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 John Kirk Semr
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES 
 
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 THE 
 
 HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
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 EDITED BY 
 
 GEOEGE GILFILLAN. 
 
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 LONDON : 
 ARTHUR HALL, VIRTUE, & CO. 
 
 25, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 1856.
 
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 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 At the close ofTIie last chapter, I have specified the 
 objects and aims which I have sought in the following 
 veluijie. Although, formally, in many parts fictitious, 
 the quality by which I hope it will be found peculiarly 
 distinguished, is — fearless truthfulness; and being a 
 book of this pretension, I anticipate not a little criti- 
 cism, and, perhaps, detraction or abuse. Every " man," 
 however, worthy of that name, and whose "history" 
 deserves to be -vvT-itten, learns, in the course of his expe- 
 rience, to rate these things at their true value ; and so, 
 I trust, has the author of these pages. As the history, 
 however, of an enthusiastic votary of literature, and as 
 replete with sketches of and conversations with literary 
 men of eminence, it will, I believe, be found interesting 
 to one class ; as containing many pictures of the most 
 beautiful scenery in Scotland, to another ; as filled with 
 little incidents, and, hei'e and there, with fresh characters, 
 to another; as casting some light upon two different 
 modes of intellectual and moral life — the literary and the 
 clerical-^and forming a vade mecum to young aspirants
 
 VI ADVERTISEMENT, 
 
 in both, to another ; as a record of spiritual struggle, and, 
 in some measure, of spiritual victory, to another; and 
 as pointing, ever and anon, to the cheering rays of the 
 "Coming Glory" of the Church of Christ, to another. 
 Whether the writer has been able to interpose, by means 
 of the interest of his own personal story, or by the 
 idiosyncrasy of his own style, a thread of unity through 
 these various materials, — is a different question, and one 
 about which, sooth to say, he is considerably careless. 
 In writing it, and especially the latter portion of it, he 
 had higher objects in view than to manifest either the 
 skill of the artist or the power of the poet. 
 
 B. E. 
 
 March 5, 1856.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ^ -W^^ PAGE 
 
 bAth and Eakly Youth 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Edtjcation, and Glasgow 49 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Edinbuegh 101 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Mt Theological Course 155 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Public and Literary Life 216 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Reminiscences op Scenery 260
 
 Viii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Progress of Keligious Opinions 281 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Dreams ^^^ 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Closing "Prophetic Strain" ...;..'.• 351
 
 THE 
 
 HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BIRTH AND EARLY TOUTH. 
 
 How simple the aunouncemeut, such a person was born at 
 such a day and such an hour ; and yet how significant and 
 solemn the statement ! What comparison between the birth 
 of a sun — a vast mass of mere light, heat, and perishable 
 matter — and the birth of a being who can weigh, measure, 
 love, laugh at, adore, or despise that orb,— kiss his hand and 
 worship, or ciy, " Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams !" 
 and who is to suiwive the proud luminary, and to return 
 one day the smile shed by the Day-star on his death-bed 
 and grave, and shall see him snatched from his sphere while 
 holding on his own immortal journey ! What a key-note is 
 struck when the tidings are told, " Behold, there is a man- 
 child brought forth," — a key-note which is to ring and re- 
 verberate through eternal ages ! This thought is very seldom 
 in men's minds, when they hear of or witness a birtli. They 
 see only the poor paltry threescore and ten years of moi-tal 
 life that are to follow, and not the awful roll of cycles of in- 
 numerable centuries ! Perhaps men never feel less, or are 
 less certain of the immortality of the soul, than when they 
 watch the puny creature as it enters the stage, " wawliug " 
 • B
 
 2 THE HISTOEY OF A MAN. 
 
 and shi'inking from the chill air of an inhospitable world. 
 "That child live for ever? — that poor shrunken "worm 
 become a winged angel?" Besides, the fact of birth is so 
 common, that to many it loses all its charm, and all its 
 poetic interest. While parents, in general, think too much of 
 their offspring, and act and speak as if they w^ere the creators 
 of the spirits as well as the begetters of the bodies of their 
 children ; and, to use the quaint language of a friend long 
 since dead, dress up their young sinners, and bring them to be 
 baptized, as if they were newly-arrived angels, many people 
 go to the other extreme, and are apt to pooh the baby, and 
 to wonder what parents see about their brats, and why they 
 should be expected to kiss and fondle them. To me a child 
 has always had a deeper significance ; and I have always 
 regarded it with a warmer interest, — not, indeed, looking on 
 it as an angel, but as a candidate for a life higher than the 
 angelic, or for one lower than the demoniac, — a drop of dew, 
 destined either to be exhaled by the sun of heaven, or to be 
 mixed with that miry stream which flows through this world 
 down to the chambers of death ; and have felt this thought 
 invest a cradle with greater grandeur and an interest far more 
 thrilling and profound than, I repeat it, had I seen a sun 
 struggling up through chaos and fire-mist toward its finished 
 and orbed magnificence. 
 
 With what emotions my birth was regarded, I know not ; 
 but at all events I was born on the 30th of January, 181-. 
 A little girl of four, whom I know right well, was lately 
 overheard by her father soliloquizing thus to herself about a 
 younger brother, whose pet name was Dirrley : " There'll, may 
 be, be more Dirrleys yet ; but Fm horn, at any rate — yes, I'm 
 born ! " She felt this to be a great fact, and that no succeed- 
 ing arrivals could interfere with the truth that she had come 
 upon the stage, — had got and was to keep the start. It was 
 the queerest assertion of individuality and independence 
 I ever heard of. So I, on a Saturday morning, in the depth 
 of winter, received the unalterable honours of birth. My
 
 BIRTH AND EARLY YOUTH. 3 
 
 father was a parish minister, on the border of the Moray- ^^ 
 shire Highlands. The parish was an extensive, but a hilly 
 and poor one. The stipend was small, and his family was 
 large. And yet, although I came as one more hungry mouth 
 to a poor household, I have no doubt — although, as aforesaid, 
 I do not know — that I was welcomed with considerable fflad- 
 ness. The place where I was born had some peculiar advan- 
 tages. It lay on the very verge of the Highlands. One 
 result of this was, that it brought the manners of two dif- 
 ferent tribes into contact and contrast, and suggested com- 
 pai'isons interesting^o a philosophic mind. Another advan- 
 tage, of which I never availed myself, was the ease with 
 •wJ*ieh Gaelic, as well as English, might be mastered in a 
 pJifiSr^vhich was one half Highland, and where my father, 
 although born in the Lowlands, had been compelled to learn, 
 in order to preach Erse one part of each Sabbath. The 
 third advantage lay in the extreme seclusion of the spot, 
 and in the great simplicity of manners which prevailed. But 
 the chief charm of the region was its romantic scenery. Sir 
 Walter Scott has remarked that the finest scenery of Scot- 
 land is found at those points where the mountains sink down 
 upon the Lowlands, and where the grandeurs of the hill- 
 country are at once contrasted and harmonized with the 
 beauties of the more cultivated tracts. This was quite the 
 character of my native parish. A fine level plain had, a poet 
 would say, lain down at the feet of rough gigantic hills, to 
 wonder at their bold sublimity, and to repose in their deep 
 shade. Rich woods here and there, more daring, had run 
 half-way up toward the rocky summits, and there had 
 paused, as if in timidity. At one point, from a deep cleft 
 in a wooded hill, came down a roaring cataract, storming, 
 as it passed, w'ith the black crags, which in vain souo'ht 
 to coiifine it, but gradually softening when it approached 
 a lovely village, the edge of which it at last kissed — like 
 a lion who, having warred with and torn his keeper, comes, 
 and in rfemorse kisses the feet of his fair daughter. The 
 
 : B 2
 
 4 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 village, indeed, might be called the loved of the streams, 
 since on each of its sides there was one to lave it, and 
 murmur in its ear sweet inarticulate names of tenderness 
 and of praise. With more distant and dignified regards 
 the bold, dark mountains looked down upon it over their 
 woods. 
 
 Above the cleft and the cataract, and a sea of wood- 
 land between, towered up an insulated crag, commanding a 
 prospect in which luxuriance and naked loftiness, beauty and 
 the barren pomp of solitude, were exquisitely combined. As 
 seen from this eminence, the valley, with all its streams, lay 
 northward, with the village on its southern edge. To the 
 south were two enormous mountains, each 3,000 feet in 
 height, but both as lumpish as they were lofty, and separated 
 from the central crag by a wide green glen, down which you 
 saw the river stealing slowly, to the '' great agony " of the 
 waterfall. Immediately below, from a two-sided valley of 
 woods, came up the eternal cry of the cataract, mitigated in 
 the summer solstice ; but in winter, when the channel was 
 full of water, loud and outrageous as the voice of a demon 
 newly plunged into Tartarus. To the north-west were steep, 
 grim, conical hills, with the air of haughty dethroned princes • 
 and, indeed, the " crown had fallen from their heads," — the 
 crown of volcanic fire which they had worn in the days of 
 other years. Straight west, a long valley went up through 
 an avenue of stately hills, to greet a lake, lying in placid 
 loveliness at the end. 
 
 Beautiful at all times was this scene to me — after, at least, 
 I had learnt to interpret its language, and to feel what it 
 hinted to the inward eye of the soul ; but most so in two of 
 its aspects. One was, when the wing of the thunder-cloud 
 came down upon it, and when, as you stood on the sumtnit, a 
 large lowering mountain, closely adjacent, seemed all of a 
 smoke — i"an, like another Sinai, with rills of fire, cutting and 
 carolling around its dark sides, and rang as with the noise of 
 a hundred chariots, careering along precipices " where mortal
 
 BIETH AND EARLY YOUTH. 5 
 
 horsemen ne'er might ride." I saw it thus only once ; but 
 my companion and I, instead of trembling, felt the glow and 
 thrill of that terrible sublimity which is the mere shadow of 
 the passing God. It was finer still to come up to this emi- 
 nence on an autumn twilight, while the moon, amidst thin 
 fleecy clouds, at one time hid her beams, and left the hues of 
 evening to die away unaided into night, through which the 
 cataract seemed to lift up suddenly a louder and loosened 
 voice, as if, like a wild beast, it loved to cry amidst the dark- 
 ness, and again gleamed forth with a startling gush of light, in 
 which the mountar^tops, the valleys, and especially the cones 
 of the blue-green pine-trees, shone out with a distinctness, a 
 ftsAjruess, and a depth of tone, which were in their effect 
 ulit^ysi, iinearthly. It was fine, too, to send the imagination 
 away under the night canopy, and to find comparisons and 
 similitudes for the genius of favourite poets in the sights and 
 sounds around us ; — the cataract, with its mufiled roar and 
 sullen plaint, being an emblem of Byron ; the fat, fair val- 
 ley, winding along its winding stream, representing Thomson 
 of the Seasons ; the proud peak of Ben Ample looking on 
 over the rest, while overtopping them all, reminding us of 
 Milton ; the two large lumpish mountains to the south-east 
 suggesting the breadth, height, and heaviness of Wordsworth 
 and South ey ; that semi-Sinai, along which I had seen the 
 lightning running like the streams which succeed a water- 
 spout, but over which there now lay a scarf of bright mist, 
 figuring Coleridge or Shelley ; and the whole, in its combina- 
 tion of the soft and strong, the passionate and the calm, the 
 dazzling and the dim, the profound and the lofty, composing 
 a mighty image, cai-ved on mountains, and coloured by moon- 
 light, of Shakspere himself! 
 
 These w^re after-thoughts and imaginations. Long ere 
 I could at all appreciate the beauty, or feel the power of 
 scenery, other influences had begun to develop my mental 
 powers. One of the principal of these was frequent inter- 
 course with my father. It so happened that my five elder
 
 G THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 brothers had all left our home, long before I was born, — ou6 
 to be a soldier (very much to the grief of both his parents) ; 
 another to the sea ; a third to the ministry of the Scottish 
 Church in a remote province ; a fourth to America, as a 
 daring explorer of the Western woods ; and a fifth to be a 
 clerk in a Manchester warehouse. There were, besides, 
 several sisters, but they were much engaged in domestic 
 matters ; and two of them, shortly after my birth, were 
 removed — one by marriage, and the other by death. My 
 mother was greatly occupied in her own sphere. It became 
 thus inevitable that I should be left a good deal alone in the 
 house, and should resort much to my father's company, who 
 was, besides, very partial to me. Never shall I forget that 
 sweetest intercourse ! He was a man eminent for his' piety, 
 natural eloquence, and general information. He had been, 
 however, rather hurriedly and imperfectly educated ; and his 
 scholarship was not so remarkable as his other qualities. 
 Hence he could not ground me well in the Latin or Greek 
 tongues, or the sciences ; and I feel this to the present hour. 
 But he taught me what was of still more importance. He 
 instructed me in the general facts of history ; he recounted 
 anecdotes of the great and good of other days ; he pointed 
 out to me the prominent features of the landscape, and 
 taught me to admire them ; he directed my readings, and he 
 sought to impress on me the fear and the love of God. The 
 most delightful hours I spent with him were when he took me 
 to accompany his walks. His manse — a thing not usual iu 
 country parish manses — lay a little distance from his garden, 
 along the river-bank. Between that garden and house was 
 his favourite walk ; and as I accompanied him there, I derived 
 more pleasui'e, and more solid information too, iu an hour or 
 two, than from days of my ordinary teachers, or of my soli- 
 tary studies. Now he asked questions which at once drew 
 out, and riveted in my mind, the knowledge I already had. 
 Now he encouraged me to ask questions of him ; now he 
 stooped over a flower, and told me something about its con-
 
 ' ' BIRTH AND EARLY YOUTH. 7 
 
 struction, or repeated the famous story of Beattie and the 
 cresses. Now his eye caught a cloud, and straightway his 
 fine, simple fancy — a fancy resembling, in some points, that 
 of Addison — was stirred, and his soaring was as beautiful as it 
 was brief : he rose on doves', if not on eagles', wings. Now 
 he expatiated on some author of genius, such as Milton, 
 Johnson, or Cowper ; and his criticisms, if not subtle and 
 refined, were glowing and generous : and now he told me 
 anecdotes of his early struggles and College career, of which 
 I remember little but a general impression of their interest^ 
 and the genial hufaour in which some of them were en- 
 shrined. Besides being often with him in his walks, I was 
 oft^n, with him in his study. The window of that I'oom 
 loofe§d,out upon the fields and hills, "having a look south- 
 ward, and being open to the whole noon of Natui-e;" and 
 near that window my father's desk was sure to be placed. 
 His books were collected in a little recess, in a corner of the 
 room ; and there I was generally found seated on a stool, and 
 poring over a book to the tune of my father's pen diligently 
 racing over the page, and sometimes of his voice, asking me 
 to consult a volume, or supply a date. The books were — for 
 the time, and the wilds of Morayshire — counted a capital 
 collection. They amounted to six or seven hundi-ed volumes, 
 and were arranged on their shelves according to a definite 
 principle. At the bottom, and forming the base of the 
 library, were the large old folios — Charnock, Flavel, Matthew 
 Henry, and Poole's Synopsis; the four enormous tomes of 
 which last were adorned with rough cuts of the Ark, Solo- 
 mon's Temple, the Tabernacle, and other Scriptural edifices, 
 quaint enough in execution and design, but, to a young eye, 
 exceedingly attractive. On the next shelf appeared the 
 quartos, some of them in the old wooden bindings, and with 
 clasps of brass, including such books as Turretin's Opera 
 Omnia, Calvin's Institutes, Anderson's Defence of Pres- 
 byterian Government, and Gale's Court of the Gentiles. 
 Higher «p were the octavos, dim and dusky, many of them
 
 8 THE HISTORY OF A "MAN. 
 
 in their binding, — such as Owen's Meditations on the Glory 
 of Christ, Edwards on the Freedom of the Will, and long 
 rows of the Edinburgh Christian Instructor and the Chris- 
 tian Observer. In the next shelf were the duodecimos, — 
 the Spectator, the Rambler, Milton's Paradise Lost, and 
 Tliomson's Seasons. And highest of all were the "small 
 infantry;" consisting of Butler's Hudibras, the lesser Classics 
 (such as Flovus and Terence), two thick little copies of 
 Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and many raoi'e of the same 
 infra size. On the floor, and on some separate little shelves, 
 were innumerable pamphlets, tracts, and odd numbers of old 
 magazines. 
 
 What joys I had in that little library ! It was specially 
 luxurious, when rain kept me from my delightful solitary 
 wanderings and reveries, to take refuge there for a long sum- 
 mer's day. Never did time pass more swiftly. Now I de- 
 voured a pamphlet at a gulp ; now I lingered more fondly 
 over a favourite poem, or an essay in Addison's Guardian ; 
 now I dipped into a controversial treatise ; and now I dai'ed 
 to attack one of the " huge armfuls " of Theology, and forgot 
 the whole world, while spelling out, with a little difficulty 
 indeed, passages in Calvin's or Turretin's Latin, or glancing 
 more eagerly at some of the massive pages of Donne's Ser- 
 mons, Fox's Book of Martyrs, or Dupin's Ecclesiastical His- 
 tory. With all the appetite of youth, I yet heard the sum- 
 mons to dinner with a sigh ; and after, like Dominie Samson, 
 bolting my beef and broth, rushed back to my delightful 
 readings again. Nor was it less pleasing to drop asleep 
 for an hour over an author, and to be transported, in the 
 visions of imaginative youth, to larger libraries, and to still 
 fairer scenes than those around me, and when I awoke to 
 " cry to dream again ;" till, looking up, I saw that the rain 
 was over and gone, and, walking f6rth, beheld the farewell 
 evening gleam of the sun, diffused, like magic upon sorcery, 
 over the features of that matchless landscape ; and fomad 
 that converse with the soul of books had but qualified
 
 BIRTH AND EARLY YOUTH. 9 
 
 me more to enjoy communion with the soul of Nature ; and 
 this because the soxil of each, and the link uniting both, was 
 poetry. 
 
 At school I learned comparatively little; and although I 
 generally had my lessons as well as any of my class-mates, 
 I took less delight in Cornelius Nepos, or Mair's Introduction, 
 than I did in weaving long yarns, and recounting them across 
 the table to my companions. Not Sir Walter Scott, nor 
 Hartley Coleridge, I verily believe, ever indulged more in the 
 practice of story-telling. The romances I daily constructed 
 were endless. They^were spun out of my brain with the 
 utmost ease, and I have often since wondered that I did not 
 tifVjQi^out, in after days, as inveterate a novel-writer as I have 
 beea^jiovel -reader, and that almost the first tale I have 
 ever told in print is this story of my own life. Besides 
 boring all my co-mates with these narratives of robbers, 
 witches, smugglers, genii, and so forth, I fell into a habit of 
 composing them internally, for whole days together. I had 
 begun the cognate practice of day-dreaming long before. 
 There was a puddle near my father's house, overhung with 
 nettles and weeds, which, when I was a mere child of 
 five, was a favourite haunt of mine. I hung over it for 
 hours, and peopled it and its dirty shores with imaginary 
 beings and fictitious incidents. It was an Atlantic to me, 
 that puddle. And how often have I retired voluntarily, yet 
 not sulkily, from companions whom I loved, and sports which 
 I deeply relished, to my own musings in the silent autumn 
 fields between the hedges, to a stealthy brook near the house, 
 overhung with trees, and choked with sedge, or to the willows 
 by the watercourses of the river ! I have carried my book 
 there, and revelled uncounted hours, sighing, or weeping, or 
 smiling in secret over its pages. I passed my time sometimes 
 still more sweetly alone, with no book, chewing the cud of 
 sweet and bitter fancy, going through imaginary adventures, 
 carving out a hundred different plans of life, projecting 
 literary 'works, making verses, generally ct la Hudibras,
 
 10 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 timing my thoughts always to the motions of a large stick 
 which I carried with me to my solitude, speaking to myself 
 aloud, and not uufroquently, like Mirza, " overheard in my 
 soliloquies," and bearing the shame accordingly in blushes, 
 which yet rekindle at the thought. The consequence was, as 
 with Edwin, in the Minstrel — 
 
 " The neighbours shook their heads, yet bless'd the lad ; 
 Some deem'd me wondrous wise, and some did deem me mad." 
 
 A " remote laddie " was a frequent expression used by the 
 worthy old wives, as they saw the " lone enthusiast " sitting 
 silent for hours on the solitary stile, and gazing himself away 
 at the mountains which were glowing in the afternoon sun, 
 or heard him repeating to himself, with ardent cheek and 
 burning eyes, passages from Ossian ; or met him in a deep 
 plantation, plunging as if pursued, — and he was pursued, by 
 fancy as by fire, — farther and farther on into the woody 
 wilderness. At that time my own thoughts were dearer to 
 me than natural scenery, — I had little delight in it till my 
 mind had .been roused to a certain pitch; but whenever I 
 reached the climax of one of my darling novels, or finished 
 satisfactorily one of my internal compositions, I turned round 
 and saw the mountains and the heavens in a new light, and 
 felt, although as yet obscurely, that it was thy light, O 
 Imagination, bride of my being ! Yes, Imagination, thou 
 hast been at once the angel and tlie demon of my existence, 
 and still thy fairy hands are spreading their gauzy veil 
 between me and the universe, and I may almost say with 
 Schiller, " the Beautiful still is the God of the Earth ! " When 
 thy torch ceases to burn, and to show me all things from the 
 sun to my own shadow, let my earthly life too expire, for 
 hitherto I have fed on phantasy, and with any coarser 
 pabulum cannot away ! 
 
 I remember, as one of the principal eras in my intellectual 
 life, my introduction to the Waverley Novels. This was in 
 my tenth year. Previous to that period, Ossian, Addison,
 
 BIRTH AND EAKLY YOUTH. 11 
 
 and Milton were my favourite authors in Belles Lettres, and 
 large passages from them had indented themselves on my 
 memory. Of Shakspere, I had only read two or three plays — 
 " Macbeth," and the " Merry Wives of Windsor." I had read, 
 besides, an odd volume of Drydeu's plays, including " Cleo- 
 menes," and " Amphitryon ; " and some scattered comedies, 
 such as " A Wonder — a Woman keeps a Secret," and the 
 " Provoked Wife," constituted all the rest of my dramatic 
 lore. Of novels, I had only read the Vicar of Wakefield, 
 Joseph Andrews, Philip Quarles, Robinson Crusoe, and 
 Evelina. < In my cirefe, novels were looked upon as splendid 
 sins, and it was by stealth that I had procured some even of 
 th^.iibove. With the Pilgrim's Progress, indeed, I had 
 beeii--i[>ag permitted and urged to make acquaintance, and 
 of it I had become passionately fond, to the point of fixing 
 all its localities in a solitary road in the neighbourhood, and 
 there travelling oft in imagination after its pilgrims. But 
 when I was sent on a holiday excursion to a friend who lived 
 in a distant town, I found in the library Sir Walter Scott's 
 novels ; and greedily, and with an ecstasy I cannot fully 
 describe, did I enter, at the bidding of the magician, into that 
 wondrous world of blended romance and reality. I had 
 precisely the feeling which I experienced afterwards, when 
 I found myself in tlie centre of a great evening city, with 
 its crowds of human beings, revealed by lamps which 
 seemed hanging from a sky of enchantment — all real men 
 and women, but seemingly transfigured and glorified in an 
 unearthly light. And then the scenery and the characters 
 were Scotch ! The light of transcendent genius had fallen 
 suddenly on my own every-day walks, and the people I met 
 in them. I felt at once carried back to my own valley, and 
 borne away to a land beyond the wing of dreams. The first 
 five I laid my hands on were the Monastery, Waverley, the 
 Abl)ot, the Fortunes of Nigel, and Ivanhoe. The Monastery, 
 reckoned by many the worst of the series, was the first I 
 read ; and 'hence I continue, I fear, to love it better than some
 
 12 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 of his prouder and more popular fictions. I love still that 
 lone valley of Glendearg, and that deeper and more haunted 
 solitude of Corri-nau-shian — love to follow the Sub-Prior 
 Eustace, with beating heart, down the wizard glen — to trace 
 the desperate Halbert, rushing, like one possessed by the 
 fiend, up the valley to invoke the White Lady — to see 
 Henry Warden, coming like a spirit across the moors to 
 meet him, more terrific in his loneliness than the White 
 Lady in hers — to watch the twain stopping for breath on the 
 ridges above the Castle of Avenel — or starting as Christie of 
 the Clinthill shakes his ashen lance over them — or witnessing 
 the graphic but brutal scene between Julian and his para- 
 mour. I bow my head before the sorrows of the broken- 
 hearted Edward — I tremble at the black brows of Moray — 
 and thrill to the bone as I see Catherine trying to unloosen 
 the visor of her seducer, dead on the battle-field, and hear 
 her crying, " Christie of the Clinthill, Rowley, Hutcheon, ye 
 were constant to him at the feast, but ye fled from him at the 
 fray, false villains as ye are ! " while a dying voice near 
 exclaims, " Not I, by Heaven ! " being Christie's own, and 
 his last. I love even Piercie Shafton ; and have a great 
 regard for the Miller's daughter. This love and wonder I 
 need not say were increased mightily as each new miracle of 
 the series broke on me afterwards, at slow intervals ; for the 
 apparitions of Waverley Novels, after I returned to the 
 manse, were few and far between. Some six months after- 
 wards, I procured Rob Pioy, which, when I was reading, my 
 father gently took from me, and deposited in his desk. In 
 a day or two, however, I surprised him with his desk half- 
 open, devouring it as a sweet morsel in secret. He saw he 
 was discovered, smiled — the dear old man ! — and gave me it 
 back to finish at my leisure. I remember also, the same 
 summer, writing to a friend in a far off" city, to send me Guy 
 Mannering, by the carrier who reached our village each 
 Saturday. The first evening the book did not arrive, and 
 I returned home as full of the bitterness and blackness of
 
 BIRTH AND EARLY YOUTH. 13 
 
 disappointment as I ever was in my life. The next Saturday- 
 night, I went with a beating heart to the carrier's ; found, 
 joy ! the parcel ; tore it open ; began to read, on the road, 
 the first of the three small, dusky, crumbling volumes, and 
 continued till interrupted by bed-time. The next day was 
 the Sabbath, w^hen no novels, of course, could be perused 
 in a Presbyterian house ; and my readers can conceive 
 how I eyed, with fidgety impatience, the precious volumes 
 which I durst not open — how I sighed and smacked my lips, 
 and said for once, " When will the Sabbath be over ! " and 
 how on Monday, byiearliest summer dawn, I was up and 
 out with little Harry Bertram, amidst the sunny fields of 
 Gt^lpway. IMauy years elapsed ere I obtained my wish to 
 read -5IL, the works of the Master, and many a wish I breathed 
 in solitude, and in vain, for a complete set ; and many a 
 reprimand I got from true and tender lips for my excessive 
 exultation when a stray volume did find its way to our 
 dwelling ; and not a few, as they saw me carrying it to a 
 quiet nook to peruse, shook their heads, and entertained 
 the sentiment, if they could not utter the woi'ds — 
 
 '•' Of such materials wretched men are made ; 
 ■ And such a truant boy will end in woe." 
 
 But I cared not. I cherished then, and cherish still, love to 
 Scott as one of my first literary benefactors ; and now regu- 
 larly read over all bis better novels — all, indeed, except 
 Anne of Geierstein and Count Robert of Paris — once a 
 year, and often regret that I had not the whole to begin 
 anew, and that I had not enjoyed the luxury of reading more 
 of the series "in life's morning march, when my bosom was 
 young," -to the murmur of the blue streams of my birth- 
 place, and of the warm careering blood of my boyhood. 
 
 My ■ readers must not, from the above little incident, 
 imagine that I disregai'ded the Sabbath or its services. On 
 the contrary, that was to me one of the happiest days of the 
 week. After breakfast and prayers were over, my father 
 retired to his study to prepare for his public work ; and I,
 
 14 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 lifting some pious volume, took it out to my favourite haunt, 
 the little brook at the end of the park, stealing below its 
 shade of trees, and whispering so softly in the ear of its bull- 
 rushes, as if imploring a passage for its quiet waters to the 
 near river. There I remember reading, for the first time, 
 Graham's Sabbath (a copy that was presented by the author 
 to my father, and bearing his autogi'aph on the blank page), 
 and perceiving, with rapture, the surpassing truth as well as 
 beauty of the opening lines — 
 
 " How still the morning of the hallow'd day ! 
 Mute is the voice of rui-al labour, hush'd 
 The ploughboy's whistle and the milk-maid's song." 
 
 At eleven I returned to the house, and often accompanied 
 my father to the church. I see yet his tall form, his hurrying 
 step, and his eye, on other days so lively and mirthful, sub- 
 dued and solemnized into deep seriousness, not untouched 
 by a shade of anxiety. He was, it is true, adored by his 
 people, and went to the pulpit, in general, thoroughly pre- 
 pared. But he was now well advanced in age — about sixty — 
 and had begun, although a strong man, to be haunted with 
 the fear of dying suddenly, and of dying in the pulpit. He 
 commenced, accordingly, the services with not a little trepi- 
 dation, which disappeared, indeed, in the first duty of the 
 day — a few opening remarks, or " preface," as it was called, 
 to the psalm that was t) be sung — but returned at the 
 commencement of his prayer. Ere the close, however, 
 his fervid spirit in its soarings had forgotten earth, death, 
 man — all but Heaven and the Dread Dweller there. After 
 prayer was ended, he seldom gave out another psalm, but 
 commenced immediately his expository discourse. In ex- 
 position, however, unless the subject were historical, he did 
 not shine till he came near the close, and began to grapple 
 with the practical bearings of his theme. He had little 
 logical faculty, seldom reasoned, brought out the meaning 
 of obscure passages very in differently, and neither could 
 make, nor cared for, hair-splitting distinctions. But he
 
 BIRTH AND EARLY YOUTH. 51 
 
 had a powerful memory, a lively fancy, and a deep, warm 
 heart. He communed directly with the souls of his hearers, 
 and seemed often like a man who saw the imqnenchable 
 fires, and the victims rushing toward them, and sought by 
 cries and tears and gestures to arrest the fatal plunge. But 
 mixed with this earnestness, and redeeming it from the ap- 
 pearance of fanaticism, were a certain bonhomie and a pro- 
 fusion of striking anecdotes and quaint remarks, which 
 rendered his preaching a treat as great as his conversation; 
 indeed, it was just his conversation produced and prolonged. 
 There were, too, occfw$onal bursts of fervid pathos, or of holy 
 indignation, disturbing and elevating the sui-face of the stream 
 of fcj^ speech ; and, as I have observed in all earnest speakers, 
 he ne^f^ failed to interest his hearers. 
 
 It was fine to see the grey-plaided shepherd, with his dog 
 at his feet ; the kilted savage, who had come from a distant 
 parish, and knew English but imperfectly ; the ruddy plough- 
 man ; the old woman with her high coif and tartan plaid ; the 
 pale-cheeked and bald-headed weaver; the blooming maiden; 
 and the little boy, many of whom would have slept under a 
 Chalmers or an Irving — all suspended on the lips, and eager, 
 earnest eye of this strong, simple man, speaking from the 
 heart to the heart, determined as an arnbassador from 
 Christ to take no refusal and to brook no delay, and whose 
 whole soul, in some of the paroxysms of eloquence which 
 formed the application of his discourses, seemed povired 
 out into the question, '' Turn ye, turn ye; why will ye 
 die?" It was fine too, in a difTeront way, when he preached 
 Gaelic, to watch the effect produced by what in my ear was 
 unintelligible, upon the people — to see their tears started by 
 the combined power of what to me were an unknown tongue 
 and a well-known eye; their heai'ts pierced and souls moved 
 by the strange and mysterious union, as to me it necessarily 
 appeared, of a clear natural and an obscure artificial speech : 
 I saw the dancers and the weepers, but only half heard the 
 music to which they were mourning and moving. The most
 
 16 THE HISTOEY OF A MAN. 
 
 impressive part of the service, however, was at the end of 
 the afternoon discourse, when the speaker, feehng the sword 
 of death suspended over his own head, and knowiog the un- 
 certainty of the lives of his hearers, became pecuUarly iirgent 
 in his appeals, as if he durst not stop till he had delivered 
 fully his own soul, and " concluded " some of them, at least, 
 into the fold of safety, ere he shut the Bible — it might be for 
 ever — and uttered the " Amen" of the sermon — it might be the 
 last. It was a proof, thoiigh a very subordinate one, of his 
 power, that less frequently under him than under other 
 preachers did I indulge my incorrigible habit of day-dreaming 
 — a habit which occasionally set my wits a wool-gathering upon 
 the mountains I saw through the windows, or embarked my 
 fancy on the river that was sounding by. 
 
 The evening of the Sabbath was, if possible, more inte- 
 resting than the day. The day to the preacher had been one 
 of ardent and anxious labour; the evening was one of deep, 
 delicious rest. His spii'it had exhausted its fires, and had 
 sunk into serenest tranquillity. At tea-time, when the family 
 were all assembled, his smile, it struck me, had always on the 
 Sabbath a peculiar tenderness and depth of parental love. It 
 seemed many smiles meeting in one — a confluence of streams 
 of love. After the simple meal was over, he retired to his 
 study to pray and commend the word preached to his Master's 
 blessing, and after that duty was over, to insert a paragraph 
 in his diary recording the feelings, experiences, and gratitude 
 of the day; to look out, perhaps, at the magnificence of 
 nature around him, which seemed on Sabbath radiant with 
 rest ; or to read, with a relish which those only who have 
 read after preaching can understand, some favourite author, 
 perhaps Rutherford's Letters, or Halyburton's Memoirs, or 
 Chalmers's Astronomical Sermons. Sometimes I took my 
 book into a corner of the room, and read beside him ; and 
 sometimes I ran out to peruse the hieroglyphics of the sky 
 as it faded over the mountains, and allowed the evening star 
 and the moon to take their turn in looking down on the
 
 BIRTH AND EARLY TOUTH. 17 
 
 lovely vale in which the rivers, now emboldened by the 
 stillness, began their night concert of emulous praise to God. 
 
 At eight in the evening precisely, all the family and 
 servants assembled to be catechized, and after that was over 
 came the hour of my father's truest eloquence. He uniformly 
 closed his questions by an extempore address to the little 
 circle ; an address remarkable for its point and pathos, often 
 *• piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit," sounding 
 every soul, touching every heart, stripping bare every con- 
 science, and, as it went on, responded to by bursting tears. 
 He seemed here a father anxious to take all his family to 
 heaven with him, and unwilling to close till he had some 
 asgm-ance that they were in the right way. Oratory, poetry, 
 geniio^, are words all too feeble to express the character of 
 this land of address. It was the mere heart of a Christian 
 parent becoming a tongue and speaking, in yearning accents, 
 to his nearest and deai'est, and sounded like the echo of the 
 voice of the Father in heaven. It was followed by family 
 worship, and on that night the voice of psalms swelled out of 
 deeper deeps of adoration, was melloAved into sweeter and 
 richer melody, and rose nearer to the celestial city. The 
 chapter read had a strange and holy charm, and the prayer 
 seemed to know no intervening medium between the lips of 
 the speaker and the Heavens of the Great Hearer of Prayer. 
 A supper, frugal and temperate, but superior to the same 
 meal on ordinary days, closed the well spent Sabbath, and a 
 humble but happy family lay down as one being, to dream 
 of that rest which remaiueth for the people of God. 
 
 It may probably appear to some that I am over-colouring 
 the picture, and wishing to represent my father as perfect. 
 He was very far from it, and no one knew his imperfections 
 like himself Often after his best displays he came in "humbled 
 to the dust." " A poor weak worm," and similar expressions 
 often escaped his lips. He was, shall I say? too good 
 to be perfect, or to be even what Coleridge calls so admiral)ly 
 "a goody man." He was impetuous, irritable, impulsive, 
 
 C
 
 18 THE HISTOEY OF A MAN. 
 
 and prevented only, as lie often said, by grace from being the 
 chief of sinners. His high animal spirits and ardent tempe- 
 rament sometimes hurried him to the borders of what was 
 wrong, and very often beyond the borders of what was 
 prudent. Slights and affronts, too, he keenly felt and warmly 
 resented. He had learned to control his appetites and pas- 
 sions, but not his temper. But, apart from his piety and 
 warm heart, he was the truest man I ever knew; he had 
 " no guile." In understanding a man, he was in simplicity a 
 child. A frank, open, large, he was also an enthusiastic 
 nature. He admired mtmy whom he knew he never could 
 equal, as much as those whose heels he felt himself close 
 upon. Resembling, as I said, the dove in her lower but 
 lovely flights (we refer here solely to his fancy ; in appear- 
 ance, as a character and as a speaker he was masculine and 
 robust), he was never weary of admiring the path of the 
 cloud-cleaving eagles of genius. Indeed, his constant pre- 
 ference of .bold, daring, and poetical writers led to this conse- 
 quence in me, that in admiring them I almost learned to 
 despise his own writings as compositions, while I liked them 
 because they came from him. It was long afterwards ere I 
 saw a merit and a beauty in their simplicities, which the age 
 has not yet seen, nor probably ever shall. His writings, 
 however, were no proper revelation of him. They showed 
 his heart, his piety; they showed also his defects and limita- 
 tions, but gave little idea of that felicitous something, that 
 happy knack, that manly naivete, that Bunyan-like charm, 
 which characterised the living, moving, and speaking man. 
 
 I was just in time to witness, in his relation to his flock 
 and to his neighbourhood, the old lilessed power of priest- 
 craft in Scotland, understanding by that word the, on the 
 whole, legitimate influence of the pastor over his people. The 
 elements of that power consisted of the deep yet dignified 
 regards entertained by the minister for his flock, his assiduity 
 in the discharge of his duties, his frank yet not familiar or 
 too frequent intercourse with them, the prestige in ftivour of
 
 BIRTH AND EAELY YOUTH. 19 
 
 the office which still prevailed, and the deep sense of reli- 
 gion which characterised many, at least, of the parishioners. 
 Ministers then stood at precisely the proper angle to their 
 flocks. They were neither rich nor poor, but inclining to be 
 poor. They were neither servants nor lords, but verging 
 towards lordship. They were neither indolent nor were they 
 so hard wrought as they have since become, but their leisure 
 was more conspicuous than their labour. They were not 
 ignorant, but neither were they profoundly learned. They 
 were among their people, although not of them, and in the 
 feelings with which ,tiiey were regarded, love and reverence 
 mingled in nearly equal proportions. Their sermons were 
 obeyed, not criticised; their auditors were not merely de- 
 liglitedj t>ut they did what their minister told them. Their 
 faults were, treated with indulgence, and their society wel- 
 comed, but not violently courted. 
 
 I sometimes likened the minister among his people, at 
 least I do so on reflection now, to the parish kirk standing 
 in the centre of the village, promoted on its knoll, and digni- 
 fied, by its simple steeple, only to cast a kindlier shadow 
 over the adjacent houses, and to shed on them a holy charm. 
 The minister was then above his people merely by the height of 
 those uplifted arms with which he now warned from sin, and 
 now '"'allured to brighter worlds, and led the way." Beautiful 
 and blissful were the results of this state of things to all 
 parties. He had his trials, but he had them at home; they 
 came from friends, not from cold-hearted strangers; they 
 arose rather from accident than from design or ill-will, and he 
 treated them as trifling acts of disobedience committed by 
 children. To tliem again their pastor was always near, as a 
 counsellor to advise, as a teacher to instruct, as a friend to 
 feel for, as a being at once adored and loved, adoi'ed for his 
 office, and loved for himself I saw all this in its full glory, 
 but I saw also evidences even then that it could not continue 
 always, and that a new order of tilings, which would not 
 permit that purely patriarchal relation between teachers and 
 
 c2
 
 20 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 taught, l)ut substitute one more fluctuating and uncertain, 
 was at hand. In some parts of Scotland the old feeling is, 
 perhaps, existing still, but I fear that in most even of country 
 parishes it is an exception. 
 
 I must not forget to allude in this chapter to my com- 
 panions, to one or two of the characters in the village, and 
 to a few miscellaneous reminiscences. My companions were 
 not numerous nor very remarkable, nor did I contract any 
 friendship of the David and Jonathan kind. But there were 
 two or three with whom I either exchanged souls, or mingled 
 in spoi'ts. One, Henry Thompson, was much older than I, 
 had been at college, and had come home with a good addition 
 to his knowledge, and a larger to his self-conceit. He had a 
 clear, sharp, but common-place mind, and a ready logic and 
 rough repartee, which secured him considerable power amongst 
 the would-bes of the village, whom he rated at their true 
 value, and exposed with much adroitness. He told me, 
 although in a conceited, pragmatical way, some tidings from 
 the world of literature, science, and theology, as represented 
 in our universities ; of Chalmers, his geniality, his eloquence, 
 his occasional " darkness " of mood; and of Wilson, his gipsy 
 adventures, and all that odd outside of the man which was 
 then better known than his universal sympathies and golden 
 genius. About the same time a copy of the " Lights and 
 Shadows " reached our village, and I eagei'ly perused it, its 
 glowing eloquence, pathos, and high-toned description pro- 
 ducing an eifect only inferior to that of the Scots novels. 
 The "Shelling" was particularly prized, and I transferred 
 the picture of the thunderstorm in Glennevis, to a glen ten 
 miles to the west of my native place, and ever since in 
 fancy see its gloomy rage there storming, and there the little 
 maid still wading the red-running streams, and fronting the 
 lightnings, as she goes down the glen to find a priest for her 
 dying grandsire. 
 
 In one thing I owed Henry Thompson a literary service. 
 He taught me to abate my boyish reverence for Brougham,
 
 BIRTH AND EARLY YOUTH. 21 
 
 and showed nie how void of poetic fire and genial life, how 
 cold even in its passion and forced in its fury, was his much- 
 vaunted style. He tried, too, to turn me from being, like 
 my father, a keen Whig, into a Tory, but here he failed. My 
 feeling, ignorant, as of course in a measure it was, in favour 
 of liberal opinions, was too deeply rooted, and had been 
 fostered too carefully by my father to be at the mercy of a sneer. 
 Nothing roused me at this period, and for long afterwards, 
 more than the subject of politics. My young blood boiled, 
 my face flushed, my whole being was convulsed, while (in my 
 ignorance) defendiug^Queen Caroline, or when abusing, more 
 justly, Lo]-d Castlereagh and George the Fourth, In my 
 dai^-dreams I often fancied myself in Parliament, thundering: 
 on tli^ opposition benches; and sometimes taking my stand 
 on a pile of wood to the west of the Manse, I extemporised 
 to a gi-een field long harangues on the political questions of 
 the day. At other times I retired to a lonely spot on a river 
 about half a mile from our dwelling, where the stream, sur- 
 rounded by strait and steep wooded banks, cuts its way, in a 
 deep and narrow channel, through a rock, and after forcing 
 the passage, dispreads luxuriously in a wide basin, where I 
 used to bathe, and coming up from my plunge, stood on a 
 projecting point above, and poured out orations as little 
 liable to inten-uption as though I had been in the centre of 
 Sahara, and disturbing none save the birds and squirrels, 
 which were the only tenants of the solitude. Henry Thompson 
 soon afterwards went abroad to Canada, where he still lives 
 as the successful teacher of an academy. He came home 
 about fifteen years ago for a few months, and gave me the 
 impression of not being at all improved by contact with the 
 manners of the west, his conceit having swollen- into insolence, 
 and his spirit of controversy and contradiction having become 
 altogether intolerable. 
 
 William Hendry was another of the companions of my 
 boyhood, although he was a year or two older than I. He 
 was a farmer's son in the neighbourhood, and began Latin off
 
 22 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 the same grammar and on the same day, with me. He was 
 certainly a warm-hearted and cleverish lad, and had a con- 
 siderable talent for languages ; but he was careless, and wild, 
 and this wildness very early blossomed into vice. He became 
 afterwards a student at Aberdeen, where his riotous conduct 
 ended in disgrace. He returned to the country a fallen lad, 
 yet, loved for his good nature and frank bearing; obtained 
 a situation as a banker's clerk in Elgin, which, however, he 
 suddenly left for India, and was, I believe, drowned while 
 bathing in a spree in the Ganges. Poor William Hendry, 
 I think I see him still, creeping like a snail unwillingly to 
 school in the morning — in the interval of school hours hurry- 
 ing me and others away to the favourite " linn," where we 
 plunged, swam, dived, and laughed for a full hour under the 
 burning July sun, often racing ourselves dry afterwards upon 
 the green banks or sands around, and in winter, careering in 
 full pursuit of the foot-ball, and, after the game was over, 
 drinking copious draughts of the cold water from the sunken 
 well, till every fibre shivered with strong excitement. Always 
 frank, buoyant, and full of mirth — peace to thy ashes and 
 oblivion to thy sins! 
 
 John Anderson is another memorable name to me. He 
 was a grown-up lad, working at a humble loom in the village. 
 I liked him as a "fellow of infinite jest," well read in the 
 light letters of that day, knowing in human nature, full of 
 anecdote, and a visit to his shop ever and anon was a rare 
 treat to me. He made me laugh till I was nigh falling on 
 the floor with his comical stories, and listened with pleasure 
 to what I had to tell him, in return, of my readings and 
 youthful speculations. He was an expert fisher, and I some- 
 times accompanied him along the river side, less to watch 
 the sport than to listen to his anecdotes. I liked, too, to sit 
 down by the side of the clear running stream, as it reflected 
 the green or wooded banks, and to muse and dream over the 
 waters. I had sometimes a volume of Washington Irving 
 with me, and as I read to the angler portions of it, he
 
 BIRTH AND EARLY YOUTH. 23 
 
 smacked his lips, and said, " How I would like a day's fishiug 
 with him ! " A curious incident transpired in this lad's histoiy. 
 He married privately the daughter of a small lauded pro- 
 prietor in the neighboiu'hood. She had attended a singing- 
 school with him, and he had used his time well. They con- 
 trived to get married, and managed to conceal it for three or 
 four years. At last it could no longer be hid, and her 
 parents indignantly shut the door in her flice. The pair 
 left the place, and he was last heard of in the remote district 
 of Galloway, supporting himself and his wife by teacliing. 
 I missed his departjjj'e much. He had a decided mimetic 
 gift. I have heard of him attending Lykewakes,* and with 
 tl»e" aid of whisky, which was copiously used on these occa- 
 sipnst k^eeping the assembly all night and morning in a roar 
 of laughter. Indeed, wherever two or three were assembled, 
 John Anderson was sure to be there, and his moonlight de- 
 parture eclipsed the gaiety of the country side. 
 
 Andrew Fergusson was originally born among the glens 
 where his father, a small land proprietor, had died prema- 
 turely, leaving him the estate and a little money beside. 
 His mother had married again, and he came to our neigh- 
 bourhood to reside with an uncle, and to get his education 
 at our village school. He was an erect, good looking youth, 
 with a black eye, and a kindly disposition, although, like 
 many highlauders, full of personal and family pride, deep 
 prejudices, and not a little cunning. He lived in an old 
 castle, situated on the verge of a romantic hollow, overhung 
 by green hills, and commanding a wide prospect of the strath 
 to the eastward. There I often spent my Saturday after- 
 noons. In a room of the castle there was a library, which 
 had belonged to one of his departed relatives, consisting 
 chiefly of original or translated classics. This was a main 
 attraction to me, although I should have preferred had 
 the books been modem. But the mere words " a book," 
 
 * Lykewakes. A custom, once prevalent in Scotland, of sitting up 
 all night with the newly dead. See Antiquary.
 
 24 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 " a new book," " a library," had then to me an ineffable 
 charm, Fergusson and I once took an excursion to his 
 native Highlands. I remember my rising at four on a 
 glorious July morning, breakfasting at the castle, walking 
 up Glenconochie, with its rich woods and sounding river 
 below, and its wild-deer forest above, reaching at ten a little 
 farm-house, whei-e Fergusson was acquainted ; taking a 
 second and very substantial breakfast, renewing our journey 
 through wild and lonely moors, coming to another farm- 
 house, where a kind old man welcomed us to a hearty 
 dinner, and sent us on our way rejoicing ; and as the sun 
 was westering, crossing the hill which concealed Loch Tarat, 
 and clapping our hands for joy, when we saw it, quietly nest- 
 ling under the frowning precipices of Ben- Alan. The next 
 morning, early, our hostess, Fergusson's aunt, a mild, good- 
 looking dark-eyed highland farmer's wife, awoke us, and 
 after a rapid breakfast we climbed the lofty Ben, and found 
 ourselves at ten, forenoon, on its summit, with a burning sun 
 above us, with a wide prospect of lochs, mountains, and 
 straths beneath us, and with the fiercest thirst I ever felt 
 within us. We had taken no liquid of any kind with us, and 
 there was no possibility of getting a single drop till we 
 reached, on the other side, the bottom of the hill, where we 
 found a stream lukewarm in the great heat, out of which we 
 drank, and drank, and drank for a full half-hour, and arose 
 very imperfectly refreshed. Wandering down Gleufirkin, a 
 glen stretching on the west side of Ben-Alan, we met at a 
 little bridge crossing the mountain-stream, a singular cha- 
 racter, — a man, clad in brown shabby clothes, but with a 
 striking fece, and that indescribable something which marks 
 the f ided gentleman, and the fallen scholar. He turned out 
 to be a person who, at Glasgow College, had once promised 
 great things, taken high prizes, but got into dissipated habits, 
 lost caste, and had wandered northward to these remote 
 solitudes, where he lived, partly on the simple natives, and 
 partly by raising subsidies from any chance stranger he might
 
 BIRTH AND EARLY YOUTH. 25 
 
 meet visiting tlie scenery. He haunted this glen, which opened 
 up to the celebrated Loch Donachar, like its evil genius, and 
 with that quiet respectful impudence peculiar to his unhappy 
 class, saluted every one bearing the appearance of a gentle- 
 man, entered into interesting conversation, volunteered some 
 species of guideship, and seldom failed to extort a few shil- 
 lings, or what he relished nearly as well, an invitation to the 
 next inn. Us he approached, counting us raw boys ; as soon 
 as he found us to be school-boys, began talliing on the scenery 
 and on literary topics: spoke in the most insinuating and 
 intelligent manner, ajid seemed determined to accompany us 
 on our way to the Donachar Inn. He found out, when he 
 hejird my name, that he had been at College with an uncle 
 of mtne, whom he called a beautiful Grecian ; and, in short, 
 like Christian with Talkative, I was nearly taken in, so far, 
 at least, as to wish him to go on with us, till my companion, 
 like Faithful, contrived in a whisper to put me upon my 
 guard. How we shook him off I forget, but we did accom- 
 plish it, and with a very discontented and almost ferocious 
 look he returned, like a baffled demon, up the valley. I 
 often regret that I forgot to make farther inquiries about 
 him, or even to register his name. He is probably long since 
 dead, by a leap from a linn, or a drunken fall from a crag, or 
 by immersion in a wreath of snow. It is melancholy to think 
 that hundreds, we believe, of the romantic districts in Britain 
 are infested by similar specimens of broken down victims, 
 and that poor Hartley Coleridge was little better than one 
 of them. 
 
 Loch Donachar delighted us, as it does all the world, not 
 so much for grandeur as for beauty, and seemed worthy of 
 all the glory poured around it by the power of poetry. The 
 heat, however, had given me a severe head ache, and I did 
 not enjoy it so much as I had done a year before, when 
 I visited it early in spring, and ere yet the tide of summer 
 visitors had begun to flow. Next morning, after breakfast 
 at the Inn, we walked down the river side, bathed in it, to
 
 26 THE HISTOKY OF A MAN. 
 
 our great refreshment, returned to the farm-house at the 
 side of Loch Tarat, and the following day reached home. 
 I never saw poor Fergusson again, I think, till two years 
 afterwards, when I found him stretched on his death-bed, 
 dying of a slow consumption, and submitting with most 
 Christian resignation to the fate which was hurrying him 
 away, ere fvilly of age, from life, fortune, and prospects of 
 unusiial happiness. Shortly afterwards he died in peace. 
 
 A different and worse destiny was that of Michael Green, 
 a lad of much more talent than Fergusson. He had a keen 
 sense of humour, no small power of intellect, and unwearied 
 diligence of application. He became an admirable scholar, and 
 was appointed tutor in an academy m Shropshire. But he 
 had, unknown to his early companions, contracted other 
 habits besides that of close study, and ultimately went mad, 
 and committed suicide. He is said to have done so — he was 
 a first-rate classical scholai* — after the old Koman fashion, 
 bleeding himself at the wrists to death, and to have died 
 watching the slow dropping of the blood with the mad eye ! 
 Poor, unfortunate Michael Green ! 
 
 Fergus Mac Alpin was one of his principal companions, 
 and for some seasons, too, one of my intimate friends. The 
 chief tie which brought and kept us together was an insatiable 
 love of out-of-the-way books and speculations. At a certain 
 hour each evening, when the Evening Star was in summer 
 beginning to tremble over the mountains of Glenconochie, 
 or when in winter the Constellation of the Plough was lying 
 level over the vast Ben Coran to the North, we met at 
 the river-side, and spent an hour or two in conversation. 
 Sometimes on the books we had been reading, sometimes 
 on public or village affixirs, sometimes on the preachers 
 we had heard the previous Sabbath, and sometimes on the 
 awful topics of God, a Future Life, the truth of Christianity, 
 the nature of man — subjects which even then engaged much 
 of my thoughts, and shed shadows and lights upon my 
 j^ath. I remember little of the special speculations started —
 
 BIETH AND EARLY YOUTH. 27 
 
 thej were probably sufficiently cnide — but I never shall 
 forget how our voices sunk into whispers, and our hearts 
 beat thick, and our souls were at once excited and subdued 
 while speaking of such tliemes, sitting amidst the willows, or 
 pacing the sands, with the sky hanging her large, weighty, 
 and gleaming constellations over head, and the river speak- 
 ing to herself in her most solemn and spiritual tones at our 
 feet. Sometimes, when my companion failed to keep his 
 appointment, I spent my time deliciously by myself, gazing 
 unweariedly at the mountains resting against the stars ; at 
 the woods crowniug^^the steeps with their shadowy plumes; 
 at the orbs of heaven as they came forth in their beauty; 
 at»the meteors, which are most frequently seen somehow by 
 a ,soiit^ry eye ; and listening to the thousand interwoven 
 harmonies of breezes, streams, night birds, and the distant 
 cries of dogs from the farm-steading, foxes from the hill, and 
 boys from the village. Yes, 
 
 " In lonely glens, amid the roar of rivers, 
 
 WTien the still nights were moonless, I have known 
 Joys which no tongiie can tell : my pale lip quivers 
 When thoughts revisit them." 
 
 Of this my closest companion for some years, in my boy- 
 hood, I have long lost sight. I rather think, however, that 
 he subsided into a professional man in a distant city. 
 
 In our village, as in every other, there were some remark- 
 able character, redeeming its society from common-place, 
 and adding a queer outre charm to its many points of interest. 
 One man, Angus MacLeod, visited the village only at certain, 
 or rather uncertain, times, and mainly for the purpose of 
 seeing my father. He was a harmless maniac. He had 
 originally kept a turnpike in the centre of immense dark 
 fir woods. One morning, a carter passing by, and wishing 
 to pay his toll, got no response to his call. Opening the 
 door he found Angus stretched on the ground, in a swoon. 
 When raised up, and brought back in some measure to him-
 
 28 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 self, he was found to have lost his reason. It was gathered, 
 
 from his disconnected ravings, that at midnig-ht he had heard 
 
 a noise, looked out, and saw, or thought he saw, the Enemy 
 conveying, in a chariot, a well-known gentleman of the 
 neighbourhood, who died about that time, as he thundered 
 out in Angus' ear, " To Hell." From this shock he recovered 
 partially, but continued ever afterwards, he fancied, to receive 
 visits from angels and other denizens of the spiritual world. 
 These bore him messages, and referred him, for the elucida- 
 tion of any obscure points in them, to my father. The poor 
 being accordingly, twice or thrice, at least, every year, came to 
 the manse; I remember him well, with his brown dirty great 
 coat, his high sloping brow, his look of dreamy abstraction, 
 and his vacant but gentle smile. My father always received 
 him with kindness, heard his story with much attention, 
 prayed with, patted him on the back, and sent him home 
 for the time satisfied. We all looked at him with consider- 
 able terror. At last his periodical appearances ceased, and 
 we found, on inquiry, that his body had been found, stiff and 
 stark, in the wood near his own dwelling. He had wandered 
 among the plantations, fallen asleep, and expired of pure cold 
 and exhaustion. 
 
 Another strange being was a beggar, ycleped in nickname, 
 Mac Pherson Num. He lived in a little hamlet two or three 
 miles from the village. Every day, however, when the weather 
 permitted, he might be seen with blue bonnet, blue kilt, 
 sharp worldly eye, and a white bag slung over his shoulder, 
 begging from door to door. At night he returned laden with 
 meal, oat-cakes, lumps of cheese, and pence. He had this 
 singularity : no one was ever permitted to enter the hovel 
 where he dwelt, which, indeed, w^as well guarded by a che- 
 veaux-de-frise of filth and stench. In that hut he lived, 
 utterly alone ; and at last, like one of the wild creatures of 
 the wilderness, he died utterly alone. Missed upon his usual 
 rounds, the neighbours forced their way into the house, and 
 found, amidst a twenty years' accumulation of rubbish, more
 
 BIRTH AND EARLY YOUTH. 29 
 
 than 200^. of money, in pounds, crowns, half-crowns, six- 
 pences and pennies. 
 
 Not in the village, bnt some ten miles to the westward, 
 and among the hills, lived another curious genius, named 
 Hector Mac Galium. He was noted for his improvisatore 
 powers, indeed considered himself one of the last specimens 
 of the Highland Bard, or Sennachie ; and was not without 
 pi-etensions to the second sight. He attended markets, and 
 after having been plied with plenty of whisky, would com- 
 mence and spout, or sing Gaelic songs and rhapsodies, which 
 were said, by those -Who understood the language, to possess 
 considerable fire. Some waggish person persuaded him to 
 write, in English, a picture of the splendid scenery around, 
 A^ Ikiti Js.nowledge of English was very imperfect, the result 
 was an inconceivably ridiculous hubbub of misapplied words, 
 superlatives soaring above superlatives ; and to add the last 
 element to the jumble, and make it " thick and slab," the 
 wag, a man of some literature, prefixed a preface, full of 
 really exquisite ironical praise, commending the author for 
 his noble superiority to common rules, his lofty contempt for 
 grammar, his manly and daring use of the privilege of genius, 
 to talk nonsense, and so forth. Hector lived some years 
 after this, and died by a fall from the precipices of the east 
 side of Ben Ample, where he had been pursuing a stray goat 
 • — a fate fit for the last of the Sennachies. It was said 
 that he had predicted his own departure in a Gaelic ode, 
 entitled "The Doom of the Poet." It was said, too, that 
 meeting one day a celebrated statesman, who had an estate 
 in the neighbourhood, hurrying in his carriage toward Edin- 
 burgh, he cried out, " That's a dying man," words which 
 were fulfilled a few days afterwards. Men still, as they pace 
 the base of Ben Ample, and point up to the rock down which 
 Hector was dashed, sink their voice into whispers as they 
 speak of his predictions. 
 
 The village and neighbourhood possessed a number of 
 smaller originals — such as a mad woman, who, in her higher
 
 30 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 fits, occasionally appeared in the streets, and was followed 
 by a procession of boys. It was almost sublime to see her 
 infuriated gestures, and to hear her torrent of Erse oaths as 
 she turned upon her pursuers ; you thought of Ulrica on the 
 walls of Torquilstone, or of Meg Merrilees, when drummed 
 out of Kippletringau. There was also a little hump-backed 
 dominie, whom his scholars occasionally turned out of school, 
 sending the "schoolmaster abroad" with a vengeance, and 
 others of less mark and likelihood. I mention only one more, 
 who had a very singular history. His name was James 
 Henderson. He was the son of a watch-maker in Inverness, 
 whose widow, on his death, removed to our village, and took up 
 a small shop. James was sent to school and became a clever 
 scholar, particularly in mathematics. From school he went 
 to Marischal College, Aberdeen, and ultimately took license 
 as a preacher in some one of the dissenting bodies. He seems, 
 however, to have imbibed infidel sentiments from Voltaire, 
 Volney, and other writers of that stamp. He failed in preach- 
 ing, from a coldness of manner partly, and partly because 
 he was lame in one of his limbs. He went abroad, to Nova 
 Scotia, for two or three years, but even there his ill-success 
 j)ursued him, and he returned to his native country. I used 
 to see him loitering about the village with a settled look of 
 disappointment lowering on his brows. At last he heard of a 
 vacancy in the neighbourhood of Dumfries, and by a timely 
 application succeeded in obtaining the call to a good congre- 
 gation. He went away in great spirits, but retiurned in a few 
 months to invite a young lady, daughter of a respectable 
 exciseman, to accompany him southward, as his wife. She 
 declined: he left in deep dudgeon; and in half- a-y ear after- 
 wards became insane. The first terrible fit was cured, but 
 his mind was eff'ectually shattered, and he came back the 
 wreck of what he had been. For many years he continued 
 to haunt the village, sometimes keeping a school, sometimes 
 working as a day-labourer, sometimes all but begging his 
 bread. A strange being he was ! The disease had stung bis
 
 BIRTH AND EARLY YOUTH. 31 
 
 mind into tenfold activity, and revealed in him a vein of 
 genius which no one had before suspected. It disclosed, too 
 his infidel opinions, and he sometimes disgorged the vilest 
 things. It became quite a treat for the thoughtless lads 
 to gather round " Lucifer/' as he was called, especially 
 under the evening shadows, and to hear his outpourings, 
 which consisted of the cleverest and strangest thoughts, 
 diversified by oaths and blasphemies — now making his audi- 
 tors shudder, and anon stirring them to inextinguishable 
 laughter. I often, while pacing at night the river side, 
 heard the roars of laughter from the bridge, or the old tree 
 in the centre of the village, which announced that '' Lucifer " 
 was, there in all his glory. He sometimes said striking, as 
 weH^as strange things. Looking up to the Comet of 1835, 
 he' crfe'cl, " I have long been speculating about the nature of 
 comets : I have found it out at last, — they're the steamboats 
 of the universe." His criticisms on books, men, and preachers 
 were singularly clever, and often just. To church he never 
 went, however, latterly ; but as the hearers were crowding 
 in on Sabbath morning to hear the sermon on one side of the 
 river, " Lucifer" was seen on the other, wending his solitary 
 way up the bank toward some secluded spot, where he spent 
 the day, either in reading, or in the company of his own wild 
 thoughts. It was almost terrific to me to watch the lonely 
 wanderer striking on toward the woods, and I sometimes 
 asked, " Has he an appointment there, and with whom 1 " 
 Apart from his mental aberration, which varied at different 
 times, Henderson was an amiable, moral, and harmless 
 creature, much liked by all; and his tone, latterly, in refer- 
 ence to Christ, which had been horribly abusive, underwent 
 a change, and he spoke of him with a curious mixtiu-e of 
 affection, admiration, disbelief, and something approaching 
 pity. I often siglied as I thought, had this poor unfortunate 
 but lived in the days of the Redeemer's flesh, he would have 
 soon sat down beside his brother, the demoniac, clothed, and 
 in his right mind, at these blessed feet ! He has long been
 
 32 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 dead — he died of sheer weakness and old age, and is, I trust, 
 sitting there now. 
 
 Not many distinguished strangers visited our village, — it 
 was too far out of the way for this. One day, however, as 
 Henz-y Thompson and I were standing on the bridge, a gay 
 open carriage passed us, and I noticed a tall, broad-shouldered, 
 distinguished looking man, dressed in a round straw hat, blue 
 coat, buff waistcoat, and nankeen pantaloons, with two wild 
 light blue eyes, which, shining from amidst long yellow hair, 
 reminded me of two hawk's eyes gleaming through a bush of 
 yellow fern. He was accompanied by some ladies, and seemed 
 in raptures with the scenery, points in which he was showing 
 them with extended arm. I noticed Thompson blush, and 
 look down, and so soon as the chariot was passed he said, 
 sotto voce, " That's my professor, Christopher North." We ran 
 after, in hopes of seeing him again, but he did not find metal 
 attractive enough in our inn to induce him to tarry, and was 
 borne away from our view in a whirlwind. He alluded to 
 this rapid passage to me many years after, and regretted he 
 had not taken more time to see our country. He was the 
 first noted aiithor I ever saw; but a year or two after, 
 I, and two or three of my companions, having walked some 
 forty miles across the hills, to attend the Braemar Highland 
 games, were rewarded by a sight of Jeffrey, seated in a car- 
 riage, and with his black eyes, hair, and smart little head, 
 reminding us of what Hogg called him, " the wee reekit deil 
 o' criticism." It was, I think, the same year, that one day, 
 standing at the old tree, I saw my father returning from the 
 post-office with a newspaper in his hand. As he passed, he 
 said, in almost a whisper, " Lord Byron's dead." I felt 
 stunned, as if by a blow on the skull : T could not say a 
 word, but ran up to Henry Thompson, whom I saw approach- 
 ing, and stammered out, " Lord Byron 's dead ;" and he next 
 was struck dumb with wonder and grief, and for three or 
 four minutes we stood silent and awestruck, in thoughts too 
 deep for tears. I had only by that time read extracts and
 
 BIRTH AND EARLY YOUTH. 33 
 
 portions of Byron's poetry, but the impression made had been 
 very profound. 
 
 A year or two after, a remarkable event occurred in our 
 quiet little history. My father said to me one morning, as 
 he dropped a letter from his hand on the breakfast-table, 
 "Great news! Andrew Thomson, of St. George's, Edinburgh, 
 is coming, after all, to address us on the Apocrypha con- 
 troversy." At this I greatly rejoiced. I had read all that 
 controversy, especially Thomson's Second Statement, and 
 agreed thoroughly with the Edinburgh Society, which, my 
 readers must rememfeer, had objected to the London Bible 
 Society circulating the Apocrypha along with the Bible, and 
 ha<t^caiTied the mind of Scotland in general along with them. 
 I had^algo a strong impression of the powers of Thomson, and 
 an earnest desire to hear him. He was at the time afoinjr 
 around various districts of the covmtry, and -delivering ora- 
 tions on the subject — had been invited to our village repeat- 
 edly, and at last had comjjlied. My father and I were 
 waiting for him when he arrived in a gig from the south. 
 He was a strong-built, bluff-looking man, of the middle size, 
 with a bull-dog physiognomy, and thick curling hair. His 
 manner was frank, bold, open; his mirth sometimes immo- 
 derate ; his conversation singularly rich, powerful, diversified 
 with anecdote, and, when he was contradicted, full, like his 
 speeches, of vigorous argumentation, and clear, rapid state- 
 ment. He addressed a crowded audience in the eveuins in 
 a speech of three hours' length, distinguished by his usual 
 qualities of pithy statement, commanding logic, clear, strong 
 diction, masculine eloquence, and vivid sarcasm and wit. 
 The effect was overwhelming, and was considerably enhanced 
 by an incident which occurred. An old Baptist minister 
 named Johnstone, with more zeal than discretion, got up at 
 the close, and put in a veiy feeble reclamation in behalf 
 of the Loudon Society. Thomson rose next like a lion, 
 lifted up the speech of the old man as he might a puppy-dog, 
 and with majestic and scornful ease disposed of it and him 
 
 D
 
 34 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 in a few minutes, amidst shouts of laughter. The poor old 
 ci'eature actually wept, and said aloud, " If I had time and 
 tawlents, I think I could answer him yet." This, of course, 
 gave the climax to the merriment, which became altogether 
 ungovernable. At the end, Thomson went up good-naturedly 
 to the old man, entered into conversation, apologized for his 
 vehemence, soothed him, and sent him home quite pacified. 
 Next morning, he demanded a fishing-rod and a guide. My 
 father being occupied with some pastoral duty, I vvas but too 
 happy to offer my services to carry his basket and show him 
 the way up the valley to Loch Rennie. It is a romantic road. 
 Striking west from the village, it crosses first a flat, fertile 
 plain, surmounted by the black, bold Grampians ; it then 
 defiles into a narrower valley, filled with woods, overhung by 
 the mountains, and with the river Rennie stealing through 
 the groves, and in the shadow of the perpendicular crags. 
 Farther on, the valley again widens, the woods disappear, the 
 river is seen running through a wide, open moorland, with a 
 few patches of corn diversifying the heath and rocks ; and on 
 both sides stand up excessively rugged hills — one mountain, 
 Ben-Darg, lifting up on the south razor-like ridges, and a 
 keen, sharp summit, to the height of 2,500 feet above the 
 level of the sea. Here we crossed the Rennie at a small 
 bridge, and then Thomson adjusted his fishing apparatus, 
 and began his sport. All the way up, he was in a glad, 
 genial, condescending, and communicative mood, treating 
 mc, although only a lad of thirteen, like a companion and 
 friend, and speaking often in broad Scotch. I'plied him with 
 questions about the men of my dreams; and his answers 
 were sometimes racy. He described Wilson as an " intellec- 
 tual Cateran, a poetical drover, who, had he lived forty years 
 before, would assuredly have been hanged for cattle-lifting ;" 
 but owned, at the same tim.e, that he was one of the most 
 gifted men alive. " Coleridge," he said, " had never yet been 
 wakened ; could he possibly be so, none of the Seven Sleepers 
 could tell the world so much." Wordsworth, too, was " a
 
 BIRTH AND EARLY YOUTH. 35 
 
 di-owsy but deep-running river — a kind of Dutch demi 
 god." Chalmers was " the most ordinary man in the world, 
 a homely Fife farmer, till some idea or other made him 
 stark mad, and then he became absolutely inspired." Scott, 
 too, was "just a Boi'der horse-dealer, till you either put 
 punch in his head, or a pen in his hand, or an old ballad into 
 his mouth." Dr. Gordon was "one of the lower Alps — no 
 fiery hues of fancy about him, and a great deal of frost, but 
 clear and strong." His descriptions of the conceited Evan- 
 gelicals of the South, who went about " always in fancy, 
 leaning on the arm &f Lord Bexley, and had turned the 
 Bible Society rooms into a big toy-shop for loitering ladies 
 an(J,^andies;" and of the Moderates in the North, " living on 
 the- reputation of having got a bow in youth from Principal 
 Robertson, and waddling in his old boots," were exceedingly 
 sarcastic. Brougham, he said, was a wild, I'ough bear, with 
 a teiTible power of passion and sarcasm in him, but as evasive 
 in argument as an eel. He often had ai'gued with him on 
 Christianity, but never could get him to confront him fairly; 
 he was always running away at a tangent. As to study, he 
 seemed to have done so ere he was born; but a good deal of 
 his knowledge, like the wrong cloak picked up in a lobby, 
 hung " very loose about him." Byron was a kind of Centaur, 
 half man, half beast ; or like Milton's lion, with his head iu 
 the sunshine and his lower parts in the centre of the earth. 
 Burns was the brightest man he ever met. When a young 
 man, he said to me, he had come from Sanquhar, where he 
 was born, to Ellisland, to have a night with the poet. He 
 found him, in a fine autumn afternoon, sitting over his black 
 bowl, before the door o^ his house, surrounded by some 
 farmers and gangers, who seemed neaiiy dead, partly with 
 drink, and parti}' with laughter at Burns* jests. He himself, 
 however, was quite sober; and, after dismissing his guests 
 and having tea, took Thomson out to the red scaur above the 
 Nith, where was his solitary and favourite walk. The corn 
 was ripe; the river was full; the dying sun was glinting his 
 
 d2
 
 36 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 last and best through the trees; it was " a golden moment for 
 a poetic heart," and Burns got into his glory. He spoke of 
 nature, and of his country, of love, of politics, and of poetry, 
 till the large tears dropped from his eyes, and were " mixed," 
 said Dr. T., "on the ground with my own." As the shades 
 lengthened, and the sun went down, and the evening-star 
 appeared above CrifFel, his tone became more deep and 
 solemn. He talked of himself; deplored his errors; and 
 hinted that pride and disappointment had had a large share 
 in producing them, and that he regretted that after his first 
 success he had not gone abroad. As he spoke of the aris- 
 tocracy, their usage of him and of his country, he stamped 
 fiercely on the ground, and the expression of his " ardent 
 eyes" became almost terrific and vinearthly, as they shone 
 amid the tender gloom of the autumnal twilight. He cried, 
 " There will be a day of reckoning yet, as sure as yon star is 
 shining over CrifFel. Ten Glencairns would save this Sodom ; 
 and there has only been one, and he's dead." He alluded 
 to his own life as hanging by a thread. He said he was tor- 
 mented by headaches and palpitations of the heart, which his 
 occasional use of spirits only increased. But, he added, " I 
 have had my day, and Scotland will remember me as long as 
 she is Scotland still." He then repeated, in deep, monotonous, 
 and mournful accents, the lines " To Mary in Heaven," which 
 be had composed not long before. On returning to the house, 
 there was a new set of hero-and-toddy-worshippers arrived ; 
 the black bowl was again produced, and Burns' mood was 
 changed accordingly. He sang; he extemporized verses; he 
 cracked jests thick as minute-guns; he insisted on replenish- 
 ing the bowl again and again ; he .threw out daring political 
 and religious remarks ; and altogether, like Cleopatra and her 
 pearl, wasted intellect, wit, and genius, which might have 
 served for years, in one night of lurid brilliance. Thomson 
 left the next morning, and, except for a few minutes in the 
 street of Dumfries, a year or two afterwards, saw the unhappy 
 bard no more.
 
 BIRTH AND EARLY YOUTH. 37 
 
 I asked him if he liad met Hall or Foster, and what he 
 thought of them. He said, " Hall would have made an admi- 
 rable Antediluvian, sitting on a sea-shore, and spending a few 
 hundred years out of his nine in polishing pebbles and selecting 
 round and sparkling shells ; but he had no notion of wasting 
 precious time in our short-lived day in such work as polishing 
 sentences. But his conversation was very different; it was one 
 spur and sparkle — no repose and no tedium — good things 
 perpetually bickering out of his mouth, till the very smoke 
 of his eternal pipe seemed to coruscate." " Foster was a pro- 
 founder man, but shut up like a giant under Etna. His 
 usual conversation was careless, but he sometimes grunted 
 out- great things." Of Macrie, too, ho spoke highly as a 
 first-r^e judge in historical matters, and a capital advocate 
 of a cause too, but somewhat heavy, and spoiled by bemg the 
 facile princeps of a petty party. " He's the head o' the Auld- 
 licht,* indeed," he roared out in laughter; "but where, pray, 
 is the middle or the foot 1 " From such talk he turned with vast 
 gusto to the sport of angling. I thought I noticed many of 
 his peculiarities in his mode of fishing — his eagerness sparkling 
 in his eye, when fixed upon the waters, his manly sternness in 
 the firm grasp he took of the fishing-rod, and his impatience 
 in hastily shifting his ground when the fish would not take. He 
 caught a few. I amused him by crying out (alluding to noted 
 Apocryphists) as one came forth, "There goes Braudram;'' 
 as another appeared, " Poor Hughes !" and to a third, " Woe's 
 me for the nol)le blood of Bexley !" He angled on till he 
 reached Loch Rennie, when he sat down, and we lunched by 
 the side of the placid lake, surrounded by its ring of heathy 
 mountains, on which the heather was just beginning to blush, 
 and by its stripe of green copse-wooda, spotted with one 
 lonely island, and overtopped by the gigantic Ben-Ample, 
 the summit of which barely loomed into view. I asked him 
 what he thought of our lake as compared to Loch Ketturin. 
 He said, " Loch Rcnnie has more peace in its aspect ; it is 
 * " Auldliclit," a small religious party in Scotland.
 
 38 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 humble in its beauty; it is not yet spoiled, like Loch 
 Ketturin oi- Loch Donachar, by the praises of visitors and 
 poets. I sometimes think it's a good thing that each of these 
 lakes is not nearer Edinburgh, else it would become altogether 
 intolerable in its self-consequence. Even as it is, the moun- 
 tains in the gorge of the Trosachs hold their heads higher 
 than other hills, and look positively prim.'''' 
 
 In the cool of the evening we returned home. I forget all 
 his conversation on the way except some things he said on 
 Edward Irving. I asked his opinion of him. He pointed to 
 the lofty Ben-Darg, round whose summit the mist was begin- 
 ning to gather. " Look there," he said, " there he is ! What 
 a tall, striking, bold, and towering fellow ! how proudly he bears 
 him to the vale and to the hills around ! but look, too, what 
 dark precipices there are on his sides ; aye, and see the mist 
 of night has come down first on his brow. Nay, as the day 
 has been hot, and as the mist has a somewhat suspicious and 
 sulphurous look, I should not wonder though he should be 
 caught in a thunderstorm ere morning — that's just Edward 
 Irving. I yield to no man in admiration of his genius and 
 good-heartedness ; but he is proud, rash — precipitous, shall 
 I call it ? — and in danger of gathering mist, which may one 
 day darken into a tempest. But he'll be a noble mountain 
 to the end." "He bears," I ventured to say, "just the 
 penalties of being nearer than otlier men to heaven, attracting 
 mist and sunshine, light and lightning, first." " True," he 
 replied; "but I must say that I prefer, and would wish to be 
 one of, such men as Luther, who are always clear amid their 
 altitudes, humble, too, in their greatness, or as my friend 
 Chalmers, who sometimes gets into a fog, but who flutters 
 and flutters and works away with yon two tremendous arms 
 of his till he dispels it, and comes out uninjured. Irving 
 will get deeper and deeper from the sheer want of common 
 sense, and will, perhaps, die ere he has found his work, or 
 properly begun to live. Yet I love him as a brother." 
 
 Arrived at my father's house, he continued the same easy
 
 BIRTH AND EARLY YOUTH. 39 
 
 yet interesting talk at the supper-table. The next day after 
 breakfast he took his departure ; I saw him only once after- 
 wards, or rather heard him, iu St. Enoch's Church, Glasgow, 
 in the dim twilight of an April Sabbath evening. It was the 
 evening of the Sacrament. I do not remember the subject 
 of the discourse, but shall never forget my imprebsion of the 
 gi'and voice pealing through the crowded chapel, the practical 
 tendency of the matter, and the solemn urgency of the close. 
 It was, I think, about a twelvemonth after, that at the door 
 of his own house, this strong man "bowed down; he bowed 
 down, he fell," and in * moment expired, like an oak which, 
 although it has resisted a thousand storms, has had the ground 
 secaetly undermined below it, and sinks helplessly into the 
 gulf, .oj- like a ship which has w-eathered many a blast, but 
 which goes down when shorn by the sharp edge of the 
 assassin-rock below, so, his constitution sapped, and perhaps 
 his heai't broken, the Luther of Scotland went down. His 
 wish had been fulfilled. No mist had ever gathered on his 
 clear and manly brow, no decay or decrepitude had visited 
 his mind ; his eye was not waxed dim, nor was his natural 
 force abated : in the full pride of his powers, and in the 
 zenith of his fame, he was gathered to his fathers. 
 
 I am naturally superstitious; and my tendencies in that 
 direction have been fostered by early readings, by the prox- 
 imity of the Highlands, and by the scenery of my birth- 
 place. Mountains I have always thought, apart from the 
 traditions which have gathered around them, tend to cast a 
 gloom upon the spirit. They seem not of the earth, earthy; 
 their changes of aspect are so numerous and so sudden, and 
 their inhabitants so few and so grave ! Solemn, if also 
 silly sheep, sepulchral-looking ravens, Alpine hares, with 
 their unnatural whiteness, shy ptarmigans, shyer blackcocks, 
 and shepherds stiff and silent often as the rocks around them — 
 these are the principal inhabitants of our Scottish mountains; 
 for smugglers, and the cheerful contraband smoke of their 
 stills, no longer diversify the life of the solitary land.scape.
 
 40 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 All this, coupled with the sterner featiu^es of the scenery, the 
 lonely cairn on the summit, the hei-bless granite around, the 
 few cranberry-bushes struggling with the wintry air a little 
 below, the small inky pools farther down, the homeless 
 streams, moaning amid their alders and birches at the foot, 
 tend to produce emotions compounded in equal parts of 
 sadness and of sublimity, of a feeling of the lonely and a 
 feeling of the lofty. Hence the peculiarly gloomy character 
 of the Highland temperament, the Highland music, and the 
 Highland poetry. Hence ghosts glide in naturally, as it 
 were, both into their landscapes, their songs, and their stories. 
 Even as they seem to exhale out of the spray of the waterfall, 
 or to be let down gently from the rainbow when it drops on 
 the hill, or to rise irresistibly upon the vacaixt mountain-side, 
 or under the thick shadows of the forest-trees, so they swarm 
 natui-ally and in vast numbers upon the eye and imagination 
 of the Highland seer or bard. I cannot say that I ever saw 
 one, but I often trembled at the possibility, and often inclined 
 my ear most diligently to the tales told of them by the 
 gossips of the country-side. Many of these were duplicates 
 of what I have since found common in all country districts. 
 
 There was a man in Glen Goran, who had been poor but 
 wicked, till one day, coming home from the peat-moss, he en- 
 countered an aged carle, who entered into conversation with 
 him, and the rest followed — he was, on the usual terms, 
 shown a gold heap in a black bog in the moss ; he became 
 suddenly rich, bought lands and houses, reared sons and 
 daughters, became apparently pious even, and gave large sums 
 to some of the Ghurch schemes of the day; but at last, while 
 sitting one night before his fire, heai'd a knock at the door, 
 and going out, found the aged carle grinning and growling as 
 he cried, "Ye have had the peats; come away to the fire." 
 Of course, too, after his disappearance, his coffers were found 
 full of peat-moss. Then there was a story of a wild laird, 
 "who had been absent, it was supposed, on purposes of seduc- 
 tion, among the glens of another strath. He met a stranger
 
 BIRTH AND EARLY YOUTH. 41 
 
 while crossing a high moorland, went into an alehouse with 
 hina to drink, came home next day without his shadow, found 
 out the monstrous fact, and died of a brain-fever in a few 
 days, raving, " I have lost my shadow and my soul." His 
 very coffin, they said, cast no shadow as it was carried to the 
 grave. There was a stoiy, too, of the disappearance of a 
 little lovely girl, who lived near the foot of Ben-Ample. She 
 had gone out to gather wild flowers, nuts, and berries in the 
 woods near its base. She had been last seen lying down to 
 rest in a deep hollow, where a beautiful well was sparkling 
 like an eye in the solitude. She was heard of no more for a 
 year or two, when she came in one fine spring morning, 
 cai'ryiug what seemed a bunch of the earliest flowers of the 
 seasoii in her hands. She was questioned as to where she had 
 been, but returned no answer, save by a smile of ineffable 
 gentleness, and by pointing to her bunch of flowers; on 
 looking more narrowly at which, they found that they were 
 not of earth ! There were roses without thorns, violets bluer 
 than the very heavens, lilies large and whiter than sunny 
 clouds, and many flowers the veiy names and the very 
 colours of which were unknown. They found her speech 
 gone, but her gestures and looks were more beautiful than 
 words, and during her sleep she muttered to herself sweet liquid 
 sounds, quite strange, which seemed compounded of the voice 
 of silver streams and the softest notes of the thrush. She 
 in the course of years recovered her speech, but could then 
 only give a confused, dreamy account of a beautiful lady, a 
 rapid ascent, a white gate, golden fountains, and a great mul- 
 titude of men and women, who had all, she said, become 
 birds, and were singing in a mighty tree, high as heaven. 
 She lived for a good many years after, and was called 
 " Heaven's Flower-girl ;" was repeatedly asked in marriage, 
 for she was very good and beautiful, but steadfastly refused ; 
 and as she^ died was heard, in the brief delirium before 
 death, murmuring the old musical words of the strange lan- 
 guage which she liad long disused, even in her dreams. I
 
 42 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 afterwards recognised portions of this wild ti-aditiouary tale 
 in " Kilmany," that exquisite poem of Hogg's. 
 
 Every Scottish neighbourhood had then its haunted house ; 
 and ours with the rest. This was the house of a proprietor 
 who left the neighbourhood always in winter to reside iu 
 Edinburgh, and returned to it in summer. It was left in the- 
 care of servants, who iiltimately, however, wei'e compelled by 
 terror to leave it. It was situated half-way up a little 
 hill, so steep that it seemed rather to hang than to stand. 
 An enormous craggy mountain, embosoming a dark lonely 
 lake, shot up behind. Woods clustered thick around ; and a 
 stream tumbled its waters past it through a black gully down 
 upon the plain. It was altogether a fit place for diablerie; 
 and there accordingly, if the most of the neighbourhood 
 could be believed, infernal work one winter was going for- 
 ward. Voices were heard at midnight conveying terrific 
 .tidings to the inmates. Doors were slapped violently, sudden 
 knocks were heard at the windows and on the tables ; the 
 candles were extinguished in an instant; stools at the fireside 
 were sent spinning and dancing through the room ; and heavy 
 M'eights were heard as if dragged along the floors of unin- 
 habited rooms. One night, a voice came to a shepherd, 
 charging him to go up to the little loch at a certain hour in 
 the day, to hold a conference with the Being who spoke. In 
 spite of remonstrance, he went, and never returned — at least 
 to that house — although some said that the story of the 
 voice was all a feint, to account for his departure; that he 
 had robbed the house, and had been seen days after iu a 
 distant county. The alarm at his disappearance, however, 
 led to the departure of all the servants. And yet still the 
 house continued haunted. Men passing by, heai'd noises and' 
 saw lights; and one bolder than others, attracted by a light 
 in the front window, crept up the bank, and venturing to 
 look, beheld, he said, a party playing cards.* A great 
 " greeshy," i. e. lamp of oil, stood in the midst, and gave a 
 light as faded and forlorn as if it had been fed by an old
 
 BIRTH AND EARLY YOUTH. 43 
 
 corpse. The party had all Highland dresses — had -whisky 
 before them — and their language and oaths, which were thick, 
 fast, and loud, were in Gaelic. Their faces were pale; and 
 their gestures, even while they held the cards or drank, 
 were as those of beings in anxiety and fear. As the spectator 
 gazed, a loud whistle, which seemed to come down the 
 chimney, was heard, and along with it a hoarse voice : " Close 
 the play, and let's to work, my lads ;" at which they all laid 
 aside their cards, groaned fearfully, and the "greeshy" went out 
 in the light of morning, which was now shooting in through 
 the other window. The spectator felt so horrified at the look 
 the card-players gave when the whistle sounded, that he reeled 
 back and fell into a swoon : and when he awoke, found broad 
 npott- resting on the valley. He always maintained that he 
 had seen a company of old Highland smugglers damned ; 
 but the sceptics of the neighbourhood said that he had been 
 tipsy, as was not unusual with him, and had dreamed the 
 whole. They also insisted that the voices, knocks, &c., were 
 a contrivance of the shepherd and of a maid with whom he 
 had an intrigue, and who was his accomplice in robbing the 
 house. 
 
 The family on their return, after making some perfunctory 
 inquiry into the strange circumstances, shut up the house, 
 and removed to another quarter of Scotland. Tt was ulti- 
 mately allowed to fall into decay, and still hangs, like an oid 
 nest, among its woods ; shunned even yet, at even-tide, by 
 all women, boys, and many men. 
 
 I remember being under a kind of nympholepsy for a few 
 months, after reading a story in a newspaper entitled 
 " A Vision of Death." This was a strange wild tale, describing 
 Death as an actual being, a man unutterably old, with the grin 
 of centuries of ti'iumph carved on his lips, who appears to 
 his victims before he destroys them. The father of a High- 
 land family is haunted by him. He sees him before the death 
 of each of his children, — at one time looking at him over 
 a churchvard evening wall — at another sitting on the moonlit 
 
 I/O O
 
 44 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 grave of one of his deceased children — at a third, plucking 
 his blankets, and showing himself beside his bed, till at last 
 he himself dies, raving out, " I have seen Death." Words 
 are wanting to describe the effect of this story on my imagi- 
 nation. For many montlis it literally possessed me. I could 
 scarcely be alone at night-time; I lay with the bed-clothes 
 piled over my face, lest, looking out, I should see the fearful 
 stranger. When I had occasion to pass our churchyard, I did 
 so with averted face and hasty steps, lest the sneering face of 
 the old demon should appear above it. And more than once, 
 I rushed down in broad day from my father's study, where I 
 was sitting alone, to the parlour where the family were, in 
 sheer terror at the chance of seeing Death. I never durst 
 reveal my fear, which of course drove it inwards, and made 
 it worse. A fine summer, however, siicceeded, and swept this 
 visionary terror away. Yet I would still shrink from re- 
 reading the story — a story written by whom I never knew — 
 but apparently suggested by Chaucer's well-known tale of the 
 three men who "went out in search of Death to kill him." 
 They meet an old man with wrinkled face, who sends them on 
 errands which end in the death of all three. They hear no 
 more of him, but it is Death whom they have encountered. 
 
 A year or two after this, I was sitting one day alone in the 
 same study, in the library. At the opposite end of the room 
 there was a bed, in which — it being about noonday, and my 
 father and mother, who usually slept there, being both out — 
 I knew there was no one lying. Suddenly I heard from that led 
 a deep sigh, the sigh of a human being in gi-eat sorrow or 
 anguish. I was startled, looked at and below the bed — there 
 was nobody there, and I instantly felt the shiver of super- 
 natural fear. In a month or so after, the omen seemed 
 explained, when my venerable father on that very bed 
 gi-oaned his last. It was two years subsequently, but may be 
 introduced here, as I am on the subject of superstitions, 
 that I awoke in my own little bed, in a small chamber, the 
 only light of which came from a skylight, about five in a
 
 BIRTH AND EAELY YOUTH. 45 
 
 bright June morning. I had been dreaming about seeing a 
 little fair-haired girl, name unknown, who appeared to me 
 kneeling in the street of the village. When I awoke, there 
 she was still, as palpable as the chair beside her. I felt asto- 
 nished, but not alarmed. I rubbed my eyes, — the vision dis- 
 appeared ; I restored them, by again rubbing, to their former 
 position, and there she was again, but now a little more vague 
 and shadowy. I rubbed them again, and it entirely vanished. 
 I never saw anything more distinct and vivid. I should now, 
 after the lapse of twenty-seven years, know tlie features 
 again. I told the-, story shortly afterwards to a clever 
 preacher who was living with us; he could give no explana- 
 tion. I have since, in such books as Scott's Demonology 
 aod-Mp. Crowe's Nightside of Nature, met with stories of a 
 similar kind. 
 
 My father died suddenly the next autumn. It hud been 
 a splendid season; and although not very robust, he had 
 enjoyed himself exceedingly, and seemed sometimes to bask 
 in the sunny light, as if he were tempering himself for a 
 brighter atmosphere than earth's. I see him yet, sitting 
 under a tree, when the sun was westering in the after- 
 noon, or when a dim haze was covering the sky, telling 
 me that this was the kind of weather common in Peru. 
 He was preaching with even more than his usual power 
 and vivacity, and complaining of little except an excess 
 of bile, which was attributed to the hot season. When 
 autumn arrived, he seemed to enter on an Indian summer, 
 and his conversation mellowed with the season. I shall 
 never forget seeing him, along with my mother, setting out 
 on his last excursion. I had gone over to call on an acquaint- 
 ance, who had lent me a favoui'ite volume — it was, I think, 
 a volume of Langhorne's Plutarch — which I was holding as a 
 prize, and occasionally stopping to read. Picturning, I met 
 my parents, setting out on the last walk they were ever to 
 have together in this world. My father asked me, " What 
 book is thaf?" I told him; and he darted at me a look of
 
 46 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 eager complacency, which has since often been a key to 
 unlock the fountain of my tearful memories, and sometimes 
 a " Perge" to animate aud cheer me on my way. It seemed 
 to say, " Be, if you can, a hero, like those whose lives you 
 are about to read." He and my mother were going on a 
 visit, some miles off in the country. They returned at night, 
 and were scarcely home, till my kind, good father was seized 
 with his last illness. It was of an inflammatory nature. He 
 
 had been engaged to preach in the village of , but had 
 
 other business fixed, ere earth was, for that Sabbath-day, and 
 kept the eternal engagement. Amidst a weeping fjxmily, an 
 anxious, inquiring flock, and the still sunshine of an autumnal 
 Sabbath-day, he drew his last breath. My very heart bleeds, 
 at the date of twenty-nine years, when I see again that 
 chamber as it was then : the spirit of life fading on that 
 open, manly countenance and earnest eye (fixed to the last 
 on her he loved so tenderly) ; the spirit of death ci'eeping up 
 his strong frame, and breathing befoi-e it a ghastlier yellow 
 than that of the leaves withering without, upon his cheek and 
 brow; my mother fixed in speechless, tearless, astonished 
 sorrow beside the bed ; the rest of us dissolved in gi'ief ; the 
 desk on which he had so often inscribed his ardent simplici- 
 ties, standing near; the library, where he had melted down 
 hours to moments in study and research, behind in the 
 shadow; and the grey sunlight, trembling like a finger as it 
 touched every object in the chamber of death. I recal what 
 must have been then seen ; but for the time, I was conscious 
 of nothing but the centre of the room, — the mortified body 
 and the departing spirit of a father. 
 
 Three days after, he was carried to his last resting-place. 
 The day was clear, quiet, and somewhat cold. There was a 
 certain sternness in the air, as if it refused to sympathise 
 with the sorrows of frail mortality. Never had I seen the 
 mountains looking more proud and defiant, and never did the 
 Renuie seem to run with a calmer and more unmoved current. 
 One whose own heart was sad, felt almost angry at Nature for
 
 BIRTH AND EARLY YOUTH. 47 
 
 not being more in harmony with his feelings, and wished 
 for a lowering sky, a wailing wind, or even a savage storm. 
 It was a large funeral. Some of the gentry in the neighbour- 
 hood were there to testify respect to one whom the whole 
 country-side esteemed. The • elders of the church were of 
 course there, and some of the neighbouring ministers, and the 
 village en masse. Many a grey-plaided shepherd had come 
 down from his hills to follow to the tomb one who had 
 taught his family and counselled himself. But perhaps the 
 most affecting figui'e was that of an aged man, who had been 
 once a friend of his niinister, but had, through some untoward 
 circumstances, become estranged, nay, a keen opponent. He, 
 tot>, had joined the crowd of mourners, and there were tears 
 in h.i| eyes as he saw the dust lowered into the grave. When 
 the funeral was over, he came up to the chief mourner, one 
 of my elder brothers, wrung his hand warmly, uttered a 
 word or two in a choking voice, and hurried away. He had 
 buried that day the enmity of many years. His own winding- 
 sheet was then high up on his breast, and not long after he 
 was laid near his ancient minister. 
 
 My own feelings I can hardly venture to describe. At 
 times the whole scene had a dream-like unreality, and again 
 it burst on my consciousness like a storm of gi-ief. And here, 
 then, was my father, to whom I felt more as a companion and 
 friend than in any cold, distant relationship of conventional 
 respect or fear — my kind, playful, indulgent father — torn from 
 ray side for ever, and consigned to the companionship of the 
 clods of the valley and of the nameless worms of the grave. 
 I felt a sensation of unutterable dreariness and desolation. 
 I felt, too, " I am a child no more ; I have lost in one day 
 my father and my childhood. I must now make ready to 
 leave these pastoral glens, where I have sheltered long, and 
 cowered in the shadow of obscurity, and prepare to front, 
 battle with, and, if possible, gain a victory over, that strange, 
 hollow thing, that big bugbear, the world." 
 
 Before repairing to College, where I had been destined to
 
 48 THE HISTOEY OF A MAN. 
 
 go ere my father's death, I spent some pensive yet pleasing 
 days in the coimtry. I enjoyed a melancholy but profound 
 pleasure in listening to some remarkable funeral discourses, 
 preached on my father's memory, especially to those of a Mr. 
 Elphinstone, a man of genius, whose name will be found in 
 an after-part of these Memoirs. I looked at all my favourite 
 scenes, lander the light of the fading autumn, blended with 
 that of the "joy of grief," and found them more beautiful 
 than ever. Everything — the river, swollen, red, and with 
 redder leaves swimming on its current — the woods, clad like 
 " Joseph's coat in their many colours" — the leaves, rustling 
 along the path, or falling to their own sad music — the 
 stubble-fields, silently watching the silent weaving of the 
 gossamer-webs above them — the mountains, stripped of the 
 rich green of summer, and wearing thin, sere grass and russet 
 fern upon their granite ribs — the sloe, bramble, and haw- 
 thorn bushes bearing their belated fruit while all around was 
 barren — and the weak -but beautiful sun shivering on the 
 verge of the southern sky, were all suffused with a tenderer 
 sadness, a softer, dimmer, holier day, from my recent loss; 
 and when night fell, I saw the great stars of the Plough 
 trembling, like mighty tears, such " tears as angels weep," 
 over the northern mountains. I bade adieu to my early 
 friends; had one parting meeting with Fergus MacAlpin at 
 the river-side ; one strange talk with " Lucifer ;" one subdued 
 " Gaudeamus " even with Henry Thomson and Michael 
 Green; and then, on a November morning, after kissing 
 through tears my mother's lips. I crossed the wild moorlands 
 to the south of Strath-Rennie, and proceeded on my way to 
 Glasgow College. My father had been himself educated 
 there, and preferred it to the nearer college of Aberdeen; 
 and thither, therefore, partly too because I had a maternal 
 uncle and some other friends in that city, I wended my 
 solitary way.
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 49 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 
 
 The day I left the village -was one of those quiet, sober, 
 but bright days, which seem, not to speak it profanely, 
 shufiled out of Octolxer into the darker month. The scene 
 of my walk was a wilderness of mosses and moors, through 
 which a clear white road passed, like an innocent hfe through 
 the confusions, sins, and miseries of a wicked world. But 
 on this day the solitaiy place itself seemed quietly glad in 
 the last smile of the season. The heather had lost its purple 
 bloom, but the grass was green ; the stones shone in the sun- 
 shine ; the dun hill-sides were illuminated ; and the streams 
 bickered cheerfully by. I had only to turn my head, too, to 
 see the giant peaks of the hill-country I had left behind, 
 lifting themselves up through the clear sky, some of them 
 already tinged with the slightest touch of the great snow- 
 brush of winter. I had much in the past and in the future 
 which might well have made me melancholy; but what can 
 depress the bubbling blood of fourteen? I walked on accord- 
 ingly with lively steps, occasionally glancing at a little copy 
 of Horace I had \fith me, sometimes fixing my eyes on the 
 landscape, so wildly beautiful as it perforce appeared in that 
 'serene and belated autumn light, and sometimes venting my 
 feelings aloud, secure here of no audience except the sheep, 
 which went laa-ing to and fro along the sides of the braes. 
 At a particular point, where the road curves round a corner, 
 and brings you to a little nook, a fine clear stream, after 
 glimmering through a grassy margin, sinks below a small 
 bridge, to find its way to a larger watercourse in the hollow 
 of the glen; there I sat do^vll and ate my mid-day meal,
 
 50 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 which consisted of bread and cheese, and a draught of the 
 cold water rushing by. This was a spot where I had often 
 so rested when I passed through this desolate tract in summer 
 days, when the water, not quite so cold, was far more grateful, 
 as I dipped my bread in it j and when, as I sat luxuriously on 
 the ledge of the little bridge, or on the greensward beside it, 
 I had the summer bee humming around me, the summer 
 wind swooning on my temples, and the butterfly skimming 
 past through the air. Now all was silent save the trickling 
 of the little stream, and the whole life of the wilderness 
 seemed slumbering in a sleepy yet cold sun. Yet I spent 
 there one happy hour ; and although I slept not as I had done 
 in the same place in the siimmer at other times, I did not 
 omit to dream; and my dream, whatever it was, refreshed me 
 for prosecuting my farther walk. I reached Dee-side that 
 evening, after a walk of forty miles, and slept at Banchory. 
 
 The next day I pursued my way across the wilder, but far 
 more interesting mountain tract stretching from the Dee to 
 the Esk. It is a district to the last degree uneven, like 
 the tossings of an ocean arrested and stiffened — steep hills 
 hanging over narrow hollows, and rivers winding through 
 difficult passes to gain the lower country, and often seeming 
 to jar with the rocks and stern convolutions which oppose 
 their progress to the eastern main. This day I lingered 
 rather more than the last, and dined at a farm-house situ- 
 ated at the foot of the gigantic Cloch-na-ben — a hill noted 
 for a vast stone which stands like a wart on its brow, and 
 which sends down a stream into a wooded glen, dividing two 
 very steep heights from each other. This glen, in summer, 
 is a winding fringe of exquisite beauty, amidst the steep, 
 frowning mountains. The stream passes by a shooting-lodge, 
 and then runs under a solitary and picturesque farm-house, 
 called Bridge of Dye, which crowns the northern of the two 
 heights. The scene, even in winter, had a stem and sullen 
 beauty, and was gilded by a bright day. About sunset, I 
 found myself on the top of the Cairn-a-Mount — the summit of
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 51 
 
 a celebrated pass leading down from the Highlands to the 
 Lowlands of Kincardineshire, or the Mearns. The road, after 
 toiling up an excessively steep hill, appears to pause on the 
 top ; and the traveller, pausing with it, observes on his right 
 hand a caii-n, piled by the ten thousand hands of centuries. 
 Arrived at this confluence of tributary stones, I found a most 
 varied and superb prospect waiting for me. Dim in the 
 shadows of the evening stretched away the Howe of the 
 Mearns, from Stonehaven on the east to Forfar on the west, 
 with the Gai*vock Hills bounding the plain southward, and 
 the lights of Monti-iMe shining on the verge of ocean, through 
 the gathering gloom. Around and behind were moorlands, 
 gticmo anted by Cloch-na-Ben, with the last kiss of the sun 
 jHStimelting away from his summit; and piled up in the 
 remotest distance, against the glowing north-west, were the 
 black masses of Loch-na-Gar, at the sight of which — it was 
 the first sight — all the enthusiasm of my nature boiled up, 
 and I could no longer be silent, but expressed my feelings in 
 cries of rapture ; nor could I tear myself from the spot till 
 the last trace of day had died from the heavens. Then, with a 
 sigh, like a poet coming down from some lofty ideal subject to 
 every-day life, I plunged hastily down the steep and rugged 
 hill, into the waste darkness of the night. Ere bed-time, 
 after passing on the way much beautiful scenery, with which 
 afterwards I became familiar — such as Fettercairn, the Burn, 
 and the Gannachy-bridge — I reached the sweet little village 
 of Edzell, lying near the river North Esk, and slept in the 
 inn there. 
 
 Nothing else of any moment occurred till I entered 
 Glasgow on the northern coach, and of all the nights of the 
 year, on the 5th of November, while the bells wex-e ringing a 
 merry peal, and the boys on the street were uttering the old 
 rhyme — 
 
 " The Gunpowder T'lot shall never be forgot, 
 While Ediuburgh or Glaagow 
 Can fire a single shot." 
 e2
 
 52 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 I found myself in a kind friend's house ; the first one in which 
 I had ever yet seen, incredible as it may seem now, a 
 complete co])y of Shakspere, in large octavo, Rowe's edition. 
 This was quite a treasure to me. On Saturday mornings, 
 the only mornings the students were not compelled to rise at 
 seven and repair to their classes, I was wont, awakening at 
 the usual hour, to dart out of a sofa-bed where I lay, and 
 seizing on Shakspere, keep it pressed to my bosom till the 
 first peep of day, while I lay in luxurious enjoyment, nestling 
 among the warm blankets, and reading the immortal page. 
 
 And now began my College career in the famous University 
 of Glasgow. As was the custom of students then generally, 
 I took only two classes for the session, — the Latin and the 
 Greek. The Professor of Latin was old Josiah Walker, the 
 author of a poem entitled " The Defence of Order," which had 
 been cut up by Lord Brougham in the Edinburgh Review, 
 Walker was once a tutor in the Puke of Atholl's family, 
 where he had met Burns. He had visited the poet at 
 Dumfries, and subsequently had written his Life. He was a 
 man rather of accomplishments than genius; full, however, 
 of kind afiections, and much beloved by many of his students. 
 He had been, after leaving the Duke's family, a Custom-ofl&cer 
 in Perth, and, it was said, owed his advancement to the Latin 
 chair as much to political influence as to merit. He made, 
 however, a very respectable teacher, and his occasional lectures 
 on Roman Literature displayed very considerable acuteness 
 and taste. He was a thin, tall man, with a large brow, but 
 rather common-place countenance. The waggish and wicked 
 among his class called him generally "the Ganger," and showed 
 him little respect. Sometimes the " Defence of Order," and 
 sometimes Brougham's review of it, was brought by a student 
 to the class-room, and laid on the bench instead of the usual 
 text-book ; and when the Professor angrily inquired what book 
 it was, the answer produced a general laugh. I, however, 
 found Walker very kind, and ere the session closed loved 
 him tenderly, although 1 was quite unable to read his poem
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 53 
 
 through. I had in this class a great disadvantage, from 
 having been brought up at a country school, where no atten- 
 tion had been paid to prosody, or to the minutice of Grammar, 
 and made, consequently, only a moderate figure, although I 
 could read Latin easily, and had read much of it. In Greek 
 I had all to learn, and derived a great deal of benefit from 
 Sandford's instructions. 
 
 This brilliant man deserves a notice of some little length. 
 Sir Daniel Keyte Sandford was the sou of Bishop Sandford 
 of Edinburgh. After studying at Oxford, where he was con- 
 temporary with thfe'Earl of Derby, and occasionally carried 
 away from him the palm of scholarship, he was appointed, 
 at-^ihe age of twenty-one, Professor of Greek in Glasgow 
 CoTfege, and threw himself into the duties of the chair with 
 all the ardour of his ambitious and energetic nature. He had 
 succeeded Professor Young, — a man distinguished, according 
 to the testimony of his students, and some of them became 
 more eminent than himself, for the energy of his enthusiasm, 
 and the splendour of his eloquence. Lockhart, in his " Peter's 
 Letters," describes him as in one moment discussing, with all 
 the coolness of an acute and wary philologist, some point or 
 particle of the Grecian tongue, such as apa, and, in the next, 
 hurried away by the recollection of a passage of poetry in 
 which that particle occurred, into fine excursions of criticism, 
 illustration, fancy, and eloquence. Young was a genuine 
 enthusiast; he admired to passion all excellence, and used to 
 weep like a child, now under Kean's acting, and now under 
 Chalmers' oratory. As a teacher, however, he was partial ; 
 indeed, he was only professor to a small and superior section 
 of his class, leaving the rest to gaze in blank astonishment, 
 souring often into disgust with the entire study. He has 
 left nothing behind him, except a criticism on Gray's " Elegy," 
 in the manner of Johnson, which I never read. 
 
 Sandford, although young, brilliant, and flattered, possessed 
 at first a considerable portion of common sense, and showed 
 it by having the resolution to form, and the firmness to con-
 
 54 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 tinue, an entirely different system from his predecessor. He 
 set himself to teach all his students, and to drill some of them 
 like a village schoolmaster. With the utmost patience and 
 perseverance, he led them through the driest details of the 
 Greek Grammar. He was rather strict in his discipline, and 
 exactive in his requirements. I have seen him tower up into 
 terrible passions, sometimes for no reason or a very slight 
 one ; and remember him once threatening to " cut the soul 
 out of the body" of some student who had offended him. He 
 had a pale face, not unlike Byron's, an eye rather heavy than 
 bright ; but, when angry, his countenance gleamed and glared 
 like that of a Lucifer. Many called him a "sublime cox- 
 comb;" and Jamy Miller, the Professor of Mathematics, 
 used to say that Glasgow College had come to a sad pass, 
 when it had got a gauger and a puppy for its professors 
 of Latin and Greek. Sandford had, however, admirable 
 points, and contrived, strict as he was, to awaken in his 
 students that fine spring of generous emulation which, once 
 stirred, slumbers no more. He showed, amidst all his cox- 
 combry, a genuine love of learning. This affected us ! Greek, 
 we saw, was his universe ; " and surely," said his detractors, 
 " it must be a beautiful universe which can create such a 
 tide of soul, even in a coxcomb;" while his admirers felt 
 themselves sucked, by his "glittering eye," within the mare 
 magnwn of that noble language in which Homer rhapsodized, 
 and Plato reasoned, and Demosthenes thundei'ed, and Paul 
 discoursed of " righteousness, temperance, and judgment to 
 come," till at one time a Felix, and at another an Athens, 
 trembled. 
 
 Sandford made many of his students versifiers, although 
 he could not make all of them poets. He insisted much upon 
 their writing Greek verse, maintaining that this practice 
 would secure, as no other method could, a knowledge of the 
 minute delicacies, the tiny forces, and the refined shades of 
 the language. His students, many of them, seconded their 
 professor's intentions well and worthily; and I have heard
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 55 
 
 some of them exclaiming, " The Iambics for ever ! " James 
 Halley, whose name is familiar to many of my readers as a 
 youth of immense scholarship and otherwise of great promise, 
 who died prematurely, (I remember him well — a thin, blear- 
 eyed, red-haired, frank, warm-hearted youth— what pleasant 
 talks I had with him sometimes, and what a terrible fight 
 with snowballs once in the College-green — hand to hand, and 
 foot to foot, for two long hours !) astonished his fellow- 
 students and his professor by handing in an entire Greek 
 tragedy, — a feat which had rarely been equalled since the days 
 of Buchanan, whcf^ dramas, however, are only in Latin; 
 and its language and versification had such merit, that, said 
 S^ford, " it would have made the large grey eyes of Porson 
 flas'&with rapture." To this species of literary divertisement 
 I never took kindly ; but while my fellow-students were making 
 their Hexameters and Iambics, as they often did, extempore, 
 in the class, I had a volume of " Old Mortality " or of " Tom 
 Jones " with me, and forgot all the hubbub of what I deemed 
 then the pedantic humbug around, while thrilling beside 
 Burley in the cave, or accompanying Jones and Partridge in 
 their memorable night-journey. 
 
 Saudford had fields in which he showed to greater advan- 
 tage than among his juvenile students. These were his senior 
 classes, particularly his private class ; and his meetings from 
 time to time with all the students in the Common Hall of 
 the College. Entering such scenes, he seemed to cry, — " Off, 
 off, ye lendiugs ; come, unbutton here." He ceased on the 
 instant to be a mere drill-sergeant to awkward boys, and 
 finisher to the labours of bungling schoolmasters. He quitted 
 the hedge-school for the Grove, and became no longer a 
 teacher instructing boys, but a young rapt scholar, speaking 
 to young, eager, and enthusiastic listeners. I remember, with 
 especial interest, his readings of Homer and the plays of 
 Sophocles. There was, unqiiestionably, a spice of affectation 
 in his manner ; but as he went on, his enthusiasm mastered 
 and sublimated it into genuine animation. His voice qui-
 
 5G THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 verecl with emotion ; his arms, as they held the book, seemed 
 to become winged with ardent excitement ; and a kind of 
 spiritual radiance — a cold glory, like the soul of snow — broke 
 forth from his pale face, which remained pale still. The tones 
 in which he pronounced certain Greek words, such as ttoXv- 
 (j>X6(7J3oio dctXaaarjc, or aley dpLirrevEiy, are still in my ears ; 
 and so is his deep yearning utterance of some of the wails of 
 Medea, Agamemnon, Antigone, and Prometheus. I did not 
 belong to any of these elder classes, but I often stole in to 
 enjoy an intellectual and imaginative treat. 
 
 The effect of his exertions and eloquence was a great revival 
 of Greek literature in Glasgow, and throughout Scotland, for 
 the impetus he gave was felt in other universities ; nay, was 
 reflected upon the schools and seminaries of the covmtry. 
 Even his most ordinary students carried home a certain taste 
 for learning to which they had before been strangers ; and 
 some of his favourite pupils, repairing to the English univer- 
 sities, gained high prizes and scholarships for themselves, and 
 a new crown for the university whence they had come. 
 
 I remember a little scene, (although dating considei'ably 
 later than my first session of College,) at the distribution of 
 the prizes in 182-, when Dr. Badham, (a Medical Professor, and 
 author of a respectable and recondite translation of Juvenal,) 
 in rising to speak, delivered a very eloquent oration, magnifying 
 his own class — physicians, namely — above that of scholars in 
 general, and describing Avith great power the adventurous 
 enterprise of some medical students, who had gone away to 
 Spain during the prevalence of pestilence, " crossing tracts 
 over which the vultures were hovering, to save the beauty of 
 Barcelona and the valour of Gibraltar." There was something 
 in the high- wrought rhetoric, and in the depreciation of clas- 
 sical studies expressed by the Medical Doctor, which roused 
 both Sandford's emulation and his ire ; and when his own turn 
 to distribute the premiums of his class came, he prefaced it 
 by a brilliant reply to Badham, praising classical studies, and 
 declaring that the learned Doctor had first borrowed from the
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 57 
 
 Classics the " bright weapon" which he had afterwards plunged 
 into their hearts. It was quite an academic tournament ; and 
 as such things were rarely witnessed by the students, it was 
 ■watched with proportionable interest, and all agreed that in 
 eloquence and keen retort it had seldom been surpassed. 
 
 Sandford's life in Glasgow was regular and laborious. He 
 not only taught and lectured, but wi'ote various papers and 
 books, including articles in the Edinhurgh Review, in Black- 
 wood, and the Foindar Encydopcedia, and some elementary 
 works,. such as an Edition of Jiersch's Grammar. I liked and 
 admired his style, tnthout approving of it. It was lively, 
 sparkling, rhetorical, often eloquent ; but often flippant, 
 sS«ichy, shallow ; and it rarely, if ever, possessed that concin- 
 mU(4t^th.2it chastened calm — which so thorough a Grecian 
 might have derived from the study of the severe models of 
 antiquity, where ragged edges and meretricious ornaments are 
 alike avoided, and the thimderbolts of their Jove are as 
 polished as the cestus of their Venus. As he said himself 
 once of Shell's speeches, " They were but froth, but they were 
 excessively brilliant and fiery froth." 
 
 Sandford was kind enough to me, although I had very little 
 intercourse with him, and never, I think, called on him 
 except to get my ticket or certificate, when I found him 
 standing at his desk, engaged in composition, which he quitted 
 for a little, with a look and air of the blandest courtesy. He 
 had a peculiarly graceful and springy walk, like that of a 
 high-born belle when entering into a drawing-room. 
 
 In the year 1832, a new dream of ambition crossed his 
 soul. The times had become troublous ; the political atmo- 
 sphere electric ; great prizes were on the wheel. In Parlia- 
 ment, the name of his ancient rival, " Stanley, was the cry ;" 
 and towards this, as a new arena of display, the finger of his 
 Evil Genius pointed our learned aspirant. He had occa- 
 sionally, for some time before, been putting forth the feelers 
 of future triumpliant effcjrts, by speeches on political subjects 
 in his own city. We remember one prodigious impression he
 
 58 THE HISTOET OF A MAN. 
 
 made by a speech on the Irish Education measure in 1832. 
 The speech itself, when pubhshed, was eloquent, but did not 
 account for the enthusiasm of its reception : that sprang 
 from the liberality of its sentiments, and the splendid eclat 
 of its delivery. I did not hear it, but met some people who 
 had, and whose habitual density of prose-feelings and habi- 
 tudes of thought it had disturbed into absolute enthusiasm. 
 Many of his admirers, as well as himself, concluded from this 
 and other exhibitions of a similar kind, that the orator had in 
 him the elements of a great parliamentary leader, and that 
 the chair of Greek might eventually be exchanged for the 
 woolsack or the top of the Treasury-bench. He stood, accord- 
 ingly, for Glasgow, in autumn 1832. I happened to be in town 
 at the time, and was moved by curiosity to follow him once 
 or twice to his canvassing meetings. I heard him address an 
 audience in the open air after nightfall, and once again in a 
 barn in the neiglibourhood of Glasgow. I was not singular in 
 suspecting both his motives and his capabilities. There were 
 in his manner an elaborate condescension, an occasional testi- 
 ness and pettishness of feeling, an ill-disguised contempt for 
 his constituents, curiously contrasted with the soft flatteries 
 which he supplied abundantly, which were but too prophetic 
 of the fate which awaited him. He wanted not only the 
 temper, but the readiness and resources, of a really popular 
 and powerful speaker. 
 
 He failed in this first attempt, but came in for Paisley 
 a year or two afterwards, having been meantime knighted by 
 the King. His failure was instantaneous and irrecoverable. 
 It had been predicted that the big Dan would swallow up the 
 little at a gulp, and O'Connell accordingly had taken up his 
 pencil to prepare to reply ; but, after hearing a few sentences, 
 threw it down with a contemptuous "Pshaw!" which rang 
 the knell to Sandford's hopes. Lord Althorpe, too, it is said, 
 while the speech was going on, sent a bit of paper roiand the 
 
 Treasury-bench, with the words — " Sir D. S. is a puppy." 
 
 The House, taking its cue from its leaders, laughed, talked.
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 59 
 
 couglied, did anything but listen, till. the close of his speech, 
 when, to crown the discomfiture, Stanley rose, and partly in 
 compassion, partly in contempt, threw over the crestfallen 
 knight the shield of his eulogiam. The great mistake of 
 Saudford — wonderful in a man who had mingled so much 
 with the upper ranks and the world generally — was that of 
 confounding a popular with a parliamentary audience. The 
 scholastic and laboured air of his oratoi-y, besides the deter- 
 mination to sliine, manifest in his every word and gesture — 
 the want of solid strength and manhood in his matter — the 
 vanity and irritability of his temperament — his awkward 
 position as half professor and half member — and his rapid 
 transition from the Liberal to the Conservative party — all 
 ceniisbuted to his failure. 
 
 He tried once or twice afterwards to rally against his ill- 
 success, but with such manifest bitterness, and such a display 
 of injured self-love, that he only succeeded in humbling him- 
 self farther. His health, too, began to suffer ; and the result 
 was that, after a few months, he w^as compelled to resign his 
 seat and return to the chair, which he had prudently con- 
 trived to keep open as a dernier ressort. Intensely chagrined, 
 broken in constitution and in spirits, he came back to 
 Glasgow, returning from public life as Lord Grenville — whose 
 words I once heard Sandford quoting — said of himself, " to 
 Plato and the Hiad." He resumed with all his characteristic 
 diligence the duties of the Greek chair; he resumed, too, 
 his pen ; and to his retreat from Parliament we owe some 
 of his best droppings of criticism in Blaclcwood and the 
 Edinburgh Jievieiv, inclusive of a striking picture of the 
 ancient Admirable Crichton, the Brougham of Athens, the 
 ubiquitous, ambidextrous, all-sided Alcibiades. 
 
 In 1838, his shattered system was seized with typhus fever, 
 and he died, repeating, I believe, in his delirium the great 
 hexameters of Homer. Thus strong and thus late was with 
 him the ruling passion ! I heard with the deeper interest of 
 his death, as I was (in a distant part of the kingdom) recover-
 
 60 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 ing from a severe attack of the same disease ; so that both 
 preceptor aud pupil had been swimming for life at the same 
 time and in the same fiery sea. 
 
 A great thinker or writer Sandford was not. I can hardly 
 call him a man of genius, but a better teacher never sat in a 
 professor's chair. A more ardent classical scholar has seldom 
 breathed ; more eloquent lips never sounded out the wondrous 
 soliloquy which opens the " Agamemnon," or the melting and 
 terrible wailings which shut the " Medea." He was no Bentley, 
 or Person, or PaiT ; but he gave an impulse to the diffusion of 
 Grecian knowledge such as never came even from these 
 redoubted scholars. During his whole career, too, and espe- 
 cially toward the close, he displayed a profound feeling of the 
 claims of Christianity, and often vindicated the Greek, as well 
 as the infinitely higher qualities, of the New Testament. He 
 had his own failings, poor fellow ! but there is reason to 
 believe, that while Homer was the idol of his intellect, Jesus 
 Chi'ist became ultimately the God of his heart. 
 
 To return — I had scarcely entered College till the grand 
 but short Saturnalia of the election of a Lord Rector took 
 place. It was this year that Campbell the poet, after a keen 
 contest with, I think, Sir Thomas Brisbane, was chosen. 
 Cobbett, I remember too, was proposed, more in jest than 
 in earnest. Campbell came down in March to be installed 
 and deliver his inaugural address. It was a high day in the 
 College. The grave professors themselves, although some of 
 them were keenly opposed to Campbell, seemed excited, in a 
 measure, by the scene ; and the students, especially those of 
 us who had voted for him, were in a state of uncontrollable 
 enthusiasm. How I longed to see the poet, whose poems I 
 had read amidst the wilds of my birth-place, and most of 
 which, indeed, I had by heart ! The Common Hall was 
 crowded to suffocation. We students were fortunate in pos- 
 sessing, in our red gowns, a right of entree. It was Campbell's 
 native city, and he had never, we think, made a public ap- 
 pearance there before. He had left it a poor youth, and now
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 61 
 
 returned in the full blaze of fame, and to be received with 
 rapture by the elite of its inhabitants. I was lucky enough 
 to get into a position within a yard of the head of the seat 
 which he occupied. I saw the pale, thin, sensitive-faced 
 poet, with those black beaming eyes, rising up to bespeak the 
 breathless assembly. I noticed that tremble in his voice and 
 manner of which his biographer speaks in describing this 
 scene, which left him, however, as he proceeded. I remem- 
 ber the effect produced by some of his better passages. When 
 he said, for instance, that he was " far from wishing to damp 
 the spirit of the hoy-^oet^' a hundx'ed young ingenuous faces 
 instantaneously sparkled up as if in a gleam of sudden sunshine, 
 antj^a hundred hearts beat out a whisper, " Perhaps /may be 
 a jCa-gipbeli and a Lord Rector yet." I noticed a certain 
 dryness in the looks of the professors — the preliminary 
 prayers of the Principal seemed coldly said ; and I was told 
 that at some of the more ambitious passages, such as that in 
 which he describes the various accomplishments and attain- 
 ments of the poetic mind, like the various colours " blending 
 into the white light of inspiration," a sneering smile was seen 
 to pass over Sandford's countenance. The speech was, on the 
 whole, as a composition, slight and hurried, and was compared 
 unfavourably with Lord Brougham's elaborate address, de- 
 livered two years before; although I heard poor Tom Atkinson, 
 the bookseller and poet, truly saying, in his own shop an 
 hour after, that there were some things in Campbell's speech 
 that Brougham never could have said, at the same time 
 mouthing out, in his usual theatrical style, the opening sen- 
 tence of Jeffrey's rectorial oration, " On an occasion on which 
 Burke is reported to have faltered, and Adam Smith to have 
 remained silent, well might it have become me to have fol- 
 lowed the example of the latter." 
 
 C'ampbell gi'catly confirmed and deepened the favourable 
 impression made by his speech on the students, by his after 
 conduct. He remained some months in Glasgow, and mingled 
 much and familiarly with his constituents. Again and again,
 
 62 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 as he was moving along arm in arm with those fine fellows, 
 the sons of Stewart of Erskine, who knew him better, owing 
 to their relationship to Lord Blantyre, I, in company with 
 others, came along his path, and received a hearty " How d'ye 
 do 1 " and shake of his warm hand, which was, of course, 
 electrifying to young blood. He gave each of his students a 
 copy of his speech ; I preserve mine to this day, with the in- 
 scription, " To Mr. So-and-so, from Thomas Campbell." How 
 precious this little present seemed then, and seems still, to 
 each and all of us ! He visited all the classes in their turn. 
 Good old Walker, I remember, when the Rector entered the 
 Latin class, commenced to read a prelection on poetry, to 
 the amusement of his students, who thought he was showing 
 ofiF before the brilliant stranger, and to Campbell's apparent 
 edification, who did not seem to be displeased at a clumsy 
 compliment to himself, which the professor contrived to drag 
 into the lecture. Campbell, besides, took incredible pains to 
 make himself acquainted with the laws of the University, and 
 to advocate the rights of his constituents. He mingled even 
 in the convivialities of a certain set of the older students. A 
 " Campbell Club," too, was formed, composed of his more 
 ardent admirers, of which I was, I believe, elected a member, 
 although I never attended its meetings. He commenced, 
 also, a series of " Letters to the Students." Altogether, his 
 rectorship was a brilliant epoch in the history of the Univer- 
 sity. When we saw the active little man, with his black 
 wig, (there was " nothing false about him but his hair, which 
 was a wig, and his whiskers, which were dyed,") beaming eye, 
 frank, easy manner, and universal fame, walking daily in the 
 midst of us, it was "as if the gods had come down to us in 
 the likeness of men." At the close of the session he presided 
 at the distribution of the prizes on the first of May; and 
 although I had got no prize, and was a little gloomy there- 
 anent, the speech of the Lord Rector, telling us, in glowing 
 language, to " forget our toils or disappointments in visiting 
 the romantic woods and glens and mountains of Caledonia,"
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 63 
 
 was exceedingly cheering and inspiring to my mind. I left 
 the room, if not loaded -with prizes, clad with wings — the 
 wings of hope and high enthusiasm. 
 
 It may be as well here to complete what I have to tell of 
 Campbell. The next session he did not, I think, come down 
 from London at all. At the close, however, of the year 1828, 
 he was — a most unusual proceeding — elected a third time 
 Kector : this was partly owing to his personal popularity, 
 and partly because he was uuderstood to be pushing on 
 measures connected with the rights of the students. He 
 appeared, accordingly, to give a new inaugural speech ; it 
 was much better in composition, and delivered with far more 
 ease and energy, than the former. 
 
 Aoput a year afterwards, I was attending a meeting of a 
 Debating Society, when a student, whom I knew well, bustled 
 in with an air of vast importance, and requested leave of the 
 chairman to communicate an important fact. This was, that 
 Thomas Campbell had newly arrived from London, on a 
 matter deeply affecting the interests of the University, and 
 he proposed that we should rush out in a body, and pay him 
 our respects. It was carried by acclamation, and forth we 
 sallied — to the nimiber of some forty or fifty — to his friend 
 Mr. Gray's house, close by the Clyde. There we found, 
 sipping his coffee, the warm-hearted poet. He rose ; and in 
 answer to a congi-atulatoiy address, delivered by an eloquent 
 Irishman, said a few words, at once graceful and easy. I re- 
 member yet the contrast between the elegant drawing-room 
 and the faded red gowns of many of the students, mine own 
 included. It was, I think, the next day that he addressed a 
 large assembly of students from a window of Mr. Gray's 
 house — in which he introduced sc^pe allusions to the Clyde 
 flowing past, and to the sun westering in his bower, full of 
 eloquence and poetry. 
 
 I knew some of the studeu who were intimate with 
 Campbell ; and I often expressed to them a strong desire to 
 meet him in private. My wish was at last gratified. I was
 
 64 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 asked to a small evening-party at the house of a relative 
 where the poet appeared. There were none present except a 
 few of his favourite students, and the host, a noble, kind- 
 hearted man, along with his graceful lady, and his amiable 
 and beautiful young family. Campbell made himself at 
 home in an instant ; and I certainly have seldom met a man 
 of more ingratiating manners, and more lively conversation : 
 he did and said everything with such perfect ease. In the 
 course of the evening, a celebrated talker of the town hap- 
 pened to drop in, and, presuming on his provincial fame, 
 ventured to measure lances once or twice with the poet. But 
 although sufficiently nimble and adroit in his way, he was no 
 match for Campbell, who ran across his rapid and glittering 
 fence, and transfixed him as with the light but deadly stroke 
 of a rapier. Once he tried to overpower the poet with a 
 thick succession of questions, but found he had met his 
 match. Campbell answered his every query as a bee receives 
 every rude grasp — with a sting, — with a keen although not 
 caustic retort. " Is not Brougham a far greater man, far 
 more Demosthenic in his thought and oratory, than Burke?" 
 was one of the questions. " You might as well compare a 
 Norland ox to a lion — Si volute's not a roar?" " Don't you 
 think* Byron as great a poet as Shakspere?" "No; this 
 tumbler (of brandy-toddy) is not the Devil's Punch Bowl." 
 " Is not Jeffrey the greatest critic Britain has ever produced?" 
 " He would be, if Britain were Lilliput ; smartness, strength ; 
 and a steel pen a claymore." " How do you employ such a 
 flippant writer and bad man as Hazlitt to write for your 
 magazine ?" " Why, I grant that Hazlitt is a soured fellow, 
 but he's a sublime sourock — he sheds a sort of oracular venom ; 
 and notwithstanding all the trash he often writes, he will say 
 more in some of his single pages, than Jeffrey or Brougham 
 in whole volumes. His blackguardism is his own afiair; but 
 it's more a misfortune than a crime — it's a kind of moral 
 hump on his back, born with him. Besides, he's a poor un- 
 fortunate ; and if we drove him desperate, I believe he would
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 65 
 
 literally commit murder, or burn the Tower ! " The town- 
 talker saw he had no chance with Campbell ; and his rallies 
 were far from successful — it was cleverness with a small 
 dagger matched against genius with a sharp sword. He soon 
 went away, and Campbell felt relieved. He said, " I hate 
 these glib logical persons, who are eternally talking on literaiy 
 subjects, and trying to entangle you in small dilemmas. 
 I thought that race of prigs had been confined to London 
 and the Modern Athens ; I am grieved to see a specimen in 
 this homely, manly town of Glasgow, where I remember the 
 whole literature of "fhe place confined to the walls of the 
 College, or rather to Will Richardson and old Young." 
 And-ihen he handed a young lady to the piano, called on the 
 landlord for a song (who gave us the "Bay of Biscay" in 
 grand style, and sang afterwards *' I gaed a waefu' gate 
 yestreen " with the most exquisite feeling), kissed the children, 
 and fairly danced a measure with the rest on the floor. 
 
 At and after supper there was a resumption of literary 
 conversation. Of Byron he had a bitter opinion. He said 
 he was the only poet of the age who went to the dunghill for 
 inspiration, and thought that poetry should be a " mass of 
 wounds, bruises, and putrefying sores," a little sublimated. 
 His strength was that of disease — he had less power than 
 fury. He had passion, but wanted heart ; and as to acquired 
 knowledge, there was hardly a dunce in the Logic Class but 
 knew more. He had once had a long talk with him about 
 the Classics, and came* back wondering at his ignorance, and 
 .calling him a " gifted booby." I ventured to say that Byron 
 had described himself in describing Burns, as a compound of 
 dirt and Deity. "Aye," rejoined Campbell; "but Burns' 
 dirt was good, honest Scotch yird* collected from the fresh 
 new-ploughed land, although dashed with a little too much 
 yeast from the ale-barrel. Byron's was vile foreign filth. 
 As to Deity, there was little of it about either of them, in one 
 sense of it ; although both, of course, groat geniuses, neither 
 
 • " Yird," earth. 
 F
 
 66 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 was a worshipper, unless it w^ere that Burns worshipped 
 woman, and Byron worshipped himself." " And the Devil," 
 some one rejoined. " No, he left that to Shelley, who was a 
 much finer fellow, though, than his lordship. I met him 
 once at the house of Horace Smith, and never saw a more 
 singular and interesting creature. He reminded me of a 
 cracked angel; Byron of a vidgar heathen god — a Vulcan 
 crippled by a tumble out of heaven. Shelley had a beautiful 
 face; with large, lamping, loving eyes; a small but well- 
 rounded and arched brow ; a tender, delicate hue on his cheek ; 
 a sweet smile, like a woman's, on his lips, and a form bending 
 as if, in sjiite of himself, he were worshipping ; his very walk 
 seemed a perpetual prayer. You waited till he spoke, won- 
 dering what sound of melting music could come out of these 
 fine lips, and, to your horror, there issued the very harshest 
 and most peacock-like scream you ever heard. I absolutely 
 stai-ted ; I could hardly believe it to come from the man, but 
 from some demon within him. The sound of his voice 
 seemed to contradict all the res,t of him — his look, smile, and 
 the sentiments he uttered ; only when, in the course of the 
 evening, the name of Christ was introduced, and when the 
 poor fellow got indignant, and began to blaspheme, then the 
 voice and the sentiment seemed to attain a horrible concord, 
 a ghastly unity. I was almost tempted to believe that Shelley 
 was possessed by some extra-mundane power, against whom 
 or which his better nature struggled in vain, which cracked 
 his brain, voice, temper, and genius, and rendered him the 
 beautiful wretch and glorious wreck he became. I never 
 saw in a man so much of the Divine so fearfully counteracted 
 and neutralized ; and it was the same with his poetry. I re- 
 member, when the party broke up, he accompanied me nearly 
 home, or rather I accompanied him, for he half ran the 
 whole way, shrieking out all the time his preference of Plato 
 to John and Paul." " Passages more beautiful and truly 
 classical," he added, " more ethereal, more musical, more like 
 the words and melodies of some loftier region, are not to be
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 67 
 
 found in poetry than in Shelley ; but he often has made me 
 fui'ious at the execrable and abominable things, both in spirit 
 and in taste, which the malignant genius within seems to 
 compel him, next page, to vomit forth." 
 
 I asked him if he had seen Keats. He said only once, and 
 he seemed to him a " feeble flower, on which the dews of 
 Castalie were pressing with too crushing a power ; a weak dis- 
 ciple at Pentecost, with too grand and terrible a tongue of fire 
 seated on his head, and trembling below it. He was a genuine 
 poet, but otherwise a capricious, conceited, spoiled, and self- 
 pampered creature.^ When you thought of that strain of 
 transcendent power, ' Hyperion,' and its author, you did not, 
 fa4eed, feel inclined to say ' Hyperion to a Satyr,' but 
 <-H;^p«rion to a silly child.' " He then dilated in terms I do 
 not recollect on the difference between healthy and hydro- 
 cephalic power, taking Keats as a specimen of the latter, and 
 Burns of the former. " Certainly," cried one, " Burns could 
 never be charged with having lived with or died of too much 
 water in the head." This, poor as it was, produced a laugh, 
 and tei'minated his discussion. 
 
 He diverged to the " Noctes," and to Wilson and Lockhart, 
 both of whom he characterized by a few brief, decisive 
 touches. He seemed to appreciate both, although he only 
 loved one. Lockhart was the man of talent, Wilson of genius. 
 Lockhart, he said, " seemed to think it a noble distinction to 
 want a heart, and often did ci'uel things less from disposition 
 than because doing them redeemed him from the charge of 
 weakness. This was manhood overdone, and reminded him 
 of Byron's making himself always a greater blackguard than 
 he was. So Lockhart must be a savage, and paint his hair 
 with red ochre, and wear a wolf's-skin, while, in reality, he 
 enjoyed life far too much to be a very ill-natured man. 
 Wilson had tons of acid in his constitution, but they were 
 counteracted by a still larger amount of the milk of human 
 kindness, as well as by a sense of the ridiculous, which made 
 his very enemies less hateful to him from the ludicrous 
 
 f2
 
 68 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 aspects aud light in which it showed them. But for this, he 
 had been a terrible demon. Brandt, in my own ' Gertrude,' 
 would have been nothing to him ; the knout would have 
 given place to the tomahawk." The " Noctes " he charac- 
 terized as the recreations of a wild Titan — now bathing and 
 flinging the waves about him — now running naked along the 
 bank — now plunging into the dim forest — and now reappear- 
 ing on a distant eminence, and shouting a sublime ode to the 
 sun. Wilson had sometimes extemporized a whole " Noctes" 
 to him ; once in particular, when travelling in a postchaise to 
 a large festive meeting, Wilson took up the programme, 
 went over it all, and gave a speech for each speaker, perfectly 
 , in character and ludicrously like, besides interposing songs 
 •and bravuras of all sorts and sizes. He reminded him that 
 night of the story about Goethe opening a German Annual 
 and pretending to be reading, while, in reahty, he was impro- 
 vising a whole volume of poetry ; a bystander exclaiming, 
 "This man must be Goethe or the Devil!" and another 
 replying, "He is both, for the Devil is in him to-night!" 
 " Wilson is even a greater man by nature than Goethe, but 
 he has lost himself by not knowing what is his own place : 
 he is like a man so rich that he cannot tell for the life of him 
 what to do with his wealth, and keeps squandering what has 
 become worthless in his own eyes by its superabundance." 
 
 I remember no more of that night's conversation, but I met 
 him twice or thrice afterwards, and shall cluster together the 
 reminiscences of what he said during two or three sederunts, 
 or walks about the College-green. 
 
 He did not like the Lakers. " They would, if they could, 
 unclassicalize the world, and their arrogance and one-sided- 
 ness were intolerable. They seemed, sometimes, to be angry 
 that any poets or men had existed before them ; and he had 
 serious doubts whether they believed in the Fall, so far as 
 they were concerned. They reminded him of the Highland 
 woman, who pretended that the MacDonalds at the Flood 
 " had a wee little boat of their uain," instead of needing to be
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW, 69 
 
 saved in tlie common Ark. Wordsworth walked along the 
 Strand, like Skiddaw come south, snuffing up his nose at all 
 and sundry. Southey was a cross between Spinoza, Arch- 
 bishop Laud, and Quaker Fox. Coleridge, had he not been 
 crazy with laudanum, was the most tolerable of the set ; 
 often condescended to laugh ; and when he did sometimes 
 come down from the parachvite of his metaphysical nonsense 
 and clouds, he lighted on mountain-tops, not, like AVords- 
 woi'th, upon gravestones or moleheaps. Wordsworth was, 
 indeed, an intellectual mole, crawling over dust and dung- 
 heaps as if they were the milky way with its pavement of 
 stars. He was often near quarrelling with Wilson aboiit the 
 iTakfirs. The idea was ludicrous of a man such as Christopher 
 Nor'fti,' retiring from a melee where he might have been a 
 perfect Coeur de Lion, to snivel, drink lake-water, and cant 
 with those spiritual poachers, sanctified smugglers, and 
 inspired pedlars. 
 
 He passed from thence to the subject of the older poets : 
 " the soured seraph, Milton" — " Drydeu, with his sharp strong 
 scythe, mowing down all before him" — " Pope following after, 
 with his elegant rake, and gathering in the remnants of the 
 rich swathe" — Cray, "born a Greek and bred a Roman, 
 thinking with Pindar and speaking wuth Virgil" — and dear 
 Goldy, the " pui-est piece of instinct who ever lived — a blind 
 child led hy God's own hand." 
 
 I asked him something about the orators of the day ; but 
 instead of touchino; on them, he commenced about those of 
 the i)ast. He had walked from Glasgow to Edinburgh to 
 hear Gerald — "a great man, never fully developed, whom 
 Parr had tried to make a pedant, and Godwin a philosopher, 
 but who became in spite of them what was better — an orator 
 and a genius. He looked, when speaking, Power and Passion 
 personified — had something of the colour and all the elasticity 
 of an African Roscius, added to a concentred strength of 
 manner, at times, worthy of Fox or Kcan — was one, you 
 thought, that might have created a revolt in heaven. Be
 
 70 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 made others, for the time being, as great as himself. Common 
 men — masons and shoemakers — seemed to rise with him foot 
 for foot, as he rose in the might of his eloquence. But he 
 got, like Burns, desperate and savage ; and, like him, called 
 in auxiliaries to his genius, which at last led that havighty 
 power in chains. Fox he never heard in his glory ; he saw 
 only the trace of the dust which his whirlwind had raised ; 
 his oratory had been the agony and apotheosis of common 
 sense. Sheridan was a drunk and glozing gladiator, with 
 little heart, and with one of the clearest of heads partially 
 muddled, but was capable of being roused and surprised into 
 a man : his wit, however, reminded him of a Caesarean opera- 
 tion. Canning looked the man — the gentleman — the states- 
 man — the genius — everything — but was only a wax figure 
 after all. Burke was too great, not for his own age only, but 
 for any age ; he not only adorned, but added to the substance 
 and splendour of every subject he touched. On small themes 
 his genius seemed sunlight shed on pebbles and straws, 
 turning them into fire ; on large, it seemed sunlight on gold, 
 giving it a new and unearthly glory. There was absolutely 
 no end to the rich originalities, felicities, and fertilities of 
 his genius ; and had he lived to this hour, he had been 
 pouring out wisdom and fancy in equal proportions still. 
 Bentham was a crotchetty old chap — full of sense, as dry as 
 remainder biscuit — he was something higher than a lawyer, 
 and something less than a legislator. Hazlitt says of him : 
 ' His works have been translated into French ; they should 
 be translated into English.' Bentham would ask, like Newton, 
 of Milton's Paradise Lost, 'What does it prove?' and, I 
 believe, positively grudges the glory of a summer's day as 
 a waste of light, and looks on a flower-garden as a useless 
 excrescence' in Nature. Bless me 1 if Jeremy had had the 
 making of this universe, what a saving of stars there had been 
 in the galaxy ! There had been what Shakspere calls ' hus- 
 bandry in heaven,' and earth would have wanted all its fine 
 hills and splendid scenery — we would have had nothing but
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 71 
 
 corn-fields and candle-light ! Brougham has a strange power 
 oi simulating the highest kind of moral indignation and scorn j 
 he can transmute the fiercest passions into the appearance of 
 celestial fire : 'tis the old tale of Pandemonium rising a palace 
 of light out of the darkest entrails of heU ; but the light and 
 the materials are alike from the pit. Since Moloch, there 
 had been no such philippics as those speeches against the 
 Holy Alliance : it was ' black fire and horror.' " 
 
 He often recurred to the days of his own College career : 
 to the scenes he had with Christopher North, and to his 
 excursions to the West Highlands. He described, in wonder- 
 fully vivid language, to which I can do no justice, a thunder- 
 stoi:]?! by which he had been overtaken in Gleucoe. " As 
 \ ^^lked up the glen, I never saw such a heaviness in 
 the air : the clouds had come down upon the two opposite 
 ridges of the tremendous hills which begird the valley, and 
 lay grimly glaring across the glen at each other, like deadly 
 foes, eager, yet delaying, to come to close quarters. All 
 at once a quick bright flash of lightning, followed by a roar 
 as if the flash had lighted on and scathed a liundred bulls, 
 seemed to sound the signal for the general engagement ; 
 and for two hours it was a succession of assaults of lurid fire 
 between the opposite sides of the valley — gleams of ghastly 
 light momentarily revealing the rocks and precipices, which 
 were immediately after swallowed up in gloom — the thunders 
 bellowing incessantly, and the cry of the Cona coming up 
 from below like the wail of a child who had laid hei'self down 
 to weep, while her father was engaged hand to hand with a 
 foeman. From a cleft of a rock into which I had gone for 
 shelter, I witnessed the scene with emotions compounded of 
 sublime joy and quaking terror — for such a wild Waterloo of 
 the elements I never witnessed before nor since. And it was 
 almost as grand to see the clouds at the close, gathering up 
 their sullen skirts and unused thunderbolts, and retiring 
 from each other, unsatisfied and growling, while a rainbow 
 fell from heaven, and bridged with beauty the awful pass
 
 72 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 through which the Cona, now swollen with the rain, was 
 sending up a melancholy thunder to the evening sky." 
 
 He spoke of Campsie Glen, too, with great delight; and 
 said that when you were in it, it seemed as if a great round 
 arm were surrounding and sheltering you from the turmoil 
 of the city near it. He characterized the professors of his 
 youth. " Richardson, the Professor of Humanity, was a fine 
 although finical man; and his writings, without any genius, 
 showed a glimmering perception of what genius was. He 
 sincerely loved, although he could not poetically praise 
 poetry. Yet his works seem already forgotten. Jardine was a 
 fatherly old man — he was so sorry he was retired ere he had 
 been elected Rector. Miller of the Laws of Nations was a 
 dry but deeply-learned person. But old Young was the 
 glory of the University in his day. A partial dog and a poor 
 teacher doubtless; but in eloquence liker a Northern Scald 
 than any one he ever heard speak. He needed only a line 
 of Homer, aye, or a particle to mount on, and it became a 
 Pegasus, and he carried you up to the third heavens. Such 
 an OS rotundum ! such enthusiasm ! such big and burning 
 tears as he often shed ! No acting could approach it, and it 
 was all so natural ! He had spoiled his style a little at 
 first with imitating Johnson's sesquipedalia verba, but had 
 nearly got out of old Sam's trammels before he knew him." 
 
 Campbell shortly after left Glasgow, and although, I believe, 
 he returned once or twice afterwards, I never saw him again. 
 I was, of course, nothing to him but one of a knot of raw 
 enthusiastic lads, who adored him. I may say that I never 
 witnessed anything but the utmost propriety in his conduct 
 and language, although I heard rumours to the contrary. 
 He was, bating a slight oath or free expression now and then, 
 a thorough gentleman in his manners. Never has Glasgow 
 College seen since, and is never likely to see again, such a 
 genial, kind-hearted, and attentive Rector. He became one 
 of ourselves, and might be truly called not only the students', 
 but the ^^ Student Rector."
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 73 
 
 To return from this long digression. I came back at the 
 end of the session to my native vale. My mother had 
 removed from the manse, and was residing at a little dis- 
 tance from the village, in a cottage beside a young but 
 extensive plantation, to which I carried my dreams, and 
 where I spent many a delicious solitary hour. It was ex- 
 ceedingly pleasant for me to return across the moorlands to 
 my native place, from the pent-up streets of Glasgow, to see 
 my old valley, under the fresh flush of summer, and to renew 
 acquaintance with my old friends the hills, and especially the 
 streams; for I have^ilways regarded a fine stream as a most 
 eloquent and interesting companion, and have spent days in 
 wttuderiug without any other, submitting myself to all the 
 moG^iS -of my asso6iate — leaping when it leapt, murmuring 
 when it murmured, running when it ran, and walking in 
 slow reverie beside it when it fell into a muse, and became 
 sombre and dull in its channel. And when the cloudy and 
 dark day came with winds and rain, I visited my river to 
 see it in all the glory of its turbulence, red in its bed of 
 wrath, and foaming against its banks with very much the 
 same feeling with which, at other times, I have gone to hear 
 a splendid orator upon an occasion which was sure to call 
 forth all his powers, and have repeated Byron's " Yelino " by 
 the brink of the stormy waters. I often entertained the 
 desire of walking or sailing up some great river, from the sea 
 to its mountain source ; and long ere I heard of Words- 
 worth's scries of Sonnets on the River Duddon, I had projected 
 a succession of Poems on the River Rennie, which I never 
 executed. Another favourite poem of mine at this time was 
 Byron's Lines to the Po, beginning — "River which rollest by 
 the ancient walls," which were dear to me, not only in them- 
 selves, but from the " purple light of love " which flushes 
 them, and which suited my mood at the time. I cannot 
 describe the deep romantic interest with which I used to 
 repeat them in my solitary walks. 
 
 My studies were not entirely forgotten. I rose every
 
 74 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 morning for a while during summer at six, and read a certain 
 number of Greek lines — generally a hundred or two of 
 Homer's Iliad. I wrote also a translation of Lucian's Sale of 
 Lives into English, as a prize essay for Sandford. I had lost, 
 alas ! my literary guide and counsellor ; but I did not relax 
 my miscellaneous readings. Besides reading extensively in 
 olden theology, and in the classics, I found occasionally time 
 for devouring, as a honne bouche, such works of fiction as 
 I could find — Smollett, Fielding, and some more of the 
 Waverley series. It was this summer, too, that I first read, 
 with care and pleasure, Chalmers' Astronomical Discourses. 
 This formed a kind of era in my life. I felt even then the 
 faults of the style ; but in spite, and partly in conseqxience of 
 these, the book wielded over me a wild charm. In vain was 
 I told by preachers and elder students, that the book was 
 a bad model of style, and reading it a bad preparation for the 
 Logic Class, and that I should read rather MacRie's Life of 
 John Knox, and Hall's Sermons. I replied that I had read 
 MacRie, and tliat I would read Hall, if I had him, but that 
 I could not help reading Chalmers again and again. I 
 remember my father reading to my mother, one morning at 
 breakfast, an extract in a magazine from Hall's Sermon on 
 the death of Dr. Ryland. It was that noble description of 
 the reunion of good men in heaven. He read it with a voice 
 tremulous with admiration, and I thought it the grandest 
 writing I had ever heard. But there was not another scrap 
 of Hall's composition in the house or village. But here was 
 Chalmers' chef-cToeuvre, and little wonder that I rolled his 
 magnificent speculations like a sweet morsel under my tongue. 
 The thought that it was called wrong to read him made it 
 more delicious ; and, after closing some of his high-wrought 
 paragraphs, I ran out with the book in my hand, and gazed 
 at the stars, for which I had hitherto felt only a vague enthu- 
 siasm, till Chalmers taught me something of their moral 
 meanings, while he deepened my feeling of their imaginative 
 glory. The book taught, after Fontenelle, the doctrine that
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 75 
 
 other worlds besides our own were inhabited — a doctrine 
 which, I remember, was then thought still more heterodox 
 by the worthies of our village, than lately by Dr. Whewell. 
 My father, some time before his death, had lent the Dis- 
 courses to a ruling elder of the kirk. On getting it back, and 
 asking his opinion, all he could get out of the old man was : 
 "Ah ! Sir, there are some real nice passages of Scripture at the 
 end." (My readers will remember that Chalmers has added, 
 in an appendix, a number of texts which he thinks support 
 his system.) I have since modified very much my opinion of 
 that work as a piece of argument ; but even yet I cannot lift 
 up or look at the old volume, with its half binding, and large 
 spjifse clear type from the Collins' press, without a sigh of 
 mingted joy and grief, as it recalls to me a long-vanished 
 past, with all its memories and associations. I have often, 
 in common with others, while writing or reading, felt all of 
 a sudden an intenser and more romantic emotion passing 
 over my mind — felt myself writing or reading with greater 
 delight — and knew not the cause, till I felt in a few 
 minutes that I had been hearing, without being at first 
 aware, some sweet instrumental and vocal melody, which, 
 stealing through, had mingled with and mellowed my feel- 
 ings ; and I have had a similar sensation when a bright 
 sunshine has crept into the room silently and slowly. And 
 so, while reading these Astronomical Sermons, and several 
 other ancient fiivourites, I seem to myself to be reading them 
 to the accompaniment of some far-oif melancholy but sweet 
 and solemn music, swelling out of the depths of twenty years, 
 and in a sad mild sunlight reflected from that autumn day 
 when my father died. 
 
 I remember this same summer, or rather autumn, reading 
 a very different book, with very different sensations. This 
 was a volume of Poems by Alexander Rogers, of Glasgow. I 
 do not exactly remember how this volume, which was newly 
 published, had wandered into our remote region, but so it 
 did ; and the story of " Peter Cornclips," the song, " Behave
 
 76 THE HISTORY OF A JIAN. 
 
 yourself before folks," and the exquisite fragments of Tanna- 
 liill, which Rogers has finished so admirablj'^, became great 
 favourites with me for a season. They had no high poetry in 
 them, but they were — and the same is true of all the Whistle- 
 binkie* school — very good, as pictures of Scotch national or 
 provincial manners, and are not so far inferior to the poems 
 of Burns as is generally supposed. The power of song- 
 writing and tale-telling exhibited by Rogers, Robert Gilfillan, 
 William Miller, and others, has been undervalued, because, 
 possessed by so many, it has been thought a mere knack 
 rather than a gift. Like the silver in Solomon's day, song- 
 writing has been so plentiful as to be held of no account. 
 Still there is much excellent racy matter in these simple 
 strains, which are, at least, ten times better than the common 
 stilted imitations of Byron and Shelley ; which, if small, are 
 true, and which, if they do not always prove great genius in 
 their authors, prove, first, transcendent genius in Burns, who 
 has created a school so large and so natural ; and; secondly, 
 great peculiarity, beauty, and interest, in those national 
 customs, national superstitions, and national scenery, of 
 which they are, undoubtedly, faithful daguerreotypes. I once 
 saw Sandy Rogers in the street afterwards, but others of that 
 school in Glasgow I knew none ; although I knew well and 
 loved warmly poor David Robertson, their kind-hearted 
 patron and publisher, who was lately so suddenly removed. 
 
 It was while still charmed with Rogers' poetry, and perpe- 
 tually quoting the lines of Tannahill, which he has finished — 
 
 " Tall as the oak on the lofty Benvoirlich, 
 Dearer than life to his lovely Neen-Voich" — 
 
 that I went, along with a preacher who had been holding 
 forth in the parish kirk, to the Benvoirlich of oxir neighbour- 
 hood — Ben-Ample — a mountain of 4,000 feet, towering a 
 little apart from the side of Loch Rennie. It was a dim but 
 lovely autumn day when I found myself wending up the 
 
 * " Whistlebinkie ; " a school of Scotch song-writers.
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. ' 77 
 
 same romantic vale which I had last traversed with the lion 
 
 of St. George's, Edinburgh. The glory of Summer had not 
 
 wholly left the scenery, but seemed that day drooping her 
 
 wing, ere she prepared to take her departure. This mild 
 
 compromise between summer and autumn, when the heat is 
 
 nearly as great, and the light not much less, but both are 
 
 sheathed and somewhat saddened — when mist at once drinks 
 
 and shades the splendour of the sun — w^hen the heather has 
 
 hung out all her red fairy banners on the heath and in the 
 
 woods — and when the day seems to sweeten, as it shortens, 
 
 over yellow corn-field^ and richer, more varied, and mellower 
 
 skies — was peculiarly dear to my imagination. It suited 
 
 sorRgjiow, too, better with the scenery up which we travelled, 
 
 whicbj-iad less beauty than grandeur. As the day advanced, 
 
 it darkened, wnth a half-threatening of thunder, which kept 
 
 clinging, methought, to its craggy clouds, like an eagle, 
 
 tmcertain whether to drop over his precipice upon the plain 
 
 or not. I think the grandest light in which scenei-y is ever 
 
 shown, is the light of 
 
 " That beautiful uncertain weather 
 When gloom and glory meet together ; " 
 
 and when the clouds, before bursting in fury upon the land- 
 scape, seem to deck their victim with sacrificial splendours, 
 and there is an unearthly chiaroscuro — 
 
 " As when some great painter dips 
 His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse." 
 
 This day, however, the eagle would not loosen his hold, and 
 the clouds lent the lurid glory, without adding the lightning 
 blow. As we left the sides of Loch Rennie, and turned up 
 the long glen leading to Ben-Ample, it was fine, ever and 
 anon, to stop and look back upon the lake, so dim and beau- 
 tiful in the shadow — upon the opposite coast, with its green 
 woods and yellow corn — and on tlie tremendous peaks of the 
 Ross-shire Highlands, bounding the view to the north. As 
 we were panting up the last ascent, we had the provocation 
 to perceive, that just then the mist, which had seemed unccr-
 
 78 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 tain hitbei'to, came suddenly down on the summit of the 
 mountain. We were terribly chagrined. We coidd now see 
 nothing but the cairn on the summit of the highest of the 
 two tops, and the cold mosses, starred with cranberries, at 
 our feet. Rather sulkily we ate our dinner among the clouds, 
 and wished that the thunder would come and bellow below 
 us, and seam this cold and sullen darkness with fire. But 
 there was not a single peal, and, after delaying a long time 
 in hopes of the mist clearing away, we descended to the 
 plain, and, too late for reaching home, spent the night at a 
 house in a little village half-way. 
 
 I remember little more of the end of this autumn, except 
 the peculiar delight with which I enjoyed the moonlight of 
 its evenings. It was to me the " Honeymoon of Moonlight." 
 I never had felt before so fully the unearthly charm of that 
 strange magical radiance — the music of night — appealing to 
 the very deepest poetry in the human soul, and suggesting, 
 now the idea of an ante-natal state, and now that of a future 
 world. I was, or imagined myself to be, in love ; and this, 
 no doubt, added to the effect of the " Lady Moon," under 
 whose ray I spent this season many a solitary hour, often 
 composing poetry, while the orb seemed singing to my soul 
 a melody, which I have only sometimes heard long after- 
 wards sm-passed, while " Music w^as pouring" on mortals her 
 " beautiful disdain," from lips and voices which quivered while 
 they sang, as if to the ear of adjacent angels, of " Isles of 
 Beauty,"— of " The English Rose,"— of '•' The Trystiug Hour," 
 " The Heather Bell,"— the " Cameron's Men,"— the " Harp on 
 the Willow-tree,"— of "Music on the Waters,"— of Italy's 
 " dark-eyed daughters," — of the " Moonlit Sea," and of the 
 '•' cold grey crags" on which the wave of memory was called, by 
 the poet, to break for evermore. John Scott speaks of strange 
 joys on earth that shall be recognised in higher stages of our 
 existence ; and such are the joys of poetry and moonlight in 
 youth, and of music and love at all the seasons of existence. 
 Thousands of sermons have been written on Heaven's love
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 79 
 
 and Heaven's music, but little has ever been said or sung on 
 the poetry of Heaven, or of that light, brighter than the light 
 of the sun, and more spiritual than that of the moon, which 
 is to rest its eternal smile upon the Better Country. 
 
 These delifi-htful dreaminas were now to come to an end 
 for a season, and to be exchanged for the hard routine of the 
 Logic Class, as taught in Glasgow. I repaired to it with 
 much more alacrity and hope, however, than to the Greek 
 and Latin. I was eager to launch out upon the mare 
 magnum of English composition. I fancied, somehow, that it 
 was there, if anywhei>e, that I was to get some little credit. 
 I knew I never could make a figure at Greek verses, or at 
 prize poems ; but I fancied that I might yet write tolerable 
 essayCor sketches. I hied thither, accordingly, about the 
 beginning' of November, with a mixture of reluctance and 
 eagerness : reluctance to leave again the valley where every 
 broom-bush was known and dear to me, and to leave my 
 kind friends ; and eagerness to mingle in the shock of 
 intellectual arms, which I knew exercised the young warriors 
 under General B 's command. 'B '-'- ^ ''■'- '■' 
 
 As this gentleman is still alive, I shall forbear naming, 
 although I shall try to describe him. He was born, I believe, 
 in the parish of Callender, iu Perthshire, and was one of 
 a family of brothers, all more or less distinguished by talent 
 and literature, and who became respectable ministers in the 
 Church of Scotland. R. B. at College stood high : a rather 
 pretentious periodical having been started in the University, 
 he wrote a satirical poem in the mock heroic vein, entitled 
 '■ The Dawn of Science," which overwhelmed it in effulgence. 
 He subsequently was settled as minister in Peebles, where, at 
 first, he was not popular, because not considered sufficiently 
 evangelical. At length a sagacious elder called on him, and 
 said, " Mr. B., if you winna gie us an evangelical sermon, ye 
 micht aye, at least, gie us an evangelical text.''^ On this hint 
 he spake, and henceforth he selected texts more from the 
 Gospels or Epistles, and less from the Proverbs and Eccle-
 
 80 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 siastes, and became very much admired. He was transferred 
 to Glasgow, to assist and succeed Jardine, in, I think, 1824. 
 He was, certainly, a capital disciplinarian and teacher. He 
 had a keen, sharp, Celtic physiognomy, and was fond of a sly 
 sarcasm. A preacher was once holding forth in the Common 
 Hall of the University on Jonah's prayer from the belly of the 
 whale, and dilating rather long on the emotions of the pro- 
 phet, who regretted, the preacher thought, in his immurement 
 nothing more than absence from the temple, where he should 
 
 have been that day." Professor B , turning round to his 
 
 nearest neighbour on the professorial bench, whispered : " He 
 has forgotten one important particular ; he has told us what 
 Jonah thought and felt — he should have said something about 
 how the whale felt." His mind seemed to be rather a well- 
 furnished and highly-cultured, than a profound, powerful, or 
 original mind. He had, at times, a surface fervour, which at 
 least made his ice dance, if it did not dissolve it. He was 
 clever rather than a large-hearted critic. His sympathies, 
 on the whole, were with the artificial and the conventional : 
 you sometimes suspected that he put on his poetic enthusiasm 
 with his morning cloak. There was, besides, about his manner, 
 style, and matter, too much of the preacher : yet his morning 
 prayers were exceedingly unctional ; his recitations of poetry, 
 bating a little of the whine and monotony of the puljDit, were 
 sometimes very effective. I remember him, for instance, 
 repeating Milton's description of the return of the Messiah 
 from creating the world, with much force ; indeed, he was 
 the only tolerable reader of poetry I heard, till I heard 
 Wilson. His criticisms on the essays sent in, were, on the 
 whole, comprehensive and just : but h.i's, forte decidedly lay 
 in examination. He excelled in using the forceps, and 
 bringing out from the student all he knew, often by a series 
 of subtle Socratic questions, and often with a running stream 
 of accompanying sarcasm, which made it a delicious treat 
 to all but the hapless victim ; who sometimes, however, did 
 not perceive that he was a victim.
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 81 
 
 B was partial, and his favouritism was worse from his 
 
 efforts to conceal it. He did not despise the blind efforts of 
 aspiring minds — the flutterings of eaglets from their parent 
 crag ; but he always seemed to me to prefer too much those 
 in his class who had already taken their set, carved their rut, 
 and were fixed down in a starched mediocrity — a blameless 
 and meritless medium — for the rest of their lives. This pre- 
 matm-e, Lilliputian manhood, he seemed to think the begin- 
 ning of a giant growth, but was generally mistaken. The 
 wings of his favoured fledgelings never became eagles' wings : 
 mediocrity had from the beginning, and the more in conse- 
 quence of his praises, " marked them for its own." 
 
 Ci Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and Wilson, he 
 spoke- occasionally, but although never in an abusive, and 
 sometimes in a laudatory, generally in a deprecatory strain. 
 " They were men of genius. Wordsworth described the Lake 
 country beautifully. Wilson was an extraordinary man ; 
 and Shelley's system of versification (that of running the 
 lines into each other) was ingenious and peculiar." But he 
 never seemed to see in that school the promise of a better 
 era — the bright twilight of a brighter day — the morning 
 stars preceding the rise of a new sun and Shakspere of 
 poetry, who, although not yet risen, must arise : he did not 
 see, in other words, that a period so strange and different as 
 this from the past, must create a poetry and rear poets of its 
 own, and that the Lakers and their followers, if not fully, were 
 approximately the poets of the new time, and, by their com- 
 parative failure, had proved the greatness of an object which 
 even they, gifted as they confessedly were, could only par- 
 tially accomplish. I sometimes fancied that I saw above 
 
 B 's head, during his prelections, the shades of Pope and 
 
 Dryden hovering, and whispering, " Be a good boy now : you 
 command these youths, but we command you ; do not praise 
 modern revolutionary geniuses too much, on pain of our 
 immortal displeasure." 
 
 I have said all this without any personal feeling. Professor 
 
 G
 
 82 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 B I respected as a man of high accomplishment, varied 
 
 knowledge, and strong good-sense, and loved, too, for his kind- 
 ness to me. I found him at once a just and a merciful critic. Tf 
 he clipped some of our wings, he acknowledged that we had 
 them, and encouraged us to fly. I took a high prize in his 
 junior side. Better fer, I obtained this session from his lips 
 a great addition to my knowledge, and acquired a fluency in 
 composition which has since been of essential service. He 
 followed Jardine's system — a system which involved the prac- 
 tice of ])erpetual composition : three essays a week for the 
 first part of the session, and, toward the close, the writing of 
 five large themes — a logic essay, the analysis of a part of a 
 classical poem, an exegesis, an oration, and a descriptive 
 essay in verse or prose, at the writer's pleasure. My logic 
 theme was a tissue of hideous bombast, and was cut up 
 accordingly. My exegesis, if I remember aright, was on 
 something about Men of Genius, and was praised. The Pro- 
 fessor selected my oration as one of a number to be read, and, 
 with fear and trembling, I read it accordingly. My descrip- 
 tive essay was a poem on my native scenery, and had sound 
 and fury enough, if little real poetry. 
 
 How vividly I remember that happiest of all my College 
 sessions ! — the bench (it was number five) where I sat in the 
 class — the figures of the students who were nearest me, as 
 well as those of the more distinguished scattered throughout 
 the hall — the tall form, erect carriage, Roman nose, and 
 horn-like bumps of causality on the brow of C E. M., now 
 a Missionary in Hindostan — the round, ruddy face and Irish 
 eye of H. W., since the distinguished son-in-law and bio- 
 grapher of the most distinguished Scotch divine of our age — 
 tlie sturdy, smith-like figure, snub nose, and sagacious face of 
 A. J., the powerful Free-Church champion of Fife — the large 
 brow of P. J., lately the editor of one of our popular periodi- 
 cals in the West — -the thin, active form of B. J., the eminent 
 Hydropathist — the sharp face and worn eyes of G. W., now 
 an English clergyman,. and author of a number of well-known
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 83 
 
 works — the keeu yet lady-like features of E. J., now a Pro- 
 fessor of Biblical Literature in connexion with a large Dis- 
 senting body — the restless countenance and large grey, 
 glimmering eyes of B. C. J., brother of B. S., the gifted 
 "alchymist" — and the fair hair, wild eye, and broad forehead 
 
 of G , the critic ! There were other forms and faces less 
 
 known, but which are as indelibly fixed on my memory — 
 such as that of a tall, raw-boned figure from the Upper Ward 
 of Lanarkshire, named T. J., who might have passed for 
 Dominie Sampson in poverty, awkwardness, and unalterable 
 resolution to be a scholar— a thin and thoughtful young man 
 from Stirling, named G. W., who promised to have become 
 a^great metaphysician, but who died early — and one M. G., 
 frpmr^rshire, who wrote poetry and poetical prose, but who 
 ended, I think, in a parish schoolmaster. It was esteemed a 
 good year, although hardly equal to one which succeeded it, 
 two sessions afterwards, and when Archibald Swinton, Tait of 
 Kugby, and poor Morell Mackenzie, who was lost in the 
 " Pegasus," were the triumvirate of the year. 
 
 I spent the next summer in the country again ; and it was 
 perhaps the happiest summer I ever enjoyed. I had at the 
 Logic Class obtained a number of new ideas, and a power of 
 easy composition. I emj^loyed a good deal of my time in 
 this summer wi'iting essays on Novels, the Scottish Cove- 
 nantei-s, and other topics. I had, however, far more pleasure 
 in pursuing trains of internal thought, and building up piles 
 of silent composition, in my walks by the water-sides and 
 among the woods. I never in my life had more enjoyment 
 than while forming some of these internal essays. Having 
 few books and ample leisure, I often spent large portions of 
 my days in this practice. I went out with my stick in my 
 hand — an indispensable requisite. Sometimes, when the 
 weather was unpropitious or my own spirits flat, my vein 
 would not flow, and I returned home miserably disappointed; 
 for I went to this as to my only luxwry. At other times, 
 when there was a wind abroad, like an angel struggling 
 
 G 2
 
 84 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 through the woods, or when the divine darkness of an autumn 
 afternoon was resting on the pines and corn-fields half-way 
 up the lofty hills to the south of our valley, or when the 
 grey glory of a breezy autumn day was poured upon the 
 yellow stubble of the plain, or when I wandered among a 
 willowy isle close to the banks of the Rennie, or when I 
 returned from a long walk along the river-side under the 
 shadows of the evening shutting down over Ben-Con and 
 Ben-Darg, then my soul awoke ; and selecting some subject, 
 — such as " The Charms of Vii'tue," " Bombast and its Varie- 
 ties," " Genius," " No Friendship among the Wicked," — my 
 thoughts careered on in a rushing torrent, shaping themselves 
 instantly into language, exciting my physical frame to the 
 highest possible pitch, bringing to my brow a flush, to my 
 eyes tears, to my feet as it were wings; in short, I cannot, 
 dare not describe the rapturous enthusiasm which then dis- 
 turbed, as by a storm, my whole being. "When I read 
 " Tintern Abbey," I found in Wordsworth's description of 
 his young raptures at the sight of Nature something remind- 
 ing me of these early joys. The effusion on " The Charms of 
 Virtue " consisted of a series of bitter satirical invectives 
 against the hypocrisy of a world which pretends to love and 
 praise virtue, while practising every species of vice with 
 greediness. " Bombast and its Varieties" was a sketch of 
 the various classes of literary sins and errors. " Genius " 
 was an ardent defence of that mystic power, and formed, in 
 fact, the key to much in my after literary history. The 
 " boy was father of the man." I care not for the charges of 
 vanity which the recital of these facts may raise against me ; 
 enough that they are facts, and that, whatever might be the 
 merit of the compositions produced in these hours — which of 
 course cannot be settled, since they have for ever perished — 
 the memory of the rapture connected with them is what no 
 one can ever deprive me of. I sometimes yet pass along the 
 dyke-side whei-e I composed " The Charms of Virtue," and 
 the bare stony moor where the " Fate of Genius" came on
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 85 
 
 me ; and recal with envy, and would give all I have, to renew 
 the sensations I had then. But, alas ! in vain. 
 
 " The beautiful is vanish'd, and returns not." 
 
 That summer, too, I met with some memorable men whose 
 conversation was profitable to me. My father's place had 
 been filled up by a clergyman whom I shall describe after- 
 wards. But there was a Dissenting chapel vacant in the 
 village, and to supply it various preachers came from time to 
 time. I went often to hear them in the evenings. Some of 
 them used to call oh my mother, and I accompanied them 
 frequently in their walks among the hills. There was one 
 Sr^A., a man of very considerable talent, with a florid face, 
 "wild'^eye, beautiful " style of language," as the simple vil- 
 lagers said of his sermons; with fine, flowing, flowery sermons ; 
 much humour, and good-humour too, in private; but reck- 
 less, void of caution and principle, and who ultimately died 
 insane and a suicide. He became a minister, I think, in 
 Douglas, Isle of Man, and was for a season very popular 
 there, although much persecuted withal. I have heard many 
 stories of him; one strikes me as worth telling. A little 
 before his death, he called one day on a lady, a member of 
 his church, and requested her to take a walk with him. She 
 ■was surprised at this, but did not refuse. He led her into 
 the country, and at last requested her to follow him into a 
 ■wood; and when he reached the depths of it, he asked her to 
 kneel down beside him, which she did, and he proceeded to 
 pour out a prayer which, for beauty, pathos, and grandeur, 
 (it was the prayer of a penitent, such a prayer as a Byron 
 might have used,) she never had heard equalled. It assured 
 her of three things : that he had been a great sinner ; that 
 he was a humble penitent; and that his mind was seriously 
 affected. The next news she heard was that of his sad end. 
 
 I went with S. A. to Ben-Ample. It was a beautiful 
 May-day, not fully, as a countryman remarked to us on the 
 ■way, in the "gum of summer," and, therefore, fitter for a
 
 86 THE HISTORY OF A JFAN. 
 
 journey. He was a pleasant, nay delightful, companion. He 
 told me much of the ways of Glasgow, of which city he 
 was a native. I remember him speaking of his elocutionary 
 master — Hamilton — whom he described as " Nature's own 
 child." Alas ! he was also the child of weakness, and, ulti- 
 mately, of evil habits. One story about him was exceedingly 
 rich, although very melancholy. Hamilton had agreed to 
 give joint recitations in the Trades Hall, I think, with the 
 well-known dramatist, S. K. When the hour arrived, he was 
 
 not to be found. A little after K had begun, the poor 
 
 fellow who should have aided him reeled in, very much 
 intoxicated, and seated himself behind the speaker — inter- 
 posing such remarks audibly as, " Good! K , very good ! 
 
 but borrowed from me !" "Tolerable !' '"Bad !" " bad!" 
 
 till he had to be removed. We had a fine walk up the 
 moimtain ; and, some days after, I parted with S. A., at a 
 little bridge, over a small watercourse some miles east from 
 our dwelling, and returned with sad emotions, and a sort of 
 presentiment of his future fate. He wielded a strange fasci- 
 nation over me, and I w^atched his future career with much 
 and painful interest : I think, but am not sure, that I saw 
 him afterwards, in the Trongate of Glasgow. I loved him 
 chiefly because he loved literature. 
 
 There was another of the same body to whom, also, I took 
 a great liking. His name was James King. He became 
 afterwards a Missionary among the Eocky Mountains. He 
 was a natural sage, the first rude shaping of a Soci'ates ; or 
 — shall I say ? — a Burns in mother wit, although not in 
 genius. Genius — fancy — the powers of combination and 
 colouring, as well as learning and acquired logic — he had 
 none ; but he was a very mammoth of mother wit — or a 
 colossus of common-sense were as alliterative and as appli- 
 cable a combination of words. He had a certain short-hand 
 m.ethod of getting at the essence of all characters and all 
 subjects. His nature, in its homely width, seemed to adjust 
 itself to all varieties of company and of character, like the
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 87 
 
 wind, which waves to, blows around, retreats from, advances 
 Up, strikes or kisses, all it meets. Not himself a poet, he 
 could not help loving poetry and poets. He had a racy vein 
 of sarcasm, which was fed by an extensive knowledge of 
 human nature, and a little embittered by disappointment. 
 Of me he said kind things when a kind thing was valuable, 
 and his praise was long a solitary ray of sunshine on my 
 humble head. I took him to all the points of our scenery, 
 and enjoyed his keen and sensible talk on men and things 
 very much, I met him afterwards in Edinburgh, and re- 
 newed pleasant intercourse ^iih him, and also with his friend, 
 D. J., whom I had met in the country — a man of a more 
 re'fr&ed mind, and who possessed a passionate attachment to 
 literftttire. King, poor fellow ! died very suddenly iu his 
 foreign mission. How well I remember his tall clumsy form, 
 his big brow, sagacious face, and broad Lowland accent ! 
 
 This delightful summer was now drawing to a close. I paid 
 in October a parting visit to Ben-Ample, along with the 
 preacher who had formerly climbed it with me, when the 
 mist spoiled the prospect. We went up this time, not by 
 Loch Rennie, but through Glen Conochie ; the yellow woods ■ 
 now shining and rustling in the windy sunshine of an autumn 
 day, and the deer appearing on the remoter heaths. We 
 turned north, out of Glen Conochie, into a wide waste valley, 
 full of mosses and quagmires, across which we had to bound 
 with short and springy footstep. It was a relief to find our- 
 selves climbing the firm steep sides of Ben-Ample. This day 
 there was no mist, but a strong wind was blowing, and we 
 could not stop long to admire the magnificent view of 
 gleaming lakes, billowy mountains, vast winding hollows ; the 
 tremendous Schrecktoron standing up across a little glen as 
 if to rival Ben-Ample, and resembling a rhinoceros swollen 
 into a mountain, with a horn on its nose, snuffing the wind. 
 We returned in the late evening, very tired. 
 
 And now came College-time. On my road to Glasgow 
 I stopped a few days at a friend's in a town half-way, and
 
 88 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 there I procured from the library some old volumes of 
 Blackwood, containing Wilson's papers on " Streams," " Cot- 
 tages," " A Glance at Selby's Ornithology," and the best of 
 the " Noctes." The impression produced on my mind was 
 exciting, electrifying, intoxicating. I remember that one night, 
 after reading, I think, " Cottages," and " Selby," I could not 
 sleep, but lay awake till long past midnight iu a rapt reverie, 
 composing a description of the scenery of my own native place, 
 in my own style, but coloured a little by the papers I had 
 been reading ; or, to speak more correctly, all the scenery of 
 Strath-Rennie came rushing in words upon my view. It was 
 the most glorious night I ever spent ; and, when morning 
 arrived, I renewed my reading of the inspiring page. How 
 I revelled in those superb pictures of the golden eagle ! its 
 grandeurs and terrors hushed in half-slumber upon the crag; 
 the mighty wings which had, since morning, swept a hundred 
 straths, folded up and quiet ; the eye which had outstared the 
 sun sealed up in sleep ! — of the raven, the mountain misan- 
 thrope, sitting silent as an unopened page of the iron Book of 
 Fate in his grim glen, or seen rising slowly and heavily, 
 gorged with human flesh ! — and, in " Cottages," of the "Giant 
 of the Hut of the Three Torrents," now seated serene, with 
 his white hair glittering in the sun, before his cottage, and 
 now fallen, through the " barley-bi'ee," like a felled oak, low 
 but mighty still, on a couch which Nature herself had pre- 
 pared to break his fxll ; a couch of bounie blooming heather ! 
 I had met no writing which, in its wild freedom, its un- 
 controllable power, its magnificent divergencies and errors, 
 pleased me so much. It was just the race of a wild deer 
 along the sides of Ben- Ample : it was just one of the tameless 
 torrents of my own hills, wailing or laughing by. I believe 
 that the accidental reading of these volumes greatly accounted 
 for my dissatisfaction with the prelections of the Moral 
 Philosophy Class to which I was bound. Had I gone, as 
 I did afterwards, to Wilson's feet instead of James Milne's, 
 it had been different. The friend with whom I was living
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 89 
 
 reproved me for ray enthusiasm, and set me to reading 
 Dr. Brown's Lectures, and into their splendid maze accord- 
 ingly I went, and with much pleasure : but still, reading him 
 I found at that time a task ; reading Wilson, an exquisite 
 enjoyment. 
 
 Arrived at Glasgow, I lost no time in joining Milne's 
 Moral Philosophy Class, and soon became interested, if not 
 very much in the study, much in the idiosyncrasy of ray 
 Professor. He was a fine-minded old man ; clear, original, 
 acute, but cold rather — at all events, careless. At the 
 morning hour, to which he came sometimes scarcely dressed, 
 he seldom seemed fully awake ; yet the snorings of his 
 slrtuaber were often noble. Brummell's valet said that his 
 nfasror' always "snored like a gentleman;" so old Milne 
 always snored like a genius — of metaphysics. What a fine 
 clear system he built up year after year, from the first faint 
 sensations of the infant, to the poet's dream of immortality, 
 and the philosopher's theoiy of God ! He scouted transcen- 
 dentalism ; he was not versed in the poetry of metaphysics ; 
 his views seldom tapered away into the subtle, and never 
 towered into the sulilime. But he was the ideal of a clear, 
 strong, ingenious intellectualist ; without passion, without 
 imagination, without faith, with little force, and with less 
 feeling. His lectiires were masterly in matter, careless in 
 style and in manner of delivery ; but he once read us an 
 early Essay written by him on Beauty, developing the theory 
 of Alison, which had been formed by him previously and on 
 independent grounds, and which was written so tenderly, 
 elegantly, in a style so chastely yet richly adorned, that the 
 class were taken by surprise, and, contrasting it with his 
 ordinary prelections, could solve the problem in no other way 
 than by supposing, that when he wi-ote it he had been in love. 
 He showed sometimes that he could appreciate genius, and 
 read the good poetry that was (very rarely) handed in to him, 
 with much gusto ; and you were delighted when the meta- 
 physician, in your sight, was transfigured into a man. He
 
 90 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 was, if common report did not belie him, although a clergy- 
 man, a sceptic ; and, indeed, he set himself, in a quiet but 
 effectual way, to shake the belief of his students. He openly 
 denied and argued against eternal pvmishment, and sneered at 
 some of the cardinal doctrines of Christianity besides. Few 
 came away from his class without sharing, more or less, in 
 the infection, if not of his actual doubts, at least of his cold, 
 sceptical, materialistic spirit. The Moral Philosophy Class 
 was a kind of ice-bath, in which we shivering novices were 
 plunged ; some of the weaker perishing, and even the stronger 
 more chilled than strengthened by the operation. I have 
 heard eminent Doctors of Divinity confessing that, years after 
 they had entered the ministiy, the recollection of some of 
 Milne's half-hinted doubts, sly suggestions, words where more 
 was meant than met the ear, came back at times upon them, and 
 threatened to darken their faith and paralyse their exertions. 
 Milne, by the way, was the uncle of the notorious Frances 
 Wright, the lady lecturer, who did so much, in America and 
 elsewhere, to propagate infidelity, but who, ere she died, came 
 to sounder views, and keenly regretted her early aberrations. 
 He had once got into trouble from his political opinions. 
 About the time of Napoleon's return from Elba, he had in 
 the Common Hall, of which he was then the stated preacher, 
 delivered a sermon which was thought to savour of Buona- 
 partism, and had given out at the close the paraphrase, 
 " Behold he comes — your leader comes." Political feeling 
 was then running high in Glasgow, and Milne was summoned 
 to account for his discourse, and even for the paraphrase he 
 had sung. He proved, we believe, that he had preached the 
 same sermon and given out the same hymn years before ; it 
 might have been, of course, with a different animus and 
 object : but still the scent would not hold, and the blood- 
 hounds had to quit the track. As a preacher, he some- 
 times approached the verge of very high eloquence. His 
 sermons were too philosophical, but they were carefully com- 
 posed, elegant in language, and occasionally very effective :
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 91 
 
 one on the text, " Ponder the path of thy feet," was, we under- 
 stand, a masterpiece of sound wisdom, chaste fervour, and 
 happy illustration. Altogether he was a noble nature, frost- 
 bitten by scepticism, counteracted by indolence ; and has left 
 nothing whatever to perpetuate his name. Farewell " Old 
 Sensation," as thy students called thee ! Well I knew thee, 
 and owe thee a debt of considerable gratitude ! 
 
 In his class I did nothing except study my teacher, and 
 get acquainted with some of his students. I shall here record 
 the characters of two or three of the more remarkable. My 
 principal intimate tkis session and the next was B. G., a 
 student from Ayrshire. He was a thin, pale-faced little 
 la^j^iooking ten years older than he was, well known as a 
 cffpif^l' Latin scholar, but only two or three of his friends 
 were aware of his really extraordinary acquirements and his 
 subtle metaphysic faculty. He knew more for his age than 
 any person ever I met ; was a thorough Latin, French, and 
 Greek scholar ; had read enormously in science, literature, 
 philosophy, and history; and had a clear, searching intellect. 
 His deficiency was imagination. He could with his intellect 
 span the heavens, but no rainbow-colours flashed along the 
 arch. He sympathised, however, warmly with certain ima- 
 ginative authors. He taught me to relish Godwin and 
 Shelley, against whom I had strong prejudices. It was at 
 his lodging that I first saw Wilson's review in Blaclavood of 
 the " Revolt of Islam ;" the extracts from which struck me 
 so forcibly that I made B. G. procure me the poem from the 
 College-library; and I read it wath rapture. I learned more 
 facts, and more about philosophic theories, from this poor, 
 pale, ill-dressed lad, tlian from any source which ever opened 
 on me. He was anxious to get me to curb my fancy, or at 
 least to ballast it better with analytic thought than I was 
 inclined to ; and our talks were generally turned by him into 
 the channel of metaphysics. Day after day we paced up 
 those Collegc-grceu walks Scott has described in " Rob Roy" 
 — walks shaded with trees, and passing amidst extensive fields,
 
 92 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 through which a dull stream, called the Molendinar, wound 
 its Lethean current. It was winter; and the scene,^ although 
 diversified by merry groups of red-gowned students, and 
 occasionally by ladies, the wives or daughters of the pro- 
 fessors, was sufficiently dreary. Yet there are few scenes I 
 have ever revisited, after long absence, with more pleasure, 
 more of the "joy of grief," than those old walks, where 
 B. G. and I talked down hours to moments on such themes 
 as the Infinite Evil of Sin, the Catholic Claims (it was the 
 question of the day), and similar topics. It was pure, naked, 
 intellectual gladiatorship, familiar to him by habit, but on 
 which I entered with all the delight of one who finds himself 
 in a new element, and finds that element to be more con- 
 genial to him than he had supposed. 
 
 B. G. was not, as I said, a man of genius, scarcely what 
 could be called a brilliant man. Many thought him a 
 mere compound of memory and skin! He was shrewdly 
 suspected to be a little sceptical. He had read the Ency- 
 clopaedists of France, the Edinburgh Review, and Godwin's 
 " Political Justice" too much and too sympathisingly. He 
 lent me, I remember, that strange book of Godwin's, as 
 well as " Caleb Williams." I began this novel in the evening 
 — read on, in my own little chamber, till the candle went 
 out at one of the most interesting parts of the story. The 
 house was fast asleep, and I had to digest my disappointment 
 and go to bed. 1 rose early next day, and finished it. It 
 seemed to me, as it still does, the opening up of a virgin vein 
 of greater depth than width. Thei-e was a startling combina- 
 tion in it of a cold materialistic philosophy with warm passion 
 and imagination. The voice was Jacob's — the hands were 
 those of Esau. The theories were those of my Professor, 
 James Milne; the writing was often as powerful as that of 
 Burke, and the interest as riveting as that of Scott's best 
 novels. I passed from " Caleb Williams" to Godwin's other 
 tales, with inferior but great relish; and from him to Brock- 
 den Brown, whose " Wieland" and " Arthur Mervyn" struck
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 93 
 
 me greatly. I even meditated and began a tale in a similar 
 style, but never finished it. 
 
 I was at the end of this session separated from B. G., 
 
 and only met him once again, years afterwards, at , 
 
 He had gone in the meantime to the Divinity Hall, and 
 become more religious in the tone of his mind. If he had not 
 ceased to doubt, he had put his doubts under strong suppres- 
 sion, and was anxious now not to doubt, but to believe. We 
 compared notes together on this and other subjects during a 
 delightful walk. I, too, as I shall have to teU hereafter, had 
 had my deep difl&culties during and after my intimacy with 
 him; but I had in the interim been studying divinity too; 
 had begun to feel satisfaction in the study; and the longer I 
 had leojced at the glory of the subject, the spots had seemed 
 to diminish in number and in size. Thus, too, my friend felt ; 
 and he seemed entirely to have changed his course of study, 
 and to have applied himself to Christian authors. We talked 
 much, too, about our old companions, and about our future 
 prospects. I read him a sermon I had composed, which he 
 professed to like; but hinted that I had not pursued my 
 metaphysical studies or my practice of careful and thoughtful 
 composition so much as I ought to have done; and in refer- 
 ence to its uniform luxuriance, said, I should remember that 
 a "table-laud was just a plain." I parted with him there- 
 after, and met him no more on earth. Poor B. G. ! one 
 year afterwards I saw thy name in the cold, common obituaiy 
 of a newspaper ! May we meet again in some " mild sphere," 
 and renew o\ir conversations, and mingle our intellectual 
 joys ! Vale ! 
 
 There was a strange student of the same year, named 
 D. J., who passed for crazy, and whose manner, through its 
 gross affectation, made him the laughing-stock of the students. 
 The last thing I heard of him was that he had retired to 
 one of the romantic islands of the Hebrides, and was beg- 
 ging sixpences from strangers. There was another, called 
 D. W., who passed for a genius with some, through his
 
 94 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 assui'ance, assumed eccentricity, and boundless affectation. 
 I remember him spouting a splendid oration in the Logic 
 Class, which I recognised as stolen bodily from a speech of 
 Brougham's. When I charged him with the theft, he denied 
 it, and said coolly that if there were any resemblance, it must 
 be from the coincidence of his mind to that of the great 
 senator. He wrote a note to Professor Milne, excusing his 
 not performing the prescribed exercises, on account of the 
 " invincible, incessant, and ineradicable laziness of his nature." 
 The Professor kept up a running fire of satire on him, for this, 
 all the rest of the session. He went to study under Wilson 
 at Edinburgh, and astonished the modern Athenians by his 
 manner in the street, where he often appeared as if rapt 
 in profound reverie, and with folded arms; till stumbling 
 against a gentleman or lady, he started, bowed, and cried, 
 " Beg pardon, madam, I was thinking." He ought to have 
 been acquainted with another fool of the first head, C, Doyne 
 Sillery, the once well-known poetaster, who was wont to run 
 into coffee-houses, and say, " Waiter, bring me a sheet of 
 paper inunediately ; I have got an idea." D. W. had money, 
 and, I think, returned to his native town, somewhere in 
 Dumfries-shire, and lived in a lonely and half-crazy sort of 
 style. He had, certainly, talent, but it was not strong 
 enough to bear the heavy burden of his affectation. 
 
 I remember, as one of the characters at College, a sti-ange, 
 morbid youth, with dull yet dreamy eyes, a cadaverous 
 countenance, and dirty, dishevelled appearance, who spent 
 all the" hours he could steal from his classes in haunting dis- 
 secting-rooms. He visited them, not so much in search of 
 information, as from an unnatural delight in the smells 
 issuing from such places. He actually seemed to snuff the 
 tainted air, as if it were laden with the " arrowy" odour of 
 beds of frankincense and myrrh. B. G. and I christened 
 him the " stinking philosopher ;" and I remember saying, 
 " Look there, G., there's a practical illustration of Pantheism ; 
 that poor fellow finds a stench to be as divine as to others
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 95 
 
 seems an Arabian gale with all its spices." I did not then 
 know Emerson and Carlyle, else they had been made right 
 welcome to this additional evidence of the truth of their sub- 
 lime system ! The poor '' stinking philosopher" was not long 
 in furnishing his quota to those smells he loved so dearly; 
 his morbid taste had sprung from bodily distemper, and he 
 died during one of the recesses of College. 
 
 There was another mysterious character in the University 
 one session at this time. This was a large lean lad — the 
 largest and leanest man I ever saw — with dark but short- 
 cropped hair, a swiaging, rapid walk, and a fece almost 
 completely buried in big blue spectacles. This* person 
 attoiiued several of the classes, but no one knew his name. 
 We.caiaed him the " Genius of the Anonymous." He came 
 most punctually to the lecture, speaking to no one, and 
 stalked up to a seat in a remote part of the class-room, where 
 he sat moveless as a pillar, with nothing visible about him 
 save his glasses, and a grin that dwelt, as if carved, on the 
 lower part of his face. When retiring, he was not .unfre- 
 quently dogged by some of the students; but he seemed 
 aware of it, and, by doubling and plunging into obscure 
 lanes, he always contrived to elude them. Sometimes, espe- 
 cially when the Catholic Question was being discussed, he 
 appeared at the principal debating societies, and sat silent, 
 bxit evidently much interested in the debates. Once, and 
 once only, he seemed about to speak. A student had just 
 delivered a powerful speech against the Catholics, which 
 seemed to produce a great sensation. Suddenly the unknown 
 sprang to his feet in a state of great excitement — his hands 
 clenched — his tall form expanded to its utmost height — the 
 glasses gleaming a " blue lowe" above — and the grin becoming 
 terrific below. All eyes were instantly fixed upon him — all 
 hearts were beating thick. " What voice or language can issue 
 from the lips of this strange inscrutability'?" seemed the 
 universal query. The silence was profound, when the words
 
 96 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 "Master Chairman," in a strong Irish accent, broke from 
 him. Something in the tone of the voice, coupled with the 
 excessive excitement of the man, produced a ludicrous sensa- 
 tion in the audience. This vented itself in a roar of laughter, 
 which so disconcerted or so irritated the " Genius of the 
 Anonymous," that, without adding another word, he lifted his 
 hat, and strode indignantly out of the room, amidst loud 
 laughter and ironical cheers. From that hour he was seen 
 at College no more. Various speculations were, as usual, 
 formed about him and the causes of his disappearance. The 
 general opinion was, that he was an Irish Jesuit. A student, 
 after his disappearace, said, that he had one night encountered 
 the unknown in the Gorbals, in company with a lady. He 
 had watched and followed, and was near enough to overhear 
 her reproaching him bitterly, and him doing all he could to 
 soothe her. He lost sight of them on turning the corner of 
 a street. Shortly after, all Glasgow was startled by the news 
 of a lady, who was found, in a mean lodging in the Gorbals, 
 strangled in her bed. It was found that a gentleman, 
 answering to the description of the " Anonymous" student, 
 had procured a lodging for her there, and often visited her. 
 One night cries and shrieks were heard in the apartment. 
 The neighbours delayed inquiring into the cause till morning, 
 when, bursting in, they found the poor young lady, who 
 seemed of English extraction, dead. They made hue and cry 
 after the murderer, but in vain. They found out his lodging, 
 but his landlady knew nothing of him but that he paid his 
 bills, and was a quiet, decent lad, although often from 
 home. There were flying rumom-s afterwards of his having 
 been seen in Greenock, in Belfast, and in New York, but 
 nothing was ever accurately ascertained ; the Juuius of the 
 Ethic Class remained undiscovered, and still " stat nominis 
 umbra." 
 
 I have alluded to debating societies. These, in my day, 
 were in rather a flourishing condition, and I not unfrequently
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 97 
 
 attended, although I rarely spoke, at their meetings. I re- 
 member one singular scene. In a debate on Phrenology, the 
 well-known A. S., now of Edinburgh, stood up in defence of 
 the science, and spoke in rather a conceited, although fluent 
 and dashing style. He was a relative of Sir Walter Scott ; 
 and how we raw Glaswegians stared at him as he described 
 a meeting with the " Great Unknown," on whose rich conver- 
 sation, quotation of poetry, and " immense head," he dilated 
 with much gusto — adducing especially his organ of veneration 
 as a proof of phrenology. The speech made a decided sensa- 
 tion. C. R. M., mefiitioned above as now a Missionary in 
 India, rose and delivered a most elaborate reply, which 
 sofficwhat coimteracted the effect of the speech. But just as 
 {rngg'm fiomponere, &c.) the best reply to Burke's " Reflec- 
 tions" was not Mackintosh's " Vindicise Gallicse," but Tom 
 
 Paine's " Rights of Man," so the real reply to S was to 
 
 come, not from refined metaphysical speculation, but from 
 rough common-sense. There sat in the top of the crowded 
 class-room a tall, thin, long-visaged, spectral, and withal i-ather 
 stupid-looking man, named S. P., now, I think, a clergyman in 
 some Dissenting church in Lanarkshire. This man had what 
 Burns calls " a strong inkneed kind of a soul," an acute 
 although uncultured mind, and a great deal of humour as 
 rough as his sagacity. He was just a mass of roaring, robust 
 common-sense ; passed with puppies or asses for an ass ; but, 
 while the cleverer appreciated his merit, all were delighted to 
 see him rise ; for a treat they never failed to expect and to 
 receive. He spoke at the pitch of a very powerful voice, and 
 poured out a torrent of blended sense and nonsense, made 
 many shrewd remarks, and drew some most diverting pic- 
 tures. On this occasion his uprise had been waited for most 
 impatiently, and many a cry of " S. P." had been uttered 
 to rouse him to his legs. At last up he sprang; and certainly 
 
 if S , as is possible, had never heard of him befo)-e, and 
 
 judged of him at first only by his broad Scotch accent and 
 
 ii
 
 98 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 homely appearance, he must have thought it was the miracle 
 of Balaam's ass renewed. He took hold of his fine flimsy 
 oration, and, amidst roars, screams, shouts of laughter, rent 
 it in a thousand pieces. He turned the whole splendid melo- 
 dramatic scene of the meeting with Scott, which S had 
 
 described, into unmitigated ridicule. He said he would as 
 soon consult " a man's hands as his head in order to find out 
 his mental powers." He drew a laughable picture of venera- 
 tion as the " attic story, the garret of the brain," and of the 
 " state of the poor religious faculty sitting cold and shivering 
 thei'e." He rose to rough eloquence even when taking " Old 
 Mortality" as an illustration of Scott's bump of veneration, 
 and diverged to a glowing panegyric on the heroic Cove- 
 nanters. I despair giving my readers any idea of the sensa- 
 tion this queer speech produced. S eyed the speaker 
 
 through a golden quizzing-glass ; affected contempt — whisper- 
 
 ,> ing, it was said, to his next neighbour, " He's an inspired 
 
 i idiot ;" but felt it very keenly. I thought of a fine lady's 
 
 dress, bespattered with filth from the hoofs of a furious bull, 
 
 rushing past her in the street. It was, I think, S 's first 
 
 and last exhibition in a debating society. Far otherwise with 
 S. P. ; he continued for some years after to be the glory and 
 the laughter of the debating societies, and no debate was 
 thought worth listening to unless at some point of the 
 evening or other he rose and delivered one of his racy and 
 uproarious orations. A year or two after, there appeared one 
 of a similar make and similar eccentricity, robust S. R., 
 afterwards a clergyman in Glasgow, and ultimately in Nova 
 Scotia, who for a while divided the popularity and halved the 
 ridicule which had befallen his kindred spirit, S. P. 
 
 I left the College this spring rather disconsolate. I had 
 taken no prize; rather neglected the business of the class, 
 although I had profited by my intercourse with B. G. 
 I returned home, and spent a dull and disagreeable summer. 
 My mind had not the same elasticity as on the former season,
 
 EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW. 99 
 
 I walked, indeed, by my old rivers, and carried my old stick 
 with me ; but it was the staff of Elisha in Gehazi's hands, and 
 could not conjure any more. I met this year a person of 
 great reputed talent, a preacher named Y. J., but did not 
 take so much to him as I expected. He was a clever, saga- 
 cious man, but had become soured with disappointment, 
 spoiled with sullen self-conceit; and his opinions of men and 
 authors were, I thought, the reverse of true. He attacked 
 the Lake school savagely; admitted Wordsworth to be a 
 true poet, but thought him crazy; and ignored Shelley and 
 Coleridge altogether. I repeated to him Coleridge's " Ode to 
 Mont Blanc," and Shelley's " Cloud," and had the mortification 
 to findihem falling flat. It was casting pearls before swine, 
 althougk "I had been taught to consider Y. J. as rather a 
 seraphic intelligence than anything else. Pollok's " Course of 
 Time" was a favourite subject of his abuse. Some of his 
 objections were just and well put; others the mere ravings of 
 spite. He called the "Byron" of Pollok a piece of "big- 
 mouthed talk." He objected to the expression in it applied 
 to ocean, " hoary locks," because Byron had said — 
 
 " Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow;" 
 
 in my notion, a very captious objection. Byron's idea of 
 ocean is that of an old but unwrinkled countenance; and over 
 such a face "hoaiy locks" may be lawfully represented as 
 floating. He objected to the image of the comet — 
 
 " Like some fierce comet of tremendous size, 
 To which the stars did reverence as it passed;" 
 
 and said, " Think of a star bowing ! " To this I ventured to 
 
 say : '' Now, Mr. J , this will never do ; how could any 
 
 poetry, or poetical prose, stand such a test?" In short, we 
 did not pull together, and I began, ere all was done, to think 
 my seraph a mass of self-complacent conceit. He had some 
 good sermons, but spoiled himself by a bad delivery, and his 
 
 H 2
 
 100 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 voice was husky. He -was latterly discovered to be a syste- 
 matic plagiarist; which was, indeed, in perfect keeping with 
 his dark, dungeon-like nature. He affected oracular utterances, 
 and said, sometimes, really clever things. Many, however, of 
 his sayings, as well as of his sermons, were pilfered. He was, 
 altogether, a singular example of a man of ordinary abilities, 
 half-soured and half-spoiled ; soured by the neglect of the 
 general public, and spoiled by the flatteries of cliques, 
 coteries, and the " minnows who thought him a Triton."
 
 EDINBURGH. 101 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 EDINBURGH. 
 
 At the close of this season, I went to attend the Moral 
 Philosophy Class in Edinburgh. I came to Edinburgh up the 
 Fnt]^ from Stirling on a fine October afternoon, and saw that 
 splendid scene to the greatest advantage. A hoary light 
 suited well that scene of antique grandeur, that magnificent 
 mountain-city — 
 
 " Stately Edinborough throned on crags." 
 
 I felt especially, or deemed I felt, "no common glow," 
 when I stood under the shadow of the frowning brows of the 
 Castle, bending over the Grass-market, and I thought of the 
 Covenanters and the " Heart of Mid-Lothian." I reserve for 
 an after-part of this volume a few remarks on Edinburgh, in 
 its manners, morals, and literature ; but this is the place to 
 record the boundless enthusiasm with which I then, and still, 
 regard the scenery around it. Haydon's first exclamation 
 when he saw it conveyed very much my impressions, " A 
 Giant's Dream." It seemed as if it had been built to some, 
 unearthly music, or after a model suspended in the clouds, 
 and formed by the hands of Air and Sunshine. Stone and 
 rock seemed here moulded in the express image of genius, and 
 nature and art were apparently reconciled. Religion, too, had 
 hung up toward the glowing west the dome of St. George's, 
 as if challenging the whole proud city as her own, I revelled 
 in the glories of the town and its environs ; now standing on 
 Arthur's Seat, and admiring the blue Peutlands, and the far-
 
 102 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 off hills of Lammermuii' ; now sitting on Mons Meg,* and 
 watching a thunderstorm coming up from Rob Eoy's country 
 to deluge the Frith with darkness and with fire ; now leaning 
 over the North Bridge at evening, and looking to the dome 
 of St. George's, relieved against a fading autumn sky ; and 
 now from Salisbury Crags contemplating, for a long hour, 
 the ruined splendour of a summer-day in a sunset, which a 
 hundred ordinary sunsettings seemed combined to produce — 
 the rapid shiftings of cloudy shapes — the flushings and 
 fadings of colour — the aerial mimicry of the scenes below 
 visible in the heavens — castles arising suddenly, to subside 
 for ever — blue Grampians piled up and pulled down in a 
 moment of time — rocks of ragged, tumbling into seas of 
 molten, gold — the sun sinking out of the sight of all this 
 " agony of glory," but sending up his last beams, to see the 
 end — and a stern grey twilight casting a shroud over the 
 memory of the day and its deathbed, on which the moon 
 arose and poured a congenial ray. Such scenes, as well as 
 the sight of the old town sleeping at midnight in the 
 silence of the pale planet, were to me unspeakably dear ; 
 because, more fully than even my native scenery, combining 
 the presence of nature, of art, and of that union between the 
 two which we call poetry. How I sometimes wished to have 
 Aladdin's Lamp, so that I could have transferred this stately 
 city, or one of similar architecture, to my own native valley, 
 and seen the mountains of Strath-Rennie standing in their 
 bold towering lines of 3,000 feet, around the Modern Athens 
 — dreams of mountains guarding a dream-city ! In dreams, 
 indeed, I have often compounded the varied elements of 
 known and familiar scenes into new and gorgeous wholes ; 
 adding the loveliness of one glen to the grandeur of another, 
 placing the mountains of one strath beside the long friths of 
 others, introducing the roar of Staffa amidst the grim gorge 
 of Glencoe, and piling some of my favourite hills on each 
 
 * "Mons Meg;" the old cannon so called, which lies on the half- 
 moon battery in the Castle of Edinburgh. ^Yo- % d'k^X^ t^ *^ ^iJLu^
 
 EDINBURGH. 103 
 
 other's heads, till they became snowless Andes with heather 
 blooming up to their very summits. " Such tricks hath 
 strong imagination ! " and in these bright visions, up to this 
 hour, the scenery of Edinburgh and the Firth of Forth 
 very frequently recui'S, forming a kind of artistic centre to 
 the wilder and more romantic glories which memory and 
 fancy combine out of my early or recent impressions, or out 
 of my readings. In that dream-land I have pictures, made 
 by my own heart, of most of the famous scenery of the world ; 
 a Tempe of my own, a Mont Blanc of my own, sterner 
 glaciers, hotter and higher Heclas, prairies of wider billow, 
 aijd Niagaras of deeper sound. How often have I awaked, 
 we^ng with joy or with sorrow, from such night-spectacles — 
 joy at the retrospect of the vision, and sorrow that it had 
 passed away ! I have no dreams I so much enjoy, or in 
 which I find or fancy a better omen, than in those of beau- 
 tiful scenes, although the effect has sometimes been to disap- 
 point me with the sight of the actual realities of the natural 
 world ; and Foyers and Dunkeld have been again and again 
 dwindled and darkened, because I saw them side by side with 
 imaginary cataracts and night-built hei-mitages. I never 
 needed to resort to any stimulus, or particular kind of food 
 to produce splendid dreams \ in my earliest and healthiest 
 days they came unbidden, and stood beside my couch in their 
 beauty, their grandeur, or their terror. This I attribute 
 greatly to the fact, that I was born in a district of country 
 which saturated and steeped fancy in bold and beautiful 
 forms. 
 
 In Edinburgh I did nothing, for two or three months, 
 besides attending the class, but read in very diversified 
 du'ections. I got access to one or two good libraries ; and, 
 from these, I culled the works that I thought most con- 
 genial : I fed, not upon rule, but wherever my literary 
 appetite impelled me. I set out with the determination to 
 read no books but those possessing merit of some kind or 
 other; yet I tried to act upon a principle of intellectual
 
 104 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 catholicity ; and while I read Butler's " Analogy," and " Owen 
 on the Hebrews," in the mornings, in the evenings I devoured 
 the " Beauties of Shelley," or Hazlitt's " Spirit of the Age." 
 I must say, however, that while I found reading the former 
 dry work, I relished the latter with exquisite delight. The 
 wild wailing music, the dreamy pomp of imagination, the 
 gorgeous tulip-like language, the bar of unearthly sorrow and 
 unearthly sweetness in its utterance which ran through the 
 whole, — these fascinated me in the poems of Shelley. I 
 seemed to hear the melodious cries of Ariel, from the centre 
 of that cloven pine " where he howled away twelve winters." 
 Thei'e was something, too, in the glimpse Campbell had given 
 me of the strange manners and appearance of the poet, that 
 charmed and melted me. I thought of one of those sons 
 of God who had lost heaven for the sake of the daughters of 
 men, and who continue, it is said, to wander over this world, 
 wondering at its coarse corruptions, falsehoods, and miseries, 
 stumbling against its stern laws, admiring all its beautiful 
 objects, panting after the celestial land they have left, but not 
 having resolution or grace to undergo the purgation which 
 could alone fit them to return to it — 
 
 " Too bad for heaven, too good for hell ; " 
 
 and, for earth, at once too bad and too good ! 
 
 To Hazlitt I went, also, with deep interest. He had been 
 in youth a hero-worshipper, and, in spite of himself and of 
 his heroes, had continued to worship to the last. His " First 
 Acquaintance with Poets " pleased me beyond expression. I 
 carried it (I found it in an odd volume of the Liherat) with 
 me to the Meadows, and there read and re-read it till its 
 every line was stamped on my memory and my heart. It 
 revived a thousand old associations, and I blended the expe- 
 riences of the minister's son at Wem, Shropshire, with those 
 of the minister's son at Strath-Rennie, and did my best to 
 fancy that I had "entertained" there Coleridges "unawares." 
 The picture, at any rate, of the solitary ambitious boy living
 
 EDINBURGH. 105 
 
 in his early dream-laud, till disturbed by a shock of power 
 and genius, like an Avatar visiting his native valley, — that, 
 at any rate, I appropriated to myself; although to him it 
 came more from one transcendently-gifted man, and to me 
 from a succession of influences, including the charms, of 
 scenery, and the powers of the varied books which had stirred 
 my sleeping soul, and surprised me into life and hope. I 
 admired, too, this authoi''s genius, in its combination of the 
 solid and the brilliant — elements not, indeed, well-harmonized 
 together, through his want of culture, but existing in gi-eat 
 abundance. Two of his peculiarities were exceedingly dear : 
 hjs-love of poetry, and his passion for the past. How I joyed 
 wnep I read his glowing pictures of Chaucer, Spenser, Shak- 
 spere, and all the older bards ! I have again and again pressed 
 his " Lectures on the British Poets" to my heart, in a similar 
 mood as when, reading Shelley's description of the retreat of 
 Laon and Laone from the battle-field, I burst into tears. 
 And then Hazlitt's love for the past, in preference to the 
 present or the future, was so much in keeping with my 
 feelings then, and far more now, when, in the language of 
 poor Thomas Pringle, 
 
 " Sick of the present, I turn to the past ; " 
 
 or, as Bulwer has it in his " Lament of the Last Faun" — 
 
 " I dream of the past alone." 
 
 But now for my recollections of Christopher North. I 
 went with a friend to hear his opening lecture. The hall 
 was crowded. I was struck by the difference between the 
 appearance of the students I had known in Glasgow, and those 
 in Edinburgh ; the one class wearing shabby red gowns over 
 shabbier coats, the other dressed in the mode of the day, and, 
 to my notion, desperately like puppies. One or two of my 
 old Glasgow contemporaries were among them; and it was 
 ludicrous to observe the ' change ' which had come " o'er the 
 spirit" of their dress — the chains, ringlets, and satin waist- 
 coats, which had supplanted the dirty uniform of the west ;
 
 106 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 not to speak of their accent, which, from broad Gorbals, had 
 become a curious hybrid of Edinburgh and mangled English. 
 I felt partly shame, when I compared my own " clouterly 
 carcase" with theirs; but far more, I felt contempt and pity. 
 They were become so pompous, and so consequential withal ! 
 I turned from them in disgust, and awaited the entrance of the 
 great Pi-ofessor. At last Wilson advanced, in all his shaggy 
 majesty. I was amazingly struck with the first appearance 
 of the man : he ought, I thought, to have come bursting out 
 upon us, not from a class-closet, but from some old primeval 
 forest — from among the mighty pines of BallochbQwie, or the 
 thick umbrage of the woods of Mar. His hair at that time 
 was long, bushy, and without, as yet, a white streak visible. 
 He must have been about forty- four years of age : in the very 
 prime of his majestic manhood. His eye was a torch of fire, 
 his step elastic, his face beaming with health, his form and 
 figure erect and fully expanded ; and I almost started when 
 I heard first the strange, wild, deep accents of his voice, in 
 the words, " Moral Philosophy, Gentlemen." Yet I must 
 confess that I listened to the lecture with deep disappoint- 
 ment ; I thought the manner coarse, and, at the same time, 
 unnatural and affected. The matter struck me as rather 
 mystical than pi'ofound, and the style sustained itself by 
 heaving effort, rather than ran on smoothly and strongly in 
 the fine free channels of inspiration, like his style in Black- 
 wood. He seemed labouring in an atmosphere unsuitable to 
 him, and you thought of an eagle writhing, not waving his 
 wings in a vacuum. The audience, many of whom had heard 
 him often before, received him with prodigious enthusiasm ; 
 but I went home, I must confess, thinking of the words of 
 a sing-ular student in Glasgow, who, talking of Wilson, said : 
 ' I think that man is a fool ; and that if he was na sic a big 
 fool^ he would be laughed at." Indeed, meeting some of his 
 admu-ers immediately after lecture, I myself said some strong 
 things to a similar effect, of the memory of which I am now 
 heartily ashamed.
 
 EDINBURGH. 107 
 
 The great man greiv on me as I continued to attend his 
 class. I found that what I thought coarseness was simply 
 the shaggy mane of the lion, and that the roar, though pecu- 
 liar, was intensely his own ; that his knowledge of metaphysics 
 was more extensive than I had at first deemed ; and that, if 
 he did not add much to what I had previously learned at 
 Glasgow, he gave his students what no Professor there could 
 give, — the benefits of the inspiration of his own powerful 
 genius. I heard his lectures with deeper and deeper delight ; 
 and, long ere he reaiehed the grand closing plea for the Im- 
 mortality of the Soul, I was completely converted to his 
 manner of delivery, as well as to the more substantial merits 
 of'S^s prelections. I laughed with him in his inimitable 
 picture of the miser ; I shuddered as he painted the sublime 
 sufferings sublimely endured by the Indian prisoners ; I felt 
 a thrill, " lifting my skin from the scalp to the ankles," as he 
 figured Caesar in his " fading manhood," weeping at the tomb of 
 Alexander, who had done so much more in his glorious youth ; 
 I saw that eye of his stilled like a summer sea, and heard his 
 voice sinking like a subsiding billow, as he uttered the words, 
 "the melancholy main ;" my blood rose to the trumpet-like 
 energy with which he pealed out the description by Scott of 
 the landing of the British in Portugal ; I heard him analyse 
 beauty like a philosopher ; describe conscience, that " phan- 
 tom censor" seated in the breast, like a poet ; and expound 
 the nature of faith like a theologian. Even when he was poor 
 and tedious, I loved to sit and listen to the slow swell of his 
 voice, lingering amidst its own grand sounds, as to the cadence 
 of the wind among pines, or of the ocean breaking on mid- 
 night shores. I enjoyed the humours of the class as conducted 
 by him, and his personal eccentricities, exceedingly. His 
 abrupt and fieiy entrance into the class-room ; the habit he 
 had of glaring out, at the end of every paragraph, through 
 the window on the right-hand side ; the watch laid out before 
 him, and, when the lecture was pool-, glanced at every five 
 minutes, in his impatience to be done ; the huddle of loose
 
 108 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 Sibylline leaves which he called, facetiously, notes of his 
 lecture ; the hawkiugs and hammerings of his occasional 
 embarrassment ; the glancings of his eye, opening wide, as if 
 to embrace the whole class ; the exquisitely comic looks he 
 sometimes cast around when any odd incident occurred, or 
 any odd character entered the room ; the fierceness or the 
 fun with which, according to his mood, he put down any 
 disturbance (once, we remember, crying out to a person in a 
 corner of the class-room who had been annoying him, with a 
 look and tone of indescribably ludicrous scorn, which threw 
 the class into a roar of laughter : " Little Jack Horner sits in 
 that corner ! " and often smiting his huge fist on the desk and 
 producing dead silence in a moment) ; and the broad rol- 
 licking manner he assumed when he told his students some 
 anecdote of his own youth, or encouraged them in snowball 
 fights, adding once, " May I be there to see !" — these are only 
 a few of the many hundred traits of character which, at the 
 distance of twenty-four years, rush back upon my recollection. 
 I confess to a considerable degree of trepidation when I 
 first found myself alone, for a few minutes, in the ante- 
 chamber of his class, with Christopher North, while procuring 
 my ticket from him. He was very civil and cordial, but 
 along with the ticket gave me a look which seemed to sound 
 my very soul. He asked whence I came ; and when I told 
 him, he exclaimed, " Ha ! magnificent scenery there ! I 
 passed through that village once, but in too great a hurry to 
 see the country to advantage." I had no further intercourse 
 with him till some months later, after I had written some 
 essays by which he was pleased, and asked me to call on him. 
 I embraced an early opportunity to do so, and spent some 
 delightful hours at 6, Gloucester Place. He poured out, in 
 the course of an evening or two, more ideas, more fiery 
 imagery, more acute remai'ks, and with more ease than any 
 converser I ever heard, Campbell not excepted. I can give 
 but a very inadequate idea of his conversation. He began 
 by talking of the difference between the scenery of the Lakes
 
 EDINBURGH. 109 
 
 and that of the Highlands; — "the one soothed the soul, the 
 other overwhelmed itj you went to the one as to a pleasure, 
 to the other as to some great task. He felt always at first a 
 kind of awe when he found himself fairly enclosed in those 
 gi-im gates of mountains. Visiting the Lakes was like reading 
 Gray or Beattie : visiting the Highlands was like reading 
 Milton or Dante." I asked him if he had seen Switzerland, 
 He said, " No, nor did he wish, any more than to visit 
 Brobdignag or the Mountains of the Moon. Tliose great 
 snowy wastes seemed to him uninteresting and shocking both. 
 What was Mont Blanc, after all, but a Brobdignagian snow- 
 l^all, an exaggerated common-place 1 He preferred the heath 
 an3* the ferns of auld Scotland, and, like Sir Walter, lie 
 thought if he did not see the heather once a-year he would 
 die. Switzerland would make him mad." I questioned him 
 about Coleridge, whose " Friend" and " Biographia Literaria" 
 I had been reading. He seemed reluctant to speak of him as 
 a man — saying that he hoped '•' the root of his perpetual 
 bitterness, at the time he knew him, was nothing but the 
 poppy; and that, although he had not seen him for years, he 
 believed he was mellowed down into a different being." He 
 spoke of his genius, however, with great admiration. " It 
 seemed to hover about him as a separate Energy, a distinct 
 Daemon, being near or in, but never of him, having no relation to 
 his character or bodily frame. His character was soft, weak, and 
 yielding; his bodily system healthy, but flabby, and drowned 
 in fat; while his genius was swift, winged, ethereal, almost 
 universal in its range. I have often thought that he should 
 be painted as a composite figure, such as we find in heraldry 
 — a large luxuriant slotli, with an eagle perched upon his 
 back. De Quincey calls him a Centaur; but a Centaur was an 
 active, Coleridge a lazy, animal. And yet study and writing 
 would have cost him very little trouble, if he had but once 
 fairly bestirred himself His conversation ovei-flowed with 
 poetry. He had only to open his eyes to see the deepest 
 mysteries and most important truths, which were all fluttei*-
 
 110 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 ing like winged angels about him, and he would not take the 
 trouble ; he onlv now and then lifted a lid, and saw ' atoms of 
 the rainbow,' bright centreless gleams of the richest colouring, 
 but of no continiuty, hovering before him. He accepted 
 every invitation to loiter on his way, and to enjoy his phy- 
 sical sensations. I said to him one day, in a fit of indignation, 
 ' Why, Coleridge, if you had been Moses, called to go up to 
 the Mount and meet with the Legislator of the Universe, you 
 would, had you found a nest of honey in a cleft of the rock, 
 have sat down and tasted, and forgot the summons.' With 
 the soul almost of a Shakspere, he was in indolence and 
 luxuriousness only a few degrees above a Sheridan. And yet 
 the strangest thing about him was, that whenever he recalled 
 himself from his bewildered dreams, or roused himself above 
 his habitual laziness, his remarks on men and things were as 
 acute as if he had been watching every object with lynx-eyed 
 perspicacity. He spent all his days and nights ' sitting by 
 the shores of old Romance,' and yet seemed to know law, and 
 politics, and gossip, and 'ladies' dresses, and all the topics of 
 the day, better than any man; and his observations were 
 often tinctured with as much bitterness as if he had been an 
 actor, and an unsuccessful actor too, in all of them. You saw 
 that the Brownie * had been with you, by the kicked-down 
 pails and other mischief made, more than by the work in the 
 kitchen. He seemed to see and feel too while he slept, like 
 a clairvoyant." " Didn't he steal from other authors ? " I 
 asked. " Yes," he said, " De Quincey makes him out a thief; 
 but I think he stole in his sleep, too. I don't believe he was 
 aware that he had been pilfering, till he was challenged with 
 it; and then he got first confused, and then angry, and then 
 hated you bitterly all his life long for charging him with 
 theft. His vein of conversation was often delightful. You 
 forgot the very presence of the speaker, and your soul turned 
 at least its, eyes away from the man, while listening to the 
 sound of his voice, like that of some sad but far-sighted and 
 * " Brownie ;" the famous Scotch household fairy.
 
 EDINBURGH. Ill 
 
 poetic Genie of the ' Arabian Nights,' imprisoned within him. 
 His voice was a very pecuhar one; it was soft, not strong; 
 sweet, and yet with a strange huskiness, amounting almost to 
 harshness, in its notes, hke the voice of a river when half 
 crusted over with ice. He had a burr, too, and a lisp, which 
 completed the contradictory elements which mingled in it. 
 Yet, on the whole, it produced a melodious effect, and told 
 you, before you knew who he was, that you were in company 
 with a poet." I asked him what he thought were the effects 
 of opium on him mentally ; morally, of course, and physically, 
 it had been very pernicious. " Why, I don't think with 
 some that it produced his peculiar genius — that had existed 
 in Kitn from his boyhood ; besides, I don't believe that opium, 
 or tobacco, or whisky, can create intellect : an opiated sumph ' 
 remains a sumph, and an opiated seraph was a seraph before. 
 Its principal effect on Coleridge was to bring up his weak- 
 nesses abreast of his strength, to nourish that dreamy self- 
 indulgence and that habit of endless talk which he had even 
 when a child. It made him miserable, too ; and that misery 
 produced a sort of lazy bitterness, an indolent spite, which 
 vented itself in a sullen, sleepy venom against all his suc- 
 cessful contemporaries. He could not even hate or abuse 
 with energy, but was like a man in a dream, maundering out 
 his half- conscious animosities and chagrins." I asked him 
 what he thought of his works. " Towers of Babel every one 
 of them, promising to scale the clouds, and yet all stopped 
 through the indolence or caprice of the builder, and stopped, 
 too, at the oddest and sometimes ugliest angles. He should 
 at least have licked his abortions. But what glorious frag- 
 ments he has sometimes produced ! The ' Rime of the 
 Anciente Marinere' and ' Christabel' are the purest creations 
 since the ' Tempest' or the ' Midsummer Night's Dream.' 
 They talk of Goethe; but what is there amid all the laboured 
 extravagancies, polished pollutions, and sham catholicities of 
 his thousand and one works to compare with such things as 
 these V " You don't admire Goethe, then?" " I admire his
 
 112 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 extent, just as I have often wondered at the breadth of the 
 bottom of a hill, that had little height and less amenity of 
 aspect to recommend it. A hill ! The cold-blooded coxcomb, 
 he is not a hill, unless you call him a huge dung-/tt^Z, covered 
 with snow and bathed in January moonlight. I admire also 
 the impudence and fanaticism of his indiscriminate admirers, 
 who prefer ' Wilhelm Meister' to Scott's novels, and ' Faust' 
 to ' Hamlet.' " " But is not ' Faust' really thought a won- 
 derful production?" "Yes; and so far justly. Its breadth 
 I acknowledge to be astonishing, especially considering its 
 small compass ; and it has also some noble poetry. It is a 
 picture of human life, given on a piece of canvas of the size 
 of a crown-piece ; and very little that is evil, at any rate, is 
 omitted. Fantastic as the design is, all is there. The queer 
 contradictions of human nature; the farce which borders or 
 breaks out amidst the tragedy ; the sinkings and soarings of 
 man — in the morning mating with angels in studious con- 
 templation, and spending the night, as he says, 
 
 ' On some harlot's lieaving breast ;' 
 
 the flights of high thoughts, like eagles ; of soft emotions, 
 like doves ; and of dark passions and darker doubts, like 
 ravens which cross our sky and perch on our souls continu- 
 ally; the ingrained selfishness of man's nature, working in 
 his love, in his hate, in his pleasure, and in his devotion — 
 mining in his hell, and colouring the tints of his heaven ; the 
 restlessness and dissatisfaction attending all the movements 
 of our speculative understanding; the dark, bitter, burning 
 drop that lies at the bottom of every cup of pleasure, — are all 
 faithfully given. 'Tis just a 'Devil's Dream' of man, done 
 into German by Johann Von Baron Goethe, and could only 
 have been so well done by a scoundrel, who knew by hearsay, 
 observation, and experience, all the evil that was in man, 
 and to whom, for the nonce, 'all power' was given — by some 
 daemon — I suppose, to represent it, but who knew very little 
 of the self-devotion, the disinterestedness, and the kindliness,
 
 EDINBUEGH. 113 
 
 honesty, simplicity, and piety which are in many of the race. 
 Scott has given the best reply to ' Faust,' by pointing Jeanie 
 Deans. Goethe could no more have created or understood 
 such a character, than he could have struck out angel-wings, 
 and flown to the summit of the Brockan. Margaret is nothing 
 to her. Mephistopheles is a little unclean sneering imp, who 
 seeks, by aj)pljing a microscope to gold, to turn it into mud, 
 and, by applying a microscope to mud, to turn it into gold. 
 ' Faust,' while it preserves its author's fame, damns his cha- 
 racter. Besides, it is really his only great work. His style 
 is undoubtedly clear, clean, and sharp ; but so may be a 
 razor, as well as a scimitar. I am always amused at Tom 
 CarTN'le's adoration of Goethe. It is characterized, I think, 
 by hi^ usual contradiction and paradox. I am told that a 
 Negress is now the favourite mistress with the Parisian 
 scamps; it is something of a similar spirit which actuates 
 Carlyle's love of Goethe and of Rousseau. Tired of our 
 common healthy standards — our Homers, Miltons, and so on 
 — he has taken up, for intellectual dalliance, with books so 
 diverse from his own original nature and taste as ' Wilhelm 
 Meister' and ' The New Heloise j' and he drives out his black 
 but comely darlings in that rushing chariot of his — to my 
 great amusement, at all events." 
 
 I asked him what he thought of Schiller. " Ah ! talk of 
 Schiller, and, as Johnson said of ' Cecilia,' you may talk on. 
 He was a man. His ideal of the h:ghest style of man was, 
 I think, wrong — merely that of an intellectual artist; and 
 -wrong, too, was his religious creed; but he wrought both of 
 them out with almost superhuman determination. You 
 like to see a Cyclops hammering away with all his might, 
 although it be at armour for Pluto. Schiller had some- 
 thing better than genius — he had simplicity of character 
 and true heart. His great error was, he did not think ill 
 enough of man— the very opposite of Goethe, who thought 
 much of himself, but little of man, and less of God." 
 " Were not both Pantheistsf " I don't think so. Schiller 
 
 1
 
 114 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 prob\bly was a Pantheist, but Goethe was rather a Pandevilist. 
 Schiller winked hard at the evils in the world, and tried to 
 believe they were divine; Goethe looked at, handled, gloated 
 over, and gloried in them. Schiller tried to see the divine 
 that he thovight was in them ; Goethe thought them devilish, 
 and liked them all the better because they were. It is 
 ludicrous to see a genuine Pantheist at his work, taking up 
 a round mass of mud, and trying to make it out to be a 
 minor Milky Way; throwing toads and toadstools, serpents' 
 tongues and spiders' webs, into a crucible to extract good and 
 beauty out of them ; encoring the law of nature which kills 
 a child in its mother's arms by lightning, or sends a thousand 
 shrieking wretches out of their warm berths into the bottom 
 of the ocean ; ' finding sermons in stones, and good in every- 
 thing ;' ludicrous, but somewhat allied to benevolence withal, 
 and better than the theory that sees malice prepense in the 
 intention of all these evil things. I think, on the whole, 
 that the Christian scheme, with all its difficulties, rids us 
 of the more formidable and hopeless difficulties connected 
 with the German theories, and gives a certain explanation of 
 the monstrous mischiefs we see around us, as well as pro- 
 phesies their end, and, above all, begins already successfully 
 to remove or abate some of them." He then launched out 
 into a pictured panegyric of Jesus Christ, to which I can do 
 but imperfect justice. " Think of his benignity — a benignity 
 that has kept the heart of the world warm ever since ! What 
 a divine breath of love came out of his lips and his life! 
 Then what but immediate inspiration could have given a 
 Jewish carpenter such thoughts and language — thoughts 
 deeper and language more melodious than anything in Plato ? 
 The Sermon on the Mount stands alone in the world. It is 
 the utterance of an inspired child. You often hear children 
 saying the divinest things in a scattered and inconsequential 
 way; but here is a long stream of inspirations, so deep, so 
 unconscious, so simple, and so unspeakably sublime ! Think, 
 too, of his boldness! This has been objected to Him by
 
 EDINBURGH. 115 
 
 fribbles, biit seems to me one of his grandest attributes. 
 That humble, babe-like man, assailing all the right reverends 
 and right honourables of his day ! The rebuke of a child is 
 felt to be the severest of all ; and here was forked lightning 
 coming out of the child Jesus' mouth. He was no literary- 
 man — no scholar; He could barely read and write; and yet 
 what literature He has produced ! It dropped fi-om Him like 
 light from a star. He seemed to know little directly about 
 philosophies or sciences, and not to need to know anything 
 of them. What comgarison between the babblements of the 
 schools and those grand generalizations and melting simpli- 
 citips of Christ! It was a kind of sweet, subtle, divine 
 essenc^ which distilled from his mouth. And then how free 
 of cant! How void of formality, of stai-ched precision, of 
 austerity, of vanity, of deceit, and of any desire after per- 
 sonal aggi-andizement ! ' I may not become an earthly king,' 
 was the purport of his language, ' because I am God.' And 
 yet the calm dignity, the quiet, absolute certainty with which 
 He asserted his claims to Deity, were enough to prove that 
 these claims were true. And then that blessed story about 
 the children ! I can hardly speak of it without tears. He 
 found no equals to Himself in kings or in sages. Children 
 were his fittest companions, his only co-mates, in the world. 
 They alone reminded Him of those beings He had left in his 
 native region. I could not, in short, conceive that were the 
 good God to have incarnated Himself in a man, that He could 
 have found an incarnation so like Himself — so full, so dignified 
 so sublime in its simplicity— as in- Jesus Christ. And since, 
 how all the good, the true, and the child-like among men 
 have been attracted to Him! He, and the story of his cross, 
 seem dropped down like a great magnet into a ruined world 
 to draw to itself and redeem all who will believe on Him." As 
 he went on in this way about Christ, although in much 
 grander language than I can recount, with his deep, quivering 
 voice, softening eye, and shaggy mane, I thought of one of the 
 lions in Daniel's den, kissing the feet of the beautiful prophet. 
 
 I 2
 
 116 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 I had been reading recently " Peter's Letters," where Lockhart 
 says that Wilson might have been the greatest preacher of 
 the age; and I was confirmed in that opinion to-night. 
 
 I had several pleasant walks and interviews afterwai'ds. 
 I asked him once, why he had ceased to publish poetiy ? He 
 answered : " Your word is the proper one — ceased to publish 
 — for I write it still occasionally. The public did not encou- 
 rage me to publish it : they wanted strong stimulants, and 
 they only got a little wild mountain-honey. The fact is, 
 when writing poetry, I felt as some ministers feel in the 
 pulpit, — a sense of sacredness, which quieted, if it did not 
 quell, inspiration." " I suppose," I said, "you felt as I could 
 conceive an eagle to feel on the morning of the day of the 
 Second Advent ; .unable or afraid to soar amid the thunder- 
 laden and portentous air." " Ah ! that is too complimentary, 
 both to me and to my themes. But I had a feeling of awe 
 when writing ' The City of the Plague,' ' Unimore,' and, 
 more strongly still, wdien inditing a long MS. poem on the 
 Covenanters, which, I believe, has run on to five thousand 
 lines, but which will not see the light till / cease to see it." 
 "Indeed!" I said; " why not sooner f "The fact is," he 
 said, " the feeling that pervades Scotland, — its every hill and 
 strath, Highlands as well as Lowlands, — about that stalwart and 
 noble race, is itself a perpetual poem, humming through the 
 Scottish land and the Scottish heart : and I should be afraid 
 lest my efl^ort should fall short of the national feeling. I once 
 thought of wi'iting a prose work, too, either in shape of a tale 
 or of an history, on these brave men. Scott has not done 
 them full justice in 'Old Mortality,' otherwise the master- 
 piece of his genius. In Burley, splendid as the portrait is, 
 he has libelled, not only the Covenanters, but human nature. 
 It is the one malignant portrait in all his works. Benignity, 
 indeed, is their pervading spirit. He does not love all things 
 or beings ; he is too much of a sturdy Scotchman and ' good 
 hater;' far less does he pretend to love them, like a painter 
 wreathing his cheek into sham smiles upon all his ' Models :'
 
 EDINBURGH. 117 
 
 he is too honest, good, and manly for that ; bat he has a 
 gruff general liking for all and sundry, mingled with a deep 
 enthusiasm for many. Scott is, if not the greatest, certainly 
 the healthiest and sincerest writer in the w^orld. I do not, of 
 course, compare him with Shakspere, in splendour, origin- 
 ality, and subtlety of genius ; but in simple, broad truth, and 
 manly, direct vigour, he was, I sometimes fancy, even supe- 
 rior." I suggested that, although what he said about Scott's 
 generosity of spirit was doubtless true, it was singular how 
 his best characters were soured, disappointed, and disrespect- 
 able beings, — gipsies, villains, smugglers, caterans — such as 
 RoJ; Roy, Brian de Bois Guilbert, Varney, the Bohemian in 
 "Quefltin Durward," and Henbane Dwining in the "Fair 
 Maid of^erth." "Aye," he said, "he had, like Shakspere, 
 a dark sore, deep sunk in his nature, and which he relieved 
 by creating such queer, ambiguous, and somewhat savage 
 people. But he mingled even them with kindly elements. 
 His very devils were only brown — not black. To show the 
 good that is in evil characters is, I think, rather a more 
 amiable task than to show the evil that is in good, or to make 
 the good incredibly perfect. Every castle of old had its 
 dungeon ; and, I suspect, every lofty mind has its deep 
 misanthi'opic pit, with plenty of sullen, waveless water, and 
 many reptiles, living or dead, swimming or rotting within. 
 Scott's undoubtedly had ; and he had his reasons for it, too." 
 I asked if he had taken a similar place with Burns in the 
 affections and admiration of the Scottish people. He said : 
 *' Hardly ; he had spread himself too much abroad, and had 
 not concentrated his force oh ' dear auld Scotland' so much 
 as Bums, whose sole mission seemed to be to shed the glory 
 of a summer gloaming over his beloved country, and who, 
 so far as that mission went, was the sincerest and the most 
 successful poet that ever lived. No lines in any language 
 could, in intense nationality, vie with the ' Vision,' or the 
 little verse in his other poem " (and here, as Wilson repeated 
 it, I saw tears in his eyes) —
 
 118 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 " ' The rough bur-thistle spreading wide 
 Amang the bearded bear, 
 I turn'd the weeder-clips aside 
 And spared the symbol dear ' — 
 
 Since the inspired lines — 
 
 " ' By Babel's streams we sate and wept 
 When Sion we sate on, 
 In midst thereof we hang'd our harps 
 The willow-trees upon/ 
 
 But neither Burns nor Scott have fully entered into the reli- 
 gious enthusiasm of Scotland ; that grand dim shadow of the 
 Jewish hills which lies — and long may it lie ! — on the Scot- 
 tish soul. My friend James Grahame, of ' The Sabbath,' 
 understood this far better tuan either, if he had had equal 
 power to express it. Yet Grahame was a real genius in his 
 way, too ; and his writings contain some cabinet-pictures of 
 scenery, and some etchings of little nooks and crannies into 
 which the Beautiful had crept, and into which he seemed to 
 have crept after it on his hands and knees, equal to anything. 
 Had he been a worse man, or even less pious, he would have 
 got more credit for genius than he did. I used to call him, 
 long before he became a curate, ' The Great Unordained.' 
 Although a lawyer, he seemed to walk through the streets like 
 a Bishop out of a benefice. He was one of Nature s clergy- 
 men ; so tall, solemn, swarthy, and yet as mild in look as he 
 was majestic. He used in secret to pray, and make extem- 
 pore hymns aloud; and it was a great treat, and sometimes a 
 blessing to his friends, to listen to that pure, pious, and gifted 
 soul, conversing through an organ voice with God. When he 
 paused, you almost expected to hear a re/^^y from above" 
 
 I asked if it was true that he had once uttered an extem- 
 pore prayer, when wandering among the mountains 1 He 
 started, and asked how I had heard it. I mentioned the 
 name of a student who had told me. "Ah!" he rejoined, 
 " Hogg must have been blabbing ; for T never mentioned it, 
 except to the Shepherd. There is more truth in it, however,
 
 EDINBURGH. 119 
 
 than in most of the stories told about me. I had risen one 
 morning early, to walk over from St. Mary's Loch to Moffat, 
 There was, at first, a thick mist which shrouded the hills, 
 and through which I slowly wound my way; but, upon 
 rounding a point, I saw such a spectacle ! Before me were 
 suddenly revealed a hundred hill-tops, as if all newly springing 
 up from a deep ocean of mist, to salute the sun, who was 
 flashing on them from the high east, as if that moment 
 created, or that moment constituted king of day, I seemed 
 to see God daw^ning.ou a new world just struggling into 
 existence, and, as its mountain-tops unbared themselves to 
 WQ)-sliip, I could not help doing so too, I could not cry out 
 witlT^Cromwell : ' Arise, God, and let thine enemies be 
 scattei-e^!' for God seemed risen on his creatures, not his 
 foes ; but I bared my temples, and burst out into a passion of 
 prayer to that great Being, whose emblem and smile I felt that 
 sun to be. It was a sj)eaking trance, which lasted I know 
 not how long, but certainly as long as the superb spectacle. 
 Hogg probably exaggerated the particulars of the incident, 
 but he could not exaggerate the transport of the feeling. 
 By the way," he went on, " I know a man, now rather emi- 
 nent in the republic of letters, who when a boy, or rather 
 youth, taking the words ' Pray without ceasiug ' in their 
 literal acceptation, spent his every waking hour in uttered, 
 muttered, or silent prayer ; praying aloud several hours a day, 
 muttering prayers at other times, and, even when occupied in 
 his ordinary avocations, silently but consciously engaging in 
 prayer. It lasted for a year or two." I said that was as bad 
 as poor Kit Smart, when mad, asking his friends to kneel 
 down and pray with him in the street. " No," he said ; 
 " this man was and is quite sane ; his mistake only was in 
 not knowing tliat, as Madame dc Stael says, ' Death is just a 
 more ardent prayer of the mind;' so life, when well-spent, 
 (and part of it should be spent in devotion,) is itself one long 
 prayer." He then alluded to Jean Paul Eichter's sublime 
 description of the mountains looking up in prayer to God,
 
 120 THE HISTORY OF A MAX. 
 
 and the dead praj'iug with folded hands in their coffins, and 
 the' waves of ocean dashing for ever in prayer at the foot of 
 Jehovah's throne ; and added : " The German idea of prayer 
 is that of aspiration ; so that ' thus the universe is one ever- 
 swelling succession of Avaves of prayer, heaving higher and 
 higher toward the invisible Being who sits above ; the inani- 
 mate creation forming one wave, vegetable life a second, 
 animal life a third, the spii'itual life a fourth, — all pursuing 
 One the hem of whose garment may always be touched, but 
 who can never be overtaken or surpassed. But this is rather 
 too mystical a notion for me." 
 
 I asked him if he thought Richter as great a man as was 
 genei'ally supposed. He said " he liked him, next to Schiller, 
 better than any of the Germans. His mind was a weird 
 witch-pot ; but it was cooled, not with ' a baboon's blood,' 
 but with the blood of a canny Scot. There were the rough 
 vigour, clear insight, and strong common-sense of a Scotch- 
 man, mixed with the phantasmata and extravagances of old 
 Faderland." " One thing he never could endure in these 
 German geniuses, — their sitting at the piano, and improvising 
 there ! It was becoming rather the fashion in this country, 
 but seemed to him a monkey-trick. He could bear with it in 
 a Theodore Hook, or a Hoffman, for neither of these was 
 a man, each only a wondi'ous manuikin ; bear it almost even 
 in Leigh Hunt, who was a shade higher in the scale ; but 
 think of it in a really great genius, or a hero ! Think of 
 Pascal, or Dr. Johnson, or Richard Bentley, or Coleridge, or 
 Coeur de Lion, or Wellington, at a piano !" "Aye," I added, 
 " or Christopher North." " Besides," said he, " it poisons my 
 ideal of the piano, which I always associate with a beautiful 
 maiden, or elegant widow like Mrs. Gentle," with dark hair or 
 long fair tresses, beautifying and beautified by the ivory keys, 
 the polished wood, and the splendid harmonies. But how 
 provoking to see, instead, a great male-monster, with bushy 
 
 * ' Mrs. Gentle ; ' see ' Noctes.' She is supposed to have been an alias 
 of Wilson's own anaiable wife.
 
 EDINBUEGH. 121 
 
 moustaches and looks of upcast afFected idiocy, officiating 
 there, — I cannot, for my part, endure it. Of course much 
 depends upon national taste ; but I almost shudder when 
 I read of brave honest Jean Paul exciting himself to write by 
 sitting down at a piano, and tingling away for some mortal 
 hours till the steam was up. I hate thess transferences and 
 transpositions between male and female work ; and hence 
 I cannot bear a tailor, who has borrowed a woman's needle ; 
 a weaver, who has run away bodily with her loom ; and a 
 musical coxcomb, who has pilfered her piano. I think that, 
 on the other hand, while the organ is too grand an instrument 
 foj; woman, the harp is an amiable double entendre between 
 the's^xes. I love to see a beautiful spirit-like girl singing to 
 her Iiarp ; and I should like scarcely less to have seen a 
 spirit-like man like Shelley, or Byron himself, playing on 
 a harp, which, in his hands, would assume a nobler name — 
 
 ' Bending as he swejot the chords 
 Of his sweet and awful lyre.'' " 
 
 He said he " feared the age of great poets and great poems 
 was gone. We have, at present, floods of good verse, but 
 very little that can be called great or original. The proof of 
 great original genius in poetry pei'haps lies in its producing a 
 sense of unrest, almost of dissatisfaction. You feel and see, 
 but are not always pleased with such poetry at first. It is 
 good, you believe ; nay, you suspect it to be great; but it 
 seems too new and too strange for enjoyment. I believe 
 nectar would not be relished by a mortal at the first draught 
 so well as mead or ale. Some of the most exquisite fruits of 
 the tropics are not liked at the first taste. Ordinary, nay 
 good poetry, you read once, relish, and never think of nor 
 desire to read again : it makes little impression, and leaves no 
 stiugs. Far otherwise with the highest poetry. It must at 
 once interest, nay fascinate ; and yet it may, at the same time, 
 disgust or appal. It must grow upon you, or you must grow 
 to it ; and, even though you do not love it, you feel a strong
 
 122 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 inclination to recur to it again. You say ; ' I am determined 
 to like, as much as I admire, this poetry.' I remember my 
 own experience attesting these views in some remarkable 
 instances. When I read the ' Rime of the Ancient Marinere,' 
 as first published in Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, I saw and 
 felt it to be something extraordinary; but I did not like it. 
 Yet it fascinated me. I read it again and again, and became, 
 at last, fully aware of its wondrous power. It was much the 
 same when Aird sent me in his ' Devil's Dream on Mount 
 Acksbeck.' I read it with a kind of half-shudder, ' Well, 
 that is very grand, very terrific, and certainly very new ; 
 but — but — but' — I said to myself. I read it to a party of 
 friends where James Hogg was. He gi'unted out : ' Wilson, 
 that's joost sublime nonsense.' ' It may be so, James ; but 
 neither you nor I could have written it. I like it better the 
 oftener I read it, and, at all events, it shall appear in Black- 
 wood.'' I now, in common with most critics, regard it as a 
 masterpiece of imagination. The public has not yet, how- 
 ever, seen Aird fully — and that I account for on this theory — 
 nor has it seen Carlyle either ; but it will one day see both : 
 admire and tremble at the terrible Tom of Annandale, and 
 admire and love the gentle and gifted Tom of the Eildon 
 hills." 
 
 " You know another Tom better, I think, than either, my 
 old Rector." " Campbell ! yes ! An enemy might, at one 
 time, have almost quoted about us the words — 
 
 * Tarn lo'ed him like a vera brither ' — 
 
 You know the rest. A fine gifted fellow was, is, and ever 
 shall be, Tom Campbell, I remember him coming to the 
 Logic Class first, a little black-eyed boy — what they call in 
 the west a ' smalley boy '^with a pale cheek, just touched with 
 a reluctant yet lingering tinge of red like a moss-rose, and an 
 eye that sparkled with all the young life of genius. He was more 
 remarkable then for his wit than even his scholarship or his 
 love of poetry. A most provoking little imp he was ! He
 
 EDINBURGH. 123 
 
 ran about, firing off paper pellets or viva voce epigi'ams against 
 the bigger lads, and often nearly got himself thrashed for his 
 pains. I was stronger and sturdier, and stood by him in such 
 scrapes, as well as in all snow-ball fights and foot-ball matches. 
 We went once to the Highlands, and shut ourselves up in 
 Tarbat Inn, for the hopeful purpose of writing an epic poem. 
 We compai'ed ourselves to Beaumont and Fletcher ; nay, — 
 for our conceit was unbounded, — to Homer and Virgil, meeting 
 in the shades, and clubbing their sublime genius. By the 
 way, most of such ^oint-stock literary schemes are absm-d. 
 They have, indeed, been sometimes entered on by real poets, 
 bji.t they have not very often been successful, nor produced 
 mucji permanent poetry. There is generally some fatal dis- 
 parity in the firm, and, even when the parties are about 
 equal, the one perhaps writes his best, and the other his 
 worst ; one cannot perform his task well from a sense of the 
 ludicrous, and, in another, emulation perhaps darkens into 
 envy. You remember the countryman who, taking up ' Lara 
 and Jacqueline,' by Byron and Rogers, cried out : ' Ah ! 
 summat like Sternhold and Hopkins, I suppose.' Two fellows 
 crossing poetical pipes, and pufiing in each other's faces their 
 ' inspissated' inspirations, as Johnson would call them, is a 
 ridiculous conception. Nevertheless, to it Campbell and 
 I set ; and began a poem called the ' Tarquiniad,' the subject 
 being, of course, the expulsion of the Tarquins froui Rome. 
 Our agreement was to write book about — and the number was 
 to be twenty-four books, the real heroic number ; he to write 
 the first and I the second, and so on. I went into a room 
 looking up along the wild mountain-pass coming over from 
 Loch-Long, and, inspired by the scene, I suppose, I got on 
 with vehement haste, till I had finished some thousand or two 
 lines, when I thought I might step across and see how my 
 coadjutor was getting on. There he sat, looking out on the 
 broad Loch-Lomond, the very picture of beautiful despair, 
 like an Apollo who had lost his arrows, holding a quill in his 
 hand, but utterly unable to indite a single line. He had stuck
 
 124 THE HISTORY OF A MAN, 
 
 in the middle of tlie invocation to the Muse. He asked me 
 about my progress, and I showed him, with great exultation, 
 my big though blurred MS. He had his revenge. He 
 quietly took it out of my hand, and began to read it in poock 
 heroic tones so exquisitely absurd, so atrociously and inimi- 
 tably ridiculous, that, although like to cry for vexation, I was 
 at last compelled to break out into a loud peal of laughter, 
 in which he joined; and the result was, that the two merry, 
 although mortified poets, ordered dinner, and washed down 
 their chagrin in Glenlivat. Next morning we left the place ; 
 and the ' Tarquiniad' is still a Torso. I had, long afterwards, 
 a somewhat similar scene with the Ettrick Shepherd, which 
 he has recorded, I believe, with a few of his usual additions 
 and exaggerations. I remember once standing on the quay 
 at Greenock, when a small boat hove in sight from the Gare- 
 loch. I saw seated at the stern a strange, dark, savage- 
 looking man, his face black all over with beard, his eye 
 glaring, and his dress somewhat disordered, a Highland plaid 
 slung over his shoulders, and a Highland bonnet on his head. 
 I looked more narrowly, and found it was Campbell, although 
 so changed that I had difficulty in recognising him. He had 
 been away for a month on a ramble among the mountains, 
 and, having saluted, and adjourned to my hotel, he gave me 
 a number of strange particulars about his tour. He said it 
 had been a wild poem. He had witnessed a thunderstorm in 
 Glencoe," (" I heard him describe that," I interposed,) " which 
 had, although he denied it, considerably frightened the little 
 man. He had spent a night in a Highland still, and desci'ibed 
 the scene with great vividness : the surprise and rage with which 
 the smugglers clustered round him as he entered, supposing 
 him to be an exciseman ; the glee of their disappointment 
 when he told them he was just a Glasgow student on the 
 daunder ; the mysteries of the Worm, which they explained 
 to him, with some practical applications thereof, which threat- 
 ened to disturb his equilibrium ; his falling asleep and 
 awakening about midnight, and the scene he saw of the wild
 
 EDINBURGH. 125 
 
 foces of the smugglers, flashing in the last embers of the dying 
 fire, and the stars shining with a ghastly light through the 
 smoky rafters,— he thought, for a few minutes, that he was in 
 another, and not a better world. He soon, however, came to 
 his recollection, and, resuming the spree, he sang Greek in 
 exchange for Gaelic songs, heard wild tales, and cracked queer 
 jests, till rhorning broke on the revel, and he went on his 
 way. He had contrived, too, to fall in love with an inn- 
 keeper's daughter, whom he described as a perfect beauty, 
 but whose confounded Highland pride, although her only 
 family escutcheon was 'Cakes and Whisky,' he found too 
 rouch for him. He had fallen short of cash, too, in his travels, 
 an3^ad at one time, at Oban, aunoxinced a series of readings 
 frorn Shakspere, by an Oxford student, through which he 
 realized, by a collection at the door, the sum of seven pence 
 halfpenny and three nails, contributed by those who had 
 nothing better to give ; had announced, at another place, a 
 sermon by a "Welsh Methodist minister, with somewhat more 
 success, only, ' Confound it,' said Campbell, ' they smelt my 
 accent, and said : " That's a clever lad ; but surely he was 
 bora in Glasco'j'" and at Inverary was compelled to sing in 
 the streets a few ballads, including one or two of Auacreon's 
 Odes, which passed, as with the smugglers, for Erse, and were 
 very popular. ' And so, John,' he concluded, ' I may say, like 
 Goldsmith, that since I have struggled so hard to get back to 
 you, I do expect to be received with much thankfulness.' 
 And this I need not say I did. We spent the night together ; 
 and, through means of my supplies, he got his beard shaved, 
 his dress rearranged, and we went merrily to Glasgow. Many 
 a time since I have recalled to his memory that meeting and 
 trip, and he has said with a sigh : ' It was the queerest and 
 most delightful month I ever spent in my life. And yet how 
 relieved I felt when I saw your big yellow head on the quay 
 at Greenock ! ' Poor Campbell ! he is a noble fellow ; altliough 
 feeble iu many things, and one who never has been nor shall 
 be a happy man. He has wrought hard enough, but never
 
 126 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 taken kindly somehow to work, and all his best poems have 
 come on him like jets of flame in momentary inspiration, 
 and a great whole he has never even attempted to constriict. 
 He has, however, wondrous genius ; and as a lyrist yields 
 only, in Scotland, or in England, Ireland, and the modern 
 world, to Burns and to Schiller. His is true ' Greek fire ;' so 
 chaste and pure, as well as keen and ardent. In his better 
 Odes, and in portions of ' Gertrude of Wyoming,' I could no 
 more think, or dare, to alter one of their words, than I durst 
 dream of dashing out a star from the Pleiades, or of cutting 
 away his belt from Orion. Nor was this perfection the effect 
 of polish merely, but of the patrician nature of his genius. 
 How a boy from the High Street of Glasgow could ever, and 
 so early, display a taste as refined as that of Athens in her 
 best age, I can in no other way explain. His ' Pleasures of 
 Hope,' full as it is of youthful falsetto and flourish, is full 
 also of this innate aristocracy ; its very bombast is regal. 
 The mystical fudge of the imitators of Coleridge and Shelley 
 has kept Campbell out of sight of late ; but the ' star that 
 bringeth home the bee,' will reappear again in her own meek 
 western hermitage. What can be better, more graceful, more 
 elegant, yet unpretending and simple in its beauty, than 
 such love-stanzas as those to 'Caroline?' What cultured 
 sti'ength, again, like ' beechwood in the blast,' in his stanzas 
 on a ' Scene in Bavaria ! ' What tremulous finish in his lines 
 on ' Painting,' and his ' Field Flowers ! ' What chastened 
 prophecy, what subdued inspiration, like the half-unfolded 
 wing of an angel, in his ' Lines to Emigrants !' What light 
 but unspeakably beautiful touches in ' Gertrude ;' like the 
 stealthy strokes of a superhuman artist, anxious to be un- 
 known, yet unable to resist the temptation of leaving the 
 beauty-marks of heaven on the canvas ! And what Horatian 
 daring in his 'Lines to Kemble !' Homeric daring in his 
 * Hohenlinden,' and ' Lochiel's Warning!' and Dante-like 
 daring in his ' Last Man ! ' The critic must be a senseless 
 fellow who classes Campbell with such an elegant moth as
 
 EDINBURGH. 127 
 
 Rogers, such a bright butterfly as Moore, or even with 
 Beattie and Gray, whom he incomparably excels both in 
 beauty and in power." 
 
 One night, parting from "Wilson, he said, " You must come 
 to-morrow to Ambrose's. The Noctes are now shorn of some 
 of their beams; but Lockhart is at present in Edinburgh, 
 and I have engaged to sup with him, Pat Robertson, De 
 Quincey, and one or two good fellows, to-morrow night. It 
 shall be an early supper — cloth laid and oysters ready at 
 eight precisely. You must come." I, of course, declared 
 my eagerness to comply with the flattering invitation, and at 
 the appointed hour arrived in a large room, two stairs up, in 
 thaVredoubted meeting-place of the wits. The tout ensemble 
 of tlie group, as I entered, was imposing. They were all 
 standing around the fire-place, and Wilson's grand and 
 portly figure and flashing eye constituted the centre of the 
 picture. He that night, like Will Waddle, who was 
 
 " Two single gentlemen rolled into one," 
 
 seemed two single geniuses rolled into one ; and his eye was 
 flashing with a double portion of the fire of poetic inspiration. 
 Near him, and cowering as it were under his wing, stood a 
 little man, with two queer inscrutable eyes, a broad rather 
 than lofty brow, a thin worn face, and a tremulous, nervous 
 aspect. This was De Quincey, the English Opium-eater. 
 Burying one or two of the company in his vast shadow, like 
 that of Ben-Wyvis, the broadest of Scotch hills, stood a large 
 personage, with a face like a baker s, round and flabby, with 
 gross, greasy lips, which seemed ever smacking over an 
 unseen repast, and a twinkle in the fat eye, as if it saw eter- 
 nally some funny scene — one whom I had often seen in the 
 Parliament House, and recognised to be Patrick Robertson, 
 the prince of Scottish wags. Listening to his jokes were 
 three or four persons of minor consequence apparently, 
 among whom I observed one noticeable man, with a large 
 pale brow, keen black eyes, fine, well-cut features, and sen-
 
 128 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 suoiis lips, Avho was, I was told, a Mr. Brydges, a literary 
 tailor of the town, a great connoisseur in paintings, and who 
 had been christened "Director-General of the Fine Arts" 
 by his witty associates. Standing close together were two 
 individuals — a tall, erect young man, with dark-brown hair, 
 large high head, a fine, simple, boyish face, and rich, expres- 
 sive lips ; and a shortei", thinnei*, more urbane-looking figure, 
 with fair hair, a ruddy countenance, the glow distributed 
 equally over the whole face, and a form slightly stooped; — 
 two who were evidently intimate, and the appearance of both 
 of whom displayed earnest simplicity and mild modesty of 
 character. These were, I ascertained, Thomas Aird, author 
 of " Religious Characteristics" and " The Devil's Dream," 
 and Delta, the well-known delightful poet. And in a dark 
 corner of the room, on one side of the fire-place, almost apart 
 from the rest, and eyeing them all with a quizzical sternness, 
 a quiet statuesque sneer, stood a person whose contour of 
 countenance, dark-olive complexion, slightly Eonian nose, 
 black locks, and sarcastic expression, were manifestly those 
 of the editor of the Quarterly, and the author of " Valerius," 
 " Adam Blair," and " Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk." 
 
 And so I was actually at a Noctes Ambrosianse ! I felt at 
 first, however, rather teiror than pleasure, and was glad, after 
 Wilson had given me a kind word of introduction, to shrink 
 into my mew, and take refuge among the dii minorum 
 gentium who were composing the background of the picture, 
 among whom there were two or three nearly as young as 
 myself. The first thing I remember was some one inquiring 
 wiiat had become of the Shepherd, and remai'king that a 
 Noctes without the Shepherd was like a night in which the 
 moon was omitted by " special desire." " James," roared out 
 Wilson, " has taken offence at these harmless little meetings, 
 and is standing up for his dignity." " The dignity of a boar," 
 cried Lockhart ; " what an idea ! " " He thinks," said Robert- 
 son, " that you have made him in the ' Noctes,' as he would 
 say himself, ' a soo playing on a trump.' " " Noble fellow,
 
 EDINBURGH. 129 
 
 though, James ! " said Wilson ; " but how ' Kilmany ' ever 
 could have oozed out of the brain of a man who made him- 
 self the fool of the Forum,* and wrote ' Hogg on Sheep,' I 
 never could understand. Yet we hear of an oak sweltering- 
 honey, as well as bearing mast." " And where," said the 
 same voice, " is Timothy Tickler? I'm sure I met him to-day 
 in the Meadows, looking as erect as if he had been an old 
 Caledonian dug out of a peat-moss, where he had fallen 
 with feet foremost, and had got only partially fossilized." 
 " Homes lines," said Wilson, " are more to the point — 
 
 ' Bold and erect the Caledonian stood; 
 Old was his mutton, and his claret good. 
 *♦•• " Let him drink port !" some envious demon cried ; 
 ' " "i ■ fie drank the poison, and his spirit died.' 
 
 Perhaps old Symet will be here yet. We can hardly do with- 
 out him on such a field-night. He is a kind of compound of 
 Lord Eldon and the Duke of Wellington. He speaks little, 
 and that little very slowly. But his very yawns are oracular; 
 his silence is significant; his whisper, like Siddons', brings 
 down the house ; his 'asides' are orations; and the turning 
 up of his little finger is sublime." 
 
 Supper was now brought in, consisting of oysters ad libitum, 
 and cold roast-beef; and afterwards a bowl of punch was com- 
 pounded, and the current of the conversation, which had for a 
 little been impeded, flowed on apace, " I hear," said Wilson, 
 " that the Cockneys are setting up a small imitation Noctes, in 
 a little ale-house at Hampstead Heath. What a strange affair 
 it must be, where Hazlitt the Grim is in the chair, and Hunt 
 the Giddy is croupier ! What toasts ! — ' Confusion to Chris- 
 topher ! ' ' May Blackwood bite the dust ! ' 'To the honour of 
 Bow-bell ! ' What sentiments passed by acclamation ! — ' That 
 the gcntleraanhood of the nation is increasing, has been 
 increasing, and ought to be diminished.' " [" You should," 
 
 * " Forum ;" a debating society in Edinburgh, where Hogg was the 
 chief speaker and construit butt. 
 
 t " Syme ;" see Ferrier's preface to the " Noctes."
 
 130 THE HISTORY OP A MAN. 
 
 interposed Lockhart, " have substituted for ' gentlemanhood 
 of nation,' the ' circulation of ^^acl-woo(i.' "] " Wiiat bitter 
 things said about us! and what careful glances out at the 
 windows, or under the table, lest there should be any spy 
 to report the disgusting proceedings ! And how cheering to 
 their cockles when, some stray night, old Coleridge daunders 
 in upon them, staff in hand, and begins to mystify them by 
 conversing on the philosophy of Kant, they not knowing a 
 word of German ; or on the authorship of the ' Iliad,' they 
 not knowing a word of Greek ! And with what ' awful 
 reverence prone,' and unwholesome flatteiy, they surround 
 the throne of the ' bright-eyed marinere ! ' ' Beats Burke 
 hollow!' grunts out the author of 'Liber Amoris.' ''Ow 
 'appy we hare,' says Hunt, ' to be privileged with the presence 
 and the hinspiring heloquence of the greatest man of the 
 hage.' Allan Cunningham alone ventures to say, after the 
 orator is gone, ' Confounded nonsense ! I never saw sae thick 
 a mist on Criffel or Queensberry Hill a' my days, as that auld 
 carle has been weaving. He's but a puir wee warlock com- 
 pared to Sir Walter.' At this, Edward Irving stai-ts up 
 indignant, and vows that Coleridge is inspired— is the Moses, 
 and he himself the Aaron, of these degenerate and God-for- 
 saken days. Cunningham rejoins, that Irving had been 
 better employed preparing his sermons, than sitting in a 
 public-house, listening to the sublime 'havers o' a daft 
 poet.' As the controversy waxes fast and furious, the scene 
 becomes one of most admired disorder, and I shut it sud- 
 denly." " You don't," said Lockhart, " describe the Cockney 
 Noctes half so well as you do those of Ambrose." " Why, 
 there's nothing to be described," rejoined Wilson; "I can't 
 make bricks without sti-aw." " But you don't deny," said 
 one, " that some of these men have genius, or at least high 
 talents." "What say you to that, Lockhart?" cries Wilson, 
 " There are certainly distinctions and varieties among that 
 vermin," rejoined he; "but Hazlitt, Hunt, Reynolds, and 
 Patmore are all vermin, notwithstanding. Lamb and Cun-
 
 EDINBURGH. 131 
 
 ningliam are of a different order, but misery brings men 
 acquainted with strange bedfellows; and what makes Irving 
 and Coleridge herd even occasionally with such creatures, I 
 cannot conjecture, except from that diseased love of praise 
 which is common to both." 
 
 Up to this point, De Quincey had not opened his lips; but 
 now I heard a thin but thrilling voice accosting Lockhart 
 thus : — " Pardon me, Mr. Lockhart, but I think you do great 
 injustice to these quondam associates of mine in the London 
 Magazine, which, youxmay remember, was started by the late 
 celebrated John Scott, in January 1820, although I did not 
 coiHmence to contribute to its pages till the month of Sep- 
 ter9he>"^821 ; my first paper constituting the first part of my 
 ' Confessions of an English Opium-eater,' which were after- 
 wards collected into a separate volume, and published by the 
 then eminent booksellers, Taylor and Hessey; although the 
 London Magazine, I may remark, originally belonged to the 
 respectable firm of Baldwin, Cradock and Joy — a trinity of 
 names which has, in my ear, a certain majestic sound, and re- 
 minds me of some great rolling Latin termination. No names, 
 I often think, can be compared to those of some of the Romans 
 for grandem' of sound, like the long reverberated echoes of 
 thunder, as I have heard them amidst the mountains of Cum- 
 berland and Wales, when I was wandering, a poor penniless 
 boy, among their sublime recesses. Such are the names of 
 Cffisar Augustus, Valerius Flaccus, Cains Julius Csesar, Cris- 
 pus Sallustius, Augustulus, and the words Consul Romanus. 
 What pomp and magnificence of flowing sound ! It is — " 
 " I remember," interrupted Patrick Robertson, " a combina- 
 tion of sounds in plain English quite as superb." " Surely," 
 said De Quincey, " if such there exist, it must be in some of 
 the greatest of the prose authors of the early age of English 
 literature — in the divine page of Milton, who approaches not 
 unfz-equcntly, particularly in liis ' Treatise of Reformation,' 
 and in his ' Areopagitica,' that grand swelling prose lyric, to 
 the more complicated harmonies of the Latin speech ; or else 
 
 k2
 
 132 THE HISTORY OF A MAN, 
 
 amidst the solemn intricacies, as of a maze in a sacred grove, 
 of Hooker, whose ' Ecclesiastical Polity,' although neglected 
 now by the frivolous, is a production which, for — " " They 
 don't occur," cried Patrick, " in any such antique authors, 
 but in one much better known — in Goldsmith, and are these ; 
 ' Miss Wilhelmina Carolina Amelia Skeggs.'" (A laugh, 
 in which De Quincey good-naturedly joined, and proceeded.) 
 " The anticlimax, my dear Sir, is perfect ; and reminds me, 
 through a common law of association, although one not 
 noticed by Hartley, whose theory of Vibrations and Vibra- 
 tuncles, although it seduced the unripe nonage of Coleridge, 
 has always appeared to me a combination of some of the prin- 
 cipal logical fallacies, such as the petitio principii and the igno- 
 ratio elenchi, as well as encumbered with special difficulties 
 connected with our ignorance of the functions of the brain, and 
 of the extent to which the nervo-mental energy collected in the 
 head, as in a citadel, may be diffused, and as it were diluted, 
 throughout the whole frame — your witty remark reminds 
 me, I say, through its irrelevance, and, as it were, contra- 
 distinction to my grave criticism on Roman names, of the 
 fact that I also have somewhat rambled ; my original purpose 
 having been to oppose Mr. Lockhart's rather sweeping charges 
 of stupidity and absurdity brought against my former col- 
 laborateurs — Hazlitt, Cunningham, Lamb, and others scarcely 
 inferior to them in talents or in genius. But ere I can enter 
 on this argument, I must first settle the previous question, as 
 to the difference between talent and genius; and I would 
 comprise the necessary prolegomena for commencing the 
 settlement of this question under the following five simple 
 heads : first — " " Come now, Mr. De Quincey," roared out 
 Robertson, " don't you remember what Dr. Johnson said, 
 when asked whether Smart or Derrick were the greater poet? 
 — ' Sir, it is difficult to settle the question of precedence 
 between a louse and a flea.' I don't want to learn whether 
 Hazlitt or Hunt be the bigger insect; and, with the leave of 
 the company, shall shift the subject, and call on Mr. Brydges
 
 EDINBURGH. 133 
 
 foi- a song." Mr. Biydges proceeded accordingly to sing, in 
 a somewhat theatrical but effective style,, the '•' Sweet Little 
 Cherub that sits up aloft." During the susurrns of applause 
 which follows all tolerable songs, a gentleman sitting beside 
 me told me some curious anecdotes of the souoster. One I 
 remember. Mr. Brydges was attending a masquerade. A 
 gentleman, who knew him through his disguise, came up and 
 saluted him. " Mr. Brydges, on which of the bridges do you 
 collect the pontage?" His sharp reply was, "On 1\\q Pons 
 Asinorum. Fools and asses pass free. You may go on. Sir." 
 I got into a corner with him, at an after-part of the evening, 
 aud enjoyed his conversation much. His remarks were exceed- 
 ingly^shrewd ; his knowledge of books and of men extensive ; 
 and, although a thorough man of the world, he had retained an 
 enthusiastic appreciation of literature. Unbounded was his 
 admiration of Wilson, and singular were some of the anecdotes 
 he told about him. He met him, he said, once in the street, 
 about the dinner-hour, and asked him to accompany him 
 home, and dine with him. He at first declined, because, he said, 
 he had been long away from home; and, on inquiry, it tm-ued 
 out that he had, unknown to his wife or his bookseller, been 
 spending some weeks in the Highlands. He had pitched his 
 tent in a blacksmith's back-shop, and had employed his time 
 in writing poetry. On one occasion he had taken a wager 
 with the blacksmith that he would run up a great black hill, 
 which lowered before the door, without stopping; and he' 
 gained the bet. He rushed up like a red deer, and shouted 
 out the news of his triumph from the top. Wilson, in fine, 
 went home with the Directoi'-General, and they spent a most 
 amusing evening together. Brydges, when talking of writings 
 or pictures that pleased him, gave an audible smack with his 
 lips, which was very edifying. He seemed one of the last 
 specimens of that class to which James Ballantyne and 
 Ctnistable belonged, and literally swarmed with anecdotes of 
 those halcyon days when Scott, Murray, and Jeffrey were iu 
 their glory.
 
 134 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 I asked Wilson, on this occasion, his opinion of Pollok, 
 and his very popular poem, " The Course of Time." He 
 said aside to me, " Eobert Pollok was a rare fellow in con- 
 versation, as well as in verse. Indeed, I never thought his 
 poem, with all its merits, like the poet. It came out of a 
 part of him, like Minerva from Jove's brain, but fui'uished 
 little idea of the whole man, and none at all of that sharp 
 common-sense, and that tart tinge of sarcasm, which gave a 
 flavour to his talk. The best passages in ' The Course of 
 Time' were the darkest — such as his pictures, ghastly and 
 tasteless, but terribly new, and erroneously strong, of the 
 Worm that dieth not, and Eternal Death — that most eloquent 
 and poetical sketch of Byron — and the description of the 
 signs preceding the Judgment, which Dante never surpassed. 
 But one-half of the book is either trash, or exceedingly 
 vulgar and coarse. His version of Christianity is very eai'- 
 nest, but he has bound the glorious volume in sheeiy. His 
 work is a misnomer; it is not a ' Course' — not a regular and 
 progressive poem, like a great river — but a series of broken 
 and inteiTupted Highland linns. It has much fine, even 
 noble poetry, but is not, as a whole, a poem. I am not sure if 
 Pollok would ever have written great poems, although he had 
 true poetic genius. He wanted not only constructive power, 
 but the dramatic faculty, and also width of sympathies and 
 elasticity of mind. He would never have become much more 
 • than a gloomy and powerful poetic declaimer, a kind of minor 
 Young, with all his passion and nerve, but with less point and 
 less richness of thought and fancy. It was my friend Aird 
 there principally who prevailed on Blackwood to publish the 
 ' Course of Time.' Blackwood and I saw its talent, but had 
 doubts as to its success. Aird pointed out its elements of 
 popularity with great acuteness, and said especially that, as 
 the first poem of much merit written by a Scottish Dissenter, 
 it was sure to rally all that body around it; and so it has 
 proved. He reviewed it afterwards in Blackwood, in a style 
 of measured panegyric which did not please the poet, who
 
 EDINBURGH. 185 
 
 was by this time deep in a nervous consumption, and sensi- 
 tive to a most morbid degree. This accounted for his 
 truculent language concerning Aird, who is one of the most 
 amiable and modest of men, and who warmly appreciated 
 Pollok; as well as for the ridiculous gasconades he used to 
 utter about his intention to travel over all the countries 
 which Milton had travelled through, and to return and write 
 a poem, ' The Course of Eternity,' which was toe clipse the 
 ' Paradise Lost.' The very idea of such a subject was pre- 
 posterous, or, at least, the subject was beyond the powers of 
 any mortal man. It is without the ranges even of the 
 highest genius. The ' Coiu'se of Time' implies vicissitudes, 
 as^ wjell. as cumulative progress — more vicissitudes, and at 
 the same time a stronger, steadier ' stress of tendency,' than 
 Pollok has exhibited. But the ' Course of Eternity,' if we are 
 taiight to conceive of it aright, implies few changes; all is 
 'eternal and the same' — bliss unbounded, woe unutterable; 
 and what poetry of much human interest can be extracted 
 from monotony, however grand or however terrible that 
 monotony be ? After this world has come to an end, it is 
 the wisdom — shall I say? — of the poet, in humble imitation 
 of God himself, to shut the doors both of heaven and hell, 
 and to leave to our own imaginations to conceive of what is 
 going on within both." 
 
 Soon afterwards a good many songs were sung and 
 speeches made. Patrick Robertson gave us his famous 
 imitation of a Gaelic sermon, the thick " agusses " (ands) 
 and " haneils " (noes) of which still ring in my ears, as well 
 as the roars of laughter with which it was received. The 
 very ftice of the man seemed to become inspired with the 
 genius of fun ; and its dull, dough-like expanse actually glit- 
 tered through the tears and sweat-drops of mirth which 
 bedewed it. After it was over, he called for a bumper to the 
 health of Christopher North, and prefaced it by a speech, of 
 which I recollect only the following very imperfect oiitline : — 
 " Gentlemen, I move the health of a man whom we respect
 
 136 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 and honour to the pitch of downright enthusiasm — a man of 
 transcendent genius, and of a large and loving heart — the 
 glory of Scotland — the pride of Edinburgh — the terror of 
 quacks all over the world — a man who, to use figurative 
 language, combines the playfulness of the kitten, the high- 
 soaring plume of the eagle, the keen eye of the vulture, and 
 the might and magnificence of the lion — the uncoverer of the 
 ' Cottages' of Caledonia — the singer of its ' Streams ' — the 
 wild warbler of its ' Ornithology ' — the poet, also, of its 
 punch-bowls and potatoes (laughter), whose praise at this 
 moment rises reeking from ten thousand toddy-tumblers, and 
 hovers in the incense which ascends from a million porridge- 
 pots — who has a power of uttering eloquent, magnificent, 
 and sounding nonsense (laughter) only inferior to his power 
 of inditing sense and perpetrating poetry — who might have 
 been the greatest statesman in the world, had he ever studied 
 Cocker — the greatest orator, had he ever learned a little elo- 
 cution — the greatest preacher, had he ever managed to get 
 ordination (a laugh) — the gi-eatest traveller, had he evei 
 been able to quit the attraction of his natale solum — the 
 greatest author, had he ever, as was said of Slieridan, been 
 persuaded to learn to read and write like other people — and 
 who is, at all events, the brightest ' star ' in our Noctes, or 
 in any Noctes, I verily believe, being at present, or that 
 ever have been, or shall be, celebrated throughout the wide 
 universe. I beg leavOj sans further phrase, to propose a nine 
 times nine round of applause to the sole author of the •' Lights 
 and Shadows,' the joint author of the ' Chaldee Manuscript' 
 and ' Peter's Letters,' the poet of ' The Isle of Palms,' and the 
 presiding genius of these amiable Ambrosian entertainments, 
 Christopher North." * 
 
 The applause, of course, was tremendous; and up through 
 
 * There were frequent rencontres between these two cslebrated 
 wits. On one occasion Robertson began bantering Wilson on his 
 increasing corpulence. Wilson's reply was, " Yes, Mr. R., I am fat, but 
 not like many people, disgusting." It was felt as a homethrust.
 
 EDINBURGH. 137 
 
 its subsiding; but still resounding wave, like Neptune from 
 the deep, rose Wilson, with a calm grandeur of aspect, mingled 
 with an air of suppressed fun, which I despair of adequately 
 describing. He stood for five minutes, or nearly so, looking 
 with eyes of fire, not on his audience, but on the air, up which 
 seemed coming his future speech ; and at last, in deep, low, but 
 gradually strengthening and swelling tones, amid silence 
 
 " Deep as night, 
 Or summer's noontide air," 
 
 he thus began : — 
 
 " Gentlemen : — I thank you from the depths of my soul 
 fo^ the applause I have received ; for the praise that preceded 
 it ; afid for the silence and attention with which vou are now 
 watchuig my poor lips. I value the veiy censure implied in 
 Mr. Robertson's eloquent and warm-hearted speech, as attesting 
 the sincerity of his panegyric. I have not, gentlemen, to 
 quote Burke, been 'nursed and dandled' into an authoi', or 
 a teacher of the young mind. I have had to fight my way 
 inch by inch ; and although Mr. Robertson may be right in 
 his hint about my defective culture, (and 1 value the hint 
 more that it comes from such a thoroughly learned and clas- 
 sical gentleman, who in person and in speech is the model of 
 the Graces, as well as of the Gifts [a laugh], and whom I 
 should not be surprised to see yet waddling up the steep sides 
 of the Parnassian hill, like another ' Jemmy Thomson, Jemmy 
 Thomson 0,' [loud laughter], although, perhaps, like him, 
 ' more fat than bard beseems,') yet I can seriously tell you, 
 gentlemen, that it has been my care to cultivate daily, and for 
 many a year, my knowledge of one subject, in which, I am 
 proud to say, I have profited more than many of my fellows : 
 I mean Scotland (loud cheers) ; and in this no man shall 
 make my glorying void. It is not of myself I am to boast, 
 but of that dear and magic land which has compelled me, by 
 the witchery of its scenery and its manners, to know it so 
 well. (Cheers.) I claim no higher character than that of a 
 slave or a shadow ; but I am Scotland's slave, and have followed
 
 138 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 her, my venerable mother, Hke a shadow, into all her nooks 
 and corners, and wherever 
 
 ' Beauty pitches her tents before her.' 
 
 I love, indeed, that beautiful English land, and that magna- 
 nimous and stately English race ; love its fine levels, rising so 
 gradually as they run northwards into bold mountains, till, 
 in the Lake Country, where stands my own sweet Elleray, 
 the beauties of the south and the north meet and embrace 
 each other, and remind me of a strong Scotchman, wedded to 
 a fair and gentle daughter of Devonshire or Kent (applause) 
 — love its stui'dy and self-asserting sons, and its princely 
 maidens, with their grace and gentle womanhood, their soul- 
 like step and carriage, and their voices so deep yet delicate, so 
 majestic and so mellifluous (great cheering) ; but I love also, 
 and with greater intensity, from sympathy as well as from fami- 
 liarity, from passion as much as from mere use and wont, the 
 mountains, the men, and the maids of ' dear auld Scotland,' 
 (Tremendous cheers.) I know something, gentlemen, of all 
 three. I have stood on many, if not all, the lofty ridges of 
 Caledonia's hills. I have seen the morning break from the 
 brow of Benlomond ; I have had my feet, as my friend Aird 
 would say, ' shod with the thunder ' of Bennevis (cheers) ; I 
 have stood on the bare scalp of Ben- An, and heard the yell of 
 the eagle, as he started from his morning slumber, on the cliffs 
 of Cairngorm, and prepared to 
 
 ' prey on distant isles.' 
 
 I cannot say with Byron that 
 
 ' I have seen the soaring Juugfrau reai" 
 
 Her never-trodden snow, 
 
 ****** 
 
 And in Clumari heard the thunder-hills of Fear ;' 
 but I have listened at midnight to the moan of the waves 
 which break continually on the aisles of Staffa ; and I have 
 sat in Ossian's Cave in the valley of Glencoe, when, through 
 the heaped drifts of snow, I could almost fancy the Mac 
 Donalds flying up the glen from their pursuing enemies on
 
 EDINBURGH. 139 
 
 that dread February morn. I have slept in the forest of 
 Ballochbowie, which leads its line of divine darkness, of pines 
 and torrents, for ever alougst the base of Loch-na-Gar. I have 
 bathed in the Linn of Dee, and in the beautiful reaches of the 
 river which surmount the Fall of Foyers, I have heard the 
 twilight voice of the great woods of Glenmore, and in the wide 
 desolations of the moor of Rannoch have felt — 
 ' Of the old u-astts some reverential fear.' 
 
 I have sat on the brink of Loch-Aven, under the inky gloom 
 of an autumn sky laden with thunder, and watched the grim 
 shadow resting on the precipices, three thousand feet in height, 
 wM^lower around that darkest and sublimest of all Scot- 
 laiKr.5i kkes. I have seen grey Loch Skene, tossed with 
 tempest, and shrieking with the thousand voices of its white 
 waves to Heaven. And I have walked up alone the sides of 
 that dreadful glen Coriskin, in Skye, where herbless, grassless 
 rocks of granite sink sheer down on a savage and lonely loch, 
 and where the Genius of the Mist sits on the beetling crags, 
 even at summer tide, with his wet mantle shivering around 
 his aerial limbs. (Great cheering.) I know too (and here 
 again I say, if I seem to boast, it is not of myself, but of my 
 country) much of tlie men and of the maidens of Caledonia. 
 I have seen the Scottish character in all its phases, and found 
 it in all of these to be true-hearted, patriotic, and noble, 
 although tinged more with the grand shadows of the past 
 than with the prophetic tints of the future. I have sat down 
 at the peasant's fireside, and dipped my spoon with his in the 
 pot containing his 'halcsome' fare. (Cheers.) I have seen 
 him with 
 
 * Lyart haffets waxing thin and bare ; ' 
 
 raising with reverence, as if it had been the Ark of God itself, 
 
 the 
 
 ' Big ha' Bible yance his father's pride,' 
 
 and have knelt beside him as he commended his family in 
 prayer to their father's God. (Sensation.) I have gone out
 
 140 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 with him the uext morning to the peat-moss or the harvest- 
 rig, and wi'ought by his side a summer's day, well rewarded 
 for my toils by listening to words of simple wisdom and piety, 
 which seemed the hoai'dings of a hundred years, and the echoes 
 of those days when the covenanting crown still encii'cled the 
 brow of Scotland, and when amidst the ancient hills the 
 message of the everlasting Gospel was — 
 
 ' By Cameron thunder'd, or by Renwick pour'd 
 In gentle stream.' 
 
 (Loud cheers.) T have felt in these humble huts that truth 
 is stranger far than fiction, and that facts are often more 
 delightful, spirit-stirring, and sublime, than even the finest 
 creations of poetic genius. I have, after working all day by 
 the side of the ' good-man,' in the evening — what time 
 
 ' The plantain tops were tinged wi' goud 
 On yon burnside' — 
 
 courted the ' good-man's ' lovely daughters (great laughter 
 and cheers) ; have played at Barley-brax among the tall white 
 stacks glimmering in the harvest-moon ; and can fervently 
 declare that simpler, purer, and more leal-hearted maidens 
 I have never met on earth. (Cheers.) I have mingled with 
 the revels of the village foir, and attended the athletic games 
 of my country, both where sweet St. Fillans stands on the 
 brink of Loch Earn, and where Braemar, in its green loveliness, 
 rejDoses in the shadow of Ben-y-Boord. I have leapt with 
 Scotland's flying tailors* (laughter), drank with her smug- 
 glers, drawn oars with her fishers, dined with her ministers, 
 ate braxyt with her shepherds, wandered with her gipsies, 
 (hear, hear,) and conversed at such meetings as this, and often 
 elsewhere, with the elite of her men of genius. (Cheers.) 
 
 * "Flying tailors ;" alluding to a famous leaper in Ettrick. a tailor 
 by trade, who was said to have discomfited Wilson at his favourite 
 pastime of jumping. See the early BlacJcwoods, passim. 
 
 + " Braxy ; " diseased mutton : a favourite dish with Scottish shep- 
 herds.
 
 EDINBURGH. 141 
 
 I knew full well her Grahames aud Findlays, now, alas ! no 
 more. I know her Campbells and her Jeffreys ; and many 
 a time and oft have I listened to her ballad-poetry from the 
 lips of that greatest of her living sons — may God for ever 
 bless him ! — Sir Walter Scott. (Immense applause.) But I 
 will not much further trespass on your time. In speaking 
 so much of myself, I have been only expressing my regard for 
 my country, as well as supplying a reason for what otherwise 
 were your undue enthusiasm for me. Ere I sit down I beg 
 a toast, and be surert is a toast to a Scotchman — the first of 
 all her men of genius — to that strong peasant who, by one 
 bldt^Of his forehammer-fist, broke down the conventionalities 
 of a^s— tho' frost-work barriers which had separated the rich 
 from the poor ; who showed that genius, like the wind of 
 heaven, bloweth where it listeth ; who passed to eminence, 
 as my friend Lockhart says, 'at a single stride from that 
 plough-tail' where, 'walking in glory and in joy,' he had 
 watched the fields and skies, and rural manners of Caledonia, 
 with the eye of a lover and a poet, and had sung of the Daisy, 
 the Field-mouse, and the Skylark, in strains simple and 
 natural as those gums which the trees and flowers themselves 
 distil in the silent woods ; whose poetry was just the produced 
 affluence of his large heart ; and whose woes were only the 
 birth-pangs through which all immortal things and all heroes 
 are brought forth. (Cheers.) I give you the memory of 
 him whose praise is sung by Caledonia's streams, from where 
 the rapid Spey cleaves with arrowy haste the pine-forests of 
 Relugas, to where the southern Dee empties her woodland 
 waters into the Solway Frith ; by Caledonia's lakes, from 
 Loch Sunart to Loch Doon ; and by all the waving heather 
 and wild-toiTent voices of her mountains, from Ben-More in 
 the far shire of Sutherland, to the round Crifiel, watching the 
 wedding of the poet's own dear Nith with the sea ; the memory 
 of a tried, tempted, erring, but true-hearted, honest, high- 
 minded, immortal man — Robert Burns." (Deep sensation 
 and silence.)
 
 142 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 After the toast was drunk, and one of the company had 
 sung " A man's a man for a' that," a lively conversation 
 ensued, of which I remember little except a few anecdotes 
 told by a country gentleman present about Burns, one or two 
 of which I quote, having never seen them mentioned in any 
 of the biographies of the poet. The village of Carnwath is ou 
 the direct road between Edinburgh and Ayr, and the poet 
 had occasion to pass it several times on his way between the 
 two places.* On his first journey to the metropolis, he had 
 arranged to pass a night with a Mr. Archibald Prentice, 
 farmer, Covington Mains, who was an ardent admirer of the 
 poet, and became a subscriber for twenty copies of the 
 second edition of his works. A great many of Mr. Pren- 
 tice's friends in the vicinity were invited to meet Burns, and, 
 as some uncertainty existed respecting the time of his arrival, 
 it was ari'anged that a flag was to be hoisted on Covington 
 Hill, being a spot visible for a considerable distance, as soon 
 as he reached. On the hoisting of the signal, all the farmers 
 of the neighbourhood might be seen flocking to Covington 
 Mains, to pay homage to the king of Scotland's ploughmen 
 and poets. They spent with him a joyovis night, and the next 
 
 * Since writing this, I find that Robert Chambers has told the first 
 of these anecdotes in his " Life of Burns," with this difference, that he 
 says the flag, a white sheet attached to a pitchfork, was hoisted on the 
 top of a corn-stack, to proclaim the advent of the poet. I have my 
 doubts, however, if this visit took place on Burns' Jirst journey to 
 Edinburgh. He is generally said to have performed it on foot, and to 
 have been so fatigued with the walk that he was indisposed for some 
 days — an indisposition to which he alludes in his letters, — and which 
 was more likely to have been produced by a long walk than by a 
 ride, unless, indeed, the hospitality of the Plains had been excessive. 
 It is not, besides, at all likely that the farmers would have gathered 
 to meet him, vmless they had been pi-eviously acquainted with his 
 poems. But the circulation of the first edition had been very limited. 
 The enthusiasm felt for the pioet was probably produced by Mr. Pren- 
 tice's twenty copies of the second edition — circulated by him amongst 
 his neighbours ; — ^and Burns had afterwards repeated occasion to pass 
 that way.
 
 EDINBURGH. 143 
 
 morning, ' weel mounted' on a pony borrowed at Ayr, Burns 
 wended his eastward way. He called, in passing, on John 
 Stoddart, a neighbouring farmer, but did not alight. Stod- 
 dart remarked that they were in great confusion, as they had 
 a bride in the house. " Weel, weel," replied Burns, laughing, 
 " Heaven send the lassie good luck." Good luck, accordingly, 
 followed tiie blessing of the bard. The lassie became the 
 mother of a numerous family, who all did well in the world. 
 One daughter settled in Moscow, became the milliner and 
 dressmaker to the Empress of Russia, acquired a large 
 fortune, and returned home to her native country. 
 
 ^Uipther anecdote affected me much In the spring after 
 Burni^iied, Thomas Nimmo, a native of Carnwath, having 
 received his discharge from the army in England, was travel- 
 ling home with a comrade. Passing through Dumfries, they 
 inquired the way to St. Michael's churchyard, to visit the 
 poet's grave. Following a footpath through the wilderness of 
 ornaments which deck Death in that famous burying-groxuid, 
 they looked around for a stone to tell them where he slept. 
 Not finding anything of the sort, they made up to a female 
 in deep mourning, who was sitting on the ground a little 
 farther on. Nimmo thus addressed her : " Mistress, we are 
 strangers, and would feel obliged if you could show us the 
 grave of Burns." Pointing to the narrow mound at her feet, 
 and bursting into tears, she said : " That, soldiers, is his grave, 
 and I am his widow." The poor fellows felt hurt at having 
 intiaided on her in such circumstances, apologized for their 
 abruptness, tendered their simple but heartfelt condolence, 
 and went on their way. It were, I thought, a good subject 
 for a painter : Jean Armour at the grave of Burns, while yet 
 no monument marked the spot. 
 
 After a few more toasts and songs, the Noctes broke up ; 
 and I never attended any more of its meetings, nor did I see 
 Wilson in private again for several years. I remained for 
 some months during summer in Edinburgh, and was intro- 
 duced in the course of it to Jeffrey, who was kind enough
 
 144 • THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 to ask me out to dine with him once at Craigcrook Castle. 
 When I reached Craigcrook, and entered the waiting-room 
 before dinnei", I found assembled a small but intei'esting 
 assembly, some of whom I recognised as having seen in the 
 street and elsewhere, but others of whom were strangers. 
 There was our gifted host, with his sharp, dark, half-smoked 
 visage, every point of which seemed to be looking at you ; 
 while two bright, restless, glancing eyes were only the foci of 
 the vision diffvised over all. Near him were the smooth open 
 brow and honest genial face of Henry Cockburn, whose rich 
 Scottish brogue I had often heard arising, and had compared, 
 not to a " steam of rich-distilled perfumes," but — shall I say] 
 — to the odour of a new-gashed haggis,* pervading the chilly 
 atmosphere of the Parliament-house, and found most refresh- 
 ing to my country senses. There was also a person to whom 
 at the first glance I felt a singular mixture of feelings ; half 
 aversion and half attraction. He sat in a coi-ner of the 
 room, and seemed sinking at times through the floor. There 
 was a curious nervous twitching about his whole body and 
 face. His hair was close-cropped, dark, slightly snowed over 
 by time, like a pine-tree in February ; his countenance pale 
 and haggard ; his eye restless and eager, as if trying to see 
 every object more perfectly, like the eye of a man looking to 
 a letter in cypher ; and a certain strange sternness and fierce- 
 ness of aspect, mingling with his awkwardness and apparent 
 timidity, completed the confusion of elements about him. 
 Guess my surprise and delight when I heai'd Jeffi-ey cry : 
 " Mr. Hazlitt, what do you think of the view you saw to-day 
 from the Calton Hill 1 " This, then, was the author of " My 
 First Acquaintance with Poets," and " The Spirit of the Age." 
 I remembered immediately of having heard somebody at the 
 Noctes say that Hazlitt was expected to visit Jeffrey in the 
 course of the summer. Among minor notaiiilities, I w;is 
 struck with the appearance of a man about thirty years of 
 age ; with dark locks approaching to a curl ; cheek tinged 
 
 * " Haggis J " a famovis Scotch pudding. See Burns.
 
 EDINBURGH. 145 
 
 ■with a healthy red ; a brow broad, prominent, but rather 
 low, not unhke that which painters give to Burns ; eyes 
 which in a front view said nothing, but which, when seen from 
 the side, were seen rolHng in fire ; and Hps which appeared 
 as if pei'petually champing some invisible bit; the whole 
 aspect of the face being that of infinite restlessness, strongly 
 restrained by self-control. His eyes and lips when he spoke 
 seemed taking parts and responding to each other in one 
 wild tune. A jaw like that of a figer formed the base of the 
 head ; and a form not tall, but commanding in its mediocrity, 
 from an air of proud humility and half-stooping strength, 
 finiSbed off the whole. I heard his name with compai'atively 
 li£tle"'ernotion then as " Mr. Carter." I had, indeed, read 
 some of his papers in Reviews with admiration, but had no 
 conception, any more than the public, what a lurid potentate 
 of mind this man was yet to become. And it is probably 
 from the natural confusion often made between after and 
 present impressions, if I now suppose that I even then com- 
 pared his aspect to that of Satan, led off between Zephon and 
 Ithuriel — a haughty prisoner, stooping to inevitable Destiny, 
 but stooping at such an angle of intense defiance and con- 
 tempt ; every feature and movement saying : " Ye slaves of 
 Jehovah, how I contemn, while I yield to you ! Know ye 
 not that I was a god once j am the prince of devils still j and 
 may be a god again 1" 
 
 Such were the principal members of the party. When 
 comparing them before and after dinner with the men of the 
 Noctes, I was struck with their having less of the free and 
 easy and less of the Scottish in their manners and feelings. 
 Of cour.se, Hazlitt was an Englishman ; but even the Scotch 
 in the party, with the exception of Cockburn, had little that 
 was distinctively national. A certain aristocratic air, too, 
 hung like a chain around every one ; a chain, indeed, worn 
 more lightly as the evening wore on, and the " good wine did 
 its good office," but which had a constraining effect at first. 
 For a long time nothing remarkable was said ; the ordinaiy 
 
 L
 
 146 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 news were discussed, and a good deal of clever, but somewhat 
 envious, literary gossip circulated. It was curious contem- 
 plating the different views taken by two different cliques of 
 different men and measures. It was the tale of the golden 
 and the silver sides of the shield over again. 
 
 The Lakers were introduced ; and very little ceremony 
 indeed was used with their names. Jeffrey remarked, that 
 " these poets seemed to have found the bottom of their ponds, 
 and were doing nothing no^ but stirring the mud. Words- 
 worth might have been a decent enough quarter-Milton, had 
 he not vainly sought to be a whole one. He had power and 
 genius ; but the power was lamed, and the genius could pro- 
 duce no finished results. Some astronomers held that those 
 little planets — Juno, Ceres, Vesta, and the rest — were worlds 
 which Nature had tiied to make, but had failed somehow. 
 Wordsworth had been always building away at poetic worlds, 
 and produced not even small planets, but fragmentary aero- 
 lites, hissing their little heat out, and becoming cold and dead. 
 He was no poet, if poet meant maker ; no artist, if art im- 
 plied construction on intelligible principles ; and no prophet, 
 if the prophetic power included self-forgetfulness and aban- 
 donment ; he was only a strange mixture, in improper 
 proportions, of some of the elements of all three. He had 
 tried to find a new path in poeti'y ; and, seeking for it, had 
 gone sometimes high amid mist, and sometimes low amid 
 mosses and leeches ; but always ended in tumbling back into 
 the old paths, knocking down sometimes, by his vis inertice, 
 those that were walking quietly therein. He was paradox 
 personified. Southey was a man of immense versatility, 
 acquirements, and industry, but his poetry was only mimicry 
 on a stupendous scale. He seemed to be a mocking-bird with 
 a million heads, to speak in the style of his own 'Kehama ;' 
 imitating Milton in ' Madoc,' the Ai'abian and Persian writers 
 in ' Tlialaba ' and ' The Curse ;' Shakspere in ' Wat Tyler,' and 
 Wordsworth passim. He went to every new kind of poetry 
 as if it were to be mastered mechanically, like a new language.
 
 EDINBURGH. 147 
 
 and paraded his triumph over each, like the wicked lady in 
 the ' Arabian Nights,' who showed a ring for every lover, 
 Coleridge had greater powers than any of the other two, and 
 less affectation and conceit ; but his life had been deplorably 
 regardless of all the conditions and responsibilities of real 
 existence. He had latterly run all to tongue ; his conversa- 
 tion moved on like the Dutchman's cork leg; he fancied 
 there would be a mystical muttering heard even under his 
 gravestone ! He met him once at Keswick ; and certainly, 
 to such talk he never listened. It was a flow of maguificent 
 words, and of what seemed magnificent thoughts and images, 
 po'uffed out from two rich but fading lips, like half-withered 
 rose-teaves, moving slowly but incessantly under a face as red 
 as a coach-guard's, and two eyes that seemed ever as if 
 awaking from the sleep of a centmy. His talk that morning 
 was a bright September mist ; very beautiful in itself, but 
 very provoking ; not allowing one spot of blue sky to appear, 
 and drenching the very locks of the sun ere it permitted him 
 to peep through." " What say you to all this, Hazlitt?" cried 
 Cockburn. " Why," he said, " confound it, I hate the Lakers 
 as men, like a good Christian as I am ; but I admire their 
 genius, and wonder how it ever came to keep company with 
 such accommodating consciences and turncoat characters as 
 theii's. They have all three sold their birthright : Words- 
 worth for a stamp -office salary and the smile of a lord ; 
 Southey for tlie laui'eate's butt of sack ; and Coleridge for the 
 paltry price of a phial of laudanum. I would spend my last 
 penny in treating Miss N (have you seen her, gentle- 
 men ? By the stars a Venus de Medici !) to see them hung, 
 Twere a curious sight ! Wordsworth would go off singing 
 one of his own lyrical ballads instead of a psalm ; Southey 
 would lay his hand on his heart and swear to his consis- 
 tency with his last breath ; and Coleridge, with the rope 
 round his neck, would be^ haranguing the hangman upon 
 Aristotle's Predicaments — his own forgotten. They are a 
 base gang ; but baser still are their imitators in this good city. 
 
 L 2
 
 148 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 When I was up to-day on your Calton Hill, looking toward the 
 peaks of Rob Roy's country, and trying to forgive the author 
 of the tale of that name for 'The Beacon,'* I heard a snigger 
 behind me; and, looking round — would you believe it. Sir? — 
 I saw the scoundrels of Blackwood assembled, and deriding 
 me behind my back. How they had tracked me, I cannot 
 say; but there they were. I knew them by instinct — Lock- 
 hart, the black-visaged and black-hearted; Wilson, the big, 
 bright-haired butcher ; O'Doherty, the ' Irish blackguard ;' 
 Timothy Tickler, with his gaunt physiognomy and endless 
 body." "Nonsense !" interrupted Jeffrey, knowing the weak 
 points and strange suspicions of his guest ; " some of these 
 men are, / know, out of town; your eyes must have deceived 
 
 you. Revenons h nos moutons. When saw you Miss N ?" 
 
 This threw the irascible critic from one hobby upon another. 
 It was a little after the publication of " Liber Amoris ;" and 
 away he ran, as I had heard he was in the habit of doing, 
 into the particulars of that unhappy affair, which bad par- 
 tially unstrung his powerful mind. 
 
 This effected a change in the conversation, but it soon 
 flowed again into the channel of literature. Jeffrey strongly 
 advocated a return to the school of Dryden, Pope, and 
 Johnson in manner, along with an infusion of more of the 
 spirit of Shakspere and the elder Dramatists. Hazlitt con- 
 tended that the Drydenic manner as well as matter, at least 
 as it had degenerated in Pope, was un-English and unnatural ; 
 while that of Shakspere ought to be imitated by all poets, 
 and had been, on the whole, well imitated by Wordsworth. 
 " I think, on the other hand," said Jeffrey, " that Byron 
 might have been, and is in some points, the model-poet of 
 this age. He adds much of the passion and high-soaring 
 fancy of the Elizabethan time to the manly clearness, terse- 
 ness, and finish of Pope and his period. He says a strong 
 thing strongly, a profound thing quickly and without con- 
 
 * " The Beacon.;" a notorious Tory print, of a scurrilous character, 
 patronized at first by Sir Walter Scott.
 
 EDINBURGH. 149 
 
 sciousness, a beautiful thiug gracefully, and a common thing 
 quietly. I, of course, refer to liis first two cantos of ' Childe 
 Harold,' his ' Corsair,' his ' Giaour,' and I may add, his ' Don 
 Juan.' I except such swollen and turbid strains as his fourth 
 canto of the ' Childe,' his ' Darkness,' and his ' Cain,' in which 
 he was misled by his brief nympholeptic passion for the Lake- 
 school — a passion reminding me of Titania's tendresse for 
 Bottom — and by the influence of that ethereal maniac Shelley. 
 In ' Don Juan' he was returning, I think, to his earlier and 
 pm-er taste." " Purer !" ejaculated Hazlitt; " pretty purity ! 
 But all things may be pardoned, I suppose, in a lord. I beg 
 lejftc, Mr. Jeffrey, to differ from you decidedly in your esti- 
 niate^of Byron. He was an incarnate passion, rather than a 
 true poet. He had force of intellect, and terrible concentra- 
 tion of will, but not that sympathy — 
 
 ' All wide and general as the casing air ' — 
 
 that liquid flow of feeling — that openness to all the skyey 
 influences, like an ^olian-harp, waiting for the advent of any 
 angel-wind that may be blowing through the universe — that 
 broad benignity of nature — which characterized Shakspere, 
 and which, more or less, characterize all highest poets. He 
 did not ' look abroad into universality ;' he stayed at home, 
 and it was a gloomy home. His library-room — I have seen 
 it in Newstead Abbey — looked not to the sunny south, but 
 to the north, towards ' dark Loch-na-Gar.' It was a long and 
 narrow, not a wide and ample chamber; and seemed to me, 
 as I gazed at it, amid the mists and closing twilight of a 
 November day, to be an emblem of the noble poet's mind. 
 Yet I grant him to have been, in a sense, a man of strong 
 genius, but of no geniality, and no dramatic power. He 
 was the most selfish of men — and Shakspere the least^so. 
 Byron has crossed our literature like a falling Lucifer, seek- 
 ing to drag down along with him all within the sweep of his 
 lurid arm. But this is a devil's purpose, not a poet's." 
 
 " What think you of Shelley 1" asked Jeffrey. " I suspect
 
 150 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 you agree with me there." " I thought him," said TIazlitt, 
 " another Piercy Shafton, in ' The Monastery' — not devoid of 
 generosity, genius, and enthusiasm, but thoroughly spoiled by 
 a sort of sincere coxcombry and by absurd flightiness. His 
 genius was rather a wild goose than a swan. Some of his poems 
 are the most beautiful and exquisite evasions of meaning and 
 common-sense I ever read. Even his best works are more or 
 less tinged with disease. He might say, to alter Stephano's 
 words, in ' The Tempest,' ' I am not Shelley, but a scrofula.' 
 He has been compared to Spensei', and has a good deal of 
 his music and ethereal luxury of description, but wants his 
 breadth and body, his ease, and his massive strength. ' Pro- 
 metheus Unbound ' might have been written by a gnome of 
 genius. It has no relation or connexion with the aflfairs or 
 scenery of this world." I here struck in, and ventnred to 
 say a word in behalf of my favourite ; for he was so then 
 much more than now. " Is it not interesting, though, to 
 meet with a being so different from men, though it were for 
 nothing but its rarity — a being so strange and wild, so sin- 
 cere and so misled — like a child from another planet, wan- 
 dering bewildered upon earth?" "Why," says Hazlitt, 
 " upon this principle the best thing that could have been 
 done with Shelley was to have caught him, clapped him, as 
 the Brobdignagian farmer did Gulliver, into a cage, and made 
 a fortune by exhibiting this ' Wondrous creature, imcom- 
 monly like the human race; no owner; newly fallen, it is 
 supposed, from the top of one of the highest mountains in 
 Merciny.' Keats was a truer poet than Shelley. His vein was 
 more thoroughly ideal, healthier, and flowed more sweetly 
 upon him. Shelley could only paint lunar landscapes — all 
 was glaring, volcanic, and abrupt. Keats shone in describing 
 i\\^ lush fruitfulness, the vineyards, and the corn-fields of 
 ' dear old earth ;' and yet when he mounted to the ethereal, as 
 in ' Hyperion,' he beat Shelley on his own ground, and rose 
 to Miltouic or J^schylean altitudes. Shelley was a meta- 
 physician, a scholar, a genius, if you will — everything but a
 
 EDINBURGH. 151 
 
 man. Keats was not permitted much to overpass boyhood; 
 but there was the germ of a man and of a hero within him. 
 In one thing only did the poetry of Shelley surpass that of 
 Keats — in purity of language ; but this was owing rather to 
 his superior culture than to his superior powers." 
 
 I noticed Carter, during this discussion, becoming pecu- ^^-M.^ 
 liarly fidgetty, and saw his lips in manifest* labour to be 
 delivered of something or other. At last he found an oppor- 
 tunity ; and in a strange, wild, Annandale accent, commenced 
 a harangue, of which"' I remember only some faintly-defined 
 peaks, looming through an ocean of burning mist. I say 
 "btTPuing;" for the intense although subdued excitement of 
 the rnfiri seemed to steep his every word in fire. He commenced 
 by wondering at men of " average sanity" discussing, with any 
 seriousness, the claims of such " clanjamfry* of Cockneydom" 
 as Shelley and Keats, when there were so many other high 
 themes and noble men challenging attention. " They reminded 
 him of a man who should, after climbing a lofty mountain — 
 whence, as from a pinnacle of the great temple of immensity, 
 earth, and the blue deeps of air, and the everlasting brine of 
 ocean were beheld — should turn away from the prospect, and 
 spend that hour he had given him upon the Mount of Vision 
 in measuring the proportions of a ptarmigan, or in admiring 
 the colour of an Alpine hare. If they wanted to speak of 
 poets and j)oeti'y, they should look eastward, and think of 
 the genius of Germany. There alone, in this late, self-listen- 
 ing age of cant and conventionalism, did he see any remains 
 of the real spirit of poetry. Goethe and Schiller were men, 
 cultured, gifted, earnest, heroic; and their poetry was just the 
 flower of their noble manhood. Some poets, such as Keats, 
 carried in them a vein, as the bee carries a small, sweet bag 
 of honey, not diffused over their whole being, and having 
 little relation to their other faculties. All the poetry in 
 •Johnny Keats might lie snug and unsuspected in the hollow 
 of one of Jean Paul's stupendous chapters. But why," he 
 * "Clanjamfry;" rubbish.
 
 152 THE HISTORY OP A MAN. 
 
 said, " preach about poetry or anything else to an age like 
 this? The public had become a gigantic jackass — Literature 
 a glittering lie; Science was groping aimlessly amidst the 
 dry, dead clatter of the machinery by which it means the 
 universe ; Art wielding a feeble, watery pencil j History 
 stumbling over dry bones, in a valley no longer of vision; 
 Philosophy lisping and babbling exploded absurdities, mixed 
 Avith new nonsense about the Infinite, the Absolute, and the 
 Eternal ; our Religion a great truth groaning its last ; Truth, 
 Justice, God, turned big, staring, empty words, like the address 
 on the sign, remaining after the house was abandoned, or like 
 the envelope, after the letter had been extracted, drifting 
 down the wind. And what men we have to meet the crisis ! 
 Sir Walter Scott, a toothless retailer of old wives' fables ; 
 Brougham, an eternal grinder of common-place and pre- 
 tentious noise, like a man playing on the hurdy-gurdy; 
 Coleridge, talking in a maudlin sleep an infinite deal of 
 nothing ; Wordsworth, stooping to extract a spiritual catsup 
 from mushrooms which were little better than toadstools; 
 John Wilson, taken to presiding at Noctes, and painting 
 haggisses in flood ; the bishops and clergy of all denomina- 
 tions combined to keep men in pupillage, that they may be 
 kept in port-wine and roast-beef; politicians full of cant, 
 insincerity, and falsehood; — Peel, a plausible fox; John 
 Wilson Croker, an unhanged hound; Lord John Russell, a 
 turnspit of good pedigree ; Lord Melbourne, a monkey : 
 ' these be thy gods, Israel !' Others occupied in under- 
 takings as absurd as to seek to suck the moon out of the sky ; 
 this windbag yelping for liberty to the Negro, and that other 
 for the improvement of prisons; — all sham and imposture 
 together — a giant lie — which may soon go down in hell- 
 fire." 
 
 I cannot describe the effect which the tirade, of which 
 these are only the outlines, uttered in melancholy tones, 
 interrupted occasionally by deep sighs, and breaking out, 
 ever and anon, in wild, mystic, unfathomable laughter, pro-
 
 EDINBUEGH. 153 
 
 duced on the company. It added to the eifect, that twilight 
 had come down over the sky, and that behind the speaker's 
 head the large autumn moon was rising into the room, and 
 throwing a weird lustre around it. It seemed a voice well 
 fitted to harmonize with the play of twilight moonbeams and 
 with the plaint of evening waters. All sat silent, overborne 
 by the force of the almost despairing earnestness which spoke 
 in every tone ; and felt as if an Ezekiel, or at least a Balaam, 
 had been uttering a prophetic deliverance beside us. For 
 a while none seemed" willing to "bell the cat ;" till, at last, 
 an intelligent Highland laird — whose name, I think, was 
 Mat>€!onnell — began by begging Mr. Carter to suggest some 
 rd'metfy for this sad state of matters. Things were certainly 
 veiy bad ; but was there no possibility of their becoming 
 better 1 " Why," said Carter, " let all men cease to be shams, 
 and become earnest and true ! " " But do you think," said Mac 
 Connell, " it likely that this will soon occur ? Do you think 
 Brougham will ever learn to think twice before he speaks once 1 
 that Peel will ever lose his tail or change his skin 1 or that 
 hanging would turn Croker's bark into music, or his venom 
 into sweetness. Or, if the old race be incorrigible, is there 
 any appearance of a new and better arising among our young 
 men ? " " Our young men ! " rej oined Carter, " they're puppies 
 before the Lord exceedingly, and should be drowned, like 
 blind whelps, or clapped into barrels, and so kept till they 
 come to years of discretion." " But," continued the indo- 
 mitable MacConnell, who seemed determined to pin him 
 down, " what substitute would you propose for our good old 
 mother, Christianity ] " This set Carter off, somewhat stung, 
 I thought, at the question, into a long mystical harangue, 
 about Christianity being the child's meat of man's nonage, 
 and of Nature and Duty being the twin elements of the 
 manlier nurture of his maturer years. To which MacConnell 
 coolly replied, that if Mr. Carter's previous statement was 
 correct, the world must be now, as the famous Ephraim 
 Jenkinson in the Yicar of Wakefield has it, "in its dotage,"
 
 154 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 or second childhood ; that pap, he thought, in this case, 
 would be its appropriate food ; and of that, Mr. Carter 
 would agree, there was at present no scarcity. 
 
 I remember nothing more that passed. I have not done 
 justice to this conversation ; at least, to Lord Jeffrey's share 
 in it. There was about his talk a tremulous, brilliant 
 evanescence, which defies all reproduction. He touched a 
 thousand subjects in the course of a few sentences ; but it 
 was with a light and hurrying finger, at once graceful and 
 slight. He might be compared to a musician running in 
 haste along a range of pianos, and drawing from each in turn 
 single notes so exquisite and masterly, that you regretted 
 that he could not stop to elaborate a complete harmony. 
 His conversation was gold-dust throughout ; but there were 
 few lumps or nuggets.
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COUKSE. 155 
 
 CHAPTER IV, 
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 
 
 A YEAR afterwards/ after considerable hesitation, I at last 
 made up my mind to become a student of Divinity, and not 
 onlj^-tso, but to join to a Dissenting Church. To this I 
 wa& irfdticed, partly by iutercouse, already described, with 
 preachers of these denominations in Strath-Rennie, and 
 partly by my reading of Hall's Apology for the Liberty of 
 the Press, and of Grahame of Newcastle on Ecclesiastical 
 Establishments. I proceeded, accordingly, to the Dissenting 
 academy held in ]\[ , a small town in the west of Scot- 
 land. Here I studied five successive years, but, for the sake 
 of method and brevity, shall sum up my recollections 
 under the heads of my Professors, my Companions, and my 
 Vacations. 
 
 My professors were four in number, and their names for 
 the present shall be Dr. Mildman, Dr. Dogmatic Dry, Dr. 
 Dungeon, and Dr. Bilious Phlegmatic. All were men of 
 respectable talents, but all were considerably over-rated in 
 their own body. None of them was truly eloquent, or a 
 philosopher, or a man of genius. Dr. Mildman was an 
 amiable being, of the most correct and exemplary deport- 
 ment, and was greatly loved and respected by all his students. 
 He was one of those unfortunate persons, however, who first 
 become famous through a prize essay, and are ever after- 
 wards striving in vain to keep up a false and factitious 
 reputation. Wilson said once to me of a man, — I think it 
 was of Brown Paterson, the author of an Essay on Greece 
 which gained a gold medal in Edinburgh College — " I may
 
 156 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 say of him now, what I could say of all in the same pre- 
 dicament — ' Good had it been for that man had he never 
 been born.' " The expression was daring, and only to be 
 excused in a " chartered libertine j" but contained in it much 
 truth. It may be truly said that no great man ever began 
 his career with writing even a rejected, far less a successful, 
 prize essay. The ambition implied in the attempt is small ; 
 the execution is never spontaneous ; and the result, in general, 
 is an elaborate abortion. The name of the writer is forced 
 into reputation, and he very seldom is able to bear the load 
 of the uneasy lustre which falls around him. It was so with 
 Dr. Mildman. His essay had made him a reputation which, 
 like a suit too large, did not fit him, and he looked ever 
 afterwards ludicrous in his East Indian array. A better 
 man, however, a gentler, or one who displayed, on occasion, 
 a finer Christian unction in his prelections, preachings, and 
 prayers, never lived. His chief fault, as a professor, lay in 
 over-indulgence and over-praise of his students. What 
 geniuses he thought of some of them ! I have heard him 
 panegyrize a poor creature that could hardly spell, till he 
 persuaded him that he was at the least a Chalmers, more 
 probably a Plato. Occasionally, he used to utter such 
 criticisms as the following : — " The discourse you have just 
 heard is a masterpiece, that might have done credit to 
 Milton at the same age. Its thought is profound ; its style 
 elegant ; its taste Attic. The manner of its deliveiy was 
 chaste, imposing, and majestic ; and the voice, a stream of 
 music, melting as the liquid lapse of the Ayr beneath the 
 classic ground which begirds the Castle of Montgomery. 
 I trust to see this extraordinary production published in the 
 
 Magazine, and afterwards preserved in the archives of 
 
 immortal fame." This is no caricature ; but almost a 
 transcript. Good old man ! he little dreamed what mischief 
 he was doing, not only to his own character as a critic, but 
 to the youth he was puffing into premature importance, and 
 sending home, not to study, but to think himself superior to
 
 UY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 157 
 
 the di-udgei'ies of diligence, — a Heaven-inspired divine ! I 
 learned nothing from Dr. Mildman except a tolerable share 
 of the little Hebrew which was to be got in his class, whigh I 
 have since managed almost entirely to forget, and except, 
 I may add, a profound appreciation of his own character as 
 a pattern of those pastoral virtues which he so affectionately 
 inculcated on his students. I had begun, by the way, my 
 Hebrew studies in Strath-Rennie, and remember, with deep 
 emotion, the reading of the first words of Genesis — " Barasheth 
 Bara Elohim Haretz," &c. — at a little window in my mother's 
 d'w^ing, which looked towards the East and Jerusalem. 
 Tbe-TSoi'ds seemed dropping slowly from within the veil of 
 the Holy of Holies, and rolled on, in grand symphony with 
 the spirit of the Everlasting Hills without. It was God 
 talking of his own creative work in syllables of thunder ! 
 The mere circumstance of these being probably the earliest 
 words that have come down to us, invested them with 
 mysterious grandeur. They seemed the aboriginal " fii'e- 
 mist " whence have since been evolved all the worlds and 
 wonders of literature. 
 
 The second professor in this establishment was Dr. Dog- 
 matic Dry. In this name I have wished to represent him 
 rather as he appeared, than as he was. He seemed to his 
 students severe, distant, i*etired into his cold altitiides, like 
 an Alpine summit, which deigns to communicate with the 
 lower vales only through avalanches and glaciers. In reality, 
 however, he was a warm-hearted and well-conditioned man, 
 full of interest in his class, individually as well as collectively; 
 and his severe strictures on their lucubrations were dictated 
 by wisdom, and littered in a manner so clear, so cold, so void 
 of prejiidice and passion, that their sincerity, if not justice, 
 was vouched for in their very tones. Yet he was desperately 
 cold. The sun seems sometimes partial, or at least limited, 
 in his favours — leaving many places unwarmed in shadow, 
 while others are basking in his beams; but how impartial is 
 old John Frost ! How do all things, from the electric rod on
 
 158 THE HISTORY OP A MAN. 
 
 the top of the spire, down to the gutter and the dunghill, feel 
 the force of his chilly finger ! How he nips the nose of Prince 
 Albert, as well as that of his " meanest subject," and freezes 
 the breath of a Chalmers even in the pulpit, as well as that 
 of a serving-wench sweeping the snow from her master's door ! 
 This was the spirit of Dr. Dogmatic Dry's criticism. It 
 passed like frost over all his students' sermons, and, more or 
 less, shed its chilling influence upon the good and the bad, 
 upon those that soared and those that cowered in timid 
 mediocrity. He had, it was said, commended sometimes to 
 enthusiasm ; but this was like Silence's mirth, who says, " I 
 have been merry twice or thrice ere now;" and his praise was 
 counted as precious and scarce as a Queen Anne's farthing. 
 How Dr. Mildman's mighty geniuses shrank and shrivelled 
 up when they came under the wing of Dr. Dry! They 
 resembled birds of the tropics, carried up on some tempest 
 from the foot of Chimborazo, with its everlasting summer, to 
 its top of everlasting snow. Take a specimen of his kind of 
 criticism on, we shall suppose, the same discourse which had 
 awakened Dr. Mildman's enthusiasm : — " I allow this dis- 
 course to pass, although it seems to me very imperfect and 
 juvenile. The style is nearly as bad a specimen of the bom- 
 bastic taste of the age as I recollect. It is prose run mad, 
 and, as Junius says, discovers ' the melancholy madness of 
 poetry without the inspiration.' The sermon is too shallow 
 for an assembly of students, too obscure and pointless for a 
 general audience, and too turgid for any audience whatever. 
 I should advise the author, immediately on returning home, 
 to commit it to the flames, and thereafter, in order to 
 improve his style, to study Addison in English, Aristotle in 
 Gi'eek, and Turretin and Calvin in Latin. As he is a young 
 man, and displays respectable talents, I have less hesitation 
 in passing his sermon for the present, although it does not 
 certainly sustain the common reputation of this age for 
 growing taste and intelligence. Yet I grant, gentlemen, 
 that of late the march of intellect has been very rapid ; it
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 159 
 
 has marched out of sk/?d." This snow-shower style of criti- 
 cism, mingled with little icy morsels of sarcasm, did, I verily 
 believe, more good to the young hopefuls than the soft 
 encomiums of Dr. Mildman, who saluted each preacher, when 
 he came down from the jjulpit, in the style with which a 
 young lady is welcomed as she retires from the piano. It was 
 to me (in the only discourse I preached before him, I acted, 
 too, on this principle, and came off well) very edifying to 
 notice the manner ifl. which some young aspirants held in 
 their wings (some of which were tiny and short enough, at 
 an^jc^te) as they felt the falcon eye of Dr. Dogmatic Dry 
 fised-ti^n them. This prevalent terror gave him less oppor- 
 tunity of knowing the true calibre of his students; but, 
 besides, he wanted that prophetic insight which discerns the 
 tree in the bud, the full-fledged future of the bird in the 
 infant pinion. As a theologian, Dr. Dry was clear, learned, 
 able, and systematic, — nay, sometimes rose into poetic elo- 
 quence without knowing it ; and fine sentences used to come 
 out of his mouth as if they had been frost-bitten. As a man 
 be was exemplary, more affectionate than he got credit for, 
 and warmly loved by those who knew him. 
 
 The third of our professors was Dr. Dungeon. I call him 
 so from the immense quantity of recondite learning he had 
 contrived to amass, although, from the want of method and 
 clearness, it was often of little use to him. He possessed also 
 great, although somewhat paradoxical ingenuity, and could 
 occasionally write with genuine force and spirit. He had 
 very considerable sympathy with and knowledge of modern 
 literature. Best of all, he had a warm, wide heart. As a 
 professor, he followed a kind of medium between the judicial 
 severities of Dr. Dogmatic Dry and the feeble amenities of 
 Dr. Mildman. He loved the young fermenting brain^ and 
 was fond and proud of discovering the germ of genius. 
 
 Dr. Bilious Phlegmatic was less a favourite, with me at 
 least, than any of tLe rest. He was said, by his intimates, to 
 be amiable; but to his students he was distant, without real
 
 160 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 dignity, sometimes severe, and sometimes partial without 
 discrimination. He was a learned, bnt not a gifted man. 
 His dull eye seemed eternally about to speak, but never did ; 
 his stiff, stilted style sometimes threatened to move freely 
 and eloquently, but the crutches continually came crashing 
 down below him, and all the light he emitted resembled only 
 the radiance of a November noon shining in on an old library 
 of dusky tomes, and making their darkness visible. He had 
 been spoiled, ere created professor, by the applause of a 
 clique, who thought him a demi-god; and by an unlucky 
 visit he paid once to London, during the May meetings, 
 where he met with Sir James Mackintosh, Eobert Hall, and 
 some other magnates of that day, whose words he was ever 
 afterwards quoting as oraculai', whose style he did his best to 
 imitate, and whose prejudices against the far greater genius 
 of Coleridge and Wordsworth he had imbibed, and tried to 
 circvilate among us. The tendency of this was, of course, to 
 produce a worship of comparative mediocrity — than which 
 that in Egypt of oxen and beeves were scarce more deplorable. 
 The undue admiration of all but the hisrhest models of excel- 
 lence is pernicious, in creating attention to words rather than 
 things, to style rather than thought, and to systematic imita- 
 tion. Who ever dreams of imitating ^Eschylus, Shakspere, or 
 the Prophets 1 Their wheels, like those in Ezekiel's vision, 
 are so " high that they are dreadful ;" their merits so tran- 
 scendent that it were madness to seek to emulate them; at 
 the same time that they supply deep inspiration. But an 
 exaggerated estimate of writers whose chief power is in their 
 style, leads to attempts to reach what seems, although it is 
 not, a more attainable object. It was an ox, not a lion or 
 behemoth, that the frog burst in trying to copy. Dr. Bilious 
 Phlegmatic was a man that never seemed to have looked at 
 any object or thought except through the spectacles of books. 
 There were no traces of struggle, or of sympathy with it, in 
 his prelections. Had he seen Niagara, his first thought would 
 have been, " What would Mackintosh think of this? and how
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 161 
 
 would Hall describe it?" As a divine, he had no notion of 
 the a-wful cui-reut of doubt and darkness -which had set in, 
 and -was heaving below all theological chairs and all theo- 
 logies. His life, in short, was a long " brown studj^," the 
 dream of a bookworm, disturbed only now and then by the 
 passage across his professorial eye of what he deemed pre- 
 sumptuous glares of "strange fire" from authors whom he 
 thought not " classical," and therefore nought, or from some 
 of his own students, ^ho dared to think and speak for them- 
 selves. Peace to his ashes ! He was a good man, possessed 
 of "naiich useful and more useless knowledge ; deeply read in 
 ol^eol^iOj and deservedly obsolete, books; an elaborate con- 
 structor of sermons, which he delivered in long-drawn, 
 monotonous, and melancholy tones ; and, after having been 
 deservedly respected by all, and loved by many, is now 
 forgotten by the general public. 
 
 I had many dear and intimate friends among my fellow- 
 students, but do not feel myself justified in recording their 
 names. Most of them are now laborious and estimable 
 clergymen in various parts of the world; in Glasgow, in 
 Dumbai'ton, in Canada, and in Australia. I shall simply 
 allude to one or two more remarkably distinguished by 
 singularity, talent, or genius. One of these was called Thomas 
 Anderson, and was remarkable for his vast memory, acute 
 understanding, and romantic history. When a mere boy, he 
 had run away from a school in Angusshire, where he was 
 boarded, taking fright at the severities of the master, and 
 bad spent some months wandering in the Highlands, sub- 
 sisting for the most part on hips and haws. He had found 
 his way to Greenock, whence a ship was sailing to tlie West 
 Indies; he offered himself as a cabin-boy, and was accepted. 
 He spent some years at sea; was several times shipwrecked; 
 and at last left the profession in disgust. He went to London, 
 and there led a wild and precarious life for several years. He 
 was at one time a printer's devil ; he became next a compo- 
 sitor; he was promoted then to be the editor of a pot-house
 
 162 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 print, which brought him — being at once the theati'ical, poli- 
 tical, and literary critic of the establishment — in contact with 
 the stage. He fell madly in love with a beautiful barmaid, 
 and was on the point of marrying her, when she luckily one 
 morning decamped with one of his own associates, a reporter 
 in the Times office. He became for a season desperate. A 
 person from Scotland found him by accident in St. James's 
 Park, sitting on a bench, in rags and wretchedness. He 
 made up to him; heard his story; lent him his counsel and 
 a little cash ; and sent him down to his native parish, where 
 he taught a school, and. gradually struggled on his way to 
 College, and came, a matured and steadied character, to the 
 
 Academy at . I met him there first, and enjoyed him 
 
 much, particularly his conversation about the strange scenes 
 he had witnessed abroad and in the metropolis. He had 
 been intimate with Pierce Egan, with Hazlitt, and with the 
 elder Kean. What stories he told of these characters! 
 Kean's wild tricks, his insane extravagances in private life, 
 his habitual dissipation, his unbounded genius in all tragic 
 p^rts, were painted to the life. I got a peep into the 
 mysteries of the green-room, as well as of the lower London 
 press, which did not certainly improve my good opinion of 
 human nature, Anderson became an exemplary character, 
 and promised to be an ornament to the Church. He had the 
 most extraordinary memory, except perhaps B. G., I ever 
 encountered. He could repeat all Homer and Milton by 
 heart, as well as the greater part of Shakspere and the Bible. 
 He read Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Greek, Latin, 
 German, and Italian as easily as English. He was seized, 
 however, poor fellow! with consumption; and when, at the 
 commencement of one of our sessions, on missing his fair 
 hectic face and blue eyes, I inquired, I found that he was 
 dead. He left a MS. life of himself, which must have been 
 a most singular document; but a stupid minister, who got it 
 into his hands, persuaded his old parents that its publication 
 would ]iot be for their son's honour, and prevailed on them
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 163 
 
 to commit it to his keeping. He, however, had shortly after 
 to remove to a foreign shore, owing to debt and other causes, 
 and in lais hurry carried away poor Anderson's MS. with him, 
 and it is now iiTecoverably lost. 
 
 I remember another student, of less talent than Anderson, 
 but of more genius. His name was Fingal Buchanan. He 
 came from the parish of Drymen, and boasted of being 
 related to his great namesake, George Buchanan. He struck 
 all, when he came t« the Academy, as the queerest-looking 
 mortal they ever beheld. He had on a suit of shabby clothes, 
 which appeared to have been made for his father, or perhaps 
 his graodfathei", but certainly never for him. His aspect on 
 the street was in the last degree careless and strange. He 
 walked staring around him, like a man in a dream. He was 
 near-sighted, too, which added to the oddness and awkward- 
 ness of his appearance. His face was naturally good and 
 expressive, but spoiled by bad teeth and by a custom he had 
 of wearing his hair pulled back from his big brow, and lying 
 in a dead lump on the top of his head. His eye was dreamy 
 till he was roused, when it became wild and glaring. His 
 mouth was rather large than otherwise; his hair fair; his 
 cheek-bones prominent. In company he was, then, the most 
 blundering and bashful of boobies, especially if there were 
 ladies present; yet when at ease, and with two or three 
 kindred spirits, his talk was full of fire and enthusiasm. He 
 quoted poetry with great gusto ; and it was quite delightful 
 to see him getting a new book of merit into his hands. He 
 looked as if he would have torn it to pieces for very rapture. 
 He mastered its contents in a few hours; rushed, as if by 
 instinct, on its finer passages, and ran about everywhere 
 repeating or reading its choice sentences. You tliought he 
 knew books by touch. I had often noticed his strange 
 appearance, and was, like the rest of his fellow-students, 
 utterly at a loss what to make of him, he seemed at times 
 80 stupid, and at other times so radiant with soul. At last 
 the time came fur his delivering a discourse before the 
 
 m2
 
 164 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 Professors, and the whole class was on tiptoe. 1 see him yet, on 
 an autumn morning, mounting the box, trembling, but more 
 in eagerness and enthusiasm than in fear. He read out for 
 his text, in strong, loud tones, " Awake, sword, against my 
 Shepherd, and the man that is my fellow." I remember he 
 began his discourse with the words, " Of whom speaketh the 
 prophet here? of himself, or of some other man?" and pro- 
 ceeded with prodigious vehemence, as if addressing a popular 
 audience, to deliver a figurative and extravagant harangue, 
 gleaming, however, here and there, with fine fancy. His 
 voice was deep, and full of a wild music. His manner was 
 a kind of compound of Wilson's and Chalmers', although 
 he had never seen nor heard either. He described the cry, 
 " Awake," as a cry of haste, and brought a long paragraph to 
 a close and climax by saying, with startling force, " Haste ! 
 for the sackcloth of the sun hath heen woven, and ere that 
 darkness pass away, the sweat of an infinite agony must have 
 been expended, and the blood of an infinite atonement must 
 have been outpoured." The effect of the sermon was as 
 strange as the sermon and as the man. Some abused it as 
 a tissue of absolute bombast, while others praised it highly. 
 The opinion of the three Professors, too, was divided (Dr. 
 Dogmatic Dry was by this time dead). Dr. Mildman lavished 
 a superfluity of superlatives, Pelions on Ossas, in its praise; 
 Dr. Dungeon muttered something about " extravagance," 
 "no divinity in it, but considerable genius;" while Dr. 
 Bilious Phlegmatic, whose face I had noticed getting yellow 
 with his feelings during the delivery, attacked the sermon at 
 length, and among other things accused the author of imi- 
 tating Dr. Chalmers. Fingal, who had sat writhing during 
 the previous part of the criticism, could bear this no longer, 
 but, starting up (he had some Highland blood in him, and I 
 was really afraid he would hurst if he did not speak, and 
 
 swear if he did), cried out, " Dr. B , you may copy Hall, 
 
 and mimic Macintosh if you please, but I disdain to imitate 
 any man; and, moreover, I never either heard or read Dr.
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 165 
 
 ChalfDers ;" and having so said, he left the room in high 
 dudgeon. He never came back to tlie Academy, bnt con- 
 tinued in the place for some time. Many of the other stu- 
 dents rather shunned him after this escapade ; but it attracted 
 me towards him, and during the few remaining weeks of that 
 autumn we became inseparable. I found him a far more 
 congenial associate than even B. G. I often went up to his 
 humble lodging, after having breakfasted myself, and found 
 him having just swallowed his dish of 'pease-meal brose — a 
 favourite dish in the West of Scotland — and proceeding to 
 v^^h it down with copious libations of very strong tea. 
 Slieljey's Poems, Hazlitt's Lectures, Wordsworth, and the 
 new number of Tait were generally lying on the table. He 
 would rise, receive me with outspread arms, and proceed to 
 talk or to read with immense enthusiasm. He had no sar- 
 casm, suspicion, jealousy, or guile, in his nature, but was a 
 fierce hater, and used to empty himself out in furious invec- 
 tives against the books or men he disliked . He did not deal 
 in inuendoes or sneers, but in good, downright abuse. It 
 was no sullen, creeping miasma of malignity, but a fiery, 
 rushing wind of anger. " Dr. Bilious Phlegmatic was a dog 
 living under Hall's table, and feeding on the crumbs that fell 
 from it. But does he take us for his pups, to feed us with 
 the same?" " Mildman was a good being, doubtless, but so 
 anxious to conciliate, that were he bit all night by bugs, he 
 would commend them the next morning as the very best and 
 gentlest of that much misrepresented class of God's creatures." 
 " The Professors of Glasgow College were about the most 
 miserable collection of mediocrities extant. Josiah Walker 
 was a poor hum-drum creature, living on the reputation of 
 having written a bad poem, and being cut up in the Edin- 
 burgh Review. Save the mark of Brougham's blow on his brow, 
 what else had he to distinguish him? and that was the 'mark 
 of the Beast,' for Brougham was nothing more than a powerful 
 brute. His own namesake in the Logic-chair was a sly Celt, 
 who believed about as much as he saw, and had about as
 
 1G6 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 little real enthusiasm as an oyster. Sandford was brilliant, 
 but it was a forced and false brilliance. His excitement 
 resembled a foaming cascade in a gentleman's grounds, not a 
 mountain torrent; it was full of impotent and noisy fury. 
 Old Milne was a Pagan yf\thout the classical element; he was 
 a David Hume withoM^ the bonhomie. They should write 
 over the door of his class, ' Man-traps and spring-guns set 
 here.' The most of the others were beneath contempt." To 
 counterbalance these savage attacks, he had his favourites, 
 whom he spent whole hours in praising. He was never 
 weary of speaking about Hazlitt and Keats, and deploring 
 that they had not fallen on better times. " Had Keats," he 
 cried, " been alive now, and called by Blackwood a fool and a 
 mannikin, he would be no more disturbed than the moon by 
 the baying of a Lapland wolf, than a spirit shrined in heaven 
 by the half-heard howl of the envious damned." He read, 
 he told me, a play of Shakspere and a chapter of the Bible 
 every morning, to refresh and invigorate him for the day. 
 
 In spite of his eccentricities and invectives, Fingal B, 
 was much loved by his intimates for his simplicity, sincerity, 
 geniality, and thorough-going honesty. Great things, too, 
 were expected from him, which he never fulfilled. He 
 left our denomination, and joined another Dissenting body. 
 When rambling, as a preacher, somewhere in Argyleshire, 
 he met and joined a party of pleasure, which was on its way 
 to see a celebrated waterfall. They stopped to call at a farm- 
 house, and got a diink of milk from one of the farmer's 
 daughters, — a nice, tidy, frank, fair-haired damsel. Buchanan 
 fell half in love with her, but this was a common case with 
 him, and the feeling might have passed away, but for a 
 curious circumstance. On returning from the sight of the 
 cataract, past the farm-house, a tremendous thunder-storm 
 came on, and detained them there all night. The impression 
 made on Fingal in the morning by the interesting Scotch 
 lassie was deepened — an acquaintance commenced— and the 
 result was marriage the next year, by which time he had got
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 167 
 
 a church in a large city in the West of Scotland. He had 
 thus, as he said in his own wild way at his marriage, " been 
 taken by storm; God had let down an angel to him on a 
 stair of lightning from heaven." She turned out, I have 
 heard, really an excellent wife. He was not so popular as a 
 preacher as had been anticipated — his matter and manner 
 "wei'e both counted extravagant ; and he never wrote anything 
 except a scattered sermon or two. He is still, I think, 
 labouring away in the same city. 
 
 There was another curious genius, a great intimate of 
 B^jhanan's and mine, called Alaster MacTavish. This 
 yout^. ^ame from the banks of Loch Awe, where his father 
 had been a Congregational pastor, and small farmer. Mac 
 Tavish was the oddest character in the Academy, next to 
 Buchanan. His dress was somewhat less sublime in its 
 disorder, he had more Highland pawkiness, and knew more 
 of life. But he resembled Buchanan in his odd mode of 
 walking, in his love of literature, and in his strange and 
 daring talk. He had a round, ruddy, good-humoured face ; 
 an eye which gave forth the drollest sparkles of humour 
 at times ; a loud, convulsive, contagious laugh ; the keenest 
 sense of the ludicrous I ever met in any man; and certainly 
 a wild touch of real genius. He had a passion for journals, 
 and could rarely be seen without the last Edinhurgh or 
 Blackivood in his hands ; often swinging it to and fro when 
 he became animated in his conversation. He had at College 
 become intimate with MacNish, the modern Pythagorean, 
 and author of the " Anatomy of Drunkenness." At his tabl e 
 he «aw a number of the Glasgow wits of that day, and was 
 fond of picturing their social meetings. MacNish himself 
 was a rare fellow, full of a dry humour, which came out in 
 minute puffs, corresponding with those of the pipe which he 
 smoked incessantly. He delighted in bamming, quizzing, and, 
 when he found an absurd original, egging him on to deeper 
 and deeper immersion in the mire. This was Addison's 
 manner too. His writings are unequal ; but some of them,
 
 168 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 such as the " Metempsychosis," are exquisite in their comhi- 
 nation of humour with weird interest and imagination. Mac 
 Nish was intimate with Motherwell, whom MacTavish de- 
 scribed as a little man, with keen glancing eyes; and full of 
 sharp, lively, sententious talk. His "Sword Song," and 
 " Jeauie Morison " shall long preserve his name as an author. 
 When he died, in 1835, there was a strange stoiy of a lady 
 being seen planting flowers on his grave, in the Necropolis of 
 Glasgow. Some said she was his wife by a private marriage. 
 Nothing certain was, however, we believe, known on the 
 subject. To MacNish's hospitable board came Dugald 
 Moore, William Kennedy, Thomas Atkinson, and sometimes 
 Delta, Malcolm, and even Aird and Wilson, from Edinburgh. 
 Dugald Moore had been a bookseller's shopman, and had, 
 unknown to his master, perpetrated occasional pieces of 
 poetry. He was a damper little man. wi_ th a big brow... but a 
 i^dcti '! very common^plac e^ expression of countenance, and would 
 speak of any subject but literature. His first book, " The 
 African and other Poems," was followed by " Scenes from 
 the Flood," and various other volumes. He became a book- 
 seller in Glasgow, but has now for some years been dead — and 
 so, we fear, is most of his poetry. Yet he was a man of some 
 genius. His verses on " Irad, a Son of Cain," and sevei'al 
 other occasional pieces, were striking, and, bating a slight 
 tinge of the Byronism which prevailed at the time, they were 
 written, original. A proof of their merit lies in the fact 
 that although I have not read them since the year 1830, 
 lines and portions of them cling to my memoiy still. Two 
 of his lines, in reference to the white hair of Ossian — 
 
 "Floating upon the mountain storm like spray, 
 And like a shade he seems of some forgotten day," 
 
 recurred to me when I first saw in David Scott's studio the 
 picture of Ossian and Malvina — Malvina playing on her harp 
 to the old blind bard, whose hoary locks streaming behind 
 reminded me of a winter torrent, or a frozen meteor. 
 Dugald Moore's great defect was — that of his more illustrious
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COUESE. 169 
 
 namesake, Thomas — the want of deep earnestness. He did 
 not feel that poetry was a " true thing." He aimed at the 
 honours and immunities, but shirked the responsibilities of 
 genius. It was much the same with a more brilliant man, 
 William Kennedy, the author of " Fitful Fancies." I had 
 met this gentleman's " Early Days " in my native village, 
 and read it with great delight. The picture of his father's 
 and mother's deaths j; that of the character and drowning of 
 Gerald; the beautiful descriptions and the fine snatches of 
 pcjetry, charmed me, — I classed it with some of the tales in 
 the'"'*' Lights and Shadows," but thought it superior in 
 natuf^afness and variety. I met afterwards with some of 
 his minor poems, and relished them much. I learned that 
 his career was very chequered. He was the son of an Irish 
 Presbyterian minister. He studied at Dr. Lawson's seminary 
 for Dissenting students in Selkirk ; but ultimately resigned 
 thoughts of the ministry, became an editor, first in Paisley, 
 then ill Hull; went as Consul to Texas; and has ended, I 
 am told, poor fellow, in an asylum in Paris. In Paisley, he 
 was a prodigious favourite as a frank, clever, social Irishman, 
 the life of every company. His " Early Days " might secui'e 
 his reputation for a long time to come. 
 
 Tom Atkinson was a bookseller in Glasgow. He was a man 
 of middle size, with bright yellow hair, and large expressive 
 eyes and lips. A more harmless, or more industrious crea- 
 ture there was not. And yet he swam in an atmosphere of 
 affectation. His address, his accent, his style of writing, and 
 of public speaking, were all tinged by it. I remember a 
 little specimen. On one occasion, having separated from his 
 partner, he wrote the following laconic note to a customer of 
 the firm. " Dear Sir, I have separated from my partner. 
 Remember the Bard. Thine. Thomas A." He edited a 
 periodical called the Ant, which was almost all written by 
 himself, and did infinite credit to his diligence and smartness. 
 He became smit with the Reform Mania in 1832, and 
 actually stood as candidate for a seat in Parliament ; but was
 
 170 THE HISTOKY OF A MAN. 
 
 unsuccessful. His various exertious, and some reverses, 
 preyed on his constitution; and on his way to a foreign 
 shore, in search of health, he died, and was buried at sea. 
 MacNish's notices of him in his biography, do little credit to 
 his heart ; and leave the impression that poor Atkinson was 
 a much finer fellow, with all his faults, than the Modern 
 Pythagorean. 
 
 John Malcolm was an Orcadian, and had been in the army. 
 I met him once in Glasgow, at the house of one of his re- 
 latives, whom he often visited. He was a quiet, pleasant, 
 modest person. He had published a small volume of poems, 
 one on the subject of Gow the Pirate, which attracted con- 
 siderable notice in their day, although deeply tinged with 
 the prevalent Byronic sentimentalism. He died editing 
 the Edinburgh Observer. With the MacNish clique there 
 mingled occasionally Samuel Hunter, the editor of the 
 Herald, the Cobbett of Glasgow, with a dash of Theodore 
 Hook, too, in him — a diner out, a wit, a master of coarse 
 common sense, and rough jocularity — whose paper and talk 
 were famous for their unfrequent, but rich unctuous jests ; 
 Lockhart's friends, William Malcolm, and James Kerr, the 
 able condvictors of the Scottish Times; Sheridan Knowles 
 the dramatist ; Northhouse, the accomplished editor of the 
 Free Press; William Bennet, afterwards editor of the same 
 journal — a remarkable man, originally a blacksmith, but 
 who was patronised by MacDiarmid, of Dumfries, and 
 who, from editing a clever periodical called the Dumfries 
 Magazine, was promoted to Glasgow ; Leitch, famous for 
 his (nonprofessional) ventriloquial powers, as well as for 
 his knowledge of German ; and two young men of high pro- 
 mise, Egerton Webbe, whom Leigh Hunt has commemorated 
 in his Autobiography, (I remember him speaking in support 
 of Campbell at various public meetings — a thin, fair-haired, 
 spiritual-looking youth, of immense versatility and elasticity 
 of talent, a scholar, a wit, a poet, and a musician ;) and J. T. 
 of Glasgow, a distinguished linguist, and litterateur, intimate
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 171 
 
 with Campbell — both, alas ! loug since removed from society, 
 the one by death, and the other by a far direr calamity. To 
 return to MacTavish. He had, partly from nature, and partly 
 from contact with these men, learned to practise a style of 
 grotesque humorous exaggeration, which sounded strange in 
 the ears of many of the students, but came with exceeding 
 refreshment upon mine. What hours and nights of this kind 
 of talk we had ! Hqw we " sublimated," as we called it, 
 certain men and things. What peals of laughter awoke the 
 eckoes as we moved alon"' together through the silent night ! 
 Uydiir ajl this there was in Alaster's heart a vein of sincere 
 piety; and althongh I have not seen him for eighteen years, 
 I have reason to believe that all Galloway does not contain a 
 more devoted minister of the Gospel than he. 
 
 There was another sterner and more talented student, 
 named John Henry Kelso. He was a first-rate scholar ; had 
 gained all the medals in Edinburgh College; had, besides, a 
 keen, yet quiet, measured, butjntense vein of sarcasm; had 
 fierce hatreds and strong likings ; wished in all things to 
 have the pre-eminence, and had to bear and to retort a 
 great deal of envy and abuse on this account. He was a 
 determined Radical, and this, with some other circumstances, 
 led him to quit the Academy and the country, and remove to 
 America, where, I believe, he is now principal in a college. 
 He was and is a man of rare vigour of mind, warm heart, 
 solid learning, and an intense contemner of every kind and 
 degree of hypocrisy and sham. 
 
 The last I shall mention was, in many points, the most 
 remarkal)le. His name I shall call Francis Dickson. He w-as 
 a thin, dark, pale youth, with a face capable of the most 
 varied play, not at all unlike the common pictures of 
 Brougham, but with a milder, and at times a more spiritual 
 expression. The elasticity of Dickson's person, the grace of 
 his manners, and the sparkling gaiety or melodramatic 
 earnestness of his conversation, rendered him very popular in 
 all societies. In private there was a wild witchery in his talk,
 
 172 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 especially when he selected the subjects from " such stuff as 
 dreams are made of," — animal magnetism, astrology, alchymy, 
 and the mysteries of Rosicrucianism. Standing on that 
 border-land which dimly divides the spiritual from the mate- 
 rial worlds, what visions and dreams of imaginary truth he 
 built up, and in what gorgeous colours he dyed them ! His 
 thought was often as daring as his language was beautiful. 
 He seemed sometimes labouring with the throes of Creation, 
 aspiring to get behind the Demiurge, and to say, " Let me 
 make a world in mine own image, and after my own likeness." 
 He believed, like Shelley, that man could do everything. I 
 called him the " Demon of the Impossible," and often felt 
 myself muttering about him the words in Manfred — 
 
 "He would have made 
 An awful spirit." 
 
 He had, his enemies alleged, a dash of charlatanerie, but 
 beneath that there lay a stream of genuine enthusiasm. His 
 culture was more showy than solid, and his knowledge not so 
 profound, as it was thoroughly under his command. He had 
 . a genius rather subtle than strong, rather flighty than forcible. 
 His ministering spirit was not a " Giant Angel," but a 
 " stripling cherub, not of the prime," but ever near and ready 
 to do his behests, under some of which, however, it succumbed. 
 He attempted too much, and succeeded in doing comparatively 
 little. Hazlitt calls Cobbett's " Register " a " Pei-petual 
 Prospectus ;" Dickson was a perpetual project, an ever-re- 
 newed, never-fulfilled promise. To hear him for a night you 
 would have imagined that next day he was to open the 
 golden gates of the Millennial morning, and in its light to 
 show to the world Science, Literature, Art, Philosophy, and 
 Religion, exalted on five concentric seats around that un- 
 utterable and invisible throne in the midst, on which was 
 seated the Eternal I AM. Matter was to become pliant as 
 air in his hands, and like interchang-ins: currents were the 
 metals and elements to melt into and be transmuted into 
 each other. The faintest blush of gold was to be detected in
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 173 
 
 the coarsest substances amidst which she had retreated, and 
 like a goddess from the shades was he to lead her forth, and 
 show her to mankind, " fair as the moon, clear as the sun, 
 and teiTible as an army with banners." The rich secrets hid 
 in the forest of the stars were to be explored ; the grave of 
 dreams was to surrender its mysteries at the sound of his 
 trump. Nay, Death was not to deem himself safe and sacred 
 in his immemorial shroud, but this new and potent philosophy 
 was to seek, at least, to strip that shi'oud away, and the elixir 
 of iife was to be poured into a pot of man-made gold. He 
 seemep exultingly to ciy, — 
 
 " To me have been reveal'd, bared for my seeing, 
 The fate of man, the mysteries of being ; 
 Hell, Hades, Heaven, the eternal How and Where, 
 The glory of the dead, and their despair." 
 
 Alas ! when the morning came, these dreams looked cold as 
 clouds when disenchanted of their sunlight, and have never 
 been realized. Yet I linger when I remember the time when 
 I shared in the influence of these sweet and strong illusions. 
 My position was, in fact, that described by Coleridge — him- 
 self a kindred dreamer — in his exquisite sonnet on Sunset. 
 I surrendered my soul " to a friend's fancy," as it went away, 
 winged and burning, amid the wildernesses of " cloud land, 
 gorgeous land," and made every form it met bend into a new 
 one by the force of strong but momentary will. And although 
 now separated fi'om this early friend for ever, and that by 
 an estrangement far bitterer tlian death, I can never cease to 
 think with pensive delight of the intercourse I had with 
 him, and of tlie time when I thought his lips the portals 
 of the palace of philosophical truth, as certainly they were 
 the portals of the palace of eloquence, enthusiasm, and poetic 
 genius. To our Academy he came, like the " comet of a 
 season," and looked strange enough in the atmosphere of 
 Dr. Bilious Phlegmatic. He left us, after attending one 
 session, for the medical schools of the Continent. 
 
 I must not omit the lovely scenery by which the little
 
 174 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 town of is surrounded. Two rivers, issuing each from 
 
 its own romantic glen, melt into each other's arms beside it, 
 and up these glens we students spent much of our leisure 
 time in roaming. Divine were the autumns which in all 
 
 these years rested on thy woods and streams, lovely M ! 
 
 and hours of richer, purer, and moi'e varied enjoyment, I and 
 my contemporaries never passed on earth than in the mellow 
 afternoons which bathed thy scenery, or when at night the 
 moonbeams poured their " holier day " upon thy glimmering 
 stubble-fields ! The world was then all before us ; life was 
 new, and its enchanted cup was sparkling at the brim ! 
 Never do any of us who studied together there meet, but 
 
 the mention of the name M abolishes the existence of 
 
 twenty years, and makes our eyes sparkle and our hearts 
 heave, as we remember our walks, our talks, our little troubles, 
 our large joys, our cheei'ful symposia, our rambles on the 
 Saturday afternoons, the loves which gently agitated some of 
 ovu' hearts, the jokes we cut at the expense of ourselves, or 
 our companions, or our teachers; the five autumns, sacred to 
 hilarity and heart, we there enjoyed ! I have only once 
 since passed through the place, on the top of a stage-coach, 
 but I breathed all through it a sigh of that deliciously painful 
 sort which vibrates between deep pensive and high pleasurable 
 emotions, and which is expressive at once of the joy of grief, 
 and of the grief of joy ; and I cast many a longing, lingering 
 look behind, as I saw its woods and suri'ounding little hills 
 sinking down in the west. 
 
 My vacations, which included nearly ten months of each 
 year, were passed either in Strath-Rennie, or in Edinburgh, 
 where I supported myself by private teaching. I shall jot 
 down a few recollections of the men I met or heard 
 while there, before closing this chapter with some general 
 remarks on Edinburgh. I became considerably more clerical 
 in my readings and associates than in my former residence, 
 although I often stole in to hear Wilson, and retained all my 
 relish for poetry.
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 175 
 
 ' I went occasionally to Chalmers' class-room, and learned, 
 after awhile, to enjoy his strange, strong oratory, I had met 
 
 in Glasgow a man of much natural acuteness, named B , 
 
 the college librarian, who had somewhat prejudiced me 
 against Chalmers' speaking and writing. The first time he 
 heard him, he remarked to one of his congi-egation, " Well, I 
 am sorry I have not heard Dr. Chalmers to-daj^" " Why," 
 replied the other, "that is Dr. Chalmers." "That Dr. 
 Chalmers ! " was the answer ; " I thought it was the 
 grave-digger !" He dwelt severely on the coarseness and 
 conyujsion of his delivery and style, and said that, com- 
 pared to the preachers of the past, — the Barrows, Taylors, 
 and Howes, — or to those of this century — the Halls and 
 Horsleys, — it was Statius or Claudian beside the writers of the 
 .A"gustan age. He said, " The demon of Bad Taste seemed 
 to h.ave raised up and inspired the man to vitiate the English 
 Language, and that, if a man of genius, he was the first in 
 Britain who ever wrote a style thoroughly and irredeemably 
 bad." He laughed contemptuously at those critics who 
 likened Chalmers to Burke, and said that there were as much 
 thought, imagery, and suggestive matter in one of Burke's 
 pages as in all that Chalmers ever wrote ; and that, bating 
 some peculiarities, which added race to it, and to which none 
 save a critic of the Dennis or of the Dugald Stewart species 
 could object, Bui-ke's style was as pure as it was powerful, as 
 fit a medium for a mind of an imaginative and subtle cast, 
 like Burke's, as Horsley's style was to be the ihediiim to 
 a clear, strong, and sovereign intellect, which had no fancy or 
 subtlety. " Horsley," he remarked, by the way, " was one of 
 the very few mathematicians who could write good English. 
 What more detestable than the affectation and florid falsetto 
 of Leslie's style, and he was one of a large class." He took 
 down his copy of Burke, and showed how he had found in 
 almost every sentence something to mark, either for its 
 brilliance, ur its truth, or its depth, or its exquisite felicity 
 of expression ; and how, withal, instead of his pages forming
 
 176 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 mere collections of scattered maxims, like tables confusedly 
 covered witli medals, they were pervaded, held together, and 
 harmonized by philosophic and poetic unity. His copy of 
 Chalmers' " Asti-onomical Discourses," on the other hand, 
 was full of queries annexed to strange words and barbarous 
 phrases. Some passages, indeed, wei-e marked as specimens 
 of brilliant, rushing rhetoric ; but scarce a single individual 
 beauty, or striking separate thought, was, or, he said, could 
 be pointed out. 
 
 Between my early impi-essions of that volume, and my 
 
 conviction that much of B 's criticism was just, I felt 
 
 halting between two opinions, and it was some time ere my 
 mind was fully made up. I never, indeed, became a worshipper 
 of Chalmers, to the full extent of the term. I never could 
 read any of his works, except that first love of my heart, his 
 " Astronomical Discourses," with much satisfaction. But I 
 surrendered, at last, to the spell and thraldom of his oratory. 
 I felt a mind that can so sway and thrill human nature must 
 be a great and powerful mind. I saw that the power was in 
 the whole ; and that, although I could not call him an artist, 
 or a poet, or a philosopher, or a prophet, I was compelled to 
 feel and to call him a giant force, — one of those cataract-like 
 minds which rise abruptly in rare ages, and gain mightier 
 triumphs than many who are incomparably their superiors in 
 scholarship, intellect, and genius. Nay, at length I liked to see 
 him rejoicing to run his race, like a strong man ; trampling 
 sometimes on the rules of grammar, careless about cacopho- 
 nous sentences, grinding out new barbarisms at every step, 
 and mouthing his false quantities and his Fifan pronuncia- 
 tions, with an energy, a gusto, and an unconsciousness which 
 were quite refreshing. Bad and barbarous his style might be, 
 but it carried you away, and his worst alliterations often 
 made you remember his best thoughts. (1 remember once, 
 while listening to a much inferior speaker, who was showing 
 a still sublimer contempt for correctness and grammar, jDro- 
 posing that a colossal statue should be made of him, with
 
 MY THEOLOCtICAL COURSE. 177 
 
 one foot ti'ampliug proudly on a copy of Lindley Murray !) 
 I never felt him, indeed, give me that thrill, that sense 
 of the infinite — that calm, deep rapture — tliat feeling of 
 romantic and pensive sublimity, which I had felt while 
 listening to the better efforts of Wilson's genius. But while 
 Wilson's eloquence sent you home to muse and dream, 
 Chalmers sent you home to act. In hearing Wilson you 
 listened to a man soijjading on his solitary way, and careless 
 whether you followed him or not ; who sometimes did not in- 
 deed seem to know whither he himself was going. In hearing 
 Chalmers you heard a loud, earnest, and hurrying voice, crying, 
 " This is the way ; walk ye in it." The one was a thinker 
 and poet ; the other, an orator and an earnest man. Many 
 of Chalmex-s' theories I thought, and think, crotchets. None 
 of his plans convinced me that he had that species of mind 
 which is capable at once of grand generalisations, and of 
 attention to particulars. He seemed always something nar- 
 rower than a truly comprehensive, and something wider than 
 a hoodwinked and party-ridden genius. His vehemence in 
 the defence of certain schemes and ideas reminded rae, to 
 quote the language of another about another, " of one getting 
 enthusiastic and rapturous over a plate of porridge ;" and in 
 reference to the present state of the Christian Church, I 
 thought he rather saw the evils than the real remedies. But 
 I venerated his spirit and purpose, 'and felt that if he had 
 taught the age little, he had cii'culated a noble inspiration, 
 shot new blood into its veins, and on many a young, ingenu- 
 ous, and gifted soul had, like Diyden's Jove, — 
 
 " Stamp'd an image of himself — the sovereign of the world." 
 
 Still, I never fixlly appreciated his character, till I met 
 him once, and only once, at his own breakfast-board. I went 
 with one of his students, avIio could take the liberty of 
 visiting his Professor at any time, and bringing a stranger 
 along with him. I seldom spent a more delightful morning. 
 When we entered the breakfast-parlour, we fjund the great,
 
 178 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 benignant genius, sitting precisely in the attitude in which 
 Duncan has painted him. He was seated in a large easy- 
 chair ; his white hair floating around his temples ; his eyes 
 cast upwards in an earnest, but mild reverie ; his head and face 
 developing leonine massiveness without leonine fierceness, and 
 his form and lower limbs revealing that rook-like firmness and 
 strength so characteristic of the constitution of the man, 
 which bent not till it broke, as well as that carelessness about 
 appearance and effect which so often accompanies strength. 
 He rose up, and received us most graciously, and began by 
 speaking of my father, with whom he had had some corre- 
 spondence, and whom he praised as " the Oberlin of the 
 North." He said he had spent a night once in his house, 
 and remembered a little boy seated on his mother's knee, 
 "who must have been yourself" He proceeded to describe 
 the ideal of the life of a parish minister in the Highlands, 
 which he said might be the happiest under heaven. If he 
 were the minister of a Highland parish, he would in summer 
 rise every morning at five, climb a mountain, or visit'a distant 
 waterfall before breakfast ; from breakfast to dinner he would 
 study ; after dinner he would sally forth on foot, and ex- 
 patiate through all the " Findlays and the Fannys " of his 
 parish, drink tea in some farmer's house, pursue his visitation 
 till night-fall, and come home to a well-won supper and bed. 
 He would know every hairn in the parish by headmark. He 
 would not give his people on Sabbath starched and stilted 
 elaborations, but plain, practical sermons, coming home to 
 their business and bosoms, and would interrupt his discourse 
 often to catechise his hearers as to their comprehension of 
 his " whereabouts and whatabouts," 
 
 At this point breakfast was brought in, and I saw Chalmers 
 in all his hospitable glory. He said he would give, and 
 hoped we would give, what he called a certificate of character, 
 by making a good breakfast, and so accordingly he did. Not 
 Sir Walter himself could have been more in his element 
 while discussing the tea, the eggs, the ham, the Findhorn
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 179 
 
 baddies, and, above all, what he called the " cvit and come 
 again," — the cold round of salt beef. And while satisfying 
 the " sacred rage " of his own hunger, he was not forgetful 
 to press his deliqacies upon his guests, as well as to flavour 
 them by his racy talk. He said a good breakfast, next to a 
 good conscience, was the best foundation for the day, and to 
 say of Scotland that it was pre-eminently the land of break- 
 fasts was a compliment to its morality as much as to its 
 meat. This suggested to him Dr. Johnson, and he launched 
 into an animated criticism on his character and works. He 
 said, -/'that at one of the kail-suppers* of Fife, he had 
 something of a crow to pluck with the Doctor, for his 
 treatment of that shire in his travels. It was bare enough 
 in its eastern parts, certainly; but Johnson passed over it 
 like a withering wind — a wind from the wilderness — and 
 stripped it of all the leafy honours it had. It was very 
 laughable to see the old purblind Dominie going about the 
 entire east coast, poking and groping in search of trees to 
 lean his huge corporation on, he supposed, or to shade him 
 from the intolerable fervours of a Scottish autumnal sun. In 
 spite of all this, however, and of the many other sturdy and 
 stalwart prejudices of Johnson, there were few men of the 
 past he liked so much. He is not one of your brilliant but 
 evasive characters, who slip out of your fingers like shadows; 
 you can tak' a good grip o' him. His hand's worth shaking, 
 and has at once manlike warmth and metallic weight in it. 
 I like him in his prose well, in his poetry better, and in his 
 conversation best. He is none of your slim coxcombs, turning 
 up the white of their eyes, and taking out their quizzing- 
 glasses, pocket-combs, and smelling-bottles at every turn ; 
 he is a direct, robust, and masculine spirit. I would give a 
 great deal to have had one roaring conversation with him, 
 although I know we should have differed about more things 
 than the trees of Scotland, or John Milton and his genius. 
 
 i 
 
 * " Kail-supperH." Fife was formerly noted for its coiisumptiou of 
 kail, i.e. barley-broth. 
 
 n2
 
 180 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 He was a strange mixture of the Papist and the Protestant , 
 neither a right Jew nor a thorough Christian, but a chaotic 
 conjunction of both." 
 
 Of a since celebrated divine who had then newiy emerged 
 in Edinburgh he said : " He has more promptitude than 
 power;" and of the same person: " He's in presl)yteries hke 
 Jove on Ida " — (he pronounced it Eedo) — " when he wants 
 to do any dirty thing he throws a mist around him." He 
 said, speaking of oratory : " If you wanted to hear a great 
 natural orator, you should have heard Lapslie of Campsie, 
 and he was both a natural and an orator. It was terrible 
 speaking his. Every bit o' the body, from the top of his 
 head to the sole of his foot, spoke. He beat his breast; he 
 flang about in the pulpit ; he tore his hair, and he made 
 mine stand on end. I heard him once at a tent among the 
 hills preach on that text, ' One shall be taken, and another 
 left.' He described a wicked child, on the left hand of the 
 Judge, recognising his pious mother on the right, and the 
 mingled horror, envy, sorrow, and yearning affection with 
 whicli. he was seized at the sight, in terms and gestures more 
 striking and melting than anything I ever heard. A fiend he 
 supposed just fastening on the sinner to carry him away to 
 hell, when he stretches his arms across, and cries, ' Save me, 
 mother ! ' He uttered these words with an attitude, a look, 
 and a tone of piercing pathos, which produced an impression 
 altogether indescribable. Many wept; many groaned aloud ; 
 a shudder i-an audibly thi'ough all the hearers, and some 
 females fainted away. I thought it was old George Whitfield 
 risen from the dead." " Yet this man," I said, "was, I have 
 heard, a poor creature in private life." " Aye," rejoined the 
 Doctor, •' they used to say that he should have been chained 
 conclusively to the pulpit, and fed wi' parritch and kirnmilk 
 over the side o't. He was a temperate enough man, but 
 utterly destitute of common sense and common management; 
 but set him in the pulpit, or, better still, in a tent on a hill- 
 side, witli a sermon in his head, a large audience before him,
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. I8l 
 
 a summer sun sinking iu the ruddy west, aud a star or two 
 peeping over the distant mountains, and lie got perfectly and 
 positively inspired — I say again, perfectly and positively in- 
 spired. I never understood the words ' out of oneself,' till I 
 heard Lapslie, and saw his audience, for both were out of 
 themselves for hours together. But genius, gentlemen, 
 dwells with strange bedfellows." This led him to speak of 
 Coleridge ; and he described his interview with him much as 
 Dr. Hannay has since recorded it. He said it was " au'ful to 
 tiiiiik of such a man speaking this moment like an angel 
 ajjojit .philosophies and theogonies, and the next slinking 
 away out of the room, as he did that day, to get an additional 
 dose of the drug that was poisoning his existence." 
 
 I asked him if he had met De Quincey % " I have only 
 seen," he said, " the curious cratur, creeping along Great 
 King-street, like a separated shadow, or like a man Hall 
 once described as ' going about, apologizing to all men for the 
 unpardonable liberty of being in the world.' But I read for 
 the first time the other day his 'Confessions.' They're 
 gorgeous, especially his architectural dreams. That figure of 
 Perinassi, or some such outlandish name, climbing an endless 
 stair in his dreams, lost and re-appearing continually at each 
 new angle of the tortuous and interminable staircase, struck 
 my fancy much. I believe I dreamt it over again the next 
 night, with variations." He expressed himself a devout , 
 believer in many dreams, and said he sometimes lay half-an- ; 
 hour ere he rose in the morning, " collating and comparing I 
 the mystic manuscripts of his dreams," and was often struck i 
 with strange fulfilments. He thought there was a prophetic " 
 power in the human mind, which came forth intcrmittingly 
 in presentiments and in dreams. He could distinguish, he 
 said, a real from a false presentiment by this, that a false 
 presentiment could be increased or diminished in impression 
 by your wish that it should or should not be fulfilled • when 
 trae, its load lay on the soul, altogether independent of the 
 will, in fixed light, or in solid, immutable darkness. He said
 
 182 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 there was something " wonderfully queer, yet morally grand, 
 in the thought of a brain, wrapped up in slumber under 
 nightcaps and pairs of blankets, and the shadow of the dark- 
 ness, seeing distant objects, and conversing with unborn 
 events. It was a proof of the immortality and the infinite 
 relationships of the human mind, which was ' cousin-german 
 to the whole universe.' " He depicted with great humour 
 a lauohable dream he had once. He dreamed he was 
 
 v., ^ — 
 
 preaching in St. George's, Edinburgh, to a crowded and 
 fashionable audience, and getting on, he thought, exceedingly 
 well, when he suddenly became aware of a gi'eat rent in his 
 pidjyii-ffown, and the sight of the shirt peeping out gave him 
 a shiver of the most exquisite agony of shame and fear he 
 ever encountered, and from which it was a luxury of relief to 
 awaken. 
 
 I do not remember much more of his conversation. I en- 
 joyed amazingly the frankness, the bonhomie, the buoyancy 
 of spirit, and the child-like simplicity of the dear old man. 
 He mentioned, a little before I left, when speaking of the 
 ministei's of Edinburgh, that there was one he thought I 
 would like, John Bruce, who was at present preaching in a 
 Methodist chapel in Nicholson-square. He said : " He'll 
 need to be waited on, though. He's whiles as drumly* a 
 pond as you'll see anywhere ; but sometimes an angel troubles 
 the waters into a glorious hubbub of genius. He's a little 
 black water-dog himself in appearance, and is never so happy 
 as when ploitermgf about rivers and lochs. I saw him once 
 where he saw not me, in the Mearns, hurrying away to fish 
 in the river Luther, with a hairy cap on his head, a creel:}: 
 on his back, and half-singing, half-whistling to himself, as he 
 went along. The worthy folks there thought him daft ; but so 
 are all geniuses, more or less, you know." I shall soon relate 
 what my impressions of Bruce were. 
 
 Like all students, I delighted in wandering from church to 
 
 * " Drumly ; " dim. f " Ploitering ; " working away. 
 
 J "Creel;" fish-basket.
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 183 
 
 church, and hearing reputed ministers. I had heard most of 
 the then distinguished preachers in the city. I went to tlie 
 church of old Dr. Macrie, whom I had heard with pleasure 
 years before in Glasgow, being told, by a worthy uncle, that 
 " I would find him to speak like a dictionary." I was more 
 disappointed with the second than with the first hearing of 
 this celebrated man. He had a majestic presence, a full, 
 keen eye, and the j)owder which he wore, according to the 
 old custom, on his head, fitted his character somehow, and 
 looked as venerable as the veritable snow of age would have 
 dotre. But his matter that morning was common-place, his 
 vole's a puling sing-song, and his delivery dry and hard. I 
 never went back to hear him, although I value few historical 
 writers more. I occasionally visited Broughton-street Chapel, 
 and was delighted always to see, and often to hear, Dr. John 
 Brown, with his placid, lady-like face ; his mild air of perpetual 
 self-satisfaction ; his gi'ey locks gracing his beautiful forehead; 
 his loud, commanding, dogmatic voice, with the antique tones 
 in it so carefully preserved ; his brilliant and showy criticism 
 of Scripture passages, and the animation and ardour of his 
 practical appeals. 
 
 I sometimes attended Eitchie of the Potterrow; but Dr. 
 Ritchie, although a man of rare talents, and even genius, and 
 capable, had he so pleased, of having been one of the most 
 powerful popular orators in Scotland, was on common occa- 
 sions a dry and tedious preacher, without unction, polish, or 
 point. I liked him far better as I had heard him in Glasgow, 
 at the United Associate Synod, defending himself on some 
 knotty question, on which he differed from all his brethren, 
 for two hours, in a speech which seemed one long sentence, 
 and which at every pore coruscated with eloquence or with 
 wit; or as I heard him on the Irish Education Measure, at 
 a public meeting in Broughton Chapel, astonishing his very 
 foes by the readiness, richness, and power of his oratory, and 
 electrifying the most fastidious audience in Europe. 
 
 I had gone once to hear the excellent Mr. !MacG , of
 
 184 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 Eose-street, but iustead of him there was a preacher for the 
 day, whose name I forget^ who united a bellow, which I was 
 
 told he had borrowed from Mr. M , with the hesitation 
 
 of Dr. John Brown, and the whine of Henry Grey, and of 
 whose oratory a friend who was with me — rather wittily than 
 reverently — remarked, that he never heard such " weeping, 
 wailing, and gnashing of teeth" in a sermon before. 
 
 I heard once, if not twice, the late Alexander Nisbet of 
 Portsburgh, and knew, besides, well, that amiable and most 
 accomplished person, whose large eyes, low, broad brow, 
 round, good-humoured face, and awkward, interesting man- 
 ners, are still before me, and for w^hose ample and varied 
 knowledge, piety, talent, and heart I had great respect. He 
 w'as cut off, after a year's incumbency, chiefly owing to the 
 absurd prejudice then entertained against reading sermons. 
 Possessed of extensive learning, he wanted the memory of 
 mere words; and the difficulty of committing the discourses 
 which he was not allowed to read, contributed materially to 
 his early death. 
 
 I had heard Dr. Gordon two or three times, sooth to 
 say, with deep disappointment. After he had preached, I 
 regretted that he had not remained silent, and that he had 
 disturbed, by common-place thought and language, the 
 unique and profound impression produced by his grand and 
 venerable appearance ; his hair so silvery white, his brow so 
 lofty and smooth, his eye so dark, expressive, and calm. He 
 had, how-ever, it seems, been once a great preacher ; but his 
 fire had abated, nor did it ever fully return. 
 
 I had heard also good Henry Grey, whose name shall pro- 
 bably be, by and by, solely remembered from its connexion 
 with Andrew Thomson's famous witticism about the letters of 
 Anglicanus — letters greatly celebrated in their day, and sup- 
 posed to be concocted between Grey, his very clever wife, and 
 a farmer friend; in other words, as Thomson said, between 
 Anglicanus, Anglicana, and Anglicanum ! I imagine that the 
 last of the three terms had been as fitly applied to Henry
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 185 
 
 himself. Others of all varieties I had gone to hear ; but I 
 continued still in search of the Gospel of Christ, preached in a 
 way at once intellectual and evangelical — adapted at once to 
 the heart, the mind, and the imagination — and preached by 
 one who should be not only an earnest and pious man, not 
 only an original and intellectual thinker, but actuated by a 
 spirit bearing a resemblance, however far inferior in degree, 
 to that which burned in the prophets of Israel and in the first 
 preachers of the Gospel, as well as a man of genius. 
 
 ,T did not find all these qualities in Bruce; but I found in 
 him a preacher whom I preferred greatly to all whom I had 
 heard' in Edinburgh, for originality of thought, occasional 
 bursts of wild eloquence, deep earnestness without a particle 
 of cant, and a bonhomie and simplicity which redeemed his 
 crotchets and singularities. He wanted only physical form 
 and cultivated address to have been, nearly as powerful as 
 Edward Irving. As it was, the smallness of his figure, 
 and the odd peculiarity of his look and gesture, somewhat 
 detracted from the effect; and when he rose to the highest 
 pitch of his enthusiasm, you thought not of an ocean, but of 
 a little dark loch, sunk in among solitary hills, like Loch Lea 
 in Kincardineshire, when tossed in tempest, and uplifting a 
 tiny, although true, voice to Heaven. His excitement, how- 
 ever, in these moments was excessive, and generally commu- 
 nicated itself to the audience. He tossed about like a man 
 among breakers; his eye glared; his head moved up and 
 down over his manuscript in fast and furious alternation, and 
 a Pythonic foam gathered on, and sometimes overflowed, his 
 lips. His audience was composed principally of students and 
 religious lawyers, with a professor or two, or a stray " hero- 
 worshipper" from a distance, occasionally mingling with the 
 throng. Bruce dwelt generally in a fog ; but sometimes the 
 sun shone through, and with what cries of ra])turc he wel- 
 comed him! The late John MacDiarmid, of Dumfries, once 
 visited London, and wrote down to his newspaper such 
 lengthened and minute details about the sights, &lc., of the 
 
 Ci,
 
 186 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 city, that Allan Cunningham said that he seemed to fancy- 
 that he had " discovered London !" so Bruce hailed sometimes 
 a common gleam of light with as energetic an " Eiireka" as 
 if he had discovered the sun. He never seemed to have any 
 broad, comprehensive, or consistent view of theological sub- 
 jects, but to see individual points with intense clearness, and 
 to announce the fact that he saw them with prodigious 
 emphasis and effect. But you had always the impression, 
 even when he was indulging in dark drivel, without any 
 beginning, any middle, or, you feared sometimes, any end, 
 that this is a man of deep sincerity, of true genius, and one 
 who is trying with all his might to transcribe for your benefit, 
 honestly and accurately, although with imperfect success, the 
 dim, confused impi-essions which are really on the tablet of 
 his own original mind. 
 
 Of Edward Irving I must say, " Tantum vidi Virgilium" 
 I saw and heard him only once, and it was in melancholy 
 circumstances. It was in the year 1834, when he made his 
 last visit to Edinburgh, that city where, in 1828, he had 
 come, like another Jonah into Nineveh, and where the inha- 
 bitants, if they did not repent, yet rose as one man at his 
 coming. That was the time when the West Church for 
 some successive weeks was filled, two galleries and all, at six 
 each summer morning, by eager throngs, who came from 
 every corner of Edinburgh, from Leith, from Portobello, 
 from Fife, from villages six miles off in the country, to listen 
 to what they deemed the voice of a new John Baptist, as 
 well as to wonder at the man's marvellous powers. I was not 
 then in Edinbm-gh; but hearing, in the spring of 1834, that 
 he had revisited the city, I repaired to the small chapel in 
 Carrubber's Close, where he had been in the habit of holding 
 forth. I was rather late of reaching the place, and found the 
 preacher addressing an audience of twenty persons. It was, 
 to be sure, a week-evening; but what a falling off from the 
 days of the West Church! His appearance was ghastly j his 
 hair as white as snow; the bones on his thin, pale cheek
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COUESE. 187 
 
 seemed, in the language of the Psalmist, to be " looking and 
 staring" through his skin; his form seemed more gigantic 
 almost than human, from its extreme leanness; his squint, of 
 which I had heard so much, was aggravated by the same 
 cause ; and his two eyes seemed darting a wild, hungry fire 
 in two opposite directions toward the ends of the earth. 
 
 I thought of one of the prophets whom Obadiah fed with 
 bread and water in a cave, coming out emaciated from the 
 confinement, and bewildered besides by the terrible visions 
 hejiad seen within. A friend, who had heard him in London 
 a year or two before, ere yet his hair was blanched, said that, 
 with his dark locks, iron-grey complexion, villanous squint, 
 and strange aspect, he gave him a shuddering similitude of 
 Milton's Satan. But now his snow-like hair had lent him a 
 more venerable appearance; and if blasted, he seemed blasted 
 with celestial fire. His discourse was on the subject of mira- 
 culous tongues. I remember little of it, except a general 
 impression of tediousness produced by its great length, in 
 spite of the cadeuces of the grandest voice I ever heard. His 
 manner was calm, almost to statuary, except once, when he 
 lifted up his right hand to the gallery, where some students 
 were smiling at the oddity of one of his statements, and gave 
 them a look and word which sunk them into awe and silence. 
 His animation and fire seemed gone, from his delivery at 
 least ; and I thought of a cinderous mass on the side of Sinai, 
 which had one day smoked and flamed in the Burning Mount, 
 but which w^as now cooled, and crumbling down into the sur- 
 rounding ashes. I remember, as he closed the book, his last 
 sentence was, " I have sowed this field with sand, this ox-chard 
 with apple-rinds, and it shall bear no fruit henceforth and for 
 ever." With a sigh of deep sorrow I passed away from the 
 sight of this great and good man ruined — a man that might, 
 for power, have been compared to one of the Gnostic vEons, 
 and taken part almost with the Demiurge in the formation of 
 a world — and that had here been addressing twenty shivering 
 or sneering auditors in the metropolis of his native laud ! It
 
 188 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 was the thought of a future world only that stifled on my 
 lips the question, " Lord, why hast thou made this man in 
 vain?" I caught a glimpse of him, some day or two after- 
 wards, walking toward the Calton-hill, in company with 
 De Quincey. Thei-e was a curious contrast hetween the small 
 tremulous scholar and the towering divine, whose stature a 
 thousand labours and sorrows had not been able to bend, and 
 who, if there was a hell within him, appeared to be able to 
 command and to earry it calmly. 
 
 The summer after this, I spent a month or two in my 
 native place. There I " found myself" again in Nature, revi- 
 siting the old familiar places, and seeing my glens, hills, and 
 lochs, in the light of the July evenings of that superb season. 
 I attended in the course of this month a tent-preaching, 
 where all the elite of the ministers of that country-side assem- 
 bled ; and where I went, partly, for the purpose of comparing 
 them with the Edinburgh men, Nor did I find the former so 
 inferior as might have been expected. There was less effort, 
 less elaboration, more of the spontaneous, the sincere, the 
 unctional, the thoroughly simple and natural, than about the 
 men of the metropolis. I said, as I heard their j)reachings, 
 and watched the effect — 
 
 " The ancient spirit is not dead. 
 Old times, methiuks, are breathing there." 
 
 The place of meeting was a gi-ass-park, sloping up the side of 
 a little hill, bedropped with trees, and edged by the woods 
 which inclosed the cataract described in my first chapter, the 
 roar of which was faintly audible from within its forest-mantle. 
 To the east ran the river, among trees and rocks ; a portion 
 of it nearer to the tent having been diverted into a lead — a 
 smooth rapid current, watering a rich greensward, bathing a 
 deserted gentleman's seat, which stood in the corner of the 
 park, and running down to turn the mill of the village. The 
 village itself, the plain, and the hills beyond, were also in sight. 
 A more romantic tent-ground was not to be found in Scot-
 
 UY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 189 
 
 laud, and all preachers of any sensibility felt themselves 
 " enlarged," if not inspired, when preaching there. The scene 
 stirred even dull men, and it electrified men of genius. 
 
 This particular sacramental day was in the month of July, 
 183-. It arose in great splendour ; and, as usual, crowds 
 from every quarter of the country-side assembled on the green. 
 The first preacher of the day was my father's successor in the 
 parish ; the other, Janj.es Brechin. This was, in many points, 
 a remarkable man. He was a thin person, rather below the 
 miijflle size, with no prominent point in his whole frame 
 except two bumps of causality, which (like those of M. C. R. 
 descrified before) protruded like horns on his forehead, and 
 you fancied at times shone with a clear logical light. His 
 eyes were dark, penetrating, but with a little of that half- 
 melancholy, half-furtive glance, which betrays the intensely 
 nervous temperament. His laugh had a wild rhythm in it, 
 which resembled Mr. Carter's, and, -like his, seemed the escape 
 of immeasurable misery, reminding you of the glee of a " holi- 
 day in hell." Mr. Brechin, however, unlike Mr. Carter, was 
 a sincere Christian ; although he appeared to have reached the 
 Cross over many a stony wilderness of doubt, and through 
 many a valley of humiliation and woe. His intellect was 
 clear, thoughtful, highly cultured in the metaphysical direc- 
 tion ; he was one of those "men of one book," who ai*e prover- 
 bially formidable. He had not read in very diversified regions, 
 nor with the most catholic of eyes ; but what he read he knew 
 and remembered, digested, and could use for any purpose, I 
 remember how he stunned me when I proposed as a new book 
 for the parish library, Shelley's " Revolt of Islam," by the ex 
 cathedrd words : " Shelley was not a very good poet, and he 
 ■was a very bad man." Hall, Macintosh, Brougham, and 
 Thomas Brown, were his principal favourites, and excessive 
 admiration of them had considera])ly cramped and injured his 
 mind. His soul was too large for his body ; liis voice for hia 
 langiiage. I have heard it again and again, as John Scott says 
 of Hall, "trembling" beneath its images; the more that his
 
 190 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 nervousness, which made him " all eye," and his timid tem- 
 perament, told him that the most of his audience did not 
 appreciate him or them. Yet his sermons often, and his 
 lectures always, were excellent ; characterised by a correctness, 
 a precision, a subtlety, and occasionally, when he forgot his 
 models, by a severe grandeur of imagery, which I have seldom 
 heard equalled in the pulpit. In private he was more urbane 
 and refined than country ministers usually are ; owing, pro- 
 bably, to a long residence in England ; and his conversation 
 was that delicate marrow of thoughtful language, which ever 
 comes from the fine mind when it has all its powers and faculties 
 in thorough command. He shed on every subject he touched 
 the gentle gleam of clear insight and fancy, if not often the 
 wild and windy glai'e, like that of a bright but stormy October 
 day, of original imagination. On this occasion he chose for 
 his text the words : " Heal me, Lord, and I shall be healed ;" 
 and drew a pathetic picture of the world as a " vast hospital, 
 or lazar-house," selecting severally those cases of woe which 
 were of a generic or representative character, lending them 
 individual interest at the same time ; and after he had piled 
 up and painted the monstrous moral infirmary, till the sun 
 and moon themselves seemed but sickly lamps shining 
 down on its innumerable wards of varied horror and death ; 
 introducing the Deliverer, the Prince of Life, passing from 
 bed to bed, in his healing tenderness, and shedding on the 
 general condition of the place a ray of uusetting Hope. I 
 never heard him so animated ; nor had I ever before seen his 
 talent sublimated to the pitch of genius, Brechin had a 
 feeble constitution, which he made materially weaker by the 
 excessive use of tea and tobacco, and in the winter succeeding 
 this he died after a few days' illness ; a meek and humble 
 disciple of Jesus Christ. He was little known or appreciated 
 by the public ; but a few of his brethren in various parts of the 
 country, and of his hearers in Strath- Kennie, retain a pleasing 
 recollection of his mild pastorate of four years, and of his 
 highly refined, yet strictly evangelical discourses.
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COUESE. 191 
 
 There came up, after the first sermon of the day was over, 
 Mr. Elphinstone, formerly mentioned, whose appearance was 
 the signal for a general rise and rush. It was, as a wag 
 remarked, equivalent to the old cry: "To your tents, 
 Israel !" — literally so ; for on the outskirts of the field were 
 some tents erected, as in Bui-ns' time (see the " Holy Fair "), 
 for the refreshment of the throngs who had come from distant 
 places to hear the preachings. I knew, however, the character 
 of the man, and was one of the few who remained to listen to 
 his iine monologue, which seemed somehow to concert ami- 
 cably ^'ith the whisper of the summer wind through the 
 summer flowers, and with the voices of the lead and the river 
 sounding on their musical way through the adjacent woods. 
 He took for his text : " This is as the waters of Noah unto me ; 
 for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go 
 over the earth, so have I sworn that I would not be wroth 
 with thee, nor rebuke thee." His appearance and manner 
 were strange. His face was long, thin, coloui'less, with a rapt 
 yet mild expression lying on it, like a sleepy sunshine, and 
 animating its otherwise dull expanse : it seemed a bit of 
 chaos, with the light of creation just beginning to gleam on, 
 but not yet entirely illumining it. His delivery was slow ; 
 his gesture awkward ; his voice strong, and harsh in its higher 
 notes, low and almost inaudible when it sunk into its i^lain- 
 tive keys. His sermon on this occasion, as on others, con- 
 sisted of strong evangelical sense, deeply coloured with poetic 
 imagination ; and had his manner been commensurate, or had 
 even his matter been always or generally worthy of his genius, 
 he miglit have been as popular as he was the reverse. But his 
 wing often flagged ; and there is no sight more painful, even 
 to a vulgar eye, than an eagle lamed and sprawling on the 
 ground. This day ho was in a felicitous mood. The sceneiy, 
 the glorious weather, aroused him ; and if he had few hnman 
 hearers, the silent hills and wooded gorges seemed listening to 
 bis winged words ; and now and then a far-oft" echo gave him 
 a lonely cheer. He shone most in his description of the
 
 192 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 Flood. He brought the scene home to the imaginations of 
 his hearers, by begging them to fancy the "waters of Noah" 
 involving their own sweet valley and village ; choking the 
 voice of those murmuring streams ; " strangling like a ser- 
 pent" that cataract, the sound of which was now in their ears, 
 and which was the glory and the terror of the country-side ; 
 surmounting the "high finger" which pointed from their 
 white parish church to heaven ; and reaching at last the 
 summit of Ben-Ample, which was, as he spoke, visible in the 
 distance over the tops of the meaner hills. He next painted 
 a group who had fled to that mountain ; a shepherd, and his 
 dog clinging to him, swallowed up by the waves ; a mother, 
 herself deep in the waters, but holding her screaming child 
 above them ; " from yonder precipice," and on " that cairn 
 on the summit," a defiant and desperate blasphemer taking 
 Lis stand, alone but unsubdued, spurning with his feet the 
 foaming surge, warming his hands at the lightnings, mating 
 his fierce eye with the raging elements and the darkened sun, 
 and lifting up a last proud shout above the thunder of the 
 great sea-billows, as they were engulphing him in the abyss. 
 And then — supposing the waters to have done their work — he 
 took up a lamentation for a drowned world, which, although 
 extravagant, was certainly not devoid of fine touches. I 
 remember it imperfectly ; but I think he wailed for the "moun- 
 tains of the old earth, for its cities, its teeming popvilations, its 
 fair valleys, its children — not the degenerate and feeble men 
 of later days, but a generation of giants ;" and having wound 
 it up to a climax, he conceived the question "Why?" to be 
 asked over this weltering world of waters ; and the deep 
 dreadful reply coming up from all its caverns, in " groanings 
 that could not be uttered," " Sin I" and "sin," he added, 
 " not satisfied with all these victims, but still crying out : 
 Give ! give ! I require a world once more — ' salted with 
 fire?'" He then changed the tone of his discourse, and 
 described the deluge of wrath sul sided, and the rainbow of 
 the Covenant shining above the fast-settling waters. And
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 193 
 
 curiously enough, as he spoke, a black cloud, which liad very 
 suddenly arisen over a hill of pines to the south-east, showed, 
 as it came in opposition to the sun, a lovely rainbow. The 
 preacher caught the omen, and cried out : " Look there, 
 brethren ! behold an emblem of the rainbow of the Covenant ! 
 The rain of Divine wrath is passing away, and there is shelter 
 aiid salvation for you yonder." The effect was great ; and I 
 wished that the multitudes who had vanished at his coming 
 had remained ; till I remembered that many of them would 
 nc-t have appreciated the sermon though they had heard it, 
 and that had the preacher found himself in what to him was 
 the hampering presence of a miscellaneous multitude, many 
 of the finest ideas would never have occurred to his mind. 
 
 " Sut now the tent has changed its voice, 
 There's peace and rest no longer." 
 
 Like electric influence there flew from the tent to the tents, 
 the tidings that a great gun, as they called him, was about to 
 open his mouth. And open it he did, with a vengeance ! 
 The speaker, named Henderson, and who came from a distant 
 northern city, was a tall, red-cheeked, fair-haired young man, 
 elaborately dressed in the height of the then-prevalent clerical 
 fashion, with hair on end, as if anticipating the wonders of its 
 owner's oratory ; with what Rowland Hill would have called 
 the " seals of bis ministry" dangling large and manifold at his 
 watch-chain, with an acre of linen distributed around his 
 breast and neck — the very type, in short, of a vulgar Adonis. 
 He gave out for his text : " Behold, He cometh with clouds ; 
 and every eye shall see Him." He read these awful words, not 
 with solemn reverence, but with thundering pomp, as if he 
 stood above them with the Comer, and not beneath them, like 
 all that race to whom He is to come. And then he proceeded 
 to an eager, thrilling, weeping multitude, to pour out a torrent 
 of exaggerated common-place, crossed liy shafts of terror, and 
 inspirited by cries of claptrap, such as I never heard before 
 nor since. He described the J udge as coming in " clouds red
 
 194 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 as his own blood." He pictured his procession from heaven 
 to earth, much as the newspapers of the day chronicled George 
 the Fourth's pi'ogress from London to Edinburgh. He seated 
 him at last in "a judgment-seat shaped somewhat like a 
 chair!" He then brought in criminal after criminal before 
 Him ; the thief, the drunkard, the licentious person, the hypo- 
 crite, the papist, the infidel, and, in fine, the devil, " covering 
 his face for shame with his black wings," and gave out the 
 several sentences of their condemnation. At this point, 
 looking down toward the village, he suddenly stopped, stared 
 eagerly for a few moments, and then cried out : " Fire ! fire ! 
 fire ! " All heads were turned round for an instant ; the nest, 
 many exclaimed "Where? where?" and then the preacher, 
 with a fearful toss of the head, and with the deepest sotto voce, 
 replied : " In hell, preparing for the sinner." His manner 
 was in keeping with the matter. Now he disappeared almost 
 out of sight of his hearers, going down into the tent as if it 
 were bottomless ; and now he seemed to wish to leap over it, 
 and swim away through the thick of the audience. Now he 
 struck the Bible ; now he exalted his voice to a roar, and now 
 he sunk it to a whisper ; now he stamped furiously, and now 
 he went through manoeuvres reminding one of the sword dance 
 at the Braemar games. And although here and there I 
 observed a quizzical or dissatisfied look among his hearers, yet 
 on the whole the impression was prodigious, and, I hope, salu- 
 tary on the ruder portion of them. Even the more refined 
 and fastidious owned that there was in him great natural 
 eloquence, thoi'oughly spoiled. 
 
 The evening was now di*awing nigh, and the evening 
 sermon, reckoned by many the culmination of the whole day's 
 proceedings, had yet to be delivered. I thought, as I looked 
 above and around at that transcendent July eve, never could 
 there be a more favourable opportunity for the display of true 
 oratorical genius. The fervours of the day had subsided, and 
 a cool breeze was blowing gently on our faces. The great 
 moon had just begun to appeal" in the south-cast, and was
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 195 
 
 rapidly changiug from silver to gold throiigh the alchymy of 
 the approaching night. The day was seen dying over the top 
 of the western hills ; and, although the sun was hid, rays 
 shooting up from his deathbed of victory were visible. The 
 woods assumed a pensive glory ; the streams ran with a softer, 
 deeper note ; evening, the autumn of the day, shed more 
 spiritual hues on the countenances, and gave more high-toned 
 emotions to the hearfe of the throng. The last preacher of the 
 occasion now ascended the tent. He was a tall and very thin 
 ms»vof about thirty-five years of age, at least six feet two 
 itl '^crifure, with thick masses of fair hair fallino- over his 
 shoulders, a rather long face, sharp, sagacious eyes, a nose 
 nearly Roman in its outline, and a cheek flushed with a hectic 
 red. A certain pensive expression, often, as with him, the 
 prognostic of early death, lay on his countenance. His name 
 was Johnstone : he was reputed a man of great eloquence, 
 information, talent, and heart. I had never seen him before, 
 and listened with intense interest. He took for his text the 
 words ; " It is appointed unto all men once to die." In the 
 matter of the sermon I was disappointed. It consisted chiefly 
 of the old venerable common-places on the subject, conveyed 
 in language of considerable spirit and elegance, rather than 
 with originality, felicity, or boldness. But this I was barely 
 able to pei'ceive, while hurried away as I was by the over- 
 powering fervour and enthusiasm of his manner. His dis- 
 course might be only a straw ; but it was a straw borne on 
 the breath of a whirlwind. He might be compared to 
 
 " Old ocean into tempest toss'd, 
 To waft a feather or to drown a fly ;" 
 
 but it was ocean in all his might and majestic fury. There 
 was a glare of excitement about the whole man; vividi oculi, 
 vivida vultus, omnia vivida. He had no elocutionary tricks; 
 but he had a voice of thunder, an eye of fire, the utmost 
 rapidity of utterance ; and his arms, which were mimensely 
 long, were now swung over his head, now stretched iniplor- 
 
 o2
 
 196 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 ingly to his audience, now folded on his breast, and now 
 Hfted up, like those of one taking an oath, to heaven. He 
 did not preach above half an hour ; but the audience breathed 
 only thrice during the course of it — breathing mingled, on 
 the part of many, with tears. At the close, and just as he 
 had conveyed the soul of the Christian into heaven, the 
 evening-star shone forth over the brow of Ben-Ample, and 
 seemed to meet the eye of the impassioned orator, who cried, 
 " He shall shine more brightly than that beautiful star in the 
 kingdom of his heavenly Father. And oh ! brethren, if you 
 would shine like him yonder, live like him here." After 
 uttering these words, he closed the sermon, and sank back 
 thoroughly exhausted. Johnstone was a most amiable, and, 
 I believe, a good man; and died, a few years after this visit 
 to Strath-Rennie, beloved, admired, and pitied by all who 
 knew him. 
 
 The services of the sacramental day (the Communion had 
 taken place in the church, where each of the ministers I have 
 described had, seriatim, served a table*) were now over ; but 
 I had th ; privilege of being asked to the reunion which took 
 place in the manse after, as well as, on the succeeding day, to 
 the " Mciuday dinner." This was always (our readers will 
 find it described in " Peter's Letters," I suspect, by Wilson) 
 a grand affair. There was a load off the minds of the 
 brethren, and they were quite ready for a little innocent 
 enjoyment; and anything, on such occasions, overpassing the 
 bounds of moderate exhilaration, I never witnessed. I found 
 myself once more in the old manse where my father had died. 
 I could not, indeed, say, with Cowper — 
 
 " Children not his had trode my nursei-y floor," 
 
 for Mr. Brechin was unmarried; but still, the aspect of the 
 house seemed new, and at first somewhat cold to me. 
 
 * " Served a table." In Scotland the Communion is celebrated not 
 at once, but at successive tables ; and each of the companies sitting 
 down at these is separately addressed by the clergyman, or clergymen.
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 197 
 
 There, to the east, were the little green, and the seat below 
 the cherry-tree; and, to the west, the long park, fringed by 
 the trees, and the brook; but where the tall, robust figure, 
 the eager, kindly countenance, the beaming smile, the teeming- 
 anecdote, the hearty laugh, of my dear old parent^ The 
 dining-room was plainly, but well furnished; but where the 
 little black print of Sir Ralph Abercromby on hoi'seback? 
 (I remember a minister asking me, when a boy, if I would 
 not like to get up on that horse; to which my canny reply 
 ^^s, " I'll wait till the man comes doon!") Where the small 
 cc>Hf.cJ:ion of well-bound books — Macrie's " Life of Knox," 
 and various works of Hannah More, presented to my father 
 by the respective authors 1 where many other landmarks of 
 memory? Gone! for ever gone! It was in this room, I 
 remembered, where the medical men retired from my father's 
 dying bed, to hold a final consultation ; and it was into that 
 bedroom, communicating with it by a side-door, that one of 
 my sisters, in her anxiety, had gone and overheard them 
 coming to the sad conclusion that they could do no more. 
 All this somewhat darkened and disturbed my mind, when I 
 came in and found the room filled with a company of joyous 
 strangers. But I soon revived, and entered into the spirit 
 and the humours of the happy scene, where sociality was 
 smiling and good-humour gleaming on every countenance — 
 where a bond of brotherhood was making every heart one — 
 and where, above the innocent hilarity, aiid around the 
 bounteous board, were flashing the eyes of wit, and waving 
 the wing of poetic genius. Johnstone was as dashing a 
 talker as he was a preacher, and spoke, indeed, with far 
 greater precision and in terser language at table than in the 
 pulpit. He was intimately versed with the facts both of his- 
 tory and geography, and could have extemporized a miniature 
 outline of universal history, or drawn an off-hand map of the 
 globe. He astonished on one occasion a missionary from the 
 South Seas, by displaying a more thorough knowledge of 
 Otahcite and Owhyhee than he himself had. He had also read
 
 198 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 much in all metaphysical authoi's, and could state with the 
 utmost fluency, and illustrate with much felicity, the theories 
 of such thinkers as Descartes, Malebranche, Leibnitz, Locke, 
 Hume, Reid, and Brown. It was Brechin's manner to allow 
 him to go on in this triumphant, chevalier-like style, till, 
 perhaps, he saw some weak point or crevice, when he was sure 
 to strike in, and, by a few subtle Socratic questions, to pin the 
 brilliant, fiery dogmatist to the dust, till, the topic being 
 changed, he was again at liberty to dash ofi" at the same 
 speed in a new direction. He started, for instance, the theory, 
 that the only difficulty in metaphysics was the origin of evil 
 (a theory Whately, too, and Henry Rogers have advocated), 
 and proceeded with considerable dexterity and eloquence to 
 describe difficulty after difficulty — the miseries of the world, 
 the doctrine of eternal punishment, the fall of man and of 
 devils — disappearing one after another in the " black maw of 
 that aboriginal monster," when Brechin quietly interposed : — 
 " Yes, it engulphs much, but explains nothing — neither itself 
 nor the being of God ;" and proceeded to show that the really 
 aboriginal and absorbing difficulty was the eternal existence 
 of God, to which the origin of evil was second both in date 
 and in importance. Mr. Elphinstone enjoyed these tourua- 
 ments, but rarely mingled with them. Instead of this, he 
 threw in sometimes a little anecdote, a brief biu-st of enthu- 
 siasm about a favourite book or scene, a humorous thought, 
 and occasionally had nothing more to contribute than a placid 
 smile, which seemed a sentence of sunshine inscribed on his 
 lips. One of his remarks only I remember. The talk turned 
 upon the difference between the Edinburgh and the Glasgow 
 people. Mr. Elphinstone said, the " Edinburgh man reminded 
 him of a bubbly-jock* prancing along, all pomp, idleness, and 
 feathers; and the Glasgow man of a clocking-hen, all useful, 
 although somewhat ostentatious bustle and self-important 
 activity." I found Henderson a fine, hearty, jocular person. 
 He described with great glee the different scales of popularity 
 * "Bubbly-jock;" turkey-cock.
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 199 
 
 which prevailed in the town where he was the pastor, aud at 
 that time the most popular preacher. There were four 
 species of the recognised popular man. There was, first, the 
 thumper ; second, the groaner ; third, the kicker, or, as they 
 pronounced it, the "kucker." The first confined his fury 
 to the Bible ; the second extended his to the air, and the ears 
 of the audience ; and the third included the pulpit-sides and 
 floor in his assaultst. But there was a fourth class which 
 combined the characteristics of all three ; " aud to that," he 
 acided, "I flatter myself that / belong." He painted a 
 li^dici-pjis contest for popularity, carried on in alternate 
 addresses or sermons, between two femous mob-orators (of 
 whom, I suspect, he was one), in which the superiority, 
 which had hung dubious a whole sacramental day, was de- 
 cided in the evening in favour of one of them by a fell and 
 fortunate kick, which (the Bible boards had been demolished, 
 aud tiie candlesticks overturned long before) broke a foot- 
 board, and laid the foundation of a fame : and that both the 
 speakers were seized with a hoarseness, from their loud exerci- 
 tation of their lungs, which continued for some days. To tell 
 this, I thought, was carrjang the joke rather far. There 
 was altogether much enjoyment, although only a few glasses 
 of wine were consumed; aud a large whisky-bottle left the 
 table untouched ; one of the ministers saying, that he never 
 could see such an article without fancying it surrounded by 
 a scale of labels descending from the top to the bottom ; an 
 inch or two down, " Exhilaration ;" farther down, " Excite- 
 ment;" farther down, "Fury;" farther down, "Frenzy;" 
 farther down, " Death ;" and at the bottom, " Damnation." 
 
 I had afterwards some little talk with Mr. Brechin, and 
 enjoyed much his strong sense, good taste, and subtle reflec- 
 tion. He accompanied me on my return to Edinburgh, as 
 far as where the moors described in the second chapter were 
 sepai-ated from the hill-side, sloping down to the level of 
 Strath-Rennie, by a little bridge. We sat down to rest our- 
 selves on the ledge. It was the afternoon of an August day.
 
 200 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 and the sullen face of the moorlands was all smiling with 
 purple heather, and humming with bees and winged insects 
 of every kind. I never had found him so communicative. 
 He said he had come to Strath-Rennie a disappointed man, 
 and perplexed, moreover, with terrible doubts; but added, 
 " Blessings on these dark rugged hills (they were towering up 
 to the north-west, like a saw of ebon-coloured iron distinctly 
 defined against a glowing sky), I would not exchange what I 
 have learned of God — Jesus — man — myself, amid their silent 
 circuit, for ten thousand worlds ! " As he wrung my hand in 
 parting, he said, " My dear lad, you may — you must, with 
 your temperament — doubt; but, for God's sake, never dis- 
 believe, never despair, and you will come at last to that reso- 
 lution of your doubts which only patience, prayer, and peace 
 of conscience can bestow." He turned rapidly down the 
 valley, and I pursued southwards my lingering and lonely 
 ^vay. I never saw him again. 
 
 And now came the last winter I was ever to reside for any 
 length of time in the Modern Athens; and a miserable and 
 dark winter it turned out to be. I shall, first, however, 
 record one or two things which relieved, to some extent, the 
 gloom of this yeai\ 
 
 I became acquainted with David Scott the painter — that 
 sullen, amiable man— that demi-Dante in genius — that noble 
 Puritanic mind and heart, fallen on an infidel age. How a 
 town like Edinburgh ever produced a David Scott, I never 
 understood; but she succeeded in doing so; and, having 
 done so, she did another deed, as if in atonement and contra- 
 diction — she shed on him her selectest sceptical influences. 
 Having painted a man, she poured round him an evil elixir, 
 which darkened the portrait to a caricatiu-e and a mockery. 
 David Scott was of Baptist parents, and ought to have trans- 
 figured and spiritualized all the sceptical doubts which crossed 
 his mind, as a greater Baptist than he, John Foster, did, into 
 a still, sombre sunlight, the prefiguration of a grand mira- 
 culous morrow; instead of which, he allowed them to sit
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 201 
 
 steadfast aud changeless, like clouds in the sky of a painted 
 deluge, over his head, and seemed even to wish them to be 
 eternal. Poor fellow! how I pitied him! — the Puritan by 
 nature, caught in the gossamer meshes of Pantheism, and 
 becoming actually the one Pantheistic painter extant — at 
 least the only one I ever knew who possessed any genius. 
 I used occasionally to visit him in his painting-room, or 
 " chapel," as it was ,6g)metimes called, and knew not whether 
 more to wonder at the stern and solemn works of the painter's 
 peoeil which crowded the walls, or at the unfinished but 
 m^gujficeut sketch or outline of Nature's finger, the painter 
 himself. He was a tall, thin, spectral-looking man, with fair 
 hair, and a pale, grave, earnest face ; a frame through which 
 you were tempted to doubt if a single drop of blood circu- 
 lated — it seemed filled with some " celestial ichor ;" and a 
 voice, slow, solemn, deep, and cavernous. His talk was not 
 copious, but precious thoughts came forth at times from his 
 lips. He gave you the impression, not of brightness or 
 splendoui' of genius, so much as of earnestness and unearth- 
 liness. You saw a man " living collaterally or aside" to the 
 world, and inhabiting a bower of contemplation, lighted up 
 by a fading autumn sky. A kind of dull, divine wonder at 
 the universe seemed to look out at his eyes, and to subdue 
 and sadden his whole being. He was unquestionably unhapp}'; 
 but his unhappiness seemed a part of his art — the hlach in his 
 box of colours. The subjects of his pictures were almost all 
 solemn, if not tragic ; and I was often tempted to say in his 
 painting-room, "How dreadful is this place!" On one side 
 leant, like a wearied Atlas, his gi-eat picture of Vasco di Gama 
 passing the Cape. Behind was King Richaid receiving his 
 ill-fated nephews. In front rose the blind Ossian listening 
 to the harp of Malvina. In a dim corner of the room, per- 
 ceiving something dark, and " shadowing with wings," in the 
 shape of a picture, I asked the artist what it was, and almost 
 shuddered as I heard the reply, in his sepulchral tones — " It 
 is from Homer, and represents Sleep and Death carrying
 
 202 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 Sarpedon to the grave." A person once said to him, " Scott, 
 were a contract made for painting the walls of Pandemonium, 
 you would carry it even against John Martin; for if he 
 understands better than you or any man the words ' black- 
 ness of darkness' — the mere colouring of Perdition — you are 
 up to its inmost soul." 
 
 The last time I saw David Scott was in the year 1848 at 
 Stirling. I had been visiting Drummond's Agricultural 
 Museum, and looking at its various specimens of ploughs, 
 (fee, when suddenly I became aware of a very different 
 specimen. At a window which looked out on the beautiful 
 Links of Forth, and the green Ochils, shining in the lovely 
 light of a September afternoon, stood David Scott, and the 
 appearance of his tall, gaunt form, and thin, pensive face, 
 resembled an apparition. I was, however, as much delighted 
 as surprised. It was like the angel who came to Gideon as 
 he was in the field, and surrounded by implements of hus- 
 bandry. He had been engaged in preparing designs illus- 
 trative of Nichol's " Architecture of the Heavens," which 
 would have brought him in both profit and fame had he 
 lived. He said that he had a poem ready for the press, but 
 could get no publisher to imdertake it. It was to be entitled, 
 " British Deed." A part of it has since been published by 
 his admirable brother, W. B. Scott, in his life of David. It 
 is hai'dly worthy of his genius. He died during the following 
 winter. He was unquestionably a man of great original 
 genius, but with talents and taste not proportionate to it; 
 and therefore his thought was never fully uttered, and its 
 unexpressed residuum lay like a load on his heart, and, along 
 with his creed, crushed him. His death-bed was characterised 
 by a kind of ghastly tranquillity and resignation, to me more 
 painful than curses and teeth-gnashings would have been. 
 Verily, the peace of a dying Pantheist " passeth all under- 
 standing." Yet I dearly loved the man, admired his genius, 
 and deeply cherish his memory. 
 
 This winter I went occasionally to a short coui'se of
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 203 
 
 lectures given in conjunction by two young men of gi'eat 
 promise, — Samuel Brown and Edward Forbes. Edward 
 Forbes, since the well-known Professor of Natural History, 
 first in King's College, London, and afterwards, till his pre- 
 mature and lamented death, in Edinbiu-gh, was then a con- 
 spicuous chai'acter on the streets and in the saloons of the 
 Modern Athens. He was a thin, sharp-faced youth, with 
 long black hair, and jvas often seen walking arm in arm 
 ■with one Cunningham, — a promising geologist, long since 
 dead, whose hair, as profuse as Forbes', but of a bright yellow 
 colour^ormed a piquant contrast. Both belonged to a gay 
 and brilliant clique of young philosophers, w^ho called them- 
 selves the " Order of Truth," and wore a particular badge, 
 consisting of a red riband, with a silver triangle, inscribed 
 with the three Greek initial letters e. o. ji., which were sup- 
 posed by the initiated to stand for Ipwc, oIvoq, fxddrjaiq. Forbes 
 was an interesting, if hardly an eloquent lecturer. His forte 
 ■was distinct, exhaustive statement, both of principles and 
 facts. His powers of classification and research were com- 
 pared by his friends to those of Cuvier, and had he lived, 
 he might probably have fulfilled their prophecy. He was 
 in private, I understood, a very delightful person. Samuel 
 Brown -was much more of the enthusiast and the man of 
 genius. He had a pale, sickly, but expressive face, immense 
 elasticity of body, a voice not strong, but musical, and which, 
 as he went on, became tremulous with impassioned enthu- 
 siasm, — language dashed with a slight affectation of Cole- 
 ridgeism, and, latterly, of Carlyleism, but copious, adventu- 
 rous, and highly eloquent, — and a manner in wliich you did 
 nut know whether more to admire the abandonment and 
 impulse — the torrent and tempest of feeling — or the taste, 
 tact, and tcmpei'ance which gave the whirlwind an aspect of 
 "smoothness." Some of his highly-wrought passages and 
 perorations produced greater effects on his audience than 
 anything I almost ever Ik ard. I saw even mechanics become 
 pale, then flush like fire, and then get pale again, as he ■n'as
 
 204 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 " souuding on his dim and perilous way," especially once 
 when he was describing the possible annihilation of the 
 universe, he the Nvhile annihilating all sound and breath in 
 his hearers, and leaving them conscious of nothing but a 
 voice, warbling the elegy of the vast All. He had, even 
 then, his detractors, who accused him of conceit, clap-trap, 
 affectation ; but they, too, were sometimes obliged to feel, if 
 they did not acknowledge, the power and charm of his 
 eloquence. I never heard him again till his appearance at the 
 Great Philosophic Feed in Edinburgh, November 1846. This 
 course of lectures was not successful. Neither he nor Forbes 
 was then sufficiently known, and there were more people 
 inclined to wonder at the presumption of the two young men 
 than to appreciate their eloquence, insight, knowledge, and 
 genius. 
 
 This winter, I said, was a melancholy one to me. I know 
 not how it is, but to men, as well as to the world, thei'e are 
 some years darkened by a baleful influence, as though comets 
 crossed the mental, as well as the material sky, and shed 
 from their horrid hair fears, doubts, and forebodings on the 
 soul. This was to me, at least, a year marked by a black 
 stone. Principally through anxious religious doubts, I lost 
 my appetite ; I slept only in broken intervals ; I spent hours 
 in walking, like an unlaid ghost, through the streets of the 
 old town ; or sometimes in the King's Park, or along Salisbury 
 Crags, or in the environs of the sweet village of Duddingston. 
 Once I passed a whole night between Porto Bello and Edin- 
 burgh — at early morn found myself on the top of Arthur's 
 Seat, and having witnessed a sun-rising came down and took 
 breakfast at a little inn near Duddingston ; after which 
 I dropped asleep in the box of the coffee-house, and when I 
 awoke, found the afternoon sun glinting in at the window. 
 A terrible feeling of uncertainty and unrest was my constant 
 and almost only companion. I became pale and haggard, 
 and my dress now hung loosely about me. I found no 
 pleasure in my readings, except, indeed, strange as it may
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COUPwSE. 205 
 
 seem, from Boswell's " Life of Jolmson," which always acted 
 as a narcotic to soothe my mind, and which I nearly got by 
 heart. Now and then, too, I snatched a fierce luxury from 
 Shelley's poems, and from occasional compositions of my own, 
 which, — I was sometimes so poor, — that, to save the expense 
 of ink and paper, I was compelled to record in pencil on the 
 blank pages of an old Latin Atlas, which I still preserve. 
 Sometimes a friend called on me, and I dictated to him lono- 
 essays, which he gave in as his own to the classes he was 
 attefidjiig, and gained prizes. Encouraged by this, as well as 
 by my-$uccess in Wilson's class, I ventured to transcribe five 
 essays — one, on the " Aberrations of Genius," which I had 
 composed a year or two before with feelings of greater 
 rapture than anything I ever wrote before or since ; another 
 on the " Terrible in Poetry ;" a third, on " Plagiarism ;" a 
 fourth, on " Eccentricity ;" and a fifth, a poem entitled " The 
 Lost One ;" and sent them to a leading periodical. How 
 anxiously I waited for the result ! How my heart sickened as 
 day after day passed away with no reply ! How stealthily in 
 my daily walks I looked in at the windows of the piiblisher's 
 shop, whei'e my destiny was hanging in the balance! How 
 my heart beat when I took up the monthly advertisement of 
 the contents of each new number of the magazine, and how 
 my fingers trembled as, after two months' delayed hope, the 
 letter, at last, appeared. It was as follows : — 
 
 " Dear Sir, — I ought to have written about your essays 
 long ago. Although it may be impossible for me to print 
 them, I have read them with pleasure, and wish to be better 
 acquainted with the author. Any time you are passing this 
 way, I shall be happy to be favoured with a call. 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 "T. W." 
 
 I dropped the letter in disappointment and anguish. Here, 
 then, was the end of my bright expectations of literary fame, 
 as well as of the pecuniary recompense I needed so much !
 
 • 206 THE HlSTOllY OF A MAN. 
 
 I cursed (I fear) the bookseller by bis gods, and determined 
 never to darken bis door. I learned long afterwards better 
 to ajDpreciate bim, and wrote many a leading article for the 
 journal which had rejected my early eifusions. Let all young 
 aspirants profit by this incident, and let their motto be, as 
 mine has ever been, " Never say die." Plant your foot firmly 
 on its proper position, and not only will it never be moved, 
 but the world, by and by, will move round it. 
 
 The essays thus disposed of had many faults, but were 
 not devoid of thought, and had I not lost them, I could 
 prove this by extracts. I can quote from memory fragments 
 of the poem entitled 
 
 THE LOST ONE. 
 
 " Thy haunts were Nature's loneliest, loveliest forms : 
 Where sorrow hovers o'er, sublimity, 
 Like the soft shadow of an angel's wing — 
 The dimness of the mountain's shady side, 
 The gloom that gathers round the cataract ; 
 The listening horror of the pines that stand 
 Blackening beneath the advancing thunder-cloud; 
 The meaning silence of the midnight worlds, 
 Wonderins^ in speechless throbbings at the earth. 
 At God, themselves, and most of all at men, 
 (Shooting at Night their faint and endless shafts, 
 Unknowing that themselves are Night's mere foils — 
 But bubbles bright on its stern ocean old). 
 There was thy element, and Darkness there 
 Seem'd gather'd like a temple o'er thy head. 
 And all its grandeur and its stormy might, 
 
 Great Spirit, were thine. 
 A darker hour descended on thy soul ; 
 Hope perish'd, and the joys that sprang from hope 
 Wither'd like flowers upon a fallen hut. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Dim was the morning as thou hurriedst forth 
 To the lone pool, where often thou hadst mused. 
 And merged thyself in Nature. Sadness seem'd 
 To hold that day as holy ; and her shade 
 Was over all things ; and the Cataract's voice 
 Sounded like wail of anguish o'er the dead ; 
 And the mist seem'd thy shroud, and the rain fell
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COUESE. 207 
 
 Like tears from heaven o'er thee ; and a low voice 
 Which whispti-'d madness, ran along the trees. 
 
 * ♦ * ♦ • 
 
 Oh ! that thy mother had been in thy grave, 
 Or that she had not loved thee ! 
 She saw thee — yes ; and thou wert not alone 
 In that deep, dark, and desolate recess, 
 For she had mark'd thy brow, and wildly came 
 To seek her dark-eyed darling : but too late — 
 
 She asfev thee die : 
 And Hell was miiTor'd on her heart for ever. 
 And where art thou ? I dare not speak nor dream ; 
 ••■«-■ I dare not follow the angelic wmgs 
 f -- i-AVhich shivering bear thee to the judgment-seat. 
 I dare not look at the intenser gloom 
 Which shrouds at thy approach the throne of God ; 
 I dare not listen to the thundrous words 
 Which tell thy dark and speechless destiny. 
 Enough that I can say with lowly thoughts. 
 He that hath made thee knows thee ; He doth judge 
 Most righteously; the depths of Hell are his." 
 
 I had iK)t then read Coleridge's poem on the fate of Chat- 
 terton, else, while writing the above, I might have thought on 
 that fearful line in it, — 
 
 " Lest kindred woes persuade a kindred doom." 
 
 I never felt thoroughly at home in writing verse, although I 
 wrote, about this time, a good deal for myself and for others. 
 Now and then, indeed, my misery and doubt overflowed in 
 Thymes. Of these, besides the above, I remember only one 
 wild effusion, suggested by the news of the approaching 
 comet, in 1835 : — 
 
 THE LAST COMET. 
 
 " I was launch'd in haste'from that fiery shore 
 
 Where horror and darkness reign ; 
 Where the music of madness is heard evermore — 
 
 And where I retum'd again ! 
 For an oath had been sworn, and recorded on high 
 
 In letters of lurid light, 
 That in fire and in wrath o'gr a trembling world 
 
 I should sweep on my pinions bright. 
 ' They laugh at the tli under,' a Deep Voice said, 
 
 ' And the lightning's language ia tame;
 
 208 THE HISTOEY OF A MAN. 
 
 But thou on their souls shalt wild horror shed 
 
 From thy car of crimson flame ! 
 I stirr'd with my breath a volcano's fires, 
 
 Which had slumber'd in dark repose, 
 Till roused to wrath from their lava-bed, 
 
 In kindling torrents they rose. 
 In a car of cloud I bestrode the sky, 
 
 And shrieks from the sea came fast, 
 For the winds of a thousand storms were there. 
 
 And Death was in every blast. 
 I stretch'd the shadow of my arm 
 
 Over the rushing world, 
 And in earthquake shock, and 'mid loud alarm. 
 
 Like a leaf in the blast it curl'd. 
 From its dream of wrath I awoke the plague. 
 
 And the blue fiend laugh'd for glee. 
 And away he sprang to his feast of blood — 
 
 And yet, have they trembled at Me? 
 No ! the feast is spread, but of praise no more 
 
 Do I list the harmony ; 
 Music there rings, but no more to Me 
 
 Ascends its melody. 
 But thou, my red-winged minister, 
 
 Child of Hell and of Chaos, away. 
 To blast and to break, to force and to burn 
 
 In ruin thy terrible way.' 
 The Deep Voice ceased, and away I sprang 
 
 Like arrow from boundless bow. 
 And the vaults of Perdition behind me rang 
 
 With laughter hoarse and low. 
 The starry volcanoes answer'd me. 
 
 As I swept on with whirlwind noise ; 
 And dearly to me on my lonely way 
 
 Came their old and solemn voice. 
 The Sphere Music said, as I rush'd along, 
 
 ' Spare, spare that planet dim ; ' 
 But I listed not to that soft, sad song, 
 
 For I was true to Him. 
 * There's fire upon Himmaleh,' India said ; 
 
 ' The Pyrenees burn,' cried Spain ; 
 ' Mont Blanc is red,' shriek'd Switzerland, 
 
 ' As the sun when he springs from the main,' 
 Like a storm of fire-snow I swept o'er each land. 
 
 And it shrivell'd up amain ; 
 And the blackness of darkness follow'd my steps, 
 
 And the whirlwinds bore my train.
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 209 
 
 I tipp'd the eye of the eagle keen, 
 
 AVith a wilder, fiercer red ; 
 The panther I choked in his wilderness ; 
 
 The bison in his bed. 
 I burn'd the bull in his pasture green ; 
 
 The lion in his lair ; 
 On the shining coat of the speckled snake 
 
 I cast a deeper glare. 
 On the locks of the sage, on the robes of the bride, 
 
 I fasten'd loy fiery fang ; 
 And from shivering cradles and burning cots 
 
 There arose a Moloch-clang. 
 I melted the snows of the Andes high; 
 -* '."i— « And the condor's wing, a-flame, 
 
 Bore him shrieking down from his snowy throne — 
 
 And Niagara's voice fell tame. 
 I touch'd each mount, and like Sinai it smoked ; 
 
 I blasted all the vales ; 
 The woods I wither'd, the rivers I lapp'd — 
 
 On the deep I scorch'd the sails. 
 Till Earth in my arms I enfolded it all, 
 
 And then my work was o'er ; 
 And again, like a fire-ship returning, I sought 
 
 And found — my awful shore 1 " 
 
 • 
 
 This poem will, at all events, testify to the reality of 
 that unrest which I described as then constituting the at- 
 mosphere of my mind. I remember at this time once, in a 
 mood of deep depression, constructing a kind of scale of 
 spirits, ranging from " rapture," through the varying degrees 
 ' of " moodiness," " melancholy," and so on down to the " suicide 
 point." To sustain me in these deep and warring waters, I 
 had, first of all, youth ; and secondly, a recollection, at least, of 
 a time when I was as serene as I was now son-owful, as firm in 
 belief as I was now at sea, — of a time, " when the candle of 
 the Lord shined upon me." 
 
 I was all this while pursuing my theological studies, and 
 preaching, both in presbyteries and to little congregations at 
 a missionaiy station in the Cross Causeway, every Sabbath 
 evening. This was an exercise in which I took great delight. 
 I had a circle of plain, poor people, and as I addressed them 
 
 p
 
 210 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 my heart was enlai-ged, and sometimes tliey and I were 
 melted down together into one menstruum of holy tears. 
 " Oh," cried Elphinstone, speaking about his young class ; 
 " oh, that class ! I sometimes feel as if Heaven were opening 
 upon me there !" And so sometimes I felt while talking to 
 these simple beings, amid the darkening shadows of a summer 
 eve, about Jesus and the other grand themes of Christianity. 
 While thus conversing, my doubts and difficulties seemed to 
 retire, even as the shadows of those objects which darken a 
 stream in its usual channel are unable to reach it when it is 
 up in flood. How often since have I, while addressing lai-ge 
 and intelligent audiences, panted and prayed for something of 
 the spirit which breathed on me while speaking to twenty 
 people in the Cross Causeway ! But if ever I was to come 
 again under the influence of that simple inspiration, I had 
 many a strange region — many a " frozen — many a fiery Alp" 
 of thought, feeling, and passion, to traverse. In these dis- 
 courses there was little elaboration, and not much poetry j 
 but there was earnestness and pathos. I^Iy success before the 
 Presbytery was various. Some of the clergymen were some- 
 what cold and severe in their criticisms ; others were genial 
 and liberal. This Presbytery has always been distinguished 
 for its somewhat savage treatment of ambitious students. 
 It clipped the wings of Pollok, who calls it a " set of curious 
 persons." It has frequently since come in collision with 
 promising youths. On the whole, I thought myself pretty 
 well ofi". 
 
 At length, in April, 183 — , I received license, and left 
 Edinburgh for the country, with scarcely any regret ; indeed, 
 with very considerable indifference. I had never thoroughly 
 mingled with the stream of its society, and never relished the 
 tone which then prevailed, and still prevails. The ties which 
 had bound me at different times to some of its citizens had 
 been successively snapped asunder, and the last year I had 
 spent almost in solitude. My health, too, had suffered 
 somewhat during the winter. 1 was employed from five to
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COURSE. 211 
 
 nine o'clock, afternoon, in teaching. Returning at nine, it 
 was my custom to drink strong coffee, and to sit up writing 
 or studying till three or four in the morning. This habit 
 injured the tone of my stomach, and shed a gloom of dys- 
 pejjtic disgust over the streets and scenery of the city. 
 
 I promised a few remarks on Edinburgh. What struck 
 me first and most about it — next to its splendid site — was 
 the extreme, open, an4 impudent dissolution of its manners. 
 As compared to Glasgow, vice, in Burke's language, had in 
 Edfjj^Ui'gh lost much of its grossness, but had not lost any of 
 its evii; therewith. How often, as I passed through its streets 
 of shining and jewelled pollution, have I exclaimed, " What a 
 rouged hell ! " A general atmosphere of licentiousness per- 
 vaded the place. In Glasgow and London vice keeps to 
 certain localities; in Edinburgh the miasma is universally 
 diffused. In Glasgow, young men coming from the country 
 are welcomed by respectable families, and this becomes their 
 safeguard. In Edinburgh, a chevaux de frise of aristocratic 
 exclusiveness shuts them out fi*om the better circles, and 
 compels them to herd together in theatres and so forth. In 
 Glasgow, a great majority of the young men profess to believe 
 in Christianity ; in Edinburgh, in my day at least, to be an 
 infidel was thought a proof of independent intellect, — a mark 
 of genius ! A cold, sceptical spirit, forming a monstrous 
 combination wth materialistic passion, prevailed in the city, 
 and chilled more or less all who came in contact with it. 
 " Lust hard by hate," were enthroned side by side. There 
 were, indeed, many exceptions; many a noble heart, and not 
 a little real principle and piety ; and there are so still. 
 But those possessing such qualities dwell, as it were, in 
 an enemy's country, and arc fiir moi'c sincerely admired at 
 a distance than in the place of their abode. Few of them 
 were bora, or even bred, in Edinburgh. Chalmers was from 
 Fife, and St. Andrews had been his Alma Mater. Wilson 
 was a Paisley man, and had been educated in Glasgow. 
 Andrew Thomson, of St. George's, was box-n in Sanquhar. 
 
 r 2
 
 212 THE niSTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 At present, almost all the celebrities of the modern Athens 
 were originally natives of the provinces. Dr. Guthrie is a 
 Brechin man ; John Bruce is from the same place; Professor 
 Blackie is an Aberdonian ; Candlish is from the West, and 
 so we think is Cunningham ; Alexander Smith and Sydney 
 Yendys, both now resident in Edinburgh, were both born 
 in other parts of the land ; Hugh Miller comes from 
 Cromarty. "With the exception of Hume, JeflFrey, and Sir 
 Walter Scott, Edinburgh has never reared a really great 
 literaiy character. Nor has she appreciated some of the 
 greatest of Scotland's children. Carlyle was laughed out of 
 her, not for his infidelity, and his stern dogmatic conceit, 
 but for his oddities. Wilson was long looked at with an 
 ungracious eye, had to fight his way inch by inch, and is 
 even yet, by the general Edinburgh public, rated far below 
 Macaulay, who should have been a native of Edinburgh, for 
 he is, next to Jeffrey, the express image of that city, both in 
 its merits and in its vital deficiencies. What has checked 
 and chilled original genius in the capital of Scotland, has 
 been the prevalence and the fear of criticism. Lockhart in 
 his " Life of Scott," has truly and graphically described the 
 talk of the notables in Edinburgh as remarkable for its cold 
 acuteness: its elaborate and incessant discussion of locfical 
 points ; its want of heart, geniality, and abandonment. In 
 this atmosphere every Edinburgh youth is reared, and it is 
 not at all to be wondered at, that the shoots of fancy are 
 blighted in the bud. The Edinburgh Review gave an ex- 
 ample of badinage, hyper-criticism, and free-and-easy con- 
 tempt for works and men of genius, which has never ceased 
 to find imitators, I have within a few years met with glib 
 Edinburgh youths, who spoke with profound contempt of 
 Wordsworth, and quoted Jeffrey's i^resent opinion, as well as 
 his past criticisms, to back them. Intellectual j)uppyism, in 
 short, is, and has long been, the ci'ying sin of Edinburgh 
 coteries. An eternal stream of small talk goes on about 
 phrenology, physical science, mesmerism, music, and art ; and
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COUESE. 213 
 
 the talk, on all such subjects, is generally as shallow as it is 
 endless. " Have you been at the Exhibition?" " Have you 
 heard the new singer at the Italian Opera f' "Have you 
 seen the fine new picture of Noel Paton'sl" are the per- 
 petual questions. 
 
 What a lofty opinion all these people have of their city 
 and themselves ! " When a man comes to Edinburgh he 
 finds his level," is ^e constant cuckoo-cry; its meaning 
 being, that he is subjected to a system of quizzing and paltry 
 pedantic criticism. And yet nowhere are all the stalking 
 and . piking humbugs of the day — the Peter Borthwicks 
 and Goughs — more rapturously received. What audiences 
 there assemble in the Modern Athens to listen to a lecturer ! 
 " Curled darlings" — bearded and whiskered philosophers — 
 pale-cheeked and long-haired coxcombs — dry lawyers, with 
 faces which seem made of biscuit, " the remainder biscuit 
 after a voyage" — students at the " barrel-age"* — and ladies 
 worthy of being doomed to similar immurement, with quiz- 
 zing glasses at their eyes, and affectation steeping their faces 
 and figures — an air of intense conceit pervading the whole 
 assembly, like a general rustle of self-conscious importance — 
 such, after subtracting one nine-tenth of sensible persons, is 
 the average composition of an Edinburgh audience. How 
 they do measure their man ! What sneers and shrugs at 
 anything outre! What significant smiles of derision! What 
 "forced or false cheers! How faint the enthusiasm, unless the 
 lecturer has got a name ! and even in this case what pedantic 
 and contemptible carpings are sometimes heard! Indeed, 
 intellect without heart may be fearlessly called the cliarac- 
 teristic of tlie town ; and that intellect, too, of a second-rate 
 and merely aesthetic kind, fond of discussing kn(.)tty questions 
 in law, politics, and science, but unable to create any new 
 and powerful train of thought, or to produce, or even fully to 
 appreciate, any high original genius. Pretension and buckram, 
 in short, without capital or reality, distinguish this city, alike 
 " " Barrel-age." See Carlyle's " Sartor Resartus."
 
 214 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 in its private life, with its splendid poverty — its literature — 
 its philosophy — and its religion. Time would fail me, and 
 tempei*, too, were I to dilate on its haughty and sneering 
 scorn for the provinces, for provincial men, for even London, 
 Dublin, and Paris, as if they, too, were overtopped by this 
 Norland eyrie, resting on its cold crag; and with its exalted 
 indigence, proud sin, and shivering population. I remember 
 a man of the true Edinburgh breed, when speaking of the 
 Queen's hasty transit, in 1842, from Granton to Dalkeith 
 Palace, saying, with sucli a turkey-cock look of injured 
 importance — " Sir, she has insulted the city." I thought of 
 the words of the Wise Man, " There is a generation, oh ! how 
 lofty are their eyes, aiid their eyelids are lifted up." I shall 
 not dwell on the evil that the luxury of the Scottish capital 
 does to many a young innocent life, and how many a one 
 who entered it pure as virgin snow leaves it with muttered 
 curses on its contaminating influences. 
 
 My experience as a probationer was not at all peculiar. I 
 saw, in the course of the one year I spent in this capacity, 
 many new faces and new scenes, both in Scotland and else- 
 where. I visited the fair isle of Bute; heard the morning 
 waves breaking in Ascog Bay; and, as I crossed the hills 
 between it and Rothesay, saw the dark peaks of Arran, the 
 mountain island, relieved against the south-west sky. I stood, 
 one summer forenoon, on Both well-bridge, and heard the 
 peaceful ripple of the river, which, on the 22d of June, 1G79, 
 had ran red with Covenanting blood. I walked from Forfar 
 to Glammis Castle, and beheld with deep admiration the fine 
 avenue leading up to the front of the old mansion, its noble 
 mediaeval structure, and the beautiful and most varied prospect 
 which its leaden roof commands of the richly wooded valley 
 of Strathmore, the Seidlaw hills to the south, and the Gram- 
 pians to the north, surmounted in the far west by the proud 
 peaks of Benvoirlich and Schiehallion. I visited Moua's isle ; 
 walked one bright winter day from Ramsay to Douglas; and 
 saw a sea, calm as a summer's lake, reposing in the shadow of
 
 MY THEOLOGICAL COUESE. 215 
 
 the heathy hills of Laxley. I passed a night, on my way 
 home, in Liverpool; and came in one of Glasgow's giant 
 steamers to Glasgow, reading, as the waves of the Mull of Gal- 
 loway were bounding below like a steed, Christopher North's 
 review in Blackwood of Dana, the American poet. I stood, 
 at the cold close of an April day, on Balgounie's " Brigg's 
 black wall," with the walk in which Hall and Mackintosh 
 were wont to melt down hours to moments in high converse, 
 within sight : with the sea in the distance, the city of Aber- 
 degu behind, and the lame boy-poet, Byron, still seeming to 
 lean'Tt-ith a fearful joy over the parapet of the bridge, which 
 had been fated to fall " wi' a wife's ae son, and a mare's ae 
 foal." But more of some of these beautiful scenes aftei-wards. 
 At the end of a year I obtained a settled situation in the 
 
 town of , and commenced a series of incessant, arduous, 
 
 and varied labours. These, too, and other things, I reserve.
 
 216 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PUBLIC AND LITERABT LIFE. 
 
 My purpose iu this chaptei- is less to give individual details 
 or incidents, than to mass the results of these under certain 
 leading deductions, which, as they have grown out of a pretty 
 wide experience, may contribute somewhat to the guidance of 
 others who may be standing on the threshold of public life. 
 These deductions I shall not always formally state; but they 
 can easily be gathered from the tenor of my remarks. 
 
 It is a great mistake to commence the ministerial life with 
 too high expectations either of happiness or of usefulness. It 
 is in this mood, however, that most young clergymen, par- 
 ticularly if they have excited considerable expectations, do 
 commence their career. Flushed, perhaps, by College prizes; 
 having been, it is probable, petted by presbyteries and profes- 
 sors ; having gained with ease one, or two, or three calls to con- 
 gregations ; being almost all, besides, engaged, and straining 
 upon the slip for a speedy marriage, their blood, when they 
 are ordained, is at fever-heat, and they are resolved to carry 
 all before them. What sermons they are to preach! What 
 studies they are to pursue! What Herculean toils of visita- 
 tion and tuition they are at the same time to carry on ! Talk 
 to them of such and such men of established reputation, who 
 •have had their trials, and perhaps been at one time in danger 
 of utter neglect, their answer is ready, " Pshaw ! they did not 
 know how to manage, or how to preach as we shall preach and 
 manage. They belonged to a former day, and did not even 
 then fully discern their time ; but we have now, too, ' been 
 born out of the eternal silence;' we have come upon the 
 stage, and shall play a great and glorious part." They hint,
 
 PUBLIC AND LITERARY LIFE, 217 
 
 indeed, that their priucipal danger hes in being spoiled by 
 their people; that they are sadly afraid that their heads 
 shoidd be turned by their popularity, and that their chixrches 
 will not be able to contain the multitudes attracted by their 
 oratory; and they sigh deeply, as they think of the dim 
 eclipse they are sure to shed upon elderly luminaries: — '•' But 
 really, you know, we cannot help it." I have seen some of 
 these persons look half patronizingly, half contemptuously, at 
 such men as the venerable Drs. Wardlaw, Chalmers, and 
 Brtiwn, when they met them on the streets of Edinburgh or 
 Glasgow, saying in every gesture and look, ' Enjoy your fame 
 while ye may ; we bide our time ; and, please God ! we hope 
 Goon to bury you in the light of our superior genius." I 
 trust that things are mended now, although I have my doubts 
 on the subject; but I know that such feelings were common 
 twenty years ago. There were, indeed, diversities in the expec- 
 tations of the men, some expecting to subdue their congrega- 
 tions under the weight of their eloquence and talents, while 
 others hoped, by dexterous and diligent fawning, and incessant 
 drudgery, to win them over to perpetual allegiance and self- 
 interested love. 
 
 Such hopes, I have observed, were often disappointed. In 
 pi'oportion to the 2J>'estif/e preceding a clergyman's ordination, 
 were sometimes the difficulties he had to encounter. Too 
 much was expected from him. If he was not equally 
 "brilliant every Sabbath, the cry instantly ran, " He is becoming 
 lazy," or " He is exhausted already; we always thought him too 
 bright to last," or, " His friends over-rated him from the 
 beginning," or, " He is too much in society," or, " He is 
 coiirthifj : — would that were fairly at an end, and he were 
 fairly settled as well as ordained, and had become a quiet 
 married man, like worthy Dr. Henry Humdrum, his vene- 
 rable neighbour ! " If he were regular, and no rpore, in his 
 visitations, complaints were sure to be made, and comparisons 
 instituted between his chary calls and those of his illustrious 
 contemporary, Benjamin Blatherum, who, if you believed
 
 218 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 the honest folks, was in all his people's houses once a fort- 
 night, and saw all the sick — midwifery cases included — at 
 least twice a-week ; the said Blatherum, in fact, having 
 wearied part of his flock by his continual coming, and another 
 part of it never visiting at all. If he was much from home, 
 it was said immediately that he was tired of his congregation, 
 and seeking another church, like his friend Rumblegumption, 
 who, by getting seven translations, had acquired the name of 
 " our cousin seven times removed." If he was much in his own 
 pulpit, it was hinted, " He's no' very popular — our lad — they 
 think anything '11 do for us now-a-days ; the folks o' Glasgow '11 
 no' be coveting or calling this one in a hurry." If he did 
 not marry one of his own congi-egation, or if he happened to 
 preach anything contrary to their taste or opinions, he was 
 certain of a sheaf of anonymous letters, imless he thundered 
 down the vile practice from the pulpit at once ; and even 
 then his conduct was probably thought conceited and im- 
 perious. " Worthy Master Worldly Wiseman of the Cross- 
 kii'k, nsed to call on the authors of his anonymous letters, if 
 he found them out, and first engage in prayer with them, 
 then clap them on the back in a friendly manner, and seldom 
 failed, honest man, to get an invitation to his dinner or 
 his tea; — that was Christian conduct." If his company was 
 courted by the upper classes of the town, it was whispered, 
 " He is too much among the rich and gay, and neglects 
 the poor;" if not, "He must surely be a rude, ungentle- 
 manly man ; he should go to the dancing-school yet, and 
 then, like the Rev. Flimsy Frippery, he might be invited 
 every week to dine with the M.P." If he took a bold and 
 public part in political or other matters, " He is a forward 
 fellow — set him up ! " If he I'efrained, and kept himself 
 secluded and apart, " He has no public spirit ; what a con- 
 trast between him and the Rev. Hercules Bludgeon, who was 
 once tried for sedition, and who attends all the Radical 
 meetings in the county ! " If the receipts of his church fell 
 off, and a reaction in his popularity took place, he was
 
 PUBLIC AND LITERARY LIFE. 219 
 
 entirely to blame, and his salary must sink accordingly. If 
 he fell ill, his illness was judged an impertinence. " What 
 business had he to take ill, in such a disastrous state of his 
 church? 111! let him die, then; for we can easily get as 
 good or better than he." 
 
 In this, I have no individual instance, far less myself, ex- 
 actly in view. I am generalizing from many instances, and 
 am speaking of a st^^ of things which I believe is, in some 
 measure, past. Hitherto I have supposed the clergyman to 
 be»a man of honour, probity, high talent, or even, if you 
 will,. genius. But if he were only at or beneath mediocrity, 
 in point of talent, and if he were destitute of gentlemanly 
 feeling, and anxious, at all hazards, to be popular, the con- 
 sequences were somewhat different. At first he generally 
 proved pretty successful. " Fine sensible man, Mr. Judicious /' 
 Slyman ! none of your flowery flare-ups in the pulpit, indeed, 
 but plain and practical in his preaching ; and then, how 
 attehtive ! If he miss any of his members out of the church, 
 he is sure to call the next morning ; if one leaves chapel sick 
 in the forenoon, he has a message during the interval to his 
 house, to inquire what has been the matter ; whether his head 
 or his stomach was affected. If one of his pupils be absent 
 from his school a single night, he instantly inquires at the 
 parents' ; he does not wait to be sent for, or only call as long 
 as his people are needing him, — like our minister ; nor does 
 he confine himself to his own congregation — we don't belong 
 to it, for example, and yet he often looks in while passing, and 
 likes finely to hear what we can tell him about our own 
 church and minister. He is a public blessing!" By this 
 perfection of priestcraft, Mr. Slyman for a season manages to 
 gull the j)ublic; but we live in a sharp-sighted age, and it is 
 by-and-by discovered that Mr. Slyman is selfish and cunning 
 — that he whispers insinuations against the character and 
 talents of his brethren; that he is behind the age ; and once 
 these discoveries are made, woe be to Mr. Slyman ! The 
 public, it must be owned, forgives much in men and minis-
 
 220 THE HISTOKY OF A MAN. 
 
 ters — ill-temper, imprudence, imperiousness, grave errors 
 even, but never meanness, duplicity, or cunning, or an 
 undermining, tortuous policy. Mr. Slyman's popularity 
 subsides, and all the efforts of his despairing self-love to 
 support it are but the writhings of torture, the convulsions of 
 death, and end in nothing. 
 
 There is, besides, among clergymen, a third and large class, 
 and a class,,! hope, on the increase — a class whose main 
 object is usefulness. But that class, too, is often deceived 
 and baulked of their noble aim. Sometimes they are fretted 
 by pecuniary difficulties, or by the oppositions of stupid, un- 
 reasonable men. Sometimes Envy fixes on them the deadliest 
 glare of her eye, and breathes on them the fellest poison of 
 her breath. Sometimes their schemes are met with active 
 opposition, and sometimes by a vis inertioe of resistance — 
 worse still. Sometimes, " wearied in the greatness of their 
 way," they are tempted to relax in their efforts. Often they 
 are cruelly deceived in friends they trusted, or converts they 
 thought they had made ; and, pierced to the heart by black 
 ingratitude, reiterate the cry of David, " All men are liars ! " 
 And sometimes — for they are men — they are mortified at 
 seeing the power and popularity at which, from high and 
 pui-e motives, they have aimed, snatched from them by the 
 Bombastes Furiosos, the empty elocutionists, the mouthing 
 charlatans, the soft-lipped whiners or solemn canters of the 
 hour, who still find in the pulpit a province so congenial, and 
 a field of imposture so fertile. 
 
 I have spoken of envy, and this reminds me to remark 
 that the Church is not free, any more than the world, from 
 the spirit of malice, envy, and detraction. Nay, I have some- 
 times fancied, knowing, as I do, a good deal of the working of 
 both the clerical and literary worlds,* that there is in the former 
 still more envy than in the latter, alike at worth, at popularity 
 and at genius. This I attribute, partly, at least, to the pre- 
 cariousuess of the pecuniary circumstances of many clex'gy- 
 men, which tends to embitter their temper; partly to the
 
 PUBLIC AND LITERAEY LIFE. 221 
 
 rebuffs they often meet from their flocks, partly to the 
 outlets for their ambition being so few, and partly to 
 consciousness that the mere clerical office, without some de- 
 cided merit in the man, is not now held in such respect 
 as it once was. But whatever the causes, the fact is unde- 
 niable. The moment a man obtains any eminence, whether 
 for gifts, or learning, or popular preaching, or business talents, 
 or even piety, that tooment he becomes the mark for ten 
 thousand, visible or invisible, missiles of detraction. The 
 onl^^exceptions to this general rule, are when the distin- 
 guislisd«mau happens to be amiable to a fault; or to be a 
 dexterous and universal flatterer of others ; or to keep up 
 a sustained system of self-depreciation and mock modesty ; or 
 to be essential to, and identified with, the particular party ; or 
 (I have known even this, in some few cases, abate the edge of 
 envy) to have his strength counteracted by some gi'eat weak- 
 ness, or crippled by some dire calamity. But when he has 
 none of these shields against the tongue of malice and down- 
 taking, what arrows are aimed at him, and what pangs would 
 be his, if he were not steeled against them, by habit, or prin- 
 ciple, or determined self-assertion ! His talents are under- 
 rated, often in the most cutting and contemptuous terms, by 
 persons who never had an original idea or wrote a decent sen- 
 tence; his works, if he pviblishes, ai'e ignored, or kept out of 
 libraries, or perhaps attacked from the pulpit ; his sermons 
 and books are watched ; his motives are misinterpreted ; his 
 character maligned ; his people are sounded and tampered 
 with ; the most notorious facts in reference to his labours, his 
 influence ; — the very sale of his books, his very circumstances, 
 are denied. All this co-exists, sometimes, with gross flatteries, 
 paid him orally or in writing, by the same persons, wlien it is 
 their interest or cue to " hinge their knee " to one against 
 whom their teeth are gnashing in secret hostility. Of course, 
 I am far fr<)m asserting that all, or the majority of Clergy, are 
 distinguished by such despicable conduct ; many, many are 
 far above it. But I state, nevertheless, and challenge contra-
 
 222 THE HISTOKT OF A MAN. 
 
 diction, that this root of bitterness, this "savage envy of 
 aspiring dunces," is widely spread (and surely it nowhere 
 looks more infernal than) in the churches of Christ ; and 
 that not a few eminent men have had their lives rendered un- 
 happy, and even shortened by it, or else their influence and 
 usefulness abridged, — nay, have sometimes through this, and 
 this chiefly, lost their position, and been ruined outright. 
 Truly says the Wise Man, — " Wrath is cruel, and anger is 
 outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy !" And 
 with Envy are found associated Gossip and Evil Speaking, in 
 all their thousand-and-one disgusting shapes. 
 
 A nobler youth than William Andrew, I have seldom 
 known. He came fi'om the Western Isles to Edinburgh 
 College, where he distinguished himself much. To gi'eat 
 enthusiasm, he added a strong, clear intellect. He was indo- 
 lent ; but whenever he was roused to exei'tion, he acquired 
 knowledge on all subjects with masterly ease, and as if by 
 intuition. His conversation was almost Johnsonian, in its 
 massive sense, and clear, pointed expression. I see him yet, 
 with his tall, slightly-bent figure, — his broad, arched brow, — 
 his long dark hair, floating over his forehead and down on his 
 broad shoulders, — his firm-set, yet elastic and eloquent lips, 
 — and hear him discoursing on, what to me and him was 
 the favourite subject, — poetry, quoting, in his deep, gut- 
 tural accents, Coleridge's Ode, " Fire, Famine, and Slaughter ;" 
 or carrying some work of genius, like a prize, under his 
 stalwart arm. This youth had one great fault, — he sjjoke 
 his mind too freely and fearlessly on all subjects, and was too 
 severe in his judgments of his inferiors at the Academy of 
 
 M^ . ' This, along with his undisputed pre-eminence in 
 
 talent, roused the whole race of detraction and spite against 
 him. His religious principles and personal morality were 
 unfairly called in question; his admiration of poetry and 
 literature was construed into a crime ; the minds of the 
 professors were poisoned against him ; till, at last, in disgust, 
 he left the academy, and, after some stay in England, wan-
 
 PUBLIC AND LITEEARY LIFE. 223 
 
 dered to a distant part of the -world, where he perished early, 
 and left no name, — a victim (as I scruple not to call him) 
 to wretched jealousies, envies, and sectarian uncharitableness, 
 which, in his case, prevailed even to strangle the strong, 
 God-given power of genius. 
 
 Ouesimus Oldstick, I may mention as a specimen of the '/"LAx*.. 
 ministerial gossip, the more freely as he has been long dead. 
 This worthy man in person I'esembled the withered gourd of 
 Joiiah, and seemed to have venom, instead of blood, circu- 
 lating^Jhrough his veins. An envious man always reminds 
 me of a wasp in a beautiful garden, sucking, not honey, but 
 poison out of flowers, and the more he sucks the thinuei', and 
 bitterer, and more w^aspish he becomes. This was the case 
 with Ouesimus, whose envy had reduced him to a mei'e 
 fleshless atomy. Deaths of ministers, scrapes into which 
 some of the clergy were falling, faraas that were rising 
 against others, the chai'acter or peculiar temper of their 
 wives, tottering congregations, fading popularities, diminish- 
 ing collections and seat-rents, schisms and heresies in 
 Churches, — these and a thousand similar stories were always 
 trembling on the tip of Oldstick's tongue, wdiich often 
 quivered with eagerness as he detailed them. How he got at 
 them, no one for a long time knew ; but he always had them 
 before any one else, and some whispered about telegraphic 
 connexion with a certain Great Personage. The mystery was 
 at last solved by the discovery of a chain of gossips and evil- 
 speakers in various parts of the country, who carried on a 
 constant correspondence with one another. As soon as 
 
 Jonathan Juniper, in the town of L , had made up a 
 
 budget of bad tidings, he sent it on immediately in a letter 
 
 to Martin Muckworm, in the village of T , and he passed 
 
 it impatiently on to old Ouesimus at M , who reciprocated 
 
 to them his evil surmises and rumours at the first opportu- 
 nity. Such unclean, infernal chains I am credibly informed 
 do still exist. The fate of Oldstick was in keeping with his 
 character. A new church, with a popular ministex', was
 
 224 THE HISTOKY OF A MAN. 
 
 erected opposite his manse, and he was condemned every 
 Sabbath to see the crowds thronging to hear him. Tliis 
 greatly annoyed, and was gradually killing him. To his 
 comfort, however, a grievous fauna broke out against the 
 preacher's moral character. Oldstick revived ; and men 
 spoke of ten years being added to his life. The case, how- 
 ever, was tried, and ended in the triumphant vindication of 
 the accused. Onesimus died ten days after, in the act, it 
 was said, of writing an anonymous letter to the gentleman 
 acquitted ! 
 
 In a former paragraph, I mentioned as one cause of the 
 uneasy bitterness characterizing the feelings of many clergy- 
 men, — the poverty of their circumstances. And here, although 
 not from personal experience, at least to any extent, 
 I might a tale unfold that would harrow up many a sympa- 
 thetic heart, and startle many a lay Christian who looks on 
 the office of the ministry as a well-paid sinecure. I am con- 
 scientiously a voluntary, holding decidedly that the voluntary 
 principle is inculcated in the New Testament ; but I think as 
 decidedly that it has never yet been adequately wrought out, 
 and that with a proportion of the laity it means not voluntary 
 giving, but voluntary withholding. As it is, what misery its 
 neglect has often entailed on Dissenting clergymen, and on 
 their families ! I have known poverty repress the genial 
 current of many a noble heart, which coveted the enjoyments 
 of domestic life and female society, " above rubies," and which 
 had to stifle its finest impulses, and to shut itself xip in 
 gloomy solitude, — when it did not, as was sometimes the case, 
 seek a miserable solace in sordid vice. I have known a mind 
 of the highest powers crippled, paralyzed, or embittered, by 
 the pressure of narrow circumstances ; and have sighed when 
 I have compared the ample brow and eagle eye of the student, 
 with the poor, contemptible array of books in his library, 
 which were all his funds had enabled him to purchase. I 
 have seen a sight more painful still. A young and pro- 
 mising ministei', who, had he possessed a moderate compe-
 
 PUBLIC AND LITERARY LIFE, 225 
 
 tence, might have in milder climes dodged for years the 
 fell disease which had begun to prey upon his vitclls, com- 
 pelled by poverty to stay at home and die. I have known 
 clergymen of great talent insulted in tlie Streets for petty 
 debts, which the most rigid economy could not prevent them 
 from contracting, owing to their narrow income ; and of 
 others all their lifetime subject to bondage — the most galling 
 bondage that can bo#- down a proud and honest spirit, — 
 that of hopeless and honest debt. When there were wives 
 or f^BQJlies in the case, I have witnessed or heard of cases 
 even ■■^orse. I have heard of stipends paid in silver or 
 copper instalments, and of the wives of clergymen, when 
 asking for a small portion of their dues a little in advance, 
 receiving it in the language of reluctance, spiced with in- 
 sulting wonder — how they could wish, or contrive, to spend so 
 much ! I have known of families denying themselves every 
 comfort and indulgence, that they might keep up a decent 
 appearance before visitors ; — of others, where the children 
 were half-fed, half-clad, and almost wholly uneducated ; and of 
 others which were compelled to eke out by mean shifts, by gen- 
 teel beggary, or by irksome and unceasing toil, the miserable 
 pittance they received. I have seen the tears of them that 
 were thus oppressed, — the brave wife bursting out, after 
 long efforts to suppress her feelings, into wild sobs of despair, 
 . — the children, sharing in and echoing her anguish, — and 
 the husband retiring, with these sounds in his ears, to his 
 study, to prepare, forsooth, an elaborate sermon for the 
 ensuing Sabbath ! And worst of all, I have known or heard 
 of many classes of laymen, from the rich farmer or merchant 
 down to the humble artizan, speaking with callous contempt 
 of such sufterings, or even expressing envy at the lot of those 
 who were called to bear them — to bear them, I must say, in 
 general, in silence, with dignity and with patience, like men, 
 and like Christians. I admit, indeed, that these are not the rule, 
 but the exceptions only, and chiefly confined to the country, — 
 but it is to be regretted that the exceptions are so numerous. 
 
 Q
 
 226 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 I could give a number of special proofs in point, but shall 
 confine myself at present to one, — the case of a man I knew 
 well and loved warmly ; a man of eccentricity and many 
 foibles, but of worth and of genius. Nicholas Thorn came 
 from the south of Scotland. He had, as a preacher, excited 
 a great sensation, for even those who did not admire, were 
 compelled to wonder at him. He was a man of middle 
 size, but well built and sinewy ; his head and fece strongly 
 resembled those of a New Zealander. In his eye, as I 
 sometimes told him, you saw the grey gleam of the partition 
 between genius- and madness. In the pulpit he was ani- 
 mated in the extreme, and often indulged in lofty flights of 
 imagination, although too fond of abstruse and learned dis- 
 quisitions to be generally popular. In conversation he was 
 rich and powerful, if somewhat reckless and daring. He 
 was ambitious, but got only a small church in a rural 
 disti'ict, where he was diligent, and, for a time, prospered 
 considerably. Bad times, however, arrived, and a large 
 portion of his flock were compelled to emigrate to America. 
 He came into the seaport, along with thirty of his members, 
 and bade them farewell on board the ship in which they had 
 taken their passage, amidst fervent prayer on his part, and 
 bursting tears on theirs. He called on me immediately after, 
 and told me, in the quiet, but gloomy tones of despair, that 
 his congregation was ruined. I accompanied him home, and 
 tried to cheer him. The iron, however, had entered into his 
 soul. Living much alone, immersed constantly in Hebraic 
 and. Oriental studies, — keenly alive to his own merits and to 
 the neglect he experienced, — burdened with poverty, and, 
 latterly, Avith debt, — his mind became soured almost to 
 frenzy, and a cloud of fierce hypochondria began to gather 
 over his gifted soul. The tone of his conversation, when 
 I visited him, changed from the joyous and fanciful to the 
 sombre and misanthropic, and I was reminded of the talk 
 of Bethlem Gabor, so powerfully described in Godwin's 
 •'St, Leon," when. — as he became in his darker mood, an
 
 PUBLIC AND LITERAEY LIFE. 227 
 
 accuser of God and man, — " a supernatural eloquence seemed 
 to inspire and enshroud him." I never listened to such 
 torrents of burning misery, beautified, sometimes, as they 
 came forth from his lips, by the light of genius, like streams 
 of lava bathed in moonlight. It became, by-and-by, posi- 
 tively painful to listen to his eloquent complainings and 
 terrible invectives. " He was one of God's eagles chained to 
 a barren rock, chattered at by magpies, who were free, while 
 he was a prisoner, fed on garbage, and forced to stare help- 
 lessiy.At the distant sky, instead of soaring towards the sun." 
 Such was the tenor of his language about himself. At last, 
 he fell ill, and, owing to poverty, had to be removed to the 
 infirmary of a neighbouring city, and in one of its wards 
 died, in the prime of his days, a man who, in happier cir- 
 cumstances, might have been a distinguished ornament 
 either of the world or of the Church. Poor Nicholas Thom ! 
 when I sometimes pass through the beautiful Strath where 
 thy obscure and unhappy career was run, and see the church 
 and manse which were once thine standing in the midst of 
 the tall hedge, and shadowed by the fruit trees in which 
 thou didst so pride thyself, and remember the nodes cce- 
 nceque Bedim I have enjoyed under thy hospitable roof, and 
 the glowing talks in which the summer's dawning sometimes 
 surprised us ; — when I think how little thou wert recognised 
 >. while alive, and in what lamentable circumstances thou wert 
 prematurely removed, I am tempted to weep like a child, and 
 to cry out, " Surely man is vanity, and life a dream ! " 
 
 I shall never forget a description Thom once gave me of 
 a scene in the Orkney Islands. It was a summer Sabbath 
 evening. The church was so crowded that it had to overflow 
 into the open air, and Thom preached on the seashore to an 
 immense audience. The sea was smooth as glass, and bright 
 aa silver. In the red north-west appeared the lofty mountain- 
 island of Hoy, steep-rising from the wave, furrowed with 
 ravines, split into three peaks, the highest of wiiicli is that 
 Ward-hill commemorated in " The Pirate" — from which, it is 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 said, the sun is sometimes .seen at midnight, and on whose 
 breast appears from the valley, during the dead of night, in 
 the three summer months, a great shining something, like an 
 enchanted carbuncle, which, on climbing the mountain, can 
 nowhere be found. Behind, and just touching the top of 
 the Ward-hill, the orb of day was sinking in glory, in an 
 hour to become the morning sun of America — to kindle all 
 the forests, and awaken all the eagles of the mighty West. 
 Thorn's blood rose, and his wild eye caught inspiration from 
 the sea and the sun. He dropped the theme he had intended 
 to handle, and, opening the Bible, selected for his text, " The 
 sea gave up the dead that were in it ;" and poured out an 
 extempore prose-poem, which made the vast assembly as 
 breathless as the sea, and their hearts to glow as warmly as 
 the sun. " If ever man was poetically inspired," he said, " I 
 that evening was that man." There is still, I believe, a tra- 
 ditionary recollection of that evening, and that sermon in 
 these islands, at the distance of thirty years. 
 
 I have alluded more than once to the labours to which 
 a Dissenting clergyman is subject. These are very numerous, 
 and sometimes oppressive. Lord Brougham has expressed 
 his wonder how a Scotch clergyman can write two new dis- 
 courses every week during a long series of years. But this is 
 only a part of his duties. He has besides this, in general, if 
 a Dissenter, to commit them to memory ; and this, to many, 
 is a sad drudgery. How often I have overheard clergymen 
 groaning aloud, as they paced their morning or midnight 
 chambers, trying to fix on their memory the reluctant and 
 rebellious sentences of their sermons! Many constitutions 
 have been shattered, many nervous systems unhinged, and 
 many lives shortened, by this difficulty — a difficulty which 
 I never, however, personally experienced. Besides the writing 
 and the maudation of sermons, there is in the preaching of 
 them a constant strain upon the system and the nerves, luider 
 which many succumb. Nervous complaints are, in conse- 
 quence, multiplying among ministers. One is perpetually
 
 PUBLIC AND LITERARY LIFE. 229 
 
 hearing of this and the other minister away on furlough 
 from duty; and if you ask -what is the matter with him, 
 the reply is, " His nervous system is all wrong." To this the 
 practice of preaching a third discourse in the evening (called 
 by some wit, a " device of the Devil's to kill ministers withal") 
 has contributed, as well as the use of stimulants (such as tea, 
 coffee, and tobacco — the Scottish clergy now are in general 
 extremely temperate in the use of stronger fluids), which 
 become almost essential to support the overwrought system, 
 but ^tkich, if taken to excess, do injury afterwards. Then, 
 besides; there are endless visitations of sick and whole — 
 attendance on funerals — performance of marriages— speaking 
 at public meetings — and a hundred other public and private 
 engagements, which massacre the minister's time, often irri- 
 tate his temper, and gradually wear him down. Nothing can 
 carry him triumphantly through these labours, except, first, 
 a good constitution ; secondly, readiness in composition and 
 speech; thirdly, system; fourthly, generous living; and, 
 fifthly, a buoyant, sanguiue disposition. But if he be, as is 
 too often the case, poor in circumstances and unsuccessful in 
 his calling, he cannot live well, his spirits sink, and he dies 
 before his time. I could tell the tales and point out the 
 graves of many such martyrs. And yet I have heard lay- 
 men often wondering how ministers could get their time 
 spent ; and speaking of their life as a long gala-day ! 
 
 It were invidious to dwell long on the literary defects of 
 the clergy as a class. I noticed in many of them a kind of 
 indifference to, if not horror at, literature. They aspired 
 to nothing but the praise given by Cowper to the poor 
 
 cottager — 
 
 " To know, and know no more, their Bible true." 
 
 I am happy to say that this state of things is coming to an 
 end, and that fashion is combining with the advancement of 
 society in promoting a love of letters, particularly among our 
 younger clergy — some of whom, however, are going to the
 
 230 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 opposite extreme, and ai'e becoming strongly tinged with 
 Germanism, and might, even in their pulpits, be mistaken 
 for minor Carlyles in white cravats. The misty utterances 
 of Maui'ice, Kiugsley, and the other members of that school, 
 are very popular, too, with a class of our young divines, who 
 are perpetually talking about " stand-points," " spiritualism," 
 " divine meanings," " God being the centre of Being," and the 
 " Heart-force of the universe," and who accept the stare of 
 wonderment cast at them by their bewildered audiences as a 
 willing worship and a profoimd obedience. There is more 
 now, too, among Dissenters, both lay and clerical, of admira- 
 tion of mental excellence and genius, as these qualities are to 
 be found in men of other denominations, and in men of no 
 denomination at all. Connected with this, however, I have 
 noticed the prevalence of certain evils. I allude to the imi- 
 tation of models in preaching and writing — a practice which 
 has deadened originality, damped imagination, and filled 
 many pulpits with bloated frogs instead of men. Chalmers 
 was long the favourite model with this kind of people; it is 
 now Hamilton of Leeds, or Dr. Hai-ris, or Melvill, or Gum- 
 ming, or Parsons of York. The worst of this is, that it is 
 sometimes practised by young men, who possess superior 
 talents of their own, and who hobble about on borrowed 
 crutches when they might walk alone. Akin to this is the 
 practice of wholesale and habitual plagiarism. Many minis- 
 ters live by plunder. Neither the dead nor the living, 
 neither good nor bad writers, neither celebrated nor obscure 
 divines, are safe from this spirit of appropriation. That 
 recondite author Matthew Henry even, has had whole pages 
 transplanted to sermons, which have been published! No 
 sooner does a new volume appear from the pen of Isaac 
 Taylor or Harris, than its choicest sentences are culled to 
 adorn the discourses of some fashionable preacher, who 
 (having studied and practised their delivery at the mirror) 
 gives them with incomparably more effect than the original 
 authors could. T. T., an intimate friend of my own, has
 
 PUBLIC AND LITERARY LIFE. 231 
 
 been often honoured in this way. He has preached, through 
 his printed sermons, in highflying metropolitan pulpits, in 
 which he never set a foot all his life. He has defied, without 
 intention, offence, or resistance, the law of the General As- 
 sembly, which allows no Dissenter to appear in the pulpits 
 of the Establishment, and has held forth there again and 
 again. He once {in 2^}W>'^ pe7'sond) pi'eached a public 
 sermon in a great northern city, while an aspiring youth was 
 preaching one of his printed sermons in an adjoining chapel. 
 This'*fetate of things, indeed, has become so general, and so 
 flagrantly notorious, that some have begun to allege that 
 sermons, like umbrellas and hats at a public dinner, are 
 common property, and that the only sin lies in the discovery 
 of the theft, and the only shame in the poorness of the article 
 which is stolen. And, indeed, our clerical thieves are not 
 fastidious. My readers probably remember the pickpocket in 
 " Pelham," who saw a Frenchman of the same kidney pocket- 
 ing an article in a coff"ee-house. What it was he was unable, 
 from the distance, to discover, but he supposed it to be 
 something very valuable. He followed him to the street, and 
 picked his pocket of the prize, which turned out to be two 
 pieces of white sugar, very carefully wrapped up ! I could 
 supply many examples showing the application of this story, 
 but I forbear. 
 
 We often hear it said now-a-days that the clergy are in a 
 false position. I think I see wherein this saying is true and 
 wherein it is false. A minister, quoad minister, has now less 
 influence and respect than he had; and if he presume on his 
 mere ministerial position, and try in its strength to browbeat 
 or trample on the public, he is sure to get into a false posi- 
 tion. But there is still so much of the ancient pres^i^e in 
 behalf of the clerical ofiico remaining, that if he add to its 
 weight, personal merit — whether genius, or eloquence, or 
 learning, or zeal, or uncommon diligence — no man can even 
 yet exert greater or more valuable influence, or be more 
 useful to society, than a minister. But he must ever bear in
 
 232 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 mind that as the pedestal of the ministerial position has 
 somewhat sunk of late, it becomes the more necessary that 
 the statue erected on it should be symmetrical and lofty. 
 
 I have, in the foregoing remarks, been rather showing the 
 " shady " than the " sunny " side of ministerial life. I come 
 now to more agreeable topics. Had I a poet's genius, I might 
 write a very interesting poem on the pleasures of a clergyman's 
 existence, under the title of the " Manse." Had Christopher 
 North been a minister, what a noble thing he might have 
 made of it, either in verse or in his glowing and numerous 
 prose ! There are, first, the pleasures of preacliing. Who that 
 has ever thrown his soul into his sermons, or ever addressed, 
 with any force or freedom, large multitudes of men, has not 
 been conscious, at certain favoured hours, of exquisite enjoy- 
 ment 1 In an autumn evening, especially, when men gather 
 round the speaker, and the stars come out, how exciting, in 
 that dim religious light, and before that sea of half-seen faces, 
 to speak of such subjects as the Deluge, the destruction of the 
 Cities of the Plain, the Second Advent of Christ, the immolation 
 of Jephthah's daughter, or the glories of the future state ! 
 Such pleasures are not to be classed with mere intellectual 
 luxuries, nor supposed to be inconsistent with deep earnest- 
 ness and humility on the part of the speaker. They are the 
 results of lawful and natural stimulants, that of a season the 
 most spirit-stirring and ethereal of all ; for true it is that 
 " Heaven and earth are loveliest 
 In autumn eves," 
 
 and that then a strange unearthly joy, like the music of 
 another planet, does fall upon the ear of the soul — that of the 
 sympathy of masses of men, and that of Subjects which 
 appeal to the heart through the imagination, and in which 
 the speaker forgets himself, and is gloriously lost, like an 
 eagle in a sea of sunny clouds. The horse gains the goal not 
 less surely, that he exults in his tremendous gallop, and the 
 preacher may reach his purpose the more certainly when his 
 spirit is stirred and quickened to its depths. Of still more
 
 PUBLIC AND LITEEAEY LIFE. 233 
 
 delicious zest are sacramental occasions, particularly toward 
 the close of the day, when the minister is counselling his flock 
 ere they retire from the holy communion, or giving out the 
 parting hymn ; and when, sometimes, " whether he is in the 
 body or out of it," he cannot tell, since all heaven seems open- 
 ing to his eyes, or flowing into his heart. I at least, for my 
 part, can declare that many a time, when reading to my flock, 
 at the close of a communion-day, Addison's famous hymn, 
 
 »— " When all thy mercies, my God," 
 
 and -gju:J;icularly the words — 
 
 " And after death, in distant worlds. 
 Resume the glorious theme," 
 
 I have felt — " Higher than this I cannot go — this is the climax 
 of my feelings ; this emotion, purified, might mingle con- 
 genially with the raptures of a ' better sphere.' " I need not 
 dwell on the delightful intercoiu-se that on these occasions often 
 still takes place between ministers, who are not merely by 
 name, or by courtesy, but in reality and in heart, hrethren. 
 
 One such brother I may here commemorate, since I have 
 enjoyed with him several of the happiest communions I ever 
 spent. Gilchrist Hamilton is his name, and a better man does 
 not exist. He is a man, — in completeness, if not in size and 
 strength, — approaching my ideal of humanity. You often 
 see heads and faces, which approach to perfection so nearly 
 that you think a hair's breadth only separates them from it ; 
 and you sigh as you remember that that hair's breadth is a 
 great gulf, for ever fixed. With somewhat less sorrow, do 
 I survey that kind of duodecimo edition of a perfect man 
 which my friend Hamilton presents; for his combination of 
 qualities is so rare as to be exceedingly valuable, and, to a 
 lover of man, cheering. He has geniality and fancy, almost 
 amounting to genius. He has an exquisite taste. He has 
 very res{)Cctablo attainments. He has a sweet and natural 
 elocution. In jjrivate, he is all that is amiable, gentle, and 
 intelligent. His friends and his flock admire him to enthu-
 
 234 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 siasm. And yet he has not a tithe of the power and popu- 
 larity of some far inferior men ; and why 1 — partly because his 
 strength is not quite equal to his symmetry, partly because 
 he wants assumption, and partly because he cannot make so 
 much noise in the pulpit as they. But better, surely, to be 
 a beautiful limpid stream, winding its own peaceful way 
 throvigh its own sweet and soft scenery, and singing its own 
 fine monotony to the listening woods and flowers, than to be 
 a sham Niagara, all froth and foam, without body or real 
 force — with plenty of sound, but with little volume of water. 
 In the private work of the clergyman's life there are many 
 trials, but there are many enjoyments, too. He has occasion 
 to see a good deal of the selfishness of mankind. If he, how- 
 ever unintentionally, omit any of his flock in his pastoral 
 calls, or wait till the sick send for him, or do not recognise 
 his people on the street, he is blamed bitterly, and accused 
 of partiality, carelessness, pride, and so forth. He has also, 
 as I showed above, sometimes his own trials thi-ough poverty. 
 But, as Savage told Johnson, that the more he mingled with 
 human nature, the more, and not the less, did he esteem it ; 
 so it is sometimes in the case of ministerial intercourse with 
 the lower classes. The clergyman has often occasion to quote 
 the well-known lines from Gray's poem — 
 
 " Full many a gem of purest ray serene," &c. 
 
 What solid worth, what warm-hearted kindness, what simple 
 foith, what loyalty to their minister and to the Christian 
 cause, what strong natural sense, what childlike piety, have 
 I witnessed among the humbler ranks of Scottish dissenters, 
 both in town and country ! Even when they are off"ended, 
 I have observed them to be more placable than people in 
 higher life, and many of the rubs their ministers receive from 
 them, proceed more from ignorance than fi'om intention. 
 On the other hand, a little friendly interest taken in their 
 concerns, if not ostentatiously protruded or earned too far — 
 a visit opportunely made — attention to their children or their
 
 PUBLIC AND LITERARY LIFE. 235 
 
 sick selves, if not evidently dictated by motives of mere 
 priestcraft — a letter written for them — a situation obtained 
 for one of their family — a friendly salutation on the street — 
 the keeping up of a steady stream of good, useful sermons, 
 and perseverance in daily and weekly duties, are sure, in 
 many cases, to excite gratitude, to disarm hostility, and to 
 prodxice a mutual ^ood understanding, which is less fre- 
 quently disturbed in Scotland than in England, and perhaps 
 exists more thoroughly in town-congi-egations, chiefly com- 
 pcfgfed of the industrious poor, than in those composed of the 
 ffivOTotis and fashionable I'ich. I have enjoyed, especially, 
 intercourse with the aged men and women of the flock — those 
 venerable links connecting two centuries together. How I 
 liked to see their old eyes gleaming with delight as the 
 minister entered their garret; to take up and glance at the 
 dusky volumes over which they had, with their horn spectacles, 
 been poring ; perhaps Willison's " Afflicted Man's Compa- 
 nion," " Haweis's Bible," Bunyan's Works, or Fleetwood's 
 " Life of Christ," to listen to their quaint remarks, and their 
 talk about the olden times, and the departed ministers of the 
 church ; to eat, occasionally, with them a piece of their oaten 
 cake, or drink a drop of their poor thin tea ; to see the glow 
 of genuine gratitude shining on their faces, at the receipt of 
 some little alms ; to receive, in my turn, sometimes a present 
 from them — a book, probably, such as a copy I still preserve 
 and cherish, of Brown's " Self-interpreting Bible ;" to pray 
 with them, and to hear their lips murmuring a blessing over 
 their pastor's head, ere they were closed in death ! These 
 T felt to be "joys beyond the name of pleasure," and often 
 I overheard myself, as I passed from garret to garret of the 
 aged poor, muttering the grand words of Burke, " remem- 
 bering the forgotten ;" and adding — what a liigh lot ; how far 
 superior to that of a man of letters, of a nobleman, or of a king ! 
 And when, in the silent watches of the night, I reflect with 
 pain on past miserable hours, I am consoled by the recollec- 
 tion of these visits ; of the good I did, and the good I derived
 
 236 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 in them, and can fancy I see the faces of many a humble 
 Christian, looking down from the climes of glory, and that 
 I hear their voices bidding me be of good cheer. I say this, 
 God knows, in no boasting or self-glorying spirit, but in deep 
 gratitude and humility. 
 
 In such feelings I know of one eminent minister in Scot- 
 land who thoroughly participates — I mean the celebrated 
 Andrew Williamson. This remarkable man I did not per- 
 , sonally know till after I had been eight years a clergyman. 
 I had once stepped, when a student, into his church, on a 
 Fast-day. A bungling noodle from the country had preached, 
 and contrived to mangle a glorious text, "He that spared 
 not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall 
 he not with him also freely give us all things?" At the 
 close, Williamson stood up, and uttered a prayer of remark- 
 able power. In one simple sentence — a sentence that still 
 clings to my memory — he seemed to say more than had 
 been said in all the sermon — " Thou hast given us thine own 
 Son, and shalt thou not give us bread ?" I was struck, too, 
 with his appearance : his dark hair, his retreating forehead, 
 his innocent, almost idiotic mouth, and his swarthy skin pitted 
 with the small-pox, and through which, like stars through 
 midnight, shone two large, mild eyes, as dark as death in 
 their colour, but in their expression as bright as day ; a body 
 thin, but strong and wury ; a chest, broad ; a figure of the 
 middle size ; the whole constituting a unique, in which 
 eccentricity and power, considerable weakness and great 
 strength, simplicity and pawJciness, much bile and more 
 brains, had met and mingled. 
 
 I cried out to myself, " Strange man this ! — among the 
 strangest I ever saw — but the power that can subdue and 
 unify such chaotic materials, must be that of genius." This 
 gentleman had long to struggle against opposition, envy, 
 contempt, and jealousy. He was at one time very generally 
 thought half-mad. He tells himself, with great glee, a story 
 about the rate at which he was held. A traveller from
 
 PUBLIC AND LITERARY LIFE. 237 
 
 London had come to the town where he i^reached, and on 
 the morning of a Sunday had stepped out to the stable-yard 
 of the inn. Meeting the ostler, he said : " I wish to go to 
 church this morning ; can you tell me where one of your 
 crack preachers holds forth 1 " " Crack tvkat, Sir ] " answered 
 the ostler ; " what's your wull ? " " Why crack preachers, to 
 be sure ; you must have some crack preachers in this large 
 town." " I dinna ken what you mean by a crack preacher. 
 Sir ; but if you want to hear a cracked, one, you have only to 
 step.^ver yonder ; " pointing across the road to Williamson's 
 chapel." Williamson, however, persevered, and ultimately 
 triumphed — became one of the most popular preachers and 
 platform men in Scotland ; nay, more than once, when he 
 visited London, in spite of his odd manner and strong Scottish 
 accent, electrified Exeter Hall by his inspired common-sense 
 and robust eloquence. He is at the same time one of the 
 most assiduous visitors of the sick in the Church, and has 
 written some vigorous pamphlets on Popery, and one very 
 remarkable volume of sermons. 
 
 I once met him in company with Mr. Gilbert, an author of 
 the day, who is also a divine, although chiefly known for 
 some sketches of poets, including Shelley, Keats, and others 
 of that file. This gentleman told a story about Williamson, 
 which he had got from himself, and which was true. (Mr. 
 Williamson is a believer in the personal reign of Christ.) 
 " Mr. W. was sitting one day in his study, when a stranger is 
 announced; and in stalks an elderly man, of majestic presence, 
 mild expression of face, and with long grey hairs floating on 
 his shoulders. He accosts Mr. W. : — 'I have long known you, 
 Sir, and highly esteemed your character. You are one of the 
 few ministers in this land who have advocated the ancient 
 hope of the Church — the personal pre-millennial advent of 
 Christ. I, Sir, am Jesus Christ ; I am newly arrived from 
 heaven, and you are the first man in Scotland on whom 
 I have called.' " (He was, of course, an escaj^ed lunatic.) 
 Mr. Williamson evidently did not hke the somewhat ludicrous
 
 238 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 light in which this story presented him to the company, and 
 hastened to say : " That's nothing to a story I have heard of 
 Mr. Gilbert. He was one day sitting in his study, reading 
 'Sartor Resartus,' when a stranger is shown in, of a very 
 remarkable appearance. His stature is tall, his complexion 
 and hair dark as night; his large eyes gleam with what 
 Milton calls 'black fire;' his forehead is furrowed with 
 deep scars; his air is majestic, but unspeakably melancholy; 
 he has the aspect altogether of a fallen prince. He approaches 
 Mr. G., takes him warmly by the hand, and cries : ' Sir, I am no 
 stranger to your wide catholicity of heart ; you are above all 
 clerical and vulgar prejudices ; you have done justice, in your 
 writings, to some of my greatest friends, who are now with 
 myself, such as Shelley and Byron, I see in your hand the 
 work of another of my intimates, who is on his road ; I have 
 come to thank you in person ; I am that much misrepresented 
 person — the Devil ! ' " My readers may conceive the effect 
 of this rejoinder, given, as it was, with the utmost readiness 
 and rapidity. I record it as a specimen of Williamson's racy 
 genius. 
 
 Among ministerial pleasures I must not forget the teaching 
 of the young in classes. I thoroughly agree with the words 
 formerly quoted of a clergyman described in a former chap- 
 ter : " Oh that class ! I sometimes feel as if Heaven were 
 dawning on me there." The minister in his class feels 
 himself perfectly at home ; it is taught generally in the 
 evening, when his mind is finely toned, and has not fully sub- 
 sided from the excitement of the day — the wind is down, but 
 the sea is still running high. He is surrounded by young, 
 ingenuous faces; by souls dawning into intellectual life; and 
 surely the evening star coming out in the yellow west of an 
 autumn evening is not so beautiful as the light of immortal 
 mind beginning to break from a youthful eye : and cold must 
 be his heart, and dead his imagination, if his tongue be not 
 touched with fire. What joys of the purest and highest kind I 
 have had in the evenings of summer, or in those, more delicious
 
 PUBLIC AND LITERARY LIFE. 239 
 
 still, when summer is swooning away into the arms of autumn, 
 explaining to artless youth the Pilgrim's Progress, that parable 
 of sanctified genius, worthy almost to be bound up with the 
 parables of celestial wisdom in the Bible, and which, in its 
 combination of subjective thought and objective interest, is 
 so admirably calculated to instruct the understandings, affect 
 the heart, and delight the imagination of the young ; and the 
 eyes of those around -me burning with emotion — their occa- 
 sional tears, and their " silence, the best applause " — told 
 th^jthey reciprocated their teacher's feeling, and that the 
 soul: lif ••the inspired tinker had entered like a spell into the 
 little room, and melted all of us down into one menstruum 
 of wonder and worship. Some of these young persons 
 have retained the impressions made on them in after years — 
 in foreign lands, and on their death-beds. One, the best 
 scholar I ever had, who was cut off by fever while her teacher 
 was dangerously ill with the same terrible disease, during the 
 delirium of her illness, imagined herself in the class to the end, 
 and went straight from hearing what she supposed to be the 
 words of her beloved minister, to hear the words of her still 
 more beloved Saviour. On my recovery, I shed a sincere tear 
 to hear of her premature removal. 
 
 I can never speak of classes without remembering one who 
 peculiarly shone, and shines still, in the tuition of the young 
 — I mean George Leitham. This gentleman, and his brother 
 Roderick, I rank among my worthiest and warmest friends. 
 I have often thought that heart and common sense, when 
 united together, become something which, if not genius, is 
 really something better — free, at least, from the penalties of 
 that fatal gift; and nowhere have I found these qualities 
 better blended than in the two brothers I have named. The 
 eldest has a face radiant with open, frank, all-embracing 
 . heart ; a form buoyant and winged with genial life; his hand, 
 like that of Burns, " threatens to burn yours ;" and when he 
 preaches, an ardour seems to " go out of him," and his audience 
 catch the glow. His brother, with more eccentricity, has
 
 240 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 nearly equal warmth, and a still stronger intellect. Both are 
 thoroughly unsophisticated, genuine men, and their provincial 
 accent, their unkempt, yet curling locks, their loud, infectious 
 laugh, their brawny forms, and strong stride proclaim them 
 Antsei — of the "earth, earthy" — whom,in this age of puppyism 
 and pretension, it is most refreshing to meet. George L. 
 is the best teacher of youth, I believe, in the empire. To 
 his congregation is attached a superb Sabbath-school of five 
 hundred scholars, and there the ardent politician, the eloquent 
 preacher, the intrepid opponent of American slavery, and of 
 all other despotisms ; the oracle, next to Williamson, of the 
 "young West" of Scotland, may be seen every first day of 
 the week moving through his numerous classes, the spring 
 and centre of the whole complicated and beautiful machine — 
 a child among children — as a child beloved, and yet moving 
 with the dignity of a man, and wielding the authority of 
 a master. 
 
 I now close my remarks on ministerial difficulties and 
 pleasures. Ere entering on the subject of my literary expe- 
 riences, I may premise that I intend, as in the former part 
 of the chapter, not so much to give a regular recital of 
 facts, as to bring forth facts and characters to illustrate 
 certain general deductions. I think it a great and common 
 mistake to enter on a literary life too early, and without 
 counting the cost. The results of this are, if the writer be 
 unsuccessful, a premature souredness of feeling — what Byron 
 calls " a dreary old sort of feeling " — about the imfortunate 
 aspirant; and there are few sights more deplorable than that 
 of a youth of talent and promise, with his early enthusiasm 
 chilled and blackened by frosts of neglect or criticism, to 
 which he has unnecessarily exposed himself. The combina- 
 tion of young ardour and old bitterness is not in nature — it 
 resembles a chaos of fire and ice. If strong and sanguine, 
 this mood passes away from the youth, but it sometimes 
 leaves a permanent evil influence behind it. We can trace 
 this in the career of Byron, who never quite forgot the
 
 PUBLIC AND LITERARY LIFE, 241 
 
 Edinburgh Review's attack on his early poems, and something 
 of his ultimate deep disgust at humanity, was owing to the 
 clouding of his first literary hopes. There is a conservative 
 power in the breast and brain of genius, which retains the 
 freshness of all its impressions, whether of bliss or bale, of 
 satisfaction or of disappointment. The poet in the night- 
 season grieves over his earliest griefs, and his brow flushes at 
 the memory of his first triumphs. Hence the embittered 
 boy-bard often remains embittered for evermore. If, on the 
 ot&echand, he obtains a sudden triun.ph, the consequences 
 are fifir more disastrous. Unless possessed of extraordinary 
 good sense, or of a strong and paramount sense of duty, the 
 moment he is assured that he possesses the powei's, he begins 
 to take what he calls the privileges, of genius. What these 
 are depends partly upon his temperament and previous circum- 
 stances. If he be vain, and fond of self-display, he passies, 
 by rapid stages, into an exquisite and hopeless coxcomb. If 
 he be given to indolence, he falls into luxurious reverie, and 
 fancies himself a Coleridge. If he be sensually inclined, he 
 finds many pits of mischief gaping for their prey. If he 
 dream himself gifted with a peculiar religious mission, he 
 becomes hardened in the conceit that he is to be another 
 Milton. I have seen wild work made thus, partly by the 
 public, and partly by themselves, on young men of very 
 promising genius. 
 
 There is a good deal of truth in what Emerson says, that 
 a man may set his own rate, and that the public is j^rofuundly 
 indifferent as to the matter, and takes him at his own ad- 
 measurement. But then that admeasurement shoifld be 
 deliberate — not the rash prejudice of a boy in favour of 
 himself, but the result of those watchful observations and 
 comparisons which imply experience. I think, as a general 
 nile, no one should publish till he be thirty ; for even if he 
 have indited golden thoughts ere then, they can be set and 
 shown to far greater advantage when he has reached tlie age 
 of manhood. Premature geniuses seldom come to much,
 
 242 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 even if they live, and they often die early. It is now held by 
 some eminent physiologists, that a healthy constitntion goes 
 on strengthening, both in body and mind, till upwards of 
 fifty. Burns, indeed, said of his first volume of poems, that 
 " it was the first hairn of his brain, and would be the best;" 
 but then it was a very extraordinary production, and perhaps 
 he felt that the expenditure of passion, feeling, and mental 
 force which enabled him to write it, had exhausted and 
 undermined his system ; and if he thought so, he was right. 
 A friend of mine published a little work while several years 
 under thirty. A critic, handling it severely, said he should 
 keep his next work nine years. The author indignantly re- 
 joined, that in that case, as the critic was sure to be hanged 
 long before then, he would never read it ! He soon after- 
 wards, however, became convinced that the critic was not so 
 far mistaken. A man who collects his thoughts and husbands 
 his breath till thirty, or even five or six year§ later, and then 
 brings out a first book, combining the unfaded hues of youth 
 with the deeper and maturer coloiirs of manhood, is very 
 generally successful. The greatest literary careers ever run 
 in Britain, such as those of Shakspere, Dryden, Swift, John- 
 son, Foster, and Sir Walter Scott — cai*eers greatest because 
 in them all we see a steady course of progressive improve- 
 ment, till impeded by distemper or age — have not been early, 
 but late in their beginnings. 
 
 It is an important matter for an author to produce one 
 really good book at the commencement of his career. If 
 written down after doing so, he must be written down by him- 
 self; if neglected, it mu^t be his own fault. In general, a good 
 book is a permanent letter of introduction to the world. It 
 may be worth remarking, however, what I mean, first, by a 
 good book ; and secondly, by its success. By a good book, 
 then, I mean a book that is a man's own in the main — that, 
 along with a display of good or great talents, is original 
 — that proves a mind communicating directly with thoughts 
 and things, with nature and with truth. There are, of course,
 
 PUBLIC AND LITERARY LIFE. 243 
 
 many subordinate degrees of goodness in books ; there are 
 good compilations, good imitations — books admirably suited to 
 do a certain temporary work, and to fill certain desiderata in the 
 public mind. But no book can produce any lasting impres- 
 sion, or gain its author true fame, that is not intvs ei in cute, 
 the product of his own mind. But by the success of such 
 a work, I do not mean a gi'eat, far less a rapid sale. The 
 kind of book I mean^ seldom lies long as mere lumber on the 
 bookseller's shelves, but as seldom, perhaps, does it run like 
 wii^-fire. It disdains being puffed into notice. It reaches, 
 howeV^, its own class — a class sometimes larger, sometimes 
 less — but always enthusiastic in favour of the original book, 
 and gi'ateful to its author. It is a letter bearing the 
 superscription, " To those whom it may concern." It is 
 bread cast upon the waters, and the predestined fisher finds 
 it after many days. Next to its originality, its main 
 differentia is its thought- producing power. Indeed, these 
 two qualities are almost one ; and one word — the word 
 creative — expresses both. Creative genius means genius 
 never created, and always creating. The kind of book I 
 mean may not run through many editions, and it may be 
 more frequently abused than praised ; but if one begins to 
 read it, he will read it through — if he read it once, he will 
 read it again — if he hate it, he will not hide his hatred under 
 a bushel — and if he admire, he will rave about it. Bits of 
 it will be ever and anon flashing on the eye in newspapers ; 
 many parts of it will be pilfered by lecturers and writers ; a 
 good many, without appreciating it thoroughly, will imitate ; 
 and others will admire it too much to seek or dare to copy. 
 Many who know it only by name will regard it wdth a 
 mysterious veneration, and will transfer a portion of this to 
 the author, who will also, on the strength of this book, 
 receive invitations to lecture, to write in magazines, to give 
 his opinion of volumes, and to lend his aid to young authors, 
 who all commence tlieir letters to him, in sending their MS., 
 with preliminary soft sawder about the " many blissful hours 
 
 r2
 
 244 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 they have passed in the perusal of his immortal pages :" the 
 same blissful hours being often only those spent in a cofFee- 
 room in reading some envious critique, or some still more 
 envious extracts in a London journal. In short, the man's 
 name is made ; although whether his fortune too is secured, 
 is a very different question. 
 
 Such books are not numerous, amidst the vast mass of 
 publications which pour from the press. I may mention 
 three of this species of native seminal works, all of diiferent 
 calibre, none of them popular in the proper sense, yet all in 
 different measures influential, especially on the rising mind 
 of the age — Hazlitt's Works, Landor's " Imaginary Conversa- 
 tions," and Thomas Aird's Poems. The first two of these are 
 not yet, and perhaps never will be, classics; but they are 
 mines where many who abuse are daily diggers. Mr. Aird's 
 poems are not, and probably never will be, popular; nor 
 can they be said to be so rich in thought and imageiy as 
 some of the poetic productions of the day; but they are 
 intensely original, bold, manly, and powerful ; and, as such, 
 will always hold a high place, and attract an enthusiastic 
 and increasing tribe of admirers. 
 
 It is long since old Bentley said that no author was ever 
 written down except by himself; and it holds true still. The 
 sale of his works may, indeed, be hindered, and sometimes 
 his personal comfort disturbed, by systematic attacks; but 
 his name will not be affected, nor will his genuine admirers 
 be at all moved from their allegiance. Nay, if the attacks 
 be, as is generally the case, overdone in their malignity, they 
 are sure to provoke a reaction in the author's favour ; and, if 
 he have any courage in his constitution, they will only rouse 
 and animate him to greater exertions. I have had my own 
 share of attacks; but the greater part I have never even seen, 
 nor would have heard of, save for some " good-natured friend." 
 Tliose I have seen, I have felt keenly — for one night; one 
 good sound sleep has made me oblivious of them, or only so 
 remember them as to spur me on in ray course. I have
 
 PUBLIC AND LITERARY LIFE. 245 
 
 known, indeed, authors exceedingly sensitive, especially when 
 their bread was entirely dependent on their writings, or when 
 their health was bad, or when they were themselves prone to 
 attack others. Baser cowards than your habitual satirists 
 do not exist — mere Ancient Pistols and Captain Culpeppers 
 every one of them— often boobies, always bullies; whether 
 they are assaulted by the broom of a scavenger or by the eye 
 of a man, tliey tremble and flee. Indifference to assaults is 
 often produced by a thorough knowledge of the system, 
 mOtv^es, and characters of those who make them. It is, with 
 a'pat-t'of the press, an agreed and understood thing, that 
 after an author has risen a certain way, his works are for a 
 season to be undercried. I once asked a literary man why a 
 well-known London print was so severe now on Ruskin ; his 
 reply was, " Oh ! it's his time ; all must take their turn ; he 
 was praised enough before; that's our system, you know." 
 I thought it a strange, unprincipled system. Others praise 
 or blame according to the publisher, or the country of the 
 author; others have personal piques and grudges. When 
 you know all this, if you do not excuse the critics, you learn 
 to despise their criticisms. There are sometimes cases, indeed, 
 of especial baseness, which excite deeper emotions than con- 
 tempt. One of the popular lyric poets of the day sent his 
 volume to a well-known critic, who encouraged — reviewed — 
 ' praised it. While the poet was, by every post, expressing 
 gratitude, and reciprocating praise — not to speak of pilfering 
 from his writings — he was all the ivhile ivriting abusive, 
 anonymous attacks on his revietver. This is but one of the 
 worst specimens of the sad want of principle which the lite- 
 rary life leads to in many of those who live by it exclusively. 
 I fear there is not at present an unhealthier, unhappier, or 
 more demoralizing mode of winning one's bread. It is not, 
 however — except in such extreme cases as the above — the 
 men, so much as the position, I blame. 
 
 Originally there arc few finer fellows than your young men 
 of genius. They begin their career with the most delight-
 
 246 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 fully delusive notions of themselves, of life, of nature, and 
 of man. By and by, however, criticism, rejection, experience 
 of the falsehood and insincerity so common in literary life, 
 Ijecuniary emiiarrassment, sudden shiftings of position, and 
 a hundred other causes, combine to make them uneasy, rest- 
 less, dissatisfied, willing to grasp at any employment, and to 
 do any work, on any side, and in any style. Hence the 
 innumerable " portable pens" and literary Swiss abounding 
 at present. Hence there are so many literateurs, who can no 
 more afford to keep a creed or conscience than to keep 
 a coach. Hence Whig and Tory editors frequently exchange 
 the writing of each other's leaders ; and nothing more common 
 than to find a Conservative editor sinkino- out of sio;ht for 
 a season, and suddenly reappearing as the Sub of a Radical 
 print. 
 
 I may notice here what I cannot consider a very happy 
 sign of the times. I refer to the vast number of young 
 students who now write in periodicals. When I was a divi- 
 nity student, any one who had written a single paper in a 
 periodical, or even in a newspai)er, was stared at as a prodigy. 
 What a change twenty years have produced ! Now students 
 in dozens, beneath age, regularly write to, edit, or sixb-edit, 
 and gain the most of their subsistence from the periodical 
 press. From this, indeed, advantages, as well as disadvantages, 
 have sprung — greater spirit, freshness, and enthusiasm in 
 contributions, but often, too, greater crudeness and exaggera- 
 tion. Some clever yoimg men may be bettered by this early 
 initiation into the mysteries of authorship; but far more are 
 ruined, as writers, for life — attain an early triumph, to be 
 sure, but a veiy cheap one, and one which is apt to lessen 
 instead of increasing with years. Diogenes Dingy, although 
 not known beyond a certain circle, is at present one of the 
 cleverest men in the republic of letters, and one of the most 
 thoroughly damaged by its influences. In the course of 
 twenty years of literary life he has contrived to lose his faith 
 in God, in man, almost in himself, in everything except in a
 
 PUBLIC AND LITERARY LIFE. 247 
 
 colossal image of cleverness, -which is his real and only deity. 
 He thinks that all men are apes, and that the only distinc- 
 tion worth coveting is that of being a gigantic specimen, an 
 ouraug-outang among the tribe. He deems that man's highest 
 destiny is to say the largest amount of clever, wicked, mali- 
 cious tilings. He worships Butler's " Hudibras;" i-eads Swift's 
 filthy Miscellanies, and prefers them even to " Don Juan ;" 
 he admires Wilson for his occasional coarseness, and because 
 in his secret heart he thinks him the king of the race Simia, 
 to tfhich he knows he himself belongs, and believes him to 
 haTve Hb^en, not a man-mountain, but a monkey -mountain. 
 He believes nothing good, and everything evil of his fellow- 
 authors. Truths, in passing through the atmosphere of his 
 mind, become falsehoods, and lies enlarge and loom like crows 
 through a mist. In the millennium or in heaven he would 
 expire for want of food to his malice, like a reptile in an 
 exhausted receiver. His attacks are fearfully severe ; but the 
 animus in most of them reduces them to the character of 
 libels on their author. His most formidable attacks are his 
 panegyrics, which are sometimes so overdone that they 
 damage the object, as they are meant to do. He never 
 praises one author except for the sake of provoking another. 
 Some of his devilry, however, is affected; he blackens his 
 own face as well as others. He is essentially a coward, and a 
 single touch of the red-hot pitch brings him, squalling, to his 
 senses. His talents are as great as his use of them is lament- 
 able, and you cannot but own that he is a blood-sucker of 
 rare capacity. 
 
 Antony E. Will is a man of considerable powers, and, had 
 he known their compass, and kept within it, he might have 
 taken a respectable place in literature. He has the good 
 spirits of a grig, and liis mind has the light, wavering, lyric 
 motion of a butterfly. He can indite capital caricatures, and 
 tolerable imitations of gi-eat aiithors. He has written clever 
 adaptations of Bunyan to modern politics, and one or two 
 good imitations of ancient ballad poetry. But in an evil hour
 
 248 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 lie was smitten with a desire to be a great original genius — 
 a desire iu his case as absurd as though he had conceived a 
 passion for the moon. He became connected, through mar- 
 ^}j_oiJji;)^,riage, with a great writer of the age, and from that moment 
 ^H+s'i!' "''■'^ his ruin was sealed. His existence since has been one lonsr 
 '^ iS'.'liy^k spasm of weakness determined to be strong, of clever common- 
 place striving to be inspired. He has only of late begun to 
 suspect that the effort is vain, that the " gods have not made 
 him poetical." But this, instead of producing humility, has 
 irritated his pride ; and he has taken to abusing the grapes 
 which he cannot reach, of baying at the moon because she is 
 so bright and so far above him. He has set himself, in the 
 true spirit of an ape, to rail at and caricature the true men 
 and poets of the age. This he has managed to do with 
 considerable adroitness; but the mean motive has peeped 
 through. Had he had more of Dingy's power, it had been 
 different ; but the public soon see the difference between the 
 spite of an emasculate and the malice of a fiend, and while 
 tiembliug at the latter, they pity or laugh at the former. 
 There is, perhaps, no position on earth more lamentable than 
 that which Will holds — that of an Achilles dipped in the 
 river of inspiration, not all but the heel, but all except the 
 head — that of an almost poet, and no man, if generosity, 
 honour, and heart be elements of manhood. 
 
 I regard the early rebuffs which, in the shape of rejected 
 articles, unpublished MSS., &c., meet most young writers, as 
 often, if not always, in their favour — tending to harden and 
 to hammer them out. I have some little experience of it. 
 Besides the rejection of some papers which I mention in the 
 former chapter, I had a volume, on which I had bestowed 
 much pains, and which ultimately was well received by the 
 public, returned twice on my hands — the second time in a 
 sweeping and summary manner, by no means pleasing to 
 literary flesh and blood. I felt for the time as if the solid 
 earth were sinking below me ; it seemed not a wound, but a 
 death-blow. I saw there was but one remedy ; I repaired to
 
 PUBLIC AND LITEEARY LIFE, 249 
 
 the summit of a high green hill, where I had often carried my 
 joys and sorrows, and said, " I shall not come down till I am 
 in a better temper of mind ;" and there, to be sure, I walked 
 for two hours, " consuming my own smoke," and descended 
 fii-m, calm, and saying, " I am determined that I shall yet be 
 heard." I remember lodging, when a student, along with a 
 doctor of laws and theology, since very eminent in the world. 
 He had written a paper for the Edinhurgh Review, and he 
 and I expected great things, in more ways than one, from 
 its *h*eertion. One day, entering the apartment, I saw his 
 countfthtince fallen. In answer to my inquiry, he went 
 to a drawer, and showed me the unfortunate article, returned 
 with a cold, polite note from Macvey Napier. Down fell 
 all our golden castles in the air; but, on reflection, we 
 both saw it was for the best. He has since repeatedly 
 been invited to adorn the pages of that pei'iodical with his 
 contributions, as well as written for all the other leading 
 Quarterlies, 
 
 I think every young man who feels himself prompted by 
 literary ambition, and by the consciousness of genius or 
 power of some kind, should not fritter away his mind in 
 little poems or essays, but should early lay the -scheme of 
 a magnum ojnis, and should be constantly thinking of it, 
 gathering matter for it, " lashing at it day and night," 
 dreaming of it. Thus Bailey did with " Festus," and Pollok 
 with " The Course of Time." Such a plan would dignify 
 the very bearing, and glorify the very eye of the student. 
 It would unify all his readings and meditations. I deeply 
 regret that, partly from haste of temperament, and partly 
 from circumstances, and professional labours, I have not 
 been able hitherto to fulfil this ideal myself. Alas ! in 
 speaking thus I am speaking not for myself alone, but 
 lor almost all the writers of the day, Hcjw few loaves, 
 and how many "baskets of fragments," consequently, we 
 find in the literary market ! 
 
 All literary men should avoid, as much as possible, the
 
 250 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 pubHc dinner, the soii'ee, and the lecture-room. Such scenes, 
 although as fitly adapted, as if created for the purpose, to the 
 charlatan, are entirely unsuited to the man of genius. He 
 is almost certain to vulgarize himself by coming down to the 
 level of his audience, if he would gain applause ; or, if he 
 seeks to raise them up to his, he frequently fails, and becomes 
 lost in clouds. " Shoot laigh" (low), was the advice of an aged 
 to a young minister, meaning that to gain the heart, rather 
 than to amuse the imagination, should be the great aim of 
 a preacher. To instruct the understanding, on the other 
 hand, is the great object of the lecturer ; but the misfortvrae 
 is, that in coming down to effect this, the man of genius 
 often comes down very clumsily. Trying to " shoot laigh," 
 he becomes one of the awkward squad, and reaches neither 
 head nor heart, gives little information to his audience, and 
 administers little delight ; and, while failing to instruct the 
 intellect, fails, also, in touching the imagination. It will be 
 said that my views on this subject ai'e tinged by personal 
 disappointment. They are not. I have had my own share 
 of success in lecturing, and, had I persevered, I might have 
 had much more. But I soon felt the falsehood of the lec- 
 turer's position, and saw that clap-trap was the only element 
 which was in constant demand. I felt indignant, too, I 
 confess, when I saw the more eminent and gifted members of 
 the lecturing body eclipsed by the masters of sound and fury, 
 — by the dextrous dunces and impudent charlatans of the 
 day. I saw that deservedly popular as the Nicholses, and the 
 Samuel Browns, and the Frederick Douglasses were, they 
 were not so popular as the Thomsons and the Goughs. In 
 my hot youth I was a great admirer of George Thomson, as 
 an orator, and I feel still grateful to him for the delight some 
 of his anti-slavery addresses gave me, although I have con- 
 siderably modified my judgment of him. In Gough, again, 
 the degradation of the lecturing platform is perfect. I say 
 nothing against the cause he advocates ; I impugn not his 
 motives ; I believe him to be conscientious and consistent ;
 
 PUBLIC AND LITEEAKY LIFE. 251 
 
 but his popularity as a speaker is a blot on the age. His 
 vermicular twistings (" I am a worm, aud no man" might be 
 his text,) — " the contortions of the sybil, without the inspi- 
 ration" — his low mimicries, his jumpings to and fro, the 
 bare-faced plagiarisms in which he indulges, his eternal self- 
 repetitions, the vulgarity and coarseness of the whole display, 
 are simply disgusting, and not only stamp indelible disgrace 
 on his numerous admirers, but do discredit to Mrs. Stowe, 
 who recommended him, ere he came, in lanscuage which 
 wouM-4iave required some qualification if applied to Burke 
 or Cicel'o*. This, of course, took place before that lady had 
 damaged herself, beyond almost the power of another " Uncle 
 Tom " to redeem, by her ('' silly ?") " Sunny Memories," and 
 the egi'egious want of common sense, dignity, truth, talent, 
 and every lady-like quality discovered therein, and while the 
 world was still wondering after the chef d'oeuvre of her genius. 
 Without this prestige, and patronage, a " dismal universal 
 hiss " would have saluted the twaddling Yankee orator, whom 
 even a Topsy would have despised and laughed at. 
 
 Lecturing, I know, will siu'vive my attacks, and a thousand 
 such others. It is too often a nuisance and a mistake, but is 
 peculiarly popular in this age. It makes little deep im- 
 pression, but it keeps up a small and not unpleasant titilla- 
 tion in the public mind. It suits admirably that class of 
 ^jersons who are anxious to acquire the reputation of know- 
 ledge, without the trouble of study. It is an excellent 
 machinery for the creation of smatterers by smatterers. It 
 ranks pretty high in the catalogue of agreeable amusements, 
 and is a good substitute for the cai'd table or the theatre ; 
 but as a means of intellectual improvement or moral culture 
 it is of no gi-eat value. 
 
 I might have said much about the pleasures of authorship. 
 An author as he goes on loses much, indeed, of that delight 
 in composition which lie originally had. No more, by and 
 by, can he say, that his writings are — 
 
 " Conceived in rapture, and in fire begot."
 
 252 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 No more do the hours slip away like moments while he is 
 employed in inscribing his heart on his page. No more is his 
 sleep deliciously disturbed by the continuance of the excite- 
 ment of composition. No more as a thunder-cloud darkens 
 the air of his study, or as an autumn wind stirs the leaves of 
 the trees without it, does he feel his pen huri'yiug to record 
 the thoughts which seem shed from the careering elements 
 upon his soul. These joys fade, but they are succeeded by 
 quieter, deeper, and more continuous feelings, — by a greater 
 sense of ease and feeling of mastery. Instead of waiting for 
 the happy hour, and often waiting in vain, he now goes to 
 composition at all times with nearly equal relish, and if he 
 seldom rises so high, he never sinks so low as at first. Com- 
 position before was either a luxury or a torment ; it is now 
 a regular work and sober pleasure, and he knows the meaning 
 of the words — 
 
 " Years that bring the philosophic mind." 
 
 More frequently than at first does he stop to watch the 
 progress of his own work, and to adjust its proportions, and 
 if he be somewhat less of the poet, becomes more of the 
 artist. Yet while this is better for him and better for his 
 readers, he misses the wild joy and " first love of his espou- 
 sals," and continues to envy himself seated at his humble 
 desk in the east room of his mother's dwelling, now kneeling 
 down in despair in the midst of a sentence that he has begun 
 but cannot finish ; and now, when a thought has struck him 
 which seems to form a clue to his labyrinth, running out, ere 
 inscribing it, to the adjacent wood, and spending an hour of 
 solitary gladness, wandering through its silent glades, and 
 gazing at the fragments of the beautiful scenery beyond, 
 which come in like glimpses of glory through the trees. 
 What comparison between the pleasures of fame — though 
 that fame were as great as Shakspere's — and such young 
 joys as most authors feel at first 1 None whatever. 
 
 The pleasure of aiding young aspirants is one of the purest
 
 PUBLIC AND LITERARY LIFE. 253 
 
 and most exquisite in the literary life. I have had ample 
 experience in this matter. I cannot enumerate the authors 
 who have applied for advice in reference to their works or 
 MSS., and in scarcely one case have I declined to give it. 
 I lately packed up and returned sixteen MSS. in prose or 
 verse, some of them as large as pulpit Bibles. My experience 
 in this has taught me several lessons. I had no conception 
 before that so many young men and maidens, too, were 
 thinking and writing in a poetical way. The hundi'eds — 
 I sp^^ literally — of MSS. I have received within the last 
 nine yefei's have come from the most various quarters ; from 
 Wales, and from John o' Groat's house ; from Liverpool and 
 the heart of the Highlands ; from London, Bavaria, and the 
 centre of Australia ; they have been the compositions of both 
 sexes, and all occupations, ages, and intellects — shepherds, 
 ploughmen, tailors, tinsmiths, you-ng ladies, old ladies, old 
 gentlemen, wine-merchants, pattern-drawers, cattle-dealers, 
 clergymen, gentlemen of family and fortune, have been in- 
 cluded in the list. In my mode of dealing with them my 
 general plan has been this : — I have sought to discover the 
 particular talent that each of my correspondents possessed ; 
 if that was not decidedly poetical, I have discouraged them 
 from verse, and pointed out some field more suited for their 
 powers ; if they seemed to me to possess any kind or degree 
 'of genius, I have said to each, " Pei-ge, puer," but strongly 
 enjoined on them, first, not to use their gift as a crutch, but as 
 a staff; and, secondly, to cultivate it by stern study. If I 
 have erred, it has been, in general, on the side of lenity. 
 Of course, in these MSS. criticisms, I have often laboured 
 under the disadvantage of not knowing the authors person- 
 ally : if I had, it might and must have modified my judg- 
 ments, and taught me, if I saw either modesty or vanity, 
 self-love or earnest purj)Osc, predominant, to proportion my 
 praise or blame accordingly. This, I say, often must be the 
 case, and can be so in perfect consistency with candour and 
 truth. You cannot fully know a man's writings until you
 
 254 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 know himself. Amidst all this mass of poetry, there was, 
 of course, much rubbish ; but there was also much that was 
 excellent, and full of promise. A considerable number, perhaps 
 twenty, of those poems which I received in MS. have been 
 printed ; and two or three of them, I am proud to say, have 
 become the most popular poems of the day. 
 
 Some of these the public, as well as myself, have probably 
 overrated a little ; although this was to be expected from the 
 long interregnum in poetry which had taken place. I value 
 these New Poets, however, not merely in themselves, — and I 
 think them men of real genius, — but because they are the 
 promise of better things — the bright morning stars progno- 
 sticating the daAvning, it may be, of some new and mightier 
 orb of song. 
 
 Of patronage I myself had a little, and am grateful to 
 those who bestowed it, some of whom are still my true 
 friends. It was only a little, however ; and I soon felt that 
 whatever patronage one has, a man, in the long run, must 
 help himself; and that however sincere it be, it establishes 
 a false relation between the two parties, which often termi- 
 nates the friendship, especially if the only congeniality between 
 them be common pride. Sometimes the patron becomes 
 jealous of his protege ; sometimes the protege exclaims — 
 " I am grateful to that man for his kind offices — offices, I 
 am willing to believe, dictated not by vanity, but by kindly 
 feeling — but am I compelled, on that account, to be his 
 humble servant for life, to praise everything he writes ; and 
 if I discover any gi-eat deterioration in his works or career, 
 to refrain from saying so, provided always that I say it 
 openly, and, if possible, 'more in sorrow than in anger'?" 
 In many cases, the protege does as much for the patron as 
 the patron had done for him, and then — unless they really 
 are kindred spirits — they often square and close accounts. 
 My readers remember how glad Cleveland, in the " Pirate," 
 was, when he had saved Merton — his saviour's life — and was 
 thus freed from the obligation. So, sometimes, the protege
 
 PUBLIC AND LITERARY LIFE. 255 
 
 feels happy (although I caunot charge my own memoiy with 
 auy such feeling), wheu he has outpraised the praise of his 
 patron, and is free. 
 
 The pleasures of literary composition are accompanied, of 
 course, not only with anxiety but with much labour. I am 
 often asked, with real or affected wonder, how 1 can get 
 through so much work of various kinds 1 My answer is — 
 Sleep and system. I'^leep eight or nine houi's out of the 
 twelve, and I never write after dinner or supper. I never 
 havef-«t any time, written more than five hours a day, and I 
 read s^ Ineals and odd moments. At Edinburgh I hurt 
 myself, as I said, by sitting up late to study ; and when I 
 obtained a settled position, I said, " I shall throw down my 
 pen every night at nine ;" and, with the exception of three 
 several times in nineteen years, I have kept the i-esolution. 
 My present plan of life is this : — I rise at nine a.m. ; go into 
 a shower-bath ; breakfast and read till half-past ten ; write till 
 one, when I dine, walk out, and perform calls, visits to the 
 sick, ifec, return to tea at five, write till nine, sup and read 
 till eleven, when I uniformly go to bed. This sort of life, 
 which might appeal' to some monotonous, is diversified by 
 occasional trips to the country, by the exciting exercises of 
 the Sabbath, by the visits ©f friends with whom I love to 
 relax myself now and then ; and, above all, by intercourse 
 ^with some favourite little children, relations who visit me 
 each autumn, whoso chubby faces, yellow or dark curling 
 locks, laughing eyes, and pleasing prattle, constitute my 
 dearest earthly joy. 
 
 I name, in fine, here, intercourse with literary men, and 
 men of genius, as one of the greatest pleasures of a life of 
 letters, especially to one young and unhackneyed. I have 
 in some respects exliausted (as I shall have occasion to men- 
 tion again) the cream of the early feeling of " hero-worship." 
 Still I linger as I remember the delight with which I used 
 tp anticipate, or to enjoy meetings with some celebrated men. 
 I have recorded a few of these in a foregoing part of these
 
 256 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 Memoirs; and did space permit, I could expand on this 
 subject. On the whole, I have been pleased, although seldom 
 astonished or overpowered, by the conversation of men of 
 letters, I find light, pleasant gossip the common style of their 
 talk ; arguing, dissertation, controversy, or .monologue are 
 out of date. To this the principal exception is Carlyle, who, 
 as if from the pressure of some secret pain, pours out perpe- 
 tually a wild and strange soliloquy, which always compels his 
 auditors to join trembling with their mirth, and from which 
 they depart melancholy and unsatisfied, although deeply 
 interested and struck. He stirs every soul and every subject, 
 but settles none ; nay, seldom casts any real light on any. 
 lie leaves a sting behind him always, but it is the sting of 
 death. De Quincey says few memorable things, but keeps 
 up a stream of slow-welling wisdom, tinged now and then by 
 faint but beautiful gleams of imagination, and gently dis- 
 turbed by little jets of that exquisite humour you find in his 
 works. Talking the other day, for instance, of Cottle, Cole- 
 ridge's friend, he described him as the " author of three epic 
 poems, and a new kind of blacking." His manner is urbanity 
 itself, and you leave him with the impression that he is a 
 good as well as a great man. Leigh Hunt is full of boyish, 
 buoyant spirits, and this in such»an old man of sorrow strikes 
 you so much, that you can scarcely note his remarks. You 
 see the champagne bubbling, but forget to count or care for 
 the special drops of its poetic foam. I hope one day to 
 write an " Imaginary Conversation " between him and Pro- 
 fessor Wilson, two men that I think never met, but would 
 have loved each other in a minute if they had. Croly is a 
 noble, manly talker, a true Milesian lion in look, speaks 
 with authority, but has not a particle of pomp; is terribly 
 severe in his criticisms, but has a rough kindness in his 
 manner which wins your lieart. To use a vulgar expression, 
 " His bark is worse than his bite." He is loth to praise, but 
 when he does, it is with a mixture of discrimination and 
 generosity, which settles the question.
 
 PUBLIC AND LITEEARY LIFE. 257 
 
 Marston, of the " Patrician's Daughtei'," is one of the most 
 pleasing men I have met — gentle, high-bred, yet thoroughly un- 
 assuming. Bailey, of " Festus," is a delightful person — modest, 
 reserved, yet far from proud ; his conversation entirely free 
 from that unhealthy mysticism which sometimes infects his 
 poetry. Thomas Aird and Charles Mackay resemble each other 
 very much in the blended mildness and manhood of their 
 style of manners. A irtrs conversation is one of the sweetest and 
 most natural outflows of mind and heart I have ever listened 
 to. '-Erofessor Nichol is a rapid, frank, and vivid converser. 
 Maty'ficrwitt struck meas the best combination of the authoress 
 and the woman I ever saw ; the two elements blend, as well 
 as meet. Emerson of America is always on his guard — is 
 cold in seeming, and has at times an expression of eye which 
 is profound rather than pleasing, subtle rather than clear; 
 but he slips out now and then searching questions at, rather 
 than ideas of, nature and man. Garrison, of the same country, 
 has a brow like alabaster, an eye of mild and piercing intelli- 
 gence, and converses with the depth and dignity of a sage. 
 Charles Swain of Manchester has dark hair and eyes, is tall, 
 and looks like a poet. Archibald Alison is cold, still, and 
 silent as an iceberg. Pi'ofessor Blackie is bold, rattling, 
 fearless, and careless ; one who seems always about to sing, 
 and who often does burst out into snatches of German song. 
 "He has qxiite the look of an Italian impivvvisatore. John 
 Robertson, late of the Westminste7% and Samuel Brown, arc 
 both remarkable conversationists ; the one for strength some- 
 what jagged and abrupt, the other for elasticity, swiftness, 
 elegance, and beauty. Miall, of the Nonconformist, is dis- 
 tinguished by the thoughtful shrewdness and earnestness of 
 his talk. Hugh Miller seems in company to be always 
 pursuing some stern continuous train of thought, fi'om which 
 he looks u]) now and then to throw out remarks which do not 
 seem to come from the depth of his heart, or to interfere 
 with the secret under-current ; and whatever he be talking 
 of, his mind is always in the bowels of the earth. On
 
 258 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 the whole, however, I never met a man who came np to 
 my idea of a converser, with the breadth, copiousness, and 
 brilhance of Burke or Coleridge. Campbell was smart and 
 sententious; Wilson, aflSueut and animated, but loose in 
 thought and language ; Carlyle, powerful but unpleasing, at 
 least, on the reflection — you cannot long listen with delight 
 to the moan and splashing spray of a cataract; Chalmers was 
 too hurried and ebullient; and De Quincey is too slow and 
 constrained. The age, I suspect, of great talkers is gone, 
 nor have I discerned any germ of coming greatness in this 
 dii'edion in our rising men of genius. 
 
 As I have had, what is not very common, nearly an equal 
 trial of the clerical and of the literary life, it may be asked 
 what is my comparative estimate of the two 1 I think then, 
 in the first place, if mere competence, comfort, and quiet be 
 the objects of ambition, neither is very desirable. There are 
 few " high prizes " in either, and the prizes that exist can 
 only be reached after much toil and heart-burning. Clergy- 
 men, in Scotland at least, and litterateurs in Britain, belong, 
 in general, to what is called the " uneasy class ; " they are 
 neither rich nor poor, neither high nor low. What a contrast 
 clergymen present in comfort to flirmers, and to many in 
 trade ! Speculation (except in wives with fortunes !) is shut 
 against them. They are exposed, besides, to an Argus-eyed 
 scrutiny, and are often harshly condemned, and unjustly 
 suspected. Literary men, on the other hand,, while somewhat 
 more their own masters, are far more dependent on the 
 caprices of public taste, and their office is hardly considered, 
 as yet, so reputable. Those, again, who combine the charac- 
 ters of clergyman and litterateur have their own special 
 difficulties, and are too often treated as hybrids, and some- 
 times exposed to two fires. If we look to the two callings 
 from a higher point of view, and in the light of duty, there 
 can be no comparison. A literary man, however faithful he 
 be to his mission, conscious of its dignity, and anxious to 
 perform his work as " ever in his Great Taskmaster's eye,"'
 
 PUBLIC AND LITERARY LIFE. 259 
 
 cannot be the instrument of so much good, I am persuaded, 
 as the humblest and most hard-worked clergyman or city 
 missionary, who carries the Gospel to the poor and the igno- 
 rant, and whose presence is welcomed through a hundred 
 hovels as a messenger of light, comfort, and joy. "This is 
 true fame." 
 
 At the same time, the discharge of clerical duty is perfectly 
 consistent with, and ought to be more closely connected with 
 literary accomplishments, and a sympathy with the spirit of 
 the ag?. If there were more Charles Wolfs, Robert Halls, 
 John F8sfers, Thomas Chalmerses, and Thomas Arnolds, there 
 would be fewer Thomas Carlyles and John Sterlings. In my 
 own humble way I have sincerely and conscientiously sought 
 to unite and harmonize literature and the duties of a clergy- 
 man ; and however imperfectly I may have succeeded, I do not 
 regret the attempt, since I believe it has, in some instances, 
 made my voice be heard with greater deference, first, when I 
 spoke to Christians of the glories of genius and the charms 
 of literature, and far more when I spoke to young lovers of 
 literature, of the superior claims and infinitely higher merits 
 of the Book of God. This has comforted me under many 
 misrepresentations ; and should I be still called an Ishmaelite, 
 I lift up the name, and bind it as a crown to me, if that 
 word simply mean that I belong to no party in the Church, 
 and to no clique or coterie in literature ; but not, if it mean 
 that I am an enemy to literature or religion themselves, 
 although, as I shall afterwards show, convictions have grown 
 on me, that science, literature, philosopliy, and even our 
 present foi'ms of faith, arc dwindling and djang away in the 
 dawn of that bright and final revelation of Christ which 
 I expect, like a new sun, to illuminate a desperate world and 
 a distracted Church. 
 
 s2
 
 2G0 THE HISTOEY OF A MAN. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 REMINISCENCES OF SCENERY. 
 
 Who has not marked in his memoiy, with a white stone, 
 certain days, weeks, scenes, circumstances of peculiar enjoy- 
 ment, when the heart said, " It is good for me to be here," — 
 when tlie earth seemed lifted nearer to the skies — when a 
 softer gold was poured upon the autumn landscape, and 
 a browner glory on the streams and the woods — perhaps 
 hours of intercourse with the objects of passionate love ; or 
 single splendid days, standing out, amidst a succession of dark 
 ones, like silver birch-trees diversifying a wood of black firs ; 
 or meetings with kindred spirits, when the soul, imprisoned 
 before, burst out, like a Northern river suddenly thawed, and 
 rolled on in power and joy ; or evenings of spring or summer- 
 tide, so heavenly fair between the combined charms of sunset 
 and of the great rising moon, that men seemed walking like 
 gods, and women like angels, upon earth — and we thought of 
 ''an eve in a sinless world ;" or faces of maidens or children 
 that have gleamed on us in the streets, so beautiful as to 
 affect our imaginations and our dreams for ever, though we 
 were to see them no more ; or solitary walks along solitary 
 paths, in secret woods, or along barren moors, or 
 
 " Where deeply, darkly, far below, 
 Went sounding ou a lonely river ;" 
 
 and when "all power was given us," in meditation, over 
 subjects and realms of thought, strange and iiusubdued 
 befoi-e ; or certain scenes of surpassing beauty, shown in the 
 light of days that seemed created to reveal them in all their 
 glory? Some such recollections I have, in my chequered
 
 REMINISCENCES OF SCENERY. 261 
 
 life, almost all connected with beautiful natural scenery ; and 
 I now proceed to depict a few of those which are dearest to 
 my imagination. 
 
 I remember spending one very interesting day, in a peat- 
 moss to the south of Strath-Rennie, on the road to the Low- 
 lands. This was an extensive morass, whither the villagers 
 were wont, in June, to repair, to provide themselves with 
 winter fuel. I determined, in the year 1828, to join a party 
 of this kind, which was leaving the village, to spend one day of 
 veritasfelB toil under a burning sun. I wished a new sensation, 
 and' r got it. It was fine to rise at three in the morning, 
 and to see the eastern half of the northern horizon one red 
 line, pointing, like a finger, to the unrisen sun ; to hear the 
 earliest notes of birds ; to trample on the dewy grass ; to 
 admire the calm grey mountains, from wljich the mists of 
 night had risen, but which the beams of day had not yet 
 touched; to notice, by and by, the "morning spread upon 
 the mountains," peak telegraphing to peak, through a long, 
 lofty, and most rugged range, the fiict that the King of 
 glory had entered the sky, to climb a slow-winding road, 
 going up the hill, and from every point of ascent opening up 
 some new aspect of grandeur, beauty, or wildness ; to mix in 
 the glee, watch the flirtations, and listen to the stories of the 
 rustic party of lads and lasses, with whom I had mingled ; 
 *o feel myself, at last, fairly in the moss, and to commence 
 the day's work with the determination to be behind none of 
 my companions in diligence, and to snatch laurels from the 
 very bogs ! How I did work for some hours, hurling my 
 wheel-barrow with the wet peats, which the caster (as he was 
 called) had dug out ! How delicious, as the sun became hot^ 
 to quench our thirst at the large pails of buttermilk and whey 
 which were standing near! How I relieved the labour by 
 discourse with my next neighbour, about Irving's Millennium 
 (he was that summer in Scotland), and amused him by specu- 
 latinjx whether this moss would then be made to " blossom as 
 the rose !" How I felt for a while that sense of dignity in
 
 262 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 toil which all boys feel, as if to work made them all of a 
 sudden men amongst men ! How I enjoyed the meridian 
 rest of half-au-hour, and the repast of oat-cakes, cheese, and 
 milk ! How, as the day was descending toward afternoon, 
 I began to tii-e, to abuse the moss, and to tell my neighbour 
 that if I had a magic-glass, I would burn it at once to ashes ! 
 How at last I " recoiled into the wilderness," fairly took flight 
 homewards by a road I made for myself across the moors ; 
 and, a little before sunset, reached a dun mountain summit, 
 whence I saw a thousand hill-tops, which seemed like captives 
 in the train of the proud sun, who was shedding on them, as 
 if contemptuously, the last rays of his long day's triumph ! 
 What a sense of solitude and sublimity I had, seated alone 
 amidst these wide moorlands — only a few shepherds' huts, 
 a few sheep, and no human being in sight — my only compa- 
 nions the sun and the sun-smitten summits of the everlasting 
 hills ! How that high emotion passed away, and I came down 
 subdued and saddened, and reached my home about the same 
 time with Kilmany — 
 
 " When the ingle shone with an eery gleam, 
 When the sky was I'ed, and the air was still, 
 And the reek of the cot hung over the plain. 
 Like a little wee cloud in the world its lane, 
 Late, late in the gloaming Kilmany came hame." 
 
 And what deep yet rich and dream-haunted slumbers that 
 night were mine ! 
 
 Two years afterwards, I, iu company with a young relation, 
 visited the Trosachs. My friend was a youth of fine taste, 
 accomplishments, almost of genius ; and the journey, I trust, 
 lives in his recollection, under the sun and winds of Australia. 
 We went from Glasgow, through Drymen to Aberfoyle, and 
 on the road caught a glimpse of Loch Lomond, with all its 
 isles gleaming in the suu, who was setting behind the dark 
 Alps of Arrochar. Next day, we stretched away westward, 
 by the side of Loch Ard, the lake so exquisitely described in 
 '• Rob Roy," and found it the same sheet of rock-surrounded
 
 REMINISCENCES OF SCENERY. 263" 
 
 and birch-shaded silver, as it had appeared in the days of 
 Francis Osbaldistone. Farther up, we came to the solitary 
 Loch Con, alluded to in the " Lady of the Lake," — 
 
 " To scare the herons from Loch Con ; " 
 
 and although no herons were \'isible, we were much pleased 
 with it, and the heathy hills around, over which Ben-Lomond 
 just showed his proud^ forehead. Often since has my fancy 
 travelled to the sweet yet stern stillness of that " very solitary 
 placr,* Loch Con. Here we struck to the north, and, crossing 
 a ^te^ tnountain, came down upon the south-west side of 
 Loch Ketturin. We found a small ferry-house, which was 
 also an inn, with a primitive sign of slate, ou which were 
 chalked the names of the articles of entertainment to be found 
 therem. A Highland boatman conveyed us across the lake, 
 and we thought of Charon. It was inexpressibly delightful, 
 yet solemn, to be ferried through these fresh curling waves, 
 and toward these unknown romantic shores, while strange 
 blue peaks were staring at us over the top of the nearer hills 
 surrounding the lake. I would give years of common life for 
 the sensations of that one half-liour spent on those charmed 
 evening waters. Arrived on the other side, we passed a place 
 of graves, and felt the awe of death mingling with the beauty 
 of nature in impressing our hearts. It was a quiet grey May 
 "Evening, in which we entered the gorge of the Trosachs ; 
 and we soon felt that this was the very light in which it 
 should be seen. How smoothly the lake slumbered ! and 
 the sky, and the rocks, painted on its bosom, seemed but the 
 visions of its repose. There was not a breath of wind to 
 disturb one tress of the young locks of the birch-trees, which 
 grew around in thousands. A mantle of uniform yet light- 
 some cloud lay over the southern sky, touching, but not 
 concealing, the majestic summit of Benvenue, who leant 
 down his masses of rock and heath over J'^llen's isle ; while, 
 toward the north-east, a darker hue rested congenially on 
 Ben- An, whose bald brow, scathed sides, and lowering aspect,
 
 264 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 were almost startling, as he seemed suddenly to look in upon 
 the lovely scene, like a giant of hell, overseeing from behind 
 some happy earthly company. As we went deeper into the 
 pass, the day darkened into twilight, and night closed over us, 
 when we entered our inn. How sweetly we went to sleep, 
 exclaimino: — " We have seen the Trosachs at last !" and what 
 a joyous reveil my friend sounded, when, rushing to my 
 bed in the morning, a copy of the " Lady of the Lake " in his 
 hand, he opened the shutters, and showed me Benvenue j 
 quoting, at the same time, Scott's lines : — 
 
 " High on the south, huge Benvenue 
 Down to the lake his masses threw, 
 Rocks, crags, and mounts confusedly hurl'd, 
 The fragments of an earlier world." ^ 
 
 All that day we spent seeing the usual sights; the one of 
 wliich struck us most — no, the word struck is at once too 
 strong and too weak for our purpose — which affected us 
 most, was Loch Achray, that " lonely lake," that metaphor of 
 peace, the very ripples of which are dreams, and 
 
 " The lark's shrill carol from the cloud 
 Seems for the scene too gaily loud." 
 
 Next day we pursued our journey to Callender, where we 
 were storm-stayed all night, and compelled to prosecute our 
 walk the next morning, though it was Sunday, to the village 
 of Comrie, famous for its earthquakes and romantic scenery. 
 We passed down " Glenartney's hazel shade," — a fine valley 
 winding amidst copsewood, and beside a roaring mountain- 
 stream, called, I think, the Roughrill; and at an angle of the 
 glen I saw, xmder a serene, sunless Sabbath light, the fair 
 valley of the Earn, with the white church of Comrie standing 
 as the centre of the scene; a monument to Lord Melville 
 towering above on a grey crag, which surmounts a sea of 
 copsewood; and behind, great round mountains, specked hei'e 
 and there with snow, cairying off the view into remoter wil- 
 dernesses. There was much in the scene which reminded me 
 of my native and fai'-distant Strath-Rennie. • J^^vtA-^
 
 REMINISCENCES OF SCENERY. 265 
 
 I have often spent days of much gratification at the Burn, 
 Kincardineshire, near Montrose. This is a scene com]iara- 
 tively little known, except in its own district ; but few places 
 exhibit a finer combination of beauties. Nature has done 
 much for it. It has hollowed out a pass of six miles in 
 length; it has surrounded that pass with heathy hills, and 
 poured through it the North Esk, a rapid mountain stream, 
 which, from the peculiar nature of the rocks through which 
 it flows, assumes the colour generally of dark-purple wine, 
 an3y^ter rain, becomes black as blood mingled with ink. 
 Art, ■c1|,-ain, has done her part in covering the sides of the pass 
 with the richest and most varied woodlands ; in spanning the 
 stream with, here, a bridge of iron-wire, overlooking a cata- 
 ract, up which you can often see the salmon leaping as if on 
 wings of spray, and, there, with a single arch of stone, which 
 for more than a century has looked calmly down on a boiling- 
 gulf of waters; in leading all manner of walks through the 
 scenery; in erecting a fine mansion-house behind, and plant- 
 ing a garden, where dark pines hover over hothouses, and a 
 wall separates a wilderness of wild rasps and brambles from 
 the richest products of the tropics ; and in surmounting the 
 whole with a tower of other years, standing lonely, at the very 
 head of the pass, on its lofty crag, and looking down in pen- 
 sive pride on the gorgeous chaos of hills, woods, crags, and 
 i» waters, as if it were still all its own. This scene I have seen 
 in all seasons and circumstances. 1 saw it first as one of a 
 gay party, who had thrown for that day all care to the winds 
 — whose merry and innocent laughter seemed that of fairies 
 amidst the solitudes, and was not materially disturbed even 
 when a thunder-storm drove them within doors for shelter. 
 And I have wandered in it alone in summer, when I was as 
 closely concealed amidst the thick foliage as is a thought 
 amidst the inaccessible and curving ways of the brain ; in 
 autumn, when the red heather, the yellow corn, the green 
 leaves, and the purple river, formed an earthly rainbow of 
 colour; and in winter, when moonlight was finding its scarce
 
 266 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 resisted road, through the thin, sere fohage, to the unchanged 
 and rejoicing waters. I once heard a man of some talent say 
 of a bridge in Perthshire, that if he were a blackbird, wher- 
 ever he might wander, he would return and die at the bridge 
 of Strowan. If I, on the other hand, had, even as a man, my 
 choice of a spot to die at, it would be, not excepting my 
 native village, the neighbourhood of the Burn ; and were 
 disembodied spirits permitted, in Byron's fine thought, to 
 choose some particular scene for an eternal sanctuary, mine 
 should be found by the side of these dark rolling waters, 
 those shadow-like bridges, and those clustering woods. 
 
 But I must hurry on to describe two or three other scenes, 
 which, if not quite so dear to my heart, have equally im- 
 pressed my imagination. I remember spending, in the 
 society of two or three of the most distinguished men in 
 Scotland, one delightful day at Glammis Castle. This lies in 
 the valley of Strathmore. It is a vast old red tower, sur- 
 rounded by great trees, which hum in its ears an everlasting 
 hymn of praise, and by rich level meadows. In the interior 
 there is a chapel, filled with a " dim religious light," and 
 painted all round by a fine female hand of some past 
 century, which impressed us all particularly. We were of 
 various creeds — some Dissenters, and some belonging to the 
 Established Church of Scotland, and some, " or I missay," of 
 no church or creed whatever — and yet we had been scarcely 
 a minute in this chapel when I noticed that we had all sponta- 
 neously and at once uncovered our heads. The " air became 
 religion, and we bent in solemn worship of the great of old." 
 We saw also the chamber where Malcolm the Second, of Scot- 
 land, was murdered. The view from the leads of the Castle 
 we found magnificent, including the long level plain extending 
 from near Perth to the German Ocean — the loch of Forfar to 
 the east — the Seidlaw-hills to the south — and in the north 
 the Grampian ridge, commanded by the huge peak of Schie- 
 hallion, which seemed a shoulder of Atlas propping up the 
 sky. It was somewhat terrific to look down over the battle-
 
 REMINISCENCES OP SCENERY. 267 
 
 ments (particularly to one of tlie party, a great poet, -whose 
 " Hell of Sleep" is produced by dreams of fiilling over pre- 
 cipices and lofty buildings, and who consequently is, in 
 Solomon's language, " afraid of that which is high"), and to 
 see the dizziness of distance, broken only by the blue-glancing 
 wings and white bosoms of the swallows or martins which 
 were skimming the air below, and recall the words of 
 Shakspere, applied t& a castle much farther north — 
 
 ^ ^ " This guest of summer, 
 
 *•"*■ The temple-haunting martlet, does approve 
 "'••■'' By his loved mansionry that the heavens' breath 
 Smells wooingly here." 
 
 It was, I think, that same summer, that I, in company 
 
 with a little party, visited Loch-na-Gar, that monument 
 
 to Byron, piled up by the hand of Nature, ages ere she had 
 
 produced the poet. We had come across from the Spital 
 
 of Glenshee, in the morning of a fine warm June day ; had 
 
 lunched at Braemar, and hired a guide and two ponies, for 
 
 the summit of the mountain. The road led us first along the 
 
 banks of the Dee, which we trod with great enthusiasm, 
 
 repeating lines originally addressed to the river in Galloway 
 
 of the same name — 
 
 " Flow on, lovely Dee, flow on, thou sweet river, 
 Thy banks' sweetest stream shall be dear to me ever." 
 
 After passing the house of Invercauld, and the bold crag 
 Cluny, we struck up through the forest of Ballochbowie, a 
 place which has ever since been my " standard of woodland 
 scenery." What prodigious pines, shedding each a thunder- 
 cloud of shade from his old pile of foliage ! What solemn 
 avenues beneath ! What a fierce stream sounds, foams, tears 
 its tortured way through a rocky channel to join the Dee! 
 And how finely does the dark brow of Loch-ua-Gar ever and 
 anon look over the glades, as if to remind the traveller that 
 he is the goal to which the journey is tending, and that the 
 mighty pines of the forest are only the ornaments of his
 
 268 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 footstool! But is he in very deed angry at us? or is it the 
 spirit of Byron that, offended with his worshippers, is now 
 gathering all the mists of the mountain into a black frown ? 
 Be this as it may, while plodding up the steep sides, and 
 " larding" with perspiration the heather and the sprinkled 
 snows, we have the mortification to see a thick, and for that 
 evening final mist, slowly preoccupying the ground, and when 
 we reach the summit we can see nothing;. Nothing! — it is 
 the grandest spectacle we have yet seen in our life. The mist 
 is not a slow and sullen one — it is alive, and is streaming up 
 in floods, in oceans, upon the breath of a strong wind. Some- 
 times that wind breaks it in sunder, and then, far down at 
 the foot of precipices hundreds of feet in height, you see 
 masses of snow in the hollows of the hill. Sometimes a 
 sharp beam from the sinking sun cuts the curtain as with a 
 sword, and the valley of the Dee gleams out for one intense 
 instant, and is gone. Turn behind you, and behold 1 through 
 another momentary breach in the mist, you see, far below, a 
 sullen loch, which reminds you of the " Last Lake of God's 
 wrath" in Aird's transcendent " Devil's Dream." Beside are 
 the silent cairn, a few bushes of cranberries, and a few spots 
 full of the cold unquenchable life of unmelted snow. The 
 spirit of Byron seems nearer still, and yet it excites not terror, 
 but enthusiasm; for from all our voices, hark ! there starts 
 simultaneously the immortal song — 
 
 " Away, ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses, 
 In you let the minions of luxury rove ; 
 Restore me the rocks where the snoiv-flahe reposes, 
 If still ye are sacred to freedom and love." 
 
 Whatever the merits of the singing, the effect of the 
 song, struggling with mist and storm, and triumphing over 
 both, was touching to the verge of the sublime. Never, at 
 least, was a sincerer tribute presented on the altar of genius, 
 than was then offered, amidst mist and summer snow, on the 
 dark shrine of Loch-na-Gar. Of the character of Byron, I
 
 REMINISCENCES OF SCENERY. 269 
 
 am no admirer, nor would I compare him to Shakspere, 
 Milton, Dante, or even Wordsworth, in lofty poetic power ; 
 but somehow — and many, I believe, feel the same — 1 think 
 ten times oftener about him and his poetry than about any 
 of the rest. 
 
 The mist now began to thicken and to reinforce itself ft-om 
 the shades of night, and we had to descend. Our guide, as 
 we believe often happens in mists, became confused, and 
 took us down the wrong side of the mountain. When we 
 reat^feed a stream at the foot of the hill, he told us, ere he 
 r^turti^d toward Braemar, to follow its course, and it would 
 bring us to the Spital of Glen-Mick, where we could obtain 
 a bed. We followed the sti'eara accordingly for several miles, 
 but no house appeared. We became certain that he had 
 made us lose our way, — no agreeable assurance amidst these 
 lonely tracks. Entirely exhausted, we lay down for half- 
 an-hour"s repose. It was a position more romantic than 
 pleasing, — " our lodging on the cold ground," our provisions 
 consumed, the night, although it was the summer solstice, 
 chilly and drizzling, a brawling stream singing our lullaby, 
 and a hundred heathy mountains stretching obscurely around. 
 We soon got up, and pursued our wanderings, our sole guide 
 still the stream, till, at last, about three in the morning, we 
 emerged into an open valley, and were '' aware " of a river, 
 a bridge, and a village ; but what village, bridge, or river, we 
 knew not. We knocked at one of the houses to ask where 
 we were, and a red-capped head peered out cautiously, and 
 we were informed, in answer to our query, that this was 
 " Crathay-on-the-Dee," — words which, simple as they were, 
 had then, and have still, a strange wild charm, and their 
 sound seems perfect mountain melody. The place has since 
 become famous through its nearness to Balmoral. There 
 wa.s no inn in Ciathay ! and, thoroughly tired, we had yet to 
 cross the bridge, and drag our limbs four miles further down 
 the river, ere we came to a little white-washed way-side 
 hospiinm, where, by dint of loud and desperate knocking.
 
 270 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 we roused the inmates, and obtained entrance, refreshment, 
 and rest. 
 
 A few weeks afterwards, I went up from Banff by the 
 banks of the Deveron, to the bridge of Alva, — an enchanting 
 walk through copsewood and crags, and rendered more so by 
 the presence of delightful society. T saw, too, about the 
 same time, the Bullers of Buchan, — which rather disappointed 
 me, — and Slaines Castle, standing right over a rock, which 
 shadows the ocean, and resounding continually with the clang 
 of sea-fowl, and the roar of the waves which have beat on it 
 for centuries, and ai'e still ever renewing the hopeless siege. 
 Dunottar Castle, — that gigantic antiquity, resembling rather 
 a town than a tower, in ruins, and with the memory of the 
 Covenanting sufferers adding a dim immemorial glory to its 
 other charms, — I did not visit till years afterwards. I re- 
 member, too, one charming day spent on the river Findhorn. 
 Few days are wholes — most, even of our happy ones, are 
 fragmentary, and full of gaps ; but this was a subdued but 
 perfect jjoem. The sunny, breezy day — the extensive wood- 
 lands, newly clothed by the hand of June in their glossiest 
 green — the stream, so pure and so impetuous, like a wayward 
 but innocent child ; here, bridled by extempore bridges of 
 wood, and there, overlooked by beetling crags, with fir-trees 
 growing over the gulf (round which to fold our arm, and 
 hang sheer over a descent of 300 feet, was a fearful joy) — the 
 mansion of Belugas, standing apart from the river, amidst 
 its rich lawns and laurels, and suggesting the name of its 
 former proprietor, the gifted and warm-hearted Sir T. D. 
 Lauder, author of the "Wolfe of Badenoch," and that 
 glowing, eloquent book on the " Moray Floods," — the fine 
 hraes surmounting the woody margin of the Findhorn, and 
 swelling up behind into bold mountains, and, above all, the 
 heronry on the lower part of the stream, consisting of large 
 old trees, dead below, but above forming nests for these 
 beautiful hybrids between the fish and the bird, hundreds of 
 which, at the clapping of our hands, rose from their nests in
 
 REMINISCENCES OF SCENERY. 271 
 
 fear and clamour, and flew away, cutting every variety of 
 circle and semicircle with their wings in the air. These 
 features of the scene, along with the society of two respected 
 friends, one of whom may possibly read this narrative in the 
 Southern Hemisphere, served to crown that day and that 
 river-side with " a peculiar diadem." 
 
 Peebles, too, Inverleithen, Clovenford, Meigle-hill, Gala- 
 shiels, Melrose Abbey, and Abbotsford, I have visited, and 
 could tell something new, had I time, about them all. I 
 shaiijiever forget the first time I reached Peebles, running 
 dowiiito the river-side, and lapping a little of its water. 
 Cold-blooded folks may laugh, but that first taste of the 
 Tweed is to me a pleasing memory. I never got the length 
 of " grey Loch Skene," or the Grey Mare's Tail, or St. Mary's 
 Loch ; but there is another little lake far north of and less 
 known than these, which has to me a deep interest. This is 
 Loch Lea, in Kincardineshire. The road to it opens up 
 beyond the Burn already described, and conducts us through 
 a winding, unequal, but very interesting glen, which, after 
 exhibiting at its foot many patches of corn, yellowing amidst 
 thick green copsewood and birch-trees, fades and darkens 
 gradually into a stern, woodless, and rocky defile, which 
 emerges on a solitaiy loch, lying " dern and dreary " amidst 
 silent hills. It is one of those lakes which divides the distance 
 . between the loch and the tarn, being two miles in length and 
 one in breadtli. Tlie hills, which are stony and savage, sink 
 directly down upon its brink. A house or two are all the 
 dwellings in view. On the west, one bold sword-like summit, 
 Craig Mac Skeldie by name, cuts the air, and relieves the 
 monotony of the other mountains. There is a churchyard 
 at the east end, where lies Ross, the author of the " Fortunate 
 Shepherdess." He was the schoolmaster of the parish, and 
 died at a great age. He was a friend of James Beattie, and 
 one of tliL best Scottish poets who preceded Burns. A 
 fitting resting-place he has found in that calm rural burying- 
 place, beside " the rude forefathers of the hamlet ;" short,
 
 272 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 sweet, flower-besprinkled grass covering his dust, the low 
 voice of the lake sounding a few yards from his cold ear, and 
 a simple gi-avestone uniting with the mountains of his native 
 parish, to form his memorial. " Fortunate Shepherd " shall 
 we call him, to have obtained a grave so intensely charac- 
 teristic of a Scottish poet! Once, in 1847, while waiting 
 for my party who had climbed Craig Mac Skeldie, when 
 the day had deepened into twilight, and the descending 
 mists made the evening dark almost as night, I plunged into 
 the waters of Loch Lea, which were beginning to swell with 
 the wdnd, and seldom enjoyed a sensation so exquisitely 
 romantic, as when swimming in the solitary and darkened 
 lake. The celebrated Thomes Guthrie of Edinburgh dearly 
 loves this lake, lives beside it for months at a time, and is 
 often seen rowing his lonely boat in the midst of it, by 
 sunlight and by moonlight too. In coming up the glen, we 
 pass an ancient battle-field, where heaps of grey stones 
 mark the resting-places of the dead. I was still more struck 
 with the opening up of a glen, called Glen Mark, or Murk — 
 "the dark^leu." Dark, indeed, it is, and winds up, as if 
 tremblingly, amidst waste and dusky hills, — such a glen as 
 you could conceive a desperate man going up alone, in an 
 October eve, to meet and sell himself to a demon. 
 
 I once paid a visit to the braes of Balquhidder. This is 
 a spot seldom visited, even by the thousands who sing the 
 famous song, or who read the novel of " Rob Roy," whose dust 
 slumbers in the churchyard there. I found the place the 
 quietest and most serene spot I had ever seen in the High- 
 lands. It might have suited the resting-place of a poet, 
 rather than of a Highland robber. Wordsworth has glorified 
 the repose of Glenalmain — the narrow glen where Ossian 
 is said to sleep— a glen not far from this spot. But Bal- 
 quhidder might have been the graveyard of Wordsworth 
 himself, who of all poets most sympathised with nature's 
 solitudes and serenities, — who, as with an ear of fairy fine- 
 ness, seemed to hear a melody in the everlasting silence of
 
 REMINISCENCES OF SCENERY. 273 
 
 rocks, valleys, and lakes. Balquhidder is one of those nooks 
 or quiet eddies in the stream of the Highlands, which are 
 more interesting to some than the bolder and sterner features 
 of its landscapes. It is a long valley, uniting a succession of 
 little lakes, and surrounded by soft green hills. The church- 
 yard, with the fiery dust of Rob Roy cooled and quieted in 
 one of the sepulchres, seems the centre of the scene, and to 
 breathe out repose upon it all. A little below, a bridge is in 
 sight, standing amidst still meadows, and with still waters 
 and*"geutle flotillas of foam creeping below. There is but 
 one ocf)Vct in the landscape which threatens to distm-b, by 
 adding grandeur to, this scene of perfect beauty. It is the 
 high peak of Ben Voirlich, starting up on the east, at an 
 abrupt, authoritative angle, above a range of inferior summits, 
 and, as we thought, rather jarring on the unity of the 
 prospect, otherwise inimitably rounded in its rest. 
 
 To the north of Monti'ose there is a spot of peculiar and 
 terrible interest, which even yet peasants and school-boys 
 hurry past at eventide. It is an old churchyard, standing on 
 the brink of the sea, which here is beat back by bold crags, 
 and sometimes caught in deep pits. In that churchyard 
 stands a gravestone, which is remarkable for a tragic story. 
 About thirty years ago, there lived in Montrose a lawyer, 
 named George Beattie. He was a wit, a poet, a man of 
 generous heart, and a general favourite. He had gained 
 considerable local fame by a witty poem in imitation of " Tam 
 o' Shanter," entitled " John of Arnha'." He had courted a lady 
 in the neighbourhood of Montrose, who lived on a farm, at a 
 point where the South Esk makes a beautiful bend round a high 
 red scaur, ere it prepares to plunge into the deep. She had- 
 favoured his addresses, and the marriage was an understood 
 thing. Unexpectedly, however, an uncle died, and left her 
 a large fortune. Beattie was rather a poor man, and in an 
 evil hour, aspiring to a higher alliance, she suddenly broke 
 up the intimacy, and soon after married another. Beattie 
 straightway formed a resolution to destroy himself, and set 
 
 T
 
 274 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 about it with a coolness and concentration of mind almost 
 unparalleled in the annals of suicide. He first aiTanged his 
 affairs, aiid made his will. He then sat down, and wrote 
 a long, calm, clear, la wyei"-like,. account of the whole trans- 
 action, which is still, and shall always ""^irtsain, in MS. 
 I have read it, and was astonished at its coolness and 
 firmness. He was in the habit of giving an annual dinner 
 to his more intimate friends ; he gave it that year as usual. 
 I know a gentleman who was present, and who assures me 
 that he never saw Beattie more entertaining and delightful. 
 He then walked calmly out to this lone churchyard, laid 
 himself down on a certain spot which he had marked in his 
 will as the spot where he wished to be entombed, and blew 
 out his brains. He was buried according to his desire, and 
 
 " Nejitune now doth weep for aye 
 O'er his low grave." 
 
 This event produced an unparalleled sensation in the 
 district. The deepest sympathy was shown to the unfor- 
 tunate victim. The lady who had used him so ill was hooted 
 and stoned whenever she entered Montrose, and strange 
 stories weri? told of her midnights, and eventually of her 
 death-bed. And often still do pilgrims repair northwards 
 to snatch a moral, and to obtain a sublime shudder, from 
 poor Beattie's sea-washed sepulchre. 
 
 Not long ago, in one of those sudden longings for a new 
 glimpse of the scenery of my native land, which frequently 
 come over me in the autumn, I took a rapid run to the pass 
 of Killiecrankie. In entering Dunkeld, I was delighted to 
 see the new railway advancing, and thought what a surprise 
 and luxury of prospect it was preparing for strangers from 
 the south, in the sudden burst upon their view when they 
 pass Bii-nam Hill, — of that delicious little valley surrounding 
 the village, — of Invar — of the Bridge, — the cathedral, — the 
 Tay, — and the magnificent strath to the eastward. The road 
 from Dunkeld to Monlin-Earn is beyond praise, especially as
 
 EEMINISCENCES OF SCENERY. 275 
 
 I saw it, with the ripe corn bathing the holms, and meadows, 
 and the sides of the hills, in gold, and with the afternoon autumn 
 sun pouring its mellowest rays on the river and the woods. 
 Near Pitlochrie, the country becomes barer. AYest from it, 
 however, as we approached the entrance of the Pass, the 
 woods began to cluster in more richly upon the road, while 
 a great green hill of vpines stood up like an island from a 
 sea of woodland on the west. As we entered the Pass, twi- 
 ligjjt came slowly down, like a stately stage-curtain ; and 
 while^ooking aloft to the two vast mountains on both sides, 
 around, to the thick birches and pines, and beneath to the 
 unseen gulf^ whence the stream was sending up a choked 
 and tortured cry, we could appreciate a story told us by an 
 old man whom we met, — that when the soldiers of General 
 - Mackay, in pursuit of Claverhouse, came to a certain point 
 in the Pass, they recoiled, and said they could go no farther, 
 for this was the mouth of hell. The very road, as it entered 
 the yawning gloom, seemed timid and hashed for fear. 
 A little way farther, we were solaced by the spectacle of a 
 light, sparkling out cheerily from the left side of the valley. 
 It had a most pleasing yet startling effect, as it shone across 
 the abyss, like the first lamp of Heaven appearing to one 
 crossing, Dante-like, from the Mount of Purgatory. Farther 
 on still, the way turns westward towards Blair- Athole. Here 
 ''we met several persons ; and after various inquiries, (some of 
 the worthy natives had never heard of Clavei'house !) we 
 ascertained the field where the stone stands marking the spot 
 where some say that he fell. Our readers mast know that it 
 was his tactique to allow the soldiers of Mackay to deploy 
 from the Pass into the level ground to the west, ere he 
 charged them. He drove them back, but was himself shot 
 — some of the people at Killiecrankie say, through a crevice 
 in his mail, as he was stooping near a well, which they point 
 out, to give drink to his horse. ' This well, however, is remote 
 from the wood behind the corn-fiold, where the better in- 
 formed decide him to have fallen. We did not, however, tm-n 
 
 T 2
 
 276 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 aside to look at the spot wliere the bloody ruffian met his 
 deserved doom, but pursued our -way to Blair-Athole. 
 
 Next day we went, ere breakfast, to the Duke's seat, and 
 thence a mile or two up the Tilt. "We were disgusted with 
 the long avenue of Rowan ti'ees, leading up to the house. 
 A Rowan tree ought to be a rarity, and stand alone. It is 
 emphatically the rvlld mountain-ash, and a row of Rowan 
 trees is as great an impertinence as a leash of eagles. By the 
 way, there are two magnificent eagles in cages shown here. 
 One especially seemed the very ideal of the king of birds ; 
 and his eager eye, quivering talons, broad wings, and proud 
 bearing, combined to say, — " I am not where I ought to be ; 
 oh for the summit of Ben-y-Gloe !" I was struck, as I 
 looked at him, and provoked too, by his resemblance to an 
 owl, and thought of the brotherhood of Jerome and Napoleon 
 Buonaparte. Christopher North says, " Every owl is an 
 eagle" (both being of the genus " Falco") ; but, alas ! on the 
 same principle, every eagle is an owl. While pacing the 
 gai'den, I asked our old guide if he liked Athole-brose 
 (a compound of milk, honey, and whisky, which the people in 
 this country drink at all hours), and whether it were not an 
 improvement to leave out the whisky. " Na," he answered, 
 " that wad make it owre soft in the natur ! " 
 
 The river, the rocks, and the waterfalls of the Tilt are 
 exquisitely beautiful. I did not remember till afterwards 
 that it was on one of the seats along this stream that Professor 
 Walker describes Burns throwing himself down, in a moonlit 
 autumn eve, and giving himself ujj to a " tender, abstracted, 
 and voluptuous enthusiasm of imagination." After breakfast 
 we returned back through the Pass, but were persuaded 
 by a fine, genial Englishman we liad met, an architect from 
 Pimlico, to take a detour from the high road along the side 
 of the river, where he kindly acted as our guide, and showed 
 us all the well-known beauties of the lower Pass, — the 
 waterfall, the deep pool, the high rocks, the stone commemo- 
 rating the tread of Her Majesty's feet, &c. The day was
 
 REMINISCENCES OF SCENERY. 277 
 
 beautiful. There had been a slight drizzle in the morning, 
 and this, along with the bright sun and their own uncoined 
 silverr, made the birch-trees shine with a sparkling brilliance 
 I cannot describe. I was equally struck with the colour of 
 the river (the Garie), as I had been with that of the Tummell 
 and the Tilt ; that is, perfectly lustrous, like green marble, 
 from the purity of the streams, and from the slaty and 
 pebbly character of the channels. To these rivers alone, I can 
 fully apply the words of the song — 
 
 " Flow on, thou shininrj river !" 
 
 Altogether, I was enchanted with this famous Pass. It is 
 not only worth seeing^ but worth going to see, and going to 
 see oftener than once. 
 
 I have reserved Glencoe for the last of the little descrip- 
 tions in this chapter, because (having never seen Loch 
 Coriskin in Skye or Loch Aven in Aberdeenshire, which are 
 probably grander still) I consider it the most awfully mag- 
 nificent scene (I had almost said "being;" its idiosyncrasy is 
 so tremendously distinct, horrent, and peculiar, that you 
 sometimes think of it as alive, with a savage life of its own) 
 my eyes have ever rested on. It is a scene which, strange to 
 say, has seldom been sung, and never adequately, by poet. 
 Wilson has nowhere described it ; he calls it only " that 
 , dreadful valley of Glencoe." Mrs. Johnstone, in " Clan- 
 Albin," comes near it — the scene of her novel is in the next 
 glen, but she never crosses the ridge. Nor has Scott, if I 
 remember aright, ever pictured it, either in his pi'ose or his 
 poetry. 
 
 We entered the valley from the side of Ballahulish ; and as 
 we ascended in our car, I amused my companions by reading 
 aloud a description of Glencoe, by Dr. MacCulloch — a descrip- 
 tion so gi-ossly unlike and so miserably written, that we 
 welcomed every sentence with a peal of laughter. We came 
 to a few cottages situated on a rich green meadow, near 
 which, Talfourd says, " the wild myrtle grows in great profu-
 
 278 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 sion," although we did not happen to observe this. Here, 
 meeting a mountaineer, we inquired if he could tell us where 
 the spot of the celebrated massacre of Glencoe was 1 ' He 
 replied that " the mas&SLkrai/, he believed, was held behind 
 that little spirit-hoose," pointing to a small inn by the way- 
 side — an answer which by no means tended to abate our 
 risible emotions ; the idea of a massacre being held, like a 
 public meeting, or soiree, seemed so ludicrous. Leaving this 
 celebrated spot behind us, we hurried up the banks of the 
 river, to reach the Pass. The name of the stream is Cona — 
 truly the most musical and romantic name that was ever 
 borne by river. In its two simple sounds, the Italian and 
 the Gaelic tongues seem to meet and embrace each other. 
 What famous river — Tiber, Thames, Danube, Ilissus, Rhine, 
 Rhone, Tay, Clyde, Forth, Amazons, (fee. — can compare in 
 beauty of sound, aye, or in grandeur of scenery, with the 
 Conal We cannot forget, too, that the Cona was Ossian's 
 stream, and that to its waters he has lent all the magic of his 
 poetry. The stream itself is in one place wild and brawling, 
 and in another soft and gentle. The first object in the glen 
 that struck us specially was a bold black mountain, rising up 
 on our right, with a deep cut along its side, like the gash 
 which the sword left on the face of Le Balafre in " Quentin 
 Durward." This is called Ossian's Cave, and we fancied the 
 grey -haired and stone-blind bard standing at the mouth, with 
 the '• harp of Selma " in his hand, and pouring out his 
 plaintive minstrelsy j the Cona from beneath bearing a burden 
 to his song, and the little lake which lurks below stealthily 
 catching the outline of his majestic shape — third warrior, 
 third poet, third ghost. Something in the rugged aspect of 
 this mountain reminded me of a dissolving view I had seen 
 in London of Mount Sinai, and I called the hill Mount Moses. 
 It seemed a duplicate of that tremendous mount " that might 
 be touched." Further on, the valley widened, and the path 
 rapidly ascended, till we came to a somewhat elevated point, 
 whence the whole bi'oad prospect of the Glen burst upon us.
 
 REMINISCENCES OF SCENERY. 279 
 
 The valley is not a narrow and confined one, as some of the 
 tourists, who seem to have passed through it blind, assert ; 
 it is, as Talfourd more truly says, " a huge valley, between 
 mountains of rock, receding from each other till a field of air 
 of several miles' breadth lies between their summits." But 
 these summits, who can describe 1 Conceive two streets of 
 a city, which had been ruined by an earthquake, or blasted 
 by a storm of fire, sii^denly enlarged and exalted into moun- 
 tains, three or four thousand feet high ; or conceive two 
 rafi^^ of mountain- waves, when the sea was at the wildest, 
 ar>-est^ and stiffened into eternal granite, and you have some 
 conception of Glencoe ; and of tlie spirit of terrible sport in 
 which Nature seems to have worked while making it. It is 
 a divine ruin. But what sublimity mingles with the desola- 
 tion ! Here hills are piled on hills, as if the Pelion and Ossa 
 scene had been re-enacted in this glen. Here, sharp and 
 dizzy ridges rise ; and there, black ravines yawn. Here, two 
 mountains seem to have been torn from each other by one 
 rude grasp ; there, several seem to have been melted by fire 
 into one mural precipice ; and yonder, behind the jagged fore- 
 ground of the ruined Glen, stand up some proud peaks, which 
 look as if they had escaped the wave of wrath, which had 
 blasted, twisted, shattered, and torn all around. One of these 
 I called Mount Homer, so serenely did it tower up into the 
 ,^ air. While we were in the glen, the sun was warm and bright ; 
 and hence our emotions were, on the whole, rather those of 
 rapturous enthusiasm than of deep awe. But it must have 
 been otherwise had a thunder-cloud darkened over the land- 
 .scape, or a thick mist, or the shadow of a gloomy evening. 
 Then we might have conceived ourselves passing along some 
 great avenue descending toward the Valley of the Shadow of 
 Death, or to have been treadiug one of the defiles of that 
 " Other Place." * We said that this scene has never b6eu sung; 
 and the reason of this seems to be, it has never yet been seen 
 
 * This was written ere readiag Macaulay's description. He applies 
 to it the very same epithet.
 
 280 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 by the eye of a poet fully capable of singing it. Talfourd's 
 descriptions, in the " Fate of the Macdonalds," sink below 
 the grandeur of a theme which would have tasked the powers 
 of a Dante or a Byron to describe. Glencoe would require 
 a poet or a painter who dips 
 
 " His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse." 
 
 The spirit of a Dante might study here for all eternity, and 
 never want new food for his melancholy muse. 
 
 I heard an anecdote corroborating my idea of its tran- 
 scendent grandeur. An American gentleman travelled from 
 Glasgow, through Loch Lomond, to Fort William. He was 
 an enthusiastic Yankee ; and, as he went along, found some 
 scene in his own country to eclipse the Clyde, and Ben-Lomond, 
 and Loch Lomond ; in short, every place he passed, till he 
 came to Glencoe. Here he was for a while silent. He was 
 asked, " Anything in America equal to this 1 " He replied, 
 "No — but it wants the American atmosphere!" Perhaps 
 this was the highest compliment Glencoe ever received.
 
 PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 281 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PROsaies of religious opinion?. 
 
 Pb»haps some may make a preliminary objection to this 
 chrtpTer^ they may say, " You are professionally a divine. 
 And what interest to us the train of sophistry by which you 
 have been able at last to reconcile your heart to your creed, 
 and to find your cage comparatively comfortable 1" I suspect 
 the secret spring of this objection is connected with the kind 
 of result which I profess to have I'eached. Were I to confess 
 a transit from orthodoxy to infidelity, I should meet with far 
 more sympathy from the majority of the literary class now- 
 a-days. But, as I am about to describe a fluctuating progress 
 through doubt and darkness, to a modified form of orthodoxy, 
 I must prepare for coldness or hostility from many quarters. 
 I care not ! If any of my readers are doubtful of my sincei'ity, 
 or feel little interest in the procession of my opinions, let 
 them shut the book at this point, and turn to their " Phases" 
 or " Nemesis of Faith " again ! If not, let them lend me 
 their eai-s a little, while I tell them a plain unvarnished tale, 
 with very little indeed of that admixture of fiction, or dis- 
 guised truth, which the anonymous and fictitious form of this 
 book has compelled me occasionally to employ in the pre- 
 ceding pages. 
 
 In childhood I received from my parents very deep 
 impressions of religion, and of high Calvinism to boot. I 
 enjoyed the privilege, too, of witnessing the working of these 
 principles in the lives of two very differently constituted 
 individuals. My father, as I said in the first chapter, was 
 of an ardent, impulsive, excitable temperament, full of
 
 282 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 animal spirits, and -with very much of the child, and with 
 not a little of the poet. My mother, too, had a dash of 
 romance in her composition; was an enthusiastic lover of 
 nature, delighted in reading such poets as Milton, Thompson, 
 and Cowper, but was, withal, of a quiet and composed cha- 
 racter. Nervous in a high measure, she had yet a firm and 
 calm basis, both of constitution and of mind, to support her. 
 I sometimes compared her to one of those stones which an 
 infant's finger can move, but which an earthquake cannot 
 overthrow. I never saw her angiy; I never saw her weep, 
 although her feelings were deeply susceptible both of injury 
 and of tenderness. She loved my father warmly, but shed 
 no tears at his death ; the grief was within, and the tears 
 those bloody tears which drop in the inner chambers of the 
 heart. A month afterwards her hair became grey, and she 
 looked ten years older than ere the fatal event, which, never- 
 theless, she survived, retaining all her faculties entire, 
 twenty- eight years. 
 
 To a temperament so susceptible yet calm, and a constitu- 
 tion so impressible yet strong, Calvinism came as an appro- 
 priate atmosphere. Methodism had been too exciting, and 
 other forms of Christianity too cold. But that mixture of 
 high severe principle and ardent devotion, the one acting and 
 reacting on the other — (the eternal decrees standing like 
 distant snowy Alps above, and the streams from them re- 
 freshing and beautifying the warm and sunny valleys of 
 practical Christianity below) — that profound conviction that 
 all is right on God's side, all wrong on man's, and that duty 
 and piety can only be supported by believing in these two 
 cardinal points, implied in Calvinism, became the very life of 
 my mother's soul. Calvinism lifted her up, and lowered her, 
 at the same time. She felt herself nothing — a mere point on 
 the brow of a mountain ; but it was a mountain which com- 
 manded a view of ocean, earth, and heaven, and she rejoiced 
 at once in her own insignificance, and in the greatness of 
 her God. If some aspects of her religion made her tremble,
 
 PEOGRESS OP RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 283 
 
 she was soon reassured by remembering, " What am I ? I am 
 nothing — God is all. I may shake, but the everlasting Rock 
 below me remains the same, and I will rest on his Word and 
 faithfulness." From her earliest years she was a child of 
 God, and walked with the dignity of an heir of the Better 
 Country. While a young and very beautiful girl (surnamed 
 by the people, for her loveliness, her bright sunny complexion, 
 her mild womanly smile, her open features and auburn hair, 
 " the Star of the North"), she used to retire to the church- 
 
 yard^ C ; and there, in sight of one of the most beautiful 
 
 prdspectfe in Scotland — the green vale of Strath-Renuie 
 winding up amid rich lawns, deep groves, and wooded braes, 
 to where the blue Grampians interfere with the calm current, 
 and abruptly and as if in anger transmute the beauty into 
 grandeur — she spent many a solitary hour in singing aloud 
 psalms to God, or in reading religious books or poems. 
 Afterwards her religion assumed a quieter, yet at the same 
 time, deeper aspect ; and after living a long, useful, and serene, 
 although chequered and anxious life, she fell at last asleep in 
 Jesus, eighty-two years of age, and pi'csenting, on her dying- 
 bed, a more powerful argument for Christianity than a thou- 
 sand elaborate treatises could express. 
 
 The influence of the same creed I have already, in part, de- 
 scribed upon my father. To him, however, as I suspect to 
 *most men of true man-like qualities, it came more as a sudden 
 stranger from above, than as a quiet spirit contemporaneous 
 with the dawn of his own reason. Not but what he, too, 
 had had deep religious impressions in boyhood; but the 
 religious impressions of boys, even when of genius, are too 
 often like the morning-cloud and the early dew. Those of 
 girls are less precarioxis, and need less the aid of the " wind 
 that bloweth where it listcth," visibli/, at least, to renew and 
 perpetuate them. But ho had in youth somewhat lost the 
 savour of his early piety, — while she retained all hers ; and yet 
 the effects of the same creed on such difl'erent temperaments, 
 when both had attained full age, were in many poiuts, not in
 
 284 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 all, identical. It made them both humble, hopeful in God, 
 doubtful of themselves and of man. Both loved the Bible as 
 they loved each other, with an affection lawful and unlimited, 
 and both loved nature -with a tendresse, of ■which both felt 
 rather ashamed. But while the larger, wider nature of the one 
 found the straitest form of our religion, if a chain, one that 
 "went with him in his somewhat wide intellectual motions; 
 the other loved it the more that it linked her for ever to one 
 sacred spot — the blood-soaked turf below the cross of Calvary. 
 The one felt God to be with him, while reading, in diversified 
 regions of prose and poetiy, because his own conscience and 
 heart approved of the exercise, and deductions drawn, if not 
 of the books read; the other thought that a double portion 
 of the Divine Spirit was to be derived from Heaven by waiting 
 and brooding over the pages of Scripture, and Scripture alone, 
 with the exception of that class of books which may be called 
 variations of the Bible. Both were right in different ways; 
 or, at least, on both the different regimen operated in pro- 
 ducing different degrees of spiritual exeollence — in the one, a 
 more manly, and, in the other, a more feminine variety of the 
 " beauties " of the same " holiness." 
 
 All this T saw with a boy's eye, and a boy's eye is not the 
 least clear ; its mirror is a mere calotype, indeed, at the time, 
 but retains its impressions, and the mind, comparing them with 
 after-thoughts, comes to the true conclusion. A boy's eye often 
 sees prophetic visions of the characters on whom it rests. I 
 had religion presented to me first in an imaginative light, 
 through the means of a hieroglyphic Bible, in which all the 
 leading facts of the Holy Book are accompanied by pictiu-es, 
 as well as in the pictured pages of the " Pilgrim's Progress." 
 Yet, on the whole, the faith I learned came on me rather as 
 a shadow from this sublime and dreadful universe and its 
 Author, than as a sunbeam, shooting life, peace, and recon- 
 ciliation athwart it. I heard more of God as a consuming 
 fire, than as Love. I heard more of hell than of heaven. 
 I was taught to tremble at human nature ; to fear, as much
 
 peoCtRess of eeligious opinions. 285 
 
 as to love the Sabbath ; to look ou literature as utterly 
 profane and worthless, unless consecrated to Christianity ; to 
 weep at my mothers knee, while my father was describing 
 eternal torments ; to look at all things, even at the Gospel 
 itself, through a saddened medium ; nor am I prepared yet to 
 say that this dark side is not as nearly an approximation to 
 the truth as is the bright. But to the imagination of a boy it 
 did not appear so. Hence, while springing through the 
 flowery meadows, or basking beneath the shade of the large 
 surnmftr trees, or listening to the ripple of the three rivers of 
 my'na&T^ vale, or walking on a Sabbath morning to a tent- 
 preaching under the gloiious sun of July, I sometimes felt 
 a difficulty in reconciling all this superfluous life, loveliness, 
 and apparent bliss, with the existence of a Divine Wrath that 
 demanded such myriads of victims, and with the other 
 dogmas of the Calvinistic creed. I remember, too, boggling at 
 the doctrines of Election and Grace, and greatly annoying one 
 of my relatives by asserting, one fine Sabbath afternoon after 
 church time, the Arminian hypothesis. While I saw the 
 good effects produced by Calvinism on my parents and other 
 friends, I could not avoid observing that on many it seemed 
 to exert a very different influence. I saw that with some it 
 degenerated into a gloomy superstition ; that with some it 
 was a mere hollow cant ; that others held it in unrighteousness, 
 in conjunction with not a few bad habits, and base passions 
 and practices ; that some seemed shrunk up and shrivelled 
 through its power into narrow and nauseous mummies instead 
 of men ; and that in others it nourished a fierce and almost 
 Popish bigotry. I know now that only, if I may use the 
 expression, a Calvinism very badly calcined could be charge- 
 able with such results ; but I did not see this then. I had, 
 moreover, a good deal of that distaste to religion which is 
 often found in the heart of the young ; to whom it seems an 
 alien in the world, and who like it less, and not more, because 
 it is. Yet my enthusiasm for the Bible, the "Pilgrim's 
 Progress," my father's preaching, and even, in a certain sense,
 
 '1' 
 
 286 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 for religion, was strong ; and when I met anything in Scott's 
 novels, or other literary works, that honoured or seemed to 
 assert evangelical sentiments, my blood glowed, and my face 
 flushed as if I had received personal praise. I remember, 
 while reading Virgil's ^neid, how delighted I was to find 
 iEneas called pm.s ^ueas, till a good old minister who was 
 assisting my father, explained, to my enlightenment and 
 mortification, that the epithet only referred to the hero's 
 filial piety. Such was then, to 'use Burns' expression, my 
 " idiot piety ;" ardent, but fluctuating and uncertain. 
 
 In common sermons, I found, at that early time, little to 
 fan the flame of devotion ; and sometimes, instead of listening 
 to the minister preaching on a sacramental evening in the 
 church, I employed myself in watching and wondering at the 
 process by which the tallow in the candles was transmuted 
 into flame ! Elpliinston and my father alone charmed me ; 
 the one by the oddity of his delivery, and the fine sparks of 
 poetry which leaped at times out of his mouth, and my father 
 by his anecdotes, and the earnestness of his eye and manner. 
 The death of this venerable parent produced a profound 
 impression on my mind in a religious point of view. For 
 some time the world seemed to recede ; it was blotted out, 
 and I thought of eternity alone. I could read no books that 
 were not religious ; and Haly burton's '"' " Memoirs," with the 
 account it contains of his triumphant deatli-bed, became my 
 constant companion. In this, however, there was more of 
 fear than of love ; and I shall never forget the start and 
 perspiration of terror with which, walking a week after my 
 father's death from the village to the manse, on a dark night, 
 I saw a flash of sheet-lightning " painting hell on the sky." 
 A little after, a worse feeling arose ; a kind of semi-sensual 
 luxury in reading religious books and indulging religious senti- 
 ments. How long this might have lasted, or what mischief it 
 might have done, I cannot tell ; but my first College session, 
 
 * " Halyburton ; " a celebrated Covenanting DiYiue, still much 
 esteemed in Scotland.
 
 PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS OPIXIOXS. 287 
 
 by plunging me in new cares and new studies, and introducing 
 me to new companions, chased this feehng away, and most 
 thankful I am that it did. I got, however, thus a glimpse 
 of what I am persuaded is a very prevalent and a very perni- 
 cious form of false piety ; a piety of feeling which, when 
 pampered, tends to loosen the bonds of virtue, to relax the 
 nerves of action, and to make religion little else than a secret 
 and pleasant vice. I have known, in after-life, young men and 
 ■women gi'eatly injured by the indulgence of such sentimental 
 pietiShl' ; in some cases driven mad, in others made melancholy, 
 relaxed, and toi^nd, and in others led to tamper with hidden 
 sins, which, combining with the dissolution of their hearts in 
 the element of weak and superstitious religion, have completed 
 the ruin of their bodies and souls. Never were words more 
 true than those used somewhere by Dr. Croly, that "our 
 religion is a manly religion." That false sentimental form of 
 it to which I allude, a form greatly aided by the writings of 
 even good men like Samuel Rutherford and Mac Cheyne, is 
 often productive in its votaries of such evils as diseased self- 
 esteem, self-search and self-consciousness, hypocrisy, cant, 
 senseless bigotry, and an indulgence of the emotional part of 
 religion to the detriment of the health both of their mind and 
 their morals. 
 
 In the summer, I think it was, which succeeded my second 
 Session at College, I felt for a month or two an overwhelming 
 sense of the shortness of life, and the rapidity with which my 
 time was gliding away. The thought of death, according to 
 De Quincey, is always most terrific in summer-tide, and it was 
 during a long succession of bright and shining days, that this 
 feeling was strongest in my mind. Every new morning of 
 splendour dawned sadly on me, because it was never to dawn 
 again ; and every evening, I knew, had brought me a stage 
 nearer to the last evening of all. On these brilliant days, as 
 on the rounds of a celestial ladder, I felt descending to the 
 grave. The feeling was morbid, and did not dcscrre to last 
 long ; nor did it outlive the autumn. I believe it is not
 
 288 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 uucommou with those young persons who possess a susceptible 
 and poetic sj)int ; and I find it recorded of poor Cowper that, 
 in early life, he was haunted by a similar thought, as by the 
 shadow of a demon follower. On me it left little impression 
 of any kind. 
 
 Ei"e I went to the Logic Class, and still more while there, 
 I began to be beset with the question : " Is Christianity, after 
 all, true?" And I went into the inquiry with all the ardour 
 of an eager and impassioned temperament ; went to it, however, 
 with all my feelings, prejudices, and prepossessions, in favour 
 of Christianity. I had no reason to wish it false. I was 
 consciously guilty at that time of no sin, whether of soul or 
 body ; and yet dark intellectual doubts began to perplex my 
 spirit. They were of various kinds. Sometimes I fancied 
 I perceived discrepancies in the Scriptural narratives ; some- 
 times I doubted of the divinity of Christ, or of eternal 
 torments, or of the doctrine of the Trinity — doubts which, by 
 undermining my belief in the prominent doctrines of the 
 Bible, shook by and by, to some extent, my belief in the 
 Bible itself. I felt that I could not reconcile Christianity to 
 nature, to man, to philosophy and science, to literature and 
 poetry. I did not then see that Christianity is a fact as real 
 and far grander than any of these others, and that instead of 
 needing to beg a reconciliation with them, they rather require 
 to come and seek a baptism and a blessing from it. But in 
 my early worship of nature and of literature, I did only 
 partial justice to Christianity's claims; nor, indeed, did I 
 comprehend accurately what these claims were. And yet at 
 times I remember the thought passing across my mind in an 
 irresistible intuition, Christianity must be true : and I listened 
 to this as to a voice from heaven. At other times, when my 
 perplexities returned, I fell on my knees, and prayed to God 
 to show me the truth, and to rid me of those spectral doubts 
 which waylaid me. Under the teaching of James Milne, it 
 was not at all likely that I should derive much satisfaction to 
 my disquietudes ; and indeed all that session I was, although
 
 PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 289 
 
 not an infidel, yet in a sceptical state of mind. I saw, along 
 with B. G., that the external evidences were not demonstrative, 
 and I had not then leai'ned to feel the force of the internal. 
 I almost entirely lost my piety. I lost all delight in prayer, 
 although I still practised it as a form. I became a listless 
 hearer of sei-mous, and felt little else than contempt for the 
 preachers I did hear ; contrasting their platitudes -with the 
 burning glories of the Style of Shelley, Godwin, and my other 
 literary idols. I began, along with B. G., to doubt the 
 docf^kie of Eternal Punishment, and to do away with the main 
 pillai-'Gf-its support — the infinite evil of sin. This I saw to 
 be a logical fallacy ; but did not see to be at the same time 
 a melancholy fact. All metaphysical principles would prove 
 it to be impossible ; every conscience knows it to be true. 
 But my conscience at this time was asleep, and was confirmed 
 in its slumbers by the fact that my life was blameless. I 
 found even a delight and luxury in doubt, and read no books 
 "with such relish as those mentioned above, and the works of 
 Brockden Brown ; all of which are shadowed by a sublime 
 scepticism, amidst which I loved to walk, as if in the cool 
 grand glooms of a primeval forest. I felt, too, a species of 
 distinction in my sceptical notions, which, although I dared 
 not avow them, yet gave me a secret sense of superiority to 
 the Christian students and others with whom I mingled. 
 , With such ideas I felt excessively reluctant to enter on the 
 study of divinity, to which my friends had destined me, and 
 
 contrived to put off my going to the academy at M , for 
 
 a year. If I had secured much literary reputation at College, 
 or been thought worthy of the notice of any of those " flat- 
 terers " who often waylay pi'omising youths and lead them into 
 paths of secular ambition ; or if I had had any smallest com- 
 petence ; or if I had had the slightest aptitude for business, 
 I should have stopped short of a theological cai-eer. But 
 I was miserably j)oor. I was, in all matters of business, a 
 blind blunderer. The little reputation I got at the Logic Class 
 of Glasgow, and at the Moral Philosophy Class of Edinburgh, 
 
 u
 
 290 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 had not extended far. I had heard, too, a great deal of the 
 precariousness of the literary man's life ; and I felt, therefore, 
 that I must become either a wreck or a minister. My delay 
 of a year was so far fortunate, that it gave me some mouths 
 in my native place, ere I went to the Academy. There, the 
 society of my good mother and other friends, much solitary 
 communion with the great surrounding forms of nature, and, 
 above all, the study of the Scriptures in the original (I read 
 the Greek Testament through several times, and about one- 
 half of the Hebrew Bible), united to renew my religious 
 impressions ; and during my first session at the Academy, 
 I became, or fancied I became, very devout. I prayed much 
 and fervently. I spent much time in my closet, and in read- 
 ing books of practical piety. I continued, indeed, to enjoy 
 literary works, and thus saved myself from that morbid 
 fanaticism to which I had been exposed in a former period of 
 my life ; but I subordinated all my readings to the study of 
 the Bible. During the succeeding winter, I began a course 
 of theological reading ; and, among many other bulky tomes, 
 perused all Mosheim's " Ecclesiastical History." It was 
 curious that nothing in that book interested me so much as 
 the chapters appropriated to the heresies of the various cen- 
 turies. I cared very little for the account of persecutions, 
 celebrated saints, and so forth ; but whenever I came to the 
 historian's record of the opinions of the Gnostics, Mystics, and 
 other heretics of the early ages, I felt my heart beating, and 
 my keenest curiosity excited. During the same winter, I was 
 greatly fascinated with the prospect of a Millennium — not in 
 the form in which I now believe it, as connected with the 
 Personal Pre-millennial Advent, but in the form in which it is 
 credited by the majority of Christians. I loved the thought, 
 for its consoling character, for its sublimity and its poetry, 
 and indited a long essay on the subject — full of enthusiasm, at 
 any rate. During the succeeding summer, — one of a bright and 
 breezj', not a hot and sultiy character, — which I spent in Strath- 
 ' Reauie, my mind was in fine tune. I began to entertain the
 
 PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 291 
 
 ambition of being a popular public speaker, and commenced 
 the practice of declaiming aloud on religious subjects, some- 
 times to myself, in my own chamber, or in the " engulfed 
 navel" of woods, and sometimes to one or two companions 
 whom T prevailed on to accompany me in my rambles. 
 I found again in these declamations, or soliloquies, the old 
 liberty and rapture I had had three years before, in my soli- 
 tary and inaudible meditations. The difference was, that 
 now chiefly sacred topics engaged my thoughts. Often, too, 
 lying!!pn my midnight couch (in a little room, the sole furni- 
 ture of which was a bed, a chair, the meal-barrel of the family, 
 an old box full of pamphlets, and the sole light of which 
 came from a small sky-window), I spent hours together in 
 composing sermons and prayers aloud. I wrote, too, various 
 compositions of a religious or moral kind, but with consi- 
 derable difficulty ; and although my pen now moves far more 
 fluently than my tongue, it was otherwise in these years. 
 Again and again I had to break off" compositions in the middle, 
 and shed more than one flood of tears over the unfinished 
 manuscript. In all this there was, I fear, more of ambition 
 and of the ardour of eighteen, than of piety. Still, my doubts 
 had for a season entirely disappeared. On a visit to a city 
 at some little distance from my native vale, I met, this 
 autumn, the " Natural History of Enthusiasm ;" and the 
 delight with which it struck me not only confirmed me in 
 that luxuriant style to which I had been all along prone, but 
 made me aware of a form of religion more ideal and impas- 
 sioned, more sanguine and sunny — more tropical, in short, 
 than I had found in the gloomy pages of Foster, in the divine 
 prattle of Addison, or in the glaring rhetoric and fiery logic 
 of Chalmers, For the first time, I found, as I thought, 
 evangelical truth wedded to Oriental fancy ; the sentiments 
 of the New Testament delivered in language resembling 
 that of the Old. This completed the imaginative intoxication 
 of that delightful summer. I had formerly loved Christianity 
 with the heart — I now loved it (too exclusively, I fear) with 
 
 u 2
 
 292 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 the imagination ; and my exercises in the Academy bore 
 testimony to the exceeding exaltation of my emotions on all 
 the grander and more poetical topics connected with the 
 system. 
 
 A year or two after, in Edinburgh, came that dark hour 
 described in the former chapter, and with my misery came 
 many of my old doubts. Especially did I begin to feel again 
 the awful horror of the doctrine of Eternal Punishment. 
 I remember once weeping, like to break my very heart, in 
 the meadows, one beautiful spring afternoon, as I thought of 
 the dire doom awaiting the majority of the species ; almost 
 blaspheming God, as I looked up through my tears, and 
 asked, " Why hast thou made all men in vain 1 " and how 
 soothed and sublimated I was, when walking, an hour or two 
 after, on Waterloo Bridge, I heard from some concert-room 
 a strain of music ascending, consisting of many female voices, 
 united in a harmony which seemed that of heaven ; and how 
 it brought tenderer tears than before to my eyes. I became 
 aware, and mentioned it to one of my friends, of a dark 
 process going on in my mind, which, I said, would issue either 
 in my becoming a confirmed infidel, or a confirmed Christian, 
 or utterly careless on the subject of religion. Partly to con- 
 firm myself in my staggering faith, partly to record my own 
 struggles, I commenced a book entitled " The Infidel," con- 
 sisting of essays on the " Causes and Cure, &c., of Infidelity ;" 
 and which was to be attended by a religious novel, developing 
 the same thoughts in a fictitious form. These projects, how- 
 ever, were never completed. Yet, still my mind continued 
 tossing in deep uncertainty. I shall never forget once 
 setting out on a walk from Glasgow to Stirling, while return- 
 ing from M to Strath-Rennie. I reached a little bridge 
 
 about half-way, and rested there. While sitting on the ledge, 
 and gazing at the golden September sky, a little collier-boy 
 of eight staggei-ed past di-unk and blaspheming ; and the shock- 
 ing thought of such a spectacle of early degradation — proba- 
 bly, too, the prelude of a whole after-life of similar sin — being
 
 PEOGRESS OF EELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 293 
 
 presented in the universe of a great and good God, came like 
 a strong sickness over my heart, and T had to stifle the 
 wicked question, " Is He so good and so great, after all 1" It 
 was, I am pei-suaded, a suggestion of the Evil One ; but it 
 could never even have entered, perhaps, a mind which was 
 not partially poisoned with doubts and perplexities. Some 
 days after, ci'ossing at- wide moorland, I lost my way among 
 the bogs ; and whether it was that the memory of that boy at 
 th^^bridge was still fresh, I cannot tell, but among these 
 drgarj^^o^J'S, over which the mists of night were beginning 
 to di'op, I felt, for an hour or two, as if I had become the 
 " vessel of an infernal will ;" and a torrent of the darkest and 
 most tremendous thoughts rushed, like an arm of Acheron, 
 over my shivering soul. I thought of some of Bunyan's 
 experiences in the "Grace Abounding," and of Christian 
 hearing the whisper of fiends in the Valley of the Shadow of 
 Death, and being tempted to confound them with the utter- 
 ances of his own spirit and voice. 
 
 This journey to my native vale, as usual, refreshed and 
 revived, as well as calmed and soothed me, and I returned to 
 Edinburgh in a much happier frame. After varied vicissi- 
 tudes of feeling, I took licence, at length, with considerable 
 firmness of conviction ; and for several years, and while 
 actively engaged in pastoral labours, had almost forgotten 
 what it was to doubt. At this time a keen theological con- 
 troversy began to shake some of the religious denominations 
 in Scotland. Although I took no public part, I took a deep 
 interest in it; and a contemplation of the bad spirit, the 
 fierce diatribes, the wretched partyisms, the I'ancorous per- 
 sonalities, the odium theologicum, and, as it seemed to me, 
 the misei'ably shallow and one-sided views of Christianity dis- 
 played by all parties in the various churches where it raged, 
 disgusted me beyond measure. So also had the still more 
 celebrated contest which culminated in the formation of the 
 Free Church, at every stage of its progress, and in all the 
 parties, more or less, too, which were in it engaged. I said,
 
 294 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 " What do these quarreUiug divines mean, tearing ont each 
 other's eyes, hke angry parrots in a narrow cage 1 Do they not 
 see that whilst they are disputing about their Atonement per 
 se, and not per se, their Veto Act, and their Strathbogie and 
 Auchterarder cases, that the common foe is opening his 
 boa-constrictor mouth to devour them all? — that infidelity, 
 having donned another skin — that of Pan — ' the leopard-skin 
 bedropped with stars' — is approaching to the contest? 
 While they are fighting with one another, let me look more 
 narrowly to this fell destroyer in his new and splendid dress." 
 And I did look to him accordingly ; and alas ! while looking, 
 was once or twice nearly engulfed in his jaws. 
 
 Various other circumstances contributed at this time to 
 make my mind morbid and unhappy. I found, I thought — 
 perhaps unjustly — little sympathy from many of my fathers 
 and brethren, either in my public labours or in my literary 
 tastes. I had my own sufficient share of pastoral difficulties 
 at that time. Perhaps, in some instances, I was misled in 
 my estimate of the magnitude of these two different classes of 
 calamities, by men who had an object in view. But I did 
 feel a dreary sense of isolation, and fancied that in the writ- 
 ings of some Pantheistic authors, I found something that 
 gave me more a feeling of intellectual companionship than in 
 the theological productions of the time. Walking through 
 " the valley of the shadow," I heard their voices in distant 
 parts of the glen, uplifted, as I fancied, not in blasphemy, 
 but in melancholy prayer. I knew that they were in deep 
 doubt, but I did not as yet suspect the depth of their ani- 
 mosity to the Christian faith. I admired, too, as I still do, 
 their writings for their eloquence, insight into many things, 
 enthusiasm, and poetry. 
 
 There was one event in my domestic history at this time 
 which cast a deep shadow on my soul, and weakened me for 
 the contest with my spiritual foes. This was the death of a 
 dear little girl of nin^, who was connected with me, and 
 whom I regarded as a daughter. I am guilty of no conscious
 
 PEOGRESS OF RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 295 
 
 exaggei-ation when I call my Agnes all that Mrs. Stowe has 
 since represented in Eva — one of the rarest specimens of the 
 workmanship of Heaven. In her simple yet profound nature, 
 was united a wisdom beyond her years to the most bewitching 
 artlessness. Playful yet serious; quick in feeling ; buoyant in 
 spirits; fond of books and of solitude to a degree which is 
 rarely to be found in cue so utterly a child; affectionate and 
 open-hearted, she wielded a gentle fascination which was felt 
 bejiond her own little circle, and attested by the tears which 
 the a&ws of her loss drew from many to whom she was but 
 partially known. Her face was one of those which, without 
 being perfectly regular in their beauty, win their way still 
 more beseechingly to the heart. Its leading characters were 
 transparent openness — every feature obeying the motions of 
 the mind within, promptly and fully as the wave receives 
 the sunbeam; great flexibility and intelligence of expres- 
 sion; and that indescribable something which naivete and 
 heart unite in stamping on the countenance. Her brow 
 Avas prominent, jDale as marble, and nobly expanded; her 
 eyes— 
 
 " Oh ! speak not of her eyes — they were 
 Twin mirrors of the Scottish summer heaven ;" 
 
 her chin Grecian, as if chiselled by Phidias; her cheek, in 
 exex'cise or emotion, often flushing up through its paleness 
 into a rich and roseate Ime ; her voice clear, sweet, none the 
 less for its Norland accent, and predicting a beautiful singer ; 
 and her step light, airy, and swift as a "roe or a young 
 hart upon the mountains." Disease — it was severe hoojiing- 
 cough — changed her countenance, ere it sent her away, 
 spreading a fearful pallor over the whole, protruding the 
 fine eye into a stare of anguish, and choking up the music of 
 her voice, which, inarticulate, became unable to express her 
 thickening thoughts and wants; but death restored her to 
 herself, and almost all her former beauty clustered round her 
 corpse. Death is often a ghastly disguise, a dread mask, 
 reminding you of an ill-executed picture. But she was so
 
 290 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 calmly beautiful, so spiritually still, so smilingly radiant 
 amidst her marble coldness, that but for the heart-heard 
 whispei' — how stilly low ! — " It is for ever," and the shudder 
 springing from the touch of the icy brow, you would have 
 said, " The maid is not dead ; she only sleepeth." Death 
 seemed forced to smile out the news of immortality from her 
 dear cold countenance. It was solemn beyond expression to 
 see friend after friend coming in on tiptoe, raising the cover- 
 ing, looking and leaning over the face, and with sighs or 
 tears, or aspect of withei'sd unweeping woe, turning away. 
 It was inexpressibly touching, too, to see the immediate 
 relatives taking their last look ere the lid of the coffin was 
 closed, amid bursting sobs, and all the other irrepressible 
 signs of sorrow — suddenly brought under the sense of an 
 eternal separation ; one parent the while looking not — daring 
 not to look — but patting the dear brown head once more, and 
 hurrying away. In a sweet southerly side of the beautiful 
 
 kirk-yard of F , beside the bones of her grandfather, 
 
 under the clear blue sky of the north, and in the expectation 
 of the coming to this sunlit vale of tears of Jesus Christ with 
 his holy angels, repose, and have for thirteen years reposed, 
 the remains of one who never gave a pang to a friend's heart, 
 nor armed with a rod a father's hand ; whose memory shall 
 be cherished, and her sweetest name repeated, and the spot 
 where lies her virgin dust visited and watered with tears, 
 while there lives one of those who really knew her, or felt 
 how insipid in comparison was all love beside what she 
 inspired — of one who in the brief business of her existence 
 exhibited the affection of the amiable child, the ardour of the 
 docile scholar, the liveliness of the fearless girl, and the gi'aces 
 of the saint sanctified from the womb. She was my play- 
 fellow when cheerful, my comforter when sad; her artless 
 yet piercing prattle at once soothed and roused my mind ; 
 and assuredly, amid all the " chambers of my imagery," I 
 have never had an idol like her, whose premature loss I con- 
 tinue bittei'ly, j'et submissively, to deplore.
 
 PEOGEESS OF RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 297 
 
 Not so submissive were my feelings at the time. How my 
 heart bled, and what dai'k, unhappy thoughts crossed my soul, 
 as I saw this good and beautiful young being writhing in 
 anguish, and. weeping with her fearful pain, till there came at 
 last a mild and merciful delirium, and. gave her partial for- 
 getfulness! The theory of all suffering springing from sin, 
 seemed to fade iritp extinction beside Agnes' dying bed. 
 Scarcely less strange were my emotions as I leaned over her 
 coffin, and cried out, " That is beautiful, but it is not my 
 .^g-iie.s^" I remember, too, when the preparations on the 
 morning of the funeral were going on, lifting up an old 
 volume, which lay on the window-sill of the chamber where 
 the dear child was lying, and glancing at a paper on the 
 " Origin of Evil." How revoltingly false and contemptibly 
 silly all the theories which were there recounted for the expli- 
 cation of that surpassing problem, appeared in the light which 
 a March sun was shedding into the chamber of death ! Even 
 when I tried to say to myself, " Blessed are the dead who 
 die in the Lord," a 
 
 " Wicked whisper came and made 
 My heart as dry as dust." 
 
 And it was not till I saw the child I loved so deai'ly fairly 
 committed to the grave, and had leant a long time in anguish 
 over a tombstone which was casting its shadow on the little 
 spot, and, looking up to the sun shining so bright and cold 
 in the spring sky, had said within myself, as Scott cried at 
 the burial of one of his friends, " There shall be less sunshine 
 for me henceforth," that tears came to my relief, and a rain- 
 bow of resignation, if not of hope, seemed to smile through 
 these bitter yet blessed tears. 
 
 And yet my word at the grave's edge had been prophetic. 
 Thei'C was for some time less sunshine in my sky. The 
 summer that succeeded, was the most miserable I had yet 
 spent in this world. The shadow of those thoughts which 
 had passed through my mind at her death and funeral, con- 
 tinued, like a gigantic ghost, to hover between me and my
 
 298 THE HISTOEY OF A MAN. 
 
 God. I lost the sense of his Fatherhood, and began to 
 enthrone a Fate, -which, if I could not love, I could not 
 blame, in his stead. And yet, most inconsistently, against 
 that Fate, too, I warred ; and against it, even, at times, I mur- 
 mured. I remember visiting, in the course of the summer, 
 the secluded but beautiful region surrounding the grave of 
 my darling. At one point, two or three miles to the west of 
 
 the village of F , there is a solitary tree, marking the 
 
 divergence of two roads ; the one of which strikes across 
 moors and bogs to the house where she was born and where 
 she died, while the other bears away westward through beau- 
 tiful woodlands. I had been wandering all forenoon through 
 these mosses, till at last I felt disjoosed to rest. The day was 
 hot, and I took refuge amidst the thick umbrage of the tree, 
 where I spent an hour of the most poignant misery, the most 
 thoroughly rounded despair, the most misanthropical and 
 God-accusing anguish, that I ever experienced. I often yet, as 
 I walk below that tree, look up with shuddering horror, and 
 with deep thankfulness that such moods have passed away. 
 I have noticed my companions wonder at the earnest regards 
 they have seen me fix on an object which to them had no 
 interest. They saw only a tree; I saw what had been an 
 hour's hell, and which shall remain, while life and it endure, 
 a landmark of memory, and a spring of gratitude. Un- 
 doubtedly, although I seemed in perfect health, and was 
 performing with energy every duty, there must have been 
 something wrong in my bodily system, as well as in my 
 views. The summer was one of burning heat, and I looked 
 forward to the autumn, as likely to bring me healthier and 
 happier emotions. 
 
 I always loved autumn above all the seasons, for its "joy 
 of harvest," and its joy of grief ; for the many sad and sombre 
 glories which gather around it. The spring reminded me of 
 Homer and his lusty song ; the summer of the fervid writers 
 and bards of the East; and the autumn of Ossiau and his 
 poetry. But this autumn brought little "joy on its dark
 
 PEOGRESS OF EELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 299 
 
 brown wings " to me. I had occasion, in reference to a 
 publication I produced in it, to learn a good deal more 
 about the contemptible narrowness and watchful bigotry of 
 thoroughly sectarian Christians, and to feel how difficult it 
 was for an honest inquirer to act harmoniously with them. 
 My deepest doubts I did not express; I preferred that, like 
 the fox the bowels ofethat Spartan boy, they should rend me 
 in secret; besides, they were douhts, not convictions, and 
 I^]jhor the man who circulates his doubts, even to relieve 
 hknsgl:^ and far moi-e for the purpose of perplexing others. 
 But on certain minor points. I had formed somewhat decided 
 opinions, and my expression of these led to a good deal of 
 vexatious persecution ; chiefly, indeed, from the silly and 
 ignorant, but partly, also, from the envious and malicious, 
 which, if it failed to injure me outwardly, did my boiling and 
 struggling soul no good. 
 
 It was in this deep crisis of my spii'itual being, with fears 
 within and fightings without; my love to my profession and 
 to Christ continuing strong on the one hand — my doubts, on 
 the other, as to many of the primal doctrines of both revealed 
 and natural religion, gaining force every day — that I had sent 
 me from the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, a copy of " Sartor 
 Resartus." Two years before I had read the " French Revo- 
 lution," by the same author, with rapture. It kept me from 
 sleep — it haunted me during my waking hours. I quoted it 
 in the pulpit, and I read its best passages over and over again 
 to strangers. 1 was prepared, therefore, for welcoming any 
 other production of his, although it had had no reference to 
 my present state of mind. But I had scarcely glanced over 
 twenty pages, till I cried out : " This is the very book for 
 me ! Nay, this Sartor is an alias of myself." As I read on, 
 the feeling strengthened : " I, like him, have been in the Ever- 
 lasting No. I have been frozen for a period in tlie Centre of 
 Indifference; I am seeking, at least, for the Everlasting 
 Yea." I found, indeed, a coincidence between these three 
 predicaments, and the trilemma to which, in a former page.
 
 300 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 I said I fancied myself at one time driving ; namely, to 
 I'eligion, or atheism, or utter indifference. In the wild 
 tmnultous language employed by this man, while in the 
 Everlasting No, I recognised fragments of the fearful thoughts 
 that had streamed through my own mind, in the bogs of 
 Sheriffmuir, and in the tree beside the solitary road at Inch. 
 Hence the book turned up my soul like a storm. 
 
 " It fann'd my cheek, it raised my hair, 
 Like a meadow-gale in spring ; 
 It mingled strangely with my fears, 
 Yet it felt like a welcoming.'' 
 
 Beside its eloquence and terrible poetry of earnestness, what 
 struck me most about it, as distinguishing it from other 
 sceptical works, such as those of Shelley and Byron, was its 
 apparent reverence for God and Christ. I did not see then, 
 that this reverence could not long be sustained, after the 
 author had struck away its foundations in denying the per- 
 sonality of God, and by implication, at least, the divinity of 
 Christ. "A mouse's weight,''' said Tony Foster to Varney, 
 about the trap-door in Kenilworth, from which he had re- 
 moved the props, " ivill bring it down ; " and I now know 
 that Sartor, and most of his followers, have trode down the 
 door, and tumbled into the gulf. I was deceived, too, by his 
 seeming satisfaction with the " Everlasting Yea ;" and for a 
 time imagined that it was real, yea, the only peace in the 
 world. Peace did not, indeed, immediately visit mj/ breast, 
 but surely it must be in his who had said, " Blessedness is 
 better than happiness, as much as happiness is better than 
 pleasure," and in that of his maturer disciples. I will not 
 expose the abundant evidence I have had since, to doubt 
 whether this conclusion were correct. 
 
 And now what was there to save me from the same abyss 
 of ease? — the ease reached by Amy Robsart when she was 
 crushed, at the bottom of the trap, out of the very shape of 
 humanity ! Reader ! it was principally one thing (next, 
 of course, to Divine Grace, if I dare lay claim to such a
 
 PROGEESS OF EELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 301 
 
 gift); it was a personal passion for, and an unlimited, uu- 
 doubting belief in Jesus Christ himself. In my deepest and 
 darkest hours, I clung to the doctrine of the God-Man, the 
 AVord incarnate in the Man of Galilee ; nay, methought his 
 beautiful, bending, compassionate form became larger and 
 brighter from the surrounding gloom ; and I was tempted to 
 cry, "If there be fio other God, Thou, Jesus, at least art 
 divine ; and to whom can I go but unto Thee, for Thou hast 
 th^& words of everlasting life." And to intensify this affec- 
 tion-^ there ai'ose in my heart at this time, like a new star 
 bursting on the midnight, the ancient Hope of the Church 
 — that " blessed Hope of the glorious appearing of the great 
 God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ." I had previously 
 despised this as a dream, and wondered, with a great admira- 
 tion, how a man like Edward Irving ever yielded his giant 
 arms to such gossamer chains. One night, however, in my 
 absence, a humble millennarian missionary called at my 
 dwelling, and left with my dearest relative some little tracts 
 on the subject. These, on my return, I read, sooth to say, 
 with no great admiration, and with no credence ; but they 
 turned my attention to the topic, besides convincing one 
 good and pious inmate of my dwelling. I began to revolve 
 the suVjject in my mind, and the result, at last, was a very 
 decided hope in the Pre-millenuial Advent. " One clear star 
 the seaman saves," and for a long time I had only this star 
 in my cloud-drifting sky. Unable to answer many of the 
 objections or objurgations of Carlyle and Emerson, I said to 
 myself, "^e shall one day answer them." Unable to see 
 clearly the relations of reconcilement between science, litera- 
 ture, philosophy, and religion, I cried, " He shall one day form 
 the bright synthesis between these transcendent things." My 
 faltering Faith began to lean for support upon her younger 
 and fairer sister Hope. 
 
 One day, while wrapped in deep and silent misery, I was 
 relieved by a friend sitting in the room beside me, mur- 
 muring to herself in soliloquy " The Saviour is coming soon."
 
 / 
 
 302 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 I felt as if an oracle had opened its lips beside me; and 
 although twelve years have elapsed, and he is not yet here, I 
 am as confident as ever that as surely " as Tabor is among 
 the mountains and Carmel by the sea, so He shall come, 
 saith the Lord of Hosts." Connecting this hope with my 
 early Millennial expectations, I found them far g'rander and 
 more conceivable — at once more true- like and more poetical. 
 The doctrine of Christ coming to burn the earth, and judge 
 those who, at death, had been judged already, seemed now 
 uninteresting compared to that of the Son of Man descend- 
 ing in the crisis of the world to deliver his saints, and to 
 introduce a new and better era in the annals of time. I 
 began to feel that this was the chief hope of the distracted 
 earth. I saw clearly that no form of philosophy or science 
 could long satisfy the mind or heart of humanity. I felt 
 that the present shapes of Christianity were sustained in life 
 partly by galvanic action and effort. There was no prospect 
 of a new Cultus arising; and as to the worship of the universe, 
 it was as old as Paganism, and what good had it ever done to 
 mortal man 1 But here was a thought, suggested by Chris- 
 tianity itself, of a new and final evolution of its power, which 
 was to explain its mysteries, strengthen its weak points, give 
 it a glorious incarnation on earth in Universal Man, and bring 
 its structure to a golden spire-like point. This commended 
 itself to my imagination, as well as reason ; " detained me 
 before the Lord/' shed new life and fire into my flagging 
 ministrations, and was often a secret solace to my own sick 
 and weary heart. 
 
 To say that I was now satisfied or at rest, were to say too 
 much. I was yet far — very far — from being so. Restored 
 now to belief, or, at least, to hope, I was still subject to the 
 reactions of doubt and despondency. I was still tormented 
 with a desire for unity, and was perpetually seeking to re- 
 concile the creeds or crotchets of the Carlyle school with 
 Millennial Christianity. I remember one April night, as a 
 soft large moon was shining into my midnight room, crying
 
 PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 303 
 
 out, " I must and shall reconcile the theory of Emerson with 
 the religion of Jesus." And for a year or two this was the 
 effort of my mind, and, in some measure, of my writings. 
 But I felt it, at last, to be vain and hopeless, and have re- 
 signed it for ever. Shortly after this, I entered the arena 
 as an author, and met with gratifying success. This I attri- 
 bute partly to what^eome of the critics called my "criminal 
 lenity " to the sceptical writers whom I had occasion to 
 aualyse. And I am ready to admit that, were I speaking 
 of SQpae of these authors now, I would use language of a very 
 different kind. I have no right and no wish to interfere with 
 private convictions. I have even sympathy with the insane 
 earnestness of a Shelley, running to and fi'o with his wild 
 Eureka of despair ; but when I find writers in cold blood 
 decrying Christianity, and denouncing all who still believe it 
 as weak and cowardly, and yet having nothing but the 
 vaguest dreams or blackest negations to substitute for it — 
 these authors knowing, too, that Christianity is making its 
 votaries, on the whole, virtuous and happy, while their 
 systems are keeping the^n miserable, and precipitating their 
 followers into gulfs of varied mischief, — I grant that I feel 
 now inclined to call them by their right names. 
 
 I had occasion, after this, to meet a good deal with this 
 class of men in private, and to hear a great deal more of them 
 from others. And I saw much about them that was pleas- 
 ing. I found them men of high talent, genius, varied learn- 
 ing, and, on the whole, of manly manners. But I found also 
 certain elements which did not improve my conception of 
 their creeds. I found in almost of all of them, — as, indeed, 
 I might have expected — a morbid restlessness of spirit, dis- 
 guised sometimes under levity, and sometimes under wild and 
 ghastly laughter. They were not at peace within themselves, 
 or satisfied that their course was a clear and correct one. 
 I found, too, in some of them, an eagerness to find out 
 faults in the lives of Christians, or to suspect them of bad 
 motives, or to smell out secret scepticism in their hearts, or
 
 304 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 to exaggerate the feeble and false elements which are working 
 in the Church. Over such things they scarcely even af- 
 fected to mourn, while some of them openly rejoiced and 
 loudly laughed. Eeal Christianity, they said, had died with 
 Irving and Chalmers, and all the rest now were either silly or 
 shams. I observed, too, the working of pride and vanity in 
 open and glaring forms. Their God, next to Nature, was 
 Intellect or Genius, especially their own ; and with what 
 haughty contempt, or worse, haughty pity, they looked down 
 vipon huml)le, poor, uneducated people, even when they had 
 worth, honesty, and religion ! I have even heard some of 
 them defend this feeling as the proper one ! Pride, I noticed, 
 distinguished those of them who had the highest talents or 
 genius, — a fierce, demoniac pride, spurning their foes, and 
 recalcitrating at everything that pretended to be a Revelation 
 from God. In others — of a feebler, but more elegant and 
 graceful make — there was a butterfly vanity, which it was 
 almost pleasing, if it had not been somewhat ludicrous, to 
 behold. Common to both were critical fastidiousness and 
 wholesale detraction of all who did not talk a certain mystical 
 jargon in literature, and had not the same sceptical Shib- 
 boleth. 
 
 Some who were among, but hardly of, these men, I loved, 
 and love still, for their truly generous and amiable disposi- 
 tions. They are such men as Jesus, in the days of his flesh, 
 would have sighed over, and declai'ed to be not " very far 
 from the kingdom of Heaven." Tliese were anxious, but 
 unable to believe. Others, again, displayed a very different 
 spirit. They hugged their dark chains ; they were not afraid 
 to "speak evil of dignities," aye, of Christ and the Holy Ghost 
 themselves; and yet, along with serpentine ferocity, there was 
 a serpentine cunning blended, and their eyes, when turned 
 upon you in certain moods, seemed, now the eyes of a chained 
 tiger, and now those of a basilisk. This is not the language 
 of fancy ; at least, I could prove that it is not the language 
 of my fancy alone, since some of this very school have owned
 
 PROGRESS OF HELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 305 
 
 to me that tbey had the same impression about their leaders. 
 There was a third class, far more despicable, who had the art 
 to conceal sentiments, in certain companies, which they pro- 
 claimed in others, and who became actually the pets of some 
 religious bodies, and objects of encomium to some religious 
 newspapers, through the power of vague mystification or of 
 dexterous reticence. ,?i - 
 
 In saying all this, I am not guilty of betraying any con- 
 fidence, — as no confidence was ever reposed in me, and as I 
 only^-epeat emphatically and honestly what is known by 
 many. I am far from meaning to deny that I have witnessed 
 much that was evil, mean, narrow-minded, disingenuous, and 
 Jesuitical, in the ministers and members of the Christian 
 Church. I Icnow the deep-rooted envy, the jealousy, the 
 hypocrisy, the ignorance, the vulgar pride, the underhand 
 methods, the Mammon-worship, the " flunkeyism," in ten 
 thousand forms, which coexist with a Christian profession m 
 the lives of multitudes, and I have felt the effects of some 
 of them, to my own cost. But I know, too, that these spring, 
 not from the presence, but from the absence of the true spirit 
 of Christ. Whereas, not only do the evils I have observed 
 or heard of among the infidel school, equal those of professing 
 Christians, — if not in number, in intensity, — but they can be 
 traced directly to that creed which denies a futui-e world, the 
 existence of a Divine Saviour, the reality of sin, and the 
 responsibility of man. The bad and hollow members of the 
 Christian Church, I may compare to dark spots swimming 
 in a bright sun ; the good and true men of the sceptical 
 schools, I liken to white spots upon one of those black 
 luminaries, which some astronomers tell us are found in the 
 remoter parts of the universe. 
 
 Even in the better members of this class, I perceived two 
 or three gi'and errors ; one was a Brahminical worship of the 
 mere forms of ^Matter — a worship that often far outshot the 
 lawful homage paid these by genius. As they liad no object 
 of worship but the Uuivcnsc, tlicy considered it necessai-y to 
 
 X
 
 306 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 make the best of their idol. Not content with asserting its 
 excessive beauty and grandeur, and the bracing healthful in- 
 fluences that communion with it exerts on both body and soul, 
 they magnified it as a religious teacher ; they winked at those 
 tremendous symptoms oi something wrong which are found in it 
 as well as in man ; and they sought for a Code of Morals and a 
 System of Belief in its " divine meanings," as they mystically 
 called them. The stars were the true Urim and Thummim 
 upon the breast of God ; the voices of Nature, of the old thunder, 
 the old earthquake, the crashing avalanche, the roaring deep, 
 the soft westerly breeze, and. the ripple of a summer stream, 
 with its tiny and momentary stars of light, were the true and 
 only iitterances of the Unseen I am. In vain to point out to 
 them the unsatisfactory and contradictory nature of these deli- 
 verances ; still they were divine, and all that Divinity could do 
 for us. I viewed and view Nature chiefly as a poetical thing, 
 they regarded it as a God, and the only God ; I felt to it 
 much as Pascal describes himself, when he says, " The eternal 
 silence of these infinite spaces affrights me," even while it was 
 stirring up my soul to wonder and enthusiastic admiration ; 
 they believed it, and sung of it, now in eloquent prose, and 
 now in harmonious verse, " as their Mother and Divine." I 
 looked upon it as, with all its magnitude, only a drop in 
 God's bucket, and not to be compared in value to a single 
 soul, — as something that had begun to be, that was limited in 
 its being, and that was yet to cease to be ; they regarded it 
 as infinite and eternal, and man's soul as a mere bubble upon 
 its boundless, unutterable deep. I owned the tremendous 
 difiiculties connected with the material universe, the suffer- 
 ings of myriads of innocent creatures, and the indifference 
 with which it seems to regard individual happiness or indi- 
 vidual life ; but I said, " I know that it cannot reveal the 
 Father, whom I have found in Christ ; I know the utmost it 
 can stammer out from all its starry lips is only ' God hath 
 love,' but not ' God is Love.' " I trust in other revelations 
 than that dumb and half-choked utterance of Nature, and
 
 PEOGEESS OF EELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 307 
 
 am not " careful to answer to objections urged against it j" 
 they, on the other hand, knowing of no other discovery of 
 God than the Universe, professing infinite belief in it, and not 
 admitting the doctrines of a Devil, a Fall of Man, a glorious 
 Supernatural Millennium, or a Future World of compensation 
 and explanation, were driven to their wits' end in accounting 
 for evils of which they could not believe either the beginning 
 or the end, and have sometimes even gone the length of pre- 
 t^ia4ii3g that the sufferings of the lower animals, for instance, 
 ■rcereioaly apparent. And yet some of these very men, who, 
 in order to explain the dreadful phenomena of things, had to 
 resort to silly sophistry, were most forward to charge the 
 Bible God, and the Bible heroes, with cruelty. I need not, 
 however, enlarge on this, as Henry Rogers has shown, with 
 overwhelming force, not only that the moral difficulties which 
 cling to revelation affect Nature- worship and Deism far more 
 formidably, but that the Scriptural discoveries form the only 
 bulwark to save us either from absolute Atheism or from the 
 Manichean hypothesis. We must believe either in No-God ; 
 or in Two Co-eternal Powers, the one Good and the other 
 Evil ; or in the Scripture doctrine of a Fin ite " Enemy," after- 
 wards to be "bound," having "done this," i.e. produced, in 
 conjunction with depraved man, all the moral, and perhaps, 
 ^ too, all the physical, evil in the world. 
 
 I noticed, too, in this class of men, a morbid craving for 
 Unity. This is one of the rages of this age. In science, 
 poetry, art, and philosophy, there must be organic unity. 
 Now, whatever be the case in these, (and we think that a great 
 deal of nonsense has been spoken on the subject, particularly 
 in reference to works of art,) I am certain that the formation 
 of a proper theory of God has been retarded ; or, speaking 
 more strictly, that the Scriptural view of the moral and reli- 
 gious relations of the universe has been perverted, by this 
 diseased desire for unity — a unity, which, like the water from 
 the gate at Bethlehem, after which David thirsted, has some- 
 times been fetched from afar ; and, like it, has returned dyed 
 
 X 2
 
 308 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 with blood — the blood of murdered Truth ! Hence the sad 
 tampering and tinkering that has taken place with notorious 
 facts, and established principles. Hence that mysterious 
 distinction in the Godhead, found in a crude shape in all 
 primeval faiths, and which, in the Bible, takes the perfect 
 form of the Trinity, is denied by so many of our modern 
 theorists. Hence the doctrine of a Devil, also found in various 
 forms in all aboriginal creeds, and which, in the Scriptiire, is 
 separated from the Manichean mistake about his equality 
 with the Divine Being, is now " pvilled down," as Carlyle says; 
 and many maintain that the Devil is only an alias of God, 
 who might have said, as appropriately as he, " Evil, be thou 
 my Good." Hence, sin, too, is just holiness gone a-mumming 
 in a dark mask. Hence, hatred is just love in disguise, and 
 malignity a modification of kindness. I wonder they do not, 
 on the same ground, maintain that madness is reason ; folly, 
 sense ; murder, conception ; and death, birth. Nay, that 
 terrible thing, death, from which men have been accustomed 
 to shrink, shuddering back with a horror compounded of 
 natural and moral aversion, as a hideous anomaly in the 
 universe, is regarded by these amiable and profound thinkers 
 as a blessing, and as rather a beautiful object. The "corpse 
 adds a solemn ornament to the house ;" the coffin, although 
 not, as we Christians foolishly think, the chrysalis-cocoon of 
 an immortal, is an interesting piece of dark furniture ; and 
 the grave, if never to be opened, covers its blank and black 
 forgetfulness with grasses and flowers ! God said of the world, 
 ere man fell, " It is very good ;" they, more generous and 
 catholic in their tastes, say of it still — with all its miseries, 
 absurdities, and vices ; with its burning cradles and crushed 
 worms, its mad-houses and lazar -houses, its hollow laughter 
 and real tears, its slaveries, and — (we were going to say, its 
 superstitions ; but no ! there their charity fails them) — " It 
 is very good !" And why? Because these are all found on 
 one earth, which attends one sun, is attended by one moon, 
 and belongs to one universe ! — although they might as well
 
 PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 309 
 
 say of a palace, which had been shaken by an earthquake, 
 and become for years the haunt of robbers and unclean 
 birds, that the remains of tapestiy and mirrors, the odd 
 leaves of books, the scattei-ed coins, the cracks in the wall 
 and roof, the spiders' webs, and the filthy ordures, were all 
 right, and all showed the same author, because the palace had 
 been built by one-'kirchitect, enclosed in one wall, and had 
 had one great window, letting in light through the roof ! 
 H^e indeed, however, there is a divergence in the path of 
 Qiir-^i&peculators. Cai'lyle, with Goethe, maintains that evil 
 is twin-born with good, and, like it, eternal ; asking, " How 
 can you escape from your own shadow 1 " Emerson, deem- 
 ing this doctrine not very hopeful or comfortable, opines, 
 (although he thinks evil not a bad thing either, and gene- 
 rally productive of much good,) that it is through some 
 mysterious process of " pushing," on the part of love, to come 
 to a quasi end, depai'ting. however, as unexplained as when 
 it entered. Of the two, I think Carlyle the more consistent. 
 If the All — to use his own favourite word — has bred all these 
 strange and terrible things by a necessity of its own nature, 
 then why should it not breed them always 1 ^Vhat can it do 
 better 1 If these things are, in a very considerable sense, good, 
 why should they not continue ? We may, indeed, conceive of 
 '' better," but may not the positive degree of " good " be quite 
 enough for us 1 We, on the other hand, holding that many 
 of these things are detestably evil, thoroughly unjust, irre- 
 deemably polluted and malignant, and that as long as they 
 continue, they are libels on the Divine chai'actex, are certain, 
 alike from our own instincts and the testimony of Scripture, 
 that they are to cease for ever. Let our Carlyles and Carlyle- 
 worshippcrs hear this from the mouth of that Seer of Patmos, 
 who saw the end from the beginning, and let their petty talk 
 about evil being man's shadow, " night perpetually following 
 day," be crushed under the words — " And thci'C shall he no 
 curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it ; 
 and his servants shall serve him. And there shall be no night
 
 310 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 there ; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun, for 
 the Lord God giveth them light, and they shall reign for ever 
 and ever." Be it that this is the language of poetry ; no 
 language could have expressed the great idea save the language 
 of poetry. And within the woof of figure we see the broad 
 principle, that evil and misery are to have an end, at least 
 on earth ; although an eloquent and warm-hearted wi'iter of 
 this school says, " In vain have dreamers promised that in 
 this life strife shall one day cease. No ! Strife without end 
 below !" John then, perhaps, was a dreamer, when he said, 
 " I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, Behold, the 
 tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell among them, 
 and they shall be his people, and. God himself shall be with 
 them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears 
 from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither 
 sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain ; for 
 the former things are passed away." This shall be the true 
 imity, for I, too, am a believer in unity — the unity which 
 God himself is yet to produce, by "binding," through his 
 Son, the Evil Power ; by swallowing up death in victory, 
 and by establishing a universal empire on earth of purity, 
 love, and peace. But the unity of our modern speculators is 
 false ; it lies in a vain effort to identify good with evil, light 
 with darkness, bitter with sweet, and sweet with bitter ; and 
 exposes them to the prophetic " Wo " pronounced on those 
 who make the insane and blasphemous attempt. (See Isaiah 
 v. 20.) 
 
 That "Wo" I saw to be ho^jelessness. 1 am by no means 
 a sanguine person, and but for my belief in the future of 
 Christianity, would often surrender myself to despair. If 
 I err in this, I err in company with such men as Milton, 
 plaining out his musical protest against " evil days," " evil 
 tongues," and " Satan's perverted world ;" — as Pascal, tossing 
 on his bed of slow fire ; — as Johnson, crying, " sun ! to 
 tell thee how I hate thy beams !" — as Burke, dying, as he says 
 himself, "an unhappy man;" — as Foster, all his long hfetime
 
 PROGRESS OP RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 311 
 
 " subject to bondage;" — as Henry Rogers, breathing a milder 
 inspiration of the same dark melancholy which lay on Pascal : 
 I err with Irving, and with Coleridge ; — with Hall, " on 
 whose soul" Foster saw "a deep shade of gloom always 
 hanging;" — and, I add, with Carlyle, who, in his rejection of 
 Christ, reminds me of the Genie imprisoned in the iron pot, 
 ■who for the first huftdred years of his confinement vowed to 
 reward the man who should liberate him, but during the 
 se;^ud, swore a tremendoiis oath that he would put his deliverer 
 to d^^Lt^. But some of these men were relieved amidst their 
 dark views by the hopes of Christianity; and so, I flatter 
 myself, am I. But what have our modern sceptics to cheer 
 them? Some, indeed, of their number smack their lips over 
 this world, and aff'ect to regard it as a vexy snug and com- 
 fortable little corner of the universe. What with good 
 digestion, cold bathing, a well-managed and modified volup- 
 tuousness, exercise, light-reading, museums and theatres — no 
 Sabbath in their week, and, thank God ! no immortal soul in 
 their bodies, to trouble them about its future fate — they 
 contrive to make, they think, the best of this world, and have 
 considerable sympathy, on the one hand, with the ancient 
 Epicureans, who said, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow 
 we die;" and, on the other, strange to tell! with some 
 enlightened and excellent Christians, who have set them- 
 selves elaborately to show how a believer may beat an infidel 
 hollow in the enjoyvient of the good things of this life — how 
 he may, in his flight to the better country, " spoil the 
 Egyptians" en passant, and ride triumphantly in a first-class 
 carnage to heaven ! 
 
 But leaving the Secularists of the party to their flesh- 
 pots, I return to the question — Can their leaders, can the 
 true men and poets among them, be happy or hopeful? 
 Being without God, can they be with hope in the world? 
 Can they be entirely satisfied with the gratifications of sub- 
 limated swine ? Can they stoop over the same trough, and 
 grunt in chorus over the same husks with their followers?
 
 312 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 Can they be happy even iu the full enjoyment of the inno- 
 cent and refined pleasures of this life, believing that they are 
 to go down like bubbles in the dark stream of death? No! 
 they cannot — they do not; they are — they must be — mise- 
 rable. They talk of tlie Puritans, and, while abusing their 
 creed, wonder at their energy of purpose, their vigour of 
 character, their great achievements — not seeing that the two 
 springs of all this lay in the faith and hope ministered by 
 Christianity — in the faith that Christ had come, and in the 
 hope that He was to come again. They talk of an " Atheistic 
 age" — centuries of Atheistic government; and they try to 
 help this state of things by sapping that Christianity which 
 was the life and glory of what they justly deem the proudest 
 section of English story! They tell us to tvait and- labour ; 
 but wait for what? labour in what hope or prospect? None. 
 It is but sowing the wind, to reap the whirlwind. We are 
 ready to labour, and to wait, too ; but Ave labour and wait 
 under divine hopes, golden promises — the prospect, if we 
 endure to the end, of an immortal and unfading crown, 
 " reserved not for us only, but for all that love Christ's 
 appearing." 
 
 I noticed egregious inconsistency in some of their number. 
 At one time they professed thorough satisfaction with this 
 world, in order to save them from the necessity of believing 
 in another ; at another, they magnified its evils, in order to 
 shake the argument for the being of its God. Some, again, 
 referred the solution of the problem to the future; saying, 
 " Hitherto the history of this earth has been a fearful farce ; 
 but we hope for better things." " What ground," I might 
 have rejoined, "have you for hoping this, except from the 
 promises of Christianity? And what better things can you 
 expect from one who, accordi-ng to i/oic, is the sole author of 
 this farce? What, indeed, can you expect as the result but 
 a tragedy — the tragedy — the utter annihilation of the souls 
 of men? If God has been the only and complacent con- 
 ductor of this fearful farce, it is just as likely that he will
 
 PEOGEESS OF EELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 313 
 
 caiTj it on for ever, as that he will bring it to a close." 
 These thinkers seemed to look upon God, mei'ely as an artist, 
 poet, or dramatist, who might be allowed to bungle, nod, or 
 walk through his part, during the first two or three acts or 
 books, provided he gave us a splendid denouemerd or conclu- 
 sion, of which, hitherto, however, they had to admit, there 
 was little prospect.-^. Others have gone farther lengths than 
 even this. The Rev. James Smith, a man of great talent and 
 v»st scholarship, has written an elaborate and ingenious work, 
 eijtiie^ " The Divine Drama of History and Civilization," in 
 which he formally claims for God all the abominable delu- 
 sions of Greek Paganism, Mahometanism, Popery, and so 
 forth, and lays them down, as children more legitimate than 
 Christianity herself, at the door of Heaven! All systems, 
 however erroneous or depraved, are so many distinct " mis- 
 sions" from the one Divine Being. Tliis gentleman is at 
 great pains to prove that there is no Devil — lest, we presume, 
 he should be suspected of having had this most monstrous of 
 all latitudiuarian theories whispered in his clerical ear by one 
 who was a " liar fi"om the beginning.'' The same notion, I 
 may remark — a notion so essentially blasphemous, that 
 rather than believe it, I would drink a thrice-drugged cup of 
 spiritual poison from the hand of Hobbes or Spinoza them- 
 selves — runs through and contaminates the whole structure 
 of that otherwise glorious poem " Festus." 
 
 The inconsistency to which I have alluded taints this 
 school in various other directions. Scarcely two of them 
 have the same theory of Christ; scarcely two of them have 
 the same way of explaining away the force of the Christian 
 evidences; scarcely two of them are agreed as to wliat 
 cidtus, or whether any, is to succeed Christianity. Ah of 
 them are agreed, indeed, in thinking Christianity not what 
 Christians believe it to be; but here, again, there are wide 
 disagreements — some thinking it the best of God's many 
 "missions," and others about the worst; some raving about 
 it being the " divinest idea " of God, except, perhaps, Maho-
 
 314 THE HISTOEY OF A MAN. 
 
 metanism; others hating it with a hatred so intense, that 
 they would ahnost recal the " exploded myth " of hell for its 
 special accommodation ; while others love it so much that 
 they assume its name, and steal the clothes of its phraseology. 
 Mr. Rogers' picture of a " sceptics' dinner-party" is very 
 accurate. 
 
 In one other point they are, speaking generally, at one. 
 I refer to their aversion to church-going and to clergymen. 
 As to church-going, it seems to them the most lamentable 
 piece of superannuated folly. " They kneel with old women, 
 or poor and pious weavers, who cannot rid themselves of the 
 belief that ' there is a wrath to come;' or listen to formal 
 cant, doled out by snivelling curates, pampered rectors, 
 gaunt Presbyterian jiarsons — Independents, with swelling 
 piles of white neckcloth, and mouthing volubility of talk — 
 or even by Unitarian ministers, with the word * Truth ' 
 inscribed on their watch-seals — no, not they ! They will 
 rather to the woods and the silent fields ; or will, on that 
 day, of all others, record in writing their liberal and unfet- 
 tered thoughts. What can they learn at church?" Why, 
 perhaps they might learn a good deal. They might listen to 
 the sweet and beautiful prayers of the old English liturgy, 
 and have an opportunity of comparing them with those of 
 Leigh Hunt's Prayer-book. They might hear the organ 
 lifting up its billows of sound, and mount on them, as on 
 ridges of gradual ascension — Alps above Alps — firmaments 
 above firmaments — toward the very throne of God. They 
 might, in Scotland, listen to the " simple song of praise," the 
 voice of psalms, and might, while it lasted, dream that they 
 were boys and Christians once more, and weep as they awoke 
 ft-om the dream. They might even still hear some solid 
 truth, set in rich and sparkling eloquence, from lips nearly as 
 gifted as their own. They might, if thirsting for earnestness, 
 find not a little of it among the old, the invalid, the females, 
 the children, and the simple-hearted in every congregation. 
 If, on the other hand, they wished to refresh the fui-y of their
 
 PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 315 
 
 hatred at formalism, cant, hypocrisy, and fashionable religion 
 — should they feel it becoming rather fade and stale, they 
 could not do better than step into certain churches in both 
 the metropolis of England and in that of Scotland. But, in 
 real truth, I fear these men are detained from church partly 
 by the morbid fastidiousness which characterizes their literary 
 taste, partly by a biJater hatred at the religion which is pro- 
 claimed there, and partly by caprice, a love of singularity, 
 aad downright affectation. Some of them could not consent 
 to^ h& §ilent, to listen, and be overcrowed by a clergyman, 
 dui'ing the space of an hour, for a whole world. It never 
 occurs to them that to worship is as much a part of divine 
 service as to listen, and that they might bear with the hore of 
 the one for the sake of the lofty spiritual enjoyment that, 
 were they really devout, they might derive from the exercise 
 of the other. But no ; their gorge rises at the bare concep- 
 tion of a poor parson venturing to echo the thunder-message 
 of Sinai, or the soft accents of Calvary, in the ears of a man 
 of genius ! 
 
 As to the clergy, we have seen recently a specimen from the 
 Polyphemus of the sceptical party, of the animosity enter- 
 tained to these "black dragoons." If John Sterling had only 
 been eight months a whipper of female slaves, or eight 
 ^ months in Jericho, or eight months in Pandemonium, instead 
 of being eight months a humble, working curate ! " That 
 was the unkiudest cut of all." To run wounded, although 
 not killed, by Carlylean cannon-shot, and spend eight months 
 of this mutilated life in telling the glad tidings of the 
 Gospel to poor cottagers — what a crime ! fitly rewarded, 
 when he returned, by another salute, which did, at last, 
 eflfectually cripple and bring down the mark ! Honour to 
 the brave hand that fired the great guns, and completed the 
 destruction of the unfortunate invalid, who had committed 
 the inexpiable sin of believing in Christianity, of working 
 in the Lord's vineyard almost one year, and, as Coleridge, 
 too, had once done, of preaching Christ with the lips and the
 
 316 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 heart of a man of genius ! Now, that the clergy of any de- 
 nomination are all they ought to be, or that they thoroughly 
 comprehend their time or their work in it, — I am far from 
 maintaining. But this I say, tliat they are employed in 
 conserving an influence which will be granted by all to have 
 OJice been beneficial, — that the religion they teach is still, 
 as John Sterling admits, intensely adapted and eminently 
 useful to simple minds, — that they are doing a good work 
 among the young, among the poor and the " forgotten," 
 — that they are the natural bulwarks of the institution of 
 the Sabbath, ("a day which," says Emerson, "is the Jubilee 
 of the whole world, and, as it dawns into prisons and hovels, 
 suggests, even to the vile, a sense of the dignity of spiritual 
 being,") — that they are very serviceable in repressing open 
 vice, — that they are still the most successful teachers, on the 
 whole, of the lower and middle classes in the empire, — that, 
 besides preaching and pastoral duties, they frequently read 
 lectures or write books on general subjects, — that many of 
 them are confessedly talented as well as good men, and a few 
 are master-spirits, — and that their miserable remuneration, 
 hard labours, and many difficulties, are enough to prove that 
 they are actuated by disinterested motives. Why a class of 
 which all this is undeniably true, should be objects of 
 contempt and abuse to any wide-minded and philosophic 
 man, and to such an extent, that eight months' identification 
 "with their order is spoken of as equivalent to a connexion of 
 the same length of time with felons or scoundrels in a 
 " Model Prison," — I cannot comprehend, except on the 
 ground (for which, alas ! thei'e is some evidence in the writer 
 besides) of a quarrel with the religion they are employed in 
 teaching. For the alternative may be stated thus — Either 
 the religion of Christ is true, and the clergy false guides and 
 unworthy representatives of it, in which case let the religion 
 be vindicated at the expense of the teachers ; or, Both of 
 them are false, in which case let both be treated with equal 
 severity and with equal 2}lainness, as they deserve. The
 
 PEOGEESS OF EELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 317 
 
 author of the " Life of Sterling " takes neither side, but, 
 while only daring, with " whispered breath " and " sotto voce,''' 
 to attack Christianity, he throws out, what I must call, 
 unmanly and untrue insults against the clergy. 
 
 My remarks in the fifth chapter have shown that I am no 
 bigot to my order. But I do not see, for the life of me, were 
 men like Jeremy Ta^dor, Dr. Donne, or John Howe, now 
 alive, what there were to prevent them from appearing in 
 the,€hristian pulpit, and thence shooting forth, as they did 
 twp -agn^uries ago, the bright shafts of their genius. The 
 difficulties of the Christian religion were not one whit greater 
 then than now, and the evidences for it were not so strong, 
 nor had they been so scientifically presented. There was, 
 indeed, less denial, but there was much, and that of a far 
 profounder kind than is common now. Spinoza and Hobbes 
 were of the same century with Milton, Taylor, and Barrow. 
 It may be true, indeed, that more higher minds are tinged 
 with doubt in this age than in any preceding one ; but the 
 men I speak of, were not men to follow in crowds, — run in 
 ruts, or put on scepticism as a fashionable mode of dress. 
 It may be said, but why are there no such men now found in 
 the Christian Church ? I reply, first, neither are there any 
 on the sceptical side equal to them ; secondly, the non-ex- 
 istence of giants does not imply that all who remain are 
 dwarfs ; and, thirdly, if none of the transcendent order of 
 the Barrows and Taylors be now in the Christian pulpit, yet 
 taking the clergy of all denominations as a whole, they 
 condense and exhibit a mass of intellect, knowledge, elo- 
 quence, and piety, on which few men are so lofty as to have 
 a right to look down, and at which no really great and good 
 man would sneei*. 
 
 I luid long observed, as well as heard of, heartlessness as 
 a sure result, sooner or later, of the sceptical speculations of 
 the day. Once the living image of compassion and disinte- 
 rested love exhibited in Christ Jesus, is blotted out as a 
 reality from our belief, however it may continue to exist as
 
 318 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 an ideal figure in the fancy, the heai-t gradually hardens, 
 either freezes in contempt or bums with a deadly flame of 
 animosity to mankind. Tell me not, that fictitious characters 
 of virtue can as much impress the heart and inspire the 
 conduct as true historical ones. Why do such persons in 
 fiction as David Deans, and his sublimely simple daughter, 
 Jeanie, so move and so benefit us % Because they are both 
 founded on fact ; nay, are facts somewhat faded from the 
 brightness of the original truth. The real Helen Walker pre- 
 ceded and, I doubt not, surpassed, the fictitious Jeanie Deans ; 
 and Scott must have seen, and I have seen myself, Scottish 
 patriarchs of whom David Deans was but a faint copy. I re- 
 member conversing once with an excellent and eminent man, 
 whose only fault is too good an opinion of the school I am 
 describing, about Strauss' theory of Christ, when he remarked, 
 — " It had been strange if God had produced the impression 
 Jesus has made on the world, and the good he has effected, by 
 a myth, instead of a real man." Yes, I thought, " strange," 
 but something more ; it had been impossible, even to OncLui- 
 potence, to produce such effects by anything short of a real 
 personage, as impossible as to make two and two five. Once 
 you prove Christ to be a fiction, then his virtues next become 
 fictitious, and then the whole thing becomes a beautiful 
 picture, and, by ceasing to have life, loses authority, not to 
 speak of the awful sanctions and glorious motives implied in 
 Christ's words and doctrines, which, were his reality dis- 
 proved, would become of no greater validity than Dante's 
 pictures of hell, or than John Martin's " Plains of Heaven." 
 Little Eva has converted many souls, I believe, as well as 
 melted millions of eyes ; but why ? because, first, she was a 
 portrait of many a real little Eva, and because, secondly, 
 she was a miniature of Jesus Christ. Mere myths can- 
 not propagate. Truth is not only stranger, but infinitely 
 more powerful than fiction. If Christ be a fiction, where 
 could the prototype have been found 1 Consequently, I 
 fear many of those who begin by questioning Christ's real
 
 PEOGRESS OF RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 319 
 
 existence, as well as divinity, end in hating his character. 
 I saw this only in jDart, till I read the " Model Prisons." 
 This book did me a great deal of good. It cut the last fibre 
 of the tie -which bound me to that school, and which had long 
 been trembling. When the pamphlet came in, a member of 
 this school was with me. I read it aloud, with a running 
 commentary of unnsitigated disgust and contempt. The 
 vulgarity, meanness, and coarseness of the diction, the vile 
 inhumanity of the spirit, the brutal language applied to John 
 Hp^i'aa-cL and the general want of sympathy with poor 
 humanity, struck me as unworthy of a man, besides a 
 man of genius. I was amazed and edified at the impression 
 it made on the gentleman to whom I read it. His taste and 
 sensibility were evidently shocked ; but then, was not this 
 the production of his Demigod or rather Divinity 1 Dared 
 he doubt his infallibility 1 He attempted, accordingly, some 
 weak plea about these always having been Sartor's sentiments, 
 although his language, he admitted, had not improved, — an 
 excuse equivalent to saying of a man who had begun to 
 swear, that he was always in the habit of cursing,' — as if the 
 intensely infernal nature of the sentiments had deserved any 
 other species of utterance, — as if, in this unguarded and 
 truculent fury of speech, the veil had not just fortunately 
 dz'opped, and revealed to thousands, who never saw it before, 
 the real purpose and spirit of the man ! He was, at last, 
 compelled to tell me that " I did not know my own place in 
 speaking disrespectfully of such a man ;" to which, I think, I 
 rejoined, that " far less had that man known his own place, in 
 insulting John Howard, and, through him, Jesus Christ, and 
 Humanity themselves." 
 
 The next year I saw this spirit of hcartlessness — (a spirit, 
 I may remark, fostei'ed, not only by disbelief and dislike to 
 Christ, but by that indifference to individual human life 
 taught such men by their system) — illustrated in the far- 
 famed Life of Sterling, a book the bitter animus of which 
 against the clergy has often been exposed, but the heartless-
 
 320 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 ness and the want of honesty iu which are still more wonderful. 
 It is very sad, indeed, to find how its author set himself to 
 strip one garment of belief after another away fx-om Sterling's 
 mind, till he left him naked, and converted a glorious, bold 
 being into such " a man as is made out of a forked radish, or 
 after supper, out of a cheese-paring," and how he actually 
 seems to "see the nakedness" of his friend's soul, and " not 
 be ashamed," nay, to glory in the transformation. One is 
 reminded of the triumph with which the sorcerer in the 
 Arabian Nights must have seen Prince Bahman turned into 
 a black stone ! Should he reply, " What, although I taught 
 him Pot-theism or Pantheism, if I taught him the truth; what, 
 a] though I taught him that Christ was an imjiostor, Paul a 
 sham, and that Christianity had become a damnable liumbug, — 
 if I taught him what was the melancholy fact." I rejDly, " Very 
 well ; but first, why did you not say so plainly before, and, 
 again, why have you concealed what you did teach Sterling; 
 why have you combined with him in ' keeping down the 
 iron lids of these secrets with all the weights in your power ;' 
 why not have as much mercy on us poor deluded wretches as 
 on him ; why, since it seems you told one dying invalid (for 
 the first time in your mortal life) something definite, not tell 
 the same to a sick world, but continue to insult it by morsels 
 of mysticism and rants of rage ; why not even print, if you 
 dare, Sterling's last lines to you, written, as you say, iu 
 ' tears and star-fire ;' and why not explain how your account 
 of his dying beliefs harmonizes wdth his wish to have the 
 old Bible handed to him on his death-bed, which he used at 
 Herstmonceux among the cottages 1 I knew you never ivill 
 nor dare re'ply to these questions." 
 
 I may, perhaps, be thought to have dwelt too long on such 
 subjects, but I know, as well probably as any man living, the 
 influences exerted by the men I refer to, upon the mind of 
 the country, and I wish to do all in my power to counteract 
 it. I think I understand their tactics well. They know 
 that a great number of Christians are doubtful about many
 
 PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 321 
 
 parts of tbeir own creed, and that there is a general spirit of 
 inquiry, unrest, and analysis abroad in the world. They are 
 afraid that, nevertheless, the religion of Jesus may come out, 
 as it has come often out befoi'e from the crucible, as unique, 
 peculiar, divine, and more refined than at the beginning. 
 Anxious that it should not be so, they have first of all affected 
 to extract out of Christianity, what they call its kernel, and to 
 leave the shell to shift for itself. They have next tried to 
 classify the religion of the world with the ten thousand human 
 sj^tfftns, good, bad, or indifferent, which have appeared; and 
 Kavd'stai-ted the paradox, that, because the serpent and the 
 lamb are fouud in the same universe, therefore Belial and 
 Christ are both varieties of God. They have magnified the 
 duty of earthly work, and have separated the two precepts, 
 " Diligent in business and fervent in spirit," from the third, 
 " serving the Lord." They have opposed the humility and the 
 childlikeness of the Gospel, and tried to substitute for them 
 self-reliance, pride, or at least, the resolution of despair. They 
 have magnified Nature and Man above the Word, while the 
 Bible had said, " He hath magnified his Word above all his 
 name." They have underrated the present power and re- 
 sources of the Church, — feeble and poor, comparatively, as I 
 grant these are. They have tried to deprive Christianity of 
 its hold over the poor, and its authority over the science, 
 literature, and, above all, over the politics and sciology of 
 the day. They have, in order to answer the unanswerable 
 argument from the Christian life, attempted a caricature of 
 it, and inculcated, and even practised with considerable zeal, 
 some of its outward virtues, altliough never for Christ's sake, 
 but sometimes for the sake of the world, and sometimes for 
 the sake, it is to be feared, of the Devil and his cause ! They 
 have at the same time shown themselves " wiser in their 
 generation than the children of light;" are adepts in the 
 art of religious douhle-entendre ; are masters of a jargon 
 which resembles the language of Canaan mixed up in a sort 
 of porridge with the language of Ashdod, and whenever 
 
 Y
 
 322 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 any imprudent member of their sects, or sympathiser with 
 them, such as an Atkinson, a Miss Martineau, an Holyoake, 
 or a Francis Newman, breaks out into useless extravagances 
 of unbelief or unwise displays of malignity, (even as Robes- 
 pierre used to "swear down" some of the monstrous proposals 
 cf Hebert and Marat.) they, masters of this craft, too, have 
 a ' word in season " and a withering sneer at hand for those 
 well-meaning but blundering blockheads who loUl ride through 
 Coventry, even though there should be few Peeping Toms ! 
 
 I could have said somewhat more on these topics, but I 
 defer it to another occasion, when, God-willing, T shall deal 
 less in the statement of imjyremions, sincere and profound as 
 these are, and more in eeasons for my feelings. If it is 
 asked now, — To what exact point have your inquiries and dis- 
 appointments in thought, led you 1 I hasten, although shortly 
 and generally, to reply by a few statements, both positive 
 and negative. And, first, I do now, far less than I did, worship 
 genius. "The shepherd in Virgil," says Johnson, "grew at 
 last acquained with Love, and found him a native of the 
 rocks." A similar disenchantment has taken place with me. 
 I admire and love genius still, biit I find its general dwelling- 
 place to be among rocks-^the rocks of unhappy, morbid dis- 
 positions, of unsettled religious convictions, of querulous 
 vanities and jealousies; rocks volcanic in structure, yet with 
 masses of the unmelted ice of selfishness lurking in the 
 hollows, and rocks which too often shade the beams of the 
 Sun of Righteousness. I know, indeed, that some men of 
 real geniiis and unsettled views, in our present age, as well as 
 many of the soi-disant species, pretend that they have become 
 healthier, happier, more benevolent, and more devout men 
 than their brethi'en in the past, and let those who know them 
 not, believe this ! / do not believe it. Never did evil- 
 speaking, jealousy, rancorous envy, rampant selfishness, and 
 want of faith in anything but nature, their cliques, and them- 
 selves, more flourish than in the present day. Never were 
 principle and heart more frequently divorced from intellect,
 
 PROGEESS OF RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 323 
 
 learning, and genius. I acknowledge, indeed, many lionoui'- 
 able exceptions — men who have wedded rehgion in the rich 
 and costly marriage-chamber of genius — men who are full of 
 high-minded, amiable, and generous dispositions, and men 
 who at least are distinguished by a perseverance and pains- 
 taking industry which are worthy of all commendation. But 
 such exceptions toojoften occur in the obscurer nooks of the 
 literaiy world, and among those who, however worthy, are 
 npt basking in the sunshine of genei'al aj^plause. 
 
 ^jpart from all this, I now feel far more forcibly than I did, 
 that genius, unless consecrated and inspired by a deeper 
 inspiration than its own, is but a sorry God, and may be 
 likened to one of the strong genii of the Arabian Nights — 
 very powerful always, but as fi'equently employed in doing 
 the will of dark sorcerers and fiends, as in doing that of Allah. 
 I may and do, always admire, but it is only when employed 
 in God's service, that I can ever tvorship, or trust, or hojje in 
 genius. 
 
 I have, secondly, ceased to expect much from the discoveries 
 of science. It has done, of course, much in the past, and is 
 fussing away in imitation of those doings, still. What it has 
 done, however, and whatever yet it is likely to do, concerns 
 more man's earthly welfare than his spiritual good. It has 
 told him much that has tended to make him comfortable, 
 but scarcely one thing that has tended to make him happy. 
 It has given him much information, but little real knowledge. 
 It has furnished him with many beautiful images, but with 
 little real inspiration. It has rather perplexed, than clarified, 
 his original conception of God. And, in some directions at 
 least, it seems fast approaching its limits. In geology, indeed, 
 it may continue to supply new materials for contradictory 
 theories for a long time to come ; in chemistry, some expect 
 that great prizes are yet reserved ; but in astronomy, many 
 besides us are becoming hopeless. How sanguine, nine years 
 ago, were ' men's expectations about Lord Rosse's telescope ! 
 It was to pierce, they thought — or spoke as if they thought — 
 
 T 2
 
 324 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 iuto the very Tieaven of heavens, and show us the central 
 throne itself. It was, at all events, to solve the questions 
 about the nebulae, the plurality of worlds, and so forth ; and 
 yet we have seen, witliin these last two years, both these 
 questions again canvassed with as much imcertainty and 
 contradictory keenness as ever. The heavens are as far off as 
 they were, and can tell us as little as before about either man, 
 their spectator, or God, their Creator. Our British Association 
 meetings are becoming laughing-stocks to the non-scientific 
 public, and to many of the scientific too. It was, perhaps, 
 a prophetic glimpse of the modern doings of our silly science, 
 that made Pascal throw himself back in disgust at the study, 
 into that shroud which he put on long before, and wore till 
 death. And it would require the sarcasm of a Swift to 
 describe adequately the ridiculous details of one of these 
 " Legion- Clubs," where one eminent Professor puffs another 
 to the skies for finding out a new species of duckweed, and 
 where the other returns a profound bow as he compliments 
 his learned brother on his having detected the undeveloped 
 germ of a third ear in a rare variety of the ass ; where one 
 wears a new trefoil aromid his victorious brow, as if he had 
 discovered the corn or the vine ; where another is as proud 
 of a new gas as if he had found out a principle more compre- 
 hensive than gravitation ; and where a number of immortal 
 men (?) are occupied for several hours in discussing the ques- 
 tion : How comes it that^^ies are able to walk upon the ceiling 
 of the house ? a fact, by the way, proving that their heads are 
 not quite so heavi/, nor their footing quite so slippery, as those 
 of our sapient philosophers. I know, indeed, that some of 
 our most eminent savans are sick of the common-places and 
 tiny results of modern science, and have striven hard to subli- 
 mate it, by connecting it with theological and moral principles, 
 and with a spiritual poetry ; but I know also that they have 
 failed in the attempt, and are, in some instances, drawing off 
 from the study in silent, contemptuous despair. My impres- 
 sion is, that scientific investigation is utterly unable to give
 
 PEOGEESS OF EELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 325 
 
 US any theological or moral light ; because, first, there is very- 
 little to be found in Matter itself; and because, secondly, 
 Science has no proper instrument of moral discovery in its 
 hands : "Who can, by searching, find out God"?" I need not 
 dwell on the discrepancies between Science and Revelation ; 
 discrepancies which, in my opinion, have never yet been 
 satisfactorily explaiiftd. Upon similar grounds I have very 
 little fiiiih or hope in Metaphysics ; except, indeed, as they 
 can be successfully wielded in the defence of Christianity, and 
 tQ the. poufusion of its adversaries. 
 
 Thirdly : I have nearly as little trust in our common Chris- 
 tian schemes and common Christian hopes. My reasons for 
 this, as a whole, I reserve till afterwards, but would only at 
 present, express my amazement at the stress laid upon Mis- 
 sions by a Christian so enlightened as Henry Rogers, in the 
 close of his " Defence of the Eclipse of Faith." That Chris- 
 tianity tends to propagate itself so long as it lives, is unques- 
 tionable ; but why should it not be permitted by God for 
 a season to die ? Are there not symptoms that such a dark 
 dispensation is before it ? This we will be believed to say not 
 in exultation, but in deep sorrow. Christianity always radiates 
 out from a centre ; but what if, between the centre and the cir- 
 cumference, has crossed some cold blast from hell ? Christianity 
 is spreading still over the simple-uiiuded in every country ; 
 but it is the fact, that it is not only desperately resisted by 
 many of the mightiest minds in Christendom, but that the 
 young race is, to a frightful extent, disaffected to it. That 
 from this state our religion is to emerge, I firmly believe ; but 
 I am persuaded that no books of evidences, and that nc 
 increase to the extent or energy of existing machineiy, can 
 produce this desirable issue. Ttie crisis is extraordinary ; and 
 extraordinaiy too must the remedy be. It is a crisis not for 
 a heroic writer, so much as for a heroic actor. It was not 
 Burke's magnificent " Reflections" which quelled the French 
 Revolution ; it was Wellington's steel. So — if I dare compare 
 greater things to smaller — it is not the " Eclipse of Faith,"
 
 326 THE HISTORY OP A MAN. 
 
 although a book of great power and genius, that is to extin- 
 guish modern infidehty ; it is the " Sword coming out of the 
 mouth of Him who rideth upon tlie white horse." 
 
 Fourthly : I believe in a personal Devil, as well as in a per- 
 sonal God ; and find in his prodigious ramified power, and 
 old deepening hate to Deity, a solution of much, if not all, the 
 evil in the universe ; a solution at which the Unitarians of our 
 enlightened age may laugh their fill, but which seems Scrip- 
 tural, simple, comprehensive ; which saves man in some 
 measure from the blame of the fearful phenomena to be found 
 on earth, and casts a glimmer, at least, of liglit, upon the 
 origin of sin, misery, and evil. Once give up the idea of 
 supernatural malignant agency ; of a Power resisting and 
 counterplotting the good God; and you give up what is one 
 of the main principles in the Bible, and what explains much 
 in the plot and the contest of things, — as distinctly as the 
 character of Rashleigh, in " Rob Roy," explains many of the 
 complications of the otherwise unaccountable and incredible 
 tale. On the difficulties, objections, extent, &c. of this theory, 
 I enter not now ; but sure I am that a greater truth than is 
 generally suspected lies in this direction; and I am much 
 mistaken if such Christian minds as Henry Rogers, and the 
 author of the " Restoration of Belief," have not come contem- 
 poraneously to a somew^hat similar phase of belief. Arnold 
 and Milton, too, saw the importance of the same truth.* 
 
 Fifthly : Without dwelling on points which I hold in 
 common with all Christians ; such as Christ's Divinity, his 
 Real and True Atonement for sin, the Trinity, the office of 
 the Holy Spirit, &c., I repeat my pi'ofound, gi-owiug, deepening, 
 and, I may almost say, unalterable conviction, in the Second 
 Advent of Christ, as the hope of the world, the glorious com- 
 plement and crown of the dispensation of mercy, the conclusive 
 blow to the Evil One, and to all those evil agents and 
 
 * It is curious, that since writing this I find that James Martineau 
 has been driven to admit Sui^ernatural Evil Agents, in spite of his 
 systems See Prospective Review for 1 85 5. Ax'ticle, " Maurice's Essays.*
 
 PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 327 
 
 influences which, under him, are ruining the race. Of tiie 
 times and the seasons I say nothing, and think that notliing 
 should be said, except witli great caution ; neitlier do I here 
 dwell on difficulties, objections, or on the extent of the deli- 
 verance to be effected. T state only that broad principle 
 which the Day shall declare ; and declare in thunder and iu 
 flame. .v 
 
 I offer, after all, the above outline of a creed, not as the 
 oreed of a philosopher, not as deduced from long and deep 
 s|,u(^^ ^f exegesis and dogmatic theology — although I believe 
 it consistent with both — still less as the reverie or dream of a 
 poet, but as the creed of a babe, for on such matters I desire to 
 "humble myself and-become as a little child." It is a creed 
 which will and must be distasteful to the proud votaries of the 
 sciences and the philosophies of these days — those sciences 
 so shallow, that the depth of a nutshell beside that of the 
 infinite baffles them, and those philosophies so uncertain and 
 so hollow, that they, have not yet decided whether man be a 
 pai-t or a whole — a reality or a dream. It is a creed which 
 can have few charms for most of our present race of poets, 
 who have gone a-gadding through this torn, ruptured earth, 
 this night-and-day-divided universe, this devil-ridden societ}', 
 this true chaos, on w'hich the Spirit has hardly begun to brood, 
 and searching for a unity as to come, w^hich, if tiiey cannot 
 find, they can forge. 1 hope for little acceptance for it either 
 from many of the votaries of our common religious systems, 
 or men who ai'e fleeing from terrible facts to hide theii 
 ostrich heads in organizations and money-moved machineries, 
 and whose religion is too often a semi-worldly, semi-spiritual 
 cant, priding itself, Avith all its pretensions to piety, more on 
 the names of noblemen who attend religious meetings, and 
 on the multitude of carriages to be seen at public religious 
 breakfasts, than on the good it professes to do, to a distracted 
 world and a riven Church. 
 
 But I am not without my hopes that this creed of a babe,
 
 328 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 essentially that of Pascal, Foster, Irving, and Arnold, may 
 obtain acceptance with many babe-like Christians in all 
 denominations, who may find in it some of the silent beatings 
 of their own hearts expressed, and that said in language 
 which they had only been able to say by tears and sighs. 
 There are many in the age who are not prepared to believe 
 in full, either the philosophic view of religion, or all that is 
 contained in the common creeds of Christendom. To them, my 
 view may possibly have some interest, especially after it has 
 been cast, as I am in another work seeking to cast it, into a 
 larger and shapelier system than my space in this permits. 
 At all events it commends itself to my soul, especially at 
 the times when that soul is most weaned from the world, 
 most distrustful of itself, and most penetrated with the love 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ. To babes I commend it, even as 
 something of it I have learned from babes. Oh ! how precious 
 to me have been the pi'attlings of little children, and those 
 subtle questions and still subtler replies that I have heard 
 coming from their spotless lips, and have listened to as to 
 oracular breathings ! How true the words : " Out of the 
 mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast ordained strength ;" 
 aje, strength of insight, to which that of most philosophers 
 and theologians is abject weakness and folly ! Almost every 
 doctrine now " most sui'ely believed " by me, I have heard 
 again and again (sometimes without much conviction till 
 long afterwards) from the lips of prattlers, ere or after their 
 evening prayer was said, at that hour when those acquainted 
 with children must have noticed how, after they are watered 
 with the baptism for the night, and clad in their sleeping 
 robes, their souls and bodies seem both liberated ; and how, 
 as a double portion of the child's spirit seems to fall on them, 
 their utterances sometimes far transcend the thoughts of the 
 highest genius. Then and there, the imj)ossibility and madness 
 of the ideas that God has created evil ; that evil is or can be 
 good; that the Devil is in league with God; have been dis-
 
 PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 329 
 
 closed in the language of those " of whom is the kingdom of 
 Heaven." From the child's shrine I have heard again and 
 again the doctrines of a fall, and the antagonism of good and 
 evil, proclaimed. 
 
 Once a little boy was walking on the brink of the German 
 Ocean with his nurse. He saw the waves rising, and then, 
 as if fiercely pulled ' down from below, subsiding into their 
 channel. He asked her : " Who makes all these waves rise, 
 Mai-j-l" She answered: "Oh! God, my boy." " And does 
 the""I>e^fil," he rejoined, "sit below, and di'atv them all down 
 again r' Had he come an hour after to the beach, he would 
 have found a silvery ripple the only relic of the struggle; and 
 would have seen in this that issue of the great sphere-shaking 
 contest, " which shall come, will come, and will not tarry." 
 Children, too, all love the idea of Christ, and testify to his 
 reality. Strauss never could have been truly a child. Was 
 Sartor ever taught to say — 
 
 " Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, 
 Look upon a little child ; 
 Pity my simplicity, 
 And suffer me to come to thee." 
 
 Newton, we know, said something like this on his death- 
 bed; and so the greatest might do, and but for pride, would 
 do still. Children, too, all feel the reality of sin, and that 
 death, as well as it, is no make-believe, no mere transition 
 state, no angel with a black mask and an inverted torch, biit 
 a dire infliction ; and they wonder as much as we how they are 
 called to endure it. In many other points I look upon 
 them as tlie best commentators on the Bible ; and even as it 
 is granted that tliey are in their instinct admirable judges of 
 the human character, so also are they admirable judges of 
 the divine. Tell me not tliat tliey are taught all this by 
 their parents; it is not true — their parents themselves are 
 often " astonished " at their understanding and their answers.
 
 330 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 Slump not uj) these facts, as Emerson does, under the general 
 term, " the wisdom of children;" the question recurs, '• Whence 
 have they their wisdom, having never learned 1 " That sin 
 and Satan have something to do with children, I deny not, 
 else they Avould never suffer nor so die ; but that Christ has 
 something far more to do with them, I believe, — and I hear 
 the testimony which those little children, " crying in the 
 temple," gave to him during the days of his flesh, reverbe- 
 rated by myriads of voices since, and swelled, besides, by 
 those of child-like men in every age and in every family of 
 mankind. Wordsworth saw this truth, in part, when he said — 
 
 " Heaven lies about us iu our infancy, 
 
 ***** 
 
 Trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 From God who is our home." 
 
 We are fast, I believe, coming to the alternative, the religion 
 of the philosopher, or that of the babe, — referring here not 
 specially to my version of it, but to the general child-like 
 spirit and principles of Christianity, the religion of Him 
 whom I have sometimes called " the Eternal Child." The 
 question amounts simply to this, — Are we to become for ever 
 the bond-slaves of matter, and its confused and contradictory 
 phenomena ; to sing esto ^^er^jg^wa to the fearful farce or 
 tragedy going on, and to call that " all God's," of which we 
 know a large portion to belong to the Devil, the world, and the 
 flesh; or are we to entertain the belief, chiefly on the 
 evidence of our ow^n souls, echoing the words of the Book, 
 that a divine principle or power is working against innume- 
 rable adversaries in the universe, and is, through the God- 
 Man, Christ Jesus, yet to overcome, and in overcoming either 
 to translate us, if we believe on him, out of this dark world 
 for ever, or to ^t it for the habitation of Christ's "little 
 children, and of Christ himself? " All the tendencies of the 
 mere intellect of the world seem running to the former; 
 Christians should be taking their stand more and more firmly
 
 PEOGEESS OF EELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 
 
 331 
 
 on the latter. While yielding all that can properly be con- 
 ceded to the claims of genuine science, literature, art, and 
 philosophy, and while admiring to enthusiasm the universe in 
 its poetical aspects, let them cling to the grand princii^les, 
 supernaturalisms, and hopes of the Bible, and be prepared 
 rather to sacrifice a thousand human systems than one " Thus 
 saith the Lord ;" ratlier all the stars, were it, which it is not, 
 necessary, than one of the fringes of the garment of Him who 
 c*rne from above them the Teacher of Galilee.
 
 332 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 DREAMS. 
 
 I WOULD exhort all my readers to skip this chapter, unless 
 they possess, along with a good deal of the speculative, a good 
 deal also of the poetical. I have been, as I have hinted in 
 a former chapter, all my life, and am still at forty-two, an 
 incorrigible dreamer, both by night and by day, and I propose 
 to recount, for the benefit of the imaginative, a few of the 
 more remarkable of those reveries by day, and visions by 
 night, which have crossed my spirit. 
 
 Near the cataract described in my first chapter, there was 
 a deep pit, partly covered with brambles and trees. It was 
 not generally known, and even those who knew, shunned it, 
 because it bore some Gaelic name implying a tradition that 
 it was " the Mouth of Hell." This, however, when I was 
 a boy, instead of deterring, drew me to it by a kind of fasci- 
 nation. One Saturday afternoon in, I think, 1824, I was 
 wandering in the wood alone, and found myself, ere I was 
 aware, near the brink of this mysterious pit. I got up on 
 a tree, which hung its branches right over the mouth, and 
 was gazing down, with considerable curiosity, when lo ! under 
 my weight the branch broke, and I was precipitated in. My 
 fall was partly broken by the bushes which lined the mouth 
 and sides of the pit, but the fall was far enough to stun and 
 disable me; and when I came to my consciousness, I found 
 myself in a pit too steep and deep to be scaled, amongst 
 stones and mud, a dim twilight around, and only a single 
 speck of blue sky shining through the brambles, as if to 
 mock my imprisonment. Here was a predicament ! The
 
 DREAMS. 333 
 
 pit was in the centre of a solitary wood ; it was shunned by- 
 many of those who did know of its existence ; strange cries, 
 it was said, had been heard from it at midnight ; and how 
 likely it was that my voice, were I to shout, would be con- 
 founded with these, if it were not drowned by the cataract 
 which was howling at a short distance. j\Iy feelings were 
 disagi-eeable enough^, and as the afternoon darkened into 
 evening, they became worse. I thought of the agony my 
 parents would feel at my absence ; I began to remember the 
 strajQ^e^ stories I had heard about this pit ; and the wind, 
 which had now begun to arise, had a dreary, dirge-like sound, 
 mingling, in melancholy concert, with the cry of the cataract. 
 One star had come, and looked tlu'ough the bushes; had 
 shone with tantalizing brightness for an hour, and then, as if 
 its interest in the lonely boy had been satisfied, had gone on 
 its journey. It was succeeded by a windy gush of moonlight, 
 which seemed how strange, sad, and ghostly, as it trembled 
 through the trees, and went out in darkness ! Then, by-and- 
 by, came the plash of rain, which although diverted by the 
 bushes, was yet heavy enough to di-ench me to the skin. Kow, 
 for the first time, I felt utterly overwhelmed by the terrors 
 of my situation, and, after crying for some time aloud for 
 help, I burst out into a flood of tears, and continued to sob 
 and weep till, at last, worn out by cold, hunger, and misery, 
 I fell asleep. I remember even yet the dreams I had on that 
 strange, wet pillow, and amidst the fierce or woful sounds 
 which were wailing over my head. Indeed, all the particulars 
 of that night are stamped indelibly upon my memory. My 
 sleep was one dire fantastic di-eam of hell, and fiends, and 
 fires. I imagined myself in that awful place, — not as a suf- 
 ferer, but as a spectator. Me thought, I saw some who had 
 been long, in the pit of perdition, and who were laughing at 
 all new-comers, and wishing them joy of their " honeymoon 
 of horrors ;*' and others that cried that an earnest, burning 
 reality like this was better than a deliberate lie, like earth ; 
 and others who said that perdition was no worse than famine;
 
 334 THE HISTOEY OF A MAN. 
 
 and others who were going about, everywhere seeking for, 
 but finding none to return to the world, and tell some of 
 their relations not to come after them to this place of toi'- 
 ment. There were, I thought, sudden Auroras of false hope, 
 that ever and anon visited the place, and created a ghastly 
 joy, — a joy, however, which speedily passed, and was followed 
 by a deeper darkness than before. Some there ran about in 
 despair and fury, cursing themselves because they had not 
 " wrought better for their wages." Others I saw, who had 
 laid themselves down, with a pale, stedfast, maniac smile upon 
 their faces, and were looking above for the Advent of a 
 Deliverer. A few rushed through the crowded streets, pre- 
 dicting that an amnesty of madness and oblivion was speedily . 
 to be proclaimed from heaven. Other di-eadful figures and 
 sounds there were, but more confused, of men that had been 
 there for centuries, and yet had not done wondeiing that they 
 were not in heaven ; of poets, trying to relieve their agonies 
 by song; and philosophers, seeking to explain them away by 
 sojjhistry, and proving that " this was the best of all possible 
 worlds;" and of the music of awful Voices from above, 
 speaking evidently of the lost, and even naming them : but 
 the talk was so far off and so fragmentary that none could 
 tell to what it pointed, whether to hope or to despair; and 
 thus there was a neio torment — that of suspense — in hell. 
 It was a relief to awake from such dismal dreams, and to ' 
 find myself in a real earthly pit. The next day, having been " 
 missed, a great poss6 of the villagers came to the place, and 
 I was rescued from a most alarming adventure, which had 
 well nigh cost me my life. I came out benumbed, hardly 
 able to crawl, and with a shuddering recollection of my 
 tumultuous and terrible dreams. 
 
 Some time after I read in an old magazine an account of 
 an American minister, named Tenuant, who in his youth had 
 apparently given up the ghost. The company had met for 
 his funeral ; but it was delayed, owing to his brother, who 
 insisted that he was not dead. He ultimatelv revived, but
 
 DREAMS. 335 
 
 his memory was found to be gone. He had to commence his 
 studies again, and had advanced as far in Latin as Cornelius 
 Nepos. He was reading, along with his brother, a portion of 
 that author one day, when he suddenly stopped, put his hand 
 to his head, and cried, " I have surely read this before !" and, 
 in an instant, as if on the pulling up of a blind, all that he 
 knew formerly came, rushing back "on his recollection. His 
 brother now questioned him if he remembered aught of what 
 h^pened during his trance. He said he found himself in 
 the cpmpany of a winged guide, who conducted him to a 
 vast multitude, who were employed in singing the sweetest 
 and most ravishing strains he ever heard, in a place of infinite 
 
 . splendour. He expressed to his guide an ardent desire to 
 join them, but was told that he must first return to earth. 
 He remembered no more till he found himself lying in his 
 coffin. He had hinted to his brother that he recollected 
 some of the words he heard the blessed singing, but no per- 
 suasion could prevail on him to recount them. This story 
 made a great impression on my imagination, and one day, 
 while reposing on the summit of the hill surmounting the 
 cataract, its sound, mellowed by distance, in my ears, and 
 soothing my spirit, and the fine prospect below shining in an 
 afternoon sun, I dropped asleep, and had the following dream. 
 The first part of it was somewhat terrible. I imagined 
 
 'myself dying ; and in the room, I thought the faces of my 
 friends were fixed on mine with peculiar intensity. At last, 
 methought, I died ; and yet, strange to tell, I imagined 
 myself still alive ; and that while my weeping friends were 
 taking a last kiss of my cold lips, I felt the keenest anguish iu 
 not being able to return the kiss ; and while one of them was 
 shutting my eyes, I seemed to make a desperate effort to resist 
 it, and thought, with a pang, " I shall now be blind as well as 
 dead." It was conscious death; and while conscious sleep 
 is the most delightful of all sensations, conscious death seemed 
 the most dreadful. I felt myself getting cold and stiff; felt, 
 with Avhat a horrible sensation ! the grave-clothes put on ;
 
 336 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 saw the windows darkened ; the weepers withdraw ; and felt 
 myself alone. How the word -'alone" seemed to gall and 
 wither my heart ! I knew my dearest friends to be in the 
 next chamber ; I heard their voices ; and yet, had all Sahara 
 or the ocean been between me and them, I could not have 
 been more effectually separated. It was the idea, not of 
 death's noisomeness or decay, but of death's solitude, that 
 overwhelmed me. I struggled, I thought, to break the dreadful 
 silence, and to rouse me from the accursed repose ; but in vain. 
 There was one picture in the bedroom — that of an old man — 
 and his eyes seemed to know my state, and to look down on 
 me with a smile of scorn and mockery, as they shone through 
 the twilight of the room. Then the scene shifted ; and I found 
 that I had left my dead body, and, as I hovered in the air. over 
 it, I gave it a last look ; and, strange to relate, I remember, 
 along with a feeling of regret and of horror, having a strong 
 inclination to laugh, as the idea of my corpse being an absurd 
 resemblance of my former self, came upon me. Then I seemed 
 moving upwards on wings swifter than the pinions of eagles, 
 or than the highest flight of imagination. I left the earth 
 behind, and saw the sun as my momentary footstool, while 
 I pursued my way. I then plunged into the midst of a 
 hundred suns, and knew I was in the heart of my old 
 favourite constellation, the Plough. Speeding through it, I 
 saw before me what seemed a Burning Bush of Stars, so closely 
 were they set together ; but when I entered it, I found myself 
 in the centre of a firmament far surpassing ours in the magni- 
 tude, multitude, and splendour of its orbs. Upwards I sped 
 from firmament to firmament, and stranger, and wilder, and 
 mightier, did each seem. In one especially the stars were 
 cast into the most singular shapes ; there were horned moons 
 composed of brilliant stars ; here eagles of stars flew ; there 
 lions of stars ramped ; yonder, pyramids of stars towered ; 
 and, on the edge of the horizon, a constellation shaped like 
 a leviathan opened his jaws, and threw out a cataract of suns. 
 Swifter still became my flight, till I felt myself swimming
 
 DREAMS. 337 
 
 through a starry ocean, and with eveiy stroke of my hand 
 dividing waves of worlds. At last T saw what seemed a bright 
 shore to my sea ; and landing, rested for an instant on an orb 
 which stood apart from all the rest, and was as large as thou- 
 sands of the suns I had passed. This was the terminus of the 
 material creation ; the gigantic sentinel of the system keeping 
 watch on the verge of the dark, unutterable deep. Across 
 that awful star I rushed, and from its fiirther side, as from 
 a precipice, I looked for a moment across a gulf of utter dark- 
 nes'C'^hich seemed, nevertheless, to be distinct and glossy as 
 the sffeen of the raven's wing. Shudderingly, yet eagerly, I 
 plunged in and bore away, passing from one depth of gloom 
 into another, till light seemed a forgotten dream, and I wearied 
 in the greatness of my way. Suddenly, I discerned a far- 
 shooting beam, trembling (like the finger of one searching for 
 a lost jewel) as it pierced downwards into the depths of Night. 
 How soothing, after first the glare of light, and next the waste 
 of darkness, seemed that solitary ray to my imagination ! 
 It was not composed of fire, but of mild and shorn light, and 
 seemed rather to encourage than to repel approach. I rose, 
 I thought, on it as on a ladder, not with my former impetuous 
 speed, but slowly, and with awful reverence, for I began to 
 feel that I was nearing Heaven. From this raj'^-path, as from 
 a centrical position, I saw, on either side, worlds of wonder- 
 land stretching around, all composed of ethereal matter, giving 
 forth an innocuous but most brilliant light, — and with beings 
 of ineffable loveliness standing on the shore, or soaring through 
 the spaces above it ; while in the distance appeared, as the 
 centre of them all, a luminous orb, brighter than the sun, 
 softer than the moon, and larger than the entire space included 
 in the sweep of a summer sky. I was reminded of a sight 
 I had often seen on earth, — of a thousand fair and fleecy 
 clouds gathering round the autumn sun. Up through these 
 cloud-worldsf fixing my eye on the Mighty Sun overhead, 
 I continued to arise on the ray, till, in the midst of the orb's 
 enlarging surficc and increasing brightness, I saw tlie shape 
 
 z
 
 338 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 of an Angel distinctly defined ; and I knew instantly who that 
 Angel was ; and there came on me a thrill of trembling joy, 
 mingled with a strange fear, and a desire for the first time to 
 return ; when, methonght, between me and the marvellons 
 light in the Being's eyes, there came in again the faces I had 
 seen at my bedside, all smiling on me with a joy so unspeak- 
 able, that I wept ; and awaking, found myself I'eclining on the 
 hill over the cataract, with the evening shadows resting on the 
 landscape, the mist of the night descending on the bi'ow of 
 Ben- Am pie, and the red moon slowly rising in the north-east, 
 like a torch uplifted by some gigantic but reluctant hand, as 
 of an Ethiopian slave showing his master's way into a dark 
 room where a murder has recently been committed by the 
 slave himself. 
 
 I have repeatedly had dreams of the Future State of the 
 World, of the Second Advent, and the Judgment Day ; some 
 of which I may recount. In one of them, I fancied myself 
 
 standing on the hill behind the town of , where I reside. 
 
 I looked for some familiar objects, but found them not. A 
 large, new,* and splendid Infirmary, which should have been 
 seen lying at my feet, had vanished. To the east of the town 
 there had been a well-built and thickly-peopled Asylum ; it 
 too had disappeared. Close beside each other had stood 
 a Barracks and a Bridewell ; but I could see no vestige of 
 either. The thick smoke which used to darken the atmo- 
 sphere had cleared away. Sti-angest of all, instead of the 
 many spires and steeples, indicating the various churches and 
 sects into which the town was torn, I saw one simple edifice 
 covering a vast space of ground, and into which all the people 
 seemed to be flocking. Suddenly the scene of my dream 
 shifted, and it seemed to be London that lay before my eye. 
 But it was no longer " crowned with darkness." I missed, 
 too, many objects which had been prominent. There were no 
 Theatres, and no Houses of Parliament, and no Palaces. It 
 seemed Sabbath, and all the streets were filled with multitudes 
 flocking to worship ; and so great was the difference between
 
 DREAMS. 339 
 
 the past and present aspect of the city, that the shock of the 
 contrast awoke me. Falling asleep immediately again, I saw 
 a much grander spectacle. I stood on a hill, commanding the 
 view of a wide and varied prospect. At my feet, to the west, 
 ■was a huge chasm, or valley, down which rolled a clear, full, 
 and rapid stream. To the east and south lay rugged moun- 
 tains, with many traces of vegetation and of culture beginning 
 to appear upon their sides, and in the valleys between them ; 
 terminating in a large lake, or sea. To the north towered 
 chp,ixis §f hills, bounded by one high and hoary peak, the 
 manifest king of the territory. Valleys, plains, meadows, and 
 woods of the richest verdure diversified the prospect ; through 
 which, too, rivers ran sparkling, and lakes reposed amidst 
 their solitudes. Across the chasm, to the west, lay a city 
 clothed in the " light that never was on sea or shore," towered, 
 turreted, but unwalled ; its broad ample streets crowded with 
 men of all colours, kindreds, and climes, and surmounted with 
 a temple, built of marble whiter than ever came from the 
 quaiTies of Paros. The roof of the temple was flat and wide, 
 and in the midst of it was erected a throne of diamond ; and on 
 that throne sat a Form, in whose eyes like a flame of fire, in 
 whose smile of ineffable benignity, and in whose garment, 
 dipped as it were in blood, I recognised the Angel whom I had 
 seen standing in the Sun of Heaven. Many circles surrounded 
 Him as He sat ; one of which seemed composed of aged 
 and venerable sages, — another of poets, — another of virgins, — 
 another of " God's images carved in ebony," — and another, and 
 the nearest to Him that sat on the throne, of little cliildren. 
 Winged figures hovered around, and, ever and anon, ambas- 
 sadors from distant provinces of earth and of the universe 
 approached his presence, and commimcd with or bowed before 
 Him. And over his head there shone a coronet of glorious 
 light, with the words (in Greek, Latin^ and Hebrew) inscribed 
 above it : " This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews;" 
 and beside this was traced the sentence : " Behold the taber- 
 nacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and 
 
 z 2
 
 340 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, 
 and be their God." And I awoke, and behold it was a dream ; 
 but a dream of which I needed no interpretation. 
 
 The next dream presented itself after the former in point 
 of time, although in strict logic I should have recorded it 
 first. I imagined myself in my native valley, and that a 
 rumour had circulated that it was to be swallowed up by an 
 earthquake. A man had passed through the village, it was 
 said, at evening, and in haste, and had cried aloud, in the ears 
 of all he met, the tidings of approaching doom. His name 
 no one knew, but his appearance seemed that of a wild bard— 
 of one who, like the hermit Brian in the " Lady of the Lake," 
 the child of the spectre, might have been let down to the ledge 
 of a cataract in the skin of a white bull, and whose hair had, 
 ere morning, been blanched by the terrible visions which had 
 visited his slumber from that " hell of waters" thundering 
 beside him. He disappeared as mysteriously as he had come; 
 but, methought, the impression of his words was such, that 
 on tlie morning of the fore-^fated day all the inhabitants got 
 up, as one man, and left the region. I joined the throng; 
 but after travelling with them for a few miles to the east- 
 ward, I turned aside, and went up alone to the summit of a 
 lofty mountain overlooking Strath-Eennie to the soiith-west, 
 and toward the north-east throwing its shadow OA'er the dark 
 Loch Tarkin, that I might on it wait, and witness the destruc- 
 tion of the plain and village I loved so dearly. Tlie day 
 seemed sympathizing with the expected catastrophe. A 
 gloom, reminding me of what I had witnessed on the morning 
 of the 3d of Aiigust, 1829, the day when the waterspouts 
 burst on the Monadhleadh mountains, and deluged all Moray- 
 shire, — such a massed-up, portentous frown now lay along the 
 whole sky. Clouds especially hung heavily over the devoted 
 valley, through which the Rennie was seen, and scarcely seen, 
 to flow. Suddenly, as often happens in dreams, the view 
 widened; and, first, all Scotland, and then all Europe, and 
 part of Asia, seemed in sight, and the same deep gloom had
 
 DREAMS. 341 
 
 fallen on the whole, and the same portentous silence was over 
 all. The sky seemed bowed down and burdened below a 
 weight heavier than thunder — a weight of wrath. At times 
 the clouds became more transparent, but it was only to show, 
 as through a crape veil, an expanse of fire behind them ; and 
 then, again, the gloom closed in, and became thicker than 
 before. 
 
 But how distinct every object appeared amidst the dark- 
 neast The hills of Scotland, Cumberland, Wales, and Ire- 
 laiyi-^tlie grey Alps — the Ural mountains, on the north — 
 Iceland, with all her fire-springs and everlasting snows— the 
 forest-veil of Germany — the slim, snaky, shape of Italy, 
 curling between the mountains and the sea — Spain and the 
 Pyrenees — the 'cities of Europe — Paris and St. Petersburg, 
 both, as I thought, illuminated, and by the illumination 
 rendering the darkness more visible — Vienna seeming to be on 
 fire — London almost lost in its cloud of smoke and the pre- 
 ternatural darkness — Rome painted as if by Rembrandt on 
 the canvas of the di.stant sky— ^and, further off still, Jeru- 
 salem and Sinai, which appeared to stand immediately south 
 of the Holy City, and to have its summit shrouded with 
 clouds, and its sides furrowed with streams of flame : — such 
 was the map I seemed to see ; and, while gazing intensely at 
 it, the silence was suddenly disturbed by a loud voice, and lo ! 
 in the valley at my feet I beheld the mysterious stranger, 
 running along distractedly, and I heard him crying, — " The 
 Great Day of His wrath is come, and who shall be able to 
 stand?" At the sound of these words, methought, the dark- 
 ness lifted up itself like a curtain, and there appeared beyond 
 it — not, as I expected, a great white throne, or a frowning 
 judgment-seat, or a blaze of consuming splendour — but a 
 solitary Child, surrounded by a mild moonlight effulgence, 
 a rainbow OYer his head, and a book iu his hand. Yet from 
 that Child's'eye what power, amazement, terror, joy, there 
 seemed to go forth! I saw the proud cities trembling 
 visibly; I saw the reaper throwing down his hook in the
 
 342 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 harvest-field — the ploughman quitting the plough in mid- 
 fuiTow — the merchant shutting his ledger for ever — the rail- 
 way-ti'ain rushing through a death-dark tunnel into the blaze 
 of His glory, and the passengers vittering one wild, wide cry — 
 armies fixed and fascinated amidst a reeling charge — dancers 
 stiffened by wonder into the statues of themselves — the 
 murderer's arm arrested, and the Atheist's tongue cooled and 
 silenced, as the Child's eye looked on ; and 1 heard, as pro- 
 phets had foretold, " all kindreds of the earth wailing because 
 of Him," with wails which were echoed by the loud cries of 
 animals in the fields and the forests, and, as it seemed, too, 
 by supernatural shrieks from the air, and under the earth, 
 and the dim caverns of the sea. 
 
 Next, there came another voice, saying, ' " Every valley 
 shall be exalted, and every mountain brought low;" and 
 straightway the lofty mountains of the world seemed to 
 sink, and nameless hills arose; Lebanon became a plain, 
 and Sinai lowered his crest of cloudy fire, while the 
 little hill Calvary erected itself, and on it the Eternal Child 
 was seen throned, and all nations and kindreds appeared 
 before his bar. There was no citing of witnesses, no leading 
 of evidence, no reading of names, no set accusation, and no 
 formal acquittal ; as of old each animal passed before Adam 
 and received its destiny in its name, so every being out of 
 unnumbered millions, came before the Child, looked at Him, 
 received his look and his one word in return, — and passed on, 
 to the right hand or to the left, either blasted or blessed, but 
 in either case submissive and silent — although the silent 
 doom on the brow of the former class was terrible to look at 
 &s the brand of Cain, — and the silent joy in the eyes of the 
 other was the miniature of heaven. Every one seemed to see 
 his own Conscience glaring or gleaming on him through the 
 eye of Christ, and the foot of the cross-shaped throne seemed 
 the tremendous point at which the two streams of moral 
 being — the good and bad — the true and the false — the 
 child-hke and the fiend-like — disparted, to meet no more at
 
 DREAMS. 343 
 
 all for ever. I saw philosophers, and geuerals, and kings, 
 and men of genius, and Christian authors, whose names I 
 mention not, advancing confidently to encounter the eye of 
 the Child, and suddenly shrinking away from it, and stagger- 
 ing forward, as if blinded and riven by a flash of lightning, 
 to their " own place." And I saw humble females, and 
 simple missionaries, and little children, trembling as they 
 came near the Child, till one look of love reassured them, 
 aryi one word seemed to fall like a baptism on them, and 
 the*yj)assed on, happy, and yet as humble as before — while 
 the Ctliild looked vip to Heaven, and said, " I thank thee. 
 Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid 
 these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them 
 imto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in thy 
 sight;" casting, methought, after uttering these last words, 
 a longing, lingering look of pity upon the hapless but haughty 
 giants of the race who had turned to the downward path. 
 And then, behind all this, I heard, as it were, the Dead Sea 
 rising from its bed, and rolling on to meet and engailf the 
 victims, who were hurrying down the valley of Jehoshaphat 
 to their doom. But while my eye was following them south- 
 wards, I felt myself rapidly propelled by the pressure of the 
 multitude toward tlie throne where the Child was sitting; and 
 the contest of feeling between desire and reluctance to meet 
 ' that look from which " Heaven and Earth had fled away," 
 awoke me from my dream. 
 
 I shall cite one more, which very deeply, at the time, 
 impressed my imagination. It was a waking dream — one of 
 those which occur when the eye is open, and its sense not 
 shut — one of those 
 
 " Visions whicli arise without a sleep." 
 
 This strange reverie came on me one July evening, while I 
 was revisiting my native Stratli from the eastward. It was 
 a lovely evening, and seemed, in its superfluous beauty, as if
 
 344 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 the essence of many beautiful summer eves had gone to its 
 glorification. The crescent moon, in the south-west, hung 
 over a mountain, which was covered, from foundation to 
 aerial summit, with rich young firs, larches, and pines. Near 
 the moon, yet preserving due and reverent distance, shone 
 the evening star, like a gem newly set, and trembling on an 
 imperial forehead. To tlie south, lay the deep groves of 
 Castle-Donachar, with its turrets surmounting the still lake 
 and ample park ; while the Rennie, turning away from the 
 proud pile, flowed down a low-lying and most lovely little 
 valley of its own — like a Burns, abandoning the hopeless task 
 of continuing his captivation of the upper classes of his day, 
 to find among the poor the fit audience for his immortal 
 
 song. To the west, the town of C was just visible, 
 
 adding silently the contribution of its silent smoke to the 
 manifold serenities and stillnesses of tlie evening sky. Farther 
 on, in the same direction, towered against a " sea of glass 
 mingled with fire," down which the sun had newly sunk, like 
 Pharaoh in the Red Sea, the black, peaked, volcanic-seeming 
 mountains which gird my native vale. On the east, the sky 
 was grey and quiet, with large white, ghost-like clouds rising 
 over the horizon. The whole was a combination of the 
 peaceful and the splendid — of all the powers and elements of 
 grandeur and of beauty, harmonized, and, as it were, asleep 
 in each other's arms — a compromise of evening and of night 
 in their finest effects and tints of intensest poetry. 
 
 It was while walking slowly through this lovely landscape, 
 and pondering much the mystery that overhangs and darkens 
 a universe so fair, that T fell into the following reverie, — which 
 pleasurably occupied my mind for six successive miles, and 
 came to a climax as the red west was seen fading into night, 
 through an avenue of ash-trees a mile from my mother's 
 dwelling. I seemed to see three great separate spheres, of 
 different sizes and colours, situated, I thought, somewhere in 
 the centre of the Milky Way. One of these was a black sun, 
 such as astronomers tell us do probably exist in remote parts
 
 DEEAMS. 345 
 
 of the universe — the other au orb of light, greatly surpassing 
 our sun in size and splendour — the third seemed a planet 
 much larger than our earth, and which revolved between the 
 others. Each of these, methought, was pervaded by a spirit 
 who was ordering and animating each. The spirit of the 
 black sun was au evil spirit, of great but limited power; he 
 was old, but not from everlasting. The spirit of the bright 
 orb was benevolent and uncreated, and the light of his orb 
 had" everlastingly and necessarily proceeded from him, as 
 tlipua^h^ from tlic brain, or expression from the eye. The 
 spirit of the planet was neither good nor bad — she was simply 
 powerful and intelligent, and had proceeded from the in- 
 habitant of the Bright Sun. 
 
 On the surface of this latter orb, as I gazed, there appeared 
 a being of beautiful form and symmetry, the climax of a 
 long series of creations. He was beautiful, and made after 
 an angelic mould, but there was no angelic life in him. I 
 saw the being lying naked and lifeless on the ground, and his 
 attitude seemed a dumb prayer for inspiration from on high. 
 Nor was this pi-ayer vain, for in a little, I beheld as it were a 
 ripple of light crossing his face like a breeze, and lo ! he 
 opened his eyes — he breathed — he arose on his feet, and 
 looked up in gratitude to the bright sun vertical over his 
 head, as to the creator and father of that immortal spirit 
 which had entered him. Nobler being than this now could 
 not be conceived, — for to the perfection of animal nature given 
 him by his mother the planet, he added the bright intelligence 
 bestowed on liim by his father, the unearthly sun. At length, 
 however, the sun set, and with the darkness appeared that 
 other lurid orb, paling all the constellations, shedding a 
 frightful chiaroscuro over tlie planet, and darting beams of 
 disastrous influence into the newly-awakened mind of its 
 child. Wlien the morning and the bright sun came, tlie 
 being was changed to the worse — a fearful derangement had 
 seized upon his whole nature, whicli he transmitted to 
 others, who seemed to spring from him. Instead of looking
 
 346 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 up iu reverence to the bi'ight sun, he and his descendants 
 now blasphemed it — now sang the praises of the black and 
 baleful orb — and now stooping to the dust of the planet, 
 cried out, — " Thou art our mother, and alone divine. Dust 
 we are, and nothing but dust, and to dust we shall return." 
 In vain did the bright sun shed his purest rays on these 
 children of the planet ; in vain did ripple after ripple of 
 breeze-like beams cross their souls. They longed always for 
 the night, and when it came, they did continual obeisance to 
 the dark lumniary and to their own planet, as if they were 
 their true and only parents. Their nobility of aspect deserted 
 them— ^their look became gross, their appetites were brutal, 
 their passions fiendish — their mother herself looked on them 
 with disdain, and punished them with many evils andten-ors; 
 the black sun, having the " power of death," scorched and 
 withered them, and the bright sun again and again withdrew 
 his shining, and seemed threatening to forsake their sky 
 for ever. 
 
 At last one night, while the children of the planet, who 
 had become utterly miserable, were gazing hopelessly at the 
 rising of the dark orb, there appeared a strange phenomenon. 
 From the bright sun which was going down in the west, there, 
 as it were, detached itself a new star, milder in aspect, and 
 softer in light, which rapidly mounted the sky, and sat in 
 the zenith, in the very spot whence the dai'k luminaiy had 
 usually poured down his fell lustre on the planet. How beau- 
 tiful that star appeared ! How the constellations seemed to 
 rejoice at his coming, and to crowd around his divine car ! How 
 the dark luminary trembled even while rising to meet, and to 
 resist the star ! and how the eye of the poor planet-children 
 began to brighten, and how long-forgotten joy came out upon 
 their dim faces like a stream from a cavern, when they beheld 
 the beautiful star ! and how great their horror and grief 
 when they saw the black orb preparing to do battle with this 
 mild luminary, — and with malignant fury, and beams like 
 arrows of fire, assailing it in mid-heaven, while the star
 
 DREAMS. 347 
 
 sefemed to fade, sbrink, and die in the contest, and the black 
 orb again resumed its station at the zenith. It was said, 
 however, by some, that the star was not extinguished in the 
 fight, as had been generally thought, but had been seen 
 retiring in splendour towai'd its parent sun, and some pre- 
 dicted that it was to return again and renew the contest. 
 Meanwhile it was noticed, that although the black orb had 
 regained the zenith, it was lessened in size, and that its 
 malignant power over the children of the planet w^as greatly 
 dimitiished. More of them now worshipped the bright sun, 
 and even raised altars and held feasts in honour of the beau- 
 tiful star, which had shone so shortly and with such heavenly 
 sweetness, — and their general condition was improved and 
 exalted. 
 
 Thus matters went on for ages. Divisions, however, among 
 the planet's children increased and multiplied. Some main- 
 tained that the black orb, the bright sun, and the beautiful 
 star, were only varieties of the same power, shapes of the 
 same spirit, and that darkness and evil were both to be 
 Avorshipped, as well as good and light. Others asserted that 
 they all were mere modifications of the lower atmosphere, 
 adjusted for the purpose of general deception, by the power 
 of the spirit of the planet. Others, admitting the reality of 
 the phenomena, denied that there were any personal agents 
 ' at work in their production. Many held tliat the children of 
 the planet owed all their qualities, good or bad, to the nature 
 of the ground out of which they were taken, and that there 
 was no such being as the spirit of the planet, and still less 
 that there were any spirits in the bright and black suns, the 
 phenomena of which were entirely produced by dire necessity. 
 Others asserted that the bright sun had made the black one, 
 and that the evils which that had inflicted on the planet 
 came from it. Some said the beautiful star was of the same 
 essence as 'the bright sxin, while others denied this, calling it 
 now an exhalation of the planet, and now a messenger in 
 disguise from the black orb. Many even of those who held
 
 348 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 that the star was the child of the snn, denied that it was 'to 
 return to renew the fight with the black orb, but was to 
 triumph over it solely through the little track of light it left 
 when it departed; while others cried aloud, — "See how the 
 black orb is again growing in magnitude and power ; how the 
 light even of the bright sun is becoming dimmer everyday ; how 
 despair or disbelief is seizing upon the majority of creatures; 
 how the worshippers of the beautiful star themselves are 
 beginning to tamper with the votaries of the planet and the 
 black orb ! surely it is high time for that star to appear 
 ao;ain, and with 
 
 "o 
 
 ' New-spangled ore, flame in the forehead of the evening sky.' " 
 
 In this deep crisis, the planet seemed rather the field of the 
 contest than to help either party, and so with many of those 
 of its children who were " of the earth, earthy." On the 
 other hand, there were two parties — the haters of the beautiful 
 star, and his lovers; parties — the members of whom, however, 
 in the increasing darkness, it was sometimes difficult to dis- 
 tinguish from one another. Among the haters of the star, I 
 noticed those whose selfish lives and proud theories its light 
 had condemned ; those who saw nothing in sun, moon, or 
 stars but mere mechanism ; those who, on the contrary, 
 looked vipon it as the " stuff of which dreams are made ; " 
 those who regarded it merely with the eye of the poet ; and 
 those who were under misapprehensions as to the real cha- 
 racter and purpose of the orb's coming. On the other hand, 
 many child-like beings who had believed in the first appeai-- 
 ing of the beautiful star, were now longing for the fulfilment 
 of the hope that it was to appear again ; while a far larger 
 class, who yet loved it and had blessed its first coming, were 
 expecting deliverance, in some other way, from the terrible 
 and strengthening tyranny of the black orb. Great uncer- 
 tainty and agony prevailed ; many hopes and many fears 
 arose in both parties, to be disappointed, — till at last a fearful 
 tempest broke over the planet, such as had never been wit-
 
 DREAMS. 349 
 
 nessed before, which raged for many days, and blotted out 
 every vestige of light from the heavens. When the clouds 
 at length disparted, the children of the planet saw the dark 
 orb and the long-lost beautiful star engaged in deadly contest 
 — a contest which shook tlie spheres, and made the planet 
 tremble. It was decided by the utter destruction of the black 
 orb, which seemed, i?as it fell athwart the planet, to sweep 
 into its train its more devoted worshippers, who, along with 
 itf were whirled into bottomless gulfs of night. The clouds 
 n9Wweu,tirely disappeared, and showed the Beautiful Star in 
 the ascendant, while ten thousand times ten thousand voices 
 from the surrounding heavens, and from the children of the 
 planet, united in exclaiming, " Glory to the Spirit of tlie 
 Bright Sun and to the Beautiful Star! The reign of evil is 
 over, and that of good has begun. The old heavens are 
 passed away, and behold ! there are new heavens overhead." 
 And methought that the spirit of the earth, too, was 
 changed; that its materialism became divine; and that 
 these three — the Spirit of the Earth, the Spirit of the 
 Bright Sun, and the Spirit of the Beautiful Star — were now 
 thoroughly one. It seemed also that instead of the trinity 
 of elements of which the children of the planet had been, 
 during the reign of the black orb, composed ; namely, the 
 planetary, or sensuous — the sunny, or divine — and the in- 
 fernal, or false and malignant ; that the last was extracted 
 entirely, that the first was much modified and spiritualized, 
 and tliat the planet's children were now composed entirely 
 of refined and glorified sense, derived from the regenerated 
 earth — true, wise, and holy spirit, derived from the Bright 
 Sun — and pure love, breathed into them by the Beautiful 
 Star. Of that perfected world I had only a glimpse, but it 
 was a glorious one. I saw the happy children of the planet 
 walking, -working, singing, dancing, feasting, by turns; mar- 
 rying and giving in marriage; yet pnre as the angels of God : 
 toil become work, — pleasure transfigui-cd into celestial joy, — 
 envy become generous emulation, — jjassion become free-going
 
 350 THE HISTOEY OF A MAN. 
 
 energic power, — falsehood and concealment extinct, — every 
 face clear and bright as a crystal wave, — the planet aronnd 
 them a smiling garden, where it was not a magnificent wil- 
 derness. Each morning shone the Bright Sun, no longer 
 fitful and angry at times, but with his red ray evanished, and 
 his power and mercy both increased. Each evening appeared, 
 in its calm beauty, the Beautiful Star, so near and so bright, 
 that it seemed to rest on the mountain-tops; that men lifted 
 up their hands as if to touch it, and that the Spirit inha- 
 biting it might be seen, at certain favoured states of the 
 atmosphere, looking down with eyes of love on that planet 
 which he had ransomed by such an unparalleled contest. No 
 more vain inquiries why and how was that black and baleful 
 orb produced, and why allowed so long to reign, and what 
 has become of its votaries and victims; enough that the 
 people of the planet, looking up, behold it no more in their 
 sky — know themselves to be freed for ever from its power — 
 and feel themselves more closely knit to their two glorious 
 luminaries, because they once worshipped anothei", from 
 whose dominion the Beautiful Star delivered them. While 
 gazing at these happy beings in my mind's eye, like good old 
 John Bunyan, " I wished myself among them." I wished still 
 more, " Oh ! that this were to be the destiny of our earth ! " 
 when a voice seemed to pass through me, sweet and strong as 
 an organ-blast, " Be not faithless, but believing." And with 
 that, like " the baseless fabric of a vision," the reverie passed, 
 but HAS left something behind it.
 
 CLOSING "PROPHETIC STEAIN. 351 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FINALE, OR CLOSING "PROPHETIC STRAIN." 
 
 " Till old experience do attain 
 » ' V^ To something like prophetic strain." 
 
 11 Penseroso. 
 
 It is singular to notice how many of our modern works, in 
 poetry or in prose, infidel and Christian, blossom, ere they 
 close, into some form or other of the anticipatory or pro- 
 phetic. Shelley, for instance, closes both his "Queen Mab" 
 and his " Prometheus Unbound" with long poetical pro- 
 phecies about the future. Carlyle closes his " French Revo- 
 lution" with a strain of mystical prediction. Isaac Taylor is 
 continually prophesying. In short, you seldom find even 
 a thoughtful novel, or a treatise on the Hebrew Bards, or a 
 book of travels, or a volume of high and serious song, ending 
 without a flight forward into the abyss of futurity — a flight 
 in which you sometimes entirely lose sight of the adven- 
 turous aspirant, and seldom do more than catch glimpses of 
 his white wing ploughing through the darkness. Why is 
 this ? Is it from mere ambition ? — or is it from the imitation 
 of others ? — or is it, rather, because our age is peculiarly the 
 age of hope and expectancy, and may be fitly described as in 
 that glorious picture in " Balder," 
 
 "With backward streaming hair, and eyes of haste," 
 
 to be careering onward, not passively to meet, but actively 
 to encounter its destinies 1 Hence poets aspire to be, as in old 
 times, prophets. None of their separate predictions may, 
 indeed, be considered infallible; but when many minds are
 
 352 THE HISTOEY OF A MAN. 
 
 directed at once to the future, there is likely to be some 
 portion of truth in their poetical vaticinations. 
 
 Let me, too, throw out (in addition to what I have hinted 
 in the two preceding chapters), ere I close this volume, a very 
 few half- poetic, half-prophetic anticipations. 
 
 And first, as to literature and poetry. We are neariug a 
 point in which poetry shall have much to sing ; and the great 
 event generally begets the great singer, and " the large utter- 
 ance of the early gods" wherewith to sing it. Think of the 
 one theme of war, which many had thought exhausted ! It 
 has suddenly shot up into a Brobdignagian size, and has 
 organized a machinery on a scale of magnificence of which 
 even the oriental genius of the First Napoleon never dreamed. 
 Men are now fighting the wars of the Titans over again : shells 
 are flying like rocks, mortars like mountains, and the storms 
 and tempests of fire let loose by man uj^ou his fellows, almost 
 vie with the tornadoes, the thunders, and the hghtnino-s of 
 Tropical nature. Never, too, did pathos, moral grandeur, 
 disinterested afiection, and the other scarce and difficult 
 flowers sometimes found on the murky rocks of warfare, 
 bloom more beautifully than in the present war. AVhat a 
 stern and silent fund of incidents and imao-es these battles of 
 Balaklava, Alma, Inkerman, and that gallant siege of Sebas- 
 topol have accumulated for the purposes of poets — were the 
 poets but come! We are engaged in a war which resembles 
 that of Troy in grandeur — which threatens to resemble it in 
 length — and which, like that ten years' struggle, ere it close, 
 may draw superior intelligences into its vortex, and become 
 the Armageddon of the earth. May it not, like tlie Trojan 
 war, be expected to produce a Homer and an Iliad? Un- 
 doubtedly its tendency is to infuse greater force, condensation, 
 and manhood into the somewhat morbid, sickly and volup- 
 tuous poetry which at present abounds. Then, in the manifold 
 • l>henomena of this "wondrous mother age" — its restless 
 excitement, an excitement so great that it would sometimes 
 seem as if, in man's mysterious composition, the brain and
 
 CLOSING " PROPHETIC STRAIN. 353 
 
 nervous-system were becoming sole and supreme — fast bud- 
 ding into a higher organization — or else about to explode 
 and to be extinguished ; in its sudden revelation of enormous 
 wealth, as if the earth were hurrying to display her most 
 secret collection of treasure, and to open all her dooi's, that 
 the race, ere too late, may enter in ; in its rapid revolutions 
 of opinion ; in the rajjjway-rate at which the powers of death 
 and destruction themselves are going on (" there are no death- 
 hedji -now-a-days") \ and in its eager, lisieniiig attitude — there 
 is /uucb deserving, nay, demanding, the highest poetical 
 treatment, whether didactically, or satirically, or dramati- 
 cally, or lyrically. The discoveries, too, in astronomy, che- 
 mistry, and geology, while, as hinted before, casting little 
 light upon the great questions connected with theology, are 
 eminently adapted for the purposes of poetry. Before the 
 First Advent of Christ, the voice of earthly song fell silent; 
 before His Second, we expect it to revive in sti-ains holier than 
 the lyre of Amphion, more powerful than the hymnings of 
 Orpheus, sweeter than the pipiiigs of Arcadian shepherds, — 
 comparable only to that music which, when earth first swam 
 into the sky, welcomed the stranger, as the " morning stars 
 sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." 
 
 We have already denounced the false unity sought 
 after, and said to be already found, in the universe, con- 
 sidered morally and religiously. But, in point of secular 
 knowledge, there is a certain tendency to unity, which 
 shall probably increase till a spectacle, thousands saw 
 seven years ago in the heavens, shall find its antitype on 
 earth. On a clear, starry, October night, in the year 1848, 
 there began to stream up certain rills of electric light, not 
 from the north merely, as usual, but simultaneously from 
 north, south, east, and west, till meeting in the zenith, they 
 seemed to pause, to mingle, and to form together a great, 
 white quivering tent of light, covering the whole face of the 
 sky, and under which it was an awful joy for men to stand 
 and wondering to look \ip. So truth may soon Ijc expected 
 
 A A
 
 354 THE HISTOEY OP A MAN. 
 
 more fully and irresistibly to break forth from every point, 
 and to hurry on to some centrical meeting-place — to the for- 
 mation of some wider, more complete, and more magnificent 
 system. Till this happen, the encyclopaedia of human know- 
 ledge will only be in scattered sheets, not bound in a goodly 
 volume, — far less reduced to a brilliant essence. 
 
 We see a far more remarkable phenomenon beginning to 
 manifest itself. Closer bonds are di'awing all nations and 
 every portion of society together, and must produce a greater 
 unity of feeling and interest throughout the globe. Previous 
 to the great discoveries and changes of this century, what 
 insulation there was in the various countries of the world I 
 What great giilphs, like the nine foldings of Styx, — such as 
 diversity of language, vast interspaces of distance, commercial 
 restrictions, religious prejudice, barbarian ignorance, — sepa- 
 rated nation from nation ! But how rapidly are these gulphs 
 filling up, and how soon may we expect the sphere to be as 
 thoroughly one, in many moral and intellectual respects, as it 
 is in physical ! Innumerable causes are, so to speak, drawing 
 the bands of the globe more tightly together, and bringing 
 it into narrower compass. Europeans have ridden in triumph 
 through all the hundred-gated cities of barbaric tongues ; 
 commercial restrictions are melting away, like barriers of 
 morning mist before the rising sun ; and religious castes and 
 narrow creeds must follow. Ignorance is, as ashamed, hiding 
 its face. Meanwhile, Steam and Electricity are wafting thought, 
 and feeling, and opinion, and burning passion, with far more 
 than the swiftness of the eagle's pinion, from the Indus to the 
 Pole ; from California to Japan. There is no disguising the 
 fact, — the earth is fast becoming one ; it is shrivelling up, like 
 a palace reduced by the might of an Arabian magician, to 
 the size of a shepherd's hut ; it is, through various and 
 resistless influences, shrinking down from a scene of wide 
 unpeopled wastes, from a vast house of empty and unknown 
 mansions, into a spot or dwelling, where all shall know all 
 and everything within the earth's compass ; where mountains
 
 CLOSING "PROPHETIC STRAIN." 355 
 
 shall seem mole-hills ; seas, little summer-pools ; deserts, 
 garden-walks of sand and gravel, — where, in the language of 
 Scripture, " every island shall flee away, and the mountains 
 be no longer found." Yes ! shall we say 1 — this huge palace 
 of the Evil one, " the god of this world," shall become a 
 dwelling for the Good Shepherd, who gave his life for the 
 sheep. For I canno^but see, in all this lessening of local 
 distance; this unifying of the "great globe — the world;" this 
 melting away of all old distinctions of clime, and caste, and 
 country, and langTiage; this spurning away of mountains, and 
 licking i;p of oceans out of the path of human intercourse ; the 
 preparation of the earth as the seat of a universal monarchy. 
 Such a government there must be ; the question only is, — 
 Shall the Good or the Evil Power take the kingdom 1 an 
 Omniarch there must reign ; the question is, — Shall it be 
 Belial or Christ ? — and that is a question which can only be 
 decided by war — and that war appears begun.* 
 
 Of the times and the seasons — of the future events of this 
 war — or of the particulars of that war of opinion with which 
 it must be more or less mingled — and when it may be neces- 
 sary for the Prince of the Kings of the Earth to interfere, 
 I know nothing, and shall say nothing. I see, certainly, 
 much in the present aspect of the times that is calculated to 
 alarm the Christian and the lover of his race. This war is 
 glorious, but it is perilous and bloody in the extreme ; our 
 religious atmosphere is dark and threatening. Personal piety 
 and earnestness are low in every Church. The pulse of the 
 Christian life is beating feebly ; and this is a more appalling 
 symptom than any connected with the spread of infidelity, or 
 the increase of popery ; our mechanical and missionary 
 agencies are prosperous; but they are sustained by great 
 effort; aijd there is, I fear, a vital coldness at the heart of 
 many of their supporters. Iniquity, too, is abounding ; and 
 
 * This was written ere the proposals for peace were issued. Most 
 devoutly do we pray for peace, but have no hope of its being per- 
 manent.
 
 356 THE HISTORY OF A MAN. 
 
 because it abounds, as Christ predicted, the love of many- 
 is waxiug cold. And how signally do our times exhibit 
 that other sign He mentions of his approaching advent — 
 " perplexity! " — "And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the 
 moon, and in the stars ; distress of nations, with perplexity." 
 Perplexity about every subject, human and divine, temporal, 
 moral, and spiritual ; a perplexity often increasing with the 
 advance of knowledge, and found in conjunction with the 
 warmest piety ; found in the camp of the Lord, and found 
 without it, — is one of the most remarkable and most melan- 
 choly symptoms of the age ; melancholy, were it not that, as 
 the darkest hour precedes the dawning of the natural day, so, 
 in the very depth of this perplexity, we see the prospect of 
 clearer discovery and of coming help. And therefore I would 
 desire myself, and would call on my Christian brethren to be 
 of good cheer. The breaking of the day will come — " Thou, 
 Eternal Providence, wilt make the day to dawn ! " 
 
 In the book now completed, I have sought the following 
 aims : — first, artistically, to secure variety of interest and 
 effect, by the intermixture of varied matter, — including inci- 
 dent, portrait-painting, description of scenery, conversation 
 with men of genius, personal reminiscences, &c. : secondly, 
 to trace a rather peculiar course of experience, botli in the 
 literary and the clerical life, and record certain deductions 
 from it, for the benefit of the young : and, thirdly, to lift up 
 a voice of protest, however feeble, against the Materialisms, 
 Pantheisms, Atheisms, and Deisms of our day ; to attest my 
 own deep-felt conviction in the main truths of our old faith ; 
 a conviction none the less valuable that it has not been 
 received on hearsay, but has been bought — wrested, torn, 
 inch by inch, from personal experience ; and to declare my 
 belief, too, in some doctrines not generally received among 
 us, — such as the Personal Advent. On some of these topics, 
 as I have before hinted, —
 
 CLOSING " PROPHETIC STRAIN." 357 
 
 " There is matter for another rhyme, 
 And I thei-eto may add another tale," 
 
 although in a different and more argumentative and elaborate 
 shape. As to the charges of egotism, imprudent outspoken- 
 ness, &c., which are likely to be brought against this narra- 
 tive, I will not stay to do more than name and pass them by. 
 Enough, that I have betrayed no confidence, slandered no 
 private character ; but have aimed — so far as a form in some 
 degree and of necessity fictitious, has allowed me — to state the 
 trnth ; to assign no characteristics to an author, a man, or 
 a'pSirty, which I did not believe to be theirs; to put no 
 speech into a man's mouth, of which the sentiments, if not 
 the words or imagery, were not his ; and to transcribe the 
 history of myself, my opinions, adventures, &c., in general, 
 from the daguerrotypic plates of memory. Whatever may 
 be thought of the literary merits of the book, — if I find that 
 it has contributed to strengthen the faith of one doubter, to 
 cast the least gleam of light upon the path of one bewildered 
 wanderer, to point one eye to the unrisen Sun of Chris- 
 tianity, or to show to one Nature, or Man-worshipper, the 
 hopelessness lowering over his sad, although sunlit path, — 
 I shall be happier and prouder than if all the critics in 
 the world were united in attributing to it the character of 
 eloquence, or talent, or genius. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 R. CLAY,. PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL.
 
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 AA 000 385 919 
 
 rcter ijanarem, wno qi uC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITi' 
 
 there has passed away a 
 
 literary accomplishments. 
 
 a Berwickshii-e farmer, M 
 
 University career at Edin' 
 
 of the United Presbyteri 
 
 Aberchirder, ho ministered to an attacnea nocK lor 
 
 some years, until, greatly to their regret, he resigned 
 
 [lis charge in order that he might devote himself to 
 iterature. The first of the papers edited by Mr 
 Landreth was the '" Fife Herald," in which he had 
 feuch notable predecessors as Professor Nichol and 
 Alexander Ru?sel. Subsequently Mr Landreth 
 edited the " Edinburgh Daily Express," the " Glas- ' 
 gow Daily Bulletin,", and after the death of Hugh 
 Miller, he contributed regularly leading articles to 
 the "Witnee^." Concurrently with his editorial 
 activity, he gave himself to a criticism of a purely 
 literary character. The immense amount of work 
 which he did in this \vay can be recognised by a 
 
 SjAJy^^. 
 
 discriminating reader of "Tait's Maguzino," 
 " Hogg^a Instructor " and " iMaepJiaira Eccl-e-si- 
 astical Journal." In reviewing his peculiar 
 strength and delicacy of stylo were 
 
 at onco apparent, and ho soon gathered around 
 I him friends of eminence, among whom ma.y l>o named 
 f>uch men as Professor John Wilson, Emerson, 
 iXr John Brown, Thomas Do Quincey, of the last 
 iff whcwn he oontrrbutod a roniinidccnco to "Black- 
 woofl's Magazme " in 1894-. Mr Landreth was married 
 to the youngest daughter of llio late Rev. Dr Adam 
 Thomson, of Coldstream, well known as the aboli- 
 tionist of the Bible monopoly, and is siirvavod by 
 three sons, who are all mi;ustor3 of the Church of 
 .Scotland, and by one daughter, who is marrietl to 
 Professor Osgood Poirco, of Harvard University. 
 During the laU>r years of his life, which ho spent at 
 ^the manso of Logie-Pert, near Montrose, with his 
 .eldest SCO, tho Kov. James Landreth, ho contributed
 
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