than too little or too few. But this means of turning knowledge\nto action, making it what Bacon meant when he said it was power,\ninvigorating the thinking substance--giving tone, and you may call it\nmuscle and nerve, blood and bone, to the mind--a firm gripe, and a keen\nand sure eye; _that_ we think, is far too little considered or cared for\nat present, as if the mere act of filling in everything forever into a\npoor lad's brain, would give him the ability to make anything of it, and\nabove all, the power to appropriate the small portions of true\nnutriment, and reject the dregs.\n\nOne comfort we have, that in the main, and in the last resort, there is\nreally very little that _can_ be done for any man by another. Begin with\nthe sense and the genius--the keen appetite and the good digestion--and,\namid all obstacles and hardships, the work goes on merrily and well;\nwithout these, we all know what a laborious affair, and a dismal, it is\nto make an incapable youth apply. Did any of you ever set yourselves to\nkeep up artificial respiration, or to trudge about for a whole night\nwith a narcotized victim of opium, or transfuse blood (your own perhaps)\ninto a poor, fainting exanimate wretch? If so, you will have some idea\nof the heartless attempt, and its generally vain and miserable result,\nto make a dull student apprehend--a debauched, interested, knowing, or\nactive in anything beyond the base of his brain--a weak, etiolated\nintellect hearty, and worth anything; and yet how many such are dragged\nthrough their dreary _curricula_, and by some miraculous process of\ncramming, and equally miraculous power of turning their insides out, get\nthrough their examinations: and then--what then? providentially, in most\ncases, they find their level; the broad daylight of the world--its\nshrewd and keen eye, its strong instinct of what can, and what cannot\nserve _its_ purpose--puts all, except the poor object himself, to\nrights; happy is it for him if he turns to some new and more congenial\npursuit in time.\n\nBut it may be asked, how are the brains to be strengthened, the sense\nquickened, the genius awakened, the affections raised--the whole man\nturned to the best account for the cure of his fellow-men? How are you,\nwhen physics and physiology are increasing so marvellously, and when the\nburden of knowledge, the quantity of transferable information, of\nregistered facts, of current names--and such names!--is so infinite: how\nare you to enable a student to take all in, bear up under all, and use\nit as not abusing it, or being abused by it? You must invigorate the\ncontaining and sustaining mind, you must strengthen him from within, as\nwell as fill him from without; you must discipline, nourish, edify,\nrelieve, and refresh his entire nature; and how? We have no time to go\nat large into this, but we will indicate what we mean:--encourage\nlanguages, especially French and German, at the early part of their\nstudies; encourage not merely the book knowledge, but the personal\npursuit of natural history, of field botany, of geology, of zoology;\ngive the young, fresh, unforgetting eye, exercise and free scope upon\nthe infinite diversity and combination of natural colors, forms,\nsubstances, surfaces, weights, and sizes--everything, in a word, that\nwill educate their eye or ear, their touch, taste, and smell, their\nsense of muscular resistance; encourage them by prizes, to make\nskeletons, preparations, and collections of any natural objects; and,\nabove all, try and get hold of their affections, and make them put their\nhearts into their work. Let them, if possible, have the advantage of a\nregulated _tutorial_, as well as the ordinary professorial system. Let\nthere be no excess in the number of classes and frequency of lectures.\nLet them be drilled in composition; by this we mean the writing and\nspelling of correct, plain English (a matter not of every-day\noccurrence, and not on the increase),--let them be directed to the best\nbooks of the old masters in medicine, and _examined in them_,--let them\nbe encouraged in the use of a wholesome and manly literature. We do not\nmean popular or even modern literature--such as Emerson, Bulwer, or\nAlison, or the trash of inferior periodicals or novels--fashion, vanity,\nand the spirit of the age, will attract them readily enough to all\nthese; we refer to the treasures of our elder and better authors. If our\nyoung medical student would take our advice, and for an hour or two\ntwice a week take up a volume of Shakspeare, Cervantes, Milton, Dryden,\nPope, Cowper, Montaigne, Addison, Defoe, Goldsmith, Fielding, Scott,\nCharles Lamb, Macaulay, Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, Helps, Thackeray, &c.,\nnot to mention authors on deeper and more sacred subjects--they would\nhave happier and healthier minds, and make none the worse doctors. If\nthey, by good fortune--for the tide has set in strong against the\n_literae humaniores_--have come off with some Greek or Latin, we would\nsupplicate for an ode of Horace, a couple of pages of Cicero or of Pliny\nonce a month, and a page of Xenophon. French and German should be\nmastered either before or during the first years of study. They will\nnever afterwards be acquired so easily or so thoroughly, and the want of\nthem may be bitterly felt when too late.\n\nBut one main help, we are persuaded, is to be found in studying, and by\nthis we do not mean the mere reading, but the digging into and through,\nthe energizing upon, and mastering such books as we have mentioned at\nthe close of this paper. These are not, of course, the only works we\nwould recommend to those who wish to understand thoroughly, and to make\nup their minds, on these great subjects as wholes; but we all know too\nwell that our Art is long, broad, and deep,--and Time, opportunity, and\nour little hour, brief and uncertain, therefore, we would recommend\nthose books as a sort of game of the mind, a mental exercise--like\ncricket, a gymnastic, a clearing of the eyes of their mind as with\neuphrasy, a strengthening their power over particulars, a getting fresh,\nstrong views of worn out, old things, and, above all, a learning the\nright use of their reason, and by knowing their own ignorance and\nweakness, finding true knowledge and strength. Taking up a book like\nArnauld, and reading a chapter of his lively, manly sense, is like\nthrowing your manuals, and scalpels, and microscopes, and natural (most\nunnatural) orders out of your hand and head, and taking a game with the\nGrange Club, or a run to the top of Arthur Seat. Exertion quickens your\npulse, expands your lungs, makes your blood warmer and redder, fills\nyour mouth with the pure waters of relish, strengthens and supples your\nlegs; and though on your way to the top you may encounter rocks, and\nbaffling _debris_, and gusts of fierce winds rushing out upon you from\nbehind corners, just as you will find in Arnauld, and all truly serious\nand honest books of the kind, difficulties and puzzles, winds of\ndoctrine, and deceitful mists; still you are rewarded at the top by the\nwide view. You see, as from a tower, the end of all. You look into the\nperfections and relations of things. You see the clouds, the bright\nlights and the everlasting hills on the far horizon. You come down the\nhill a happier, a better, and a hungrier man, and of a better mind. But,\nas we said, you must eat the book, you must crush it, and cut it with\nyour teeth and swallow it; just as you must walk up, and not be carried\nup the hill, much less imagine you are there, or look upon a picture of\nwhat you would see were you up, however accurately or artistically done;\nno--you yourself must _do_ both.\n\nPhilosophy--the love and the possession of wisdom--is divided into two\nthings, science or knowledge; and a habit, or power of mind. He who has\ngot the first is not truly wise unless his mind has reduced and\nassimilated it, as Dr. Prout would have said, unless he appropriates and\ncan use it for his need.\n\nThe prime qualifications of a physician may be summed up in the words\n_Capax_, _Perspicax_, _Sagax_, _Efficax_. _Capax_--there must be room to\nreceive, and arrange, and keep knowledge; _Perspicax_--senses and\nperceptions, keen, accurate, and immediate, to bring in materials from\nall sensible things; _Sagax_--a central power of knowing what is what,\nand what it is worth, of choosing and rejecting, of judging; and\nfinally, _Efficax_--the will and the way--the power to turn all the\nother three--capacity, perspicacity, sagacity, to account, in the\nperformance of the thing in hand, and thus rendering back to the outer\nworld, in a new and useful form, what you had received from it. These\nare the intellectual qualities which make up the physician, without any\none of which he would be _mancus_, and would not deserve the name of a\ncomplete artsman, any more than proteine would be itself if any one of\nits four elements were amissing.\n\nWe have left ourselves no room to speak of the books we have named at\nthe end of this paper. We recommend them all to our young readers.\nArnauld's excellent and entertaining _Art of Thinking_--the once famous\nPort-Royal Logic--is, if only one be taken, probably the best. Thomson's\nlittle book is admirable, and is specially suited for a medical student,\nas its illustrations are drawn with great intelligence and exactness\nfrom chemistry and physiology. We know nothing more perfect than the\nanalysis, at page 348, of Sir H. Davy's beautiful experiments to account\nfor the traces of an alkali, found when decomposing water by galvanism.\nIt is quite exquisite, the hunt after and the unearthing of \"_the\nresidual cause_.\" This book has the great advantage of a clear, lively,\nand strong style. We can only give some short extracts.\n\n\n INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION.\n\n \"We may define the inductive method as the process of\n discovering laws and rules from facts, and causes from effects;\n and the deductive, as the method of deriving facts from laws,\n and effects from their causes.\"\n\nThere is a valuable paragraph on anticipation and its uses--there is a\npower and desire of the mind to project itself from the known into the\nunknown, in the expectation of finding what it is in search of.\n\n \"This power of divination, this sagacity, which is the mother of\n all science, we may call anticipation. The intellect, with a\n dog-like instinct, will not hunt until it has found the scent.\n It must have some presage of the result before it will turn its\n energies to its attainment. The system of anatomy which has\n immortalized the name of Oken, is the consequence of a _flash of\n anticipation_, which glanced through his mind when he picked up,\n in a chance walk, the skull of a deer, bleached by the weather,\n and exclaimed--'_It is a vertebral column!_'\"\n\n \"The man of science possesses principles--the man of art, not\n the less nobly gifted, is possessed and carried away by them.\n The principles which art _involves_, science _evolves_. The\n truths on which the success of art depends lurk in the artist's\n mind in an undeveloped state, guiding his hand, stimulating his\n invention, balancing his judgment, but not appearing in regular\n propositions.\" \"An art (that of medicine for instance) will of\n course admit into its limits, everything (_and nothing else_)\n which can conduce to the performance of _its own proper work_;\n it recognizes no other principles of selection.\"\n\n \"He who reads a book on logic, probably thinks no better when he\n rises up than when he sat down, but if any of the principles\n there unfolded cleave to his memory, and he afterwards, perhaps\n unconsciously, shapes and corrects his thoughts by them, no\n doubt the whole powers of his reasoning receive benefit. In a\n word, every art, from reasoning to riding and rowing, is learned\n by assiduous practice, and if principles do any good, it is\n proportioned to the readiness with which they can be converted\n into rules, and the patient constancy with which they are\n applied in all our attempts at excellence.\"\n\n \"_A man can teach names to another man, but he cannot plant in\n another's mind that far higher gift--the power of naming._\"\n\n \"_Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and\n efficient instrument in thinking._\"\n\n \"The whole of every _science_ may be made the subject of\n teaching. Not so with _art_; much of it is not teachable.\"\n\nColeridge's profound and brilliant, but unequal, and often somewhat\nnebulous _Essay on Method_, is worth reading over, were it only as an\nexercitation, and to impress on the mind the meaning and value of\n_method_. Method is the road by which you reach, or hope to reach, a\ncertain end; it is a process. It is the best direction for the search\nafter truth. System, again, which is often confounded with it, is a\nmapping out, a circumscription of knowledge, either already gained, or\ntheoretically laid down as probable. Aristotle had a system which did\nmuch good, but also much mischief. Bacon was chiefly occupied in\npreparing and pointing out the way--the only way--of procuring\nknowledge. He left to others to systematize the knowledge after it was\ngot; but the pride and indolence of the human spirit lead it constantly\nto build systems on imperfect knowledge. It has the trick of filling up\nout of its own fancy what it has not the diligence, the humility, and\nthe honesty, to seek in nature; whose servant, and articulate voice, it\nought to be.\n\nDescartes' little tract on Method is, like everything the lively and\ndeep-souled Breton did, full of original and bright thought.\n\nSir John Herschel's volume needs no praise. We know no work of the sort,\nfuller of the best moral worth, as well as the highest philosophy. We\nfear it is more talked of than read.\n\nWe would recommend the article in the _Quarterly Review_ as first-rate,\nand written with great eloquence and grace.\n\n\n SYDNEY SMITH'S _Sketches of Lectures on Moral Philosophy_.\n Second Edition.\n\n SEDGWICK'S _Discourse on the Studies at Cambridge, with a\n Preface and Appendix_. Sixth Edition.\n\nWe have put these two worthies here, not because we had forgotten\nthem,--much less because we think less of them than the others,\nespecially Sydney. But because we bring them in at the end of our small\nentertainment, as we hand round a liqueur--be it Curacoa, Kimmel, or old\nGlenlivet--after dinner, and end with the heterogeneous\nplum-pudding--that most English of realized ideas. Sydney Smith's book\nis one of rare excellence, and well worthy of the study of men and\nwomen, though perhaps not transcendental enough for our modern\nphilosophers, male and female. It is really astonishing how much of the\nbest of everything, from patriotism to nonsense, is to be found in this\nvolume of sketches. You may read it through, if your sides can bear such\nan accumulation of laughter, with great benefit; and if you open it\nanywhere, you can't read three sentences without coming across some, it\nmay be common thought, and often original enough, better expressed and\n_put_ than you ever before saw it. The lectures on the Affections, the\nPassions and Desires, and on Study, we would have everybody to read and\nenjoy.\n\nSedgwick is a different, and, as a whole, an inferior man; but a _man_\nevery inch of him, and an Englishman too, in his thoughts, and in his\nfine mother wit and tongue. He has, in the midst of all his confusion\nand passionateness, the true instinct of philosophy--the true venatic\nsense of objective truth. We know nothing better in the main, than his\ndemolition of what is untrue, and his reduction of what is absurd, and\nhis taking the wind out of what is tympanitic, in the notorious\n_Vestiges_; we don't say he always does justice to what is really good\nin it; his mission is to execute justice _upon it_, and that he does.\nHis remarks on Oken and Owen, and his quotations from Dr. Clarke's\nadmirable paper on the _Development of the Foetus_, in the _Cambridge\nPhilosophical Transactions_, we would recommend to our medical friends.\nThe very confusion of Sedgwick is the free outcome of a deep and racy\nnature; it puts us in mind of what happened, when an Englishman was\nlooking with astonishment and disgust at a Scotchman eating a singed\nsheep's head, and was asked by the eater what he thought of that dish?\n\"_Dish_, sir, do you call that a dish?\" \"Dish or no dish,\" rejoined the\nCaledonian, \"there's a deal o' fine confused feedin' aboot it, let me\ntell you.\"\n\nWe conclude these rambling remarks with a quotation from Arnauld, the\nfriend of Pascal, and the intrepid antagonist of the Vatican and the\nGrand Monarque; one of the noblest, freest, most untiring and honest\nintellects, our world has ever seen. \"Why don't you rest sometimes?\"\nsaid his friend Nicole to him. \"Rest! why should I rest here? haven't I\nan eternity to rest in?\" The following sentence from his \"_Port-Royal\nLogic_,\" so well introduced and translated by Mr. Baynes, contains the\ngist of all we have been trying to say. It should be engraven on the\ntablets of every young student's heart--for the heart has to do with\nstudy as well as the head.\n\n \"There is nothing more desirable than _good sense and justness\n of mind_,--all other qualities of mind are of limited use, but\n exactness of judgment is of general utility in every part and in\n all employments of life.\n\n \"_We are too apt to employ reason merely as an instrument for\n acquiring the sciences, whereas we ought to avail ourselves of\n the sciences, as an instrument for perfecting our reason_;\n justness of mind being infinitely more important than all the\n speculative knowledge which we can obtain by means of sciences\n the most solid. This ought to lead wise men to make their\n sciences _the exercise and not the occupation of their mental\n powers_. Men are not born to employ all their time in measuring\n lines, in considering the various movements of matter: their\n minds are too great, and their life too short, their time too\n precious, to be so engrossed; but they are born to be just,\n equitable, and prudent, in all their thoughts, their actions,\n their business; to these things they ought especially to train\n and discipline themselves.\"\n\nSo, young friends, bring _Brains_ to your work, and mix everything with\nthem, and them with everything. _Arma virumque_, tools and a man to use\nthem. Stir up, direct, and give free scope to Sir Joshua's \"_that_,\" and\ntry again, and again; and look, _oculo intento, acie acerrima_. Looking\nis a voluntary act,--it is the man within coming to the window; seeing\nis a state,--passive and receptive, and, at the best, little more than\nregistrative.\n\nSince writing the above, we have read with great satisfaction Dr.\nForbes' Lecture delivered before the Chichester Literary Society and\nMechanics' Institute, and published at their request. Its subject is,\nHappiness in its relation to Work and Knowledge. It is worthy of its\nauthor, and is, we think, more largely and finely imbued with his\npersonal character, than any one other of his works that we have met\nwith. We could not wish a fitter present for a young man starting on the\ngame of life. It is a wise, cheerful manly, and warm-hearted discourse\non the words of Bacon,--\"He that is wise, let him pursue some desire or\nother: for he that doth not affect some one thing in chief, unto him all\nthings are distasteful and tedious.\" We will not spoil this little\nvolume by giving any account of it. Let our readers get it, and read it.\nThe extracts from his Thesis, _De Mentis Exercitatione et Felicitate\nexinde derivanda_, are very curious--showing the native vigor and bent\nof his mind, and indicating also, at once the identity and the growth of\nhis thoughts during the lapse of thirty-three years.\n\nWe give the last paragraph, the sense and the filial affection of which\nare alike admirable. Having mentioned to his hearers that they saw in\nhimself a living illustration of the truth of his position, that\nhappiness is a necessary result of knowledge and work, he thus\nconcludes:--\n\n \"If you would further desire to know to what besides I am\n chiefly indebted for so enviable a lot, I would say:--1st,\n Because I had the good fortune to come into the world with a\n healthful frame, and with a sanguine temperament. 2d, Because I\n had no patrimony, and was therefore obliged to trust to my own\n exertions for a livelihood. 3d, Because I was born in a land\n where instruction is greatly prized and readily accessible. 4th,\n Because I was brought up to a profession which not only\n compelled mental exercise, but supplied for its use materials of\n the most delightful and varied kind. _And lastly and\n principally, because the good man to whom I owe my existence,\n had the foresight to know what would be best for his children.\n He had the wisdom, and the courage, and the exceeding love, to\n bestow all that could be spared of his worldly means, to\n purchase for his sons, that which is beyond price_, EDUCATION;\n well judging that the means so expended, if hoarded for future\n use, would be, if not valueless, certainly evanescent, while the\n precious treasure for which they were exchanged, a cultivated\n and instructed mind, would not only last through life, but might\n be the fruitful source of treasures far more precious than\n itself. So equipped he sent them forth into the world to fight\n Life's battle, leaving the issue in the hand of God; confident,\n however, that though they might fail to achieve renown or to\n conquer Fortune, they possessed _that_ which, if rightly used,\n could win for them the yet higher prize of HAPPINESS.\"\n\n * * * * *\n\nSince this was written, many good books have appeared, but we would\nselect three, which all young men should read and get--Hartley\nColeridge's _Lives of Northern Worthies_, Thackeray's _Letters of Brown\nthe Elder_, and _Tom Brown's School-days_--in spirit and in expression,\nwe don't know any better models for manly courage, good sense, and\nfeeling, and they are as well written as they are thought.\n\nThere are the works of another man, one of the greatest, not only of\nour, but of any time, to which we cannot too earnestly draw our young\nreaders. We mean the philosophical writings of Sir William Hamilton. We\nknow no more invigorating, quickening, rectifying kind of exercise, than\nreading with a will, anything he has written upon permanently important\nsubjects. There is a greatness and simplicity, a closeness of thought, a\nglance keen and wide, a play of the entire nature, and a truthfulness\nand downrightness, with an amount, and accuracy, and vivification of\nlearning, such as we know of in no one other writer, ancient or\nmodern--not even Leibnitz; and we know no writings which so wholesomely\nat once exalt and humble the reader, make him feel what is in him, and\nwhat he can and may, as well as what he cannot, and need never hope to\nknow. In this respect, Hamilton is as grand as Pascal, and more simple;\nhe exemplifies everywhere his own sublime adaptation of\nScripture--unless a man become a little child, he cannot enter into the\nkingdom; he enters the temple stooping, but he presses on, intrepid and\nalone, to the inmost _adytum_, worshipping the more the nearer he gets\nto the inaccessible shrine, whose veil no mortal hand has ever rent in\ntwain. And we name after him, the thoughtful, candid, impressive little\nvolume of his pupil, his friend, and his successor, Professor Fraser.\n\nThe following passage from Sir William Hamilton's _Dissertations_,\nbesides its wise thought, sounds in the ear like the pathetic and\nmajestic sadness of a symphony by Beethoven:--\n\n \"There are two sorts of ignorance: we philosophize to escape\n ignorance, and the consummation of our philosophy is ignorance;\n we start from the one, we repose in the other; they are the\n goals from which, and to which, we tend; and the pursuit of\n knowledge is but a course between two ignorances, as human life\n is itself only a travelling from grave to grave.\n\n {Tis bios?--Ek tymboio thoron, eti tymbon hodeuo.}\n\n The highest reach of human science is the scientific recognition\n of human ignorance; 'Qui nescit ignorare, ignorat scire.' This\n 'learned ignorance' is the rational conviction by the human mind\n of its inability to transcend certain limits; it is the\n knowledge of ourselves,--the science of man. This is\n accomplished by a demonstration of the disproportion between\n what is to be known, and our faculties of knowing,--the\n disproportion, to wit, between the infinite and the finite. In\n fact, the recognition of human ignorance, is not only the one\n highest, but the one true, knowledge; and its first-fruit, as\n has been said, is humility. Simple nescience is not proud;\n consummated science is positively humble. For this knowledge it\n is not, which 'puffeth up;' but its opposite, the conceit of\n false knowledge,--the conceit, in truth, as the apostle notices,\n of an ignorance of the very nature of knowledge:--\n\n 'Nam nesciens quid scire sit,\n Te scire cuncta jactitas.'\n\n \"But as our knowledge stands to Ignorance, so stands it also to\n Doubt. Doubt is the beginning and the end of our efforts to\n know; for as it is true,--'Alte dubitat qui altius credit,' so\n it is likewise true,--'Quo magis quaerimus magis dubitamus.'\n\n \"The grand result of human wisdom is thus only a consciousness\n that what we know is as nothing to what we know not, ('Quantum\n est quod nescimus!')--an articulate confession, in fact, by our\n natural reason, of the truth declared in revelation, that '_now_\n we see through a glass, darkly.'\"\n\nHis pupil writes in the same spirit and to the same end:--\"A discovery,\nby means of reflection and mental experiment, of the _limits_ of\nknowledge, is the highest and most universally applicable discovery of\nall; it is the one through which our intellectual life most strikingly\nblends with the moral and practical part of human nature. Progress in\nknowledge is often paradoxically indicated by a diminution in the\n_apparent bulk_ of what we know. Whatever helps to work off the dregs of\nfalse opinion, and to purify the intellectual mass--whatever deepens our\nconviction of our infinite ignorance--really adds to, although it\nsometimes seems to diminish, the rational possessions of man. This is\nthe highest kind of merit that is claimed for Philosophy, by its\nearliest as well as by its latest representatives. It is by this\nstandard that Socrates and Kant measure the chief results of their\ntoil.\"\n\n\nBOOKS REFERRED TO.\n\n1. Arnauld's Port-Royal Logic; translated by T. S. Baynes.--2. Thomson's\nOutlines of the Necessary Laws of Thought.--3. Descartes on the Method\nof Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences.--4.\nColeridge's Essay on Method.--5. Whately's Logic and Rhetoric; new and\ncheap edition.--6. Mill's Logic; new and cheap edition.--7. Dugald\nStewart's Outlines.--8. Sir John Herschel's Preliminary\nDissertation.--9. Quarterly Review, vol. lxviii; Article upon Whewell's\nPhilosophy of Inductive Sciences.--10. Isaac Taylor's Elements of\nThought.--11. Sir William Hamilton's edition of Reid; Dissertations; and\nLectures.--12. Professor Fraser's Rational Philosophy.--13. Locke on the\nConduct of the Understanding.\n\n\n\n\n_THE MYSTERY OF BLACK AND TAN._\n\n \"_The reader must remember that my work is concerning the_\n aspects _of things only._\"--RUSKIN.\n\n\nWe,--the _Sine Qua Non_, the Duchess, the Sputchard, the Dutchard, the\nRicapicticapic, Oz and Oz, the Maid of Lorn, and myself,--left Crieff\nsome fifteen years ago, on a bright September morning, soon after\ndaybreak, in a gig. It was a morning still and keen: the sun sending his\nlevel shafts across Strathearn, and through the thin mist over its river\nhollows, to the fierce Aberuchil Hills, and searching out the dark blue\nshadows in the corries of Benvorlich. But who and how many are \"we?\" To\nmake you as easy as we all were, let me tell you we were four; and are\nnot these dumb friends of ours persons rather than things? is not their\nsoul ampler, as Plato would say, than their body, and contains rather\nthan is contained? Is not what lives and wills in them, and is\naffectionate, as spiritual, as immaterial, as truly removed from mere\nflesh, blood, and bones, as that soul which is the proper self of their\nmaster? And when we look each other in the face, as I now look in\nDick's, who is lying in his \"corny\" by the fireside, and he in mine, is\nit not as much the dog within looking from out his eyes--the windows of\nhis soul--as it is the man from his?\n\nThe _Sine Qua Non_, who will not be pleased at being spoken of, is such\nan one as that vain-glorious and chivalrous Ulric von Huetten--the\nReformation's man of wit, and of the world, and of the sword, who slew\nMonkery with the wild laughter of his _Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_--had\nin his mind when he wrote thus to his friend Fredericus Piscator (Mr.\nFred. Fisher), on the 19th May 1519, \"_Da mihi uxorem, Friderice, et ut\nscias qualem, venustam, adolescentulam, probe educatam, hilarem,\nverecundam, patientem._\" \"_Qualem_,\" he lets Frederic understand in the\nsentence preceding, is one \"_qua cum ludam, qua jocos conferam,\namoeniores et leviusculas fabulas misceam, ubi sollicitudinis aciem\nobtundam, curarum aestus mitigem_.\" And if you would know more of the\n_Sine Qua Non_, and in English, for the world is dead to Latin now, you\nwill find her name and nature in Shakspeare's words, when King Henry the\nEighth says, \"go thy ways.\"\n\n_The Duchess_, alias all the other names till you come to the _Maid of\nLorn_, is a rough, gnarled, incomparable little bit of a terrier, three\nparts Dandie-Dinmont, and one part--chiefly in tail and hair--cocker:\nher father being Lord Rutherfurd's famous \"Dandie,\" and her mother the\ndaughter of a Skye, and a light-hearted Cocker. The Duchess is about the\nsize and weight of a rabbit; but has a soul as big, as fierce, and as\nfaithful as had Meg Merrilies, with a nose as black as Topsy's; and is\nherself every bit as game and queer as that delicious imp of darkness\nand of Mrs. Stowe. Her legs set her long slim body about two inches and\na half from the ground, making her very like a huge caterpillar or hairy\n_oobit_--her two eyes, dark and full, and her shining nose, being all of\nher that seems anything but hair. Her tail was a sort of stump, in size\nand in look very much like a spare foreleg, stuck in anywhere to be\nnear. Her color was black above and a rich brown below, with two dots of\ntan above the eyes, which dots are among the deepest of the mysteries of\nBlack and Tan.\n\nThis strange little being I had known for some years, but had only\npossessed about a month. She and her pup (a young lady called _Smoot_,\nwhich means smolt, a young salmon), were given me by the widow of an\nhonest and drunken--as much of the one as of the other--Edinburgh\nstreet-porter, a native of Badenoch, as a legacy from him and a fee from\nher for my attendance on the poor man's death-bed. But my first sight of\nthe Duchess was years before in Broughton Street, when I saw her sitting\nbolt upright, begging, imploring, with those little rough four leggies,\nand those yearning, beautiful eyes, all the world, or any one, to help\nher master, who was lying \"mortal\" in the kennel. I raised him, and with\nthe help of a ragged Samaritan, who was only less drunk than he, I got\nMacpherson--he held from Glen Truim--home; the excited doggie trotting\noff, and looking back eagerly to show us the way. I never again passed\nthe Porters' Stand without speaking to her. After Malcolm's burial I\ntook possession of her; she escaped to the wretched house, but as her\nmistress was off to Kingussie, and the door shut, she gave a pitiful\nhowl or two, and was forthwith back at my door, with an impatient,\nquerulous bark. And so this is our second of the four; and is she not\ndeserving of as many names as any other Duchess, from her of Medina\nSidonia downwards?\n\nA fierier little soul never dwelt in a queerer or stancher body; see her\nhuddled up, and you would think her a bundle of hair, or a bit of old\nmossy wood, or a slice of heathery turf, with some red soil underneath\nbut speak to her, or give her a cat to deal with, be it bigger than\nherself, and what an incarnation of affection, energy, and fury--what a\nfell unquenchable little ruffian.\n\n_The Maid of Lorn_ was a chestnut mare, a broken down racer,\nthorough-bred as Beeswing, but less fortunate in her life, and I fear\nnot so happy _occasione mortis_: unlike the Duchess, her body was\ngreater and finer than her soul; still she was a ladylike creature,\nsleek, slim, nervous, meek, willing, and fleet. She had been thrown down\nby some brutal half-drunk Forfarshire laird, when he put her wildly and\nwith her wind gone, at the last hurdle on the North Inch at the Perth\nraces. She was done for and bought for ten pounds by the landlord of the\nDrummond Arms, Crieff, who had been taking as much money out of her, and\nputting as little corn into her as was compatible with life, purposing\nto run her for the Consolation Stakes at Stirling. Poor young lady, she\nwas a sad sight--broken in back, in knees, in character, and wind--in\neverything but temper, which was as sweet and all-enduring as Penelope's\nor our own Enid's.\n\nOf myself, the fourth, I decline making any account. Be it sufficient\nthat I am the Dutchard's master, and drove the gig.\n\nIt was, as I said, a keen and bright morning, and the S. Q. N. feeling\nchilly, and the Duchess being away after a cat up a back entry, doing a\nchance stroke of business, and the mare looking only half breakfasted, I\nmade them give her a full feed of meal and water, and stood by and\nenjoyed her enjoyment. It seemed too good to be true, and she looked up\nevery now and then in the midst of her feast, with a mild wonder. Away\nshe and I bowled down the sleeping village, all overrun with sunshine,\nthe dumb idiot man and the birds alone up, for the ostler was off to his\nstraw. There was the S. Q. N. and her small panting friend, who had lost\nthe cat, but had got what philosophers say is better--the chase. \"_Nous\nne cherchons jamais les choses, mais la recherche des choses_,\" says\nPascal. The Duchess would substitute for _les choses_--_les chats_.\nPursuit, not possession, was her passion. We all got in, and off set the\nMaid, who was in excellent heart, quite gay, pricking her ears and\ncasting up her head, and rattling away at a great pace.\n\nWe baited at St. Fillans, and again cheered the heart of the Maid with\nunaccustomed corn--the S. Q. N., Duchie, and myself, going up to the\nbeautiful rising ground at the back of the inn, and lying on the\nfragrant heather looking at the Loch, with its mild gleams and shadows,\nand its second heaven looking out from its depths, the wild, rough\nmountains of Glenartney towering opposite. Duchie, I believe, was\nengaged in minor business close at hand, and caught and ate several\nlarge flies and a humble-bee; she was very fond of this small game.\n\nThere is not in all Scotland, or as far as I have seen in all else, a\nmore exquisite twelve miles of scenery than that between Crieff and the\nhead of Lochearn. Ochtertyre, and its woods; Benchonzie, the\nhead-quarters of the earthquakes, only lower than Benvorlich; Strowan;\nLawers, with its grand old Scotch pines; Comrie, with the wild Lednoch;\nDunira; and St. Fillans, where we are now lying, and where the poor\nthoroughbred is tucking in her corn. We start after two hours of\ndreaming in the half sunlight, and rumble ever and anon over an\nearthquake, as the common folk call these same hollow, resounding rifts\nin the rock beneath, and arriving at the old inn at Lochearnhead, have a\n_tousie_ tea. In the evening, when the day was darkening into night,\nDuchie and I,--the S. Q. N. remaining to read and rest,--walked up Glen\nOgle. It was then in its primeval state, the new road non-existent, and\nthe old one staggering up and down and across that most original and\nCyclopean valley, deep, threatening, savage, and yet beautiful--\n\n \"Where rocks were rudely heaped, and rent\n As by a spirit turbulent;\n Where sights were rough, and sounds were wild,\n And everything unreconciled;\"\n\nwith flocks of mighty boulders, straying all over it. Some far up, and\nfrightful to look at, others huddled down in the river, _immane pecus_,\nand one huge unloosened fellow, as big as a manse, up aloft watching\nthem, like old Proteus with his calves, as if they had fled from the sea\nby stress of weather, and had been led by their ancient herd _altos\nvisere montes_--a wilder, more \"unreconciled\" place I know not; and now\nthat the darkness was being poured into it, those big fellows looked\nbigger, and hardly \"canny.\"\n\nJust as we were turning to come home--Duchie unwillingly, as she had\nmuch multifarious, and as usual fruitless hunting to do--she and I were\nstartled by seeing a dog _in_ the side of the hill, where the soil had\nbeen broken. She barked and I stared; she trotted consequentially up and\nsnuffed _more canino_, and I went nearer: it never moved, and on coming\nquite close I saw as it were the _image_ of a terrier, a something that\nmade me think of an idea unrealized; the rough, short, scrubby heather\nand dead grass, made a color and a coat just like those of a good\nHighland terrier--a sort of pepper and salt this one was--and below, the\nbroken soil, in which there was some iron and clay, with old gnarled\nroots, for all the world like its odd, bandy, and sturdy legs. Duchie\nseemed not so easily unbeguiled as I was, and kept staring, and\nsnuffing, and growling, but did not touch it,--seemed afraid. I left and\nlooked again, and certainly it was very odd the _growing_ resemblance to\none of the indigenous, hairy, low-legged dogs, one sees all about the\nHighlands, terriers, or earthy ones.\n\nWe came home, and told the S. Q. N. our joke. I dreamt of that visionary\nterrier, that son of the soil, all night; and in the very early morning,\nleaving the S. Q. N. asleep, I walked up with the Duchess to the same\nspot. What a morning! it was before sunrise, at least before he had got\nabove Benvorlich. The loch was lying in a faint mist, beautiful\nexceedingly, as if half veiled and asleep, the cataract of Edinample\nroaring less loudly than in the night, and the old castle of the Lords\nof Lochow, in the shadow of the hills, among its trees, might be seen\n\n \"Sole sitting by the shore of old romance.\"\n\nThere was still gloom in Glen Ogle, though the beams of the morning were\nshooting up into the broad fields of the sky. I was looking back and\ndown, when I heard the Duchess bark sharply, and then give a cry of\nfear, and on turning round, there was she with as much as she had of\ntail between her legs, where I never saw it before, and her small Grace,\nwithout noticing me or my cries, making down to the inn and her\nmistress, a hairy hurricane. I walked on to see what it was, and there\nin the same spot as last night, in the bank, was a real dog--no mistake;\nit was not, as the day before, a mere surface or _spectrum_, or ghost of\na dog; it was plainly round and substantial; it was much developed since\neight P.M. As I looked, it moved slightly, and as it were by a sort of\nshiver, as if an electric shock (and why not?) was being administered by\na law of nature; it had then no tail, or rather had an odd amorphous\nlook in that region; its eye, for it had one--it was seen in\nprofile--looked to my profane vision like (why not actually?) a huge\nblaeberry (_vaccinium Myrtillus_, it is well to be scientific) black and\nfull; and I thought,--but dare not be sure, and had no time or courage\nto be minute,--that where the nose should be, there was a small shining\nblack snail, probably the _Limax niger_ of M. de Ferussac, curled up,\nand if you look at any dog's nose you will be struck with the typical\nresemblance, in the corrugations and moistness and jetty blackness of\nthe one to the other, and of the other to the one. He was a\nstrongly-built, wiry, bandy, and short-legged dog. As I was staring upon\nhim, a beam--Oh, first creative beam!--sent from the sun--\n\n \"Like as an arrow from a bow,\n Shot by an archer strong\"--\n\nas he looked over Benvorlich's shoulder, and piercing a cloudlet of mist\nwhich clung close to him, and filling it with whitest radiance, struck\nupon that eye or berry, and lit up that nose or snail: in an instant he\nsneezed (the _nisus (sneezus?) formativus_ of the ancients); that eye\nquivered and was quickened, and with a shudder--such as a horse executes\nwith that curious muscle of the skin, of which we have a mere fragment\nin our neck, the _Platysma Myoides_, and which doubtless has been\nlessened as we lost our distance from the horse-type--which dislodged\nsome dirt and stones and dead heather, and doubtless endless beetles,\nand, it may be, made some near weasel open his other eye, up went his\ntail, and out he came, lively, entire, consummate, _warm_, wagging his\ntail, I was going to say like a Christian, I mean like an ordinary dog.\nThen flashed upon me the solution of the _Mystery of Black and Tan_ in\nall its varieties: the body, its upper part gray or black or yellow\naccording to the upper soil and herbs, heather, bent, moss, &c.; the\nbelly and feet, red or tan or light fawn, according to the nature of the\ndeep soil, be it ochrey, ferruginous, light clay, or comminuted mica\nslate. And wonderfullest of all, the DOTS of TAN above the eyes--and who\nhas not noticed and wondered as to the philosophy of them?--_I saw made_\nby the two fore feet, wet and clayey, being put briskly up to his eyes\nas he sneezed that genetic, vivifying sneeze, and leaving their mark,\nforever.\n\nHe took to me quite pleasantly, by virtue of \"natural selection,\" and\nhas accompanied me thus far in our \"struggle for life,\" and he, and the\nS. Q. N., and the Duchess, and the Maid, returned that day to Crieff,\nand were friends all our days. I was a little timid when he was crossing\na burn lest he should wash away his feet, but he merely colored the\nwater, and every day less and less, till in a fortnight I could wash him\nwithout fear of his becoming a _solution_, or fluid extract of dog, and\nthus resolving the mystery back into itself.\n\nThe mare's days were short. She won the Consolation Stakes at Stirling,\nand was found dead next morning in Gibb's stables. The Duchess died in a\ngood old age, as may be seen in the history of \"Our Dogs.\" The S. Q. N.,\nand the parthenogenesic earth-born, the _Cespes Vivus_--whom we\nsometimes called Joshua, because he was the Son of None (Nun), and even\nMelchisedec has been whispered, but only that, and Fitz-Memnon, as being\nas it were a son of the Sun, sometimes the Autochthon {autochthonos};\n(indeed, if the relation of the _coup de soleil_ and the blaeberry had\nnot been plainly causal and effectual, I might have called him _Filius\nGunni_, for at the very moment of that shudder, by which he leapt out of\nnon-life into life, the Marquis's gamekeeper fired his rifle up the\nhill, and brought down a stray young stag,) these two are happily with\nme still, and at this moment she is out on the grass in a low\neasy-chair, reading Emilie Carlen's _Brilliant Marriage_, and Dick is\nlying at her feet, watching, with cocked ears, some noise in the ripe\nwheat, possibly a chicken, for, poor fellow, he has a weakness for\nworrying hens, and such small deer, when there is a dearth of greater.\nIf any, as is not unreasonable, doubt me and my story, they may come and\nsee Dick. I assure them he is well worth seeing.\n\n\n\n\n_HER LAST HALF-CROWN._\n\n _Once I had friends--though now by all forsaken;\n Once I had parents--they are now in heaven.\n I had a home once----_\n\n _Worn out with anguish, sin, and cold, and hunger,\n Down sunk the outcast, death had seized her senses.\n There did the stranger find her in the morning--\n God had released her._\n\n SOUTHEY.\n\n\nHugh Miller, the geologist, journalist, and man of genius, was sitting\nin his newspaper office late one dreary winter night. The clerks had all\nleft and he was preparing to go, when a quick rap came to the door. He\nsaid \"Come in,\" and, looking towards the entrance, saw a little ragged\nchild all wet with sleet. \"Are ye Hugh Miller?\" \"Yes.\" \"Mary Duff wants\nye.\" \"What does she want?\" \"She's deein.\" Some misty recollection of the\nname made him at once set out, and with his well-known plaid and stick,\nhe was soon striding after the child, who trotted through the now\ndeserted High Street, into the Canongate. By the time he got to the Old\nPlayhouse Close, Hugh had revived his memory of Mary Duff: a lively girl\nwho had been bred up beside him in Cromarty. The last time he had seen\nher was at a brother mason's marriage, where Mary was \"best maid,\" and\nhe \"best man.\" He seemed still to see her bright young careless face,\nher tidy short gown, and her dark eyes, and to hear her bantering, merry\ntongue.\n\nDown the close went the ragged little woman, and up an outside stair,\nHugh keeping near her with difficulty; in the passage she held out her\nhand and touched him; taking it in his great palm, he felt that she\nwanted a thumb. Finding her way like a cat through the darkness, she\nopened a door, and saying \"That's her!\" vanished. By the light of a\ndying fire he saw lying in the corner of the large empty room something\nlike a woman's clothes, and on drawing nearer became aware of a thin\npale face and two dark eyes looking keenly but helplessly up at him. The\neyes were plainly Mary Duff's, though he could recognize no other\nfeature. She wept silently, gazing steadily at him. \"Are you Mary Duff?\"\n\"It's a' that's o' me, Hugh.\" She then tried to speak to him, something\nplainly of great urgency, but she couldn't, and seeing that she was very\nill, and was making herself worse, he put half-a-crown into her feverish\nhand, and said he would call again in the morning. He could get no\ninformation about her from the neighbors; they were surly or asleep.\n\nWhen he returned next morning, the little girl met him at the\nstair-head, and said, \"She's deid.\" He went in, and found that it was\ntrue; there she lay, the fire out, her face placid, and the likeness to\nher maiden self restored. Hugh thought he would have known her now, even\nwith those bright black eyes closed as they were, _in aeternum_.\n\nSeeking out a neighbor, he said he would like to bury Mary Duff, and\narranged for the funeral with an undertaker in the close. Little seemed\nto be known of the poor outcast, except that she was a \"licht,\" or, as\nSolomon would have said, a \"strange woman.\" \"Did she drink?\" \"Whiles.\"\n\nOn the day of the funeral one or two residents in the close accompanied\nhim to the Canongate Churchyard. He observed a decent looking little old\nwoman watching them, and following at a distance, though the day was wet\nand bitter. After the grave was filled, and he had taken off his hat, as\nthe men finished their business by putting on and slapping the sod, he\nsaw this old woman remaining. She came up and, courtesying, said, \"Ye\nwad ken that lass, sir?\" \"Yes; I knew her when she was young.\" The woman\nthen burst into tears, and told Hugh that she \"keepit a bit shop at the\nClosemooth, and Mary dealt wi' me, and aye paid reglar, and I was feared\nshe was dead, for she had been a month awin' me half-a-crown:\" and then\nwith a look and voice of awe, she told him how on the night he was sent\nfor, and immediately after he had left, she had been awakened by some\none in her room; and by her bright fire--for she was a _bein_,\nwell-to-do body--she had seen the wasted dying creature, who came\nforward and said, \"Wasn't it half-a-crown?\" \"Yes.\" \"There it is,\" and\nputting it under the bolster, vanished!\n\nAlas for Mary Duff! her career had been a sad one since the day when she\nhad stood side by side with Hugh at the wedding of their friends. Her\nfather died not long after, and her mother supplanted her in the\naffections of the man to whom she had given her heart. The shock was\noverwhelming, and made home intolerable. Mary fled from it blighted and\nembittered, and after a life of shame and sorrow, crept into the corner\nof her wretched garret, to die deserted and alone; giving evidence in\nher latest act that honesty had survived amid the wreck of nearly every\nother virtue.\n\n\"My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith\nthe Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways\nhigher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.\"\n\n\n\n\n_OUR DOGS._\n\n \"_The misery of keeping a dog, is his dying so soon; but to be\n sure, if he lived for fifty years, and then died, what would\n become of me?_\"--SIR WALTER SCOTT.\n\n \"_There is in every animal's eye a dim image and gleam of\n humanity, a flash of strange light through which their life\n looks out and up to our great mystery of command over them, and\n claims the fellowship of the creature if not of the\n soul._\"--RUSKIN.\n\n _To Sir Walter and Lady Trevelyan's\n glum and faithful_\n \"PETER,\"\n _with much regard_.\n\n\nI was bitten severely by a little dog when with my mother at Moffat\nWells, being then three years of age, and I have remained \"bitten\" ever\nsince in the matter of dogs. I remember that little dog, and can at this\nmoment not only recall my pain and terror--I have no doubt I was to\nblame--but also her face; and were I allowed to search among the shades\nin the cynic Elysian fields, I could pick her out still. All my life I\nhave been familiar with these faithful creatures, making friends of\nthem, and speaking to them; and the only time I ever addressed the\npublic, about a year after being bitten, was at the farm of Kirklaw\nHill, near Biggar, when the text, given out from an empty cart in which\nthe ploughmen had placed me, was \"Jacob's dog,\" and my entire sermon was\nas follows:--\"Some say that Jacob had a black dog (the _o_ very long),\nand some say that Jacob had a white dog, but _I_ (imagine the\npresumption of four years!) say Jacob had a brown dog, and a brown dog\nit shall be.\"\n\nI had many intimacies from this time onwards--Bawtie, of the inn;\nKeeper, the carrier's bull-terrier; Tiger, a huge tawny mastiff from\nEdinburgh, which I think must have been an uncle of Rab's; all the sheep\ndogs at Callands--Spring, Mavis, Yarrow, Swallow, Cheviot, etc.; but it\nwas not till I was at college, and my brother at the High School, that\nwe possessed a dog.\n\n\nTOBY\n\nWas the most utterly shabby, vulgar, mean-looking cur I ever beheld: in\none word, _a tyke_. He had not one good feature except his teeth and\neyes, and his bark, if that can be called a feature. He was not ugly\nenough to be interesting; his color black and white, his shape leggy and\nclumsy; altogether what Sydney Smith would have called an\nextraordinarily ordinary dog; and, as I have said, not even greatly\nugly, or, as the Aberdonians have it, _bonnie wi' ill-fauredness_. My\nbrother William found him the centre of attraction to a multitude of\nsmall blackguards who were drowning him slowly in Lochend Loch, doing\ntheir best to lengthen out the process, and secure the greatest amount\nof fun with the nearest approach to death. Even then Toby showed his\ngreat intellect by pretending to be dead, and thus gaining time and an\ninspiration. William bought him for twopence, and as he had it not, the\nboys accompanied him to Pilrig Street, when I happened to meet him, and\ngiving the twopence to the biggest boy, had the satisfaction of seeing a\ngeneral engagement of much severity, during which the twopence\ndisappeared; one penny going off with a very small and swift boy, and\nthe other vanishing hopelessly into the grating of a drain.\n\nToby was for weeks in the house unbeknown to any one but ourselves two\nand the cook, and from my grandmother's love of tidiness and hatred of\ndogs and of dirt, I believe she would have expelled \"him whom we saved\nfrom drowning,\" had not he, in his straightforward way, walked into my\nfather's bedroom one night when he was bathing his feet, and introduced\nhimself with a wag of his tail, intimating a general willingness to be\nhappy. My father laughed most heartily, and at last Toby, having got his\nway to his bare feet, and having begun to lick his soles and between his\ntoes with his small rough tongue, my father gave such an unwonted shout\nof laughter, that we--grandmother, sisters, and all of us--went in.\nGrandmother might argue with all her energy and skill, but as surely as\nthe pressure of Tom Jones' infantile fist upon Mr. Allworthy's\nforefinger undid all the arguments of his sister, so did Toby's tongue\nand fun prove too many for grandmother's eloquence. I somehow think Toby\nmust have been up to all this, for I think he had a peculiar love for my\nfather ever after, and regarded grandmother from that hour with a\ncareful and cool eye.\n\nToby, when full grown, was a strong, coarse dog; coarse in shape, in\ncountenance, in hair, and in manner. I used to think that, according to\nthe Pythagorean doctrine, he must have been, or been going to be a\nGilmerton carter. He was of the bull-terrier variety, coarsened through\nmuch mongrelism and a dubious and varied ancestry. His teeth were good,\nand he had a large skull, and a rich bark as of a dog three times his\nsize, and a tail which I never saw equalled--indeed it was a tail _per\nse_; it was of immense girth and not short, equal throughout like a\npoliceman's baton; the machinery for working it was of great power, and\nacted in a way, as far as I have been able to discover, quite original.\nWe called it his ruler.\n\nWhen he wished to get into the house, he first whined gently, then\ngrowled, then gave a sharp bark, and then came a resounding, mighty\nstroke which shook the house; this, after much study and watching, we\nfound was done by his bringing the entire length of his solid tail flat\nupon the door, with a sudden and vigorous stroke; it was quite a _tour\nde force_ or a _coup de queue_, and he was perfect in it at once, his\nfirst _bang_ authoritative, having been as masterly and telling as his\nlast.\n\nWith all this inbred vulgar air, he was a dog of great moral\nexcellence--affectionate, faithful, honest up to his light, with an odd\nhumor as peculiar and as strong as his tail. My father, in his reserved\nway, was very fond of him, and there must have been very funny scenes\nwith them, for we heard bursts of laughter issuing from his study when\nthey two were by themselves; there was something in him that took that\ngrave, beautiful, melancholy face. One can fancy him in the midst of his\nbooks, and sacred work and thoughts, pausing and looking at the secular\nToby, who was looking out for a smile to begin his rough fun, and about\nto end by coursing and _gurrin'_ round the room, upsetting my father's\nbooks, laid out on the floor for consultation, and himself nearly at\ntimes, as he stood watching him--and off his guard and shaking with\nlaughter. Toby had always a great desire to accompany my father up to\ntown; this my father's good taste and sense of dignity, besides his fear\nof losing his friend (a vain fear!), forbade, and as the decision of\ncharacter of each was great and nearly equal, it was often a drawn game.\nToby ultimately, by making it his entire object, triumphed. He usually\nwas nowhere to be seen on my father leaving; he however saw him, and lay\nin wait at the head of the street, and up Leith Walk he kept him in view\nfrom the opposite side like a detective, and then, when he knew it was\nhopeless to hound him home, he crossed unblushingly over, and joined\ncompany, excessively rejoiced of course.\n\nOne Sunday he had gone with him to church, and left him at the vestry\ndoor. The second psalm was given out, and my father was sitting back in\nthe pulpit, when the door at its back, up which he came from the vestry,\nwas seen to move, and gently open, then, after a long pause, a black\nshining snout pushed its way steadily into the congregation, and was\nfollowed by Toby's entire body. He looked somewhat abashed, but snuffing\nhis friend, he advanced as if on thin ice, and not seeing him, put his\nforelegs on the pulpit, and behold there he was, his own familiar chum.\nI watched all this, and anything more beautiful than his look of\nhappiness, of comfort, of entire ease when he beheld his friend,--the\nsmoothing down of the anxious ears, the swing of gladness of that mighty\ntail,--I don't expect soon to see. My father quietly opened the door,\nand Toby was at his feet and invisible to all but himself; had he sent\nold George Peaston, the \"minister's man,\" to put him out, Toby would\nprobably have shown his teeth, and astonished George. He slunk home as\nsoon as he could, and never repeated that exploit.\n\nI never saw in any other dog the sudden transition from discretion, not\nto say abject cowardice, to blazing and permanent valor. From his\nearliest years he showed a general meanness of blood, inherited from\nmany generations of starved, bekicked, and down-trodden forefathers and\nmothers, resulting in a condition of intense abjectness in all matters\nof personal fear; anybody, even a beggar, by a _gowl_ and a threat of\neye, could send him off howling by anticipation, with that mighty tail\nbetween his legs. But it was not always so to be, and I had the\nprivilege of seeing courage, reasonable, absolute, and for life, spring\nup in Toby at once, as did Athene from the skull of Jove. It happened\nthus:--\n\nToby was in the way of hiding his culinary bones in the small gardens\nbefore his own and the neighboring doors. Mr. Scrymgeour, two doors off,\na bulky, choleric, red-haired, red-faced man--_torvo vultu_--was, by the\nlaw of contrast, a great cultivator of flowers, and he had often scowled\nToby into all but non-existence by a stamp of his foot and a glare of\nhis eye. One day his gate being open, in walks Toby with a huge bone,\nand making a hole where Scrymgeour had two minutes before been planting\nsome precious slip, the name of which on paper and on a stick Toby made\nvery light of, substituted his bone, and was engaged covering it, or\nthinking he was covering it up with his shovelling nose (a very odd\nrelic of paradise in the dog), when S. spied him through the inner glass\ndoor, and was out upon him like the Assyrian, with a terrible _gowl_. I\nwatched them. Instantly Toby made straight at him with a roar too, and\nan eye more torve than Scrymgeour's, who, retreating without reserve,\nfell prostrate, there is reason to believe, in his own lobby. Toby\ncontented himself with proclaiming his victory at the door, and\nreturning finished his bone-planting at his leisure; the enemy, who had\nscuttled behind the glass-door, glaring at him.\n\nFrom this moment Toby was an altered dog. Pluck at first sight was lord\nof all; from that time dated his first tremendous deliverance of tail\nagainst the door, which we called \"come listen to my tail.\" That very\nevening he paid a visit to Leo, next door's dog, a big, tyrannical bully\nand coward, which its master thought a Newfoundland, but whose pedigree\nwe knew better; this brute continued the same system of chronic\nextermination which was interrupted at Lochend,--having Toby down among\nhis feet, and threatening him with instant death two or three times a\nday. To him Toby paid a visit that very evening, down into his den, and\nwalked about, as much as to say \"Come on, Macduff!\" but Macduff did not\ncome on, and henceforward there was an armed neutrality, and they merely\nstiffened up and made their backs rigid, pretended each not to see the\nother, walking solemnly round, as is the manner of dogs. Toby worked his\nnew-found faculty thoroughly, but with discretion. He killed cats,\nastonished beggars, kept his own in his own garden against all comers,\nand came off victorious in several well-fought battles; but he was not\nquarrelsome or foolhardy. It was very odd how his carriage changed,\nholding his head up, and how much pleasanter he was at home. To my\nfather, next to William, who was his Humane Society man, he remained\nstanch. And what of his end? for the misery of dogs is that they die so\nsoon, or as Sir Walter says, it is well they do; for if they lived as\nlong as a Christian, and we liked them in proportion, and they then\ndied, he said that was a thing he could not stand.\n\nHis exit was miserable, and had a strange poetic or tragic relation to\nhis entrance. My father was out of town; I was away in England. Whether\nit was that the absence of my father had relaxed his power of moral\nrestraint, or whether through neglect of the servant he had been\ndesperately hungry, or most likely both being true, Toby was discovered\nwith the remains of a cold leg of mutton, on which he had made an ample\nmeal;[5] this he was in vain endeavoring to plant as of old, in the hope\nof its remaining undiscovered till to-morrow's hunger returned, the\nwhole shank bone sticking up unmistakably. This was seen by our\nexcellent and Radamanthine grandmother, who pronounced sentence on the\ninstant; and next day, as William was leaving for the High School, did\nhe in the sour morning, through an easterly _haur_, behold him \"whom he\nsaved from drowning,\" and whom, with better results than in the case of\nLaunce and Crab, he had taught, as if one should say, \"thus would I\nteach a dog,\" dangling by his own chain from his own lamp-post, one of\nhis hind feet just touching the pavement, and his body preternaturally\nelongated.\n\n [5] Toby was in the state of the shepherd boy whom George Webster\n met in Glenshee, and asked, \"My man, were you ever fou'?\"\n \"Ay, aince\" speaking slowly, as if remembering--\"Ay, aince.\"\n \"What on?\" \"Cauld mutton!\"\n\nWilliam found him dead and warm, and falling in with the milk-boy at the\nhead of the street, questioned him, and discovered that he was the\nexecutioner, and had got twopence, he--Toby's every morning crony, who\nmet him and accompanied him up the street, and licked the outside of his\ncan--had, with an eye to speed and convenience, and a want of taste, not\nto say principle and affection, horrible still to think of, suspended\nToby's animation beyond all hope. William instantly fell upon him,\nupsetting his milk and cream, and gave him a thorough licking, to his\nown intense relief; and, being late, he got from Pyper, who was a\nmartinet, the customary palmies, which he bore with something\napproaching to pleasure. So died Toby; my father said little, but he\nmissed and mourned his friend.\n\nThere is reason to believe that by one of those curious intertwistings\nof existence, the milk-boy was that one of the drowning party who got\nthe penny of the twopence.\n\n\nWYLIE.\n\nOur next friend was an exquisite shepherd's dog; fleet, thin-flanked,\ndainty, and handsome as a small grayhound, with all the grace of silky\nwaving black and tan hair. We got him thus. Being then young and keen\nbotanists, and full of the knowledge and love of Tweedside, having been\non every hill-top from Muckle Mendic to Hundleshope and the Lee Pen, and\nhaving fished every water from Tarth to the Leithen, we discovered early\nin spring that young Stewart, author of an excellent book on natural\nhistory, a young man of great promise and early death, had found the\n_Buxbaumia aphylla_, a beautiful and odd-looking moss, west of Newbie\nheights, in the very month we were that moment in. We resolved to start\nnext day. We walked to Peebles, and then up Haystoun Glen to the cottage\nof Adam Cairns, the aged shepherd of the Newbie hirsel, of whom we knew,\nand who knew of us from his daughter, Nancy Cairns, a servant with Uncle\nAitken of Callands. We found our way up the burn with difficulty, as the\nevening was getting dark; and on getting near the cottage heard them at\nworship. We got in, and made ourselves known, and got a famous tea, and\nsuch cream and oat cake!--old Adam looking on us as \"clean dementit\" to\ncome out for \"a bit moss,\" which, however, he knew, and with some pride\nsaid he would take us in the morning to the place. As we were going into\na box bed for the night, two young men came in, and said they were \"gaun\nto burn the water.\" Off we set. It was a clear, dark, starlight, frosty\nnight. They had their leisters and tar torches, and it was something\nworth seeing--the wild flame, the young fellows striking the fish coming\nto the light--how splendid they looked with the light on their scales,\ncoming out of the darkness--the stumblings and quenchings suddenly of\nthe lights, as the torch-bearer fell into a deep pool. We got home past\nmidnight, and slept as we seldom sleep now. In the morning Adam, who had\nbeen long up, and had been up the \"_Hope_\" with his dog, when he saw we\nhad wakened, told us there was four inches of snow, and we soon saw it\nwas too true. So we had to go home without our cryptogamic prize.\n\nIt turned out that Adam, who was an old man and frail, and had made some\nmoney, was going at Whitsunday to leave, and live with his son in\nGlasgow. We had been admiring the beauty and gentleness and perfect\nshape of Wylie, the finest colley I ever saw, and said, \"What are you\ngoing to do with Wylie?\" \"'Deed,\" says he, \"I hardly ken. I canna think\no' sellin' her, though she's worth four pound, and she'll no like the\ntoun.\" I said, \"Would you let me have her?\" and Adam, looking at her\nfondly--she came up instantly to him, and made of him--said, \"Ay, I\nwull, if ye'll be gude to her;\" and it was settled that when Adam left\nfor Glasgow she should be sent into Albany Street by the carrier.\n\nShe came, and was at once taken to all our hearts, even grandmother\nliked her; and though she was often pensive, as if thinking of her\nmaster and her work on the hills, she made herself at home, and behaved\nin all respects like a lady. When out with me, if she saw sheep in the\nstreets or road, she got quite excited, and helped the work, and was\ncuriously useful, the being so making her wonderfully happy. And so her\nlittle life went on, never doing wrong, always blithe and kind and\nbeautiful. But some months after she came, there was a mystery about\nher: every Tuesday evening she disappeared; we tried to watch her, but\nin vain, she was always off by nine P. M., and was away all night,\ncoming back next day wearied and all over mud, as if she had travelled\nfar. She slept all next day. This went on for some months and we could\nmake nothing of it. Poor dear creature, she looked at us wistfully when\nshe came in, as if she would have told us if she could, and was\nespecially fond, though tired.\n\nWell, one day I was walking across the Grassmarket, with Wylie at my\nheels, when two shepherds started, and looking at her, one said, \"That's\nher; that's the wonderfu' wee bitch that naebody kens.\" I asked him what\nhe meant, and he told me that for months past she had made her\nappearance by the first daylight at the \"buchts\" or sheep-pens in the\ncattle market, and worked incessantly, and to excellent purpose, in\nhelping the shepherds to get their sheep and lambs in. The man said with\na sort of transport, \"She's a perfect meeracle; flees about like a\nspeerit, and never gangs wrang; wears but never grups, and beats a' oor\ndowgs. She's a perfect meeracle, and as soople as a maukin.\" Then he\nrelated how they all knew her, and said, \"There's that wee fell yin;\nwe'll get them in noo.\" They tried to coax her to stop and be caught,\nbut no, she was gentle, but off; and for many a day that \"wee fell yin\"\nwas spoken of by these rough fellows. She continued this amateur work\ntill she died, which she did in peace.\n\nIt is very touching the regard the south-country shepherds have to their\ndogs. Professor Syme one day, many years ago, when living in Forres\nStreet, was looking out of his window, and he saw a young shepherd\nstriding down North Charlotte Street, as if making for his house; it was\nmidsummer. The man had his dog with him, and Mr. Syme noticed that he\nfollowed the dog, and not it him, though he contrived to steer for the\nhouse. He came, and was ushered into his room; he wished advice about\nsome ailment, and Mr. Syme saw that he had a bit of twine round the\ndog's neck, which he let drop out of his hand when he entered the room.\nHe asked him the meaning of this, and he explained that the magistrates\nhad issued a mad-dog proclamation, commanding all dogs to be muzzled or\nled on pain of death. \"And why do you go about as I saw you did before\nyou came in to me?\" \"Oh,\" said he, looking awkward, \"I didna want Birkie\nto ken he was tied.\" Where will you find truer courtesy and finer\nfeeling? He didn't want to hurt Birkie's feelings.\n\nMr. Carruthers of Inverness told me a new story of these wise sheep\ndogs. A butcher from Inverness had purchased some sheep at Dingwall, and\ngiving them in charge to his dog, left the road. The dog drove them on,\ntill coming to a toll, the toll-wife stood before the drove, demanding\nher dues. The dog looked at her, and, jumping on her back, crossed his\nforelegs over her arms. The sheep passed through, and the dog took his\nplace behind them, and went on his way.\n\n\nRAB.\n\nOf Rab I have little to say, indeed have little right to speak of him as\none of \"our dogs;\" but nobody will be sorry to hear anything of that\nnoble fellow. Ailie, the day or two after the operation, when she was\nwell and cheery, spoke about him, and said she would tell me fine\nstories when I came out, as I promised to do, to see her at Howgate. I\nasked her how James came to get him. She told me that one day she saw\nJames coming down from Leadburn with the cart; he had been away west,\ngetting eggs and butter, cheese and hens for Edinburgh. She saw he was\nin some trouble, and on looking, there was what she thought a young calf\nbeing dragged, or, as she called it, \"haurled,\" at the back of the cart.\nJames was in front, and when he came up, very warm and very angry, she\nsaw that there was a huge young dog tied to the cart, struggling and\npulling back with all his might, and as she said \"lookin' fearsom.\"\nJames, who was out of breath and temper, being past his time, explained\nto Ailie, that this \"muckle brute o' a whalp\" had been worrying sheep,\nand terrifying everybody up at Sir George Montgomery's at Macbie Hill,\nand that Sir George had ordered him to be hanged, which, however, was\nsooner said than done, as \"the thief\" showed his intentions of dying\nhard. James came up just as Sir George had sent for his gun; and as the\ndog had more than once shown a liking for him, he said he \"wad gie him a\nchance;\" and so he tied him to his cart. Young Rab, fearing some\nmischief, had been entering a series of protests all the way, and nearly\nstrangling himself to spite James and Jess, besides giving Jess more\nthan usual to do. \"I wish I had let Sir George pit that charge into him,\nthe thrawn brute,\" said James. But Ailie had seen that in his foreleg\nthere was a splinter of wood, which he had likely got when objecting to\nbe hanged, and that he was miserably lame. So she got James to leave him\nwith her, and go straight into Edinburgh. She gave him water, and by her\nwoman's wit got his lame paw under a door, so that he couldn't suddenly\nget at her, then with a quick firm hand she plucked out the splinter,\nand put in an ample meal. She went in some time after, taking no notice\nof him, and he came limping up, and laid his great jaws in her lap; from\nthat moment they were \"chief,\" as she said, James finding him mansuete\nand civil when he returned.\n\nShe said it was Rab's habit to make his appearance exactly half an hour\nbefore his master, trotting in full of importance, as if to say, \"He's\nall right, he'll be here.\" One morning James came without him. He had\nleft Edinburgh very early, and in coming near Auchindinny, at a lonely\npart of the road, a man sprang out on him, and demanded his money.\nJames, who was a cool hand, said, \"Weel a weel, let me get it,\" and\nstepping back, he said to Rab, \"Speak till him, my man.\" In an instant\nRab was standing over him, threatening strangulation if he stirred.\nJames pushed on, leaving Rab in charge; he looked back, and saw that\nevery attempt to rise was summarily put down. As he was telling Ailie\nthe story, up came Rab with that great swing of his. It turned out that\nthe robber was a Howgate lad, the worthless son of a neighbor, and Rab\nknowing him had let him cheaply off; the only thing, which was seen by a\nman from a field, was, that before letting him rise, he quenched (_pro\ntempore_) the fire of the eyes of the ruffian, by a familiar Gulliverian\napplication of Hydraulics, which I need not further particularize.\nJames, who did not know the way to tell an untruth, or embellish\nanything, told me this as what he called \"a fact _positeevely_.\"\n\n\nWASP\n\nWas a dark brindled bull-terrier, as pure in blood as Cruiser or Wild\nDayrell. She was brought by my brother from Otley, in the West Riding.\nShe was very handsome, fierce, and gentle, with a small, compact,\nfinely-shaped head, and a pair of wonderful eyes,--as full of fire and\nof softness as Grisi's; indeed she had to my eye a curious look of that\nwonderful genius--at once wild and fond. It was a fine sight to see her\non the prowl across Bowden Moor, now cantering with her nose down, now\ngathered up on the top of a dyke, and with erect ears, looking across\nthe wild like a moss-trooper out on business, keen and fell. She could\ndo everything it became a dog to do, from killing an otter or a polecat,\nto watching and playing with a baby, and was as docile to her master as\nshe was surly to all else. She was not quarrelsome, but \"being in,\" she\nwould have pleased Polonius as much, as in being \"ware of entrance.\" She\nwas never beaten, and she killed on the spot several of the country\nbullies who came out upon her when following her master in his rounds.\nShe generally sent them off howling with one snap, but if this was not\nenough, she made an end of it.\n\nBut it was as a mother that she shone; and to see the gypsy, Hagar-like\ncreature nursing her occasional Ishmael--playing with him, and fondling\nhim all over, teaching his teeth to war, and with her eye and the curl\nof her lip daring any one but her master to touch him, was like seeing\nGrisi watching her darling \"_Gennaro_,\" who so little knew why and how\nmuch she loved him.\n\nOnce when she had three pups, one of them died. For two days and nights\nshe gave herself up to trying to bring it to life--licking it and\nturning it over and over, growling over it, and all but worrying it to\nawake it. She paid no attention to the living two, gave them no milk,\nflung them away with her teeth, and would have killed them, had they\nbeen allowed to remain with her. She was as one possessed, and neither\nate, nor drank, nor slept, was heavy and miserable with her milk, and in\nsuch a state of excitement that no one could remove the dead pup.\n\nEarly on the third day she was seen to take the pup in her mouth, and\nstart across the fields towards the Tweed, striding like a\nrace-horse--she plunged in, holding up her burden, and at the middle of\nthe stream dropped it and swam swiftly ashore; then she stood and\nwatched the little dark lump floating away, bobbing up and down with the\ncurrent, and losing it at last far down, she made her way home, sought\nout the living two, devoured them with her love, carried them one by one\nto her lair, and gave herself up wholly to nurse them; you can fancy her\nmental and bodily happiness and relief when they were pulling away--and\ntheirs.\n\nOn one occasion my brother had lent her to a woman who lived in a lonely\nhouse, and whose husband was away for a time. She was a capital watch.\nOne day an Italian with his organ came--first begging, then demanding\nmoney--showing that he knew she was alone, and that he meant to help\nhimself, if she didn't. She threatened to \"lowse the dowg;\" but as this\nwas Greek to him, he pushed on. She had just time to set Wasp at him. It\nwas very short work. She had him by the throat, pulled him and his organ\ndown with a heavy crash, the organ giving a ludicrous sort of cry of\nmusical pain. Wasp thinking this was from some creature within, possibly\na _whittret_, left the ruffian, and set to work tooth and nail on the\nbox. Its master slunk off, and with mingled fury and thankfulness\nwatched her disembowelling his only means of an honest living. The woman\ngood-naturedly took her off, and signed to the miscreant to make himself\nand his remains scarce. This he did with a scowl; and was found in the\nevening in the village, telling a series of lies to the watchmaker, and\nbribing him with a shilling to mend his pipes--\"his kist o' whussels.\"\n\n\nJOCK\n\nWas insane from his birth; at first an _amabilis insania_, but ending in\nmischief and sudden death. He was an English terrier, fawn-colored; his\nmother's name VAMP (Vampire), and his father's DEMON. He was more\nproperly _daft_ than mad; his courage, muscularity, and prodigious\nanimal spirits making him insufferable, and never allowing one sane\nfeature of himself any chance. No sooner was the street door open, than\nhe was throttling the first dog passing, bringing upon himself and me\nendless grief. Cats he tossed up into the air, and crushed their spines\nas they fell. Old ladies he upset by jumping over their heads; old\ngentlemen by running between their legs. At home, he would think nothing\nof leaping through the tea-things, upsetting the urn, cream, etc., and\nat dinner the same sort of thing. I believe if I could have found time\nto thrash him sufficiently, and let him be a year older, we might have\nkept him; but having upset an Earl when the streets were muddy, I had to\npart with him. He was sent to a clergyman in the island of Westray, one\nof the Orkneys; and though he had a wretched voyage, and was as sick as\nany dog, he signalized the first moment of his arrival at the manse, by\nstrangling an ancient monkey, or \"puggy,\" the pet of the minister,--who\nwas a bachelor,--and the wonder of the island. Jock henceforward took to\nevil courses, extracting the kidneys of the best young rams, driving\nwhole hirsels down steep places into the sea, till at last all the guns\nof Westray were pointed at him, as he stood at bay under a huge rock on\nthe shore, and blew him into space. I always regret his end, and blame\nmyself for sparing the rod. Of\n\n\nDUCHIE\n\nI have already spoken; her oddities were endless. We had and still have\na dear friend,--\"Cousin Susan\" she is called by many who are not her\ncousins--a perfect lady, and, though hopelessly deaf, as gentle and\ncontented as was ever Griselda with the full use of her ears; quite as\ngreat a pet, in a word, of us all as Duchie was of ours. One day we\nfound her mourning the death of a cat, a great playfellow of the\nSputchard's, and her small Grace was with us when we were condoling with\nher, and we saw that she looked very wistfully at Duchie. I wrote on the\nslate, \"Would you like her?\" and she through her tears said, \"You know\nthat would never do.\" But it did do. We left Duchie that very night, and\nthough she paid us frequent visits, she was Cousin Susan's for life. I\nfear indulgence dulled her moral sense. She was an immense happiness to\nher mistress, whose silent and lonely days she made glad with her oddity\nand mirth. And yet the small creature, old, toothless, and blind,\ndomineered over her gentle friend--threatening her sometimes if she\npresumed to remove the small Fury from the inside of her own bed, into\nwhich it pleased her to creep. Indeed, I believe it is too true, though\nit was inferred only, that her mistress and friend spent a great part of\na winter night in trying to coax her dear little ruffian out of the\ncentre of the bed. One day the cook asked what she would have for\ndinner: \"I would like a mutton chop, but then, you know, Duchie likes\nminced veal better!\" The faithful and happy little creature died at a\ngreat age, of natural decay.\n\n * * * * *\n\nBut time would fail me, and I fear patience would fail you, my reader,\nwere I to tell you of CRAB, of JOHN PYM, of PUCK, and of the rest. CRAB,\nthe Mugger's dog, grave, with deep-set, melancholy eyes, as of a\nnobleman (say the Master of Ravenswood) in disguise, large visaged,\nshaggy, indomitable, come of the pure Piper Allan's breed. This Piper\nAllan, you must know, lived some two hundred years ago in Cocquet Water,\npiping like Homer, from place to place, and famous not less for his dog\nthan for his music, his news and his songs. The Earl of Northumberland,\nof his day, offered the piper a small farm for his dog, but after\ndeliberating for a day Allan said, \"Na, na, ma Lord, keep yir ferum;\nwhat wud a piper do wi' a ferum?\" From this dog descended Davidson of\nHyndlee's breed, the original Dandie-Dinmont, and Crab could count his\nkin up to him. He had a great look of the Right Honorable Edward Ellice,\nand had much of his energy and _wecht_; had there been a dog House of\nCommons, Crab would have spoken as seldom, and been as great a power in\nthe house, as the formidable and faithful time-out-of-mind member for\nCoventry.\n\nJOHN PYM was a smaller dog than Crab, of more fashionable blood, being a\nson of Mr. Somner's famous SHEM, whose father and brother are said to\nhave been found dead in a drain into which the hounds had run a fox. It\nhad three entrances: the father was put in at one hole, the son at\nanother, and speedily the fox bolted out at the third, but no appearance\nof the little terriers, and on digging, they were found dead, locked in\neach other's jaws; they had met, and it being dark, and there being no\ntime for explanations, they had throttled each other. John was made of\nthe same sort of stuff, and was as combative and victorious as his great\nnamesake, and not unlike him in some of his not so creditable qualities.\nHe must, I think, have been related to a certain dog to whom \"life was\nfull o' sairiousness,\" but in John's case the same cause produced an\nopposite effect. John was gay and light-hearted, even when there was not\n\"enuff of fechtin,\" which, however, seldom happened, there being a\nmarket every week in Melrose, and John appearing most punctually at the\ncross to challenge all comers, and being short legged, he inveigled\nevery dog into an engagement by first attacking him, and then falling\ndown on his back, in which posture he latterly fought and won all his\nbattles.\n\nWhat can I say of PUCK[6]--the thoroughbred--the simple-hearted--the\npurloiner of eggs warm from the hen--the flutterer of all manner of\nVolscians--the bandy-legged, dear, old, dilapidated buffer? I got him\nfrom my brother, and only parted with him because William's stock was\ngone. He had to the end of life a simplicity which was quite touching.\nOne summer day--a dog-day--when all dogs found straying were hauled away\nto the police-office, and killed off in twenties with strychnine, I met\nPuck trotting along Princes Street with a policeman, a rope round his\nneck, he looking up in the fatal, official, but kindly countenance in\nthe most artless and cheerful manner, wagging his tail and trotting\nalong. In ten minutes he would have been in the next world; for I am one\nof those who believe dogs _have_ a next world, and why not? Puck ended\nhis days as the best dog in Roxburghshire. _Placide quiescas!_\n\n [6] In _The Dog_, by Stonehenge, an excellent book, there is a\n woodcut of Puck, and \"Dr. Wm. Brown's celebrated dog John\n Pym\" is mentioned. Their pedigrees are given--here is\n Puck's, which shows his \"strain\" is of the pure azure\n blood--\"Got by John Pym, out of Tib; bred by Purves of\n Leaderfoot; sire, Old Dandie, the famous dog of old John\n Stoddart of Selkirk--dam, Whin.\" How Homeric all this\n sounds! I cannot help quoting what follows--\"Sometimes a\n Dandie pup of a good strain may appear not to be game at an\n early age; but he should not be parted with on this account,\n because many of them do not show their courage till nearly\n two years old, and then nothing can beat them; this apparent\n softness arising, as I suspect, _from kindness of heart_\"--a\n suspicion, my dear \"Stonehenge,\" which is true, and shows\n your own \"kindness of heart,\" as well as sense.\n\n\nDICK\n\nStill lives, and long may he live! As he was never born, possibly he may\nnever die; be it so, he will miss us when we are gone. I could say much\nof him, but agree with the lively and admirable Dr. Jortin, when, in his\ndedication of his _Remarks on Ecclesiastical History_ to the then (1752)\nArchbishop of Canterbury, he excuses himself for not following the\nmodern custom of praising his Patron, by reminding his Grace \"that it\nwas a custom amongst the ancients, _not to sacrifice to heroes till\nafter sunset_.\" I defer my sacrifice till Dick's sun is set.\n\nI think every family should have a dog; it is like having a perpetual\nbaby; it is the plaything and crony of the whole house. It keeps them\nall young. All unite upon Dick. And then he tells no tales, betrays no\nsecrets, never sulks, asks no troublesome questions, never gets into\ndebt, never coming down late for breakfast, or coming in through his\nChubb _too early_ to bed--is always ready for a bit of fun, lies in wait\nfor it, and you may, if choleric, to your relief, kick him instead of\nsome one else, who would not take it so meekly, and, moreover, would\ncertainly not, as he does, ask your pardon for being kicked.\n\nNever put a collar on your dog--it only gets him stolen; give him only\none meal a day, and let that, as Dame Dorothy, Sir Thomas Browne's wife,\nwould say, be \"rayther under.\" Wash him once a week, and always wash the\nsoap out; and let him be carefully combed and brushed twice a week.\n\nBy the bye, I was wrong in saying that it was Burns who said Man is the\nGod of the Dog--he got it from Bacon's _Essay on Atheism_.\n\n\n\n\n_QUEEN MARY'S CHILD-GARDEN._\n\n\nIf any one wants a pleasure that is sure to please, one over which he\nneedn't growl the sardonic beatitude of the great Dean, let him, when\nthe Mercury is at \"Fair,\" take the nine A.M. train to the North and a\nreturn-ticket for Callander, and when he arrives at Stirling, let him\nask the most obliging and knowing of station-masters to telegraph to\n\"the Dreadnought\" for a carriage to be in waiting. When passing Dunblane\nCathedral, let him resolve to write to the _Scotsman_, advising the\nremoval of a couple of shabby trees which obstruct the view of that\nbeautiful triple end window which Mr. Ruskin and everybody else admires,\nand by the time he has written this letter in his mind, and turned the\nsentences to it, he will find himself at Callander and the carriage all\nready. Giving the order for the _Port of Monteith_, he will rattle\nthrough this hard-featured, and to our eye comfortless village, lying\nugly amid so much grandeur and beauty, and let him stop on the crown of\nthe bridge, and fill his eyes with the perfection of the view up the\nPass of Leny--the Teith lying diffuse and asleep, as if its heart were\nin the Highlands and it were loath to go, the noble Ben Ledi imaged in\nits broad stream. Then let him make his way across a bit of pleasant\nmoorland--flushed with maidenhair and white with cotton grass, and\nfragrant with the _Orchis conopsia_, well deserving its epithet\n_odoratissima_.\n\nHe will see from the turn of the hill-side the Blair of Drummond waving\nwith corn and shadowed with rich woods, where eighty years ago there was\na black peat-moss; and far off, on the horizon, Damyat and the Touch\nFells; and at his side the little loch of Ruskie, in which he may see\nfive Highland cattle, three tawny brown and two brindled, standing in\nthe still water--themselves as still, all except their switching tails\nand winking ears--the perfect images of quiet enjoyment. By this time he\nwill have come in sight of the Lake of Monteith, set in its woods, with\nits magical shadows and soft gleams. There is a loveliness, a gentleness\nand peace about it more like \"lone St. Mary's Lake,\" or Derwent Water,\nthan of any of its sister lochs. It is lovely rather than beautiful, and\nis a sort of gentle prelude, in the _minor_ key, to the coming glories\nand intenser charms of Loch Ard and the true Highlands beyond.\n\nYou are now at the Port, and have passed the secluded and cheerful\nmanse, and the parish kirk with its graves, close to the lake, and the\nproud aisle of the Grahams of Gartmore washed by its waves. Across the\nroad is the modest little inn, a Fisher's Tryst. On the unruffled water\nlie several islets, plump with rich foliage, brooding like great birds\nof calm. You somehow think of them as on, not in the lake, or like\nclouds lying in a nether sky--\"like ships waiting for the wind.\" You get\na coble, and a _yauld_ old Celt, its master, and are rowed across to\n_Inchmahome, the Isle of Rest_. Here you find on landing huge Spanish\nchestnuts, one lying dead, others standing stark and peeled, like\ngigantic antlers, and others flourishing in their _viridis senectus_,\nand in a thicket of wood you see the remains of a monastery of great\nbeauty, the design and workmanship exquisite. You wander through the\nruins, overgrown with ferns and Spanish filberts, and old fruit-trees,\nand at the corner of the old monkish garden you come upon one of the\nstrangest and most touching sights you ever saw--an oval space of about\n18 feet by 12, with the remains of a double row of boxwood all round,\nthe plants of box being about fourteen feet high, and eight or nine\ninches in diameter, healthy, but plainly of great age.\n\nWhat is this? it is called in the guide-books Queen Mary's Bower; but\nbesides its being plainly not in the least a bower, what could the\nlittle Queen, then five years old, and \"fancy free,\" do with a bower? It\nis plainly, as was, we believe, first suggested by our keen-sighted and\ndiagnostic Professor of Clinical Surgery,[7] _the Child-Queen's Garden_,\nwith her little walk, and its rows of boxwood, left to themselves for\nthree hundred years. Yes, without doubt, \"here is that first garden of\nher simpleness.\" Fancy the little, lovely royal child, with her four\nMarys, her playfellows, her child maids of honor, with their little\nhands and feet, and their innocent and happy eyes, pattering about that\ngarden all that time ago, laughing, and running, and gardening as only\nchildren do and can. As is well known, Mary was placed by her mother in\nthis Isle of Rest before sailing from the Clyde for France. There is\nsomething \"that tirls the heartstrings a' to the life\" in standing and\nlooking on this unmistakable living relic of that strange and pathetic\nold time. Were we Mr. Tennyson, we would write an Idyll of that child\nQueen, in that garden of hers, eating her bread and honey--getting her\nteaching from the holy men, the monks of old, and running off in wild\nmirth to her garden and her flowers, all unconscious of the black,\nlowering thunder-cloud on Ben Lomond's shoulder.\n\n [7] The same seeing eye and understanding mind, when they were\n eighteen years of age, discovered and published the Solvent\n of Caoutchouc, for which a patent was taken out afterwards\n by the famous Mackintosh. If the young discoverer had\n secured the patent, he might have made a fortune as large as\n his present reputation--I don't suppose he much regrets that\n he didn't.\n\n \"Oh, blessed vision! happy child!\n Thou art so exquisitely wild;\n I think of thee with many fears\n Of what may be thy lot in future years.\n I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest,\n Lord of thy house and hospitality.\n And Grief, uneasy lover! never rest\n But when she sat within the touch of thee.\n What hast thou to do with sorrow,\n Or the injuries of to-morrow?\"\n\nYou have ample time to linger there amid\n\n \"The gleams, the shadows, and the peace profound,\"\n\nand get your mind informed with quietness and beauty, and fed with\nthoughts of other years, and of her whose story, like Helen of Troy's,\nwill continue to move the hearts of men as long as the gray hills stand\nround about that gentle lake, and are mirrored at evening in its depths.\nYou may do and enjoy all this, and be in Princes Street by nine P.M.;\nand we wish we were as sure of many things as of your saying, \"Yes, this\n_is_ a pleasure that has pleased, and will please again; this was\nsomething expected which did not disappoint.\"\n\n * * * * *\n\nThere is another garden of Queen Mary's, which may still be seen, and\nwhich has been left to itself like that in the Isle of Rest. It is in\nthe grounds at Chatsworth, and is moated, walled round, and raised about\nfifteen feet above the park. Here the Queen, when a prisoner under the\ncharge of \"Old Bess of Hardwake,\" was allowed to walk without any guard.\nHow different the two! and how different she who took her pleasure in\nthem!\n\n Lines written on the steps of a small moated garden at\n Chatsworth, called\n\n \"QUEEN MARY'S BOWER.\n\n \"The moated bower is wild and drear,\n And sad the dark yew's shade;\n The flowers which bloom in silence here,\n In silence also fade.\n\n \"The woodbine and the light wild rose\n Float o'er the broken wall;\n And here the mournful nightshade blows,\n To note the garden's fall.\n\n \"Where once a princess wept her woes,\n The bird of night complains;\n And sighing trees the tale disclose\n They learnt from Mary's strains.\n\n \"A. H.\"\n\n\n\n\n_PRESENCE OF MIND, AND HAPPY GUESSING._\n\n \"_Depend upon it a lucky guess is never merely luck--there is\n always some talent in it._\"--MISS AUSTEN, _in Emma._\n\n\nDr. Chalmers used to say that in the dynamics of human affairs, two\nqualities were essential to greatness--Power and Promptitude. One man\nmight have both, another power without promptitude, another promptitude\nwithout power. We must all feel the common sense of this, and can\nreadily see how it applies to a general in the field, to a pilot in a\nstorm, to a sportsman, to a fencer, to a debater. It is the same with an\noperating surgeon at all times, and may be at any time with the\npractitioner of the art of healing. He must be ready for what are called\nemergencies--cases which rise up at your feet, and must be dealt with on\nthe instant,--he must have power and promptitude.\n\nIt is a curious condition of mind that this requires: it is like\nsleeping with your pistol under your pillow, and it on full cock; a\nmoment lost and all may be lost. There is the very nick of time. This is\nwhat we mean by presence of mind; by a man having such a subject at his\nfinger ends; that part of the mind lying nearest the outer world, and\nhaving to act on it through the bodily organs, through the will--the\noutposts must be always awake. It is of course, so to speak, only a\nportion of the mind that is thus needed and thus available; if the whole\nmind were forever at the advanced posts, it would soon lose itself in\nthis endeavor to keep it. Now, though the thing needed to be done may be\nsimple enough, what goes to the doing of it, and to the being at once\nready and able to do it, involves much: the wedge would not be a wedge,\nor do a wedge's work, without the width behind as well as the edge in\nfront. Your men of promptitude without genius or power, including\nknowledge and will, are those who present the wedge the wrong way. Thus\nyour extremely prompt people are often doing the wrong thing, which is\nalmost always worse than nothing. Our vague friend who bit \"Yarrow's\"\ntail instead of \"the Chicken's,\" was full of promptitude; as was also\nthat other man, probably a relative, who barred the door with a boiled\ncarrot; each knew what was needed--the biting the tail, the barring the\ndoor; both erred as to the means--the one by want of presence of mind,\nthe other by lack of mind itself. We must have just enough of the right\nknowledge and no more; we must have the habit of using this; we must\nhave self-reliance, and the consentaneousness of the entire mind; and\nwhat our hand finds to do, we must do with our might as well as with it.\nTherefore it is that this master act of the man, under some sudden and\ngreat unexpected crisis, is in a great measure performed unconsciously\nas to its mental means. The man is so _totus in illo_, that there is no\nbit of the mind left to watch and record the acts of the rest; therefore\nmen, when they have done some signal feat of presence of mind, if asked\nhow they did it, generally don't very well know--they just did it; it\nwas, in fact, done and then thought of, not thought of and then done, in\nwhich case it would likely never have been done. Not that the act was\nuncaused by mind; it is one of the highest powers of mind thus to act;\nbut it is done, if I may use the phrase, by an acquired instinct. You\nwill find all this in that wonderful old Greek who was Alexander the\nGreat's and the old world's schoolmaster, and ours if we were\nwise,--whose truthfulness and clear insight one wonders at the longer he\nlives. He seems to have seen the human mind as a bird or an engineer\ndoes the earth--he knew the plan of it. We now-a-days see it as one sees\na country, athwart and in perspective, and from the side; he saw it from\nabove and from below. There are therefore no shadows, no\nforeshortenings, no clear-obscure, indeed no disturbing medium; it is as\nif he examined everything _in vacuo_. I refer my readers to what he says\non {Anchinoia} and {Eustochia}.[8]\n\n [8] As I am now, to my sorrow and shame, too much of a mediate\n Grecian, I give a Balliol friend's note on these two\n words:--\"What you have called 'presence of mind' and 'happy\n guessing' may, I think, be identified respectively with\n Aristotle's {anchinoia} and {eustochia}. The latter of\n these, {eustochia}, Aristotle mentions incidentally when\n treating of {euboulia}, or good deliberation. _Eth. Nic._\n bk. vi. ch. 9. Good deliberation, he says, is not\n {eustochia}, for the former is a slow process, whereas the\n latter is not guided by reason, and is rapid. In the same\n passage he tells us that {anchinoia} is a sort of\n {eustochia}. But he speaks of {anchinoia} more fully in\n _Ana. Post._ i. 34:--'{Anchinoia} is a sort of happy\n guessing at the intermediate, when there is not time for\n consideration: as when a man, seeing that the bright side of\n the moon is always turned towards the sun, comprehends that\n her light is borrowed from the sun; or concludes, from\n seeing one conversing with a capitalist that he wants to\n borrow money; or infers that people are friends from the\n fact of their having common enemies.'\" And then he goes on\n to make these simple observations confused and perplexing by\n reducing them to his logical formula.\n\n \"The derivation of the words will confirm this view.\n {Eustochia} is a hitting the _mark_ successfully, a reaching\n to the end, the rapid and, as it were, intuitive perception\n of the truth. This is what Whewell means by saying, 'all\n induction is a happy conjecture.' But when Aristotle says\n that this faculty is not guided by reason ({aneu te gar\n logou}), he does not mean to imply that it grows up\n altogether independent of reason, any more than Whewell\n means to say that all the discoveries in the inductive\n sciences have been made by men taking 'shots' at them, as\n boys at school do at hard passages in their Latin lessons.\n On the contrary, no faculty is so absolutely the child of\n reason as this faculty of happy guessing. It only attains to\n perfection after the reason has been long and painfully\n trained in the sphere in which the guesses are to be made.\n What Aristotle does mean is, that when it has attained\n perfection, we are not conscious of the share which reason\n has in its operation--it is so rapid that by no analysis can\n we detect the presence of reason in its action. Sir Isaac\n Newton seeing the apple fall, and thence 'guessing' at the\n law of gravitation, is a good instance of {eustochia}.\n\n \"{Anchinoia}, on the other hand, is a _nearness of mind_;\n not a reaching to the end, but an apprehension of the best\n means; not a perception of the truth, but a perception of\n how the truth is to be supported. It is sometimes translated\n 'sagacity,' but readiness or presence of mind is better, as\n sagacity rather involves the idea of consideration. In\n matters purely intellectual it is ready wit. It is a sort of\n shorter or more limited {eustochia}. It is more of a natural\n gift than {eustochia}, because the latter is a far higher\n and nobler faculty, and therefore more dependent for its\n perfection on cultivation, as all our highest faculties are.\n {Eustochia} is more akin to genius, {anchinoia} to practical\n common sense.\"\n\nMy object in what I have now written and am going to write, is to\nimpress upon medical students the value of power and promptitude in\ncombination, for their professional purposes; the uses to them of\nnearness of the {Nous}, and of happy guessing; and how you may see the\nsense, and neatness, and pith of that excellent thinker, as well as best\nof all story-tellers, Miss Austen, when she says in _Emma_, \"Depend upon\nit, a lucky guess is never merely luck, there is always some talent in\nit.\" Talent here denoting intelligence and will in action. In all\nsciences except those called exact, this happy guessing plays a large\npart, and in none more than in medicine, which is truly a tentative art,\nfounded upon likelihood, and is therefore what we call contingent.\nInstead of this view of the healing art discouraging us from making our\nultimate principles as precise, as we should make our observations, it\nshould urge us the more to this; for, depend upon it, that guess as we\nmay often have to do, he will guess best, most happily for himself and\nhis patient, who has the greatest amount of true knowledge, and the most\nserviceable amount of what we may call mental cash, ready money, and\nready weapons.\n\nWe must not only have wisdom, which is knowledge assimilated and made\nour own, but we must, as the Lancashire men say and do, _have wit to use\nit_. We may carry a nugget of gold in our pocket, or a L100 bank-note,\nbut unless we can get it _changed_, it is of little use, and we must\nmoreover have the coin of the country we are in. This want of presence\nof mind, and having your wits about you, is as fatal to a surgeon as to\na general.\n\nThat wise little man, Dr. Henry Marshall, little in body but not little\nin mind, in brain, and in worth, used to give an instance of this. A\nyoung, well-educated surgeon, attached to a regiment quartered at\nMusselburgh, went out professionally with two officers who were in\nsearch of \"satisfaction.\" One fell shot in the thigh, and in half an\nhour after he was found dead, the surgeon kneeling pale and grim over\nhim, with his two thumbs sunk in his thigh _below_ the wound, the grass\nsteeped in blood. If he had put them two inches higher, or extemporized\na tourniquet with his sash and the pistol's ramrod and a stone, he might\nhave saved his friend's life and his own--for he shot himself that\nnight.\n\nHere is another. Robbie Watson, whom I now see walking mildly about the\nstreets--having taken to coal--was driver of the Dumfries coach by\nBiggar. One day he had changed horses, and was starting down a steep\nhill, with an acute turn at the foot, when he found his wheelers, two\nnew horses, utterly ignorant of backing. They got furious, and we\noutside got alarmed. Robbie made an attempt to pull up, and then with an\nodd smile took his whip, gathered up his reins, and lashed the entire\nfour into a gallop. If we had not seen his face we would have thought\nhim a maniac; he kept them well together, and shot down like an arrow,\nas far as we could see to certain destruction. Right in front at the\nturn was a stout gate into a field, shut; he drove them straight at\nthat, and through we went, the gate broken into shivers, and we finding\nourselves safe, and the very horses enjoying the joke. I remember we\nemptied our pockets into Robbie's hat, which he had taken off to wipe\nhis head. Now, in a few seconds all this must have passed through his\nhead--\"that horse is not a wheeler, nor that one either; we'll come to\nmischief; there's the gate; yes, I'll do it.\" And he did it; but then he\nhad to do it with his might; he had to make it impossible for his four\nhorses to do anything but toss the gate before them.\n\nHere is another case. Dr. Reid of Peebles, long famous in the end of\nlast and beginning of this century, as the Doctor of Tweeddale; a man of\ngreat force of character, and a true Philip, a lover of horses, saw one\nFair day a black horse, entire, thoroughbred. The groom asked a low\nprice, and would answer no questions. At the close of the fair the\ndoctor bought him, amid the derision of his friends. Next morning he\nrode him up Tweed, came home after a long round, and had never been\nbetter carried. This went on for some weeks; the fine creature was\nwithout a fault. One Sunday morning, he was posting up by Neidpath at a\ngreat pace, the country people trooping into the town to church.\nOpposite the fine old castle, the thorough-bred stood stock still, and\nit needed all the doctor's horsemanship to counteract the law of\nprojectiles; he did, and sat still, and not only gave no sign of urging\nthe horse, but rather intimated that it was his particular desire that\nhe should stop. He sat there a full hour, his friends making an\nexcellent joke of it, and he declining, of course, all interference. At\nthe end of the hour, the Black Duke, as he was called, turned one ear\nforward, then another, looked aside, shook himself, and moved on, his\nmaster intimating that this was exactly what he wished; and from that\nday till his death, some fifteen years after, never did these two\nfriends allude to this little circumstance, and it was never repeated;\nthough it turned out that he had killed his two men previously. The\ndoctor must have, when he got him, said to himself, \"if he is not stolen\nthere is a reason for his paltry price,\" and he would go over all the\npossibilities. So that when he stood still, he would say, \"Ah, this is\nit;\" but then he saw this at once, and lost no time, and did nothing.\nHad he given the horse one dig with his spurs, or one cut with his whip,\nor an impatient jerk with his bit, the case would have failed. When a\ncolt it had been brutally used, and being nervous, it lost its judgment,\npoor thing, and lost its presence of mind.\n\nOne more instance of nearness of the {Nous}. A lady was in front of her\nlawn with her children, when a mad dog made his appearance, pursued by\nthe peasants. What did she do? What would you have done? Shut your eyes\nand think. She went straight to the dog, received its head in her thick\nstuff gown, between her knees, and muffling it up, held it with all her\nmight till the men came up. No one was hurt. Of course, she fainted\nafter it was all right.\n\nWe all know (but why should we not know again?) the story of the Grecian\nmother who saw her child sporting on the edge of the bridge. She knew\nthat a cry would startle it over into the raging stream--she came gently\nnear, and opening her bosom allured the little scapegrace.\n\nI once saw a great surgeon, after settling a particular procedure as to\na life-and-death operation, as a general settles his order of battle. He\nbegan his work, and at the second cut altered the entire conduct of the\noperation. No one not in the secret could have told this: not a moment's\npause, not a quiver of the face, not a look of doubt. This is the same\nmaster power in man, which makes the difference between Sir John Moore\nand Sir John Cope.\n\nMrs. Major Robertson, a woman of slight make, great beauty, and\nremarkable energy, courage, and sense (she told me the story herself),\non going up to her bedroom at night--there being no one in the house but\na servant girl, in the ground floor--saw a portion of a man's foot\nprojecting from under the bed. She gave no cry of alarm, but shut the\ndoor as usual, set down her candle, and began as if to undress, when she\nsaid aloud to herself, with an impatient tone and gesture, \"I've\nforgotten that key again, I declare;\" and leaving the candle burning,\nand the door open, she went down-stairs, got the watchman, and secured\nthe proprietor of the foot, which had not moved an inch. How many women\nor men could have done, or rather been all this!\n\n\n\n\n_MY FATHER'S MEMOIR._\n\n _A LETTER TO JOHN CAIRNS, D. D._\n\n \"_I praised the dead which are already dead, more than the\n living which are yet alive._\"\n\n\nLETTER TO JOHN CAIRNS, D. D.\n\n 23 RUTLAND STREET, _15th August, 1860._\n\nMY DEAR FRIEND,--When, at the urgent request of his trustees and family,\nand in accordance with what I believe was his own wish, you undertook my\nfather's Memoir, it was in a measure on the understanding that I would\nfurnish you with some domestic and personal details. This I hoped to\nhave done but was unable.\n\nThough convinced more than ever how little my hand is needed, I will now\nendeavor to fulfil my promise. Before doing so, however, you must permit\nme to express our deep gratitude to you for this crowning proof of your\nregard for him\n\n \"Without whose life we had not been;\"\n\nto whom for many years you habitually wrote as \"My father,\" and one of\nwhose best blessings, when he was \"such an one as Paul the aged,\" was to\nknow that you were to him \"mine own son in the gospel.\"\n\nWith regard to the manner in which you have done this last kindness to\nthe dead, I can say nothing more expressive of our feelings, and, I am\nsure, nothing more gratifying to you, than that the record you have\ngiven of my father's life, and of the series of great public questions\nin which he took part, is done in the way which would have been most\npleasing to himself--that which, with his passionate love of truth and\nliberty, his relish for concentrated, just thought and expression, and\nhis love of being loved, he would have most desired, in any one speaking\nof him after he was gone. He would, I doubt not, say, as one said to a\ngreat painter, on looking at his portrait, \"It is certainly like, but it\nis much better looking;\" and you might well reply as did the painter,\n\"It is the truth, told lovingly\"--and all the more true that it is so\ntold. You have, indeed, been enabled to speak the truth, or as the Greek\nhas it, {aletheuein en agape}--to truth it in love.\n\nI have over and over again sat down to try and do what I promised and\nwished--to give some faint expression of my father's life; not of what\nhe did or said or wrote--not even of what he was as a man of God and a\npublic teacher; but what he was in his essential nature--what he would\nhave been had he been anything else than what he was, or had lived a\nthousand years ago.\n\nSometimes I have this so vividly in my mind that I think I have only to\nsit down and write it off, and do it to the quick. \"The idea of his\nlife,\" what he was as a whole, what was his self, all his days,\nwould,--to go on with words which not time or custom can ever wither or\nmake stale,--\n\n \"Sweetly creep\n Into my study of imagination;\n And every lovely organ of his life\n Would come apparelled in more precious habit--\n More moving delicate, and full of life,\n Into the eye and prospect of my soul,\n Than when he lived indeed,\"\n\nas if the sacredness of death and the bloom of eternity were on it; or\nas you may have seen in an untroubled lake, the heaven reflected with\nits clouds, brighter, purer, more exquisite than itself; but when you\ntry to put this into words, to detain yourself over it, it is by this\nvery act disturbed, broken and bedimmed, and soon vanishes away, as\nwould the imaged heavens in the lake, if a pebble were cast into it, or\na breath of wind stirred its face. The very anxiety to transfer it, as\nit looked out of the clear darkness of the past, makes the image grow\ndim and disappear.\n\nEvery one whose thoughts are not seldom with the dead, must have felt\nboth these conditions; how, in certain passive, tranquil states, there\ncomes up into the darkened chamber of the mind, its \"chamber of\nimagery\"--uncalled, as if it blossomed out of space, exact, absolute,\nconsummate, vivid, speaking, not darkly as in a glass, but face to face,\nand \"moving delicate\"--this \"idea of his life;\" and then how an effort\nto prolong and perpetuate and record all this, troubles the vision and\nkills it! It is as if one should try to paint in a mirror the reflection\nof a dear and unseen face; the coarse, uncertain passionate handling and\ncolor, ineffectual and hopeless, shut out the very thing itself.\n\nI will therefore give this up as in vain, and try by some fragmentary\nsketches, scenes, and anecdotes, to let you know in some measure what\nmanner of man my father was. Anecdotes, if true and alive, are always\nvaluable; the man in the concrete, the _totus quis_ comes out in them;\nand I know you too well to think that you will consider as trivial or\nout of place anything in which his real nature displayed itself, and\nyour own sense of humor as a master and central power of the human soul,\nplaying about the very essence of the man, will do more than forgive\nanything of this kind which may crop out here and there, like the smile\nof wild-flowers in grass, or by the wayside.\n\nMy first recollection of my father, my first impression, not only of his\ncharacter, but of his eyes and face and presence, strange as it may\nseem, dates from my fifth year. Doubtless I had looked at him often\nenough before that, and had my own childish thoughts about him; but this\nwas the time when I got my fixed, compact idea of him, and the first\nlook of him which I felt could never be forgotten. I saw him, as it\nwere, by a flash of lightning, sudden and complete. A child begins by\nseeing bits of everything; it knows in part--here a little, there a\nlittle; it makes up its wholes out of its own littles, and is long of\nreaching the fulness of a whole; and in this we are children all our\nlives in much. Children are long of seeing, or at least of looking at\nwhat is above them; they like the ground, and its flowers and stones,\nits \"red sodgers\" and lady-birds, and all its queer things; their world\nis about three feet high, and they are more often stooping than gazing\nup. I know I was past ten before I saw, or cared to see, the ceilings of\nthe rooms in the manse at Biggar.\n\nOn the morning of the 28th May, 1816, my eldest sister Janet and I were\nsleeping in the kitchen-bed with Tibbie Meek,[9] our only servant. We\nwere all three awakened by a cry of pain--sharp, insufferable, as if one\nwere stung. Years after we two confided to each other, sitting by the\nburnside, that we thought that \"great cry\" which arose at midnight in\nEgypt must have been like it. We all knew whose voice it was, and, in\nour night-clothes, we ran into the passage, and into the little parlor\nto the left hand, in which was a closet-bed. We found my father standing\nbefore us, erect, his hands clenched in his black hair, his eyes full of\nmisery and amazement, his face white as that of the dead. He frightened\nus. He saw this, or else his intense will had mastered his agony, for,\ntaking his hands from his head, he said, slowly and gently, \"Let us give\nthanks,\" and turned to a little sofa in the room; there lay our mother,\ndead.[10] She had long been ailing. I remember her sitting in a\nshawl,--an Indian one with little dark green spots on a light\nground,--and watching her growing pale with what I afterwards knew must\nhave been strong pain. She had, being feverish, slipped out of bed, and\n\"grandmother,\" her mother, seeing her \"change come,\" had called my\nfather, and they two saw her open her blue, kind, and true eyes,\n\"comfortable\" to us all \"as the day\"--I remember them better than those\nof any one I saw yesterday--and, with one faint look of recognition to\nhim, close them till the time of the restitution of all things.\n\n \"She had another morn than ours.\"\n\nThen were seen in full action his keen, passionate nature, his sense of\nmental pain, and his supreme will, instant and unsparing, making himself\nand his terrified household give thanks in the midst of such a\ndesolation,--and for it. Her warfare was accomplished, her iniquities\nwere pardoned: she had already received from her Lord's hand double for\nall her sins; this was his supreme and over-mastering thought, and he\ngave it utterance.\n\n [9] A year ago, I found an elderly countrywoman, a widow, waiting\n for me. Rising up, she said, \"D'ye mind me?\" I looked at\n her, but could get nothing from her face; but the voice\n remained in my ear, as if coming from \"the fields of sleep,\"\n and I said by a sort of instinct, \"Tibbie Meek!\" I had not\n seen her or heard her voice for more than forty years. She\n had come to get some medical advice. Voices are often like\n the smells of flowers and leaves, the tastes of wild\n fruits--they touch and awaken memory in a strange way.\n \"Tibbie\" is now living at Thankerton.\n\n [10] This sofa, which was henceforward sacred in the house, he\n had always beside him. He used to tell us he set her down\n upon it when he brought her home to the manse.\n\nNo man was happier in his wives. My mother was modest, calm, thrifty,\nreasonable, tender, happy-hearted. She was his student-love, and is even\nnow remembered in that pastoral region, for \"her sweet gentleness and\nwife-like government.\" Her death and his sorrow and loss, settled down\ndeep into the heart of the countryside. He was so young and bright, so\nfull of fire, so unlike any one else, so devoted to his work, so\nchivalrous in his look and manner, so fearless, and yet so sensitive and\nself-contained. She was so wise, good and gentle, gracious and frank.\n\nHis subtlety of affection, and his almost cruel self-command, were shown\non the day of the funeral. It was to Symington, four miles off,--a quiet\nlittle churchyard, lying in the shadow of Tinto; a place where she\nherself had wished to be laid. The funeral was chiefly on horseback. We,\nthe family, were in coaches. I had been since the death in a sort of\nstupid musing and wonder, not making out what it all meant. I knew my\nmother was said to be dead. I saw she was still, and laid out, and then\nshut up, and didn't move; but I did not know that when she was carried\nout in that long black box, and we all went with her, she alone was\nnever to return.\n\nWhen we got to the village all the people were at their doors. One\nwoman, the blacksmith Thomas Spence's wife, had a nursing baby in her\narms, and he leapt up and crowed with joy at the strange sight, the\ncrowding horsemen, the coaches, and the nodding plumes of the hearse.\nThis was my brother William, then nine months old, and Margaret Spence\nwas his foster-mother. Those with me were overcome at this sight; he of\nall the world whose, in some ways, was the greatest loss, the least\nconscious, turning it to his own childish glee.\n\nWe got to the churchyard and stood round the open grave. My dear old\ngrandfather was asked by my father to pray; he did. I don't remember his\nwords; I believe he, through his tears and sobs, repeated the Divine\nwords, \"All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of\nthe grass; the grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away, but\nthe word of the Lord endureth forever;\" adding, in his homely and\npathetic way, that the flower would again bloom, never again to fade;\nthat what was now sown in dishonor and weakness, would be raised in\nglory and power, like unto His own glorious body. Then to my surprise\nand alarm, the coffin, resting on its bearers, was placed over that dark\nhole, and I watched with curious eye the unrolling of those neat black\nbunches of cords, which I have often enough seen since. My father took\nthe one at the head, and also another much smaller springing from the\nsame point as his, which he had caused to be put there, and unrolling\nit, put it into my hand. I twisted it firmly round my fingers, and\nawaited the result; the burial men with their real ropes lowered the\ncoffin, and when it rested at the bottom, it was too far down for me to\nsee it--the grave was made very deep, as he used afterwards to tell us,\nthat it might hold us all--my father first and abruptly let his cord\ndrop, followed by the rest. This was too much. I now saw what was meant,\nand held on and fixed my fist and feet, and I believe my father had some\ndifficulty in forcing open my small fingers; he let the little black\ncord drop, and I remember, in my misery and anger, seeing its open end\ndisappearing in the gloom.\n\nMy mother's death was the second epoch in my father's life; it marked a\nchange at once and for life; and for a man so self-reliant, so poised\nupon a centre of his own, it is wonderful the extent of change it made.\nHe went home, preached her funeral sermon, every one in the church in\ntears, himself outwardly unmoved.[11] But from that time dates an\nentire, though always deepening, alteration in his manner of preaching,\nbecause an entire change in his way of dealing with God's Word. Not that\nhis abiding religious views and convictions were then originated or even\naltered--I doubt not that from a child he not only knew the Holy\nScriptures, but was \"wise unto salvation\"--but it strengthened and\nclarified, quickened and gave permanent direction to, his sense of God\nas revealed in His Word. He took as it were to subsoil ploughing; he got\na new and adamantine point to the instrument with which he bored, and\nwith a fresh power--with his whole might, he sunk it right down into the\nliving rock, to the virgin gold. His entire nature had got a shock, and\nhis blood was drawn inwards, his surface was chilled; but fuel was\nheaped all the more on the inner fires, and his zeal, that {ti thermon\npragma}, burned with a new ardor; indeed had he not found an outlet for\nhis pent-up energy, his brain must have given way, and his faculties\nhave either consumed themselves in wild, wasteful splendor and\ncombustion, or dwindled into lethargy.[12]\n\n [11] I have been told that _once_ in the course of the sermon his\n voice trembled, and many feared he was about to break down.\n\n [12] There is a story illustrative of this altered manner and\n matter of preaching. He had been preaching when very young,\n at Galashiels, and one wife said to her \"neebor,\" \"Jean,\n what think ye o' the lad?\" \"_It's maist o't tinsel wark_,\"\n said Jean, neither relishing nor appreciating his fine\n sentiments and figures. After my mother's death, he preached\n in the same place, and Jean, running to her friend, took the\n first word, \"_It's a' gowd noo_.\"\n\nThe manse became silent; we lived and slept and played under the shadow\nof that death, and we saw, or rather felt, that he was another father\nthan before. No more happy laughter from the two in the parlor, as he\nwas reading Larry, the Irish postboy's letter in Miss Edgeworth's tale,\nor the last Waverley novel; no more visitings in a cart with her, he\nriding beside us on his white thorough-bred pony, to Kilbucho, or Rachan\nMill, or Kirklawhill. He went among his people as usual when they were\nill; he preached better than ever--they were sometimes frightened to\nthink how wonderfully he preached; but the sunshine was over--the glad\nand careless look, the joy of young life and mutual love. He was little\nwith us, and, as I said, the house was still, except when he was\n_mandating_ his sermons for Sabbath. This he always did, not only _viva\nvoce_, but with as much energy and loudness as in the pulpit; we felt\nhis voice was sharper, and rang keen through the house.\n\nWhat we lost, the congregation and the world gained. He gave himself\nwholly to his work. As you have yourself said, he changed his entire\nsystem and fashion of preaching; from being elegant, rhetorical, and\nambitious, he became concentrated, urgent, moving (being himself moved),\nkeen, searching, unswerving, authoritative to fierceness, full of the\nterrors of the Lord, if he could but persuade men. The truth of the\nwords of God had shone out upon him with an immediateness and infinity\nof meaning and power, which made them, though the same words he had\nlooked on from childhood, other and greater and deeper words. He then\nleft the ordinary commentators, and men who write about meanings and\nflutter around the circumference and corners; he was bent on the centre,\non touching with his own fingers, on seeing with his own eyes, the pearl\nof great price. Then it was that he began to dig into the depths, into\nthe primary and auriferous rock of Scripture, and take nothing at\nanother's hand: then he took up with the word \"apprehend;\" he had laid\nhold of the truth,--there it was, with its evidence, in his hand; and\nevery one who knew him must remember well how, in speaking with\nearnestness of the meaning of a passage, he, in his ardent, hesitating\nway, looked into the palm of his hand as if he actually saw there the\ntruth he was going to utter. This word _apprehend_ played a large part\nin his lectures, as the thing itself did in his processes of\ninvestigation, or, if I might make a word, _indigation_. Comprehension,\nhe said, was for few; apprehension was for every man who had hands and a\nhead to rule them, and an eye to direct them. Out of this arose one of\nhis deficiencies. He _could_ go largely into the generalities of a\nsubject, and relished greatly others doing it, so that they did do it\nreally and well; but he was averse to abstract and wide reasonings.\nPrinciples he rejoiced in: he worked with them as with his choicest\nweapons; they were the polished stones for his sling, against the\nGoliaths of presumption, error, and tyranny in thought or in polity,\ncivil or ecclesiastical; but he somehow divined a principle, or got at\nit naked and alone, rather than deduced it and brought it to a point\nfrom an immensity of particulars, and then rendered it back so as to\nbind them into one _cosmos_. One of my young friends now dead, who\nafterwards went to India, used to come and hear him in Broughton Place\nwith me, and this word _apprehend_ caught him, and as he had a great\nlove for my father, in writing home to me, he never forgot to ask how\n\"grand old Apprehend\" was.\n\nFrom this time dates my father's possession and use of the German\nExegetics. After my mother's death I slept with him; his bed was in his\nstudy, a small room,[13] with a very small grate; and I remember well\nhis getting those fat, shapeless, spongy German books, as if one would\nsink in them, and be bogged in their bibulous, unsized paper; and\nwatching him as he impatiently cut them up, and dived into them in his\nrapid, eclectic way, tasting them, and dropping for my play such a lot\nof soft, large, curled bits from the paper-cutter, leaving the edges all\nshaggy. He never came to bed when I was awake, which was not to be\nwondered at; but I can remember often awaking far on in the night or\nmorning, and seeing that keen, beautiful, intense face bending over\nthese Rosenmuellers, and Ernestis, and Storrs, and Kuinoels--the fire\nout, and the gray dawn peering through the window; and when he heard me\nmove, he would speak to me in the foolish words of endearment my mother\nwas wont to use, and come to bed, and take me, warm as I was, into his\ncold bosom.\n\n [13] On a low chest of drawers in this room there lay for many\n years my mother's parasol, by his orders--I daresay, for\n long, the only one in Biggar.\n\n_Vitringa in Jesaiam_ I especially remember, a noble folio. Even then,\nwith that eagerness to communicate what he had himself found, of which\nyou must often have been made the subject, he went and told it. He would\ntry to make me, small man as I was, \"apprehend\" what he and Vitringa\nbetween them had made out of the fifty-third chapter of his favorite\nprophet, the princely Isaiah.[14] Even then, so far as I can recall, he\nnever took notes of what he read. He did not need this, his intellectual\nforce and clearness were so great; he was so _totus in illo_, whatever\nit was, that he recorded by a secret of its own, his mind's results and\nvictories and _memoranda_, as he went on; he did not even mark his\nbooks, at least very seldom; he marked his mind.\n\n [14] His reading aloud of everything from John Gilpin to John\n Howe was a fine and high art, or rather gift. Henderson\n could not have given\n\n \"The dinner waits, and we are tired;\"\n Says Gilpin, \"So am I,\"\n\n better; and to hear him sounding the depths and cadences of\n the Living Temple, \"bearing on its front this doleful\n inscription, 'Here God once dwelt,'\" was like listening to\n the recitative of Handel. But Isaiah was his masterpiece;\n and I remember quite well his startling us all when reading\n at family worship, \"His name shall be called Wonderful,\n Counsellor, the mighty God,\" by a peremptory, explosive\n sharpness, as of thunder overhead, at the words \"the mighty\n God,\" similar to the rendering now given to Handel's music,\n and doubtless so meant by him; and then closing with \"the\n Prince of Peace,\" soft and low. No man who wishes to feel\n Isaiah, as well as understand him, should be ignorant of\n Handel's \"Messiah.\" His prelude to \"Comfort ye\"--its simple\n theme, cheerful and infinite as the ripple of the\n unsearchable sea--gives a deeper meaning to the words. One\n of my father's great delights in his dying months was\n reading the lives of Handel and of Michael Angelo, then\n newly out. He felt that the author of \"He was despised,\" and\n \"He shall feed his flock,\" and those other wonderful airs,\n was a man of profound religious feeling, of which they were\n the utterance; and he rejoiced over the warlike airs and\n choruses of \"Judas Maccabaeus.\" You have recorded his\n estimate of the religious nature of him of the _terribile\n via_; he said it was a relief to his mind to know that such\n a mighty genius walked humbly with his God.\n\nHe was thus every year preaching with more and more power, because with\nmore and more knowledge and \"pureness;\" and, as you say, there were\nprobably nowhere in Britain such lectures delivered at that time to such\nan audience, consisting of country people, sound, devout, well-read in\ntheir Bibles and in the native divinity, but quite unused to persistent,\ndeep, critical thought.\n\nMuch of this--most of it--was entirely his own, self-originated and\nself-sustained, and done for its own sake,\n\n \"All too happy in the pleasure\n Of his own exceeding treasure.\"\n\nBut he often said, with deep feeling, that one thing put him always on\nhis mettle, the knowledge that \"yonder in that corner, under the\ngallery, sat, Sabbath after Sabbath, a man who knew his Greek Testament\nbetter than I did.\"\n\nThis was his brother-in-law, and one of his elders, Mr. Robert Johnston,\nmarried to his sister Violet, a merchant and portioner in Biggar, a\nremarkable man, of whom it is difficult to say to strangers what is\ntrue, without being accused of exaggeration. A shopkeeper in that remote\nlittle town, he not only intermeddled fearlessly with all knowledge, but\nmastered more than many practised and University men do in their own\nlines. Mathematics, astronomy, and especially what may be called\n_selenology_, or the doctrine of the moon, and the higher geometry and\nphysics; Hebrew, Sanscrit, Greek, and Latin, to the veriest rigors of\nprosody and metre; Spanish and Italian, German, French, and any odd\nlanguage that came in his way; all these he knew more or less\nthoroughly, and acquired them in the most leisurely, easy, cool sort of\nway, as if he grazed and browsed perpetually in the field of letters,\nrather than made formal meals, or gathered for any ulterior purpose, his\nfruits, his roots, and his nuts--he especially liked mental nuts--much\nless bought them from any one.\n\nWith all this, his knowledge of human, and especially of Biggar human\nnature, the ins and outs of its little secret ongoings, the entire\ngossip of the place, was like a woman's; moreover, every personage great\nor small, heroic or comic, in Homer--whose poems he made it a matter of\nconscience to read once every four years--Plautus, Suetonius, Plutarch,\nTacitus, and Lucian, down through Boccaccio and Don Quixote, which he\nknew by heart and from the living Spanish, to Joseph Andrews, the\nSpectator, Goldsmith and Swift, Miss Austen, Miss Edgeworth, and Miss\nFerrier, Galt and Sir Walter,--he was as familiar with, as with David\nCrockat the nailer, or the parish minister, the town-drummer, the\nmole-catcher, or the poaching weaver, who had the night before leistered\na prime kipper at Rachan Mill, by the flare of a tarry wisp, or brought\nhome his surreptitious gray hen or _maukin_ from the wilds of Dunsyre or\nthe dreary Lang Whang.[15]\n\n [15] With the practices of this last worthy, when carried on\n moderately, and for the sport's sake, he had a special\n sympathy.\n\nThis singular man came to the manse every Friday evening for many years,\nand he and my father discussed everything and everybody;--beginning with\ntough, strong head work--a bout at wrestling, be it Caesar's Bridge, the\nEpistles of Phalaris, the import of {men} and {de}, the Catholic\nquestion, or the great roots of Christian faith; ending with the latest\njoke in the town or the _West Raw_, the last effusion by Affleck, tailor\nand poet, the last blunder of AEsop the apothecary, and the last repartee\nof the village fool, with the week's Edinburgh and Glasgow news by their\nrespective carriers; the whole little life, sad and humorous--who had\nbeen born, and who was dying or dead, married or about to be, for the\npast eight days.[16]\n\n [16] I believe this was the true though secret source of much of\n my father's knowledge of the minute personal history of\n every one in his region, which,--to his people, knowing his\n reserved manner and his devotion to his studies, and his so\n rarely meeting them or speaking to them except from the\n pulpit, or at a diet of visitation, was a perpetual wonder,\n and of which he made great use in his dealings with his\n afflicted or erring \"members.\"\n\nThis amused, and, in the true sense, diverted my father, and gratified\nhis curiosity, which was great, and his love of men, as well as for man.\nHe was shy, and unwilling to ask what he longed to know, liking better\nto have it given him without the asking; and no one could do this better\nthan \"Uncle Johnston.\"\n\nYou may readily understand what a thorough exercise and diversion of an\nintellectual and social kind this was, for they were neither of them men\nto shirk from close gripes, or trifle and flourish with their weapons;\nthey laid on and spared not. And then my uncle had generally some\nspecial nut of his own to crack, some thesis to fling down and offer\nbattle on, some \"particle\" to energize upon; for though quiet and calm,\nhe was thoroughly combative, and enjoyed seeing his friend's blood up,\nand hearing his emphatic and bright speech, and watching his flashing\neye. Then he never spared him; criticized and sometimes quizzed--for he\nhad great humor--his style, as well as debated and weighed his\napprehendings and exegeses, shaking them heartily to test their\nstrength. He was so thoroughly independent of all authority, except that\nof reason and truth, and his own humor; so ready to detect what was\nweak, extravagant, or unfair; so full of relish for intellectual power\nand accuracy, and so attached to and proud of my father, and bent on his\nmaking the best of himself, that this trial was never relaxed. His firm\nand close-grained mind was a sort of whetstone on which my father\nsharpened his wits at this weekly \"setting.\"\n\nThe very difference of their mental tempers and complexions drew them\ntogether--the one impatient, nervous, earnest, instant, swift, vehement,\nregardless of exertion, bent on his goal, like a thorough-bred racer,\npressing to the mark; the other leisurely to slowness and provokingness,\nwith a constitution which could stand a great deal of ease,\nunimpassioned, still, clear, untroubled by likings or dislikings,\ndwelling and working in thought and speculation and observation as ends\nin themselves, and as their own rewards:[17] the one hunting for a\nprinciple or a \"divine method;\" the other sapping or shelling from a\ndistance, and for his pleasure, a position, or gaining a point, or\nsettling a rule, or verifying a problem, or getting axiomatic and\nproverbial.\n\n [17] He was curiously destitute of all literary ambition or show;\n like the _cactus_ in the desert, always plump, always taking\n in the dew of heaven, and caring little to give it out. He\n wrote many papers in the _Repository_ and _Monitor_, an\n acute and clever tract on the Voluntary controversy,\n entitled _Calm Answers to Angry Questions_, and was the\n author of a capital bit of literary banter--a Congratulatory\n Letter to the Minister of Liberton, who had come down upon\n my father in a pamphlet, for his sermon on \"There remaineth\n much land to be possessed.\" It is a mixture of Swift and\n Arbuthnot. I remember one of the flowers he culls from him\n he is congratulating, in which my father is characterized as\n one of those \"shallow, sallow souls that would swallow the\n bait, without perceiving the cloven foot!\" But a man like\n this _never_ is best in a book; he is always greater than\n his work.\n\nIn appearance they were as curiously unlike; my uncle short and round to\nrotundity, homely and florid in feature. _I_ used to think Socrates must\nhave been like him in visage as well as in much of his mind. He was\ncareless in his dress, his hands in his pockets as a rule, and strenuous\nonly in smoking or in sleep; with a large, full skull, a humorous\ntwinkle in his cold, blue eye, a soft, low voice, expressing every kind\nof thought in the same, sometimes plaguily _douce_ tone; a great power\nof quiet and telling sarcasm, large capacity of listening to and of\nenjoying other men's talk, however small.\n\nMy father--tall, slim, agile, quick in his movements, graceful, neat to\nnicety in his dress, with much in his air of what is called style, with\na face almost too beautiful for a man's, had not his eyes commanded it\nand all who looked at it, and his close, firm mouth been ready to say\nwhat the fiery spirit might bid; his eyes, when at rest,\nexpressing--more than almost any other's I ever saw--sorrow and tender\nlove, a desire to give and to get sympathy, and a sort of gentle, deep\nsadness, as if that was their permanent state, and gladness their\nmomentary act; but when awakened, full of fire, peremptory, and not to\nbe trifled with; and his smile, and flash of gayety and fun, something\nno one could forget; his hair in early life a dead black; his eyebrows\nof exquisite curve, narrow and intense; his voice deep when unmoved and\ncalm; keen and sharp to piercing fierceness when vehement and roused--in\nthe pulpit, at times a shout, at times a pathetic wail; his utterance\nhesitating, emphatic, explosive, powerful,--each sentence shot straight\nand home; his hesitation arising from his crowd of impatient ideas, and\nhis resolute will that they should come in their order, and some of them\nnot come at all, only the best, and his settled determination that each\nthought should be dressed in the very and only word which he stammered\non till it came,--it was generally worth his pains and ours.\n\nUncle Johnston, again, flowed on like Caesar's _Arar_, _incredibili\nlenitate_, or like linseed out of a poke. You can easily fancy the\nspiritual and bodily contrast of these men, and can fancy too, the kind\nof engagements they would have with their own proper weapons on these\nFriday evenings, in the old manse dining-room, my father showing uncle\nout into the darkness of the back-road, and uncle, doubtless, lighting\nhis black and ruminative pipe.\n\nIf my uncle brought up nuts to crack, my father was sure to have some\ndifficulties to consult about, or some passages to read, something that\nmade him put his whole energy forth; and when he did so, I never heard\nsuch reading. To hear him read the story of Joseph, or passages in\nDavid's history, and Psalms 6th, 11th, and 15th, or the 52d, 53d, 54th,\n55th, 63d, 64th, and 40th chapters of Isaiah, or the Sermon on the\nMount, or the Journey to Emmaus, or our Saviour's prayer in John, or\nPaul's speech on Mars' Hill, or the first three chapters of Hebrews and\nthe latter part of the 11th or Job, or the Apocalypse; or, to pass from\nthose divine themes--Jeremy Taylor, or George Herbert, Sir Walter\nRaleigh, or Milton's prose, such as the passage beginning \"Come forth\nout of thy royal chambers, O thou Prince of all the kings of the earth!\"\nand \"Truth, indeed, came once into the world with her divine Master,\" or\nCharles Wesley's Hymns, or, most loved of all, Cowper, from the rapt\n\"Come thou, and, added to thy many crowns,\" or \"O that those lips had\nlanguage!\" to the Jackdaw, and his incomparable Letters; or Gray's\nPoems, Burns's \"Tam O'Shanter,\" or Sir Walter's \"Eve of St. John,\"[18]\nand \"The Gray Brother.\"\n\n [18] Well do I remember when driving him from Melrose to Kelso\n long ago, we came near Sandyknowe, that grim tower of\n Smailholm standing erect like a warder turned to stone,\n defying time and change his bursting into that noble\n ballad--\n\n \"The Baron of Smaylho'me rose with day,\n He spurr'd his courser on,\n Without stop or stay, down the rocky way,\n That leads to Brotherstone;\"\n\n and pointing out the \"Watchfold height,\" \"the eiry Beacon\n Hill,\" and \"Brotherstone.\"\n\nBut I beg your pardon: Time has run back with me, and fetched that\nblessed past, and awakened its echoes. I hear his voice; I feel his eye;\nI see his whole nature given up to what he is reading, and making its\nvery soul speak.\n\nSuch a man then as I have sketched, or washed faintly in, as the painters\nsay, was that person who sat in the corner under the gallery every\nSabbath-day, and who knew his Greek Testament better than his minister.\nHe is dead too, a few months ago, dying surrounded with his cherished\nhoard of books of all sizes, times, and tongues--tatterdemalion many; all\nhowever drawn up in an order of his own; all thoroughly mastered and\nknown; among them David Hume's copy of Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_,\nwith his autograph, which he had picked up at some stall.\n\nI have said that my mother's death was the second epoch in my father's\nlife. I should perhaps have said the third; the first being his mother's\nlong illness and death, and the second his going to Elie, and beginning\nthe battle of life at fifteen. There must have been something very\ndelicate and close and exquisite in the relation between the ailing,\nsilent, beautiful, and pensive mother, and that dark-eyed, dark-haired,\nbright and silent son; a sort of communion it is not easy to express.\nYou can think of him at eleven slowly writing out that small book of\npromises in a distinct and minute hand, quite as like his mature hand,\nas the shy, lustrous-eyed boy was to his after-self in his manly years,\nand sitting by the bedside while the rest were out and shouting, playing\nat hide-and-seek round the little church, with the winds from Benlomond\nor the wild uplands of Ayrshire blowing through their hair. He played\nseldom, but when he did run out, he jumped higher and farther, and ran\nfaster than any of them. His peculiar beauty must have come from his\nmother. He used at rare times, and with a sort of shudder, to tell of\nher when a lovely girl of fifteen, having been seen by a gentleman of\nrank, in Cheapside, hand in hand with an evil woman, who was decoying\nher to ruin, on pretence of showing her the way home; and how he stopped\nhis carriage and taking in the unconscious girl, drove her to her\nuncle's door. But you have said all this better than I can.\n\nHis time with his mother, and the necessary confinement and bodily\ndepression caused by it, I doubt not deepened his native thoughtful\nturn, and his tendency to meditative melancholy, as a condition under\nwhich he viewed all things, and quickened and intensified his sense of\nthe suffering of this world, and of the profound seriousness and mystery\nin the midst of which we live and die.\n\nThe second epoch was that of his leaving home with his guinea, the last\nhe ever got from any one but himself; and his going among utter\nstrangers to be master of a school one half of the scholars of which\nwere bigger and older than himself, and all rough colts--wilful and\nunbroken. This was his first fronting of the world. Besides supporting\nhimself, this knit the sinews of his mind, and made him rely on himself\nin action as well as in thought. He sometimes, but not often, spoke of\nthis, never lightly, though he laughed at some of his predicaments. He\ncould not forget the rude shock. Generally those familiar revelations\nwere at supper, on the Sabbath evening, when, his work over, he enjoyed\nand lingered over his meal.\n\nFrom his young and slight, almost girlish look, and his refined, quiet\nmanners, the boys of the school were inclined to annoy and bully him. He\nsaw this, and felt it was now or never,--nothing between. So he took his\nline. The biggest boy, much older and stronger, was the rudest, and\ninfected the rest. The \"_wee maister_\" ordered him, in that peremptory\nvoice we all remember, to stand up and hold out his hand, being not at\nall sure but the big fellow might knock him down on the word. To the\nastonishment of the school, and to the big rebel's too, he obeyed and\nwas punished on the instant, and to the full; out went the hand, down\ncame the \"_taws_\" and bit like fire. From that moment he ruled them by\nhis eye, the _taws_ vanished.\n\nThere was an incident at this time of his life which I should perhaps\nnot tell, and yet I don't know why I shouldn't, it so perfectly\nillustrates his character in many ways. He had come home during the\nvacation of his school to Langrig, and was about to go back; he had been\nrenewing his intercourse with his old teacher and friend whom you\nmention, from whom he used to say he learned to like Shakspeare, and who\nseems to have been a man of genuine literary tastes. He went down to bid\nhim good-bye, and doubtless they got on their old book loves, and would\nbe spouting their pet pieces. The old dominie said, \"John, my man, if\nyou are walking into Edinburgh, I'll convoy you a bit.\" \"John\" was too\nhappy, so next morning they set off, keeping up a constant fire of\nquotation and eager talk. They got past Mid-Calder to near East, when my\nfather insisted on his friend returning, and also on going back a bit\nwith him; on looking at the old man, he thought he was tired, so on\nreaching the well-known \"Kippen's Inn,\" he stopped and insisted on\ngiving him some refreshment. Instead of ordering bread and cheese and a\nbottle of ale, he, doubtless full of Shakspeare, and great upon sack and\ncanary, ordered _a bottle of wine_! Of this, you may be sure, the\ndominie, as he most needed it, had the greater share, and doubtless it\nwarmed the cockles of his old heart. \"John\" making him finish the\nbottle, and drink the health of \"Gentle Will,\" saw him off, and went in\nto pay the reckoning. What did he know of the price of wine! It took\nexactly every penny he had; I doubt not, most boys, knowing that the\nlandlord knew them, would have either paid a part, or asked him to score\nit up. This was not his way; he was too proud and shy and honest for\nsuch an expedient. By this time, what with discussing Shakspeare, and\nwitnessing his master's leisurely emptying of that bottle, and releasing\nthe\n\n \"Dear prisoned spirits of the impassioned grape,\"\n\nhe found he must run for it to Edinburgh, or rather Leith, fourteen\nmiles; this he did, and was at the pier just in time to jump into the\nElie pinnace, which was already off. He often wondered what he would\nhave done if he had been that one moment late. You can easily pick out\nthe qualities this story unfolds.\n\nHis nature, capable as it was of great, persistent, and indeed dogged\nlabor, was, from the predominance of the nervous system in his\norganization, excitable, and therefore needed and relished\nexcitement--the more intense the better. He found this in his keen\npolitical tastes, in imaginative literature, and in fiction. In the\nhighest kind of poetry he enjoyed the sweet pain of tears; and he all\nhis life had a steady liking, even a hunger, for a good novel. This\nrefreshed, lightened, and diverted his mind from the strain of his\nincessant exegesis. He used always to say that Sir Walter and Goldsmith,\nand even Fielding, Miss Edgeworth, Miss Austen, and Miss Ferrier, were\ntrue benefactors to the race, by giving such genuine, such secure and\ninnocent pleasure; and he often repeated with admiration Lord Jeffrey's\nwords on Scott, inscribed on his monument. He had no turn for gardening\nor for fishing or any field sports or games; his sensitive nature\nrecoiled from the idea of pain, and above all, needless pain. He used to\nsay the lower creation had groans enough, and needed no more burdens;\nindeed, he was fierce to some measure of unfairness against such of his\nbrethren--Dr. Wardlaw, for instance[19]--as resembled the apostles in\nfishing for other things besides men.\n\n [19] After a tight discussion between these two attached friends,\n Dr. Wardlaw said, \"Well, I can't answer you, but fish I must\n and shall.\"\n\nBut the exercise and the excitement he most of all others delighted in,\nwas riding; and had he been a country gentleman and not a clergyman, I\ndon't think he could have resisted fox-hunting. With the exception of\nthat great genius in more than horsemanship, Andrew Ducrow, I never saw\na man sit a horse as he did. He seemed inspired, gay, erect, full of the\njoy of life, fearless and secure. I have heard a farmer friend say if he\nhad not been a preacher of the gospel he would have been a cavalry\nofficer, and would have fought as he preached.\n\nHe was known all over the Upper Ward and down Tweeddale for his riding.\n\"There goes the minister,\" as he rode past at a swift canter. He had\ngenerally well-bred horses, or as I would now call them, ponies; if he\nhad not, his sufferings from a dull, hardmouthed, heavy-hearted and\nfooted, plebeian horse were almost comic. On his gray mare, or his\nlittle blood bay horse, to see him setting off and indulging it and\nhimself in some alarming gambols, and in the midst of his difficulties,\npartly of his own making, taking off his hat or kissing his hand to a\nlady, made one think of \"young Harry with his beaver up.\" He used to\ntell with much relish, how, one fine summer Sabbath evening after\npreaching in the open air for a collection, in some village near, and\nhaving put the money, chiefly halfpence, into his handkerchief, and that\ninto his hat, he was taking a smart gallop home across the moor, happy\nand relieved, when three ladies--I think, the Miss Bertrams of\nKersewell--came suddenly upon him; off went the hat, down bent the head,\nand over him streamed the cherished collection, the ladies busy among\nthe wild grass and heather picking it up, and he full of droll confusion\nand laughter.\n\nThe gray mare he had for many years. I can remember her small head and\nlarge eyes; her neat, compact body, round as a barrel; her finely\nflea-bitten skin, and her thorough-bred legs. I have no doubt she had\nArabian blood. My father's pride in her was quite curious. Many a wild\nride to and from the Presbytery at Lanark, and across flooded and\nshifting fords, he had on her. She was as sweet-tempered and enduring,\nas she was swift and sure; and her powers of running were appreciated\nand applied in a way which he was both angry and amused to discover. You\nknow what riding the _bruse_ means. At a country wedding the young men\nhave a race to the bridegroom's home, and he who wins, brings out a\nbottle and glass and drinks the young wife's health. I wish Burns had\ndescribed a _bruse_; all sorts of steeds, wild, unkempt lads as well as\ncolts, old broken-down thorough-breds that did wonders when _soopled_,\nhuge, grave cart horses devouring the road with their shaggy hoofs,\nwilful ponies, etc. You can imagine the wild hurry-skurry and fun, the\ncomic situations and upsets over a rough road, up and down places one\nwould be giddy to look at.\n\nWell, the young farmers were in the habit of coming to my father, and\nasking the loan of the mare to go and see a friend, etc., etc., praising\nknowingly the fine points and virtues of his darling. Having through\nlife, with all his firmness of nature, an abhorrence of saying \"No\" to\nany one, the interview generally ended with, \"Well, Robert, you may have\nher, but take care of her, and don't ride her fast.\" In an hour or two\nRobert was riding the _bruse_, and flying away from the crowd, Gray\nfirst, and the rest nowhere, and might be seen turning the corner of the\nfarm-house with the victorious bottle in his uplifted hand, the motley\npack panting vainly up the hill. This went on for long, and the gray was\nfamous, almost notorious, all over the Upper Ward; sometimes if she\nappeared, no one would start, and she trotted the course. Partly from\nhis own personal abstraction from outward country life, and partly from\nUncle Johnston's sense of waggery keeping him from telling his friend of\nthe gray's last exploit at Hartree Mill, or her leaping over the \"best\nman\" at Thriepland, my father was the last to hear of this equivocal\nglory of \"the minister's _meer_.\" Indeed, it was whispered she had once\nwon a whip at Lanark races. They still tell of his feats on this fine\ncreature, one of which he himself never alluded to without a feeling of\nshame. He had an engagement to preach somewhere beyond the Clyde on a\nSabbath evening, and his excellent and attached friend and elder, Mr.\nKello of Lindsay-lands, accompanied him on his big plough horse. It was\nto be in the open air, on the river side. When they got to the Clyde\nthey found it in full flood, heavy and sudden rains at the head of the\nwater having brought it down in a wild _spate_. On the opposite side\nwere the gathered people and the tent. Before Mr. Kello knew where he\nwas, there was his minister on the mare swimming across, and carried\ndown in a long diagonal, the people looking on in terror. He landed,\nshook himself, and preached with his usual fervor. As I have said, he\nnever liked to speak of this bit of hardihood, and he never repeated it;\nbut it was like the man--there were the people, that was what he would\nbe at, and though timid for anticipated danger as any woman, _in_ it he\nwas without fear.\n\nOne more illustration of his character in connection with his riding. On\ncoming to Edinburgh he gave up this kind of exercise; he had no occasion\nfor it, and he had enough, and more than enough of excitement in the\npublic questions in which he found himself involved, and in the\nmiscellaneous activities of a popular town minister. I was then a young\ndoctor--it must have been about 1840--and had a patient, Mrs. James\nRobertson, eldest daughter of Mr. Pirie, the predecessor of Dr. Dick in\nwhat was then Shuttle Street congregation, Glasgow. She was one of my\nfather's earliest and dearest friends,--a mother in the Burgher Israel,\nshe and her cordial husband \"given to hospitality,\" especially to \"the\nProphets.\" She was hopelessly ill at Juniper Green, near Edinburgh. Mr.\nGeorge Stone, then living at Muirhouse, one of my father's congregation\nin Broughton Place, a man of equal originality and worth, and devoted to\nhis minister, knowing my love of riding, offered me his blood-chestnut\nto ride out and make my visit. My father said, \"John, if you are going,\nI would like to ride out with you;\" he wished to see his dying friend.\n\"You ride!\" said Mr. Stone, who was a very Yorkshireman in the matter of\nhorses. \"Let him try,\" said I. The upshot was, that Mr. Stone sent the\nchestnut for me, and a sedate pony--called, if I forget not,\nGoliath--for his minister, with all sorts of injunctions to me to keep\nhim off the thorough-bred, and on Goliath.\n\nMy father had not been on a horse for nearly twenty years. He mounted\nand rode off. He soon got teased with the short, pattering steps of\nGoliath, and looked wistfully up at me, and longingly to the tall\nchestnut, stepping once for Goliath's twice, like the Don striding\nbeside Sancho. I saw what he was after, and when past the toll he said\nin a mild sort of way, \"John, did you promise _absolutely_ I was not to\nride your horse?\" \"No, father, certainly not. Mr. Stone, I daresay,\nwished me to do so, but I didn't.\" \"Well then, I think we'll change;\nthis beast shakes me.\" So we changed. I remember how noble he looked;\nhow at home: his white hair and his dark eyes, his erect, easy,\naccustomed seat. He soon let his eager horse slip gently away. It was\nfirst _evasit_, he was off, Goliath and I jogging on behind; then\n_erupit_, and in a twinkling--_evanuit_. I saw them last flashing\nthrough the arch under the Canal, his white hair flying. I was uneasy,\nthough from his riding I knew he was as yet in command, so I put Goliath\nto his best, and having passed through Slateford, I asked a stonebreaker\nif he saw a gentleman on a chestnut horse. \"Has he white hair?\" \"Yes.\"\n\"And een like a gled's?\" \"Yes.\" \"Weel then, he's fleein' up the road\nlike the wund; he'll he at Little Vantage\" (about nine miles off) \"in\nnae time if he haud on.\" I never once sighted him, but on coming into\nJuniper Green there was his steaming chestnut at the gate, neighing\ncheerily to Goliath. I went in, he was at the bedside of his friend, and\nin the midst of prayer; his words as I entered were, \"When thou passest\nthrough the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they\nshall not overflow thee;\" and he was not the least instant in prayer\nthat his blood was up with his ride. He never again saw Mrs. Robertson,\nor as she was called when they were young, Sibbie (Sibella) Pirie. On\ncoming out he said nothing, but took the chestnut, mounted her, and we\ncame home quietly. His heart was opened; he spoke of old times and old\nfriends; he stopped at the exquisite view at Hailes into the valley, and\nup the Pentlands beyond, the smoke of Kate's Mill rising in the still\nand shadowy air, and broke out into Cowper's words: Yes,--\n\n \"HE sets the bright procession on its way,\n And marshals all the order of the year;\n And ere one flowery season fades and dies,\n Designs the blooming wonders of the next.\"\n\nThen as we came slowly in, the moon shone behind Craiglockhart hill\namong the old Scotch firs; he pulled up again, and gave me Collins' Ode\nto Evening, beginning--\n\n \"If aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song,\n May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,\n Thy springs, and dying gales;\"\n\nrepeating over and over some of the lines, as\n\n \"Thy modest ear,\n Thy springs, and dying gales.\"\n \"--And marks o'er all\n Thy dewy fingers draw\n The gradual dusky veil.\"\n\nAnd when she looked out on us clear and full, \"Yes--\n\n \"The moon takes up the wondrous tale,\n And nightly to the listening earth\n Repeats the story of her birth.\"\n\nAs we passed through Slateford, he spoke of Dr. Belfrage, his\ngreat-hearted friend, of his obligations to him, and of his son, my\nfriend, both lying together in Colinton churchyard; and of Dr. Dick, who\nwas minister before him, of the Coventrys, and of Stitchel and\nSprouston, of his mother, and of himself,--his doubts of his own\nsincerity in religion, his sense of sin, of God--reverting often to his\ndying friend. Such a thing only occurred to me with him once or twice\nall my life; and then when we were home, he was silent, shut up,\nself-contained as before. He was himself conscious of this habit of\nreticence, and what may be called _selfism_ to us, his children, and\nlamented it. I remember his saying in a sort of mournful joke, \"I have a\nwell of love; I know it; but it is a _well_, and a _draw_-well, to your\nsorrow and mine, and it seldom overflows, but,\" looking with that\nstrange power of tenderness as if he put his voice and his heart into\nhis eyes, \"you may always come hither to draw;\" he used to say he might\ntake to himself Wordsworth's lines,--\n\n \"I am not one who much or oft delights\n To season my fireside with personal talk.\"\n\nAnd changing \"though\" into \"if:\"\n\n \"A well of love it may be deep,\n I trust it is, and never dry;\n What matter, though its waters sleep\n In silence and obscurity?\"\n\nThe expression of his affection was more like the shock of a Leyden jar,\nthan the continuous current of a galvanic circle.\n\nThere was, as I have said, a permanent chill given by my mother's death,\nto what may be called the outer surface of his nature, and we at home\nfelt it much. The blood was thrown in upon the centre, and went forth in\nenergetic and victorious work, in searching the Scriptures and saving\nsouls; but his social faculty never recovered that shock! it was\nblighted; he was always desiring to be alone and at his work. A stranger\nwho saw him for a short time, bright, animated, full of earnest and\ncordial talk, pleasing and being pleased, the life of the company, was\napt to think how delightful he must always be,--and so he was; but these\ntimes of bright talk were like angels' visits; and he smiled with\npeculiar benignity on his retiring guest, as if blessing him not the\nless for leaving him to himself. I question if there ever lived a man so\nmuch in the midst of men, and in the midst of his own children,[20] in\nwhom the silences, as Mr. Carlyle would say, were so predominant. Every\nSabbath he spoke out of the abundance of his heart, his whole mind; he\nwas then communicative and frank enough: all the week, before and after,\nhe would not unwillingly have never opened his mouth. Of many people we\nmay say that their mouth is always open except when it is shut; of him\nthat his mouth was always shut except when it was opened. Every one must\nhave been struck with the seeming inconsistency of his occasional\nbrilliant, happy, energetic talk, and his habitual silentness--his\ndifficulty in getting anything to say. But, as I have already said, what\nwe lost, the world and the church gained.\n\n [20] He gave us all the education we got at Biggar.\n\nWhen travelling he was always in high spirits and full of anecdote and\nfun. Indeed I knew more of his inner history in this _one_ way, than\nduring years of living with him. I recollect his taking me with him to\nGlasgow when I must have been about fourteen; we breakfasted in \"_The\nRam's Horn Tavern_\" and I felt a new respect for him at his commanding\nthe waiters. He talked a great deal during our short tour, and often\nhave I desired to recall the many things he told me of his early life,\nand of his own religious crises, my mother's death, his fear of his own\ndeath, and all this intermingled with the drollest stories of his boy\nand student life.\n\nWe went to Paisley and dined, I well remember, we two alone, and, as I\nthought, magnificently, in a great apartment in \"_The Saracen's Head_,\"\nat the end of which was the county ball-room. We had come across from\nDunoon and landed in a small boat at the _Water Neb_ along with Mrs. Dr.\nHall, a character Sir Walter or Galt would have made immortal. My father\nwith characteristic ardor took an oar, for the first time in his life,\nand I believe for the last, to help the old boatman on the Cart, and\nwishing to do something decided, missed the water, and went back head\nover heels to the immense enjoyment of Mrs. Hall, who said, \"Less pith,\nand mair to the purpose, my man.\" She didn't let the joke die out.\n\nAnother time--it was when his second marriage was fixed on, to our great\nhappiness and his--I had just taken my degree of M. D., and he took\nIsabella, William, and myself to Moffat. By a curious felicity we got\ninto Miss Geddes' lodgings, where the village circulating library was\nkept, the whole of which we aver he read in ten days. I never saw him so\nhappy, so open and full of mirth, reading to us, and reciting the poetry\nof his youth. On these rare but delightful occasions he was fond of\nexhibiting, when asked, his powers of rapid speaking, in which he might\nhave rivalled old Matthews or his son. His favorite feat was repeating\n\"Says I to my Lord, quo' I--what for will ye no grund ma barley-meal\nmouter-free, says I to my Lord, quo' I, says I, I says.\" He was\nbrilliant upon the final, \"I says.\" Another _chef-d'oeuvre_ was, \"On\nTintock tap there is a mist, and in the mist there is a kist (a chest),\nand in the kist there is a cap (a wooden bowl), and in the cap there is\na drap, tak' up the cap, and sup the drap, and set the cap on Tintock\ntap.\" This he could say, if I mistake not, five times without drawing\nbreath. It was a favorite passage this, and he often threatened to treat\nit exegetically; laughing heartily when I said, in that case, he would\nnot have great trouble with the _context_, which in others cost him a\ngood deal.\n\nHis manners to ladies, and indeed to all women, was that of a courtly\ngentleman; they could be romantic in their _empressement_ and devotion,\nand I used to think Sir Philip Sydney, or Ariosto's knights and the\nPaladins of old, must have looked and moved as he did. He had great\npleasure in the company of high-bred, refined thoughtful women; and he\nhad a peculiar sympathy with the sufferings, the necessary mournfulness\nof women, and with all in their lot connected with the fruit of that\nforbidden tree--their loneliness, the sorrows of their time, and their\npangs in travail, their peculiar relation to their children. I think I\nhear him reading the words, \"Can a woman forget her sucking child, that\nshe should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea\" (as if it\nwas the next thing to impossible), \"she may forget, yet will not I\nforget thee.\" Indeed, to a man who saw so little of, and said so little\nto his own children, perhaps it may be _because_ of all this, his\nsympathy for mothers under loss of children, his real suffering for\ntheir suffering, not only endeared him to them as their minister, their\nconsoler, and gave him opportunities of dropping in divine and saving\ntruth and comfort, when the heart was full and soft, tender, and at his\nmercy, but it brought out in his only loss of this kind, the mingled\ndepth, tenderness, and also the peremptoriness of his nature.\n\nIn the case of the death of little Maggie--a child the very image of\nhimself in face, lovely and pensive, and yet ready for any fun, with a\nkeenness of affection that perilled everything on being loved, who must\ncling to some one and be clasped, made for a garden, for the first\ngarden, not for the rough world, the child of his old age--this peculiar\nmeeting of opposites was very marked. She was stricken with sudden\nillness, malignant sore throat; her mother was gone, and so she was to\nmy father as a flower he had the sole keeping of: and his joy in her\nwild mirth, his watching her childish moods of sadness, as if a shadow\ncame over her young heaven, were themselves something to watch. Her\ndelicate life made no struggle with disease; it as it were declined to\nstay on such conditions. She therefore sunk at once and without much\npain, her soul quick and unclouded, and her little forefinger playing to\nthe last with my father's silvery curls, her eyes trying in vain to\nbrighten his:--\n\n \"Thou wert a dew-drop which the morn brings forth,\n Not fitted to be trailed along the soiling earth;\n But at the touch of wrong, without a strife,\n Slips in a moment out of life.\"\n\nHis distress, his anguish at this stroke, was not only intense, it was\nin its essence permanent; he went mourning and looking for her all his\ndays; but after she was dead, that resolved will compacted him in an\ninstant. It was on a Sabbath morning she died, and he was all day at\nchurch, not many yards from where lay her little corpse alone in the\nhouse. His colleague preached in the forenoon, and in the afternoon he\ntook his turn, saying before beginning his discourse:--\"It has pleased\nthe Father of Lights to darken one of the lights of my dwelling--had the\nchild lived I would have remained with her, but now I have thought it\nright to arise and come into the house of the Lord and worship.\" Such\nviolence to one part of his nature by that in it which was supreme,\ninjured him: it was like pulling up on the instant an express train; the\nwhole inner organization is minutely, though it may be invisibly hurt;\nits molecular constitution damaged by the cruel stress and strain. Such\nthings are not right; they are a cruelty and injustice and injury from\nthe soul to the body, its faithful slave, and they bring down, as in his\ncase they too truly did, their own certain and specific retribution. A\nman who did not feel keenly might have preached; a man whose whole\nnature was torn, shattered, and astonished as his was, had in a high\nsense _no right_ so to use himself; and when too late he opened his eyes\nto this. It was part of our old Scottish severe unsparing\ncharacter--calm to coldness outside, burning to fierceness, tender to\nagony within.\n\nI was saying how much my father enjoyed women's company. He liked to\nlook on them, and watch them, listening[21] to their keen, unconnected,\nand unreasoning, but not unreasonable talk. Men's argument, or rather\narguing, and above all debating, he disliked. He had no turn for it. He\nwas not combative, much less contentious. He was, however, warlike.\nAnything that he could destroy, any falsehood or injustice, he made for,\nnot to discuss, but to expose and kill. He could not fence with his mind\nmuch less with his tongue, and had no love for the exploits of a nimble\ndialectic. He had no readiness either in thought or word for this; his\nway was slowly to _think out_ a subject, to get it well \"bottomed,\" as\nLocke would say; he was not careful as to recording the steps he took in\ntheir order, but the spirit of his mind was logical, as must be that of\nall minds who seek and find truth, for logic is nothing else than the\narithmetic of thought; having therefore _thought it out_, he proceeded\nto put it into formal expression. This he did so as never again to undo\nit. His mind seemed to want the wheels by which this is done, _vestigia\nnulla retrorsum_, and having stereotyped it, he was never weary of it;\nit never lost its life and freshness to him, and he delivered it as\nemphatically thirty years after it had been cast, as the first hour of\nits existence.\n\n [21] One day my mother, and her only sister, Agnes--married to\n James Aitken of Cullands, a man before his class and his\n time, for long the only Whig and Seceder laird in\n Peeblesshire, and with whom my father shared the _Edinburgh\n Review_ from its beginning--the two sisters who were, the\n one to the other, as Martha was to Mary, sat talking of\n their household doings; my aunt was great upon some things\n she could do; my father looked up from his book, and said,\n \"There is one thing, Mrs. Aitken, you cannot do--you cannot\n turn the heel of a stocking;\" and he was right, he had\n noticed her make over this \"kittle\" turn to her mother.\n\nI have said he was no swordsman, but he was a heavy shot; he fired off\nhis ball, compact, weighty, the _maximum_ of substance in the _minimum_\nof bulk; he put in double charge, pointed the muzzle, and fired, with\nwhat force and sharpness we all remember. If it hit, good; if not, all\nhe could do was to load again, with the same ball, and in the same\ndirection. You must come to him to be shot, at least you must stand\nstill, for he had a want of mobility of mind in great questions. He\ncould not stalk about the field like a sharp-shooter; his was a great\nsixty-eight pounder, and it was not much of a swivel. Thus it was that\nhe rather dropped into the minds of others his authoritative assertions,\nand left them to breed conviction. If they gave them entrance and\ncherished them, they would soon find how full of primary truth they\nwere, and how well they would serve them, as they had served him. With\nall this heavy artillery, somewhat slow and cumbrous, on great\nquestions, he had no want, when he was speaking off-hand, of quick,\n_snell_ remark, often witty and full of spirit, and often too\nunexpected, like lightning--flashing, smiting, and gone. In Church\nCourts this was very marked. On small ordinary matters, a word from him\nwould settle a long discussion. He would, after lively, easy talk with\nhis next neighbor, set _him_ up to make a speech which was conclusive.\nBut on great questions he must move forward his great gun with much\nsolemnity and effort, partly from his desire to say as much of the truth\nat once as he could, partly from the natural concentration and rapidity\nof his mind in action, as distinguished from his slowness when\n_incubating_, or in the process of thought,--and partly from a sort of\nself-consciousness--I might almost call it a compound of pride and\nnervous diffidence--which seldom left him. He desired to say it so that\nit might never need to be said again or otherwise by himself, or any one\nelse.\n\nThis strong personality, along with a prevailing love to be alone, and\ndwell with thoughts rather than with thinkers, pervaded his entire\ncharacter. His religion was deeply personal,[22] not only as affecting\nhimself, but as due to a personal God, and presented through the\nsacrifice and intercession of the God-man; and it was perhaps owing to\nhis \"conversation\" being so habitually in heaven--his social and\naffectionate desires filling themselves continually from \"all the\nfulness of God,\" through living faith and love--that he the less felt\nthe need of giving and receiving human affection. I never knew any man\nwho lived more truly under the power, and sometimes under the shadow of\nthe world to come. This world had to him little reality except as\nleading to the next; little interest, except as the time of probation\nand sentence. A child brought to him to be baptized was in his mind, and\nin his words, \"a young immortal to be educated for eternity;\" a birth\nwas the beginning of what was never to end; sin--his own and that of the\nrace--was to him, as it must be to all men who can think, the great\nmystery, as it is the main curse of time. The idea of it--of its\nexceeding sinfulness--haunted and oppressed him. He used to say of John\nFoster, that this deep and intense, but sometimes narrow and grim\nthinker, had, in his study of the disease of the race, been, as it were,\nfascinated by its awful spell, so as almost to forget the remedy. This\nwas not the case with himself. As you know, no man held more firmly to\nthe objective reality of his religion--that it was founded upon fact. It\nwas not the pole-star he lost sight of, or the compass he mistrusted; it\nwas the seaworthiness of the vessel. His constitutional deficiency of\nhope, his sensibility to sin, made him not unfrequently stand in doubt\nof himself, of his sincerity and safety before God, and sometimes made\nexistence--the being obliged to continue to be--a doubtful privilege.\n\n [22] In his own words, \"A personal Deity is the soul of Natural\n Religion; a personal Saviour--the real living Christ--is the\n soul of Revealed Religion.\"\n\nWhen oppressed with this feeling,--\"the burden and the mystery of all\nthis unintelligible world,\" the hurry of mankind out of this brief world\ninto the unchangeable and endless next,--I have heard him, with deep\nfeeling, repeat Andrew Marvel's strong lines:--\n\n \"But at my back I always hear\n Time's winged chariots hurrying near;\n And yonder all before me lie\n Deserts of vast eternity.\"\n\nHis living so much on books, and his strong personal attachment to men,\nas distinct from his adhesion to their principles and views, made him,\nas it were, live and commune with the dead--made him intimate, not\nmerely with their thoughts, and the public events of their lives, but\nwith themselves--Augustine, Milton, Luther, Melancthon, George Herbert,\nBaxter, Howe, Owen, Leighton, Barrow, Bunyan, Philip and Matthew Henry,\nDoddridge, Defoe, Marvel, Locke, Berkeley, Halliburton, Cowper, Gray,\nJohnson, Gibbon, and David Hume,[23] Jortin, Boston, Bengel, Neander,\netc., not to speak of the apostles, and above all, his chief friend the\nauthor of the Epistle to the Romans, whom he looked on as the greatest\nof men,--with all these he had personal relations as men, he cordialized\nwith them. He had thought much more about them--would have had more to\nsay to them had they met, than about or to any but a very few living\nmen.[24] He delighted to possess books which any of them might have held\nin their hands, on which they had written their names. He had a number\nof these, some very curious; among others, that wild soldier, man of\nfashion and wit among the reformers, Ulric von Huetten's autograph on\nErasmus' beautiful folio Greek Testament, and John Howe's (spelt How) on\nthe first edition of Milton's Speech on Unlicensed Printing.[25] He\nbegan collecting books when he was twelve, and he was collecting up to\nhis last hours. He cared least for merely fine books, though he enjoyed,\nno one more so, fine type, good binding, and all the niceties of the\nbook-fancier. What he liked were such books as were directly useful in\nhis work, and such as he liked to live in the midst of; such, also, as\nillustrated any great philosophical, historical, or ecclesiastical\nepoch. His collection of Greek Testaments was, considering his means, of\ngreat extent and value, and he had a quite singular series of books,\npamphlets, and documents, referring not merely to his own body--the\nSecession, with all its subdivisions and reunions--but to Nonconformity\nand Dissent everywhere, and, indeed, to human liberty, civil and\nreligious, in every form,--for this, after the great truths, duties, and\nexpectations of his faith, was the one master-passion of his\nlife--liberty in its greatest sense, the largest extent of individual\nand public spontaneity consistent with virtue and safety. He was in this\nas intense, persistent in his devotion, as Sydney, Locke, or old Hollis.\nFor instance, his admiration of Lord Macaulay as a writer and a man of\nletters, an orator and a statesman, great as it was, was as nothing to\nhis gratitude to him for having placed permanently on record, beyond all\nrisk of obscuration or doubt, the doctrine of 1688--the right and power\nof the English people to be their own lawgivers, and to appoint their\nown magistrates, of whom the sovereign is the chief.\n\n [23] David Hume's _Treatise on Human Nature_ he knew thoroughly,\n and read it carefully during his last illness. He used to\n say it not only was a miracle of intellectual and literary\n power for a man of twenty-eight, but contained the essence\n of all that was best on the philosophy of mind; \"It's all\n there, if you will think it out.\"\n\n [24] This tendency was curiously seen in his love of portraits,\n especially of men whose works he had and liked. He often put\n portraits into his books, and he seemed to enjoy this way of\n realizing their authors; and in exhibitions of pictures he\n was more taken up with what is usually and justly the most\n tiresome departments, the portraits, than with all else. He\n was not learned in engravings, and made no attempt at\n collecting them, so that the following list of portraits in\n his rooms shows his liking for the men much more than for\n the art which delineated them. Of course they by no means\n include all his friends, ancient and modern, but they all\n _were_ his friends:--\n\n Robert Hall--Dr. Carey--Melancthon--Calvin--Pollok--Erasmus\n (very like \"Uncle Ebenezer\")--John Knox--Dr. Waugh--John\n Milton (three all framed)--Dr. Dick--Dr. Hall--Luther\n (two)--Dr. Heugh--Dr. Mitchell--Dr. Balmer--Dr.\n Henderson--Dr. Wardlaw--Shakspeare (a small oil painting\n which he had since ever I remember)--Dugald Stewart--Dr.\n Innes--Dr. Smith, Biggar--the two Erskines and Mr.\n Fisher--Dr. John Taylor of Toronto--Dr. Chalmers--Mr.\n William Ellis--Rev. James Elles--J. B.\n Patterson--Vinet--Archibald M'Lean--Dr. John\n Erskine--Tholuck--John Pym--Gesenius--Professor\n Finlayson--Richard Baxter--Dr. Lawson--Dr. Peddie (two, and\n a copy of Joseph's noble bust); and they were thus all about\n him for no other reason than that he liked to look at and\n think of them through their countenances.\n\n [25] In a copy of Baxter's Life and Times, which he picked up at\n Maurice Ogle's shop in Glasgow, which had belonged to Anna,\n Countess of Argyll, besides her autograph, there is a most\n affecting and interesting note in that venerable lady's\n handwriting. It occurs on the page where Baxter brings a\n charge of want of veracity against her eldest and\n name-daughter who was perverted to Popery. They are in a\n hand tremulous with age and feeling:--\"I can say w^t truth I\n neuer in all my lyff did hear hir ly, and what she said, if\n it was not trew, it was by others sugested to hir, as y^t\n she wold embak on Wedensday. She belived she wold, bot thy\n took hir, alles! from me who never did sie her mor. The\n minester of Cuper, Mr. John Magill, did sie hir at Paris in\n the convent. Said she was a knowing and vertuous person, and\n hed retined the living principels of our relidgon, which\n made him say it was good to grund young persons weel in ther\n relidgion, as she was one it appired weel grunded.\"\n\n The following is Lord Lindsay's letter, on seeing this\n remarkable marginal note:--\n\n EDINBURGH, DOUGLAS' HOTEL,\n _26th December 1856._\n\n MY DEAR SIR,--I owe you my sincerest thanks for your\n kindness in favoring me with a sight of the volume of\n Baxter's Life, which formerly belonged to my ancestrix,\n Anna, Countess of Argyll. The MS. note inserted by her in it\n respecting her daughter is extremely interesting. I had\n always been under the impression that the daughter had died\n very shortly after her removal to France, but the contrary\n appears from Lady Argyll's memorandum. That memorandum\n throws also a pleasing light on the later life of Lady Anna,\n and forcibly illustrates the undying love and tenderness of\n the aged mother, who must have been very old when she penned\n it, the book having been printed as late as 1696.\n\n I am extremely obliged to you for communicating to me this\n new and very interesting information.--Believe me, my dear\n Sir, your much obliged and faithful servant,\n\n LINDSAY.\n\n JOHN BROWN, Esq. M.D.\n\n\nHis conviction of the sole right of God to be Lord of the conscience,\nand his sense of his own absolute religious independence of every one\nbut his Maker, were the two elements in building up his beliefs on all\nChurch matters; they were twin beliefs. Hence the simplicity and\nthoroughness of his principles. Sitting in the centre, he commanded the\ncircumference. But I am straying out of my parish into yours. I only add\nto what you have said, that the longer he lived, the more did he insist\nupon it being not less true and not less important, that the Church must\nnot intermeddle with the State, than that the State must not intermeddle\nwith the Church. He used to say, \"Go down into the world, with all its\ncomplications and confusions, with this double-edged weapon, and you can\ncut all the composite knots of Church and State.\" The element of God and\nof eternity predominates in the religious more than in the civil affairs\nof men, and thus far transcends them; but the principle of mutual\nindependence is equally applicable to each. All that statesmen, as such,\nhave to do with religion, is to be themselves under its power; all that\nChristians, as such, have to do with the State, is to be good citizens.\n\nThe fourth epoch of his personal life I would date from his second\nmarriage. As I said before, no man was ever happier in his wives. They\nhad much alike in nature,--only one could see the Divine wisdom of his\nfirst wife being his first, and his second his second; each did best in\nher own place and time. His marriage with Miss Crum was a source of\ngreat happiness and good not only to himself, but to us his first\nchildren. She had been intimately known to us for many years, and was\nendeared to us long before we saw her, by her having been, as a child\nand girl, a great favorite of our own mother. The families of my\ngrandfather Nimmo, and of the Crums, Ewings, and Maclaes, were very\nintimate. I have heard my father tell, that being out at Thornliebank\nwith my mother, he asked her to take a walk with him to the Rouken, a\nromantic waterfall and glen up the burn. My mother thought they might\ntake \"Miss Margaret\" with them, and so save appearances, and with Miss\nCrum, then a child of ten, holding my father's hand, away the three\nwent!\n\nSo you may see that no one could be nearer to being our mother; and she\nwas curiously ingenious, and completely successful in gaining our\naffection and regard. I have, as a boy, a peculiarly pleasant\nremembrance of her, having been at Thornliebank when about fourteen, and\ngetting that impression of her gentle, kind, wise, calm, and happy\nnature--her entire lovableness--which it was our privilege to see\nministering so much to my father's comfort. That fortnight in 1824 or\n1825 is still to me like the memory of some happy dream; the old\nlibrary, the big chair in which I huddled myself up for hours with the\nNew Arabian Nights, and all the old-fashioned and unforgotten books I\nfound there, the ample old garden, the wonders of machinery and skill\ngoing on in \"the works,\" the large water-wheel going its stately rounds\nin the midst of its own darkness, the petrifactions I excavated in the\nbed of the burn, _ammonites_, etc., and brought home to my museum (!);\nthe hospitable lady of the house, my hereditary friend, dignified,\nanxious and kind; and above all, her only daughter who made me a sort of\npet, and was always contriving some unexpected pleasure,--all this feels\nto me even now like something out of a book.\n\nMy father's union with Miss Crum was not only one of the best blessings\nof his life,--it made him more of a blessing to others, than it is\nlikely he would otherwise have been. By her cheerful, gracious ways, her\nlove for society as distinguished from company, her gift of making every\none happy and at ease when with her, and her tender compassion for all\nsuffering, she in a measure won my father from himself and his books, to\nhis own great good, and to the delight and benefit of us all. It was\nlike sunshine and a glad sound in the house. She succeeded in what is\ncalled \"drawing out\" the inveterate solitary. Moreover, she encouraged\nand enabled him to give up a moiety of his ministerial labors, and thus\nto devote himself to the great work of his later years, the preparing\nfor and giving to the press the results of his life's study of God's\nWord. We owe entirely to her that immense _armamentarium libertatis_,\nthe third edition of his treatise on Civil Obedience.\n\nOne other source of great happiness to my father by this marriage was\nthe intercourse he had with the family at Thornliebank, deepened and\nendeared as this was by her unexpected and irreparable loss. But on this\nI must not enlarge, nor on that death itself, the last thing in the\nworld he ever feared--leaving him once more, after a brief happiness,\nand when he had still more reason to hope that he would have \"grown old\nwith her, leaning on her faithful bosom.\" The urn was again empty--and\nthe only word was _vale!_ he was once more _viduus_ bereft.\n\n \"God gives us love; something to love\n He lends us; but, when love is grown\n To ripeness, that on which it throve\n Falls off, and love is left alone.\n This is the curse of time\"--\n\nBut still--\n\n \"'Tis better to have loved and lost,\n Than never to have loved at all.\"\n\nIt was no easy matter to get him from home and away from his books. But\nonce off, he always enjoyed himself,--especially in his visits to\nThornliebank, Busby, Crofthead, Biggar, and Melrose. He was very fond of\npreaching on these occasions, and his services were always peculiarly\nimpressive. He spoke more slowly and with less vehemence than in his own\npulpit, and, as I often told him, with all the more effect. When driving\nabout Biggar, or in the neighborhood of Langrig, he was full of the\npast, showing how keenly, with all his outward reserve, he had observed\nand felt. He had a quite peculiar interest in his three flocks, keeping\nhis eye on all their members, through long years of absence.\n\nHis love for his people and for his \"body\" was a special love; and his\nknowledge of the Secession, through all its many divisions and\nunions,--his knowledge, not only of its public history, with its immense\ncontroversial and occasional literature, but of the lives and\npeculiarities of its ministers,--was of the most minute and curious\nkind. He loved all mankind, and specially such as were of \"the household\nof faith;\" and he longed for the time when, as there was one Shepherd,\nthere would be but one sheepfold; but he gloried in being not only a\nSeceder, but Burgher; and he often said, that take them all in all, he\nknew no body of professing Christians in any country or in any time,\nworthier of all honor than that which was founded by the Four Brethren,\nnot only as God-fearing, God-serving men, but as members of civil\nsociety; men who on every occasion were found on the side of liberty and\norder, truth and justice. He used to say he believed there was hardly a\nTory in the Synod, and that no one but He whose service is perfect\nfreedom, knew the public good done, and the public evil averted, by the\nlives and the principles, and when need was, by the votes of such men,\nall of whom were in the working classes, or in the lower half of the\nmiddle. The great Whig leaders knew this, and could always depend on the\nSeceders.\n\nThere is no worthy portrait of my father in his prime. I believe no man\nwas ever more victimized in the way of being asked to \"sit;\" indeed, it\nwas probably from so many of them being of this kind, that the\nopportunity of securing a really good one was lost. The best--the one\nportrait of his habitual expression--is Mr. Harvey's, done for Mr. Crum\nof Busby: it was taken when he was failing, but it is an excellent\nlikeness as well as a noble picture; such a picture as one would buy\nwithout knowing anything of the subject. So true it is, that imaginative\npainters, men gifted and accustomed to render their own ideal\nconceptions in form and color, grasp and impress on their canvas the\nfeatures of real men more to the quick, more faithfully as to the\ncentral qualities of the man, than professed portrait painters.\n\nSteell's bust is beautiful, but it is wanting in expression. Slater's,\nthough rude, is better. Angus Fletcher's has much of his air, but is too\nmuch like a Grecian God. There is a miniature by Mrs. Robertson of\nLondon, belonging to my sister, Mrs. Young, which I always liked, though\nmore like a gay, brilliant French Abbe, than the Seceder minister of\nRose Street, as he then was. It gives, however, more of his exquisite\nbrightness and spirit, the dancing light in his dark eyes, and his\nsmile, when pleased and desiring to please, than any other. I have a\ndrawing by Mr. Harvey, done from my father for his picture of the\nMinister's Visit, which I value very much, as giving the force and\ndepth, the _momentum_, so to speak, of his serious look. He is sitting\nin a cottar's house, reading the Bible to an old bedridden woman, the\nfarm servants gathered round to get his word.\n\nMungo Burton painted a good portrait which my brother William has; from\nhis being drawn in a black neckcloth, and standing, he looks as he\nsometimes did, more like a member of Parliament than a clergyman. The\nprint from this is good and very scarce. Of photographs, I like D. O.\nHill's best, in which he is represented as shaking hands with the\n(invisible) Free Church--it is full of his earnest, cordial power; that\nby Tunny, from which the beautiful engraving by Lumb Stocks in the\nMemoir was taken, is very like what he was about a year and a half\nbefore his death. All the other portraits, as far as I can remember, are\nworthless and worse, missing entirely the true expression. He was very\ndifficult to take, partly because he was so full of what may be called\nspiritual beauty, evanescent, ever changing, and requiring the highest\nkind of genius to fix it; and partly from his own fault, for he thought\nit was necessary to be lively, or rather to try to be so to his\nvolunteering artist, and the consequence was, his giving them, as his\nhabitual expression, one which was rare, and in this particular case\nmore made than born.\n\nThe time when I would have liked his look to have been perpetuated, was\nthat of all others the least likely, or indeed possible;--it was, when\nafter administering the Sacrament to his people, and having solemnized\nevery one, and been himself profoundly moved by that Divine, everlasting\nmemorial, he left the elders' seat and returned to the pulpit, and after\ngiving out the psalm, sat down wearied and satisfied, filled with devout\ngratitude to his Master--his face pale, and his dark eyes looking out\nupon us all, his whole countenance radiant and subdued. Any likeness of\nhim in this state, more like that of the proto-martyr, when his face was\nas that of an angel, than anything I ever beheld, would have made one\nfeel what it is so impossible otherwise to convey,--the mingled\nsweetness, dignity, and beauty of his face. When it was winter, and the\nchurch darkening, and the lights at the pulpit were lighted so as to\nfall upon his face and throw the rest of the vast assemblage into deeper\nshadow, the effect of his countenance was something never to forget.\n\nHe was more a man of power than of genius in the ordinary sense. His\nimagination was not a primary power; it was not originative, though in a\nquite uncommon degree receptive, having the capacity of realizing the\nimaginations of others, and through them bodying forth the unseen. When\nexalted and urged by the understanding, and heated by the affections, it\nburst out with great force, but always as servant, not master. But if he\nhad no one faculty that might be, to use the loose words of common\nspeech, original, he was so as a whole,--such a man as stood alone. No\none ever mistook his look, or would, had they been blind, have mistaken\nhis voice or words, for those of any one else, or any one else's for\nhis.\n\nHis mental characteristics, if I may venture on such ground, were\nclearness and vigor, intensity, fervor,[26] concentration, penetration,\nand perseverance,--more of depth than width.[27] The moral conditions\nunder which he lived were the love, the pursuit, and the practice of\ntruth in everything; strength and depth, rather than external warmth of\naffection; fidelity to principles and to friends. He used often to speak\nof the moral obligation laid upon every man to _think truly_, as well as\nto speak and act truly, and said that much intellectual demoralization\nand ruin resulted from neglecting this. He was absolutely tolerant of\nall difference of opinion, so that it was sincere; and this was all the\nmore remarkable from his being the opposite of an indifferentist, being\nvery strong in his own convictions, holding them keenly, even\npassionately, while from the structure of his mind, he was somehow\ndeficient in comprehending, much less of sympathizing with the opinions\nof men who greatly differed from him. This made his homage to entire\nfreedom of thought all the more genuine and rare. In the region of\ntheological thought he was scientific, systematic, and authoritative,\nrather than philosophical and speculative. He held so strongly that the\nChristian religion was mainly a religion of facts, that he perhaps\nallowed too little to its also being a philosophy that was ready to\nmeet, out of its own essence and its ever unfolding powers, any new form\nof unbelief, disbelief, or misbelief, and must front itself to them as\nthey moved up.\n\n [26] This earnestness of nature pervaded all his exercises. A man\n of great capacity and culture, with a head like Benjamin\n Franklin's, an avowed unbeliever in Christianity, came every\n Sunday afternoon, for many years, to hear him. I remember\n his look well, as if interested, but not impressed. He was\n often asked by his friends why he went when he didn't\n believe one word of what he heard. \"Neither I do, but I like\n to hear and to see a man earnest once a week, about\n anything.\" It is related of David Hume, that having heard my\n great-grandfather preach, he said, \"That's the man for me,\n he means what he says, he speaks as if Jesus Christ was at\n his elbow.\"\n\n [27] The following note from the pen to which we owe \"St. Paul's\n Thorn in the Flesh\" is admirable, both for its reference to\n my father, and its own beauty and truth.\n\n \"One instance of his imperfect discernment of associations\n of thought that were not of a purely logical character was\n afforded, we used to think, by the decided and almost\n contemptuous manner in which he always rejected the theory\n of what is called the double interpretation of prophecy.\n This, of course, is not the place to discuss whether he was\n absolutely right or wrong in his opinion. The subject,\n however, is one of somewhat curious interest, and it has\n also a strictly literary as well as a theological aspect,\n and what we have to say about it shall relate exclusively to\n the former. When Dr. Brown then said, as he was accustomed\n in his strong way to do, that 'if prophecy was capable of\n two senses, it was impossible it could have any sense at\n all,' it is plain, we think, that he forgot the specific\n character of prophetic literature, viz., its being in the\n highest degree poetic. Now every one knows that poetry of a\n very elevated cast almost invariably possesses great\n breadth, variety, we may say multiplicity of meaning. Its\n very excellence consists in its being capable of two, three,\n or many meanings and applications. Take, for example, these\n familiar lines in the 'Midsummer Night's Dream:'--\n\n 'Ah me! for aught that ever I could read,\n Could ever hear by tale or history,\n The course of true love never did run smooth:\n But either it was different in blood,\n Or else misgraffed in respect of years,\n Or else it stood upon the choice of friends;\n Or if there were a sympathy in choice,\n War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,\n Making it momentary as a sound,\n Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,\n Brief as the lightning in the collied night,\n That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth,\n And ere a man hath power to say \"Behold!\"\n The jaws of darkness do devour it up;\n So quick bright things come to confusion.'\n\n We remember once quoting these lines to a lady, and being\n rather taken aback by her remark, 'They are very beautiful,\n but I don't, think they are true.' We really had forgot for\n the moment the straightforward, matter-of-fact sense of\n which they are capable, and were not adverting to the\n possibility of their being understood to mean that--nothing\n but love-crosses are going, and that no tolerable amount of\n comfort or happiness is to be found in the life matrimonial,\n or in any of the approaches towards it. Every intelligent\n student of Shakspeare's, however, will at once feel that the\n poet's mind speedily passes away from the idea with which he\n starts, and becomes merged in a far wider theme, viz., in\n the disenchantment to which all lofty imaginations are\n liable, the disappointment to which all extravagant earthly\n hopes and wishes are doomed. This, in fact, is distinctly\n expressed in the last line, and in this sense alone can the\n words he regarded as at all touching or impressive. Sudden\n expansions and transitions of thought, then, are nothing\n more than what is common to all poetry; and when we find the\n Hebrew bards, in their prophetic songs, mingling in the\n closest conjunction the anticipations of the glories of\n Solomon's reign, or the happy prospects of a return from\n Babylon, with the higher glory and happiness of Messiah's\n advent, such transitions of thought are in perfect\n accordance with the ordinary laws of poetry, and ought not\n to perplex even the most unimaginative student of the\n Bible.\"\n\nWith devotional feeling--with everything that showed reverence and godly\nfear--he cordialized wherever and in whomsoever it was found,--Pagan or\nChristian, Romanist or Protestant, bond or free; and while he disliked,\nand had indeed a positive antipathy to intellectual mysticism, he had a\ngreat knowledge of and relish for such writers as Dr. Henry More,\nCulverwel, Scougall, Madame Guyon, whom (besides their other qualities)\nI may perhaps be allowed to call affectionate mystics, and for such\npoets as Herbert and Vaughan, whose poetry was pious, and their piety\npoetic. As I have said, he was perhaps too impatient of all obscure\nthinking, from not considering that on certain subjects, necessarily in\ntheir substance, and on the skirts of all subjects, obscurity and\nvagueness, difficulty and uncertainty, are inherent, and must therefore\nappear in their treatment. Men who rejoiced in making clear things\nobscure, and plain things the reverse, he could not abide, and spoke\nwith some contempt of those who were original merely from their standing\non their heads, and tall from walking upon stilts. As you have truly\nsaid, his character mellowed and toned down in his later years, without\nin any way losing its own individuality, and its clear, vigorous,\nunflinching perception of and addiction to principles.\n\nHis affectionate ways with his students were often very curious: he\ncontrived to get at their hearts, and find out all their family and\nlocal specialities, in a sort of short-hand way, and he never forgot\nthem in afterlife; and watching him with them at tea, speaking his mind\nfreely and often jocularly upon all sorts of subjects, one got a glimpse\nof that union of opposites which made him so much what he was--he gave\nout far more liberally to them the riches of his learning and the deep\nthoughts of his heart, than he ever did among his full-grown brethren.\nIt was like the flush of an Arctic summer, blossoming all over, out of\nand into the stillness, the loneliness, and the chill rigor of winter.\nThough authoritative in his class without any effort, he was indulgent\nto everything but conceit, slovenliness of mind and body, irreverence,\nand above all handling the Word of God deceitfully. On one occasion a\nstudent having delivered in the Hall a discourse tinged with\nArminianism, he said, \"That may be the gospel according to Dr.\nMacknight, or the gospel according to Dr. Taylor of Norwich, but it is\nnot the gospel according to the Apostle Paul; and if I thought the\nsentiments expressed were his own, if I had not thought he has taken his\nthoughts from commentators without carefully considering them, I would\nthink it my duty to him and to the church to make him no longer a\nstudent of divinity here.\" He was often unconsciously severe, from his\nsaying exactly what he felt. On a student's ending his discourse, his\nonly criticism was, \"The strongest characteristic of this discourse is\nweakness,\" and feeling that this was really all he had to say, he ended.\nA young gentleman on very good terms with himself, stood up to pray with\nhis hands in his pockets, and among other things he put up a petition he\nmight \"be delivered from the fear of man, which bringeth a snare;\" my\nfather's only remark was that there was part of his prayer which seemed\nto be granted before it was asked. But he was always unwilling to\ncriticize prayer, feeling it to be too sacred, and, as it were, beyond\nhis province, except to deliver the true principles of all prayer, which\nhe used to say were admirably given in the _Shorter Catechism_--\"Prayer\nis an offering up of the desires of the heart to God, for things\nagreeable to his will, in the name of Christ; with confession of our\nsins, and thankful acknowledgment of his mercies.\"\n\nFor the \"heroic\" old man of Haddington my father had a peculiar\nreverence, as indeed we all have--as well we may. He was our king, the\nfounder of our dynasty: we dated from him, and he was \"hedged\"\naccordingly by a certain sacredness or \"divinity.\" I well remember with\nwhat surprise and pride I found myself asked by a blacksmith's wife in\na remote hamlet among the hop-gardens of Kent, if I was \"the son of the\nSelf-interpreting Bible.\" I possess, as an heirloom, the New Testament\nwhich my father fondly regarded as the one his grandfather, when a herd\nladdie, got from the Professor who heard him ask for it, and promised\nhim it if he could read a verse; and he has in his beautiful small hand\nwritten in it what follows: \"He (John Brown of Haddington) had now\nacquired so much of Greek as encouraged him to hope that he might at\nlength be prepared to reap the richest of all rewards which classical\nlearning could confer on him, the capacity of reading in the original\ntongue the blessed New Testament of our Lord and Saviour. Full of this\nhope, he became anxious to possess a copy of the invaluable volume. One\nnight, having committed the charge of his sheep to a companion, he set\nout on a midnight journey to St. Andrews, a distance of twenty-four\nmiles. He reached his destination in the morning, and went to the\nbookseller's shop asking for a copy of the Greek New Testament. The\nmaster of the shop, surprised at such a request from a shepherd boy,\nwas disposed to make game of him. Some of the professors coming into\nthe shop questioned the lad about his employment and studies. After\nhearing his tale, one of them desired the bookseller to bring the\nvolume. He did so, and drawing it down, said, 'Boy, read this, and you\nshall have it for nothing.' The boy did so, acquitted himself to the\nadmiration of his judges, and carried off his Testament, and when the\nevening arrived, was studying it in the midst of his flock on the braes\nof Abernethy.\"--_Memoir of Rev. John Brown of Haddington_, by Rev. J.\nB. Patterson.\n\n \"There is reason to believe _this_ is the New Testament referred\n to. The name on the opposite page was written on the fly-leaf.\n It is obviously the writing of a boy, and bears a resemblance to\n Mr. Brown's handwriting in mature life. It is imperfect, wanting\n a great part of the Gospel of Matthew. The autograph at the end\n is that of his son, Thomas, when a youth at college, afterwards\n Rev. Dr. Thomas Brown of Dalkeith.--J. B.\"\n\nI doubt not my father regarded this little worn old book, the sword of\nthe Spirit which his ancestor so nobly won, and wore, and warred with,\nwith not less honest veneration and pride than does his dear friend\nJames Douglas of Cavers the Percy pennon borne away at Otterbourne. When\nI read, in Uncle William's admirable Life of his father, his own simple\nstory of his early life--his loss of father and mother before he was\neleven, his discovering (as true a _discovery_ as Dr. Young's of the\ncharacters of the Rosetta stone, or Rawlinson's of the cuneiform\nletters) the Greek characters, his defence of himself against the\nastonishing and base charge of getting his learning from the devil (that\nshrewd personage would not have employed him on the Greek Testament),\nhis eager, indomitable study, his running miles to and back again to\nhear a sermon after folding his sheep at noon, his keeping his family\ncreditably on never more than L50, and for long on L40 a year, giving\nlargely in charity, and never wanting, as he said, \"lying money\"--when\nI think of all this, I feel what a strong, independent, manly nature he\nmust have had. We all know his saintly character, his devotion to\nlearning, and to the work of preaching and teaching; but he seems to\nhave been, like most complete men, full of humor and keen wit. Some of\nhis _snell_ sayings are still remembered. A lad of an excitable\ntemperament waited on him, and informed him he wished to be a preacher\nof the gospel. My great-grandfather, finding him as weak in intellect as\nhe was strong in conceit, advised him to continue in his present\nvocation. The young man said, \"But I wish to preach and glorify God.\"\n\"My young friend, a man may glorify God making broom besoms; stick to\nyour trade, and glorify God by your walk and conversation.\"\n\nThe late Dr. Husband of Dunfermline called on him when he was preparing\nto set out for Gifford, and was beginning to ask him some questions as\nto the place grace held in the Divine economy. \"Come away wi' me, and\nI'll expound that; but when I'm speaking, look you after my feet.\" They\ngot upon a rough bit of common, and the eager and full-minded old man\nwas in the midst of his unfolding the Divine scheme, and his student was\ndrinking in his words, and forgetting _his_ part of the bargain. His\nmaster stumbled and fell, and getting up, somewhat sharply said, \"James,\nthe grace o' God can do much, but it canna gi'e a man common sense;\"\nwhich is as good theology as sense.\n\nA scoffing blacksmith seeing him jogging up to a house near the smithy\non his pony, which was halting, said to him, \"Mr. Brown, ye're in the\nScripture line the day--'the legs o' the lame are not equal.'\" \"So is a\nparable in the mouth of a fool.\"\n\nOn his coming to Haddington, there was one man who held out against his\n\"call.\" Mr. Brown meeting him when they could not avoid each other, the\nnon-content said, \"Ye see, sir, I canna say what I dinna think, and I\nthink ye're ower young and inexperienced for this charge.\" \"So I think\ntoo, David, _but it would never do for you and me to gang in the face o'\nthe hale congregation!_\"\n\nThe following is a singular illustration of the prevailing dark and\nsevere tone of the religious teaching of that time, and also of its\nstrength:--A poor old woman, of great worth and excellent understanding,\nin whose conversation Mr. Brown took much pleasure, was on her\ndeath-bed. Wishing to try her faith, he said to her, \"Janet, what would\nyou say if, after all He has done for you, God should let you drop into\nhell?\" \"E'en's (even as) he likes; if he does, _He'll lose mair than\nI'll do_.\" There is something not less than sublime in this reply.\n\nThan my grandfather and \"Uncle Ebenezer,\" no two brothers could be more\ndifferent in nature or more united in affection. My grandfather was a\nman of great natural good sense, well read and well knowledged, easy but\nnot indolent, never overflowing but never empty, homely but dignified,\nand fuller of love to all sentient creatures than any other human being\nI ever knew. I had, when a boy of ten, two rabbits, Oscar and Livia: why\nso named is a secret I have lost; perhaps it was an Ossianic union of\nthe Roman with the Gael. Oscar was a broad-nosed, manly, rather\n_brusque_ husband, who used to snort when angry, and bite too; Livia was\na thin-faced, meek, and I fear, deceitfullish wife, who could smile, and\nthen bite. One evening I had lifted both these worthies, by the ears of\ncourse, and was taking them from their clover to their beds, when my\ngrandfather, who had been walking out in the cool of the evening, met\nme. I had just kissed the two creatures, out of mingled love to them,\nand pleasure at having caught them without much trouble. He took me by\nthe chin, and kissed me, and then _Oscar and Livia_! Wonderful man, I\nthought, and still think! doubtless he had seen me in my private\nfondness, and wished to please me.\n\nHe was forever doing good in his quiet yet earnest way. Not only on\nSunday when he preached solid gospel sermons, full of quaint familiar\nexpressions, such as I fear few of my readers could take up, full of\nsolemn, affectionate, appeals, full of his own simplicity and love, the\nMonday also found him ready with his every-day gospel. If he met a\ndrover from Lochaber who had crossed the Campsie Hills, and was making\nacross Carnwath Moor to the Calstane Slap, and thence into England by\nthe drove-rode, he accosted him with a friendly smile,--gave him a\nreasonable tract, and dropped into him some words of Divine truth. He\nwas thus _continually_ doing good. Go where he might, he had his message\nto every one; to a servant lass, to a poor wanderer on the bleak\nstreets, to gentle and simple--he flowed forever _pleno rivo_.\n\nUncle Ebenezer, on the other hand, flowed _per saltum_; he was always\ngood and saintly, but he was great once a week; six days he brooded over\nhis message, was silent, withdrawn, self-involved; on the Sabbath, that\ndowncast, almost timid man, who shunned men, the instant he was in the\npulpit, stood up a son of thunder. Such a voice! such a piercing eye!\nsuch an inevitable forefinger, held out trembling with the terrors of\nthe Lord; such a power of asking questions and letting them fall deep\ninto the hearts of his hearers, and then answering them himself, with an\n\"ah, sirs!\" that thrilled and quivered from him to them.\n\nI remember his astonishing us all with a sudden burst. It was a sermon\nupon the apparent _plus_ of evil in this world, and he had driven\nhimself and us all to despair--so much sin, so much misery--when, taking\nadvantage of the chapter he had read, the account of the uproar at\nEphesus in the Theatre, he said, \"Ah, sirs! what if some of the men who,\nfor 'about the space of two hours,' cried out, 'Great is Diana of the\nEphesians,' have for the space of eighteen hundred years and more been\ncrying day and night, 'Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God\nAlmighty; just and true are all thy ways, thou King of saints; who shall\nnot fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy.'\"\n\nYou have doubtless heard of the story of Lord Brougham going to hear\nhim. It is very characteristic, and as I had it from Mrs. Cuninghame,\nwho was present, I may be allowed to tell it. Brougham and Denman were\non a visit to James Stuart of Dunearn, about the time of the Queen's\ntrial. They had asked Stuart where they should go to church; he said he\nwould take them to a Seceder minister at Inverkeithing. They went, and\nas Mr. Stuart had described the saintly old man, Brougham said he would\nlike to be introduced to him, and arriving before service time, Mr.\nStuart called, and left a message that some gentlemen wished to see him.\nThe answer was that \"Maister\" Brown saw nobody before divine worship. He\nthen sent in Brougham and Denman's names. \"Mr. Brown's compliments to\nMr. Stuart, and he sees nobody before sermon,\" and in a few minutes out\ncame the stooping shy old man, and passed them, unconscious of their\npresence. They sat in the front gallery, and he preached a faithful\nsermon, full of fire and of native force. They came away greatly moved,\nand each wrote to Lord Jeffrey to lose not a week in coming to hear the\ngreatest natural orator they had ever heard. Jeffrey came next Sunday,\nand often after declared he never heard such words, such a sacred,\nuntaught gift of speech. Nothing was more beautiful than my father's\nadmiration and emotion when listening to his uncle's rapt passages, or\nthan his childlike faith in my father's exegetical prowess. He used to\nhave a list of difficult passages ready for \"my nephew,\" and the moment\nthe oracle gave a decision, the old man asked him to repeat it, and then\ntook a permanent note of it, and would assuredly preach it some day with\nhis own proper unction and power. One story of him I must give; my\nfather, who heard it not long before his own death, was delighted with\nit, and for some days repeated it to every one. Uncle Ebenezer, with all\nhis mildness and general complaisance, was, like most of the Browns,\n_tenax propositi_, firm to obstinacy. He had established a week-day\nsermon at the North Ferry, about two miles from his own town,\nInverkeithing. It was, I think, on the Tuesdays. It was winter, and a\nwild, drifting, and dangerous day; his daughters--his wife was\ndead--besought him not to go; he smiled vaguely, but continued getting\ninto his big-coat. Nothing would stay him, and away he and the pony\nstumbled through the dumb and blinding snow. He was half-way on his\njourney, and had got into the sermon he was going to preach, and was\nutterly insensible to the outward storm: his pony getting its feet\n_balled_, staggered about, and at last upset his master and himself into\nthe ditch at the road-side. The feeble, heedless, rapt old man might\nhave perished there, had not some carters, bringing up whisky casks from\nthe Ferry, seen the catastrophe, and rushed up, raising him, and\n_dichtin'_ him, with much commiseration and blunt speech--\"Puir auld\nman, what brocht ye here in sic a day?\" There they were, a rough crew,\nsurrounding the saintly man, some putting on his hat, sorting and\ncheering him, and others knocking the balls off the pony's feet, and\nstuffing them with grease. He was most polite and grateful, and one of\nthese cordial ruffians having pierced a cask, brought him a horn of\nwhisky, and said, \"Tak that, it'll hearten ye.\" He took the horn, and\nbowing to them, said, \"Sirs, let us give thanks!\" and there, by the\nroad-side, in the drift and storm, with these wild fellows, he asked a\nblessing on it, and for his kind deliverers, and took a tasting of the\nhorn. The men cried like children. They lifted him on his pony, one\ngoing with him, and when the rest arrived in Inverkeithing, they\nrepeated the story to everybody, and broke down in tears whenever they\ncame to the blessing. \"And to think o' askin' a blessin' on a tass o'\nwhisky!\" Next Presbytery day, after the ordinary business was over, he\nrose up--he seldom spoke--and said, \"Moderator, I have something\npersonal to myself to say. I have often said, that real kindness belongs\nonly to true Christians, but\"--and then he told the story of these men;\n\"but more true kindness I never experienced than from these lads. They\nmay have had the grace of God, I don't know; but I never mean again to\nbe so _positive_ in speaking of this matter.\"\n\nWhen he was on a missionary tour in the north, he one morning met a band\nof Highland shearers on their way to the harvest; he asked them to stop\nand hear the word of God. They said they could not, as they had their\nwages to work for. He offered them what they said they would lose; to\nthis they agreed, and he paid them, and closing his eyes engaged in\nprayer; when he had ended, he looked up, and his congregation had\nvanished! His shrewd brother Thomas, to whom he complained of this\nfaithlessness, said, \"Eben, the next time ye pay folk to hear you\npreach, keep your eyes open, and pay them when you are done.\" I\nremember, on another occasion, in Bristo Church, with an immense\naudience, he had been going over the Scripture accounts of great sinners\nrepenting and turning to God, repeating their names, from Manasseh\nonwards. He seemed to have closed the record, when, fixing his eyes on\nthe end of the central passage, he called out abruptly, \"I see a man!\"\nEvery one looked to that point,--\"I see a man of Tarsus; and he says,\nMake mention of me!\" It must not be supposed that the discourses of\n\"Uncle Ebenezer,\" with these abrupt appeals and sudden starts, were\nunwritten or extempore; they were carefully composed and written\nout,--only these flashes of thought and passion came on him suddenly\nwhen writing, and were therefore quite natural when delivered--they came\non him again.\n\nThe Rev. John Belfrage, M. D., had more power over my father's actions\nand his relations to the world, than any other of his friends: over his\nthoughts and convictions proper, not much,--few living men had, and even\namong the mighty dead, he called no man master. He used to say that the\nthree master intellects devoted to the study of divine truth since the\napostles, were Augustine, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards; but that even\nthey were only _primi inter pares_,--this by the bye.\n\nOn all that concerned his outward life as a public teacher, as a father,\nand as a member of society, he consulted Dr. Belfrage, and was swayed\ngreatly by his judgment, as, for instance, the choice of a profession\nfor myself, his second marriage, etc. He knew him to be his true friend,\nand not only wise and honest, but preeminently a man of affairs, _capax\nrerum_. Dr. Belfrage was a great man _in posse_, if ever I saw one,--\"a\nvillage Hampden.\" Greatness was of his essence; nothing paltry, nothing\nsecondary, nothing untrue. Large in body, large and handsome in face,\nlofty in manner to his equals or superiors;[28] homely, familiar,\ncordial with the young and the poor,--I never met with a more truly\nroyal nature--more native and endued to rule, guide, and benefit\nmankind. He was forever scheming for the good of others, and chiefly in\nthe way of helping them to help themselves. From a curious want of\nambition--his desire for advancement was for that of his friends, not\nfor his own, and here he was ambitious and zealous enough,--from\nnon-concentration of his faculties in early life, and from an affection\nof the heart which ultimately killed him--it was too big for his body,\nand, under the relentless hydrostatic law, at last shattered the\ntabernacle it moved, like a steam-engine too powerful for the vessel it\nfinds itself in,--his mental heart also was too big for his\nhappiness,--from these causes, along with a love for gardening, which\nwas a passion, and an inherited competency, which took away what John\nHunter calls \"the stimulus of necessity,\" you may understand how this\nremarkable man--instead of being a Prime Minister, a Lord Chancellor, or\na Dr. Gregory, a George Stephenson, or likeliest of all, a John Howard,\nwithout some of his weaknesses, lived and died minister of the small\ncongregation of Slateford, near Edinburgh. It is also true that he was a\nphysician, and an energetic and successful one, and got rid of some of\nhis love of doing good to and managing human beings in this way; he was\nalso an oracle in his district, to whom many had the wisdom to go to\ntake as well as ask advice, and who was never weary of entering into the\nmost minute details, and taking endless pains, being like Dr. Chalmers a\nstrong believer in \"the power of littles.\" It would be out of place,\nthough it would be not uninteresting, to tell how this great resident\npower--this strong will and authority, this capacious, clear, and\nbeneficent intellect--dwelt in its petty sphere, like an oak in a\nflower-pot; but I cannot help recalling that signal act of friendship\nand of power in the matter of my father's translation from Rose Street\nto Broughton Place, to which you have referred.\n\n [28] On one occasion, Mr. Hall of Kelso, an excellent but very\n odd man, in whom the _ego_ was very strong, and who, if he\n had been a Spaniard, would, to adopt Coleridge's story, have\n taken off or touched his hat whenever he spoke of himself,\n met Dr. Belfrage in the lobby of the Synod, and drawing\n himself up as he passed, he muttered, \"high and michty!\"\n \"There's a pair of us, Mr. Hall.\"\n\nIt was one of the turning-points of my father's history. Dr. Belfrage,\nthough seldom a speaker in the public courts of his church, was always\nwatchful of the interests of the people and of his friends. On the Rose\nStreet question he had from the beginning formed a strong opinion. My\nfather had made his statement, indicating his leaning, but leaving\nhimself absolutely in the hands of the Synod. There was some speaking,\nall on one side, and for a time the Synod seemed to incline to be\nabsolute, and refuse the call of Broughton Place. The house was\neverywhere crowded, and breathless with interest, my father sitting\nmotionless, anxious, and pale, prepared to submit without a word, but\nretaining his own mind; everything looked like a unanimous decision for\nRose Street, when Dr. Belfrage rose up and came forward into the\n\"passage,\" and with his first sentence and look, took possession of the\nhouse. He stated, with clear and simple argument, the truth and reason\nof the case; and then having fixed himself there, he took up the\npersonal interests and feelings of his friend, and putting before them\nwhat they were about to do in sending back my father, closed with a\nburst of indignant appeal--\"I ask you now, not as Christians, I ask you\nas gentlemen, are you prepared to do this?\" Every one felt it was\nsettled, and so it was. My father never forgot this great act of his\nfriend.\n\nThis remarkable man, inferior to my father in learning, in intensity, in\ncompactness and in power of--so to speak--_focussing_ himself,--admiring\nhis keen eloquence, his devotedness to his sacred art, rejoicing in his\nfame, jealous of his honor--was, by reason of his own massive\nunderstanding, his warm and great heart, and his instinctive knowledge\nof men, my father's most valued friend, for he knew best and most of\nwhat my father knew least; and on his death, my father said he felt\nhimself thus far unprotected and unsafe. He died at Rothesay of\nhypertrophy of the heart. I had the sad privilege of being with him to\nthe last; and any nobler spectacle of tender, generous affection, high\ncourage, child-like submission to the Supreme Will, and of magnanimity\nin its true sense, I do not again expect to see. On the morning of his\ndeath he said to me, \"John, come and tell me honestly how this is to\nend; tell me the last symptoms in their sequence.\" I knew the man, and\nwas honest, and told him all I knew. \"Is there any chance of stupor or\ndelirium?\" \"I think not. Death (to take Bichat's division) will begin at\nthe heart itself, and you will die conscious.\" \"I am glad of that. It\nwas Samuel Johnson, wasn't it, who wished not to die unconscious, that\nhe might enter the eternal world with his mind unclouded; but you know,\nJohn, that was physiological nonsense. We leave the brain, and all this\nruined body, behind; but I would like to be in my senses when I take my\nlast look of this wonderful world,\" looking across the still sea towards\nthe Argyllshire hills, lying in the light of sunrise, \"and of my\nfriends--of you,\" fixing his eyes on a faithful friend and myself. And\nit was so; in less than an hour he was dead, sitting erect in his\nchair--his disease had for weeks prevented him from lying down,--all the\ndignity, simplicity, and benignity of its master resting upon, and, as\nit were, supporting that \"ruin,\" which he had left.\n\nI cannot end this tribute to my father's friend and mine, and my own\ndear and earliest friend's father, without recording one of the most\nextraordinary instances of the power of will, under the pressure of\naffection, I ever witnessed or heard of. Dr. Belfrage was twice married.\nHis second wife was a woman of great sweetness and delicacy, not only of\nmind, but, to his sorrow, of constitution. She died, after less than a\nyear of singular and unbroken happiness. There was no portrait of her.\nHe resolved there should be one; and though utterly ignorant of drawing,\nhe determined to do it himself. No one else could have such a perfect\nimage of her in his mind, and he resolved to realize this image. He got\nthe materials for miniature painting, and, I think, eight prepared ivory\nplates. He then shut himself up from every one, and from everything, for\nfourteen days, and came out of his room, wasted and feeble, with one of\nthe plates (the others he had used and burnt), on which was a portrait,\nfull of subtle likeness, and drawn and colored in a way no one could\nhave dreamt of, having had such an artist. I have seen it; and though I\nnever saw the original I felt that it must be like, as indeed every one\nwho knew her said it was. I do not, as I said before, know anything more\nremarkable in the history of human sorrow and resolve.\n\nI remember well that Dr. Belfrage was the first man I ever heard speak\nof Free-trade in religion and in education. It was during the first\nelection after the Reform Bill, when Sir John Dalrymple, afterwards Lord\nStair, was canvassing the county of Mid-Lothian. They were walking in\nthe doctor's garden, Sir John anxious and gracious. Dr. Belfrage, like,\nI believe, every other minister in his body, was a thorough-going\nLiberal, what was then called a Whig; but partly from his natural sense\nof humor and relish of power, and partly, I believe, for my benefit, he\nwas putting the Baronet through his facings with some strictness,\nopening upon him startling views, and ending by asking him, \"Are you,\nSir John, for free-trade in corn, free-trade in education, free-trade in\nreligion? I am.\" Sir John said, \"Well, doctor, I have heard of\nfree-trade in corn, but never in the other two.\" \"You'll hear of them\nbefore ten years are gone, Sir John, or I'm mistaken.\"\n\nI have said thus much of this to me memorable man, not only because he\nwas my father's closest and most powerful personal friend, but because\nby his word he probably changed the whole future course of his life.\nDevotion to his friends was one of the chief ends of his life, not\ncaring much for, and having in the affection of his heart a warning\nagainst the perils and excitement of distinction and energetic public\nwork, he set himself far more strenuously than for any selfish object,\nto promote the triumphs of those whom his acquired instinct--for he knew\na man as a shepherd knows a sheep, or \"_Caveat Emptor_\" a horse--picked\nout as deserving them. He rests in Colinton churchyard,\n\n \"Where all that mighty heart is lying still,\"--\n\nhis only child William Henry buried beside him. I the more readily pay\nthis tribute to Dr. Belfrage, that I owe to him the best blessing of my\nprofessional and one of the best of my personal life--the being\napprenticed to Mr. Syme. This was his doing. With that sense of the\ncapacities and capabilities of other men, which was one of his gifts, he\npredicted the career of this remarkable man. He used to say, \"Give him\nlife, let him live, and I know what and where he will be thirty years\nhence;\" and this long before our greatest clinical teacher and wisest\nsurgeon, had made the public and the profession feel and acknowledge the\nfull weight of his worth.\n\nAnother life-long and ever strengthening friendship was that with James\nHenderson, D. D., Galashiels, who survived my father only a few days.\nThis remarkable man, and exquisite preacher, whose intellect and worth\nhad for nearly fifty years glowed with a pure, steady, and ever-growing\nwarmth and lustre in his own region, died during the night and probably\nasleep, when, like Moses, no one but his Maker was with him. He had for\nyears labored under that form of disease of the heart called _angina\npectoris_ (Dr. Arnold's disease), and for more than twenty years lived\nas it were on the edge of instant death; but during his later years his\nhealth had improved, though he had always to \"walk softly,\" like one\nwhose next step might be into eternity. This bodily sense of peril gave\nto his noble and leonine face a look of suffering and of seriousness,\nand of what, in his case, we may truly call godly fear, which all must\nremember. He used to say he carried his grave beside him. He came in to\nmy father's funeral, and took part in the services. He was much\naffected, and we fear the long walk through the city to the burial-place\nwas too much for him; he returned home, preached a sermon on his old and\ndear friend's death of surpassing beauty. The text was, \"For me to live\nis Christ, and to die is gain.\" It was, as it were, his own funeral\nsermon too, and there was, besides its fervor, depth, and\nheavenly-mindedness, a something in it that made his old hearers\nafraid--as if it were to be the last crush of the grapes. In a letter to\nme soon after the funeral, he said:--\"His removal is another _memento_\nto me that my own course is drawing near to its end. Nearly all of my\ncontemporaries and of the friends of my youth are now gone before me.\nWell! I may say, in the words of your friend Vaughan--\n\n 'They are all gone to that world of light,\n And I alone sit lingering here;\n Their very memory's calm, and bright,\n And my sad thoughts doth cheer.'\"\n\nThe evening before his death he was slightly unwell, and next morning,\nnot coming down as usual, was called, but did not answer; and on going\nin, was found in the posture of sleep, quite dead: at some unknown hour\nof the night _abiit ad plures_--he had gone over to the majority, and\njoined the famous nations of the dead. _Tu vero felix non vitae tantum\nclaritate, sed etiam opportunitate mortis!_ dying with his lamp burning,\nhis passport made out for his journey; death an instant act, not a\nprolonged process of months, as with his friend.\n\nI have called Dr. Henderson a remarkable man, and an exquisite preacher;\nhe was both, in the strict senses of the words. He had the largest brain\nI ever saw or measured. His hat had to be made for him; and his head was\ngreat in the nobler regions; the anterior and upper were full, indeed\nimmense. If the base of his brain and his physical organization,\nespecially his circulating system, had been in proportion, he would have\nbeen a man of formidable power, but his defective throb of the heart,\nand a certain lentitude of temperament, made this impossible; and his\nenormous organ of thought and feeling, being thus shut from the outlet\nof active energy, became intensely _meditative_, more this than even\nreflective. The consequence was, in all his thoughts an exquisiteness\nand finish, a crystalline lustre, purity and concentration; but it was\nthe exquisiteness of a great nature. If the first edge was fine, it was\nthe sharp end of the wedge, the broad end of which you never reached,\nbut might infer. This gave _momentum_ to everything he said. He was in\nthe true sense what Chalmers used to call a \"man of _wecht_.\" His mind\nacted by its sheer absolute power; it seldom made an effort; it was the\nhydraulic pressure, harmless, manageable, but irresistible; not the\nperilous compression of steam. Therefore it was that he was untroubled\nand calm, though rich; clear, though deep; though gentle, never dull;\n\"strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.\" Indeed this element of\nwater furnishes the best figure of his mind and its expression. His\nlanguage was like the stream of his own Tweed; it was a translucent\nmedium, only it brightened everything seen through it, as wetting a\npebble brings out its lines and color. That lovely, and by him\nmuch-loved river was curiously like him, or he like it, gentle, great,\nstrong, with a prevailing mild seriousness all along its course, but\nclear and quiet; sometimes, as at old Melrose, turning upon itself,\nreflecting, losing itself in beauty, and careless to go, deep and\ninscrutable, but stealing away cheerily down to Lessudden, all the\nclearer of its rest; and then again at the Trows, showing unmistakably\nits power in removing obstructions and taking its own way, and chafing\nnobly with the rocks, sometimes, too, like him, its silver stream rising\ninto sudden flood, and rolling irresistibly on its way.[29]\n\n [29] Such an occasional paroxysm of eloquence is thus described\n by Dr. Cairns:--\"At certain irregular intervals, when the\n loftier themes of the gospel ministry were to be handled,\n his manner underwent a transformation which was startling,\n and even electrical. He became rapt and excited as with new\n inspiration; his utterance grew thick and rapid; his voice\n trembled and faltered with emotion; his eye gleamed with a\n wild unearthly lustre, in which his countenance shared; and\n his whole frame heaved to and fro, as if each glowing\n thought and vivid figure that followed in quick succession\n were only a fragment of some greater revelation which he\n panted to overtake. The writer of this notice has witnessed\n nothing similar in any preacher, and numbers the effects of\n a passage which he once heard upon the scenes and exercises\n of the heavenly world among his most thrilling recollections\n of sacred oratory.\"--_Memoir prefixed to posthumous volume\n of Discourses._\n\nWe question if as many carefully thought and worded, and rapidly and by\nno means laboriously written sermons, were composed anywhere else in\nBritain during his fifty years--every Sunday two new ones; the\ncomposition faultless--such as Cicero or Addison would have made them,\nhad they been U. P. ministers; only there was always in them more soul\nthan body, more of the spirit than of the letter. What a contrast to the\nmuch turbid, hot, hasty, perilous stuff of our day and preachers! The\noriginal power and _size_ of Dr. Henderson's mind, his roominess for all\nthoughts, and his still reserve, his lentitude, made, as we have said,\nhis expressions clear and quiet, to a degree that a coarse and careless\nman, spoiled by the violence and noise of other pulpit men, might think\ninsipid. But let him go over the words slowly, and he would not say this\nagain; and let him see and feel the solemnizing, commanding power of\nthat large, square, leonine countenance, the broad massive frame, as of\na compressed Hercules, and the living, pure, melodious voice, powerful,\nbut not by reason of loudness, dropping out from his compressed lips the\nwords of truth, and he would not say this again. His voice had a\nsingular pathos in it; and those who remember his often-called-for\nsermon on \"The Bright and the Morning Star,\" can reproduce in their mind\nits tones and refrain. The thoughts of such men--so rare, so apt to be\nunvisited and unvalued--often bring into my mind a spring of pure water\nI once saw near the top of Cairngorm; always the same, cool in summer,\nkeeping its few plants alive and happy with its warm breath in winter,\nfloods and droughts never making its pulse change; and all this because\nit came from the interior heights, and was distilled by nature's own\ncunning, and had taken its time--was indeed a well of living water. And\nwith Dr. Henderson this of the mountain holds curiously; he was retired,\nbut not concealed; and he was of the primary formation, he had no\n_organic remains_ of other men in him; he liked and fed on all manner of\nliterature; knew poetry well; but it was all outside of him; his\nthoughts were essentially his own.\n\nHe was peculiarly a preacher for preachers, as Spenser is a poet for\npoets. They felt he was a master. He published, after the entreaties of\nyears, a volume of sermons which has long been out of print, and which\nhe would never prepare for a second edition; he had much too little of\nthe love of fame, and though not destitute of self-reliance and\nself-value, and resolved and unchangeable to obstinacy, he was not in\nthe least degree vain.\n\nBut you will think I am writing more about my father's friends and\nmyself than about him. In a certain sense we may know a man by his\nfriends; a man chooses his friends from harmony, not from sameness, just\nas we would rather sing in parts than all sing the air. One man fits\ninto the mind of another not by meeting his points, but by dovetailing;\neach finds in the other what he in a double sense wants. This was true\nof my father's friends. Dr. Balmer was like him in much more than\nperhaps any,--in love of books and lonely study, in his general views of\ndivine truth, and in their metaphysical and literary likings, but they\ndiffered deeply. Dr. Balmer was serene and just rather than subtle and\nprofound; his was the still, translucent stream,--my father's the rapid,\nand it might be deep; on the one you could safely sail, the other\nhurried you on, and yet never were two men, during a long life of\nintimate intercourse, more cordial.\n\nI must close the list; one only and the best--the most endeared of them\nall--Dr. Heugh. He was, in mental constitution and temper, perhaps more\nunlike my father than any of the others I have mentioned. His was\nessentially a practical understanding; he was a man of action, a man for\nmen more than for man, the curious reverse in this of my father. He\ndelighted in public life, had a native turn for affairs, for all that\nsociety needs and demands,--clear-headed, ready, intrepid, adroit; with\na fine temper, but keen and honest, with an argument and a question and\na joke for every one; not disputatious, but delighting in a brisk\nargument, fonder of wrestling than of fencing, but ready for action; not\nmuch of a long shot, always keeping his eye on the immediate, the\npossible, the attainable, but in all this guided by genuine principle,\nand the finest honor and exactest truth. He excelled in the conduct of\npublic business, saw his way clear, made other men see theirs, was\nforever getting the Synod out of difficulties and confusions, by some\nclear, tidy, conclusive \"motion;\" and then his speaking, so easy and\nbright and pithy, manly and gentlemanly, grave when it should be, never\nwhen it should not--mobile, fearless, rapid, brilliant as Saladin--his\nsilent, pensive, impassioned and emphatic friend was more like the\nlion-hearted Richard, with his heavy mace; he might miss, but let him\nhit, and there needed no repetition. Each admired the other; indeed Dr.\nHeugh's love of my father was quite romantic; and though they were\nopposed on several great public questions, such as the Apocrypha\ncontroversy, the Atonement question at its commencement; and though they\nwere both of them too keen and too honest to mince matters or be\nmealy-mouthed, they never misunderstood each other, never had a shadow\nof estrangement, so that our Paul and Barnabas, though their contentions\nwere sometimes sharp enough, never \"departed asunder;\" indeed they loved\neach other the longer the more.\n\nTake him all in all, as a friend, as a gentleman, as a Christian, as a\ncitizen, I never knew a man so thoroughly delightful as Dr. Heugh.\nOthers had more of this or more of that, but there was a symmetry, a\ncompactness, a sweetness, a true _delightfulness_ about him I can\nremember in no one else. No man, with so much temptation to be heady and\nhigh-minded, sarcastic, and managing, from his overflowing wit and\ntalent, was ever more natural, more honest, or more considerate, indeed\ntender-hearted. He was full of animal spirits and of fun, and one of the\nbest wits and jokers I ever knew; and such an asker of questions, of\nposers! We children had a pleasing dread of that nimble, sharp, exact\nman, who made us explain and name everything. Of Scotch stories he had\nas many original ones as would make a second volume for Dean Ramsay. How\nwell I remember the very corner of the room in Biggar manse, forty years\nago, when from him I got the first shock and relish of humor; became\nconscious of mental tickling; of a word being made to carry double, and\nbeing all the lighter of it. It is an old story now, but it was new\nthen; a big, perspiring countryman rushed into the Black Bull\ncoach-office, and holding the door, shouted, \"Are yir insides a' oot?\"\nThis was my first tasting of the flavor of a joke.\n\nHad Dr. Heugh, instead of being the admirable clergyman he was, devoted\nhimself to public civil life, and gone into Parliament, he would have\ntaken a high place as a debater, a practical statesman and patriot. He\nhad many of the best qualities of Canning, and our own Premier, with\npurer and higher qualities than either. There is no one our church\nshould be more proud of than of this beloved and excellent man, the\nholiness and humility, the jealous, godly fear in whose nature was not\nknown fully even to his friends, till he was gone, when his private\ndaily self-searchings and prostrations before his Master and Judge were\nfor the first time made known. There are few characters, _both sides_ of\nwhich are so unsullied, so pure, and without reproach.\n\nI am back at Biggar at the old sacramental times; I see and hear my\ngrandfather, or Mr. Horne of Braehead, Mr. Leckie of Peebles, Mr. Harper\nof Lanark, as inveterate in argument as he was warm in heart, Mr. Comrie\nof Penicuik, with his keen, Voltaire-like face, and much of that unhappy\nand unique man's wit, and sense, and perfection of expression, without\nhis darker and baser qualities. I can hear their hearty talk, can see\nthem coming and going between the meetinghouse and the _Tent_ on the\nside of the burn, and then the Monday dinner, and the cheerful talk, and\nthe many clerical stories and pleasantries, and their going home on\ntheir hardy little horses, Mr. Comrie leaving his curl-papers till the\nnext solemnity, and leaving also some joke of his own, clear and compact\nas a diamond, and as cutting.\n\nI am in Rose Street on the monthly lecture, the church crammed, passages\nand pulpit stairs. Exact to a minute, James Chalmers--the old soldier\nand beadle, slim, meek, but incorruptible by proffered half crowns from\nladies who thus tried to get in before the doors opened--appears, and\nall the people in that long pew rise up, and he, followed by his\nminister, erect and engrossed, walks in along the seat, and they\nstruggle up to the pulpit. We all know what he is to speak of; he looks\ntroubled even to distress;--it is the matter of Uriah the Hittite. He\ngives out the opening verses of the 51st Psalm, and offering up a short\nand abrupt prayer, which every one takes to himself, announces his\nmiserable and dreadful subject, _fencing_ it, as it were, in a low,\npenetrating voice, daring any one of us to think an evil thought; there\nwas little need at that time of the warning,--he infused his own\nintense, pure spirit, into us all.\n\nHe then told the story without note or comment, only personating each\nactor in the tragedy with extraordinary effect, above all, the manly,\nloyal, simple-hearted soldier. I can recall the shudder of that\nmultitude as of one man when he read, \"And it came to pass in the\nmorning, that David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of\nUriah. And he wrote in the letter, saying, Set ye Uriah in the forefront\nof the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten\nand die.\" And then, after a long and utter silence, his exclaiming, \"Is\nthis the man according to God's own heart? Yes, it is; we must believe\nthat both are true.\" Then came Nathan. \"There were two men in one city;\nthe one rich, and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many flocks\nand herds; but the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb\"--and\nall that exquisite, that divine fable--ending, like a thunder-clap, with\n\"Thou art the man!\" Then came the retribution, so awfully exact and\nthorough,--the misery of the child's death; that brief tragedy of the\nbrother and sister, more terrible than anything in AEschylus, in Dante,\nor in Ford; then the rebellion of Absalom, with its hideous dishonor,\nand his death, and the king covering his face, and crying in a loud\nvoice, \"O my son Absalom! O Absalom! my son! my son!\"--and David's\npsalm, \"Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness;\naccording unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my\ntransgressions,\"--then closing with, \"Yes; 'when lust hath conceived, it\nbringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.\nDo not err,' do not stray, do not transgress ({me planasthe}),[30] 'my\nbeloved brethren,' it is first 'earthly, then sensual, then devilish;'\"\nhe shut the book, and sent us all away terrified, shaken, and humbled,\nlike himself.\n\n [30] James i. 15, 16. It is plain that \"do not err\" should have\n been in verse 15th.\n\nI would fain say a few words on my father's last illness, or rather on\nwhat led to it, and I wish you and others in the ministry would take to\nheart, as matter of immediate religious duty, much of what I am going to\nsay. My father was a seven months' child, and lay, I believe, for a\nfortnight in black wool, undressed, doing little but breathe and sleep,\nnot capable of being fed. He continued all his life slight in make, and\nnot robust in health, though lively, and capable of great single\nefforts. His attendance upon his mother must have saddened his body as\nwell as his mind, and made him willing and able to endure, in spite of\nhis keen and ardent spirit, the sedentary life he in the main led. He\nwas always a very small eater, and nice in his tastes, easily put off\nfrom his food by any notion. He therefore started on the full work of\nlife with a finer and more delicate mechanism than a man's ought to be,\nindeed, in these respects he was much liker a woman; and being very soon\n\"placed,\" he had little travelling, and little of that tossing about the\nworld, which in the transition from youth to manhood, hardens the frame\nas well as supples it. Though delicate, he was almost never ill. I do\nnot remember, till near the close of his life, his ever being in bed a\nday.\n\nFrom his nervous system, and his brain predominating steadily over the\nrest of his body, he was habitually excessive in his professional work.\nAs to quantity, as to quality, as to manner and expression, he flung\naway his life without stint every Sabbath-day, his sermons being\nlaboriously prepared, loudly mandated, and at great expense of body and\nmind, and then delivered with the utmost vehemence and rapidity. He was\nquite unconscious of the state he worked himself into, and of the loud\npiercing voice in which he often spoke. This I frequently warned him\nabout, as being, I knew, injurious to himself, and often painful to his\nhearers, and his answer always was, that he was utterly unaware of it;\nand thus it continued to the close, and very sad it was to me who knew\nthe peril, and saw the coming end, to listen to his noble, rich,\npersuasive, imperative appeals, and to know that the surplus of power,\nif retained, would, by God's blessing, retain him, while the effect on\nhis people would, I am sure, not have lost, but in some respects have\ngained, for much of the discourse which was shouted and sometimes\nscreamed at the full pitch of his keen voice, was of a kind to be better\nrendered in his deep, quiet, settled tones. This, and the great length\nof his public services, I knew he himself felt, when too late, had\ninjured him, and many a smile he had at my proposal to have a secret\nsub-congregational string from him to me in the back seat, to be\nauthoritatively twitched when I knew he had done enough; but this string\nwas never pulled, even in his mind.\n\nHe went on in this expensive life, sleeping very little, and always\nlightly, eating little, never walking except of necessity; little in\ncompany, when he would have eaten more and been, by the power of social\nrelish, made likelier to get the full good out of his food; never\ndiverting his mind by any change but that of one book or subject for\nanother; and every time that any strong affliction came on him, as when\nmade twice a widower, or at his daughter's death, or from such an\noutrage upon his entire nature and feelings as the Libel, then his\ndelicate machinery was shaken and damaged, not merely by the first\nshock, but even more by that unrelenting self-command by which he\nterrified his body into instant submission. Thus it was, and thus it\never must be, if the laws of our bodily constitution, laid down by Him\nwho knows our frame, and from whom our substance is not hid, are set at\nnought, knowingly or not--if knowingly, the act is so much the more\nspiritually bad--but if not, it is still punished with the same unerring\nnicety, the same commensurate meting out of the penalty, and paying \"in\nfull tale,\" as makes the sun to know his time, and splits an erring\nplanet into fragments, driving it into space \"with hideous ruin and\ncombustion.\" It is a pitiful and a sad thing to say, but if my father\nhad not been a prodigal in a true but very different meaning, if he had\nnot spent his substance, the portion of goods that fell to him, the\ncapital of life given him by God, in what we must believe to have been\nneedless and therefore preventable excess of effort, we might have had\nhim still with us, shining more and more, and he and they who were with\nhim would have been spared those two years of the valley of the shadow,\nwith its sharp and steady pain, its fallings away of life, its longing\nfor the grave, its sleepless nights and days of weariness and languor,\nthe full expression of which you will find nowhere but in the Psalms and\nin Job.\n\nI have said that though delicate he was never ill: this was all the\nworse for him, for, odd as it may seem, many a man's life is lengthened\nby a sharp illness; and this in several ways. In the first place, he is\nlaid up, out of the reach of all external mischief and exertion, he is\nlike a ship put in dock for repairs; time is gained. A brisk fever\nclarifies the entire man; if it is beaten and does not beat, it is like\ncleaning a chimney by setting it on fire; it is perilous but thorough.\nThen the effort to throw off the disease often quickens and purifies and\ncorroborates the central powers of life; the flame burns more clearly;\nthere is a cleanness, so to speak, about all the wheels of life.\nMoreover, it is a warning, and makes a man meditate on his bed, and\nresolve to pull up; and it warns his friends, and likewise, if he is a\nclergyman, his people, who if their minister is always with them, never\nonce think he can be ever anything but as able as he is.\n\nSuch a pause, such a breathing-time my father never got during that part\nof his life and labors when it would have availed most, and he was an\nold man in years, before he was a regular patient of any doctor. He was\nduring life subject to sudden headaches, affecting his memory and\neyesight, and even his speech; these attacks were, according to the\nthoughtless phrase of the day, called bilious; that is, he was sick, and\nwas relieved by a blue pill and smart medicine. Their true seat was in\nthe brain; the liver suffered because the brain was ill, and sent no\nnervous energy to it, or poisoned what it did send. The sharp racking\npain in the forehead was the cry of suffering from the anterior lobes,\ndriven by their master to distraction, and turning on him wild with\nweakness and fear and anger. It was well they did cry out; in some\nbrains (large ones) they would have gone on dumb to sudden and utter\nruin, as in apoplexy or palsy; but he did not know, and no one told him\ntheir true meaning, and he set about seeking for the outward cause in\nsome article of food, in some recent and quite inadequate cause.\n\nHe used, with a sort of odd shame and distress, to ask me why it was\nthat he was subjected to so much suffering from what he called the lower\nand ignoble regions of his body; and I used to explain to him that he\nhad made them suffer by long years of neglect, and that they were now\nhaving their revenge, and in their own way I have often found, that the\nmore the nervous centres are employed in those offices of thought and\nfeeling the most removed from material objects,--the more the nervous\nenergy of the entire nature is concentrated, engrossed, and used up in\nsuch offices,--so much the more and therefore, are those organs of the\nbody which preside over that organic life, common to ourselves and the\nlowest worm, defrauded of their necessary nervous food,--and being in\nthe organic and not in the animal department, and having no voice to\ntell their wants or wrongs, till they wake up and annoy their neighbors\nwho have a voice, that is, who are sensitive to pain, they may have been\nlong ill before they come into the sphere of consciousness. This is the\ntrue reason--along with want of purity and change of air, want of\nexercise,[31] want of shifting the work of the body--why clergymen, men\nof letters, and all men of intense mental application, are so liable to\nbe affected with indigestion, constipation, lumbago, and lowness of\nspirits, _melancholia_--black bile. The brain may not give way for long,\nbecause for a time the law of exercise strengthens it; it is fed high,\ngets the best of everything, of blood and nervous pabulum, and then men\nhave a joy in the victorious work of their brain, and it has a joy of\nits own, too, which deludes and misleads.\n\n [31] \"The youth Story was in all respects healthy, and even\n robust; he died of overwork, or rather, as I understand, of\n a two years' almost total want of exercise, which it was\n impossible to induce him to take.'--_Arnold's Report to the\n Committee of Council on Education_, 1860.\n\nAll this happened to my father. He had no formal disease when he\ndied--no structural change; his sleep and his digestion would have been\nquite sufficient for life even up to the last; the mechanism was entire,\nbut the motive-power was gone--it was expended. The silver cord was not\nso much loosed as relaxed. The golden bowl, the pitcher at the fountain,\nthe wheel at the cistern, were not so much broken as emptied and stayed.\nThe clock had run down before its time, and there was no one but He who\nfirst wound it up and set it who could wind it up again; and this He\ndoes not do, because it is His law--an express injunction from\nHim--that, having measured out to his creatures each his measure of\nlife, and left him to the freedom of his own will and the regulation of\nhis reason, He also leaves him to reap as he sows.\n\nThus it was that my father's illness was not so much a disease as a long\ndeath; life ebbing away, consciousness left entire, the certain issue\nnever out of sight. This, to a man of my father's organization--with a\nkeen relish for life, and its highest pleasures and energies, sensitive\nto impatience, and then over-sensitive of his own impatience; cut to the\nheart with the long watching and suffering of those he loved, who, after\nall, could do so little for him; with a nervous system easily sunk, and\nby its strong play upon his mind darkening and saddening his most\ncentral beliefs, shaking his most solid principles, tearing and\nterrifying his tenderest affections: his mind free and clear, ready for\naction if it had the power, eager to be in its place in the work of the\nworld and of its Master, to have to spend two long years in this\never-descending road--here was a combination of positive and negative\nsuffering not to be thought of even now, when it is all sunk under that\n\"far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.\"\n\nHe often spoke to me freely about his health, went into it with the\nfearlessness, exactness, and persistency of his nature; and I never\nwitnessed, or hope to witness, anything more affecting than when, after\nit had been dawning upon him, he apprehended the true secret of his\ndeath. He was deeply humbled, felt that he had done wrong to himself, to\nhis people, to us all, to his faithful and long-suffering Master; and he\noften said, with a dying energy lighting up his eye, and nerving his\nvoice and gesture, that if it pleased God to let him again speak in his\nold place, he would not only proclaim again, and, he hoped, more simply\nand more fully, the everlasting gospel to lost man, but proclaim also\nthe gospel of God to the body, the religious and Christian duty and\nprivilege of living in obedience to the divine laws of health. He was\ndelighted when I read to him, and turned to this purpose that wonderful\npassage of St. Paul--\"For the body is not one member, but many. If the\nwhole body were an eye, where were the hearing? if the whole were\nhearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every\none of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. And the eye cannot say\nunto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet, I\nhave no need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body, which\nseem to be more feeble, are necessary;\" summing it all up in words with\nlife and death in them--\"That there should be no schism in the body; but\nthat the members should have the same care one for another. And whether\none member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be\nhonored, all the members rejoice with it.\"\n\nThe lesson from all this is, Attend to your bodies, study their\nstructure, functions, and laws. This does not at all mean that you need\nbe an anatomist, or go deep into physiology, or the doctrines of\nprevention and cure. Not only has each organism a resident doctor,\nplaced there by Him who can thus heal all our diseases; but this doctor,\nif watched and waited on, informs any man or woman of ordinary sense\nwhat things to do, and what things not to do. And I would have you, who,\nI fear, not unfrequently sin in the same way, and all our ardent,\nself-sacrificing young ministers, to reflect whether, after destroying\nthemselves and dying young, they have lost or gained. It is said that\nGod raises up others in our place. God gives you no title to say this.\nMen--such men as I have in my mind--are valuable to God in proportion to\nthe time they are here. They are the older, the better, the riper and\nricher, and more enriching. Nothing will make up for this absolute loss\nof life. For there is something which every man who is a good workman is\ngaining every year just because he is older, and this nothing can\nreplace. Let a man remain on his ground, say a country parish, during\nhalf a century or more--let him be every year getting fuller and sweeter\nin the knowledge of God and man, in utterance and in power--can the\npower of that man for good over all his time, and especially towards its\nclose, be equalled by that of three or four young, and, it may be,\nadmirable men, who have been succeeding each other's untimely death,\nduring the same space of time? It is against all spiritual, as well as\nall simple arithmetic, to say so.\n\nYou have spoken of my father's prayers. They were of two kinds; the one,\nformal, careful, systematic, and almost stereotyped, remarkable for\nfulness and compression of thought; sometimes too manifestly the result\nof study, and sometimes not purely prayer, but more of the nature of a\ndevotional and even argumentative address; the other, as in the family,\nshort, simple, and varied. He used to tell of his master, Dr. Lawson,\nreproving him, in his honest but fatherly way, as they were walking home\nfrom the Hall. My father had in his prayer the words, \"that through\ndeath he might destroy him that had the power of death,--that is, the\ndevil.\" The old man, leaning on his favorite pupil, said, \"John, my man,\nyou need not have said '_that is the devil_;' you might have been sure\nthat _He_ knew whom you meant.\" My father, in theory, held that a\nmixture of formal, fixed prayer, in fact, a liturgy, along with\n_extempore_ prayer, was the right thing. As you observe, many of his\npassages in prayer, all who were in the habit of hearing him could\nanticipate, such as \"the enlightening, enlivening, sanctifying, and\ncomforting influences of the good Spirit,\" and many others. One in\nespecial you must remember; it was only used on very solemn occasions,\nand curiously unfolds his mental peculiarities; it closed his\nprayer--\"And now, unto Thee, O Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the one\nJehovah and our God, we would--as is most meet--with the church on earth\nand the church in heaven, ascribe all honor and glory, dominion and\nmajesty, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world\nwithout end. Amen.\" Nothing could be liker him than the interjection,\n\"as is most meet.\" Sometimes his abrupt, short statements in the Synod\nwere very striking. On one occasion, Mr. James Morison having stated his\nviews as to prayer very strongly, denying that a sinner _can_ pray, my\nfather, turning to the Moderator, said--\"Sir, let a man feel himself to\nbe a sinner, and, for anything the universe of creatures can do for him,\nhopelessly lost,--let him feel this, sir, and let him get a glimpse of\nthe Saviour, and all the eloquence and argument of Mr. Morison will not\nkeep that man from crying out, 'God be merciful to me a sinner.' That,\nsir, is prayer--that is acceptable prayer.\"\n\nThere must be, I fear, now and then an apparent discrepancy between you\nand me, especially as to the degree of mental depression which at times\novershadowed my father's nature. _You_ will understand this, and I hope\nour readers will make allowance for it. Some of it is owing to my\nconstitutional tendency to overstate, and much of it to my having had\nperhaps more frequent, and even more private, insights into this part of\nhis life. But such inconsistency as that I speak of--the co-existence of\na clear, firm faith, a habitual sense of God and of his infinite mercy,\nthe living a life of faith, as if it was in his organic and inner life,\nmore than in his sensational and outward--is quite compatible with that\ntendency to distrust himself, that bodily darkness and mournfulness,\nwhich at times came over him. Any one who knows \"what a piece of work is\nman;\" how composite, how varying, how inconsistent human nature is, that\neach of us are\n\n \"Some several men, all in an hour,\"\n\n--will not need to be told to expect, or how to harmonize these\ndifferences of mood. You see this in that wonderful man, the apostle\nPaul, the true typical fulness, the _humanness_, so to speak, of whose\nnature comes out in such expressions of opposites as these--\"By honor\nand dishonor, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet\ntrue; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as\nchastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor,\nyet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.\"\n\nI cannot, and after your impressive and exact history of his last days,\nI need not say anything of the close of those long years of suffering,\nactive and passive, and that slow ebbing of life; the body, without help\nor hope, feeling its doom steadily though slowly drawing on; the mind\nmourning for its suffering friend, companion, and servant; mourning\nalso, sometimes, that it must be \"unclothed,\" and take its flight all\nalone into the infinite unknown; dying daily, not in the heat of fever,\nor in the insensibility or lethargy of paralytic disease, but having the\nmind calm and clear, and the body conscious of its own decay,--dying, as\nit were, in cold blood. One thing I must add. That morning when you were\nobliged to leave, and when \"cold obstruction's apathy\" had already begun\nits reign--when he knew us, and that was all, and when he followed us\nwith his dying and loving eyes, but could not speak--the end came; and\nthen, as through life, his will asserted itself supreme in death. With\nthat love of order and decency which was a law of his life, he\ndeliberately composed himself, placing his body at rest, as if setting\nhis house in order before leaving it, and then closed his eyes and\nmouth, so that his last look--the look his body carried to the grave and\nfaced dissolution in--was that of sweet, dignified self-possession.\n\nI have made this letter much too long, and have said many things in it I\nnever intended saying, and omitted much I had hoped to be able to say.\nBut I must end.\n\n Yours ever affectionately,\n\n J. BROWN.\n\n\n\n\n\"_MYSTIFICATIONS._\"[32]\n\n [32] Edinburgh: printed privately, 1859.\n\n \"_Health to the auld wife, and weel mat she be,\n That busks her fause rock wi' the lint o' the lee (_lie_),\n Whirling her spindle and twisting the twine,\n Wynds aye the richt pirn into the richt line._\"\n\n\nThose who knew the best of Edinburgh society eight-and-thirty years\nago--and when was there ever a better than that best?--must remember the\npersonations of an old Scottish gentlewoman by Miss Stirling Graham, one\nof which, when Lord Jeffrey was victimized, was famous enough to find\nits way into _Blackwood_, but in an incorrect form.\n\nMiss Graham's friends have for years urged her to print for them her\nnotes of these pleasant records of the harmless and heart-easing mirth\nof bygone times; to this she has at last assented, and the result is\nthis entertaining, curious, and beautiful little quarto, in which her\nfriends will recognize the strong understanding and goodness, the wit\nand invention, and fine _pawky_ humor of the much-loved and warmhearted\nrepresentative of Viscount Dundee--the terrible Clavers.[33] They will\nrecall that blithe and winning face, sagacious and sincere, that kindly,\ncheery voice, that rich and quiet laugh, that mingled sense and\nsensibility, which all met, and still, to our happiness, meet in her,\nwho, with all her gifts and keen perception of the odd, and power of\nembodying it, never gratified her consciousness of these powers, or ever\nplayed\n\n \"Her quips and cranks and wanton wiles,\"\n\nso as to give pain to any human being.\n\n [33] Miss Graham's genealogy in connection with Claverhouse--the\n same who was killed at Killiecrankie--is as follows:--John\n Graham of Claverhouse married the Honorable Jean Cochrane,\n daughter of William Lord Cochrane, eldest son of the first\n Earl of Dundonald. Their only son, an infant, died December\n 1689. David Graham, his brother, fought at Killiecrankie,\n and was outlawed in 1690--died without issue--when the\n representation of the family devolved on his cousin, David\n Graham of Duntrune. Alexander Graham of Duntrune died 1782;\n and on the demise of his last surviving son, Alexander, in\n 1804, the property was inherited equally by his four\n surviving sisters, Anne, Amelia, Clementina, and Alison.\n Amelia, who married Patrick Stirling, Esq., of Pittendreich,\n was her mother. Clementina married Captain Gavin Drummond of\n Keltie; their only child was Clementina Countess of Airlie,\n and mother of the present Earl.\n\nThe title of this memorial is _Mystifications_, and in the opening\nletter to her dear kinswoman and life-long friend, Mrs. Gillies, widow\nof Lord Gillies, she thus tells her story:--\n\n DUNTRUNE, _April 1859._\n\n MY DEAREST MRS. GILLIES,\n\n _To you and the friends who have partaken in these\n \"Mystifications,\" I dedicate this little volume, trusting that,\n after a silence of forty years, its echoes may awaken many\n agreeable memorials of a society that has nearly passed away._\n\n _I have been asked if I had no remorse in ridiculing\n singularities of character, or practising deceptions;--certainly\n not._\n\n _There was no personal ridicule or mimicry of any living\n creature, but merely the personation or type of a bygone class,\n that had survived the fashion of its day._\n\n _It was altogether a fanciful existence, developing itself\n according to circumstances, or for the amusement of a select\n party, among whom the announcement of a stranger lady, an\n original, led to no suspicion of deception. No one ever took\n offence: indeed it generally elicited the finest individual\n traits of sympathy in the minds of the dupes, especially in the\n case of Mr. Jeffrey, whose sweet-tempered kindly nature\n manifested itself throughout the whole of the tiresome interview\n with the law-loving Lady Pitlyal._\n\n _No one enjoyed her eccentricities more than he did, or more\n readily devised the arrangement of a similar scene for the\n amusement of our mutual friends._\n\n _The cleverest people were the easiest mystified, and when once\n the deception took place, it mattered not how arrant the\n nonsense or how exaggerated the costume. Indeed, children and\n dogs were the only detectives._\n\n _I often felt so identified with the character, so charmed with\n the pleasure manifested by my audience, that it became painful\n to lay aside the veil, and descend again into the humdrum\n realities of my own self._\n\n _These personations never lost me a friend; on the contrary,\n they originated friendships that cease only with life._\n\n _The Lady Pitlyal's course is run; she bequeaths to you these\n reminiscences of beloved friends and pleasant meetings._\n\n _And that the blessing of God may descend on \"each and all of\n you,\" is the fervent prayer of her kinswoman and executrix,_\n\n _CLEMENTINA STIRLING GRAHAM._\n\nI now beg to \"convey,\" as Pistol delicately calls it, or as we on our\nside the Border would say, to \"lift,\" enough of this unique volume to\nmake my readers hunger for the whole.\n\n\n MRS. RAMSAY SPELDIN.\n\n Another evening Miss Guthrie requested me to introduce my old\n lady to Captain Alexander Lindsay, a son of the late Laird of\n Kinblethmont, and brother to the present Mr. Lindsay Carnegie,\n and Mr. Sandford, the late Sir Daniel Sandford.\n\n She came as a Mrs. Ramsay Speldin, an old sweetheart of the\n laird's, and was welcomed by Mrs. Guthrie as a friend of the\n family. The young people hailed her as a perfectly delightful\n old lady, and an original of the pure Scottish character, and to\n the laird she was endeared by a thousand pleasing recollections.\n\n He placed her beside himself on the sofa, and they talked of the\n days gone by--before the green parks of Craigie were redeemed\n from the muir of Gotterston, and ere there was a tree planted\n between the auld house of Craigie and the Castle of Claypotts.\n\n She spoke of the \"gude auld times, when the laird of Fintry\n widna gie his youngest dochter to Abercairney, but tell'd him to\n tak them as God had gien them to him, or want.\"\n\n \"And do you mind,\" she continued, \"the grand ploys we had at the\n Middleton; and hoo Mrs. Scott of Gilhorn used to grind lilts out\n o' an auld kist to wauken her visitors i' the mornin'.\n\n \"And some o' them didna like it sair, tho' nane o' them had\n courage to tell her sae, but Anny Graham o' Duntrune.\n\n \"'Lord forgie ye,' said Mrs. Scott, 'ye'll no gae to heaven, if\n ye dinna like music;' but Anny was never at a loss for an\n answer, and she said, 'Mrs. Scott--heaven's no the place I tak\n it to be, if there be auld wives in 't playing on hand-organs.'\"\n\n Many a story did Mrs. Ramsay tell. The party drew their chairs\n close to the sofa, and many a joke she related, till the room\n rung again with the merriment, and the laird, in ecstasy, caught\n her round the waist, exclaiming \"Oh! ye are a canty wifie.\"\n\n The strangers seemed to think so too; they absolutely hung upon\n her, and she danced reels, first with the one, and then with the\n other, till the entrance of a servant with the newspapers\n produced a seasonable calm.\n\n They lay, however, untouched upon the table till Mrs. Ramsay\n requested some one to read over the claims that were putting in\n for the King's coronation, and see if there was any mention of\n hers.\n\n \"What is your claim?\" said Mr. Sandford.\n\n \"To pyke the King's teeth,\" was the reply.\n\n \"You will think it very singular,\" said Mr. Guthrie, \"that I\n never heard of it before; will you tell us how it originated?\"\n\n \"It was in the time of James the First,\" said she, \"that monarch\n cam to pay a visit to the monks of Arbroath, and they brought\n him to Ferryden to eat a fish dinner at the house o' ane o' my\n forefathers. The family name, ye ken, was Spelden, and the dried\n fish was ca'd after them.\n\n \"The king was well satisfied wi' a' thing that was done to honor\n him. He was a very polished prince, and when he had eaten his\n dinner he turned round to the lady and sought a preen to pyke\n his teeth.\n\n \"And the lady, she took a fish bane and wipit it, and gae it to\n the king; and after he had cleaned his teeth wi' it, he said,\n '_They're weel pykit._'\n\n \"And henceforth, continued he, the Speldins of Ferryden shall\n pyke the king's teeth at the coronation. And it shall be done\n wi' a fish-bone, and a pearl out o' the Southesk on the end of\n it. And their crest shall be a lion's head wi' the teeth\n displayed, and the motto shall be _weel pykit_.\"\n\n Mr. Sandford read over the claims, but there was no notice given\n of the Speldins.\n\n \"We maun just hae patience,\" said Mrs. Ramsay, \"and nae doubt it\n will appear in the next newspaper.\"\n\n Some one inquired who was the present representative?\n\n \"It's me,\" replied Mrs. Ramsay Speldin; \"and I mean to perform\n the office mysel'. The estate wad hae been mine too, had it\n existed; but Neptune, ye ken, is an ill neighbor, and the sea\n has washed it a' away but a sand bunker or twa, and the house I\n bide in at Ferryden.\"\n\n At supper every one was eager to have a seat near Mrs. Ramsay\n Speldin. She had a universal acquaintance, and she even knew Mr.\n Sandford's mother, when he told her that her name was Catherine\n Douglas. Mr. Sandford had in his own mind composed a letter to\n Sir Walter Scott, which was to have been written and despatched\n on the morrow, giving an account of this fine specimen of the\n true Scottish character whom he had met in the county of Angus.\n\n We meant to carry on the deception next morning, but the laird\n was too happy for concealment. Before the door closed on the\n good-night of the ladies, he had disclosed the secret, and\n before we reached the top of the stairs, the gentlemen were\n scampering at our heels like a pack of hounds in full cry.\n\nHere are at random some extracts from the others:--\n\n Mr. Jeffrey now inquired what the people in her part of the\n country thought of the trial of the Queen. She could not tell\n him, but she would say what she herself had remarked on siclike\n proceedings: \"Tak' a wreath of snaw, let it be never so white,\n and wash it through clean water, it will no come out so pure as\n it gaed in, far less the dirty dubs the poor Queen has been\n drawn through.\"\n\n Mr. Russell inquired if she possessed any relics of Prince\n Charles from the time he used to spin with the lasses:--\n\n \"Yes,\" she said, \"I have a _flech_ that loupit aff him upon my\n aunty, the Lady Brax, when she was helping him on wi' his\n short-gown; my aunty rowed it up in a sheet of white paper, and\n she keepit it in the tea canister, and she ca'd it aye the\n King's Flech; and the laird, honest man, when he wanted a cup of\n gude tea, sought aye a cup of the _Prince's mixture_.\" This\n produced peals of laughter, and her ladyship laughed as heartily\n as any of them. When somewhat composed again, she looked across\n the table to Mr. Clerk, and offered to let him see it. \"It is\n now set on the pivot of my watch, and a' the warks gae round the\n _flech_ in place of turning on a diamond.\"\n\n Lord Gillies thought this flight would certainly betray her, and\n remarked to Mr. Clerk that the flea must be painted on the\n watch, but Mr. Clerk said he had known of relics being kept of\n the Prince quite as extraordinary as a flea; that Mr. Murray of\n Simprim had a pocket-handkerchief in which Prince Charles had\n blown his nose.\n\n The Lady Pitlyal said her daughter did not value these things,\n and that she was resolved to leave it as a legacy to the\n Antiquarian Society.\n\n Holmehead was rather amused with her originality, though he had\n not forgotten the attack. He said he would try if she was a real\n Jacobite, and he called out, \"Madam, I am going to propose a\n toast for ye!\n\n \"May the Scotch Thistle choke the Hanoverian Horse.\"\n\n \"I wish I binna among the Whigs,\" she said.\n\n \"And whare wad ye be sae weel?\" retorted he.\n\n \"They murdered Dundee's son at Glasgow.\"\n\n \"There was nae great skaith,\" he replied; \"but ye maun drink my\n toast in a glass of this cauld punch, if ye be a true Jacobite.\"\n\n \"Aweel, aweel,\" said the Lady Pitlyal; \"as my auld friend Lady\n Christian Bruce was wont to say, 'The best way to get the better\n of temptation is just to yield to it;'\" and as she nodded to the\n toast and emptied the glass, Holmehead swore\n exultingly--\"_Faith, she's true!_\"\n\n Supper passed over, and the carriages were announced. The Lady\n Pitlyal took her leave with Mrs. Gillies.\n\n Next day the town rang with the heiress of Pitlyal. Mr. W. Clerk\n said he had never met with such an extraordinary old lady, \"for\n not only is she amusing herself, but my brother John is like to\n expire, when I relate her stories at second-hand.\"\n\n He talked of nothing else for a week after, but the heiress, and\n the flea, and the rent-roll, and the old turreted house of\n Pitlyal, till at last his friends thought it would be right to\n undeceive him; but that was not so easily done, for when the\n Lord Chief-Commissioner Adam hinted that it might be Miss\n Stirling, he said that was impossible, for Miss Stirling was\n sitting by the old lady the whole of the evening.\n\nHere is a bit of Sir Walter--\n\n Turning to Sir Walter, \"I am sure you had our laird in your e'e\n when you drew the character of Monkbarns.\"\n\n \"No,\" replied Sir Walter, \"but I had in my eye a very old and\n respected friend of my own, and one with whom, I daresay you,\n Mrs. Arbuthnott, were acquainted--the late Mr. George Constable\n of Wallace, near Dundee.\"\n\n \"I kenned him weel,\" said Mrs. Arbuthnott, \"and his twa sisters\n that lived wi' him, Jean and Christian, and I've been in the\n blue-chamber of his _Hospitium_; but I think,\" she continued,\n \"our laird is the likest to Monkbarns o' the twa. He's at the\n Antiquarian Society the night, presenting a great curiosity that\n was found in a quarry of mica slate in the hill at the back of\n Balwylie. He's sair taken up about it, and puzzled to think what\n substance it may be; but James Dalgetty, wha's never at a loss\n either for the name or the nature of onything under the sun,\n says it's just Noah's auld wig that blew aff yon time he put his\n head out of the window of the ark to look after his corbie\n messenger.\"\n\n James Dalgetty and his opinion gave subject of much merriment to\n the company, but Doctor Coventry thought there was nothing so\n very ludicrous in the remark, for in that kind of slate there\n are frequently substances found resembling hairs.\n\n Lord Gillies presented Doctor Coventry to Mrs. Arbuthnott, as\n the well-known professor of agriculture, and they entered on a\n conversation respecting soils. She described those of Balwylie,\n and the particular properties of the _Surroch Park_, which James\n Dalgetty curses every time it's spoken about, and says, \"it\n greets a' winter, and girns a' simmer.\"\n\n The doctor rubbed his hands with delight, and said that was the\n most perfect description of cold wet land he had ever heard of;\n and Sir Walter expressed a wish to cultivate the acquaintance of\n James Dalgetty, and extorted a promise from Mrs. Arbuthnott that\n she would visit Abbotsford, and bring James with her. \"I have a\n James Dalgetty of my own,\" continued Sir Walter, \"that governs\n me just as yours does you.\"\n\n Lady Ann and Mr. Wharton Duff and their daughter were announced,\n and introduced to Mrs. Arbuthnott.\n\n At ten, Sir Walter and Miss Scott took leave, with a promise\n that they should visit each other, and bending down to the ear\n of Mrs. Arbuthnott, Sir Walter addressed her in these words:\n \"Awa! awa! the deil's ower grit wi' you.\"\n\n * * * * *\n\nAnd now are we not all the better for this pleasantry? so womanly, so\ngenial, so rich, and so without a sting,--such a true diversion, with\nnone of the sin of effort or of mere cleverness; and how it takes us\ninto the midst of the strong-brained and strong-hearted men and women of\nthat time! what an atmosphere of sense and good-breeding and kindliness!\nAnd then the Scotch! cropping out everywhere as blithe, and expressive,\nand unexpected as a gowan or sweet-briar rose, with an occasional\nthistle, sturdy, erect, and bristling with _Nemo me_. Besides the deeper\nand general interest of these _Mystifications_, in their giving, as far\nas I know, a unique specimen of true personation--distinct from\nacting--I think it a national good to let our youngsters read, and, as\nit were, hear the language which our gentry and judges and men of\nletters spoke not long ago, and into which such books as Dean Ramsay's\nand this are breathing the breath of its old life. Was there ever\nanything better or so good, said of a stiff clay, than that it \"girns\n(grins) a' simmer, and greets (weeps) a' winter?\"\n\n\n\n\n\"_OH, I'M WAT, WAT!_\"\n\n\n _The father of the Rev. Mr. Steven of Largs, was the son of a\n farmer, who lived next farm to Mossgiel. When a boy of eight, he\n found \"Robbie\" who was a great friend of his, and of all the\n children, engaged digging a large trench in a field, Gilbert,\n his brother, with him. The boy pausing on the edge of the\n trench, and looking down upon Burns, said, \"Robbie, what's that\n ye're doin'?\" \"Howkin' a muckle hole, Tammie.\" \"What for?\" \"To\n bury the Deil in, Tammie!\" (one can fancy how those eyes would\n glow.) \"A'but, Robbie,\" said the logical Tammie, \"hoo're ye to\n get him in?\" \"Ay\" said Burns, \"that's it, hoo are we to get Him\n in!\" and went off into shouts of laughter; and every now and\n then during that summer day shouts would come from that hole, as\n the idea came over him. If one could only have daguerreotyped\n his day's fancies!_\n\n\n\"What is love, Mary?\" said Seventeen to Thirteen, who was busy with her\nEnglish lessons.\n\n\"Love! what do you mean, John?\"\n\n\"I mean, what's love?\"\n\n\"Love's just love, I suppose.\"\n\n(Yes, Mary, you are right to keep by the concrete; analysis kills love\nas well as other things. I once asked a useful-information young lady\nwhat her mother was. 'Oh, mamma's a _biped_!' I turned in dismay to her\nyounger sister, and said, What do you say? 'Oh, my mother's just my\nmother.')\n\n\"But what part of speech is it?\"\n\n\"It's a substantive or a verb.\" (Young Horne Tooke didn't ask her if it\nwas an active or passive, an irregular or defective verb; an inceptive,\nas _calesco_, I grow warm, or _dulcesco_, I grow sweet; a frequentative\nor a desiderative, as _nupturio_, I desire to marry.)\n\n\"I think it is a verb,\" said John, who was deep in other diversions,\nbesides those of Purley; \"and I think it must have been originally _the\nPerfect of Live_, like thrive throve, strive strove.\"\n\n\"Capital, John!\" suddenly growled Uncle Oldbuck, who was supposed to be\nasleep in his arm-chair by the fireside, and who snubbed and supported\nthe entire household. \"It was that originally, and it will be our own\nfaults, children, if it is not that at last, as well as, ay, and more\nthan at first. What does Richardson say, John? read him out.\" John\nreads--\n\n LOVE, _v. s._ To prefer, to desire, as an\n -LESS. object of possession or enjoyment\n -LY, _ad. av._ to delight in, to be\n -LILY. pleased or gratified with, to\n -LINESS. take pleasure or gratification\n -ER. in, delight in.\n -ING. _Love_, the _s_ is app. emph. to\n -INGLY. the passion between the sexes.\n -INGNESS. _Lover_ is, by old writers, app. as\n -ABLE.[A] _friend_--by male to male.\n -SOME.[B] _Love_ is much used--pref.\n ERED.[C] [A] _Wiclif._ [B] _Chaucer._ [C] _Shak._\n\n _Love-locks_,--locks (of hair) to set off the beauty; the\n loveliness.\n\n A. S. _Luf-ian_; D. _Lie-ven_; Ger. _-ben_, amare, diligere.\n Wach. derives from _lieb_, bonum, because every one desires that\n which is good: _lieb_, it is more probable, is from _lieb-en_,\n grateful, and therefore _good_. It may at least admit a\n conjecture that A. S. _Lufian_, to _love_, has a reason for its\n application similar to that of L. _Di-ligere_ (_legere_, to\n gather), to take up or out (of a number), to choose, sc. one in\n preference to another, to prefer; and that it is formed upon A.\n S. _Hlif-ian_, to lift or take up, to pick up, to select, to\n prefer, Be- Over- Un-\n\n_Uncle impatiently._--\"Stuff; 'grateful!' 'pick up! stuff! These\nword-mongers know nothing about it. Live, love; that is it, the perfect\nof live.\"[34]\n\n [34] They are strange beings, these lexicographers. Richardson,\n for instance, under the word SNAIL, gives this\n quotation from Beaumont and Fletcher's _Wit at Several\n Weapons_,--\n\n \"Oh, Master Pompey! how is 't, man?\n\n _Clown_--SNAILS, I'm almost starved with love\n and cold, and one thing or other.\"\n\n Any one else knows of course that it is \"'s nails\"--the\n contraction of the old oath or interjection--_God's nails_.\n\nAfter this, Uncle sent the cousins to their beds.\n\nMary's mother was in hers, never to rise from it again. She was a widow,\nand Mary was her husband's niece. The house quiet, Uncle sat down in his\nchair, put his feet on the fender, and watched the dying fire; it had a\nrich central glow, but no flame, and no smoke, it was flashing up\nfitfully, and bit by bit falling in. He fell asleep watching it, and\nwhen he slept, he dreamed. He was young; he was seventeen; he was\nprowling about the head of North St. David Street, keeping his eye on a\ncertain door,--we call them common stairs in Scotland. He was waiting\nfor Mr. White's famous English class for girls coming out. Presently out\nrushed four or five girls, wild and laughing; then came one, bounding\nlike a roe:\n\n \"Such eyes were in her head,\n And so much grace and power!\"\n\nShe was surrounded by the rest, and away they went laughing, she making\nthem always laugh the more. Seventeen followed at a safe distance,\nstudying her small, firm, downright heel. The girls dropped off one by\none, and she was away home by herself, swift and reserved. He, imposter\nas he was, disappeared through Jamaica Street, to reappear and meet her,\nwalking as if on urgent business, and getting a cordial and careless\nnod. This beautiful girl of thirteen was afterwards the mother of our\nMary, and died in giving her birth. She was Uncle Oldbuck's first and\nonly sweetheart; and here was he, the only help our young Horne Tooke,\nand his mother and Mary had. Uncle awoke, the fire dead, and the room\ncold. He found himself repeating Lady John Scott's lines--\n\n \"When thou art near me,\n Sorrow seems to fly,\n And then I think, as well I may,\n That on this earth there is no one\n More blest than I.\n\n But when thou leav'st me,\n Doubts and fears arise,\n And darkness reigns,\n Where all before was light.\n The sunshine of my soul\n Is in those eyes,\n And when they leave me\n All the world is night.\n\n But when thou art near me,\n Sorrow seems to fly,\n And then I feel, as well I may,\n That on this earth there dwells not one\n So blest as I.\"[35]\n\n [35] Can the gifted author of these lines and of their music not\n be prevailed on to give them and others to the world, as\n well as to her friends?\n\nThen taking down _Chambers's Scottish Songs_, he read aloud:--\n\n \"O I'm wat, wat,\n O I'm wat and weary;\n Yet fain wad I rise and rin,\n If I thocht I would meet my dearie.\n Aye waukin', O!\n Waukin' aye, and weary;\n Sleep, I can get nane\n For thinkin' o' my dearie.\n\n Simmer's a pleasant time,\n Flowers o' every color;\n The winter rins ower the heugh,\n And I long for my true lover.\n\n When I sleep I dream,\n When I wauk I'm eerie,\n Sleep I can get nane,\n For thinkin' o' my dearie.\n\n Lanely nicht comes on,\n A' the lave are sleepin';\n I think on my true love,\n And blear my e'en wi' greetin'.\n\n Feather beds are saft--\n Pentit rooms are bonnie;\n But ae kiss o' my dear love\n Better's far than ony.\n\n O for Friday nicht!--\n Friday at the gloamin';\n O for Friday nicht--\n Friday's lang o' comin'!\"\n\nThis love-song, which Mr. Chambers gives from recitation, is, thinks\nUncle to himself, all but perfect; Burns, who in almost every instance,\nnot only adorned, but transformed and purified whatever of the old he\ntouched, breathing into it his own tenderness and strength, fails here,\nas may be seen in reading his version.\n\n \"Oh, spring's a pleasant time!\n Flowers o' every color--\n _The sweet bird builds her nest_,\n And I lang for my lover.\n Aye wakin', oh!\n Wakin' aye and _wearie_;\n Sleep I can get nane,\n For thinkin' o' my dearie!\n\n \"When I sleep I dream,\n When I wauk I'm eerie,\n Rest I canna get,\n For thinkin' o' my dearie.\n Aye wakin', oh!\n Wakin' aye and weary;\n _Come, come, blissful dream_,\n Bring me to my dearie.\n\n \"_Darksome_ nicht comes doun--\n A' the lave are sleepin';\n I think on my kind lad,\n And blin' my een wi' greetin'.\n Aye wakin', oh!\n Wakin' aye and wearie;\n _Hope is sweet_, but ne'er\n Sae sweet as my dearie!\"\n\nHow weak these italics! No one can doubt which of these is the better.\nThe old song is perfect in the procession, and in the simple beauty of\nits thoughts and words. A ploughman or shepherd--for I hold that it is a\nman's song--comes in \"wat, wat\" after a hard day's work among the\nfurrows, or on the hill. The _watness_ of wat, wat, is as much wetter\nthan wet as a Scotch mist is more of a mist than an English one; and he\nis not only wat, wat, but \"weary,\" longing for a dry skin and a warm bed\nand rest; but no sooner said and felt, than, by the law of contrast, he\nthinks on \"Mysie\" or \"Ailie,\" his Genevieve; and then \"all thoughts, all\npassions, all delights,\" begin to stir him, and \"fain wad I rise and\nrin\" (what a swiftness beyond run is \"rin\"!) Love now makes him a poet;\nthe true imaginative power enters and takes possession of him. By this\ntime his clothes are off, and he is snug in bed; not a wink can he\nsleep; that \"fain\" is domineering over him,--and he breaks out into what\nis as genuine passion and poetry, as anything from Sappho to\nTennyson--abrupt, vivid, heedless of syntax. \"Simmer's a pleasant time.\"\nWould any of our greatest geniuses, being limited to one word, have done\nbetter than take \"pleasant?\" and then the fine vagueness of \"time!\"\n\"Flowers o' every color;\" he gets a glimpse of \"herself a fairer\nflower,\" and is off in pursuit. \"The water rins ower the heugh\" (a steep\nprecipice); flinging itself wildly, passionately over, and so do I long\nfor my true lover. Nothing can be simpler and finer than\n\n \"When I sleep, I dream;\n When I wauk, I'm eerie.\"\n\n\"Lanely nicht;\" how much richer and touching than \"darksome.\" \"Feather\nbeds are saft;\" \"paintit rooms are bonnie;\" I would infer from this,\nthat his \"dearie,\" his \"true love,\" was a lass up at \"the big house\"--a\ndapper Abigail possibly--at Sir William's at the Castle, and then we\nhave the final paroxysm upon Friday nicht--Friday at the gloamin'! O for\nFriday nicht!--Friday's lang o' comin'!--it being very likely Thursday\nbefore daybreak, when this affectionate _ululatus_ ended in repose.\n\nNow, is not this rude ditty, made very likely by some clumsy, big-headed\nGalloway herd, full of the real stuff of love? He does not go off upon\nher eyebrows, or even her eyes; he does not sit down, and in a genteel\nway announce that \"love in thine eyes forever sits,\" &c. &c., or that\nher feet look out from under her petticoats like little mice: he is far\npast that; he is not making love, he is in it. This is one and a chief\ncharm of Burns' love-songs, which are certainly of all love-songs except\nthose wild snatches left to us by her who flung herself from the\nLeucadian rock, the most in earnest, the tenderest, the \"most moving\ndelicate and full of life.\" Burns makes you feel the reality and the\ndepth, the truth of his passion; it is not her eyelashes or her nose, or\nher dimple, or even\n\n \"A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops\n I' the bottom of a cowslip,\"\n\nthat are \"winging the fervor of his love;\" not even her soul; it is\nherself. This concentration and earnestness, this _perfervor_ of our\nScottish love poetry, seems to me to contrast curiously with the light,\ntrifling philandering of the English; indeed, as far as I remember, we\nhave almost no love-songs in English, of the same class as this one, or\nthose of Burns. They are mostly either of the genteel, or of the\nnautical (some of these capital), or of the comic school. Do you know\nthe most perfect, the finest love-song in our or in any language; the\nlove being affectionate more than passionate, love in possession not in\npursuit?\n\n \"Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast\n On yonder lea, on yonder lea,\n My plaidie to the angry airt,\n I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee:\n Or did Misfortune's bitter storms\n Around thee blaw, around thee blaw,\n Thy bield should be my bosom,\n To share it a', to share it a'.\n\n \"Or were I in the wildest waste,\n Sae black and bare, sae black and bare,\n The desert were a paradise,\n If thou wert there, if thou wert there:\n Or were I monarch o' the globe,\n Wi' thee to reign, wi' thee to reign,\n The brightest jewel in my crown\n Wad be my queen, wad be my queen.\"\n\nThe following is Mr. Chambers' account of the origin of this\nsong:--Jessy Lewars had a call one morning from Burns. He offered, if\nshe would play him any tune of which she was fond, and for which she\ndesired new verses, that he would do his best to gratify her wish. She\nsat down at the piano, and played over and over the air of an old song,\nbeginning with the words--\n\n \"The robin cam' to the wren's nest,\n And keekit in, and keekit in:\n 'O weel's me on your auld pow!\n Wad ye be in, wad ye be in?\n Ye' se ne'er get leave to lie without,\n And I within, and I within,\n As lang 's I hae an auld clout,\n To row ye in, to row ye in.'\"\n\nUncle now took his candle, and slunk off to bed, slipping up noiselessly\nthat he might not disturb the thin sleep of the sufferer, saying in to\nhimself--\"I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee;\" \"If thou wert there, if\nthou wert there;\" and though the morning was at the window, he was up by\neight, making breakfast for John and Mary.\n\n * * * * *\n\nLove never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail;\nwhether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge,\nit shall vanish away; but love is of God, and cannot fail.\n\n\n\n\n_ARTHUR H. HALLAM._\n\n \"PRAESENS _imperfectum,--perfectum, plusquam perfectum_\n FUTURUM.\"--GROTIUS.\n\n \"_The idea of thy life shall sweetly creep\n Into my study of imagination;\n And every lovely organ of thy life\n Shall come apparelled in more precious habit--\n More moving delicate, and full of life,\n Into the eye and prospect of my soul,\n Than when thou livedst indeed._\"\n\n MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.\n\n\nIn the chancel of Clevedon Church, Somersetshire, rest the mortal\nremains of Arthur Henry Hallam, eldest son of our great philosophic\nhistorian and critic,--and the friend to whom \"_In Memoriam_\" is sacred.\nThis place was selected by his father, not only from the connection of\nkindred, being the burial-place of his maternal grandfather, Sir Abraham\nElton, but likewise \"on account of its still and sequestered situation,\non a lone hill that overhangs the Bristol Channel.\" That lone hill, with\nits humble old church, its outlook over the waste of waters, where \"the\nstately ships go on,\" was, we doubt not, in Tennyson's mind, when the\npoem, \"Break, break, break,\" which contains the burden of that volume in\nwhich are enshrined so much of the deepest affection, poetry,\nphilosophy, and godliness, rose into his \"study of imagination\"--\"into\nthe eye and prospect of his soul.\"[36]\n\n [36] The passage from Shakspeare prefixed to this paper, contains\n probably as much as can be said of the mental, not less than\n the affectionate conditions, under which such a record as\n _In Memoriam_ is produced, and may give us more insight into\n the imaginative faculty's mode of working, than all our\n philosophizing and analysis. It seems to let out with the\n fulness, simplicity, and unconsciousness of a\n child--\"Fancy's Child\"--the secret mechanism or procession\n of the greatest creative mind our race has produced. In\n itself, it has no recondite meaning, it answers fully its\n own sweet purpose. We are not believers, like some folks, in\n the omniscience of even Shakspeare. But, like many things\n that he and other wise men and many simple children say, it\n has a germ of universal meaning, which it is quite lawful to\n bring out of it, and which may be enjoyed to the full\n without any wrong to its own original beauty and fitness. A\n dew-drop is not the less beautiful that it illustrates in\n its structure the law of gravitation which holds the world\n together, and by which \"the most ancient heavens are fresh\n and strong.\" This is the passage. The Friar speaking of\n Claudio, hearing that Hero \"died upon his word,\" says,--\n\n \"The idea of her life shall sweetly creep\n Into his study of imagination;\n And every lovely organ of her life\n Shall come apparelled in more precious habit--\n More moving delicate, and full of life,\n Into the eye and prospect of his soul,\n Than when she lived indeed.\"\n\n We have here expressed in plain language the imaginative\n memory of the beloved dead, rising upon the past, like\n moonlight upon midnight,--\n\n \"The gleam, the shadow, and the peace supreme.\"\n\n This is its simple meaning--the statement of a truth, the\n utterance of personal feeling. But observe its hidden\n abstract significance--it is the revelation of what goes on\n in the depths of the soul, when the dead elements of what\n once was, are laid before the imagination, and so breathed\n upon as to be quickened into a new and higher life. We have\n first the _Idea of her Life_--all he remembered and felt of\n her, gathered into one vague shadowy image, not any one\n look, or action, or time--then the idea of her life\n _creeps_--is in before he is aware, and SWEETLY\n creeps,--it might have been softly or gently, but it is the\n addition of affection to all this, and bringing in another\n sense--and now it is in his _study of imagination_--what a\n place! fit for such a visitor. Then out comes the _Idea_,\n more particular, more questionable, but still ideal,\n spiritual--_every lovely organ of her life_--then the\n clothing upon, the mortal putting on its immortal, spiritual\n body--_shall come apparelled in more precious habit, more\n moving delicate_--this is the transfiguring, the putting on\n strength, the _poco piu_--the little more which makes\n immortal,--_more full of life_, and all this submitted\n to--_the eye and prospect of the soul_.\n\n \"Break, break, break,\n On thy cold gray stones, O sea!\n And I would that my tongue could utter\n The thoughts that arise in me.\n\n \"O well for the fisherman's boy\n That he shouts with his sister at play!\n O well for the sailor lad\n That he sings in his boat on the bay!\n\n \"And the stately ships go on\n To their haven under the hill!\n But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,\n And the sound of a voice that is still!\n\n \"Break, break, break,\n At the foot of thy crags, O sea!\n But the tender grace of a day that is dead\n Will never come back to me.\"\n\nOut of these few simple words, deep and melancholy, and sounding as the\nsea, as out of a well of the living waters of love, flows forth all _In\nMemoriam_, as a stream flows out of its spring--all is here. \"I would\nthat my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me,\"--\"the touch\nof the vanished hand--the sound of the voice that is still,\"--the body\nand soul of his friend. Rising as it were out of the midst of the gloom\nof the valley of the shadow of death,--\n\n \"The mountain infant to the sun comes forth\n Like human life from darkness;\"\n\nand how its waters flow on! carrying life, beauty, magnificence,--shadows\nand happy lights, depths of blackness, depths clear as the very body of\nheaven. How it deepens as it goes, involving larger interests, wider\nviews, \"thoughts that wander through eternity,\" greater affections, but\nstill retaining its pure living waters, its unforgotten burden of love\nand sorrow. How it visits every region! \"the long unlovely street,\"\npleasant villages and farms, \"the placid ocean-plains,\" waste howling\nwildernesses, grim woods, _nemorumque noctem_, informed with spiritual\nfears, where may be seen, if shapes they may be called--\n\n \"Fear and trembling Hope,\n Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton,\n And Time the Shadow;\"\n\nnow within hearing of the Minster clock, now of the College bells, and\nthe vague hum of the mighty city. And overhead through all its course\nthe heaven with its clouds, its sun, moon, and stars; but always, and in\nall places, declaring its source; and even when laying its burden of\nmanifold and faithful affection at the feet of the Almighty Father,\nstill remembering whence it came,--\n\n \"That friend of mine who lives in God,\n That God which ever lives and loves;\n One God, one law, one element,\n And one far-off divine event,\n To which the whole creation moves.\"\n\nIt is to that chancel, and to the day, 3d January, 1834, that he refers\nin poem XVIII. of _In Memoriam_.\n\n \"'Tis well, 'tis something, we may stand\n Where he in English earth is laid,\n And from his ashes may be made\n The violet of his native land.\n\n \"'Tis little; but it looks in truth\n As if the quiet bones were blest\n Among familiar names to rest,\n And in the places of his youth.\"\n\nAnd again in XIX.:--\n\n \"The Danube to the Severn gave\n The darken'd heart that beat no more;\n They laid him by the pleasant shore,\n And in the hearing of the wave.\n\n \"There twice a day the Severn fills,\n The salt sea-water passes by,\n And hushes half the babbling Wye,\n And makes a silence in the hills.\"\n\nHere, too, it is, LXVI.:--\n\n \"When on my bed the moonlight falls,\n I know that in thy place of rest,\n By that broad water of the west;\n There comes a glory on the walls:\n\n \"Thy marble bright in dark appears,\n As slowly steals a silver flame\n Along the letters of thy name,\n And o'er the number of thy years.\"\n\nThis young man, whose memory his friend has consecrated in the hearts of\nall who can be touched by such love and beauty, was in nowise unworthy\nof all this. It is not for us to say, for it was not given to us the sad\nprivilege to know, all that a father's heart buried with his son in that\ngrave, all \"the hopes of unaccomplished years;\" nor can we feel in its\nfulness all that is meant by\n\n \"Such\n A friendship as had mastered Time;\n Which masters Time indeed, and is\n Eternal, separate from fears.\n The all-assuming months and years\n Can take no part away from this.\"\n\nBut this we may say, we know of nothing in all literature to compare\nwith the volume from which these lines are taken, since David lamented\nwith this lamentation: \"The beauty of Israel is slain. Ye mountains of\nGilboa, let there be no dew, neither rain upon you. I am distressed for\nthee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me; thy\nlove for me was wonderful.\" We cannot, as some have done, compare it\nwith Shakspeare's sonnets, or with _Lycidas_. In spite of the amazing\ngenius and tenderness, the never-wearying, all-involving reiteration of\npassionate attachment, the idolatry of admiring love, the rapturous\ndevotedness, displayed in these sonnets, we cannot but agree with Mr.\nHallam in thinking, \"that there is a tendency now, especially among\nyoung men of poetical tempers, to exaggerate the beauties of these\nremarkable productions;\" and though we would hardly say with him, \"that\nit is impossible not to wish that Shakspeare had never written them,\"\ngiving us, as they do, and as perhaps nothing else could do, such proof\nof a power of loving, of an amount of _attendrissement_, which is not\nless wonderful than the bodying forth of that myriad-mind which gave us\nHamlet, and Lear, Cordelia, and Puck, and all the rest, and indeed\nexplaining to us how he could give us all these;--while we hardly go so\nfar, we agree with his other wise words:--\"There is a weakness and folly\nin all misplaced and excessive affection;\" which in Shakspeare's case is\nthe more distressing, when we consider that \"Mr. W. H., the only\nbegetter of these ensuing sonnets,\" was, in all likelihood, William\nHerbert, Earl of Pembroke, a man of noble and gallant character, but\nalways of licentious life.\n\nAs for _Lycidas_, we must confess that the poetry--and we all know how\nconsummate it is--and not the affection, seems uppermost in Milton's\nmind, as it is in ours. The other element, though quick and true, has no\nglory through reason of the excellency of that which invests it. But\nthere is no such drawback in _In Memoriam_. The purity, the temperate\nbut fervent goodness, the firmness and depth of nature, the impassioned\nlogic, the large, sensitive, and liberal heart, the reverence and godly\nfear, of\n\n \"That friend of mine who lives in God,\"\n\nwhich from these Remains we know to have dwelt in that young soul, give\nto _In Memoriam_ the character of exactest portraiture. There is no\nexcessive or misplaced affection here; it is all founded in fact; while\neverywhere and throughout it all, affection--a love that is\nwonderful--meets us first and leaves us last, giving form and substance\nand grace, and the breath of life and love, to everything that the\npoet's thick-coming fancies so exquisitely frame. We can recall few\npoems approaching to it in this quality of sustained affection. The only\nEnglish poems we can think of as of the same order, are Cowper's lines\non seeing his mother's portrait:--\n\n \"O that these lips had language!\"\n\nBurns to \"Mary in Heaven;\" and two pieces of Vaughan--one beginning\n\n \"O thou who know'st for whom I mourn;\"\n\nand the other--\n\n \"They are all gone into the world of light.\"\n\nBut our object now is, not so much to illustrate Mr. Tennyson's verses,\nas to introduce to our readers what we ourselves have got so much\ndelight, and, we trust, profit from--_The Remains, in Verse and Prose,\nof Arthur Henry Hallam_, 1834; privately printed. We had for many years\nbeen searching for this volume, but in vain; a sentence quoted by Henry\nTaylor struck us, and our desire was quickened by reading _In Memoriam_.\nWe do not remember when we have been more impressed than by these\nRemains of this young man, especially when taken along with his friend's\nMemorial; and instead of trying to tell our readers what this impression\nis, we have preferred giving them as copious extracts as our space\nallows, that they may judge and enjoy for themselves. The italics are\nour own. We can promise them few finer, deeper, and better pleasures\nthan reading, and detaining their minds over these two books together,\nfilling their hearts with the fulness of their truth and tenderness.\nThey will see how accurate as well as how affectionate and \"of\nimagination all compact\" Tennyson is, and how worthy of all that he has\nsaid of him, that friend was. The likeness is drawn _ad vivum_,--\n\n \"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought\n He summons up remembrance of things past.\"\n\n\"The idea of his Life\" has been sown a natural body, and has been raised\na spiritual body, but the identity is unhurt; the countenance shines and\nthe raiment is white and glistering, but it is the same face and form.\n\nThe Memoir is by Mr. Hallam. We give it entire, not knowing anywhere a\nnobler or more touching record of a father's love and sorrow.\n\n \"Arthur Henry Hallam was born in Bedford Place,[37] London, on\n the 1st of February, 1811. Very few years had elapsed before his\n parents observed strong indications of his future character, in\n a peculiar clearness of perception, a facility of acquiring\n knowledge, and, above all, in an undeviating sweetness of\n disposition, and adherence to his sense of what was right and\n becoming. As he advanced to another stage of childhood, it was\n rendered still more manifest that he would be distinguished from\n ordinary persons, by an increasing thoughtfulness, and a\n fondness for a class of books, which in general are so little\n intelligible to boys of his age, that they excite in them no\n kind of interest.\n\n [37] \"Dark house, by which once more I stand\n\t Here in the long unlovely street;\n\t Doors, where my heart was wont to beat\n\t So quickly, waiting for a hand.\"--_In Memoriam._\n\n\t This is a mistake, as his friend Dr. A. P. Stanley thus\n\t corrects:--\"'The long unlovely street' was Wimpole Street,\n\t No. 67, where the Hallams lived; and Arthur used to say to\n\t his friends, You know you will always find us at sixes and\n\t sevens.'\"\n\n \"In the summer of 1818 he spent some months with his parents in\n Germany and Switzerland, and became familiar with the French\n language, which he had already learned to read with facility. He\n had gone through the elements of Latin before this time; but\n that language having been laid aside during his tour, it was\n found upon his return that, a variety of new scenes having\n effaced it from his memory, it was necessary to begin again with\n the first rudiments. He was nearly eight years old at this time;\n and in little more than twelve months he could read Latin with\n tolerable facility. In this period his mind was developing\n itself more rapidly than before; he now felt a keen relish for\n dramatic poetry, and wrote several tragedies, if we may so call\n them either in prose or verse, with a more precocious display of\n talents than the Editor remembers to have met with in any other\n individual. The natural pride, however, of his parents, did not\n blind them to the uncertainty that belongs to all premature\n efforts of the mind; and they so carefully avoided everything\n like a boastful display of blossoms which, in many cases, have\n withered away in barren luxuriance, that the circumstance of\n these compositions was hardly ever mentioned out of their own\n family.\n\n \"In the spring of 1820, Arthur was placed under the Rev. W.\n Carmalt, at Putney, where he remained nearly two years. After\n leaving this school he went abroad again for some months; and in\n October, 1822, became the pupil of the Rev. E. C. Hawtrey, an\n Assistant Master of Eton College. At Eton he continued till the\n summer of 1827. He was now become a good though not perhaps a\n first-rate scholar in the Latin and Greek languages. The loss of\n time, relatively to this object, in travelling, but far more his\n increasing avidity for a different kind of knowledge, and the\n strong bent of his mind to subjects which exercise other\n faculties than such as the acquirement of languages calls into\n play, will sufficiently account for what might seem a\n comparative deficiency in classical learning. It can only,\n however, be reckoned one, comparatively to his other\n attainments, and to his remarkable facility in mastering the\n modern languages. The Editor has thought it not improper to\n print in the following pages an Eton exercise, which, as written\n before the age of fourteen, though not free from metrical and\n other errors, appears, perhaps to a partial judgment, far above\n the level of such compositions. It is remarkable that he should\n have selected the story of Ugolino, from a poet with whom, and\n with whose language, he was then but very slightly acquainted,\n but who was afterwards to become, more perhaps than any other,\n the master-mover of his spirit. It may be added, that great\n judgment and taste are perceptible in this translation, which is\n by no means a literal one; and in which the phraseology of\n Sophocles is not ill substituted, in some passages, for that of\n Dante.\n\n \"The Latin poetry of an Etonian is generally reckoned at that\n School the chief test of his literary talent. That of Arthur was\n good without being excellent; he never wanted depth of thought,\n or truth of feeling; but it is only in a few rare instances, if\n altogether in any, that an original mind has been known to utter\n itself freely and vigorously, without sacrifice of purity, in a\n language the capacities of which are so imperfectly understood;\n and in his productions there was not the thorough conformity to\n an ancient model which is required for perfect elegance in Latin\n verse. He took no great pleasure in this sort of composition;\n and perhaps never returned to it of his own accord.\n\n \"In the latter part of his residence at Eton, he was led away\n more and more by the predominant bias of his mind, from the\n exclusive study of ancient literature. The poets of England,\n especially the older dramatists, came with greater attraction\n over his spirit. He loved Fletcher, and some of Fletcher's\n contemporaries, for their energy of language and intenseness of\n feeling; but it was in Shakspeare alone that he found the\n fulness of soul which seemed to slake the thirst of his own\n rapidly expanding genius for an inexhaustible fountain of\n thought and emotion. He knew Shakspeare thoroughly; and indeed\n his acquaintance with the earlier poetry of this country was\n very extensive. Among the modern poets, Byron was at this time,\n far above the rest, and almost exclusively, his favorite; a\n preference which, in later years, he transferred altogether to\n Wordsworth and Shelley.\n\n \"He became, when about fifteen years old, a member of the\n debating society established among the elder boys, in which he\n took great interest; and this served to confirm the bias of his\n intellect towards the moral and political philosophy of modern\n times. It was probably, however, of important utility in giving\n him that command of his own language which he possessed, as the\n following Essays will show, in a very superior degree, and in\n exercising those powers of argumentative discussion, which now\n displayed themselves as eminently characteristic of his mind. It\n was a necessary consequence that he declined still more from the\n usual paths of study, and abated perhaps somewhat of his regard\n for the writers of antiquity. It must not be understood,\n nevertheless, as most of those who read these pages will be\n aware, that he ever lost his sensibility to those ever-living\n effusions of genius which the ancient languages preserve. He\n loved AEschylus and Sophocles (to Euripides he hardly did\n justice), Lucretius and Virgil; if he did not seem so much drawn\n towards Homer as might at first be expected, this may probably\n be accounted for by his increasing taste for philosophical\n poetry.\n\n \"In the early part of 1827, Arthur took a part in the Eton\n Miscellany, a periodical publication, in which some of his\n friends in the debating society were concerned. He wrote in\n this, besides a few papers in prose, a little poem on a story\n connected with the Lake of Killarney. It has not been thought by\n the Editor advisable, upon the whole, to reprint these lines;\n though, in his opinion, they bear very striking marks of\n superior powers. This was almost the first poetry that Arthur\n had written, except the childish tragedies above mentioned. No\n one was ever less inclined to the trick of versifying. Poetry\n with him was not an amusement, but the natural and almost\n necessary language of genuine emotion; and it was not till the\n discipline of serious reflection, and the approach of manhood,\n gave a reality and intenseness to such emotions, that he learned\n the capacities of his own genius. That he was a poet by nature,\n these Remains will sufficiently prove; but certainly he was far\n removed from being a versifier by nature; nor was he probably\n able to perform, what he scarce ever attempted, to write easily\n and elegantly on an ordinary subject. The lines on the story of\n Pygmalion are so far an exception, that they arose out of a\n momentary amusement of society; but he could not avoid, even in\n these, his own grave tone of poetry.\n\n \"Upon leaving Eton in the summer of 1827, he accompanied his\n parents to the Continent, and passed eight months in Italy. This\n introduction to new scenes of nature and art, and to new sources\n of intellectual delight, at the very period of transition from\n boyhood to youth, sealed no doubt the peculiar character of his\n mind, and taught him, too soon for his peace, to sound those\n depths of thought and feeling, from which, after this time, all\n that he wrote was derived. He had, when he passed the Alps, only\n a moderate acquaintance with the Italian language; but during\n his residence in the country he came to speak it with perfect\n fluency, and with a pure Sienese pronunciation. In its study he\n was much assisted by his friend and instructor, the Abbate\n Pifferi, who encouraged him to his first attempts at\n versification. The few sonnets, which are now printed, were, it\n is to be remembered, written by a foreigner, hardly seventeen\n years old, and after a very short stay in Italy. The Editor\n might not, probably, have suffered them to appear, even in this\n private manner, upon his own judgment. But he knew that the\n greatest living writer of Italy, to whom they were shown some\n time since at Milan, by the author's excellent friend, Mr.\n Richard Milnes, has expressed himself in terms of high\n approbation.\n\n \"The growing intimacy of Arthur with Italian poetry led him\n naturally to that of Dante. No poet was so congenial to the\n character of his own reflective mind; in none other could he so\n abundantly find that disdain of flowery redundance, that\n perpetual preference of the sensible to the ideal, that\n aspiration for somewhat better and less fleeting than earthly\n things, to which his inmost soul responded. Like all genuine\n worshippers of the great Florentine poet, he rated the _Inferno_\n below the two latter portions of the _Divina Commedia_; there\n was nothing even to revolt his taste, but rather much to attract\n it, in the scholastic theology and mystic visions of the\n _Paradiso_. Petrarch he greatly admired, though with less\n idolatry than Dante; and the sonnets here printed will show to\n all competent judges how fully he had imbibed the spirit,\n without servile centonism, of the best writers in that style of\n composition who flourished in the 16th century.\n\n \"But poetry was not an absorbing passion at this time in his\n mind. His eyes were fixed on the best pictures with silent\n intense delight. He had a deep and just perception of what was\n beautiful in this art, at least in its higher schools; for he\n did not pay much regard, or perhaps quite do justice, to the\n masters of the 17th century. To technical criticism he made no\n sort of pretension; painting was to him but the visible language\n of emotion; and where it did not aim at exciting it, or employed\n inadequate means, his admiration would be withheld. Hence he\n highly prized the ancient paintings, both Italian and German, of\n the age which preceded the full development of art. But he was\n almost as enthusiastic an admirer of the Venetian, as of the\n Tuscan and Roman schools; considering these masters as reaching\n the same end by the different agencies of form and color. This\n predilection for the sensitive beauties of painting is somewhat\n analogous to his fondness for harmony of verse, on which he laid\n more stress than poets so thoughtful are apt to do. In one of\n the last days of his life, he lingered long among the fine\n Venetian pictures of the Imperial Gallery at Vienna.\n\n \"He returned to England in June, 1828; and, in the following\n October, went down to reside at Cambridge; having been entered\n on the boards of Trinity College before his departure to the\n Continent. He was the pupil of the Rev. William Whewell. In some\n respects, as soon became manifest, he was not formed to obtain\n great academical reputation. An acquaintance with the learned\n languages, considerable at the school where he was educated, but\n not improved, to say the least, by the intermission of a year,\n during which his mind had been so occupied by other pursuits,\n that he had thought little of antiquity even in Rome itself,\n though abundantly sufficient for the gratification of taste and\n the acquisition of knowledge, was sure to prove inadequate to\n the searching scrutiny of modern examinations. He soon,\n therefore, saw reason to renounce all competition of this kind;\n nor did he ever so much as attempt any Greek or Latin\n composition during his stay at Cambridge. In truth he was very\n indifferent to success of this kind; and conscious as he must\n have been of a high reputation among his contemporaries, he\n could not think that he stood in need of any University\n distinctions. The Editor became by degrees almost equally\n indifferent to what he perceived to be so uncongenial to\n Arthur's mind. It was however to be regretted, that he never\n paid the least attention to mathematical studies. That he should\n not prosecute them with the diligence usual at Cambridge, was of\n course to be expected; yet his clearness and acumen would\n certainly have enabled him to master the principles of\n geometrical reasoning; nor, in fact, did he so much find a\n difficulty in apprehending demonstrations, as a want of\n interest, and a consequent inability to retain them in his\n memory. A little more practice in the strict logic of geometry,\n a little more familiarity with the physical laws of the\n universe, and the phenomena to which they relate, would possibly\n have repressed the tendency to vague and mystical speculations\n which he was too fond of indulging. In the philosophy of the\n human mind, he was in no danger of the materializing theories of\n some ancient and modern schools; but in shunning this extreme,\n he might sometimes forget that, in the honest pursuit of truth,\n we can shut our eyes to no real phenomena, and that the\n physiology of man must always enter into any valid scheme of his\n psychology.\n\n \"The comparative inferiority which he might show in the usual\n trials of knowledge, sprung in a great measure from the want of\n a prompt and accurate memory. It was the faculty wherein he\n shone the least, according to ordinary observation; though his\n very extensive reach of literature, and his rapidity in\n acquiring languages, sufficed to prove that it was capable of\n being largely exercised. He could remember anything, as a friend\n observed to the Editor, that was associated with an idea. But he\n seemed, at least after he reached manhood, to want almost wholly\n the power, so common with inferior understandings, of retaining\n with regularity and exactness, a number of unimportant\n uninteresting particulars. It would have been nearly impossible\n to make him recollect for three days the date of the battle of\n Marathon, or the names in order of the Athenian months. Nor\n could he repeat poetry, much as he loved it, with the\n correctness often found in young men. It is not improbable, that\n a more steady discipline in early life would have strengthened\n this faculty, or that he might have supplied its deficiency by\n some technical devices; but where the higher powers of intellect\n were so extraordinarily manifested, it would have been\n preposterous to complain of what may perhaps have been a\n necessary consequence of their amplitude, or at least a natural\n result of their exercise.\n\n \"But another reason may be given for his deficiency in those\n unremitting labors which the course of academical education, in\n the present times, is supposed to exact from those who aspire to\n its distinctions. In the first year of his residence at\n Cambridge, symptoms of disordered health, especially in the\n circulatory system, began to show themselves; and it is by no\n means improbable, that these were indications of a tendency to\n derangement of the vital functions, which become ultimately\n fatal. A too rapid determination of blood towards the brain,\n with its concomitant uneasy sensations, rendered him frequently\n incapable of mental fatigue. He had indeed once before, at\n Florence, been affected by symptoms not unlike these. His\n intensity of reflection and feeling also brought on occasionally\n a considerable depression of spirits, which had been painfully\n observed at times by those who watched him most, from the time\n of his leaving Eton, and even before. It was not till after\n several months that he regained a less morbid condition of mind\n and body. This same irregularity of circulation returned again\n in the next spring, but was of less duration. During the third\n year of his Cambridge life, he appeared in much better health.\n\n \"In this year (1831) he obtained the first college prize for an\n English declamation. The subject chosen by him was the conduct\n of the Independent party during the civil war. This exercise was\n greatly admired at the time, but was never printed. In\n consequence of this success, it became incumbent on him,\n according to the custom of the college, to deliver an oration in\n the chapel immediately before the Christmas vacation of the same\n year. On this occasion he selected a subject very congenial to\n his own turn of thought and favorite study, the influence of\n Italian upon English literature. He had previously gained\n another prize for an English essay on the philosophical writings\n of Cicero. This essay is perhaps too excursive from the\n prescribed subject; but his mind was so deeply imbued with the\n higher philosophy, especially that of Plato, with which he was\n very conversant, that he could not be expected to dwell much on\n the praises of Cicero in that respect.\n\n \"Though the bent of Arthur's mind by no means inclined him to\n strict research into facts, he was full as much conversant with\n the great features of ancient and modern history, as from the\n course of his other studies and the habits of his life it was\n possible to expect. He reckoned them, as great minds always do,\n the groundworks of moral and political philosophy, and took no\n pains to acquire any knowledge of this sort from which a\n principle could not be derived or illustrated. To some parts of\n English history, and to that of the French Revolution, he had\n paid considerable attention. He had not read nearly so much of\n the Greek and Latin historians as of the philosophers and poets.\n In the history of literary, and especially of philosophical and\n religious opinions, he was deeply versed, as much so as it is\n possible to apply that term at his age. The following pages\n exhibit proofs of an acquaintance, not crude or superficial,\n with that important branch of literature.\n\n \"His political judgments were invariably prompted by his strong\n sense of right and justice. These, in so young a person, were\n naturally rather fluctuating, and subject to the correction of\n advancing knowledge and experience. Ardent in the cause of those\n he deemed to be oppressed, of which, in one instance, he was led\n to give a proof with more of energy and enthusiasm than\n discretion, he was deeply attached to the ancient institutions\n of his country.\n\n \"He spoke French readily, though with less elegance than\n Italian, till from disuse he lost much of his fluency in the\n latter. In his last fatal tour in Germany, he was rapidly\n acquiring a readiness in the language of that country. The whole\n range of French literature was almost as familiar to him as that\n of England.\n\n \"The society in which Arthur lived most intimately, at Eton and\n at the University, was formed of young men, eminent for natural\n ability, and for delight in what he sought above all things, the\n knowledge of truth, and the perception of beauty. They who loved\n and admired him living, and who now revere his sacred memory, as\n of one to whom, in the fondness of regret, they admit of no\n rival, know best what he was in the daily commerce of life; and\n his eulogy should, on every account, better come from hearts,\n which, if partial, have been rendered so by the experience of\n friendship, not by the affection of nature.\n\n \"Arthur left Cambridge on taking his degree in January 1832. He\n resided from that time with the Editor in London, having been\n entered on the boards of the Inner Temple. It was greatly the\n desire of the Editor that he should engage himself in the study\n of the law; not merely with professional views, but as a useful\n discipline for a mind too much occupied with habits of thought,\n which, ennobling and important as they were, could not but\n separate him from the every-day business of life, and might, by\n their excess, in his susceptible temperament, be productive of\n considerable mischief. He had, during the previous long\n vacation, read with the Editor the Institutes of Justinian, and\n the two works of Heineccius which illustrate them; and he now\n went through Blackstone's Commentaries, with as much of other\n law-books as, in the Editor's judgment, was required for a\n similar purpose. It was satisfactory at that time to perceive\n that, far from showing any of that distaste to legal studies\n which might have been anticipated from some parts of his\n intellectual character, he entered upon them not only with great\n acuteness, but considerable interest. In the month of October\n 1832, he began to see the practical application of legal\n knowledge in the office of an eminent conveyancer, Mr. Walters\n of Lincoln's Inn Fields, with whom he continued till his\n departure from England in the following summer.\n\n \"It was not, however, to be expected, or even desired by any who\n knew how to value him, that he should at once abandon those\n habits of study which had fertilized and invigorated his mind.\n But he now, from some change or other in his course of thinking,\n ceased in a great measure to write poetry, and expressed to more\n than one friend an intention to give it up. The instances after\n his leaving Cambridge were few. The dramatic scene between\n Raffaelle and Fiammetta was written in 1832; and about the same\n time he had a design to translate the _Vita Nuova_ of his\n favorite Dante; a work which he justly prized, as the\n development of that immense genius, in a kind of autobiography,\n which best prepares us for a real insight into the _Divine\n Comedy_. He rendered accordingly into verse most of the sonnets\n which the _Vita Nuova_ contains; but the Editor does not believe\n that he made any progress in the prose translation. These\n sonnets appearing rather too literal, and consequently harsh, it\n has not been thought worth while to print.\n\n \"In the summer of 1832, the appearance of Professor Rosetti's\n _Disquisizioni sullo spirito Antipapale_, in which the writings\n of Arthur's beloved masters, Dante and Petrarch, as well as most\n of the mediaeval literature of Italy, were treated as a series\n of enigmas, to be understood only by a key that discloses a\n latent Carbonarism, a secret conspiracy against the religion of\n their age, excited him to publish his own Remarks in reply. It\n seemed to him the worst of poetical heresies to desert the\n Absolute, the Universal, the Eternal, the Beautiful and True,\n which the Platonic spirit of his literary creed taught him to\n seek in all the higher works of genius, in quest of some\n temporary historical allusion, which could be of no interest\n with posterity. Nothing, however, could be more alien from his\n courteous disposition than to abuse the license of controversy,\n or to treat with intentional disrespect a very ingenious person,\n who had been led on too far in pursuing a course of\n interpretation, which, within certain much narrower limits, it\n is impossible for any one conversant with history not to admit.\n\n \"A very few other anonymous writings occupied his leisure about\n this time. Among these were slight memoirs of Petrarch,\n Voltaire, and Burke, for the Gallery of Portraits, published by\n the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.[38] His time\n was, however, principally devoted, when not engaged at his\n office, to metaphysical researches, and to the history of\n philosophical opinions.\n\n [38] We had read these Lives, and had remarked them, before we\n\t knew whose they were, as being of rare merit. No one could\n\t suppose they were written by one so young. We give his\n\t estimate of the character of Burke. \"The mind of this great\n\t man may perhaps be taken as a representation of the general\n\t characteristics of the English intellect. Its groundwork was\n\t solid, practical, and conversant with the details of\n\t business; but upon this, and secured by this, arose a\n\t superstructure of imagination and moral sentiment. He saw\n\t little, _because it was painful to him_ to see anything\n\t beyond the limits of the national character. In all things,\n\t while he deeply reverenced principles, he chose to deal with\n\t the concrete rather than with abstractions. He studied men\n\t rather than man.\" The words in italics imply an insight into\n\t the deepest springs of human action, the conjunct causes of\n\t what we call character such as few men of large experience\n\t can attain.\n\n \"From the latter part of his residence at Cambridge, a gradual\n but very perceptible improvement in the cheerfulness of his\n spirits gladdened his family and his friends; intervals there\n doubtless were, when the continual seriousness of his habits of\n thought, or the force of circumstances, threw something more of\n gravity into his demeanor; but in general he was animated and\n even gay, renewing or preserving his intercourse with some of\n those he had most valued at Eton and Cambridge. The symptoms of\n deranged circulation which had manifested themselves before,\n ceased to appear, or at least so as to excite his own attention;\n and though it struck those who were most anxious in watching\n him, that his power of enduring fatigue was not quite so great\n as from his frame of body and apparent robustness might have\n been anticipated, nothing gave the least indication of danger\n either to their eyes, or to those of the medical practitioners\n who were in the habit of observing him. An attack of\n intermittent fever, during the prevalent influenza of the spring\n of 1833, may perhaps have disposed his constitution to the last\n fatal blow.\"\n\nTo any one who has watched the history of the disease by which \"so quick\nthis bright thing came to confusion,\" and who knows how near its subject\nmust often, perhaps all his life, have been to that eternity which\noccupied so much of his thoughts and desires, and the secrets of which\nwere so soon to open on his young eyes, there is something very touching\nin this account. Such a state of health would enhance, and tend to\nproduce, by the sensations proper to such a condition, that habitual\nseriousness of thought, that sober judgment, and that tendency to look\nat the true life of things--that deep but gentle and calm sadness, and\nthat occasional sinking of the heart, which make his noble and strong\ninner nature, his resolved mind, so much more impressive and endearing.\n\nThis feeling of personal insecurity--of life being ready to slip\naway--the sensation that this world and its ongoings, its mighty\ninterests, and delicate joys, is ready to be shut up in a moment--this\ninstinctive apprehension of the peril of vehement bodily enjoyment--all\nthis would tend to make him \"walk softly,\" and to keep him from much of\nthe evil that is in the world, and would help him to live soberly,\nrighteously, and godly even in the bright and rich years of his youth.\nHis power of giving himself up to the search after absolute truth, and\nthe contemplation of Supreme goodness, must have been increased by this\nsame organization. But all this delicate feeling, this fineness of\nsense, did rather quicken the energy and fervor of the indwelling\nsoul--the {ti thermon pragma} that burned within. In the quaint words of\nVaughan, it was \"manhood with a female eye.\" These two conditions must,\nas we have said, have made him dear indeed. And by a beautiful law of\nlife, having that organ out of which are the issues of life, under a\nsort of perpetual nearness to suffering, and so liable to pain, he would\nbe more easily moved for others--more alive to their pain--more filled\nwith fellow-feeling.\n\n \"The Editor cannot dwell on anything later. Arthur accompanied\n him to Germany in the beginning of August. In returning to\n Vienna from Pesth, a wet day probably gave rise to an\n intermittent fever, with very slight symptoms, and apparently\n subsiding, when a sudden rush of blood to the head put an\n instantaneous end to his life on the 15th of September 1833. The\n mysteriousness of such a dreadful termination to a disorder\n generally of so little importance, and in this instance of the\n slightest kind, has been diminished by an examination which\n showed a weakness of the cerebral vessels, and a want of\n sufficient energy in the heart. Those whose eyes must long be\n dim with tears, and whose hopes on this side the tomb are broken\n down forever, may cling, as well as they can, to the poor\n consolation of believing that a few more years would, in the\n usual chances of humanity, have severed the frail union of his\n graceful and manly form with the pure spirit that it enshrined.\n\n \"The remains of Arthur were brought to England, and interred on\n the 3d of January 1834, in the chancel of Clevedon Church in\n Somersetshire, belonging to his maternal grandfather Sir Abraham\n Elton, a place selected by the Editor, not only from the\n connection of kindred, but on account of its still and\n sequestered situation, on a lone hill that overhangs the Bristol\n Channel.\n\n \"More ought perhaps to be said--but it is very difficult to\n proceed. From the earliest years of this extraordinary young\n man, his premature abilities were not more conspicuous than an\n almost faultless disposition, sustained by a more calm\n self-command than has often been witnessed in that season of\n life. The sweetness of temper which distinguished his childhood,\n became with the advance of manhood a habitual benevolence, and\n ultimately ripened into that exalted principle of love towards\n God and man, which animated and almost absorbed his soul during\n the latter period of his life, and to which most of the\n following compositions bear such emphatic testimony. He seemed\n to tread the earth as a spirit from some better world; and in\n bowing to the mysterious will which has in mercy removed him,\n perfected by so short a trial, and passing over the bridge which\n separates the seen from the unseen life, in a moment, and, as we\n may believe, without a moment's pang, we must feel not only the\n bereavement of those to whom he was dear, but the loss which\n mankind have sustained by the withdrawing of such a light.\n\n \"A considerable portion of the poetry contained in this volume\n was printed in the year 1830, and was intended by the author to\n be published together with the poems of his intimate friend, Mr.\n Alfred Tennyson. They were however withheld from publication at\n the request of the Editor. The poem of Timbuctoo was written for\n the University prize in 1829, which it did not obtain.\n Notwithstanding its too great obscurity, the subject itself\n being hardly indicated, and the extremely hyperbolical\n importance which the author's brilliant fancy has attached to a\n nest of barbarians, no one can avoid admiring the grandeur of\n his conceptions, and the deep philosophy upon which he has built\n the scheme of his poem. This is however by no means the most\n pleasing of his compositions. It is in the profound reflection,\n the melancholy tenderness, and the religious sanctity of other\n effusions that a lasting charm will be found. A commonplace\n subject, such as those announced for academical prizes generally\n are, was incapable of exciting a mind which, beyond almost every\n other, went straight to the farthest depths that the human\n intellect can fathom, or from which human feelings can be drawn.\n Many short poems of equal beauty with those here printed, have\n been deemed unfit even for the limited circulation they might\n obtain, on account of their unveiling more of emotion than,\n consistently with what is due to him and to others, could be\n exposed to view.\n\n \"The two succeeding essays have never been printed; but were\n read, it is believed, in a literary society at Trinity College,\n or in one to which he afterwards belonged in London. That\n entitled _Theodicaea Novissima_, is printed at the desire of\n some of his intimate friends. A few expressions in it want his\n usual precision; and there are ideas which he might have seen\n cause, in the lapse of time, to modify, independently of what\n his very acute mind would probably have perceived, that his\n hypothesis, like that of Leibnitz, on the origin of evil,\n resolves itself at last into an unproved assumption of its\n necessity. It has however some advantages, which need not be\n mentioned, over that of Leibnitz; and it is here printed, not as\n a solution of the greatest mystery of the universe, but as most\n characteristic of the author's mind, original and sublime,\n uniting, what is very rare except in early youth, a fearless and\n unblenching spirit of inquiry into the highest objects of\n speculation, with the most humble and reverential piety. It is\n probable that in many of his views on such topics he was\n influenced by the writings of Jonathan Edwards, with whose\n opinions on metaphysical and moral subjects, he seems generally\n to have concurred.\n\n \"The extract from a review of Tennyson's poems in a publication\n now extinct, the _Englishman's Magazine_, is also printed at the\n suggestion of a friend. The pieces that follow are reprints, and\n have been already mentioned in this Memoir.\"\n\nWe have given this Memoir almost entire, for the sake both of its\nsubject and its manner--for what in it is the father's as well as for\nwhat is the son's. There is something very touching in the paternal\ncomposure, the judiciousness, the truthfulness, where truth is so\ndifficult to reach through tears, the calm estimate and the subdued\ntenderness, the ever-rising but ever restrained emotion; the father's\nheart throbs throughout.\n\nWe wish we could have given in full the letters from Arthur's friends,\nwhich his father has incorporated in the Memoir. They all bring out in\ndifferent but harmonious ways, his extraordinary moral and intellectual\nworth, his rare beauty of character, and their deep affection.\n\nThe following extract from one seems to us very interesting:--\"Outwardly\nI do not think there was anything remarkable in his habits, except _an\nirregularity with regard to times and places of study_, which may seem\nsurprising in one whose progress in so many directions was so eminently\ngreat and rapid. _He was commonly to be found in some friend's room,\nreading, or canvassing._ I dare say he lost something by this\nirregularity, _but less than perhaps one would at first imagine_. I\nnever saw him idle. He might seem to be lounging, or only amusing\nhimself, but his mind was always active, and active for good. In fact,\nhis energy and quickness of apprehension did not stand in need of\noutward aid.\" There is much in this worthy of more extended notice. Such\nminds as his probably grow best in this way, are best left to themselves\nto glide on at their own sweet wills; the stream was too deep and clear,\nand perhaps too entirely bent on its own errand, to be dealt with or\nregulated by any art or device. The same friend sums up his character\nthus:--\"I have met with no man his superior in metaphysical subtlety; no\nman his equal as a philosophical critic on works of taste; no man whose\nviews on all subjects connected with the duties and dignities of\nhumanity were more large, and generous, and enlightened.\" And all this\nsaid of a youth of twenty--_heu nimium brevis aevi decus et desiderium!_\n\nWe have given little of this verse; and what we do give is taken at\nrandom. We agree entirely in his father's estimate of his poetical gift\nand art, but his mind was too serious, too thoughtful, too intensely\ndedicated to truth and the God of truth, to linger long in the pursuit\nof beauty; he was on his way to God, and could rest in nothing short of\nHim, otherwise he might have been a poet of genuine excellence.\n\n \"Dark, dark, yea, 'irrecoverably dark,\n Is the soul's eye; yet how it strives and battles\n Thorough th' impenetrable gloom to fix\n That master light, the secret truth of things,\n Which is the body of the infinite God!\"\n\n \"Sure, we are leaves of one harmonious bower,\n Fed by a sap that never will be scant,\n All-permeating, all-producing mind;\n And in our several parcellings of doom\n We but fulfil the beauty of the whole.\n Oh, madness! if a leaf should dare complain\n Of its dark verdure, and aspire to be\n The gayer, brighter thing that wantons near.\"\n\n \"Oh, blessing and delight of my young heart,\n Maiden, who wast so lovely, and so pure,\n I know not in what region now thou art,\n Or whom thy gentle eyes in joy assure.\n Not the old hills on which we gazed together,\n Not the old faces which we both did love,\n Not the old books, whence knowledge we did gather,\n Not these, but others now thy fancies move.\n I would I knew thy present hopes and fears,\n All thy companions with their pleasant talk,\n And the clear aspect which thy dwelling wears:\n So, though in body absent, I might walk\n With thee in thought and feeling, till thy mood\n Did sanctify mine own to peerless good.\"\n\n \"Alfred, I would that you beheld me now,\n Sitting beneath a mossy ivied wall\n On a quaint bench, which to that structure old\n Winds an accordant curve. Above my head\n _Dilates immeasurable a wild of leaves,_\n Seeming received into the blue expanse\n That vaults this summer noon.\"\n\n \"Still here--thou bast not faded from my sight,\n _Nor all the music round thee from mine ear;_\n _Still grace flows from thee to the brightening year,_\n _And all the birds laugh out in wealthier light._\n Still am I free to close my happy eyes,\n And paint upon the gloom thy mimic form,\n That soft white neck, that cheek in beauty warm,\n And brow half hidden where yon ringlet lies:\n With, oh! the blissful knowledge all the while\n That I can lift at will each curved lid,\n And my fair dream most highly realize.\n The time will come, 'tis ushered by my sighs,\n When I may shape the dark, but vainly bid\n True light restore that form, those looks, that smile.\"\n\n \"The garden trees _are busy with the shower_\n That fell ere sunset: now methinks they talk,\n Lowly and sweetly as befits the hour,\n One to another down the grassy walk.\n Hark the laburnum from his opening flower,\n This cherry creeper greets in whisper light,\n While the grim fir, rejoicing in the night,\n Hoarse mutters to the murmuring sycamore,[39]\n What shall I deem their converse? would they hail\n The wild gray light that fronts yon massive cloud,\n Or the half bow, rising like pillar'd fire?\n Or are they fighting faintly for desire\n That with May dawn their leaves may be o'erflowed,\n And dews about their feet may never fail?\"\n\n [39] This will remind the reader of a fine passage in _Edwin the\n Fair_, on the specific differences in the sounds made by the\n ash, the elm, the fir, &c., when moved by the wind; and of\n some lines by Landor on flowers speaking to each other; and\n of something more exquisite than either, in _Consuelo_--the\n description of the flowers in the old monastic garden, at\n \"the sweet hour of prime.\"\n\nIn the Essay, entitled _Theodicaea Novissima_, from which the following\npassages are taken to the great injury of its general effect, he sets\nhimself to the task of doing his utmost to clear up the mystery of the\nexistence of such things as sin and suffering in the universe of a being\nlike God. He does it fearlessly, but like a child. It is in the spirit\nof his friend's words,--\n\n \"An infant crying in the night,\n An infant crying for the light,\n And with no language but a cry.\"\n\n \"Then was I as a child that cries,\n But, crying, knows his father near.\"\n\nIt is not a mere exercitation of the intellect, it is an endeavor to get\nnearer God--to assert his eternal Providence, and vindicate his ways to\nmen. We know no performance more wonderful for such a boy. Pascal might\nhave written it. As was to be expected, the tremendous subject remains\nwhere he found it--his glowing love and genius cast a gleam here and\nthere across its gloom; but it is brief as the lightning in the collied\nnight--the jaws of darkness do devour it up--this secret belongs to God.\nAcross its deep and dazzling darkness, and from out its abyss of thick\ncloud, \"all dark, dark, irrecoverably dark,\" no steady ray has ever, or\nwill ever, come,--over its face its own darkness must brood, till He to\nwhom alone the darkness and the light are both alike, to whom the night\nshineth as the day, says, \"Let there be light!\" There is, we all know, a\ncertain awful attraction, a nameless charm for all thoughtful spirits,\nin this mystery, \"the greatest in the universe,\" as Mr. Hallam truly\nsays; and it is well for us at times, so that we have pure eyes and a\nclean heart, to turn aside and look into its gloom; but it is not good\nto busy ourselves in clever speculations about it, or briskly to\ncriticize the speculations of others--it is a wise and pious saying of\nAugustin, _Verius cogitatur Deus, quam dicitur; et verius est quam\ncogitatur_.\n\n \"I wish to be understood as considering Christianity in the\n present Essay rather in its relation to the intellect, as\n constituting the higher philosophy, than in its far more\n important bearing upon the hearts and destinies of us all. I\n shall propose the question in this form, 'Is there ground for\n believing that the existence of moral evil is absolutely\n necessary to the fulfilment of God's essential love for Christ?'\n (_i. e._, of the Father for Christ, or of {ho pater} for {ho\n logos}).\n\n \"'Can man by searching find out God?' I believe not. I believe\n that the unassisted efforts of man's reason have not established\n the existence and attributes of Deity on so sure a basis as the\n Deist imagines. However sublime may be the notion of a supreme\n original mind, and however naturally human feelings adhered to\n it, the reasons by which it was justified were not, in my\n opinion, sufficient to clear it from considerable doubt and\n confusion.... I hesitate not to say that I derive from\n Revelation a conviction of Theism, which without that assistance\n would have been but a dark and ambiguous hope. _I see that the\n Bible fits into every fold of the human heart. I am a man, and I\n believe it to be God's book because it is man's book._ It is\n true that the Bible affords me no additional means of\n demonstrating the falsity of Atheism; _if mind had nothing to do\n with the formation of the Universe, doubtless whatever had was\n competent also to make the Bible_; but I have gained this\n advantage, that my feelings and thoughts can no longer refuse\n their assent to _what is evidently framed to engage that assent;\n and what is it to me that I cannot disprove the bare logical\n possibility of my whole nature being fallacious? To seek for a\n certainty above certainty, an evidence beyond necessary belief,\n is the very lunacy of skepticism_: we must trust our own\n faculties, or we can put no trust in anything, save that moment\n we call the present, which escapes us while we articulate its\n name. _I am determined therefore to receive the Bible as\n Divinely authorized, and the scheme of human and Divine things\n which it contains, as essentially true._\"\n\n \"I may further observe, that however much we should rejoice to\n discover that the eternal scheme of God--the necessary\n completion, let us remember, of his Almighty Nature--did not\n require the absolute perdition of any spirit called by Him into\n existence, we are certainly not entitled to consider the\n perpetual misery of many individuals as incompatible with\n sovereign love.\"\n\n \"In the Supreme Nature those two capacities of Perfect Love and\n Perfect Joy are indivisible. Holiness and Happiness, says an old\n divine, are two several notions of one thing. Equally\n inseparable are the notions of Opposition to Love and Opposition\n to Bliss. _Unless therefore the heart of a created being is at\n one with the heart of God, it cannot but be miserable._\n Moreover, there is no possibility of continuing forever partly\n with God and partly against him; we must either be capable by\n our nature of entire accordance with His will, or we must be\n incapable of anything but misery, further than He may for awhile\n 'not impute our trespasses to us,' that is, He may interpose\n some temporary barrier between sin and its attendant pain. _For\n in the Eternal Idea of God a created spirit is perhaps not seen,\n as a series of successive states_, of which some that are evil\n might be compensated by others that are good, _but as one\n indivisible object of these almost infinitely divisible modes_,\n and that either in accordance with His own nature, or in\n opposition to it....\n\n \"Before the gospel was preached to man, how could a human soul\n have this love, and this consequent life? I see no way; but now\n that Christ has excited our love for him by showing unutterable\n love for us; now that we know him as an Elder Brother, a being\n of like thoughts, feelings, sensations, sufferings, with\n ourselves, it has become possible to love as God loves, that is,\n to love Christ, and thus to become united in heart to God.\n Besides, Christ is the express image of God's person; in loving\n him we are sure we are in a state of readiness to love the\n Father, whom we see, he tells us, when we see him. Nor is this\n all; the tendency of love is towards a union so intimate as\n virtually to amount to identification; when then by affection\n towards Christ we have become blended with his being, the beams\n of eternal love, falling, as ever, on the one beloved object,\n will include us in him, and their returning flashes of love out\n of his personality will carry along with them some from our own,\n since ours has become confused with his, and so shall we be one\n with Christ and through Christ with God. Thus then we see the\n great effect of the Incarnation, as far as our nature is\n concerned, _was to render human love for the Most High a\n possible thing_. The Law had said, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy\n God with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy\n strength;' and could men have lived by law, 'which is the\n strength of sin,' verily righteousness and life would have been\n by that law. But it was not possible, and all were concluded\n under sin, that in Christ might be the deliverance of all. I\n believe that Redemption\" (_i.e._, what Christ has done and\n suffered for mankind) \"is universal, in so far as it left no\n obstacle between man and God, but man's own will: that indeed is\n in the power of God's election, with whom alone rest the abysmal\n secrets of personality; but as far as Christ is concerned, his\n death was for all, since his intentions and affections were\n equally directed to all, and 'none who come to him will he in\n any wise cast out.'\n\n \"I deprecate any hasty rejection of these thoughts as novelties.\n Christianity is indeed, as St. Augustin says, 'pulchritudo tam\n antiqua;' but he adds, 'tam nova,' for it is capable of\n presenting to every mind a new face of truth. The great\n doctrine, which in my judgment these observations tend to\n strengthen and illumine, _the doctrine of personal love for a\n personal God_, is assuredly no novelty, but has in all times\n been the vital principle of the Church. Many are the forms of\n antichristian heresy, which for a season have depressed and\n obscured that principle of life; but its nature is connective\n and resurgent; and neither the Papal Hierarchy with its pomp of\n systematized errors, not the worse apostasy of latitudinarian\n Protestantism, have ever so far prevailed, but that many from\n age to age have proclaimed and vindicated the eternal gospel of\n love, believing, as I also firmly believe, that any opinion\n which tends to keep out of sight the living and loving God,\n whether it substitute for Him an idol, an occult agency, or a\n formal creed, can be nothing better than a vain and portentous\n shadow projected from the selfish darkness of unregenerate man.\"\n\nThe following is from the Review of Tennyson's Poems; we do not know\nthat during the lapse of eighteen years anything better has been said:--\n\n \"Undoubtedly the true poet addresses himself, in all his\n conceptions, to the common nature of us all. Art is a lofty\n tree, and may shoot up far beyond our grasp, but its roots are\n in daily life and experience. Every bosom contains the elements\n of those complex emotions which the artist feels, and every head\n can, to a certain extent, go over in itself the process of their\n combination, so as to understand his expressions and sympathize\n with his state. _But this requires exertion_; more or less,\n indeed, according to the difference of occasion, but always some\n degree of exertion. For since the emotions of the poet during\n composition follow a regular law of association, it follows that\n to accompany their progress up to the harmonious prospect of the\n whole, and to perceive the proper dependence of every step on\n that which preceded, it is absolutely necessary _to start from\n the same point, i.e._, clearly to apprehend that leading\n sentiment of the poet's mind, by their conformity to which the\n host of suggestions are arranged. _Now this requisite exertion\n is not willingly made by the large majority of readers. It is so\n easy to judge capriciously, and according to indolent impulse!_\"\n\n \"Those different powers of poetic disposition, the energies of\n Sensitive, of Reflective, or Passionate Emotion, which in former\n times were intermingled, and derived from mutual support an\n extensive empire over the feelings of men, were now restrained\n within separate spheres of agency. The whole system no longer\n worked harmoniously, and by intrinsic harmony acquired external\n freedom; but there arose a violent and unusual action in the\n several component functions, each for itself, all striving to\n reproduce the regular power which the whole had once enjoyed.\n _Hence the melancholy which so evidently characterizes the\n spirit of modern poetry_; hence that return of the mind upon\n itself, and the habit of seeking relief in idiosyncrasies rather\n than community of interest. _In the old times the poetic impulse\n went along with the general impulse of the nation._\n\n \"One of the faithful Islam, a poet in the truest and highest\n sense, we are anxious to present to our readers.... He sees all\n the forms of Nature with the '_eruditus oculus_,' and his ear\n has a fairy fineness. There is _a strange earnestness in his\n worship of beauty_, which throws a charm over his impassioned\n song, more easily felt than described, and not to be escaped by\n those who have once felt it. We think that he has _more\n definiteness and roundness of general conception_ than the late\n Mr. Keats, and is much more free from blemishes of diction and\n hasty capriccios of fancy.... The author imitates nobody; _we\n recognize the spirit of his age, but not the individual form of\n this or that writer_. His thoughts bear no more resemblance to\n Byron or Scott, Shelley or Coleridge, than to Homer or Calderon,\n Ferdusi or Calidasa. We have remarked five distinctive\n excellencies of his own manner. First, his luxuriance of\n imagination, and at the same time his control over it. Secondly,\n his power of embodying himself in ideal characters, or rather\n modes of character, with such extreme accuracy of adjustment,\n that the circumstances of the narration seem to have a natural\n correspondence with the predominant feeling, and, as it were, to\n be evolved from it by assimilative force. Thirdly, his vivid,\n picturesque delineation of objects, and the peculiar skill with\n which he holds all of them _fused_, to borrow a metaphor from\n science, in a medium of strong emotion. Fourthly, the variety of\n his lyrical measures, and exquisite modulation of harmonious\n words and cadences to the swell and fall of the feelings\n expressed. Fifthly, the elevated habits of thought, implied in\n these compositions, and imparting a mellow soberness of tone,\n more impressive, to our minds, than if the author had drawn up a\n set of opinions in verse, and sought to instruct the\n understanding, _rather than to communicate the love of beauty to\n the heart_.\"\n\nWhat follows is justly thought and well said.\n\n \"And is it not a noble thing, that the English tongue is, as it\n were, the common focus and point of union to which opposite\n beauties converge? Is it a trifle that we temper energy with\n softness, strength with flexibility, capaciousness of sound with\n pliancy of idiom? Some, I know, insensible to these virtues, and\n ambitious of I know not what unattainable decomposition, prefer\n to utter funeral praises over the grave of departed Anglo-Saxon,\n or, starting with convulsive shudder, are ready to leap from\n surrounding Latinisms into the kindred, sympathetic arms of\n modern German. For myself, I neither share their regret, nor\n their terror. Willing at all times to pay filial homage to the\n shades of Hengist and Horsa, and to admit they have laid the\n base of our compound language; or, if you will, have prepared\n the soil from which the chief nutriment of the goodly tree, our\n British oak, must be derived, I am yet proud to confess that I\n look with sentiments more exulting and more reverential to the\n bonds by which the law of the universe has fastened me to my\n distant brethren of the same Caucasian race; to the privileges\n which I, an inhabitant of the gloomy North, share in common with\n climates imparadised in perpetual summer, to the universality\n and efficacy resulting from blended intelligence, which, while\n it endears in our eyes the land of our fathers as a seat of\n peculiar blessing, tends to elevate and expand our thoughts into\n communion with humanity at large; and, in the 'sublimer spirit'\n of the poet, to make us feel\n\n \"That God is everywhere--the God who framed\n Mankind to be one mighty family,\n Himself our Father, and the world our home.\"\n\nWhat nice shading of thought do his remarks on Petrarch discover!\n\n \"But it is not so much to his direct adoptions that I refer, _as\n to the general modulation of thought, that clear softness of his\n images, that energetic self-possession of his conceptions, and\n that melodious repose in which are held together all the\n emotions he delineates_.\"\n\nEvery one who knows anything of himself, and of his fellow-men, will\nacknowledge the wisdom of what follows. It displays an intimate\nknowledge both of the constitution and history of man, and there is much\nin it suited to our present need:--\n\n \"_I do not hesitate to express my conviction, that the spirit of\n the critical philosophy, as seen by its fruits in all the\n ramifications of art, literature, and morality, is as much more\n dangerous than the spirit of mechanical philosophy_, as it is\n fairer in appearance, and more capable of alliance with our\n natural feelings of enthusiasm and delight. Its dangerous\n tendency is this, that it perverts those very minds, whose\n office it was to resist the perverse impulses of society, and to\n proclaim truth under the dominion of falsehood. However\n precipitate may be at any time the current of public opinion,\n bearing along the mass of men to the grosser agitations of life,\n and to such schemes of belief as make these the prominent\n object, _there will always be in reserve a force of antagonist\n opinion, strengthened by opposition, and attesting the sanctity\n of those higher principles, which are despised or forgotten by\n the majority_. These men _are secured by natural temperament_\n and peculiar circumstances from participating in the common\n delusion; but if some other and deeper fallacy be invented; if\n some more subtle beast of the field should speak to them in\n wicked flattery; if a digest of intellectual aphorisms can be\n substituted in their minds for a code of living truths, and the\n lovely semblances of beauty, truth, affection, can be made first\n to obscure the presence, and then to conceal the loss, of that\n religious humility, without which, as their central life, all\n these are but dreadful shadows; if so fatal a stratagem can be\n successfully practised, I see not what hope remains for a people\n against whom the gates of hell have so prevailed.\"\n\n \"But the number of pure artists is small: few souls are so\n finely tempered as to preserve the delicacy of meditative\n feeling, untainted by the allurements of accidental suggestion.\n The voice of the critical conscience is still and small, like\n that of the moral: it cannot entirely be stifled where it has\n been heard, but it may be disobeyed. Temptations are never\n wanting: some immediate and temporary effect can be produced at\n less expense of inward exertion than the high and more ideal\n effect which art demands: it is much easier to pander to the\n ordinary and often recurring wish for excitement, than to\n promote the rare and difficult intuition of beauty. _To raise\n the many to his own real point of view, the artist must employ\n his energies, and create energy in others: to descend to their\n position is less noble, but practicable with ease._ If I may be\n allowed the metaphor, one partakes of the nature of redemptive\n power; the other of that self-abased and degenerate will, which\n 'flung from his splendors' the fairest star in heaven.\"\n\n \"_Revelation is a voluntary approximation of the Infinite Being\n to the ways and thoughts of finite humanity._ But until this\n step has been taken by Almighty Grace, how should man have a\n warrant for loving with all his heart and mind and strength?...\n Without the gospel, nature exhibits a want of harmony between\n our intrinsic constitution, and the system in which it is\n placed. But Christianity has made up the difference. It is\n possible and natural to love the Father, who has made us his\n children by the spirit of adoption: it is possible and natural\n to love the Elder Brother, who was, in all things, like as we\n are, except sin, and can succor those in temptation, having been\n himself tempted. _Thus the Christian faith is the necessary\n complement of a sound ethical system._\"\n\nThere is something to us very striking in the words \"Revelation is a\n_voluntary_ approximation of the Infinite Being.\" This states the case\nwith an accuracy and a distinctness not at all common among either the\nopponents or the apologists of _revealed religion_ in the ordinary sense\nof the expression. In one sense God is forever revealing himself. His\nheavens are forever telling his glory, and the firmament showing his\nhandiwork; day unto day is uttering speech, and night unto night is\nshowing knowledge concerning him. But in the word of the truth of the\ngospel, God draws near to his creatures; he bows his heavens, and comes\ndown:\n\n \"That glorious form, that light unsufferable,\n And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,\"\n\nhe lays aside. The Word dwelt with men. \"Come then, let _us_ reason\ntogether;\"--\"Waiting to be gracious;\"--\"Behold, I stand at the door, and\nknock; if any man open to me, I will come in to him, and sup with him,\nand he with me.\" It is the father seeing his son while yet a great way\noff, and having compassion, and running to him and falling on his neck\nand kissing him; for \"it was meet for us to rejoice, for this my son was\ndead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.\" Let no man confound\nthe voice of God in his Works with the voice of God in his Word; they\nare utterances of the same infinite heart and will; they are in absolute\nharmony; together they make up \"that undisturbed song of pure concent;\"\none \"perfect diapason;\" but they are distinct; they are meant to be so.\nA poor traveller, \"weary and waysore,\" is stumbling in unknown places\nthrough the darkness of a night of fear, with no light near him, the\neverlasting stars twinkling far off in their depths, and yet unrisen\nsun, or the waning moon, sending up their pale beams into the upper\nheavens, but all this is distant, and bewildering for his feet,\ndoubtless better much than outer darkness, beautiful and full of God, if\nhe could have the heart to look up, and the eyes to make use of its\nvague light; but he is miserable, and afraid, his next step is what he\nis thinking of; a lamp secured against all winds of doctrine is put into\nhis hands, it may, in some respects, widen the circle of darkness, but\nit will cheer his feet, it will tell them what to do next. What a silly\nfool he would be to throw away that lantern, or draw down the shutters,\nand make it dark to him, while it sits \"i' the centre and enjoys bright\nday,\" and all upon the philosophical ground that its light was of the\nsame kind as the stars', and that it was beneath the dignity of human\nnature to do anything but struggle on and be lost in the attempt to get\nthrough the wilderness and the night by the guidance of those \"natural\"\nlights, which, though they are from heaven, have so often led the\nwanderer astray. The dignity of human nature indeed! Let him keep his\nlantern till the glad sun is up, with healing under his wings. Let him\ntake good heed to the \"sure\" {logon} while in this {auchmero topo}--this\ndark, damp, unwholesome place, \"till the day dawn and {phosphoros}--the\nday-star--arise.\" Nature and the Bible, the Works and the Word of God,\nare two distinct things. In the mind of their Supreme Author they dwell\nin perfect peace, in that unspeakable unity which is of his essence; and\nto us his children, every day their harmony, their mutual relations, are\ndiscovering themselves; but let us beware of saying all nature is a\nrevelation as the Bible is, and all the Bible is natural as nature is:\nthere is a perilous juggle here.\n\nThe following passage develops Arthur Hallam's views on religious\nfeeling; this was the master-idea of his mind, and it would not be easy\nto overrate its importance. \"My son, give me thine heart;\"--\"Thou shalt\n_love_ the Lord thy God;\"--\"The fool hath said in his _heart_, There is\nno God.\" He expresses the same general idea in these words, remarkable\nin themselves, still more so as being the thought of one so young. \"The\nwork of intellect is posterior to the work of feeling. _The latter lies\nat the foundation of the man_; it is his proper self--the peculiar thing\nthat characterizes him as an individual. No two men are alike in\nfeeling; but conceptions of the understanding, when distinct, are\nprecisely similar in all--the ascertained relations of truths are the\ncommon property of the race.\"\n\nTennyson, we have no doubt, had this thought of his friend in his mind,\nin the following lines; it is an answer to the question, Can man by\nsearching find out God?--\n\n \"I found Him not in world or sun,\n Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye;\n Nor thro' the questions men may try,\n The petty cobwebs we have spun:\n\n \"If e'er when faith had fallen asleep,\n I heard a voice 'believe no more,'\n And heard an ever-breaking shore\n That tumbled in the godless deep;\n\n \"_A warmth within the breast would melt_\n The freezing reason's colder part,\n _And like a man in wrath, the heart_\n _Stood up and answered, 'I have felt._'\n\n \"No, like a child in doubt and fear:\n But that blind clamor made me wise;\n Then was I as a child that cries,\n But, crying, knows his father near;\n\n \"And what I seem beheld again\n What is, and no man understands:\n And out of darkness came the hands\n That reach thro' nature, moulding men.\"\n\nThis is a subject of the deepest personal as well as speculative\ninterest. In the works of Augustin, of Baxter, Howe, and Jonathan\nEdwards, and of Alexander Knox, our readers will find how large a place\nthe religious affections held, in their view of Divine truth as well as\nof human duty. The last-mentioned writer expresses himself thus:--\"Our\nsentimental faculties are far stronger than our cogitative; and the best\nimpressions on the latter will be but the moonshine of the mind, if they\nare alone. Feeling will be best excited by sympathy; rather, it cannot\nbe excited in any other way. Heart must act upon heart--the idea of a\nliving person being essential to all intercourse of heart. You cannot by\nany possibility _cordialize_ with a mere _ens rationis_. 'The Word was\nmade flesh, and dwelt among us,' otherwise we could not 'have beheld his\nglory,' much less 'received of his fulness.'\"[40]\n\n [40] _Remains_, vol. iii. p. 105.\n\nOur young author thus goes on:--\n\n \"This opens upon us an ampler view in which the subject deserves\n to be considered, and a relation still more direct and close\n between the Christian religion and the passion of love. What is\n the distinguishing character of Hebrew literature, which\n separates it by so broad a line of demarcation from that of\n every ancient people? Undoubtedly the sentiment of _erotic\n devotion_ which pervades it. Their poets never represent the\n Deity as an impassive principle, a mere organizing intellect,\n removed at infinite distance from human hopes and fears. He is\n for them a being of like passions with themselves,[41]\n _requiring heart for heart, and capable of inspiring affection\n because capable of feeling and returning it_. Awful indeed are\n the thunders of his utterance and the clouds that surround his\n dwelling-place; very terrible is the vengeance he executes on\n the nations that forget him: but to his chosen people, and\n especially to the men 'after his own heart,' whom he anoints\n from the midst of them, his 'still, small voice' speaks in\n sympathy and loving-kindness. Every Hebrew, while his breast\n glowed with patriotic enthusiasm at those promises, which he\n shared as one of the favored race, had a yet deeper source of\n emotion, from which gushed perpetually the aspirations of prayer\n and thanksgiving. He might consider himself alone in the\n presence of his God; the single being to whom a great revelation\n had been made, and over whose head an 'exceeding weight of\n glory' was suspended. For him the rocks of Horeb had trembled,\n and the waters of the Red Sea were parted in their course. The\n word given on Sinai with such solemn pomp of ministration was\n given to his own individual soul, and brought him into immediate\n communion with his Creator. That awful Being could never be put\n away from him. He was about his path, and about his bed, and\n knew all his thoughts long before. _Yet this tremendous,\n enclosing presence was a presence of love. It was a manifold,\n everlasting manifestation of one deep feeling--a desire for\n human affection._[42] Such a belief, while it enlisted even\n pride and self-interest on the side of piety, had a direct\n tendency to excite the best passions of our nature. Love is not\n long asked in vain from generous dispositions. A Being, never\n absent, but standing beside the life of each man with ever\n watchful tenderness, and recognized, though invisible, in every\n blessing that befell them from youth to age, became naturally\n the object of their warmest affections. Their belief in him\n could not exist without producing, as a necessary effect, that\n profound impression _of passionate individual attachment_ which\n in the Hebrew authors always mingles with and vivifies their\n faith in the Invisible. All the books of the Old Testament are\n breathed upon by this breath of life. Especially is it to be\n found in that beautiful collection, entitled the Psalms of\n David, which remains, after some thousand years, perhaps the\n most perfect form in which the religious sentiment of man has\n been embodied.\n\n [41] \"An unfortunate reference (Acts xiv. 15), for the apostle's\n\t declaration is, that he and his brethren were of 'like\n\t passions\" (James v. 17);--liable to the same imperfections\n\t and mutations of thought and feeling as other men, and as\n\t the Lystrans supposed their gods to be; while the God\n\t proclaimed by him to them is not so. And _that_ God is the\n\t God of the Jews as well as of the Christians; for there is\n\t but _one_ God. Hallam's thought is an important and just\n\t one, but not developed with his usual nice accuracy.\"\n\n\t For this note, as for much else, I am indebted to my father,\n\t whose powers of compressed thought I wish I had inherited.\n\n\t [42] Abraham \"was called the friend of God;\" \"with him (Moses)\n\t will I (Jehovah) speak mouth to mouth, even\n\t apparently,\"--\"as a man to his friend;\" David was \"a man\n\t after mine own heart.\"\n\n \"But what is true of Judaism is yet more true of Christianity:\n '_matre pulchra filia pulchrior_.' In addition to all the\n characters of Hebrew Monotheism, _there exists in the doctrine\n of the Cross a peculiar and inexhaustible treasure for the\n affectionate feelings_. The idea of the {Theanthropos}, the God\n whose goings forth have been from everlasting, yet visible to\n men for their redemption as an earthly, temporal creature,\n living, acting, and suffering among themselves, then (which is\n yet more important) transferring to the unseen place of his\n spiritual agency the same humanity he wore on earth, so that the\n lapse of generations can in no way affect the conception of his\n identity; this is the most powerful thought that ever addressed\n itself to a human imagination. It is the {pou sto}, which alone\n was wanted to move the world. Here was solved at once the great\n problem which so long had distressed the teachers of mankind,\n how to make _virtue the object of passion_, and to secure at\n once the warmest enthusiasm in the heart with the clearest\n perception of right and wrong in the understanding. The\n character of the blessed Founder of our faith became an abstract\n of morality to determine the judgment, _while at the same time\n it remained personal, and liable to love_. The written word and\n established church prevented a degeneration into ungoverned\n mysticism, but the predominant principle of vital religion\n always remained that of self-sacrifice to the Saviour. Not only\n the higher divisions of moral duties, but the simple, primary\n impulses of benevolence, were subordinated to this new absorbing\n passion. The world was loved 'in Christ alone.' The brethren\n were members of his mystical body. All the other bonds that had\n fastened down the spirit of the universe to our narrow round of\n earth were as nothing in comparison to this golden chain of\n suffering and self-sacrifice, which at once riveted the heart of\n man to one who, like himself, was acquainted with grief. _Pain\n is the deepest thing we have_ in our nature, and union through\n pain has always seemed more real and more holy than any\n other.\"[43]\n\n [43] This is the passage referred to in Henry Taylor's delightful\n\t _Notes from Life_ (\"Essay on Wisdom\"):--\n\n\t \"Fear, indeed, is the mother of foresight: spiritual fear,\n\t of a foresight that reaches beyond the grave; temporal fear,\n\t of a foresight that falls short; but without fear there is\n\t neither the one foresight nor the other; and as pain has\n\t been truly said to be 'the deepest thing in our nature,' so\n\t is it fear that will bring the depths of our nature within\n\t our knowledge. A great capacity of _suffering_ belongs to\n\t genius; and it has been observed that an alternation of\n\t joyfulness and dejection is quite as characteristic of the\n\t man of genius as intensity in either kind.\" In his _Notes\n\t from Books_, p. 216, he recurs to it:--\"'Pain,' says a\n\t writer whose early death will not prevent his being long\n\t remembered, 'pain is the deepest thing that we have in our\n\t nature, and union through pain has always seemed more real\n\t and more holy than any other.'\"\n\nThere is a sad pleasure,--_non ingrata amaritudo_, and a sort of\nmeditative tenderness, in contemplating the little life of this \"dear\nyouth,\" and in letting the mind rest upon these his earnest thoughts; to\nwatch his keen and fearless, but child-like spirit, moving itself\naright--going straight onward \"along the lines of limitless\ndesires\"--throwing himself into the very deepest of the ways of God, and\nstriking out as a strong swimmer striketh out his hands to swim; to see\nhim \"mewing his mighty youth, and kindling his undazzled eye at the\nfountain itself of heavenly radiance:\"\n\n \"Light intellectual, and full of love,\n Love of true beauty, therefore full of joy,\n Joy, every other sweetness far above.\"\n\nIt is good for every one to look upon such a sight, and as we look, to\nlove. We should all be the better for it; and should desire to be\nthankful for, and to use aright a gift so good and perfect, coming down\nas it does from above, from the Father of lights, in whom alone there is\nno variableness, neither shadow of turning.\n\nThus it is, that to each one of us the death of Arthur Hallam--his\nthoughts and affections--his views of God, of our relations to Him, of\nduty, of the meaning and worth of this world, and the next,--where he\nnow is, have an individual significance. He is bound up in our bundle of\nlife; we must be the better or the worse of having known what manner of\nman he was; and in a sense less peculiar, but not less true, each of us\nmay say,\n\n ----\"The tender grace of a day that is dead\n Will never come back to me.\"\n\n ----\"O for the touch of a vanished hand,\n And the sound of a voice that is still!\"\n\n \"God gives us love! Something to love\n He lends us; but when love is grown\n To ripeness, that on which it throve\n Falls off, and love is left alone:\n\n \"This is the curse of time. Alas!\n In grief we are not all unlearned;\n Once, through our own doors Death did pass;\n One went, who never hath returned.\n\n \"This star\n Rose with us, through a little arc\n Of heaven, nor having wandered far,\n Shot on the sudden into dark.\n\n \"Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace;\n Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul,\n While the stars burn, the moons increase,\n And the great ages onward roll.\n\n \"Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet,\n Nothing comes to thee new or strange,\n Sleep, full of rest from head to feet;\n Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.\"\n\n_Vattene in pace, alma beata e bella._--Go in peace, soul beautiful and\nblessed.\n\n\"O man greatly beloved, go thou thy way till the end, for thou shalt\nrest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.\"--DANIEL.\n\n * * * * *\n\n\"Lord, I have viewed this world over, in which thou hast set me; I have\ntried how this and that thing will fit my spirit, and the design of my\ncreation, and can find nothing on which to rest, for nothing here doth\nitself rest, but such things as please me for a while, in some degree,\nvanish and flee as shadows from before me. Lo! I come to Thee--the\nEternal Being--the Spring of Life--the Centre of rest--the Stay of the\nCreation--the Fulness of all things. I join myself to Thee; with Thee I\nwill lead my life, and spend my days, with whom I aim to dwell forever,\nexpecting, when my little time is over, to be taken up ere long into thy\neternity.\"--JOHN HOWE, _The Vanity of Man as Mortal_.\n\n_Necesse est tanquam immaturam mortem ejus defleam: si tamen fas est aut\nflere, aut omnino mortem vocare, qua tanti juvenis mortalitas magis\nfinita quam vita est. Vivit enim, vivetque semper, atque etiam latius in\nmemoria hominum et sermone versabitur, postquam ab oculis recessit._\n\n * * * * *\n\nThe above notice was published in 1851. On sending to Mr. Hallam a copy\nof the _Review_ in which it appeared, I expressed my hope that he would\nnot be displeased by what I had done. I received the following kind and\nbeautiful reply:--\n\n \"WILTON CRESCENT, _Feb. 1, 1851._\n\n \"DEAR SIR,--It would be ungrateful in me to feel any displeasure\n at so glowing an eulogy on my dear eldest son Arthur, though\n after such a length of time, so unusual, as you have written in\n the _North British Review_. I thank you, on the contrary, for\n the strong language of admiration you have employed, though it\n may expose me to applications for copies of the _Remains_, which\n I have it not in my power to comply with. I was very desirous to\n have lent you a copy, at your request, but you have succeeded\n elsewhere.\n\n \"You are probably aware that I was prevented from doing this by\n a great calamity, very similar in its circumstances to that I\n had to deplore in 1833--the loss of another son, equal in\n virtues, hardly inferior in abilities, to him whom you have\n commemorated. This has been an unspeakable affliction to me, and\n at my advanced age, seventy-three years, I can have no resource\n but the hope, in God's mercy, of a reunion with them both. The\n resemblance in their characters was striking, and I had often\n reflected how wonderfully my first loss had been repaired by the\n substitution, as it might be called, of one so closely\n representing his brother. I send you a brief Memoir, drawn up by\n two friends, with very little alteration of my own.--I am, Dear\n Sir, faithfully yours, HENRY HALLAM.\n\n \"DR. BROWN,\n \"Edinburgh.\"\n\n * * * * *\n\nThe following extracts, from the _Memoir of Henry Fitzmaurice Hallam_\nmentioned above, which has been appended to a reprint of his brother's\n_Remains_ (for private circulation), form a fitting close to this\nmemorial of these two brothers, who were \"lovely and pleasant in their\nlives,\" and are now by their deaths not divided:--\n\n \"But few months have elapsed since the pages of _In Memoriam_\n recalled to the minds of many, and impressed on the hearts of\n all who perused them, the melancholy circumstances attending the\n sudden and early death of Arthur Henry Hallam, the eldest son of\n Henry Hallam, Esq. Not many weeks ago the public journals\n contained a short paragraph announcing the decease, under\n circumstances equally distressing, and in some points remarkably\n similar, of Henry Fitzmaurice, Mr. Hallam's younger and only\n remaining son. No one of the very many who appreciate the\n sterling value of Mr. Hallam's literary labors, and who feel a\n consequent interest in the character of those who would have\n sustained the eminence of an honorable name; no one who was\n affected by the striking and tragic fatality of two such\n successive bereavements, will deem an apology needed for this\n short and imperfect Memoir.\n\n \"Henry Fitzmaurice Hallam, the younger son of Henry Hallam,\n Esq., was born on the 31st of August 1824; he took his second\n name from his godfather, the Marquis of Lansdowne.... A habit of\n reserve, which characterized him at all periods of life, but\n which was compensated in the eyes of even his first companions\n by a singular sweetness of temper, was produced and fostered by\n the serious thoughtfulness ensuing upon early familiarity with\n domestic sorrow.\n\n \"'He was gentle,' writes one of his earliest and closest\n school-friends, 'retiring, thoughtful to pensiveness,\n affectionate, without envy or jealousy, almost without\n emulation, impressible, but not wanting in moral firmness. No\n one was ever more formed for friendship. In all his words and\n acts he was simple, straightforward, true. He was very\n religious. Religion had a real effect upon his character, and\n made him tranquil about great things, though he was so nervous\n about little things.'\n\n \"He was called to the bar in Trinity Term, 1850, and became a\n member of the Midland Circuit in the summer. Immediately\n afterwards he joined his family in a tour on the Continent. They\n had spent the early part of the autumn at Rome, and were\n returning northwards, when he was attacked by a sudden and\n severe illness, affecting the vital powers, and accompanied by\n enfeebled circulation and general prostration of strength. He\n was able, with difficulty, to reach Siena, where he sank rapidly\n through exhaustion, and expired on Friday, October 25. It is to\n be hoped that he did not experience any great or active\n suffering. He was conscious nearly to the last, and met his\n early death (of which his presentiments, for several years, had\n been frequent and very singular) with calmness and fortitude.\n There is reason to apprehend, from medical examination, that his\n life would not have been of very long duration, even had this\n unhappy illness not occurred. But for some years past his health\n had been apparently much improved; and, secured as it seemed to\n be by his unintermitted temperance, and by a carefulness in\n regimen which his early feebleness of constitution had rendered\n habitual, those to whom he was nearest and dearest had, in great\n measure, ceased to regard him with anxiety. His remains were\n brought to England, and he was interred, on December 23d, in\n Clevedon Church, Somersetshire, by the side of his brother, his\n sister, and his mother.\n\n \"For continuous and sustained thought he had an extraordinary\n capacity, the bias of his mind being decidedly towards\n analytical processes; a characteristic which was illustrated at\n Cambridge by his uniform partiality for analysis, and\n comparative distaste for the geometrical method, in his\n mathematical studies. His early proneness to dwell upon the more\n recondite departments of each science and branch of inquiry has\n been alluded to above. It is not to be inferred that, as a\n consequence of this tendency, he blinded himself, at any period\n of his life, to the necessity and the duty of practical\n exertion. He was always eager to act as well as speculate; and,\n in this respect, his character preserved an unbroken consistency\n and harmony from the epoch when, on commencing his residence at\n Cambridge, he voluntarily became a teacher in a parish\n Sunday-school, for the sake of applying his theories of\n religious education, to the time when, on the point of setting\n forth on his last fatal journey, he framed a plan of obtaining\n access, in the ensuing winter, to a large commercial\n establishment, in the view of familiarizing himself with the\n actual course and minute detail of mercantile transactions.\n\n \"Insensibly and unconsciously he had made himself a large number\n of friends in the last few years of his life: the painful\n impression created by his death in the circle in which he\n habitually moved, and even beyond it, was exceedingly\n remarkable, both for its depth and extent. For those united with\n him in a companionship more than ordinarily close, his\n friendship had taken such a character as to have almost become a\n necessity of existence. But it was upon his family that he\n lavished all the wealth of his disposition--affection without\n stint, gentleness never once at fault, considerateness reaching\n to self-sacrifice:--\n\n \"Di cio si biasmi il debolo intelletto\n E' l'parlar nostro, che non ha valore\n Di ritrar tutto cio che dice amore.\n\n H. S. M.\n F. L.\"\n\n\n\n\n_EDUCATION THROUGH THE SENSES._\n\n {Proton chorton, eita stachyn, eita plere siton en to stachui}.\n\n\nOne of the chief sins of our time is hurry: it is helter-skelter, and\ndevil take the hind-most. Off we go all too swift at starting, and we\nneither run so fast nor so far as we would have done, had we taken it\n_cannily_ at first. This is true of a boy as well as of a blood colt.\nNot only are boys and colts made to do the work and the running of\nfull-grown men and horses, but they are hurried out of themselves and\ntheir _now_, and pushed into the middle of next week where nobody is\nwanting them, and beyond which they frequently never get.\n\nThe main duty of those who care for the young is to secure their\nwholesome, their entire growth, for health is just the development of\nthe whole nature in its due sequences and proportions: first the\nblade--then the ear--then, and not till then, the full corn in the ear;\nand thus, as Dr. Temple wisely says, \"not to forget wisdom in teaching\nknowledge.\" If the blade be forced, and usurp the capital it inherits;\nif it be robbed by you its guardian of its birthright, or squandered\nlike a spendthrift, then there is not any ear, much less any corn; if\nthe blade be blasted or dwarfed in our haste and greed for the full\nshock and its price, we spoil all three. It is not easy to keep this\nalways before one's mind, that the young \"idea\" is in a young body, and\nthat healthy growth and harmless passing of the time are more to be\ncared for than what is vainly called accomplishment. We are preparing\nhim to run his race, and accomplish _that_ which is one of his chief\nends; but we are too apt to start him off at his full speed, and he\neither bolts or breaks down--the worst thing for him generally being to\nwin. In this way a child or boy should be regarded much more as a mean\nthan as an end, and his cultivation should have reference to this; his\nmind, as old Montaigne said, should be forged, as well as--indeed, I\nwould say, rather than--furnished, fed rather than filled,--two not\nalways coincident conditions. Now exercise--the joy of interest, of\norigination, of activity, of excitement--the play of the\nfaculties,--this is the true life of a boy, not the accumulation of mere\nwords. Words--the coin of thought--unless as the means of buying\nsomething else, are just as useless as other coin when it is hoarded;\nand it is as silly, and in the true sense as much the part and lot of a\n_miser_, to amass words for their own sakes, as to keep all your guineas\nin a stocking and never spend them, but be satisfied with every now and\nthen looking greedily at them and making them chink. Therefore it is\nthat I dislike--as indeed who doesn't?--the cramming system. The great\nthing with knowledge and the young is to secure that it shall be their\nown--that it be not merely external to their inner and real self, but\nshall go _in succum et sanguinem_; and therefore it is, that the\nself-teaching that a baby and a child give themselves remains with them\nforever--it is of their essence, whereas what is given them _ab extra_,\nespecially if it be received mechanically, without relish, and without\nany energizing of the entire nature, remains pitifully useless and\n_wersh_. Try, therefore, always to get the resident teacher _inside the\nskin_, and who is forever giving his lessons, to help you and be on your\nside.\n\nNow in children, as we all know, _he_ works chiefly through the senses.\nThe quantity of accurate observation--of induction, and of deduction too\n(both of a much better quality than most of Mr. Buckle's); of reasoning\nfrom the known to the unknown; of inferring; the nicety of appreciation\nof the like and the unlike, the common and the rare, the odd and the\neven; the skill of the rough and the smooth--of form, of appearance, of\ntexture, of weight, of all the minute and deep philosophies of the touch\nand of the other senses,--the amount of this sort of objective knowledge\nwhich every child of eight years has acquired--especially if he can play\nin the lap of nature and out of doors--and acquired for life, is, if we\ncould only think of it, marvellous beyond any of our mightiest marches\nof intellect. Now, could we only get the knowledge of the school to go\nas sweetly and deeply and clearly into the vitals of the mind as this\nself-teaching has done, and this is the paradisiac way of it, we should\nmake the young mind grow as well as learn, and be in understanding a man\nas well as in simplicity a child; we should get rid of much of that\ndreary, sheer endurance of their school-hours--that stolid lending of\nears that do not hear--that objectless looking without ever once seeing,\nand straining their minds without an aim; alternating, it may be, with\nsome feats of dexterity and effort, like a man trying to lift himself in\nhis own arms, or take his head in his teeth, exploits as dangerous, as\nungraceful, and as useless, except to glorify the showman and bring\nwages in, as the feats of an acrobat.\n\nBut you will ask, how is all this to be avoided if everybody must know\nhow far the sun is from _Georgium Sidus_, and how much of phosphorus is\nin our bones, and of ptyalin and flint in human spittle--besides some\n10,000 times 10,000 other things which we must be told and try to\nremember, and which we cannot prove not to be true, but which I decline\nto say we _know_.\n\nBut _is_ it necessary that everybody should know everything? Is it not\nmuch more to the purpose for every man, when his turn comes, to be able\nto _do_ something; and I say, that other things being equal, a boy who\ngoes bird-nesting, and makes a collection of eggs, and knows all their\ncolors and spots, going through the excitements and glories of getting\nthem, and observing everything with a keenness, an intensity, an\nexactness, and a permanency, which only youth and a quick pulse, and\nfresh blood and spirits combined, can achieve,--a boy who teaches\nhimself natural history in this way, is not only a healthier and happier\nboy, but is abler in mind and body for entering upon the great game of\nlife, than the pale, nervous, bright-eyed, feverish, \"interesting\" boy,\nwith a big head and a small bottom and thin legs, who is the \"captain,\"\nthe miracle of the school; dux for his brief year or two of glory, and,\n_if he live_, booby for life. I am, of course, not going in for a\ncomplete _curriculum_ of general ignorance; but I am for calling the\nattention of teachers to drawing out the minds, the energies, the hearts\nof their pupils through their senses, as well as pouring in through\nthese same apertures the general knowledge of mankind, the capital of\nthe race, into this one small being, who it is to be hoped will contrive\nto forget much of the mere words he has unhappily learned.\n\nFor we may say of our time in all seriousness, what Sydney Smith said in\nthe fulness of his wisdom and his fun, of the pantologic master of\nTrinity--Science is our _forte_; omniscience is our _foible_. There is\nthe seed of a whole treatise, a whole organon in this joke; think over\nit, and let it simmer in your mind, and you will feel its significance\nand its power. Now, what is _science_ so called to every 999 men in\n1000, but something that the one man tells them he has been told by some\none else--who may be one among say 50,000--is true, but of the truth of\nwhich these 999 men (and probably even the teaching thousandth man) can\nhave no direct test, and, accordingly, for the truth or falsehood of\nwhich they, by a law of their nature, which rejects what has no savor\nand is superfluous, don't care one fig. How much better, how much\ndearer, and more precious in a double sense, because it has been bought\nby themselves,--how much nobler is the knowledge which our little\nfriend, young Edward Forbes, \"that marvellous boy,\" for instance--and\nwhat an instance!--is picking up, as he looks into everything he sees,\nand takes photographs upon his retina--the _camera lucida_ of his\nmind--which never fade, of every midge that washes its face as a cat\ndoes, and preens its wings, every lady-bird that alights on his knee,\nand folds and unfolds her gauzy pinions under their spotted and glorious\nlids. How more real is not only this knowledge, but this little\nknowledger in his entire nature, than the poor being who can maunder\namazingly the entire circle of human science at second, or it may be,\ntwentieth hand!\n\nThere are some admirable, though cursory remarks on \"Ornithology as a\nBranch of Liberal Education,\" by the late Dr. Adams of Banchory, the\ngreat Greek scholar, in a pamphlet bearing this title, which he read as\na paper before the last meeting of the British Association in Aberdeen.\nIt is not only interesting as a piece of natural history, and a touching\ncooeperation of father and son in the same field--the one on the banks of\nhis own beautiful Dee and among the wilds of the Grampians, the other\namong the Himalayas and the forests of Cashmere; the son having been\nenabled, by the knowledge of his native birds got under his father's\neye, when placed in an unknown country to recognize his old feathered\nfriends, and to make new ones and tell their story; it is also valuable\nas coming from a man of enormous scholarship and knowledge--the most\nlearned physician of his time--who knew Aristotle and Plato, and all\nthose old fellows, as we know Maunder or Lardner--a hard-working country\nsurgeon, who was ready to run at any one's call--but who did not despise\nthe modern enlightenments of his profession, because they were not in\nPaulus Agineta; though, at the same time, he did not despise the\nadmirable and industrious Paul because he was not up to the last\ndoctrine of the nucleated cell, or did not read his Hippocrates by the\nblaze of Paraffine; a man greedy of all knowledge, and welcoming it from\nall comers, but who, at the end of a long life of toil and thought, gave\nit as his conviction that one of the best helps to true education, one\nof the best counteractives to the necessary mischiefs of mere scientific\nteaching and information, was to be found in getting the young to teach\nthemselves some one of the natural sciences, and singling out\nornithology as one of the readiest and most delightful for such a life\nas his.\n\nI end these intentionally irregular remarks by a story. Some years ago I\nwas in one of the wildest recesses of the Perthshire Highlands. It was\nin autumn, and the little school supported mainly by the Chief, who\ndwelt all the year round in the midst of his own people, was to be\nexamined by the minister, whose native tongue, like that of his flock,\nwas Gaelic, and who was as awkward and ineffectual, and sometimes as\nunconsciously indecorous, in his English, as a Cockney is in his kilt.\nIt was a great occasion: the keen-eyed, firm-limbed, brown-cheeked\nlittle fellows were all in a buzz of excitement as we came in, and\nbefore the examination began every eye was looking at us strangers as a\ndog looks at his game, or when seeking it; they knew everything we had\non, everything that could be known through their senses. I never felt\nmyself so studied and scrutinized before. If any one could have examined\nthem upon what they thus mastered, Sir Charles Trevelyan and John Mill\nwould have come away astonished, and, I trust, humble. Well then, the\nwork of the day began; the mill was set a-going, and what a change! In\nan instant their eyes were like the windows of a house with the blinds\ndown; no one was looking out; everything blank; their very features\nchanged--their jaws fell, their cheeks flattened, they drooped and\nlooked ill at ease--stupid, drowsy, sulky--and getting them to speak, or\nthink, or in any way to energize, was like trying to get any one to come\nto the window at three of a summer morning, when, if they do come, they\nare half awake, rubbing their eyes and growling. So with my little\nCelts. They were like an idle and half asleep collie by the fireside, as\ncontrasted with the collie on the hill and in the joy of work; the form\nof dog and boy are there--he, the self of each, was elsewhere (for I\ndiffer from Professor Ferrier in thinking that the dog _has_ the reflex\nego, and is a very knowing being.) I noticed that anything they really\nknew roused them somewhat; what they had merely to transmit or pass\nalong, as if they were a tube through which the master blew the pea of\nknowledge into our faces, was performed as stolidly as if they were\nnothing but a tube.\n\nAt last the teacher asked where Sheffield was, and was answered; it was\nthen pointed to by the dux, as a dot on a skeleton map. And now came a\nflourish. \"What is Sheffield famous for?\" Blank stupor, hopeless\nvacuity, till he came to a sort of sprouting Dougal Cratur--almost as\nwee, and as glegg, and as tousy about the head, as my own Kintail\nterrier, whom I saw at that moment through the open door careering after\na hopeless rabbit, with much benefit to his muscles and his wind--who\nwas trembling with keenness. He shouted out something which was liker\n\"cutlery\" than anything else, and was received as such amid our\nrapturous applause. I then ventured to ask the master to ask small and\nred Dougal what cutlery was; but from the sudden erubescence of his\npallid, ill-fed cheek, and the alarming brightness of his eyes, I\ntwigged at once that _he_ didn't himself know what it meant. So I put\nthe question myself, and was not surprised to find that not one of them,\nfrom Dougal up to a young strapping shepherd of eighteen, knew what it\nwas.\n\nI told them that Sheffield was famous for making knives, and scissors,\nand razors, and that cutlery meant the manufacture of anything that\ncuts. Presto! and the blinds were all up, and eagerness, and _nous_, and\nbrains at the window. I happened to have a Wharncliffe, with \"Rodgers\nand Sons, Sheffield,\" on the blade. I sent it round, and finally\npresented it to the enraptured Dougal. Would not each one of those boys,\nthe very boobiest there, know that knife again when they saw it, and be\nable to pass a creditable competitive examination on all its ins and\nouts? and wouldn't they remember \"cutlery\" for a day or two! Well, the\nexamination over, the minister performed an oration of much ambition and\ndifficulty to himself and to us, upon the general question, and a great\nmany other questions, into which his Gaelic subtilty fitted like the\nmists into the hollows of Ben-a-Houlich, with, it must be allowed, a\nsomewhat similar tendency to confuse and conceal what was beneath; and\nhe concluded with thanking the Chief, as he well might, for his generous\nsupport of \"this aixlent CEMETERY of aedication.\" Cemetery indeed! The\nblind leading the blind, with the ancient result; the dead burying their\ndead.\n\nNow, not greater is the change we made from that low, small, stifling,\ngloomy, mephitic room, into the glorious open air, the loch lying asleep\nin the sun, and telling over again on its placid face, as in a dream,\nevery hill and cloud, and birch and pine, and passing bird and cradled\nboat; the Black Wood of Rannoch standing \"in the midst of its own\ndarkness,\" frowning out upon us like the Past disturbed, and far off in\nthe clear ether, as in another and a better world, the dim Shepherds of\nEtive pointing, like ghosts at noonday, to the weird shadows of\nGlencoe;--not greater was this change, than is that from the dingy,\noppressive, weary \"cemetery\" of mere word-knowledge to the open air, the\nlight and liberty, the divine infinity and richness of nature and her\nteaching.\n\nWe cannot change our time, nor would we if we could. It is God's time as\nwell as ours. And our time is emphatically that for achieving and\nrecording and teaching man's dominion over and insight into matter and\nits forces--his subduing the earth; but let us turn now and then from\nour necessary and honest toil in this neo-Platonic cavern where we win\ngold and renown, and where we often are obliged to stand in our own\nlight, and watch our own shadows as they glide, huge and misshapen,\nacross the inner gloom; let us come out betimes with our gold, that we\nmay spend it and get \"goods\" for it, and when we can look forth on that\nample world of daylight which we can never hope to overrun, and into\nthat overarching heaven where, amid clouds and storms, lightning and\nsudden tempest, there is revealed to those who look for them, lucid\nopenings into the pure, deep empyrean, \"as it were the very body of\nheaven in its clearness;\" and when, best of all, we may remember Who it\nis who stretched out these heavens as a tent to dwell in, and on whose\nfootstool we may kneel, and out of the depths of our heart cry aloud,--\n\n _Te Deum veneramur,\n Te Sancte Pater!_\n\nwe shall return into our cave, and to our work, all the better of such a\nlesson, and of such a reasonable service, and dig none the worse.\n\nScience which ends in itself, or still worse, returns upon its maker,\nand gets him to worship himself, is worse than none; it is only when it\nmakes it more clear than before who is the Maker and Governor, not only\nof the objects, but of the subjects of itself, that knowledge is the\nmother of virtue. But this is an endless theme. My only aim in these\ndesultory hints is to impress parents and teachers with the benefits of\nthe _study_, the personal engagement--with their own hands and eyes, and\nlegs and ears--in some form or another of natural history, by their\nchildren and pupils and themselves, as counteracting evil, and doing\nimmediate and actual good. Even the immense activity in the\nPost-Office-stamp line of business among our youngsters has been of\nimmense use in many ways, besides being a diversion and an interest. I\nmyself came to the knowledge of Queensland, and a great deal more,\nthrough its blue twopenny.\n\nIf any one wishes to know how far wise and clever and patriotic men may\noccasionally go in the way of giving \"your son\" a stone for bread, and a\nserpent for a fish,--may get the nation's money for that which is not\nbread, and give their own labor for that which satisfies no one;\nindustriously making sawdust into the shapes of bread, and chaff into\nthe appearance of meal, and contriving, at wonderful expense of money\nand brains, to show what can be done in the way of feeding upon\nwind,--let him take a turn through certain galleries of the Kensington\nMuseum.\n\n\"Yesterday forenoon,\" writes a friend, \"I went to South Kensington\nMuseum. It is really an absurd collection. A great deal of valuable\nmaterial and a great deal of perfect rubbish. The analyses are even\nworse than I was led to suppose. There is an ANALYSIS OF A MAN. First, a\nman contains so much water, and there you have the amount of water in a\nbottle; so much albumen, and there is the albumen; so much phosphate of\nlime, fat, haematin, fibrine, salt, etc., etc. Then in the next case so\nmuch carbon; so much phosphorus--a bottle with sticks of phosphorus; so\nmuch potassium, and there is a bottle with potassium; calcium, etc. They\nhave not bottles of oxygen, hydrogen, chlorine, etc., but they have\ncubical pieces of wood on which is written 'the quantity of oxygen in\nthe human body would occupy the space of 170 (_e. g._) cubes of the size\nof this,' etc., etc.\" What earthly good can this do any one?\n\nNo wonder that the bewildered beings whom I have seen wandering through\nthese rooms, yawned more frequently and more desperately than I ever\nobserved even in church.\n\nSo then, cultivate observation, energy, handicraft, ingenuity, _outness_\nin boys, so as to give them a pursuit as well as a study. Look after the\nblade, and don't coax or crush the ear out too soon, and remember that\nthe full corn in the ear is not due till the harvest, when the great\nSchool breaks up, and we must all dismiss and go our several ways.\n\n\n\n\nVAUGHAN'S POEMS, &c.\n\n {Hosa esti prosphile--tauta logizesthe}.--ST. PAUL.\n\n\n\"What do you think of Dr. Channing, Mr. Coleridge?\" said a brisk young\ngentleman to the mighty discourser, as he sat next him at a small\ntea-party. \"Before entering upon that question, sir,\" said Coleridge,\nopening upon his inquirer those 'noticeable gray eyes,' with a vague and\nplacid stare, and settling himself in his seat for the night, \"I must\nput you in possession of my views, _in extenso_, on the origin,\nprogress, present condition, future likelihoods, and absolute essence of\nthe Unitarian controversy, and especially the conclusions I have, upon\nthe whole, come to on the great question of what may be termed the\nphilosophy of religious difference.\" In like manner, before telling our\nreaders what we think of Henry Vaughan, the Silurist, or of \"V.,\" or of\nHenry Ellison, the Bornnatural, or of E. V. K., it would have been very\npleasant (to ourselves) to have given, _in extenso_, our views _de Re\nPoetica_, its nature, its laws and office, its means and ends; and to\nhave made known how much and how little we agreed on these points with\nsuch worthies as Aristotle and Plato, Horace and Richard Baxter,\nPetronius Arbiter and Blaise Pascal, Ulric von Huetten and Boileau,\nHurdis and Hurd, Dr. Arnold and Montaigne, Harris of Salisbury and his\nfamous uncle, Burke and \"John Buncle,\" Montesquieu and Sir Philip\nSidney, Dr. Johnson and the two Wartons, George Gascoyne and Spenser's\nfriend Gabriel Harvey, Puttenham and Webbe, George Herbert and George\nSand, Petrarch and Pinciano, Vida and Julius Caesar Scaliger, Pontanus\nand Savage Landor, Leigh Hunt and Quinctilian, or Tacitus (whichever of\nthe two wrote the Dialogue _De Oratoribus_, in which there is so much of\nthe best philosophy, criticism, and expression), Lords Bacon and Buchan\nand Dr. Blair, Dugald Stewart and John Dryden, Charles Lamb and\nProfessor Wilson, Vinet of Lausanne and John Foster, Lord Jeffrey and\nthe two brothers Hare, Drs. Fuller and South, John Milton and Dr. Drake,\nDante and \"Edie Ochiltree,\" Wordsworth and John Bunyan, Plutarch and\nWinkelman, the Coleridges, Samuel, Sara, Hartley, Derwent, and Henry\nNelson, Sir Egerton Bridges, Victor Cousin and \"the Doctor,\" George Moir\nand Madame de Stael, Dr. Fracastorius and Professor Keble, Martinus\nScriblerus and Sir Thomas Browne, Macaulay and the Bishop of Cloyne,\nCollins and Gray and Sir James Mackintosh, Hazlitt and John Ruskin,\nShakspeare and Jackson of Exeter, Dallas and De Quincey, and the six\nTaylors, Jeremy, William, Isaac, Jane, John Edward, and Henry. We would\nhave had great pleasure in quoting what these famous women and men have\nwritten on the essence and the art of poetry, and to have shown how\nstrangely they differ, and how as strangely at times they agree. But as\nit is not related at what time of the evening our brisk young gentleman\ngot his answer regarding Dr. Channing, so it likewise remains untold\nwhat our readers have lost and gained in our not fulfilling our somewhat\nextensive desire.\n\nIt is with poetry as with flowers or fruits, and the delicious juices of\nmeats and fishes, we would all rather have them, and smell them, and\ntaste them, than hear about them. It is a good thing to know all about a\nlily, its scientific ins and outs, its botany, its archaeology, its\naesthetics, even its anatomy and \"organic radicals,\" but it is a better\nthing to look at itself, and \"consider\" it how it grows--\n\n \"White, radiant, spotless, exquisitely pure.\"\n\nIt is one thing to know what your peach is, that it is the fruit of a\nrosal exogen, and is of the nature of a true drupe, with its carpel\nsolitary, and its style proceeding from the apex,--that its ovules are\nanatropal, and that its _putamen_ separates _sponte sua_ from the\nsacrocarp; to know, moreover, how many kinds of peaches and nectarines\nthere are in the world, and how happy the Canadian pigs must be of an\nevening munching the downy odoriferous drupes under the trees, and what\nan aroma this must give to the resulting pork,[44]--it is another and a\nbetter thing to pluck the peach, and sink your teeth into its fragrant\nflesh. We remember only one exception to this rule. Who has ever yet\ntasted the roast pig of reality which came up to the roast pig of\nCharles Lamb? Who can forget \"that young and tender suckling, under a\nmoon old, guiltless as yet of the style, with no original speck of the\n_amor immunditiae_--the hereditary failing of the first parent, yet\nmanifest, and which, when prepared aright, is, of all the delicacies in\nthe _mundus edibilis_, the most delicate--_obsoniorum facile\nprinceps_--whose fat is not fat, but an indefinable sweetness growing up\ntoward it--the tender blossoming of fat--fat cropped in the bud--taken\nin the shoot--in the first innocence, the cream and quintessence of the\nchild-pig's yet pure food--the lean not lean, but a kind of animal\nmanna--_coelestis_--_cibus ille angelorum_--or rather shall we say, fat\nand lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into each other, that\nboth together make but one ambrosial result.\" But here, as elsewhere,\nthe exception proves the rule, and even the perusal of \"Original\"\nWalker's delicious schemes of dinners at Lovegrove's, with flounders\nwater-zoutched, and iced claret, would stand little chance against an\ninvitation to a party of six to Blackwall, with \"Tom Young of the\nTreasury\" as Prime Minister.\n\n [44] We are given to understand that peach-fed pork is a poor\n pork after all, and goes soon into decomposition. We are not\n sorry to know this.\n\nPoetry is the expression of the beautiful--by words--the beautiful of\nthe outer and of the inner world; whatever is delectable to the eye or\nthe ear, the every sense of the body and of the soul--it presides over\n_veras dulcedines rerum_. It implies at once a vision and a faculty, a\ngift and an art. There must be the vivid conception of the beautiful,\nand its fit manifestation in numerous language. A thought may be\npoetical, and yet not poetry; it may be a sort of mother liquor, holding\nin solution the poetical element, but waiting and wanting its\nprecipitation,--its concentration into the bright and compacted crystal.\nIt is the very blossom and fragrancy and bloom of all human thoughts,\npassions, emotions, language; having for its immediate object--its very\nessence--pleasure and delectation rather than truth; but springing from\ntruth, as the flower from its fixed and unseen root. To use the words of\nPuttenham in reference to Sir Walter Raleigh, poetry is a lofty,\ninsolent (unusual) and passionate thing.\n\nIt is not philosophy, it is not science, it is not morality, it is not\nreligion, any more than red is or ever can be blue or yellow, or than\none thing can ever be another; but it feeds on, it glorifies and exalts,\nit impassionates them all. A poet will be the better of all the wisdom,\nand all the goodness, and all the science, and all the talent he can\ngather into himself, but _qua_ poet he is a minister and an interpreter\nof {to kalon}, and of nothing else. Philosophy and poetry are not\nopposites, but neither are they convertibles. They are twin sisters;--in\nthe words of Augustine:--\"PHILOCALIA _et_ PHILOSOPHIA _prope similiter\ncognominatae sunt, et quasi gentiles inter se videri volunt et sunt. Quid\nest enim Philosophia? amor sapientiae. Quid Philocalia? amor\npulchritudinis. Germanae igitur istae sunt prorsus, et eodem parente\nprocreatae._\" Fracastorius beautifully illustrates this in his\n\"_Naugerius, sive De Poetica Dialogus_.\" He has been dividing writers,\nor composers as he calls them, into historians, or those who record\nappearances; philosophers, who seek out causes; and poets, who perceive\nand express _veras pulchritudines rerum, quicquid maximum et magnificum,\nquicquid pulcherrimum, quicquid dulcissimum_; and as an example, he\nsays, if the historian describe the ongoings of this visible universe, I\nam taught; if the philosopher announce the doctrine of a spiritual\nessence pervading and regulating all things, I admire; but if the poet\ntake up the same theme, and sing--\n\n \"_Principio caelum ac terras camposque liquentes\n Lucentemque globum lunae, titaniaque astra,\n Spiritus intus alit; totamque infusa per artus\n Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet._\"\n\n\"_Si inquam, eandem rem, hoc pacto referat mihi, non admirabor solum,\nsed adamabo: et divinum nescio quid, in animum mihi immissum\nexistimabo._\"\n\nIn the quotation which he gives, we at once detect the proper tools and\ncunning of the poet: fancy gives us _liquentes campos_, _titania astra_,\n_lucentem globum lunae_, and fantasy or imagination, in virtue of its\nroyal and transmuting power, gives us _intus alit_--_infusa per\nartus_--and that magnificent idea, _magno se corpore miscet_--this is\nthe _divinum nescio quid_--the proper work of the imagination--the\nmaster and specific faculty of the poet--that which makes him what he\nis, as the wings make a bird, and which, to borrow the noble words of\nthe Book of Wisdom, \"is more moving than motion,--is one only, and yet\nmanifold, subtle, lively, clear, plain, quick, which cannot be letted,\npassing and going through all things by reason of her pureness; being\none, she can do all things; and remaining in herself, she maketh all\nthings new.\"\n\nThe following is Fracastorius' definition of a man who not only writes\nverses, but is by nature a poet: \"_Est autem ille natura poeta, qui\naptus est veris rerum pulchritudinibus capi monerique; et qui per illas\nloqui et scribere potest_;\" and he gives the lines of Virgil,--\n\n \"_Aut sicuti nigrum\n Ilicibus crebris sacra nemus accubat umbra,_\"\n\nas an instance of the poetical transformation. All that was merely\nactual or informative might have been given in the words _sicuti nemus_,\nbut fantasy sets to work, and _videte, per quas pulchritudines, nemus\ndepinxit; addens_ ACCUBAT, ET NIGRUM _crebris ilicibus et_ SACRA UMBRA!\n_quam ob rem, recte Pontanus dicebat, finem esse poetae, apposite dicere\nad admirationem, simpliciter, et per universalem bene dicendi ideam_.\nThis is what we call the _beau ideal_, or {kat' exochen} the ideal--what\nBacon describes as \"a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a\nmore absolute variety than can be found in the nature of things, the\nworld being in proportion inferior to the soul, and the exhibition of\nwhich doth raise and erect the mind by submitting _the shows of things_\nto the desires of the mind.\" It is \"the wondrous and goodly paterne\" of\nwhich Spenser sings in his \"Hymne in honour of Beautie:\"--\n\n \"What time this world's great Workmaister did cast\n To make al things such as we now behold,\n _It seems that he before his eyes had plast_\n _A goodly Paterne_, to whose perfect mould\n He fashioned them, as comely as he could,\n That now so faire and seemly they appeare,\n As nought may be amended any wheare.\n\n \"That wondrous Paterne wheresoere it bee,\n Whether in earth layd up in secret store,\n Or else in heaven, that no man may it see\n With sinfull eyes, for feare it to deflore,\n _Is perfect Beautie_, which all men adore--\n _That is the thing that giveth pleasant grace_\n _To all things fair._\n\n \"For through infusion of celestial powre\n _The duller earth it quickneth with delight,_\n _And life-full spirits privily doth powre_\n _Through all the parts, that to the looker's sight_\n _They seeme to please._\"\n\nIt is that \"loveliness\" which Mr. Ruskin calls \"the signature of God on\nhis works,\" the dazzling printings of His fingers, and to the unfolding\nof which he has devoted, with so much of the highest philosophy and\neloquence, a great part of the second volume of \"Modern Painters.\"\n\nBut we are as bad as Mr. Coleridge, and are defrauding our readers of\ntheir fruits and flowers, their peaches and lilies.\n\nHenry Vaughan, \"Silurist,\" as he was called, from his being born in\nSouth Wales, the country of the _Silures_, was sprung from one of the\nmost ancient and noble families of the Principality. Two of his\nancestors, Sir Roger Vaughan and Sir David Gam, fell at Agincourt. It is\nsaid that Shakspeare visited Scethrog, the family castle in\nBrecknockshire; and Malone guesses that it was when there that he fell\nin with the word \"Puck.\" Near Scethrog, there is Cwn-Pooky, or Pwcca,\nthe Goblin's valley, which belonged to the Vaughans; and Crofton Croker\ngives, in his Fairy Legends, a fac-simile of a portrait, drawn by a\nWelsh peasant, of a Pwcca, which (whom?) he himself had seen sitting on\na milestone,[45] by the roadside, in the early morning, a very unlikely\npersonage, one would think, to say,--\n\n \"I go, I go; look how I go;\n Swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow.\"\n\n [45] We confess to being considerably affected when we look at\n this odd little fellow, as he sits there with his innocent\n upturned toes, and a certain forlorn dignity and meek\n sadness, as of \"one who once had wings.\" What is he? and\n whence? Is he a surface or a substance? is he smooth and\n warm? is he glossy, like a blackberry? or has he on him \"the\n raven down of darkness,\" like an unfledged chick of night?\n and if we smoothed him, would he smile? Does that large eye\n wink? and is it a hole through to the other side? (whatever\n that may be;) and is that a small crescent moon of darkness\n swimming in its disc? or does the eye disclose a bright\n light from within, where his soul sits and enjoys bright\n day? Is he a point of admiration whose head is too heavy, or\n a quaver or crotchet that has lost his neighbors, and fallen\n out of the scale? Is he an aspiring Tadpole in search of an\n idea? What have been and what will be the fortunes of this\n our small Nigel (_Nigellus_)? Think of \"Elia\" having him\n sent up from the Goblin Valley, packed in wool, and finding\n him lively! how he and \"Mary\" would doat upon him, feeding\n him upon some celestial, unspeakable _pap_, \"sweeter than\n the lids of Juno's eyes, or Cytherea's breath.\" How the\n brother and sister would croon over him \"with murmurs made\n to bless,\" calling him their \"tender novice\" \"in the first\n bloom of his nigritude,\" their belated straggler from the\n \"rear of darkness thin,\" their little night-shade, not\n deadly, their infantile Will-o'-the-wisp caught before his\n sins, their \"poor Blot,\" \"their innocent Blackness,\" their\n \"dim Speck.\"\n\nWe can more easily imagine him as one of those Sprites--\n\n \"That do run\n By the triple Hecat's team,\n From the presence of the Sun,\n Following darkness like a dream.\"\n\nHenry, our poet, was born in 1621; and had a twin-brother, Thomas.\nNewton, his birthplace, is now a farm-house on the banks of the Usk, the\nscenery of which is of great beauty. The twins entered Jesus College,\nOxford, in 1638. This was early in the Great Rebellion, and Charles then\nkept his Court at Oxford. The young Vaughans were hot Royalists; Thomas\nbore arms, and Henry was imprisoned. Thomas, after many perils, retired\nto Oxford, and devoted his life to alchemy, under the patronage of Sir\nRobert Murray, Secretary of State for Scotland, himself addicted to\nthese studies. He published a number of works, with such titles as\n\"_Anthroposophia Theomagica_, or a Discourse of the Nature of Man, and\nhis State after Death, grounded on his Creator's Proto-chemistry;\"\n\"_Magia Adamica_, with a full discovery of the true _Coelum terrae_, or\nthe Magician's Heavenly Chaos and the first matter of all things.\"\n\nHenry seems to have been intimate with the famous wits of his time:\n\"Great Ben,\" Cartwright, Randolph, Fletcher, &c. His first publication\nwas in 1646:--\"Poems, with the Tenth Satyre of Juvenal Englished, by\nHenry Vaughan, Gent.\" After taking his degree in London as M. D., he\nsettled at his birthplace, Newton, where he lived and died the doctor of\nthe district. About this time he prepared for the press his little\nvolume, \"Olor Iscanus, the Swan of Usk,\" which was afterwards published\nby his brother Thomas, without the poet's consent. We are fortunate in\npossessing a copy of this curious volume, which is now marked in the\nCatalogues as \"_Rariss_.\" It contains a few original poems; some of them\nepistles to his friends, hit off with great vigor, wit, and humor.\nSpeaking of the change of times, and the reign of the Roundheads, he\nsays,--\n\n \"Here's brotherly Ruffs and Beards, and a strange sight\n Of high monumental Hats, tane at the fight\n Of eighty-eight; while every Burgesse foots\n The mortal Pavement in eternall boots.\"\n\nThere is a line in one of the letters which strikes us as of great\nbeauty:--\n\n \"Feed on the vocal silence of his eye.\"\n\nAnd there is a very clever poem _Ad Amicum Foeneratorem_, in defiance\nof his friend's demand of repayment of a loan.\n\nThere is great beauty and delicacy of expression in these two stanzas of\nan epithalamium:--\n\n \"Blessings as rich and fragrant crown your heads,\n As the mild heaven on roses sheds,\n When at their cheeks (like pearls) they weare\n The clouds that court them in a tear.\n\n \"Fresh as the houres may all your pleasures be,\n And healthfull as Eternitie!\n Sweet as the flowre's first breath, and close\n As th' unseen spreadings of the Rose\n When she unfolds her curtained head,\n And makes her bosome the Sun's bed!\"\n\nThe translations from Ovid, Boece, and Cassimir, are excellent.\n\nThe following lines conclude an invitation to a friend:--\n\n \"Come then! and while the slow isicle hangs\n At the stifle thatch, and Winter's frosty pangs\n Benumme the year, blithe as of old let us\n Mid noise and war, of peace and mirth discusse.\n This portion thou wert born for. Why should we\n Vex at the time's ridiculous miserie?\n An age that thus hath fooled itself, and will,\n Spite of thy teeth and mine, persist so still.\n Let's sit then at this fire; and, while wee steal\n A revell in the Town, let others seal,\n Purchase, and cheat, and who can let them pay,\n Till those black deeds bring on the darksome day.\n Innocent spenders wee! a better use\n Shall wear out our short lease, and leave the obtuse\n Rout to their husks. They and their bags at best\n Have cares in earnest. Wee care for a jest!\"\n\nWhen about thirty years of age, he had a long and serious illness,\nduring which his mind underwent an entire and final change on the most\nimportant of all subjects; and thenceforward he seems to have lived\n\"soberly, righteously, and godly.\"\n\nIn his Preface to the \"_Silex Scintillans_,\" he says, \"The God of the\nspirits of all flesh hath granted me a further use of mine than I did\nlook for in the body; and when I expected and had prepared for a message\nof death, then did he answer me with life; I hope to his glory, and my\ngreat advantage; that I may flourish not with leafe only, but with some\nfruit also.\" And he speaks of himself as one of the converts of \"that\nblessed man, Mr. George Herbert.\"\n\nSoon after, he published a little volume, called \"_Flores Solitudinis_,\"\npartly prose and partly verse. The prose, as Mr. Lyte justly remarks, is\nsimple and nervous, unlike his poetry, which is occasionally deformed\nwith the conceit of his time.\n\nThe verses entitled \"St. Paulinus to his wife Theresia,\" have much of\nthe vigor and thoughtfulness and point of Cowper. In 1655, he published\na second edition, or more correctly a re-issue, for it was not\nreprinted, of his _Silex Scintillans_, with a second part added. He\nseems not to have given anything after this to the public, during the\nnext forty years of his life.\n\nHe was twice married, and died in 1695, aged 73, at Newton, on the banks\nof his beloved Usk, where he had spent his useful, blameless, and, we\ndoubt not, happy life; living from day to day in the eye of Nature, and\nin his solitary rides and walks in that wild and beautiful country,\nfinding full exercise for that fine sense of the beauty and wondrousness\nof all visible things, \"the earth and every common sight,\" the\nexpression of which he has so worthily embodied in his poems.\n\nIn \"The Retreate,\" he thus expresses this passionate love of Nature--\n\n \"Happy those early dayes, when I\n Shin'd in my Angell-infancy!\n Before I understood this place\n Appointed for my second race,\n Or taught my soul to fancy ought\n But a white, Celestiall thought;\n When yet I had not walkt above\n A mile or two from my first love,\n And looking back, at that short space,\n Could see a glimpse of his bright face;\n When on some gilded Cloud or flowre\n My gazing soul would dwell an houre,\n And in those weaker glories spy\n Some shadows of eternity;\n Before I taught my tongue to wound\n My Conscience with a sinfule sound,\n Or had the black art to dispence\n A sev'rall sinne to ev'ry sence,\n But felt through all this fleshly dresse\n Bright shootes of everlastingnesse.\n O how I long to travell back,\n And tread again that ancient track!\n That I might once more reach that plaine,\n Where first I left my glorious traine;\n From whence th' Inlightned spirit sees\n That shady City of Palme trees.\"\n\nTo use the words of Lord Jeffrey as applied to Shakspeare, Vaughan seems\nto have had in large measure and of finest quality, \"that indestructible\nlove of flowers, and odors, and dews, and clear waters, and soft airs\nand sounds, and bright skies, and woodland solitudes, and moonlight,\nwhich are the material elements of poetry; and that fine sense of their\nundefinable relation to mental emotion which is its essence and its\nvivifying power.\"\n\nAnd though what Sir Walter says of the country surgeon is too true, that\nhe is worse fed and harder wrought than any one else in the parish,\nexcept it be his horse; still, to a man like Vaughan, to whom the love\nof nature and its scrutiny was a constant passion, few occupations could\nhave furnished ampler and more exquisite manifestations of her\nmagnificence and beauty. Many of his finest descriptions give us quite\nthe notion of their having been composed when going his rounds on his\nWelsh pony among the glens and hills, and their unspeakable solitudes.\nSuch lines as the following to a Star were probably direct from nature\non some cloudless night:--\n\n \"Whatever 'tis, whose beauty here below\n Attracts thee thus, and makes thee stream and flow,\n And winde and curle, and wink and smile,\n Shifting thy gate and guile.\"\n\nHe is one of the earliest of our poets who treats external nature\nsubjectively rather than objectively, in which he was followed by Gray\n(especially in his letters) and Collins and Cowper, and in some measure\nby Warton, until it reached its consummation, and perhaps its excess, in\nWordsworth.\n\nWe shall now give our readers some specimens from the reprint of the\n_Silex_ by Mr. Pickering, so admirably edited by the Rev. H. F. Lyte,\nhimself a true poet, of whose careful life of our author we have made\nvery free use.\n\n\nTHE TIMBER.\n\n \"Sure thou didst flourish once! and many Springs,\n Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers\n Past o'er thy head: many light Hearts and Wings,\n Which now are dead, lodg'd in thy living bowers.\n\n \"And still a new succession sings and flies;\n Fresh groves grow up, and their green branches shoot\n Towards the old and still enduring skies;\n While the low Violet thriveth at their root.\n\n \"But thou beneath the sad and heavy Line\n Of death dost waste all senseless, cold and dark;\n Where not so much as dreams of light may shine,\n Nor any thought of greenness, leaf or bark.\n\n \"And yet, as if some deep hate and dissent,\n Bred in thy growth betwixt high winds and thee,\n Were still alive, thou dost great storms resent,\n Before they come, and know'st how near they be.\n\n \"Else all at rest thou lyest, and the fierce breath\n Of tempests can no more disturb thy ease;\n But this thy strange resentment after death\n Means only those who broke in life thy peace.\"\n\nThis poem is founded upon the superstition that a tree which had been\nblown down by the wind gave signs of restlessness and anger before the\ncoming of a storm from the quarter whence came its own fall. It seems to\nus full of the finest fantasy and expression.\n\n\nTHE WORLD.\n\n \"I saw Eternity the other night\n Like a great Ring of pure and endless light,\n All calm as it was bright;\n And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,\n Driv'n by the spheres\n Like a vast shadow mov'd, in which the world\n And all her train were hurl'd.\"\n\nThere is a wonderful magnificence about this; and what a Bunyan-like\nreality is given to the vision by \"_the other night_\"!\n\n\nMAN.\n\n \"Weighing the stedfastness and state\n Of some mean things which here below reside,\n Where birds like watchful Clocks the noiseless date\n And Intercourse of times divide,\n Where Bees at night get home and hive, and flowrs,\n Early as well as late,\n Rise with the Sun, and set in the same bowrs:\n\n \"I would, said I, my God would give\n The staidness of these things to man! for these\n To His divine appointments ever cleave,\n And no new business breaks their peace;\n The birds nor sow nor reap, yet sup and dine,\n The flowres without clothes live,\n Yet Solomon was never drest so fine.\n\n \"Man hath still either toyes or Care;\n He hath no root, nor to one place is ty'd,\n But ever restless and Irregular\n About this Earth doth run and ride.\n He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where;\n He says it is so far,\n That he hath quite forgot how to go there.\n\n \"He knocks at all doors, strays and roams:\n Nay hath not so much wit as some stones have,\n Which in the darkest nights point to their homes\n By some hid sense their Maker gave:\n Man is the shuttle, to whose winding quest\n And passage through these looms\n God order'd motion, but ordain'd no rest.\"\n\nThere is great moral force about this; its measure and words put one in\nmind of the majestic lines of Shirley, beginning\n\n \"The glories of our earthly state\n Are shadows, not substantial things.\"\n\n\nCOCK-CROWING.\n\n \"Father of lights! what Sunnie seed,\n What glance of day hast thou confin'd\n Into this bird? To all the breed\n This busie Ray thou hast assign'd;\n Their magnetisme works all night,\n And dreams of Paradise and light.\n\n \"Their eyes watch for the morning-hue,\n Their little grain expelling night\n So shines and sings, as if it knew\n The path unto the house of light.\n It seems their candle, howe'er done,\n Was tinn'd and lighted at the sunne.\"\n\nThis is a conceit, but an exquisite one.\n\n\nPROVIDENCE.\n\n \"Sacred and secret hand!\n By whose assisting, swift command\n The Angel shewd that holy Well,\n Which freed poor Hagar from her fears,\n And turn'd to smiles the begging tears\n Of yong distressed Ishmael.\"\n\nThere is something very beautiful and touching in the opening of this on\nProvidence, and in the \"yong distressed Ishmael.\"\n\n\nTHE DAWNING.\n\n \"Ah! what time wilt thou come? when shall that crie,\n The Bridegroome's Comming! fill the sky?\n Shall it in the Evening run\n When our words and works are done?\n Or will thy all-surprizing light\n Break at midnight,\n When either sleep, or some dark pleasure\n Possesseth mad man without measure?\n Or shall these early, fragrant hours\n Unlock thy bowres?\n And with their blush of light descry\n Thy locks crown'd with eternitie?\n Indeed, it is the only time\n That with thy glory doth best chime;\n All now are stirring, ev'ry field\n Full hymns doth yield;\n The whole Creation shakes off night,\n And for thy shadow looks the light.\"\n\nThis last line is full of grandeur and originality.\n\n\nTHE LAW AND THE GOSPEL.\n\n \"Lord, when thou didst on _Sinai_ pitch,\n And shine from _Paran_, when a firie Law,\n Pronounc'd with thunder and thy threats, did thaw\n Thy People's hearts, when all thy weeds were rich,\n And Inaccessible for light,\n Terrour, and might;--\n How did poore flesh, which after thou didst weare,\n Then faint and fear!\n Thy Chosen flock, like leafs in a high wind,\n Whisper'd obedience, and their heads inclin'd.\"\n\nThe idea in the last lines, we may suppose, was suggested by what Isaiah\nsays of the effect produced on Ahaz and the men of Judah, when they\nheard that Rezin, king of Syria, had joined Israel against them. \"And\nhis heart was moved, and the heart of his people, _as the trees of the\nwood are moved by the winds_.\"\n\n\nHOLY SCRIPTURES.\n\n \"Welcome, dear book, soul's Joy and food! The feast\n Of Spirits; Heav'n extracted lyes in thee.\n Thou art life's Charter, The Dove's spotless nest\n Where souls are hatch'd unto Eternitie.\n\n \"In thee the hidden stone, the Manna lies;\n Thou art the great Elixir rare and Choice;\n The Key that opens to all Mysteries,\n The Word in Characters, God in the Voice.\"\n\nThis is very like Herbert, and not inferior to him.\n\nIn a poem having the odd mark of \"\u00b6,\" and which seems to have been\nwritten after the death of some dear friends, are these two stanzas, the\nlast of which is singularly pathetic:--\n\n \"They are all gone into the world of light!\n And I alone sit lingring here!\n Their very memory is fair and bright,\n And my sad thoughts doth clear.\n\n \"He that hath found some fledg'd bird's nest may know\n At first sight if the bird be flown;\n But what fair Dell or Grove he sings in now,\n That is to him unknown.\"\n\nReferring to Nicodemus visiting our Lord:--\n\n\nTHE NIGHT. (JOHN iii. 2.)\n\n \"Most blest believer he!\n Who in that land of darkness and blinde eyes\n Thy long expected healing wings could see,\n When thou didst rise;\n And, what can never more be done,\n Did at midnight speak with the Sun!\n\n \"O who will tell me where\n He found thee at that dead and silent hour?\n What hallow'd solitary ground did bear\n So rare a flower;\n Within whose sacred leaves did lie\n The fulness of the Deity?\n\n \"No mercy-seat of gold,\n No dead and dusty Cherub, nor carved stone,\n But his own living works, did my Lord hold\n And lodge alone;\n Where trees and herbs did watch and peep\n And wonder, while the Jews did sleep.\n\n \"Dear night! this world's defeat;\n The stop to busie fools; care's check and curb;\n The day of Spirits; my soul's calm retreat\n Which none disturb!\n Christ's[46] progress and his prayer time;\n The hours to which high Heaven doth chime.\n\n \"God's silent, searching flight:\n When my Lord's head is filled with dew, and all\n His locks are wet with the clear drops of night;\n His still, soft call;\n His knocking time; the soul's dumb watch,\n When spirits their Fair Kindred catch.\n\n \"Were all my loud, evil days,\n Calm and unhaunted as is Thy dark Tent,\n Whose peace but by some Angel's wing or voice\n Is seldom rent;\n Then I in Heaven all the long year\n Would keep, and never wander here.\"\n\n [46] Mark i. 35; Luke xxi. 37.\n\nAt the end he has these striking words--\n\n \"There is in God, some say,\n _A deep but dazzling darkness_----\"\n\nThis brings to our mind the concluding sentence of Mr. Ruskin's fifth\nchapter in his second volume--\"The infinity of God is not mysterious, it\nis only unfathomable; not concealed, but incomprehensible; _it is a\nclear infinity, the darkness of the pure, unsearchable sea_.\" Plato, if\nwe rightly remember, says--\"Truth is the body of God, light is His\nshadow.\"\n\n\nDEATH.\n\n \"Though since thy first sad entrance\n By just Abel's blood,\n 'Tis now six thousand years well nigh,\n And still thy sovereignty holds good;\n Yet by none art thou understood.\n\n \"We talk and name thee with much ease,\n As a tryed thing,\n And every one can slight his lease,\n As if it ended in a Spring,\n Which shades and bowers doth rent-free bring.\n\n \"To thy dark land these heedless go,\n But there was One\n Who search'd it quite through to and fro,\n And then, returning like the Sun,\n Discover'd all that there is done.\n\n \"And since his death we throughly see\n All thy dark way;\n Thy shades but thin and narrow be,\n Which his first looks will quickly fray:\n Mists make but triumphs for the day.\"\n\n\nTHE WATER-FALL.\n\n \"With what deep murmurs, through time's silent stealth,\n Doth thy transparent, cool and watry wealth\n Here flowing fall,\n And chide and call,\n As if his liquid, loose Retinue staid\n Lingring, and were of this steep place afraid.\"\n\n\nTHE SHOWER.\n\n \"Waters above! Eternal springs!\n The dew that silvers the Dove's wings!\n O welcome, welcome to the sad!\n Give dry dust drink, drink that makes glad.\n Many fair Evenings, many flowers\n Sweetened with rich and gentle showers,\n Have I enjoyed, and down have run\n Many a fine and shining Sun;\n But never, till this happy hour,\n Was blest with such an evening shower!\"\n\nWhat a curious felicity about the repetition of \"drink\" in the fourth\nline.\n\n\"Isaac's Marriage\" is one of the best of the pieces, but is too long for\ninsertion.\n\n\n\"THE RAINBOW\"\n\nhas seldom been better sung:\n\n \"Still young and fine! but what is still in view\n We slight as old and soil'd, though fresh and new.\n How bright wert thou, when Shem's admiring eye\n Thy burnisht, flaming Arch did first descry!\n When Terah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot,\n The youthful world's gray fathers in one knot,\n Did with intentive looks watch every hour\n For thy new light, and trembled at each shower!\n When thou dost shine darkness looks white and fair,\n Forms turn to Musick, clouds to smiles and air:\n Rain gently spends his honey-drops, and pours\n Balm on the cleft earth, milk on grass and flowers.\n Bright pledge of peace and Sunshine! the sure tye\n Of thy Lord's hand, the object[47] of His eye!\n When I behold thee, though my light be dim,\n Distant and low, I can in thine see Him\n Who looks upon thee from His glorious throne,\n And mindes the Covenant 'twixt _All_ and _One_.\"\n\n [47] Gen. ix. 16.\n\nWhat a knot of the gray fathers!\n\n \"Terah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot!\"\n\nOur readers will see whence Campbell stole, and how he spoiled in the\nstealing (by omitting the word \"youthful\"), the well-known line in his\n\"Rainbow\"--\n\n \"How came the world's gray fathers forth\n To view the sacred sign.\"\n\nCampbell did not disdain to take this, and no one will say much against\nhim, though it looks ill, occurring in a poem on the rainbow; but we\ncannot so easily forgive him for saying that \"Vaughan is one of the\nharshest even of the inferior order of conceit, having some few\nscattered thoughts that meet our eye amidst his harsh pages, like wild\nflowers on a barren heath.\"\n\n\"Rules and Lessons\" is his longest and one of his best poems; but we\nmust send our readers to the book itself, where they will find much to\nmake them grateful to \"The Silurist\" and to Mr. Pickering, who has\nalready done such good service for the best of our elder literature.\n\nWe have said little about the deep godliness, the spiritual\nChristianity, with which every poem is penetrated and quickened. Those\nwho can detect and relish this best, will not be the worse pleased at\nour saying little about it. Vaughan's religion is deep, lively,\npersonal, tender, kindly, impassioned, temperate, central. His religion\ngrows up, effloresces into the ideas and forms of poetry as naturally,\nas noiselessly, as beautifully as the life of the unseen seed finds its\nway up into the \"bright consummate flower.\"\n\n * * * * *\n\nOf \"IX. Poems by V.,\" we would say with the _Quarterly_, {baia men alla\nRHODA}. They combine rare excellences; the concentration, the finish,\nthe gravity of a man's thought, with the tenderness, the insight, the\nconstitutional sorrowfulness of a woman's--her purity, her\npassionateness, her delicate and keen sense and expression. We confess\nwe would rather have been the author of any one of the nine poems in\nthis little volume, than of the somewhat tremendous, absurd, raw, loud,\nand fuliginous \"Festus,\" with his many thousands of lines and his\namazing reputation, his bad English, bad religion, bad philosophy, and\nvery bad jokes--his \"buttered thunder\" (this is his own phrase), and his\npoor devil of a Lucifer--we would, we repeat (having in this our _subita\nac saeva indignatio_ run ourselves a little out of breath), as much\nrather keep company with \"V.\" than with Mr. Bailey, as we would prefer\ngoing to sea for _pleasure_, in a trim little yacht, with its free\nmotions, its quiet, its cleanliness, to taking a state berth in some\nFire-King steamer of one thousand horse-power, with his mighty and\ntroublous throb, his smoke, his exasperated steam, his clangor, and fire\nand fury, his oils and smells.\n\nHad we time, and were this the fit place, we could, we think, make\nsomething out of this comparison of the boat with its sail and its\nrudder, and the unseen, wayward, serviceable winds playing about it,\ninspiring it, and swaying its course,--and the iron steamer, with its\nmachinery, its coarse energy, its noises and philosophy, its ungainly\nbuild and gait, its perilousness from within; and we think we could show\nhow much of what Aristotle, Lord Jeffrey, Charles Lamb, or Edmund Burke\nwould have called genuine poetry there is in the slender \"V.,\" and how\nlittle in the big \"Festus.\" We have made repeated attempts, but we\ncannot get through this poem. It beats us. We must want the _Festus_\nsense. Some of our best friends, with whom we generally agree on such\nmatters, are distressed for us, and repeat long passages with great\nenergy and apparent intelligence and satisfaction. Meanwhile, having\nread the six pages of public opinion at the end of the third and\nPeople's edition, we take it for granted that it is a great performance,\nthat, to use one of the author's own words, there is a mighty\n\"_somethingness_\" about it--and we can entirely acquiesce in the\nquotation from _The Sunday Times_, that they \"read it with astonishment,\nand closed it with bewilderment.\" It would appear from these opinions,\nwhich from their intensity, variety, and number (upwards of 50), are\ncurious signs of the times, that Mr. Bailey has not so much improved on,\nas happily superseded the authors of Job and Ecclesiastes, of the Divine\nComedy, of Paradise Lost and Regained, of Dr. Faustus, Hamlet, and\nFaust, of Don Juan, the Course of Time, St. Leon, the Jolly Beggars, and\nthe Loves of the Angels.\n\nHe is more sublime and simple than Job--more royally witty and wise,\nmore to the quick and the point than Solomon--more picturesque, more\nintense, more pathetic than Dante--more Miltonic (we have no other word)\nthan Milton--more dreadful, more curiously blasphemous, more sonorous\nthan Marlowe--more worldly-wise and clever, and intellectually _svelt_\nthan Goethe. More passionate, more eloquent, more impudent than\nByron--more orthodox, more edifying, more precocious than Pollok--more\nabsorptive and inveterate than Godwin; and more hearty and tender, more\nof love and manhood all compact than Burns--more gay than Moore--more\n{myrianous} than Shakspeare.\n\nIt may be so. We have made repeated and resolute incursions in various\ndirections into his torrid zone, but have always come out greatly\nscorched and stunned and affronted. Never before did we come across such\nan amount of energetic and tremendous words, going \"sounding on their\ndim and perilous way,\" like a cataract at midnight--not flowing like a\nstream, nor leaping like a clear waterfall, but always among\nbreakers--roaring and tearing and tempesting with a sort of\ntranscendental din; and then what power of energizing and speaking, and\nphilosophizing and preaching, and laughing and joking and love-making,\n_in vacuo_! As far as we can judge, and as far as we can keep our senses\nin such a region, it seems to us not a poem at all, hardly even\npoetical--but rather the materials for a poem, made up of science,\nreligion, and love, the (very raw) materials of a structure--as if the\nbricks and mortar, and lath and plaster, and furniture, and fire and\nfuel and meat and drink, and inhabitants male and female, of a house\nwere all mixed \"through other\" in one enormous _imbroglio_. It is a sort\nof fire-mist, out of which poetry, like a star, might by curdling,\ncondensation, crystallization, have been developed, after much purging,\nrefining, and cooling, much time and pains. Mr. Bailey is, we believe,\nstill a young man full of energy--full, we doubt not, of great and good\naims; let him read over a passage, we dare say he knows it well, in the\nsecond book of Milton on Church Government, he will there, among many\nother things worthy of his regard, find that \"the wily subtleties and\nrefluxes of man's thoughts from within,\" which is the haunt and main\nregion of his song, may be \"painted out and described\" with \"_a solid\nand treatable smoothness_.\" If he paint out and describe after this\nmanner, he may yet more than make up for this sin of his youth; and let\nhim take our word for it and fling away nine tenths of his adjectives,\nand in the words of Old Shirley--\n\n \"Compose his poem clean without 'em.\n A row of stately SUBSTANTIVES would march\n Like Switzers, and bear all the fields before 'em;\n Carry their weight; show fair, like Deeds enroll'd;\n Not Writs, that are first made and after filed.\n Thence first came up the title of Blank Verse;--\n You know, sir, what Blank signifies;--when the sense,\n First framed, is tied with adjectives like points,\n Hang 't, 'tis pedantic vulgar poetry.\n _Let children, when they versify, stick here\n And there, these piddling words for want of matter.\n Poets write masculine numbers._\"\n\nHere are some of \"V.'s\" Roses--\n\n\nTHE GRAVE.\n\n \"I stood within the grave's o'ershadowing vault;\n Gloomy and damp it stretch'd its vast domain;\n Shades were its boundary; for my strain'd eye sought\n For other limit to its width in vain.\n\n \"Faint from the entrance came a daylight ray,\n And distant sound of living men and things;\n This, in th' encountering darkness pass'd away,\n That, took the tone in which a mourner sings.\n\n \"I lit a torch at a sepulchral lamp,\n Which shot a thread of light amid the gloom;\n And feebly burning 'gainst the rolling damp,\n I bore it through the regions of the tomb.\n\n \"Around me stretch'd the slumbers of the dead,\n _Whereof the silence ached upon my ear;_\n More and more noiseless did I make my tread,\n And yet its echoes chill'd my heart with fear.\n\n \"The former men of every age and place,\n From all their wand'rings gather'd, round me lay;\n The dust of wither'd Empires did I trace,\n And stood 'mid Generations pass'd away.\n\n \"I saw whole cities, that in flood or fire,\n Or famine or the plague, gave up their breath;\n Whole armies whom a day beheld expire,\n Swept by ten thousands to the arms of Death.\n\n \"I saw the old world's white and wave-swept bones\n A giant heap of creatures that had been;\n Far and confused the broken skeletons\n Lay strewn beyond mine eye's remotest ken.\n\n \"Death's various shrines--the Urn, the Stone, the Lamp--\n Were scatter'd round, confused, amid the dead;\n Symbols and Types were mould'ring in the damp,\n Their shapes were waning and their meaning fled.\n\n \"Unspoken tongues, perchance in praise or woe,\n Were character'd on tablets Time had swept;\n _And deep were half their letters hid below\n The thick small dust of those they once had wept._\n\n \"No hand was here to wipe the dust away,\n No reader of the writing traced beneath;\n No spirit sitting by its form of clay;\n No sigh nor sound from all the heaps of Death.\n\n \"_One place alone had ceased to hold its prey;\n A form had press'd it and was there no more;\n The garments of the Grave beside it lay,\n Where once they wrapp'd him on the rocky floor._\n\n \"_He only with returning footsteps broke\n Th' eternal calm wherewith the Tomb was bound;_\n _Among the sleeping Dead alone He woke,\n And bless'd with outstretch'd hands the host around._\n\n \"_Well is it that such blessing hovers here,\n To soothe each sad survivor of the throng,\n Who haunt the portals of the solemn sphere,\n And pour their woe the loaded air along._\n\n \"_They to the verge have follow'd what they love,\n And on th' insuperable threshold stand;\n With cherish'd names its speechless calm reprove,\n And stretch in the abyss their ungrasp'd hand._\n\n \"But vainly there they seek their soul's relief,\n And of th' obdurate Grave its prey implore;\n Till Death himself shall medicine their grief,\n Closing their eyes by those they wept before.\n\n \"All that have died, the Earth's whole race, repose\n Where Death collects his Treasures, heap on heap;\n O'er each one's busy day, the nightshades close;\n Its Actors, Sufferers, Schools, Kings, Armies--sleep.\"\n\nThe lines in italics are of the highest quality, both in thought and\nword; the allusion to Him who by dying abolished death, seems to us\nwonderfully fine--sudden, simple,--it brings to our mind the lines\nalready quoted from Vaughan:--\n\n \"But there was One\n Who search'd it quite through to and fro,\n And then returning like the Sun,\n Discover'd all that there is done.\"\n\nWhat a rich line this is!\n\n \"And pour their woe the loaded air along.\"\n\n \"The insuperable threshold!\"\n\nDo our readers remember the dying Corinne's words? _Je mourrais\nseule--au reste, ce moment se passe de secours; nos amis ne peuvent nous\nsuivre que jusqu'au_ _seuil de la vie. La, commencent des pensees dont\nle trouble et la profondeur ne sauraient se confier._\n\nWe have only space for one more--verses entitled \"Heart's-Ease.\"\n\n\nHEART'S-EASE.\n\n \"Oh, Heart's-Ease, dost thou lie within that flower?\n How shall I draw thee thence?--so much I need\n The healing aid of thine enshrined power\n To veil the past--and bid the time good speed!\n\n \"I gather it--it withers on my breast;\n The heart's-ease dies when it is laid on mine;\n Methinks there is no shape by Joy possess'd,\n Would better fare than thou, upon that shrine.\n\n \"Take from me things gone by--oh! change the past--\n Renew the lost--restore me the decay'd,--\n Bring back the days whose tide has ebb'd so fast--\n Give form again to the fantastic shade!\n\n \"My hope, that never grew to certainty,--\n My youth, that perish'd in its vain desire,--\n My fond ambition, crush'd ere it could be\n Aught save a self-consuming, wasted fire:\n\n \"Bring these anew, and set me once again\n In the delusion of Life's Infancy--\n I was not happy, but I knew not then\n That happy I was never doom'd to be.\n\n \"Till these things are, and powers divine descend--\n Love, kindness, joy, and hope, to gild my day,\n In vain the emblem leaves towards me bend,\n Thy Spirit, Heart's-Ease, is too far away!\"\n\nWe would fain have given two poems entitled \"Bessy\" and \"Youth and Age.\"\nEverything in this little volume is select and good. Sensibility and\nsense in right measure and proportion and keeping, and in pure, strong\nclassical language; no intemperance of thought or phrase. Why does not\n\"V.\" write more?\n\nWe do not very well know how to introduce our friend Mr. Ellison, \"The\nBornnatural,\" who addresses his \"Madmoments to the Light-headed of\nSociety at large.\" We feel as a father, a mother, or other near of kin\nwould at introducing an ungainly gifted and much loved son or kinsman,\nwho had the knack of putting his worst foot foremost, and making himself\n_imprimis_ ridiculous.\n\nThere is something wrong in all awkwardness, a want of nature\n_somewhere_, and we feel affronted even still, after we have taken the\nBornnatural[48] to our heart, and admire and love him, at his absurd\ngratuitous self-befoolment. The book is at first sight one farrago of\noddities and offences--coarse foreign paper--bad printing--italics\nbroad-cast over every page--the words run into each other in a way we\nare glad to say is as yet quite original, making such extraordinary\nmonsters of words as these--beingsriddle--sunbeammotes--gooddeed--midjune--\nsummerair--selffavor--seraphechoes--puredeedprompter--barkskeel, &c.\nNow we like Anglo-Saxon and the polygamous German,[49] but we like\nbetter the well of English undefiled--a well, by the by, much oftener\nspoken of than drawn from; but to fashion such words as these words are,\nis as monstrous as for a painter to _compose_ an animal not out of the\nelements, but out of the entire bodies of several, of an ass, for\ninstance, a cock and a crocodile, so as to produce an outrageous\nindividual, with whom even a duck-billed Platypus would think twice\nbefore he fraternized--ornithorynchous and paradoxical though he be,\npoor fellow.\n\n [48] In his Preface he explains the title Bornnatural, as meaning\n \"one who inherits the natural sentiments and tastes to which\n he was born, still artunsullied and customfree.\"\n\n [49] _ex. gr._--_Konstantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifergeselle_.\n Here is a word as long as the sea-serpent--but, like it,\n having a head and tail, being what lawyers call _unum\n quid_--not an up and down series of infatuated _phocae_, as\n Professor Owen somewhat insolently asserts. Here is what the\n Bornnatural would have made of it--\n\n _A Constantinopolitanbagpiperoutofhisapprenticeship_.\n\nAnd yet our Bornnatural's two thick and closely small-printed volumes\nare as full of poetry as is an \"impassioned grape\" of its noble liquor.\n\nHe is a true poet. But he has not the art of _singling_ his thoughts, an\nart as useful in composition as in husbandry, as necessary for young\nfancies as young turnips. Those who have seen our turnip fields in early\nsummer, with the hoers at their work, will understand our reference. If\nany one wishes to read these really remarkable volumes, we would advise\nthem to begin with \"Season Changes\" and \"Emma, a Tale.\" We give two Odes\non Psyche, which are as nearly perfect as anything out of Milton or\nTennyson.\n\nThe story is the well-known one of Psyche and Cupid, told at such\nlength, and with so much beauty and pathos and picturesqueness by\nApuleius, in his \"Golden Ass.\" Psyche is the human soul--a beautiful\nyoung woman. Cupid is spiritual, heavenly love--a comely youth. They are\nmarried, and live in perfect happiness, but by a strange decree of fate,\nhe comes and goes unseen, tarrying only for the night; and he has told\nher, that if she looks on him with her bodily eye, if she tries to break\nthrough the darkness in which they dwell, then he must leave her, and\nforever. Her two sisters--Anger and Desire, tempt Psyche. She yields to\ntheir evil counsel, and thus it fares with her:--\n\n\nODE TO PSYCHE.\n\n \"1. Let not a sigh be breathed, or he is flown!\n With tiptoe stealth she glides, and throbbing breast,\n Towards the bed, like one who dares not own\n Her purpose, and half shrinks, yet cannot rest\n From her rash Essay: in one trembling hand\n She bears a lamp, which sparkles on a sword;\n In the dim light she seems a wandering dream\n Of loveliness: 'tis Psyche and her Lord,\n Her yet unseen, who slumbers like a beam\n Of moonlight, vanishing as soon as scann'd!\n\n \"2. One Moment, and all bliss hath fled her heart,\n Like windstole odours from the rosebud's cell,\n Or as the earthdashed dewdrop which no art\n Can e'er replace: alas! we learn fullwell\n How beautiful the Past when it is o'er,\n But with scal'd eyes we hurry to the brink,\n Blind as the waterfall: oh, stay thy feet,\n Thou rash one, be content to know no more\n Of bliss than thy heart teaches thee, nor think\n The sensual eye can grasp a form more sweet--\n\n \"3. Than that which for itself the soul should chuse\n For higher adoration; but in vain!\n Onward she moves, and as the lamp's faint hues\n Flicker around, her charmed eyeballs strain,\n For there he lies in undreamt loveliness!\n Softly she steals towards him, and bends o'er\n His slumberlidded eyes, as a lily droops\n Faint o'er a folded rose: one caress\n She would but dares not take, and as she stood,\n An oildrop from the lamp fell burning sore!\n\n \"4. Thereat sleepfray'd, dreamlike the God takes Wing\n And soars to his own skies, while Psyche strives\n To clasp his foot, and fain thereon would cling,\n But falls insensate;\n\n * * * * *\n\n Psyche! thou shouldst have taken that high gift\n Of Love as it was meant, that mystery\n Did ask thy faith, the Gods do test our worth,\n And ere they grant high boons our heart would sift!\n\n \"5. Hadst thou no divine Vision of thine own?\n Didst thou not see the Object of thy Love\n Clothed with a Beauty to dull clay unknown?\n And could not that bright Image, far above\n The Reach of sere Decay, content thy Thought?\n Which with its glory would have wrapp'd thee round,\n To the Gravesbrink, untouched by Age or Pain!\n Alas! we mar what Fancy's Womb has brought\n Forth of most beautiful, and to the Bound\n Of Sense reduce the Helen of the Brain!\"\n\nWhat a picture! Psyche, pale with love and fear, bending in the\nuncertain light, over her lord, with the rich flush of health and sleep\nand manhood on his cheek, \"_as a lily droops faint o'er a folded rose!_\"\nWe remember nothing anywhere finer than this.\n\n\nODE TO PSYCHE.\n\n \"1. Why stand'st thou thus at Gaze\n In the faint Tapersrays,\n With strained Eyeballs fixed upon that Bed?\n Has he then flown away,\n Lost, like a Star in Day,\n Or like a Pearl in Depths unfathomed?\n Alas! thou hast done very ill,\n Thus with thine Eyes the Vision of thy Soul to kill!\n\n \"2. Thought'st thou that earthly Light\n Could then assist thy Sight,\n Or that the Limits of Reality\n Could grasp Things fairer than\n Imagination's Span,\n Who communes with the Angels of the Sky,\n Thou graspest at the Rainbow, and\n Wouldst make it as the Zone with which thy Waist is spanned.\n\n \"3. And what find'st thou in his Stead?\n Only the empty Bed!\n\n * * * * *\n\n Thou sought'st the Earthly and therefore\n The heavenly is gone, for that must ever soar!\n\n \"4. For the bright World of\n Pure and boundless Love\n What hast thou found? alas! a narrow room!\n Put out that Light,\n Restore thy Soul its Sight,\n For better 'tis to dwell in outward Gloom,\n Than thus, by the vile Body's eye,\n To rob the Soul of its Infinity!\n\n \"5. Love, Love has Wings, and he\n Soon out of Sight will flee,\n Lost in far Ether to the sensual Eye,\n But the Soul's Vision true\n Can track him, yea, up to\n The Presence and the Throne of the Most High:\n For thence he is, and tho' he dwell below,\n To the Soul only he his genuine Form will show!\"\n\nMr. Ellison was a boy of twenty-three when he wrote this. That, with so\nmuch command of expression and of measure, he should run waste and\nformless and even void, as he does in other parts of his volumes, is\nvery mysterious and very distressing.\n\n * * * * *\n\nHow we became possessed of the poetical Epistle from \"E. V. K. to his\nFriend in Town,\" is more easily asked than answered. We avow ourselves\nin the matter to have acted for once on M. Proudhon's maxim--\"_La\npropriete c'est le vol._\" We merely say, in our defence, that it is a\nshame in \"E. V. K.,\" be he who he may, to hide his talent in a napkin,\nor keep it for his friends alone. It is just such men and such poets as\nhe that we most need at present, sober-minded and sound-minded and\nwell-balanced, whose genius is subject to their judgment, and who have\ngenius and judgment to begin with--a part of the poetical stock in trade\nwith which many of our living writers are not largely furnished. The\nEpistle is obviously written quite off-hand, but it is the off-hand of a\nmaster, both as to material and workmanship. He is of the good old\nmanly, classical school. His thoughts have settled and cleared\nthemselves before forming into the mould of verse. They are in the style\nof Stewart Rose's _vers de societe_, but have more of the graphic force\nand deep feeling and fine humor of Crabbe and Cowper in their substance,\nwith a something of their own which is to us quite as delightful. But\nour readers may judge. After upbraiding, with much wit, a certain\nfaithless town-friend for not making out his visit, he thus describes\nhis residence:--\n\n \"Though its charms be few,\n The place will please you, and may profit too;--\n My house, upon the hillside built, looks down\n On a neat harbor and a lively town.\n Apart, 'mid screen of trees, it stands, just where\n We see the popular bustle, but not share.\n Full in our front is spread a varied scene--\n A royal ruin, gray, or clothed with green,\n Church spires, tower, docks, streets, terraces, and trees,\n Back'd by green fields, which mount by due degrees\n Into brown uplands, stretching high away\n To where, by silent tarns, the wild deer stray.\n Below, with gentle tide, the Atlantic Sea\n Laves the curved beach, and fills the cheerful quay,\n Where frequent glides the sail, and dips the oar,\n And smoking steamer halts with hissing roar.\"\n\nThen follows a long passage of great eloquence, truth, and wit, directed\nagainst the feverish, affected, unwholesome life in town, before which\nhe fears\n\n \"Even he, my friend, the man whom once I knew,\n Surrounded by blue women and pale men,\"\n\nhas fallen a victim; and then concludes with these lines, which it would\nnot be easy to match for everything that constitutes good poetry. As he\nwrites he chides himself for suspecting his friend; and at that moment\n(it seems to have been written on Christmas day) he hears the song of a\nthrush, and forthwith he \"bursts into a song,\" as full-voiced, as\nnative, as sweet and strong, as that of his bright-eyed feathered\nfriend.\n\n \"But, hark that sound! the mavis! can it be?\n Once more! It is. High perched on yon bare tree,\n He starts the wondering winter with his trill;\n Or by that sweet sun westering o'er the hill\n Allured, or for he thinks melodious mirth\n Due to the holy season of Christ's birth.--\n And hark! as his clear fluting fills the air,\n Low broken notes and twitterings you may hear\n From other emulous birds, the brakes among;\n Fain would they also burst into a song;\n But winter warns, and muffling up their throats,\n They liquid--for the spring--preserve their notes.\n O sweet preluding! having heard that strain,\n How dare I lift my dissonant voice again?\n Let me be still, let me enjoy the time,\n Bothering myself or thee no more with rugged rhyme.\"\n\nThis author must not be allowed to \"muffle up _his_ throat,\" and keep\nhis notes for some imaginary and far-off spring. He has not the excuse\nof the mavis. He must give us more of his own \"clear fluting.\" Let him,\nwith that keen, kindly and thoughtful eye, look from his retreat, as\nCowper did, upon the restless, noisy world he has left, seeing the\npopular bustle, not sharing it, and let his pen record in such verses as\nthese what his understanding and his affections think and feel and his\nimagination informs, and we shall have something in verse not unlike the\nletters from Olney. There is one line which deserves to be immortalized\nover the cherished bins of our wine-fanciers, where repose their\n\n \"Dear prisoned spirits of the impassioned grape.\"\n\nWhat is good makes us think of what is better, as well, and it is to be\nhoped more, than of what is worse. There is no sweetness so sweet as\nthat of a large and deep nature; there is no knowledge so good, so\nstrengthening as that of a great mind, which is forever filling itself\nafresh. \"Out of the eater comes forth meat; out of the strong comes\nforth sweetness.\" Here is one of such \"_dulcedines verae_\"--the sweetness\nof a strong man:--\n\n \"Now came still evening on, and twilight gray\n Had in her sober livery all things clad;\n Silence accompany'd; for beast and bird,\n They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,\n Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;\n She all night long her amorous descant sung;\n Silence was pleased: now glow'd the firmament\n With living saphirs; Hesperus that led\n The starry host rode brightest, till the moon,\n Rising in clouded majesty, at length\n Apparent queen unveil'd her peerless light,\n And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.\"\n\nWere we inclined to do anything but enjoy this and be thankful--giving\nourselves up to its gentleness, informing ourselves with its quietness\nand beauty,--we would note the simplicity, the neutral tints, the\nquietness of its language, the \"sober livery\" in which its thoughts are\nclad. In the first thirty-eight words, twenty-nine are monosyllables.\nThen there is the gradual way in which the crowning fantasy is\nintroduced. It comes upon us at once, and yet not wholly unexpected; it\n\"sweetly creeps\" into our \"study of imagination;\" it lives and moves,\nbut it is a moving that is \"delicate;\" it flows in upon us _incredibili\nlenitate_. \"Evening\" is a matter of fact, and its stillness too--a time\nof the day; and \"twilight\" is little more. We feel the first touch of\nspiritual life in \"_her_ sober livery,\" and bolder and deeper in \"all\nthings _clad_.\" Still we are not deep, the real is not yet transfigured\nand transformed, and we are brought back into it after being told that\n\"Silence accompanied,\" by the explanatory \"for,\" and the bit of sweet\nnatural history of the beasts and birds. The mind dilates and is moved,\nits eye detained over the picture; and then comes that rich, \"thick\nwarbled note\"--\"_all but the wakeful nightingale_;\" this fills and\ninforms the ear, making it also \"of apprehension more quick,\" and we are\nprepared now for the great idea coming \"into the eye and prospect of our\nsoul\"--SILENCE WAS PLEASED! There is nothing in all poetry above this.\nStill evening and twilight gray are now Beings, coming on, and walking\nover the earth like queens, \"with Silence,\"\n\n \"Admiration's speaking'st tongue,\"\n\nas their pleased companion. All is \"calm and free,\" and \"full of life,\"\nit is a \"Holy Time.\" What a picture!--what simplicity of means! what\nlargeness and perfectness of effect!--what knowledge and love of\nnature! what supreme art!--what modesty and submission! what\nself-possession!--what plainness, what selectness of speech! \"As is the\nheight, so is the depth. The intensities must be at once opposite and\nequal. As the liberty, so the reverence for law. As the independence,\nso must be the seeing and the service, and the submission to the\nSupreme Will. As the ideal genius and the originality, so must be the\nresignation to the real world, the sympathy and the intercommunion with\nNature.\"--_Coleridge's Posthumous Tract \"The Idea of Life.\"_\n\n * * * * *\n\nSince writing the above, our friend \"E. V. K.\" has shown himself\ncuriously unaffected by \"that last infirmity of noble minds,\"--his\n\"clear spirit\" heeds all too little its urgent \"spur.\" The following\nsonnets are all we can pilfer from him. They are worth the stealing:--\n\n\nAN ARGUMENT IN RHYME.\n\n\nI.\n\n \"Things that now are beget the things to be,\n As they themselves were gotten by things past;\n Thou art a sire, who yesterday but wast\n A child like him now prattling on thy knee;\n And he in turn ere long shall offspring see.\n Effects at first, seem causes at the last,\n Yet only seem; when off their veil is cast,\n All speak alike of mightier energy,\n Received and pass'd along. The life that flows\n Through space and time, bursts in a loftier source.\n What's spaced and timed is bounded, therefore shows\n A power beyond, a timeless, spaceless force,\n Templed in that infinitude, before\n Whose light-veil'd porch men wonder and adore.\n\n\nII.\n\n \"Wonder! but--for we cannot comprehend,\n Dare not to doubt. Man, know thyself! and know\n That, being what thou art, it must be so.\n We creatures are, and it were to transcend\n The limits of our being, and ascend\n Above the Infinite, if we could show\n All that He is and how things from Him flow.\n Things and their laws by Man are grasp'd and kenn'd,\n But creatures must no more; and Nature's _must_\n Is Reason's choice; for could we all reveal\n Of God and acts creative, doubt were just.\n Were these conceivable, they were not real.\n Here, ignorance man's sphere of being suits,\n 'Tis knowledge self, or of her richest fruits.\n\n\nIII.\n\n \"Then rest here, brother! and within the veil\n Boldly thine anchor cast. What though thy boat\n No shoreland sees, but undulates afloat\n On soundless depths; securely fold thy sail.\n Ah! not by daring prow and favoring gale\n Man threads the gulfs of doubting and despond,\n And gains a rest in being unbeyond,\n Who roams the furthest, surest is to fail;\n Knowing nor what to seek, nor how to find.\n Not far but near, about us, yea within,\n Lieth the infinite life. The pure in mind\n Dwell in the Presence, to themselves akin;\n And lo! thou sick and health-imploring soul,\n He stands beside thee--touch, and thou art whole.\"\n\n\n\n\n_DR. CHALMERS._\n\n \"_Fervet immensusque ruit._\"--HOR.\n\n \"_His memory long will live alone\n In all our hearts, as mournful light\n That broods above the fallen sun,\n And dwells in heaven half the night._\"\n\n TENNYSON.\n\n \"_He was not one man, he was a thousand men._\"--SYDNEY SMITH.\n\n\nWhen, towards the close of some long summer day, we come suddenly, and,\nas we think, before his time, upon the broad sun, \"sinking down in his\ntranquillity\" into the unclouded west, we cannot keep our eyes from the\ngreat spectacle,--and when he is gone the shadow of him haunts our\nsight: we see everywhere,--upon the spotless heaven, upon the distant\nmountains, upon the fields, and upon the road at our feet,--that dim,\nstrange, changeful image; and if our eyes shut, to recover themselves,\nwe still find in them, like a dying flame, or like a gleam in a dark\nplace, the unmistakable phantom of the mighty orb that has set,--and\nwere we to sit down, as we have often done, and try to record by pencil\nor by pen, our impression of that supreme hour, still would IT be there.\nWe must have patience with our eye, it will not let the impression\ngo,--that spot on which the radiant disk was impressed, is insensible to\nall other outward things, for a time: its best relief is, to let the eye\nwander vaguely over earth and sky, and repose itself on the mild shadowy\ndistance.\n\nSo it is when a great and good and beloved man departs, sets--it may be\nsuddenly--and to us who know not the times and the seasons, _too soon_.\nWe gaze eagerly at his last hours, and when he is gone, never to rise\nagain on our sight, we see his image wherever we go, and in whatsoever\nwe are engaged, and if we try to record by words our wonder, our sorrow,\nand our affection, we cannot see to do it, for the \"idea of his life\" is\nforever coming into our \"study of imagination \"--into all our thoughts,\nand we can do little else than let our mind, in a wise passiveness, hush\nitself to rest. The sun returns--he knows his rising--\n\n \"To-morrow he repairs his drooping head,\n And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore\n Flames in the forehead of the morning sky;\"\n\nbut man lieth down, and riseth not again till the heavens are no more.\nNever again will he whose \"Meditations\" are now before us, lift up the\nlight of his countenance upon us.\n\nWe need not say we look upon him, as a great man, as a good man, as a\nbeloved man,--_quis desiderio sit pudor tam cari capitis?_ We cannot now\ngo very curiously to work, to scrutinize the composition of his\ncharacter,--we cannot take that large, free, genial nature to pieces,\nand weigh this and measure that, and sum up and pronounce; we are too\nnear as yet to him, and to his loss, he is too dear to us to be so\nhandled. \"His death,\" to use the pathetic words of Hartley Coleridge,\n\"is a recent sorrow; his image still lives in eyes that weep for him.\"\nThe prevailing feeling is,--He is gone--\"_abiit ad plures_--he has gone\nover to the majority, he has joined the famous nations of the dead.\"\n\nIt is no small loss to the world, when one of its master spirits--one of\nits great lights--a king among the nations--leaves it. A sun is\nextinguished; a great attractive, regulating power is withdrawn. For\nthough it be a common, it is also a natural thought, to compare a great\nman to the sun; it is in many respects significant. Like the sun, he\nrules his day, and he is \"for a sign and for seasons, and for days and\nfor years;\" he enlightens, quickens, attracts, and leads after him his\nhost--his generation.\n\nTo pursue our image. When the sun sets to us, he rises elsewhere--he\ngoes on rejoicing, like a strong man, running his race. So does a great\nman: when he leaves us and our concerns--he rises elsewhere; and we may\nreasonably suppose that one who has in this world played a great part in\nits greatest histories--who has through a long life been preeminent for\npromoting the good of men and the glory of God--will be looked upon with\nkeen interest, when he joins the company of the immortals. They must\nhave heard of his fame; they may in their ways have seen and helped him\nalready.\n\nEvery one must have trembled when reading that passage in Isaiah, in\nwhich Hell is described as moved to meet Lucifer at his coming: there is\nnot in human language anything more sublime in conception, more\nexquisite in expression; it has on it the light of the terrible crystal.\nBut may we not reverse the scene? May we not imagine, when a great and\ngood man--a son of the morning--enters on his rest, that Heaven would\nmove itself to meet him at his coming? That it would stir up its dead,\neven all the chief ones of the earth, and that the kings of the nations\nwould arise each one from his throne to welcome their brother? that\nthose who saw him would \"narrowly consider him,\" and say, \"is this he\nwho moved nations, enlightened and bettered his fellows, and whom the\ngreat Taskmaster welcomes with 'Well done!'\"\n\nWe cannot help following him, whose loss we now mourn, into that region,\nand figuring to ourselves his great, childlike spirit, when that\nunspeakable scene bursts upon his view, when, as by some inward, instant\nsense, he is conscious of God--of the immediate presence of the\nAll-seeing Unseen; when he beholds \"His honorable, true, and only Son,\"\nface to face, enshrined in \"that glorious form, that light unsufferable,\nand that far-beaming blaze of majesty,\" that brightness of His glory,\nthat express image of His person; when he is admitted into the goodly\nfellowship of the apostles--the glorious company of the prophets--the\nnoble army of martyrs--the general assembly of just men--and beholds\nwith his loving eyes the myriads of \"little ones,\" outnumbering their\nelders as the dust of stars with which the galaxy is filled exceeds in\nmultitude the hosts of heaven.\n\nWhat a change! death the gate of life--a second birth, in the twinkling\nof an eye: this moment, weak, fearful, in the amazement of death; the\nnext, strong, joyful,--at rest,--all things new! To adopt his own words:\nall his life, up to the last, \"knocking at a door not yet opened, with\nan earnest indefinite longing,--his very soul breaking for the\nlonging,--drinking of water, and thirsting again\"--and then--suddenly\nand at once-a door opened into heaven, and the Master heard saying,\n\"Come in, and come up hither!\" drinking of the river of life, clear as\ncrystal, of which if a man drink he will never thirst,--being filled\nwith all the fulness of God!\n\n * * * * *\n\nDr. Chalmers was a ruler among men: this we know historically; this\nevery man who came within his range felt at once. He was like Agamemnon,\na native {anax andron}, and with all his homeliness of feature and\ndeportment, and his perfect simplicity of expression, there was about\nhim \"that divinity that doth hedge a king.\" You felt a power, in him,\nand going from him, drawing you to him in spite of yourself. He was in\nthis respect a _solar_ man, he drew after him his own firmament of\nplanets. They, like all free agents, had their centrifugal forces acting\never towards an independent, solitary course, but the centripetal also\nwas there, and they moved with and around their imperial\nsun,--gracefully or not, willingly or not, as the case might be, but\nthere was no breaking loose: they again, in their own spheres of power,\nmight have their attendant moons, but all were bound to the great\nmassive luminary in the midst.\n\nThere is to us a continual mystery in this power of one man over\nanother. We find it acting everywhere, with the simplicity, the\nceaselessness, the energy of gravitation; and we may be permitted to\nspeak of this influence as obeying similar conditions; it is\nproportioned to _bulk_--for we hold to the notion of a bigness in souls\nas well as bodies--one soul differing from another in quantity and\nmomentum as well as in quality and force, and its intensity increases by\nnearness. There is much in what Jonathan Edwards says of one spiritual\nessence having more being than another, and in Dr. Chalmers's question,\n\"Is he a man of _wecht_?\"\n\nBut when we meet a _solar_ man, of ample nature--soul, body, and spirit;\nwhen we find him from his earliest years moving among his fellows like a\nking, moving them whether they will or not--this feeling of mystery is\ndeepened; and though we would not, like some men (who should know\nbetter), worship the creature and convert a hero into a god, we do feel\nmore than in other cases the truth, that it is the inspiration of the\nAlmighty which has given to that man understanding, and that all power,\nall energy, all light, come to him, from the First and the Last--the\nLiving One. God comes to be regarded by us, in this instance, as he\nought always to be, \"the final centre of repose\"--the source of all\nbeing, of all life--the _Terminus ad quem_ and the _Terminus a quo_. And\nassuredly, as in the firmament that simple law of gravitation reigns\nsupreme--making it indeed a _kosmos_--majestic, orderly, comely in its\ngoing--ruling, and binding not the less the fiery and nomadic comets,\nthan the gentle, punctual moons--so certainly, and to us moral creatures\nto a degree transcendantly more important, does the whole intelligent\nuniverse move around and move towards and in the Father of Lights.\n\nIt would be well if the world would, among the many other uses they make\nof its great men, make more of this,--that they are manifestors of\nGod--revealers of His will--vessels of His omnipotence--and are among\nthe very chiefest of His ways and works.\n\nAs we have before said, there is a perpetual wonder in this power of one\nman over his fellows, especially when we meet with it in a great man.\nYou see its operations constantly in history, and through it the Great\nRuler has worked out many of His greatest and strangest acts. But\nhowever we may understand the accessory conditions by which the one man\nrules the many, and controls, and fashions them to his purposes, and\ntransforms them into his likeness--multiplying as it were himself--there\nremains at the bottom of it all a mystery--a reaction between body and\nsoul that we cannot explain. Generally, however, we find accompanying\nits manifestation, a capacious understanding--a strong will--an\nemotional nature quick, powerful, urgent, undeniable, in perpetual\ncommunication with the energetic will and the large resolute\nintellect--and a strong, hearty, capable body; a countenance and person\nexpressive of this combination--the mind finding its way at once and in\nfull force to the face, to the gesture, to every act of the body. He\nmust have what is called a \"presence;\" not that he must be great in\nsize, beautiful, or strong; but he must be expressive and\nimpressive--his outward man must communicate to the beholder at once and\nwithout fail, something of indwelling power, and he must be and act as\n_one_. You may in your mind analyze him into his several parts; but\npractically he acts in everything with his whole soul and his whole\nself; whatsoever his hand finds to do, he does it with his might.\nLuther, Moses, David, Mahomet, Cromwell--all verified these conditions.\n\nAnd so did Dr. Chalmers. There was something about his whole air and\nmanner, that disposed you at the very first to make way where he\nwent--he held you before you were aware. That this depended fully as\nmuch upon the activity and the quantity--if we may so express\nourselves--of his affections, upon that combined action of mind and body\nwhich we call temperament, and upon a straightforward, urgent will, as\nupon what is called the pure intellect, will be generally allowed; but\nwith all this, he could not have been and done, what he was and did, had\nhe not had an understanding, in vigor and in capacity, worthy of its\ngreat and ardent companions. It was large, and free, mobile, and\nintense, rather than penetrative, judicial, clear, or fine,--so that in\none sense he was more a man to make others _act_ than _think_; but his\nown actings had always their origin in some fixed, central, inevitable\n_proposition_, as he would call it, and he began his onset with stating\nplainly, and with lucid calmness, what he held to be a great seminal\ntruth; from this he passed at once, not into exposition, but into\nillustration and enforcement--into, if we may make a word, overwhelming\ninsistance. Something was to be done, rather than explained.\n\nThere was no separating his thoughts and expressions from his person,\nand looks, and voice. How perfectly we can at this moment recall him!\nThundering, flaming, lightening in the pulpit; teaching, indoctrinating,\ndrawing after him his students in his lecture-room; sitting among other\npublic men, the most unconscious, the most king-like of them all, with\nthat broad leonine countenance, that beaming, liberal smile; or on the\nway out to his home, in his old-fashioned great-coat, with his throat\nmuffled up, his big walking-stick moved outwards in an arc, its point\nfixed, its head circumferential, a sort of companion, and playmate, with\nwhich doubtless, he demolished legions of imaginary foes, errors, and\nstupidities in men and things, in Church and State. His great look,\nlarge chest, large head, his amplitude every way; his broad, simple,\nchildlike, inturned feet; his short, hurried impatient step; his erect,\nroyal air; his look of general good-will; his kindling up into a warm\nbut vague benignity when one he did not recognize spoke to him; the\naddition, for it was not a change, of keen specialty to his hearty\nrecognition; the twinkle of his eyes; the immediately saying something\nvery personal to set all to rights, and then the sending you off with\nsome thought, some feeling, some remembrance, making your heart burn\nwithin you; his voice indescribable: his eye--that most peculiar\nfeature--not vacant, but _asleep_--innocent, mild, and large; and his\nsoul, its great inhabitant, not always at his window; but then, when he\ndid awake, how close to you was that burning vehement soul! how it\npenetrated and overcame you! how mild, and affectionate, and genial its\nexpression at his own fireside!\n\nOf his portraits worth mentioning, there are Watson Gordon's,\nDuncan's--the Calotypes of Mr. Hill--Kenneth M'Leay's miniatures--the\nDaguerreotype, and Steell's bust. These are all good, and all give bits\nof him, some nearly the whole, but not one of them that {ti thermon},\nthat _fiery particle_--that inspired look--that \"diviner mind\"--the\n_poco piu_, or little more. Watson Gordon's is too much of the mere\nclergyman--is a pleasant likeness, and has the shape of his mouth, and\nthe setting of his feet very good. Duncan's is a work of genius, and is\nthe giant looking up, awakening, but not awakened--it is a very fine\npicture. Mr. Hill's Calotypes we like better than all the rest; because\nwhat in them is true, is absolutely so, and they have some delicate\nrenderings which are all but beyond the power of any human artist; for\nthough man's art is mighty, nature's is mightier. The one of the Doctor\nsitting with his grandson \"_Tommy_\" is to us the best; we have the true\ngrandeur of his form--his bulk. M'Leay's is admirable-spirited--and has\nthat look of shrewdness and vivacity and immediateness which he had when\nhe was observing and speaking keenly; it is, moreover, a fine, manly bit\nof art. M'Leay is the Raeburn of miniature painters--he does a great\ndeal with little. The Daguerreotype is, in its own way, excellent; it\ngives the externality of the man to perfection, but it is Dr. Chalmers\nat a stand-still--his mind and feelings \"pulled up\" for the second that\nit was taken. Steell's is a noble bust--has a stern heroic expression\nand pathetic beauty about it, and from wanting color and shadow and the\neyes, it relies upon a certain simplicity and grandeur;--in this it\ncompletely succeeds--the mouth is handled with extraordinary subtlety\nand sweetness, and the hair hangs over that huge brow like a glorious\ncloud. We think this head of Dr. Chalmers the artist's greatest bust.\n\nIn reference to the assertion we have made as to bulk forming one\nprimary element of a powerful mind, Dr. Chalmers used to say, when a man\nof activity and public mark was mentioned, \"Has he _wecht?_ he has\npromptitude--has he power? he has power--has he promptitude? and,\nmoreover, has he a discerning spirit?\"\n\nThese are great practical, universal truths. How few even of our\ngreatest men have had all these three faculties large--fine, sound, and\nin \"perfect diapason.\" Your men of promptitude, without power or\njudgment, are common and are useful. But they are apt to run wild, to\nget needlessly brisk, unpleasantly incessant. A weasel is good or bad as\nthe case may be,--good against vermin--bad to meddle with;--but inspired\nweasels, weasels on a mission, are terrible indeed, mischievous and\nfell, and swiftness making up for want of momentum by inveteracy;\n\"fierce as wild bulls, _untamable as flies_.\" Of such men we have\nnowadays too many. Men are too much in the way of supposing that _doing_\nis _being;_ that theology and excogitation, and fierce dogmatic\nassertion of what they consider truth, is godliness; that obedience is\nmerely an occasional great act, and not a series of acts, issuing from a\nstate, like the stream of water from its well.\n\n \"Action is transitory--a step--a blow,\n The motion of a muscle--this way or that;\n 'Tis done--and in the after vacancy,\n We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed.\n Suffering\" (_obedience_, or _being_ as opposed to _doing_)--\n \"Suffering is permanent,----\n And has the nature of infinity.\"\n\nDr. Chalmers was a man of genius--he had his own way of thinking, and\nsaying, and doing, and looking everything. Men have vexed themselves in\nvain to define what genius is; like every ultimate term we may describe\nit by giving its effects, we can hardly succeed in reaching its essence.\nFortunately, though we know not what are its elements, we know it when\nwe meet it; and in him, in every movement of his mind, in every gesture,\nwe had its unmistakable tokens. Two of the ordinary accompaniments of\ngenius--Enthusiasm and Simplicity--he had in rare measure.\n\nHe was an _enthusiast_ in its true and good sense; he was \"entheat,\" as\nif full of God, as the old poets called it. It was this ardor, this\nsuperabounding life, this immediateness of thought and action, idea and\nemotion, setting the whole man a-going at once--that gave a power and a\ncharm to everything he did. To adopt the old division of the Hebrew\nDoctors, as given by Nathanael Culverwel, in his \"Light of Nature:\" In\nman we have--_1st_, {pneuma zoopoioun}, _the sensitive soul_, that which\nlies nearest the body--the very blossom and flower of life; _2d_, {ton\nnoun}, _animam rationis_, sparkling and glittering with intellectuals,\ncrowned with light; and _3d_, {ton thymon}, _impetum animi, motum\nmentis_, the vigor and energy of the soul--its temper--the mover of the\nother two--the first being, as they said, resident _in hepate_--the\nsecond _in cerebro_--the third _in corde_, where it presides over the\nissues of life, commands the circulation, and animates and sets the\nblood a-moving. The first and second are informative, explicative, they\n\"take in and do\"--the other \"gives out.\" Now in Dr. Chalmers, the great\ningredient was the {ho thymos} as indicating _vis animae et vitae_,--and\nin close fellowship with it, and ready for its service, was a large,\ncapacious {ho nous}, and an energetic, sensuous, rapid {to pneuma}.\nHence his energy, his contagious enthusiasm--this it was which gave the\npeculiar character to his religion, to his politics, to his _personnel_;\neverything he did was done heartily--if he desired heavenly blessings he\n\"panted\" for them--\"his soul broke for the longing.\" To give again the\nwords of the spiritual and subtle Culverwel, \"Religion (and indeed\neverything else) was no matter of indifferency to him. It was {thermon\nti pragma}, a certain fiery thing, as Aristotle calls love; it required\nand it got the very flower and vigor of the spirit--the strength and\nsinews of the soul--the prime and top of the affections--this is that\ngrace, that panting grace--we know the name of it and that's all--'tis\ncalled zeal--a flaming edge of the affection--the ruddy complexion of\nthe soul.\" Closely connected with this temperament, and with a certain\nkeen sensation of truth, rather than a perception of it, if we may so\nexpress ourselves, an intense consciousness of objective reality,--was\nhis simple animating faith. He had faith in God--faith in human\nnature--faith, if we may say so, in his own instincts--in his ideas of\nmen and things--_in himself_; and the result was, that unhesitating\nbearing up and steering right onward--\"never bating one jot of heart or\nhope\" so characteristic of him. He had \"the _substance_ of things hoped\nfor.\" He had \"the _evidence_ of things not seen.\"\n\nBy his _simplicity_ we do not mean the simplicity of the head--of that\nhe had none; he was eminently shrewd and knowing--more so than many\nthought; but we refer to that quality of the heart and of the life,\nexpressed by the words, \"in simplicity a child.\" In his own words, from\nhis Daily Readings,--\n\n \"When a child is filled with any strong emotion by a surprising\n event or intelligence, it _runs_ to discharge it on others,\n impatient of their sympathy; and it marks, I fancy, the\n simplicity and greater naturalness of this period (Jacob's),\n that the grown-up men and women _ran_ to meet each other, giving\n way to their first impulses--even as children do.\"\n\nHis emotions were as lively as a child's, and he ran to discharge them.\nThere was in all his ways a certain beautiful unconsciousness of\nself--an outgoing of the whole nature that we see in children, who are\nby learned men said to be long ignorant of the EGO--blessed in many\nrespects in their ignorance! This same Ego, as it now exists, being\nperhaps part of \"the fruit of that forbidden tree;\" that mere knowledge\nof _good_ as well as of _evil_, which our great mother bought for us at\nsuch a price. In this meaning of the word, Dr. Chalmers, considering the\nsize of his understanding--his personal eminence--his dealings with the\nworld--his large sympathies--his scientific knowledge of mind and\nmatter--his relish for the practical details, and for the spirit of\npublic business--was quite singular for his simplicity; and taking this\nview of it, there was much that was plain and natural in his manner of\nthinking and acting, which otherwise was obscure, and liable to be\nmisunderstood. We cannot better explain what we mean than by giving a\npassage from Fenelon, which D'Alembert, in his Eloge, quotes as\ncharacteristic of that \"sweet-souled\" prelate. We give the passage\nentire, as it seems to us to contain a very beautiful, and by no means\ncommonplace truth:--\n\n \"Fenelon,\" says D'Alembert, \"a caracterise lui-meme en peu\n de mots cette simplicite qui se rendoit si cher a tous les\n coeurs, 'La simplicite est la droiture d'une ame qui\n s'interdit tout retour sur elle et sur ses actions--cette vertu\n est differente de la sincerite, et la surpasse. On voit\n beaucoup de gens qui sont sinceres sans etre simples--Ils ne\n veulent passer que pour ce qu'ils sont, mais ils craignent sans\n cesse de passer pour ce qu'ils ne sont pas. L'homme simple\n n'affecte ni la vertu, ni la verite meme; il n'est jamais\n occupe de lui, il semble d'avoir perdu ce _moi_ dont on est si\n jaloux.'\"\n\nWhat delicacy and justness of expression! how true and clear! how little\nwe see nowadays, among grown-up men, of this straightness of the\nsoul--of this losing or never finding \"_ce moi!_\" There is more than is\nperhaps generally thought in this. Man in a state of perfection, would\nno sooner think of asking himself--am I right? am I appearing to be what\ninwardly I am? than the eye asks itself--do I see? or a child says to\nitself--do I love my mother? We have lost this instinctive sense; we\nhave set one portion of ourselves aside to watch the rest; we must keep\nup appearances and our consistency; we must respect--that is, look back\nupon--ourselves, and be respected, if possible; we must, by hook or by\ncrook, be respectable.\n\nDr. Chalmers would have made a sorry Balaam; he was made of different\nstuff, and for other purposes. Your \"respectable\" men are ever doing\ntheir best to keep their status, to maintain their position. He never\ntroubled himself about his status; indeed, we would say _status_ was not\nthe word for him. He had a _sedes_ on which he sat, and from which he\nspoke; he had an _imperium_, to and fro which he roamed as he listed;\nbut a _status_ was as little in his way as in that of a Mauritanian\nlion. Your merely \"sincere\" men are always thinking of what they said\nyesterday, and what they may say to-morrow, at the very moment when they\nshould be putting their whole self into to-day. Full of his idea,\npossessed by it, moved altogether by its power,--believing, he spoke,\nand without stint or fear, often _apparently_ contradicting his former\nself--careless about everything, but speaking fully his mind. One other\nreason for his apparent inconsistencies was, if one may so express it,\nthe spaciousness of his nature. He had room in that capacious head, and\naffection in that great, hospitable heart, for relishing and taking in\nthe whole range of human thought and feeling. He was several men in one.\nMultitudinous but not multiplex, in him odd and apparently incongruous\nnotions dwelt peaceably together. The lion lay down with the lamb.\nVoluntaryism and an endowment--both were best.\n\nHe was _childlike_ in his simplicity; though in understanding a man, he\nwas himself in many things a child. Coleridge says, every man should\ninclude all his former selves in his present, as a tree has its former\nyears' growths inside its last; so Dr. Chalmers bore along with him his\nchildhood, his youth, his early and full manhood into his mature old\nage. This gave himself, we doubt not, infinite delight--multiplied his\njoys, strengthened and sweetened his whole nature, and kept his heart\nyoung and tender; it enabled him to sympathize, to have a fellow-feeling\nwith all, of whatever age. Those who best knew him, who were most\nhabitually with him, know how beautifully this point of his character\nshone out in daily, hourly life. We well remember long ago loving him\nbefore we had seen him--from our having been told, that being out one\nSaturday at a friend's house near the Pentlands, he collected all the\nchildren and small people--the _other_ bairns, as he called them--and\nwith no one else of his own growth, took the lead to the nearest\nhill-top,--how he made each take the biggest and roundest stone he could\nfind, and carry,--how he panted up the hill himself with one of enormous\nsize,--how he kept up their hearts, and made them shout with glee, with\nthe light of his countenance, and with all his pleasant and strange ways\nand words,--how having got the breathless little men and women to the\ntop of the hill, he, hot and scant of breath--looked round on the world\nand upon them with his broad benignant smile like the {anerithmon\nkymaton gelasma}--the unnumbered laughter of the sea,--how he set off\nhis own huge \"fellow,\"--how he watched him setting out on his race,\nslowly, stupidly, vaguely at first, almost as if he might die before he\nbegan to live, then suddenly giving a spring and off like a\nshot--bounding, tearing, {autis epeita pedonde kylindeto laas anaides},\n_vires acquirens eundo_; how the great and good man was _totus in illo_;\nhow he spoke to, upbraided him, cheered him, gloried in him, all but\nprayed for him,--how he joked philosophy to his wondering and ecstatic\ncrew, when he (the stone) disappeared among some brackens--telling them\nthey had the evidence of their senses that he was in, they might even\nknow he was there by his effects, by the moving brackens, himself\nunseen; how plain it became that he had gone in, when he actually came\nout!--how he ran up the opposite side a bit, and then fell back, and\nlazily expired at the bottom,--how to their astonishment, but not\ndispleasure--for he \"set them off so well,\" and \"was so funny\"--he took\nfrom each his cherished stone, and set it off himself! showing them how\nthey all ran alike, yet differently; how he went on, \"making,\" as he\nsaid, \"an induction of particulars,\" till he came to the Benjamin of the\nflock, a _wee wee_ man, who had brought up a stone bigger than his own\nbig head; then how he let him, _unicus omnium_, set off his own, and how\nwonderfully IT ran! what miraculous leaps! what escapes from impossible\nplaces! and how it ran up the other side farther than any, and by some\nfelicity remained there.\n\n * * * * *\n\nHe was an orator in its specific and highest sense. We need not prove\nthis to those who have heard him; we cannot to those who have not. It\nwas a living man sending living, burning words into the minds and hearts\nof men before him, radiating his intense fervor upon them all; but there\nwas no reproducing the entire effect when alone and cool; some one of\nthe elements was gone. We say nothing of this part of his character,\nbecause upon this all are agreed. His eloquence rose like a tide, a sea,\nsetting in, bearing down upon you, lifting up all its waves--\"deep\ncalling unto deep;\" there was no doing anything but giving yourself up\nfor the time to its will. Do our readers remember Horace's description\nof Pindar?\n\n \"Monte decurrens velut amnis, imbres\n Quem super uotas aluere ripas,\n Fervet, immensusque ruit profundo\n Pindarus ore:\n\n --'per audaces nova dithyrambos\n Verba devolvit, numerisque fertur\n Lege solutis.'\"\n\nThis is to our mind singularly characteristic of our perfervid Scotsman.\nIf we may indulge our conceit we would paraphrase it thus. His eloquence\nwas like a flooded Scottish river,--it had its origin in some exalted\nregion--in some mountain-truth--some high, immutable reality; it did not\nrise in a plain, and quietly drain its waters to the sea,--it came sheer\ndown from above. He laid hold of some simple truth--the love of God, the\nDivine method of justification, the unchangeableness of human nature,\nthe supremacy of conscience, the honorableness of all men; and having\ngot this vividly before his mind, on he moved--the river rose at once,\ndrawing everything into its course--\n\n \"All thoughts, all passions, all desires,--\n Whatever stirs this mortal frame,\"\n\nthings outward and things inward, interests immediate and remote--God\nand eternity--men, miserable and immortal--this world and the\nnext--clear light and unsearchable mystery--the word and the works of\nGod--everything contributed to swell the volume and add to the onward\nand widening flood. His river did not flow like Denham's Thames,--\n\n \"Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull;\n Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.\"\n\nThere was strength, but there was likewise rage; a fine frenzy--not\nunoften due mainly to its rapidity and to its being raised suddenly by\nhis affections; there was some confusion in the stream of his thoughts,\nsome overflowing of the banks, some turbulence, and a certain noble\nimmensity; but its origin was clear and calm, above the region of clouds\nand storms. If you saw _it_; if you took up and admitted his\nproposition, his starting idea, then all else moved on; but once set\na-going, once on his way, there was no pausing to inquire, why or\nhow--_fervet_--_ruit_--_fertur_, he boils--he rushes--he is borne along;\nand so are all who hear him.\n\nTo go on with our figure--There was no possibility of sailing up his\nstream. You must go with him, or you must go ashore. This was a great\npeculiarity with him, and puzzled many people. You could argue with him,\nand get him to entertain your ideas on any purely abstract or simple\nproposition,--at least for a time; but once let him get down among\npracticals, among applications of principles, into the regions of the\naffections and active powers, and such was the fervor and impetuosity of\nhis nature, that he could not stay leisurely to discuss, he could not\nthen entertain the opposite; it was hurried off, and made light of, and\ndisregarded, like a floating thing before a cataract.\n\nTo play a little more with our conceit--The greatest man is he who is\nboth born and made--who is at once poetical and scientific--who has\ngenius and talent--each supporting the other. So with rivers. Your\nmighty world's river rises in high and lonely places, among the\neverlasting hills; amidst clouds, or inaccessible clearness. On he\nmoves, gathering to himself all waters; refreshing, cheering all lands.\nHere a cataract, there a rapid; now lingering in some corner of beauty,\nas if loath to go. Now shallow and wide, rippling and laughing in his\nglee; now deep, silent, and slow; now narrow and rapid and deep, and not\nto be meddled with. Now in the open country; not so clear, for other\nwaters have come in upon him, and he is becoming useful, no longer\nturbulent,--travelling more contentedly; now he is navigable, craft of\nall kinds coming and going upon his surface forever; and then, as if by\nsome gentle and great necessity, \"deep and smooth, passing with a still\nfoot and a sober face,\" he pays his last tribute to \"the _Fiscus_, the\ngreat Exchequer, the sea,\"--running out fresh, by reason of his power\nand volume, into the main for many a league.\n\nYour mere genius, who has instincts, and is poetical and not scientific,\nwho grows from within--he is like our mountain river, clear, wilful,\nodd; running round corners; disappearing it may be under ground, coming\nup again quite unexpectedly and strong, as if fed from some unseen\nspring, deep down in darkness; rising in flood without warning, and\ncoming down like a lion; often all but dry; never to be trusted to for\ndriving mills; must at least be tamed and led off to the mill; and going\ndown full pace, and without stop or stay, into the sea.\n\nYour man of talent, of acquirements, of science--who is made,--who is\nnot so much educed as edified; who, instead of acquiring his _vires\neundo_, gets his _vires eundi_, from acquirement, and grows from\nwithout; who serves his brethren and is useful; he rises often no one\nknows where or cares; has perhaps no proper fountain at all, but is the\nresult of the gathered rain-water in the higher flats; he is never quite\nclear, never brisk, never dangerous; always from the first useful, and\ngoes pleasantly in harness; turns mills; washes rags--makes them into\npaper; carries down all manner of dye-stuffs and feculence; and turns a\nbread-mill to as good purpose as any clearer stream; is docile, and has,\nas he reaches the sea, in his dealings with the world, a river trust,\nwho look after his and their own interests, and dredge him, and deepen\nhim, and manage him, and turn him off into docks, and he is in the sea\nbefore he or you know it.\n\n * * * * *\n\nThough we do not reckon the _imagination_ of Dr. Chalmers among his\nmaster faculties, it was powerful, effective, magnificent. It did not\nmove him, he took it up as he went along; its was not that imperial,\npenetrating, transmuting function that we find it in Dante, in Jeremy\nTaylor, in Milton, or in Burke; he used it to emblazon his great central\ntruths, to hang clouds of glory on the skirts of his illustration; but\nit was too passionate, too material, too encumbered with images, too\ninvolved in the general _melee_ of the soul, to do its work as a master.\nIt was not in him, as Thomas Fuller calls it, \"that inward sense of the\nsoul, its most boundless and restless faculty; for while the\nunderstanding and the will are kept as it were _in libera custodia_ to\ntheir objects of _verum et bonum_, it is free from all engagements--digs\nwithout spade, flies without wings, builds without charges, in a moment\nstriding from the centre to the circumference of the world by a kind of\nomnipotency, creating and annihilating things in an instant--restless,\never working, never wearied.\" We may say, indeed, that men of his\ntemperament are not generally endowed with this power in largest\nmeasure; in one sense they can do without it, in another they want the\nconditions on which its highest exercise depends. Plato and Milton,\nShakspeare and Dante, and Wordsworth, had imaginations tranquil, sedate,\ncool, originative, penetrative, intense, which dwelt in the \"highest\nheaven of invention.\" Hence it was that Chalmers could personify or\npaint a passion; he could give it in one of its actions; he could not,\nor rather he never did impassionate, create, and vivify a person--a very\ndifferent thing from personifying a passion--all the difference, as\nHenry Taylor says, between Byron and Shakspeare.\n\nIn his impetuosity, we find the rationale of much that is peculiar in\nthe style of Dr. Chalmers. As a spoken style it was thoroughly\neffective.[50] He seized the nearest weapons, and smote down whatever\nhe hit. But from this very vehemence, this haste, there was in his\ngeneral style a want of correctness, of selectness, of nicety, of that\ncurious felicity which makes thought immortal, and enshrines it in\nimperishable crystal. In the language of the affections he was\nsingularly happy; but in a formal statement, rapid argumentation and\nanalysis, he was often as we might think, uncouth, and imperfect, and\nincorrect: chiefly owing to his temperament, to his fiery, impatient,\nswelling spirit, this gave his orations their fine audacity--this\nbrought out hot from the furnace his new words--this made his numbers\nrun wild--_lege solutis_. We are sure this view will be found confirmed\nby these \"Daily Readings,\" when he wrote little, and had not time to\nget heated, and when the nature of the work, the hour at which it was\ndone, and his solitariness, made his thoughts flow at their \"own sweet\nwill;\" they are often quite as classical in expression, as they are\ndeep and lucid in thought--reflecting heaven with its clouds and stars,\nand letting us see deep down into its own secret depths: this is to us\none great charm of these volumes. Here he is broad and calm; in his\ngreat public performances by mouth and pen, he soon passed from the\nlucid into the luminous.\n\n [50] We have not noticed his iterativeness, his reiterativeness,\n because it flowed naturally from his primary qualities. In\n speaking it was effective, and to us pleasing, because there\n was some new modulation, some addition in the manner, just\n as the sea never sets up one wave exactly like the last or\n the next. But in his books it did somewhere encumber his\n thoughts, and the reader's progress and profit. It did not\n arise, as in many lesser men, from his having said his\n say--from his having no more in him; much less did it arise\n from conceit, either of his idea or of his way of stating\n it; but from the intensity with which the sensation of the\n idea--if we may use the expression--made its first mark on\n his mind. Truth to him never seemed to lose its first\n freshness, its edge, its flavor; and Divine truth, we know,\n had come to him so suddenly, so fully, at mid-day, when he\n was in the very prime of his knowledge and his power and\n quickness--had so possessed his entire nature, as if, like\n him who was journeying to Damascus, a Great Light had shone\n round about him--that whenever he reproduced that condition,\n he began afresh, and with his whole utterance, to proclaim\n it. He could not but speak the things he had seen and felt,\n and heard and believed; and he did it much in the same way,\n and in the same words, for the thoughts and affections and\n posture of his soul were the same. Like all men of vivid\n perception and keen sensibility, his mind and his body\n continued under impressions, both material and spiritual,\n after the objects were gone. A curious instance of this\n occurs to us. Some years ago, he roamed up and down through\n the woods near Auchindinny, with two boys as companions. It\n was the first burst of summer, and the trees were more than\n usually enriched with leaves. He wandered about delighted,\n silent, looking at the leaves, \"thick and numberless.\" As\n the three went on, they came suddenly upon a high brick\n wall, newly built, for peach-trees, not yet planted. Dr.\n Chalmers halted, and looking steadfastly at the wall,\n exclaimed most earnestly, \"What foliage! what foliage!\" The\n boys looked at one another, and said nothing; but on getting\n home, expressed their astonishment at this very puzzling\n phenomenon. What a difference! leaves and parallelograms; a\n forest and a brick wall!\n\nWhat, for instance, can be finer in expression than this? \"It is well to\nbe conversant with great elements--life and death, reason and madness.\"\n\"God forgets not his own purposes, though he executes them in his own\nway, and maintains his own pace, which he hastens not and shortens not\nto meet our impatience.\" \"I find it easier to apprehend the greatness of\nThe Deity than any of his moral perfections, or his sacredness;\" and\nthis--\n\n \"One cannot but feel an interest in Ishmael, figuring him to be\n a noble of nature--one of those heroes of the wilderness who\n lived on the produce of his bow, and whose spirit was nursed and\n exercised among the wild adventures of the life he led. And it\n does soften our conception of him whose hand was against every\n man, and every man's hand against him, when we read of his\n mother's influence over him, in the deference of Ishmael to whom\n we read another example of the respect yielded to females even\n in that so-called barbarous period of the world. There was a\n civilization, the immediate effect of religion, in these days,\n from which men fell away as the world grew older.\"\n\nThat he had a keen relish for material and moral beauty and grandeur we\nall know; what follows shows that he had also the true ear for beautiful\nwords, as at once pleasant to the ear and suggestive of some higher\nfeelings:--\"I have often felt, in reading Milton and Thomson, a strong\npoetical effect in the bare enumeration of different countries, and this\nstrongly enhanced by the statement of some common and prevailing\nemotion, which passed from one to another.\" This is set forth with great\nbeauty and power in verses 14th and 15th of Exodus xv.,--\"The people\nshall hear and be afraid--sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of\nPalestina. Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed--the mighty men of\nMoab, trembling shall take hold of them--the inhabitants of Canaan shall\nmelt away.\" Any one who has a tolerable ear and any sensibility, must\nremember the sensation of delight in the mere sound--like the colors of\na butterfly's wing, or the shapeless glories of evening clouds, to the\neye--in reading aloud such passages as these: \"Heshbon shall cry and\nElealeh--their voice shall be heard to Jabez--for by the way of Luhith\nwith weeping shall they go it up--for in the way of Horonaim they shall\nraise a cry. God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. Is not\nCalno as Carchemish? is not Hamath as Arpad? is not Samaria as Damascus?\nHe is gone to Aiath, he is passed to Migron; at Michmash he hath laid up\nhis carriages: Ramath is afraid; Gibeah of Saul is fled--Lift up thy\nvoice, O daughter of Gallim: cause it to be heard unto Laish, O poor\nAnathoth. Madmenah is removed; the inhabitants of Gebim gather\nthemselves to flee. The fields of Heshbon languish--the vine of\nSibmah--I will water thee with my tears, O Heshbon and Elealeh.\" Any one\nmay prove to himself that much of the effect and beauty of these\npassages depends on these names; put others in their room, and try them.\n\nWe remember well our first hearing Dr. Chalmers. We were in a moorland\ndistrict in Tweeddale, rejoicing in the country, after nine months of\nthe High School. We heard that the famous preacher was to be at a\nneighboring parish church, and off we set, a cartful of irrepressible\nyoungsters. \"Calm was all nature as a resting wheel.\" The crows, instead\nof making wing, were impudent and sat still; the cart-horses were\nstanding, knowing the day, at the field-gates, gossiping and gazing,\nidle and happy; the moor was stretching away in the pale sunlight--vast,\ndim, melancholy, like a sea; everywhere were to be seen the gathering\npeople, \"sprinklings of blithe company;\" the country-side seemed moving\nto one centre. As we entered the kirk we saw a notorious character, a\ndrover, who had much of the brutal look of what he worked in, with the\nknowing eye of a man of the city, a sort of big Peter Bell--\n\n \"He had a hardness in his eye,\n He had a hardness in his cheek.\"\n\nHe was our terror, and we not only wondered, but were afraid when we saw\n_him_ going in. The kirk was full as it could hold. How different in\nlooks to a brisk town congregation! There was a fine leisureliness and\nvague stare; all the dignity and vacancy of animals; eyebrows raised and\nmouths open, as is the habit with those who speak little and look much,\nand at far-off objects. The minister comes in, homely in his dress and\ngait, but having a great look about him, like a mountain among hills.\nThe High School boys thought him like a \"big one of ourselves,\" he looks\nvaguely round upon his audience, as if he saw in it _one great object,\nnot many_. We shall never forget his smile! its general benignity;--how\nhe let the light of his countenance fall on us! He read a few verses\nquietly; then prayed briefly, solemnly, with his eyes wide open all the\ntime, but not seeing. Then he gave out his text; we forget it, but its\nsubject was, \"Death reigns.\" He stated slowly, calmly, the simple\nmeaning of the words; what death was, and how and why it reigned; then\nsuddenly he started, and looked like a man who had seen some great\nsight, and was breathless to declare it; he told us how death\nreigned--everywhere, at all times, in all places; how we all knew it,\nhow we would yet know more of it. The drover, who had sat down in the\ntable-seat opposite, was gazing up in a state of stupid excitement; he\nseemed restless, but never kept his eye from the speaker. The tide set\nin--everything added to its power, deep called to deep, imagery and\nillustration poured in: and every now and then the theme,--the simple,\nterrible statement, was repeated in some lucid interval. After\noverwhelming us with proofs of the reign of Death, and transferring to\nus his intense urgency and emotion; and after shrieking, as if in\ndespair, these words, \"Death is a tremendous necessity,\"--he suddenly\nlooked beyond us as if into some distant region, and cried out, \"Behold\na mightier!--who is this? He cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from\nBozrah, glorious in his apparel, speaking in righteousness, travelling\nin the greatness of his strength, mighty to save.\" Then, in a few plain\nsentences, he stated the truth as to sin entering, and death by sin, and\ndeath passing upon all. Then he took fire once more, and enforced, with\nredoubled energy and richness, the freeness, the simplicity, the\nsecurity, the sufficiency of the great method of justification. How\nastonished and impressed we all were! He was at the full thunder of his\npower; the whole man was in an agony of earnestness. The drover was\nweeping like a child, the tears running down his ruddy, coarse\ncheeks--his face opened out and smoothed like an infant's; his whole\nbody stirred with emotion. We all had insensibly been drawn out of our\nseats, and were converging towards the wonderful speaker. And when he\nsat down, after warning each one of us to remember who it was, and what\nit was, that followed death on his pale horse,[51] and how alone we\ncould escape--we all sunk back into our seats. How beautiful to our eyes\ndid the thunderer look--exhausted--but sweet and pure! How he poured out\nhis soul before his God in giving thanks for sending the Abolisher of\nDeath! Then, a short psalm, and all was ended.\n\n [51] \"And I looked, and behold, a pale horse; and his name that\n sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.\"--Rev. vi. 8.\n\nWe went home quieter than we came; we did not recount the foals with\ntheir long legs, and roguish eyes, and their sedate mothers; we did not\nspeculate upon whose dog _that_ was, and whether _that_ was a crow or a\nman in the dim moor,--we thought of other things. That voice, that face;\nthose great, simple, living thoughts; those floods of resistless\neloquence; that piercing, shattering voice,--\"that tremendous\nnecessity.\"\n\n * * * * *\n\nWere we desirous of giving to one who had never seen or heard Dr.\nChalmers an idea of what manner of man he was--what he was as a whole,\nin the full round of his notions, tastes, affections, and powers--we\nwould put this book into their hands, and ask them to read it slowly,\nbit by bit, as he wrote it. In it he puts down simply, and at once, what\npasses through his mind as he reads; there is no making of himself feel\nand think--no getting into a frame of mind; he was not given to frames\nof mind; he preferred states to forms--substances to circumstances.\nThere is something of everything in it--his relish for abstract\nthought--his love of taking soundings in deep places and finding no\nbottom--his knack of starting subtle questions, which he did not care to\nrun to earth--his penetrating, regulating godliness--his delight in\nnature--his turn for politics, general, economical, and\necclesiastical--his picturesque eye--his humanity--his courtesy--his\nwarm-heartedness--his impetuosity--his sympathy with all the wants,\npleasures, and sorrows of his kind--his delight in the law of God, and\nhis simple, devout, manly treatment of it--his acknowledgment of\ndifficulties--his turn for the sciences of quantity and number, and\nindeed for natural science and art generally--his shrewdness--his\nworldly wisdom--his genius; all these come out--you gather them like\nfruit, here a little, and there a little. He goes over the Bible, not as\na philosopher, or a theologian, or a historian, or a geologist, or a\njurist, or a naturalist, or a statist, or a politician--picking out all\nthat he wants, and a great deal more than he has any business with, and\nleaving every thing else as barren to his reader as it has been to\nhimself; but he looks abroad upon his Father's _word_--as he used so\npleasantly to do on his _world_--as a man, and as a Christian; he\nsubmits himself to its influences, and lets his mind go out fully and\nnaturally in its utterances. It is this which gives to this work all the\ncharm of multitude in unity, of variety in harmony; and that sort of\nunexpectedness and ease of movement which we see everywhere in nature\nand in natural men.\n\nOur readers will find in these delightful Bible Readings not a museum of\nantiquities, and curiosities, and laborious trifles; nor of scientific\nspecimens, analyzed to the last degree, all standing in order, labelled\nand useless. They will not find in it an armory of weapons for fighting\nwith and destroying their neighbors. They will get less of the physic of\ncontroversy than of the diet of holy living. They will find much of what\nLord Bacon desired, when he said, \"We want short, sound, and judicious\nnotes upon Scripture, without running into commonplaces, pursuing\ncontroversies, or reducing those notes to artificial method, but leaving\nthem quite loose and native. For certainly, as those wines which flow\nfrom the first treading of the grape are sweeter and better than those\nforced out by the press, which gives them the roughness of the husk and\nthe stone, so are those doctrines best and sweetest which flow from a\ngentle crush of the Scriptures, and are not wrung into controversies and\ncommonplaces.\" They will find it as a large pleasant garden; no great\nsystem; not trim, but beautiful, and in which there are things pleasant\nto the eye as well as good for food--flowers and fruits, and a few good,\nesculent, wholesome roots. There are Honesty, Thrift, Eye-bright\n(Euphrasy that cleanses the sight), Heart's-ease. The good seed in\nabundance, and the strange mystical Passion-flower; and in the midst,\nand seen everywhere, if we but look for it, the Tree of Life, with its\ntwelve manner of fruits--the very leaves of which are for the healing of\nthe nations. And, perchance, when they take their walk through it at\nevening time, or at \"the sweet hour of prime,\" they may see a happy,\nwise, beaming old man at his work there--they may hear his well-known\nvoice; and if they have their spiritual senses exercised as they ought,\nthey will not fail to see by his side, \"one like unto the Son of Man.\"\n\n\n\n\n_DR. GEORGE WILSON._\n\n\nAmong the many students at our University who some two-and-twenty years\nago started on the great race, in the full flush of youth and health,\nand with that strong hunger for knowledge which only the young, or those\nwho keep themselves so ever know, there were three lads--Edward Forbes,\nSamuel Brown, and George Wilson--who soon moved on to the front and took\nthe lead. They are now all three in their graves.\n\nNo three minds could well have been more diverse in constitution or\nbias; each was typical of a generic difference from the others. What\nthey cordially agreed in, was their hunting in the same field and for\nthe same game. The truth about this visible world, and all that it\ncontains, was their quarry. This one thing they set themselves to do,\nbut each had his own special gift, and took his own road--each had his\nown special choice of instruments and means. Any one man combining their\nessential powers, would have been the epitome of a natural philosopher,\nin the wide sense of the man who would master the philosophy of nature.\n\nEdward Forbes, who bulks largest at present, and deservedly, for\nlargeness was of his essence, was the observer proper. He saw everything\nunder the broad and searching light of day, white and uncolored, and\nwith an unimpassioned eye. What he was after were the real appearances\nof things; _phenomena_ as such; all that seems to be. His was the search\nafter _what is_, over the great field of the world. He was in the best\nsense a natural historian, an observer and recorder of what is seen and\nof what goes on, and not less of what has been seen and what has gone\non, in this wonderful historic earth of ours, with all its fulness. He\nwas keen, exact, capacious,--tranquil and steady in his gaze as Nature\nherself. He was, thus far, kindred to Aristotle, to Pliny, Linnaeus,\nCuvier, and Humboldt, though the great German, and the greater\nStagirite, had higher and deeper spiritual insights than Edward Forbes\never gave signs of. It is worth remembering that Dr. George Wilson was\nup to his death engaged in preparing his Memoir and Remains for the\npress. Who will now take up the tale?\n\nSamuel Brown was, so to speak, at the opposite pole--rapid, impatient,\nfearless, full of passion and imaginative power--desiring to divine the\nessences rather than the appearances of things--in search of the _what_\nchiefly in order to question it, make it give up at whatever cost the\nsecret of its _why_; his fiery, projective, subtile spirit, could not\nlinger in the outer fields of mere observation, though he had a quite\nrare faculty for seeing as well as for looking, which latter act,\nhowever, he greatly preferred; but he pushed into the heart and inner\nlife of every question, eager to evoke from it the very secret of\nitself. Forbes, as we have said, wandered at will, and with a settled\npurpose and a fine hunting scent, at his leisure, and free and almost\nindifferent, over the ample fields--happy and joyous and full of\nwork--unencumbered with theory or with wings, for he cared not to fly.\nSamuel Brown, whose wings were perhaps sometimes too much for him, more\nambitious, more of a solitary turn, was forever climbing the Mount\nSinais and Pisgahs of science, to speak with Him whose haunt they\nwere,--climbing there all alone and in the dark, and with much peril, if\nhaply he might descry the break of day and the promised land; or, to\nvary the figure, diving into deep and not undangerous wells, that he\nmight the better see the stars at noon, and possibly find Her who is\nsaid to lurk there. He had more of Plato, though he wanted the symmetry\nand persistent grandeur of the son of Ariston. He was, perhaps, liker\nhis own favorite Kepler; such a man in a word as we have not seen since\nSir Humphry Davy, whom in many things he curiously resembled, and not\nthe least is this, that the prose of each was more poetical than the\nverse.\n\nHis fate has been a mournful and a strange one, but he knew it, and\nencountered it with a full knowledge of what it entailed. He perilled\neverything on his theory; and if this hypothesis--it may be somewhat\nprematurely uttered to the world, and the full working out of which, by\nrigid scientific realization, was denied him by years of intense and\nincapacitating suffering, ending only in death, but the \"_relevancy_\" of\nwhich, to use the happy expression of Dr. Chalmers, we hold him to have\nproved, and in giving a glimpse of which, he showed, we firmly believe,\nwhat has been called that \"instinctive grasp which the healthy\nimagination takes of _possible_ truth\",--if his theory of the unity of\nmatter, and the consequent transmutability of the now called elementary\nbodies, were substantiated in the lower but essential platform of actual\nexperiment, this, along with his original doctrine of atoms and their\nforces, would change the entire face of chemistry, and make a Cosmos\nwhere now there is endless agglomeration and confusion,--would, in a\nword, do for the science of the molecular constitution of matter and its\nlaws of action and reaction at insensible distances, what Newton's\ndoctrine of gravitation has done for the celestial dynamics. For, let it\nbe remembered, that the highest speculation and proof in this\ndepartment--by such men as Dumas, Faraday, and William Thomson, and\nothers--points in this direction; it does no more as yet perhaps than\npoint, but some of us may live to see \"_resurgam_\" inscribed over Samuel\nBrown's untimely grave, and applied with gratitude and honor to him\nwhose eyes closed in darkness on the one great object of his life, and\nthe hopes of whose \"unaccomplished years\" lie buried with him.\n\nVery different from either, though worthy of and capable of relishing\nmuch that was greatest and best in both, was he whom we all loved and\nmourn, and who, this day week, was carried by such a multitude of\nmourners to that grave, which to his eye had been open and ready for\nyears.\n\nGeorge Wilson was born in Edinburgh in 1818. His father, Mr. Archibald\nWilson, was a wine merchant, and died sixteen years ago; his mother,\nJanet Aitken, still lives to mourn and to remember him, and she will\nagree with us that it is sweeter to remember him than to have converse\nwith the rest. Any one who has had the privilege to know him, and to\nenjoy his bright and rich and beautiful mind, will not need to go far to\nlearn where it was that her son George got all of that genius and worth\nand delightfulness which is transmissible. She verifies what is so often\nand so truly said of the mothers of remarkable men. She was his first\nand best _Alma Mater_ and in many senses his last, for her influence\nover him continued through life. George had a twin brother, who died in\nearly life; and we cannot help referring to his being one of twins,\nsomething of that wonderful power of attaching himself, and being\npersonally loved, which was one of his strongest as it was one of his\nmost winning powers. He was always fond of books, and of fun, the play\nof the mind. He left the High School at fifteen and took to medicine;\nbut he soon singled out chemistry, and, under the late Kenneth Kemp, and\nour own distinguished Professor of _Materia Medica_, himself a\nfirst-class chemist, he acquired such knowledge as to become assistant\nin the laboratory of Dr. Thomas Graham, now Master of the Mint, and then\nProfessor of Chemistry in University College. So he came out of a\nthorough and good school, and had the best of masters.\n\nHe then took the degree of M. D., and became a Lecturer in Chemistry, in\nwhat is now called the extra-academical school of medicine, but which in\nour day was satisfied with the title of private lecturers. He became at\nonce a great favorite, and, had his health and strength enabled him, he\nwould have been long a most successful and popular teacher; but general\nfeeble health, and a disease in the ankle-joint requiring partial\namputation of the foot, and recurrent attacks of a serious kind in his\nlungs, made his life of public teaching one long and sad trial. How\nnobly, how sweetly, how cheerily he bore all these long baffling years;\nhow his bright, active, ardent, unsparing soul lorded it over his frail\nbut willing body, making it do more than seemed possible, and as it were\nby sheer force of will ordering it to live longer than was in it to do,\nthose who lived with him and witnessed this triumph of spirit over\nmatter, will not soon forget. It was a lesson to every one of what true\ngoodness of nature, elevated and cheered by the highest and happiest of\nall motives, can make a man endure, achieve, and enjoy.\n\nAs is well known, Dr. Wilson was appointed in 1855 to the\nnewly-constituted Professorship of Technology, and to the Curatorship of\nthe Industrial Museum. The expenditure of thought, of ingenuity, of\nresearch, and management--the expenditure, in a word, of\nhimself--involved in originating and giving form of purpose to a scheme\nso new and so undefined, and, in our view, so undefinable, must, we\nfear, have shortened his life, and withdrawn his precious and quite\nsingular powers of illustrating and adorning, and, in the highest sense,\nsanctifying and blessing science, from this which seemed always to us\nhis proper sphere. Indeed, in the opinion of some good judges, the\ninstitution of such a chair at all, and especially in connection with a\nUniversity such as ours, and the attaching to it the conduct of a great\nMuseum of the Industrial Arts, was somewhat hastily gone into, and might\nhave with advantage waited for and obtained a little more consideration\nand forethought. Be this as it may, Dr. Wilson did his duty with his\nwhole heart and soul--making a class, which was always increasing, and\nwhich was at its largest at his death.\n\nWe have left ourselves no space to speak of Dr. Wilson as an author, as\nan academic and popular lecturer, as a member of learned societies, as a\nman of exquisite literary powers and fancy, and as a citizen of\nremarkable public acceptation. This must come from some more careful,\nand fuller, and more leisurely record of his genius and worth. What he\nwas as a friend it is not for us to say; we only know that when we leave\nthis world we would desire no better memorial than to be remembered by\nmany as George Wilson now is, and always will be. His _Life of\nCavendish_ is admirable as a biography, full of life, of picturesque\ntouches, and of realization of the man and of his times, and is,\nmoreover, thoroughly scientific, containing, among other discussions, by\nfar the best account of the great water controversy from the Cavendish\npoint of view. His _Life of John Reid_ is a vivid and memorable\npresentation to the world of the true lineaments, manner of life, and\ninmost thought and heroic sufferings, as well as of the noble scientific\nachievements of that strong, truthful, courageous, and altogether\nadmirable man, and true discoverer--a genuine follower of John Hunter.\n\n_The Five Gateways of Knowledge_ is a prose poem, a hymn of the finest\nutterance and fancy--the white light of science diffracted through the\ncrystalline prism of his mind into the colored glories of the spectrum;\ntruth dressed in the iridescent hues of the rainbow, and not the less\nbut all the more true. His other papers in the _British Quarterly_, the\n_North British Review_, and his last gem on \"Paper, Pens, and Ink,\" in\nhis valued and generous friend Macmillan's first number of his Magazine,\nare all astonishing proofs of the brightness, accuracy, vivacity,\nunweariedness of his mind, and the endless sympathy and affectionate\nplay of his affections with the full round of scientific truth. His\nessay on \"Color Blindness\" is, we believe, as perfect a monogram as\nexists, and will remain likely untouched and unadded to, _factum ad\nunguem_. As may be seen from these remarks, we regard him not so much\nas, like Edward Forbes, a great observer and quiet generalizer, or, like\nSamuel Brown, a discoverer and philosopher properly so called--though,\nas we have said, he had enough of these two men's prime qualities to\nunderstand and relish and admire them. His great quality lay in making\nmen love ascertained and recorded truth, scientific truth especially; he\nmade his reader and hearer _enjoy facts_. He illuminated the Book of\nNature as they did the missals of old. His nature was so thoroughly\ncomposite, so in full harmony with itself, that no one faculty could or\ncared to act without calling in all the others to join in full chorus.\nTo take an illustration from his own science, his faculties\ninterpenetrated and interfused themselves into each other, as the gases\ndo, by a law of their nature. Thus it was that everybody understood and\nliked and was impressed by him; he touched him at every point. Knowledge\nwas to him no barren, cold essence; it was alive and flushed with the\ncolors of the earth and sky, and all over with light and stars. His\nflowers--and his mind was full of flowers--were from seeds, and were\nsown by himself. They were neither taken from other gardens and stuck in\nrootless, as children do, much less were they of the nature of\ngumflowers, made with hands, wretched and dry and scentless.\n\nTruth of science was to him a body, full of loveliness, perfection, and\nstrength, in which dwelt the unspeakable Eternal. This, which was the\ndominant idea of his mind--the goodliness, and not less the godliness of\nall science--made his whole life, his every action, every letter he\nwrote, every lecture he delivered, his last expiring breath, instinct\nwith the one constant idea that all truth, all goodness, all science,\nall beauty, all gladness are but the expression of the mind and will and\nheart of the Great Supreme. And this, in his case, was not mysticism,\nneither was it merely a belief in revealed religion, though no man\ncherished and believed in his Bible more firmly and cordially than he;\nit was the assured belief, on purely scientific grounds, that God is\nindeed and in very truth all in all; that, to use the sublime adaptation\nby poor crazy Smart, the whole creation, visible and invisible,\nspiritual and material, everything that has being, is--to those who have\nears to hear--forever declaring \"_Thou Art_,\" before the throne of the\nGreat I AM.\n\nTo George Wilson, to all such men--and this is the great lesson of his\nlife--the heavens are forever telling His glory, the firmament is\nforever showing forth His handiwork; day unto day, every day, is forever\nuttering speech, and night unto night is showing knowledge concerning\nHim. When he considered these heavens, as he lay awake weary and in\npain, they were to him the work of His fingers. The moon, walking in\nbrightness, and lying in white glory on his bed--the stars--were by Him\nordained. He was a singularly happy, and happy-making man. No one since\nhis boyhood could have suffered more from pain, and languor, and the\nmisery of an unable body. Yet he was not only cheerful, he was gay, full\nof all sorts of _fun_--genuine fun--and his jokes and queer turns of\nthought and word were often worthy of Cowper or Charles Lamb. We wish we\nhad them collected. Being, from his state of health and his knowledge of\nmedicine, necessarily \"mindful of death,\" having the possibility of his\ndying any day or any hour, always before him, and \"that undiscovered\ncountry\" lying full in his view, he must--taking, as he did, the right\nnotion of the nature of things--have had a peculiar intensity of\npleasure in the every-day beauties of the world.\n\n \"The common sun, the air, the skies,\n To him were opening Paradise.\"\n\nThey were to him all the more exquisite, all the more altogether lovely,\nthese Pentlands, and well-known rides and places; these rural solitudes\nand pleasant villages and farms, and the countenances of his friends,\nand the clear, pure, radiant face of science and of nature, were to him\nall the more to be desired and blessed and thankful for, that he knew\nthe pallid king at any time might give that not unexpected knock, and\nsummon him away.\n\n\n\n\n_ST. PAUL'S THORN IN THE FLESH: WHAT WAS IT?_\n\n\nIf the 15th verse of the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians,\ninstead of being taken in a figurative sense, as it generally has been,\nbe understood literally, it will be found to furnish the means of\ndetermining, with a tolerably near approach to certainty, the particular\nnature of the disease under which St. Paul is supposed to have labored,\nand which he elsewhere speaks of as the \"Thorn in his flesh.\" And that\nthe literal interpretation is the true one, may, I think, be shown,\npartly from the general scope of the paragraph to which the 15th verse\nbelongs; partly from some peculiarities of expression in it, which could\nonly have been used under an intention that the verse in question should\nbe taken literally; and partly also from the fact that there are\nstatements and allusions elsewhere in the New Testament, which assert or\nimply, that St. Paul really was affected in the manner here supposed to\nbe indicated.\n\n\"_Brethren, I beseech you_,\" says the Apostle, \"_be as I am; for I am as\nye are: ye have not injured me at all. Ye know how through infirmity of\nthe flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first. And my temptation\n(trial) which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but\nreceived me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus._ _Where is then\nthe blessedness ye spake of? for I bear you record, that, if it had been\npossible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them\nto me._\"\n\nThe last words of this passage, \"Ye would have plucked out your own\neyes, and have given them to me,\" have usually been taken in a\nhyperbolical or proverbial sense, as if a merely general meaning was\nconveyed, amounting simply to--\"There was no sacrifice, however great,\nwhich ye would not have made for me.\" But it is plainly open to inquiry,\nwhether the sense is not of a more special kind; whether (viz.) St. Paul\ndoes not here, as in the preceding verses, intend to remind the\nGalatians of pure matter of fact--to recall to them, not in mere general\nterms, the depth and warmth of their feelings and professions of regard\nfor him, but to repeat to them perhaps the very words they had used, and\nto revive in their memories the actual and express import of their\ndesires and anxieties. If this be the case, if it really was a common\nand habitual thing with them to express a wish that it were possible for\nthem to pluck out their own eyes, and to transfer them to the apostle,\nthe only way of reasonably accounting for so strange and _outre_ a\nproceeding, is to suppose that St. Paul actually labored either under\nentire deprivation of vision, or under some severely painful and\nvexatious disease of the eyes: The meaning being, that so keenly did the\nGalatians sympathize with the apostle in his affliction, that they would\nwillingly have become his substitutes by taking all his suffering upon\nthemselves, if only it were possible, by doing so to relieve him.\n\nThat there is at least no _prima facie_ objection to this explanation of\nthe words, will, I think, be readily enough admitted. It is perfectly\nsimple and unforced, and it conveys a lively and touching representation\nof the feelings which would naturally spring up in the minds of a\ngrateful and warm-hearted people, to their great benefactor and friend,\nwho, amidst disease, and pain, and weakness, had made the greatest and\nmost unwearying exertions to communicate to them the invaluable truths\nof Christianity.\n\nBut, in addition to this, it will be found, I think, that under the\nliteral interpretation of the 15th verse, a peculiar point and force\nbelongs to the apostle's appeal, and a closely connected and harmonious\nmeaning is imparted to the whole paragraph, all of which, it seems to\nme, are lost if the figurative explanation is adhered to. In the\nprevious part of the chapter, St. Paul had been arguing against the\nfoolish predilection which the Galatians had taken up for forms and\nformalisms and ceremonial observances, and strongly exhorting them to\nabandon this pernicious and unchristian propensity. And now, in the\nparagraph quoted, he takes up new ground, and appeals to them by the\nmemory of their old affection for him, to listen to his arguments and\nentreaties, and to be of one mind with him. The general meaning of what\nhe says is plain enough, but there are difficulties of detail, both in\nparticular expressions, and in the train of thought. The words, for\nexample, \"Be as I am, for I am as ye are,\" at once strike the ear as a\npeculiar and unusual style to adopt in an invitation to unity of thought\nand feeling. But if the last clause of the 15th verse be taken\nliterally, I think it will appear that this expression has a special\nfitness and propriety. The words, \"for I am as ye are,\" imply a\nreference, I imagine, to his being, in respect of his bodily affliction,\n_not_ as they were; and what follows is intended to remind them how\nanxious they were, when their love to him was fresh, to be \"as he was,\"\neven although it would have been necessary to accept bodily pain and\nmutilation to attain that object. If I am correct in thinking the first\nclause of the 12th verse, and the last of the 15th, to be thus closely\nrelated and corresponsive, it will be seen that they mutually explain\neach other; and the apostle's argument, as I understand it, may then be\nthus stated:--If you were so willing and eager, when I was with you,\neven at the cost of plucking out your eyes, to \"be as I am,\" surely you\nwill hardly refuse me the same thing now in this other matter, wherein\nthere is no such difference between us as to raise any impediment in the\nway of your compliance, where no such sacrifice as ye were formerly\nready to make is required of you, and where all that is asked from you\nis to give up your false opinions and evil practices, and simply \"be as\nI am\" in believing and obeying the truth revealed.\n\nIn another respect, the ordinary explanation involves, I think, an\nunnatural rupture of the continuity of thought, which is completely\navoided by the literal interpretation of the passage. In the 13th verse,\nwe find the apostle introducing, in a somewhat formal and special\nmanner, the subject of his bodily affliction. \"Ye know,\" he says, \"how\nthrough infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel to you at the\nfirst.\" And it cannot but strike the reader as strange that, after this,\nall he should have to say about the matter, is that the Galatians\n\"despised not nor rejected it.\" The very vagueness, and merely negative\ncharacter of this expression, excites a sort of instinctive expectation\nthat he will forthwith proceed to state something more positive and\nspecific. But instead of this we are taught by the common explanation,\nto suppose that an abrupt transition is at once made from the subject of\nhis \"temptation\" altogether; the statement about the attachment of the\nGalatians, instead of becoming more distinct and special, as we\nnaturally expect it to do, suddenly merges into the widest possible\ngenerality; and their affection, instead of being described by any\nfurther reference to the facts of its manifestation, is now represented\nto us under a strong (it is true) but rather fantastic figure, which\nleaves an impression of its character and aspect just as undecided and\nimperfect as before.\n\nBut a closer examination of the words at once throws doubt on this\nconception of their meaning. In the 13th and 14th verses, the associated\nideas are, the apostle's disease or affliction, and the affectionate\nconcern of the Galatians with reference to it. In the 15th verse, the\nreference to the Galatians' display of affection is still continued, and\nnow the idea connected with it is, that of their giving him their\nplucked-out eyes. But this is not necessarily a change of association,\nfor, as already intimated, their plucking out their eyes and giving them\nto the apostle, naturally and readily suggests the thought that their\ndesign was, \"if it had been possible,\" to supply them to him as\nsubstitutes for his own, under the assumption of the latter being\ndiseased or defective. If this be the reference, then the missing idea\nreappears, the lost association is recovered; bodily affliction in the\napostle, and the affection of the Galatians towards him, are still the\nconnected thoughts, the only change being just what might naturally be\nexpected to take place as the discourse proceeded, viz.:--that the ideas\nare more distinctly developed, and that what was previously alluded to\nin general terms, is now, not indeed directly stated, but specifically\nindicated and implied. The \"temptation\" in the one verse, and the\ndisease hinted by implication in the form assumed by the passionate\nsympathy of the Galatians, are therefore identified; and thus, the whole\nparagraph, from the 12th to the 15th verse, instead of presenting an\nagglomeration of abrupt transitions and disconnected thoughts, evolves a\nclose, natural, and continuous meaning throughout.\n\nSomething more, however, is required than merely to show that the\ninterpretation which I propose exhibits a better arrangement, and\nconnection of the thoughts. The apostle may have written in haste, and\nthat explanation of his meaning which attributes to him imperfect\nconnectedness, may after all be the correct one. I shall therefore\nproceed to inquire whether some further light may not be thrown upon the\nsubject, by a more minute investigation than I have yet attempted, of\nparticular words and turns of expression in the passage.\n\nThe phrase, \"I bear you record,\" could only have been used with\npropriety in reference to a positive _fact;_ something that the apostle\nhad actually witnessed. He could not have employed this language in\nannouncing a mere _inference_ (as the common interpretation would make\nit) from the conduct of the Galatians towards him, as to the strength\nand extent of their regard; for a man's testimony can only bear\nreference to facts which have actually come under his observation. The\napostle's language, let it be observed, is not the declaration of a\n_belief_ that the Galatians would have plucked out their own eyes in his\nbehalf, if circumstances had arisen to make such a sacrifice necessary;\nit is the announcement of a _testimony_ ({martyro}), on the assumption\nthat those circumstances had actually arisen. And the testimony is not\nto the effect that the Galatians entertained strong affection to him,\nand as a consequence of that affection; that he is assured they would\nhave plucked out their eyes for him (for these must have been the terms\nof his declaration, upon the ordinary understanding of the passage); but\nit is direct to the point, that if it had only been possible, \"they\nwould have plucked out their own eyes, and have given them to him.\" Such\nlanguage, it appears to me, would be absurd, unless we are to understand\nby it, that the Galatians had actually expressed a wish, and\ndemonstrated a desire to perform the very act which the apostle speaks\nof! And if so, I think it is obviously necessary to infer that some\ncircumstance must have existed to give occasion to a wish of so peculiar\na kind, in the minds of those who were attached to the apostle's person;\nand the only circumstance which I can conceive of as calculated to\nexcite such a wish, is St. Paul's suffering under some painful affection\nof the eyes.\n\nThe expression, \"if it had been possible,\" has also, I think, a peculiar\nsignificance. If the sentence in the 15th verse, beginning, \"I bear you\nrecord,\" &c., is thoughtfully considered, it will be seen that three\nsuppositions may be made as to the apostle's meaning and reference:\n_1st_, The language may be understood (as has usually been done) in a\nfigurative or proverbial sense, and as containing no allusion to any\nreally existing circumstances; _2d_, It may be taken literally, but with\nreference rather to what _might_ happen than to circumstances actually\nexisting; as if the writer had said, \"If I were to lose my eyes, I bear\nyou record that you would willingly have plucked out yours to supply\ntheir place;\" or, _3d_, The words may be understood as giving a plain\nmatter-of-fact representation of what the Galatians really thought and\nfelt in reference to the apostle's bodily affliction. Now, I think it\nmay be made out quite distinctly that the words \"if it had been\npossible,\" could only have been used under the last of these hypotheses;\nfor in no other case would the contingency of _possibility_ have\npresented itself to the writer's mind. If, for example, we are to\nunderstand the language as literal, but with reference to the _future_\nor _conceivable_, rather than the present or actual, the expression\nwould obviously have been,--\"I bear you record that if it had been\n_necessary_\" or, \"if such a thing had been required of you for my\nbenefit, ye would have plucked out,\" &c.[52] If, on the other hand, we\nsuppose the language to be figurative or proverbial, no contingency\nwould have been mentioned at all, for it is characteristic of such\nlanguage that it is always absolute and unconditional. For example, in\nthe expressions, \"If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it\nfrom thee;\" \"If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it\nfrom thee;\" every one at once recognizes the purely proverbial or\nfigurative character of the language, and this simply because its form\nis absolute and unconditioned. The moment you introduce anything like a\ncondition, and make the removal of the sinning eye or the offending hand\ndependent upon some circumstance, you are compelled to understand the\nwords according to their strictly literal meaning. Thus, if our Lord,\ninstead of saying what he did in this case, had used such an expression\nas this,--\"If thy right hand offend thee, and if the tendency to offend\nbe insuperable, cut it off;\" or, \"If thy right eye offend thee, and its\nextraction would not endanger life, pluck it out,\" it is clear that the\nexpressions could only have been taken in their strictly literal sense.\nSo, in the words under review, it is also obvious that the introduction\nof the \"if it be possible\" takes the phrase out of the class of figures\nor proverbs, and necessitates its interpretation in a close, literal,\nmatter-of-fact manner.\n\n [52] This seems to have been the view taken by Calvin, but with\n that logical acuteness which was characteristic of him, he\n at the same time perceived that it was inaccordant with the\n expression, \"if it had been possible.\" In his commentary\n upon the passage, therefore, he substitutes \"_si opus sit_\"\n for the apostle's words; thus, of course, assuming that St.\n Paul had adopted an inapt phrase to express his meaning. But\n I need scarcely say that such a mode of interpretation is\n altogether inadmissible, the only legitimate rule being to\n take the words of the text as they stand, and thence to\n infer the circumstances or conditions under which they were\n used.\n\nPerhaps a slight incident which lately occurred in my presence will\nbetter illustrate what I wish to convey than any elaborate exposition\ncould do. One day, a poor simple-hearted married couple, from the\ncountry, called on a medical friend of mine, to consult him about a\ncomplaint in the eyes of the husband, which seemed to threaten him with\ntotal blindness. The wife entered at great length into all the symptoms\nof the complaint, and was extremely voluble in her expressions of\nsympathy and of anxiety that something should be done to remove the\ndisease. It was difficult to repress a smile at the scene, and yet it\nwas touching too; and the doctor, looking in the old woman's honest\naffectionate face, quietly said, \"I suppose you would give him one of\nyour own eyes, _if you could_:\" \"That I would, sir,\" was the immediate\nanswer. Now, it is clear that my friend's words could only have been\nused under the particular circumstances which called them forth. Had the\naffection of the old woman been exhibited upon some other occasion than\nher husband's threatened blindness, he _might_ have said (though, of\ncourse, the allusion to eyes at all would not very naturally or probably\nhave suggested itself), \"I suppose you would give him one of your own\neyes _if he required it_,\" but he could never have used the words, \"_if\nyou could_.\" The application of this to the language used by St. Paul is\nsufficiently obvious.\n\nAnother expression in this paragraph seems to me still further to\ndiscriminate the nature of the complaint under which St. Paul suffered.\nI mean the words, \"and have given them to me.\" Admitting that the\nGalatians might, under other circumstances than diseased vision in the\napostle, have thought of such a way of demonstrating their affection to\nhim as plucking out their own eyes, I cannot imagine how the notion of\n\"giving them to him\" could ever have occurred to them, unless his organs\nof sight were in such a state of disease as in the natural association\nof ideas to give rise to this vain and fanciful wish. For the very fact\nof its being thus vain, fanciful, and far-fetched, makes it necessary to\nassume that there were some peculiar circumstances in the case to\noccasion a thought so odd and out of the way. If the language had really\nbeen what it has so generally been supposed to be--figurative or\nproverbial--I can conceive the apostle putting it in this way, \"Ye would\nhave plucked out your own eyes _for me_,\" or, \"_to show the strength of\nyour affection for me_;\" but it seems to me that it is absurd and\nunmeaning to say, \"_and have given them to me_\", unless under the idea\nof such giving being of some service to the apostle, as a kindly fancy\nwould naturally dwell upon the thought of its being, if St. Paul's own\neyes were injured or destroyed. And, further, we are compelled, I think,\nto conclude that the idea of _substitution_ is conveyed by the word\n\"given,\" from this fact, that the clause, \"if it had been possible,\" has\nactually no meaning at all, unless it is to be understood as referring\nto the supposed attempt of the apostle to make use of the Galatians'\neyes. It is clear that the writer could not have used the words, \"if it\nhad been possible\" in reference to the \"plucking out,\" because _there_\nthe obstacle of impossibility did not present itself; there was nothing\nto hinder the Galatians from plucking out their eyes if they had been so\ndisposed. Neither could the reference have been to \"giving\" in the\nsimple sense of that word; if they could pluck out their eyes there was\nno impossibility in merely _giving_ them to the apostle. The only thing\nabout the possibility of which there could be any question was their\nbeing _so_ given--_so_ made over to him as to be of any service as\nsubstitutes for his own.\n\nOne other expression in the paragraph still requires to be noticed, but\nI must defer alluding to it until I have referred to some other points\nwhich seem to me to have a bearing upon the question. In the mean time,\nhaving thus shown how exactly the whole of the language of this passage\ntallies with the idea of the apostle having been affected with some\ndistressing complaint in his eyes, it is surely very remarkable to\nlearn, from a totally different source, that St. Paul actually had at\none period of his life lost the power of vision. I allude, of course, to\nwhat is recorded, in the ninth chapter of Acts, of the strange\noccurrence which took place when he was on his way to Damascus. And\nalthough we are informed that he shortly afterwards recovered his sight,\nit is obvious that this is quite compatible with the existence of much\nremaining disease and imperfection of vision. Indeed, I am not sure but\nhis own language in giving an account of the extraordinary event\nactually favors the idea that the miraculous cure effected by Ananias\nwent barely to the restoration of sight, and did not amount to a\ncomplete removal of the injury which his eyes had sustained. In his\naddress to the Jews at Jerusalem, when he stood upon the stairs of the\ncastle (Acts xxii. 13), all that he says is, \"Ananias came unto me and\nstood and said unto me, Brother Saul, receive thy sight. And the same\nhour _I looked up upon him_.\" In Acts ix. 18, the words are,\n\"Immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales, and he\nreceived sight forthwith.\" In neither passage at least is there anything\ninconsistent with the idea that his eyes, though they had not lost the\npower of vision, may yet have been seriously and perhaps permanently\ninjured. And although it is perhaps scarcely legitimate to bring it\nforward as an argument for the view which I have adopted, yet it is\nimpossible to overlook the fact that a most important end was served by\nthe apostle's eyes being permitted to retain the marks of disease and\nsevere injury, for a standing proof was thus afforded to the Church and\nto the world that the extraordinary vision, so confirmatory of the truth\nof our holy religion, was not, as some might otherwise have been\ninclined to think it, a vain fancy of the apostle's own mind. Often, no\ndoubt, when St. Paul told of that remarkable meeting with the Lord\nJesus, he was met by the reply, \"'Paul, thou art beside thyself;'\ndelusion, a heated imagination, has deceived and betrayed you.\" But he\nhad only to point to his branded, half-quenched orbs, and to ask the\nobjectors if mental hallucinations were accustomed to produce such\neffects on the bodily frame. To such a question there could obviously be\nno answer And if the objectors were satisfied of the apostle's veracity\nin alleging the one thing to be the effect of the other, it was hardly\npossible for them to gainsay the claim of a Divine origin for\nChristianity.\n\nThis hypothesis as to the _cause_ and _occasion_ of St. Paul's\ninfirmity, receives from another part of Scripture, where allusion is\nmade to it, a somewhat remarkable confirmation. In the 12th chapter of\nSecond Corinthians, it cannot, I think, after what I have just stated,\nbut be regarded as very singular that the \"thorn in the flesh\" is\nmentioned in immediate connection with \"visions and revelations of the\nLord.\" The ordinary idea, indeed, has been that this connection is\nmerely incidental; but a little consideration, I think, will show that\nthis cannot be the case. In the 7th verse he says, \"And lest I should be\nexalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there\nwas given to me a thorn in the flesh,\" &c. Now, I contend that unless\nthere was some such intimate relation between the thorn in the flesh and\nthe revelations in question, as that of the one being immediately\noccasioned by the other, the humbling effect here attributed to the\nbodily infirmity could not have been produced on the apostle's mind,\nbecause the cause assigned would have been unsuitable and inadequate to\nsuch an effect. It is true that every affliction, bodily or otherwise,\nhas a tendency to produce a feeling of humiliation, but it does so only\nin so far as it cuts away the ground on which we are disposed to build\nup matter of pride or boasting. If a man is proud of his strength or\npersonal beauty, it would humble him to lose a limb, or to have his\nfeatures disfigured by loathsome disease. But these afflictions would\nnot produce the same effect if they befell another person who valued\nhimself exclusively upon his learning and mental endowments. The pride\nof learning and of intellect would, in such a case, remain as strong as\never. Accordingly we find that deformed persons, so far from being\ndistinguished by the grace of humility, are very frequently rather\nremarkable for the opposite characteristics of vanity and self-conceit;\nso natural is it for the mind to take refuge from what tends to produce\na sense of degradation, in something that the humbling stroke does not\ndirectly smite. It does not, therefore, distinctly appear, in any\nexplanation of St. Paul's affliction which would refer it to disease of\nan ordinary kind, how it should have had the effect which he attributes\nto it,--that of preventing him from being unduly exalted by the\nabundance of the revelations made to him. But when it is pointed out\nthat his affliction was the immediate consequence of his close\nintercourse with Deity, the relation of the two things assumes an\nentirely different aspect, and a sufficient cause of humiliation\nappears. For, if at any time the apostle was disposed to glorify himself\non his superiority to his fellow-men, and on being the peculiar favorite\nand friend of God, his real insignificance, and the infinite distance\nthat lay between him and the Divine Being, must have been sent home with\nirresistible power to his mind, by the recollection that the mere sight\nof that terrible majesty had struck him to the ground, and had left an\never-during brand of pain and disfigurement on his person. I shall just\nadd, that in Second Corinthians xii. 7, the words, {te hyperbole ton\napokalypseon} may with quite as much propriety be construed with {edothe\nmoi skolops te sarki}, as with {hina me huperairomai}; the meaning\nbeing thus given,--\"and that I might not be exalted, a thorn in the\nflesh [caused] by the exceeding greatness (for this rather than\n'abundance' seems to me the proper translation of {hyperbole}) of the\nrevelations, was given me.\"\n\nIf the account I have thus given of the connection between St. Paul's\n\"thorn in the flesh,\" and the visions or revelations with which he was\nfavored, be the correct one, we are now furnished with the means of\nexplaining a somewhat obscure expression in the 14th verse of the fourth\nchapter of Galatians, to which I promised to return: \"And my trial which\nwas in my flesh, ye despised not, nor _rejected_.\" If we are compelled\nto abide by the belief, that St. Paul's \"trial\" was merely some bodily\naffliction of the ordinary kind, we can understand the meaning of his\nsaying that the Galatians did not \"despise\" it (although, by the way, it\nseems rather a microscopic basis on which to found a laudation of a body\nof Christian men and women, to say that they were so good as not to\ndespise him on account of a natural bodily infirmity), but it is\nimpossible, on this assumption, to attach any consistent sense to the\nword \"_rejected_.\" It has, therefore, been taken as simply synonymous\nwith \"despise,\" an interpretation which is objectionable, both because\nit is at variance with the well-ascertained meaning of the Greek word\n{exeptusate} (spit _out_, not spit _at_), and also because it involves\nthe imputation of needless tautology to St. Paul's language, from which,\nalmost more than from any other fault of style, the whole of his\nwritings prove him to be singularly free. But if my explanation of the\nnature of the apostle's trial be the true one, every word of the\nsentence has a clear and intelligible meaning. St. Paul came among the\nGalatians proclaiming to them the glad truth, that Jesus Christ was\nrisen from the dead. How did he know it? Because he himself had seen him\nalive after his passion, \"when he came near to Damascus.\" Was he quite\nsure that the vision was not a dream, or a delusion? He pointed to his\neyes in proof that it was a great certainty, a terrible as well as\njoyous reality. And this evidence the Galatians \"despised not, nor\nrejected.\"\n\nThis explanation of the reference of \"rejected,\" has also the advantage\nof removing a difficulty which has hitherto been felt in the translation\nof the preceding verse. It is there said, \"Ye know how through infirmity\nof the flesh I preached,\" &c. Now, it so happens, that the Greek words\n{di astheneian}, cannot, in accordance with the common usage of the\nlanguage, be translated \"through\" (in the sense of _during_)\n\"infirmity.\" Had this been the meaning which the apostle intended to\nconvey, he would have used the genitive {di astheneias}. With the\naccusative, the reference of {dia} is generally found to be to the\ninstrument, ground, or cause of anything, and its meaning is--by, on\naccount of, by means of, on the ground of, &c.[53] The literal and\nstrictly correct translation of St. Paul's words, therefore, is: \"By the\ninfirmity of my flesh, I proclaimed to you the good news,\" _i. e._, I\nadduced the fact of my bodily affliction, as giving indisputable\nevidence of the truth which I told you about the resurrection and\nexaltation of Jesus Christ, and this evidence \"ye despised not, nor\nrejected.\" Thus, not only a specific meaning is attached to the word\n\"rejected,\" but a much more close, distinct, and consistent sense is\ngiven to the whole passage, than upon any other understanding of the\nreference it could possess.\n\n [53] See Robinson's _Lexicon to the New Testament_, _sub voce_ {dia}.\n\nThere are one or two other passages in St. Paul's Epistles, in which\nreference, I think, is implied to this subject of his bodily affliction,\nand all of them seem to me to afford incidentally some confirmation of\nthe particular view of the matter which I have endeavored to establish.\nAt the close of the Epistle to the Galatians (chap. vi. verse 11), we\nfind him saying, \"Ye see how large a letter I have written to you with\nmy own hand.\" Now, the letter is not a very large one; on the contrary,\nit is one of the shorter of the apostle's productions. And, then, why\nshould he take credit for having written it with his own hand? Under\nordinary circumstances, it would scarcely occur to any one in the habit\nof writing at all, to speak of this as any remarkable achievement. But,\nif the Galatians knew him to be laboring under impaired vision, and\nperhaps severe pain in his eyes, the words are peculiarly significant,\nand could not fail to make a touching impression on the quick, impulsive\ntemperament, so vividly alive to anything outward, of the Celtic tribe\nto which they were addressed. And thus too, we obtain an explanation of\nwhat would otherwise be rather unaccountable, how a man of St. Paul's\nactive habits, and whom we have difficulty in conceiving of as\naccustomed in anything to have recourse to superfluous ministrations,\nseems to have almost uniformly employed an amanuensis in writing to the\nvarious churches.[54]\n\n [54] It has been suggested to me that the state of St. Paul's\n eyesight might also furnish an explanation of his mistake in\n not recognizing the High Priest, which is recorded in Acts\n xxiii. 5, and about which some difficulty has been felt by\n commentators. One can picture the great apostle, who was a\n thorough gentleman, stretching forward, and shading his\n eyes, to see better, and saying, \"Pardon me, I did not see\n it was the High Priest.\" \"I wist not.\"\n\nAgain, at the very conclusion of the Epistle, we have what I cannot help\nregarding as another allusion to his affliction: \"From henceforth let no\nman trouble me; for I bear in my body the _marks of the Lord Jesus_.\" It\nhas been customary to regard these words as referring to the marks of\nscourging, stoning, &c., which had been imprinted on the apostle's body\nby the enemies of the gospel, in the course of the persecutions to which\nhe had been subjected in consequence of his firm adherence to the faith.\nBut though the fact of his having undergone severe persecution was a\nstrong proof of his _sincerity_, it was no proof at all of his bearing\nany _authority_ over the Galatians. Yet this is what he must be\nunderstood as asserting here. And I cannot help thinking, that the\nwords, \"marks of the Lord Jesus,\" are chosen with a reference to that\nrelationship which was established between St. Paul and his Master and\nLord, on the occasion of that extraordinary meeting on the way to\nDamascus, for it was then he received his commission to bear Christ's\nname to the Gentiles. {Stigmata} were the brands with which slaves were\nmarked in order to prove their ownership. So, if I am right in my\nunderstanding of the meaning of the word here, the apostle intends to\nintimate that the blasting effect produced on his eyes by the glory of\nthat light, constituted the _brand_ which attested his being the servant\n({doulos}) of Jesus Christ, and of his being commissioned by him to\ncommunicate to others the truth of the gospel. This gives a force and\nfulness of meaning which corresponds exactly with the peculiar energy of\nthe expression, while, according to any ordinary explanation of the\npassage, it seems rather to be strong language used without any adequate\noccasion for it.[55]\n\n [55] It may be worth mentioning here, that an opinion prevails in\n the Roman Catholic Church, that persons who have been\n favored with Divine visions, or to whom God wishes to give a\n token of his peculiar love, are frequently marked by what\n are specifically called _stigmas_. I have not met with any\n account of the grounds on which this opinion is founded: but\n the _stigmas_ are explained to be the marks of the Saviour's\n five wounds. It is very likely that the notion is nothing\n more than a fantastic and superstitious explanation of the\n passage in Galatians vi. 17. But it is not altogether\n impossible that it may be the faint and imperfect echo of\n some early tradition in the Church as to the physical effect\n produced upon St. Paul by Christ's miraculous appearance to\n him near Damascus. Whatever be its origin, the existence of\n such an opinion is not without a certain degree of curiosity\n and interest.\n\nI think the circumstance of the expression, \"marks of the Lord Jesus,\"\noccurring just where it does, at the close of the Epistle, is worthy of\nremark. From what he says at the 11th verse of the same chapter (\"Ye see\nhow large a letter I have written to you with my own hand\") it is\nobvious that, to whatever cause it is to be attributed, the act of\nwriting was one of considerable effort to the apostle. His zeal, and\nanxiety, and Christian affection, however, had borne him up, and carried\nhim through with his task. But just as he was concluding, I imagine that\nhe began to feel that the effort he had made was greater than his\ninfirmity was well able to bear. If my idea as to the nature of that\ninfirmity be correct, his weak, diseased eyes were burning and smarting\nmore than ordinarily, from the unusual exertion that had been demanded\nfrom them; and this, at once leading his mind to what had been the cause\nof that exertion, the misconduct of the Galatians and their teachers,\nnaturally wrung from him an assertion of his authority, in the impetuous\nand reproachful, but at the same time deeply pathetic exclamation: \"From\nhenceforth let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the\nLord Jesus.\" And so he concludes his Epistle.\n\nIn pursuing the above inquiry, certain further conclusions, naturally\nflowing out of what I have attempted to establish, and yet involving\nresults considerably remote from it, have presented themselves to my\nthoughts. I am inclined to regard them as calculated in some degree to\nsimplify the mode of presenting the Christian scheme to the mind, and to\nimpart to its claims upon the understanding and belief more of logical\ndirectness, and less of the liability to evasion, than appear to me to\ncharacterize some of the more ordinary modes of its presentation. But I\nmust leave the development of this, the most interesting, as I think,\nand important part of my subject, to some future opportunity, should it\nbe granted me.\n\n\n\n\n_THE BLACK DWARF'S BONES._\n\n ... \"_If thou wert grim,\n Lame, ugly, crooked, swart, prodigious._\"\n\n KING JOHN.\n\n\nThese gnarled, stunted, useless old bones, were all that David Ritchie,\nthe original of the Black Dwarf, had for left _femur_ and _tibia_, and\nwe have merely to look at them and add poverty, to know the misery\nsummed up in their possession. They seem to have been blighted and\nrickety. The thigh-bone is very short and slight, and singularly loose\nin texture; the leg-bone is dwarfed, but dense and stout. They were\ngiven to me many years ago by the late Andrew Ballantyne, Esq. of\nWoodhouse (the Wudess, as they call it on Tweedside), and their\ngenuineness is unquestionable.\n\nAs anything must be interesting about one once so forlorn and miserable,\nand whom our great wizard has made immortal, I make no apology for\nprinting the following letters from my old friend Mr. Craig, long\nsurgeon in Peebles, and who is now spending his evening, after a long,\nhard, and useful day's work, in the quiet vale of Manor, within a mile\nor two of \"Cannie Elshie's\" cottage. The picture he gives is very\naffecting, and should make us all thankful that we are \"wiselike.\" There\nis much that is additional to Sir Walter's account, in his \"Author's\nEdition\" of the Waverley Novels.\n\n \"HALL MANOR, _Thursday, May 20, 1858._\n\n \"MY DEAR SIR,--David Ritchie, _alias_ Bowed Davie, was born at\n Easter Happrew, in the parish of Stobo, in the year 1741. He was\n brought to Woodhouse, in the parish of Manor, when very young.\n His father was a laborer, and occupied a cottage on that farm;\n his mother, Anabel Niven, was a delicate woman, severely\n afflicted with rheumatism, and could not take care of him when\n an infant. To this cause he attributed his deformity, and this,\n if added to imperfect clothing, and bad food, and poverty, will\n account for the grotesque figure which he became. He never was\n at school, but could read tolerably; had many books; was fond of\n poetry, especially Allan Ramsay; he hated Burns. His father and\n mother both died early, and poor Davie became a homeless\n wanderer; he was two years at Broughton Mill, employed in\n stirring the husks of oats, which were used for drying the corn\n on the kiln, and required to be kept constantly in motion; he\n boasted, with a sort of rapture, of his doings there. From\n thence he went to Lyne's Mill, near his birth-place, where he\n continued one year at the same employment, and from thence he\n was sent to Edinburgh to learn brush-making, but made no\n progress in his education there; was annoyed by the wicked boys,\n or _keelies_, as he called them, and found his way back to Manor\n and Woodhouse. The farm now possessed by Mr. Ballantyne, was\n then occupied by four tenants, among whom he lived; but his\n house was at Old Woodhouse, where the late Sir James Nasmyth\n built him a house with two apartments, and separate outer doors,\n one for himself exactly his own height when standing upright in\n it; and this stands as it was built, exactly four feet. A Mr.\n Ritchie, the father of the late minister of Athelstaneford, was\n then tenant; his wife and Davie could not agree, and she\n repeatedly asked her husband to put him away, by making the\n highest stone of his house the lowest. Ritchie left, his house\n was pulled down, and Davie triumphed in having the stones of his\n chimney-top made a step to his door, when this new house was\n built. He was not a little vindictive at times when irritated,\n especially when any allusion was made to his deformity. On one\n occasion, he and some other boys were stealing pease in Mr.\n Gibson's field, who then occupied Woodhouse; all the others took\n _leg-bail_, but Davie's locomotion being tardy, he was caught,\n shaken, and scolded by Gibson for all the rest. This he never\n forgot, and vowed to be avenged on the \"auld sinner and deevil;\"\n and one day when Gibson was working about his own door, Davie\n crept up to the top of the house, which was low, and threw a\n large stone down on his head, which brought the old man to the\n ground. Davie crept down the other side of the house, got into\n bed beside his mother, and it was never known where the stone\n came from, till he boasted of it long afterwards. He only prayed\n that it might sink down through his \"_harn-pan_\" (his skull).\n His personal appearance seems to have been almost indescribable,\n not bearing any likeness to anything in this upper world. But as\n near as I can learn, his forehead was very narrow and low,\n sloping upwards and backward, something of the hatchet shape;\n his eyes deep set, small, and piercing; his nose straight, thin\n as the end of a cut of cheese, sharp at the point, nearly\n touching his fearfully projecting chin; and his mouth formed\n nearly a straight line; his shoulders rather high, but his body\n otherwise the size of ordinary men; his arms were remarkably\n strong. With very little aid he built a high garden wall, which\n still stands, many of the stones of huge size; these the\n shepherds laid to his directions. His legs beat all power of\n description; they were bent in every direction, so that Mungo\n Park, then a surgeon at Peebles, who was called to operate on\n him for strangulated hernia, said he could compare them to\n nothing but a pair of corkscrews; but the principal turn they\n took was from the knee outwards, so that he rested on his inner\n ankles, and the lower part of his tibias.\n\n 'An' his knotted knees play'd aye knoit between.'\n\n \"He had never a shoe on his feet; the parts on which he walked\n were rolled in rags, old stockings, &c., but the toes always\n bare, even in the most severe weather. His mode of progressing\n was as extraordinary as his shape. He carried a long pole, or\n 'kent,' like the Alpenstock, tolerably polished, with a turned\n top on it, on which he rested, placed it before him, he then\n lifted one leg, something in the manner that the oar of a boat\n is worked, and then the other, next advanced his staff, and\n repeated the operation, by diligently doing which he was able to\n make not very slow progress. He frequently walked to Peebles,\n four miles, and back again, in one day. His arms had no motion\n at the elbow-joints, but were active enough otherwise. He was\n not generally ill-tempered, but furious when roused.\n\n \"ROBERT CRAIG.\"\n\n \"HALL MANOR, _June 15, 1858._\n\n \"MY DEAR SIR,--I have delayed till now to finish Bowed Davie, in\n the hope of getting more information, and to very little\n purpose. His contemporaries are now so few, old, and widely\n scattered, that they are difficult to be got at, and when come\n at, their memories are failed, like their bodies. I have\n forgotten at what stage of his history I left off; but if I\n repeat, you can omit the repetitions. Sir James Nasmyth, late of\n Posso, took compassion on the houseless, homeless _lusus\n naturae_, and had a house built for him to his own directions;\n the door, window, and everything to suit his diminished,\n grotesque form; the door four feet high, the window twelve by\n eighteen inches, without glass, closed by a wooden board, hung\n on leathern hinges, which he used to keep shut. Through it he\n reconnoitred all visitors, and only admitted ladies and\n particular favorites; he was very superstitious; ghosts,\n fairies, and robbers he dreaded most. I have forgotten if I\n mentioned how he contrived to be fed and warmed. He had a small\n allowance from the parish poor-box, about fifty shillings; this\n was eked out by an annual peregrination through the parish, when\n some gave him food, others money, wool, &c., which he hoarded\n most miserly. How he cooked his food I have not been able to\n learn, for his sister, who lived in the same cottage with him,\n was separated by a stone and lime wall, and had a separate door\n of the usual size, and window to match, and was never allowed to\n enter his dwelling; but he brought home such loads, that the\n shepherds had to be on the lookout for him, when on his annual\n eleemosynary expeditions, to carry home part of his spoil. On\n one occasion a servant was ordered to give him some salt, for\n containing which he carried a long stocking; he thought the\n damsel had scrimped him in quantity, and he sat and distended\n the stocking till it appeared less than half full, by pressing\n down the salt, and then called for the gudewife, showed it her,\n and asked if she had ordered Jenny only to give him that wee\n pickle saut; the maid was scolded, and the stocking filled. He\n spent all his evenings at the back of the Woodhouse kitchen\n fire, and got at least one meal every day, where he used to make\n the rustics gape and stare at the many ghost, fairy, and robber\n stories which he had either heard of or invented, and poured out\n with unceasing volubility, and so often that he believed them\n all true. But the Ballantyne family had no great faith in his\n veracity, when it suited his convenience to fib, exaggerate, or\n prevaricate, particularly when excited by his own lucubrations,\n or the waggery of his more intellectual neighbors and\n companions. He had a seat in the centre, which he always\n occupied, and a stool for his deformed feet and legs; they all\n rose at times, asking Davie to do likewise, and when he got upon\n his pins, he was shorter than when sitting, his body being of\n the ordinary length, and the deficiency all in his legs. On one\n occasion, a wag named Elder put up a log of wood opposite his\n loophole, made a noise, and told Davie that the robbers he\n dreaded so much were now at his house, and would not go away; he\n peeped out, and saw the log, exclaimed, 'So he is, by the Lord\n God and my soul; Willie Elder, gi'e me the gun, and see that she\n is weel charged.' Elder put in a very large supply of powder\n without shot, rammed it hard, got a stool, which Davie mounted,\n Elder handing him the gun, charging him to take time, and aim\n fair, for if he missed him, he would be mad at being shot at, be\n sure to come in, take everything in the house, cut their\n throats, and burn the house after. Davie tremblingly obeyed,\n presented the gun slowly and cautiously, drew the trigger; off\n went the shot, the musket rebounded, and back went Davie with a\n rattle on the floor. Some accomplice tumbled the log; Davie at\n length was encouraged to look out, and actually believed that he\n had shot the robber; said he had done for him now, 'that ane wad\n plague him nae mair at ony rate.' He took it into his head at\n one time that he ought to be married, and having got the consent\n of a haverel wench to yoke with him in the silken bonds of\n matrimony, went to the minister several times, and asked him to\n perform the ceremony. At length the minister sent him away,\n saying that he could not and would not accommodate him in the\n matter. Davie swung himself out at the door on his kent, much\n crestfallen, and in great wrath, shutting the door with a bang\n behind him, but opening it again, he shook his clenched fist in\n the parson's face, and said, 'Weel, weel, ye'll no let decent,\n honest folk marry; but, 'od, lad, I'se plenish your parish wi'\n bastards, to see what ye'll mak o' that,' and away he went. He\n read Hooke's _Pantheon_, and made great use of the heathen\n deities. He railed sadly at the taxes; some one observed that he\n need not grumble at them as he had none to pay. 'Hae I no'?' he\n replied, 'I can neither get a pickle snuff to my neb, nor a\n pickle tea to my mouth, but they maun tax 't.' His sister and he\n were on very unfriendly terms. She was ill on one occasion; Miss\n Ballantyne asked how she was to-day. He replied, 'I dinna ken, I\n ha'na been in, for I hate folk that are aye gaun to dee and\n never do't,' In 1811 he was seized with obstruction of the\n bowels and consequent inflammation; blisters and various\n remedies were applied for three days without effect. Some one\n came to Mrs. Ballantyne and said that it was 'just about a' owre\n wi' Davie noo.' She went, and he breathed his last almost\n immediately. His sister without any delay, got his keys, and\n went to his secret repository, Mrs. Ballantyne thought to get\n dead-clothes, but instead, to the amazement of all present, she\n threw three money-bags, one after another, into Mrs.\n Ballantyne's lap, telling her to count that, and that, and that.\n Mrs. B. was annoyed and astonished at the multitude of\n half-crowns and shillings, all arranged according to value. He\n hated sixpences, and had none, but the third contained four\n guineas in gold. Mrs. B. was disgusted with the woman's greed,\n and put them all up, saying, what would anybody think if they\n came in and found them counting the man's money and his breath\n scarcely out,--took it all home to her husband, who made out L4\n 2_s._ in gold, L10 in a bank receipt, and L7 18_s._ in\n shillings and half-crowns, in all L22. How did he get this? He\n had many visitors, the better class of whom gave him\n half-crowns, others shillings and sixpences; the latter he never\n kept, but converted them into shillings and half-crowns whenever\n he got an opportunity. I asked the wright how he got him into a\n coffin. He replied, 'Easily; they made it deeper than ordinary,\n and wider, so as to let in his distorted legs, as it was\n impossible to streek him like others.' He often expressed a\n resolve to be buried on the Woodhill top, three miles up the\n water from the church-yard, as he could never 'lie amang the\n common trash;' however, this was not accomplished, as his\n friend, Sir James Nasmyth, who had promised to carry this wish\n into effect, was on the Continent at the time. When Sir James\n returned, he spoke of having his remains lifted and buried where\n he had wished; but this was never done, and the expense of a\n railing and plantation of rowan-trees (mountain ash), his\n favorite prophylactic against the spells of witches and fairies,\n was abandoned. The Woodhill is a romantic, green little mount,\n situated at the west side of the Manor, which washes its base on\n the east, and separates it from Langhaugh heights, part of a\n lofty, rocky, and heathery mountain range, and on the west is\n the ruin of the ancient peel-house of old Posso, long the\n residence of the Nasmyth family. And now that we have the Dwarf\n dead and buried, comes the history of his resurrection in 1821.\n His sister died exactly ten years after him. A report had been\n spread that he had been lifted and taken to dissecting-rooms in\n Glasgow, which at that period was the fate of many a more seemly\n corpse than Davie's; and the young men--for Manor had no\n sexton--who dug the sister's grave in the vicinity of her\n brother's, stimulated by curiosity to see if his body had really\n been carried off, and if still there what his bones were like,\n lifted them up, and carried them to Woodhouse, where they lay a\n considerable time, till they were sent to Mr. Ballantyne, then\n in Glasgow. Miss Ballantyne thinks the skull was taken away with\n the other bones, but put back again. I have thus given you all\n the information I can gather about the Black Dwarf that I think\n worth narrating. It is reported that he sometimes sold a gill,\n but if this is true the Ballantynes never knew it. Miss\n Ballantyne says that he was not ill-tempered, but on the\n contrary, kind, especially to children. She and her brother were\n very young when she went to Woodhouse, and her father objected\n to resetting the farm from Sir James, on account of the fearful\n accounts of his horrid temper and barbarous deeds, and Sir James\n said if he ever troubled them that he would immediately put him\n away; but he was very fond of the younger ones, played with\n them, and amused them, though when roused and provoked by\n grown-up people, he raged, stormed, swore terrifically, and\n struck with anything that was near him, in short, he had an\n irritable but not a sulky, sour, misanthropic temper. The\n Messrs. Chambers wrote a book about him and his doings at a very\n early period of their literary history. Did I tell you of a\n female relative, Niven (whom he would never see), saying that\n she would come and streek him after he died? He sent word, 'that\n if she offered to touch his corpse he would rive the thrapple\n oot o' her--he would raither be streekit by Auld Clootie's ain\n red-het hands.'--Yours, truly obliged, R. C.\"\n\nThis poor, vindictive, solitary, and powerful creature, was a\nphilocalist: he had a singular love of flowers and of beautiful women.\nHe was a sort of Paris, to whom the blushing Aphrodites of the glen used\nto come, and his judgment is said to have been as good, as the world\ngenerally thinks that of Oenone's handsome and faithless mate. His\ngarden was full of the finest flowers, and it was his pleasure, when the\nyoung beauties\n\n \"Who bore the blue sky intermixed with flame\n In their fair eyes,\"\n\ncame to him for their competitive examination, to scan them well, and\nthen, without one word, present each with a flower, which was of a\ncertain fixed and well-known value in Davie's standard _calimeter_.\n\nI have heard that there was one kind of rose, his {kallisteion}, which\nhe was known to have given only to three, and I remember seeing one of\nthe three, when she was past seventy. Margaret Murray, or Morra, was her\nmaiden name, and this fine old lady, whom an Oxonian would call a Double\nFirst, grave and silent, and bent with \"the pains,\" when asked by us\nchildren, would, with some reluctance, and a curious grave smile,\nproduce out of her Bible, Bowed Davie's withered and flattened rose; and\nfrom her looks, even then, I was inclined to affirm the decision of the\nconnoisseur of Manor Water. One can fancy the scene in that sweet\nsolitary valley, informed like its sister Yarrow with pastoral\nmelancholy, with a young May, bashful and eager, presenting herself for\nhonors, encountering from under that penthouse of eyebrows the steady\ngaze of the strange eldritch creature; and then his making up his mind,\nand proceeding to pluck his award and present it to her, \"herself a\nfairer flower,\" and then turning with a scowl, crossed with a look of\ntenderness, crawl into his den. Poor \"gloomy Dis,\" slinking in alone.\n\nThey say, that when the candidate came, he surveyed her from his window,\nhis eyes gleaming out of the darkness, and if he liked her not he\ndisappeared; if he would entertain her, he beckoned her into the garden.\n\nI have often thought that the _Brownie_, of whom the south country\nlegends are so full, must have been some such misshapen creature,\nstrong, willing, and forlorn, conscious of his hideous forbidding looks,\nand ready to purchase affection at any cost of labor, with a kindly\nheart, and a longing for human sympathy and intercourse. Such a being\nlooks like the prototype of the Aiken-Drum of our infancy, and of that\n\"drudging goblin,\" of whom we all know how he\n\n \"... Sweat\n To earn his cream-bowl daily set,\n When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,\n His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn,\n That ten day lab'rers could not end;\n Then lies him down, the lubber[56] fiend,\n And stretch'd out all the chimney's length,\n Basks at the fire his hairy strength,\n And cropful out of doors he flings,\n Ere the first cock his matin rings.\"\n\n [56] Lob-lye-by-the-fire.\n\nMy readers will, I am sure, more than pardon me for giving them the\nfollowing poem on Aiken-Drum, for the pleasure of first reading which,\nmany years ago, I am indebted to Mr. R. Chambers's _Popular Rhymes of\nScotland_, where its \"extraordinary merit\" is generously acknowledged.\n\n\nTHE BROWNIE OF BLEDNOCH.\n\n There cam' a strange wicht to our town-en',\n An' the fient a body did him ken;\n He tirl'd na lang, but he glided ben\n Wi' a dreary, dreary hum.\n\n His face did glow like the glow o' the west,\n When the drumlie cloud has it half o'ercast;\n Or the struggling moon when she's sair distrest,\n O sirs! 'twas Aiken-drum.\n\n I trow the bauldest stood aback,\n Wi' a gape an' a glow'r till their lugs did crack,\n As the shapeless phantom mum'ling spak,\n Hae ye wark for Aiken-drum!\n\n O! had ye seen the bairns' fricht,\n As they stared at this wild and unyirthly wicht,\n As they skulkit in 'tween the dark an' the licht,\n An' graned out, Aiken-drum!\n\n \"Sauf us!\" quoth Jock, \"d'ye see sick e'en?\"\n Cries Kate, \"There's a hole where a nose should ha' been;\n An' the mouth's like a gash that a horn had ri'en;\n Wow! keep's frae Aiken-drum!\"\n\n The black dog growlin' cow'red his tail,\n The lassie swarf'd, loot fa' the pail;\n Rob's lingle brack as he mendit the flail,\n At the sicht o' Aiken-drum.\n\n His matted head on his breast did rest,\n A lang blue beard wan'ered down like a vest;\n But the glare o' his e'e hath nae bard exprest,\n Nor the skimes o' Aiken-drum.\n\n Roun' his hairy form there was naething seen,\n But a philabeg o' the rashes green,\n An' his knotted knees play'd aye knoit between;\n What a sicht was Aiken-drum!\n\n On his wauchie arms three claws did meet,\n As they trail'd on the grim' by his taeless feet;\n E'en the auld gudeman himsel' did sweat,\n To look at Aiken-drum.\n\n But he drew a score, himsel' did sain,\n The auld wife tried, but her tongue was gane;\n While the young ane closer clespit her wean,\n And turn'd frae Aiken-drum.\n\n But the canty auld wife cam till her braith,\n And she thocht the Bible micht ward aif scaith;\n Be it benshee, bogle, ghaist, or wraith--\n But it fear'd na Aiken-drum.\n\n \"His presence protect us!\" quoth the auld gudeman;\n \"What wad ye, whare won ye,--by sea or by lan'?\n I conjure ye--speak--by the Beuk in my han'!\"\n What a grane gae Aiken-drum!\n\n \"I lived in a lan' whare we saw nae sky,\n I dwalt in a spot whare a burn rins na by;\n But I'se dwall noo wi' you if ye like to try--\n Hae ye wark for Aiken drum?\n\n \"I'll shiel a' your sheep i' the mornin' sune,[57]\n I'll berry your crap by the licht o' the moon,\n An' ba the bairns wi' an unkenn'd tune,\n If ye'll keep puir Aiken-drum.\n\n \"I'll loup the linn when ye canna wade,\n I'll kirn the kirn, an' I'll turn the bread;\n An' the wildest fillie that e'er ran rede\n I'se tame't,' quoth Aiken-drum!\n\n \"To wear the tod frae the flock on the fell--\n To gather the dew frae the heather-bell--\n An' to look at my face in your clear crystal well,\n Micht gie pleasure to Aiken-drum.\n\n \"I'se seek nae guids, gear, bond, nor mark;\n I use nae beddin', shoon, nor sark;\n But a cogfu' o' brose 'tween the licht an' the dark\n Is the wage o' Aiken-drum.\"\n\n Quoth the wylie auld wife, \"The thing speaks weel;\n Our workers are scant--we hae routh o' meal;\n Giff he'll do as he says--be he man, be he de'il,\n Wow! we'll try this Aiken-drum.\"\n\n But the wenches skirl'd, \"He's no' be here!\n His eldritch look gars us swarf wi' fear;\n An' the feint a ane will the house come near,\n If they think but o' Aiken-drum.\n\n \"For a foul and a stalwart ghaist is he,\n Despair sits broodin' aboon his e'e-bree,\n And unchancie to light o' a maiden's e'e,\n Is the glower o' Aiken-drum.\"\n\n \"Puir clipmalabors! ye hae little wit;\n Is't na hallowmas noo, an' the crap out yet?\"\n Sae she seelenc'd them a' wi' a stamp o' her fit,\n \"Sit-yer-wa's-down, Aiken-drum.\"\n\n Roun' a' that side what wark was dune,\n By the streamer's gleam, or the glance o' the moon;\n A word, or a wish--an' the Brownie cam sune,\n Sae helpfu' was Aiken-drum.\n\n But he slade aye awa or the sun was up,\n He ne'er could look straught on Macmillan's cup;[58]\n They watch'd--but nane saw him his brose ever sup\n Nor a spune sought Aiken-drum.\n\n On Blednoch banks, an' on crystal Cree,\n For mony a day a toil'd wicht was he;\n And the bairns they play'd harmless roun' his knee,\n Sae social was Aiken-drum.\n\n But a new-made wife, fu' o' rippish freaks,\n Fond o' a things feat for the five first weeks,\n Laid a mouldy pair o her ain man's breeks\n By the brose o' Aiken-drum.\n\n Let the learn'd decide when they convene,\n What spell was him an' the breeks between;\n For frae that day forth he was nae mair seen,\n An' sair miss'd was Aiken-drum.\n\n He was heard by a herd gaun by the Thrieve,\n Crying, \"Lang, lang now may I greet an' grieve;\n For alas! I hae gotten baith fee an' leave,\n O luckless Aiken-drum!\"\n\n Awa! ye wrangling sceptic tribe,\n Wi' your pro's an' your con's wad ye decide\n 'Gainst the 'sponsible voice o' a hale country-side\n On the facts 'bout Aiken-drum?\n\n Tho' the \"Brownie o' Blednoch\" lang be gane,\n The mark o' his feet's left on mony a stane;\n An' mony a wife an' mony a wean\n Tell the feats o' Aiken-drum.\n\n E'en now, licht loons that jibe an' sneer\n At spiritual guests an' a' sic gear,\n At the Glasnock mill hae swat wi' fear,\n An' look'd roun' for Aiken-drum.\n\n An' guidly folks hae gotten a fricht,\n When the moon was set, an' the stars gaed nac licht,\n At the roaring linn in the howe o' the nicht,\n Wi' sughs like Aiken-drum.\n\n [57] On one occasion, Brownie had undertaken to gather the sheep\n into the bught by an early hour, and so zealously did he\n perform his task, that not only was there not one sheep left\n on the hill, but he had also collected a number of hares,\n which were found fairly penned along with them. Upon being\n congratulated on his extraordinary success, Brownie\n exclaimed, \"Confound thae wee gray anes! they cost me mair\n trouble than a' the lave o' them.\"\n\n [58] A communion cup, belonging to M'Millan, the well-known\n ousted minister of Balmaghie, and founder of the sect of\n Covenanters of his name. This cup was treasured by a zealous\n disciple in the parish of Kirkcowan, and long used as a test\n by which to ascertain the orthodoxy of suspected persons.\n If, on taking it into his hand, the person trembled, or gave\n other symptoms of agitation, he was denounced as having\n bowed the knee to Baal, and sacrificed at the altar of\n idolatry.\n\nWe would rather have written these lines than any amount of Aurora\nLeighs, Festuses, or such like, with all their mighty \"somethingness,\"\nas Mr. Bailey would say. For they, are they not the \"native wood-notes\nwild\" of one of nature's darlings? Here is the indescribable,\ninestimable, unmistakable impress of genius. Chaucer, had he been a\nGalloway man, might have written it, only he would have been more\ngarrulous, and less compact and stern. It is like Tam o' Shanter, in its\nliving union of the comic, the pathetic, and the terrible. Shrewdness,\ntenderness, imagination, fancy, humor, word-music, dramatic power, even\nwit--all are here. I have often read it aloud to children, and it is\nworth any one's while to do it. You will find them repeating all over\nthe house for days such lines as take their heart and tongue.\n\nThe author of this noble ballad was William Nicholson, the Galloway\npoet, as he was, and is still called in his own district. He was born at\nTanimaus, in the parish of Borgue, in August 1783; he died _circa_ 1848,\nunseen, like a bird. Being extremely short-sighted, he was unfitted for\nbeing a shepherd or ploughman, and began life as a packman, like the\nhero of \"the Excursion;\" and is still remembered in that region for his\nhumor, his music, his verse, and his ginghams; and also, alas! for his\nmisery and his sin. After travelling the country for thirty years, he\nbecame a packless pedler, and fell into \"a way of drinking;\" this led\nfrom bad to worse, and the grave closed in gloom over the ruins of a man\nof true genius. Mr. M'Diarmid of Dumfries prefixed a memoir of him to\nthe Second Edition of his _Tales in Verse and Miscellaneous Poems_.\nThese are scarcely known out of Galloway, but they are worth the\nknowing; none of them have the concentration and nerve of the Brownie,\nbut they are from the same brain and heart. \"The Country Lass,\" a long\npoem, is excellent; with much of Crabbe's power and compression. This,\nand the greater part of the volume, is in the Scottish dialect, but\nthere is a Fable--the Butterfly and Bee--the English and sense, the\nfine, delicate humor and turn of which might have been Cowper's; and\nthere is a bit of rugged sarcasm called \"Siller,\" which Burns need not\nhave been ashamed of. Poor Nicholson, besides his turn for verse, was an\nexquisite musician, and sang with a powerful and sweet voice. One may\nimagine the delight of a lonely town-end, when Willie the packman and\nthe piper made his appearance, with his stories, and jokes, and ballads,\nhis songs, and reels, and \"wanton wiles.\"\n\nThere is one story about him which has always appeared to me quite\nperfect. A farmer, in a remote part of Galloway, one June morning before\nsunrise, was awakened by music; he had been dreaming of heaven, and when\nhe found himself awake, he still heard the strains. He looked out, and\nsaw no one, but at the corner of a grass-field he saw his cattle, and\nyoung colts and fillies, huddled together, and looking intently down\ninto what he knew was an old quarry. He put on his clothes, and walked\nacross the field, everything but that strange wild melody, still and\nsilent in this the \"sweet hour of prime.\" As he got nearer the \"beasts,\"\nthe sound was louder; the colts with their long manes, and the nowt with\ntheir wondering stare, took no notice of him, straining their necks\nforward entranced. There, in the old quarry, the young sun \"glintin\" on\nhis face, and resting on his pack, which had been his pillow, was our\nWandering Willie, playing and singing like an angel--\"an Orpheus; an\nOrpheus.\" What a picture! When reproved for wasting his health and time\nby the prosaic farmer, the poor fellow said: \"Me and this quarry are\nlang acquant, and I've mair pleasure in pipin to thae daft cowts, than\nif the best leddies in the land were figurin away afore me.\"\n\n\n\n\n_NOTES ON ART._[59]\n\n [59] Originally prefixed to a Criticism on some paintings in the\n Scottish Academy.\n\n \"_The use of this feigned history\" (the Ideal Arts of Poesy,\n Painting, Music, &c.) \"hath been to give_ SOME SHADOW OF\n SATISFACTION TO THE MIND OF MAN IN THESE POINTS WHEREIN THE\n NATURE OF THINGS DOTH DENY IT, _the world being in proportion\n inferior to the soul; by reason whereof, there is, agreeable to\n the spirit of man_, A MORE AMPLE GREATNESS, A MORE EXACT\n GOODNESS AND A MORE ABSOLUTE VARIETY, _than can be found in the\n nature of things. So it appeareth that Poesy\" (and the others)\n \"serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality, and to\n delectation. And therefore it was even thought to have some\n participation of divineness because_ IT DOTH RAISE AND DIRECT\n THE MIND, BY SUBMITTING THE SHEWS OF THINGS TO THE DESIRES OF\n THE MIND; _whereas reason\" (science, philosophy) \"doth buckle and\n bow the mind to the nature of things._\"--OF THE PROFICIENCE AND\n ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING.\n\n \"_To look on noble forms\n Makes noble through the sensuous organism\n That which is higher._\"--THE PRINCESS.\n\n\nOne evening in the spring of 1846, as my wife and I were sitting at tea,\n_Parvula_ in bed, and the Sputchard reposing, as was her wont, with her\nrugged little brown forepaws over the edge of the fender, her eyes shut,\ntoasting, and all but roasting herself at the fire,--a note was brought\nin, which from its fat, soft look, by a hopeful and not unskilled\n_palpation_ I diagnosed as that form of lucre which in Scotland may well\nbe called filthy. I gave it across to Madam, who, opening it, discovered\nfour five-pound notes, and a letter addressed to me. She gave _it_ me.\nIt was from Hugh Miller, editor of the _Witness_ newspaper, asking me to\ngive him a notice of the Exhibition of the Scottish Academy then open,\nin words I now forget, but which were those of a thorough gentleman, and\nenclosing the aforesaid fee. I can still remember, or indeed feel the\nkind of shiver, half of fear and pleasure, on encountering this\ntemptation; but I soon said, \"You know I can't take this; I can't write;\nI never wrote a word for the press.\" She, with \"wifelike government,\"\nkept the money, and heartened me to write, and write I did but with\nawful sufferings and difficulty, and much destruction of sleep. I think\nthe only person who suffered still more must have been the compositor.\nHad this packet not come in, and come in when it did, and had the _Sine\nQua Non_ not been peremptory and retentive, there are many chances to\none I might never have plagued any printer with my bad hand and my\nendless corrections, and general incoherency in all transactions as to\nproofs.\n\nI tell this small story, partly for my own pleasure, and as a tribute to\nthat remarkable man, who stands alongside of Burns, and Scott, Chalmers,\nand Carlyle, the foremost Scotsmen of their time,--a rough, almost\nrugged nature, shaggy with strength, clad with zeal as with a cloak, in\nsome things sensitive and shamefaced as a girl; moody and self-involved,\nbut never selfish, full of courage, and of keen insight into nature and\nmen, and the principles of both, but simple as a child in the ways of\nthe world; self-taught and self-directed, argumentative and scientific,\nas few men of culture have ever been, and yet with more imagination than\neither logic or knowledge; to the last as shy and _blate_ as when\nworking in the quarries at Cromarty. In his life a noble example of what\nour breed can produce, of what energy, honesty, intensity, and genius\ncan achieve; and in his death a terrible example of that revenge which\nthe body takes upon the soul when brought to bay by its inexorable\ntaskmaster. I need say no more. His story is more tragic than any\ntragedy. Would to God it may warn those who come after to be wise in\ntime, to take the same--I ask no more--care of their body, which is\ntheir servant, their beast of burden, as they would of their horse.\n\nFew men are endowed with such a brain as Hugh Miller--huge, active,\nconcentrated, keen to fierceness; and therefore few men need fear, even\nif they misuse and overtask theirs as he did, that it will turn, as it\ndid with him, and rend its master. But as assuredly as there is a\ncertain weight, which a bar of iron will bear and no more, so is there a\ncertain weight of work which the organ by which we act, by which we\nthink, and feel, and will--cannot sustain, blazing up into brief and\nruinous madness, or sinking into idiocy. At the time he wrote to me, Mr.\nMiller and I were strangers, and I don't think I ever spoke to him: but\nhis manner of doing the above act made me feel, that in that formidable\nand unkempt nature there lay the delicacy, the generosity, the noble\ntrustfulness of a gentleman born--not made.\n\nMost men have, and almost every man should have a hobby: it is exercise\nin a mild way, and does not take him away from home; it diverts him; and\nby having a double line of rails, he can manage to keep the permanent\nway in good condition. A man who has only one object in life, only one\nline of rails, who exercises only one set of faculties, and these only\nin one way, will wear himself out much sooner than a man who shunts\nhimself every now and then, and who has trains coming as well as going;\nwho takes in as well as gives out.\n\nMy hobby has always been pictures, and all we call Art. I have\nfortunately never been a practitioner, though I think I could have made\na tolerable hand; but unless a man is a thoroughly good artist, he\ninjures his enjoyment, generally speaking, of the art of others. I am\nconvinced, however, that to enjoy art thoroughly, every man must have in\nhim the possibility of doing it as well as liking it. He must feel it in\nhis fingers, as well as in his head and at his eyes; and it must find\nits way from all the three to his heart, and be emotive.\n\nMuch has been said of the power of Art to refine men, to soften their\nmanners, and make them less of wild beasts. Some have thought it\nomnipotent for this; others have given it as a sign of the decline and\nfall of the nobler part of us. Neither is, and both are true. Art does,\nas our Laureate says, make nobler in us what is higher than the senses\nthrough which it passes; but it can only make nobler what is already\nnoble; it cannot regenerate, neither can it of itself debase and\nemasculate and bedevil mankind; but it is a symptom, and a fatal one,\nwhen Art ministers to a nation's vice, and glorifies its naughtiness--as\nin old Rome, as in Oude--as also too much in places nearer in time and\nplace than the one and the other. The truth is, Art, unless quickened\nfrom above and from within, has in it nothing beyond itself, which is\nvisible beauty--the ministration to the lust, the desire of the eye. But\napart from direct spiritual worship, and self-dedication to the Supreme,\nI do not know any form of ideal thought and feeling which may be made\nmore truly to subserve, not only magnanimity, but the purest devotion\nand godly fear; by fear meaning that mixture of love and awe, which is\nspecific of the realization of our relation to God. I am not so silly as\nto seek painters to paint religious pictures in the usual sense; for the\nmost part, I know nothing so profoundly profane and godless as our\nsacred pictures; and I can't say I like our religious beliefs to be\nsymbolized, even as Mr. Hunt has so grandly done in his picture of the\nLight of the World. But if a painter is himself religious; if he feels\nGod in what he is looking at, and in what he is rendering back on his\ncanvas; if he is impressed with the truly divine beauty, infinity,\nperfection, and meaning of unspoiled material nature--the earth and the\nfulness thereof, the heaven and all its hosts, the strength of the\nhills, the sea and all that is therein; if he is himself impressed with\nthe divine origin and divine end of all visible things,--then will he\npaint religious pictures and impress men religiously, and thus make good\nmen listen, and possibly make bad men good. Take the landscapes of our\nown Harvey. He is my dear old friend of thirty years, and his power as a\npainter is only less than his fidelity and ardor as a friend, and that\nthan his simple, deep-hearted piety; I never see one of his transcripts\nof nature, be they solemn and full of gloom, with a look \"that threatens\nthe profane;\" or laughing all over with sunshine and gladness, but I\nfeel something beyond, something greater and more beautiful than their\ngreatness and their beauty--the idea of God, of the beginning and the\nending, the first and the last, the living One; of whom, and through\nwhom, and to whom are all things; who is indeed God over all, blessed\nforever; and whom I would desire, in all humbleness of mind, to sanctify\nin my heart, and to make my fear and my dread. This is the true moral\nuse of Art, to quicken and deepen and enlarge our sense of God. I don't\nmean so much our belief in certain articulate doctrines, though I am\nold-fashioned enough to think that we must know what as well as in whom\nwe believe--that our religion, like everything else, must \"have its seat\nin reason, and be judicious;\" I refer rather to that temper of the soul,\nthat mood of the mind in which we feel the unseen and eternal, and bend\nunder the power of the world to come.\n\nIn my views as to the office of the State I hold with John Locke and\nCoventry Dick,[60] that its primary, and probably its only function is\nto protect us from our enemies and from ourselves; that to it is\nintrusted by the people \"the regulation of physical force;\" and that it\nis indeed little more than a transcendental policeman. This is its true\nsphere, and here lies its true honor and glory. When it intermeddles\nwith other things,--from your Religion, Education, and Art, down to the\nnumber, and size, and metal of your buttons, it goes out of its line and\nfails; and I am convinced that with some benefits, specious and partial,\nour Government interference has, in the main and in the long run, done\nharm to the real interests of Art. Spontaneity, the law of free choice,\nis as much the life of Art as it is of marriage, and it is not less\nbeyond the power of the State to choose the nation's pictures, than to\nchoose its wives. Indeed there is a great deal on the physiological side\nto be said for law interfering in the matter of matrimony. I would\ncertainly make it against law, as it plainly is against nature, for\ncousins-german to marry; and if we could pair ourselves as we pair our\nlive stock, and give ear to the teaching of an enlightened zooenomy, we\nmight soon drive many of our fellest diseases out of our breed; but the\nlaw of personality, of ultroneousness, of free will, that which in a\ngreat measure makes us what we are, steps in and forbids anything but\nthe convincement and force of reason. Much in the same way, though it be\na more trivial matter, pleasure, in order to please, must be that which\nyou yourself choose. You cannot make an Esquimaux forswear train oil,\nand take to tea and toast like ourselves, still less to boiled rice like\na Hindoo; neither can you all at once make a Gilmerton carter prefer\nRaphael and claret to a glass of raw whiskey and the _Terrific\nRegister_. Leviathan is not so tamed or taught. And our Chadwicks and\nKaye Shuttleworths and Coles--kings though they may be--enlightened,\nenergetic, earnest, and as full of will as an egg is full of meat,\ncannot in a generation make the people of England as intelligent as\nthemselves, or as fond and appreciative of the best Art as Mr. Ruskin.\nHence all their plans are failing and must fail; and I cannot help\nthinking that in the case of Art, the continuance of the Cole dynasty is\nnot to be prayed for very much. As far as I can judge, it has done\ninfinitely more harm than good. These men think they are doing a great\nwork, and, worse still, the country thinks so too, and helps them,\nwhereas I believe they are retarding the only wholesome, though slow\ngrowth of knowledge and taste.\n\n [60] In the thin octavo, _The Office of the State_, and in its\n twin volume on _Church Polity_, there will be found in\n clear, strong, and singularly candid language, the first\n lines of the sciences of Church and State politics. It does\n not say much for the sense and perspicuity of the public\n mind, if two such books are allowed to fall aside, and such\n a _farrago_ of energetic nonsense and error as Mr. Buckle's\n first, and we trust last, volume on Civilization, is read\n and admired, and bought, with its bad logic, its bad facts,\n and its had conclusions. In bulk and in value his volume\n stands in the same relation to Mr. Dick's, as a handful, I\n may say a _gowpen_ of chaff does to a grain of wheat, or a\n bushel of sawdust to an ounce of meal.\n\nTake the Kensington Museum: the only thing there (I speak in all\nseriousness) worth any man spending an hour or a shilling upon, are the\nSheepshank and Turner galleries; all those costly, tawdry, prodigious,\nand petty displays of arts and manufactures, I look upon as mere\ndelusions and child's play. Take any one of them, say the series\nillustrating the cotton fabrics; you see the whole course of cotton from\nits _Alpha_ to its _Omega_, in the neatest and prettiest way. What does\nthat teach? what impression does that make upon any young mind? Little\nbeyond mere vapid wonder. The eye is opened, but not filled; it is a\nstare, not a look.\n\nIf you want to move, and permanently rivet, a young mind with what is\nworth the knowing, with what is to deepen his sense of the powers of the\nhuman mind, and the resources of nature, and the grandeur of his\ncountry, take him to a cotton-mill. Let him hear and come under the\npower of that wonderful sound pervading the whole vast house, and\nfilling the air with that diapason of regulated, harmonious energy. Let\nhim enter it, and go round with a skilled workman, and then follow the\n_Alpha_ through all its marvellous transformations to the _Omega_; do\nthis, and you bring him out into the fresh air not only more knowing,\nbut more wise. He has got a lesson. He has been impressed. The same with\ncalico-printing, and pottery, and iron-founding, and, indeed, the whole\nround of that industry which is our glory. Do you think a boy will get\nhalf the good from the fine series of ores and specimens of pig-iron,\nand all the steels he may see in cold blood, and with his grandmother or\nhis sweetheart beside him at Kensington, that he will from going into\nDixon's foundry at Govan, and seeing the half-naked men toiling in that\nplace of flame and energy and din--watching the mighty shears and the\nNasmyth-hammers, and the molten iron kneaded like dough, and planed and\nshaved like wood; he gets the dead and dissected body in the one case;\nhe sees and feels the living spirit and body working as one, in the\nother. And upon all this child's-play, this mere make-believe, our\ngood-natured nation is proud of spending some half-million of money.\nThen there is that impertinent, useless, and unjust system of\nestablishing Government Schools of Design in so many of our towns,\navowedly, and, I believe (though it is amazing that clever men should do\nsuch a foolish thing), honestly, for the good of the working-classes,\nbut actually and lamentably, and in every way harmfully, for the\namusement and benefit of the wealthy classes, and to the ruin of the\nhard-working and legitimate local teachers.\n\nI have not time or space, but if I had I could prove this, and show the\ncuriously deep injuries this system is inflicting on true Art, and upon\nthe freedom of industry.\n\nIn the same line, and to the same effect, are our Art-Unions and\nAssociations for \"the encouragement\" of Art; some less bad than others,\nbut all bad, because founded upon a wrong principle, and working to a\nwrong end. No man can choose a picture for another, any more than a wife\nor a waistcoat. It is part of our essential nature to choose these\nthings for ourselves, and paradoxical as it may seem, the wife and the\nwaistcoat and the work of Art our departmental wiseacres may least\napprove of, if chosen _sua sponte_ by Giles or Roger, will not only give\nthem more delectation, but do them more good, than one chosen by\nsomebody else for him upon the finest of all possible principles.\nBesides this radical vice, these Art-Unions have the effect of\nencouraging, and actually bringing into professional existence, men who\nhad much better be left to die out, or never be born; and it, as I well\nknow, discourages, depreciates, and dishonors the best men, besides\nkeeping the public, which is the only true and worthy patron, from doing\nits duty, and getting its due. Just take our Edinburgh Association, in\nmany respects one of the best, having admirable and devoted men, as its\nmanagers, what is the chance that any of the thousand members, when he\ndraws a prize, gets a picture he cares one straw for, or which will do\nhis nature one particle of good? Why should we be treated in this\nmatter, as we are treated in no way else? Who thinks of telling us, or\nfounding a Royal Association with all its officers, to tell us what\nnovels or what poetry to read, or what music to listen to? Think of a\nUnion for the encouragement of Poetry, where Mr. Tennyson would be\nobliged to put in his _In Memoriam_ or his _Idylls of the King_, along\nwith the Lyrics and the Sonnets of we don't say who, into a common\nlottery, and be drawn for at an annual speechifying? All such\nassociations go to encourage quantity rather than quality. Now, in the\nideal and pleasurable arts _quality_ is nearly everything. Our Turner\nnot only transcends ten thousand Claudes and Vanderveldes; he is in\nanother sphere. You could not thus sum up his worth.\n\nOne of the most flagrant infractions of the primary laws of political\neconomy, and one of the most curious illustrations of the fashionable\nfallacies as to Government encouragement to Art, is to be found in the\nrevelations in the Report of the Select Committee on the South\nKensington Museum. Mr. Lowe, and the majority of the Committee, gave it\nas their opinion, that Government should deal in photographs, and\n_undersell_ them (thereby ruining the regular trade), and all for the\nencouragement of Art, and the enlightenment of the public! Can there be\nanything more absurd than this, and at this time of day? and not only\nabsurd and expensive, but mischievous. All this, you see, would be\navoided, and society left to provide its own Art, as it provides its own\nbeef and trousers for itself; if men would hold with John Locke, and\nCoventry Dick, and _Egomet_, that the Government, the State, has simply\nnothing to do with these things, that they are _ultra vires_ not less\nthan religion, and, I am bold to add, education.\n\nOne other drawback to Art taking its place alongside its sisters--Poetry\nand Music--is the annual exhibitions. Nothing more thoroughly barbarous\nand childish could be devised than this concentrating the mental\nactivity of the nation in regard to the Art of the year upon one month.\nFancy our being obliged to read all our novels, and all our poetry, and\nhear all our music in a segment of our year. Then there is the mixing up\nof all sorts of pictures--sacred and profane, gay and sombre, etc.--all\nhuddled together, and the eye flitting from one to the other.[61] Hence\nthe temptation to paint down to the gaudiest pictures, instead of up or\ninto the pure intensity of nature. Why should there not be some large\npublic hall to which artists may send their pictures at any time when\nthey are perfected; but better still, let purchasers frequent the\nstudios, as they did of old, full of love and knowledge. Why will we\ninsist in pressing our Art and our taste, as we did long ago our\nreligion and our God, upon our neighbors! Why not trust to time, and to\ncultivating our own tastes earnestly, thoroughly, humbly, and for\nourselves, filling our houses with the best of everything, and making\nall welcome to see them, and believing that the grandchildren of those\nwho come to see our Turners and Wilkies and Hogarths will be wiser and\nmore refined than we? It is most lamentable to witness the loss of\nmoney, of energy, and in a measure of skill, and, above all, of time, on\nthose engravings, which no one but a lodging-keeper frames, and those\nParian statuettes and Etruscan pitchers and tazzas of all sorts, which\nno one thinks half so much of, or gets half so much real pleasure and\ngood from, as from one of John Leech's woodcuts. One true way to\nencourage Art is to buy and enjoy _Punch_. There is more fun, more good\ndrawing, more good sense, more beauty in John Leech's _Punch_ pictures,\nthan in all the Art-Union illustrations, engravings, statuettes, etc.\netc., put together. Could that mighty Potentate have been got up, think\nyou, by a committee of gentlemen, and those drawings educed by proffered\nprizes? No; they came out, and have flourished according to a law as\nnatural and as effective as the law of seed-time and harvest; and Art,\nas a power to do good, will never reach its full perfection till it is\nallowed to walk at liberty, and follow the course of all other\nproductions, that of supply and demand, individual demand, and voluntary\nsupply. It is not easy to tell how far back these well-meaning, zealous,\ndeluded men who have managed these \"encouragements,\" have put the\nprogress of the nation in its power of knowing and feeling true Art.\n\n [61] In our excellent National Gallery (Edinburgh), a copy of\n Titian's Ariadne in Naxos is hung immediately above Wilkie's\n sacred sketch of John Knox administering the Sacrament in\n Calder House!\n\nOne other heresy I must vent, and that is to protest against the\ndoctrine that scientific knowledge is of much direct avail to the\nartist; it may enlarge his mind as a man, and sharpen and strengthen his\nnature, but the knowledge of anatomy is, I believe, more a snare than\nanything else to an artist as such. Art is the _tertium quid_ resulting\nfrom observation and imagination, with skill and love and downrightness\nas their executors; anything that interferes with the action of any of\nthese, is killing to the soul of Art. Now, painting has to do simply and\nabsolutely with the surfaces, with the appearances of things; it knows\nand cares nothing for what is beneath and beyond, though if it does its\nown part aright it indicates them. Phidias and the early Greeks, there\nis no reason to believe, ever dissected even a monkey, much less a man,\nand yet where is there such skin, and muscle, and substance, and breath\nof life? When Art became scientific, as among the Romans, and lost its\nheart in filling its head, see what became of it: anatomy offensively\nthrust in your face, and often bad anatomy; men skinned and galvanized,\nnot men alive and in action. In the same way in landscape, do you think\nTurner would have painted the strata in an old quarry, or done Ben\nCruachan more to the quick, had he known all about geology, gneiss, and\ngraywacke, and the Silurian system? Turner might have been what is\ncalled a better-informed man, but we question if he would have been so\ngood, not to say a better representer of the wonderful works of God,\nwhich were painted on his retina, and in his inner chamber--the true\n_Camera lucida_, the chamber of imagery leading from the other,--and\nfelt to his finger-tips. No; science and poetry are to a nicety\ndiametrically opposed, and he must be a Shakspeare and a Newton, a\nTurner and a Faraday all in one, who can consort much with both without\ninjury to each. It is not what a man has learned from others, not even\nwhat he thinks, but what he sees and feels, which makes him a painter.\n\nThe moral from all this is, love Art, and if you choose, practise Art.\nPurchase Art for itself alone, and in the main for yourself alone. If\nyou so do, you will encourage Art to more purpose than if you spent\nthousands a year in Art-Unions, and in presenting the public with what\npleased you; just as a man does most good by being good. Goldsmith puts\nit in his inimitable way--\"I was ever of opinion that the honest man,\nwho married and brought up a large family, did more service than he who\ncontinued single, and only talked of population.\"\n\nI have said those things strongly, abruptly, and perhaps rudely; but my\nheart is in the matter. Art is part of my daily food, like the laughter\nof children, and the common air, the earth, the sky; it is an affection,\nnot a passion to come and go like the gusty wind, nor a principle cold\nand dead; it penetrates my entire life, it is one of the surest and\ndeepest pleasures, one of the refuges from \"the nature of things,\" as\nBacon would say, into that enchanted region, that \"ampler aether,\" that\n\"diviner air,\" where we get a glimpse not only of a Paradise that is\npast, but of a Paradise that is to come.\n\nThere is one man amongst us who has done more to breathe the breath of\nlife into the literature and the philosophy of Art, who has \"encouraged\"\nit ten thousand times more effectually than all our industrious Coles\nand anxious Art-Unions, and that is the author of _Modern Painters_. I\ndo not know that there is anything in our literature, or in any\nliterature, to compare with the effect of this one man's writings. He\nhas by his sheer force of mind, and fervor of nature, the depth and\nexactness of his knowledge, and his amazing beauty and power of\nlanguage, raised the subject of Art from being subordinate and\ntechnical, to the same level with Poetry and Philosophy. He has lived to\nsee an entire change in the public mind and eye, and, what is better, in\nthe public heart, on all that pertains to the literature and philosophy\nof representative genius. He combines its body and its soul. Many before\nhim wrote about its body, and some well; a few, as Charles Lamb and our\nown \"Titmarsh,\" touched its soul: it was left to John Ruskin to do\nboth.[62]\n\n [62] This great writer was first acknowledged as such by our big\n quarterlies, in the _North British Review_, fourteen years\n ago, as follows:--\n\n \"This is a very extraordinary and a very delightful book,\n full of truth and goodness, of power and beauty. If genius\n may be considered (and it is as serviceable a definition as\n is current) that power by which one man produces for the use\n or the pleasure of his fellow-men, something at once new and\n true, then have we here its unmistakable and inestimable\n handiwork. Let our readers take our word for it, and read\n these volumes thoroughly, giving themselves up to the\n guidance of this most original thinker, and most attractive\n writer, and they will find not only that they are richer in\n true knowledge, and quickened in pure and heavenly\n affections, but they will open their eyes upon a now\n world--walk under an ampler heaven, and breathe a diviner\n air. There are few things more delightful or more rare, than\n to feel such a kindling up of the whole faculties as is\n produced by such a work as this; it adds a 'precious seeing\n to the eye,'--makes the ear more quick of apprehension, and,\n opening our whole inner-man to a new discipline, it fills us\n with gratitude as well as admiration towards him to whom we\n owe so much enjoyment. And what is more, and better than all\n this, everywhere throughout this work, we trace evidences of\n a deep reverence and godly fear--a perpetual, though subdued\n acknowledgment of the Almighty, as the sum and substance,\n the beginning and the ending of all truth, of all power, of\n all goodness, and of all beauty.\n\n \"This book (_Modern Painters_) contains more true\n philosophy, more information of a strictly scientific kind,\n more original thought and exact observation of nature, more\n enlightened and serious enthusiasm, and more eloquent\n writing, than it would be easy to match, not merely in works\n of its own class, but in those of any class whatever. It\n gives us a new, and we think, the only true theory of beauty\n and sublimity; it asserts and proves the existence of a new\n element in landscape-painting, placing its prince upon his\n rightful throne; it unfolds and illustrates, with singular\n force, variety, and beauty, the laws of art; it explains and\n enforces the true nature and specific function of the\n imagination, with the precision and fulness of one having\n authority,--and all this delivered in language which, for\n purity and strength and native richness, would not have\n dishonored the early manhood of Jeremy Taylor, of Edmund\n Burke, or of the author's own favorite Richard Hooker.\"--J.B.\n\n\nBEAUTY, ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE.\n\nWe are not now going to try our 'prentice hand upon a new theory of\nBeauty, after so many masters have failed; but we cannot help thinking\nthat the dispute would be at an end if it were but allowed at once, that\nthere are two kinds of beauty, that there is a material and necessary\nelement of beauty, and another which is contingent and relative--a\nnatural and a spiritual delightfulness to and through the eye; and that\nsometimes we see both together, as in the face and eyes of a beautiful\nand beloved woman; and moreover, that there is no more reason for\ndenying either the sense or the emotion of beauty, because everybody\ndoes not agree about the kind or measure of either of these qualities in\nall objects, than there is for affirming that there is no such thing as\nveracity or natural affection, because the Spartans commended lying, and\nthe Cretians practised it, or the New Zealanders the eating of one's\ngrandmother. Why should the eye, the noblest, the amplest, the most\ninforming of all our senses, be deprived of its own special delight? The\nlight is sweet, and it is a pleasant thing for the eye to behold the\nsun; and why, when the ear has sound for informing, and music for\ndelight--when there is smell and odor, taste and flavor, and even the\ntouch has its sense of pleasant smoothness and softness--why should\nthere not be in the eye a pleasure born and dying with the sights it\nsees? it is like the infinite loving-kindness of Him who made the trees\nof the garden pleasant to the eye as well as good for food. We say\nnothing here of Relative or Associative Beauty,--this has never been\ndoubted either in its essence or its value. It is as much larger in its\nrange, as much nobler in its meaning and uses, as the heavens are higher\nthan the earth, or as the soul transcends the body. This, too, gives\nback to material beauty more than it received: it was after man was\nmade, that God saw, and, behold, everything was very good.\n\nOur readers may perhaps think we make too much of imagination as an\nessential element--as _the_ essential element--in Art. With our views of\nits function and its pervading influence in all the ideal arts, we can\ngive it no other place. A man can no more be a poet or painter in the\nspiritual and only true sense without imagination, than an animal can be\na bird without wings; and as, other things being equal, that bird can be\nlongest on the wing and has the greatest range of flight which has the\nstrongest pinions, so that painter is likely to have the farthest and\nkeenest vision of all that is within the scope of his art, and the\nsurest and most ample faculty of making known to others what he himself\nhas seen, whose imagination is at once the most strong and quick. At the\nsame time, if it be true that the body without the spirit is dead, so it\nis equally true that the spirit without the body is vain, ineffectual,\nfruitless. Imagination alone can no more make a painter or a poet than\nwings can constitute a bird. Each must have a body. Unfortunately, in\npainting we have more than enough of body without spirit. Correct\ndrawing, wonderful imitative powers, cleverness, adaptiveness, great\nfacility and dexterity of hand, much largeness of _quotation_, and many\nmaterial and mechanical qualities, all go to form an amusing, and, it\nmay be, useful spectacle, but not a true picture. We have also, but not\nso often, the reverse of all this,--the vision without the faculty, the\nsoul without the body, great thoughts without the power to embody them\nin intelligible forms. He, and he alone, is a great painter, and an heir\nof time, who combines both. He must have observation,--humble, loving,\nunerring, unwearied; this is the material out of which a painter, like a\npoet, feeds his genius, and \"makes grow his wings.\" There must be\nperception and conception, both vigorous, quick and _true_; you must\nhave these two primary qualities, the one first, the other last, in\nevery great painter. Give him good sense and a good memory, it will be\nall the better for him and for us. As for principles of drawing and\nperspective, they are not essential. A man who paints according to a\nprinciple is sure to paint ill; he may apply his principles after his\nwork is done, if he has a philosophic as well as an ideal turn.\n\n\n\n\nTHE END.\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON.\n\n\n\n\n Transcriber's Note: Greek transliterations are indicated by\n {curly braces}. Duplicated essay names have been removed. Minor\n typographical errors have been corrected, but spelling and\n hyphenation inconsistencies have been retained.","title":"Spare Hours","tradition":"folklore-oral-tradition","translated_text":null,"word_count":123319}