various material, but we see nothing of him -he is hidden in his subject, who is kept continually before the reader. We meet frequently with beautiful passages, belonging, evidently, to the historian; but it has been remarked, and we think correctly, that there exists a similarity between Dr. Chalmers' style and Dr. Hanna's mode of writing, that permits the reader to glide out of the one into the other, without perceiving a marked change, or being startled by an abrupt alteration in the complexion and construction of sentences. Perhaps it might be more accurate to say that there exists a similarity of sentiment, and a devotedness of the historian to his subject, that, more than any mere similarity of style, accounts for the circumstance we have noticed. A similarity of spirit goes far to accomplish the end mentioned; and Dr. Hanna, holding the same principles as Dr. Chalmers, living with him long on terms of the closest intimacy and relationship, and almost daily employed, since his death, amongst his journals, in preparing them for the press, would probably imbibe some part of his spirit, and even gradually fall into his style. Dr. Hanna has sincerely devoted himself to the preparation of Dr. Chalmers' posthumous works, and his life. We know that, two years since, a desire was expressed for his presence and professional assistance in a quarter that he must have felt difficulty to resist, under circumstances that almost rendered it a matter of duty to accept; that would have conferred on him great personal influence, and insured a status in temporal matters equivalent to the highest hopes that can be formed in his connection. The latter inducement may have possessed comparatively little weight; but a strong current of moral and religious interests, and even of personal associations, must have inclined him strongly toward the acceptance of the cordial invitations warmly pressed on him. A deep feeling of duty alone toward the great work that had fallen into his hands, and which he could best discharge, must have weighed much in dictating a refusal that in scarcely any other circumstances could have been given with a consistent and strict regard to duty, and to those high and immortal interests that he had promised always to promote. We may, appropriately, at this stage, notice the energetic manner in which the publisher of this important series of works has supported the literary efforts to render them what the public would desire, and have some right to expect. They are substantial books. The typography is excellent, the paper good, and the style adopted, renders the volumes remarkably easy to read. The outlay on publications of this description is immense. The sale requires to be correspondingly extensive, but that, we believe, has been obtained; and the volumes are standard works that will be current for centuries in the market of literature. With the greater part of that time the publisher and printer, who has hazarded a fortune in this work, or the author's family, have no interest. Dr. Chalmers might have devoted his powerful mental faculties to the collection of money. He would have made an excellent banker or merchant. He might have formed a large fortune, and bought and entailed an estate in his family while his descendants continued. He followed another course, and one still more useful to mankind. Therefore, the property reared by him only belongs to his family for a limited period. He did not belong to party, it is said, but to mankind; and, therefore, mankind agree to appropriate the pecuniary proceeds of his labors, after a given period. So runs the law. Dr. Chalmers was born in Anstruther, a little burgh on the shores of the Frith of Forth, near by the East Neuk of Fife. Passing over the introduction, the first chapter opens with a brief description of the past, and now almost forgotten, greatness of Anstruther. The family of Dr. Chalmers appear to have been connected with Fife for a considerable period :— "With the county of Fife Dr. Chalmers' family had for some generations been connected. His great-grandfather, Mr. James Chalmers, son of John Chalmers, laird of Pitmedden, was ordained as minister of the parish of Elie, in the Agnes Merchiston, daughter of the Episcopal year 1710. In the following year he married clergyman of Kirkpatrick, who had been ejected from his living at the period of the Revolution. Undistinguished by any superiority of talent, the simple kindness of Mr. Chalmers' disposition endeared him to his parishioners, and there still lingers in the neighborhood a remembrance of the familiar and affectionate intercourse which was carried on between minister and people. What the minister himself wanted in energy was amply made up by the vigorous activity of his wife. Brought up in the school of adversity, she had learned the lesson of a most thrifty economy. The estate of Radernie, purchased by her savings, out of a slender income, which had to bear the mains in the possession of one of her descendburden of twelve children's education, stili re ants; while, in the after history of more than one member of her family, the care with which she had watched over their infancy and education brought forth its pleasant fruits. Her eldest daughter married Mr. Thomas Kay, minister of Kilrenny, a parish immediately adjoining to Anstruther. With the family at Kilrenny manse, the family of Dr. Chalmers' father continued to maintain the closest intimacy. It was to Mrs. Kay's son-inlaw, Dr. Adamson, of St. Andrews, that Dr. Chalmers was himself indebted for his presentation to the living of Kilmany. "Mr. Chalmers' eldest son, the Rev. John Chalmers, D.D., succeeded his father as minister at Elie, but was afterward translated to the parish of Kilconquhar. He inherited his mother's talent, and in his day was distinguished both as an eloquent preacher, and an able and zealous advocate of that policy which then predominated within the Church of Scotland. Mr. Chalmers second son, Mr. James Chalmers, having married Barbara Anderson, of Easter Anstruther, settled in that town as a dyer, shipowner, and general merchant. He was succeeded in a prosperous business by his second son, Mr. John Chalmers, who, in 1771, married Elizabeth Hall, the daughter of a wine merchant at Crail. They had a very numerous family-nine sons and five daughters-of whom only one died in childhood. The following table is extracted from Mr. Chalmers' family record: "John Chalmers and Elizabeth Hall were married on the 20th August, 1771. CHILDREN BY SAID MARRIAGE. Unlike many other crowded families, this one was not early thinned; and one of the disadvantages attending a numerous flock of rivals to a mother's care was, that the nurse had the management of Thomas at an early age; and a bad nurse she appears to have been, since the victim of her anger never entirely forgot the treatment he received. Many young persons derive their first impressions in life from a bad nurse, like the girl who fixed her character indelibly on the mind of Thomas Chalmers. It is a great mistake to place the most inexperienced servant in the nursery, if she be to rule there 66 Though he continued for many years afterward to preside, Mr. Bryce had furnished himself with an assistant, Mr. Daniel Ramsay, afterward parochial schoolmaster at Corstorphine, to whose care all the younger children were in the first instance consigned. The assistant was as easy as his superior was harsh. As teachers, they were about equally inefficient. Mr. Ramsay sought distinction in his profession by becoming the author of a treatise on " Mixed Schools." His work won for him but little reputation; and an unfortunate act, in which, perhaps, there was more imprudence than guilt, lost him his situation, and plunged him in poverty. For many years Dr. Chalmers contributed regularly for his support. His latter days were spent in Gillespie's Hospital, where he died about five years ago. The Rev. Dr. Steven, who visited him frequently while upon his death-bed, in a letter with which I have been favored, says: 'On one occasion he spoke to me, in a very feeling manner indeed, of Dr. Chalmers, and the impression made upon my mind was such that I have not yet forgotten the words he employed: "No man," exclaimed he, "knows the amount of kindness which I have received from my old pupil. He has often done me good, both as respects my soul and my body; many a pithy sentence he uttered when he threw himself in my way-many a pound note has the Doctor given me, and he always did the thing as if May God reward hin!" The feeble old man was he were afraid that somebody should see him. quite overpowered, and wept like a child when he gave utterance to these words.' "There had been a dash of eccentricity about Ramsay. Some years ago, when the whole powers of the empire lodged for a short time in the single hand of the Duke of Wellington, he wrote almost as much wisdom as wit-that he could to his Grace, in the true dominie spirit, but with tell him how to do the most difficult thing he had in hand, namely, to cure the ills of Ireland. He should just take, he told him, the taws in tae | saying them, the lessons were often found scarcehand, and the Testament in the tither.' Engrossedly half-learned-sometimes not learned at all. as he was, the Duke sent an acknowledgment The punishment inflicted in such cases was to signed by himself; and for some time it was diffi-send the culprit into the coalhole, to remain there cult to say which of the two Daniel Ramsay was in solitude till the neglected duty was discharged. proudest of having taught Dr. Chalmers, and so If many of the boys could boast over Thomas laid, as he was always accustomed to boast, the Chalmers that they were seldomer in the place of foundation of his fame-or having instructed the punishment, none could say that they got more Duke of Wellington as to the best way of govern- quickly out of it. Joyous, vigorous, and humoring Ireland, and having got an answer from the ous, he took his part in all the games of the playDuke himself." ground, ever ready to lead or to follow, when schoolboy expeditions were planned and executed; and, wherever for fun or for frolic any little group of the merry-hearted was gathered, his full, rich laugh, might be heard rising amid their shouts of his mirth. He could not bear that either falseglee. But he was altogether unmischievous in hood or blasphemy should mingle with it. His own greater strength he always used to defend the weak or the injured, who looked to him as their natural protector; and whenever, in its heated overflow, play passed into passion, he hastened from the ungenial region, rushing once into a shells was flying to and fro, which the angry litneighboring house, when a whole storm of mussel tle hands that flung them meant to do all the mischief that they could; and exclaiming, as he sheltered himself in his retreat, I'm no for powder and ball,' a saying which the good old woman, beside whose ingle he found a refuge, was wont in these later years to quote in his favor, when less friendly neighbors were charging him with being a man of strife, too fond of war. The letter to the Duke does not bear out Ramsay's character for dealing easily with his scholars. Teachers most probably become inured to "the taws" as they increase in years; but Ramsay's distribution of the governing powers is bad. The Testament should always be tried before "the taws," in managing Ireland and governing schools; and if the precepts of the Testament had been more consistently applied to Ireland than has been done, we might have found less use for "the taws" in conducting its affairs. Dr. Chalmers' good nature was more apparent than his genius at Anster parish school. The exercises there failed to inspire in him any love of learning. He went there not to find instruction, but a refuge; and he appears to have been often unsuccessful in his object. Few of our greatest men have been precocious students. We have grave doubts respecting the propriety of taxing the intellect greatly at an early age. rents who expect children to be little men and women seldom get much good out of them. It will hardly do, we fear, to try and blot out infancy, boyhood, and girlhood from life. Art is strong, and training powerful; but nature will keep its own against both, or avenge the theft at a subsequent period. Still the boy contains the germs of the man. Great changes may be produced by the agency of many circumstances, by the force of experience, or, finally, as Scott has it, by the force of truth; but through them all the influences of infancy and youth retain their places, sometimes scarcely perceptible, but always real, and not seldom powerful. The schoolboy character of Dr. Chalmers is clearly marked in the following passages :— 66 'By those of his schoolfellows, few now in number, who survive, Dr. Chalmers is remembered as one of the idlest, strongest, merriest, and most generous-hearted boys in Anstruther school. Little time or attention would have been required for him to prepare his daily lessons, so as to meet the ordinary demands of the school-room; for when he did set himself to learn, not one of all his schoolfellows could do it at once so quickly and so well. When the time came, however, for During his school days, Thomas Chalmers was caught preaching to a single auditor, from the appropriate text, "Let brotherly love continue." The circumstance is not of much importance, because, as we remember once to have previously noticed, most boys preach at some period of their career; for the same reason that they teach schools and play at "soldiery," without much more probability of becoming "dominies," or following a warlike career, than that of "the Queen of May" to change her crown of roses for one of diamonds and gold. Thomas Chalmers left school early, and entered St. Andrews College: "In November, 1791, whilst not yet twelve years of age, accompanied by his eldest brother, William, he enrolled himself as a student in the United College of St. Andrews. He had but one contemporary there, who had entered college at an earlier age, John, Lord Campbell; and the two youngest students became each, in future life, the most distinguished in his separate sphere. However it may have been in Lord Campbell's case, in Dr. Chalmers', extreme youth was not compensated by any prematureness, or superiority of preparation. A letter written to his eldest brother, James, during the summer which succeeded his first session at college, is still preserved-the earliest extant specimen of his writing. It abounds in errors, both in orthography and grammar, and abundantly proves that the work of learning to write his own tongue with ordinary correctness had still to be begun. His knowledge of the Latin language was equally defective, unfitting him, during his first two sessions, to profit as he might otherwise have done from the prelections of that distinguished philosophical grammarian, Dr. James Hunter, who was then the chief ornament of St. Andrews University." ral science.' It was not unnatural that, recoiling from the uncompromising and unelastic political principle with which he had been familiar at Anstruther, and unfortified by a strong individual faith in the Christian salvation, he should have felt the power of that charm which the high talent of Leslie, and Brown, and Milne, threw around the religious and political principles which they so sincerely and enthusiastically espoused; that his youthful spirit should have kindled into generous emotion at the glowing prospects which At St. Andrews College, a number of the they cherished as to the future progress of our professors were "Ultra-Whigs," keen Re- and that he should have admitted the idea that the species, springing out of political emancipation; formers, and what would now be called religion of his early home was a religion of con "Radicals." They were also men of excep- finement and intolerance, unworthy of entertaintional opinions and views in religious matters,ment by a mind enlightened and enlarged by libwhich is not a necessary, not often in Scot-eral studies. From the political deviation into land-a usual accompaniment of keen reform- which he was thus temporarily seduced, he soon ing opinions. Radicals, as they are called, retreated; from the religious, it needed many years, and other than human influences, to recall get no authority for their politics so good as him. they may find in the Bible, if they carefully read its injunctions. Their opinions influenced the young student. His father was, like many laymen in his day, of more evangelical sentiments than the majority of the ministers; but he was also a Town Councillor of Anstruther, and the official influence he possessed in the burgh, for a councillor stood in no dread then of November, made him a Tory. His son deviated from his father's ecclesiastical and political opinions; and while the latter were recovered in a short period, many years passed before he was restored to the former. Mathematics was his favorite study; but he read the popular political works of the day, and felt a warm interest in political discussions: "Other subjects, however, besides those of his favorite science, were pressed upon his notice, not so much by the pretensions of the class-room, as by the conversation of Dr. Brown and his ac complished friends. Ethics and politics engaged much of their attention. Yielding to the impulses thus imparted, Dr. Chalmers, at the close of his philosophical studies, became deeply engaged with the study of Godwin's Political Justice, a work for which he entertained at that time a profound, and, as he afterward felt and acknowledged, a misplaced admiration. His father was a strict, unbending Tory, as well as a strict, and, as he in his childhood fancied, a severe religionist. By the men among whom he was now thrown, and to whom he owed the first kindlings of his intellectual sympathies, Calvinism and Toryism were not only repudiated, but despised. St. Andrews' (we have his own testimony for it) was at this time overrun with Moderatism, under the chilling influences of which we inhaled, not a distaste only, but a positive contempt for all that is properly and peculiarly Gospel, insomuch that our confidence was nearly as entire in the sufficiency of natural theology as in the sufficiency of natu. "In November, 1795, he was enrolled as a student of Divinity. Theology, however, occupied but little of his thoughts. During the preceding autumn he had learned enough of the French language to enable him to read fluently and intelligently the authorship in that tongue upon the higher branches of Mathematics. His favorite study he prosecuted with undiminished ardor.” St. Andrews, we suspect, has never changed nominally in some respects. Moderatism has always prevailed there, although occasionally a chair has been filled by men like Dr. Chalmers or Sir David Brewster. The politics of Moderatism have changed, and even the religious peculiarity in some respects. The Professors of St. Andrews for many past years must be acquitted of holding “UltraWhig or keen reforming views." We deem it more probable that they generally incline to the jus divinum, and oppose reform as unnecessary until it be accomplished; and then adopt some measure that they have resisted with the power given to them, as a final measure to be conserved with care. religious element of Moderatism has also changed. It professes now to be evangelical in religious doctrine; then it professed to be very near Socinianism or Arianism. The Although Dr. Chalmers, when a student, kept journals, corresponded largely, and had abundant practice in English composition, yet he seems to have been long defective in that department. Dr. Hanna insists that his earliest compositions were deficient in the imaginative and sentimental qualities. The sermons composed when he was still very half of the opinion. young, and recently published, warrant one They contain no flights of the imagination; but they exhibit a mixture of what might be called sentimentalism -occasionally in undue proportions. We subjoin part of Dr. Hanna's criticism on this subject: "His third session at the university, which had witnessed his first well-sustained intellectual ef forts, had witnessed also his earliest attempts in English composition. Here he had to begin at the very beginning. Letters written by him, even after his second year at college, exhibit a glaring deficiency in the first and simplest elements of correct writing. And he had to become very much his own instructor, guiding himself by such models as the prelections of Dr. Hunter and Dr. Brown, and the writings of Godwin or other favorite authors, presented. A few of his first efforts in this way have been preserved. They exhibit little that is remarkable in style. The earliest compositions of those who have afterward become distinguished as poets, or orators, or eloquent writers, have generally displayed a profuse excess of the rhetorical or the imaginative, which it took time and labor to reduce to becoming proportions. In the college exercises of Dr. Chalmers this order is reversed. The earliest of them are the simplest and plainest, with scarcely a gleam of fancy or sentiment ever rising to play over the page. They give token of a very vigorous youthful intellect disciplining itself at once in exact thinking and correct perspicuous expression; never allowing itself to travel beyond the bounds of the analysis or argument which it is engaged in prosecuting; never wandering away to pluck a single flower out of the garden of the imagination, by which illustration or adornment might be supplied. Those who, as the result of their analysis, have concluded that in Dr. Chalmers' mental constitution the purely intellectual largely predominated-that fancy was comparatively feeble, and that imagination, potent as she was, was but a minister of other and higher powers, might find historic verification of their analyses in the earliest of his college compositions." Campbell. Much franker and more manly than in the first years of my acquaintance with him.” His collegiate career was diversified by a tutorship, which, from his correspondence, was evidently distasteful to him, and he retired from the family early in 1799, to be licensed as a preacher : "Soon after his return, he applied to the Presbytery of St. Andrews to be admitted to his examination, preparatory to his obtaining a license as a preacher of the Gospel. Some difficulties were raised against its being received. He had not completed his nineteenth year, whereas Presbyteries were not wont to take students upon probationary trials until they had attained the age of twenty-one. It happily occurred that one of his friends in the Presbytery fell upon the old statute of the Church, which ordains, that none be admitted to the Ministry before they be twenty-five years of age, except such as for rare and singular qualities shall be judged by the General and Provincial Assembly to be meet and worthy thereof.' "Under cover of the last clause of the statute, and translating its more dignified phraseology into terms of common use, his friend pleaded for Mr. Chalmers' reception as a lad o' pregnant pairts.' The plea was admitted; and, after the usual formalities, he was licensed as a preacher of the Gospel on the 31st July, 1799. It was one of the tales of his earlier life which he was in the habit in later years of playfully repeating, that such a title had been so early given to him, and such a dispensation as to age had been granted." Some time elapsed before Mr. Chalmers made any use of his license. He proceeded to visit a brother at Liverpool, and first conducted public worship in the Scotch Church, in Chapel Lane, Wigan, on Sabbath, the 25th August, 1799. He preached on the following Sabbath in Mr. Kirkpatrick's church, Liverpool. His brother, writing from Liverpool, said "It is impossible for me to form an opinion of Thomas as yet; but the sermon he gave us in Liverpool, which was the same as we had in Wigan, was in general His brother thought the discourse rather more practical than doctrinal, and he complained of the preacher's awkward appearance and dress; adding, that His college life commenced in 1793; and in 1807, while Dr. Chalmers was on a visit to London, we find some memoranda of this same John Campbell, who has lived to be one of the first English lawyers-the representative first of Dudley, and next of Edin-well liked." burgh, in the House of Commons-the At torney-General of England-the Chancellor of Ireland-the great legal historian of the day-a member of the House of Peers-and now promises to succeed Lord Denman in the Court of Queen's Bench : "Tuesday, May 12.-Breakfasted with the Miss Hunters, and took three of them to the Royal Academy, and had great satisfaction in observing the increasing celebrity of Mr. Wilkie's picture. In going along to Somerset House I met John Campbell. [Now Lord Campbell.] "Wednesday, May 13.-Breakfasted with John 66 his mathematical studies seem to occupy more of his time than the religious." Mr. Chalmers returned to Scotland, and in 1800 he was studying in Edinburgh, while we hear very little more of his preaching until the middle of 1801, when the circumstance occurred that first introduced him into a course of regular professional service :— "While Dr. Chalmers was imbibing wholesome |