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 bullrushes, 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 autograph 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 rural 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, subdued 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 prepared. But he was now well advanced in age-about sixtyand 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 trepidation, 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 to 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 exposition, 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 indifferently, and neither could make, nor cared for, hair-splitting distinctions. But he

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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 unquenchable 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 appearance of fanaticism, were a certain bonhomie and a profusion 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, occasional bursts of fervid pathos, or of holy indignation, disturbing and elevating the surface of the stream of his speech; and, as I have observed in all earnest speakers, he never 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 ploughman; 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 ambassador 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 poured out into the question, "Turn ye, turn ye; why will ye die ?" It was fine too, in a different 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 hearts 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

impressive part of the service, however, was at the end of the afternoon discourse, when the speaker, feeling the sword of death suspended over his own head, and knowing the uncertainty of the lives of his hearers, became peculiarly urgent 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, though 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 interesting 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 spirit 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

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 conscience, 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 assurance that they were in the right way. Oratory, poetry, genius, are words all too feeble to express the character of this kind of address. It was the mere heart of a Christian parent becoming a tongue and speaking, in yearning accents, to his nearest and dearest, 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 mellowed 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 remaineth 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 admirably "a goody man." He was impetuous, irritable, impulsive,

C

and prevented only, as he often said, by grace from being the chief of sinners. His high animal spirits and ardent temperament 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 passions, 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 many 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 appearance, 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 preference of bold, daring, and poetical writers led to this consequence 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. however, were no proper revelation of him. his heart, his piety; they showed also his defects and limitations, but gave little idea of that felicitous something, that happy knack, that manly naïveté, that Bunyan-like charm, which characterised the living, moving, and speaking man.

His writings,

They showed

I was just in time to witness, in his relation to his flock and to his neighbourhood, the old blessed power of priestcraft 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 favour of