'They are all gone to that world of light, And I alone sit lingering here; Their very memory's calm, and bright, And my sad thoughts doth cheer.'"

The evening before his death he was slightly unwell, and next morning, not coming down as usual, was called, but did not answer; and on going in, was found in the posture of sleep, quite dead: at some unknown hour of the night abiit ad plures—he had gone over to the majority, and joined the famous nations of the dead. Tu vero felix non vitae tantum claritate, sed etiam opportunitate mortis! dying with his lamp burning, his passport made out for his journey; death an instant act, not a prolonged process of months, as with his friend.

I have called Dr. Henderson a remarkable man, and an exquisite preacher; he was both, in the strict senses of the words. He had the largest brain I ever saw or measured. His hat had to be made for him; and his head was great in the nobler regions; the anterior and upper were full, indeed immense. If the base of his brain and his physical organization, especially his circulating system, had been in proportion, he would have been a man of formidable power, but his defective throb of the heart, and a certain lentitude of temperament, made this impossible; and his enormous organ of thought and feeling, being thus shut from the outlet of active energy, became intensely meditative, more this than even reflective. The consequence was, in all his thoughts an exquisiteness and finish, a crystalline lustre, purity and concentration; but it was the exquisiteness of a great nature. If the first edge was fine, it was the sharp end of the wedge, the broad end of which you never reached, but might infer. This gave momentum to everything he said. He was in the true sense what Chalmers used to call a "man of wecht." His mind acted by its sheer absolute power; it seldom made an effort; it was the hydraulic pressure, harmless, manageable, but irresistible; not the perilous compression of steam. Therefore it was that he was untroubled and calm, though rich; clear, though deep; though gentle, never dull; "strong without rage, without o'erflowing full." Indeed this element of water furnishes the best figure of his mind and its expression. His language was like the stream of his own Tweed; it was a translucent medium, only it brightened everything seen through it, as wetting a pebble brings out its lines and color. That lovely, and by him much-loved river was curiously like him, or he like it, gentle, great, strong, with a prevailing mild seriousness all along its course, but clear and quiet; sometimes, as at old Melrose, turning upon itself, reflecting, losing itself in beauty, and careless to go, deep and inscrutable, but stealing away cheerily down to Lessudden, all the clearer of its rest; and then again at the Trows, showing unmistakably its power in removing obstructions and taking its own way, and chafing nobly with the rocks, sometimes, too, like him, its silver stream rising into sudden flood, and rolling irresistibly on its way.[29]

[29] Such an occasional paroxysm of eloquence is thus described by Dr. Cairns:—"At certain irregular intervals, when the loftier themes of the gospel ministry were to be handled, his manner underwent a transformation which was startling, and even electrical. He became rapt and excited as with new inspiration; his utterance grew thick and rapid; his voice trembled and faltered with emotion; his eye gleamed with a wild unearthly lustre, in which his countenance shared; and his whole frame heaved to and fro, as if each glowing thought and vivid figure that followed in quick succession were only a fragment of some greater revelation which he panted to overtake. The writer of this notice has witnessed nothing similar in any preacher, and numbers the effects of a passage which he once heard upon the scenes and exercises of the heavenly world among his most thrilling recollections of sacred oratory."—Memoir prefixed to posthumous volume of Discourses.

We question if as many carefully thought and worded, and rapidly and by no means laboriously written sermons, were composed anywhere else in Britain during his fifty years—every Sunday two new ones; the composition faultless—such as Cicero or Addison would have made them, had they been U. P. ministers; only there was always in them more soul than body, more of the spirit than of the letter. What a contrast to the much turbid, hot, hasty, perilous stuff of our day and preachers! The original power and size of Dr. Henderson's mind, his roominess for all thoughts, and his still reserve, his lentitude, made, as we have said, his expressions clear and quiet, to a degree that a coarse and careless man, spoiled by the violence and noise of other pulpit men, might think insipid. But let him go over the words slowly, and he would not say this again; and let him see and feel the solemnizing, commanding power of that large, square, leonine countenance, the broad massive frame, as of a compressed Hercules, and the living, pure, melodious voice, powerful, but not by reason of loudness, dropping out from his compressed lips the words of truth, and he would not say this again. His voice had a singular pathos in it; and those who remember his often-called-for sermon on "The Bright and the Morning Star," can reproduce in their mind its tones and refrain. The thoughts of such men—so rare, so apt to be unvisited and unvalued—often bring into my mind a spring of pure water I once saw near the top of Cairngorm; always the same, cool in summer, keeping its few plants alive and happy with its warm breath in winter, floods and droughts never making its pulse change; and all this because it came from the interior heights, and was distilled by nature's own cunning, and had taken its time—was indeed a well of living water. And with Dr. Henderson this of the mountain holds curiously; he was retired, but not concealed; and he was of the primary formation, he had no organic remains of other men in him; he liked and fed on all manner of literature; knew poetry well; but it was all outside of him; his thoughts were essentially his own.

He was peculiarly a preacher for preachers, as Spenser is a poet for poets. They felt he was a master. He published, after the entreaties of years, a volume of sermons which has long been out of print, and which he would never prepare for a second edition; he had much too little of the love of fame, and though not destitute of self-reliance and self-value, and resolved and unchangeable to obstinacy, he was not in the least degree vain.

But you will think I am writing more about my father's friends and myself than about him. In a certain sense we may know a man by his friends; a man chooses his friends from harmony, not from sameness, just as we would rather sing in parts than all sing the air. One man fits into the mind of another not by meeting his points, but by dovetailing; each finds in the other what he in a double sense wants. This was true of my father's friends. Dr. Balmer was like him in much more than perhaps any,—in love of books and lonely study, in his general views of divine truth, and in their metaphysical and literary likings, but they differed deeply. Dr. Balmer was serene and just rather than subtle and profound; his was the still, translucent stream,—my father's the rapid, and it might be deep; on the one you could safely sail, the other hurried you on, and yet never were two men, during a long life of intimate intercourse, more cordial.

I must close the list; one only and the best—the most endeared of them all—Dr. Heugh. He was, in mental constitution and temper, perhaps more unlike my father than any of the others I have mentioned. His was essentially a practical understanding; he was a man of action, a man for men more than for man, the curious reverse in this of my father. He delighted in public life, had a native turn for affairs, for all that society needs and demands,—clear-headed, ready, intrepid, adroit; with a fine temper, but keen and honest, with an argument and a question and a joke for every one; not disputatious, but delighting in a brisk argument, fonder of wrestling than of fencing, but ready for action; not much of a long shot, always keeping his eye on the immediate, the possible, the attainable, but in all this guided by genuine principle, and the finest honor and exactest truth. He excelled in the conduct of public business, saw his way clear, made other men see theirs, was forever getting the Synod out of difficulties and confusions, by some clear, tidy, conclusive "motion;" and then his speaking, so easy and bright and pithy, manly and gentlemanly, grave when it should be, never when it should not—mobile, fearless, rapid, brilliant as Saladin—his silent, pensive, impassioned and emphatic friend was more like the lion-hearted Richard, with his heavy mace; he might miss, but let him hit, and there needed no repetition. Each admired the other; indeed Dr. Heugh's love of my father was quite romantic; and though they were opposed on several great public questions, such as the Apocrypha controversy, the Atonement question at its commencement; and though they were both of them too keen and too honest to mince matters or be mealy-mouthed, they never misunderstood each other, never had a shadow of estrangement, so that our Paul and Barnabas, though their contentions were sometimes sharp enough, never "departed asunder;" indeed they loved each other the longer the more.

Take him all in all, as a friend, as a gentleman, as a Christian, as a citizen, I never knew a man so thoroughly delightful as Dr. Heugh. Others had more of this or more of that, but there was a symmetry, a compactness, a sweetness, a true delightfulness about him I can remember in no one else. No man, with so much temptation to be heady and high-minded, sarcastic, and managing, from his overflowing wit and talent, was ever more natural, more honest, or more considerate, indeed tender-hearted. He was full of animal spirits and of fun, and one of the best wits and jokers I ever knew; and such an asker of questions, of posers! We children had a pleasing dread of that nimble, sharp, exact man, who made us explain and name everything. Of Scotch stories he had as many original ones as would make a second volume for Dean Ramsay. How well I remember the very corner of the room in Biggar manse, forty years ago, when from him I got the first shock and relish of humor; became conscious of mental tickling; of a word being made to carry double, and being all the lighter of it. It is an old story now, but it was new then; a big, perspiring countryman rushed into the Black Bull coach-office, and holding the door, shouted, "Are yir insides a' oot?" This was my first tasting of the flavor of a joke.

Had Dr. Heugh, instead of being the admirable clergyman he was, devoted himself to public civil life, and gone into Parliament, he would have taken a high place as a debater, a practical statesman and patriot. He had many of the best qualities of Canning, and our own Premier, with purer and higher qualities than either. There is no one our church should be more proud of than of this beloved and excellent man, the holiness and humility, the jealous, godly fear in whose nature was not known fully even to his friends, till he was gone, when his private daily self-searchings and prostrations before his Master and Judge were for the first time made known. There are few characters, both sides of which are so unsullied, so pure, and without reproach.

I am back at Biggar at the old sacramental times; I see and hear my grandfather, or Mr. Horne of Braehead, Mr. Leckie of Peebles, Mr. Harper of Lanark, as inveterate in argument as he was warm in heart, Mr. Comrie of Penicuik, with his keen, Voltaire-like face, and much of that unhappy and unique man's wit, and sense, and perfection of expression, without his darker and baser qualities. I can hear their hearty talk, can see them coming and going between the meetinghouse and the Tent on the side of the burn, and then the Monday dinner, and the cheerful talk, and the many clerical stories and pleasantries, and their going home on their hardy little horses, Mr. Comrie leaving his curl-papers till the next solemnity, and leaving also some joke of his own, clear and compact as a diamond, and as cutting.

I am in Rose Street on the monthly lecture, the church crammed, passages and pulpit stairs. Exact to a minute, James Chalmers—the old soldier and beadle, slim, meek, but incorruptible by proffered half crowns from ladies who thus tried to get in before the doors opened—appears, and all the people in that long pew rise up, and he, followed by his minister, erect and engrossed, walks in along the seat, and they struggle up to the pulpit. We all know what he is to speak of; he looks troubled even to distress;—it is the matter of Uriah the Hittite. He gives out the opening verses of the 51st Psalm, and offering up a short and abrupt prayer, which every one takes to himself, announces his miserable and dreadful subject, fencing it, as it were, in a low, penetrating voice, daring any one of us to think an evil thought; there was little need at that time of the warning,—he infused his own intense, pure spirit, into us all.

He then told the story without note or comment, only personating each actor in the tragedy with extraordinary effect, above all, the manly, loyal, simple-hearted soldier. I can recall the shudder of that multitude as of one man when he read, "And it came to pass in the morning, that David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. And he wrote in the letter, saying, Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten and die." And then, after a long and utter silence, his exclaiming, "Is this the man according to God's own heart? Yes, it is; we must believe that both are true." Then came Nathan. "There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb"—and all that exquisite, that divine fable—ending, like a thunder-clap, with "Thou art the man!" Then came the retribution, so awfully exact and thorough,—the misery of the child's death; that brief tragedy of the brother and sister, more terrible than anything in AEschylus, in Dante, or in Ford; then the rebellion of Absalom, with its hideous dishonor, and his death, and the king covering his face, and crying in a loud voice, "O my son Absalom! O Absalom! my son! my son!"—and David's psalm, "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions,"—then closing with, "Yes; 'when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Do not err,' do not stray, do not transgress ({me planasthe}),[30] 'my beloved brethren,' it is first 'earthly, then sensual, then devilish;'" he shut the book, and sent us all away terrified, shaken, and humbled, like himself.

[30] James i. 15, 16. It is plain that "do not err" should have been in verse 15th.

I would fain say a few words on my father's last illness, or rather on what led to it, and I wish you and others in the ministry would take to heart, as matter of immediate religious duty, much of what I am going to say. My father was a seven months' child, and lay, I believe, for a fortnight in black wool, undressed, doing little but breathe and sleep, not capable of being fed. He continued all his life slight in make, and not robust in health, though lively, and capable of great single efforts. His attendance upon his mother must have saddened his body as well as his mind, and made him willing and able to endure, in spite of his keen and ardent spirit, the sedentary life he in the main led. He was always a very small eater, and nice in his tastes, easily put off from his food by any notion. He therefore started on the full work of life with a finer and more delicate mechanism than a man's ought to be, indeed, in these respects he was much liker a woman; and being very soon "placed," he had little travelling, and little of that tossing about the world, which in the transition from youth to manhood, hardens the frame as well as supples it. Though delicate, he was almost never ill. I do not remember, till near the close of his life, his ever being in bed a day.

From his nervous system, and his brain predominating steadily over the rest of his body, he was habitually excessive in his professional work. As to quantity, as to quality, as to manner and expression, he flung away his life without stint every Sabbath-day, his sermons being laboriously prepared, loudly mandated, and at great expense of body and mind, and then delivered with the utmost vehemence and rapidity. He was quite unconscious of the state he worked himself into, and of the loud piercing voice in which he often spoke. This I frequently warned him about, as being, I knew, injurious to himself, and often painful to his hearers, and his answer always was, that he was utterly unaware of it; and thus it continued to the close, and very sad it was to me who knew the peril, and saw the coming end, to listen to his noble, rich, persuasive, imperative appeals, and to know that the surplus of power, if retained, would, by God's blessing, retain him, while the effect on his people would, I am sure, not have lost, but in some respects have gained, for much of the discourse which was shouted and sometimes screamed at the full pitch of his keen voice, was of a kind to be better rendered in his deep, quiet, settled tones. This, and the great length of his public services, I knew he himself felt, when too late, had injured him, and many a smile he had at my proposal to have a secret sub-congregational string from him to me in the back seat, to be authoritatively twitched when I knew he had done enough; but this string was never pulled, even in his mind.

He went on in this expensive life, sleeping very little, and always lightly, eating little, never walking except of necessity; little in company, when he would have eaten more and been, by the power of social relish, made likelier to get the full good out of his food; never diverting his mind by any change but that of one book or subject for another; and every time that any strong affliction came on him, as when made twice a widower, or at his daughter's death, or from such an outrage upon his entire nature and feelings as the Libel, then his delicate machinery was shaken and damaged, not merely by the first shock, but even more by that unrelenting self-command by which he terrified his body into instant submission. Thus it was, and thus it ever must be, if the laws of our bodily constitution, laid down by Him who knows our frame, and from whom our substance is not hid, are set at nought, knowingly or not—if knowingly, the act is so much the more spiritually bad—but if not, it is still punished with the same unerring nicety, the same commensurate meting out of the penalty, and paying "in full tale," as makes the sun to know his time, and splits an erring planet into fragments, driving it into space "with hideous ruin and combustion." It is a pitiful and a sad thing to say, but if my father had not been a prodigal in a true but very different meaning, if he had not spent his substance, the portion of goods that fell to him, the capital of life given him by God, in what we must believe to have been needless and therefore preventable excess of effort, we might have had him still with us, shining more and more, and he and they who were with him would have been spared those two years of the valley of the shadow, with its sharp and steady pain, its fallings away of life, its longing for the grave, its sleepless nights and days of weariness and languor, the full expression of which you will find nowhere but in the Psalms and in Job.

I have said that though delicate he was never ill: this was all the worse for him, for, odd as it may seem, many a man's life is lengthened by a sharp illness; and this in several ways. In the first place, he is laid up, out of the reach of all external mischief and exertion, he is like a ship put in dock for repairs; time is gained. A brisk fever clarifies the entire man; if it is beaten and does not beat, it is like cleaning a chimney by setting it on fire; it is perilous but thorough. Then the effort to throw off the disease often quickens and purifies and corroborates the central powers of life; the flame burns more clearly; there is a cleanness, so to speak, about all the wheels of life. Moreover, it is a warning, and makes a man meditate on his bed, and resolve to pull up; and it warns his friends, and likewise, if he is a clergyman, his people, who if their minister is always with them, never once think he can be ever anything but as able as he is.

Such a pause, such a breathing-time my father never got during that part of his life and labors when it would have availed most, and he was an old man in years, before he was a regular patient of any doctor. He was during life subject to sudden headaches, affecting his memory and eyesight, and even his speech; these attacks were, according to the thoughtless phrase of the day, called bilious; that is, he was sick, and was relieved by a blue pill and smart medicine. Their true seat was in the brain; the liver suffered because the brain was ill, and sent no nervous energy to it, or poisoned what it did send. The sharp racking pain in the forehead was the cry of suffering from the anterior lobes, driven by their master to distraction, and turning on him wild with weakness and fear and anger. It was well they did cry out; in some brains (large ones) they would have gone on dumb to sudden and utter ruin, as in apoplexy or palsy; but he did not know, and no one told him their true meaning, and he set about seeking for the outward cause in some article of food, in some recent and quite inadequate cause.

He used, with a sort of odd shame and distress, to ask me why it was that he was subjected to so much suffering from what he called the lower and ignoble regions of his body; and I used to explain to him that he had made them suffer by long years of neglect, and that they were now having their revenge, and in their own way I have often found, that the more the nervous centres are employed in those offices of thought and feeling the most removed from material objects,—the more the nervous energy of the entire nature is concentrated, engrossed, and used up in such offices,—so much the more and therefore, are those organs of the body which preside over that organic life, common to ourselves and the lowest worm, defrauded of their necessary nervous food,—and being in the organic and not in the animal department, and having no voice to tell their wants or wrongs, till they wake up and annoy their neighbors who have a voice, that is, who are sensitive to pain, they may have been long ill before they come into the sphere of consciousness. This is the true reason—along with want of purity and change of air, want of exercise,[31] want of shifting the work of the body—why clergymen, men of letters, and all men of intense mental application, are so liable to be affected with indigestion, constipation, lumbago, and lowness of spirits, melancholia—black bile. The brain may not give way for long, because for a time the law of exercise strengthens it; it is fed high, gets the best of everything, of blood and nervous pabulum, and then men have a joy in the victorious work of their brain, and it has a joy of its own, too, which deludes and misleads.

[31] "The youth Story was in all respects healthy, and even robust; he died of overwork, or rather, as I understand, of a two years' almost total want of exercise, which it was impossible to induce him to take.'—Arnold's Report to the Committee of Council on Education, 1860.

All this happened to my father. He had no formal disease when he died—no structural change; his sleep and his digestion would have been quite sufficient for life even up to the last; the mechanism was entire, but the motive-power was gone—it was expended. The silver cord was not so much loosed as relaxed. The golden bowl, the pitcher at the fountain, the wheel at the cistern, were not so much broken as emptied and stayed. The clock had run down before its time, and there was no one but He who first wound it up and set it who could wind it up again; and this He does not do, because it is His law—an express injunction from Him—that, having measured out to his creatures each his measure of life, and left him to the freedom of his own will and the regulation of his reason, He also leaves him to reap as he sows.

Thus it was that my father's illness was not so much a disease as a long death; life ebbing away, consciousness left entire, the certain issue never out of sight. This, to a man of my father's organization—with a keen relish for life, and its highest pleasures and energies, sensitive to impatience, and then over-sensitive of his own impatience; cut to the heart with the long watching and suffering of those he loved, who, after all, could do so little for him; with a nervous system easily sunk, and by its strong play upon his mind darkening and saddening his most central beliefs, shaking his most solid principles, tearing and terrifying his tenderest affections: his mind free and clear, ready for action if it had the power, eager to be in its place in the work of the world and of its Master, to have to spend two long years in this ever-descending road—here was a combination of positive and negative suffering not to be thought of even now, when it is all sunk under that "far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."

He often spoke to me freely about his health, went into it with the fearlessness, exactness, and persistency of his nature; and I never witnessed, or hope to witness, anything more affecting than when, after it had been dawning upon him, he apprehended the true secret of his death. He was deeply humbled, felt that he had done wrong to himself, to his people, to us all, to his faithful and long-suffering Master; and he often said, with a dying energy lighting up his eye, and nerving his voice and gesture, that if it pleased God to let him again speak in his old place, he would not only proclaim again, and, he hoped, more simply and more fully, the everlasting gospel to lost man, but proclaim also the gospel of God to the body, the religious and Christian duty and privilege of living in obedience to the divine laws of health. He was delighted when I read to him, and turned to this purpose that wonderful passage of St. Paul—"For the body is not one member, but many. If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? if the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary;" summing it all up in words with life and death in them—"That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it."

The lesson from all this is, Attend to your bodies, study their structure, functions, and laws. This does not at all mean that you need be an anatomist, or go deep into physiology, or the doctrines of prevention and cure. Not only has each organism a resident doctor, placed there by Him who can thus heal all our diseases; but this doctor, if watched and waited on, informs any man or woman of ordinary sense what things to do, and what things not to do. And I would have you, who, I fear, not unfrequently sin in the same way, and all our ardent, self-sacrificing young ministers, to reflect whether, after destroying themselves and dying young, they have lost or gained. It is said that God raises up others in our place. God gives you no title to say this. Men—such men as I have in my mind—are valuable to God in proportion to the time they are here. They are the older, the better, the riper and richer, and more enriching. Nothing will make up for this absolute loss of life. For there is something which every man who is a good workman is gaining every year just because he is older, and this nothing can replace. Let a man remain on his ground, say a country parish, during half a century or more—let him be every year getting fuller and sweeter in the knowledge of God and man, in utterance and in power—can the power of that man for good over all his time, and especially towards its close, be equalled by that of three or four young, and, it may be, admirable men, who have been succeeding each other's untimely death, during the same space of time? It is against all spiritual, as well as all simple arithmetic, to say so.

You have spoken of my father's prayers. They were of two kinds; the one, formal, careful, systematic, and almost stereotyped, remarkable for fulness and compression of thought; sometimes too manifestly the result of study, and sometimes not purely prayer, but more of the nature of a devotional and even argumentative address; the other, as in the family, short, simple, and varied. He used to tell of his master, Dr. Lawson, reproving him, in his honest but fatherly way, as they were walking home from the Hall. My father had in his prayer the words, "that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death,—that is, the devil." The old man, leaning on his favorite pupil, said, "John, my man, you need not have said 'that is the devil;' you might have been sure that He knew whom you meant." My father, in theory, held that a mixture of formal, fixed prayer, in fact, a liturgy, along with extempore prayer, was the right thing. As you observe, many of his passages in prayer, all who were in the habit of hearing him could anticipate, such as "the enlightening, enlivening, sanctifying, and comforting influences of the good Spirit," and many others. One in especial you must remember; it was only used on very solemn occasions, and curiously unfolds his mental peculiarities; it closed his prayer—"And now, unto Thee, O Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the one Jehovah and our God, we would—as is most meet—with the church on earth and the church in heaven, ascribe all honor and glory, dominion and majesty, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen." Nothing could be liker him than the interjection, "as is most meet." Sometimes his abrupt, short statements in the Synod were very striking. On one occasion, Mr. James Morison having stated his views as to prayer very strongly, denying that a sinner can pray, my father, turning to the Moderator, said—"Sir, let a man feel himself to be a sinner, and, for anything the universe of creatures can do for him, hopelessly lost,—let him feel this, sir, and let him get a glimpse of the Saviour, and all the eloquence and argument of Mr. Morison will not keep that man from crying out, 'God be merciful to me a sinner.' That, sir, is prayer—that is acceptable prayer."

There must be, I fear, now and then an apparent discrepancy between you and me, especially as to the degree of mental depression which at times overshadowed my father's nature. You will understand this, and I hope our readers will make allowance for it. Some of it is owing to my constitutional tendency to overstate, and much of it to my having had perhaps more frequent, and even more private, insights into this part of his life. But such inconsistency as that I speak of—the co-existence of a clear, firm faith, a habitual sense of God and of his infinite mercy, the living a life of faith, as if it was in his organic and inner life, more than in his sensational and outward—is quite compatible with that tendency to distrust himself, that bodily darkness and mournfulness, which at times came over him. Any one who knows "what a piece of work is man;" how composite, how varying, how inconsistent human nature is, that each of us are

"Some several men, all in an hour,"

—will not need to be told to expect, or how to harmonize these differences of mood. You see this in that wonderful man, the apostle Paul, the true typical fulness, the humanness, so to speak, of whose nature comes out in such expressions of opposites as these—"By honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things."

I cannot, and after your impressive and exact history of his last days, I need not say anything of the close of those long years of suffering, active and passive, and that slow ebbing of life; the body, without help or hope, feeling its doom steadily though slowly drawing on; the mind mourning for its suffering friend, companion, and servant; mourning also, sometimes, that it must be "unclothed," and take its flight all alone into the infinite unknown; dying daily, not in the heat of fever, or in the insensibility or lethargy of paralytic disease, but having the mind calm and clear, and the body conscious of its own decay,—dying, as it were, in cold blood. One thing I must add. That morning when you were obliged to leave, and when "cold obstruction's apathy" had already begun its reign—when he knew us, and that was all, and when he followed us with his dying and loving eyes, but could not speak—the end came; and then, as through life, his will asserted itself supreme in death. With that love of order and decency which was a law of his life, he deliberately composed himself, placing his body at rest, as if setting his house in order before leaving it, and then closed his eyes and mouth, so that his last look—the look his body carried to the grave and faced dissolution in—was that of sweet, dignified self-possession.

I have made this letter much too long, and have said many things in it I never intended saying, and omitted much I had hoped to be able to say. But I must end.

Yours ever affectionately,

J. BROWN.



"MYSTIFICATIONS."[32]

[32] Edinburgh: printed privately, 1859.

"Health to the auld wife, and weel mat she be, That busks her fause rock wi' the lint o' the lee (lie), Whirling her spindle and twisting the twine, Wynds aye the richt pirn into the richt line."

Those who knew the best of Edinburgh society eight-and-thirty years ago—and when was there ever a better than that best?—must remember the personations of an old Scottish gentlewoman by Miss Stirling Graham, one of which, when Lord Jeffrey was victimized, was famous enough to find its way into Blackwood, but in an incorrect form.

Miss Graham's friends have for years urged her to print for them her notes of these pleasant records of the harmless and heart-easing mirth of bygone times; to this she has at last assented, and the result is this entertaining, curious, and beautiful little quarto, in which her friends will recognize the strong understanding and goodness, the wit and invention, and fine pawky humor of the much-loved and warmhearted representative of Viscount Dundee—the terrible Clavers.[33] They will recall that blithe and winning face, sagacious and sincere, that kindly, cheery voice, that rich and quiet laugh, that mingled sense and sensibility, which all met, and still, to our happiness, meet in her, who, with all her gifts and keen perception of the odd, and power of embodying it, never gratified her consciousness of these powers, or ever played

"Her quips and cranks and wanton wiles,"

so as to give pain to any human being.

[33] Miss Graham's genealogy in connection with Claverhouse—the same who was killed at Killiecrankie—is as follows:—John Graham of Claverhouse married the Honorable Jean Cochrane, daughter of William Lord Cochrane, eldest son of the first Earl of Dundonald. Their only son, an infant, died December 1689. David Graham, his brother, fought at Killiecrankie, and was outlawed in 1690—died without issue—when the representation of the family devolved on his cousin, David Graham of Duntrune. Alexander Graham of Duntrune died 1782; and on the demise of his last surviving son, Alexander, in 1804, the property was inherited equally by his four surviving sisters, Anne, Amelia, Clementina, and Alison. Amelia, who married Patrick Stirling, Esq., of Pittendreich, was her mother. Clementina married Captain Gavin Drummond of Keltie; their only child was Clementina Countess of Airlie, and mother of the present Earl.

The title of this memorial is Mystifications, and in the opening letter to her dear kinswoman and life-long friend, Mrs. Gillies, widow of Lord Gillies, she thus tells her story:—

DUNTRUNE, April 1859.

MY DEAREST MRS. GILLIES,

To you and the friends who have partaken in these "Mystifications," I dedicate this little volume, trusting that, after a silence of forty years, its echoes may awaken many agreeable memorials of a society that has nearly passed away.

I have been asked if I had no remorse in ridiculing singularities of character, or practising deceptions;—certainly not.

There was no personal ridicule or mimicry of any living creature, but merely the personation or type of a bygone class, that had survived the fashion of its day.

It was altogether a fanciful existence, developing itself according to circumstances, or for the amusement of a select party, among whom the announcement of a stranger lady, an original, led to no suspicion of deception. No one ever took offence: indeed it generally elicited the finest individual traits of sympathy in the minds of the dupes, especially in the case of Mr. Jeffrey, whose sweet-tempered kindly nature manifested itself throughout the whole of the tiresome interview with the law-loving Lady Pitlyal.

No one enjoyed her eccentricities more than he did, or more readily devised the arrangement of a similar scene for the amusement of our mutual friends.

The cleverest people were the easiest mystified, and when once the deception took place, it mattered not how arrant the nonsense or how exaggerated the costume. Indeed, children and dogs were the only detectives.

I often felt so identified with the character, so charmed with the pleasure manifested by my audience, that it became painful to lay aside the veil, and descend again into the humdrum realities of my own self.

These personations never lost me a friend; on the contrary, they originated friendships that cease only with life.

The Lady Pitlyal's course is run; she bequeaths to you these reminiscences of beloved friends and pleasant meetings.

And that the blessing of God may descend on "each and all of you," is the fervent prayer of her kinswoman and executrix,

CLEMENTINA STIRLING GRAHAM.

I now beg to "convey," as Pistol delicately calls it, or as we on our side the Border would say, to "lift," enough of this unique volume to make my readers hunger for the whole.

MRS. RAMSAY SPELDIN.

Another evening Miss Guthrie requested me to introduce my old lady to Captain Alexander Lindsay, a son of the late Laird of Kinblethmont, and brother to the present Mr. Lindsay Carnegie, and Mr. Sandford, the late Sir Daniel Sandford.

She came as a Mrs. Ramsay Speldin, an old sweetheart of the laird's, and was welcomed by Mrs. Guthrie as a friend of the family. The young people hailed her as a perfectly delightful old lady, and an original of the pure Scottish character, and to the laird she was endeared by a thousand pleasing recollections.

He placed her beside himself on the sofa, and they talked of the days gone by—before the green parks of Craigie were redeemed from the muir of Gotterston, and ere there was a tree planted between the auld house of Craigie and the Castle of Claypotts.

She spoke of the "gude auld times, when the laird of Fintry widna gie his youngest dochter to Abercairney, but tell'd him to tak them as God had gien them to him, or want."

"And do you mind," she continued, "the grand ploys we had at the Middleton; and hoo Mrs. Scott of Gilhorn used to grind lilts out o' an auld kist to wauken her visitors i' the mornin'.

"And some o' them didna like it sair, tho' nane o' them had courage to tell her sae, but Anny Graham o' Duntrune.

"'Lord forgie ye,' said Mrs. Scott, 'ye'll no gae to heaven, if ye dinna like music;' but Anny was never at a loss for an answer, and she said, 'Mrs. Scott—heaven's no the place I tak it to be, if there be auld wives in 't playing on hand-organs.'"

Many a story did Mrs. Ramsay tell. The party drew their chairs close to the sofa, and many a joke she related, till the room rung again with the merriment, and the laird, in ecstasy, caught her round the waist, exclaiming "Oh! ye are a canty wifie."

The strangers seemed to think so too; they absolutely hung upon her, and she danced reels, first with the one, and then with the other, till the entrance of a servant with the newspapers produced a seasonable calm.

They lay, however, untouched upon the table till Mrs. Ramsay requested some one to read over the claims that were putting in for the King's coronation, and see if there was any mention of hers.

"What is your claim?" said Mr. Sandford.

"To pyke the King's teeth," was the reply.

"You will think it very singular," said Mr. Guthrie, "that I never heard of it before; will you tell us how it originated?"

"It was in the time of James the First," said she, "that monarch cam to pay a visit to the monks of Arbroath, and they brought him to Ferryden to eat a fish dinner at the house o' ane o' my forefathers. The family name, ye ken, was Spelden, and the dried fish was ca'd after them.

"The king was well satisfied wi' a' thing that was done to honor him. He was a very polished prince, and when he had eaten his dinner he turned round to the lady and sought a preen to pyke his teeth.

"And the lady, she took a fish bane and wipit it, and gae it to the king; and after he had cleaned his teeth wi' it, he said, 'They're weel pykit.'

"And henceforth, continued he, the Speldins of Ferryden shall pyke the king's teeth at the coronation. And it shall be done wi' a fish-bone, and a pearl out o' the Southesk on the end of it. And their crest shall be a lion's head wi' the teeth displayed, and the motto shall be weel pykit."

Mr. Sandford read over the claims, but there was no notice given of the Speldins.

"We maun just hae patience," said Mrs. Ramsay, "and nae doubt it will appear in the next newspaper."

Some one inquired who was the present representative?

"It's me," replied Mrs. Ramsay Speldin; "and I mean to perform the office mysel'. The estate wad hae been mine too, had it existed; but Neptune, ye ken, is an ill neighbor, and the sea has washed it a' away but a sand bunker or twa, and the house I bide in at Ferryden."

At supper every one was eager to have a seat near Mrs. Ramsay Speldin. She had a universal acquaintance, and she even knew Mr. Sandford's mother, when he told her that her name was Catherine Douglas. Mr. Sandford had in his own mind composed a letter to Sir Walter Scott, which was to have been written and despatched on the morrow, giving an account of this fine specimen of the true Scottish character whom he had met in the county of Angus.

We meant to carry on the deception next morning, but the laird was too happy for concealment. Before the door closed on the good-night of the ladies, he had disclosed the secret, and before we reached the top of the stairs, the gentlemen were scampering at our heels like a pack of hounds in full cry.

Here are at random some extracts from the others:—

Mr. Jeffrey now inquired what the people in her part of the country thought of the trial of the Queen. She could not tell him, but she would say what she herself had remarked on siclike proceedings: "Tak' a wreath of snaw, let it be never so white, and wash it through clean water, it will no come out so pure as it gaed in, far less the dirty dubs the poor Queen has been drawn through."

Mr. Russell inquired if she possessed any relics of Prince Charles from the time he used to spin with the lasses:—

"Yes," she said, "I have a flech that loupit aff him upon my aunty, the Lady Brax, when she was helping him on wi' his short-gown; my aunty rowed it up in a sheet of white paper, and she keepit it in the tea canister, and she ca'd it aye the King's Flech; and the laird, honest man, when he wanted a cup of gude tea, sought aye a cup of the Prince's mixture." This produced peals of laughter, and her ladyship laughed as heartily as any of them. When somewhat composed again, she looked across the table to Mr. Clerk, and offered to let him see it. "It is now set on the pivot of my watch, and a' the warks gae round the flech in place of turning on a diamond."

Lord Gillies thought this flight would certainly betray her, and remarked to Mr. Clerk that the flea must be painted on the watch, but Mr. Clerk said he had known of relics being kept of the Prince quite as extraordinary as a flea; that Mr. Murray of Simprim had a pocket-handkerchief in which Prince Charles had blown his nose.

The Lady Pitlyal said her daughter did not value these things, and that she was resolved to leave it as a legacy to the Antiquarian Society.

Holmehead was rather amused with her originality, though he had not forgotten the attack. He said he would try if she was a real Jacobite, and he called out, "Madam, I am going to propose a toast for ye!

"May the Scotch Thistle choke the Hanoverian Horse."

"I wish I binna among the Whigs," she said.

"And whare wad ye be sae weel?" retorted he.

"They murdered Dundee's son at Glasgow."

"There was nae great skaith," he replied; "but ye maun drink my toast in a glass of this cauld punch, if ye be a true Jacobite."

"Aweel, aweel," said the Lady Pitlyal; "as my auld friend Lady Christian Bruce was wont to say, 'The best way to get the better of temptation is just to yield to it;'" and as she nodded to the toast and emptied the glass, Holmehead swore exultingly—"Faith, she's true!"

Supper passed over, and the carriages were announced. The Lady Pitlyal took her leave with Mrs. Gillies.

Next day the town rang with the heiress of Pitlyal. Mr. W. Clerk said he had never met with such an extraordinary old lady, "for not only is she amusing herself, but my brother John is like to expire, when I relate her stories at second-hand."

He talked of nothing else for a week after, but the heiress, and the flea, and the rent-roll, and the old turreted house of Pitlyal, till at last his friends thought it would be right to undeceive him; but that was not so easily done, for when the Lord Chief-Commissioner Adam hinted that it might be Miss Stirling, he said that was impossible, for Miss Stirling was sitting by the old lady the whole of the evening.

Here is a bit of Sir Walter—

Turning to Sir Walter, "I am sure you had our laird in your e'e when you drew the character of Monkbarns."

"No," replied Sir Walter, "but I had in my eye a very old and respected friend of my own, and one with whom, I daresay you, Mrs. Arbuthnott, were acquainted—the late Mr. George Constable of Wallace, near Dundee."

"I kenned him weel," said Mrs. Arbuthnott, "and his twa sisters that lived wi' him, Jean and Christian, and I've been in the blue-chamber of his Hospitium; but I think," she continued, "our laird is the likest to Monkbarns o' the twa. He's at the Antiquarian Society the night, presenting a great curiosity that was found in a quarry of mica slate in the hill at the back of Balwylie. He's sair taken up about it, and puzzled to think what substance it may be; but James Dalgetty, wha's never at a loss either for the name or the nature of onything under the sun, says it's just Noah's auld wig that blew aff yon time he put his head out of the window of the ark to look after his corbie messenger."

James Dalgetty and his opinion gave subject of much merriment to the company, but Doctor Coventry thought there was nothing so very ludicrous in the remark, for in that kind of slate there are frequently substances found resembling hairs.

Lord Gillies presented Doctor Coventry to Mrs. Arbuthnott, as the well-known professor of agriculture, and they entered on a conversation respecting soils. She described those of Balwylie, and the particular properties of the Surroch Park, which James Dalgetty curses every time it's spoken about, and says, "it greets a' winter, and girns a' simmer."

The doctor rubbed his hands with delight, and said that was the most perfect description of cold wet land he had ever heard of; and Sir Walter expressed a wish to cultivate the acquaintance of James Dalgetty, and extorted a promise from Mrs. Arbuthnott that she would visit Abbotsford, and bring James with her. "I have a James Dalgetty of my own," continued Sir Walter, "that governs me just as yours does you."

Lady Ann and Mr. Wharton Duff and their daughter were announced, and introduced to Mrs. Arbuthnott.

At ten, Sir Walter and Miss Scott took leave, with a promise that they should visit each other, and bending down to the ear of Mrs. Arbuthnott, Sir Walter addressed her in these words: "Awa! awa! the deil's ower grit wi' you."

* * * * *

And now are we not all the better for this pleasantry? so womanly, so genial, so rich, and so without a sting,—such a true diversion, with none of the sin of effort or of mere cleverness; and how it takes us into the midst of the strong-brained and strong-hearted men and women of that time! what an atmosphere of sense and good-breeding and kindliness! And then the Scotch! cropping out everywhere as blithe, and expressive, and unexpected as a gowan or sweet-briar rose, with an occasional thistle, sturdy, erect, and bristling with Nemo me. Besides the deeper and general interest of these Mystifications, in their giving, as far as I know, a unique specimen of true personation—distinct from acting—I think it a national good to let our youngsters read, and, as it were, hear the language which our gentry and judges and men of letters spoke not long ago, and into which such books as Dean Ramsay's and this are breathing the breath of its old life. Was there ever anything better or so good, said of a stiff clay, than that it "girns (grins) a' simmer, and greets (weeps) a' winter?"



"OH, I'M WAT, WAT!"

The father of the Rev. Mr. Steven of Largs, was the son of a farmer, who lived next farm to Mossgiel. When a boy of eight, he found "Robbie" who was a great friend of his, and of all the children, engaged digging a large trench in a field, Gilbert, his brother, with him. The boy pausing on the edge of the trench, and looking down upon Burns, said, "Robbie, what's that ye're doin'?" "Howkin' a muckle hole, Tammie." "What for?" "To bury the Deil in, Tammie!" (one can fancy how those eyes would glow.) "A'but, Robbie," said the logical Tammie, "hoo're ye to get him in?" "Ay" said Burns, "that's it, hoo are we to get Him in!" and went off into shouts of laughter; and every now and then during that summer day shouts would come from that hole, as the idea came over him. If one could only have daguerreotyped his day's fancies!

"What is love, Mary?" said Seventeen to Thirteen, who was busy with her English lessons.

"Love! what do you mean, John?"

"I mean, what's love?"

"Love's just love, I suppose."

(Yes, Mary, you are right to keep by the concrete; analysis kills love as well as other things. I once asked a useful-information young lady what her mother was. 'Oh, mamma's a biped!' I turned in dismay to her younger sister, and said, What do you say? 'Oh, my mother's just my mother.')

"But what part of speech is it?"

"It's a substantive or a verb." (Young Horne Tooke didn't ask her if it was an active or passive, an irregular or defective verb; an inceptive, as calesco, I grow warm, or dulcesco, I grow sweet; a frequentative or a desiderative, as nupturio, I desire to marry.)

"I think it is a verb," said John, who was deep in other diversions, besides those of Purley; "and I think it must have been originally the Perfect of Live, like thrive throve, strive strove."

"Capital, John!" suddenly growled Uncle Oldbuck, who was supposed to be asleep in his arm-chair by the fireside, and who snubbed and supported the entire household. "It was that originally, and it will be our own faults, children, if it is not that at last, as well as, ay, and more than at first. What does Richardson say, John? read him out." John reads—

LOVE, v. s. To prefer, to desire, as an -LESS. object of possession or enjoyment -LY, ad. av. to delight in, to be -LILY. pleased or gratified with, to -LINESS. take pleasure or gratification -ER. in, delight in. -ING. Love, the s is app. emph. to -INGLY. the passion between the sexes. -INGNESS. Lover is, by old writers, app. as -ABLE.[A] friend—by male to male. -SOME.[B] Love is much used—pref. ERED.[C] [A] Wiclif. [B] Chaucer. [C] Shak.

Love-locks,—locks (of hair) to set off the beauty; the loveliness.

A. S. Luf-ian; D. Lie-ven; Ger. -ben, amare, diligere. Wach. derives from lieb, bonum, because every one desires that which is good: lieb, it is more probable, is from lieb-en, grateful, and therefore good. It may at least admit a conjecture that A. S. Lufian, to love, has a reason for its application similar to that of L. Di-ligere (legere, to gather), to take up or out (of a number), to choose, sc. one in preference to another, to prefer; and that it is formed upon A. S. Hlif-ian, to lift or take up, to pick up, to select, to prefer, Be- Over- Un-

Uncle impatiently.—"Stuff; 'grateful!' 'pick up! stuff! These word-mongers know nothing about it. Live, love; that is it, the perfect of live."[34]

[34] They are strange beings, these lexicographers. Richardson, for instance, under the word SNAIL, gives this quotation from Beaumont and Fletcher's Wit at Several Weapons,—

"Oh, Master Pompey! how is 't, man?

Clown—SNAILS, I'm almost starved with love and cold, and one thing or other."

Any one else knows of course that it is "'s nails"—the contraction of the old oath or interjection—God's nails.

After this, Uncle sent the cousins to their beds.

Mary's mother was in hers, never to rise from it again. She was a widow, and Mary was her husband's niece. The house quiet, Uncle sat down in his chair, put his feet on the fender, and watched the dying fire; it had a rich central glow, but no flame, and no smoke, it was flashing up fitfully, and bit by bit falling in. He fell asleep watching it, and when he slept, he dreamed. He was young; he was seventeen; he was prowling about the head of North St. David Street, keeping his eye on a certain door,—we call them common stairs in Scotland. He was waiting for Mr. White's famous English class for girls coming out. Presently out rushed four or five girls, wild and laughing; then came one, bounding like a roe:

"Such eyes were in her head, And so much grace and power!"

She was surrounded by the rest, and away they went laughing, she making them always laugh the more. Seventeen followed at a safe distance, studying her small, firm, downright heel. The girls dropped off one by one, and she was away home by herself, swift and reserved. He, imposter as he was, disappeared through Jamaica Street, to reappear and meet her, walking as if on urgent business, and getting a cordial and careless nod. This beautiful girl of thirteen was afterwards the mother of our Mary, and died in giving her birth. She was Uncle Oldbuck's first and only sweetheart; and here was he, the only help our young Horne Tooke, and his mother and Mary had. Uncle awoke, the fire dead, and the room cold. He found himself repeating Lady John Scott's lines—

"When thou art near me, Sorrow seems to fly, And then I think, as well I may, That on this earth there is no one More blest than I.

But when thou leav'st me, Doubts and fears arise, And darkness reigns, Where all before was light. The sunshine of my soul Is in those eyes, And when they leave me All the world is night.

But when thou art near me, Sorrow seems to fly, And then I feel, as well I may, That on this earth there dwells not one So blest as I."[35]

[35] Can the gifted author of these lines and of their music not be prevailed on to give them and others to the world, as well as to her friends?

Then taking down Chambers's Scottish Songs, he read aloud:—

"O I'm wat, wat, O I'm wat and weary; Yet fain wad I rise and rin, If I thocht I would meet my dearie. Aye waukin', O! Waukin' aye, and weary; Sleep, I can get nane For thinkin' o' my dearie.

Simmer's a pleasant time, Flowers o' every color; The winter rins ower the heugh, And I long for my true lover.

When I sleep I dream, When I wauk I'm eerie, Sleep I can get nane, For thinkin' o' my dearie.

Lanely nicht comes on, A' the lave are sleepin'; I think on my true love, And blear my e'en wi' greetin'.

Feather beds are saft— Pentit rooms are bonnie; But ae kiss o' my dear love Better's far than ony.

O for Friday nicht!— Friday at the gloamin'; O for Friday nicht— Friday's lang o' comin'!"

This love-song, which Mr. Chambers gives from recitation, is, thinks Uncle to himself, all but perfect; Burns, who in almost every instance, not only adorned, but transformed and purified whatever of the old he touched, breathing into it his own tenderness and strength, fails here, as may be seen in reading his version.

"Oh, spring's a pleasant time! Flowers o' every color— The sweet bird builds her nest, And I lang for my lover. Aye wakin', oh! Wakin' aye and wearie; Sleep I can get nane, For thinkin' o' my dearie!

"When I sleep I dream, When I wauk I'm eerie, Rest I canna get, For thinkin' o' my dearie. Aye wakin', oh! Wakin' aye and weary; Come, come, blissful dream, Bring me to my dearie.

"Darksome nicht comes doun— A' the lave are sleepin'; I think on my kind lad, And blin' my een wi' greetin'. Aye wakin', oh! Wakin' aye and wearie; Hope is sweet, but ne'er Sae sweet as my dearie!"

How weak these italics! No one can doubt which of these is the better. The old song is perfect in the procession, and in the simple beauty of its thoughts and words. A ploughman or shepherd—for I hold that it is a man's song—comes in "wat, wat" after a hard day's work among the furrows, or on the hill. The watness of wat, wat, is as much wetter than wet as a Scotch mist is more of a mist than an English one; and he is not only wat, wat, but "weary," longing for a dry skin and a warm bed and rest; but no sooner said and felt, than, by the law of contrast, he thinks on "Mysie" or "Ailie," his Genevieve; and then "all thoughts, all passions, all delights," begin to stir him, and "fain wad I rise and rin" (what a swiftness beyond run is "rin"!) Love now makes him a poet; the true imaginative power enters and takes possession of him. By this time his clothes are off, and he is snug in bed; not a wink can he sleep; that "fain" is domineering over him,—and he breaks out into what is as genuine passion and poetry, as anything from Sappho to Tennyson—abrupt, vivid, heedless of syntax. "Simmer's a pleasant time." Would any of our greatest geniuses, being limited to one word, have done better than take "pleasant?" and then the fine vagueness of "time!" "Flowers o' every color;" he gets a glimpse of "herself a fairer flower," and is off in pursuit. "The water rins ower the heugh" (a steep precipice); flinging itself wildly, passionately over, and so do I long for my true lover. Nothing can be simpler and finer than

"When I sleep, I dream; When I wauk, I'm eerie."

"Lanely nicht;" how much richer and touching than "darksome." "Feather beds are saft;" "paintit rooms are bonnie;" I would infer from this, that his "dearie," his "true love," was a lass up at "the big house"—a dapper Abigail possibly—at Sir William's at the Castle, and then we have the final paroxysm upon Friday nicht—Friday at the gloamin'! O for Friday nicht!—Friday's lang o' comin'!—it being very likely Thursday before daybreak, when this affectionate ululatus ended in repose.

Now, is not this rude ditty, made very likely by some clumsy, big-headed Galloway herd, full of the real stuff of love? He does not go off upon her eyebrows, or even her eyes; he does not sit down, and in a genteel way announce that "love in thine eyes forever sits," &c. &c., or that her feet look out from under her petticoats like little mice: he is far past that; he is not making love, he is in it. This is one and a chief charm of Burns' love-songs, which are certainly of all love-songs except those wild snatches left to us by her who flung herself from the Leucadian rock, the most in earnest, the tenderest, the "most moving delicate and full of life." Burns makes you feel the reality and the depth, the truth of his passion; it is not her eyelashes or her nose, or her dimple, or even

"A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops I' the bottom of a cowslip,"

that are "winging the fervor of his love;" not even her soul; it is herself. This concentration and earnestness, this perfervor of our Scottish love poetry, seems to me to contrast curiously with the light, trifling philandering of the English; indeed, as far as I remember, we have almost no love-songs in English, of the same class as this one, or those of Burns. They are mostly either of the genteel, or of the nautical (some of these capital), or of the comic school. Do you know the most perfect, the finest love-song in our or in any language; the love being affectionate more than passionate, love in possession not in pursuit?

"Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast On yonder lea, on yonder lea, My plaidie to the angry airt, I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee: Or did Misfortune's bitter storms Around thee blaw, around thee blaw, Thy bield should be my bosom, To share it a', to share it a'.

"Or were I in the wildest waste, Sae black and bare, sae black and bare, The desert were a paradise, If thou wert there, if thou wert there: Or were I monarch o' the globe, Wi' thee to reign, wi' thee to reign, The brightest jewel in my crown Wad be my queen, wad be my queen."

The following is Mr. Chambers' account of the origin of this song:—Jessy Lewars had a call one morning from Burns. He offered, if she would play him any tune of which she was fond, and for which she desired new verses, that he would do his best to gratify her wish. She sat down at the piano, and played over and over the air of an old song, beginning with the words—

"The robin cam' to the wren's nest, And keekit in, and keekit in: 'O weel's me on your auld pow! Wad ye be in, wad ye be in? Ye' se ne'er get leave to lie without, And I within, and I within, As lang 's I hae an auld clout, To row ye in, to row ye in.'"

Uncle now took his candle, and slunk off to bed, slipping up noiselessly that he might not disturb the thin sleep of the sufferer, saying in to himself—"I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee;" "If thou wert there, if thou wert there;" and though the morning was at the window, he was up by eight, making breakfast for John and Mary.

* * * * *

Love never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away; but love is of God, and cannot fail.



ARTHUR H. HALLAM.

"PRAESENS imperfectum,—perfectum, plusquam perfectum FUTURUM."—GROTIUS.

"The idea of thy life shall sweetly creep Into my study of imagination; And every lovely organ of thy life Shall come apparelled in more precious habit— More moving delicate, and full of life, Into the eye and prospect of my soul, Than when thou livedst indeed."

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

In the chancel of Clevedon Church, Somersetshire, rest the mortal remains of Arthur Henry Hallam, eldest son of our great philosophic historian and critic,—and the friend to whom "In Memoriam" is sacred. This place was selected by his father, not only from the connection of kindred, being the burial-place of his maternal grandfather, Sir Abraham Elton, but likewise "on account of its still and sequestered situation, on a lone hill that overhangs the Bristol Channel." That lone hill, with its humble old church, its outlook over the waste of waters, where "the stately ships go on," was, we doubt not, in Tennyson's mind, when the poem, "Break, break, break," which contains the burden of that volume in which are enshrined so much of the deepest affection, poetry, philosophy, and godliness, rose into his "study of imagination"—"into the eye and prospect of his soul."[36]

[36] The passage from Shakspeare prefixed to this paper, contains probably as much as can be said of the mental, not less than the affectionate conditions, under which such a record as In Memoriam is produced, and may give us more insight into the imaginative faculty's mode of working, than all our philosophizing and analysis. It seems to let out with the fulness, simplicity, and unconsciousness of a child—"Fancy's Child"—the secret mechanism or procession of the greatest creative mind our race has produced. In itself, it has no recondite meaning, it answers fully its own sweet purpose. We are not believers, like some folks, in the omniscience of even Shakspeare. But, like many things that he and other wise men and many simple children say, it has a germ of universal meaning, which it is quite lawful to bring out of it, and which may be enjoyed to the full without any wrong to its own original beauty and fitness. A dew-drop is not the less beautiful that it illustrates in its structure the law of gravitation which holds the world together, and by which "the most ancient heavens are fresh and strong." This is the passage. The Friar speaking of Claudio, hearing that Hero "died upon his word," says,—

"The idea of her life shall sweetly creep Into his study of imagination; And every lovely organ of her life Shall come apparelled in more precious habit— More moving delicate, and full of life, Into the eye and prospect of his soul, Than when she lived indeed."

We have here expressed in plain language the imaginative memory of the beloved dead, rising upon the past, like moonlight upon midnight,—

"The gleam, the shadow, and the peace supreme."

This is its simple meaning—the statement of a truth, the utterance of personal feeling. But observe its hidden abstract significance—it is the revelation of what goes on in the depths of the soul, when the dead elements of what once was, are laid before the imagination, and so breathed upon as to be quickened into a new and higher life. We have first the Idea of her Life—all he remembered and felt of her, gathered into one vague shadowy image, not any one look, or action, or time—then the idea of her life creeps—is in before he is aware, and SWEETLY creeps,—it might have been softly or gently, but it is the addition of affection to all this, and bringing in another sense—and now it is in his study of imagination—what a place! fit for such a visitor. Then out comes the Idea, more particular, more questionable, but still ideal, spiritual—every lovely organ of her life—then the clothing upon, the mortal putting on its immortal, spiritual body—shall come apparelled in more precious habit, more moving delicate—this is the transfiguring, the putting on strength, the poco piu—the little more which makes immortal,—more full of life, and all this submitted to—the eye and prospect of the soul.

"Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.

"O well for the fisherman's boy That he shouts with his sister at play! O well for the sailor lad That he sings in his boat on the bay!

"And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill! But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!

"Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me."

Out of these few simple words, deep and melancholy, and sounding as the sea, as out of a well of the living waters of love, flows forth all In Memoriam, as a stream flows out of its spring—all is here. "I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me,"—"the touch of the vanished hand—the sound of the voice that is still,"—the body and soul of his friend. Rising as it were out of the midst of the gloom of the valley of the shadow of death,—

"The mountain infant to the sun comes forth Like human life from darkness;"

and how its waters flow on! carrying life, beauty, magnificence,—shadows and happy lights, depths of blackness, depths clear as the very body of heaven. How it deepens as it goes, involving larger interests, wider views, "thoughts that wander through eternity," greater affections, but still retaining its pure living waters, its unforgotten burden of love and sorrow. How it visits every region! "the long unlovely street," pleasant villages and farms, "the placid ocean-plains," waste howling wildernesses, grim woods, nemorumque noctem, informed with spiritual fears, where may be seen, if shapes they may be called—

"Fear and trembling Hope, Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton, And Time the Shadow;"

now within hearing of the Minster clock, now of the College bells, and the vague hum of the mighty city. And overhead through all its course the heaven with its clouds, its sun, moon, and stars; but always, and in all places, declaring its source; and even when laying its burden of manifold and faithful affection at the feet of the Almighty Father, still remembering whence it came,—

"That friend of mine who lives in God, That God which ever lives and loves; One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event, To which the whole creation moves."

It is to that chancel, and to the day, 3d January, 1834, that he refers in poem XVIII. of In Memoriam.

"'Tis well, 'tis something, we may stand Where he in English earth is laid, And from his ashes may be made The violet of his native land.

"'Tis little; but it looks in truth As if the quiet bones were blest Among familiar names to rest, And in the places of his youth."

And again in XIX.:—

"The Danube to the Severn gave The darken'd heart that beat no more; They laid him by the pleasant shore, And in the hearing of the wave.

"There twice a day the Severn fills, The salt sea-water passes by, And hushes half the babbling Wye, And makes a silence in the hills."

Here, too, it is, LXVI.:—

"When on my bed the moonlight falls, I know that in thy place of rest, By that broad water of the west; There comes a glory on the walls:

"Thy marble bright in dark appears, As slowly steals a silver flame Along the letters of thy name, And o'er the number of thy years."

This young man, whose memory his friend has consecrated in the hearts of all who can be touched by such love and beauty, was in nowise unworthy of all this. It is not for us to say, for it was not given to us the sad privilege to know, all that a father's heart buried with his son in that grave, all "the hopes of unaccomplished years;" nor can we feel in its fulness all that is meant by

"Such A friendship as had mastered Time; Which masters Time indeed, and is Eternal, separate from fears. The all-assuming months and years Can take no part away from this."

But this we may say, we know of nothing in all literature to compare with the volume from which these lines are taken, since David lamented with this lamentation: "The beauty of Israel is slain. Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither rain upon you. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me; thy love for me was wonderful." We cannot, as some have done, compare it with Shakspeare's sonnets, or with Lycidas. In spite of the amazing genius and tenderness, the never-wearying, all-involving reiteration of passionate attachment, the idolatry of admiring love, the rapturous devotedness, displayed in these sonnets, we cannot but agree with Mr. Hallam in thinking, "that there is a tendency now, especially among young men of poetical tempers, to exaggerate the beauties of these remarkable productions;" and though we would hardly say with him, "that it is impossible not to wish that Shakspeare had never written them," giving us, as they do, and as perhaps nothing else could do, such proof of a power of loving, of an amount of attendrissement, which is not less wonderful than the bodying forth of that myriad-mind which gave us Hamlet, and Lear, Cordelia, and Puck, and all the rest, and indeed explaining to us how he could give us all these;—while we hardly go so far, we agree with his other wise words:—"There is a weakness and folly in all misplaced and excessive affection;" which in Shakspeare's case is the more distressing, when we consider that "Mr. W. H., the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets," was, in all likelihood, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, a man of noble and gallant character, but always of licentious life.

As for Lycidas, we must confess that the poetry—and we all know how consummate it is—and not the affection, seems uppermost in Milton's mind, as it is in ours. The other element, though quick and true, has no glory through reason of the excellency of that which invests it. But there is no such drawback in In Memoriam. The purity, the temperate but fervent goodness, the firmness and depth of nature, the impassioned logic, the large, sensitive, and liberal heart, the reverence and godly fear, of

"That friend of mine who lives in God,"

which from these Remains we know to have dwelt in that young soul, give to In Memoriam the character of exactest portraiture. There is no excessive or misplaced affection here; it is all founded in fact; while everywhere and throughout it all, affection—a love that is wonderful—meets us first and leaves us last, giving form and substance and grace, and the breath of life and love, to everything that the poet's thick-coming fancies so exquisitely frame. We can recall few poems approaching to it in this quality of sustained affection. The only English poems we can think of as of the same order, are Cowper's lines on seeing his mother's portrait:—

"O that these lips had language!"

Burns to "Mary in Heaven;" and two pieces of Vaughan—one beginning

"O thou who know'st for whom I mourn;"

and the other—

"They are all gone into the world of light."

But our object now is, not so much to illustrate Mr. Tennyson's verses, as to introduce to our readers what we ourselves have got so much delight, and, we trust, profit from—The Remains, in Verse and Prose, of Arthur Henry Hallam, 1834; privately printed. We had for many years been searching for this volume, but in vain; a sentence quoted by Henry Taylor struck us, and our desire was quickened by reading In Memoriam. We do not remember when we have been more impressed than by these Remains of this young man, especially when taken along with his friend's Memorial; and instead of trying to tell our readers what this impression is, we have preferred giving them as copious extracts as our space allows, that they may judge and enjoy for themselves. The italics are our own. We can promise them few finer, deeper, and better pleasures than reading, and detaining their minds over these two books together, filling their hearts with the fulness of their truth and tenderness. They will see how accurate as well as how affectionate and "of imagination all compact" Tennyson is, and how worthy of all that he has said of him, that friend was. The likeness is drawn ad vivum,—

"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought He summons up remembrance of things past."

"The idea of his Life" has been sown a natural body, and has been raised a spiritual body, but the identity is unhurt; the countenance shines and the raiment is white and glistering, but it is the same face and form.

The Memoir is by Mr. Hallam. We give it entire, not knowing anywhere a nobler or more touching record of a father's love and sorrow.

"Arthur Henry Hallam was born in Bedford Place,[37] London, on the 1st of February, 1811. Very few years had elapsed before his parents observed strong indications of his future character, in a peculiar clearness of perception, a facility of acquiring knowledge, and, above all, in an undeviating sweetness of disposition, and adherence to his sense of what was right and becoming. As he advanced to another stage of childhood, it was rendered still more manifest that he would be distinguished from ordinary persons, by an increasing thoughtfulness, and a fondness for a class of books, which in general are so little intelligible to boys of his age, that they excite in them no kind of interest.

[37] "Dark house, by which once more I stand Here in the long unlovely street; Doors, where my heart was wont to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand."—In Memoriam.

This is a mistake, as his friend Dr. A. P. Stanley thus corrects:—"'The long unlovely street' was Wimpole Street, No. 67, where the Hallams lived; and Arthur used to say to his friends, You know you will always find us at sixes and sevens.'"

"In the summer of 1818 he spent some months with his parents in Germany and Switzerland, and became familiar with the French language, which he had already learned to read with facility. He had gone through the elements of Latin before this time; but that language having been laid aside during his tour, it was found upon his return that, a variety of new scenes having effaced it from his memory, it was necessary to begin again with the first rudiments. He was nearly eight years old at this time; and in little more than twelve months he could read Latin with tolerable facility. In this period his mind was developing itself more rapidly than before; he now felt a keen relish for dramatic poetry, and wrote several tragedies, if we may so call them either in prose or verse, with a more precocious display of talents than the Editor remembers to have met with in any other individual. The natural pride, however, of his parents, did not blind them to the uncertainty that belongs to all premature efforts of the mind; and they so carefully avoided everything like a boastful display of blossoms which, in many cases, have withered away in barren luxuriance, that the circumstance of these compositions was hardly ever mentioned out of their own family.

"In the spring of 1820, Arthur was placed under the Rev. W. Carmalt, at Putney, where he remained nearly two years. After leaving this school he went abroad again for some months; and in October, 1822, became the pupil of the Rev. E. C. Hawtrey, an Assistant Master of Eton College. At Eton he continued till the summer of 1827. He was now become a good though not perhaps a first-rate scholar in the Latin and Greek languages. The loss of time, relatively to this object, in travelling, but far more his increasing avidity for a different kind of knowledge, and the strong bent of his mind to subjects which exercise other faculties than such as the acquirement of languages calls into play, will sufficiently account for what might seem a comparative deficiency in classical learning. It can only, however, be reckoned one, comparatively to his other attainments, and to his remarkable facility in mastering the modern languages. The Editor has thought it not improper to print in the following pages an Eton exercise, which, as written before the age of fourteen, though not free from metrical and other errors, appears, perhaps to a partial judgment, far above the level of such compositions. It is remarkable that he should have selected the story of Ugolino, from a poet with whom, and with whose language, he was then but very slightly acquainted, but who was afterwards to become, more perhaps than any other, the master-mover of his spirit. It may be added, that great judgment and taste are perceptible in this translation, which is by no means a literal one; and in which the phraseology of Sophocles is not ill substituted, in some passages, for that of Dante.

"The Latin poetry of an Etonian is generally reckoned at that School the chief test of his literary talent. That of Arthur was good without being excellent; he never wanted depth of thought, or truth of feeling; but it is only in a few rare instances, if altogether in any, that an original mind has been known to utter itself freely and vigorously, without sacrifice of purity, in a language the capacities of which are so imperfectly understood; and in his productions there was not the thorough conformity to an ancient model which is required for perfect elegance in Latin verse. He took no great pleasure in this sort of composition; and perhaps never returned to it of his own accord.

"In the latter part of his residence at Eton, he was led away more and more by the predominant bias of his mind, from the exclusive study of ancient literature. The poets of England, especially the older dramatists, came with greater attraction over his spirit. He loved Fletcher, and some of Fletcher's contemporaries, for their energy of language and intenseness of feeling; but it was in Shakspeare alone that he found the fulness of soul which seemed to slake the thirst of his own rapidly expanding genius for an inexhaustible fountain of thought and emotion. He knew Shakspeare thoroughly; and indeed his acquaintance with the earlier poetry of this country was very extensive. Among the modern poets, Byron was at this time, far above the rest, and almost exclusively, his favorite; a preference which, in later years, he transferred altogether to Wordsworth and Shelley.

"He became, when about fifteen years old, a member of the debating society established among the elder boys, in which he took great interest; and this served to confirm the bias of his intellect towards the moral and political philosophy of modern times. It was probably, however, of important utility in giving him that command of his own language which he possessed, as the following Essays will show, in a very superior degree, and in exercising those powers of argumentative discussion, which now displayed themselves as eminently characteristic of his mind. It was a necessary consequence that he declined still more from the usual paths of study, and abated perhaps somewhat of his regard for the writers of antiquity. It must not be understood, nevertheless, as most of those who read these pages will be aware, that he ever lost his sensibility to those ever-living effusions of genius which the ancient languages preserve. He loved AEschylus and Sophocles (to Euripides he hardly did justice), Lucretius and Virgil; if he did not seem so much drawn towards Homer as might at first be expected, this may probably be accounted for by his increasing taste for philosophical poetry.

"In the early part of 1827, Arthur took a part in the Eton Miscellany, a periodical publication, in which some of his friends in the debating society were concerned. He wrote in this, besides a few papers in prose, a little poem on a story connected with the Lake of Killarney. It has not been thought by the Editor advisable, upon the whole, to reprint these lines; though, in his opinion, they bear very striking marks of superior powers. This was almost the first poetry that Arthur had written, except the childish tragedies above mentioned. No one was ever less inclined to the trick of versifying. Poetry with him was not an amusement, but the natural and almost necessary language of genuine emotion; and it was not till the discipline of serious reflection, and the approach of manhood, gave a reality and intenseness to such emotions, that he learned the capacities of his own genius. That he was a poet by nature, these Remains will sufficiently prove; but certainly he was far removed from being a versifier by nature; nor was he probably able to perform, what he scarce ever attempted, to write easily and elegantly on an ordinary subject. The lines on the story of Pygmalion are so far an exception, that they arose out of a momentary amusement of society; but he could not avoid, even in these, his own grave tone of poetry.

"Upon leaving Eton in the summer of 1827, he accompanied his parents to the Continent, and passed eight months in Italy. This introduction to new scenes of nature and art, and to new sources of intellectual delight, at the very period of transition from boyhood to youth, sealed no doubt the peculiar character of his mind, and taught him, too soon for his peace, to sound those depths of thought and feeling, from which, after this time, all that he wrote was derived. He had, when he passed the Alps, only a moderate acquaintance with the Italian language; but during his residence in the country he came to speak it with perfect fluency, and with a pure Sienese pronunciation. In its study he was much assisted by his friend and instructor, the Abbate Pifferi, who encouraged him to his first attempts at versification. The few sonnets, which are now printed, were, it is to be remembered, written by a foreigner, hardly seventeen years old, and after a very short stay in Italy. The Editor might not, probably, have suffered them to appear, even in this private manner, upon his own judgment. But he knew that the greatest living writer of Italy, to whom they were shown some time since at Milan, by the author's excellent friend, Mr. Richard Milnes, has expressed himself in terms of high approbation.

"The growing intimacy of Arthur with Italian poetry led him naturally to that of Dante. No poet was so congenial to the character of his own reflective mind; in none other could he so abundantly find that disdain of flowery redundance, that perpetual preference of the sensible to the ideal, that aspiration for somewhat better and less fleeting than earthly things, to which his inmost soul responded. Like all genuine worshippers of the great Florentine poet, he rated the Inferno below the two latter portions of the Divina Commedia; there was nothing even to revolt his taste, but rather much to attract it, in the scholastic theology and mystic visions of the Paradiso. Petrarch he greatly admired, though with less idolatry than Dante; and the sonnets here printed will show to all competent judges how fully he had imbibed the spirit, without servile centonism, of the best writers in that style of composition who flourished in the 16th century.