! 
 
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BX 9225 .D38 B76 1889 
 Brown, James, 1835-1890 
 The life of a Scottish 
 probationer 
 
THE LIFE OF A 
 SCOTTISH PROBATIONER. 
 
PUBLISHED BY 
 
 JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON AND NEW YORK. 
 
 Loudon, .... Hamilton., Adams and Co. 
 Cajiibridgc, . . . Macmillan and Bo7ves. 
 Edinburg/i, . . . Pon^/as and Foniis. 
 
 MDCCCLXXXIX. 
 
THE LIFE OF A 
 
 Scottish Probationer 
 
 BEING A MEMOIR OF THOMAS DAVIDSON 
 WITH HIS POEMS AND EXTRACTS 
 FROM HIS LETTERS 
 
 JAMES BROWN, D.D. 
 
 ST. JAMEs' CHUKCH, I'AISLEY 
 
 '■ A life which cannot challenge the world's attention ; yet which does modestly 
 solicit it, and perliaps, on clear stndy, will be found to reward it. " — Carlyles Life of 
 Sterling. 
 
 THIRD EDIT/ON, REVISED AND ENLARGED 
 
 (1 L A S G O W 
 JAMES MACLEHOSE & SONS 
 illublielicvs to the elnilicrsitii 
 1889 
 
 All rights rcsci~i'cd 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 When Thomas Davidson died, in 1870, the wish 
 was expressed by many of those who had enjoyed 
 the privilege of his friendship, that his poems and 
 a selection from his letters should be published. 
 Circumstances, which it is unnecessary to explain, 
 led to unexpected delay in giving effect to this 
 wish. Last year, at a meeting of such of Davidson's 
 more intimate friends as could be brought together 
 in Edinburgh, the present Editor was requested to 
 undertake the responsibility of preparing the desired 
 memorial. He would have hesitated to accede to 
 this request, which he deemed it a high honour 
 to receive, had he expected that more would be 
 required than editorial supervision and the pre- 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 paration of a short prefatory record of the facts 
 and dates of Davidson's brief career. But, when 
 the necessary material came into his hands, and 
 had been submitted to friends on whose judgment 
 in literary matters he could rely, he was induced 
 to attempt the preparation of such a biography as 
 might serve, not only for a memorial of Davidson, 
 but for a picture of the life of a Scottish Probationer. 
 The Editor is deeply sensible of how imperfectl}' 
 he has realised the idea he has had before him, 
 but he has seen no reason to regret that the idea 
 was suggested. The remarkable poems, and still 
 more remarkable letters, which it is his privilege 
 to introduce to the public, will, he ventures to hope, 
 be read with the greater interest that they are 
 embedded in the biography of their author, whose 
 life all who knew him believed to be more beauti- 
 ful than anything he ever wrote. And the records 
 of the individual life need be none the less valu- 
 able to those who seek a memorial of that life, that 
 the form in which they are presented is intended 
 to awaken interest in the toils and trials of a class 
 of men to whom the Church owes much, but whom. 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 it is to be feared, she often treats with some measure 
 of coldness, if not of neglect. 
 
 In harmony with the primary purpose of the 
 book, which is the publication of Davidson's literary 
 remains, the Editor has sought in every case, where 
 it was possible, to unfold the biography, alike in 
 the outward facts and in the development of the 
 inner life, by means of the poems, the letters, and 
 the journals. This has involved the publication- — 
 especially in the earlier chapters — of some letters 
 which have a biographical rather than a literary 
 value. 
 
 In determining what poems should be published, 
 the Editor has been to a large extent relieved from 
 responsibility. In the last year of his life Davidson 
 copied into a note book such of his verses as he 
 deemed worthy of preservation. Almost all the 
 pieces given on the following pages are included 
 in that MS. volume. 
 
 The Editor has to express his thanks to Davidson's 
 friends and correspondents for the help they have 
 given him, and specially to Mr. James Elliot, for 
 invaluable aid in the revision of proofs. 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 It seems fitting, also, that he should express, in 
 behalf of the friends whom he represents, gratitude 
 to Mr George Gilfillan of Dundee, and to Dr. Alex- 
 ander MacLeod of Birkenhead, for their generous 
 and appreciative notices of such of Davidson's poems 
 as have come into their hands. 
 
 St. James' Manse, 
 Paisley, 29th November, 1876. 
 
 PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 In the earlier editions the name of the correspond- 
 ent to whom many of the most interesting letters 
 in this volume were addressed, was at her own re- 
 quest withheld. Through the kindness of her two 
 brothers the Editor is now permitted to reveal the 
 fact that Miss Alison Hay Dunlop, — joint author of 
 the book on " Old Edinburgh," published in connec- 
 tion with the Exhibition of 1886, and author of the 
 charming story " When the Century w^as Young," in 
 the " New Amphion," written for the Fancy Fair in 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 behalf of the Edinburgh Students' Union, and of a 
 succession of papers in the Scotsman on the Archae- 
 ology of Edinburgh, which attracted wide attention, — 
 was she whose love was one of the most ennobling 
 influences in Thomas Davidson's life. She was the 
 Editor's most efficient helper in the original pre- 
 paration of this book. She was deeply interested 
 in its publication, and greatly gratified by the 
 kindness with which it was received. " It was," her 
 brother writes, " the last book she had in her hand 
 before she went to bed never to rise again. She 
 got up a portion of every day, and had herself put 
 into a cab for a drive, by sheer force of will, till 
 the third day before her death. She could read 
 for a few minutes only, owing to weakness and 
 narcotics. As she went out to 4ier room on the 
 evening I refer to, she carried the ' Probationer ' 
 with her, and murmured as she passed me ' The 
 love I loved sae weel, sae lang ago.' I think she 
 felt her weakness very much that night, and that 
 she thought she would not be up again." It was 
 on 3rd December, 1888, that she passed away, to 
 join him to whose memory she remained loyal to 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 the end. The fact that she had during- recent 
 years attained no insignificant place in our local 
 Scottish literature seems to justify the publication 
 of her name. 
 
 In this Edition one letter and two poems have 
 been added to those previously published. 
 
 26th March, 1SS9. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I . 
 lEhc ^chool-boi}. 
 
 Birth and Parentage — Influence of the Church — Quiet Beauty of Birth- 
 place — First School— Early Companions — Corbet House — Early 
 Reading — Woodhead — Ancrum School — Scott's Novels — Nest 
 Academy — Ancrum Studies — Early Letters and Poetry — Road to 
 Jedburgli — White Lady — Desire to Travel, . . . i--20 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 i:hc <Stiiiicnt of ^Ivts. 
 
 Peculiarities of Scottish Universities — Wonders of Edinburgh — Life in 
 Lodgings — Odours of Home — " Apple Tart '" — Influence of Ballads 
 — Echoes of Border Minstrels — Song of the Fay — Association with 
 Fellow-Students — The "Order" — Professor Aytoun's Class — 
 "Ariadne" — Thackeray — Translation from Sophocles — Close of 
 Arts Curriculum, ........ 21 — 42 
 
xii COA/TENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 i;hc cStubcnt of '(Ehccilogj). 
 
 Knrly Consecration to the Ministry — Entrance Examination — Opening 
 of Divinity Hall — Tutorship at Forres — Correspondence — First 
 Experience of Teaching — Longings for Home — " Presbytery- 
 gripes " — "I've Passed" — School Examination — ''Majesty of 
 Silence " — First Sermon — Bankend — Associations and Surround- 
 ings of Jedburgh — Hall Again— What is a Song?— Auld Ash 
 Tree — Mr. Scott Riddell — Trials of a Teacher — More Poems — 
 Rejection by Presbytery — License, .... 43 — 78 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 'HEhe |3robationcf. 
 
 Position of a Probationer — Romance of Wandering I^ife — Old 
 Probationer — First Serm.on — Stornoway — Sermon-making — Eng- 
 land — Gla.sgovv — Dublin — Cullybackey — Larry M 'Kie — -Reading 
 the Line — Sixtowns — Aldershot — Sermon-making again — "In the 
 Fair Spring Weather" — Otterburn — Gairney Bridge — Orkney — 
 A Night Walk across the Moor — Sandwick — Kirkwall — Shapin- 
 shay — Pierowall — A Probationer's Week in an Orkney Station- — 
 Pitrodie — "A Love Song in W'inter '" — The " Yang-tsi-Kiang " 
 — Wishaw — Black-day — Hymns and Church-building — Howgate — 
 Winter Journey to the North — "The Last Straw " — A Doctor's 
 Verdict — Last Sermon, 79 — 178 
 
CONTENTS. xiii 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ^kc Inbali^. 
 
 Return to Jedburj^h — Close of Diary — Attack of Cold, Bile, and the 
 Family Doctor — Auchterarder — Queen's Visit to Jedburgh — Sonnets 
 — Visit to Edinburgh — " Love is a Rose " — Great Heat — " Love's 
 Last Suit " — Submission — " To Cupid, Slayer of Friends" — " In 
 Redesdale " — A Notable Visitor — "A Rogue of a Cold " — A Level 
 Life — Sunday Occupations — Change of Feeling al)out the " Last 
 Licident " — "April' — "On a Certain Premature Report'" — 
 Boston's Fourfold State — "There will I be buried" — Visit to 
 Edinburgh — "A Cottage in the Air'' — "To Amanda" — Visits 
 to Loch Ranza and Rothesay — Autumn Trip on the Border — 
 Beginning of the End — " A Doggerel Allegory of Hemoptysis " — 
 His Last Poem — Death of Tombie — His Last Letter — The End, 
 
 179—315 
 
|3ocm3. 
 
 Song of the Fay, ...... 
 
 Ariadne at Naxos, ....-■ 
 
 The Greatness of Man (Translated from Sophocles), 
 
 The Auld Ash Tree, 
 
 Myspie's Den, .....-• 
 
 On the Cheviots, ...... 
 
 Primroses, ....... 
 
 Jedwater, ....... 
 
 In the Fair Spring Weather, .... 
 
 A Love Song in Winter, ..... 
 
 The Yang-tsi-Kiang, . . - . 
 
 Love Sonnet, ....... 
 
 A Sick Man to the Earliest Snowdrop, 
 
 The Course of Feigned Love never did run Smooth 
 
 Love's Last Suit, ...... 
 
 The Restoration, ...... 
 
 To Cupid, Slayer of Friends, .... 
 
 In Redesdale, ....... 
 
 April, . . 
 
 On a certain Premature Report, 
 
 "And there will I be buried," .... 
 
 A Cottage in the Air, ..... 
 
 To Amanda, who has achieved her First White Hair 
 Jed in October, ...... 
 
 A Doggerel Allegory of Hemoptysis, 
 
 His Last Poem, ...... 
 
 PAGE 
 
 29 
 
 35 
 40 
 66 
 
 71 
 
 72 
 
 74 
 
 75 
 
 117 
 
 146 
 
 149 
 
 215 
 215 
 222 
 225 
 229 
 232 
 234 
 253 
 256 
 265 
 267 
 269 
 276 
 282 
 287 
 
THE LIFE 
 
 OF A 
 
 SCOTTISH PROBATIONER. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Birth and Parentage — Influence of the Church — Quiet Beauty of Birth- 
 place — First School — Early Companions — Corbet House — Early 
 Reading — Woodhead — Ancrum School — Scott's Novels — Nest 
 Academy — Ancrum Studies — Early Letters and Poetry — Road to 
 Jedburgh — White Lady — Desire to Travel. 
 
 Thomas Davidson was born on 7th July, 1838, at 
 Oxnam Row, a large farm lying along the bank of 
 Oxnam Water, a tributary of the Teviot, about four 
 miles from Jedburgh. Though thus born on Scottish 
 ground, he was of English extraction. His father, 
 who was a shepherd, belonged to the neighbourhood 
 of Wooler, and his mother to Belford. They were 
 married in England, but after the birth of their eldest 
 child they migrated to the northern side of the Border. 
 
 A 
 
2 THE SCHOOL-BOY. 
 
 This migration did not involve much change. The 
 aspect of the pastoral country on both sides of the 
 dividing line between the two kingdoms is the same. 
 There is little difference in the habits of life, and in the 
 case of the Davidsons there was no change of church, 
 or of the forms of religious thought and worship. 
 They had been born in the Communion of the Scottish 
 Secession, which, having from the earliest days of its 
 history a firm hold of the population of the Border 
 counties of Scotland, had passed over into England 
 and taken root in many of the towns and villages 
 of Northumberland. When Jonah Davidson settled 
 on Oxnam Water, he found himself in the midst of 
 traditions which tended to confirm his attachment to 
 the principles of Presbyterian Dissent. The Oxnam 
 Parish Church, which stands picturesquely on a height 
 overlooking the road to Jedburgh, was the scene of 
 the ministry of the younger Boston, who, in 1757, left 
 his snug retreat to go to the relief of the patronage- 
 oppressed parishioners of Jedburgh, and was one of 
 the associates of Thomas Gillespie of Carnock in 
 founding the Synod of Relief, which, in 1S47, joined 
 with the older Secession to form the United Presby- 
 terian Church. The stalwart shepherd, accustomed 
 to his daily rounds on the hill, found intervening miles 
 no obstacle in the way of continued adherence to the 
 church of his birth. He connected himself with the 
 Blackfriars Secession congregation in Jedburgh, then 
 under the ministry of the late Dr. Nicol, who was well 
 known in that district, and beyond it, as an accom- 
 
INFLUENCE OF THE CHURCH. 3 
 
 plished scholar and gentleman. This denominational 
 attachment on the part of the father had an important 
 influence in determining the career of the son. It is 
 unquestionable that in Scotland the Church is to be 
 credited with much of the literary, as well as the 
 religious life of the nation. The distinctive type of 
 teaching in the Scottish Church — for the preservation 
 of which the Seceders contended with peculiar zeal — 
 has been such as to stimulate thought. The recog- 
 nised position of the laity under the Presbyterian 
 order, encourages a lively interest on the part of the 
 humblest members of the church in those high ques- 
 tions lying on the border-land between philosophy and 
 theology, which are formulated in the Church's creed. 
 Especially in those districts where the occupations of 
 the people are such as neither to produce great bodily 
 fatigue, nor unduly to engross the mind, these questions 
 are much pondered and keenly debated. Among the 
 pastoral population of the rural districts, as well as 
 among hand-loom weavers in the smaller manufactur- 
 ing towns, the Church has been instrumental in keep- 
 ing alive an intellectual activity, which has often borne 
 fruit in other directions than those she would have 
 wished. The fact that Scotland has produced from 
 the ranks of her peasantry so many men distinguished 
 not only in theology, but in literature and science, is 
 to be traced in large measure to the influences of her 
 church life, which, though in some directions professedly 
 narrow, are in others wide and most truly catholic. 
 It has been in the barn-like edifices where our fathers 
 
4 THE SCHOOL-BOY. 
 
 worshipped, and through the long and, in some aspects 
 of them, dreary services in which they delighted, that 
 many a young soul, whom narrowing circumstances 
 would otherwise have cramped and kept in obscurity, 
 has had his first glimpses into the world of thought, 
 and been stirred with his first intellectual ambitions. 
 And the wisdom of the founders of our Scottish 
 Church placed within reach of the lowliest the means 
 of nurturing the intellectual life thus awakened. Not 
 only in every hamlet, but even by lonely waysides 
 among the hills, there stood the school, whose 
 "Dominie," oftenest a student struggling through his 
 long course of training for the pulpit, or perchance a 
 "stickit minister," who had lacked the gift of utterance 
 necessary to command a popular election, or the social 
 influence necessary to secure a presentation, Avas 
 always ready to welcome a pupil who showed any 
 aptitude for the higher branches. 
 
 The house where Thomas Davidson first saw the 
 light was the shepherd's cottage attached to the farm 
 steading of Oxnam Row. It has been swept away, 
 and its site, marked by a young sapling, is now 
 part of the lawn of a new farm-house. It had a 
 pleasant outlook across a holm of good corn land 
 through which the Oxnam flows, to a long green hill 
 from which the farm takes its name of " The Row." 
 In the distance to the right you catch glimpses of 
 the range of the Cheviots rising beyond their out- 
 liers, which form the foreground of the view. To 
 the left, looking down the stream, there is the wooded 
 
QUIET BEAUTY OF BIRTH-PLACE. 5 
 
 height on which Oxnam Church peeps out from 
 among the trees. All who knew Davidson, with his 
 quiet reserve of manner, all who listen to the quiet 
 music of his verse, will recognise a harmony 
 between his mental characteristics and the scene 
 where he spent his earliest years. There is nothing 
 in the green valley to bid the traveller pause, but 
 there is a gentle beauty in the grassy slopes, with 
 occasional gleams of light where the water of the 
 winding stream is seen glancing in the sun. Over 
 all there broods a delicious stillness, hardly broken 
 by the murmur of the water, the bleating of the 
 sheep, or the fitful sounds of the quiet labour of 
 the farm. Tom gave early evidence of that love 
 of nature which became a passion as life advanced. 
 When only four years old, he used to accompany 
 his father on his rounds among the hills. If the 
 way proved too long for the little feet, his father 
 would leave him by the side of some whin-bush 
 with strict charge not to stir from it till he 
 returned to fetch him. There he would sit for 
 hours hearing 
 
 " The hum of bees in heather bells, 
 And bleatings from the distant fells." 
 
 Only on one occasion does his father remember to 
 have found him crying on his return. The 
 absence had been longer than usual, and the 
 sense of loneliness had for once overpowered the 
 little dreamer. His education in the direction 
 in which he was destined most to excel, really 
 
6 THE SCHOOL-BOY. 
 
 began in these rambles and watchings on the hill. 
 That lonely hill-side was the young poet's first 
 school. But book-learning was not neglected. 
 About a mile further up the stream than The 
 Row, there is a little wayside school to which 
 Tom, when he was only five years old, was sent 
 with one of his sisters. A school-fellow, who was, 
 indeed, his chosen companion, still lives hard by. 
 All who knew Davidson in later years were aware 
 of a power which was peculiarly his own, of at- 
 taching to him his friends and companions with a 
 deep and lasting aff"ection. That power must have 
 been early developed. This companion of his 
 childhood seldom saw him after the family left 
 Oxnam Row, fully thirty years ago, yet he speaks 
 of him with tenderness, as of one whose friendship 
 once enjoyed is a possession for ever. His account 
 of their companionship gives us a pleasant glimpse 
 of Scottish boy-life. " They used to dook the- 
 gither, and rin races naked to dry themselves." It 
 seems that " dooking " was in the case of both a 
 forbidden pleasure indulged in secretly, but often 
 discovered at home, when bed-time came, by the 
 fact that strings and buttons were all awry, and 
 not as careful mothers' hands had fastened them 
 in the morning. 
 
 When Tom was eight years old, the family 
 removed to Corbet House, on the Kale Water, in 
 the neighbourhood of Morebattle, and close to 
 Gateshaw Brae, where the first Secession Ordina- 
 
EARLY READINGS. 
 
 7 
 
 tion took place in 1739. In about a year there 
 was another migration in the nomadic shepherd 
 Hfe. They went to the farm of Riccalton, on the 
 upper reaches of Oxnam Water, near Carter Fell, 
 and about twelve miles south of Jedburgh. The 
 shepherd's cottage belonging to the farm was 
 called Strip-end, and was their home for two 
 years. Both church and school were distant, but 
 the father ungrudgingly made the twelve miles 
 journey every Sunday to worship in Blackfriars, 
 and Tom found his way daily in summer — less 
 regularly in winter — to Hindhope school, about 
 half the distance. It was here that the boy's love 
 of reading came to be remarked. He had already 
 devoured every scrap of child's literature that he 
 could lay hands on. Jack the Giant Killer and 
 VVhittington and his Cat had been mastered. At 
 six years old he was familiar with Blind Harry, 
 and, even before he could read, his mind Avas filled 
 with a mass of Border traditions and ballads. The 
 resources of the country side in the matter of 
 books adapted to a boy of his age were not great, 
 and his appetite for knowledge was keen. His 
 father took in the Kelso Chronicle, a weekly print 
 of some standing in these Border districts. On 
 the day when it was due, Tom used to wander 
 far out to meet the messenger, and, having got 
 the paper, found his way into some quiet corner, 
 never emerging till he had read every line of it. 
 It is a touching picture — the country-bred boy 
 
8 THE SCHOOL-BOY. 
 
 dreaming among the hills, listening eagerly to the 
 echoes of the great world as they came to him 
 through the medium of the Kelso Chronicle. 
 
 In 1849 there was yet another removal. Mr. 
 Davidson found employment on the farm of Wood- 
 head in the parish of Ancrum. One of a row of 
 labourers' cottages on the side of a country road 
 was assigned to the shepherd, and was the home 
 of the family till i860 — from Tom's twelfth to 
 his twenty-third year. There is nothing specially 
 romantic in the humble cottage, but in the far- 
 reaching view which it commands there was much 
 to nourish Tom's peculiar tastes. Looking down 
 the Ale he could see the heights of Ruberslaw and 
 Minto Crags, the latter the residence of Miss Elliot, 
 whose touching version of " The Flowers of the 
 Forest" it was his delight in after years to sing. 
 Eildon Hills on Tweedside are visible from the 
 rising ground behind. Looking to the left he 
 had a view of Teviotdale and of the monument- 
 crowned height of Penielheugh, with a far-stretch- 
 ing expanse of wood and stream, terminated in the 
 distance by the Cheviots. In the immediate fore- 
 ground is the richly-wooded valley in which the 
 Ale makes pleasant music, and on the other side of 
 which lies the pretty village of Ancrum. The path 
 by which he went to the village school was through 
 this valley, and to tread that path morning and even- 
 ing for five or six years was no unimportant part 
 of a poet's education. Descending from the high- 
 
WAY TO ANCRUM SCHOOL. 9 
 
 way and crossing a field, it strikes the high bank 
 of the stream, which is seen gleaming through the 
 leaves of overhanging trees. It follows the course 
 of the river for some distance, till it crosses it by 
 a quaint old bridge, at the end of which stands 
 the Parish Church, with the aisle in which the Scotts 
 of Ancrum lie buried under their white marble tomb- 
 stones. The footpath then turns down the river brink 
 till it reaches the end of one of those splendid cliffs 
 of Old Red Sandstone, so common in that district. 
 In this cliff there is a large deep cave called " Maggie 
 Dun's Cove," which has of course the usual traditions 
 attaching to such places to deepen the mystery of its 
 vaulted recesses. It was Tom's delight to climb into 
 the cave, which doubtless his young imagination 
 peopled with other forms than those visible in the 
 light of common day. The footpath to Ancrum 
 ascends along the summit of the cliff, on the giddy 
 edge of a sheer precipice which is so covered with 
 trees that the river, the gentle murmur of which comes 
 up from far below, is almost hidden. The village 
 itself is quaint and picturesque. Lying round a three- 
 cornered green, skirted with trees and having a cross 
 in the centre, it has a thoroughly English aspect, not 
 unbefitting the fact that it is very near the border, 
 and on the debateable land where the peculiarities of 
 the two countries shade off into each other. Along 
 this sweet path Tom trudged day by day, drinking in 
 its beauty, to the little school where he contrived to 
 pick up a respectable knowledge of Latin and Greek 
 
[O THE SCHOOL-BOY. 
 
 from a succession of well-qualified teachers, one of 
 whom confesses that he had " considerable difficulty 
 in keeping out of his way." But he had other teachers 
 than the Ancrum schoolmasters. His love for books 
 was fast developing into a passion. At the farm on 
 which his father served there resided two grandchildren 
 of Dr. M'Crie, the biographer of John Knox. They 
 were lads about his own age, and a close friendship 
 existed between him and them. They had the com- 
 mand of books which would otherwise have been inac- 
 cessible to him, and he drew largely on their stores. 
 It could not be but that, with the border-land 
 stretched out before him, he should become a student 
 of Sir Walter Scott. When his daily lessons had been 
 mastered, he would sit far into the night reading his 
 novels and his minstrelsy. They have a story in the 
 family that one night when the Magician had led 
 him into dreamland, on his way to bed he trod on 
 some lucifer matches, which exploded under his feet, 
 and that the house was awakened by the cry. 
 " Oh, mother, mother, there's fire flying from my 
 heels." The anxious mother answered him, " Oh, 
 laddie, laddie, if ye dinna stop reading Walter Scott 
 he'll turn your held." But his reading was not con- 
 fined to what he calls " the literature of levity." The 
 M'Crie library at the farm furnished heavier food for 
 his boyish appetite. His letters of this period contain 
 such scraps as the following — " I'm reading Redhead's 
 Revolutions. They're splendid both in point of de- 
 scription and of composition. Some of his passages 
 
A^ES T ACA DEM V. 1 1 
 
 are peculiarly grand : he sometimes soars into the 
 regions of subhmity," etc. " I've read M'Crie's Review 
 of Old Mortality' ; he gives him what you would call 
 a reddin' up." " I am at present reading John Knox's 
 History of the Scottish Reformation, a ponderous 
 volume, but withal full of good solid information, 
 written in an old quaint style, but relieved here and 
 there with pieces of humour, which, although pretty 
 coarse-looking to a reader of the nineteenth century, 
 still tend to enliven it a piece : for you know that a 
 whin-bush would look as well in the desert of Sahara 
 as the rose of Sharon in the vale of Tempe." 
 
 The letters from which these extracts are made 
 were written when he was sixteen. They were ad- 
 dressed to Mr. Scott, one of his teachers at Ancrum, 
 who had removed from the district. On the sugges- 
 tion of the Rev. Dr. Nicol, who, on a pastoral visita- 
 tion, had discovered the remarkable ability of the 
 shepherd's son, Tom was enrolled in the summer of 
 1854 as a pupil in the Nest Academy in the town 
 of Jedburgh. This involved a walk of five miles each 
 way, but the enthusiastic student reckoned the toil 
 a cheap price to pay for the superior advantages of 
 a secondary school. It was a new world to him, and 
 he entered with enthusiasm into the work prescribed 
 and the competitions with the town boys. His 
 letters to Mr. Scott gave expression to his unaffected 
 wonder at the ways of the new school. The English 
 pronunciation of the Latin greatly amazes him, but 
 he congratulates himself that his pronunciation of 
 
12 THE SCHOOL-BOY. 
 
 French is more satisfactory than that of his class- 
 fellows — " for they give the nasals the real broad 
 ongs and angs." He notes for the benefit of his 
 former teacher some rules to guide him in this mat- 
 ter which he has recently acquired. " We get," he 
 says further, " tremendous drillings in history and 
 geography : they have the dates of all the kings 
 that have reigned or battles that have been fought 
 in England ; nevertheless, if I am put down at a 
 date, I generally retake my position at the relation 
 of facts." We can gather from the account he gives 
 of his work that it must have been a thoroughly 
 well-taught school. His first teacher there was Mr. 
 Miller, to whom he soon became warmly attached, 
 and whose sudden death in February, 1855, he 
 characterises as "decidedly a calamity." There is 
 touching simplicity in his description of the last he 
 saw of him. " The last day he was in the school he 
 seemed as hale and as healthy as ever he was. I 
 only noticed that he sometimes put up his hand and 
 pressed his brow as if he felt pain in his head ; and 
 sometimes he never seemed to hear what was going 
 on. The last thing he did was giving us a lesson 
 on Virgil's Eighth Eclogue, which we translated, and 
 a great part of it I think he didn't hear at all. We 
 just finished the translation of it at ten o'clock, so 
 he took up his hat, saying, ' We'll resume this in the 
 afternoon,' but he never came in again. . . . He 
 just spoke to me on the Tuesday of learning German, 
 which he said he wished me to begin, for he would 
 
A NCR UM STUDIES. 1 3 
 
 make no charge. I was quite delighted with this, 
 but what I've got to do now I know not ; I'm at my 
 wit's end." His letters express impatience for the 
 appointment of a new teacher, his disappointment in 
 the man first chosen, and his gratification when he 
 made way for one more to his mind, " a nice, careful, 
 painstaking, cheerful sort of a chap of tremendous 
 stature and volume." Under the new teacher he 
 seems to have gone through a fair amount of work 
 in Latin, Greek, French, and Mathematics. Among 
 his books there is a prize gained by him as " dux " 
 in Euclid, ist August, 1855. But the school read- 
 ing did not satisfy him. " I have begun," he says, 
 April 7th, 1855, "to read Mr. Homer's Iliad on 
 my own account. I find it grand and even peculiarly 
 interesting, so much so, indeed, that I frequently 
 take him to Jedburgh with me to while away the 
 road in coming out. Some of his epithets are very 
 fine. . . . Indeed when I happen to take him 
 up before I begin to my lessons, I generally have 
 to postpone them till the next morning. I fell in 
 with Hamilton the other night, and got from him 
 the works of Thomas Reid, D.D., edited by Sir 
 William Hamilton, to read. It's a metaphysical book 
 of tremendous volume and gravity, consisting of 
 some 1,000 pages or so, closely printed, and as large 
 as your Imperial Dictio7iaiy" April 24th — " Your 
 brother Tom is down to-night, and he is going to 
 bring me some of Macualay's Essays. There's 
 Hamilton's Philosophy [his edition of Reid, it may be 
 
14 THE SCHOOL-BOY. 
 
 presumed] lying before me, every time I look at it it 
 makes my blood run cold. It is, in fact, a terrible 
 eyesore." May 14th — " I have still Reid's Philosophy, 
 at which I take a spell occasionally. It's very 
 curious ; it requires an effort to make me attack him, 
 and another to lay him down . again. A more read- 
 able book, however, is the Life of Sir Walter Seott 
 by Lockhart, which also belongs to Mr. Hamilton, 
 and upon which I am also engaged ; it abounds with 
 interest and anecdote. I have only got it for two 
 months, as he lifts at the end of that time, and I 
 have had it for a fortnight now nearly." July 2nd 
 — " I am really very much pleased with Lockhart's 
 Life. He contrives to be so minute and yet so 
 interesting that one can't help being taken up with 
 him. I regret, however, that I won't be able to 
 finish it, as I am not half through, and have 
 scarcely another month, for Hamilton will be away 
 in that time." 
 
 But those school-boy letters are not altogether 
 occupied with books. They reveal that then, as 
 always, Tom found a subject of study in the char- 
 acters of those about him, and in all the homeliest 
 incidents of their daily life. He gave his correspon- 
 dent all the gossip of the little village, sometimes 
 in sentences in which there is a funny mixture of 
 Latin, Greek, French, and English. The marriages 
 and deaths are duly recorded, and all the steps 
 toward the settlement of "a helper for the Dr." 
 seem to have been watched with deep interest by 
 
EARLY LETTERS AND POETRY. 15 
 
 the future probationer. Occasionally a great light 
 came and shone for a season in the Blackfriars' 
 pulpit. " We have heard Dr. Macfarlane preaching 
 yesterday and the Fast Day. He is, I think, one 
 of the best preachers I ever heard. You'll perhaps 
 remember him at the soiree of 1854." Every 
 passing thunderstorm finds a record on those pages, 
 and there are graphic descriptions of the rigours 
 of the memorable winter of 1854-55. February 2ist, 
 1855 — "We have had and still have a heavy storm 
 upon our part of the country ; and we are at the 
 present moment enjoying one of the most tremendous 
 frosts which have made their appearance for the last 
 fifteen or twenty years. The councils of war which 
 are being held every morning (subject, how the cattle 
 and sheep are to kept alive) are most distressing. 
 The two cutters with which they used to cut the 
 turnips of the cattle, were both destroyed the other 
 morning in useless attempts to cut some provender 
 for them, and the byre-man's hand freezing to the 
 aforesaid machine, he had to thank his patience that 
 he did not tear the hide from off his paws. . . , 
 This has been a very sickly season in Ancrum. 
 The most of the old persons are either sick or dead." 
 Those were the Crimean days, and the echoes of the 
 great world are of growing interest to the school- 
 boy. — " November ist, 1854. We were quite over- 
 whelmed on Tuesday by the blood of 10,000 
 Russians in the Crimea, a despatch from Canrobert, 
 probably true," etc., etc. The prospect of a nearer 
 
1 6 THE SCHOOL-BOY. 
 
 medium through which the intelligence of contem- 
 porary history is to come, is welcome to the boy 
 with his literary instincts. " You (as you used to 
 take some interest in the affairs of Jethart) will be 
 gratified to hear that we are going to get a news- 
 paper set on foot here ; I don't know the name of 
 it, but Mr. Jeffrey the lawyer is to be editor, and 
 Easton proprietor of it. Good luck to it ! I say, 
 good luck to it ! " 
 
 Tom had begun, even as a school-boy, to write 
 poetry. His old teacher is his confidant, to whom 
 he sends his effusions, and whose criticisms he 
 earnestly begs and receives good humouredly, even 
 when they are not very laudatory. " Much obliged 
 to you for your criticism ; the affair I looked on 
 myself as very poor ; in short, it was the only thing 
 at hand to fill up the letter. The most important 
 word, however, in your ' breath,' I was utterly unable 
 to decipher, a fact which of course stood greatly 
 in the way of my profiting very much by it. Upon 
 the whole, however, I am never happier than when I 
 have thrown off a few verses that I deem tolerable, 
 which in my opinion these are not. I have some 
 more poetry, but it's not yet transcribed. In mine 
 humble opinion it is better than the last. You shall 
 judge of that for yourself. There is a piece, however, 
 which I enclose, and which I intend should compose 
 part of a larger piece. . . . 'Tis not much 
 worth, but you'll see, and give me your opinion next 
 time. I have no time for any originality to-day. I 
 
ROAD TO JEDBURGH. ly 
 
 am very much obliged to you for your criticism : 
 but with the opinion you express anent the two 
 Hues, I can't exactly say I agree." 
 
 Many poems of this period have been preserved by 
 loving hands in note-books into which the author 
 had neatly transcribed them. It would be unfair to 
 reproduce even a specimen ; but they are interest- 
 ing as revealing the three chief sources from which 
 the Scottish school-boy drew his inspiration. These 
 were Scottish history, the Bible, and Nature. Ban- 
 nockburn and Flodden are celebrated at length. 
 So are the Exodus, the Captivity, and the Flood. 
 But Nature is the prevailing theme. There are 
 pictures of her varying aspects, which, though drawn 
 by a hand that is only struggling after the art of 
 expression, yet reveal an eye that has already the 
 gift of vision, and a heart that has learned thus 
 early to beat in unison with the manifold life of 
 field and wood. There is in those efforts a pre- 
 Raphaelite minuteness which shows a habit of careful 
 observation, full of promise for the years to come. 
 There is, above all, a deep and loving sympathy. 
 It is manifest that the boy's education was making 
 progress in his long daily walks to and from the 
 Jedburgh school, as truly as when he was within 
 its walls. His way lay through the Ancrum woods, 
 with their grand beeches, their towering limes, and 
 their herds of deer wandering in the sunny glades, 
 and then on to the great highway between the 
 Scottish and English capitals, with the policies of 
 
1 8 THE SCHOOL-BOY. 
 
 Mount Teviot lying in the hollow to the left. When 
 the weather was fine he would take a more direct 
 road. Leaving the highway after he had crossed 
 Ancrum Bridge, he would go up by a footpath 
 to the wooded ridge between the valleys of the 
 Teviot and the Jed, and, passing through the " pic- 
 turesquely situated yett " on which he used so often 
 to lean in after years, he would descend by a pleasant 
 path between luxuriant hedgerows, to the quaint 
 old town. As he sauntered along this varied road 
 with his satchel on his back and his Homer in his 
 hand, he kept his eyes and his ears open to the 
 sights and sounds of nature. He was intensely 
 susceptible to the influences of the herioc past, which 
 was called up at every turn, and spoken of by every 
 wind that swept over that Border country. 
 
 He had already, as we have seen, learned its 
 ballads by heart. He knew not the words only, 
 but the music, and would hum, as he walked, the 
 weird tunes that chord so well with the sighing 
 of the winds and the rippling of the streams. 
 Sometimes the way must have been dreary enough, 
 when ere his return the winter night had fallen. 
 They tell at home that one evening, at a time 
 when there was prevalent in the district one of 
 those stories of a ghost perambulating the neighbour- 
 hood, which from time to time take their rise in 
 country places, and which in Sir Walter's country 
 had naturally taken the form of a white lady, Tom 
 was later than usual, and one of his sisters went 
 
DESIRE TO TRAVEL. 
 
 19 
 
 out to meet him. The school-boy was trudging 
 bravely home in the gathering darkness when he 
 caught sight of his sister's white apron. Thinking 
 it was " the white lady," he leapt the fence and 
 made a long but rapid circuit to the house, which 
 he reached before the wearer of the apron. To the 
 young dreamer, who laboured hard by day and sat 
 far into the night, who saw much in nature that 
 was hidden from the eyes of those around him, and 
 who held habitual communion with the life of the 
 past, the veil that hides the unseen Avas easily drawn 
 aside. 
 
 The time is approaching when the new world 
 of college will open to him. We find him through 
 the summer of 1855 working hard that he may 
 take his place creditably as a student of arts. He 
 has never till now been far from home. His friend 
 and correspondent, Mr. Scott, who had settled at 
 Crossford in Lanarkshire, had sent him an invitation 
 to visit him. The vacation is at hand, and he 
 would fain see something • of the world, but he 
 writes touchingly and characteristifcally — "Quoad your 
 proposal concerning my coming over, I cannot as 
 yet decide. You know that I have little chance 
 of being able to come on my own resources, and 
 I don't like to apply to my father for money, for 
 I shall yet stand in enough need of it. I will think 
 about it, however." At the close of the same 
 letter he says — "Your brother Thomas was down 
 the other night, and gave me a very glowing 
 
20 THE SCHOOL-BOY. 
 
 description of the Falls of Clyde ; so much so, 
 indeed, that I feel a very strong desire to come 
 over and see them in propria persona. In your 
 next give me directions as to the journey, in case 
 I do come over." It does not appear that the journey 
 was made. When a shepherd is about to send his 
 son to a university, there is not generally much 
 to spare for other purposes. 
 
EDINBURGH. 21 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 %\\t ^tuicnt of girts. 
 
 Peculiarities of Scottish Universities — Wonders of Edinburgh — Life in 
 Lodgings — Odours of Home — " Apple Tart " — Influence of Ballads 
 —Echoes of Border Minstrels — Song of the Fay — Association with 
 Fellow- Students — The "Order" — Professor Aytoun's Class— 
 "Ariadne" — Thackeray — Translation from Sophocles — Close of 
 Arts Curriculum. 
 
 In the winter of 1855 Davidson matriculated as a 
 student in the University of Edinburgh. It is the 
 glory of our Scottish Universities that their gates 
 are thrown open, on equal terms, to men of all 
 churches and of all classes of society. The shepherd's 
 son from the banks of the Teviot takes his place in 
 the class-room and occupies the same bench with 
 the son of the Lord of Session or of the country 
 squire, with nothing to mark his social inferiority. 
 The scholar from the provincial Grammar School, 
 or even from the Parish School, finds himself in 
 competition with the " dux " of the High School 
 or Academy, and not unfrequently wins the highest 
 honours. To none has the first experience of 
 University life so great a charm as to the country 
 
22 THE STUDENT OF ARTS. 
 
 student. Everything is new to him. The great city 
 to which he has come is itself a wonder. One so 
 susceptible to natural beauty, and so saturated with 
 the traditions of Scottish history as Davidson, could 
 not fail to find delight in wandering through the 
 streets and among the environs of Edinburgh. His 
 was an eye that could never weary of the view 
 from Princes Street, with its marvellous blending of 
 the old and new — the towering Castle rock and the 
 rugged line of many-storied tenements, grey with 
 the storms of centuries, looking across the valley — 
 from the depths of which the noises of the railway 
 come up — to the bright buildings and gay life of the 
 modern city. It was a joy to him to catch glimpses 
 from the heights of George Street, of the blue Firth 
 and the green Lomonds beyond. The lion-like form 
 of Arthur's Seat, that guards the city; the Calton 
 Hill, with its monuments, which, taken separately, 
 are so poor, but which together form so picturesque 
 a group ; the Braid Hills, with their memories of 
 Marniion, and the more distant Pentlands, soon 
 became to him familiar sources of delight. He loved 
 to wander by the old Palace of Holyrood and 
 through the ancient streets that lead to it. He gazed 
 with interest on the tall houses, with their carved 
 memorials of a magnificence that has given place to 
 squalor and wretchedness. The youth who generally 
 regained his position " at the relation of facts " in the 
 history class at Jedburgh, found it easy, in his 
 wanderings through the historic city, to transport 
 
LIFE IN LODGINGS. 23 
 
 himself from the common-place bustle of its modern 
 life into the midst of the stately pageants and the 
 famous struggles of other days. 
 
 In the Universities of Scotland no provision is 
 made for the residence of students. Each one is 
 left to find lodgings for himself. This is a feature 
 of Scottish student life which must be taken into 
 account in estimating the nature of its influence. 
 To the country lad his coming to college is to 
 some extent an entrance on life. He has a sense 
 of freedom and a sense of responsibility Avhich are 
 no unimportant part of his education. He chooses 
 his lodging ; he is master of it ; he selects his com- 
 panions ; he apportions his time. Beyond the 
 class-hours no control is exercised by the college 
 authorities over his employments. Such a system 
 has, of course, its risks. It tempts to idleness those 
 who have no enthusiasm for their work, and it gives 
 peculiar facilities for cultivating companionships 
 which sometimes prove ruinous. But, on the other 
 hand, it fosters a spirit of self-reliance. When the 
 temptations of freedom are successfully resisted, the 
 will is strengthened for undertaking the graver 
 responsibilities of after life. Davidson was fortunate 
 in finding a staid companion to share his lodgings. 
 Mr. Scott, his former teacher and correspondent, 
 who was only a few years his senior, had gone to 
 the city a month before him, to attend Moray House 
 Training School. They lived together at 4 East 
 Broughton Place, with a landlady whom Mr. Scott 
 
24 THE STUDENT OF ARTS. 
 
 describes as "honest and careful, and rather en- 
 couraging to us, as strangers to the town." The 
 lads needed such encouragement. Mr. Scott acknow- 
 ledges that they made ludicrous blunders, which, 
 however, only provided material for Davidson's 
 peculiar humour, and for pleasant reminiscences in 
 after years. There was one standing cause of dispute 
 between the students and the mistress of the house. 
 The careful landlady was accustomed to watch the 
 indicator of the gas meter with a jealous eye, and was 
 sadly distressed by the waste involved in Davidson's 
 early acquired habit of sitting far into the night. 
 Spite of this point of contention, the relation seems 
 to have been amicable, for Davidson returned to the 
 same lodging session after session during the whole 
 of his University course. For four successive years he 
 came to the city at the beginning of November, and 
 left it in April, spending the long summer recess at 
 his father's house. Even during the session he had 
 much to remind him of home. His box was regu- 
 larly despatched to Woodhead, and came back to 
 him in due course with his linen, redolent of the 
 flowery braes by the banks of Ale, and having every 
 spare nook filled with home-baked bread, and with 
 some dainty — perhaps a pot of jelly made of fruit 
 grown in the cottage garden — which would taste the 
 sweeter that it had been placed in its corner by the 
 hands of the thoughtful mother whose presence made 
 home bright, in token that she was not unmindful 
 of the student son, who might one day stand in the 
 
LOVE OF HOME. 2$ 
 
 Doctor's pulpit and bring honour to the house. Each 
 opening of the box would fill the student's lodging 
 with odours of home, which could not fail to act as 
 counteractives to the evil influences of city life, and 
 as stimulants to work his best, were it only for the 
 sake of those who were making loving sacrifice for 
 him. 
 
 It was a characteristic of Davidson that he cher- 
 ished the memory of home with peculiar affection. 
 Among the new associations of college life, he never 
 lost his interest in his beloved Roxburghshire. Mr. 
 Scott tells us that he used to sit for hours over their 
 winter fire talking of the scenes of other days — telling 
 stories of the rude Border-land among the hills where 
 he spent the first years of his life. In a letter written 
 during his first autumn session at the Divinity Hall 
 he says — " Sometimes I sit here in the gloaming (as 
 now) looking away out over the Forth to the hills of 
 Fife, that bound our visible horizon, thinking with 
 envy and regret of the years that have been ; visited 
 with memories of harvests that I have seen in 
 bygone times — of the flashing sickles, the rustling 
 corn, the late leading when the hairst moon is 
 in the lift shining over all — and even of the misty 
 mornings, when the rime is on the grass, and 
 the fine cobweb-network tapestries all the brown 
 hedges. No doubt you are thinking I'm setting 
 all this down for the sake of filling my letter ; but 
 perhaps you will believe me when I tell you 
 solemnly that I have been several times half-greetiii 
 
26 THE STUDENT OF ARTS. 
 
 since I began this same epistle ! " In a letter 
 
 of some years later date, after giving a ludicrous 
 
 description of how he and a companion had been 
 
 driven to the Cafe in search of their dinner, because 
 
 a fellow-lodger in charge of the commissariat had 
 
 ordered salt herrings and potatoes for the mid-day 
 
 meal — moved thereto by the fact that, in his " habit 
 
 of chanting in an ejaculatory manner certain random 
 
 lines, generally the introductory ones, of any song 
 
 that suggested itself," the particular line which Tom 
 
 was most frequently crooning over at that time 
 
 was — 
 
 " I ha'e laid a herrin' in saut " — 
 
 he speaks of the dinner they ordered, and specially 
 of the apple-tart. " We dwelt upon the analysis of 
 the thing as we devoured it for I don't know how 
 long, till, in fact, it became by a process of imaginary 
 disintegration no longer the mere synthetic apple-tart 
 at all. Tart ! it was no simple tart we were eating ! 
 It was an aggregate of all savoury substances, of all 
 delicate essences, of all delicious dainties. There 
 was flour in it, fine flour, at the sowing whereof 
 ploughboys had whistled, over the green expanse 
 whereof birds had lilted and warbled, and at the 
 reaping whereof the reapers had sung the songs of 
 harvest. And had not the miller, that by the 
 wondrous alchemy of his mysterious art transmog- 
 rified the yellow grain into fine white flour, had he 
 not a fair damsel of a daughter who delighted to 
 handle the flour, this flour identically which and 
 
APPLE TART. 2/ 
 
 I were eating ! Time would fail me to tell of the 
 visions of deliciously daisied and butter-cupped 
 grassy slopes, with kine feeding and rosy lassies 
 milking them, and boy-sweethearts wooing these 
 same milkers at the gloaming — time, I say, forbids 
 me to speak of the visions suggested by the butter 
 and the accompanying cream. And then the 
 grinning, dusky faces conjured up by the sugar, 
 which of course was raised 
 
 ' Down in de cane-brake 
 Close by de mill.' 
 
 It was no wonder the waiter thought we were taking 
 an unconscionable time to settle what he, poor fellow, 
 only considered a tart. And no wonder he looked 
 so relieved when at last we rose and retired to the 
 smoking saloon, whither we ordered two foaming 
 tankards to follow us, and which eventually did 
 follow us, even down to the resting-place of the chop 
 and the beef and the potatoes, and the bread and 
 the salt, and the sauces and the seasonings and 
 the pickles, and the ketchup and the fine flour afore- 
 said, and the cream and the sugar, and the etc., 
 etc., in fact the dinner — for we thought, and lo I 
 we had dined ! Bruce, we had dined ! As a back- 
 ground to this, imagine two fellows sitting grim, 
 assiduous, anatomical, bone-discovering, over potatoes 
 and salt-herrings ! " 
 
 One of the influences of his early life, which to the 
 end affected him most powerfully, was the Ballad 
 poetry of Scotland, with which he had become 
 
28 THE STUDENT OF ARTS. 
 
 familiar even before his school-days on the Border. 
 His love for the Ballads grew with advancing years. 
 In his Saturday walks into the country with his 
 fellow-students, he would often spend hours at a 
 time repeating and discussing the various readings of 
 Scott, Motherwell, Aytoun, and other editors. He 
 had an old friend in Edinburgh whose tastes in this 
 particular were kindred with his own. They had 
 both learned the Ballads orally, but Davidson had 
 the Roxburghshire "reading," while his friend was 
 accustomed to contend for the version current in his 
 native district of Selkirk. Their discussions were 
 always amicable, and generally ended in their agree- 
 ing that children should be brought up on the Shorter 
 Catechism, the Psalms of David, and plenty of 
 Border Ballads. It was not only the poetry, but the 
 music of the Ballads that had a charm for Davidson. 
 A fellow-student says — " When I knew him he 
 lodged in Barony Street, and on approaching his 
 room I used to hear him giving voice to some Scotch 
 song, frequently one of the Border ballads, according 
 to the ancient music." Another testifies — "Old 
 Scotch airs had a great fascination for him. There 
 was an old volume, I do not know where he had 
 fallen in with it, that for a long time he was con- 
 stantly crooning over. Weird songs and weird airs 
 were always coming in his way. He once sung in 
 my father's company the song of Meg Merrilees over 
 the departing soul of the Bandit, and was afterwards 
 intensely vexed when he heard that the old man 
 
SONG OF THE FA Y. 29 
 
 could not raise his spirits for days in consequence." 
 This love for the Ballad music of his native district 
 influenced him powerfully in many ways. It found 
 an echo in his own verses. The most of the pieces 
 which he composed during his student course were 
 little more than reproductions of the old poetry 
 which had filled his ear. One who knew and loved 
 him well says, that at that period " he was nothing 
 more than a singer, composing little pieces of Scotch 
 verse, in the true poetic vein certainly, but still at 
 best an echo of older Scottish poets. His own 
 culture was, perhaps, studiously kept in the back- 
 ground : he attempted no more than a wandering 
 vagrant did in ' Ower the muir amang the heather.' 
 These verselets he sang to familiar tunes to the 
 great delight of us all. At the same time, he was 
 so keen in all his mental perceptions, so calm and 
 well-balanced that he was evidently fitted for much 
 higher things." 
 
 One specimen of these " Echoes " of Sir Walter 
 Scott and of the older Border minstrels may interest 
 the reader. It was contributed by Davidson to a 
 MS. magazine which circulated among his fellow- 
 students, where it appeared under the signature 
 " Jock Hashlatin." 
 
 SONG OF THE FAY. 
 I. 
 Rouse, brothers, rouse ! for far over the main, 
 The sun hath gone down to his dreaming again ; 
 Rouse, brothers, rouse ! for the Fair Queen of Night 
 Folds the far mountain in vestures of light ! 
 
30 
 
 THE STUDENT OF ARTS. 
 
 Mount, brothers, mount ! for the night-wind is calling, — 
 Mount, brothers, mount ! for the night-dew is falling ; 
 Speed, brothers, speed ! over moorland and green. 
 Gaily to gallant our Faery Queen ! 
 
 Cho7-us — Over the river and over the rill. 
 
 Over the hollow and over the hill, 
 Over the desert and over the seas. 
 Swiftly we pass on- the wing of the breeze 
 
 Out on the mead with the moon shining o'er us, — 
 Or deep in the grove where the hazels embower us, 
 Quaff we the dew from the bonny blue bell 
 That blooms by the fountain or blows on the fell ! 
 And out on the main in a hazel-nut shell, 
 Brest we the billow, the surf, and the swell ; — 
 We play with the wild wind, we laugh 'mid the foam, 
 For land and old ocean alike is our home ! 
 
 Chorus — Over the river, etc. 
 
 III. 
 
 And when howling and hissing the tempest comes forth, 
 Forth from his home in the womb of the north ; — 
 When the Sprite of the storm pours his shrieks to the 
 
 blast ; — 
 When ocean is heaving and sky overcast ; — 
 When the old forest oak from his roots is upriven, 
 And home to the valley in fragments is driven ; 
 'Mid the whirl of the hurricane wheeling on high. 
 We mock at its wrath as it sweeps through the sky ! 
 
 C/iorus — Over the river, etc. 
 
 Ours is the fleet steed that travels the wind. 
 And leaves on his wild way no traces behind ; 
 So lightly he hies him o'er mountain and lea, — 
 Viewless as ether, as boundless and free ! 
 Ho ! mount, brothers, mount ! for the night-wind is 
 calling, — 
 
STUDENT FRIENDS. 3 1 
 
 Mount, brothers, mount ! for the night-dew is falling; 
 Speed, brothers, speed ! over moorland and green. 
 Gaily to gallant our Faery Queen ! 
 
 Chorus — Over the river and over the rill, 
 
 Over the moorland and over the hill, 
 Over the desert and over the seas. 
 Swiftly we pass on the wing of the breeze ! 
 
 It will be easily understood that one so full of 
 enthusiasm for Scottish poetry and Scottish song- 
 soon became a centre of attraction to his fellow- 
 students. The benefits of University life are not 
 limited to the instruction derived from attendance 
 on college classes. It is indeed questionable whether 
 in many cases association with fellow-students does 
 not count for more as an educational influence than 
 the most stimulating lectures delivered from the 
 professor's chair. When young men of kindred 
 tastes, and fired with the same enthusiasms, meet 
 together daily in each other's rooms, or on their 
 walks around the city, and discuss the books they 
 are reading and the subjects that are occupying 
 their thoughts, their minds are quickened and their 
 views are broadened as they never could be by 
 isolated study. It is a special advantage that in 
 our Universities men destined for different pro- 
 fessions ^nd even for commercial life, meet together 
 on common ground, and pass through the same 
 curriculum of arts. It cannot be asserted that 
 the members of our learned professions in Scotland 
 are free from the influence of " Idols of the cave," 
 but it is certain that they are freer than they would 
 
32 THE STUDENT OF ARTS. 
 
 be if their training were from the first more strictly 
 professional, and if they had not the memory through 
 after life of intercourse with men whose paths in 
 later years have been widely divergent from their 
 own. Among the men who were drawn into as- 
 sociation with Davidson, there was a special variety. 
 One of them says — " Among those who had a strong 
 affection for him you might see the orthodox and 
 heretical, the methodical and disorderly, the poetic 
 and prosaic ; and I am puzzled to say which liked 
 him most." But while thus showing the manysided- 
 ness of his nature by maintaining friendly intercourse 
 with men whose common affinity with him never 
 brought them together, he became the centre of a 
 little coterie of kindred spirits who, about the third 
 year of his University course, formed themselves into 
 a society or order, under a quaint and curious name, 
 the origin of which is obscure " How the Order was 
 established," one of its members says, " I do not 
 know. It grew rather than was made. Each mem- 
 ber had his name and his office. One was Meta- 
 physician, another Hellenist, another Physician, 
 another Physicist, and Davidson Poet Laureate — 
 the Physician being also Recorder, but the records 
 were always a myth. From the time that the 
 Order fairly came into being, each one was known 
 among ourselves only by his orderial name, and 
 the conversation always turned on orderial subjects. 
 Every investigation had to be carried on by the 
 brother to whose department it belonged, and it was 
 
VARIED READING. 33 
 
 a high ofifence for any one to give an opinion on 
 any subject unless he presided over that depart- 
 ment. . . . The orderial connection was kept up 
 in correspondence long after the company was dis- 
 persed." 
 
 It is probable that his growing popularity among 
 the students interfered to some extent with his ap- 
 plication to the proper work of the University. It 
 is certain that he did not maintain throughout his 
 career as a student that enthusiasm for class-work 
 which had made him as a school-boy impatient of 
 the vacancy in the Jedburgh Academy, yet he worked 
 up to the average in the routine of the classes, 
 and in most of them he held a higher than average 
 place. Whenever the subject in hand accorded 
 in any measure with the natural bent of his mind, he 
 applied himself heartily to it. Classical study was 
 sufficiently congenial to make him work well when he 
 was in attendance on the Latin and Greek classes ; 
 but even then it was only when the exercises called 
 forth his poetic faculty that he came to the front. 
 He had no enthusiasm for mathematics, and in 
 mental philosophy even the memory of Sir William 
 Hamilton, which still lingered about the college 
 courts, failed to stimulate him to great exertion. 
 But he was not intellectually idle. He read constantly, 
 though miscellaneously. He ransacked the shelves of 
 the college library, and acquired a vast knowledge of 
 English literature. He knew Wordsworth almost by 
 heart ; he was familiar with Chaucer and Spenser, 
 
34 THE STUDENT OF ARTS. 
 
 and no one in search of a quotation from Shakespeare 
 ever applied to him in vain. He was specially fond 
 of the lyrics interspersed through the dramas of the 
 great master. He had set the most of them to 
 music, and was accustomed to sing them. His 
 letters of this period are full of references to 
 books. One example may be given, as illustrative 
 of his attitude towards subjects of prescribed study : 
 — " I am happy to see that you like Tennyson. I 
 have just been reading the Princess with redoubled 
 gusto. It doesn't require so much study as In 
 Meinoriam ; in fact, the perusal of the latter I 
 consider to be about as good a course of mental 
 exercise as the study of all Whately or Dugald 
 Stewart." As might have been expected, when he 
 came, in the last session of his Arts curriculum, to the 
 class of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, he found himself 
 thoroughly at home. Not only was the subject con- 
 genial, but Professor Aytoun, who then adorned 
 the chair, was a man whose tastes and favourite 
 pursuits were such as to command Davidson's 
 special sympathy. The author of the Lays of the 
 Scottish Cavaliers and of Bothwell, and the editor of 
 the Ballads of Scotland, was a professor for whom he 
 was likely to do his best. His exercises in prose and 
 verse — many of which he carefully preserved — were 
 written with great care, and have Aytoun's hearty com- 
 mendation inscribed on them. Toward the close of 
 the session the subject for a prize poem was prescribed, 
 and Davidson produced his "Ariadne at Naxos." It 
 
ARIADNE AT NAXOS. 35 
 
 was the result of earnest and painstaking study, and 
 will be read with interest not only as revealing much 
 poetical power, but as an evidence that, though not a 
 plodder in class-work, he was in the truest sense a 
 scholar who had brought himself into thorough sym- 
 pathy with the spirit of the ancient classics : — 
 
 ARIADNE AT NAXOS. 
 I, 
 High upon the Hill of Dries, 
 
 As the day began to waken, 
 All alone sate Ariadne, 
 
 Watching, weary, and forsaken : 
 With her dark dishevelled tresses, 
 
 Dank with dew-drops of the night, 
 And her face all wan and haggard, 
 
 Still she waited on the height ; 
 Watching, praying that the morning 
 Might reveal her love returning 
 
 Swiftly o'er the quivering water, — 
 To the lonely isle returning, 
 
 And the King's deserted Daughter. 
 
 From her couch of Orient forests — 
 
 From the chambers of her rest — 
 Came with queenly step the Morning, 
 
 Journeying onward to the West : 
 And the glory of her presence 
 
 Tinged the sea and filled the air, 
 Smote the lofty Hill of Drios 
 
 And the lonely watcher there ; 
 Yet no bark across the water 
 
 Came to lighten her despair. 
 But with sighing of the pine-trees 
 
 In the low wind gently shaken, 
 All day long, in mournful snatches. 
 
 Rose the plaint of Ariadne, 
 
 Watching, weary, and forsaken. 
 
36 THE STUDENT OF ARTS. 
 
 III. 
 " In vain ! in vain ! The seventh bright day 
 Is breaking o'er yon eastern land, 
 That 'mid the Hght — a long dark band — 
 
 Lies dim and shadowy far away ; 
 
 And still from morn till eve I've scanned 
 That weary sea from strand to strand, 
 
 To mark his sail against the spray. 
 
 In vain ! in vain ! The morning ray 
 
 Shows not his bark 'mid all the seas, 
 
 Tho' I can trace from where I stand 
 
 All the flowery Cyclades. 
 
 " Seven days ! But oh ! how tardily 
 
 These lonely hours have crept away ! 
 And yet it seems but yesterday 
 
 That, sailing o'er the Cretan sea, 
 
 I watch'd the melting shadows grey. 
 And hailed the dawn as emblem gay 
 
 Of all the rapture yet to be. 
 
 When I with him should wander free 
 Thro' fair Illissus' bowers of green. 
 
 But now, my love has gone for aye, 
 
 And I am left alone alway. 
 
 To brood o'er all that might have been ! 
 
 " Oh ! had I to the shadows passed 
 
 Before the fair-haired Stranger came 
 To light with love the fatal flame 
 That aye will burn within my breast ! 
 
 The maids of Crete had named my name, 
 Nor thought of love, — nor yet of shame ; 
 But of a sister pure and chaste. 
 In death's cold arms untimely press'd. 
 And all from joy and sorrow reft : 
 
 He might have lived his life of fame, 
 And I had ne'er been loved and left. 
 
 " Or had the North Wind woke from sleep. 
 As with our dark sails all outspread, 
 Across the southern wave we fled, 
 Down in the great sea's twilight deep 
 
ARIADNE AT NAXOS. 37 
 
 Some silent grot had been our bed, 
 
 Where many a long-haired Nereid, 
 
 With ocean-flowers all garlanded, 
 Had knelt by our low couch to weep : 
 But softly o'er the brine the breeze did creep, 
 Bearing us all too gently on our way, 
 
 While I of strong Poseidon prayed 
 To guard the life I mourn to-day ! 
 
 " Ye memories of days gone by 
 
 Ere clouds of woe began to lower, 
 When life stretched all so bright before, 
 
 And love was warm, and hope was high ; — 
 Of moonlight nights beside the shore. 
 When by the infinite heaven he swore 
 And every star that gemmed it o'er 
 
 That love like his would never die ; — 
 
 Unbidden guests of mine adversity ! 
 
 Dead hopes, and haunting memories of the Past 
 That cling about my heart for evermore — 
 
 Oh ! to forget you all, and die, and be at rest ! 
 
 " For rest alone awaiteth me 
 
 Beyond Death's portal dark and grim, 
 Where Nature whispers that I soon shall be ; 
 For robes of rest I cannot see 
 
 Seem folding round each languid limb ; 
 
 My weary eyes are waxing dim ; 
 
 Scarce may I hear the evening hymn 
 The birds are chaunting joyously. 
 But oh ! for one more glimpse of thee, 
 Theseus ! before mine eyelids sink for aye — 
 Or of thy sail beneath the western day, 
 
 O'er the horizon's utmost rim, 
 Looming far away ! " 
 
 IV. 
 
 Darkness o'er land and sea resumed her sway. 
 The fair moon rose dispensing silvery light, 
 And softly fell the tears of Mother Night 
 O'er the outwearied watcher where she lay, 
 Till in the Orient dawned again the day, 
 
38 T^HE STUDENT OF ARTS. 
 
 And all for joy o'er his triumphant birth 
 Arose the hymned praises of the earth : 
 The Rivers murmured rolling on their way, 
 The wind-swept Forests sighed, and carols gay 
 The wild birds lilted from the dewy brake — 
 But Ariadne sleeps, and never more shall wake ! 
 
 Davidson was successful in winning only the second 
 place in the competition, but the poem, which was 
 zealously passed from hand to hand, served to estab- 
 lish, among his fellow-students, his poetical reputa- 
 tion, which had been growing through all his course. 
 It was written in the spring of 1859. At the begin- 
 ning of the following year the Co7'nIiill Magazine was 
 started under the editorship of Thackeray. The 
 event excited wide-spread- interest among the reading 
 public. There was natural curiosity to see how the 
 great novelist and essayist would demean himself as 
 the conductor of a monthly serial. The appreciation 
 of the worth of their fellow-student's performance was 
 so enthusiastic on the part of Davidson's friends that 
 one of them sent to Thackeray his " Ariadne," along 
 with a translation from Sophocles. He did so without 
 the knowledge of the author, who would certainly 
 have shrunk from so bold a step. Davidson's aston- 
 ishment was unfeigned when the proof-sheet of 
 " Ariadne " was sent to him for correction. The poem 
 appeared in the number of the magazine for De- 
 cember, i860, with an illustrative engraving, and 
 occupying a place of honour. The gratification of 
 the young author in seeing his verses so worthily 
 introduced to public notice was soon followed by the 
 
FIRST LITERARY SUCCESS. 39 
 
 honest pride of having earned his first literary honor- 
 arium. A welcome remittance of ten guineas was 
 sent to him, and was valued, not only because it was 
 no mean addition to the slender income of a student, 
 but because it was a substantial token of the estima- 
 tion in which the unsought contribution of a nameless 
 man was held by the distinguished editor. Davidson 
 took the success he had thus achieved very quietly. 
 He shrank from any reference made to it by com- 
 parative strangers, but in his correspondence with 
 intimate friends he acknowledges how deeply he was 
 gratified. " I hug myself," he says, " on the honour 
 done to ' Ariadne ' by the great pains which have 
 evidently been bestowed on the illustration." To 
 another friend he writes : " I was glad you appreciated 
 the merits of the asylum in which my poor unpro- 
 tected female has at last found a refuge — not a bad 
 stroke for Flame [his ' orderial ' name], think you .-* 
 But you did not give your opinion of the illustration. 
 You must do that next time." The honour done 
 their associate was very highly appreciated by all 
 the circle of Davidson's college friends. They were 
 naturally proud that their estimate of his poetical 
 ability was endorsed by one so well qualified to judge. 
 They sounded his praises far and wide, and his 
 acquaintance was eagerly sought by other students. 
 Though naturally reserved, he was, to those who 
 were admitted to his friendship, the most charming of 
 companions. His intimate knowledge of books, and 
 the habit of close observation of the men and women 
 
40 THE STUDENT OF ARTS. 
 
 whom he met, which came through his wide sympathy 
 with every phase of human character, made his con- 
 versation always interesting. He had a quick eye for 
 the ludicrous side of life. Incidents which others 
 would have failed to notice, were treasured in his 
 memory, and supplied him with an unfailing fund of 
 stories of which his friends never wearied. Yet there 
 was no bitterness in his humour. He looked at 
 peculiarities of character with kindly eye. 
 
 The translation sent to Thackeray along with 
 " Ariadne " was from the Antigone, verse 335. It was 
 executed some time before April 13th, 1857, for the 
 only copy of it which has come into my hands has that 
 date attached to an amusing ' dedication ' to a fellow- 
 student. When the acceptance of " Ariadne " was 
 announced, it was stated that the translation was not 
 inserted because, though extremely good, its excel- 
 lence did not warrant departure from the rule of 
 publishing translations only in exceptional circum- 
 stances. 
 
 THE GREATNESS OF MAN. 
 (Translated from Sophocles, Antigone, verse 335.) 
 
 Strophe A. 
 
 Earth hath mighty things full many — 
 
 But man soars above them all, — 
 Man, who traverses the ocean, 
 The' its waves in angry tumult, 
 
 With the South wind rise and fall. 
 When his icy blasts in winter 
 
 O'er the hoary billows sweep, 
 And around the reeling galley, 
 
 Roll the surges of the deep ! 
 
THE GREATNESS OF MAN. 41 
 
 Man, — the steed that yearly yoketh, 
 
 And with plough upturns the sods, 
 That enrobe the tireless bosom 
 Of the aye-immortal Tellus — 
 
 The supreme among the gods ! 
 
 Antistrophe a. 
 
 All the tribes o'er earth that ramble — 
 
 All that sport where ocean heaves — 
 All that wing the fields of aether — 
 In the meshy toils he taketh, 
 
 That with cunning hand he weaves. 
 Savage beasts that find rude refuge 
 
 In the bosom of the hill. 
 Roaming wild athwart the mountains, 
 
 Yield to human might and skill, — 
 Yields the ox that loves to wander, 
 
 Tameless on the hills and free ; — ' 
 And, v/ith mane all shaggy-streaming. 
 Bows the noble steed to bondage — 
 
 Bows, O child of might to thee ! 
 
 Strophe B. 
 
 His is Intellect, high-thoughted. 
 
 As the wild wind unconfined, — 
 His the power to voice its musings, — 
 His to know, with wily wisdom, 
 
 How to sway a nation's mind. 
 He hath built himself a shelter 
 
 From the fiercely-pelting rain, 
 And the nipping frosts of even 
 
 Float around his home in vain. 
 All-provided, he contemneth 
 
 Aught that Fate may have in store ; 
 E'en Disease's direst anguish 
 He may shun ; — but gloomy Hades 
 
 Yawneth shunless, evermore ! 
 
 Antistrophe B. 
 
 Far beyond what hope could fancy, 
 Even in her wildest mood. 
 
42 THE STUDENT OF ARTS. 
 
 Man in might and skill hath risen ; — 
 Might and skill, alas ! which hover 
 
 'Twixt the evil and the good ! 
 But to him be proudest honour, 
 
 Who obedience due hath given 
 To the statutes of his birth-land, 
 
 And the oath-sealed laws of heaven ! 
 But who evil boldly worketh, 
 
 Outcast, exiled let him pine, 
 Far from fatherland and city ; — 
 Be his home from me far distant. 
 
 And his musings none of mine. 
 
 Before " Ariadne " was published, Davidson had 
 completed his curriculum of Arts, and entered on 
 the study of Theology. He left the University in 
 the spring of 1859. He had not written his name 
 very conspicuously on the honour list of his Alma 
 Mater, but he finished his college career with credit, 
 and his memory will long be cherished by his con- 
 temporaries as that of one of the most truly cultured 
 men it has been their privilege to know. 
 
EARLY CONSECRATION TO MINISTRY. 43 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 %\\t <Stui)£nt of 'iEhfolonB. 
 
 Early Consecration to the Ministry — Entrance Examination — Opening 
 of Divinity Hall — Tutorship at Forres — Correspondence — First 
 Experience of Teaching— Longings for Home — "Presbytery- 
 gripes" — "I've Passed" — School Examination — " Majesty of 
 Silence "• — First Sermon — Bankend — Associations and Surround- 
 ings of Jedburgh — Hall Again — What is a Song? — Auld Ash 
 Tree — Mr. Scott Riddell — Trials of a Teacher — More Poems — 
 Rejection by Presbytery — License. 
 
 Davidson had early formed the resolution to conse- 
 crate his powers to the Christian ministry in con- 
 nection with the Church of his fathers. In such a 
 family as that to which he belonged, the pulpit is 
 the destination naturally thought of for a young man 
 who has shown an aptitude for intellectual pursuits. 
 There is hardly any sacrifice which an intelligent 
 Scottish peasant would not willingly make for the 
 honour of giving a son to the service of the Church 
 he loves. But Davidson had a higher motive for 
 seeking to enter the ranks of the Christian ministry 
 than to please his parents, or to find a convenient 
 sphere for the cultivation of his literary tastes. He 
 
44 
 
 THE STUDENT OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 was not given to speak of his motives. His natural 
 reserve made it specially distasteful to him to reveal 
 his deepest feelings ; but all who knew him were 
 aware that he was a man of sterling Christian prin- 
 ciple, and that in aspiring to the position of a 
 Christian teacher he had the liighest and the purest 
 aims. The Rev. Robert Douglas of Otterburn, than 
 whom no one enjoyed his confidence more fully, 
 says — " The tone of his piety was in unison with 
 his entire character. He was free from all sectarian 
 narrowness, at once liberal and just in his views ; 
 mere party spirit could not seize his soul, which 
 instinctively drew to itself what was human and 
 permanent. His piety betrayed nothing that was 
 impulsive or ostentatious, and was slow of dis- 
 covering itself otherwise than in the purity of life 
 and excellence of character which only a hidden 
 connection with the Divine source of all goodness 
 could impart or sustain." 
 
 In Davidson's time, and, indeed, till quite recently, 
 the Theological course prescribed by the United 
 Presbyterian Church for candidates for the ministry 
 consisted of attendance on five autumnal sessions 
 at the Divinity Hall, and a series of inter-sessional 
 examinations by the Presbyteries in whose bounds 
 the students resided. Every entrant to the Hall was 
 then — before the institution of a Central Board — 
 required to undergo a preliminary examination by 
 his Presbytery on the subjects he had studied during 
 his Arts curriculum. This examination Davidson 
 
ENTRANCE EXAMINATION. 
 
 45 
 
 passed in the summer of 1859, before the Presbytery 
 of Melrose. On 9th July he wrote to one of the 
 " order " a most humorous description of the ordeal, 
 describing the fear and trembling with which he 
 walked across the hills to Melrose. He parodies 
 an old ballad " in a manner whose uncouthness and 
 barbarism were only warranted or excused by the 
 distressing nature of the circumstances in which he 
 was placed " : 
 
 "As Flame cam' doon by the Eildon Hill, 
 He gaed with dool and sorrow, 
 Till doon i' the Church he spied sax learnit men, 
 That had come to pruive his lore, O." 
 
 He tells of his sorrow " as he beheld (longo ordine) 
 a mass of problems in algebraic fractions, surds, and 
 equations which some infatuated minister of the 
 Gospel had drawn up for the special behoof of a 
 poor unfortunate who took no pleasure therein what- 
 ever — nay, to whom they were the very thing his soul 
 abhorred " : of his joy when " the Priest, probably 
 seeing some external signs, such, for example, as 
 the facial elongation and lower javial depression 
 which take place on such occasions, relieved Flame 
 finally by exclaiming, ' Never mind the algebra ! 
 let's go on to the geometry.' This was music to 
 the ears of the overwhelmed Laureate, who per- 
 formed the remaining part of the trial in a manner 
 to satisfy the whole assembly. Time would fail me 
 to go into details concerning the rest. Suffice it 
 to say that the vote was taken, and the Presbytery 
 
46 THE STUDENT OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 was unanimously in favour of the Laureate, who 
 inwardly ejaculated, ' I applaud the sentiment' He 
 left the house — he recrossed the hills — he came 
 home — and — it was done ! " 
 
 In the beginning of August he went to Edin- 
 burgh, going by way of Lochmaben, to which town 
 he walked from Ancrum, in company with Mr. Scott 
 — the distance being some 54 miles. On the way 
 from Lochmaben to Lockerbie railway station he 
 was overtaken by a thunderstorm, and thoroughly 
 drenched. He travelled to Edinburgh in his wet 
 clothes, and Mr. Scott believes that this was the 
 beginning of his long illness. It was many weeks 
 before he was well, and he was always afterwards 
 susceptible of cold. His experience as a student 
 of Theology began on the 2nd August, 1859. " I 
 saw a great many old friends at the opening lecture 
 to-day, which Dr. Eadie delivered to a very large 
 audience. The subject of it was the 'Second 
 Advent,' but I didn't hear it well. However, I 
 heard him quote Kingsley's Alton Locke with ap- 
 probation, the part where Sandy MacKay expatiates 
 on the poetry of low life — the Paradise Lost and 
 Paradise Regained which you may see in every 
 hovel. Tell it in the parish school, publish it in 
 Elliot's seminary at Lochmaben ! " The band of 
 old friends who had been his college companions 
 was soon enlarged by the addition of new friends 
 from other Universities, who, attracted by his 
 poetical fame, sought his acquaintance. He became 
 
OPENING OF DIVINITY HALL. 47 
 
 the acknowledged centre of a circle of genial and 
 right-hearted men, most of whom now occupy 
 positions of honour and usefulness in the Church, 
 and all of whom cherish his memory as one of their 
 most sacred possessions. 
 
 It does not appear that Davidson gave himself 
 with much enthusiasm to the work of the Divinity 
 Hall. He had no special taste for the study of 
 scientific theology, and the short and hurried session 
 did not give sufficient opportunity for establishing 
 any bond of sympathy between him and the able 
 and genial men who occupied the professors' chairs. 
 He did not fail, however, to acquire a competent 
 knowledge of the great questions of Bible criticism, 
 and of the facts and principles of ecclesiastical 
 history. Even in the region of dogmatic theology, 
 it was not uncommon for his fellow-students to 
 appeal to him in their perplexities with regard to 
 this or that doctrine about which they were in 
 doubt, and in such cases he never failed to make 
 the doctrine in question the subject of special study. 
 Though it might not deeply interest his own mind, 
 his brotherly concern for the friends he loved was 
 motive sufficient. Whenever he did thus apply him- 
 self to the earnest study of any department of 
 dogma, he revealed a power which, had he been 
 spared to occupy a position in the Church, might 
 have made him an able exponent and defender of 
 the catholic faith. 
 
 At the close of his first Hall session, " not wishing 
 
48 THE STUDENT OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 to eat the bread of idleness any longer," he went to 
 Forres to succeed Mr. George Douglas in the posi- 
 tion of assistant in the Academy, and tutor to the 
 boarders in the house of Mr. Berwick, the Rector. 
 It was characteristic of him that he shrank from 
 the responsibilities even of this humble position. 
 He went almost by compulsion, fearing that his 
 employer would be disappointed in him. His fears 
 were groundless. At the distance of sixteen years 
 the memory of the two sessions he spent in Forres 
 is tenderly cherished by Mr. Berwick and his family, 
 by several of his pupils, by those friends in the 
 town whom he visited occasionally, and specially 
 by his minister, Mr, Watson, who says : " He lives 
 in my memory as a tall, erect, slender young man, 
 with hair and complexion exceedingly fair. His 
 forehead was lofty. Rest, reflection, and deep 
 meaning were in his eye. His aspect and bear- 
 ing were those of natural refinement. He had 
 soul as well as intellect. I liked to feel his pre- 
 sence in the Sanctuary services, and an occasional 
 evening spent with him in our manse was no 
 ordinary pleasure. On these occasions his natural 
 reserve passed off in part, and gleams of wit 
 and imagination began to appear. His reserve 
 was the fruit of modesty, and not of conscious 
 superiority, and seems to have become less as 
 his experience increased." His life in Forres will 
 be best illustrated by extracts from his correspon- 
 dence : — 
 
A TEACHER'S TRIALS. 49 
 
 To Dr. William Douglas. 
 
 Forres, October 15th, 1859. 
 
 .... One of the first welcomes to this approxi- 
 mation to the Ultima T/mle, I received from your letter, 
 which I found awaiting me. " Verily," saith Flame, " my 
 brother hath been before me." 
 
 Well, Javius, hear I am teaching. Now, you suppose 
 that you know the meaning of that word. With all defer- 
 ence to your extensive reading, your great knowledge, your 
 etc., etc., I beg most respectfully to assure you that you do 
 no such thing. You know nothing about the vexation of 
 communicating the mysteries of number to an epitome who 
 stares you in the face with large eyes, and expresses his 
 conviction, in spite of common sense and what he deems a 
 much more important thing — the multiplication table — that 
 5 times 3 are 10, and 5 times 9 are 19. You know nothing, 
 Javius, of the internal commotion one feels when his zeal 
 in the communication of knowledge is suddenly checked by 
 some wretched essence of staring stupidity, who looks him 
 in the face, and gravely tells him that f-o-x spells cat ! ! 
 There is no room for imagination in teaching. I can assure 
 you, Javius, you must never speak of an abstract idea, or a 
 notion, or an opinion, or a conception — far less of objective 
 and subjective. You must only speak of things that are as 
 material and plain and palpable as the proverbial pike-staff, 
 or (rather) the penitential strap. You must never speak of 
 the winds that blow through the realms of history : you must 
 only speak of the straws and feathers that show which way 
 those winds are driving ; never of the troubled sea of human 
 life collectively, but only of the waifs and the wrecks and 
 the broken staves that lie strewn along its shores. Now all 
 this is vexatious and teasing and cramping enough. A 
 teacher is always in prison, his nature is in chains, and the 
 business of his life is to be a hopeless unstriving captive. He 
 
50 THE STUDENT OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 must always live for a pattern or an example, and you know 
 what sort of living that must be. That appears, to me at 
 least, to be the state of the case ; a theory liable to two 
 objections ; I am prejudiced against the business, and I 
 have had little or no experience. Take my advice, however, 
 Javius, and thank God you are not a teacher. 
 
 After all, I like Forres very well ; the consciousness of 
 independence gives life a smack which for me it never had 
 before : for there is a real pleasure in being able to say, as 
 you put your butter on your bread — " I have bought this 
 bread and I have bought this butter ; ergo, I have a right to 
 eat them both. ..." 
 
 To Mr. Scott. 
 
 Forres, November 12, 1859. 
 
 .... Do write immediately, and tell me how you are 
 getting on. 1 can appreciate, and reciprocate too, the 
 desolate portion of your letter ; and many a deep sigh do I 
 heave over the memories of winter nights by old Charlotte's 
 fire (small though it was, and in spite of the brick) ; over 
 social scenes not easily forgotten, and over the cracks that 
 we so often used to enjoy. Alas ! alas ! ! I'm well off here, 
 however, and like it capitally ; am well worked, well fed, 
 zxid^ pretty well slept; and that reminds me that it is " late, 
 late, late on a Saturday nicht," and that I have still to shave. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Forres, December 17th, 1859. 
 'Tis almost Christmas again — a fact which reminds me 
 rather mournfully of the same season a year ago. I say 
 rather mournfully ; for though Forres is a fine, quiet, and 
 even snug little place, I cannot but envy you the privilege 
 you enjoy of passing your holidays in the midst of kinsmen 
 in the " dearest spot of earth." You say I will no doubt 
 think of the jolly night or two we spent last New Year. I 
 
HOME-SICKNESS. 5 1 
 
 have remembered them, and that most vividly ; and how do 
 I wish that the present year I could live them over again. 
 No doubt, as you say yourself, you cannot look forward to 
 such a prospect ; but I only wish I could get alongside of 
 you once more on the journey homewards. Fact is, I do 
 feel dreadfully home-sick now and then : it appears to be a 
 part of my very nature, and I take a kind of delight in 
 cherishing the frailty, if frailty it be. Scarcely a night 
 passes that I do not lie awake a while for the very purpose 
 of brooding over other days, and other scenes, and " old 
 familiar faces," calling up in imagination many a well- 
 remembered Border landscape, many a joyous hour that I 
 can never have repeated in the north. For since we parted 
 at the Waverley station I have not seen one kent face, friend 
 or foe, gentle or simple. I just wish I could spend my 
 Christmas with you south of the Forth, were it even 
 Middlem or the top of Ruberslaw. However, as such a 
 thing is not to be thought of, I must sit me down in 
 contentment, or at least resignation, in the town of Forres, 
 and read my Hebrew Bible, and take things as they 
 corhe. . . . 
 
 To Mr. George Douglas. 
 
 Forres, 17th December, 1859. 
 .... We are in the midst of another snow storm, six 
 inches deep " as far as the eye can reach," and a good deal 
 farther I expect. These hills of Ross and Caithness appear 
 to be a perfect laboratory of that potent old chemist, John 
 Frost ; for I don't think they have ever been entirely free 
 from snow since I had the happiness to settle down in these 
 parts. ... I am still getting on pretty well, and tolerably 
 smoothly too, with exception of a small teapot storm now 
 
 and then, and a squabble or two with and [two of 
 
 the boarders]. . . . Since I wrote you I have been twice 
 out — one of the times at Springfield, and the other at Mrs. 
 
52 THE STUDENT OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 Sclanders'. At the latter place I met Mr. Carruthers of the 
 Inverness Courier, a famous litterateur, whom we heard 
 deliver a fine lecture the same evening. Unfortunately I 
 was seized with one of my fits of abstraction, and unable to 
 rouse myself. I sat dreaming of the south and of the days 
 of other years, and scarcely spoke a word the whole evening. 
 Goose ! ! 
 
 It was while he was at Forres that Davidson had 
 his first experience of inter-sessional examinations by 
 the Presbytery. His letters are full of references to 
 these, of exaggerated groanings when they were im- 
 pending, and humorous descriptions of them when 
 they were over. With regard to these examinations, 
 Mr. Watson says, " In his appearances before the 
 Presbytery, he only once, so far as I remember, did 
 himself full justice. That was in an ' Exercise with 
 additions ' on Hebrews i. 3, ' Who being the bright- 
 ness of His glory and the express image of His 
 person,' etc. In this discourse, which may never have 
 been finished, he put forth his strength, and that to 
 some purpose. With a masterly hand he grasped the 
 leading points of the passage, and presented them in 
 their mutual relations, in language of great force and 
 beauty. The discourse was full of unction and power. 
 On other occasions there were manifestations of the 
 same high order of ability. Nor can we wonder that 
 he should not always have done justice to his powers, 
 when we remember that in addition to six hours of 
 daily school work, he had tutorial duties in the even- 
 ing, and only a limited fund of physical energy." 
 
' PRESB YTER V- GRIPES: 5 3 
 
 To Mr. George Douglas. 
 
 Forres, January 3, i860. 
 " I wish you a happy new year, and many happy returns 
 of the season." This is the last of our hohdays ; therefore, 
 if you find this an ill-natured epistle, lay the blame on 
 circumstances and " Presbytery -gripes." Admirable desig- 
 nation ! And don't I feel them too ? Oh horror ! The 
 17 th, George, Monday fortnight, and only one verse of 
 Hebrew read ! You ask for a treatise on Nosology recog- 
 nising the said gripes as a real and true disease. I don't 
 exactly know of such a work ; but this 1 know, if any one 
 contemplating the compilation of a treatise is desirous of 
 falling in with an exemplifying subject, I am the man. Oh, 
 the ever-present aye-overshadowing cloud, big with over- 
 haulings and questions unanswerable, that hangs over the 
 coming weeks ! Oh, the writhings of consciousness and 
 memory to be swallowed up of their opposites ! Oh, the 
 diaphragmatic sensations that occur mal-a-propos in the 
 midst of some season of unsubstantial repose and frail un- 
 expectancy ! , . . Where did they examine you in the 
 Hebrew? was it in the first chapter given ? and were they 
 strict with Dick and Calvin ? Write soon and tell me, for 
 any sake. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Forres, January i8th, i860, 
 
 I've passed ! Yesterday was the eventful day, and with 
 its dawn, be assured, came many misgivings, many fears, 
 and many tremblings. Nevertheless I, Flame, arose, and 
 girded up my loins, and, resolving to play the man, went 
 to Elgin. There was I introduced to the old men, there 
 was I overhauled. . . . There did I pass with credit, 
 and there, even in the dwelling of the Rev. Adam Lind, did 
 I feed. So it ended, and thereafter we departed, each man 
 to his tent, I, Flame, hugging myself. I am delighted with 
 
54 THE STUDENT OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 your proposal about Macmillan. I have seen one of the 
 numbers, the first, which I have in my possession, it having 
 been sent me by a friend. I should like to subscribe by 
 all means. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Forres, February 14th, i860. 
 .... During the space of one hour for four days a 
 week, I teach a young man who has begun to turn his 
 attention and his studies to the ministry. Of course this 
 deprives me of one of my own hours, so that my private 
 store of leisure is very considerably curtailed. ... I 
 was truly glad to hear of Robert's success. " He'll be a 
 credit till us a'." I shall remit some day for Macmillan, 
 which meantime I expect eagerly. . . . 
 
 To Mr. Scott. 
 
 Forres, April 2nd, i860. 
 If you knew my situation, you would not wonder at my 
 silence. Industry is ever silent, my dear boy. Set that up 
 as a maxim of Thomas, preacher that is to be, and you will 
 presently find that all my offences are hidden under the 
 lee of it. In other words, more directly and less philo- 
 sophically (hence philosophy is sometimes a lady to be kept 
 in the background) — more directly and less philosophically, 
 I say, I have been so busy that I have had scarcely time to 
 put pen to paper, save in the way of cleek-and-porridge- 
 stick-making. We have two examinations per annum here ; 
 one by the Presbytery, the other magisterial. The former 
 of these came off the other day, and, of course, being a new 
 !iian, I had to make every possible exertion to show evi- 
 dence of my efficiency. Hence for the last month I have 
 been drilling, cramming, re-drilling and re-cramming these 
 epitomes with as great a knowledge cargo as they could 
 possibly sail under. The result was a complete success : 
 the fellows behaved splendidly. Oh, had you seen Flame 
 
SCHOOL-EXAMINA TION. 
 
 55 
 
 laying it off, rod in hand and book in head before the 
 Provost, and the priests and scribes and elders of the 
 people. How eloquent he was on the grand moral and 
 physical moulding forces of English History ! how aic fait 
 — how great on the physical structure and the geographico- 
 political conditions of Europe ! ! . . . I was glad to learn 
 that Tom is firmly settled in the south : it will hold our 
 old social fabric together, whose joists and kebars we 
 apprehended were about to go down straightway to dust 
 and dissolution. I am heartily glad at the prospect of 
 continued nitercourse amid old scenes and associations. 
 Teviot and Ale and Jed, and Eildon and Ancrum, are not 
 yet doomed to be merely rich in memories : to me those 
 names still summon up days and scenes of enjoyment 
 hoped for — not yet gone down to the ungenerous past. I 
 don't know how it is that I think so much of that same 
 irreparable Past ; but somehow the physical distance makes 
 me cling to and nestle among the old memories. . . • 
 By the way, I had almost forgotten to speak about the 
 Revivals. The movement has reached our port — Find- 
 horn, a village of i,ooo inhabitants, among whom there are 
 already 170 to 200 cases of deep conviction of sin. For 
 some days the work of the school there (the one I wished 
 for Mat.) could not be carried on. The excitement broke 
 out among the boys, and that still more remarkably than 
 among the adults^4o cases among them. The teacher, 
 named Lee, for the last two years at the Normal, Moray 
 House, has been very active in the work, and has aided the 
 minister very much. I thoroughly believe in the genuine- 
 ness of it all : it is the most remarkable event in the history 
 of Christianity since Pentecost. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Forres, April 21st, i860. 
 I'm in want of a Waddingion [the handbook of Church 
 
56 THE STUDENT OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 History then prescribed for Presbyterial examination]. 
 You'll be able to get me one second-hand .... only 
 be quick for all sakes and my sake. Quick, quick, quick ! 
 
 To the Same, 
 
 Forres, May 9th, i860. 
 The book came all safe to hand, and I feel much obliged 
 to you for the trouble you have taken in the matter. Oh, 
 how hard reading it is ! Dust is a cactus to it — (you're a 
 botanist, and know what a cactus is). I have scarcely been 
 able to settle more than a score of pages — how to finish the 
 rest and the Homily " I find not." Finished, however, they 
 must be. I have not much spare time here; but, as I have 
 never enjoyed the privilege of real employment hitherto, I 
 find the being busy a wonderful luxury, as well as wonderful 
 soother of the conscience. No idle man has an easy con- 
 science, though he may be a comparatively sinless person in 
 other respects. I've felt this in my own experience. 
 
 To Mr. George Douglas. 
 
 Forres, May 9th, i860. 
 I lately had an epistle from Javius, containing about the 
 most valuable possible aphorism for poor souls in such con- 
 dition as I am at present. It is from Carlyle (Javius 
 thinks : /think, however, it must be from some of the lost 
 treatises of Solomon the Son of David). Here it is : 
 " Great is the Majesty of Silence." I forgot to write it in 
 half-text ; but it deserves characters of gold. Don't you 
 think so yourself? It is something so comfortable to a lazy 
 rascal (Flame, e.g. .?) to reflect that the longer he is in 
 answering a letter, the higher is the tower of majesty he 
 builds for himself ! . . . I'm in a mortal fit of " Pres- 
 bytery-gripes " again. In fact, I'm afraid to ask when they 
 
 meet. We have had a dreadful row with [one of the 
 
 boarders], which has kept us all in hot water for some time. 
 
'MAJESTY OF SILENCE.' 57 
 
 ... I wish I could have said that I have been passing 
 my spare hours as pleasantly as yourself. Daisies and 
 buttercups here are still comparative strangers. Recently, 
 however, we have experienced a delightful change of weather, 
 and the buds which had been so long imprisoned by the 
 cold, have all at once burst out, and poured a flood of ver- 
 dure over the whole earth — (I mean round about of course, 
 hyperbole). I am longing for the Idylls. I should have 
 asked you to send them, were it not that I have lashed 
 myself to Waddington and the Homily. What would you 
 advise me to read up for Natural Philosophy before the 
 Presbytery ? It will soon be the examination, and then, 
 then, Hurrah for the right side of the Forth : — 
 
 ' ' For I was reared among the hills, 
 Within a border home." — Bothivcll. 
 
 The sender of the aphorism referred to in the 
 
 foregoing letter — Dr. William Douglas — had been 
 
 thus addressed : — 
 
 Forres, May sth, i860. 
 " Great is the Majesty of Silence." Oh, silent man ! Oh, 
 high and mighty physician ! Oh, holder of a creed whose 
 apostles and prophets are " dumb dogs that do not bark," 
 whose perfect men are deaf mutes, whose " better land" is 
 like " Dreamland, which is a silent land, and all the 
 dwellers in it are deaf and dumb ! " (Prof. Wilson). And 
 if there can be any other name that I can address thee by, 
 let mine exhaustion be mine apology for the omission of it, 
 for the length of the apostrophe hath taken away my breath. 
 Javius, thy motto in the hands of an ambitious man had 
 been a dangerous one. Might not I, Flame, on the 
 strength of the aphorism, have built me an high tower of 
 silence-born majesty in like manner, whose top might have 
 risen and risen, " by the process of the suns," until it 
 *' reached unto heaven." But I, Flame, am a man of lowly 
 
58 THE STUDENT OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 tastes, delighting not in heights and in far-off pinnacles of 
 majesty ; but loving rather the valleys, and the nooks, and 
 the solitudes of life. Thomas Gray described me long ago, 
 Javius, and he found me in a country churchyard. Listen 
 to him, — 
 
 " Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife 
 His sober wishes never learned to stray ; 
 Along the cool sequestered vale of life 
 He kept the noiseless tenor of his way. " 
 
 That's Flame. My character is old-fashioned, and some- 
 what common-place withal ; for there have been multitudes 
 of Flames in all ages. . . . 
 
 To Mr. Scott. 
 
 Forres, June 4th, i860. 
 .... I had been going on quietly with Waddingto7i^ 
 and thinking now and then of my text, but not making 
 any serious push in the matter, the fact being that I did 
 not know when the Presbytery met, and that I was almost 
 afraid to ask. Imagine my consternation when Mr. Watson 
 called one fine Wednesday afternoon, hoping that I was 
 prepared, etc., etc., as the Presbytery met on the following 
 Tuesday, and there wouldn't be another meeting till I was 
 beyond the Grampians. I stated the case despairingly, and 
 was recommended to do what I could within the appointed 
 time, and it should be seen " what could be done." . . . 
 Accordingly, on the Tuesday I presented myself chokeful 
 of Church History and the doctrine of levers (!) — sat 
 patiently some four or five hours — heard three sermons — 
 fed — heard other three sermons — was besought to go my 
 way for this time, and when they had a more convenient 
 season they should call for me — consented and vanished. 
 Fortunately the Gaelic Church of Inverness wished to call a 
 minister, and a meeting was therefore appointed to be held 
 on that day month in the Capital of the Highlands. There 
 
FIRST SERMON. 59 
 
 I am to preach my maiden sermon. Oh, happy GaeHc 
 Church of Inverness ! I am now busy grinding it up, and, 
 hech, sirs, it's dreich darg I find it. Besides, there is 
 another subject on which I haven't seen one syllable, and 
 the book is not to be heard of in the neighbourhood, 
 Davidson's Hermenevtics. Perhaps Fyfe could get it out of 
 the Library, and I will be responsible. It's only a fortnight 
 to the time, so picture my condition — 
 
 " Oh, pity Thomas and remede 
 That stayed is in perplexity." 
 
 .... On Saturday we had a most delightful excursion to 
 a place called Craigellachie, away up Strathspey, where we 
 had a most delightful ramble. We were accompanied by 
 about threescore necessary evils, of whom, however, we saw 
 nothing saving for about twenty minutes to lunch. You 
 may imagine how much I enjoyed it. A week ago, too, we 
 were up the Findhorn — where there is scenery to which I 
 have hitherto seen nothing else approaching ; banks from 
 200 to 300 feet high sheer over, and the river away below, 
 tumbling and foaming over immense rocks that strew its 
 channel. 
 
 To Mr. George Douglas. 
 
 Forres, June 21st, i860. 
 " I have been and gone and done it." I mean I have 
 preached my first sermon — not at Inverness, but at Nairn, 
 to which pretty little place I went by rail the other morning. 
 As I was rather early I went away out the road a good way, 
 struck down a small path to the banks of the Nairn, and 
 there having sat me down under a clump of alders, re- 
 freshed myself on Waddiugton, of which I there got up 
 anew all that I intended to treat them to. After having 
 walked about Nairn and gone round the high towers 
 thereof, to tell and consider her palaces, I found myself at 
 the direction of a civil man, who takes a great deal of snuff, 
 
6o THE STUDENT OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 entering the dreaded precincts of the finest U.P. Church I 
 have seen hereabout, or I daresay any other where either. 
 The menagerie had already been let loose, and the bone 
 of contention the famous Inverness case. . . . All day 
 long they higgled and haggled over this, poor Flame mean- 
 while sitting brimful of a sermon which he was painfully 
 conscious was gradually oozing out of him. It was now 
 3.30, and the Presbyterial feed was at 4 ; Flame was there- 
 fore posted in the pillory after having been "straitly 
 charged " to " engage in prayer very shortly." With much 
 fear and trembling — the " strong men bowing themselves " 
 the while — I got through much better than I had antici- 
 pated. The criticism now commenced. . . . The text 
 
 was Matt. xx. 28, and I was taken to task by for 
 
 not having taken my introduction from the context — the 
 beautiful context, viz., the washing of the disciples' feet ! 
 
 If you find it there give me notice. thought the 
 
 division not a very happy one, but on coming to go over 
 the heads he found he did not know what the division was, 
 
 and had to be refreshed on the subject by . 
 
 " Approve the discourse. It's four o'clock ! " I'll tell you 
 more of it when we meet to dwell together in Edinburgh. 
 
 Davidson's next letter bears a heading which in 
 the after years became very familiar to all his friends. 
 In the spring of i860 his father left Woodhead and 
 abandoned the shepherd life. Seeking an occupation 
 more suited to his advancing years, he settled at 
 Bankend on the Jed Water, close to the town of 
 Jedburgh, where he leased a little holding, consisting 
 of an orchard and some fields. To this new home 
 Davidson came on his first return from Forres. It 
 was such a home as he would himself have chosen, 
 
JEDBURGH. 6l 
 
 - — beside the county town which was the metropolis 
 of the pleasant district, whose bounds the family had 
 never left in all their removals from Oxnam to Kale, 
 from Kale back to Oxnam, and from Oxnam to the 
 banks of Ale, and yet sufficiently far from the bustle 
 of the market-place to suit the taste of one given to 
 solitary musings. There are few finer country towns 
 than Jedburgh. Tt is rich with memories of Saxon 
 times, when Ecgred of Lindisfarne built the little 
 settlement by the stream ; of the feudal ages when 
 armies mustered in the forest and raised the war-cry, 
 " Jethart's here," when kings kept court in the castle, 
 and the monks of St. Ouintin said masses in the 
 abbey ; of the days when Ministers of State watched 
 by the bed where Queen Mary lay nigh to death with 
 the sickness to which she looked back regretfully 
 when gathering sorrows wrung from her the cry, 
 " Would that I had died at Jedburgh ; " of the times 
 when the Earl of Dunbar administered "Jethart 
 justice " to the Border rievers ; of the earlier and 
 more recent years when Samuel Rutherford and the 
 author of TJie Seasons learned their letters in the 
 Grammar School, and when young David Brewster 
 lounged in the workshop where James Veitch was 
 making his telescopes. The town lies in a valley 
 through which a gentle stream winds its way under 
 great cliff's of Old Red Sandstone — the rich ver- 
 milion tint of which contrasts finely with the green 
 of the waving trees that crown and fringe them. It 
 is surrounded with orchards whose produce has won a 
 
^2 THE STUDENT OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 name in far-off cities, whose spring blossomings scent 
 the air and enrich the landscape ; and whose autumn 
 fruits combine with the corn-fields of the encircling 
 slopes to gladden the heart with a sense of fulness 
 and beauty. There is just enough of modern industry 
 to give to the town that air of snugness and com- 
 fort which good wages bring to a frugal population, 
 and not enough to darken the sky or defile the 
 streams. 
 
 If there are grander residences at Jedburgh, there 
 is certainly none more beautifully situated than 
 Bankend. Below the Anna — an open piece of green 
 holm-land on the left bank of the Jed — where in the 
 early days of " The Relief" vast crowds of wor- 
 shippers from far and near used to assemble to 
 celebrate the communion, and listen to the com- 
 manding voice of the younger Boston — the stream is 
 bounded for some two or three hundred yards by an 
 old red sandstone cliff, which rises perpendicularly 
 to a great height from the very edge of the water, 
 with stray trees or bushes of the plantation which 
 waves on its summit, keeping their hold on its pre- 
 cipitous sides. In a snug corner at the lower end 
 of this cliff the house stands with its gable to the 
 water, the steep but now slightly sloping bank rising 
 up at the other end. On the holm in front of the 
 house, between the river and the gradually receding 
 bank, the orchard is planted. Within the orchard 
 there is a pleasant path along the foot of the bank, 
 and following its curve, which was Tom's favourite 
 
BANKEND. 63 
 
 resort when he became too weak for longer walks. 
 This path terminates at a hedge which bounds the 
 orchard, and separates it from a still widening holm 
 of cultivated land that stretches down the stream 
 to the high road and the railway station. On the 
 other side a more beaten path runs from the house 
 to the wooden bridge which crosses the stream and 
 leads to the town. In the middle of the orchard, 
 and at its lower boundary, there are two sycamores 
 of stately proportions and graceful outline that, with 
 their wealth of dark leaves, form a fine contrast to 
 the lighter foliage of the fruit trees. In the seasons 
 of flower and fruit the place looks like a nook in 
 fairyland, and the romance is not broken, but rather 
 deepened by the fact, that from across the water 
 there comes the subdued hum of the machinery of a 
 woollen mill. Altogether it seems an ideal residence 
 for a poet who would bring his dreamings of the past 
 and his communings with nature into relation with 
 the activities and the burden-bearings of to-day. 
 
 To Dr. William Douglas. 
 
 Bankend, Jedburgh, 13th July, i860. 
 .... I now find myself once more in the " pleasant 
 places" wherein "the lines fell" to me originally — viz., the 
 banks of the Jed — a "goodly heritage," too, for we have got 
 a fine large orchard of some 150 trees, and berries beyond 
 calculation. Here I have been vegetating for a week, and 
 now find my roots struck to such a depth as to enable me 
 to maintain a condition of considerable serenity and still- 
 ness. The berries are just ripening, and this consideration 
 will in no small degree add to the attractiveness of the place. 
 
64 THE STUDENT OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 But we may seek for pleasure as we will, I have not found 
 it even yet. It's too delicate a plant for sublunary soils, and 
 belongs, I fear, to the herbarium of another world than this. 
 The prospect of a mess of Hebrew and Greek, salted with 
 Biblical criticism, and peppered with exegetical theology, 
 never fails to reveal itself in all its pungency as the sug- 
 gested, and fore-shadowed, and typified after-reality of my 
 rural feasts of strawberries and cream. . . . 
 
 During his second session at the Divinity Hall, of 
 the prospect of which he speaks so playfully, he was 
 the fellow-lodger of George Douglas — the " Plucius " 
 of the " Order," and at its close he returned to his 
 work at Forres. It is probable that renewed inter- 
 course with his fellow-students in Edinburgh had 
 re-awakened his poetical faculty, which seems to have 
 slumbered or at least to have had no noteworthy 
 outcome, amid the hard work and " Presbytery- 
 gripes " of his first year in the north. Immediately 
 after his return he began to sing once more, and it is 
 evident that disuse had not marred the sweetness of 
 his music. 
 
 To Dr. William Douglas. 
 
 Forres, October 26th, i860. 
 .... I have to inform you that the Flame has been 
 stirred up within the last few days, and the result has been 
 a certain spark, a scintillation, in short, an emanation^ to 
 use the orderial phrase — the which I do enclose for your 
 recorderial verdict. It's altogether in a new vein, as you 
 will see; in fact, it's a song. Now, read it carefully. I 
 have enclosed it in a sealed envelope, in order that I may 
 lecture you on the subject before letting you loose upon it. 
 A song, as I take it, ought to consist of one idea, of course 
 
IVNA T IS A SONG ? 65 
 
 varied in view, in mode of presentation, and so on; but, 
 after all, one idea. Of course I mean main idea ; for otie 
 idea literally would be neither more nor less than just harp- 
 ing on the same string — ^just humbug. One idea must have 
 a number of others to rest upon — more than one, look you 
 — for if it were one idea on another one, why the one, it 
 stands to reason, would be as big as the other, and so you 
 would have two main ideas. Well, then, one main idea rest- 
 ing on several others — two or more — but more, at all events, 
 than one. No doubt, as you may think, and as I think too, 
 everything in the literary line must have one idea — every- 
 thing from an epic like Paradise Lost down to an epitaph on 
 a chimney-sweep. But in the song I think the distinctive 
 feature is, that the main idea never must be permitted to 
 drop or slide out of sight; it must always be visible— a 
 visible thing — the visible thing. It must rest on the subor- 
 dinate ones — being above them as the seat of a chair is 
 above the legs of it. Well, this song of mine consists of one 
 idea, resting upon others — more than one — viz., two, which, 
 I take it, gives it at all events simplicity. There's nothing 
 transcendental about it. Well, these two are gathered both 
 up into one again in the last verse (and there are only three), 
 wherein the whole thing may be considered as concentrated. 
 Now, Javius, there's a lecture for you. I am almost afraid to 
 revise the two pages over which it extends, for I have an im- 
 pression that it will appear great stuff. But it's what I have 
 been thinking for the last ten minutes. So, now just read the 
 thing. I am afraid you will have conjured up some stupendous 
 idea from the stuff I have been speaking as an introduction 
 to it — sounding of trumpets, as it were — parturiunt montes, 
 nascetur — What ! O son of ^'Esculapius ? a mus ? Now, give 
 me your real opinion of it. To say truth, I like it a little my- 
 self, but don't let that have anything to do with your verdict, 
 which I request you will give me as soon as possible. . . , 
 
 E 
 
66 THE STUDENT OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 Within the sealed envelope the song was found, with 
 the instruction written on it, " Read it very slowly," 
 and the N.B., " I have just named it after the timber, 
 as that is the only name I can think of." It is here 
 given as slightly amended, in a letter dated a few 
 weeks later: — 
 
 THE AULD ASH TREE. 
 There grows an ash by my hour door, 
 
 And a' its boughs are buskit braw 
 In fairest weeds o' simmer green, 
 
 And birds sit singing on them a'. 
 But cease your sangs, ye blithesome birds, 
 
 An' o' your liltin' let me be ; 
 Ye bring deid simmers frae their graves 
 To weary me, to weary me ! 
 
 There grows an ash by my hour door, 
 
 And a' its boughs are clad in snaw ; 
 The ice-drap hings at ilka twig. 
 
 And sad the nor' wind soughs thro' a'. 
 Oh, cease thy mane, thou norlan' wind, 
 
 And o' thy wailin' let me be ; 
 Thou brings deid winters frae their graves 
 
 To weary me, to weary me ! 
 
 Oh, I wad fain forget them a' ; 
 
 Remember'd guid but deepens ill, 
 As gleids o' licht far seen by nicht 
 
 Mak' the near mirk but mirker still. 
 Then silent be, thou dear auld tree — - 
 
 O' a' thy voices let me be ; 
 They bring the deid years frae their graves 
 
 To weary me, to weary me ! 
 
 To Mr. George Douglas. 
 
 Forres, November ist, i860. 
 .... I had an epistle from Javius about a week 
 ago, which was awfully short, and arga/ could not contain 
 much news. However, he has been buying Carlyle's 
 
HENRY SCOTT RID DELL. 6y 
 
 Heroes and Sartor. I wish I could come across them 
 here, too. I was sorry I could not finish them in Edin- 
 burgh. There's precious little reading here, as you know, 
 for us. The club-books, however, are sometimes interest- 
 ing. That for the past month was Prescott's Conquest of 
 Alexico — a most enchanting book. I read it, however, 
 some four years ago. Begin and read it if ever you come 
 across it. . . , I have been writing a song, for which 
 Mr. Johnstone is going to compose a tune. Perhaps I 
 may enclose a copy for you herewith, if I can be bothered 
 to write one out for your criticism. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Forres, November 23rd, i860. 
 .... I have been twice asked to preach since I 
 came here — both times at Burghead. " I begged to 
 decline " in both cases, having nothing presentable. How- 
 ever, in case I should again be called upon, I am going 
 to write a popular discourse as soon as I can. I am 
 much obliged for your criticism of the " Ash Tree," but 
 I have been thinking it over, and I cannot just see how 
 the third verse contains any remark outside the idea of 
 the song ; but of course I may be wrong, and you may 
 be right for all that. However, I have got the judgment 
 of one whom both of us, I think, consider very competent 
 to estimate a thing of the kind. I had the impudence to 
 enclose it with a few explanatory sentences to no less a 
 person than the author of what I consider to be your 
 best song, viz., " Scotland's Hills " — in short, I sent it 
 to Henry Scott Riddell, and I have had a long and flatter- 
 ing epistle from him, which I will send you to read by 
 and by. I set no small store by it. Here are the open- 
 ing words of it : — " I received your letter of date 30th 
 October, enclosing your song of the ' Ash Tree ' with much 
 pleasure, and I regret that circumstances have conspired 
 
6S THE STUDENT OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 to prevent me from acknowledging it sooner. The song, 
 according to my thought and feeHng in regard to it, 
 breathes the true spirit of simple Scottish song. This kind 
 of poetry I have often thought is, unless to him who 
 naturally possesses the genius to produce it, the most 
 difficult of all others," etc., etc. Don't you think that 
 something worth while now ? 
 
 He then goes on to ask Mr. Douglas — as he asks 
 his brother William in a letter of the same date — 
 to subscribe, and get others to subscribe, for the 
 Minstrelsy of the Scottish Glens, which Mr. Scott 
 Riddell was then proposing to publish. He thus 
 urges his request : — 
 
 Except Ballantyne, I know of no other poet at the 
 present time who is doing anything to keep alive our dear 
 old traditional style of song ; so I think we who profess 
 to have a love for the poetry of our own land, and a love, 
 too, for our own distinct nationality, with the preservation 
 of which that poetry has so much to do, ought to do all 
 that lies in our power, little though that may be, to get 
 a hearing for the good old minstrel man, now that he has 
 struck his " guid auld harp ance main" 
 
 To Dr. William Douglas. 
 
 Forres, January 12th, 1861. 
 
 .... I beg to inform you of a curious physiologico- 
 psychological fact. Yoji don't knoiu you're born yet. If you 
 were Flame you would. Imagine a poor fellow labour- 
 ing hard six hours a day in public, and two in private, 
 and living the rest of the time in character of model and 
 example to the rising generation. Does he eat ? then 
 he must eat in a model way. Does he drink ? the 
 potatory habits of a dozen immortalities are dependent 
 
TRIALS OF A TEACHER. 69 
 
 in part on the manner in which he drains his tumbler. 
 Does he go to bed ? then he must doff his raiment with 
 the last degree of circumspection. Does he sleep ? then 
 let him in sleep be on his good behaviour ; let him snore 
 not, or if he does snore, then let him snore genteelly. 
 Does he get out of bed ? then let his rising up be after 
 the manner of a Lord Chesterfield. Does he wash him- 
 self? then let him perform his ablutions daintily, deftly, 
 dapperly — in short, to perfection. Does he ? — but you're 
 tired, and so am I. In fact, a man's always in harness, 
 he can never lay aside the pedagogue. . . . 
 
 The rest of the letter treats of the illustration to 
 "Ariadne," which had then appeared in the Cornhill. 
 
 To Mr. George Douglas. 
 
 Forres, February 14th, 1S61. 
 
 .... The Cardross case is kicking up an immense 
 deal of stoiir — choking the throats of every poor wight 
 who ventures to open a Scotch newspaper for the time 
 being. I hear we are to have a meeting here, too, on the 
 subject. I'm on the Free Church side for once. What 
 do you ''go in for"? I've got an instalment of Mac- 
 millan within the last few days, and am getting a rare 
 revel just now. Behind all, however, hangs my sermon 
 suggesting itself unceasingly, and of course with the usual 
 amount of unpleasant anticipations, not to mention present 
 brain-cudgelling — in short, I've a downright attack of 
 " Presbytery gripes," and I need say no more. You 
 recollect last August "rehearsals," I've no doubt. . . . 
 
 To Dr. William Douglas. 
 
 Forres, March i6th, 1861. 
 .... I was before the Presbytery the other day giving 
 them a sermon, for which I got no end of praise from the 
 priests, with the exception of one, who thought there was 
 
7o THE STUDENT OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 rather a lack of Catechism (the phrase is mine, but that's the 
 gist of his exceptions). What think you of Flame's discourse 
 being lauded for its " originality " (by the carper, too), for 
 its " sententiousness," for being " sparkling and yet pro- 
 found." I have had thoughts of writing a commentary on 
 the four Gospels ever since !....! have been thinking 
 on the subject of " Hero " for some time, with the view of 
 making a rhyme out of it, but as yet have made little or no 
 progress. 
 
 At the summer vacation of 1861, Davidson bade 
 farewell to Forres. He liked the place and the 
 friends with whom he was associated there, but his 
 work was burdensome ; it left him too little time 
 for study, or even for general reading. After his 
 third session at the Hall, he found employment in 
 Edinburgh as assistant in Dr. Douglas' School. This 
 engagement, with some hours of private teaching, 
 gave him the means of support till he was licensed. 
 The great advantage of the change was that he had 
 more spare time, and that it was entirely at his own 
 command. He had also the stimulus of intercourse 
 with fellow-students of congenial tastes. In the 
 winter of 186 1-2 he lodged with Mr. Elliot and 
 Mr. Gibson, afterwards of Auchterarder — " Chris- 
 tianity-in-its-relation-to-Politics Gibson," as Davidson 
 called him, to distinguish him from another friend 
 of the same name. In the following winter George 
 and Robert Douglas were his companions, and after 
 George was licensed, early in the spring of 1863, 
 Robert and he lived alone. 
 
 Early in this period of winter residence in Edin- 
 
MYS PIE'S DEN. y\ 
 
 burgh, Davidson formed another association, which 
 was destined to exercise a powerful influence on his 
 future. In the sister of one of his fellow-students, 
 Miss Alison Hay Dunlop, he found a companion of 
 kindred tastes, who cared for the books in which he 
 delighted, and shared his enthusiasm for poetry and 
 for music. All through his wanderings as a pro- 
 bationer, and during the long years of trouble, he 
 wrote his weekly letter,^ and the letter which he 
 received in reply was one of the joys that lightened 
 his darkness. In this attachment he found a new 
 motive for intellectual activity. 
 
 To this and the other influences that have been 
 noted may be ascribed the fact that the latter half 
 of his theological course was more fruitful of literary 
 work than the period spent in Forres. Early in 1862 
 he took a short excursion to Fife in company with 
 Mr. Elliot and Mr. White. After his return he wrote 
 a song, the reading of which on these pages will 
 recall to his fellow-students many a pleasant night 
 when, in their social gatherings, they heard his well- 
 remembered voice singing — 
 
 myspie's den. 
 
 Blithe hae I been in Myspie's Den, 
 Blithe hae I been in Falkland Ha' ; 
 
 The hours o' Kiel I lo'e them weel, 
 
 But Leven Links are best o' a'. 
 
 O blithe hoc I been, etc. 
 
 ^ The author has gratefully to acknowledge his obligation to this 
 correspondent for the use of a MS. volume containing some extracts 
 
72 THE STUDENT OE THEOLOGY. 
 
 Oh, cule is the shade in Myspie's Den, 
 An' the sun shines fair on Falkland Ha' ; 
 
 But the mune that blinks on Leven Links 
 Has charms for me abune them a'. 
 O blithe hae I been, etc. 
 
 Oh, it's saft croons the burn in Myspie's Den, 
 An' the wind sighs low round Falkland Ha' ; 
 
 But there's a voice by the Leven Links 
 Has wiled my vera heart awa'. 
 O blithe hae I been, etc. 
 
 Oh, the brier blooms bonnie in Myspie's Den, 
 An' the roses red by Falkland Ha' ; 
 
 But there are lips by the Leven Links 
 I trow are sweeter than them a'. 
 O blithe hae I been, etc. 
 
 A visit to his beloved Border-land, at the close of 
 summer in the same year, suggested to him the 
 Reverie which, in its original form, he named " Upon 
 the Hills," but which, when revised and slightly 
 altered in 1868, he designated — 
 
 ON THE CHEVIOTS. 
 
 A REVERIE AT THE END OF SUMMER. 
 
 Once more, once more upon the hills ! 
 
 No more the splendour quivering bright. 
 
 Which finger laid at summer height 
 Upon the lips of half the rills, 
 
 Pours on them, but the year's most mellow light, 
 
 Far through yon opening of the vale, 
 
 Upon the slopes of Teviotdale, 
 The green has ta'en a fainter tinge ; 
 
 It is the time when flowers grow old, 
 And summer trims her mantle fringe 
 
 With stray threads of autumnal gold. 
 
 from such letters as were likely to prove of interest to the general 
 reader, and were needful for the completeness of the work ; also for the 
 stanzas of Davidson's latest poem. 
 
ON THE CHEVIOTS. 73 
 
 The west wind blows from Liddesdale ; 
 
 And as I sit — between the springs 
 Of Bowmont and of Cayle — 
 
 To my half-listening ear it brings 
 All floating voices of the hill — ■ 
 
 The hum of bees in heather bells, 
 
 And bleatings from the distant fells, 
 The curlew's whistle fair and shrill. 
 And babblings from the restless rill 
 
 That hastes to leave its lone hill-side, 
 And hurries on to sleep in Till, 
 
 Or join the tremulous flow of Teviot's sunny tide. 
 
 It has not changed the old hill tune I 
 
 And marks that years in me have wrought 
 
 Fade as its low familiar croon 
 
 Wakens by turns full many a thought, 
 And many an olden fancy brought 
 From glooms of long oblivion ; 
 
 Forlornest fragments torn and strewn 
 
 Of dreams which I have dreamed at noon, 
 Long since, when Summer led a fairer June, 
 
 And wealthier autumns spread the slopes, 
 
 And younger heart nursed larger hopes 
 Of bounties that the years should bring. 
 Nor dreamed of all the care and all the warfaring. 
 
 Oh, western wind, so soft and low. 
 
 Long-lingering by furze and fern. 
 Rise ! From thy wing the langour throw, 
 
 And by the marge of mountain tarn. 
 
 By rushy brook, and lonely cairn. 
 Thy thousand bugles take, and blow 
 
 A wilder music up the fells ! 
 
 Thy whispered spells — 
 About ray heart I feel them twined ; 
 
 And all the landscape far around 
 
 'Neath their still strength lies thrall'd and bound ; 
 The sluggard clouds, the loitering streams, 
 And all the hills are dreaming dreams. 
 
 And I, too, dream with them, O western wind I 
 
74 THE STUDENT OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 This morn I thought to linger here 
 
 Till fall of evening and the dew — 
 To think some fresher thought perchance, or rear 
 
 Old hopes in forms and colours new ; 
 Then homeward by the burn-side wend, 
 
 When over Cheviot keen and clear. 
 The moon look'd down upon the land. 
 
 But sad sweet spots hath each lost year— 
 As ruins have their crevice-flowers 
 
 That sprinkle beauty o'er decay ; 
 And I've been sitting hours on hours, 
 
 While those old seasons hovering near 
 Beguiled me of to-day ! 
 
 I said that they were faded out, 
 
 The lines that years in me have wrought. 
 
 Alas ! there is no hand to smooth 
 Life's graven record from our brows ; 
 
 Fate drives us from the fields of youth, 
 And no returning step allows. 
 Let me no more, then, with reverted eyes — 
 Let me no more with covetous sighs, 
 Gaze at the light which on them lies. 
 
 But come, assail me without ruth. 
 
 Pains of the life that's still my own ! 
 
 Crowd out of sight the time that's gone, 
 Come, living cares ; and come, the hour's anxieties. 
 
 On his return to Edinburgh from a short spring 
 holiday in 1863, he brought with him this lyric, 
 which he sung to the tune — " There grows a bonnie 
 brier-bush in oor kail-yaird " : — 
 
 PRIMROSES. 
 
 It's far within yon Forest in the spring o' the year, 
 And deep intil yon glen I pu'd a Primrose for my Dear ; 
 And in amang the buds o' a broon hazel tree. 
 It's up there gat a wee bird and sang a sang to me. 
 
JEDWATER. 75, 
 
 Oh the Spring-time it comes an' the Primroses blaw, 
 An' saft young hearts Love wiles them awa' ; 
 But sune and ere the Simmer the Primroses decay, 
 An' wae's me for Love that it blumes but a day ! 
 
 Oh it's deep within yon Wildwood an' doon beside yon 
 brae, 
 
 I thocht on what the wee bird sang, an' thocht till I was 
 wae ; 
 
 But out frae 'mang the leaves o' the green Ivie, 
 
 It's up there gat a gaucie Merle an' liltit to me. 
 Oh the Primroses blume an' the Primroses fade, 
 But green the AVoodbine grows in shine and in shade ; 
 And there be true hearts where Love downa die, 
 Then leeze thee on the lassie that's aye leal to thee I 
 
 His short visit home in July of the same year^ 
 betw^een the close of the school and the opening of 
 his last session at the Hall, resulted in the com- 
 position of a lyric, to a tune of which he was very 
 fond, " The Blacksmiths of Cologne," written or 
 arranged by Stephen Glover : — 
 
 JEDWATER. 
 
 Yestreen I roamed by Jedwater, 
 
 When the sun was set and the dew was doun, 
 An' there was a sang in Jedwater, 
 
 An' my Ailie's name was its tune. 
 It sang o' her een, it sang o' her hair, 
 
 An' it sang o' her neck o' the lily fine ; 
 But aye the sweetest it sang o' her heart. 
 
 My Ailie's heart that is mine ! 
 
 It's up an' doun by Jedwater 
 
 I gaed and listened that ae sweet tune, 
 
 O it's up and doon by Jedwater, 
 Till it glentit under the mune. 
 
j6 THE STUDENT OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 O her deep, deep een ! O her dark, dark hair ! 
 
 And her lip that is red as the bluid-red wine ! 
 But sing, sweet River, sing aye of her heart — 
 
 My AiHe's heart that is mine ! 
 
 Meanwhile Davidson was working faithfully as a 
 student. His exercises and sermons for Hall and 
 Presbytery — most of which have been preserved — 
 bear marks of extensive general reading and of 
 careful thought. There is no evidence that he was 
 in any large measure imbued with the spirit of 
 speculation which in these days has taken hold of 
 students of theology. He seems to have been con- 
 tent to accept the system of belief authorised by 
 the Church to whose ministry he aspired, but he 
 accepted it in a catholic spirit. He was incapable 
 of understanding why minute doctrinal divergence 
 should produce alienation between Christian men. 
 It was natural that)-his sympathies should be much 
 more with that side of Christian truth which lies 
 toward his favourite region of poetry and art, than 
 with that which lies toward the region of philosophy. 
 His religious life depended less on the letter of 
 Christian doctrine than on the spirit which is 
 breathed by men whose modes of formulating the 
 truth are far apart. In his essays and discourses 
 he brought his varied culture, his knowledge of 
 literature and his knowledge of history, as well as 
 his own experience of human life, to bear on the 
 illustration of the truth he was called to set forth. 
 His style was always severely correct and some- 
 
REJECTION B Y PRESB YTER Y. 77 
 
 times it was terse and pointed. There are not 
 awanting fine gleams of poetic fancy and passages 
 of rare beauty. AH these qualities of thought and 
 style are found in a sermon on Rom. i. 16 — " I am 
 not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the 
 power of God unto salvation to every one that 
 believeth " — -which he delivered before the Presby- 
 tery of Edinburgh in March 1863. The reception 
 which this sermon met with at the hands of the 
 Presbytery is truly astonishing. It was torn to 
 pieces by hostile criticism, and was ultimately 
 rejected. The reader of it looks in vain for any- 
 thing to justify so extreme — and, happily — so rare 
 an exercise of presbyterial prerogative. It is amaz- 
 ing that in a court, some of whose members were 
 able and scholarly, no one was found to direct the 
 attention of his brethren to the deep spiritual tone 
 of the discourse, and to the quite exceptional — 
 though necessarily undeveloped — power which it 
 reveals. Davidson felt the treatment to which he 
 was subjected very keenly, but, according to his 
 wont, he was able to extract amusement even from 
 his trial. He composed a doggerel verse, begin- 
 ning, " Woe's me that I rejected am," which he used 
 to sing to the tune Coleshill. He wrote a description 
 of the meeting to Mr. Bruce, giving little sketches 
 of his various critics, and of their depreciatory 
 remarks. The letter has, unfortunately, been de- 
 stroyed, but in many a gathering of his friends in 
 the west it was read with much enjoyment. There 
 
y8 THE STUDENT OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 was no trace of bitterness in its tone, unless indeed 
 that is to be found in his reference to one young 
 presbyter — who had been his fellow-student and 
 who, with questionable taste, had spoken with 
 special severity of the preacher and his sermon. 
 He wrote of him a memorable sentence, which 
 has been preserved : " Bruce, I have broken bread 
 with this man ; I have cracked jokes with him, 
 though, to tell the truth, I had generally to act as 
 both legs of the nut-cracker myself. Well, this man 
 , even he has lifted up his heel against me." 
 
 His letters at this period are comparatively rare, 
 and none of those which have been preserved are 
 specially noteworthy. They are occupied for the 
 most part with hurried, but always humorous, 
 accounts of the ongoings of the circle of student 
 friends in Edinburgh, with shorter references to his 
 own work, and with fuller pictures of some holiday 
 excursions into the country. He was in the midst 
 of his chosen friends, and was not impelled, as in 
 Forres and during later years of isolation, to make 
 up by regular and careful correspondence for the 
 lack of nearer fellowship. 
 
 One of his letters to Mr. George Douglas contains 
 the following note, which fitly closes the record of 
 his student life: — "Yesterday, Feb. 2, 1864, I was 
 licensed ! " 
 
POSITION OF A PROBATIONER. 79 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ^Ite probationer. 
 
 Position of a Probationer — Romance of Wandering Life — Old 
 Probationer — First Sermon — Stornovvay — Sermon-making — Eng- 
 land — Glasgow — Dublin — Cullybackey— Larry M 'Kie — Reading 
 the Line — Sixtowns — Aldershott — Sermon-making again — "In the 
 Fair Spring Weather" — Otterburn — Gairney Bridge — -Orkney — 
 A Night Walk across the Moor — Sandwick — Kirkwall — Shapin- 
 shay — Pierowall — A Probationer's Week in an Orkney Station — 
 Pitrodie — " A Love Song in Winter "—The " Yang-tsi-Kiang " 
 — Wishaw — Black-day — Hymns and Church-building — Howgate — 
 Winter Journey to the North — "The Last Straw" — A Doctor's 
 Verdict — Last Sermon. 
 
 The position of the probationer in the Presbyterian 
 Church corresponds in some particulars to that 
 of the deacon under the Episcopal order. He is 
 authorised to preach, but not to dispense the 
 sacraments. His office is avowedly transitional ; 
 he only holds it till he obtains a title to a higher 
 dignity. But there is this distinction, the pro- 
 bationer is not in " orders " ; he has not re- 
 ceived the rite of ordination ; the title Rev. is 
 only given to him by courtesy, and never in official 
 documents ; he wears the pulpit gown, but not the 
 
8o THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 bands ; he is not regarded as having attained the 
 office of the ministry, but as being only a proba- 
 tioner for that office. In the Established and Free 
 Churches he generally obtains, as soon as he is 
 licensed, an appointment as assistant or missionary 
 to some clergyman, whose parochial or congrega- 
 tional duties he shares. While occupying this 
 position, he is on the outlook for vacant churches, 
 in which he tries to get a " hearing," in the hope 
 that his gifts may commend themselves to the 
 electoral body in some congregation, and that thus 
 he may attain the coveted position of an ordained 
 minister. This arrangement has the obvious advan- 
 tage of introducing a young man from the first to 
 the practical duties of his profession, and of giving 
 him the benefit of intimate association Avith one 
 who has had experience of these duties. But on 
 the other hand, it has this disadvantage, that it 
 gives him no regular opportunity of appearing as 
 a candidate in vacant pulpits. If he has left 
 college with a high reputation this is of little 
 moment, for then his services are eagerly sought 
 by congregational leaders and members of " com- 
 mittees of supply," but if unambitious of academic 
 fame, or unable to attain it, he has occupied an 
 average position, his chance of admission to vacan- 
 cies is dependent largely on the private influence 
 he can command, or on his ability to commend 
 himself to the men of authority whose advice is 
 sought by congregational patrons. 
 
IN UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 8 1 
 
 In the United Presbyterian Church a different 
 arrangement prevails. Immediately after license, 
 the name of each preacher is placed on an author- 
 ised list of probationers — " the list," as it is 
 familiarly called in denominational parlance — which 
 is under the control of a small select Committee 
 of Distribution. This Committee is charged with 
 the duty of apportioning the vacant churches 
 among the preachers, giving to each as many 
 appointments for the quarter as the relation between 
 the number of vacancies and the number of 
 preachers will allow. The attempt is fairly made 
 to balance unavoidable inequalities in the appoint- 
 ments of one quarter, by giving to the man whose 
 lot it has been to preach in isolated districts and 
 in poorer charges, his next appointments in larger 
 and more central churches. The almost mechanical 
 fairness of this arrangement is only interfered with 
 when vacant churches take advantage of the privi- 
 lege allowed them of asking a " hearing " of any 
 preachers — not more than two in each quarter — of 
 whose names and abilities they have received informa- 
 tion. The same Committee is charged with the duty 
 of sending the preachers, when they are not employed 
 in the vacancies, to occupy the pulpits of ministers 
 who may require their services. The preachers are 
 remunerated for their work by payment for each Sab- 
 bath according to a fixed rate, corresponding to the 
 amount of the stipend paid by the church in which 
 they preach. They are also entitled to a week's 
 
82 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 board : lodgings are provided for them in the 
 vacancies, while in settled charges they are inmates 
 of the manse. 
 
 These details, which it is necessary to give to 
 make many passages in Davidson's letters intelli- 
 gible, will show that the probationer has in the 
 United Presbyterian Church a better defined posi- 
 tion than in the other denominations. He is a 
 recognised institution. He receives as a right, and 
 never begs as a favour his opportunities of obtaining 
 preferment. If there are restrictions to which he is 
 bound to submit, there are compensating privileges 
 which he is entitled to claim. The chief drawback 
 to the arrangement is that it inevitably leads con- 
 gregations to judge of men too exclusively by their 
 pulpit gifts. Inquiries into scholarly attainments 
 and general ability are not so common as in the 
 other churches. There is not the same opportunity 
 for men of high culture, who lack to some extent 
 the power of effective utterance, attaining a posi- 
 tion where their gifts can be used for the general 
 good of the Church. 
 
 There is an air of romance about the wandering 
 life to which the United Presbyterian probationer 
 is at once introduced. He is sent east and west, 
 north and south, at the bidding of the Committee. 
 He sees new cities, and unexplored districts of 
 country become familiar to him. He has large 
 opportunities of acquainting himself with various 
 men and various manners. In his frequent jour- 
 
ROMANCE OF WANDERING LIFE. 83 
 
 neyings he meets the commercial traveller and the 
 tourist. He can study human nature in its mani- 
 fold peculiarities as illustrated in the eldership and 
 the beadleship of the churches where he preaches. 
 He enjoys social intercourse in the pleasant manses 
 where from time to time he sojourns, and he has 
 plenty of time for solitary reflection in the lodgings 
 to which he is consigned in outlying stations and 
 in vacant charges. 
 
 In former days, the first equipment for his work 
 which the probationer had to provide on receiving 
 license, was a horse, on which he rode from church 
 to church, with his sermons and changes of raiment 
 packed in his saddle-bags. He was then more 
 warmly welcomed than, perhaps, he is now, when 
 he arrived at some country manse to which news- 
 papers seldom penetrated, bringing with him tidings 
 of what was going on in Church and State — and 
 it was in those days reckoned a special sign of 
 grace to be kind to the preacher's horse. If he 
 had no appointment for the Sabbath following his 
 engagement, he was generally welcome to prolong 
 his stay beyond the period when his legal right to 
 bed and board came to an end. He would await 
 the return of the master of the house from the 
 " Sacramental occasion " at which he had been 
 assisting, would ride forth with him on his pastoral 
 visits, and perchance share his pulpit work on 
 Sabbath in return for the extended hospitality. It 
 was only stingy housekeepers who sometimes sought 
 
84 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 to speed his parting by loudly given orders for a 
 liberal breakfast, " because the preacher, poor lad, 
 had a long journey before him." There are men 
 still living who can remember the probationer of 
 the old school as he rode forth on his thick-set 
 cob, with his powdered wig appearing below his 
 broad-brimmed hat, which generally bore marks of 
 wind and weather ; with his Scottish plaid across 
 his shoulders ; with knee-breeches, furred stockings, 
 and buckled shoes, and the saddle-bags behind 
 jogging up and down, keeping time to the easy 
 trot by which he rode along. Instances were by 
 no means rare of men who never got beyond the 
 probationary period, but who, having overlived their 
 young am.bitions, and having forgotten their pleasant 
 dreams of churches and manses of their own, 
 devoted themselves unmurmuringly to the duties of 
 the wandering life. They and their horses were 
 familiar objects on every highway within the bounds 
 of their Presbytery ; the men uncovered and the 
 women dropped their curtseys as reverently as to 
 " the minister himsel'." Their slender stock of 
 sermons had been exhausted in every pulpit, but 
 they were none the less welcome at the manse, 
 for they had never failed to alight at some road- 
 side shop to buy " sweeties " for the children ; they 
 could talk to the minister of the old student-days 
 at Selkirk, and of the wisdom and learning of Dr. 
 Lawson ; and they had gathered in their many 
 journeyings much knowledge invaluable to the 
 
OLD PROBATIONER. 85 
 
 house-mother, as to the management of her garden 
 and her cow, and even as to the upbringing and 
 doctoring of her bairns. 
 
 The old probationer has disappeared — hke so much 
 else that one loves to think of — before the advance of 
 the steam-ship and the railway, but improved means 
 of locomotion have introduced a new element of 
 romance into the preacher's life. He has longer 
 journeyings than of old. He gathers experience over 
 a wider field. His appointments for one quarter may 
 send him here and there among the midland counties 
 of Scotland ; in the next he may have to journey to 
 Ultima Thule, and find his way over moorland and 
 fen, or across stormy waters, to the diff'erent preach- 
 ing stations in Orkney and Shetland. His next 
 location may be in the Lewis or the Isle of Skye, or 
 he may be sent over to Ireland to minister to the 
 small congregations of the Presbytery that remained 
 apart from the General Assembly in protest against 
 the Regiinn donmn. After fulfilling another set of 
 engagements in Scotland, he may receive orders from 
 the Clerk of the Committee to cross the Border and 
 exercise his gifts among the congregations in 
 England, which till recently were an integral part of 
 the United Presbyterian Church, and which still 
 remain in close federal relation to it. When the 
 period of probation is short there is a charm in this 
 life of extensive travel and ever-varying scene. To a 
 man like Davidson, with a quick eye for peculiarities 
 of character, with a power of adapting himself to cir- 
 
86 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 cumstances and of deriving positive enjoyment even 
 from hardships, the life on which he entered in the 
 spring of 1864 was in many respects congenial and 
 pleasant. 
 
 With characteristic reserve he carefully concealed 
 from his friends where he was to preach his first 
 sermon. He did not venture to preach at all on the 
 first Sabbath after he was licensed, but delayed for a 
 week, because, as he says, in a letter dated February 
 3rd, 1864, "I have a horrid hesitation in delivery, 
 which I believe is due to imperfect committal, so I'm 
 going in strong for learning one thoroughly, and thus 
 gaining as large a stock of assurance at first as I 
 possibly can." The preacher's first sermon is indeed 
 no ordinary trial. The student has had experience in 
 reading essays in the class-room, in making speeches 
 to debating societies, and even in preaching before his 
 fellow-students and the professors in the Hall, and 
 before the grave and reverend seniors in the Presby- 
 tery ; but when he has for the first time to rise in the 
 midst of a congregation assembled for the worship of 
 God, to conduct their devotions with no prayer-book 
 to read from, and no litany to chant, and to recite 
 verbatim, without the aid of notes, a carefully written 
 sermon, which must at least be half-an-hour in length, 
 and ought to be longer if the lad would begin his 
 career with a sound reputation ; when he realises that 
 he is not now delivering an exercise to be criticised, 
 but a solemn message to which simple men and 
 women are listening for their spiritual good ; when 
 
FIRST SERMON. 8/ 
 
 he looks around him and sees among his audience 
 grey-haired elders whose life-experience has given 
 them deeper insight into the things of God than he 
 himself has attained through all his years of study, it 
 is no wonder that he is overwhelmed with a sense of 
 responsibility. On the whole, Davidson acted wisely 
 when he refused to tell his friends where he was to 
 make his first essay as a preacher of the Gospel, It 
 was desirable that in the trying hour no familiar face 
 should be looking up to disconcert him. 
 
 His earliest appointments seem to have been to 
 churches in or near Edinburgh ; but in midsummer 
 he received marching orders to find his way across the 
 Minch, to occupy the pulpit of a recently-planted 
 congregation in Stornoway. He began his work 
 there about the longest day, and continued it for five 
 Sundays. It was a pleasant time of year for the first 
 of his distant expeditions, and he seems to have 
 enjoyed it thoroughly. He had there a new experi- 
 ence. A preacher's earliest sermons are usually those 
 which he has prepared on prescribed texts for Hall or 
 Presbytery. These remnants of his student days, 
 altered and amended to suit popular audiences, had 
 hitherto served Davidson, but his lengthened location 
 in the Lewis exhausted his old material, and he had 
 to begin to write discourses from texts of his own 
 choosing. It is interesting to notice the subjects 
 which suggested themselves to his mind in those long 
 summer days, Avhen he was sojourning in the distant 
 island. He turned, first of all, most fitly, to Psalm 
 
88 THE PROBA TIONER. 
 
 civ., and wrote a sermon from the words, " My medi- 
 tation of Him shall be sweet." In this discourse 
 there are clear traces of his circumstances and sur- 
 roundings. It opens thus : — 
 
 It is not good for a man to be always alone. " Iron 
 sharpeneth iron ; so doth the countenance of a man his 
 friend." And yet if it be not good for a man to be always 
 alone, neither is it well for him to be always in company, 
 for it is possible to be alone, and yet not lonely. Sages, we 
 know, thoughtful men, have even found the face of solitude 
 not without charms. Indeed, a thoughtful man is never 
 lonely; even in what we might take to be the hours of utter 
 lonehness — irksome, devoid of all fellowship — his solitude 
 is peopled with thoughts, with memories, with fancies, 
 which are sometimes the best of company. And, indeed, 
 this is a pleasure of which we must all have shared more or 
 less, especially when events rising above the common level 
 of our every-day experience, have left deeper marks than 
 usual upon our minds. To him, for example, who is far 
 from home, what is sweeter than the memory of home 
 scenes, or the thought of loved faces round the fireside 
 from which he is far distant ? Old men tell us that they 
 have a sad kind of pleasure in thinking of earlier days, and 
 of those with whom they held sweet fellowship in old times. 
 And we need not be told — for we all know it well enough — 
 that to those who mourn, it brings a melancholy pleasure to 
 think of those that are gone, to feel over again in fancy the 
 touches of vanished hands, to hear again the sounds of 
 voices that are still. But our solitude may be enlivened by 
 other phases of thought than mere memories, which are 
 almost never unalloyed by regret, seldom free from tinges 
 of sadness. We may indulge in other reflections fruitful in 
 more direct and tangible profit. The present and the future 
 
M EDIT A TION. 89 
 
 lie open to us with the past, and we, in our soHtude, must 
 to some extent arrange and anticipate and hope with 
 respect to that which is to come — duties and possibilities — 
 as well as reflect upon that which is past and gone. And 
 when we consider the thing in this way, we are led to see 
 that meditation in many forms is a duty that binds us, as 
 well as a privilege that may yield us pleasure and satisfac- 
 tion. . . . But there is one subject of thought to which we 
 should all yield ourselves at many times, and that more and 
 oftener than any of us all is in the habit of doing. What is 
 fitter to be the companion of our solitude than the thought 
 of God? . . . 
 
 The preacher then goes on to speak (I.) of calls to 
 meditation of God. Those he finds in nature and 
 experience. He thus closes his illustration of the 
 former of these particulars- — 
 
 To ourselves everything around us, if we would but 
 listen, is speaking of God. There are the heights about us, 
 tufted with broom, fragrant, golden-tasselled. Are they not 
 the " hills of God " ? There, above us, are the unending 
 alternations of day and night, of sunshine and shower and 
 rolling clouds, and, beyond all, the everlasting sky. Shall 
 we look upwards, and not think of God who dwelleth in 
 the heavens ? And there, at our feet, is the ever-moving, 
 yet ever-constant sea, changeless even in change, varying as 
 the forms of His providence, and yet still the same as the 
 mercy that rules them all. Shall it afford us no symbol of 
 eternity, of infinity, of God ? 
 
 He speaks (H.) of the profit of meditation upon 
 God — 
 
 It sweetens our cups of sorrow, it strengthens and fences 
 
90 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 us about in temptation, it solemnises and sanctifies all our 
 views of life. 
 
 He speaks (III.) of what sweetens our meditation of 
 God- 
 It is the gospel of Christ, and the gospel of Christ alone, 
 that gives sweetness to our thoughts of God, and that makes 
 our meditation of Him sweeten in its turn all the changes of 
 life, all the phases of Providence. 
 
 He makes practical application of his subject to those 
 who never meditate of God ; to those whose medita- 
 tion of God is bitter ; and thus he closes — 
 
 Finally, there are some of you whose meditation of 
 God is sweet. To you, also, there is this lesson — if your 
 meditation of God be sweet, meditate of Him all the more. 
 
 His other Stornoway subjects were Song of Solo- 
 mon ii. II, " Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over 
 and gone," etc. ; Psalm cxix. 96, " I have seen an 
 end of all perfection : but thy commandment is 
 exceeding broad ; " and Revelation iii. 20, " Behold, 
 I stand at the door and knock," etc. The last of 
 these subjects was suggested to him by Holman 
 Hunt's famous picture, a copy of which hung in a 
 house in Edinburgh over a piano, at which he often 
 stood and sung his favourite airs. He liked this 
 picture, though the face of the Christ did not 
 satisfy him. He was accustomed to speak of the 
 hopelessness of any attempt to represent that visage 
 which, though it was marred more than any man, 
 was yet fairer than the children of men. He used 
 
STORNOWAV. 91 
 
 to say of Ary SchefFer's " Christus Consolator,"' 
 " That face was never at Cana of Galilee." He 
 had a special admiration of Titian's " Entombment " 
 which he saw when he was abroad, and Tintoretto's 
 " Crucifixion," with an engraving of which he was 
 familiar, because in both the face is in shadow. 
 He said — " These men were reverent men and 
 humble men ; they painted the pictures on holy 
 ground ; they had heard the words, ' Put off thy 
 shoes from off thy feet ! ' " 
 
 While busy with his earliest con aviorc efforts at 
 sermon-making, Davidson was not unobservant of 
 the customs of the people among whom he was 
 sojourning. He thus writes : — 
 
 To Miss DuNLOP. 
 
 Stoknovvay, July, 1864. 
 
 .... Last Wednesday I was at the annual Cattle Fair, 
 held here on an undulating moor a mile out of town. It 
 was a fine day for once, and it was rather a good scene. 
 The Celt is too grave a character to make a good fair, 
 however : there wasn't the amount of laughing, sweet- 
 hearting, shrieking of herds to bewildered collies, nor 
 yet the same amount of " krames " and tents that are 
 absolutely necessary to produce a decent south country 
 — Lammas, for instance — fair. However, there was a great 
 deal of galloping of wild-eyed, blue-bonneted or unbon- 
 neted, duddy, dishevelled Gaels, upon furious demented- 
 looking and equally dishevelled ponies of diminutive 
 stature, long-maned and pot-bellied. And there was a 
 great deal of blue homespun, and Gaelic streamed in all direc- 
 tions. There were two showmen — one with the gigantic 
 title of the " Olympic Arena." The other had "no name," 
 
92 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 but consisted of waxwork and a piper. He had an 
 intimation (how beautifully Geordie would have read it) 
 hung outside in his own printing, and more, by token, 
 of his own composition. This interesting document was 
 to this effect : — 
 
 § The. Publec. is. invitted. to. sea. Her. Most. Gracious. 
 Magisty. Queen. Victoriu. in. wax. work. as. large, as. Lif. 
 and. othir. curiosaties. ^ 
 
 N.B. — The periods and the flourishes are the sliowman's. 
 .... The most striking feature of the whole fair, how- 
 ever, was the din made by a multitude of male urchins, 
 who flitted about with baskets and shrieked " Ar-an- 
 Criahe /" in the extremest and most piercing falsetto. 
 It is pronounced " Ar-an-Cree," and on my appearance, 
 or that of any one with a coat not blue, the mystic 
 words were translated into English, and turned out to 
 be " Ginger-bread ! " This is a glorious day — quite clear 
 — the sea blue, and the mountains on the mainland quite 
 visible, fringing the horizon, exactly as the hills do in 
 Waller Paton's pictures. 
 
 Davidson's next engagements brought him to the 
 neighbourhood of Edinburgh, and to renewed inter- 
 course with his friends there. He was then sent to 
 the west of Scotland, where he preached in Glas- 
 gow, Millport, and Douglas, and was prevented by 
 stress of weather from fulfilling an appointment at 
 Kirn. When at Douglas he had the opportunity 
 of gratifying the desire, which had been awakened 
 in his boyhood, of visiting the Falls of Clyde, and 
 also the pleasure of being present at his friend Mr. 
 Bruce's ordination at Wishaw. 
 
WANDERINGS. 
 
 93 
 
 To Mr. Robert Douglas. 
 
 Glasgow, September i6th, 1864. 
 
 Upon my word, I don't know how to begin. I feel 
 like a man who has stolen a sheep and, with the mutton 
 on his shoulder, meets the owner. That is a slap-dash 
 kind of illustration, from which I hope you will gather 
 that I am pretty much ashamed of myself. I have scarcely 
 written a letter the last quarter of a year, except a few to 
 Jethart announcing my intended arrivals and my actual 
 whereaboutses, so that you must not impute anything like 
 malice prepense in the matter. It is simply a case of what 
 somebody has called " cotistitutional fatigued Most people 
 in giving a name to the thing call it — harshly and coarsely, 
 in my opinion — downright laziness. However, I must leave 
 this subject ; it is drawing me into too many italics, 
 which do look bad and feeble in a letter. To change 
 the subject, then, I have been in Glasgow or its neigh- 
 bourhood for a whole week. I preached at what a modern 
 Apostle Paul would call a " den or cave of the earth " 
 last Sabbath — a kind of sow-cruive description of a biggin', 
 
 to wit a dingy, stoury, moth-eaten, sooty, grimy, 
 
 fusty, musty, mucky tabernacle : a place of worship that might 
 have suited pretty well the Gibeonites, if that be the 
 name of the tribe with the clouty shoes and the mouldy 
 bread that sold Joshua so eminently. In that same burrow 
 I am to preach again on Sabbath ; after which I am ap- 
 pointed to Millport. This is a kind of watering-place, 
 "pleasantly situated," I am told, on one of the historic 
 Cumbraes. To this insular people I am expected to 
 minister two days. I am already appointed for the last 
 Sabbath of the present quarter, and I think it highly 
 probable that my next quarter will begin with the same 
 place. This arrangement, you will observe, does me out 
 of my expected visit to Lockerbie. . . . 
 
94 
 
 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 The first two weeks of November were spent at 
 home, his appointments being to Border towns in 
 the neighbourhood. 
 
 To the Rev, John M'Intyre. 
 
 Bankend, Jedburgh, November gth, 1864. 
 .... I have had a note from Thomson of Kirn, 
 with reference to my faikire to reach his department of 
 the ' vineyard ' last Saturday night. He was sorry, of 
 course; but attaches no blame to me in the matter. 
 Moreover, he says he will speak to his congregation about 
 the fee when he gets home — for he is at Moffat invalided 
 — and offers me either of the first two Sabbaths of Dec- 
 •ember. I have written to him expressing my due 
 gratitude, but declining both : because I disdain taking 
 pay in such circumstances, and my engagement near 
 Newcastle on the Sabbaths immediately preceding those 
 in question would necessarily bring me in for a flight all 
 the way from Newcastle to Kirn, and thence again to 
 Portsoy — of all places in the world — a feat of landlouping 
 which I am prevented from going in for, both by pecuniary 
 and meteorological considerations — for my finances are 
 low, and the season is winter. I hope you have found 
 your way through that sentence ; but such a lengthy 
 journey, or series of journeys, could only be treated of 
 properly in a sentence of corresponding dimensions. I 
 have no news to communicate. My recent journeys have 
 been quite devoid of the misfortunes which usually accom- 
 pany my motions, and they have therefore been com- 
 paratively tame and uninteresting. . . . 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Walker, November 21st, 1864. 
 .... I got to Newcastle on Saturday about one o'clock, 
 and spent the afternoon there looking about me. I en- 
 joyed the trip up Teviot and down Liddesdale and Tyne- 
 
IN ENGLAND. 
 
 95 
 
 side greatly. Hexham took my fancy very much, for one of 
 the first, indeed the very first, ballad I ever learnt was the 
 pathetic " Derwentwater's Farewell " ; and one of the verses 
 has haunted me ever since, from the beautiful and natural 
 and sad kind of spirit that runs through both meaning and 
 
 words — 
 
 " Albeit that here in London town 
 It is my fate to die, 
 Oh carry me to Northumberland, 
 
 In my father's grave to lie. 
 There chant my solemn requiem 
 
 In Hexham's holy towers, 
 And let six maids from fair Tyneside 
 Scatter my grave with flowers." 
 
 I came down to Walker in the evening. Walker is a very 
 smoky, sooty, grimy, muddy place, inhabited, however, by 
 a kindly race of men (women included). In fact the place 
 is all mud together, either in the liquid, betrodden and 
 bechurned form of downright " glaur," or else burnt and 
 dried into the brick state, in which latter it is invariably 
 used by all men who take it into their heads to build houses. 
 I preached yesterday in the forenoon and in the evening. 
 They have a bad habit of keeping the Sabbath-school bairns 
 altogether in a body in the middle of the chapel in the 
 forenoon — a habit which, I think, is not to edification by 
 any means. A good deal of fun goes on among the little 
 people, and, as a check upon their procedure, a grave and 
 reverend senior, grey-haired but sharp as a needle, sits as 
 sentinel over them, and with one eye and ear directed to 
 myself and the other to the youngsters, had altogether a 
 busy time of it. He came in and smoked a pipe with me 
 in the evening, and I was amazed to see that, after all, the 
 good old gentleman does not squint either. 
 
 He was destined to accomplish a more remark- 
 able feat of " landlouping " than that to avoid which 
 
g6 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 he had declined Mr. Thomson's offer of December 
 apponitments at Kirn. The Distribution Committee 
 had intended his engagement at Walker to be the 
 first of a series among the English vacancies — to 
 which, in fact, he was sent back two months later. 
 But the Home Mission authorities, being in an 
 emergency, applied for his services, and obtained 
 leave to summon him by telegram to go at once to 
 a station which had been opened at Dublin. There, 
 accordingly, we find him. 
 
 To Miss DuNLOP. 
 
 Dublin, December 6th, 1864. 
 
 .... At Kirkby-Stephen I had an interview with a 
 most renowned and far-famed character. Of all men in the 
 world it was the notable Poet Close ! He was standing in 
 the station with a packet of ill-assorted books or pamphlets 
 in the one hand, and a staff in the other — a queer, wild- 
 looking figure, with a most incompatible Highland cloak 
 round his shoulders. He caught me staring at him — of 
 course I couldn't help it — and immediately stepped up and 
 commenced to trade with me for some of the books in his 
 hand. They were, he said, his own works. He both made 
 them and sold them, and he found it rather hard work. I 
 thought to myself that there might possibly be a third opera- 
 tion connected with them which would be " harder work " 
 still — reading them, to wit. But as I looked at the poet's 
 grey hair and thread-bare clothes and disjaskit foitf ensemble, 
 my heart smote me for ever entertaining a momentary 
 intention of saying it, and I bought his " bookie," which I 
 shall send to Bruce ; he is fond of these odd things, and I 
 think on that score it will stand about as high as any of his 
 other acquisitions in that line. 
 
JOURNEY TO BALLYMENA. 97 
 
 When his work in Dublin was over, he was sent to 
 supply two vacant congregations — CuUybackey and 
 Sixtowns — in the north of Ireland. His experience 
 by the way was mennorable, and he used to amuse his 
 friends with the record of his troubles. The journey 
 from Northumberland to Dublin had drawn heavily 
 on the probationer's slender purse, and left him only 
 what was needed for incidental expenses during his 
 stay in the Irish metropolis. He expected that the 
 usual payment by the congregational treasurer would 
 be made before it was necessary for him to set out for 
 the north ; but day after day passed, and the bearer 
 of the bag never appeared. At last the Saturday 
 following his last Sunday came round, and, as he was 
 due next day in a pulpit some thirty or forty miles 
 beyond Belfast, and had only five pence left in his 
 purse, it was absolutely necessary that he should over- 
 come his bashfulness and prefer his claim. He 
 accordingly called for the treasurer, who explained to 
 him that, as Dublin was a station specially under the 
 charge of the Home Mission Board of the Church, it 
 was by the secretary of that Board in Glasgow that 
 the preacher was paid ; but added that he would 
 gladly accommodate him with whatever money he 
 needed. Davidson modestly asked the loan of a 
 pound, and hurried to the railway station. To his 
 disappointment, he found that the train by which he 
 must go carried no third-class passengers. The price 
 of the ticket, therefore, made a sad inroad on the bor- 
 rowed pound, and, on counting the balance as he rode 
 
98 THE PROBA TIONER. 
 
 alonr^, he discovered, to his dismay, that it was not 
 sufficient to carry him to his destination. At Drog- 
 lieda station he met a young man belonging to the 
 Dubhn congregation, to whom he told his plight 
 asking the loan of five shillings. He continued his 
 journey, congratulating himself that his troubles were 
 over. But on his arriv^al at Belfast, he found that the 
 last train for Ballymena, the station nearest Cully- 
 backey, had gone. A night in a hotel had not entered 
 into his calculations, but it was now inevitable. He 
 wandered about till he found a house with a " moder- 
 ate charge look about it." Though he was very 
 hungry, he consoled himself with a pipe, and went to 
 bed supperless. In the morning he ordered a single 
 cup of tea and a slice of bread for breakfast. With 
 " much fear and trembling " he called for his bill. 
 The payment of it left him with eighteen pence less 
 than the fare to Ballymena. He looked about him 
 in his despair, and saw at the other end of the table a 
 most unapproachable looking man, who was break- 
 fasting on " a savoury mutton chop," the sight of 
 which was tantalising to the hungry probationer. 
 Blushing scarlet, he approached the stranger and told 
 his tale of dool. The stranger, Davidson always re- 
 membered with a shudder, gave him " an awfu' glour," 
 thinking, doubtless, he was an impostor ; but when he 
 asked for eighteen pence, adding that he would send 
 postage stamps in repayment, the unapproachable 
 man was evidently relieved, and, with great alacrity 
 took out his purse, gave the sum requested, and then 
 
BALLYMENA. 
 
 99 
 
 turned in haste to liis mutton chop, in manifest fear 
 that the demand would be increased. With resources 
 thus replenished, Davidson took the train to Rally- 
 mena, but on his arrival there he found that he was 
 several miles from the church where he was to preach, 
 and the hour of service was so near that it was impos- 
 sible to walk. He hired a car, w^hich brought him to 
 the church door just in time to leap off, and, asking 
 the elder at the plate to settle with the carman, found 
 his way to the pulpit. When he had begun the ser- 
 vice, he felt that his hands were wet, and, looking 
 at them, he discovered that in his agitation and 
 shame at having to appear in the guise of a men- 
 dicant, he had clenched his fists so tightly, that the 
 nails had cut into the palms. All through his 
 sermon he was haunted with the thought that he 
 must have passed his hand over his face, and be- 
 smeared it with blood. On the Monday morning he 
 wrote a letter to the Home Mission Secretary, full of 
 his quaint and curious humour, pointing out mildly 
 the difficulties to which a preacher of moderate 
 income was exposed through the arrangements which 
 had been adopted as to the payment of the Dublin 
 fee, and indicating that he had blushed so much that 
 only his quite exceptional leanness had saved him 
 from an attack of apoplexy. The letter has unfortun- 
 ately been destroyed. 
 
 When the troubles of the journey were surmounted 
 he found himself in a pleasant place with enough to keep 
 him cheerful in the dark winter days far from home. 
 
lOO THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Mr. Kxovvles', Cullybackey, Ballymena, 
 December 2^th, 1864. 
 
 I was beginning to think that your letter had gone astray 
 this time entirely : it wasn't even a " Sabbath breaker," for 
 I suspect it must have gone to Dubhn, or some place 
 equally far out of the way, seeing that all it could say for 
 itself was " Cullybackey, Ireland," which put me in mind of 
 Thomas a Beckett's mother, who set out to seek her lover, 
 though all the English and all the clue to him that she had 
 was " Gilbert " and " London." Lest your next should go 
 the same route, I have written my address in full at the top 
 of this — a precaution, indeed, which I ought to have taken 
 when I last wrote you from Dublin. . . . 
 
 Though you might not anticipate it, I am remarkably snug 
 in this out of the way place. Mr. Knowles is a very decent 
 fellow (and so is his wife, as an Irishman would say; indeed, 
 I heard a man in Dublin speak of the " Lady Lord Lieu- 
 tenant ! ") and traces his ancestral line back for two hundred 
 years to one of Cromwell's h'onsides, who, after the sack of 
 Drogheda and other fights stricken in Ireland, finally got 
 his spear transformed into a pruning-hook, or at least got a 
 pruning-hook fixed on the butt-end of it, and settled down 
 to spend the remainder of his days in tilling Ireland, and 
 restraining the Irish. He had three sons, this Ironside, and 
 from one of these patriarchs descended Sheridan Knowles 
 the dramatist, and my honest landlord from another. In 
 the same person you often find the most incongruous and 
 incompatible trades combined in this queer country, and my 
 worthy friend, Mr. Knowles, is an instance in point, for he 
 is a clerk to a manufacturer in Ballymena, and farmer of a 
 few acres of land, whereon he rears a good crop of flax, oats, 
 and, of course, potatoes. He is, withal, a man of intelli- 
 gence, and even of no small taste and judgment in literary 
 
A N IRISH S TUD V. I O I 
 
 matters ; and there is in the room which I inhabit a very 
 considerable quantity of books of all kinds and classes, 
 " from the lowest A to the highest Euclid ; " in fact, from 
 Shakespeare to Jack the Giant Killer, and " The old woman 
 who lived in a shoe and had so many children she didn't 
 know what to do," poor body. Mr. Knowles is not quite so 
 badly cumbered as that old lady, for he has the reasonable 
 quantity of three — Lizzy and Willy and the baby. Of whom 
 I don't know whether I like Willy or Lizzy the best. My 
 preference lies between them anyhow. But I daresay I have 
 dwelt rather long upon this subject of Mr. and Mrs. Knowles 
 and their children, not to mention that biographical sketch 
 of the old Cromwellian Ironside to whom remotely I am 
 indebted for so decent a landlord : and so, if it please you, 
 we will change the subject. 
 
 Yesterday I spent in on a visit to the Rev. 
 
 .... The Rev. is as lively an old gentleman as 1 
 
 ever encountered, barring, of course, the Rev. Thomas 
 Adam of Kirriemuir. He is seventy years old, I should 
 say, and yet he has about him so much of the dew of his 
 youth .... that it is quite refreshing to meet him, and 
 quite reconciles a man to the prospect of threescore years 
 
 and ten personally. When I went in, about lo a.m., Mr. 
 
 was out attending a Roman Catholic funeral : and I met his 
 wife, who is so much bothered running up and down stairs 
 attending to her lodgers that she has adopted the strange 
 and singular expedient of looping up her dress behind by 
 sticking a pin into it ! She showed me into his study, the 
 queerest little den you ever saw. It reminded me of the 
 old riddle-definition of an egg that we used to puzzle each 
 other with when we were children ever so long ago : " A 
 little hoosie weel packit." The " guess " goes on to say, 
 " Neither door nor window at it ; " but that part does not 
 apply to the Rev. Mr. 's study at all, which has a 
 
102 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 window and also a door, with a draught that would " dicht 
 
 wheat." Mr. was a most woundy long time in coming 
 
 in, and I amused myself with surveying this " little hoosie." 
 It measures exactly 9 feet by 15, and the walls of it are 
 occupied thus : thirty-eight pictures and engravings, two 
 illustrated almanacs, two fiddles, two fiddlesticks, one banjo, 
 four poems (in frames), one weather-glass, one map, one 
 clock, two book-cases ! This is an exact inventory, for I 
 grieve to own that I took down the list on the back of an 
 old envelope with a pencil. By and bye he came in, the 
 queerest-looking guy you ever saw ; for he had an immense 
 white scarf on, a knot on the right shoulder like a prize 
 cabbage, and the ends sweeping the ground. They make it 
 a point here to give as much cloth in this funereal ornament 
 as will make a shirt for the wearer 1 This is a plain and 
 
 sober fact, Mr. ■ assured me. He took me round the 
 
 town, which is for all the world just like any other town, and 
 then we came home again, and he played me a lot of Scotch 
 and Irish tunes on the fiddle, with a wonderful degree of 
 spunk and birr ; then we talked a great deal about songs 
 and music; then we had the unfailing Irish dinner of chicken 
 and bacon with greens ; then he read me a lot of his poems, 
 and whenever I said " very good," he said, " Yis, it's 
 kyapital ! " (quite seriously ;) and then we had tea, and then 
 I came away home again. He gave me quite a lot of his 
 pomes, as he calls them, to take with me, which I will hand 
 over to you when I come back. 
 
 To tJic SaiiiL. 
 
 CuLLYBACKKY, January 4th, 1865. 
 
 .... I meant to devote last night, or at least a bit 
 of it, to writing to you ; but Mr. Knowles, knowing my 
 fondness for Scotch music, had gone and invited down 
 specially an Irish fiddler who lives not a great way off, 
 to treat me to a quantity. The fiddler made his appear- 
 
LARRY iWKIE. 103 
 
 ance, fiddle and all, about six o'clock, and, barring the time 
 we took to tea, and several intermissions for smoking pur- 
 poses, which Mr. Knowles himself turned to good use in 
 singing Irish melodies, Mr. Larry M'Kie's "elbow jinked 
 and diddled " till past eleven o'clock. Larry has been in 
 Australia, where he learned a great many Scotch airs from 
 the Scotch gold-diggers, and now he is settled down com- 
 fortably to cultivate music and potatoes — for Mr. M'Kie is 
 both a fiddler and a farmer. Also he sings remarkabl)' 
 well, and the humour with which he renders Sam Lover's 
 Irish songs is quite overpowering, I assure you. Larry has 
 got the Irish susceptibility as well as the Irish humour, and 
 when I touched the strings of his violin in succession down- 
 wards, he begged me " fur goodness sake not to do that 
 same ; it was so murnfull and melancholy-like it wud 
 make him cry — and," he added, "that's jist as shure as my 
 neem's Larry M'Kie." He is as fond of his fiddle as an 
 ordinary mortal is of his sweetheart. The evening was 
 damp when he came down, and to prevent her from 
 " ketching harm," he had her secured in the never-failing 
 green bag, then this was swathed in a fine Paisley shawl, 
 then he put the " darlint " under his greatcoat, surmounting 
 the whole with a cotton umbrella as big as a Lammas-fair 
 tent; and even on his arrival the first thing he did with 
 her was to disentangle and disengage her from all these 
 securities, and warm her tenderly at the fire. Larry is not 
 good at a slow tune, or chune as he calls it, but he comes 
 out strong in "jigs, strathspeys, and reels," and he 
 " whacked off"" " 1 ullochgorum," " Killiecrankie," and "The 
 Braes o' TuUymet and Mar," not to mention " Garryowen " 
 and '• The Pradhestan Bhoys," and "Saint P?tthrick's Day" 
 and " Boyne Water," with inconceivable vim and vigour. 
 Altogether I liked Larry very much indeed ; and Larry took 
 so kindlv to me that he begged me to settle down here and 
 
104 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 he would himself take a seat in the church ! I thanked 
 him heartily and assured him that I didn't think the place 
 would just exactly suit me, and that, moreover, I didn't 
 think that I would exactly suit the place. Larry then 
 assured me in turn that it wasn't just such an "abscure 
 pleece as most people took it to be, for sure," he added, 
 "ye mushn't have heard the song about it that I sung 
 meself twelve times over the night before I left Geelong, and 
 not a sovvl there but was weepin' like a Donegal summer, 
 though their bairds were as long as the Apostle Aaron's." 
 I desired him to sing it, which he did with great pathos, and 
 a very nice little song it is, and Larry is going to write down 
 for me both the words and the music. So you see I con- 
 tinue to extract no small amusement and enjoyment out of 
 my quarters in Ireland. Don't believe half the stories they 
 tell you about it — -they're all blarney ; in fact, there is very 
 little difference between this and Scotland. At the same 
 time, I am beginning to weary slightly to get across the 
 channel again. However, I haven't very long to wait ; I 
 shall be at liberty in about ten da\s : on Monday week I 
 hope to be in Glasgow. ... I had just finished dinner, 
 and had taken my two young friends Lizzie and Willie on my 
 knee to sing them a song, when a deputation of the elders 
 came in to pay me my fee, and also to pay Mrs. Knowles 
 for the lodgings. They paid me much in the usual kind of 
 coin, but Mrs. Knowles, to whom they gave twenty-five 
 shillings, found it to consist of so many coins that she 
 couldn't count it, and was forced to call in my assistance. 
 With some difficulty I succeeded. There were, I think, 
 five fourpenny pieces, nine threepennies, and I don't know 
 how many pennies and halfpennies. This, of course, was 
 done after they went away. You never saw such a droll- 
 looking session in your life. All their hats put together 
 wouldn't have fetched sixpence in an old clothes shop. 
 
CULL YBA CKE V S£SSJOA\ i o 5 
 
 The principal spokeGman was clothed in corduroy breeks, 
 red with a year's draining in heavy clayey soil, a black sur- 
 tout coat, a red cotton neckerchief, and a pair of clogs. 
 Saving the coat, which I believe he must have donned for 
 the sake of upholding his dignity as chief speaker, the rest 
 were arrayed in very much the same style. They asked me 
 sundry questions, as. How did I like Cullybackey ? How 
 long had I been oi/t? Did I find the church very damp and 
 awfully cold ? — which questions Mrs. Knowles interpreted 
 to me after the three worthies had taken their departure. It 
 seems that this is a sly style of fishing which they employ in 
 order to expiscate (I always like to carry out a metaphor) the 
 man's sentiments as to accepting or declining if they should 
 happen to give him a call. As soon as they learned that I 
 hadn't been a year out, they looked at each other, scratched 
 their heads, rubbed their beards, or at least their jaws, for 
 they are all close-shaven, and finally took their pocket- 
 handkerchiefs out of their hats, and, having blown their 
 noses, said that they would have to be going, which they 
 accordingly proceeded to do. 
 
 Cullybackey is, however, a rather pleasant little place. 
 There are plenty of roads and walks about it, some of them 
 going through woods and avenues, some of them merely 
 through long tracts of fields with lots of houses — all farm 
 houses, for everybody is a farmer here, with a little wee 
 farmie that just keeps the family jogging and eating, and not 
 what might be called downright scarecrows. On Sundays 
 they look very respectable, saving their hats. Ireland is a 
 great field for the study of the human hat, as you may 
 see in poor Leech's Irish sketches. I have often stood 
 an hour at the hotel window in Dublin watching the hats, 
 and never failing to be thoroughly interested and amused. 
 But, to return, I feel it very pleasant to walk along one of 
 these roads here, especially after dark, as the candles are 
 
I06 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 all lighted up then, and the whole country-side is a-twinkle 
 with them, here and there and yonder, and through on the 
 other side, and up the hill behind you there, in the j oiliest 
 disorder and prettiest confusion. I often think that you 
 would enjoy an hour's walk with all those tiny lights blinking 
 and winking and flitting about, and going out of a sudden, 
 and then of a sudden jumping in again. You see I can 
 enjoy almost any place. The church here is a very poor 
 one ; the congregation very thin (just now) ; the pulpit not 
 in good repair ; the floor an earthen one, and not a living 
 soul able to keep his feet still for five minutes. Moreover, 
 it stands low, though it does stand very prettily too, fast by 
 the river Maine, which passes on its way to Lough Neagh. 
 There is a church-yard beside the church too — a queer- 
 looking unsymmetrical place, shapen like a bit of paper 
 which one would tear off the corner and along the side of 
 the daily Scoisnian to light his pipe with. Trees fringe this 
 on all sides round ; but through them you can easily count 
 the graves as you go along the public road to Kilrea which 
 passes behind. There are a good many of them — some 
 close to the river's brink, others out on the green, and 
 others, again, lying up the hill, at an angle of forty-five 
 degrees, basking, as it were, with their faces turned to the 
 south. The people, of course I mean the living, are very 
 
 old-fashioned. They don't sing paraphrases, as Mr. 
 
 assured me before the whole congregation, when I had just 
 given them out the 46th, and they read the line always, which 
 has a very strange effect to one who is unaccustomed to it. 
 However, they have not acquired the good old time-honoured 
 Scotch custom of sleeping during the sermon — they listen 
 (I micst say it, for I have no better simile at hand) " like 
 swine at a yett." 
 
 I have had some little difficulty in sliding into the thread 
 ot my discourse again at that last " however," for my good 
 
EXCURSION TO BELLAGHY. \oj 
 
 friend Larry again made his appearance, and entertained me 
 for several hours witli a new batch of songs and airs of all 
 descriptions. He seems perfectly inexhaustible, does Larry. 
 He came down to-night to settle about an excursion we are 
 going to make to-morrow — Mr. Knowles, Larry, and myself 
 — to a place called Bellaghy. This I take to be rather a 
 plenteous place, for I learn that the host (intended) is much 
 troubled with gout. I expect, therefore, to find myself in 
 clover for a day, not that I don't find myself in clover 
 where I am, and good broad leaved, red and white fiowered 
 clover, too ; but then, you know, " one star differeth from 
 another star," albeit they both be stars. . . . 
 
 I have had a letter and a great many papers from Bruce 
 here, for which I am very grateful, for in the present aspect 
 of the American War I devour all discussions of the question 
 and news of the state of affairs with even greater avidity 
 than usual. I am much obliged for your papers too. My 
 sister Frank also sent me a whole bundle of Scotsmaus (is 
 that the plural?), which took four postage stamps to carry 
 them. The royal male (or the royal female rather, for our 
 letters are carried by a woman) has never been well since \ 
 Having got to the end of that sentence, let me apologise 
 for the pun — do you see it ? I didn't want to cumber the 
 sentence Avith more parentheses than one, else I should have 
 marrow-boned immediately after it was down. But reall}^ 
 it was such an obvious one — " humblest capacity," you 
 know — and then I'm in Ireland, and I defy any man to 
 be in Ireland and not joke. Why, I wrote an indignant 
 letter to Mr. M'Gill the other day, and I joked all the way 
 through it ! 
 
 It may be necessary to explain to the younger 
 generation that the custom of reading the line, re- 
 ferred to in the forecroino; letter as still maintained 
 
I08 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 in the little Irish congregation, was once universal 
 in the Presbyterian Churches of Scotland, and even 
 now prevails in the Highlands. It originated in the 
 fact that at one time the majority in most congrega- 
 tions could not read. The precentor, therefore, read 
 each line, or each couplet of the Psalm, before he 
 sang it. It was, of course, necessary, in order to 
 keep himself in tune, that he should read on the key 
 of the tune he had chosen, and thus the service of 
 praise was a curious compound of chanting and 
 singing. In country districts it was customary for 
 the precentor to begin the music before the arrival of 
 the minister, executing thus a kind of voluntary while 
 the congregation was assembling. He went right 
 through the Psalms, beginning on one Sunday at the 
 verse where he had been interrupted by the com- 
 mencement of the regular service on the Sunday 
 previous. It is reported that a wag, with more wit 
 than grace, once obtained possession of the pre- 
 centor's book, and pasted in, at the point where the 
 voluntary was to begin, the opening verses of Chevy 
 Chase. On the Sunday morning the old precentor 
 took his place at the desk, and, having wiped and 
 adjusted his spectacles, began without suspicion his 
 accustomed chant. The first two lines had quite an 
 orthodox and familiar sound ; the worthy man 
 slightly stumbled at the " woeful hunting " in the 
 third, but remembering probably the " partridge on 
 the mountains" to which the Psalmist once likened 
 himself, he passed on, but when he came in the 
 
SIX TOWNS. 109 
 
 fourth line to the altogether uncanonical name 
 " Chevy Chase," he threw down the book in disgust, 
 exclaiming that he had been precentor in the Burgher 
 Kirk for forty years, and never knew that " Chevy 
 Chase " was in the Psalms of David before. The 
 abandonment of the custom of reading the line when 
 the spread of education rendered it unnecessary, was 
 resisted most strongly as a dangerous " innovation," 
 and was nearly as fruitful of contention, and of 
 " cases " before the Ecclesiastical Courts, as the 
 change of posture at praise and the introduction of 
 the organ have been in more recent years. Scripture 
 was ransacked with a zeal quite equal to that of 
 modern protesters against " anarchy in worship," to 
 find texts in support of the ancient custom. To a 
 deputation from the Glasgow Presbytery, which had 
 been sent to visit a congregation where dissension 
 prevailed on the grave question, the words of the 
 Psalm, " Their line is gone out through all the earth," 
 were quoted as undoubted Scriptural authority for 
 the reading of the line. The men of one generation 
 are curiously like the men of another generation. 
 
 To Miss DuNLOP. 
 
 SiXTOWNS, 13th January, 1865. 
 
 This is a most entertaining place, rendered so by the 
 amusing petty wants and laughable hardships to which the 
 dwellers in it are subjected. ... As you know, I am 
 living at the house of Mr. Kennedy, who, Avith his own 
 unaided and unassisted energies, discharges the threefold 
 duties of schoolmaster, precentor, and hairdresser. Thtr 
 Other night we had a number of the " boys' — so called here 
 
no THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 because they are not boys but men- — for the last-mentioned 
 trade to be exercised upon. They submitted their polls 
 ■successively to the scissors. Mr. Kennedy followed ujd the 
 pruning operations with a few "chunes" on the fiddle. He 
 plays pretty tolerable on an instrument of his own making, 
 which underlined bit of information reminds me of the fact 
 that to all his other trades he adds the elements of cabinet- 
 making and playing. . . . The house is a new one (and 
 it answers for church too). It is the dreadfuUest house for 
 smoke I ever lived in. Mr. Kennedy smokes, I smoke, 
 and so does every chimney in the place. Indeed, we have 
 had to sit with the front door half-open, with a " great 
 muckle stane " at the back of it to keep it from opening 
 too far, ever since I came — the wind happening to be in the 
 worst direction. If we close it for a moment, there is an 
 immediate strike among the chimneys. Now, it happens 
 just to open at the back of my own door, consequently a 
 wind sweeps across the floor of ray room and up the 
 chimney like the great Euroclydon. It is as much as I can 
 do to keep my slippers from going up with it ! To supple- 
 ment this little laughing Zephyr, there are two panes out of 
 the window, their place being but somewhat insufticiently 
 supplied by a curious and ingenious combination of news- 
 papers and pot-lids, between whose multitudinous interstices 
 the wind plays pibrochs from morning to night, and then 
 again from night to morning. Occasionally it takes a 
 momentary capricious tit and goes backwards, in which 
 case a perfectly volcanic eruption takes place, clouds and 
 volumes of half-burned peats, and whitey brown scorise, 
 come belching into the room, and, remembering the terrible 
 fate of Pliny, I rush precipitately to the farthest corner, 
 from which, when all is over again, I cautiously emerge, 
 and brush my garments. By good luck, when I was in 
 Dublin, my sister Frank sent me a smoking-cap, which I am 
 
LANARK. I 1 1 
 
 obliged here to wear constantly to prevent my hair from 
 getting dishevelled and powdered with peat ashes. Thus 
 fortified with my cap and my philosophy, I thoroughly 
 enjoy the humour of the situation ; and I am sure if Air. 
 Kennedy were to hear my cachinnations (especially during 
 the eruptions) he would have serious doubts of my sanity. 
 
 The wandering nature of the Probationer's life is 
 well illustrated by the fact that we find Davidson 
 next in Lanark, and tlien in Aldershott. 
 
 To Mr. George Douglas. 
 
 Lanark, Saturday Evening, January 28th, 1865. 
 
 I have not brought home a call from Ireland — am quite 
 as much in want of a lever as ever. I suppose if I am to 
 rise (to a pulpit) at all, I shall have to do it through sheer 
 force of specific levity. That appears to be the only reason- 
 able method at present, e.g., ■ , , etc. However, I 
 
 enjoyed my tour in the " sister country " very much for all 
 that. I walked twenty-eight miles one day, and on two 
 occasions I did thirty with my bag on my back, and felt 
 quite as fresh after it as if I hadn't done five. You see I 
 am rather more locomotive than I used to be ; but, on 
 reflection, I don't think that my sloth revealed itself very 
 much in that form after all. I never was a bad walker — 
 not that I profess to be a fast one either — only I can hold 
 out for a long spell, and generally make as good a show 
 about the winning-post as any of my neighbours. . . . 
 
 I was very sorry to hear of your father's death. I was 
 told of it in Dublin by Robertson of Balfron (who came to 
 succeed me there) just the day before Christmas, and it 
 took ine quite by surprise. It would make your Christmas 
 a dull one this year — dull to all of you, especially to your 
 mother. It is, no doubt, common-place consolation to say 
 that " your loss is your father's gain "^ — and yet a man 
 
112 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 should thank God that such comfort is so common, and, by 
 His infinite mercy, so accessible to us all that it has become 
 common-place. I reproach myself much for not having 
 written to Robert since this mournful event, but I will do 
 so soon. 
 
 If you get this on Monday, come in to Edinburgh, to 
 Elliot's, where I am to stay all night, and we shall set out 
 for Jethart on Tuesday, about noon, or a little earlier. 
 
 A Diary, beginning at the opening of 1865, and 
 extending to the close of 1866, has been preserved. 
 It contains little more than a jotting of his move- 
 ments, with occasional references to books read and 
 persons met. The sermons preached on the Sundays 
 are noted, each discourse having a name which is 
 generally the principal word of the text in abbrevi- 
 ated form. 
 
 Sunday, 22nd January, at Lanark. — Serv. Tap} Reading 
 
 the Gentle Life at night, which recommended to me as 
 
 resembling Bacon ! Ye gods I It is pleasant reading- 
 very light, very skimmy, very quotations, very pretentious. 
 does not know a good book from a bad one. 
 
 Friday, 27th. — Just getting into Glasgow, on my way to 
 see Jack (M'Intyre) at Paisley. A girl who serves in 
 "Glasca,"but has been laid up "wi' the rheumatics," has 
 just discovered that a soldier of the 78th knows her brother, 
 "Jamie M'Nab, a wee, black, pock-markit bit body," a 
 private in the same regiment. She is going to "gie him 
 a refreshment " over the discovery. 
 
 Sunday, 29th, Lanark. — Very cold and windy, the snow 
 still lying all round. Very cold during the forenoon service. 
 Preached Med. and Pow. Attendance, forenoon, as good 
 
 ^ The names he had given to two of his sermons. 
 
ALDERSHOT. 
 
 113 
 
 as last day. Evening thin. Must go in for more life — 
 must. Read MacLaren's Sermons. Turned in at 12.30. 
 
 In the course of the following week he went to 
 Aldershot, going by way of Edinburgh and Jed- 
 burgh. He occupied the Aldershot pulpit for seven 
 Sundays, beginning on February 5th. 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Aldershot, February 14th. 
 I think 1 had a larger audience last Sabbath evening than 
 I had the former one, spite of bad weather. After the 
 service there is a prayer-meeting, which is only conducted 
 by myself — the members I may happen to mention engaging 
 in prayer, and myself reading tlie hymns. I have never 
 been in any congregation where so large a proportion of the 
 members can take part in the prayer-meeting as I find here 
 — in fact, I may call upon any man present to engage in 
 prayer, just on the spur of the moment, and run no chance 
 of getting a denial from any of them. A good man might 
 make a good church in England, after a little while of 
 reasonably diligent and intelligent work, provided always 
 there is a population. The want of a population is the loss 
 and death of our stations in Ireland. Sixtowns is an ex- 
 ample of that. 
 
 His long location at Aldershot rendered further 
 sermon-writing necessary. The subjects he chose 
 were: Ecclesiastes vii. 3, "Sorrow is better than 
 laughter;" Psalm cxix. 123, "Mine eyes fail for thy 
 salvation, and for the word of thy righteousness ; " 
 Proverbs xviii. 24, " There is a friend that sticketh 
 closer than a brother;" Philippians ii. 12, "Work 
 out your own salvation with fear and trembling ; " 
 
114 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 and 2 Cor. x. 5, " Bringing into captivity every 
 thought to the obedience of Christ." The introduc- 
 tion to the last of these discourses is interesting, as 
 showing how his enthusiasm for all that was con- 
 nected with the heroic past of his native country 
 supplied him with material for illustrating divine 
 truth to his soldier-audience at Aldershot : — 
 
 Over the entrance of a very old house in a very ancient 
 Scottish town, I read, not long ago, the following in- 
 scription— 
 
 " Since word is tinall and thought is free, 
 Keep well thy tongue, I counsel thee ;" 
 
 that is to say : " Speech is liable to criticism, and may bring 
 you into trouble ; be wise and careful, therefore, in the 
 exercise of it." The inscription, however, gathers addi- 
 tional significance from the fact that the house in question 
 stands within a hundred yards of a royal residence, and 
 must have been built at a time when a more stringent law 
 of treason rendered it very dangerous to make very free, 
 even in the most private of conversations, with anything 
 appertaining to constituted authority ; and it is therefore 
 exceedingly likely that those who daily passed the door or 
 entered the house, and m passing or entering read the 
 cautioning motto, read it with a mental reference to the 
 sovereign authority to which they were always in such un- 
 comfortable neighbourhood. To them, therefore, its mean- 
 ing and force must have amounted to just about this : 
 "Think what pleases yourself — but, remember, that in 
 speech you must please the King." Looked at in a third 
 light — a general one this time — we may take this somewhat 
 .suggestive inscription as marking the ultimate limit of 
 human observation and control — the line where our neigh- 
 bour's knowledge of us and authoritv over us have their end. 
 
SOVEREIGNTY. 115 
 
 and where the really sacred and inviolable retreat of 
 absolute personal freedom begins. Within this line no one 
 can pass except by our own permission, or see anything 
 except what is pointed out by ourselves ; and, if any 
 intelligence goes out of this seclusion, we must ourselves, by 
 act or word, or sign or look, be the bearers of it. This is 
 the last retreat of liberty — a retreat whose sacred solitude 
 can be entered and desecrated by neither king nor kaiser. 
 And yet, when a man turns to survey this retired domain 
 of thought wherein he stands, and of which he is the only 
 human ruler, responsible to no fellow-man for the verdicts 
 there passed upon what is seen in the outward world, for 
 the conclusions formed in its secret councils, for its mar- 
 shallings and processions and revolutions of ideas and 
 fancies which go on continually in its fields, invisible to all 
 eyes except his own — when a man turns to survey all this 
 in the light of his faith in Christ, and the union to Christ 
 which that faith produces, in short, when he surveys it all 
 under the light of the Christian religion, he finds that even 
 here he has a Master — a King whom in his very thoughts 
 he must obey — to whom he owes as deeply the allegiance of 
 thought as he owes to lawful authority the allegiance of act. 
 " Word is thrall," says the old motto ; but Paul, going still 
 further and still deeper, entering into the region which is 
 uninvaded by man, assures the Christian that thought also 
 must be thrall to the sovereignty of Christ our King. 
 Christ's reign and sway in a man's heart and nature must be 
 an ever-growing one — its boundaries must inexorably and 
 relentlessly extend and advance, leaving no strongholds 
 unreduced, no fastnesses or retirements unpenetrated and 
 unsubdued. His reign, in its wider aspect over the universe 
 of being, is only complete when He hath put all His enemies 
 under His feet : and in the individual man the same process 
 of progressive conquest must continually develop itself, even 
 
Il6 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 in the most secret and private recesses, and it is the loyal 
 Christian's part to be continually exercising every capability, 
 and employing every possible power, in conquering to Christ 
 the whole realm of thought itself. He must bring into cap- 
 tivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. 
 
 Regular employment, and intercourse with kind 
 and hospitable friends, made his sojourn at Alder- 
 shot very pleasant. His jottings in his diary are 
 summed up at the end of the weeks by such entries 
 as these : " A tolerably happy week on the whole, 
 being a busier one than most of its predecessors " ; 
 " More busy week than usual on the whole" ; " Busiest 
 week I've had for many a month — it is happy when 
 looked back upon." The week he left Aldershot is 
 thus characterised : " Not a very happy week — first 
 part uncertain, and the latter part unhappy ; for I 
 find that any continued residence in a place leads me 
 to contract very strong likings, which are somewhat 
 violated by sudden departures." 
 
 A Sunday in London — where he met George and 
 William Douglas — two at Wolverhampton, and three 
 at Leeds, completed his English engagements for the 
 time. When he was at Wolverhampton he made the 
 following entry in his diary : — " Saturday, 8th April. 
 Most exquisite day, so exquisitely vernal that I broke 
 forth into song in a few verses called, ' In the Fair 
 Spring Weather.' Walked a little, and read some, and 
 committed half my sermon." Even the atmosphere 
 of the black country could not darken the joy with 
 Avhich this singer welcomed the return of spring : — 
 
IN THE FAIR SPRING WEATHER. 117 
 
 IN THE FAIR SPRING WEATHER. 
 
 Proteus — '' My tales of love were wont to weary you ; 
 I know you joy not in a love discourse." 
 
 — Tn>o Gentlemen of Verona., Act II.. Scene iv. 
 
 I SAT with Jack an hour to-day 
 
 Down there in the valley, 
 Where the wanton River stays 
 
 With flowery shores to dally ; 
 And, as we sat upon the grass, 
 
 Side by side together, 
 1 talk'd of love till Jack was tired 
 
 In the fair Spring weather. 
 
 In vain he started other themes — 
 
 Priests, politics, or learning — 
 My golden thread Avould still gleam out, 
 
 At every stop and turning : 
 For flowers that sprang, and birds that sang. 
 
 Flying hither, thither. 
 The very River babbled Love, 
 
 In the fair Spring weather ! 
 
 Jack smiled and talked philosophy 
 
 Over my amorous fancy : 
 '' They say, ' What's in the eye itself 
 
 Is all it sees or can see ' ; 
 And if from every living thing 
 
 You do such meanings gather. 
 Why, then — you are yourself in love. 
 
 In the fair Spring weather : 
 
 " Streams, and flowers, and birds that sing 
 
 As they do fly or flutter,- — 
 They speak not to all human hearts 
 
 What to yours they utter : 
 Flowers bear to me but scent and hue, 
 
 And birds of every feather 
 Sing what they've sung these thirty years 
 
 In the fair Spring weather. 
 
1 1 8 THE PROBA TIONER. 
 
 " And all your fond interpretings 
 
 Of sound or sight that passes 
 Are only echoes of the thoughts 
 
 That haunt your heart's recesses : 
 / find such sweet stupidities 
 
 In upper world nor nether " — 
 " Bah ! Jack, you're mad as ever a hare 
 
 In the mad March weatlier 1 " 
 
 Still — Jack's blunt charges made me wince, 
 
 Though I replied with scorning ; 
 A certain something whispers me 
 
 That^ — he was right this morning ! 
 And low down in the valley there, 
 
 Could we but meet together, 
 There are three 7voi-ds I'd say to her 
 
 In the fair Spring weather. 
 
 In going from Wolverhampton to Leeds, he went 
 by way of Loughborough, where he spent a pleasant 
 week with his old Ancrum teacher and Edinburgh 
 room-mate, Mr. Scott, who then held a situation in 
 that Midland town. The sight of his old friend was 
 most grateful to him after his many wanderings 
 among strangers. He was in his cheeriest mood, 
 and told stories of his Irish and other experiences 
 so admirably that Mr. Scott urged him to give 
 himself to literature, telling him if he wrote as he 
 talked, he could not Tail to succeed. Davidson's reply 
 was characteristic — " I will tell you the stories, if you 
 will write them." 
 
 To the Rev. John MTntyre. 
 
 Lekds, April 19th, 1865. 
 
 No doubt you expect me to begin this epistle with the 
 customary series of apologies. Never were more mistaken 
 
LEEDS. 119 
 
 in your life, sir ! Apologies 1 quotha. Why, the fact is, I 
 have a good mind to feel insulted. Here have you " been 
 and gone and got called " (you see my stay of one week in 
 London has cockneyised my style horribly — I shall never 
 be able to write classic English any more)^ — nay, more than 
 that, you have been and gone and accepted, and never so 
 much, or rather so little, as sent a fellowa miserable Glasgow 
 newspaper, or even a Paisley one, to acquaint him either 
 with the one fact or the other. Out upon you ! . . . 
 
 When I left Aldershot — where you will be surprised to 
 learn, almost as much as I am surprised to tell you, that I 
 " got thro' " without accident — 1 went to Wolverhampton. 
 Your memory there is still savoury. Mr. — — , who is a 
 regular fine old fellow (may his pipe never go out, nor his 
 barrel of home-brewed run dry !), sends you the love and 
 esteem of his whole exuberant heart ; he hopes that all good 
 angels may flap their wings incessantly about your ears ; in 
 
 fact, Mr. invokes upon your head honestly, as many 
 
 blessings as an Irish beggar invoked upon mine, insincerely, 
 when I took advantage of a dark night to palm off a 
 doubtful penny on him. (He was a great scamp — all Irish 
 beggars are — so that I feel no remorse.) When I was at 
 Wolverhampton they had called Dunlop, and were anxiously 
 awaiting his answer. From that very interesting vacancy I 
 was next sent to this one. Of course there is a man called 
 here already — our friend James. On the whole, I have had 
 a very fine run of chances these last twelve months — very. I 
 am almost tempted to begin to have half a mind to think 
 that it wouldn't be very unreasonable on my part to feel 
 almost inclined to give some little harbour, in my wounded 
 bosom, to just the little premonitory foreshadowings of 
 a state of moral feeling almost approaching the nature 
 of mild irritation — not to put too fine a point upon it I 
 However — 
 
I20 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 " Fill high the bowl with Samian wine — (coffee, alas !) 
 We will not think on themes like these, — 
 It made Anacreon's song divine — 
 
 He served, but served — well, not ," 
 
 It's one great solace to my mind that Richmond has fallen. 
 How do you feel, John ? How does Gibson feel ? (if you 
 ever do see Gibson). ... It is rather singular, isn't it? 
 that Geordie, James, Dunlop, and yourself, should all be 
 under call at the same time — 
 
 " Tib she sat down by her wheel by the lire. 
 
 And counted the hours that were fast fleein' by her, 
 An' aye she wad say, wi' a heavy ' Haw-hee ! ' 
 ' A'body's like to get married but me ! ' " 
 
 Tib, you're a great fool ! Remember me to your father and 
 mother, your sister, and all my friends in Paisley. How is 
 Bruce ? I am going to write him the day after to-morrow. 
 
 After spending the Synod week in Edinburgh, and 
 preaching in Glasgow, he returned to P^ngland in the 
 beginning of June, to be present at Mr. Douglas' 
 ordination at Walker- — preaching at Otterburn on his 
 way home to Jedburgh. 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Bankend, Jp;dburgh, 14th June, 1865. 
 .... Otterburn has, of course, been long an interesting 
 place to me, and I was very glad of the opportunity of seeing 
 
 it. Miss guided me to the place where the battle was 
 
 fought, and upon which there is a rude kind of monument 
 to commemorate the event. It stands in a small wood on 
 a long, wide, sloping hill-side ; in fact, the northern slope of 
 Redesdale. The monument is in a little cleared space in 
 the midst of the wood, and it was somewhere in this open 
 space, they tell us, that the Douglas was slain. I sung a 
 verse of the ballad to Miss , to let her hear the tune, 
 
OTTERBURN. 12 1 
 
 which, though she lives so near the place, she assures me 
 she never heard before — and then went home and supped 
 on a mutton chop. (N.B. — Prose is the setting of all poetry ; 
 romance is only romance because everything else is reality ; 
 therefore, I will not retract the chop.) Otterburn is a very 
 wee kirky, but it is exceedingly well filled with a congrega- 
 tion of farmers, well-to-do shepherds, their wives, children, 
 and dogs. The collies mustered pretty strong on Sunday, 
 and, as the day was hot, and the doors had to be thrown 
 open, they enjoyed themselves greatly, walking up and down 
 the passage to take the air, and occasionally going out for 
 a minute to lift up their voices against any passing Sabbath- 
 breaker, who they wisely thought ought to have been wor- 
 shipping in the kirk with decent folk. 
 
 In the evening I had a walk with Mrs. and Miss up 
 
 through a thick wood of firs and larches and spruces, to the 
 top of a hill, where we sat down for an hour and talked, 
 
 while I smoked one of the fragrant Havanas which had 
 
 mindfully laid out for my special behoof. The evening was 
 very pleasant. There was a cuckoo uttering its " curious 
 voice " from the opposite slope, while a number oi cushiesva 
 the wood struck in more hoarsely with a bass to pretty much 
 the same words. 
 
 Next morning I set out for the Carter Fell, a distance of 
 sixteen miles, where I had appointed to meet Jack's con- 
 veyance at two o'clock. I never enjoyed a finer walk in my 
 life. I had to follow the Rede all the way to the top of the 
 Fell, so the way was unmistakable. The morning had been 
 a little frosty, and so everything was inexpressibly fresh and 
 dewy, and the birds were singing lustily — larks, linties, and 
 mavises — with fitful inbreakings of peaseweeps, whaups, and 
 cuckoos. One of the cuckoos sat down upon an alder not 
 thirty yards off, but took fright as I came nearer, and flew 
 to the other side of the water, where it cuckooed till I was 
 
122 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 out of hearing. By-and-bye, of course, it grew hotter, and I 
 marched on with much perspiration and broiling, till at last 
 I reached the tryste at the Fell, at exactly one minute to 
 two, having marched at the rate of four miles an hour all 
 the way. I w^as regretting as I came up the glen that 1 
 hadn't named one instead of two to Jack, keeping myself, of 
 course, to the later hour ; for it is a singular idiosyncrasy of 
 my respected brother's nature to be always one hour behind 
 when he makes an appointment. I was morally certain he 
 wouldn't be at the spot ; nor was he, nor did he appear till 
 the proper time had expired ; indeed, he didn't appear at 
 all, for he staid at home for the sake of Frank, whom he sent 
 out for a drive with Bill as Jehu. . . . 
 
 I found an appointment to Berwick, for the fourth Sabbath 
 of June, awaiting me on my arrival. I have to go to Selkirk 
 on Sabbath, and, I expect, to Paisley on the second Sabbath 
 of July. If I only knew where I am to go on the first of 
 July, I should be all right for a month. . . . 
 
 After fulfilling the appointments referred to in this 
 letter, he was sent for three Sundays to Bristol, 
 whence he made a hurried run to London and Paris 
 with his friend, Mr. Henderson. Till about the end 
 of the year, his engagements were nearer home. In 
 September, we find him at Kinross, making a 
 pilgrimage to the meeting place of the first Seces- 
 sion Presbytery. 
 
 To Miss DuNLOP. 
 
 Kinross, September 15th, 1865. 
 
 I have had no time to weary since I came to Kinross, for 
 I found Mr. Torrie here preaching in Kennedy's church, 
 and we have walked about a good deal together seeing the 
 neighbourhood and its " ferlies." On Monday he went to 
 
GA IRXE 1 ■" BRIDGE. 1 2 3 
 
 visit Ben Martin at Leslie, and I accompanied him four 
 railes or so, as far as Balgedie. On the Wednesday I 
 returned thither to meet him, for he was coming back 
 that day. I set out about ten — a fine breezy sunshiny da) 
 it was — and, as I had just waited to get your letter, I took 
 it with me and broke it open and read it as I sauntered 
 along beside the Loch. When I got to Balgedie I found 
 no appearance of him at the appointed hour, and walked 
 on a little further past Kinesswood, where poor Michael 
 Bruce was born, and then I sat down by the wayside till 
 Torrie should turn up. . . . 
 
 At last he " arrove," as the INIethodist parson said, and 
 we returned to Kinross. Yesterday morning we walked 
 together as far as the famous Gairney Bridge, to see the 
 house where the first meeting of Presbytery took place. 
 We asked a wayfarer what particular house " had had the 
 honour,"' and he told us he was going past it, and would 
 be glad to point it out, mentioning at the same time that 
 opinions differed as to the particular house, but that accord- 
 ing to his own private opinion — which, of course, was the 
 only correct one — it was " that ane wi' its end to the road 
 on the left-hand side," and he pointed to a biggin', straw- 
 roofed and battered with many winters, and, in short, quite 
 wretched enough to be the "real Simon Pure." However, 
 we had to pass "another of the same" on the right-hand 
 side before we reached the competitor of which he 
 wrote himself supporter, and, at the end of this one, which 
 also turned to ihe road, we found a certain kerseckied 
 corduroy-trousered and knee-bratted " Wulliam " — for so 
 our friend addressed him — whose opinion he thought would 
 be worth taking, just for the sake of " confirmation, ye 
 ken." He accordingly addressed "Wulliam," first on the 
 state of advancement of the harvest work, to which 
 Wulliam answered civilly and discreetly ; secondly on 
 
124 ^-^^ PROBATIONER. 
 
 the subject on hand — but tliere he found he had caught 
 a Tartar. WuUiam supported the " right-hand side o' the 
 road " opinion ; we are in the midst of a controversy. Our 
 friend quoted " prent " on his own side, and denied that 
 Wulham's party could show a single blessed line of letter- 
 press that gave them the least countenance. Wulliam turned 
 up a very snuffy nose at the idea of " prent," and tumbled 
 our friend over like a ninepin, by citing the irrefragable 
 testimony of " auld Tammas Meldrum, that was deid and 
 gane this forty year, and that was weel yont o' eichty " 
 (the tough and persistent old Thomas that he was) " afore 
 he de'ed." Our friend, however, remembered him of an 
 " engagement wi' a gig," and executed as graceful a 
 strategic movement as ever escaped being called a down- 
 right retreat. A happy idea fortunately entered my head, 
 and Torrie approved of it, viz., that we should "do" 
 both hovels, which we accordingly did " do," and, as 
 WuUiam's hovel, to do him and it justice, was really, 
 if possible, the icwrse of the two, we both came away with 
 the impression that its claims were the best 
 
 Another piece of U.P. antiquity claimed our attention on 
 our return, to wit, the funeral of the Rev. Robert Leishman, 
 senior minister of the second church here, and who was 
 a minister of 62 years' standing, 90 years old, and the 
 father of the Church. Torrie and I had the honour of 
 attending his remains to a pleasant old spot by the side 
 of the Loch, where, if there be ghosts, they must have 
 a delightful time of it, the Kinross shades, wandering 
 by the winding and pebbly shore of the still and clear 
 and silent lake on starry nights beneath " the glimpses 
 of the moon." And there we buried him. He was a good, 
 gentle, pious, old man, so requiescat in pace. To-day Torrie 
 and I made our final excursion, in company, to the top ol 
 Benarty, on the south side of the Loch. In coming home 
 
AT KINROSS. 125 
 
 we skirted the shores of the lake, and found it a grateful 
 amusement on a hot day to cast our stockings and shoes and 
 wade the wee sleekit, pawky stream of the Gairney, which 
 steals like a dream through the land, and slily hides itself in 
 Loch Leven, And now Torrie is gone to Auchtermuchty, 
 and I am left to my own resources, but I shall manage 
 to tide over what remains of my appointed time in this 
 pleasant little town pretty well. There are plenty of books, 
 and, with all that walking, I have still managed to read 
 Grosart's Temptation of Christ, his little work, Christ for a ii 
 the World, Lamartine's Pictures of tlie French Revolution, 
 and half Ferrier's Institutes of Mctaphysic. Besides there 
 are two old women — one very ill, the other eighty years 
 old last May, of which she has been blind for sixteen — 
 whom I visit mostly every day for a while, so you will 
 see there isn't much time left for wearying. 
 
 After leaving Kinross, he went home to fulfil a 
 promise to preach for the first time for his friend 
 and minister, Mr. Poison, in his native church, 
 Blackfriars, Jedburgh. The trying ordeal was made 
 still more trying by the fact that he was far from well. 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Bankend, September 26th. 
 
 You will be glad to learn that I managed to preach on 
 Sunday both in the afternoon and in the evening. It isn't 
 a very agreeable business preaching to one's " Romans, 
 countrymen, and lovers." However, I felt nowise nervous, 
 but from pure weakness couldn't speak very well out. The 
 said weakness you needn't set down as a very alarming 
 business, as it was simply owing to my having eaten 
 little or nothing for about three days. One does get on 
 very badly without food. However, after preaching J 
 felt such an amount of the ravenous about me that I could 
 
126 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 have eaten a horse, which thing you will be glad to learn 
 I didn't do ; for owing to the precautions of my friends 
 I was persuaded to let a fine dapple grey canter gaily 
 home with its master, and to content myself with beef 
 and apple-pie. Whether it was the beef and the apple-pie, 
 or the consciousness of having exercised such an amount 
 of heroic self-denial (in sparing said grey horse I mean), 
 or whether (which third theory I feel inclined to adopt) 
 it was a combination of both, I don't exactly know, only 
 I felt quite strong at night, and spoke out so well, that 
 auld Wattie Lawrie, who is as deaf as his own tree leg, 
 actually turned up the Psalms and the text for himself. 
 1 am told that the folk are greatly pleased, which I neither 
 believe nor don't believe, knowing the awful tendency of 
 human nature to give flattery and to court it. Therefore, 
 all that I say to you is this, that I preached and did not 
 stick. I can answer of course for my own people ; they 
 were pleased, which they would doubtless have been if 
 I had made as bad an appearance as Dominie Sampson 
 himself. My mother was in such a state of perturbation 
 that owing to the steam rising from her face and dimming 
 her spectacles, she never saw me, I believe. 
 
 His diary has the following entry :— " Kinross, 
 Saturday, i6th September. Got the list at night, 
 and find myself bound for Orkney in winter. I 
 have been wanting to see Orkney." The experience 
 of a United Presbyterian probationer is not com- 
 plete without a trip to the Orkney Islands. The 
 Church has obtained a firm footing in that northern 
 archipelago. The congregation of Kirkwall is one 
 of the largest and most powerful in the denomina- 
 tion, and, mainly through the almost apostolic zeal 
 
ORKNEY. 127 
 
 of its late minister, the venerable Dr. Paterson, 
 congregations have been planted in almost every 
 hamlet in Pomona, and in nearly all the surrounding 
 islands. In these congregations vacancies are very 
 frequent : the isolated position of the churches, and 
 the inhospitable climate leading ministers to seek 
 translation to some sphere of work in the sunnier 
 south. There is thus a large demand for preachers, 
 and only a very early settlement avails to obviate 
 the necessity of all whose names are on " the list " 
 braving the perils of the northern voyage. Not 
 even the most timid sailor or least adventurous of 
 the young men at the command of the all-powerful 
 " Committee," ventures to hope for exemption. The 
 most he can do is to pray that his flight polewards 
 may not be in the winter. But, whether in winter 
 or in summer, the Orkney expedition supplies the 
 probationer with a new experience. In Davidson's 
 time the form of Church government in the islands 
 was really a modified Episcopacy. Everybody spoke 
 of Dr. Paterson as the Bishop of Orkney, and his 
 powers were almost Episcopal. The commandin<^'- 
 position of his congregation ; the fact that he had 
 been the founder of most of the stations in the 
 Presbytery, as well as his distinguished ability and 
 weight of character, quite naturally made his influ- 
 ence paramount. When the young men appointed 
 to service in the island landed at Kirkwall, they 
 found their headquarters provided for them at Miss 
 Bews' lodgings. They then waited on " the Dr." 
 
128 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 to receive his commands, and were by him distributed 
 among the vacant charges under his care : going at 
 his bidding to Holm, or Sandwick, or Shapinshay, 
 or Westray, returning when they had fulfilled each 
 engagement to receive further commands, and to 
 refresh their spirits by intercourse with each other 
 in Miss Bews' comfortable lodgings. Men fortunate 
 enough to be sent north in summer find the experi- 
 ence pleasant enough. There is a charm in the 
 long days and in the midnight twilight ; the roads 
 are good, and the seas are calm ; and in passing 
 from one station to another there is opportunity of 
 seeing with comfort the wonders of the Maeshowe 
 and the standing-stones of Stennis, or of going up 
 the hill of Hoy and searching for the Carbuncle, 
 or lying in the hollow of the Dwarfie Stane. In 
 winter the expedition is dreary enough. Davidson 
 reckoned it only in harmony with his general ill- 
 luck as a probationer that he should be sent to 
 Orkney in winter, but he never grumbled. 
 
 To the Rev. George Douglas. 
 
 Glasgow, November 2nd, 1865. 
 . . . . " I've paced much this weary mortal round " 
 since I saw your blessed face last, my darlint. I have been 
 in England, Scotland, Ireland, and France this summer, and 
 now in a fortnight I start polewards. This is great fun. I 
 have, singular to say, been in a vacancy since I saw you, 
 to wit Kinross, but I have declined the call they addressed 
 to me : Hollo ! stop — there's some mistake there, surely ! 
 Ah, yes — I mean they have declined addressing a call to 
 me. Well, it comes to the same thing after all — to wit, I 
 
A SMOA'V CHIMNEY 
 
 129 
 
 am going to Orkney. I rather like tlie idea of Orkney in 
 winter : 1 have a fancy that " Orkney is nothing, if not 
 stormy." Still, this particular season cannot with confidence 
 be called the very best for sailing purposes, and 1 confess I 
 do feel inclined to exclaim with old Sir Patrick Spens : 
 " O wha is this has dune the deed, 
 An' tauld the clerk o' me, 
 To send me oot at this time o' tlie year 
 To sail upon the sea I " 
 However, what's the use of whining ? I hate whining. 
 ()ut upon whiners, moaners, groaners, lamentation-makers \ 
 Bah ! — let us change the subject. . . . 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Holm, Wednesday, November 29th, 1865. 
 
 .... The chimney to-day is smoking so dreadfully that 
 I have just made up my mind to take a walk as far as 
 Kirkwall and give the wind a chance to change before I 
 come back again. In other respects I am quite comfortable, 
 and can see no reason for Orkney holding the evil reputa- 
 tion among us that it does hold ; or for anybody being 
 much pitied by his friends, though sent in the depth of 
 winter. Only that smoke. Well, I may say I never saw a 
 smoky chimney till I came here : I have seen one now, 
 however. But one great consolation lies in the fact that it 
 never smokes except when the wind is in the north, and 
 Mrs. Stewart tells me that it scarcely ever blows from that 
 ijuarter. However, it happens to be blowing to-day so 
 strong that I can't stand it any longer. I have nearly 
 rubbed my eyes out. I have been weeping these two or 
 three hours. I have nearly coughed myself into consump- 
 tion or the rupture of a blood-vessel. And, therefore, ho ! 
 
 for Kirkwall. . . . 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Sandwick, December i8th, 1865. 
 
 .... I had quite an interesting walk to Sandwick. . . . 
 
 I 
 
I30 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 After leaving Mr. Reid's I had a good road for seven or 
 eight miles across the plain of Stennis ; then I had to leave 
 what they called the " made road," and turn into one which 
 was never made, but, like Topsy, had simply "growed." 
 It was a cruel, bad road — now spreading away out in tracts 
 innumerable over the heath, as if a hundred carts had 
 crossed the moor abreast — then running suddenly into one 
 gorge, half-a-foot deep of mud and water — as if the carts 
 had all at once fallen in behind each other and tried it in 
 single file. To consummate the joke, it fell dark as 1 
 entered on this interesting line of march. You may 
 imagine, then, what fun it must have been. I stood still a 
 dozen times to look up at the stars and laugh aloud ; 
 indeed, I was compelled to halt from the fact of my having 
 stuck, and, the work of extrication requiring to be gone 
 about with much caution, as a single impatient jerk might 
 have left the jerked foot shoeless ! At length a shape — it 
 might be a man or it might be a coffin, so far as daylight 
 helped one to discern — showed itself of a sudden at a 
 distance of a dozen yards or so, which, on my addressing 
 it, turned out to be a man, and by-and-bye developed into 
 the schoolmaster of Sandwick. " Is this the road to Sand- 
 wick?" said I, to which the schoolmaster replied that it 
 was, "but," he added, " if you follow it you're done ! " I 
 said that I had for the most part found my way to a place 
 by following the road, and that, if they didn't go by the 
 same rule in Orkney, I was likely to turn out but a poor 
 traveller ! So he explained that, though the part I had already 
 crossed was certainly bad, what yet remained was unspeak- 
 ably worse ; in fact, he gave me to understand that the one 
 part was to the other much as the Poet-Laureate puts the 
 question of the sexes — 
 
 " As moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine." 
 However, he would turn back a few hundred yards and put 
 
NIGHT MARCH ACROSS THE MOOR. 131 
 
 me in the direction of tlie manse : so he led me away from 
 the road a little distance till we came to a little runlet, 
 which we crossed by stepping-stones. He then halted, 
 pointed to the little patcli of paley blue colour in the west, 
 which still lingered whereabouts the sun had gone down, 
 told me that the manse was there, and so returned, and I 
 saw him no more. I then marched straight upon the liglit 
 — at least as straight as I could, for the moor was dreadfully 
 cut up by holes and ditches, besides the aito relievo of 
 hillocks and tufts of heather. At length I lighted upon a 
 house, and knocked at the door. It was opened by a 
 woman, of whom I inquired the way. The woman stalked 
 silently out on the heath about a hundred yards, pointed 
 again to the paley-blue smear in the west, and said the 
 manse was there — and so returned, and I saw her no more. 
 Another half-hour, which I spent in crossing ploughed fields, 
 or rather patches (for they are in no way fenced off from 
 the surrounding waste), and in leaping ditches and " such 
 amusements and manly exercises," brought me to a second 
 house, from which there issued, on my knuckle-alarm at 
 his door, another " intelligent native," a man this time, 
 who, bare-headed, accompanied me about a quarter of a 
 mile to a point from which it was all plain sailing, and 
 another quarter of a mile brought me to the manse. 
 
 This December night march across the moor has quite 
 made my reputation here for a man of energy and valour : 
 and I may tell you that I astonished the Holm folks by 
 walking out there from Kirkwall after dark, in the face of 
 the wind and rain, when the gale was at its height. But I 
 think the Holm exploit was decidedly a good one (don't 
 say I never praise myself again). Geordie Steven besought 
 me to turn again (he had set me out of town about a mile, 
 and that before the rain came on), but I was ashamed to 
 show the white feather, so I kept on, just to show what 
 
132 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 kind of pluck there is to be found on the Border — though I 
 confess I did entertain a secret wish that I had never set 
 out. You have no idea how the wind blows here, where 
 there is neither wall, nor wood, nor hill, nor anything else 
 to break its force or aftbrd the battered wretch the slightest 
 shelter. I was sometimes blown back a few paces — often 
 I could only stand still and hold my ground with difficulty. 
 Stewart said it was the best feat he had known for some 
 time, and I am fool enough to be fond of praise of that 
 kind. 
 
 This Sandwick is a very solitary place in the mainland,^ 
 close to the sea. I have been along seeing the great cliffs 
 to-day which front the Atlantic, and watching for hours 
 the long heavy waves that come rolling in, and break with 
 a din like thunder, which never ceases. The headland 
 is all broken and bored through by their unceasing 
 assaults. . . . 
 
 To the Rev. James Brown. 
 
 Sandwick, December 12th, 1865. 
 
 .... I am now settled for two Sundays in this solitude 
 of Sandwick. I like a little solitude occasionally; it enables 
 you to collar yourself, as it were, and do t'ne little over- 
 hauling which one is apt to omit or avoid among the haunts 
 of men. All that is well enough for a fortnight or so ; but 
 Sandwick for a year, or, still worse, Sandwick for life, is a 
 thought which might very well give any human soul pause. 
 I amused myself the other night by a painful kind of specu- 
 lation as to what I should do in the scarcely conceivable 
 event of being settled in this waste place. " I would, first 
 of all, grow idle," said I to myself, " then moody, then 
 mad, and perhaps wind up with murdering my wife." At 
 that point I broke off the train of " not impossibles." Then, 
 there's the melancholy Kirk and God's bleak acre ; I was 
 
 ' The Island of Pomona is by Orcadians called the mainland. — Ed. 
 
SANDWICK. 133 
 
 down looking at them to-day, and the sight of them made 
 me think that it would be even worse to die and be buried 
 here than to pass one's life. The sea, at a little distance, 
 roars and thunders everlastingly ; the spray even comes up 
 the lonely hill-side to drench the dead men's graves, upon 
 which the thin, harsh grass grows only in little knots and 
 tufts and patches, through which the sand shows like the 
 skin of a mangy dog. If I were minister of Sandwick, the 
 sight of that kirk-yard would make me die of self-pity by 
 anticipation. Keats spoke of " feeling the daisies growing 
 over him." Somehow, I can't look into that desolate place 
 without having a fancy-feeling of the sharp sand and the 
 salt-sea spray chafing and pricking every limb of me. On 
 the whole, I consider a fortnight of Sandwick will be com- 
 fortable enough — but not much longer. I should be getting 
 south again in a fortnight or three weeks, if the fates be 
 favourable. Solitude makes a man long-winded, and I hope 
 you will let that excuse cover the lengthiness of this. 
 
 To Miss Dun lop. 
 
 Sandwick, December 19th, 1865. 
 
 I am going to flit from my present quarters to-morrow 
 morning for Kirkwall, there to learn " where next ? " and I 
 mean to take the standing-stones of Stennis and the re- 
 nowned Maeshowe, with its burrows and chambers and 
 runes, on my way. The people are very kind, and insist 
 upon sending a conveyance ^ witli me as far as the locality 
 rendered interesting by these antiquities, and from which a 
 walk of nine or ten miles will take me into Kirkwall. When 
 I get there and learn my destination, I will add that bit of 
 information to the end of this letter. 
 
 To-day I have been busy with the endeavour to gratify 
 my geological friend, Adam ]Mathieson, by procuring him a 
 
 ^ Let me shove into a footnote the embarrassing little fact that the 
 conveyance is a cart. Never mind. 
 
134 '^'^^- PROBATIONER. 
 
 few specimens from the fossiliferous deposits for which this 
 neighbourhood is famous. I went down to and in- 
 quired for , and then inquired of him where the fossils 
 
 are to be found. ... He was very obh'ging. He told me 
 he didn't happen to have any himself at present, and was 
 unable to quarry just now : in fact, he had got three or 
 four of his ribs broken a week or two ago, but in spite of 
 that little trifle he would go with me to the quarry, which 
 was about a mile distant on the top of the cliffs that front 
 the Atlantic. So we went to the quarry, which I found to 
 be as he had said, on the top of a beetling crag, descending 
 sheer to the bottom of a tremendous voe, where the hoarse 
 waves came tumbling and rushing in for a hundred yards as 
 far as we could see, and beyond that I don't know how 
 many yards further, where we couldn't see. So there we 
 worked for an hour or so, hewing and chipping, smoking 
 and chatting, and the sea roaring several hundred feet 
 below — one of the finest and wildest places that I ever 
 saw. Then we came away with an armful of little frag- 
 ments, and he made me go in and sit down, which I 
 accordingly did, and was hospitably entertained with con- 
 versation and wine by himself and one of the ladies. Upon 
 the whole, I began to regret that I didn't discover that 
 " seam" a little sooner, as it might have stuck a few feathers 
 into time's wings, which they have sadly lacked the last five 
 or six days. . . . 
 
 Stkomxess, December 23rd, 1865. 
 
 .... What have I been doing, then ? Well, very little, 
 except walking about the face of the earth, at least that 
 little mole on the earth's face which polite men have long 
 ago called Pomona. I suppose they were more easily pleased 
 long ago with scenery than we fastidious dilettanti are now- 
 a-days, or they would never have pasted so pretty and fertile 
 a name upon so bleak and barren a place. However, it is 
 
WALKING UP AND DOWN. 135 
 
 possible that these old people were more ironical than 
 polite, and called the place by that name because it had so 
 little claim to such a nice one. But, whatever may be the 
 state of the case with respect to the name, and the reasons 
 for it, that doesn't at all affect the fact that I have been 
 " walking up and down in it " a good deal the last two days 
 or three. I told you the other night that I was going to 
 start the next day for Kirkwall, and that I expected a "con- 
 veyance " part of the way. Well, I have determined to 
 elevate that " conveyance " out of the footnote into the text, 
 and therefore let me say quite boldly that I was carted from 
 Sandwick as far as the Standing Stones — nay further than 
 that, for the kind-hearted man insisted on going on another 
 mile or so, and only left me at the Maeshowe, near the house 
 of Turmiston, which, I think, is mentioned in the Pirate. 
 From there I marched afoot to Kirkwall, and reached the 
 Barrack about six or seven o'clock in the evening ; I might 
 have got there sooner, but I went in at Firth . . . . ; it was 
 with great reluctance that I at last rose to shoulder my 
 shirts and fossils, and resume my journey. 
 
 I found, when I reached Kirkwall, that the Doctor had 
 written to me at Sandwick, and directed me to preach at 
 Stromness on Sabbath ; but the letter and I had crossed 
 each other on the way, so I had my journey for nothing. 
 
 However, when I say " for nothing," I forgot I saw , 
 
 and found Henderson and other two in lodgings, which made 
 up for the trouble I had taken, even though I were to omit 
 the fact that I enjoy the journeys greatly. I told you 
 over the page that I had determined to promote the cart, 
 but I didn't tell you the reason. Well, the reason is twofold. 
 For to begin, really the cart bulked so largely in the history 
 of my Wednesday, and did me such excellent good service, 
 that, were there no other consideration, it would have been 
 the basest ingratitude to leave the poor, prosy, kindly, heavy, 
 
136 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 serious, good-hearted thing sticking in the mud of that foot- 
 note. But I have another reason. The Doctor was so 
 much grieved at my having walked so far to so httle purpose, 
 that he sent for me yesterday morning to express his regret, 
 which was very satisfactory, and also to send me as far as 
 Firth in his carriage, which was much more satisfactory. I 
 have underscored carriage, because I had underscored cart, 
 and I wish you to set the one against the other ; and observe 
 that it leaves a balance in favour of my dignity after all. 
 For I have seriously thought the matter over, and made up 
 my mind to the following effect : — The man who rides in a 
 cart is decidedly below the man who does his journey afoot; 
 but the man who rides in a carriage is decidedly above them 
 both, and the man who first drives in a cart and then drives 
 in a carriage, leaves himself in the matter of dignity, pre- 
 cisely on a level with him who has never used any substitute 
 for his legs. There now, let us dismiss both cart and car- 
 riage with a respectful benediction upon them both. (I am 
 going to take a smoke now, for that vehicle business has 
 been so intricate anil difficult to manage, that I feel quite 
 exhausted.) .... 
 
 DIARY. 
 
 Sandwick, Sunday, December ryth. — Dry and breezy. 
 Good audience. Work and Med. In the evening read 
 Wordsworth and some other things till bed-time. 
 
 Monday, i8th. — Walked across to Birsay ; dined there 
 with a very intelligent Mr. Leask, who showed me a Pictish 
 tower, and the old palace of Robert Stuart, who was 
 executed for bad Latin. Got home about 6 p.m. 
 
 Tuesday, 26th. — Alarming news to-day about the Cowans, 
 who have typhus fever ; Willie reported dangerously ill. 
 Hope to heaven he will get through. 
 
 Thursday, 28th. — Walked in from Stromness to-day. 
 Expected a letter about the Cowans, and, finding none. 
 
DEA TH OF A FRIEND. 
 
 ^17 
 
 thought the omen good. Got two newspapers from 
 Webster, and there found the death of poor Willie Cowan ! 
 He died on Christmas-day. He was the most loveable 
 soul on earth. This is dreadful. 
 
 Friday, 29th.— Quite stupid from that terrible news ol 
 poor Cowan. I feel as if in a dream from which I cannot 
 find means of waking. Crossed to the island of Shapinshay 
 in a roaring gale ; but could scarcely even forget that death 
 to think of my own danger. 
 
 Sunday, 31st. — Wild and stormy — only thirty in church. 
 Preached Pow. and Scrv. Last Hogmanay I was in Ireland. 
 Where shall I be next one ? Dead ? Living ? Settled ? 
 The future is veiled, and it is well. " Living or dying may 
 I be the Lord's," and so fare-thee-well '65. Thou hast had 
 a mournful ending — Poor Willie Cowan ! 
 
 To ]\IlSS DUNLOP. 
 
 Shapinshay, December 31st, 1865. 
 .... I don't find myself in the mood to write, and 
 1 must make my letter a very short one. It is also a very 
 sad one, for I have got a day or two ago, the dreadful news 
 that my friend William Cowan is dead. White wrote me 
 the week before last a letter, which I only got on Monday, 
 telling me that the two brothers were ill of typhus — that 
 Jack had got the turn, and was gradually gaining a little 
 strength, but that Willie was a much worse case, and was 
 dangerously ill. Of course this news disquieted me very 
 much, and I wrote back to White to send me word im- 
 mediately how they were. I expected that I should find a 
 letter awaiting me on Thursday when I walked into Kirk- 
 w-all ; and, as I found none, I set it down as a good omen, 
 indicating, at least, that there was nothing of a more serious 
 nature to announce. However, Webster gave me the Scots- 
 man of Tuesday to read, and, on turning to the record of 
 deaths, I found that poor Willie Cowan was gone. I cannot 
 
138 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 tell you how stunned and stupified I have been ever since. 
 I cannot get the thought of it out of my mind, do all that I 
 can. If I walk about, 1 can't help thinking of the walks I 
 have had with him ; and, if I read, the recollection inserts 
 itself between every sentence and paragraph and turning of 
 the leaf. I am quite solitary here too, and the weather is 
 stormy and wild, and, in short, I am very miserable. How- 
 ever, even to tell one's unhappiness serves a little to divert 
 it, and so I hope you will excuse me for writing you this 
 unhappy and very gloomy letter. 
 
 I didn't tell you at the time that I got a letter in Kirk- 
 wall from John M'Intyre, telling me of the death of his 
 brother Duncan, with whom I used to stay in Darlington, 
 and who was also a singularly amiable fellow. These two 
 occurrences have rendered my stay in Orkney very memor- 
 able, sadly memorable to me, and I do wish that my stay in 
 it was at an end. To-morrow, if the weather be good, I 
 mean to cross over to Kirkwall and see if there be any 
 letters for me, and to attend the Presbytery, which meets on 
 Tuesday. . . . 
 
 To the Savh\ 
 
 Shai'inshay, January ist, 1866. 
 
 This is New- Year's Day, so let me begin by wishing you 
 a "Happy New Year." ... I expected to date from Kirk- 
 wall, but the weather is so stormy and dismal that I could 
 not think of " crossing the stormy firth to-day," as the 
 chieftain was warned. It has been blowing great guns for 
 four mortal days, and to-day it has culminated in wind, 
 snow, hail, thunder, and lightning, all mingled together in 
 one tempestuous mass. Also, it is bitterly cold — even 
 indoors it is chilling and pinching in the extreme, and, 
 though I am sitting with my greatcoat on, it is as much as 
 I can do to render life tolerable. I am not naturally much 
 more of a coward than most men ; but cold has a very 
 demoralising effect, and really it makes me ciuite unable to 
 
SHAPINSHAY. 
 
 139 
 
 regard with anything hke complacency the idea of getting 
 drowned in crossing that bit of water ; so I have decided to 
 stay and see what kind of weather to-morrow will bring. . . . 
 What have I to speak about on this page ? . . . You see 
 Shapinshay is such an isolated place (it's an island), and 
 the manse where I am staying is so isolated, even from the 
 rest of Shapinshay, and, finally, 1 am myself so isolated in 
 this solitary room in the manse, from which I haven't 
 moved out of doors for three days — in short, to such an 
 extent does isolation characterise everything here, that 
 I have really no news to tell you. Just to show you how 
 little there is, I may mention that the sole noticeable occur- 
 rence that has fallen under my eye (and I command a 
 pretty extensive landscape, and i-mscape too, mind), is the 
 fact that the Volunteers came down to the shore about noon, 
 and fired some nine or ten rounds from their battery of two 
 guns, and then went away I Voila tout ! 
 
 By the way, I got that interesting document the list 
 (How you love it 1) the other day. Besides the Orkney 
 engagements, I see I have to go to Pitrodie and Inner- 
 leithen : Pitrodie the second two Sabbaths of February, and 
 Innerleithen the first two of March — not a very rich pros- 
 pect certainly, but we have seen worse in our time — 
 
 " Hope springs eternal in the human breast." 
 I don't know how I quote that unless it be in fun. Well 
 there comes another terrible hail shower, and as my fingers 
 are getting cold I must stop and warm them. . . . 
 
 To the Sa/iiL. 
 
 Shapinshay, January 7th, 1866. 
 .... Really one never knows what the next five 
 minutes will develop. I was just going to go straight into 
 some very interesting subject or another, when the dis- 
 hevelled old Eliza before mentioned made her appearance 
 with Xht Juvefiile Missionary Magazine and a threatening of 
 
I40 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 supper (both of which I knew quite well were a mere 
 apology for a hm'Cf—iht cunning old Eliza) and put the 
 whole affair out of my head. 
 
 Eliza is a very peculiar little old body. I can scarcely 
 describe her. I have called her dishevelled, and yet there 
 is a certain show of orderliness about her too. She always 
 reminds me of some of the touzie little girls at country 
 schools, bright-eyed and sprightly, with a lock of black hair 
 hanging on their brows and threatening to make them 
 squint all their days. Eliza is like one of these lassies 
 turned all of a sudden forty-five years old. That looks 
 absurd in the extreme certainly ; but that does not in the 
 least spoil the description, for Eliza is absurd. She has a 
 good deal of shrewdness too mixed up with much non- 
 sense ; for mentally as well as bodily she is dishevelled. 
 She has continually-recurring " lucid intervals," so continu- 
 ally recurring as to get mixed up with the other intervals 
 beyond all possibility of disentanglement. She is some- 
 thing like a male worthy beyond the sound there, the Rev. 
 
 of , concerning whom my friend Henderson 
 
 remarks, with much truth as well as humour, that he is 
 *• subject to frequent attacks of reason." When Eliza has a 
 mind for a haver she folds her arms and paces to and fro 
 for half an hour or so across the room, talking in her 
 inimitable mixed patois of burr and Orcadian, and in a 
 wavering, uncertain, discursive desultory manner, on all 
 possible things in Shapinshay and out of it, especially in it. 
 During the last haver, for example, which was quite a short 
 and mild one comparatively, she has managed to touch on 
 about fifty or sixty different points. She has told me about 
 the fate of two broken eggs which were intended by her to 
 be converted into ingredients of a delicious pudding for my 
 dinner to-day, but which were destined to become the prey 
 of the disreputable old grey cat, who waited till everybody 
 
ELIZA. 
 
 141 
 
 was into the kirk and the yelHng of the first psahii fairly 
 audible, and then gobbled them up^ — the blackguard. But 
 how did the eggs happen to be broken ? Well that ques- 
 tion leads on to another very fertile subject. For the eggs 
 were trampled on by the pet ewe — -who is Eliza's sole com- 
 panion with the exception of the grey cat. She has 
 managed to get as much wool from off the back of the pet 
 ewe as furnished materials for five pairs of blankets. A 
 treasure of a ewe ! But that is not all : the pet ewe had 
 two pet lambs which sold, the one for two-and-twenty 
 shillings, and the other for three-and-twenty, last summer. 
 And finally (I don't see why this should be marked down as 
 an item in the pet ewe's good character, but Eliza does), the 
 pet ewe had a brithci- who fetched no less than two-pound 
 five. So far for the usefulness of the animal. But another 
 and intenser interest attaches to the pet ewe. One of my 
 
 predecessors here was a Mr. ( is a most decent, 
 
 amiable, unsophisticated soul, as you will find in that record 
 of decent, amiable unsophisticated souls, the list), who, being 
 fond of the lower animals, made friends with the pet ewe by 
 patting her head and stroking her face. This act of kind- 
 ness was witnessed by a wicked wretch of a Morisonian, 
 who went and spread a report among the islanders that the 
 " preacher amused himself by riding about the fields on the 
 pet ewe's back," and this vile slander, says Eliza sorrowfully, 
 
 quite spoilt Mr. 's usefulness in the place I Then, 
 
 changing the scene from Shapinshay, she told me of the 
 
 " lang elder o' ," Mr. by name, (porridge here 
 
 interrupted the " lang elder," but the story is too good to be 
 
 broken off that way). Mr. is six feet five inches high, 
 
 and blind of an eye : but for all that he married a very little 
 wife, who had a very little sister — the two littlelest women 
 
 in all the island of . And here comes the point of the 
 
 story : Mr. , the day he was kirket, being a gallant 
 
142 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 man, took the little wife on one arm and the little sister 
 <)n the other, and so escorted them both to the kirk. 
 
 But the people of are a satirical generation, and said 
 
 that " he looked like a man wi' twa pails of water." Eliza 
 also touched upon the devil, but as the subject is somewhat 
 hackneyed as well as serious we will leave it. . . . 
 
 To the Same. 
 PiEKOWALL, WjiSTKAY, January nth, 1866. 
 
 .... It is a long and tedious sail to Westray, not that 
 the island is really at a great distance, but owing to the 
 number of places that we have to call at, and the doublings 
 and windings which these calls render necessary. We 
 started at eight in the morning in a snow-storra, which 
 recurred at short intervals during the day. Towards even- 
 ing, too, the wind rose, and threatened to blow a gale, and, 
 though the vessel was a very good screw-steamer, we 
 encountered such a tremendous sea on emerging from 
 between the Red Head and the Calf of Eday, and entering 
 the open ocean, which we did just as evening came on, 
 that the captain turned and ran into a little bay called 
 Rapness, and cast anchor for the night. Pierowall, my 
 destination, was eight miles off across the island, but, as 
 there is little or no sleeping accommodation on board the 
 boat, I determined to set out and walk, especially as there 
 was a shoemaker from Pierowall Avho intended to go too. 
 So the captain sent us ashore in a boat, and we came over 
 the snow to our " respectable places of abode," which we 
 reached about half-past seven. This morning the wind 
 fell, and the steamer got on about noon. Altogether, I 
 enjoyed the trip greatly. We had some amusing pas- 
 -sengers aboard (including a "Professor of Magic"), and 
 saw some splendid precipices, with a heavier sea beating on 
 them than usual. The shoemaker was excellent fun at first, 
 but he got knocked up towards the end of the way. . . . 
 
A T PIERO WALL. \ 43 
 
 The following extracts from Davidson's diary will 
 serve to give the reader some idea of a probationer's 
 life in an outlying station in Orkney : — 
 
 Pierowall, Friday, 12th January. — Weather, which is all- 
 important here, and therefore I note it, is much as before, 
 a cutting wind, with snow and hail showers. Visited Nolt- 
 land Castle, a neighbouring ruin, in the forenoon. Wrote 
 Gibson at night. The people here observe the old style 
 festivals yet, and this being Old New-Year's Eve, I had 
 " cakes and ale " (treacle, to be sure), to supper. 
 
 Saturday, 13th January. — -Thaw and indescribable slusli 
 to-day. It is their New-Year's Day (O.S.), and the young 
 fellows are playing at football. Indoors the day has been 
 celebrated chiefly by eating ; cakes and scones, and buns 
 and shortbread forming the staple food. Walked a mile or 
 two into the country in a dense mist and a drenching drizzle 
 of rain, . . . 
 
 Sunday, 14th January. — A fine morning gradually degen- 
 erated from clear to misty, and from that to heavy rain with 
 strong wind. Had a very good audience, and very atten- 
 tive. I will say this for the Orcadians, that I have never 
 been listened to anywhere with more attention — seldom, 
 indeed, if ever, with so much. SeriK and Tap. 
 
 Monday, 15th January. — -A most tempestuous day — roar- 
 ing wind and driving hail, shaking the very house. The 
 " Orcadian " came in this morning, and at once returned 
 southward; but the wind being a-head and strong, it is 
 thought she will lie still at Stronsay. Kept in-doors all day, 
 revising a sermon on Proverbs xviii. 24. 
 
 Tuesday, i6th. — Mild and beautiful day, of which I took 
 advantage to visit the promontory of Noup Head— a wild 
 headland terminating in a precipice 240 feet high, at whose 
 base the sea beats and foams everlastingly. This spent the 
 
144 
 
 THE PRO DA riONER. 
 
 forenoon. In the afternoon visited a sick woman, May- 
 Davidson by name, who has lain in bed for four years. 
 Finished Wordsworth's Excursion. 
 
 Wednesday, 17th. — Day began well, but got into low 
 spirits about noon, and took a fit of weeping in the evening, 
 and is crying yet. The day being so sombre, I walked to 
 the church-yard in the forenoon. Spent most of the day in 
 reading Wordsworth's prefaces. Mr. Ingram of Eday came 
 by the steamer in the evening. 
 
 Thursday, i8th. — A fine mild day. The congregation 
 here held their annual meeting, and also agreed to " go 
 forward," as Henderson says. There was a good attendance, 
 and I preached. In the evening the arrival of the Orkney 
 Herald let in a gleam of light from the outer world, by 
 which, however, nothing of importance was revealed. 
 
 Friday, 19th. — Very wild and stormy. Mr. Ingram re- 
 turned by the boat in the morning to Eday. Spent almost 
 the whole day reading a Life of Sir Robert Peel. Ventured 
 across country to the sea on the west side in the evening. 
 Slight twinges of toothache, caused, I suppose, by the 
 terrible draughts. 
 
 Saturday, 20th. — . . . . Weather so favourable that, for 
 the first time since my arrival, the post-boat has ventured 
 into Kirkwall. My toothache symptoms have for the most 
 part vanished ; but partly laziness, partly fear of cold, partly 
 that Life ef Sir Robert Peel, kept me indoors most of the 
 day. Ventured out a little towards evening, and called to 
 see poor May Davidson. May told me she was worse to- 
 day, but is very patient, poor soul. Post-boat not expected 
 to return to-night ; if it return on Monday, I shall miss my 
 letters. Wrote a little bit to my sermon at present under- 
 going extensive repairs. Finished up by reading in the 
 Golden Treasury (Palgrave's). 
 
 Sunday, 21st. — This has been a uniformly fine day — open 
 
KIRKWALL. 145 
 
 and sunny, and breezy and mild. There was a pretty good 
 audience at the church, attentive, too, as usual. In the 
 evening went in to see the Sabbath-School, which is pretty 
 well attended, and addressed them shortly on prayer. Work 
 and Med. 
 
 Kirkwall, Monday, 22nd. — Left Pierowall at eight a.m., a 
 beautiful morning, and, after a pretty fair passage, arrived here 
 at seven p.m. Had on board three ministers and a magician. 
 
 Bankend, Saturday, 27th. — A beautiful day. There 
 being no appointment for me, it is now settled that I 
 preach here to-morrow (D.V.). Spent the day in a very 
 desultory kind of way — ^reading desultorily, thinking de- 
 sultorily, and desultorily dodging about the town. Had tea 
 with Jack. This has been a lively kind of week. It began 
 in Pierowall, Westray, and I have ended it in Jethart. 
 During the course of it I have spent a longer or shorter time in 
 Kirkwall, Wick, Aberdeen, Perth, Edinburgh, and Jedburgh. 
 
 The earnest attention with which religious instruc- 
 tion is received by the people of Orkney, to which 
 Davidson refers in one of the foregoing extracts, is 
 remarked by all ministers who visit the islands. Dr. 
 Paterson's church in Kirkwall, which accommodates no 
 fewer than 1700 worshippers, used to be crowded not 
 only on Sundays, but also at extra week-day services, 
 such as are held on Fast-days and on the Saturdays and 
 Mondaj's before and after the celebration of the Com- 
 munion. On one occasion, at midsummer, a respected 
 missionary who had returned from labouring in India 
 was engaged to address the weekly prayer meeting. 
 The people, whom Dr. Paterson had taught to take a 
 deep interest in foreign missions, and who had never 
 before had the opportunity of seeing a live missionary, 
 
146 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 filled the large building to overflowing. The elders 
 waited on the missionary before the service, and said 
 that as the audience was so good he might with pro- 
 priety give a longer address than is usually expected 
 at a prayer meeting. He said he would speak till it 
 was dark. They replied — " Oh, no, sir, you musn't do 
 that, for it'll no be dark for six weeks." 
 
 His engagements in Orkney were the last of 
 Davidson's more distant appointments, except when 
 he was sent for two Sundays in April to Blackburn in 
 Lancashire. The other weeks of 1866 were spent in 
 wandering from one corner of Scotland to another. 
 In the beginning of February he was at Pitrodie in 
 the Carse of Gowrie, where he complains of the 
 " somewhat inconvenient little aversion of his hostess 
 for tobacco." " I have to smoke outside (February, and 
 no zephyrs !) in the garden." Next day — " I have got 
 permission now to smoke in the session-house." He 
 turned his outside smoke to good account by comiposing 
 a valentine, which originally began with the lines — 
 
 " My pipe offends my hostess' nose 
 (Fastidious little body !) 
 So I must to the outer air, 
 To smoke it in Pitrodie." 
 
 In its revised and amended form these lines were 
 omitted, and it stands thus : — 
 
 A LOVE SONG IN WINTER. 
 
 (MADE ON SAINT VALENTINE'S EVE.) 
 
 'Tis winter's hour in field and bower, 
 And woods are moaning drearly ; 
 
.1 LOVE SONG IN WINTER. 147 
 
 His minions lurk by cottage eaves, 
 
 With daggers gleaming clearly. 
 But what to me is hail or gale, 
 
 Or storm-cloud darkly rolling ? 
 For love he is a potent lord, 
 
 Both time and clime controlling I 
 
 The very stars that rule this night 
 
 With angry influences, 
 For love of thee they look on me 
 
 With soft and kindly glances. 
 And love of thee, sweet Valentine, 
 
 Where'er my footstep ranges, 
 Brings summer on the land for me 
 
 Through all the yearly changes. 
 
 He thus sums up his week at Pitrodie : — 
 
 This has been a week of the lotus-eating sort, or rather of 
 a lower kind still, to wit, X\\q vegetating. Looking back upon 
 it, my reflections resemble what one would consider the 
 " Saturday-night Recollections of a well-grown Cabbage." 
 
 On leavincr he went to Blairgowrie, to visit the Cowans 
 and weep with them over the untimely death of his 
 friend. The talk of which he speaks in the following 
 extract from his diary was only with the surviving 
 brother, who was also his own friend and fellow- 
 student. It is illustrative of his characteristic reserve 
 on the subjects which lay nearest his heart, that in the 
 family circle he never mentioned the name of the 
 dead. 
 
 Talked of him most part of the night till near two in the 
 morning. Went with Jack and saw poor Willie's grave. It 
 lies in a pleasant spot, from which you survey great part of 
 Strathmore. Never felt so sad in my life. 
 
 One of his great enjoyments as he journeyed from 
 
148 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 place to place was talking to the people in the third- 
 class carriages, which financial considerations led him 
 to select. He had there ample scope for the study of 
 character, which his warm human sympathies made 
 an unfailing delight. He loved to hear the simple 
 talk of the farmers about their crops, and of mothers 
 about their far-distant sons. On one of his journeys 
 — it was about the time he visited the Carse of Gowrie 
 — he was chatting with an old woman who was his 
 travelling companion. She was telling him of where 
 the various members of her family were scattered, 
 and she spoke specially of one son who was a soldier 
 " far away on the banks of the Yang-tsi-Kiang." She 
 seemed to find a satisfaction in the high-sounding 
 name of the distant river. The name filled Davidson's 
 ear, and he could not rest till he had woven it into the 
 refrain of a little comic song, for which he composed a 
 tune. In February, 1869, he thus wrote :— 
 
 O fame and immortality ! Why did I almost forget to 
 speak of a notable petition I had the other day from 
 Glasgow, that I would graciously condescend to allow that 
 sublime " Yang-tsi-Kiang" nonsense to appear in a Book of 
 Songs for Children, with pianoforte accompaniment ! In 
 scrutable must be tlie nature of the Glasgovian children if 
 that be suitable to their tender years ; but the thing is so 
 incongruous and comical and absurd that it gives me the 
 most entire pleasure and amusement to comply. They shall 
 have it. 
 
 They had it accordingly, and the song has become 
 popular. It had been used as one of their gathering 
 
THE YANG-rSI-KLlNG. 149 
 
 songs by the supporters of Air. Carlyle in the contest 
 which resulted in his election to the Lord Rectorship 
 of Edinburgh University. The lively tune, and the 
 chorus, in which the " Yangs " are repeated and 
 multiplied with the most ludicrous effect, adapted it 
 well to this purpose, and it has kept its place as a 
 student's song ever since. 
 
 THE YANG-TSI-KIANG. 
 
 My name is Polly Hill, and I've got a lover Bill, 
 
 But he's caused me many a pang, 
 For his regiment got the rout, and he's gone to the right ahout, 
 
 To the Yang-tsi-Kiang. 
 
 Oh ! the war had broken out, though I don't know what 
 about, 
 
 But they that make the wars go hang I 
 For he's gone with thousands ten to fight the China-men 
 
 On the Yang-tsi-Kiang. 
 
 Oh I it's five years passed away, till it fell on a day, 
 
 As I sat by the door and sang. 
 That a soldier stopped and said, " O your lover Bill is dead 
 
 On the Yang-tsi-Kiang. 
 
 " It was in a tea-tree glen that we met the Chinamen, 
 
 And one of the rogues let bang, 
 Which laid poor William low, with his toe to the foe, 
 
 On the Yang-tsi-Kiang. 
 
 " ' O,' says poor Bill to me, ' take this little sprig of tea. 
 
 And tell Poll where it sprang.' 
 Now that was all he said, when his head dropped like lead 
 
 On the Yang-tsi-Kiang. 
 
 "So here I hand to thee this little sprig of tea, 
 'Twas by poor Bill's grave that it sprang, 
 
 You may keep it if you will, as a souvenir ot Bill 
 i\nd the Yansf-tsi-Kiane." 
 
150 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 " Now, my soldier boy," says I, " Is there green in my eye 
 
 (Pray, pardon me the use of slang), 
 For I'm still your Polly Hill, and you're welcome home, my 
 Bill, 
 
 From the Yang-tsi-Kiang." 
 
 In the course of the Spring his preaching engage- 
 ments led him to become for a week the guest of a 
 clergyman, whom he thus describes in his diary, " A 
 very old man — has held out more than half a cen- 
 tury, and promises to resist another. Is very deaf, 
 but eats like a prize-fighter. Is very agreeable, were 
 it not that he sends me to bed at half-past ten — a 
 piece of tyranny which has put me on the invention 
 of the new sin of reading in bed." The entries for 
 the week give a very vivid picture of life in the 
 manse of a quiet country village with alternating 
 frosts and thaws without, and the strict rules of an 
 octogenarian enforced within. On the Sunday " a 
 clear frosty day has interrupted the thaw, and left 
 the country streaked, and spotted, and crisp." On 
 the Monday " a harder freeze still, all the windows 
 like pictures of Brazilian forests." On Tuesday it 
 is noted that " The old gentleman stole a march 
 upon me last night by turning off the gas half an 
 hour after I had gone to bed. This step spoils my 
 ' little game ' of reading in bed very completely 
 indeed. It only remains to cave in, which, of course, 
 I do, because I must. The weather execrable." 
 The readings thus remorselessly interrupted were in 
 Stanley's " Lectures on the Jewish Church," which 
 are thus characterised : — " At once interesting; and 
 
" A STUD V OF STILL LIFEP \ 5 i 
 
 unsatisfactory, and make me more than ever doubt- 
 ful of interpretation from his point of view." On 
 Thursday " a very thin prayer-meeting is addressed." 
 One day a walk is tried on one road, which is found 
 to be " unutterable." On the next day, which is 
 " mild and cloudy, and portending a thaw, for which 
 all men are praying," an experiment is made on 
 another road, which, however, is found to be " worse 
 by several degrees " than the one tried the day 
 before. On the Saturday, " Had a considerable 
 spell at Dean Stanley's book, which I have now 
 managed to finish. The closing chapters go far 
 to confirm my previous impressions about it. This 
 has been a quiet week — quite a ' study of still life,' 
 as the painters say. My two grievances — to wit, no 
 smoking, and going early to bed — have led me to 
 make up my mind for flight on Monday for Jethart. 
 Mr. is a very fine, youthful-souled old gentle- 
 man." 
 
 In the month of March he was sent to Fife, where 
 he preached one Sunday in Dysart, and two in Pitten- 
 weem. On the former of the two Sundays he notes, 
 " The first blackbird's song that I have heard this 
 season ; " and also a request, conveyed to him through 
 the elders, to " preach a rinderpest sermon on Thurs- 
 day evening ! " As Government had appointed a 
 national fast on account of the cattle plague, to be 
 observed on the Thursday referred to, Davidson had 
 expected this request, and had amused his friends 
 in Dysart and Kirkcaldy by serio-comic lamenta- 
 
152 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 tions over his hard fate in being called to render 
 an extra and special service, with no increase on 
 the fee corresponding to the increased duty. He 
 had puzzled a Kirkcaldy bookseller by asking for 
 the best sermon he could recommend on cattle 
 plagues. On the eve of the fast we find him " ex- 
 ceedingly dull, the weather being depressive, and 
 that rinderpest sermon being to write." At length 
 he solved his difficulty by adding " a page or two 
 concerning the rinderpest " to his sermon on sowing 
 and reaping (Gal. vi. 7), but it would appear from 
 the following letter that the addition was not con- 
 sidered by him so satisfactory as to be worthy of 
 preservation. The letter was written in reply to an 
 invitation to a pic-nic on the Queen's Birthday, to be 
 held on Benarty, Loch Leven. 
 
 To Mr. Wm. Storrar, Kirkcaldy. 
 
 PiTTKNVVEEM, March 31st, 1866. 
 
 You are quite wrong : it did not find me smoking. It 
 found me taking breakfast, clothed, calm, sedate, in fact 
 quite civilised looking. 
 
 I read it, however, with great interest, even with much 
 gratification. I love to be invited to pic-nics — still more do 
 I love to accept such invitations. And if circumstances 
 admit of it, even though it should cost me an eff'ort that 
 may be considerably superhuman, I shall do mine endeavour 
 to accept the one in question. Howsomedever — as we 
 used to say at Cullybackey and Eallynascreen and New- 
 town-Lim-a-Vady, and such celebrated places — I am not 
 sure at the present writing that circumstances will admit 
 of it. . . . 
 
 You will be very sorry to learn that rinderpest has broken 
 
A RINDERPEST SERMON. 153 
 
 out among my stock. Traces of its j^resence were discern- 
 ible on Tuesday evening, and on Wednesday and Thursday 
 forenoon the symptoms became quite declared. On Thurs- 
 day evening the plague raged with very great violence for 
 nearly an hour. I then determined to adopt the " stamping- 
 out system," and you will be glad to learn that all traces 
 have now disappeared. I believe, however, that my process 
 of treatment may lay claim to something like originality. 
 I have neither used the musket, which is the Elie fashion, 
 nor yet the pole-axe, which, I learn from the daily journals, 
 has been the more general instrument of extirpation. No. 
 I have employed the agency of fire, which has a twofold 
 recommendation of at once destroying the individual victim, 
 and so fumigating the premises as to render them quite 
 clean and wholesome, and in fact inhabitable by the sound 
 part of the stock. As this method of what may be called 
 destructio-fumigation may be found to be of some use by 
 stockmasters elsewhere, I give you my full and hearty 
 permission to explain and recommend it to sufferers in 
 your neighbourhood. I may add, however, a somewhat 
 singular and, I believe, quite unique feature of my case 
 — that, strange though it may seem, it was only the tail 
 of the animal that was the seat of the disease. Of course 
 the method of applying the cure which I have adopted, 
 consisted simply of amputation of the infected member, 
 and immediate conflagration. This may seem singular ; 
 but you will perhaps be aware that all epidemic dis- 
 eases have a tendency in process of time to decrease in 
 violence ; a fact which fully accounts for the feature to 
 which 1 refer. 
 
 I leave this " field " on Monday morning by that 
 unchristian institution, the first train, for " Edina-Scotia's- 
 darling-seat-all-hail-thy-palaces-and-towers," and on Sabbath 
 (to-morrow week) condescend on Dalkeith. I don't 
 
1 54 THE PROBA TIONER. 
 
 know what particular day you mean to set apart for the 
 celebration of the Queen's nativity, but communication 
 relating thereto, addressed to Bankcnd, Jedburgh, will 
 receive early attention. . . . 
 
 The " unchristian institution " was taken advantage 
 of that he might be present at the inauguration of 
 the Lord Rector, whose supporters had adopted his 
 " Yang-tsi-Kiang " as their gathering song. He thus 
 records his presence at one of the most notable scenes 
 in the history of his University. It was on April 
 2nd, 1866 — "Heard Carlyle's address — a great treat, 
 I mean to sec him speaking, for I didn't hear him. A 
 light came over his face as he ' wound up ' which I 
 shall not forget while I live." 
 
 After spending a pleasant week with old fellow- 
 students in Edinburgh, he preached in Dalkeith on 
 the Sunday, which place, he says, " I reached in due 
 time by the guidance of a drunk baker, whose fingers 
 had been mutilated by the windows of the carriage, 
 and whom I accommodated with my handkerchief 
 to bind them up." The Sunday was " a blear-eyed 
 dripping sort of a forenoon, with a thinnish kirk. 
 Cleared up about noon, aod closed with a mild 
 evening, and a wind shifting to the south. In 
 the evening the mangled baker returned my hand- 
 kerchief" 
 
 His next appointments were to Blackburn, Hawick, 
 Berwick, Lauder, and Falkirk. At the last-named 
 place he notes a meeting of Presbytery at which a 
 clergyman accepted a call — " Six or seven ladies 
 
A T HOME. I 5 5 
 
 present. Wept about a gallon of tears apiece. A 
 
 pint each from and , in addition, made it 
 
 rather a lachrymose scene." He also notes a walk to 
 Bonny Brig and back, which he " enjoyed greatly, 
 especially the singing of a certain lark in a field by 
 the road-side." 
 
 As the Queen's Birthday approached he found that 
 "circumstances" did not admit of his making the 
 proposed excursion to Benarty. The " unforeseen 
 labour," referred to in the following letter, seems to 
 have been studying the subject assigned to a fellow- 
 student, that he might assist him in the preparation of 
 a trial sermon. 
 
 To Mr. \\'. M. Storrar. 
 
 Bankend, Jedbukgh, May 22nd, 1866. 
 
 It cannot be done. I admit the case to be most severe. 
 I feel its severity, but it cannot be helped. An unforeseen 
 labour has thrown itself in the way, and cannot be overleapt. 
 Had the work been for myself, I should have shirked or 
 "scamped" it, but it is labour for another, and must not 
 only be done, but done to the utmost of my poor ability. 
 Between this and Thursday evening I must cover many 
 quarto pages with the choicest language, embodying the 
 profoundest thoughts that I can possibly upheave from the 
 caverns of my soul, and all that concerning a subject which 
 hitherto has barely presented itself to my mind. Pity me. 
 The weather is hot and threatens to be hotter. Therefore 
 behold how I shall perspire ! 
 
 Why didn't I answer your note of the i8th sooner? 
 Hearken. The sun was declining behind the purple north- 
 western hills when yester-eve a traveller, footsore and weary, 
 outworn and dust-besprinkled, might have been observed 
 
156 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 toiling painfully, and yet progressing but slowly, towards the 
 ancient and renowned royal burgh of Jedburgh. In other 
 words, I only reached this last night, considerably spoilt 
 with a stiff march on a dusty road, and found your notes 
 both awaiting me. 
 
 And now let me conclude with the dearest wish that you 
 may enjoy yourselves very vastly, and with the assurance 
 that, though far separated in body " by mount, and stream, 
 and sea," I shall not fail to be frequently with you in spirit. 
 At two o'clock precisely I shall walk into the garden with 
 the magic weed to meditate concerning the unequal fates of 
 mankind, with special reference to picnicers and sermon 
 writers, and at that hour let some charitable soul, who has 
 always on hand a supply for the tapping, " drop a tear," 
 and compassionate yours lamentatiously. 
 
 To the Rev. AVilliam T. Henderson. 
 
 Dunbar, June i6th, 1866. 
 
 I hasten to fulfil the promise which I made you the other 
 day in Edinburgh — to wit, to write soon. 
 
 I was much gratified to learn from your last letter that 
 you had hit upon so productive a seam. To be in the 
 county of Cromarty is of itself an excellent joke. (I may 
 mention that I have myself touched Cromartian ground — at 
 Ullapool "in the west " — as the geography books have it.) 
 But actually to visit the county-town is an achievement of 
 no ordinary kind. In fact, I was under a kind of notion 
 that the last man who had seen the place and returned to 
 the common world to tell the tale was the late Mr. Hugh 
 Miller : and that ever since his report upon it the subject 
 had been utterly neglected, and the route by which the 
 town is reached forgotten. I think you might entertain 
 no unreasonable hope of the Geographical Society's Dis- 
 covery Medal, if you could only snatch a few weeks' retire- 
 
".4 CASE:' 157 
 
 ment — say in Shetland — to compile a royal-octavo upon 
 •' Cromarty, and How I found my way to it." 
 
 For myself, I have been leading a very tame and unin- 
 teresting life of it for the last quarter of a year or so._ 
 Blackburn, Hawick, Berwick, Lauder, Falkirk, Fala, and 
 Dunbar : there is not a more flat, stale, and unprofitable ^ 
 list on the Church's roll. To tell the truth, I had a slight 
 little experience on Saturday evening and Sunday morning, 
 which may be said almost, though not quite, to reach the 
 dignity of a •' case." To be sure one of its main recom- 
 mendations to that character consisted mainly in the in- 
 curring of considerable extra expense and physical bothera- 
 tion : but these elements were heightened not a little in 
 their cumulative effect by the addition of a little dash of 
 Sabbath breaking. Not to detain you further on the thres- 
 hold — the facts are simply these : I came out here on 
 Saturday by the evening train, and reported myself, bag, 
 
 big-coat, umbrella and all to Mr. . (The counter and 
 
 himself intervened between me and a row of portly-looking 
 
 whisky-barrels — in other words, Mr. is in the spirit 
 
 line.) He informed me of the existence of much amaze- 
 ment in his mind at my apparition ; and as I was not 
 myself conscious of any additional peculiarity attaching to 
 my every-day and wonted appearance, I ventured to ask 
 Mr. "why?" "To-morrow," said he, "is our com- 
 munion, and Mr. Fraser of Fala is to preach, while you 
 were expected to be supplying his pulpit." Not much more 
 light could be had on the subject, excepting only so much 
 as served to indicate that the responsibility lay between the 
 
 Rev. of , who might not have written to me 
 
 at all, and my landlord at Falkirk, who might have failed to 
 forward his letter. Anyhow the long and the short of the 
 
 ^ I never like to incur suspicion of plagiarism or blackguardianism, 
 as I heard a man call it. I have taken these words from Shakespeare. 
 
158 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 matter was, that I had to retrace my steps to Edinburgh, 
 and (as it was too late to get a train to Tynehead that 
 night) lie with one eye open, so as not to oversleep 
 5.30 A.M., at which hour I managed to arise and walk to 
 the train. A Sabbath morning stroll of four miles over a 
 pleasant hill, through dewy fields and tuneful larks and 
 linnets, brought me to Fala about half-past eight. Now all 
 this is very tame work, and I begin to thirst for the next 
 volume of the Book of Fate, which, to be sure, may possibly 
 bring with it more adventure than is either desired or 
 looked for. But as we used to say on the Coiitinang—Nous 
 verrons. 
 
 I may mention that I have not succeeded in very effectu- 
 ally troubling any ecclesiastical waters since I parted with 
 you in Edinburgh. The fact is — to confuse the story a 
 little — somebody (let me also discard that somebody, and 
 say rather) some impudent man seems always to step down 
 before me. Of course Falkirk was fixed, and at Blackburn 
 it was the height of folly to come after you, and, finally, the 
 little contretemps related above has very eff'ectually shunted 
 me on the present station. 
 
 However, I am now open for an engagement, as I have 
 told you before, and next quarter I have a good mind to 
 go in bald-headed (in fact, sooner or later I will have to do 
 that nolens volens : this warm weather is playing frightful 
 havoc on my summit). In other words, I sometimes think 
 that a nearer approximation to Vulcan and Briareus com- 
 bined, would be a fairish good seam to work. But then, 
 again, it is singular, and perhaps after all, fortunate, for one's 
 own private opinion of one's own self, how your resolution 
 collapses when the time comes and Stentor and the steam- 
 hammer fail you "just at the bit." Well I fear "a wide 
 field is opening up," so I will draw off and finish up with 
 a " single word of practical matter." 
 
THE BLACK DAY. 
 
 159 
 
 On Tuesday I mean to effect my escape from Dunbar, 
 and take refuge for two nights in PMinburgh. On the 
 Thursday I mean to give a few hints on fasting at Bathgate, 
 and then move on to Wishaw. There I am to preach on 
 Sunday the 24th, and there I mean to remain during the 
 week. . . . 
 
 The visit to Wishaw, to which he was looking for- 
 ward when he wrote this letter, proved memorable. 
 In his diary for the Sunday (24th June) he notes : — 
 " An extremely warm day. Several people had to 
 leave the church on account of the excessive heat." 
 On the Monday he says : — " Terribly Jiot — but I feel 
 that I have caught a cold!" He had sat in the 
 summer house too long on the Sunday evening. He 
 was always accustomed to speak of this as the 
 beginning of his weary illness. He called the 24th 
 June the Black Day, and would never write a letter 
 on it. There are frequent indications of cold in his 
 diary from an earlier date. The minuteness with 
 which he notes the state of the weather shows that 
 it was of more moment to him than to a man in 
 perfect health. The winter expedition to Orkney 
 must have tried him severely. The long night-walks 
 across boggy moors and in the face of driving storms, 
 the discomforts of lodgings with smoky chimneys and 
 strong draughts, the sitting in shivering rooms — of all 
 which he made so light — were a severe strain on a 
 constitution which was never robust. But it was at 
 Wishaw that he first became conscious of serious 
 trouble. Mr. Bruce thus writes : " On my return 
 
l6o THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 on the Monday I found him waiting for me, and he 
 spent the rest of that week with me up till Friday, if 
 I remember aright. Certainly he took my prayer 
 meeting on the Wednesday evening, and I have the 
 most distinct recollection of the pleasure with which I 
 listened to his sermon, which was quietly, but by no 
 means unimpressively, delivered. That same evening, 
 after supper, we were sitting smoking our pipes in my 
 study. He was looking over some old numbers of 
 PnncJi, while I was writing a note which I wished 
 sent off by that evening's post. He was coughing 
 slightly at intervals, but before I had finished writing 
 ■A. fit of coughing came on which lasted a good many 
 seconds, and which left him pretty much exhausted. 
 I looked at him, and when he had sufficiently re- 
 covered himself, he said in his quiet way and with a 
 smile — ' Rather a necropolitan tone that, Bruce .' ' 
 ' No, no,' I replied. ' Ay, man, there's the ring o' the 
 kirk-yaird about it. It pits yin in mind o' the clap o' 
 the shook' " 
 
 It seems strange that one whose natural tendency 
 was certainly not to take a gloomy view of anything 
 affecting himself, should thus early think of the illness 
 by which he had been seized as likely to have a fatal 
 issue. An incident which he related to a friend at a 
 later date, explains why he afterwards thought of 
 that illness with peculiarly gloomy fore-bodings. His 
 friend was urging him to take a hopeful view of his 
 case. Davidson told him that if his sickness should 
 prove a sickness unto death, as he feared it would, it 
 
COLD INCREASES. i6r 
 
 would be a singular fulfilment of a presentiment he 
 had one day when he was a school-boy, that some- 
 thing fatal would befall him on a certain day of a 
 certain year, which day and year he wrote down at 
 the time in an old school-book. The incident had 
 quite passed from his memory for many years, when 
 the sight of the old book recalled it, and on looking 
 at the date which he had written down he found that 
 it corresponded exactly with the day and year in 
 which he caught that cold at Wishaw. The date was 
 the 24th June, 1866 — the " Black Day." 
 
 In the week following his visit to Wishaw he thus 
 notes the progress of his malady : — Monday — " A 
 cold, which I first felt about a week ago, has to-day 
 become quite pronounced." Wednesday — " Cold rather 
 more tangible and disagreeable." Thursday — " Cold 
 rather better." On Saturday (7th July) he says — 
 ■' To-day I am twenty-eight years old." Jottings of 
 the same kind are continued till Saturday, 21st July, 
 when we find this ominous entry — " The blister has 
 done little or no good. The cough is no better, 
 and, in fact, after a good round of barking here 
 (Bannockburn) to-night, I brought up a mouthful of 
 blood, which looks not very well." Still he bravely 
 persevered with his work. Indeed he seems to have 
 become more resolutely active in proportion to the 
 failure of his strength, as if he had recognised in that 
 failure the shadow of the night in which no man can 
 work. 
 
 In August we find him at West Kilbride still battling 
 
 L 
 
1 62 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 with his cold, but showing no sign of an}' disposition 
 to treat himself as an invalid. He discharges all his 
 professional duties ; he explores the neighbouring 
 heights, and visits the surrounding places of interest' 
 groaning, withal, that a companion who has attached 
 himself to him is " a man garrulous, flighty, and quota- 
 tions to the height of utter bewilderment." He 
 begins a sermon on Psalm ci. i ; he reads Masson's 
 Novelists ; Matthew Arnold's Essays; and Howson 
 On the Character of St. Paul. He occupies his mind 
 Avith questions of great and permanent interest to the 
 well-being of the Church. One of his most faithful 
 correspondents had accidentally come into possession 
 of a fragment of a hymn which he had written on the 
 words " Your life is hid with Christ in God," and had 
 urged him to complete it and another which he had 
 also begun. He thus writes in reply : — - 
 
 To Miss DuNLOP. 
 
 West Kilbkidi:, August iSth, 1866. 
 
 .... Finisla either of the hymns? — No. I have laid 
 them aside of set and deliberate purpose. I shall write no 
 hymn till I am a minister for years — then, like Bernard de 
 Morlaix, I think I should try to write one. 
 
 .... What do I know yet of the dark side of life, its 
 sorrows and sins and sufferings, that I should put words of 
 song into believers' lips — -or unbelievers' either? It is over- 
 powering to be a people's voice to God in prayer. Some- 
 times I seem stricken half-dumb with theweiglit. Preaching 
 is nothing compared to it. Finlayson, when at Jedburgh, 
 said to me that I would soon get over that feeling, but I do 
 not, and I am not sure that I would like to get over it — if 
 
HYMX-WRITIXu AXD CHURCH-BUILDING. 163 
 
 that means growing callous. The verse is a favourite ol 
 mine. It has been full of an eternity of " Rest " to me since 
 the first Sabbath after I left home, when my Bible opened at 
 it. But it was presumption in me to have meddled with it ; 
 and, moreover, you know, you ought not to have seen it at 
 all. It was written at Aldershot when I was at the sermon, 
 •' Bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of 
 Christ," but it was never used. The life I lead just now is 
 far too hurried to write even an earthward song, let alone a 
 hymn. You remember amongst your father's old engravings 
 yon copy of " Fra Angelico," with the inscription we made 
 <-)ut 10 be " Painted, at rest, Praying." That is only how a 
 hymn may be written, Argal. . . . But the Missionary 
 Hymn of the Church is to write yet . . . 
 
 Your antiquarian semi-growlings over the new kirk at 
 Melrosie are amusing. That must have been a window of 
 windows to a small child which let you see the landscape so 
 tar ; but surely you do not regret the wasps ! " Before I 
 count fifty I'll be stung, and I'll try not to scream in the 
 kirk ! " that may have been pleasure, and it may have been 
 worship. People have different ideas on these matters I If 
 the congregation needed a new church for room, as you 
 say they did, it is right ! In God's name let them build, let 
 them decorate, and be thankful you belong to people who 
 can lend such a heavy hand to the work, and enjoy it when 
 it is done. 
 
 The time is past for open-air preaching. How I should 
 have rejoiced to have looked and listened at Stitchel 
 Brae, and my heart does warm to the dear old square tea- 
 caddy churches that our good forefathers delighted to build; 
 they seem to say to me — " We were built by strong-minded 
 men who dared to think " ; but novv-a-days I must confess 
 to be somewhat of King David's faction. I would not like 
 to dwell, and I do not like to see other people dwell, in 
 
1 64 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 " Ceiled houses,"' while the tabernacle is beneath curtains— 
 i e., I do not like to see well-to-do people content with a 
 shabby church. I should be willing for the ark of God to 
 have a double ceiling if it tended to higher decoration, and 
 if it were practicable and of any use. Hymn-making and 
 church-building are very much the same, you see. I would 
 have for God's service the very highest thoughts that the 
 mind of man can conceive, and the very finest work that the 
 hand of man can execute — but for this last no debt. I loathe 
 and abhor debt ; but debt on a church I — bah I there is 
 something wrong with the Church's Christianity when it 
 cannot balnnce its ledger with the wcirld. 
 
 His state of health had become so serious at the 
 
 beginning of September that, for the first time since 
 
 his license, he sought release from an engagement, 
 
 and rested for two Sabbaths at home. About the 
 
 same period there are frequent allusions to another 
 
 illness which evidently cost him more thought than 
 
 his own. The health of his mother — who was destined 
 
 to be his companion and fellow- sufferer through many 
 
 a weary month of weakness — gave him great anxiety. 
 
 His letters and Diary have many tender references to 
 
 her state, and often, in the intervals between Sabbaths 
 
 when he was engaged in distant churches, he would 
 
 run home to Jedburgh, at a sacrifice both of money 
 
 and of strength, of neither of which he had much to 
 
 spare. 
 
 To Mr. W. M. Storrar. 
 
 Rankend, Sept. nth, 1866. 
 What kind of weather have you about Kirkcaldy ? 
 I am afraid the question must have startled you a little — 
 standing thus in the very forefront of a very momentous 
 
THE WEATHER. 1 65 
 
 letter. To explain the thing, then, just let me whisper in 
 your ear — what you must breathe again to no mortal — let 
 me just whisper to you that I am quite monomaniacal ! My 
 weakness is the weather. I have heard nothing else spoken 
 of for a fortnight : and even the perusal of the daily papers 
 joined to the hearing of a couple of sermons last Sunday, 
 has been quite insuflficient to resist the silent effect of inces- 
 sant discussions upon that otherwise useful and entertaining 
 subject. I repeat it. I am quite monomaniacal; and I 
 insist upon knowing what kind of weather you have at 
 Kirkcaldy. 
 
 Occasionally, however, I am blessed with certain " lucid 
 intervals." I feel the approach of one just at present, and 
 I seize it to answer your very kind inquiries about my 
 health, and also to thank you for your very kind invitation 
 to Kirkcaldy. 
 
 I hope to make a few eloquent and instructive remarks in 
 your lengthy town on Sabbath first. My cold is just at 
 the vanishing point, and I intend to drop upon you on 
 Saturday. I am sorry I cannot come sooner. When I 
 reached home I found my mother very seriously ill, and, as 
 she has just begun to recover, and is still exceedingly feeblcj 
 I do not wish to leave home earlier than the day I have 
 mentioned. 
 
 Your Union 1 friends appear to be in a very interesting 
 state, but I fear I am scarcely the man to put them right. 
 
 Kirkcaldy, Sunday, Sept. i6th. — " Weather fine and clear. 
 A good audience ; but I find ray cold prevents me from 
 speaking out sufficiently ; besides, I coughed. Argal, I 
 have no chance here, for which I don't much grieve — only, 
 one sillily, likes to please people." 
 
 Saturday, Sept. 22nd.— "Have been reading in the fol- 
 
 ^ The vacant churcli in which he was to preach was called Union 
 Church. 
 
1(56 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 lowing: — 'Odds and Ends'; 'Montaigne's Essays'; the 
 ' Essays of Elia ' ; and ' Dwight's Theology ' — the last-named 
 very sparingly." 
 
 To a Brother Prouaiioner. 
 
 Banki-.nd, October i8th, 1866. 
 
 I found your letter last Saturday night when, after a two 
 miles' trudge through mist and drizzle, I reached the hosi)i- 
 table hearth of the Rev. David Inglis. (Pretty good sen- 
 tence.) And, to begin my reply in the bulletin line, 1 was 
 sorry to learn that your old foe had again found you out. 
 even in so southern a " spot " as Hastings, I have never 
 mentioned the fact either to friend, foe, or entire stranger ; 
 so that, if you are only wise enough to keep your own 
 counsel, I have no doubt that we shall remain the sole 
 depositories of the injurious fact. For it is injurious. 
 One's throat and lungs may be called one's bayonet, sword, 
 lance, or Snider-ritle — everything, in fact, except cartridge. 
 And, naturally enough, the " discerning public " would 
 regard us, if materially damaged in those organs, as much in 
 the same predicament as a wretch with only his lists at 
 Sadowa. And now that I have got myself extricated with 
 greater or less credit from that martial figure of speech, let 
 me hasten to close the health-report of this epistle. As for 
 my mother, she is recovering, but very slowly indeed ; 
 which, however, was only to be expected. And as for 
 myself, I believe that I also am rather better, certainly much 
 better than when I wrote you last, but, quite as certainly, 
 not so completely better as I ought to be with the prospect 
 before me of gloomy winter, and a November campaign 
 beyond the Dee. With which remarks upon " personal 
 and relative affliction " (77V/. prayers, passim)^ I will turn the 
 leaf and seek fresh fields and pastures new. . . . 
 
 On the 2 1st and 28th October he preached in 
 
AT HOW GATE. 1 6/ 
 
 Howgate — "the one vacanq- I ever fancied — in the 
 country, and not far from Edinburgh." It could 
 hardly be expected that in his broken state of health 
 he should be successful there, yet there were evidentl)' 
 some in the quiet village church who were able to 
 discern something of the power that lay beneath his 
 unimpassioned manner. 
 
 Sunday, 21st October. — My voice was rather indifterent 
 to-day, and I had to cough occasionally. Nevertheless, the 
 people were attentive. Spent the evening over the Pro- 
 vincial Letteis, whicli I read when a boy. 
 
 Wednesday, 24th. — Mrs. Duncan tells me the people had 
 a meeting here on Monday evening about a minister. She 
 says it lies between Thomas and myself. This is possible. 
 Compatible with this possibility, however, is the possibility 
 of my having 4 votes and Thomas 400. Argal, let me be 
 humble, and build no castles. 
 
 Saturday, 27th. — . . . . The week has been a very quiet 
 and a very agreeable one. I have for the most part 
 led a pleasantly tame and secluded life. Read Sartor 
 Resarttis. 
 
 Sunday 28th. — This day has been an unmistakeable 
 emissary of winter — very clear, very dry, with a keen wind 
 from the north. The church was well filled, and the people 
 very attentive, especially in the afternoon. Visited an old 
 woman and daughter in the evening. 
 
 Stow, Saturda)-, 3rd November. — Good days and bad 
 days seem to have agreed upon alternation, and take it time 
 about. That is generally called " fair play " ; in the present 
 case it is rather fair play and foul by turns. This is a fair 
 and shining day, favourable for travelling. Left home at 
 4.40 p.m., and arrove here all right at 6.30, . . . Read 
 Carlyle's Heroes and Sellars' Roman Forts of the Republic. 
 
1 68 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 Bankend, Wednesday, yth. — . . . . To-morrow I set out 
 for the north, and that, alas ! with a new " bad cold." 
 
 Davidson used to speak playfully of " the supposi- 
 titious straw that breaks the metaphorical camel's 
 imaginary back," and the familiar proverb on which 
 he thus improved may fairly be quoted with reference 
 to this winter expedition to the north. It can 
 hardly be doubted that work persisted in when he 
 should have been at rest, and exposure to severe 
 weather when the most genial climate was needed, 
 hastened the development of his disease. The follow- 
 ing extracts from his Diary will be read with interest. 
 They reveal how courageous and, it may be added, 
 how reckless he was. There was surely something 
 of the soldier-spirit in the man who could thus un- 
 hesitatingly obey his marching orders, when a less 
 resolute heart would have claimed right to halt. 
 
 Aberdeen, Friday, 9th November. — A very lovely morn- 
 ing, followed by a day in keeping until four o'clock, when 
 at Stonehaven we dived into cloud and rain and sleet- 
 Find myself comfortably settled down in the far-famed 
 Union Street, at the top of a house. No. 36. Cold now 
 culminating (I liope). 
 
 Saturday, loth. — . . . . About my cold, last night's hope 
 fortunately is fulfilled \ it has culminated^ — but it has also, I 
 fear, strengthened my former cough, which needed no 
 reinforcement. An elder, a namesake of my own, called 
 in the evening with a ticket- to a soiree, complimentary of 
 the Rev. Mr. Robb, missionary to Old Calabar, at present 
 home here. Have read little or nothing. 
 
 Sunday, nth. — My cold has perversely chosen to " cul- 
 
IN ABERDEEN. 169 
 
 minate " again ! To-day it has returned in a horrid combina- 
 tion of catarrh and coughing, that has made any similitude 
 of pleasure or even comfort impossible. The kirk here is 
 poorly attended — in fact mostly ?///attended ! [Traces here 
 of his reading of Carlyle.] 
 
 Monday, 12th. — To-day has been clear and fine, and 
 I walked a mile or two away to the west. In the after- 
 noon called upon the Rev. Mr. M'Kerrow, and in the 
 evening addressed a prayer meeting of only six or 
 seven souls. Within the last five minutes 1 have been 
 seized loith a slight spitting of blood. I thought my cold 
 was improving ! 
 
 Saturday, 17th.- — . ... On the whole I have enjoyed 
 this utter quiet and undisturbed week very much indeed : 
 no living soul belonging to the church has crossed the 
 threshold — -a great mercy. Have read David Copperficld 
 and most of Shelley's longer poems. 
 
 Monday, 19th. — Went along to M'Kerrow's, and walked 
 a few miles with him through wind and snow before dinner. 
 Returned home in the evening with Bacon's Essays and 
 Carlyle's Life of Sterling, which latter I have now begun 
 to read and find interesting. Indeed I have spent all the 
 evening upon it. 
 
 Tuesday, 20th. — ^Spent the forenoon in reading Carlyle 
 and in spitting and coughing, attributable to yesterday's 
 bufteting with wind and defiance of snow. It was a foolish 
 thing to do, but I have been so little used to act the invalid 
 that I cannot bring myself to sustain the character at all, and 
 claim the allowances and dispensations that are its due. 
 Prayer meeting at night. 
 
 Wednesday, 21st. — I have spent the whole of this day 
 in reading, and have finished Sterling and half of Schiller — 
 reading also between them one or two of Bacon's Essays : 
 a pleasant day on the whole. To-morrow I expect letters 
 
I/O THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 from and from home, and to learn about that Howgate 
 
 business : let me expect little ! 
 
 Thursday 22nd. — . . . . News also of Howgate. "Blessed 
 are they who expect little, for they shall not be disappointed." 
 Thomas is called. . . . 
 
 After leaving Aberdeen he preached for two Sunda}-s 
 in Keith, and then paid a short visit to his old 
 friends in Forres. 
 
 Forres, Monday, 3rd December. — Smoked a flu'ewell pipe 
 to-day with Mr. Sellar, and then took the train hither- 
 Found my friends the Berwicks all very well. Mrs. B. a 
 little more silvery-haired than when I first knew her. I 
 received a warm welcome, a welcome to do one's heart 
 good. 
 
 This visit was greatly enjoyed, not onl}- by Mr. 
 Berwick and his family, but by other friends in the 
 town who had learned to love the quiet and unas- 
 suming student who sojourned for two years among 
 them. The Rev. Mr. Watson speaks most touchingl}' 
 of the sad impression produced b\' his changed 
 appearance, which now bore too evident marks of 
 the ravages of disease. He was struck, however, by 
 what was ever a characteristic of Davidson — his power 
 of looking at the humorous side even of his sorest 
 trials. Mr, Watson said to him that he musn't lose 
 heart ; Davidson's reply was, " There is no fear of 
 losing my heart if I do not lose my lungs." 
 
 On the way south he halted at the manse of his 
 friend Mr. Gibson — 
 
 Auchterarder, Thursday, 6th December. — To-day I have 
 
MEDICAL EXAMINATION. 171 
 
 come down for the first time by the great Highland Route — 
 a truly magnificent line of travel it is — a constant succession 
 of wide moors, roaring streams, still lakes, great and solenm 
 mountains. Found Gibson well. 
 
 From Auchterarder he went to Glasgow, where he 
 had an engagement to preach. In the course of the 
 week he came to a most important decision — which 
 had it been come to some months earlier might have 
 had the happiest results. The following letter ex- 
 plains the circumstances : — 
 
 To Miss DuNLOP. 
 
 Glasgow, December r4th, 1866. 
 
 .... You have always, I know, suspected me of saying 
 less than the truth about it [his illness], but I have not really 
 done that. The cold with which I went to Aberdeen is now 
 quite subsided, so that the stream, to use a very bold 
 "figur," has now reached its former level. Everybody here 
 is congratulating me on my good looks as compared with 
 the appearance I wore when I was here in summer, or 
 rather in autumn. And yet I am going to retire into private 
 life for a month or two, so as to let the rigorous season pass 
 over, and to collect strength for the future. 
 
 To explain this resolution, I will tell you a plain un- 
 varnished tale on the subject : and in case you should think 
 it very serious and get frightened about it, which there is no 
 reason for doing, let me just let you know, in the first place, 
 that I have at length " seen a doctor " as you call it, no 
 less a man than Professor Gairdner, the greatest authority 
 in this " Great Commercial Centre " — and he assures me, 
 after a very thorough examination, that my chest is still 
 unaffected and that I have no reason for uneasiness : my 
 system, however, he says is in a low state, for my blood has 
 got very much impoverished. What made me take this step 
 
172 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 was that while in Aberdeen, and labouring under that cold 
 which I told you about, I coughed up a little blood — don't 
 be alarmed — when I was writing a letter one night. I 
 stopped, of course, for a little and spat it out, and then 
 finished the letter ; though I believe I did miss a word or 
 two in the process, and then went to bed and felt no more 
 of it. I went to Dr. Gairdner on Tuesday last, and he 
 examined me carefully, with the result I have told you 
 above — and of course with the knowledge of the said blood- 
 spitting. Well last night I dined with Easton, and after 
 dinner what should I do but cough up a little more of the 
 same. Dr. Gairdner liad told me to walk a good deal, 
 and to take some medicine which he prescribed for en- 
 riching the blood. Now I believe I had overdone the 
 first part of the Doctor's recommendation, and overstrained 
 myself. However, in case anything should be wrong, I 
 have been at the Doctor again to-day : he examined me 
 again as carefully as ever, and told me still that my chest 
 was all right, and that the blood-spitting was nothing serious, 
 but would be quite cured as I got stronger. Voila tout ! 
 Now. 
 
 Before retiring from duty he had yet one engage- 
 ment to fulfil. His Diary has the following en- 
 tries : — 
 
 Of all places in the world, Clackmannan, Saturday, 15 th 
 December. — Came to Stirling to-day with Gibson, and after 
 waiting some time there, continued to this place. They 
 seem to be thoroughly in the hands of revivalists here : I am 
 lodged in the same room with an Evangelist. I hope 1 
 love the Evangel : but I don't know about t/iese Evangelists. 
 This one is a feeble brother. He inquires " if there is any 
 siir in Glasgow ? " and seems to carry on a kind of warfare 
 against an invisible tricksy, practical joker, whom he terms 
 
LAST SUNDAY'S WORK. ];3 
 
 " The Old Boy." Oh, for Monday ! Have read nothing 
 this week. 
 
 Sunday, i6th.— Weather clear and beautiful, which showed 
 the Ochils in perfection, and made me deem them the 
 very beautifullest hills I have looked upon. My friend in 
 ,2;reat feather. Preached to a very {q\n in the forenoon and 
 to a few more at night. 
 
 There is a mournful interest attaching- to this 
 simple record. It tells of his last Sunday's work. 
 The retirement from duty, which he intended should 
 only be for a month or two, proved final. He was 
 never able to preach again. He closed his ministry 
 with one of the sermons he had written at Stornoway 
 two years and six months before — " Behold I stand at 
 the door and knock." It Avas evidently a special 
 favourite. He had preached it many times and in 
 many places in the course of his wanderings. It was 
 an appropriate last word to be spoken by one who 
 in his public life never magnified himself, but was 
 ever — though quietly, not the less deeply — in earnest 
 that the hearts of his hearers should be opened to 
 receive Him who is " the Way and the Truth and the 
 Life." 
 
 It would be unjust to Davidson— it would be even 
 more unjust to the Church which he served — to repre- 
 sent him as having been a professional failure. 
 The fact that he did not receive a call is neither 
 to be attributed to his lack of power as a preacher, 
 nor altogether to lack of ability, on the part of the 
 congregations to which he preached, to discover and 
 
T74 
 
 THE PROBA TIONER. 
 
 ■appreciate his y,ift.s. He was only two years and a 
 half on the probationer's list. For nearly the half of 
 that time he was in failing health. Even in ordin- 
 ary circumstances the Church allows six years of 
 probation, and never writes a man a failure till that 
 time has expired. When Davidson was licensed the 
 ■circumstances were extraordinary. The number of 
 candidates for the ministry was so greatly in excess 
 of the number of vacant charges that the opportunities 
 of real candidature given to each probationer were 
 necessarily very few. Most of his ablest contem- 
 poraries were nearly two years on the list before 
 they were settled. In fact the present scarcity of 
 Theological students is in large measure to be 
 ascribed to a natural reaction from the state of 
 matters which reached its clima.x: in the }'ears of 
 Davidson's probation. 
 
 It is, of course, undeniable that men utterly his 
 inferiors were preferred before him. He was aware of 
 that fact, but he did not allow it to embitter his spirit. 
 The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to 
 the strong, either under a system of popular election 
 or a system of patronage. There will probably always 
 be a majority of people who will be more impressed 
 by high-sounding phrases and striking delivery, than 
 by quiet thoughtfulness and true culture. Two of 
 the most distinguished preachers of recent years 
 were probationers for a longer time than Davidson. 
 Candlish nearly lost heart before a sphere of work 
 was found for him ; and Edward Irving never "ot 
 
ll'ANl^ OF SUCCESS. 175 
 
 a charge in Scotland, but had to carry his great 
 gifts to London before they were discovered. It is 
 not pretended that Davidson would ever have de- 
 veloped pulpit power like that of either Candlish or 
 Irving. He had neither the physical energy nor the 
 intense dogmatic convictions which were characteristic 
 of both ; but, if some quiet sphere had been found 
 for him, he would, as a preacher, have commanded 
 the respect of good men, and might have done some- 
 thing to mould the thought of his Church and time. 
 As a pastor lie would certainly have been faithful 
 and greatly beloved. The Church would do well to 
 consider whether there is any way in Avhich she 
 could secure to her service powers like his, which 
 do not count for much among vacant congregations 
 on the outlook for showy and popular gifts. 
 
 Before closing this chapter, which consists so 
 largely of descriptions of people whom he met in his 
 journeyings, it may be well to give some extracts 
 from letters which, for obvious reasons, could not be 
 inserted in their chronological order : — 
 
 Specially would I note one man- — scarecrow, I mean — 
 
 by the name of , — gaunt, bony, seedy, duddy, with a 
 
 round mouth and perpendicular hair — I mean vertical hair- — 
 the minister, if one may call him so, of a wretched little 
 
 place called . . . . of (for he 
 
 generally goes by that name) is what the P^nglish young 
 ladies would call a " cure." He invited me to call and 
 refresh myself at his house, which lies on the way side, and 
 as the journey is one of some fifteen or sixteen miles, the 
 thing is decidedly convenient. I said I would. However, 
 
1/6 
 
 THE PROBA TIONER. 
 
 1 met the " cure " when I had scarcel}- got a mile on my 
 
 march, conducting a case into in a cart, for a medical 
 
 consultation. I confess I was a little disappointed, for I 
 had intended to study the domestic habits of the creature 
 a little. However, he stopped and shook me very warmly 
 by the hand, and directed me "just to walk in and — as 
 they expected me — I would find everything ready"; and 
 he gave his stomach an eloquent thump with his left paw 
 in a way that suggested roast beef at least. He again 
 abused my right hand and right arm cruelly, gave a jerk 
 of his under jaw and spasmodic twitch of his lips and 
 cheeks, that set all his face and even his ears in motion, 
 
 by which laborious operation Mr. executes a smile : 
 
 and then hied him after the cart containing the case. 
 I resumed my march too, and by and by reached his 
 house. 
 
 A brother of strange aspect, the skin of whose face was 
 yellow and wizzened, whose nose was like the " tower of 
 Lebanon," and the rays of whose eyeballs did differ in 
 direction, as if one should stand upon that tower and lock 
 with one eye down the valley of Jordan, and with the other 
 behold the billows of the great sea. 
 
 This is really very " aggravating." He would insist on 
 my going Avith him to-day to a funeral, in order that he 
 might point out a new route for my daily walks. I have 
 had my eye upon that funeral — speaking in a metaphor^ — 
 in fact I meant to utilise it — still speaking with reverence — 
 and to take advantage of his absence at it to finish this 
 present epistle. But he ivould have me to go, and so at 
 length go I did : and thus this " golden opportunity," if one 
 may so name a funeral, was lost. However, better luck 
 has come with a later hour : it is now about seven o'clock 
 (p.m. ot course), and I am sat down to put another arm on 
 
A COUNTRY PARSON'S LABOURS. 177 
 
 this windmill. For " Fortune, to show that, if she have 
 wrinkles on her brows, she hath also dimples on her cheeks," 
 has so arranged the mutual relations of the Fauna and the 
 Flora of this particular locality, that the snails every evening 
 make a raid en masse upon the brairding annuals. These 
 raids are incredibly destructive, iiotwithstanding the rather 
 phlegmatic movements of the individual snail. Like the 
 Devil, the snail effects his mischief by force of numbers. 
 The bearing of all these circumstances upon this present 
 
 writing lies in the fact that sallies out every evening 
 
 and makes havoc of his soft enemies. He stabs them with 
 a long needle or skewer, stringing his victims on the weapon, 
 and when he has " bagged " a matter of forty or fifty of 
 these " small deer " he sticks the whole affair — skewer and 
 skewered — into the ground, and calls the attention of all 
 visitors to it as " the prettiest flower in his garden." I 
 always make a show of indignantly denouncing this mode 
 of gibbeting alive — swift execution, of course, is necessary 
 and laudable ; but, after all, I never can get up a great 
 amount of steam on the subject : you see, snails, to tell the 
 truth, are not so highly organised as to command very much 
 compassion, and I am not sure that even the " Society for 
 the Prevention," etc., would ever think of making a case 
 
 of and his skewered snails. However, it is comforting 
 
 to reflect that at the present moment he is gone into the 
 garden, mad upon the slaughter of his enemies, and that the 
 evening seems just of that delightfully moist turn of mind 
 that Mr. Snail can most sympathise with. They will be in 
 great force, and I don't know that one skewer will be 
 enough for the slain : I hope not. . . . 
 
 He believes himself to bulk very largely in the eyes of all 
 the parish, and in those of all beyond it who have ever seen 
 or known him. He believes all the good and righteous 
 watch and approve his welfare, and that all the wicked and 
 
 M 
 
1/8 THE PROBATIONER. 
 
 froward are continually plotting evil against him, or rejoicing 
 when it befalls him from any other source. He believes 
 that all the women, whether they be wicked' or righteous, 
 are setting their caps at him. He believes that the im- 
 portunity of the remarriageable widows in the parish will 
 put his bachelorhood in peril of forcible abolition : that 
 their hungering eyes are continually fixed upon the manse 
 door, and their hearts perpetually filled with schemes and 
 resolves about the storming of it. Strangers of the female 
 sex, he believes, come from far to spend the summer with 
 friends from whose epistles they have heard of him and 
 his singleness. Then, in another line, he is continually 
 believing that any stranger of the male sex who enters his 
 kirk-door on a Sunday has heard of his fame at the ends 
 of the earth, and has come all the way thence on purpose 
 to hear him preach. He believes every soul within the 
 four walls hangs flutteringly on his lips, and answers like a 
 ilute the wind of his eloquence. (N.B. — His sermons are 
 very good ; although I mean on Sunday only to touch on 
 the blemishes.) All the while Clodpole is clodpoling as 
 usual, with his head on his palm, and palm and head rising 
 and sinking together as they have done ever since Noah 
 preached righteousness, and just as they will do till the last 
 of his descendants is put to sleep by a drowsy preacher on a 
 June Sunday. 
 
RETURN TO JEDBURGH. ly^ 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 %ht Enbalib. 
 
 Return to Jedburi:;h — Close of Diary — Attack of Cold, Bile, and the 
 Family Doctor — Auchterarder — Queen's Visit to Jedburgh — Sonnets 
 — Visit to Edinburgh — " Love is a Rose " — Great Heat — " Love's 
 Last Suit" — Submission — " To Cupid, Slayer of Friends" — " In 
 Redesdale " — A Notable Visitor — "A Rogue of a Cold " — A Level 
 Life^Sunday Occupations — Change of Feeling about the "Last 
 hicident " — "April" — "On a Certain Premature Report" — 
 Boston's Fourfold State — "There will I be buried" — Visit to 
 Edinburgh — "A Cottage in the Air'' — "To Amanda" — Visits 
 to Loch Ranza and Rothesay — Autumn Trip on the Border- 
 Beginning of the End — " A Doggerel Allegory of Hemoptysis"- — 
 His Last Poem — Death of Tombie — His Last Letter — The End. 
 
 At the close of 1866 Davidson returned to Jedburgh 
 in the hope that a few weeks, or at most months, of 
 rest would recruit his strength. He had prepared 
 himself for spending the period of retirement pleas- 
 antly and profitably by obtaining, as he passed 
 through Edinburgh, a stock of books from the College 
 Library. He resolved to study the early English 
 dramatists, and his first weeks at home were spent 
 reading Marlowe, Greene, and Ben Jonson. A 
 request from a friend that he should give his views 
 on hexameters in connection with Homeric trans- 
 
l8o THE INVALID. 
 
 lation, gave him further congenial occupation, and in 
 the course of the first week he wrote a long letter of 
 eight pages on the subject, which, unfortunately, has 
 not been preserved. 
 
 He says in his Diary — Monday, 31st December — 
 " The old year has wound itself up, in respect of 
 weather, with a neat little thing in snow-storms. . . . 
 I don't know very well what to say by way of epitaph 
 upon this same old year. He has not been such a 
 very bad year to me, nor yet such a very good one 
 either, seeing he has laid me on my back this way. 
 But, as he isn't clean dead yet, I daresay it will only 
 be decent to wait till to-morrow before I pronounce 
 upon him finally. It looks ghastly to write epitaphs 
 on the living ! " This is the last of the Diary, by 
 the help of which we have been able to trace the 
 course of his wanderings. From this time he was 
 destined to live what he called a " level life," with 
 hardly enough of incident to make the writing of a 
 diary interesting. He always shrank from giving any 
 record of his inward experience ; and his outward 
 history was henceforth only diversified by periodic 
 aggravations of his chronic malady, by occasional 
 journeys at distant intervals, undertaken in the hope 
 that change of air and change of scene might do him 
 good, and by visits from old friends, which were 
 always welcome so long as he had strength to bear 
 them. 
 
 His letters, however, supply us with abundant 
 materials for completing his biography. His power 
 
INTELLECTUAL AND SPIRITUAL GROWTH. kSi 
 
 as a letter-writer seems to have grown as his strength 
 declined. The best of his letters hitherto were written 
 when (as in Forres, in Ireland, and in Orkney) he was 
 isolated from his friends. The intense friendliness of 
 his nature made communion with them a necessity, 
 and moved him always to write with care. During 
 his long retirement his affection for those with whom 
 he had been associated in the occupations and enjoy- 
 ments of health grew deeper month by month. He 
 watched the movements of former fellow-students 
 and companions with deepest interest. He rejoiced 
 in their prosperity, and he wept with them in their 
 sorrow. It was not, therefore, wonderful that his 
 letters should become more numerous and more 
 remarkable. He was growing alike in insight and in 
 power of expression. His old humour never failed 
 him, even in the darkest days, and with it there was 
 manifestly a deepening wisdom and a richer culture 
 of heart and mind. 
 
 The same intellectual and spiritual growth is shown 
 in the verses he wrote in these later years. In com- 
 parison with his earlier productions, those which are to 
 be given in this chapter clearly belong to a new epoch 
 of his mental history. The singer has become the 
 thinker. The music of his verse has lost nothing of 
 its early sweetness, but it now touches deeper chords. 
 He had said of affliction in one of his sermons — " We 
 shall find that pain itself and deep adversity do not 
 visit us empty-handed, but may even leave larger 
 treasures behind them than prosperity itself We 
 
1 82 THE INVALID. 
 
 shall find that the pleasantest dreams do not ahvaj's 
 hover over pillows of down. Yox have we not heard 
 of one who rested his head upon a rock of the desert 
 and beheld the angels of God ascending and de- 
 scending between earth and heaven, and how the 
 vision sanctified unto him his own life and the 
 place itself for ever ? We shall find that the house 
 of mourning may be ' none other than the house 
 of God, and the very gate of heaven.' We shall 
 be enabled to say to all affliction, ' Thou art a teacher 
 come from God.' " These words seem prophetic of 
 his own experience. 
 
 To Adam Henderson, Esq. 
 
 Bankend, Jedburgh, January 8th, 1867. 
 
 I duly received your intimation of your little daughter's 
 untimely removal, and I need not say how sorry I was to 
 learn that her illness had ended so sadly. 
 
 You will both miss her sorely : for indeed the Providence 
 that measures out to us our various experiences intends that 
 such losses should be felt. At the same time God is good 
 — good in all things, and sorrow by His merciful ordering 
 goes ever hand in hand with consolation. To divorce them 
 utterly from one another lies with ourselves alone ; and with 
 you I hope and believe they will suffer no such separation 
 as that. 
 
 In the midst of your own loss, it is some consolation to 
 remember that she whom you lament has lost but little, 
 and gained infinitely much. I believe there are very few 
 of us who would choose to live life as we find it over 
 again : and this is indeed only to say that any early death 
 is personally an advantage rather tlian an evil. And look- 
 ing from the little she has lost to the much that she has 
 
SYMPATHY. I S3 
 
 gained, it is an unspeakable comfort indeed to remember 
 that your child is with the angels of God — with God 
 Himself, and the Christ that died for us all. This 
 mortal life at the best is but " shadow and shine, flower 
 and thorn " ; she lives where there is neither shadow nor 
 thorn, and where the sunshine and the flowers are fairer 
 and sweeter. 
 
 You do not mourn either for one whom you have lost for 
 ever, you do not mourn as those that have no hope of 
 meeting again. With our hope of eternal life we can, none 
 of us, help binding up instinctively the hope of meeting 
 and mutually knowing, and being known of, those that have 
 gone before. 
 
 It should also afford you some little solace in the midst 
 of your sadness to remember that you have the sympathies 
 of many friends ; and among others I would very earnestly 
 assure you that you have mine. 
 
 After all, however, we can do very little to comfort one 
 another in such circumstances as yours. God Himself can 
 do much ; and indeed the most that zve can do is only to 
 remmd one another of that. I pray, therefore, that you 
 may be blessed with a sense of the nearness and the good- 
 ness of Him who is the binder up of all bleeding hearts, 
 the Supreme Consoler of all them that suffer and yet 
 hope. 
 
 With kindest regards to Mrs. Henderson and yourself, 
 and hoping to hear from you soon, I am, etc. 
 
 His studies and his letter-writing were alike in- 
 terrupted towards the close of January by a severe 
 illness which lasted nearly a month, and left him ver}- 
 weak. The nature of the illness is referred to in 
 several of the following letters, and more particularly 
 described in one dated April 22nd. 
 
1 84 THE INVALID. 
 
 To Miss Dun lop. 
 
 Bankend, February 6th, 1867. 
 
 I am again sorry that you have had to wait for your 
 letter : the reason is still a bilious one. I thought I had 
 begun to improve when I wrote you last, but I had begun 
 to do no such thing. And ever since I have suffered under 
 a virulent attack of the Doctor. This has reduced me to 
 the low, mean, and contemptible weakness of taking break- 
 fast in bed for the last six or seven mornings. This is very 
 humiliating, and not to be hinted at in Gath or Askelon. 
 On Sunday the Doctor told me I had begun to mend. . . . 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Bankemu, February 15th, 1867. 
 
 During the last two or three days I have walked out into 
 the orchard. My success in these efforts has been rather 
 meagre, but the very fact of my being able to go out at all 
 is proof of the fact that I am improving. I was surprised 
 and pleased last Saturday evening by a visit from White. 
 He knew that I had been out of sorts, for he wrote me 
 about a fortnight ago urgently desiring to know how I was 
 getting on. He stayed till the Monday morning, and you 
 have no idea how much his company served to stir me up. 
 
 To the Rev, William T. Henderson. 
 
 Baxkend, February 20U), 1867. 
 
 .... I suppose I need not condole with you over your 
 
 defeat at . . . . The fact of the matter is, you — and I 
 
 take the advice to myself as well — must go in for the culti- 
 vation of the softer graces of oratory, the milder turns of 
 argument and rhetoric. Let a few stalwart thumps repre- 
 sent the more substantial and robust. We must use the 
 argnmentiim ad feminatii, and convince both sexes ; for in 
 these times, whatever may have been the case long ago, 
 men as beings preached to, have an amazing amount of the 
 
ARGUMENTUM AD FEMINAM. 185 
 
 woman about them — I mean of the weaker part of the 
 woman. 
 
 These are my general admonitions ; you may put them 
 
 into practice if you like at , where I suppose you at 
 
 present to be " labouring," although I don't mean to in- 
 sinuate that is worse than other places, or even as bad 
 
 as many. 
 
 You will find Mrs. , if she be still at the manse, a 
 
 swift, sudden, strenuous, and not unkindly woman ; and I 
 hope you will tender her my regards, and my hopes that 
 her children and herself are well. 
 
 Mr. 's you will find to be a very convenient, let us 
 
 even say a heaven-appointed place, for smoking a com- 
 fortable and comforting pipe of tobacco \ and Mr. 
 
 himself a gentle and genial and conversable soul. He is no 
 great walker. 
 
 From your brother Adam, of whose loss I was exceed- 
 ingly sorry to learn, I had a letter some days ago, and I will 
 write him shortly. Probably Adam would hint at a certain 
 Clackmannan engagement : into that I am too dull to enter 
 at present ; perhaps I may not have forgotten it next time 
 we meet. 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Bankend, March 3rd, 1867. 
 .... You wheedled me into a corner in your last letter, 
 as if you had quite a secret to tell me, and the upshot was 
 that after all you only meant to advise me to write short 
 letters. Well, I am sure such deception very well merited 
 to be punished with disobedience on my part, and the 
 infliction of eight pages at least ; and yet I am going to be 
 so much a Christian and a forgiver of offences as to obey I 
 Behold the reforming effect of bile and pill boxes — in other 
 Avords, of indisposition. Before I was afflicted I went 
 astray and wrote long letters ; but now I keep the com- 
 
1 86 THE INVALID. 
 
 mandments and write short ones. And while I am on that 
 wearisome topic — affliction — I will put you at your ease 
 about my convalescing process, which continues to go on 
 successfully, though not quite at steam speed — a speed, in 
 fact, which is not to be expected. I did a very decent spell 
 of walking on Sunday — a half-mile. 
 
 To the Rev. William T. Henderson. 
 
 Bankend, March yth, 1867. 
 
 .... I must condescend upon your "gospel call."' 
 Really it's a great case ! and I feel as if I could not con- 
 gratulate you sufhciently, or speak out with sufficient 
 emphasis the pleasure I have felt from hearing of it. Elliot 
 of all men was the first to tell me about it. He came out 
 here to see me a fortnight ago, on a Monday morning, and 
 told me he had seen it in the Revie7c\ a copy of which he had 
 with him. So, having identified you by means of the W. T. 
 which was duly given, we proceeded to felicitate ourselves. 
 It is a very covetable place, and of all the vawcaiicies is 
 perhaps the one I should have selected for myself, if only 
 we had had the liberty of choice, Avhich to be sure we 
 haven't (what a pity). To tell the truth, it is the first place 
 I ever did covet ; for I was there a number of years ago, 
 just when Leckie was about to be placed. . . . 
 
 A brother probationer having received two calls — 
 one from a larger and tlie other from a smaller town, 
 
 which we shall name X and Y respectively, 
 
 Davidson sent him the following letter : — 
 
 Bankend, April 12th, 1867. 
 I was very much gratified and not a whit surprised (T.nde 
 a former epistle) to learn the good news of your invitation to 
 
 ^ The phrase used by Presbyteries when a call is presented. They 
 " sustain it as a regular gospel call." — Ed. 
 
NECESSARY AND UNNECESSARY WORK. 187 
 
 X . Of course I don't exactly know what a man thinks 
 
 or how he feels when he is " under call " ; still less can I be 
 expected to know how he feels when he is doubly in that 
 condition : for why? no visitation of that particular com- 
 plexion has ever befallen me. But I should think his 
 feelings must belong to that class which the best novelists 
 always tell their readers "may be imagined," — meaning of 
 course all the time, that they may not be imagined. How- 
 ever your position, practically, demands consideration as 
 well as feeling, and of course I can give myself up to the 
 former item to almost any extent. And, to tell the truth, 
 I have reconsidered the case you put ; I put it hypotheticall}- 
 some weeks ago, as you may remember, and gave my vote 
 
 for Y . Now, having reconsidered the matter, I should 
 
 vote for Y again. 
 
 So far as regards the " root of all evil," you say they are 
 the same, which means they are not the same, for your 
 
 nndred-an'-arfwiW be found more elastic in Y than in 
 
 X . Argal. But that of course is a minor matter. Of 
 
 more importance is the matter of work. Now, I am quite 
 well aware that human nature is so formed (or de-ioxva&d) 
 that it lies peculiarly open to that very subtle temptation of 
 the devil, which consists in holding up to the victim the 
 notion that in the matter of religious work, /^/7 is an end in 
 itself. Of course when one looks at the proposition in that 
 form, one knows very well that toil is not an end in itself, 
 and that the proposition is a big lie; but then the devil 
 seldom puts his ideas in the simple form of propositions. 
 Such an idea as the one in question very often haunts a man 
 
 in such a shape as this : " If I don't go to X , where 
 
 there will be a great deal of work, but go rather to Y , 
 
 where there will be less, I am shirking." Now that does by 
 no means follow. Of necessary work there will be quite 
 enough in Y , indeed there is about the same every- 
 
1 88 THE INVALID. 
 
 where (meaning by necessary work the careful making of 
 prayers and sermons and addresses, and visiting). That 
 which does make one place differ from another in toilsome- 
 ness is the z/;mecessary work, which, for the most part, 
 consists of merely passive annoyance — such as the irre- 
 pressible swarrie movement, interruption at any and every 
 time in the middle of your best idea, requests to preach the 
 "annual sermon of the Devoted Young Women's Dorcas 
 Society " — in short, obsession generally ! Now all that befalls 
 the rash man that adventures to go up against a city ; and I 
 apprehend that it is as good as impossible to resist it all 
 
 effectually. In X you might expect a great deal of 
 
 that ; in Y very little. j\gain, over and above all these 
 
 sources of tribulation, in X you have the church to fill, 
 
 and it is, as you know, no common but a very " severe case " 
 
 of emptiness at present. There is one man in X 
 
 named , who is often said to have succeeded marvel- 
 lously and indeed filled his church ; but to the best of my 
 belief and judgment this report is not the fact. He has not 
 a great membership, nor even a great attendance on which 
 he can count. He has resorted to the expedient of preaching 
 always in the evening so as to catch every mobile soul's coin 
 for his collection, and to be sure he does get a large audience 
 at that time. But even this end he only compasses by means 
 of questionable dignity : by putting straw Goliaths into 
 position and then playing David to them — or, in plain prose 
 by making a show of answering and even snubbing Renan 
 and the invincible Bishop. Now you could hardly set your 
 
 face to that kind of thing, and at Y^ • there would be no 
 
 need for it. To be sure Y is not a large place, and 
 
 some men would scarcely look forward with satisfaction to a 
 long life at it. (For my own part I should of all things 
 prefer a life in such a place.) But it has the peculiarity of 
 being about the best place, or, at all events, of being one of 
 
ADVICE. 189 
 
 the very best class of places for getting one's self translated. 
 
 You would not be regarded in Y as a man fixed 
 
 unalterably for life, but in X ■ you would be very liable 
 
 to such a reputation. And at Y the annual rush of 
 
 visitors would give you the very best and widest oppor- 
 tunities of being heard and named in connection with 
 
 vawcancies. In short, Y- is perhaps the very best place 
 
 in the Church for the combined ends of beginning a ministry 
 advantageously and quietly, and of migrating to another 
 when you are inclined to do so, and when the possession 
 of sufficient capital will render the doing so worth your 
 while. 
 
 On the other side, you seem to place in prominence the 
 
 fact of the call to Y being " cordial," while the X 
 
 one is "unanimous." But then all or most of the Kirky 
 hands were placed to the document at the time, and now 
 that you loom to their eyes through this halo of a call 
 
 to X , they will hold up both hands' as an invitation. 
 
 Little weight, therefore, is to be placed on that consider- 
 ation. 
 
 In point of climate, too, Y is infinitely superior ; to 
 
 be sure you will not place great store upon that quality at 
 present, seeing that your constitution is a tolerably good 
 one. But then heaven knows what fragile and fair creature 
 you may find your lost rib in ! and what trouble your delicate 
 and interesting family may create for you ! all which a very 
 very prudent man would certainly consider ! 
 
 Finally, seeing that I know very well that nobody ever 
 takes advice simply as advice, but only as it happens to be 
 his own opinion, I will not advise you to go either to the 
 one place or the other. Said Robert the Snob to my 
 brother-in-law, who asked his advice with respect to an 
 ailing cow : " Weel, Thamas, I really will not advise ye ; 
 but if she was ma coo, I would bluid her !" And to apply 
 
I go THE INVALID. 
 
 tliis " little anecdote " to the present case — I won't advise 
 
 you one way or another; but^ , if /were "under call " 
 
 to Y and X , I should certainly go to Y ! 
 
 I suppose you will have to be off with the one and on 
 with the other very soon, and I hope you will write as soon 
 as you can and let me know which of them is to kick the 
 beam. With kind regards, and praying you to be charitable 
 to this rigmarole letter, I am, etc '' 
 
 To the Rev. John M'Intyre. 
 
 Bankend, April 22nd, 1867. 
 
 I am utterly, even deliberately idle ! and that is the sole 
 reason why I have allowed a whole month to pass before 
 answering your letter, and returning thanks for your kind 
 invitation. If you or any other man expect me to write by 
 return, or otherwise than very leisurely, you make a very 
 great mistake, I assure you. Why, a man might as well be 
 busy ! — and just at this present time that is a condition which 
 both my soul and my body abhor. If Gibson was true to my 
 instructions before he went down to Paisley in December, 
 and to his own assertions when he came back, then he must 
 have given you the real reason why I did not accompany 
 Jiim : it was for no other reason than that I had knocked 
 myself up by too much trudging to and fro the streets (none 
 o( the cleanest) and up and down the stairs (which are of 
 the steepest) of Glasgow ; and that I feared further exertion 
 might lay me upon my back permanently in the west. That 
 would have been inconvenient. I have also been lying 
 under the delusion that Gibson on the same occasion would 
 tell you of my intention to retire for some time from the 
 list ; but when your letter led me to think of the circum- 
 stances again, I did remember that it was only during the 
 time that he was absent in Paisley that I finally and 
 <lefinitely made up my mind on the matter ; and the same 
 
WITHDRAWAL FROM THE 'LIST.' 
 
 191 
 
 reason that kept me from Paisley led me to withdraw from 
 the list. I had been going on from one cold to another — 
 carrying, of course, a little of the old forward with me to 
 the new, and at length I could not help seeing that if I 
 wished to advance in any direction other than cemetery- 
 wards, the sooner " I went bald-headed " for plain shelvation 
 the better. And I shelved myself accordingly. I shelved 
 myself shortly before Christmas ; I am on the shelf still, 
 and whether or no Fate is going to put sides, ends, and 
 a lid upon it does not yet appear very clearly. . . . Pro- 
 bably I would have been on the list again ere this time of 
 day, if I had only got fair play, for during my first month 
 of retirement I went on as well as I could desire. But at 
 the end of the great storm in January I was forced suddenly 
 to expose myself with very little protection to the cold, and 
 was nailed once more. I was caught this time between cold 
 and bile, which two fiends, when rolled into one, seem to 
 form a third devil worse than themselves. His place in 
 creation will lie about midway between influenza and bilious 
 fever ; he is not so mild as the one, nor quite as fierce as 
 the other, and yet he possesses a shrewd share of the bad 
 points of both. 
 
 But what appeared to be worse even than the disease, was 
 the cure, not that the method followed in my case was at all 
 different, so far as I am aware, from the common practice, 
 but only that the next worst thing to being killed outright by 
 any ailment is to be cured by the physician. The family 
 doctor fell upon me, armed with a box of most remorseless 
 pills, and in little more than a week reduced me to a condi- 
 tion which was not merely lean, but utterly fleshless. This 
 barbarous man, I cannot help thinking, must have had in his 
 eye Sydney Smith's well-known warm-weather joke about 
 " taking off one's flesh, and sitting in one's bones." Of 
 course this is well enough for a joke, but it makes uncom- 
 
192 THE INVALID. 
 
 monly sad earnest, even when, as in my own case, a man 
 is still allowed his skin to hold them together. In short, 
 this man left me as lean as the proverbial w'hipj^ing-post, 
 fishing-rod, flag-staff, or any other symbol of emaciation that 
 the most starved fancy could suggest. To give him his due, 
 however, I must be honest enough to own that what he left 
 of me was quite cured ; in fact, it could scarcely be other- 
 wise, seeing my complaint was neither a skin disease nor a 
 bone one ! 
 
 During all this tedious business I have continued to strive 
 after philosophic content as well as I could ; of course I do 
 not flatter myself at all that I realised my own aspirations in 
 that respect, for occasionally I was, beyond any doubt, cross 
 and ill-natured. Perhaps I should have succeeded better if 
 I had consented to lie in bed ; but then I have never lain a 
 day in bed for over twenty years, and a man sets a certain 
 foolish value upon being able to make a boast of that kind ; 
 and I was naturally unwilling to pull down in a day what had 
 taken twenty years in building, and could not be reared 
 again in less. I persisted, therefore, in rising every day and 
 dragging myself painfully to the chair in the chimney-corner, 
 where I have been on view gratis any day these two or three 
 months. For several weeks this was a very trying process, 
 I can tell you ; but as it got gradually easier, I began to 
 amuse myself with reading the old dramatists, Greene, 
 Marlowe, and Ben Jonson, whose works I had by good 
 fortune brought with me from Edinburgh University on my 
 way home before Christmas. And so for many weeks I 
 have sustained myself upon these same fellows and Shake- 
 speare, in the way of reading, besides the ScotsmaJi, which I 
 get every morning (and which I was never quite past read- 
 ing), and the Spectator, which I get every Monday from a 
 good Samaritan in Edinburgh. 
 
 I am now, however, to some extent independent of these 
 
IiMPR 1 7AG HEA L TH. 
 
 195 
 
 means of keeping one's mind alive, as I am able to go out 
 and move about the country again to some extent — an extent 
 which fortunately grows daily wider. It is only about a 
 week since I walked about a mile for the first time since 
 January, and already I take walks of three or four ; so that 
 I expect soon to make up what ground I have lost during 
 this fit of illness. The cough still remains to be cured, for 
 the rest of my ailment was only an episode, and now I mean 
 to settle down strenuously to the endeavour to get rid of my 
 old enemy. For this I look, not without hope, to the good 
 weather which the month warrants me to look for soon ; and 
 I do so with the larger hope that I have already benefited 
 by the decent weather of the last week or two. So much for 
 the matter of health and sickness. You asked in your letter 
 for " explanations," and if you have drawn on yourself a 
 bulletin by way of answer, it is nobody's fault but your own. 
 Let me only thus far allude once more to the subject ; if I 
 do by the month of June attain anything like reasonable 
 ground for believing that I have got beyond immediate 
 danger of the " abhorred shears," I will not fail to present 
 myself at your house-heating. I congratulate you, in the 
 meantime, on the prospect of having a house to heat ; see 
 that you rule it well when you get it ! I wonder whether 
 mine be built yet, or whether I am to be a nomad, a " plain 
 man dwelling in tents," till the final clap of the inevitable 
 shovel. That, however, is entirely a speculative matter, and 
 I never was given to speculation ; therefore I drop it, and 
 begin to think of winding up this long epistle. The longest 
 epistle has an end ; even love letters, I am credibly told, 
 have their conclusions. Luckily I recollect, just in time, 
 your inquiry as to whether I expect to be in Edinburgh in 
 May. I am not at present quite sure about my movements 
 during that month. It is possible I may be in Edinburgh, 
 and it is possible I may be in Berwick ; but there is time for 
 
194 
 
 THE INVALID. 
 
 you to write and me to reply before the time comes which 
 you refer to. It is an easy matter for a man who is habitu- 
 ally busy to write — much easier than for myself who am 
 habitually idle, as I have already declared. You are busy 
 already, and to write me a moderately long letter will make 
 you so very little busier that you will barely be conscious of 
 any difference ! And now I commend myself through you to all 
 your friends at Paisley. I hope I may see them in June. Com- 
 mend me also to my friends in Baillieston, and believe me, etc. 
 
 In those days John Cowan, brother of Davidson's 
 dear friend Willie, wrote to the following effect : — 
 
 I have dreamt about you several times lately, but last 
 night I dreamt of you and Willie, and awoke crying. I 
 thought we were sliding together on ice, mere boys, full of 
 fun and laughter, when suddenly first Willie, then you, went 
 off the slide on the ice, which broke, leaving both to sink, 
 and me utterly paralysed and powerless to help you. No 
 doubt the hard work of the session has so excited my brain 
 that even in sleep it will not be at rest. I hope there is yet 
 a long time " on the slide " both for you and me. But, 
 Davidson, don't you think this country and its slides are 
 tiresome and wearying — wearing young brains old by the 
 regular college mills invented for that purpose ? Would 
 not we all be strong and well, healthy and happy, in some 
 young uprising country ? Think of you and Willie and me 
 as sturdy backwoodsmen, setting out rejoicing on a fine 
 Canadian morning, to do the clearing of our own acres, 
 each with a mighty hatchet over his shoulder, a song in his 
 mouth, and strength through all his stalwart frame, believing 
 with David that — 
 
 ' ' A man was famous and was had 
 In estimation, 
 According as he lifted up 
 His axe thick trees upon." 
 
ANSWER. 195 
 
 How happy we would have returned to our wigwam and log 
 fire by night. What talks, what smokes, what sleeps ! No 
 dreams then, old man. No death, perhaps — not so sooii at 
 any rate. You and Willie would have both been well. I 
 would not have been in this perpetual " mill," anxious 
 about daily bread. 
 
 To which Davidson — after delay — sent the follow- 
 ing reply : — 
 
 Bankend, May 22nd, 1867. 
 
 My dear Jack, — Let me try at once to put you in toler- 
 able humour by owning frankly that you are an ill-used man. 
 Indeed, I have owned as much already behind your back, 
 in a note to ElUot which I wrote yesterday. If you doubt 
 my word (which you have every reason to do, I confess) ask 
 him. In the same note 1 stated that I had sworn a solemn 
 oath to write you to-day, and now " for my oath's sake " I 
 am begun. That is rather a Herodian motive for a Christian 
 man to confess to ; but in justice both to myself and you, I 
 think it right to advance some claim to the possession of a 
 somewhat better one, to wit, considerations of sheer gratitude 
 and duty. I have had slightly severe times of it for some 
 time past and I have never read the long letter you were 
 good enough to send my way (and I have read it very often) 
 without silently thanking you that in the midst of your own 
 troubles and worries you had found time to remember me 
 and mine. 
 
 And now that I have got a fresh page before me, let me 
 proceed to liberate from its confinement the statement on the 
 other side that I have thrust into parentheses. I have read 
 your letter very often— much oftener than one does read 
 letters — love ones, perhaps, excepted. I have read yours so 
 often, because it is not a letter of the common sort, and, of 
 course, it could not on that account be answered in the com- 
 
196 THE INVALID. 
 
 mon way — that is to say, right off, without premeditation, 
 eyes shut and bald headed. That is what I have felt every 
 time I have read it, and so. Jack, from one point of view 
 you must really regard my long delay as a downright com- 
 pliment ! 
 
 June 14th. — All men are subject, Jack, to visitations of 
 ill-luck ; you and I are of course no exception to that 
 vexatious rule ; and among the minor strokes of that un- 
 welcome visitor is the fact that I was interrupted just at 
 that word " compliment " ; and quite prevented from resum- 
 ing that day. You know how difficult, because distasteful, 
 it is to resume to-day the letter which you commenced 
 yesterday ; and also how difficult it is to resume a former 
 humour or state of mind. I thought I was " in the humour," 
 as it is phrased, for writing you that day, and I have delayed 
 beginning again in the hope that the humour might make a 
 casual return. The humour has not returned — the moun- 
 tain has not come to the false prophet — so I " sit down 
 doggedly." 
 
 Your notion about the helps to good behaviour that 
 abound in the Backwoods, or at least about the absence 
 there of temptations to peccability that are familiar to us 
 here, tickled me, and tickles me still a good deal. It 
 tickled me so because I have been acquainted with him 
 intimately — he made up to me almost in that identical garb 
 a good while ago — say ten years since — 
 
 " When I was young and in my proime, 
 Just ajid twenty-wan " — 
 
 as the poet sings (or less it may be, for I praise the sweet 
 heavens I am still on oin- side of thirty). The moral I draw 
 from the matter is, how like to each other are the children 
 of men ! how unfailingly, under all minor differences, is to 
 be found the same make I I used to think that these fore- 
 bodings about the future (for if you look at your motive for 
 
FIGHTING OUR PHANTOMS. 197 
 
 coveting Backwood facilities for the practice of virtue, you 
 will find that it rises out of that) were the peculiar and 
 private enemy of only the somewhat superior fellows — that 
 the nick were never confronted by them at all. Of course 
 one was all the readier to adopt the notion from having a 
 sly little squint at a strictly logical inference concerning 
 one's personal self to be drawn from it. "/must be a — 
 h'm — h'm — superi — ah — well ! " I hold now the belief that 
 to all men, if they get fair play, in a way dimmer or clearer 
 as the case may be, there comes a time when Duty and Fate 
 look upon them out of the future with unlovely and uninvit- 
 ing faces. To be sure they are only images projected upon 
 the future by ourselves. But then the time I speak of comes 
 always early, when imagination in proportion to our other 
 powers is stronger than it will ever be again, and when our 
 notions have an appearance of soHdity about them which 
 will become flimsier and thinner by and bye. Anyhow, the 
 phantoms are there — and very efficient phantoms they are 
 too. You will be shrewd enough, I fear, to draw another 
 inference from the fact of the hunting being universal — to 
 wit, that if the thing be so common there must be some 
 possibility of devising an effectual manner of dealing with it, 
 or, at any rate, a recognised way of theorising about that 
 manner. In short, you are ready to put the question. What, 
 then, is to be done ? Well, Jack, I do not profess to be a 
 very wise man ; I am not a good man either. I do profess 
 to have a good deal of dumb sympathy with men, but it is 
 mostly of the dumb sort. For heaven's sake, don't rely 
 much upon me in the way of counsel. I believe the art or 
 science of dealing with those phantoms might have been a 
 good deal further advanced by this time of the world's day, 
 if only we had all been wise and orderly. But, then, though 
 we must all wrestle with the phantoms, we wrestle in such a 
 confused, blind, and undisciplined way, that we can give 
 
198 THE INVALID. 
 
 little or no account of it — of our method — to one another. 
 I remember very well how, when I was at college, I used 
 sometimes to go up to the Castle-esplanade and devote half 
 an hour to the indulgence of very intense envy of the good 
 fortune of the soldiers who were getting drilled there. I 
 used to think how easy it was for these men to go their daily 
 round of duty : it was a very narrow round ; and even in the 
 event of one's will faltering a little in the midst of it, there 
 were so many efficient means of compulsion to help one on, 
 nolens volens — sharp bayonets swiftly at one's breech, and 
 effectual beyond resistance 1 Still, I wasn't such a goose 
 but that I could perceive that wasn't the way to get rid of 
 my ghosts; and it is probable I shall never " take the shilling " 
 now. It was only an imaginary and quite unreal way of 
 turning one's back upon them — one's back, "for which," 
 says Christian in the Pilgrinis Progress., "one has no 
 armour." I do believe, Jack, that the phantoms only arise 
 to punish us for longing " to be wise above what is written " 
 with respect to our own fortunes. Practically, the only bit 
 of our record that is yet written is our past ; we must not 
 expect to find other laws (contradictory, I mean) ruling in 
 our future. If we begin to conjecture about the existence of 
 such, up start our phantoms. Isn't it better, then, to mind 
 our present more, and let our future more alone. Of course 
 we must not work blindly either, nor without plan or end. 
 But I think that most of us learn from our past that there is 
 a very close connection between the manner in which we 
 do our duties and the manner in which we endure our fates, 
 if we have been given to error and prone to shirking, no 
 good fortune can succeed in making its sweetness felt 
 by us ; and the worst of haps only brings to play upon 
 us the maximum of its force when it is joined from 
 within by conscious desert of evil. In short. Duty is like 
 Kempion's Dragon, — she puts on beauty if we only embrace 
 
CHANGE OF AIR. 
 
 199 
 
 her ; and if Duty be thus propitiated by obedience, she will 
 take half their terrors from the features of Fortune. Now, 
 if we only have faith in what our past has taught us on the 
 matter, we will not trouble ourselves so much with peering 
 into the future, nor torment ourselves with the fear that 
 other principles and other relations between Doing and 
 Enduring will be prevalent there. I have just paused to 
 throw my slipper at a chicken which has invaded my den ; 
 and, having thus stopped, I have availed myself of the pause 
 to read over what I have written. I say with Pilate, " What 
 I have written I have written " ; but I also say not with 
 Pilate, "What vehement stuff is this?" It strikes me also 
 you may be led to suppose from what I have written here, 
 that the above is the plan I have always followed in fighting 
 my ghosts. That will be very erroneous. I often think I 
 have made an utter mess of the whole campaign ; but still I 
 do profess to have had a {q.\s disjointed experiences that 
 have led me to believe these things true. That is all. 
 Also, this thing is true and beyond doubt to me, that the 
 thing cannot be done well, nor at all, if it don't be done 
 religiously. 
 
 Monday. — Another interruption. Jack, led me to believe 
 that the best thing to do with this letter — 
 
 " Which like a wounded snake drags its slow length along" — 
 
 would be to burn it, seeing I was to be in town so soon. I 
 spare it, however, and add to it the finishing touch, that it 
 may inform you of the fact that I mean to be in Elliot's to- 
 morrow evening about six or seven, en route iox Auchterarder 
 and fresh air. When it has acquainted you of that fact, do 
 for the love of heaven and me burn it, for I am ashamed of 
 its preachiness. 
 
 About the middle of June he found himself strong 
 enough to seek change of air and change of scene. 
 
200 THE INVALID. 
 
 He paid a visit of nearly two months to his old 
 fellow-student, Mr. Gibson of Auchterarder. 
 To the Rev. William T. Henderson. 
 
 AucHTKKARDKK, June 29th, 1867. 
 I am not voluminously given in the way of letter-writing : 
 I believe I never was, even when T mingled most in the 
 company of active men, and I find that private life tends 
 still less than one that was public so far, to set one's pen 
 going. One thinks about his friends as much as ever — 
 perhaps more — but, then, one's thoughts only run round 
 after each other — " so have I seen " a dog's head chasing 
 his tail : in both processes there is a certain want of progress. 
 Now, to-night, for once, I have got out of that condition. 
 Meditating in Gibson's garden upon the fact that this is 
 Saturday evening, and then on the other fact that Gibson is 
 now alongside of the weekly task, wrestling with his own 
 reluctancies and the necessities of to-morrow, I found my 
 thoughts flying Clydewards to the "Great Com. Cen.," 
 resting for a moment upon the hideous and seething aggre- 
 gate of sermonic pangs which one's imagination on a Satur- 
 day evening conjures up at the very name of Glasgow, and 
 finally settling down and folding their wings upon Cumbrae. 
 It will be Monday when you read all that, and you will 
 probably be able to smile over it. We can talk about 
 ghosts at noonday without terror. However, I begin to 
 perceive that from the time you have now been settled, 
 there will be still a few survivors (even though you have 
 written no new ones) — a few of that good host with which, 
 as Wellington said of his Peninsular army, " You could go 
 anywhere and do anything." If so, then you will not yet 
 have the Saturday evening gripes in their full strength ; but 
 sooner or later I suppose you will come to taste the univer- 
 sal cup. Reading all that over, I become aware of the 
 fact that from the sentence ending with " Cumbrae " all is 
 
AT A UCHTERARDER. 20 1 
 
 parenthetical. What I intended to say was that from think- 
 ing about you I suddenly passed into the resolution of 
 writing to you. And I write you to ask if you expect to be 
 at home for some weeks to come; for, if you are in the mind 
 to stick by your own fireside for a few weeks, I may possibly 
 for a few days sit down at the other. In plain terms, I may 
 possibly pay you a visit, if my soul and body continue to 
 tiang together by any tenure trustworthy to a reasonable 
 man. You will not repeat my own descriptions of myself in 
 the meantime, for they might be damaging ultimately, in 
 case time and improvement should supersede them, and the 
 business of circulating be resumed. But in the meantime I 
 am rather a poor Avretch, the good weather has been long in 
 coming (and you know " the time grass is a-growing an auld 
 horse may dee"), and even now when it is come, I am not 
 the ticket I expected to be at this day of the year. I am 
 easily knocked up, easily catch cold, easily get out of breath, 
 can scarcely climb a sharp ascent at all without many paus- 
 ings, pantings, puffings, and examinations of the landscape. 
 Finally, I find it difficult to sleep with a bed-fellow, being 
 prone to get dreadfully hot, and to be '• filled with tossings 
 to and fro until the breaking of the day " : Whereof the 
 morial is this, that I hope you are lord and master of two 
 beds. I hope to hear from you soon at the manse here, 
 where I shall have been located a fortnight on W^ednesday 
 first, and where probably I may spend another fortnight. 
 When I have got the letter I speak of I shall be more in a 
 position to fix a day for coming. Hoping you are getting 
 on well, and that I shall see you soon to gratulate you with 
 the " living voice," I am, etc. 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 AUCHTERARDER, July 6th, 1867. 
 
 .... Perhaps you will remember that to-morrow is the 
 7th day of July. I happened to be born that day a few 
 
202 THE INVALID. 
 
 years ago — how few it doesn't very much matter, and I 
 needn't bother myself mentioning. I cannot help remark- 
 ing, however, that they are getting less and less few every 
 time the yth of July comes round — so much so that I 
 am gradually coming to regard that day as the greatest 
 nuisance of all the days in the year. Bah ! I have a good 
 mind to ask Gibson to preach a penitential sermon on it, 
 only I fear he is too far gone already upon some other 
 
 subject. . . . 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 AUCHTERARDER, July 20th, 1867. 
 
 .... Gibson and I had a trip to St. Fillan's about ten 
 days ago, which I mention for the sake of an old fisher who 
 came down with us on the 'bus from the Earn to Crieff, and 
 who interested me by his likeness to your daddy. He was 
 plainly a good hand, for his basket was pretty full, though 
 the day was unfavourable. Also he was a man of much 
 humour and coolness. A man at Comrie found the 'bus 
 quite full, and, being unable to get a seat, began rather 
 unreasonably to abuse everybody who had one ! till the old 
 gentleman closed his mouth by telling him " they keepit an 
 auld hearse ower there that he might hire for tippence a mile." 
 The blatant man retired. I noticed a hook in the old 
 fellow's trousers just at the calf of the leg, and, thinking I 
 was doing a good action, I took the liberty to say so. He 
 sat upon me by saying " he wadna wonder," upon which I 
 felt very flat indeed. The Earn must beat the Cayle some- 
 times, if it be true, which I don't doubt, that the old man 
 had caught some 27 lbs. a week before our meeting with 
 him. . . . 
 
 To the Rev. William T. Henderson. 
 
 AUCHTEKAKDKR, AugUSt ISt, 1867. 
 
 For a fortnight I have been haunted by the idea that I 
 should write to somebody or other : it was only yesterda\'. 
 
" OH FOR DROUGHT r 203, 
 
 however, that it flashed across my mind you were the man. 
 That looks, you will say, as if I very seldom thought about 
 you : but if you say so you are quite wrong. I have thought 
 about you daily in connection with some matter or another, 
 but the idea of epistolation and the idea of yourself have 
 never happened to encounter each other in my mind until 
 the day referred to already — to wit, yesterday. Again, you 
 will say (and you will be wrong again) I might have written 
 you yesterday then. Sir, yesterday was the parochial fast. 
 
 Objections thus parried, let me proceed to business. You 
 may now let " the other bed " for the whole season, without 
 apprehension of its tenant having his slumbers either broken 
 or shared by an invader. About this journey to the west, 
 like a wise man I have changed my mind : more particularly 
 like the wise men of the East, I have resolved to " return 
 into my own country another way." 
 
 The truth is, I partly fear the travelling and 1 partly fear 
 your weeping climate. To be sure we have had a general 
 weeping lately, but the temperament of your Clyde-water is 
 to a proverb melancholic and lachrymose. Now, at the 
 present time, I covet the Sahara : — Oh for drought ! 
 
 I am going to tell you a secret: — -"tell no man." Seriously, 
 I had my chest once more looked into the other night by a 
 Glasgow doctor. He told me my left lung is "affected " : a 
 fact of which I have been perfectly well aware for many 
 weeks past, but which now looms to me slightly larger 
 through the haze of this professional confirmation. Now, 
 that fact is a little unpleasant : in the great majority of cases 
 the unpleasantness gradually deepens until it terminates in 
 the plain " necropolitan." How^ever, the medical man says 
 there is nothing wrong that may not be righted this present 
 season : this may be true or not — most likely it isn't true. 
 "The summer is ended," though "the harvest is 7iot past,"" 
 and my ragged old lung is not so much patched up as I 
 
204 
 
 THE INVALID. 
 
 anticipated. However, I have learned to take the matter 
 in a tolerably quiet spirit, and to have " a heart for either 
 fate." If I do recover I shall be very glad, for life is a 
 pleasant thing in itself somehow ; and if I don't recover I 
 shall not be much disappointed. Voila tout, except, indeed, 
 this other phrase which comes in appropriately, and will be 
 nothing the worse for an airing, nous vcrrons. The coming 
 winter, I suspect, will settle the matter (and possibly vie). 
 Now, you will understand that all this, except the hopeful 
 possibilities it contains, is entre nous. (I wonder why I am 
 betaking myself so much to my little stock of French. Per- 
 haps it is that I am a little serious, and trying to seem the 
 other. Well.) To people that inquire for me you will say 
 that I am "middling" ; that I am not quite ready yet for re- 
 entering the " lists." Of course your brother Adam can hold 
 his tongue. I should have liked extremely to see you and 
 him before going home, but I must exercise a little self- 
 denial in the meantime. The mending of a bad lung is 
 cheap at a good deal of self-denial. 
 
 I am afraid this letter will appear a little down-castical, 
 I am not downcast ; I am, indeed, much as usual. I really 
 believe a condition of this kind should not very much affect 
 a man's tone ; or rather one's habitual tone should be such 
 as a fact of that kind ought not much to affect. Mean- 
 while, 7'ive Pespoir. 
 
 I leave for home to-morrow : write soon. 
 
 I ought to have said I am a great deal improved generally 
 since I came here, and that I am going home merely for 
 change. 
 
 On his return from Auchterarder, the monotony 
 of his invalid life at home was somewhat relieved 
 by the excitement incident to a visit which the 
 Queen paid to Jedburgh. 
 
THE QUEEN'S VISIT TO JEDBURGH. 205 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Banke.nd, August 17th, 1867. 
 
 .... Of course the engrossing subject of thought and 
 talk among us is the Queen's visit. It is to be paid on 
 Friday next week — Friday first now. Ah— h-h ! if you only 
 saw how we are brushing ourselves ! 
 
 Rosie Purvis's house at the townfoot is, or rather was, as 
 black as the proverbial wolf's mouth, and the oldest man does 
 not remember when that house was white, or even modestly 
 hinted of brown. Yesterday, as I turned into the street, 
 that house sent a momentary thrill of terror through my 
 bosom. It was as white as the undrifted snow ! People 
 advise Rosie ironically to have the ^^ theekin" whitewashed 
 too ; for the thatch is of the immemorial colour still, 'and, 
 beetling over the dazzling white, it offers a very curious and 
 even startling contrast, especially to the unexpecting be- 
 holder. Think of meeting in a quiet country town a negro 
 in a long night shirt ; he would be a faint image of Rosie 
 Purvis's house. All the people who have broken windows 
 looking into the street are getting them mended of course. 
 All the people whose chimney-cans sit on their chimneys in 
 the way that a man puts his hat on his head when he wants 
 to look knowing or rakish, are having those impertinent- 
 looking chimney-cans set straight. All the people who are 
 building houses, and who would otherwise have been going 
 on slowly and soberly, are having them run up like colonial 
 shanties — they are building for dear life. All the people 
 who feel themselves at all feeble on any point whatever are 
 having themselves strengthened on that point. But the 
 greatest effort of all is the triumphal arches, and of all the 
 three triumphal arches the great grandfather himself is getting 
 himself erected just close to Jack's door. Indeed, it darkens 
 his shop a good deal. From day to day there is some new 
 limb or feature added to this great triumphal arch, and the 
 
2g6 the invalid. 
 
 progress of it interests us all very much indeed. We all go 
 and, stare at it every fine day, and most of us whether the 
 day be fine or no. I take my own stare in the forenoon 
 about ten or eleven o'clock ; the shopkeepers stare chroni- 
 cally. Then there are three grand stares every day by the 
 workpeople — at breakfast time, at dinner time, and after 
 their tea. The grandfather of all stares will be to-night 
 (Saturday), after they have got their beards shaved, but the 
 damp forbids me to join in it. In short, we are all pleased 
 but Wattie Lowrie. He asks — " What the better wull she 
 be o' gaun through a' that wud ? " He advises Jack to " pit 
 a stop till't," because it darkens his shop ! Jack, in his reply, 
 takes up ground which I consider impregnable. " It's no 
 every day, Wattie," he says, " that ane gets ane's shop dark- 
 ened wi' a triumphal airch." To which Wattie has not yet 
 replied, but he still holds out about the futility of " a' that 
 wud," and, as he is very deaf, and the benefit to be derived 
 from passing underneath a triumphal arch metaphysical and 
 difficult to be expressed, I fear he will never be able to get 
 over his difficulty. Like most deaf people, too, he gets 
 deafest at the approach of conviction. 
 
 However, since writing the above, I have heard of another 
 case of discontent — a case of a somewhat different com- 
 plexion. It seems that we are all pleased except Wattie 
 Lowrie and Archie Knox, This malcontent is engaged in 
 the dissemination of pounds of tea ; he lives by hawking tea 
 about the country, principally among the hinds' wives. He 
 has followed this occupation for a long time ; he makes his 
 rounds periodically ; he rides on a small pony : like the 
 minstrel boy and the wild harp Archie rides, 
 
 " With his tea-bags sUmg behind him " ; 
 
 and he is a very decent man — what people call a " serious 
 man" indeed. Like Wattie Lowrie, he also is impressed 
 with an overwhelming sense of the utter futility of wud, but 
 
LITTLE THINGS. 
 
 207 
 
 he does not stop there ; his theory of futihties incKides every- 
 thing of a material kind, everything visible to what the 
 ministers call the " eye of sense." " Man," he says, "wad 
 they gang into their closets and pray for her ! " It is easy 
 to answer they may do the one — the triumphal arches to 
 wit — without neglecting the other. Archie believes but little 
 in the conjunction of prayer and " work " of this kind. Still, 
 1 think he is wrong. At any rate, I hope to see her 
 " iMajingsty " pass beneath "a' that wud," and the old provost 
 go on his marrowbones to present our address, and all the 
 town councillors, and the ministers of the Gospel, and the 
 " madges and judgistrates " standing behind him with their 
 bald heads bare and the whites of their eyes where the black 
 and the blue should be. Won't it be great fun? " It" is all 
 to be " done " just in front of Storey's shop ; and, if he 
 doesn't put up a balcony outside as he threatens to do, at 
 all events I expect to see " it " from one of his windows, 
 which will be almost as good as the balcony. . . . 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Bankexd, September 30tli, 1867. 
 
 [After telling about the orchard apples, he writes] : — You 
 see I am still interested in " little things," a kind of conduct 
 which you seem very much to approve. To tell the truth, I 
 am interested in them because I must ; so far as actual life 
 goes, I have no choice between large and little. It is 
 Hobson's choice with me. But I can "go in" sometimes 
 for large interests too, in a theoretical way ; it is but opening 
 a book and you find yourself in as wide a country as you 
 like. And so I alternate between these two — the little of 
 real life and the large of books — and I am mighty well con- 
 tent so far as interest goes. You know that it does not do 
 for a man with a "towering intellect" to be always and 
 exclusively conversant with that which is small : for did I 
 not re-read the other day in the Citizen of the World of a 
 
2o8 THE INVALID. 
 
 certain Prince Bon-bennen-bon-bobbin-bon-bobbinet (isn't it 
 the prettiest of princely little names ?) who was so much 
 taken up with a little white mouse with red eyes that he 
 neglected all his proper duties, and his wife, the incomparable 
 Nanhoe, had at length to turn into a great blue cat in order 
 to gobble up the little enslaver ! Moral — Go in occasionally 
 for politics and the infinite and other such vastitudes, lest 
 your wife (or your husband if you be a woman) be under the 
 necessity of turning into a blue cat? 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Bankend, 5th October, 1867. 
 .... We had scarcely seated ourselves " forenent the 
 sun," for the morning was warm and fine, when Thomas 
 White joined us — so we went all away and walked till dinner 
 time. Next morning Dr. Douglas returned to Moffat, and 
 White and myself saw him to the train. In the meantime 
 Gibson had arriven. . . . Next morning they also de- 
 parted. I accompanied them to the train, and, having 
 seen them fairly swept off again toward the region of 
 activities, I returned to my '^ shore of peace." 
 
 The old friends to whose visits he thus refers, united 
 in urging him to submit to another medical examina- 
 tion. They wished him to consult Dr. Begbie, in the 
 hope that he might be able to suggest some means of 
 mastering the disease, which was slowly sapping his 
 strength. It was agreed that Mr. White should see 
 the doctor and arrange for a convenient day on which 
 Davidson might go to Edinburgh ; but a letter written 
 on the day his friends left him craved delay : — " You 
 must not appoint any day with Dr. Begbie just now. 
 I have a cold and ' cannot march ' ; and, indeed, the 
 weather as well as myself must mend before I can 
 
MEDICAL EXAM IN A TION. 
 
 209 
 
 come." Three days later he wrote again, still pleading 
 for delay. " My cold is improving, but it has not 
 yet so far improved as to permit me to come to town 
 for some days, I hope, however, to appear early next 
 week. I want to put off till that time at least, not only 
 because I want to avoid catching more cold, but also 
 because I want to give the doctor an opportunity of 
 seeing me in my average condition, and not in my 
 present exceptionally seedy one. You must not 
 believe, as from your note I infer you do believe, that 
 I am such an ass as to wish to put off medical 
 examination altogether. The truth is that the last 
 time I was in town I arranged to come back dur- 
 ing the present month for that very purpose. That 
 was two months ago and more. I make this state- 
 ment for the purpose of assuring you that I really 
 mean to turn up. And I really mean to turn up next 
 week early, if health and weather permit. You are 
 such a suspicious old buffer ! nevertheless thou art a 
 good soul." He was able to go at the time indicated 
 in this letter, and the examination took place. Dr. 
 Begbie told him that his only hope of recovery, or 
 even of prolonged life, lay in going to a warmer 
 climate, and spoke of Mentone as the place which 
 would best suit his case. His friends urged him to 
 go, and one of them on parting handed to him, in a 
 sealed envelope, which he asked him not to open till 
 he reached home, the necessary money. Davidson 
 was greatly touched, but he could not bring himself to 
 accept of the generous gift. His singularly unselfish 
 
210 THE INVALID. 
 
 nature rebelled against availing himself of a kindness 
 which he knew involved some measure of sacrifice to 
 the giver, besides, his own knowledge of his state, as 
 well as the tone in which Dr. Begbie had spoken, made 
 him too well aware that ultimate recovery was not to 
 be looked for in Mentone or anywhere else, and the 
 hope of merely prolonging his life of weakness and 
 inaction was not so attractive as to overcome his 
 reluctance. To his friend he thus wrote : — 
 
 Bankend, November 9th, 1867. 
 
 You certainly had a right to expect a communication 
 from me before this time of day. The fact is I have lived 
 in a chronic state of meditation ever since I was in town. I 
 am not quite so subject to it as I was, but I still have 
 occasional attacks. 
 
 Of course the subject of all this is that "Franco-Italian 
 difficulty " (for I suppose Mentone is somewhere between the 
 two). The weather has been so good that I have not felt 
 very much pressed towards a conclusion either the one way 
 or the other ; but I suspect I begin to find myself settling 
 down for a winter at home again. In fact, I might have 
 written you to this effect a while ago, only I wished to 
 escape any further admonition on the point. Don't lecture 
 me. 
 
 It would take me a long time and cost me much trouble, 
 
 to explain to you what " our Brother " would call my 
 
 " position." I will only say that I don't see how I can do 
 this thing without being more selfish than I can well bring 
 myself to be, even for dear life's sake. 
 
 Now, with regard to certain moneys that you and I wot of, 
 thou art an excellent good soul, and wilt undoubtedly go to 
 heaven. Be thanked a thousand times over, and assured 
 
CHRISTMAS. 211 
 
 that I have the notes (for I did Hft the envelope) in safe 
 keeping against my next sight of thee. 
 
 And as for my mortal body, it is doing very well indeed. 
 
 Commend me to Miss , and also to Jim and all the 
 
 rest of the fellows, and be a good boy. 
 
 Thus he settled down for another winter of invalid 
 life at home. 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Bankend, December 25th, 1867. 
 
 This is Christmas morning. This letter will not be in 
 time to greet you with its writer's good wishes, so I make 
 them prayers, which, indeed, all really good wishes should 
 be. . . . 
 
 You observe I don't speak of a merry Christmas, which, I 
 believe, is the recognised formula ; for I scarcely believe in 
 that particular feeling as the proper adjunct of this day's 
 associations. But it all comes of those gorging, guzzling, 
 gormandising English people's immemorial (not to say 
 immorial) eating-customs. They must needs dine upon every 
 occasion — the opening of the Fat Cattle Show, the found- 
 ing of the New Hospital, the ordination of the " Youthful 
 Pastor " — the very birth of Christ ! And though I am not 
 sorry but pleased that the observance of Christmas is 
 gradually displacing that of New-Year's day in Scotland 
 (Christmas has great associations, but New-Year's day, 
 apart from its whiskied traditions, is a stark-naked date), 
 I cannot help feeling sorry that the most memorable of 
 anniversaries is already half-hidden amidst the smoke and 
 steam of roast-beef and plum-pudding and prize geese. At 
 the same time, I don't pretend at all to thank heaven " I am 
 not as other men are," the truth being that I wish the conven- 
 tional wish of a " Merry Christmas " to companions when I 
 meet them, and that I eat the roast-beef, the plum-pudding. 
 
212 THE INVALID. 
 
 and the prize goose whenever they come before me, just as 
 other people do — 
 
 " Why should a man desire in any way 
 To vary from the kindly race of men ? " 
 
 Besides, I suppose the devout persons really exercise devo- 
 tion in spite of the feeding, and the mere Christmas feeder 
 gets at least a good dinner, which in itself is always a good 
 thing. So we wall even drop the subject, which, like every- 
 thing else, has two sides. And, by the way, thai considera- 
 tion is the torment of my life ; if everything had only 07ie 
 side, the conduct of life would be so much easier. And 
 yet, on t/ie other side, where would be the use or the pleasure 
 of being clever and wise ? Marry ! perhaps it is as well that 
 everything has two sides. . . . 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Bankend, January ist, 1868. 
 
 " Old Marley was dead to begin with — dead as a door 
 nail." 
 
 You see I have some acquaintance after all with the 
 works of your favourite, Charles Dickens. The " Marley " 
 in question expired last night or this morning ; or rather at 
 the weird point of a time that lies between night and morn- 
 ing, and belongs neither to the one nor the other. At any 
 rate, he is dead and gone : henceforth he will never be pres- 
 ent to us any more, except to our memories, which he will 
 often visit and flit about and flutter over, with the troop of 
 elder brother ghosts to which he now belongs. 
 
 I find it very difficult to assign a definite character to this 
 " Old Marley," not so much because his nature was peculiar 
 in itself, as because I really don't know whether it was 
 peculiar or commonplace yet. He may have been a very 
 good creature after all, yet he was certainly of "vinegar 
 aspect," and I don't know that I ever loved him, which, 
 nevertheless, may have been from want of discernment. It 
 
NEW YEAR'S DA V. 
 
 213 
 
 is rash to write epitaphs before the breath be well out of the 
 subject's body. And it is impossible to write the history of 
 a given period before that period have well receded, and 
 retired to a distance at which one pair of eyes can command 
 its whole surface and bearings. And in the same way I 
 suppose a man does a rash and shallow thing who says in 
 three words on New- Year's day what the old year was 
 worth to him, in teaching, in unteaching, in reaped harvests 
 or sown seeds of happiness and goodness and wisdom. So 
 I forbear, in the meantime, to put any mark whatever op- 
 posite Old Marley's name ; perhaps Time himself, the father 
 of all the Marleys, will do that with his own hand at his 
 leisure. 
 
 Perhaps it would be still more rash and shallow to hazard 
 any prophecies concerning him who has come to reign in 
 Old Marley's stead. I am glad that your presentiments 
 with regard to him are not unfavourable — that you antici- 
 pate a " not unhappy year." That manner of putting it is 
 the very manner after mine own heart ; it is hopeful, yet 
 mild and moderate, and, for that reason, likeliest to be 
 fulfilled. 
 
 I have had a visit of several days from St. Jim. He came 
 last Thursday and departed on Tuesday night to Stow, 
 where he was to help Robertson to eat a goose. I also was 
 invited to the attack, but . . . . 
 
 To Thomas White, Esq. 
 
 Bankend, February 12th, 1868. 
 
 Your threat of a visit delights me. In backgammon 
 phrase, " I invite a strock." I shall expect you by the first 
 train, and, if the day don't be savage, I will endeavour to 
 meet you. I am quite as able for short excursions as when 
 Dr. Douglas and yourself were here last autumn, and it is 
 not impossible we may achieve the Capon Tree again. As 
 Jim would tell you, I have been going in a little for the 
 
214 ^^^^ INVALID. 
 
 " Great Sulphur Cure " ; in fact I have been going in for it 
 a good deal of late. As to its direct effects I cannot speak 
 even yet with much definiteness. I should say that locally 
 — that is, with respect to the delinquent lung — I am not 
 conscious of any effects at all ; but generally the brimstone, 
 or something else that I don't know of, has put me in the 
 way of improving very much. Since I wrote to Jim I have 
 changed my tactics, abjuring the chimney-corner, and going 
 out every day — the brimstone has put so much spunk into 
 me. (Don't use this pun for a while, as I have some 
 thought of selling the patent of it to Dewar or Pairman.) 
 
 The reader will remember the excitement which 
 was produced at this time among invalids and the 
 friends of invalids by the publication of the pam- 
 phlets of Drs. Dewar and Pairman, in which the 
 curative power of sulphur in cases of pulmonary- 
 disease was set forth. 
 
 At the beginning of the winter Davidson had be- 
 gun to study German, and the study gave him 
 pleasant occupation during the dreary months when 
 he was unable to go out of doors. The earliest 
 spring sunshine found him more cheerful and intel- 
 lectually active than he had been the year before. 
 The gift of song which had lain dormant for several 
 years was reawakened. 
 
 To Miss DuNLOP. 
 
 Bankend, February 14th, 1868. 
 
 .... I was preparing a valentine for you. . . . Now, 
 it is a poor valentine (though, of course, you think it a 
 stroke of heaven-born genius) ; but the fact is I never made 
 a sonnet before, and I couldn't help feeling like David in 
 
SONNETS. 215 
 
 the unproved coat of mail. A. little round stone (very little 
 but not very round) out of the brook is more in my way ; 
 that is to say a little lyrical company of hobbling stanzas 
 serving for the effigy of a song. So much for the sonnet, 
 which, however, has at least the merit of having been written 
 for you. 
 
 LOVE SONNET. 
 (begun for the new year^finished on ST. valentine's eve.) 
 
 There is no date in Love's eternal Year 
 
 Saving its first, — O Loved deeply and long ! 
 
 Nor shadow invades the sunshine clear and strong 
 
 Which dominates for ever its azure sphere. 
 
 Yellow the woods grow — yellow and winter drear ; 
 Storms trample down the infinite leafy throng, 
 Even as my fortunes. Yet the spirit of song 
 
 Lives in me, and the warmth of hopeful cheer. 
 
 There is no Winter in this Love of ours ! 
 
 Thinking whereon, when with least clemency, 
 
 This Winter of the World and Fortune lowers. 
 
 Straightway that Summer's Noon breaks in on me, 
 
 Which has no ending nor decline ; whose flowers 
 Are of the Soul, and share her immortality. 
 
 " When the first snowdrop appeared," he wrote at a 
 later date, with reference to this period, " I rose up 
 and made a sonnet to it, to the effect that I was very- 
 glad to be still above ground along with it." 
 
 A SICK MAN TO THE EARLIEST SNOWDROP. 
 
 From off the chill and misty lower verge 
 
 Of Autumn, when the flowers were all gone past, 
 Looks, that were prayers, o'er Winter 1 did cast 
 
 To see beyond thy fancied form emerge : 
 
 Thy advent was my dream, while storms did surge, 
 And if Hope walked with me 'tween blast and blast, 
 With phantom Snowdrops her pale brows were graced. 
 
 And now thy presence and my heart's fulness urge 
 
2l6 THE INVALID. 
 
 This word of hail to thee, Emblem of meekness, — 
 Yet in thy meekness brave and militant, 
 Leading flower-armies from the bloomy South, 
 
 Hard on the heels of Frost and Cold and Bleakness : 
 O when I spied thee in this yearly haunt 
 
 " Life ! Life ! I shall not die !" brake from my mouth. 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Bankend, March yth, 1868. 
 
 .... You have no idea how old I feel now when I go 
 
 out for a walk with . His tendency to gymnastics 
 
 makes him insist on leaping all the five barred gates and high 
 palings we pass on our way. I try always to arrange my 
 walks with him on the principle of securing a hedgy road, 
 and not one abounding in rails and gates. But it is almost 
 impossible always to exclude these latter elements entirely, 
 and, therefore, I have to stand still every now and then 
 to see him " go over," and ever as he goes over I feel a 
 hundred years old. 
 
 Jim is a capital companion in that respect : he never 
 jumps unless somebody else does, and sets him on. 
 
 But Dr. Douglas in this item of companionableness is 
 best of all. He and I used to hold in opposition to Geordie 
 and White that it is highly ungentlemanly to walk fast ; 
 and I remember once how gravely he rebuked me for 
 running a few paces to escape impending death from a 
 hansom in the Strand. He said it was vulgar, but I replied 
 that I didn't regard a violent death as being necessarily 
 genteel, and in fact that I considered it rather beneath my 
 dignity to be sat upon by a coroner's jury. And these repre- 
 sentations somewhat mollified him. . . . 
 
 To Mr. . 
 
 Bankend, March 13th, 1868. 
 .... Is it true that the minister is hen-pecked ? I had 
 a letter some time ago from , and he makes that state- 
 
"JS THE MINISTER HEN-PECKED?'' 21/ 
 
 ment — does not merely insinuate the thing, but speaks it 
 forth as plain as the ten commandments. Is it true, then ? 
 You are on the spot and can judge for yourself. I don't 
 ask in any spirit of vulgar curiosity, but from a quite war- 
 rantable feeling of kindly interest in one with whom I have 
 companied in eating and in drinking, in singing and in 
 dancing, in labour occasionally, and in idleness oft. Is the 
 poor dear man really hen-pecked ? O Greek and mathe- 
 matics ! O dialectics and humanity ! O sermons and 
 lectures ! O exegeses and exercises with additions ! O 
 Homer and Calvin ! Virgil and Newton and Doctor Dick I 
 "Bold Plutarch, Neptune, and Nicodemus!" Is this the 
 thing to which you have all along been alluring us ? This 
 the altar for which you have been crowning us, and wreath- 
 ing our sprouting horns ? Ah me ! Hen-pecked ! Oh, I 
 would give much that it were false, that it were a base 
 slander, in short, a big lie ! It is a lie, and I won't believe 
 it ! Nay, and if it were even tnie, I won't believe it ! 
 And yet, if it be true, tell the minister that the thing may be 
 mitigable in the case of a judicious man. A judicious man 
 will take his pecking only on certain places, you know. The 
 eye, for example, being a tender organ, should be zealously 
 guarded from the dire and swift-descending beak. And the 
 nose, too : the minister has a large nose, and no doubt it 
 will often be in the way. Guard it well ; a scratch there 
 would look uncommonly ill. But I dare say a scratch on the 
 ear would be worst of all, it would be so suggestive. In short, 
 I think the minister will find it comes handiest to take as 
 much of his pecking as possible on the cheeks and especially 
 about the jaws. The marks will pass as the results of little 
 accidents due to unsuccessful shaving. " Pshaw ! a mere 
 
 razor mark." Poor minister ! Dear old ! But yet I 
 
 hope it isn't true. was always of a romantical turn of 
 
 mind. 
 
2l8 THE INVALID. 
 
 You must not come to see me just now. We are on the 
 point of leaving our small " Sparta" here for a few weeks in 
 order to have it somewhat " adorned." In plain words, the 
 house and other premises here are going to be enlarged and 
 improved (of which they have stood in great need ever since 
 they were built), and we are to be off to temporary quarters 
 immediately. And as we scarcely expect to be comfortable 
 ourselves for some weeks, we cannot hope to make a guest 
 so. But the improvements are to be carried out with all 
 possible speed : and then thou shalt come, and I will show 
 thee all this beautiful countryside in " the time when lilies 
 blow and clouds are highest up in air." I will lead thee up 
 the Jed and down the Jed, to the Ale and the Oxnam and 
 the Teviot. Also thou shalt have a fishing-rod, and " lure 
 from his haunt the monarch of the stream," whose fried 
 body I will help thee to eat. For I am not near dead yet. 
 I have walked seven or eight miles to-day. Neither am I 
 at all dull ; indeed, the days go past me so swiftly that I 
 sometimes think that it must be true of earlier life as it is of 
 old age, that 
 
 " Heaven gives our years of fading strength 
 Indemnifying fleetness. " 
 
 Not that you are to X.'d^q. fading in a very literal sense either. 
 I believe I am stronger than I ever was last year. But I 
 think I am too much wrecked ever to preach again, if I do 
 live, which I am not without hopes of doing. However, I 
 hope I have a heart for eithc}- fate. . . . 
 
 The temporary change of residence to which he 
 refers in the foregoing letter, disquieted him not a 
 little. He says in another letter : " The whole pros- 
 pect is to me cheerless, unquiet, perturbatious, and 
 ghastly in the extreme. I used to be inured to con- 
 tinual change, and even fond of it : I was in the 
 
CRITICAL REMARKS. 219 
 
 habit of ' taking a train.' But nous avons change tout 
 cela, as the man in the play says. I am become Hke 
 the merest oyster. I have taken root like a tree." 
 
 To Mr. James Elliot. 
 
 Bankend, March 26th, 1868. 
 
 I have sent back the books (Lamb and the Small House) 
 by to-day's train. I hope they will reach you safe to-day or 
 to-morrow. 
 
 The Life and Letters is a delightful book, and I am your 
 obligated servant for sending it. Be blessed. I don't like 
 " Rosamond Gray," probably because I am too old and 
 tough for much relishing mere studies in tears. I suppose 
 it was meant to excite pity and abhorrence, as well as 
 sorrow ; but, then, one can neither pity Clare, nor hate the 
 villain to one's heart's content, they are so shadowy and 
 indistinct. The characters in " John Woodvil " are much 
 the same in this respect. They are all insubstantial and 
 intangible : " the mune shines thro' their thin bodye." As 
 a tragedy, it is not tragical enough ; it is not " sad high and 
 working, full of state and woe." There is also, I think, too 
 little action, and even the action is indistinct. I almost 
 missed noticing the old knight's death the first reading; 
 indeed, I had an expectation that he would come in all alive 
 and consolatory about the end. But there is fine reading in 
 "John Woodvil," and I read the whole twice over, and a 
 good deal of it more than twice, which is not a thing one 
 commonly does with a book one only gets the loan of to read. 
 
 I am prepared to apologise for bothering you with the 
 reading of " critical remarks " in a note ; but one must gush 
 a little. So be mollified. . . . 
 
 To Miss DuNLOP. 
 
 Bankexd, April i6th, 1868. 
 
 .... Besides being Thursday, this is the Lords' day 
 
220 THE INVALID. 
 
 here — (observe accurately where the apostrophe is, I pray 
 you) — and therefore a very high day. The Lords are the 
 Lords of the Court of Session, who, as you know, take to 
 itinerating twice a year, and look into the more outrageous 
 actions of their fellow-subjects, with a view to seeing who 
 ought to be imprisoned or banished, acquitted or "hanged 
 by the neck until dead," and then " buried within the pre- 
 cincts of the jail." The principal case is a Hawick one — a 
 case of yarn-stealing — which, indeed, has been an almost 
 regular trade in that industrious community time out of 
 mind. A lot of the fellow-townsmen and sympathisers of 
 the martyrs to acquisition (thieves, that is to say) are here : 
 they are kenspeckle with great comforters and pipes, and a 
 certain Havician aspect which cannot be described to any 
 purpose in words, but which one learns to recognise in- 
 fallibly after a course of observation. Mostly they are lean, 
 leathern-looking, eager, meagre, bony, big-gummed, long- 
 toothed, chartist-looking. .... 
 
 About this time he had a visit, which he greatly 
 enjoyed, from his old friend Mr. Robertson, now of 
 Stow, who was much struck with the remarkable 
 knowledge of German which had been acquired by 
 Davidson through the winter's solitary study. " I 
 lent him then," says Mr. Robertson, " some volumes 
 of Henrich Heine, and he sent me in a week or two a 
 very real and clear estimate of the German critic and 
 poet." Unfortunately, the estimate has not been 
 preserved. 
 
 To Thomas White, Esq. 
 
 Jedburgh, May 6th, 1868. 
 .... Next week is the meeting of the U. P. Synod, — 
 an old carcase around which I expect to meet a great many 
 
VISIT TO EDINBURGH. 221 
 
 young eagles known to me when I myself was an eagle and 
 yomig. If I come I should, according to your mvitation, 
 take leave to hang up my hat in your lobby — always, of 
 course, on the understanding that you have a spare peg 
 there, and that my own old tile shall not inconveniently 
 crowd the rest of the hats. If the latter circumstance should 
 be likely to occur, say so in two words, and I will arrange 
 my visit for some other early date. Only, you know it is 
 said to be a proof of skill in affairs when a man can manage 
 to kill two dogs with one stone ; consequently, there is no 
 saying how much credit I might attain if I should contrive 
 to kill a whole dozen. Of course the dogs m the metaphor 
 are understood to be the ministers of the Gospel ; there is 
 no denying that. But, if it be counted a little wicked to 
 call the worthy men dogs, I reply that I can't help the 
 metaphor. 
 
 I cannot tell you as yet the exact date or train by 
 which I may come. Therefore don't bother yourself 
 with coming to the train, nor yet in any other way 
 whatsoever. I am quite robust enough to look after 
 myself just now. 
 
 The visit to Edinburgh which he thus planned was 
 duly paid, and was a great joy to many of his old 
 friends. There was always much eagerness on their 
 part to know whether he had been writing recently. 
 He never paraded his verses, but would quietly give 
 a copy of anything new to some one with whom he 
 was specially intimate. It soon passed from hand to 
 hand among the whole circle. On the present oc- 
 casion many appreciative hearers became acquainted 
 with the spring sonnet already quoted, and also with 
 the following exquisite lyric : — 
 
222 THE INVALID. 
 
 THE COURSE OF FEIGNED LOVE NEVER DID 
 RUN SMOOTH. 
 
 Love is a rose, a rose, 
 A dewy-dawning rose ; 
 Earth, heaven, and the souls of men were made 
 But to minister where it grows. 
 Where it grows. 
 
 Love is a rose, a rose, 
 But a something thorny rose ; 
 And the thorn pricks all the year ; alas ! 
 'Tis the flower that comes and goes. 
 Comes and goes. 
 
 Love is a rose, a rose, 
 'Tis only a faded rose \ 
 The rose is dead, its leaves are shed, 
 And here be the winter snows. 
 Winter snows. 
 
 The appreciation of friends probably encouraged 
 him to further effort. On his return to Jedburgh he 
 set himself to the revision of some old verses, as well 
 as to the production of some new ones. 
 
 To Miss DuNLOP. 
 
 Jedburgh, June 12th, 1868. 
 .... Yesterday and to-day I have been trying to repair 
 an old set of verses which I know you have, called " Upon 
 the Hills." They were always lean ; I have much difficulty 
 in making them any fatter. Indeed, I have several times 
 resolved to mend them, but hitherto I have been deterred 
 by the first survey taken of them, to that end, and have put 
 them down as past mending. I used to think, about the 
 time they were finished first of all, that they were not so 
 very bad. It is curious what changes the lapse of a little 
 bit of time makes in one's ways of thinking, tastes, likings, 
 and standards of good, bad, better, and best. I have been 
 
GREAT HEAT. 223 
 
 cherishing a very low opinion about these stanzas for some 
 time, and I was ahnost afraid to look them in the face again. 
 But I have conquered this aversion a little — I mean I have 
 inflicted a slight defeat upon it. And now I have got the 
 most of them altered, turned upside down, faces backward, 
 backs faceward, et cetera ; and I almost half-believe they 
 are beginning to wear a dawning aspect of sense — not just 
 to be called lucid, but certainly in the twilight between 
 sanity and the other way. Indeed, if there were only a con- 
 necting group of lines discrediting the whole business, a 
 kind of rear-guard protecting the main body, they might 
 almost be let loose from any further control. I shall send 
 you a copy in the course of rolling years, or weeks (but I 
 don't know that weeks roll, do they ?) if I don't stick. If\ 
 stick again they shall be burnt. ^ 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 JKDBURGH, June 19th, 1868. 
 
 If this weather persist in protracting itself, I shall have 
 to stop writing letters altogether. Walking is rapidly getting 
 out of the question. One feels as if he were a bad candle, 
 or a pound of butter, or any other oleaginous article. It 
 is no longer tropical to say the heat is tropical. I am 
 growing fast to be a very selfish creature. And I cannot 
 help my decadence, for of course the central stump round 
 which congregate all such accessories, appendages, and 
 accretions as one calls sympathies, self-denial, philanthro- 
 pies, charities, and the like — that central stump is self; and 
 I feel that all those matters have melted away, evaporated, 
 exhaled, or by some other process quite disappeared. I am 
 burnt to that one central stump. The last thought, or pass 
 ing whim rather (for it was so unsubstantial and evanescent 
 that I would rather not call it a thought), the last thing of 
 that sort which crossed me was the question, prompted, I 
 
 ' The verses in their revised form have been given — page 72. 
 
224 
 
 THE INVALID. 
 
 believe, more by curiosity than fellow-feeling — If it go thus 
 with me who am lean, what must be the case of those who 
 are fat? This occurred to me as I passed beneath the 
 shadow of a wayside tree, which interrupted for a moment 
 the streaming heat that was wasting my poor skull \ but I 
 am pervious to such interests no more. Do not these feel- 
 ings, taken in connection with the weather that has brought 
 them on, go far to account for the fact that human nature 
 tends so strongly to salvagedom within the tropics, and that 
 the virtues for the most part have fixed their more per- 
 manent abiding places within the temperate zones? This 
 hint may turn out valuable if you like to follow it up : and, 
 therefore, I make you free of it and all the discoveries to 
 which it may lead you. I know you are fond of scientific 
 inquiries. For myself, the weather is too hot, I don't care 
 one straw for any kind of information whatsoever. Oh, 
 Knowledge and Instruction ! get yourselves behind me for 
 a season. Oh, how these too solid bones do melt ! 
 
 I have been tiding over a few of the hotter hours to-day 
 with a Jethart "bookie" containing accounts of four naturals, 
 now gathered to their fathers and mothers. It is the joint 
 production of several people in the town, and is published 
 by Small, one of our booksellers. I think there are four 
 authors, and that they just took a 7iatural a piece, at least 
 so I am told, though I think the two in the middle look 
 very much the same man's handy-work. As these two ap- 
 peared tolerably good, and I myself remember the naturals, 
 I thought of sending in the bookie for your amusement, and 
 perhaps for your father's, who, I think, has a kind of warm 
 side to a natural, and is one of the tempered breezes which 
 God has prepared for his shorn lambs. But the fourth and 
 last is so stupid and vulgar and so utterly soap-and-candley, 
 that I am now of a different mind. The first one I have 
 not read yet, but it is the biography of " Willie Wilson, the 
 
LOVE'S LAST SLIT. 225 
 
 Poet," of whom and of whose works nothing is known 'to 
 me. Be it added as the last thing I have to say regarding 
 this hamelt (how that word ought to be spelt I do not know) 
 book, that it costs sixpence, and though you should take a 
 fancy for it, it is still within my reach financially ! 
 
 1 have also another, but a rather short, pome ;^ but 
 it is the mullygrubbiest pome which you ever did see. 
 Its germ was made in a fit of impatience with fate in an 
 atrabilious mood, which, not being permanent, but indeed 
 so transient as not to give time for the manufacture of 
 more than four lines, the thing was thrust into an old, dusty, 
 seldom-opened drawer in the cabinet of memory, out of 
 sight and out of mind. There it lay until last week, when 
 I pulled it out one morning and finished him oft" for the 
 sake of making up bulk. Perhaps it may be usefiil in the 
 way of reminding a fellow of what a goose he may have 
 been at certain times ; and how white-liveredly he has 
 sometimes caved in and given up all for lost at the access 
 of a little attack of bile. It is addressed, mentally, to your- 
 self, and it counsels you, in case I should get shovelled 
 off the face of the earth, just to sweep your mind clean off 
 all reminiscence of the defunct and shovelled, as you would 
 your parlour of cobwebs. You will call it bad names and 
 abuse it ; but perhaps, after all, you may like to see it. 
 Only, it is a big lie : — 
 
 love's last suit. 
 
 Love, forget me when I'm gone. 
 When the tree is overthrown 
 Let its place be digged, and sown 
 O'er with grass ; when that is grown, 
 The very place shall be unknown. 
 So court I oblivion ; 
 
 ^ He adopted this word after his interview \\ ith the Rev. curiosity in 
 Ireland described pp. lOi, 102. 
 
 P 
 
226 THE INVALID. 
 
 So, I charge thee by our love, 
 Love, forget me when I'm gone ! 
 Love of him that hes in clay 
 
 Only maketh life forlorn, 
 Clouding o'er the new-born day 
 
 With regrets of yestermorn. 
 And what is love to him that's low, 
 
 Or sunshine on his grave that floats ? 
 Love nor sunshine reacheth now 
 
 Deeper than the daisy roots. 
 So, when he that nigh me hovers — 
 Death, that spares not happy lovers — 
 Comes to claim his little due, 
 Love, as thou are art good and true, 
 Proudly give the churl his own, 
 And forget me when I'm gone ! 
 
 His " fits of impatience," his " atrabilious moods," 
 in one of which he says this poem suggested itself, 
 were certainly few. None of his friends ever chanced 
 to find him in one of them. His lot in life was not 
 what the world would call a happy lot ; his career 
 was certainly not what the w^orld would call suc- 
 cessful ; he had to bear through years a heavy cross 
 of weakness, and often of pain — but he was easily 
 comforted. A bright day, the sight of an early 
 snowdrop, the song of a bird under the eaves at 
 daybreak after a sleepless night, would pour a whole 
 flood of comfort into his heart. The noble words 
 which Mr. Carlyle has written of John Sterling might 
 have been written of Davidson : " In clear and perfect 
 fidelity to Truth wherever found, in childlike and 
 soldierlike, pious and valiant loyalty to the Highest, 
 and what of good and evil that might send him — he 
 excelled among good men. The joys and the sorrows 
 
SUBMISSION. 
 
 227 
 
 of his lot he took with true simplicity and acquiescence. 
 Like a true son, not like a miserable, mutinous rebel, 
 he comported himself in this Universe. Extremity of 
 distress .... could not tempt him into impatience at 
 any time. By no chance did you ever hear from him 
 a whisper of those mean repinings, miserable arraign- 
 ings and questionings of the Eternal Power, such as 
 weak souls even well-disposed will sometimes give 
 way to in the presence of their despair ; to the like of 
 this he never yielded, or showed the least tendency to 
 yield ; — which, surely, was well on his part. . . . Not 
 a rebel, but a son, I said ; willing to suffer when 
 Heaven said, Thou shalt ; — and, withal, what is per- 
 haps rarer in such a combination, willing to rejoice 
 also, and right cheerily taking the good that was 
 sent, whensoever or in whatever form it came." The 
 reader who makes much of the mere words and 
 phrases of religion, and who thinks he has a right to 
 expect these in the letters and journals of one who 
 had chosen the calling of a religious teacher, will 
 probably be disappointed in these pages. Those who 
 had the privilege of admission to the inner sanctuary 
 of Davidson's friendship know well that there never 
 was a devouter spirit or a more reverent heart than 
 his, but he had a constitutional aversion to revealing 
 his deepest feelings. Even in his earthly relations, 
 that which brought him his purest and his most 
 abiding joy was kept secret from his dearest friends. 
 To those who knew him best his very reticence was 
 an evidence of the depth of his religious experience. 
 
228 THE INVALID. 
 
 It was abundantly revealed to all who had eyes to 
 see, in the high-toned purity of his life, in his unsel- 
 fishness, and in his devout submission to the will of 
 God. " Not my will, but Thine be done " — that is 
 the highest that we read of in the Highest Life. 
 
 It was some time in these months that he wrote 
 " The Restoration ; " but the poem had its origin in 
 the memory of a bright autumn day in the year 1865. 
 Davidson had gone to Dunbar, where Alison Dunlop 
 was visiting her brother James, who had just been 
 ordained over one of the churches in the little sea- 
 port. The two planned an excursion to the Pease 
 Glen, near Cockburnspath, which is understood to be 
 the locale of the scenery in TJie Bride of Lamviervioor. 
 They had a great deal of fun at the start on account 
 of the difficulty of getting rid of the kindness of a 
 worthy elder of the kirk, who, anxious to promote the 
 enjoyment of the new pastor's friends, lamented that 
 they had to go alone, and wished to arrange for a pic- 
 nic ! The harvest day was beautiful exceedingly, and 
 Davidson was in exuberant spirits. As they explored 
 the ruins of Cockburnspath Tower, he repeated from 
 the Lay of tJie Last Minstrel sXl about Branksome Hall : 
 
 " They carved at the meal 
 With gloves of steel, 
 And they drank the red wine through the helmet barred." 
 
 The Tower rang with his laughter when his com- 
 panion said to him in the vernacular which she had at 
 her command — " Sir Walter was just another Caleb 
 Balderstone ; he put aye the haill side o' the dish 
 
THE RESTORATION. 
 
 229 
 
 foremost. Depend upon it, the decent knights found 
 the soft leather fronts of their steel gloves very con- 
 venient to haud a hot sheep's trotter, for there were 
 no forks in these days." 
 
 Towards afternoon she left him smoking, and went 
 in search of ferns, returning with some auturnn leaves 
 she had gathered. He selected one of the most 
 beautiful and put it in a letter of hers which he had 
 in his pocket. She said to him that she liked autumn 
 leaves — they had done their duty, and were like a 
 good woman who was beautiful in her old age. He 
 replied laughingly that he would give her back the 
 leaf — some day. 
 
 In later years, when the horizon had darkened, 
 the memory of " that day — a perfect idyll," as he 
 always called it, inspired the lyric. He did not send 
 it to his correspondent. The third last line was out of 
 harmony with the wish expressed in " Love's Last Suit," 
 and the utter unselfishness of that wish was charac- 
 teristic. It was not till many years after his death 
 that these lines were found in a little note-book in 
 which the first scroll of many of his poems was written. 
 
 THE RESTORATION. 
 
 My Love, she walked yon Forest glade 
 
 At the waning of the year, 
 She lifted a leaf from off the ground, 
 
 A leaf full dry and sere. 
 
 My Love, she bore it in her hand, 
 
 It lived through every vein ; 
 My Love, she placed it on her heart. 
 
 And it straight grew green again. 
 
230 THE INVALID. 
 
 My Love, she wears it at her heart, 
 
 Will wear it till she die : 
 My Love, thou hast been life to me, 
 
 For I trow that leaf am I. 
 
 To Mr. James Elliot. 
 
 Bankend, July 26th, 1868. 
 .... Have you heard of the drought ? There has been 
 none like it for two-and-forty years. All the pastures are 
 burnt up ; they are no longer green, but of a whitey-brown 
 colour. We have had to buy twelve dozen pairs of green 
 spectacles for the kye and the sheep, to make them believe 
 the withered grass is as green and good as ever. They 
 look, eat, and wonder. Carts and carriages, gigs and lorries, 
 no longer are to be seen upon the highways ; their wheels 
 are so shrunken and geysened (spelling conjectural) that the 
 rings come off directly they begin to move. The traffic of 
 the countryside is carried on by means of litters and hand- 
 barrows. We go about in palanquins. I have got the loan 
 of a Sedan chair from the museum ; but it comes confound- 
 edly dear for bearers. In short, it is Chaos come again — it 
 is the end of the world — and " the deil is gane ower Jock 
 Wabster ! " Come and look at us as soon as they have 
 licensed you. . . . 
 
 To Mr. Robert P. Douglas. 
 
 Bankend, Jedburgh, July 31st, 1868. 
 
 If I had time I would apologise for not writing sooner ; I 
 have no time ; therefore let it be accounted for on the 
 ground of sheer wickedness, guilt, and depravity of heart. 
 
 I am writing to you in the greatest hurry I am capable of. 
 An opportunity has opened up within the last twenty minutes 
 of getting you here for a day or two, on terms that are abso- 
 lutely remunerative, even in a mere worldly point of view. 
 The Rev. Mr. Poison requires supply for the second 
 Sabbath of August, that is to say, Sabbath-week. I have 
 
AN IN VITA TION. 2 3 I 
 
 just mentioned to him your name as that of a not impossible 
 substitute, provided you be not already "previously pre- 
 engaged before," as was the Irishman's mistress. I said 
 you were a young man of high respectability, of great 
 natural talent, of very extensive attainments, and, in point 
 of orthodoxy, scarcely even second to myself, Avhich report 
 gratified my reverend friend and pastor not a little. " The 
 Church of the Future," he said, "will not lack pillars." If 
 you come you will be made over to me as my own private 
 and personal property, ward, and protegee — my very own 
 preacher, in short ; and I will do my very utmost to procure 
 for you beef-steak, chop, kail, porridge, tea, coffee, salt and 
 pepper, gooseberries, puddings, eggs, beer, spirits, loaves, 
 scones, and where to lay your head. As further induce- 
 ments to compliance with my invitation, look carefully over 
 this table : — 
 
 Talent.i 
 
 Pleasure of seeing me, ... 
 
 From which subtract for train. 
 
 Net profit, 
 
 Further, let us regard ourselves as a firm, Douglas & 
 Davidson, Drysalters ; and again let me present you with a 
 table :— 
 
 Net Profit as above, ... ... ... ... £6 6 o 
 
 My pleasure at seeing you, ... ... ... 552 
 
 £y 
 
 II 
 
 6 
 
 5 
 
 5 
 
 o 
 
 £(> 
 
 i6 
 
 6 
 
 o 
 
 lO 
 
 6 
 
 £(> 
 
 6 
 
 o 
 
 GrossProfitsof Douglas & Davidson, drysalters, ^11 ii 2 
 
 Now, by all that is mercenary, I conjure you to come, if 
 it be possible. As for your reply, it must be not only 
 immediate, but instantaneous. Mr. Poison departs on Tues- 
 
 1 The name by which the fee paid to a probationer for his Sunday's 
 work is commonly designated. — Ed. 
 
232 THE INVALID. 
 
 day morning, first train, and, as he wishes to go with an easy 
 mind, or, at least, with a mind to which the fact is known, 
 you will require to let me hear by Monday at latest. 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Bankend, October gth, 1868. 
 
 .... Do you know what has happened to poor ? 
 
 He isn't dead, nor yet has he had a leg broken, so far as 
 I am aware. But he is married ! He was overtaken by 
 fate on Monday last. On his marriage day he wrote me 
 a letter dated '' 10 a.m." — whether he meant it for Ante 
 Meridiem or Ante Matrivionium, " before noon " or " before 
 marriage " I cannot tell until I ask him. The letter is 
 extremely fluttered and ejaculatory. But perhaps that may 
 be the way with marriage-day letters. At any rate they 
 are extremely rare productions ; it is the first of its kind 
 that I ever saw, and as it may not improbably be the last 
 too, I mean to start a private museum with it. . . . 
 
 I took a smoke between daylight and darkness and 
 wrote the following " magnificent /(?w^." You will perhaps 
 transcribe it in your best hand, and you will call it 
 
 TO CUPID, SLAYER OF FRIENDS. 
 " I have had playmates, I Iiave had companions : 
 
 All, all are gone." 
 
 Charles Lamb. 
 
 Cupid, I hate thee ! I have had friends — 
 As kind they were as friends could be. 
 
 But thou hast pierced them thorough the heart ; 
 Now cold or kind they are nothing to me ; 
 
 So I hate thee, Cupid ! 
 
 Oh we have sat and talked together 
 
 Through many a night, and into the day — 
 
 " Not without song " and happy folly ; 
 Good company now no more are they, 
 
 Friend-killing Cupid ! 
 
A FRIEiYD'S WEDDING MORNING. 233 
 
 Talked — and smoked tobacco together, 
 While our souls did mingle like its fumes ; 
 
 Now thou hast put out their pipes for ever, 
 Solus I sit in the fragrant glooms, 
 
 And curse thee, Cupid ! 
 
 Pitiless Cupid ! I am lonely : 
 
 Why hast thou left me, Archer divine ? 
 
 Come, fit a sharp shaft to thy bow, 
 
 And shoot it thorough this heart of mine — 
 
 Pray, good Cupid ! 
 
 To Tho.mas White, Esq. 
 
 Bankend, 24th October, 1868. 
 
 I scarcely dare assert that I have been expecting to hear 
 from you ; my conscience is really too active to let me go 
 that length. I have heard about you from two sources since 
 I heard from yourself. The first of the two fountains was 
 Robert, who told me you had escaped the "awful avalanche," 
 and returned to business in safety, but without having met 
 Plxcelsior and his flag. The second fountain was our brother 
 
 ! On his wedding morn he wrote me a little note — a 
 
 very wedding-mornish little note, exceedingly fluttered and 
 ejaculatory. Among the things which the poor little note 
 did articulately gasp out was the fact that you were present 
 to support and encourage its faltering writer. Did he die 
 game, poor fellow ? I have not yet written to condole with 
 him ; one is conscious of a kind of vague profanity in writ- 
 ing letters to a human being who lives beneath the glimpses 
 of a honeymoon. I suppose, however, that our late brother's 
 moon is now reaching its last quarter, and that he will soon 
 be accessible to the " light of common day." 
 
 What makes me write to-day is the fact that I have half 
 an intention — indeed a whole intention — to come to town a 
 day or two next week, before the winter finally shuts me 
 up. I am still as well as when I saw you, although I have 
 
234 THE INVALID. 
 
 passed through a series of very heavy colds. I have been 
 free of these, however, since the hot weather came to an 
 end. If I come, I mean to come by the mid-day train on 
 Wednesday first. Will you be in town ? and are you still 
 lawyer enough to be able " to take in a friend" ? 
 
 I understand the Edinburgh people are fasting at present, 
 but that, perhaps, will not matter for you, as you are of an 
 ecclesiastical breed that rather eschews fasting. At any rate, 
 if you be in town you will kindly drop me a note and let 
 me know ? . . . 
 
 When he went to Edinburgh he took with him the 
 following poem — all but one verse, which was not 
 written till January, 1870. The reader will remember 
 the account of a walk up Rede Water from Otterburn 
 to Carter Fell, in a letter dated 14th June, 1865. In 
 the course of that walk Davidson, having drunk at a 
 wayside fountain, sate down to rest, when a little 
 maiden about twelve years old, coming to fill her 
 pitcher at the stream, tripped past him. The 
 " phantom of delight " dwelt in his mind till, three 
 years after he had seen her, she reappeared in these 
 stanzas : — 
 
 IN REDESDALE. 
 
 That lovely little Maiden's face — 
 
 And will it never let me be ? 
 No point of time, nor nook of space 
 
 Whence it may not look out on me, 
 
 Still pleading, — " Twine me daintily 
 A little wreath of words in tune. 
 
 To shade the eyes which looked on thee 
 That early morn of early June, 
 In Redesdale." 
 
IN REDES DA LE. 235 
 
 Sweet Maid, I'll sing of thee 1— At morn — 
 
 At early morn of early June — 
 I took my way by Otterburne, 
 
 To reach the Carter Fell ere noon ; 
 
 Over the Border I was boune ; 
 And as I went the dews outspread 
 
 All night beneath the summer moon, 
 Rose light and vanish'd overhead 
 In Redesdale. 
 
 Then brake the light of morning clear 
 
 O'er that old field of Border fray ; 
 And rose to inward eye and ear 
 
 The armour-gleam, the battle-bray, 
 
 And all the Ballad-singers say 
 Of the stout deed that here was done 
 
 About the dawning of the day. 
 
 When Earl Percy was led away, 
 And a dead Douglas victory won 
 In Redesdale. 
 
 The Percy ta'en, the Douglas slain, 
 
 I watch'd them borne for Teviotdale, 
 Till I, too, in the proud, sad train 
 
 Bore bloodied sword and batter'd mail. 
 
 But suddenly the dream did fail : 
 Vanish'd the form of either Earl 
 
 With spear and pennon from the vale, 
 For there sate she, this winsome Girl 
 Of Redesdale. 
 
 She sate beside a tiny stream. 
 
 Which by the highway-side outwelled 
 
 From moorland into morning-gleam ; 
 One hand a half-filled pitcher held. 
 The other caught, and would have quell'd 
 
 The little waves which chafed their strand ; — 
 O foolish waves, that still repelled 
 
 The daintiest little lily hand 
 In Redesdale ! 
 
2T^6 THE INVALID. 
 
 The light — alas, so transitory ! — 
 Of eyes to which all things are seen 
 
 To float in wonder and in glory 
 (The heritage alone, I ween, 
 Of spirits youthful and serene), 
 
 Shed a soft splendour through her face ; 
 
 Her gold locks crowned her like a Queen — 
 
 The very flower and uttermost grace 
 Of Redesdale ! 
 
 Oh vision fresh and beautiful — 
 
 Beautiful beyond dream of man, 
 And fresh as lilies dewy-cool 
 
 That shine upon a morning lawn ! 
 
 Art thou the spirit of this dawn 
 Vestured in form of earthly maid ? — 
 
 Aurora from her heavens withdrawn, 
 To hide in mortal masquerade 
 In Redesdale ? 
 
 Such was my thought ; and as I gazed, 
 
 Her beauty passed into my brain 
 In lines that cannot be erased. 
 
 I would not see her face again ; 
 
 Though fairer grown, that growth were vain, 
 There were defect if there were change ; 
 
 The visionary lines remain. 
 Let me not find the living strange 
 In Redesdale. 
 
 But, lovely little country maid, 
 
 Thy beauty haunts me day by day 
 
 Oft but to pain or to upbraid, 
 
 When I could wish thee far away ; — 
 To hearts in grief or gone astray 
 
 Beauty's pure self discordant grows ; — 
 Oh could I charm thee with this lay 
 
 To come or go, my wilding rose 
 Of Redesdale. 
 
 For never Dawn on me doth rise, 
 But thou 'neath her pavilion rare 
 
THE PURCHASE OF A WIG. 237 
 
 Of fiery-shining draperies 
 
 Sit'st crowned with th}' golden hair ; 
 Th}^ moorland streamlet, too, is there ; 
 
 Beside thee droop the foxglove bells, 
 Ferns spring, and rushes stir in air ; 
 
 And far around thee sweep the fells 
 Of Redesdale. 
 
 To the Rev. Thomas Dobbie. 
 
 Bankend, gth November, 1868. 
 
 It is only that appearances are against me : I am not 
 really negligent. The fact is, that before there was time 
 to get your letter, I had to go to Edinburgh to buy my 
 mother a wig, and also for some other small ends which 
 needn't be mentioned. (If ever you need a wig employ 
 me as purchaser: there never was a more successful wig 
 than the one I brought home. I suppose you have read the 
 B?-ide of Lafiinierutoo); and remember that Caleb Balderstone 
 was of opinion that to have a good apology for the want of 
 a thing, is better than to have the thing itself. Well, some- 
 thing analogous is my mother's opinion of that wig : she 
 declares it suits her better than her own hair ever did !) 
 
 I did not get back from Edinburgh for some days, but 
 when I returned I found your letter. It is a kind letter ; 
 and when I read it, I silently blessed the writer. So 
 that if any stray good has alighted unaccountably upon your 
 head these last few days, you will be able to draw a conclu- 
 sion. However, as it was only the fervent blessing of a not 
 very righteous man, it may not have come to anything after 
 all. ... As for my health concerning which there are 
 kind inquiries in your letter — " Story, God bless you ! I 
 have none to tell, sir." I am not very well, nor yet very ill. 
 I believe I am stronger than I was last year at this time : 
 certainly I am to a much greater extent free from that 
 demoralisation and invalid feeling which is apt to arise from 
 prolonged illness. I have come to recognise the presence 
 
238 THE INVALID. 
 
 of my ailments, and to take their presence in a philosophic 
 spirit. There is a wonderful power of self-adjustment in 
 human nature ; and the fact is, that the known probability 
 of my remainder of life being short no more makes me com- 
 plain than the reflection that I am a post-Noachian, and 
 cannot hope to live the nine hundred years which crowned 
 " the white top of Methusalem." 
 
 I often wish that you had been a Jethart minister, or that 
 I had been a Stranraer invalid; but the heavens have 
 ordained you to be a Stranraer minister and me to be a 
 Jethart invalid, and this also is a thing which must be 
 acquiesced in. Nevertheless, I should like to hear from 
 you now and then. Talk me no nonsense about " swindling " 
 in the matter of letters. Any letter that speaks of you is 
 valuable to me ; and as for my own they are only common- 
 places oddly expressed, — two-headed hens and three-legged 
 geese, but not in the least related to the phcenix nor to 
 Jupiter's thunder-gripping eagle. I don't know how it is, 
 but this evil spirit of oddity straiglitway enters into me 
 when I sit down to write to a friend, and I suppose there is 
 no help for it. Friend of mine, forgive the oddities, and 
 believe me ever yours. 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Bankknd, December 4th, 1868. 
 
 .... Goldy and his fellow-traveller ^ arrived this fore- 
 noon just in time to be too late for breakfast, but that was 
 no great matter, as Goldy has given up eating now, and his 
 companion, being a magazine in himself didn't need to draw 
 upon mine. They were conducted from the station by a 
 boy of the name of Tarn Veitch, in the midst of a perfect 
 hurricane of wind and rain, which had almost wetted them to 
 the skin. However, I got them stripped of their grey-paper 
 ])lanket or great-coat, and found that they were quite safe 
 
 ^ Goldsmitli and Macniillan^s Mamzine. 
 
A NOTABLE VISITOR. 
 
 239 
 
 after all. The Spartan Tarn had shielded them as well as 
 he could beneath the lap of his somewhat scanty jacket, 
 saying, doubtless, as he cast his poor skirt over them, " Your 
 necessity is greater than mine. . . ." 
 
 To the Rev. Thomas Dobbie. 
 
 Bankknd, 9th December, 1868. 
 
 .... Last night I had a notable visitor. He came in 
 in the evening just when we were going to light the lamp. 
 At first I could make out nothing but his eyes and a kind of 
 amorphous outline. I thought it was Aiken Drum. It was 
 
 . He stayed all night, and I accompanied him to the 
 
 train this afternoon, grieving that he couldn't stay any longer. 
 He is very fat and happy. I suppose you are aware that the 
 dog has wived. On his wedding day he wrote me a letter ; 
 it was fluttered and ejaculatory to be sure, but quite articulate, 
 and not without coherency of a kind. Thomas, could you 
 liave achieved a letter on your wedding-day ? I consider it 
 a feat — an exploit ; and the doer of it not very far behind 
 that Macpherson who was hanged for cow-lifting, and of 
 whom it is sung that — 
 
 " Sac rantinly, sae wantonly, 
 Sae dauntingly gaed he, 
 He play'd a spring and danced it round 
 Below the gallows-tree ! " 
 
 He gives me to understand that he has got a very good wife, 
 in fact one whose place in creation adjoins that of the 
 heavenly host. If I were half as good I should imagine I 
 was going to die : but heaven be praised, our friend was 
 always imaginative, and it is quite possible his wife may 
 possess a reassuring quantity of little vices after all. I 
 remember, too, with much satisfaction that his honeymoon 
 is not very long gone down yet, and it may be that these 
 romantical sentiments are only the after-glow that lingers 
 a little behind it. However, I suppose it is time to cease 
 
240 
 
 THE INVALID. 
 
 " talking lightly of the spirit that's gone " ; you husbands 
 have clannish instincts, and in this sort of talk I have, no 
 doubt, very little of your sympathy. Only, the buffer 
 assumed an air so lofty and condescending, he was so high 
 and far aloof, and all because he was married, forsooth, 
 that I couldn't help thinking of the remonstrance that one 
 small boy addressed to another on the subject of his un- 
 reasonable and overweening pride : — " Man, ye're just that 
 prood because yer grannie's deid ; as if naebody's grannie 
 
 could dee but yer ain ! " Now talked as if nobody 
 
 could commit matrimony but himself : — high ground surely. 
 I have no more to talk to you about to-night, so that you 
 will have no more to read at present. Be good. I hope 
 your wife, and your Jamie and your Willie, and also yourself 
 are all well. 
 
 To Thomas White, Esq. 
 
 Bankend, 17th December, 1868. 
 
 I have just been struck with the idea that it is about time 
 I should write you a note. To tell you the truth, I have 
 been struck with this idea already more than once or twice, 
 only I have never quite succumbed to it till to-night. 
 
 I have nothing particular to tell you, except that the 
 weather continues very satisfactory — rude and boisterous to 
 be sure, but still of a mild tone. I have been out every day, 
 I think, since I was in town, and I have had no more visita- 
 tions in the form of cold. That one which I caught and 
 brought home from your nasty, old, windy, stormy, blowy, 
 flowy, snowy hill-of-storms of a city — that one, my dear 
 Thomas, was a bad one — a rogue of a cold — a cold of the 
 first and foremost magnitude. He caught me first by the 
 nose, which he pulled without mercy — ^just as Saint Dunstan 
 did the Devil's. He caught me secondly by the throat, 
 which he almost barricadoed. He caught me thirdly by the 
 lungs, from which he almost reft all power of inflation. 
 
A VERY BAD COLD. 
 
 241 
 
 Finally, he caught me by the stomach, which he rendered 
 almost utterly indifferent to provender. I could look upon 
 hens and never think of eggs ; upon fat oxen and forget 
 that there ever was in this world such a thing as a beef-steak. 
 Knives, forks, spoons, plates, pots, pans, became strange to 
 me — they lost all significance — ideas positively refused to 
 associate themselves with them. In short, I gradually per- 
 ceived that I had got a very bad cold. 
 
 Bad as it was, (observe how artistically I begin a new 
 paragraph with my recovery !) bad as it was, I say, it could 
 not abear the face of the " great sulphur cure " ; but in the 
 words of the immortal Longfellow, under repeated applica- 
 tions of sulphurous acid — 
 
 " It lifted its tents like the Arabs, 
 And as silently stole away." 
 
 Perhaps it is putting it too strongly to say silently, for if 
 the truth must be spoken, it " stole away," not without a 
 good deal of coughter. However, stolen away it has, and I 
 am again as well as I have ever been since the beginning of 
 the general dispensation. How are you? 
 
 I have had an angelically short visit of our recently- 
 departed brother. But you will know this already from his 
 own mouth. Commend me to Jack Cowan. 
 
 Thus 1868 wore to a close, and he entered the new 
 year with no such improvement as to warrant the hope 
 of ultimate recovery, but yet with more cheerful pros- 
 pects than he had had since his illness began. It was 
 characteristic of him that he was occupying himself 
 with plans for the professional advancement of a 
 friend. The service which he acknowledges at the 
 beginning of the following letter, was done at his 
 request in the interest of that friend : — 
 
 Q 
 
242 THE INVALID. 
 
 To the Rev. James Brown. 
 
 Bankend, 14th January, 1869. 
 
 You arC' a good man, and I ought to have thanked you 
 sooner for the trouble you have taken. ... I cannot say 
 either that I have any special excuse to plead. . . . But 
 the fact is, that I am now lazier at this time of the year than 
 at any other. You see I am become a hibernating animal 
 now ; like certain other species of bears, I drowse all the 
 winter. I live such a " level life " that even the writing of 
 a letter is a thing not so much to be dated as to date from. 
 It is as if a cabbage should say, " Go to; my blades shall 
 be wings, and I will fly." Indeed, I can scarcely make it 
 plain to you how lazy I am ! If a man goes in for laziness 
 with zeal and of set purpose, no active mind can form for 
 itself any idea how infinitely lazy that man can become ; 
 there is absolutely no bound nor bourne to the " Sleepy 
 Hollows," the fields of lotus, the prairies of poppy and 
 asphodel, whose conquest he may achieve. And, behold, I 
 am that man ! I have adopted this policy out of a strong 
 and vehement desire to grow fet. All my friends pray over 
 me, " Would he were fatter !" and my own responsive Amen 
 is exceedingly fervent. And yet the progress I make is 
 comparatively mean. I consume a mountain of victuals, and 
 yet I am myself consumed with a hunger and thirst after 
 corpulency. O that I were fifteen stone ! The very sight 
 of a fat man — one whose outlines are all curves, and whose 
 frame is unmarred by the straight lines and acute angles 
 which are so pathetically abundant in mine — makes me to 
 admire and sigh. Ah me ! shall I never be plump and 
 round — never, never be to the o'erwearied winds a pillow as 
 soft and yielding as themselves ? Behold that mountainous 
 farmer : his friends never prayed over //////, " Would he were 
 fatter ! " He drinks no cream, nor cod-liver oil. He only 
 prays, " May my oxen grow fatter ! " — and, lo ! his oxen and 
 
UNABLE TO GO TO CHURCH. 243 
 
 himself grow fat together. Don't you think that there is 
 something unfair here? that this also is a mystery under 
 the sun ? 
 
 1 have given up all visiting some months ago ; I have even 
 recorded a solemn vow against the quaffing of strange tea, 
 until the month of March. My last raid was directed upon 
 Edinburgh in the month of October ; and therein I reckoned 
 without my hoast, for I returned with a cold of the first 
 magnitude. It took me six weeks to live it down. Since 
 then I have gone into winter-quarters. I have even for- 
 saken the assembling of myself together in the kirk on 
 Sundays. Indeed, going to the kirk here is always a crucial 
 test of courage and robustness, for the strong and the brave 
 have entered into a conspiracy against us of the weaker and 
 more faint-hearted faction, and take three hours of it at 
 once. . . . 
 
 From all this you will have little difficulty in concluding 
 that I must have become a very disagreeable old cur- 
 mudgeon, and that if there be one solitary lingering shadow 
 of virtue about me, it must be that habit of only visiting my 
 enemies, of which I told you some weeks ago. I am very 
 grateful to know that, even in the face of the hint I then 
 gave you as to my character now, you are bold and kind 
 enough to renew your invitation. The heavens be praised 
 that Friendship can still be heroic ! I cannot tell you how 
 much it would delight me to visit you again, and take 
 "sweet counsel" with you. I will see what the winds of 
 spring and summer may bring with them. . . . 
 
 The forsaking of " the assembling of himself to- 
 gether in the kirk " was a matter of necessity, not of 
 choice. When he was able to go to church he notes 
 the event with evident pleasure. But the state of 
 his health was such that it was at all times difficult 
 
244 
 
 THE INVALID. 
 
 for him to sit through the long service, and in winter 
 it was quite impossible. His sensitive nature shrank 
 from the disturbance which his incessant cough 
 caused to fellow-worshippers. He was accustomed 
 to spend the hours of public worship in solitary 
 musings. It was his habit, as often as the weather 
 and his strength permitted, to steal out after the 
 church-goers had left, and, climbing a steep path 
 behind the house, to ascend by the pleasant lanes 
 down which he used to come on fine days from 
 Ancrum to the Nest Academy, to the " Yett " at 
 Williescrook, where he had a commanding view 
 of the most notable features of his much loved 
 Border-landscape. He would carry with him his 
 Bible, Keble's Christian Year, and the Prayer Book 
 of the Church of England, and by the help of these, 
 and of the sweet influences of "the green-leaved 
 earth" around him, would, in the temple not made 
 with hands, hold communion of spirit with the Holy 
 Catholic Church. 
 
 To the Rev. Thomas Dobbie. 
 
 Bankend, 23rd January, 1869. 
 
 Since I last wrote to you, what the almanac-sellers call the 
 " ensuing year" has made its appearance : it has "ensued"; 
 and, as it is still comparatively new, I hope it isn't too late 
 to wish you a happy one. Have you eaten any big dinners 
 over the change ? If you have, I hope you digested them 
 well, and were thankful they did you no harm. Two years 
 ago I ate, in an evil hour, a bit of a goose in honour of 
 young sixty-seven. They called it a goose, but it Avas one 
 ot Virgil's harpies I know ; for I have not subdued it to 
 
NEIV VICAR'S DINJVERS AND SERMONS. 245 
 
 this day. And therefore it is that my New-Year's dinner 
 ever since has been only three spHt peas, and no man 
 knows — save him who has dined upon them, as you will, no 
 doubt, do next year — how easy of digestion three split peas 
 are. Have you preached Old and New-Year's sermons ? 
 .... Some old scribe talks of the English " taking their 
 pleasure sadly," and I suppose it is quite possible to make 
 a sad sermon, such as shall be not all unpleasant to hear. 
 Indeed I kept a skeleton myself in my hot youth when it 
 was my calling to preach ; but then I used to flatter myself 
 that he was a somewhat elegant skeleton. He did not 
 merely " grin horrible " ; he was almost genial ; his melan- 
 choly was of the " dainty-sweet " order ; the very droop of 
 his scythe was a hinted sentiment ; you would almost have 
 said he had bowels. 
 
 One thing I charge you, by all the sanctities of friendship, 
 by every consideration of duty, by all that is gentle, amiable, 
 and ingenuous, '' lovely, and of good report," that you suffer 
 not to pass from your mind's eye : and that one thing is your 
 idea of having Robert settled at Kirkcudbright. Anywhere 
 else will do, so it be pleasant and free from colliers. I 
 should almost think of aspiring to the eldership of Robert's 
 kirk. The beadleship I covet of all things in the world. 
 What care I should lavish upon his gown and bands and 
 cassock ! With what an air I should shut him into the 
 pulpit on Sundays ! We do correspond a little, but only at 
 pretty long intervals. Robert puts off until he begins to be 
 haunted by a fear that I must really be dead, and then he 
 writes. I put off in my turn till I begin to be haunted in 
 the same way, by a fear that he will be actually putting on 
 mourning for me ; and then I write, saying, " Robert, my 
 dear, don't do it yet " ; and that is almost the whole that we 
 say. But it is an infinite comfort to my soul that I know 
 Robert, and that Robert knows me. Whenever I happen, 
 
246 THE INVALID. 
 
 as I do occasionally, to infer from much cogitating upon my 
 sins, what a poor miserable simulacrum of a man I must be, 
 and to be m^uch ashamed and cast down in the presence of 
 that disagreeable fact, I straightway begin to recover heart 
 of grace when I reflect that I have lived with Robert, and 
 am pretty well known to him, and that in some respects of 
 character and spirit he doesn't very much disapprove of me ! 
 I have not found a whiter soul than Robert's. He is surely 
 but a very " little lower than the angels." I am sometimes 
 conscious of a reverent wonder that Providence doesn't 
 make more Roberts. Perhaps they all die in infancy. 
 But you're a divine, and know far more about these things 
 than I do, so I will change the subject and tell you about 
 those sermons of mine. I speak of them apropos of Robert, 
 because I used to have some idea of making them over to 
 him. He used to be so lean and slender that I thought an 
 early ordination would be very Hkely to kill him off quite too 
 soon for everybody's sake, except, perhaps, his own. And 
 there was no expedient I thought so likely to keep him walk- 
 ing up and down the vawcancies as just simply the plan that 
 succeeded so well with me, to wit, preaching my sermons ! 
 They would have served for buttons to his foil, and kept 
 him from drawing blood, or " making an impression," as I 
 think the phrase used to run. For, Thomas, between you 
 and me, and the tip-top of this porcupine quill, be it 
 whispered, they are notable bad sermons ! Oh, you have no 
 idea how bad they are, how dull, how drowsy, how blunt, 
 how stupid — possessing withal a certain scanty treasure of 
 the merest mountebank's tinsel— or, to change the figure, 
 illuminated here and there by the lamentablest flashes of 
 glowing nonsense, as you may have seen a square yard of 
 ditchwater illuminated by a farthing dip. Poor sermons ! 
 They no longer walk abroad in the light of Sabbath fore- 
 noons, nor afternoons, nor evenings ; they take the air on 
 
" Mv sermons:' 247 
 
 Fast-days no more ! No, they are sliut up in bonds and 
 " perdurable dark," from whence they shall effect no escape, 
 except it be to final " hideous ruin and combustion ! " For 
 I think Robert is now fat enough to be ordained ] and as 
 for you, O Thomas, they would for ever blast any little 
 esteem or respect you may entertain for me or my " parts," 
 they are so extremely and anomalously bad. Honestly, I 
 am ashamed of those sermons. It would take much to 
 induce me to look the best of them in the face now. Little 
 bits and shreds of them occasionally float across the disc of 
 memory even yet before I can recognise and stop them, and 
 I assure you they make me quite angry. I cannot say that 
 I am doing any literary work. I read books almost all the 
 time I am indoors, and when I go out I can't meditate any 
 in thos6 dull days, except miscellaneously and interruptedly 
 about anything and everything — about politics, about litera- 
 ture, about plants, about scenery, about my sins, about the 
 Christian religion, about agriculture, about the future, about 
 how I am to open my " oyster," about what it will be like 
 to be dead and buried. I used to think a good deal about 
 that last matter a year ago. We must all die, and we know 
 that pretty well. But the feeling I used to have about it, 
 and which I suppose most people have, was that over the 
 hills and far away, and deep down in a certain " dowie 
 hovvme," sate that Lean One, playing with his dart ; and 
 that by the time that I reached him I should be so wearied 
 and jaded going up hill and down dale that I should take 
 the coiij) de grace at his hands not ungratefully. But all of a 
 sudden, or comparatively of a sudden, this idea changed 
 itself into the feeling that he was risen up and coming over 
 the hills swiftly to meet me, and that at the top of the very 
 next ridge or so I should infallibly have my weasand slit 
 and the life let out of me. To speak plainly, during all the 
 earlier part of last winter, I fully expected to be gobbled up 
 
248 THE INVALID. 
 
 quite shortly. Now, this change of feeling (especially if it 
 be a sudden change), about the last incident, is very apt to 
 have a paralysing effect upon some of one's faculties. At 
 any rate, one feels but little inclination to initiate anything — 
 "in the writing way I mean. I therefore procured myself a 
 grammar and dictionary, and sat down to learn the German 
 language, and to see what should occur. I acquired the 
 German language, and nothing occurred ! I am alive, and 
 can read Schiller and Goethe ! When the first snowdrop 
 appeared, I rose up and made a sonnet to it, to the effect 
 that I was very glad to be still above ground along with it, 
 and then I grew comparatively lyrical. I had made no 
 verses for years, but now that the fountains of my little deep 
 were broken up, I effunded five or six of the most exquisite 
 pomes you ever read or heard of. They are all in my desk 
 just now, but I will tell you the names of some of them : — 
 " The Course of Feigned Love never did run Smooth " ; 
 *' Love's Last Suit " 3 " In Redesdale " ; " To Cupid, Slayer 
 of Friends." Their very names are poems, aren't they? In 
 fact, my private opinion is that their names are the best 
 thing about them. . . . 
 
 To Mr. Scott. 
 
 Rankkni), 28th January, 1869. 
 
 I hasten to reply to the kind letter of inquiry you sent 
 me the other day regarding my miserable, old, rickety 
 carcase. Upon reflection it occurs to me that I have 
 allowed several posts to leave before despatching an answer, 
 but I hope you will be magnanimous enough to overlook 
 that little matter. It's a nasty, impetuous, headlong, hurry- 
 scurry kind of age we have dropped upon, and it is ab- 
 solutely necessary that there should be a if^ select and 
 deliberate souls left to keep it from going to smiihercais 
 altogether. I am bold enough to lay claim to the dignity 
 and merit of being one of that select few, one of those 
 
VALUE OF PROCRASTINATION. 249 
 
 that will only walk amongst the multitude of those that 
 run, one of the seven thousand that have not too rashly 
 bent their knees to the Baal of the times. This course, 
 I think, can be shown to have its itnmediate advantages 
 too, although the greater number of these lie afar off, and 
 require one to " reach one's hands through time to catch " 
 them. For instance, if I had rushed from the reading 
 right and straight to the answering of your letter, you would 
 only have had a bulletin of my state of health up to the 
 end of October; whereas by the simple expedient of just 
 putting off a little, I am enabled to give you correct 
 information up to this date, which we may call the end 
 of January ! From which you must learn, and also teach 
 your youthful but rising family, never to do that in a hurry 
 to-day which can he done deliberately to-morroiu. Coming 
 to the point of your kind inquiries, then, you will be glad 
 to know that I still enjoy very tolerable health. I still 
 hoast with much zeal and fervour, but I am not at all 
 weaker ; indeed I am stronger than I was last year at 
 this time. I don't expect ever to be strong again, but 
 perhaps I may recover such a degree of comparative strength 
 as to be fit for some purpose or another. And you know 
 we must accept life on such terms as we are offered it at. 
 I will, therefore, not repine nor howl over that which is 
 broken beyond mending, but endeavour by heaven's grace 
 to meet all with an all " conquering patience." In the 
 meantime I walk about as usual up the Jed and down the 
 Jed, northwards and southwards, eastwards and westwards, 
 as inclination moves and the state of the roads may permit ; 
 and when I am within doors I make myself busy — mildly 
 busy I mean — over a book. I have read almost the whole 
 of Schiller, indeed I had finished almost all his plays by 
 the time I got your letter ; and I am now so hard up for 
 German literature that unless you can lend me some, I 
 
2 so THE INVALID. 
 
 must even begin and read Schiller again. I am anxious to 
 keep whatever grip of the language I have got in the 
 meantime, and perhaps increased facilities for getting on 
 may offer themselves by and bye. If you can let me have 
 such a loan as I speak of, I shall be a much beholden 
 man. But none of your scientific stuff, mark me ; for I 
 don't care a rap for information ! I hate facts — what 
 this Philistine, positivist, turnipy, electric-machine era calls 
 " facts." Send books with ideas if you have any (such 
 books), histories, or poems, or stories. You speak in your 
 letter of Porter's book about Moab and Syria. It happens, 
 curiously enough, that I read it, I think in the spring of '57. 
 It seems to me to contain some facts of real importance 
 to the controversy now carrying on about the trustworthiness 
 and correctness of the Old Testament, at least so far as 
 geography and statistics are concerned. I remember being 
 struck by the light he throws upon the populousness of the 
 land of Bashan, and especially by the statements he makes 
 about the multitude of cities to be seen. It is extremely 
 rash to rest very much upon a priori objections. Colenso 
 and his whole school are too much given to this rash habit, 
 I think. 
 
 I have no local news to give you from this quarter. 
 Nobody is dead nor married that I can hear of, except 
 
 who is the former. Of course we have had our 
 
 share in the general election — a very disagreeable affair in 
 some respects. It has served to throw a good deal of 
 light upon human character in some instances. 
 
 To Mr. Robert P. Douglas. 
 
 Bankend, 3rd February, 1869. 
 
 .... Having despatched the books, I now write to tell 
 you what I have done. If you should ever happen to have 
 the same couple of duties to do, take them in the same 
 order. It is the logical, sensible, and natural order. First 
 
MEMORIES OF CARSE OF COWRIE. 251 
 
 do a thing and then say you have done it. Even the 
 domestic hen, I observe, first lays her egg, and then cackles 
 about it. And 1 hold that the wise and humble man (the 
 wise man is always humble) will not be above learning 
 lessons even in such a dame-school as the hen keeps. 
 Cluck, cluck, cluck ! 
 
 Let us change the subject. Do you continue to love the 
 Carse of Gowrie? I once dwelled, or rather sojourned 
 in it for ten days, and I found it quiet, still, and free from 
 alarms ; not dull, but only full of repose and peace ; so 
 that whenever I recall the Carse I say to myself, •' There 
 I once rested for ten days." My particular haven was no 
 other than Pitrodie, and the very innermost, land-lockedest 
 cove thereof was the Manse-garden. The Sidlaws and the 
 Tay shut out all the world except the Carse of Gowrie, 
 and the tall beech-hedge of the Manse-garden shut out even 
 the Carse. There I walked to and fro and smoked the 
 very peacefullest of pipes, lighting them with vesuvians 
 when they went out. If it rained I retired to the Session- 
 house and peacefully smoked my pipe there, lighting it 
 with stolen spunks from the congregational match-box. The 
 congregation was not unprosperous then, and one could 
 steal a spunk and sleep sound after the theft. I suppose 
 it would be a very hard-hearted action to do that now. 
 It is exactly three years at this very time since these scenes 
 served for my life to transact itself upon ; I remember the 
 date so well because St. Valentine's day occurred while I 
 was there, and I accompanied my pipe on the eve of that 
 great Festival with the composition of a Valentine, the first 
 verse of which contained a grievous malediction (introduced 
 
 entirely from exigences of rhyme) upon Mrs. , an 
 
 excellent good woman, who only failed of perfection by an 
 unlucky distaste for the weed. The first verse was so very 
 good that I shall begin the next page by quoting it : — 
 
252 THE INVALID. 
 
 " My pipe annoys my Lady's nose, 
 (Catarrhs confound that member), 
 So I must to the outer air 
 
 To blow the fragrant ember.*' 
 
 My own horizon is a good deal changed since then, as 
 well as that of the Pitrodie congregation. Not that I 
 care very much for the change merely, but alack, alack ! mi 
 Roberte — Robert of mine — the horizon has been grievously 
 narrowed by the change. Nevertheless, I do believe I 
 am a stronger man this February than I have been in any 
 other February that has come and gone since then, which 
 is so far well. Indeed I have been very well all winter. 
 
 Now I desire that you will write and let me know if 
 you have got the books, and also what you are going to 
 do next. Do you mean to remain at Newton for any 
 length of time ? or do you mean to " go forward " in April 
 and enlist in the noble army of carpet-baggers ? Says the 
 poet — 
 
 " I've ta'en the gold, I've been enrolled 
 In many a noble squadron, 
 In vain they search'd when off I march'd 
 To go and clout the caudron." 
 
 Alas, Robert, I fear I am little better than a " caudron 
 clouter"; stick thou to the "squadron." We all join in 
 wishing you well. My mother has been laid up these six 
 or eight days with cold and influenza, and we don't think 
 her much better yet. I hope all your friends are well. 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Bankend, February 19th, 1869. 
 
 .... You ask me why I do not write more. I have to 
 say that I can't. If I did, the results would be even 
 l)Oorer than they are. I can't write about anything unless 
 I first fall a little in love with it ; and, as regards the other 
 complaint, that I don't publish, I have to reiterate what I 
 
AVERSION TO PUBLISHING. 253 
 
 have told you before, that I don't choose any more to knock 
 at the door of magazines and beseech the wiseacres who 
 have to do with them to sit upon me. As for making a 
 book, I have not stuff enough for that. Besides, it is a 
 little raw, crude, youthful, and not much removed from 
 being a little vulgar, to rush out into the streets with half-a- 
 dozen stanzas flourished and waved between one's finger and 
 thumb, and to shout, " O good people, look at me and what 
 I have done ! My name is Thomas, and I have made half- 
 a-dozen stanzas ! Look at us, O humans ! " Which is all 
 that needs to be said on this subject. . . . 
 
 To William Macdonald, Esq. 
 
 Bankend, March 4th, 1869. 
 
 I fear the pleasure of inflicting myself upon you must be 
 put off for a little in the meantime. I was in Edinburgh 
 about October some two or three days, and was by no 
 means unkind or inattentive to myself, and yet I found in a 
 day or two that even in this cautious and mild variation from 
 the usual tenor of my way, I had reckoned without my hoast. 
 (Excellent pun for all persons afflicted with cold, asthma, 
 bronchitis, consumption, etc.) And then the weather about 
 this time of the year is apt to be very coiighijic, and our 
 present March seems to take a good deal after his ancestors 
 in that way. April is a month for which I have always a 
 strong fancy ; indeed, I went the length of inditing a pome 
 in her honour the week before last — the only time I have 
 been able to get up steam this winter in that way. Lege, 
 for here it is, " which its name is " 
 
 APRIL. 
 
 I^iLiES and daisies enamel 
 
 The mead where I see her stand 
 All in the midst of the morning,' 
 
 Her face to the glorious East. 
 
254 ^^-^ INVALID. 
 
 A breath has parted her Hps ; 
 
 She shades her eyes with her hand ; 
 And on her white-rose arm 
 
 The sunbeams gather and rest. 
 
 Pale is her cheek, yet it answers 
 
 The Hght with a tremulous glow — 
 And there are tears in her eyes — 
 
 Her eyes of cloudy and clear. 
 They are the tears of Hope, 
 
 Too light from their fountains to flow ; 
 Oh, April, I love thee the best 
 
 Of all the months of the year ! 
 
 But if all the months were pretty maids, and if one might 
 have one's choice of all the dozen, and if I were to fall in 
 love prudently, I would wed with May. She is safer than 
 my favourite, and, in fact, I fear it will be the month of 
 May before I dare venture into town, I mean to be in then 
 if possible. In the meantime, be thanked very sincerely, 
 and assured that my confidence in Mrs. Macdonald's house- 
 keeping and yours is quite unbounded. 
 
 Now, with respect to this idea of offering one's self to the 
 world's attention in the guise of poet, it is extremely 
 serious, and as yet, I fear, the thing cannot be done. To 
 make a clean breast of it, my " commerce with the Muse " 
 has been so scanty that the whole ledger thereof would not 
 be bigger than the Belfast Town and County Almanac, or 
 any ordinary class-book. This consideration, I apprehend, 
 renders the thing quite impossible. But not only is it 
 impossible — there are serious obstacles in the way ! There 
 is the rather chilly probability of losing money in the busi- 
 ness — or rather (considering that I have at present next to 
 no money to lose) of getting into debt. Vernacularly 
 speaking, this would be the " muckle black deil." And 
 also there is the probability — perhaps even more chilly — of 
 having it made matter of public discovery that one's poems 
 
RUMOUR OF HIS DEATH. 255 
 
 aren't poetry. So that, upon the whole, I think if ever this 
 thing be done, it will have to be done later, and perhaps 
 had best never be done at all. The partiality of friends, you 
 know, is quite proverbial. But we will discuss further upon 
 this matter when we meet. I think you will have seen 
 almost everything in the shape of verses which I have to 
 show ; I gather that from the Shepherd, whom I have 
 neither seen nor heard of since October. 
 
 About this time he wrote what is perhaps his ablest 
 poem. It was suggested by the incidental remark of 
 one of those good-natured friends whom we all have, 
 who mentioned, as a bit of news likely to interest 
 him, that a report of his death had gone abroad. 
 The closing lines were first thought out on the ear- 
 liest Sabbath of April — a very beautiful day — when 
 he was at his favourite " Yett " at Williescrook, 
 
 " where," he says to , April i6th, " I like to rest 
 
 my two arms upon the topmost rail, and my chin 
 upon my two arms, and to look over Timpendean 
 Moor, down upon Teviotdale, and across Teviotdale 
 on to the Eildon Hills and Tweedside, and so look- 
 ing (as I think I once told you before), ' to chew the 
 cud of sweet and bitter fancy.' The fancies I chewed 
 the cud of upon Sunday were of the pleasant kind. 
 ... At the time I thought it was all due to the 
 weather, and to the whin blooms on Timpendean 
 Moor, and to a bush of palms beneath which I had 
 paused by the wayside to admire 1,557 bees (as 
 near as I could count them), who were transacting 
 buzzines.s, and singing a most multitudinously-parted 
 psalm." 
 
.56 THE INVALID. 
 
 ON A CERTAIN PREMATURE REPORT. 
 
 A Friend I met upon my way- 
 Sauntering in the streets to-day, 
 With raised eyebrows gave me greeting ; 
 More than mere unlooked for meeting 
 Could create, was the surprise 
 Fluttering all about his eyes, 
 And — with hesitance — he said 
 He had heard that — I was dead ! 
 Gone beyond life's tearful bound 
 Dead, and gone, and underground ! 
 And I answered that, alas ! 
 My foot was still above the grass ; 
 Tho' of late she proved a Dun 
 Took my sharpest wit to shun, 
 Plague on that unlucky bill, 
 I was Nature's debtor still ! 
 — So we shook hands and parted, after 
 A little gratulatory laughter. 
 
 As I passed with careless feet 
 Through the noises of the street. 
 Musing on this ghastly rumour 
 In a half-triumphant humour ; 
 Glorying I could still despise 
 The Worm's familiarities ; 
 Jesting, too, that I had done 
 Battle stout with that Lean One, 
 Spilt his drink 'tween cup and lip, 
 And escaped his fleshless grip ; 
 Nay, part-persuaded I had brought 
 Victory from the perilous bout — 
 Victory not impalpable — 
 Plucking from his trophied skull. 
 For meed and sign of prosperous quarrel, 
 Part of his o'er-verdant laurel ; — 
 O'er this mood of exultation 
 Shot the chill interrogation, — 
 But is there ground for gratulation ? 
 
ON A CERTAIN PREMATURE REPORT. 257 
 
 Triumph for the moment fled, 
 What I'd loathed I coveted, 
 And was envious of the Dead 
 Who have worked their work, and reap 
 The unfathomable sleep. 
 Imperceptibly regret 
 That in life I lingered yet 
 Grew, by whimsical confusion. 
 Of half-thoughts, a half-illusion 
 That I truly had possessed 
 What I coveted — God's Rest ! — 
 But when far within His Gate, 
 Been, in some dim plot of fate, 
 Downward drawn or backward driven 
 From the calm to mortals given 
 In the stilly clear of Heaven ! 
 
 Then of more lost heavens I thought ; 
 For I deemed that he who brought 
 These strange tidings to mine ear. 
 Well I deemed this Messenger 
 Loved, or liked, or bore at least 
 No unfriendly interest 
 In the soul he held deceased. 
 That heaven in the hearts of friends 
 Which receives us when life ends ; 
 Which, when earth no longer bears us. 
 In a finer light enspheres us, 
 And a purer, milder air. 
 Than the merely living share, — 
 This, too, I had won and lost ; 
 O'er its tranquil threshold crossed, 
 Then to the cold been reconsigned. 
 Dispossessed and disenshrined ! 
 
 Thus flew open my mind's gate, 
 To each whim that knock'd thereat, 
 Greed of Death with love of Life 
 Waging quite fantastic strife ; 
 Till weary of such coil, at last 
 From my mind the whole to cast — 
 
 R 
 
258 THE INVALID. 
 
 " Bah ! " quoth I, " what boots debating ? 
 
 Scarce worth having — not worth hating, 
 
 Is this niggard stretch of Hght, 
 
 Lying between us and Night. 
 
 Pain and grief and loss and strife 
 
 Plucking at the throat of Life, 
 
 Baffle him that would be glad ; 
 
 Yet 'twere sickly to be sad. 
 
 Wise were he, as stout of heart, 
 
 Who with Joy could meet and part, 
 
 Who could meet and part with Pain, 
 
 Yet within his soul maintain — 
 
 Asking never what Fortune meant — 
 
 A contemptuous Content ! " 
 
 Thus I strove the theme to round ; 
 
 Dint of staff upon the ground, 
 
 Which with sounding thump I planted, 
 
 Gave the thought the weight it wanted. 
 
 But remembered and reviewed 
 Where, within this choral wood. 
 Soft I walk and silently 
 Li thy holy company, 
 O Nature, of the better man 
 Staunch ally and partisan ; — 
 Summoned here again to mind, 
 How dull ! how false ! how triply blind, 
 This most smug deliverance 
 Upon Life, and Death, and Chance ! 
 
 'Twill be twilight's advent soon ; 
 The last hour of afternoon 
 Hangs all-golden in the sky ; 
 No flower yet hath closed its eye ; 
 And around and overhead 
 Every leafy ambuscade 
 Veils a singing company. 
 Rains a shower of minstrelsy. 
 All the unreserved and pure 
 Rapture of the splendid hour 
 From my heart too plucks consent ; 
 Here I cannot deem Content 
 
A BAD COLD. 259 
 
 Life's full-flowered and perfect grace, — 
 
 Oh, Content is commonplace ! 
 
 And I hold, as when a boy, 
 
 Life is ever the root of joy ! 
 
 No celestial or Elysian 
 
 Glories taking the soul's vision, 
 
 Nor hymns chaunted inaudibly 
 
 From heavens hung in phantasy, 
 
 Make me, amid all this ocean 
 
 Of light, and form, and sound, and motion, 
 
 Covetous of yonder sky. 
 
 Let heaven hang for canopy 
 
 Over earth, my dear abode ; 
 
 For I praise the Living God, 
 
 Who all joy doth send, 
 
 I, too, living, stand 
 In your living midst to-day, 
 O teeming blooms and songs of May ! 
 
 To the Rev. Thomas Bobbie. 
 
 Bankend, April lytli, 1869. 
 
 This delay has been a thing beyond my own control. I 
 have been suffering eclipse — disastrous occultation — for 
 some weeks. In plain prose, I have had a bad cold. A 
 cold in my case now-a-days is rather a heavy and serious 
 business, both because it is uncommonly disagreeable in a 
 bodily sense, being attended by troops and squadrons of 
 such matters as catarrhs, shiverings, coughters, hoastages, 
 hoarsenesses, quinsies, and also because it opens a floodgate 
 to accesses of the most stark and blank stupidity that the 
 human soul can be deluged with — positive stupidity, quite 
 black and bottomless, "deeper than ever plummet sounded." 
 I have been immersed in it for a calendar month or more ; 
 all its Acherontic billows have passed over me. Selah. In- 
 deed, I have been as good' — that is to say, as bad — as 
 dead ; I have been incapable of either " work, or device, 
 or knowledge, or wisdom." I am better again now. 
 
26o THE INVALID. 
 
 The wind is changed to the point that Burns and I are 
 
 partial to — 
 
 " O' a' the airts the wind can blaw, 
 I dearly lo'e the west, 
 For it's there the" — 
 
 gulf Stream moderates the air and tempers the wind for shorn 
 lambs, and also for shorn sheep of all kinds. In short, 
 behold me again orient, emergent, valescent, and " writing 
 you a few lines to let you know that I am well, hoping that 
 you are the same, thank God." I have even turned my 
 attention to the smoking of a little tobacco ; for whenever I 
 begin to feel unwontedly well a certain faintly-sweet re- 
 membrance of pipes and cavendish comes over me, and 
 I gradually yield to that soft urgency for a week or two. So 
 the other day I ventured once more just a tentative two- 
 pence in half an ounce of bird's-eye and a pipe — a long 
 pipe, which will at least help me to keep the weedy demon 
 at arm's length. And behold I find that I love it right well. 
 
 April 2 1 St. — This starry firmament which I have set up is 
 meant to indicate an interval of several days, for just when 
 I had written " right well," I was interrupted, and I have not 
 been able to resume till to-day. To-day it has occurred to 
 me that in three weeks or less you may be in Edinburgh at 
 the grand annual caucus of the preaching and ruling elders 
 of the Church ; and as it is just possible I may be in town 
 too at that time (though the heavens have denied me the 
 dignity of eldership in either shape), it is also possible that 
 we may meet. How pleasant it will be to look you in the 
 face again ! Of course I shall not be able to vote with you 
 upon the Union Question, nor to listen to your speech upon 
 the subject either, but it may perhaps be allowed us to 
 transact a mild little orgie of bottled beer about the Cafe' or 
 some other hallowed retreat, and who knows but the beer 
 may be almost as palatable as the speeches ? 
 
THE ''PHILOSOPHIC MIND." 26 1 
 
 You will observe that I am given to profane speech a 
 good deal. Don't argue that I am envious, or spleeny, or 
 much filled with animosity towards the Kirk that didn't 
 perceive what a good creature I was. I have long since 
 forgiven all my enemies (except myself) ; I have buried the 
 hatchet and washed off my war-paint, and covet no man's 
 scalp-lock any more. To tell the truth, I did use to be a 
 little ill-affected towards fate; but "years that bring the 
 philosophic mind" have done something for me in that way — 
 not much, perhaps, but even little is much, so excellent a 
 thing is " philosophy." On fine Sunday forenoons I used to 
 walk to a certain gate on the top of a wooded ridge, and 
 there lay my two arms on the topmost rail, and my chin 
 upon my arms, and look away over Teviotdale into Tweed- 
 side, and " chew the cud of sweet and bitter fancy." And, 
 among other matters, bitter and sweet, which passed through 
 my mind at such times, I have sometimes said to myself — 
 " How many thousands of the merest numskulls 
 
 Are at this hour in pulpits ! 
 
 O, happy empty crown, 
 
 Skulls that hold brains are sometimes unordained ! " 
 This sort of rubbish doesn't much occur to me now-a-days 
 — a happy riddance, for I always did know it was an inspira- 
 tion of that vagabond spirit, " Sabbathless Satan," who is, 
 no doubt, apt enough to forgather with leaners upon 
 picturesquely-situated yetts upon fine Sunday forenoons. 
 
 To show you how placable, how mild, how sweet milk- 
 tempered and altogether loving and charitable I am become, 
 I will relate a little anecdote. Give ear ! Once upon a 
 time, in my hot youth, and that is long ago, I had occasion 
 to be rejected by the Edinburgh Presbytery. Well, I have 
 forgiven the whole Court ; there isn't a living soul of them 
 but I can think of him without the least inclination to 
 swear. But what I was going to tell you is this. The 
 Rev. God bless him, the old Drumclogger ! — asked 
 
262 THE INVALID. 
 
 me what kind of books I read ? for he had a feeling — good 
 soul that he is — that my views were a little dishevelled. I 
 felt a little backward about confessing to certain Ballad- 
 books and other kinds of the literature of levity, and I said 
 
 that " it would be hard to tell ! " Upon which advised 
 
 me to read Boston's Fourfold State. Now some days after 
 this I went down Leith Walk, and upon an old book stall at 
 which I halted for a minute, what should catch my eye but 
 a copy of Boston's Fourfold State. I grinned at him and 
 
 denounced the Rev. in my mind, and was just going 
 
 to pass on when I felt inspired by what I considered the 
 most ingenious method of gratifying my spleen that could 
 possibly occur to any mortal. " Buy thee," quoth I to the 
 Fourfold State; "yes, thou shalt be bought with a ven- 
 geance ! Thou shalt be so effectually bought that thou 
 shalt be withdrawn from circulation. I will bury thee 
 beneath all the old rubbish I possess, and there thou shalt 
 slumber unread till ' cockle-shells be silver-bells ' — thou old 
 night-mare !" So I bought him for a shilling, and buried 
 him with much care and deliberation at the bottom of a box 
 of the most forsaken and desolate literature I possessed ; 
 and after that had wonderful ease of mind for many years. 
 Now, some time ago (it was before I caught my last dose of 
 cold), I had occasion to turn this sepulchral box upside 
 down, and there, in his quiet grave, I ushered in a resurrec- 
 tion morning upon Boston's Fourfold State. The whole 
 story of my " superfluity of naughtiness " rushed upon my 
 mind with such irresistibly ludicrous force that it put me in 
 a roar of laughter; I plucked the old mummy out of his 
 corner, and, just to convince myself that I felt quite 
 
 amiably towards the Rev , that, in fact, I entertained a 
 
 kind of laughing kindliness towards him, I said to myself, 
 " I will read this book." And I did read it. Now, if I 
 were writing a tract, I should feel that I had come to that 
 
BOSTON'S ''FOURFOLD STATED 263 
 
 point where the crisis ought to come on, and I should there- 
 fore state that I was greatly benefited by the Fourfold 
 State ; in fact, I should hint that I had been converted by 
 the Foti7-fold State. But, O Thomas, great is truth ; and 
 behold the truth is, I think Boston's Fourfold State a very 
 poor book ; I mean poor as a theological book to recom- 
 mend any latter-day student of divinity to read. In some 
 other points of view the phenomenon is not devoid of a 
 curious interest. There are .indications here and there that 
 the old shepherd of Ettrick must have been rather a kindl} 
 soul ; and yet he can utter repeatedly, and without very 
 much perceptible shuddering, the terrific imagination that 
 " God will hold up the wicked in hell-fire with one hand, 
 and torment them with the other." This is apt to bring a 
 cold sweat over the reader of these times. It made me 
 think of a revelation of hell in Marlowe's Dr. Faiisttis, 
 where an " everburning chair " is shown to the Doctor, 
 intended for " o'ertortured spirits " to rest themselves in 
 and recover. But to do Mr. Boston justice, I suppose his 
 idea was one of the theological commonplaces of his time. 
 But I will not let him off for this one : " The righteous shall 
 then (that is in the world to come) rule over the wicked ; 
 and," he adds, " they shall rule them with a rod of iron." 
 Now, if any human being can feel satisfaction at this pros- 
 pect of his duties as a saint, he must be in a bad way. But 
 I suppose the human heart five or six generations ago would 
 be very much the same as it is now. Probably Boston was 
 as free from enjoying that prospect of getting possession of 
 a rod of iron as any of us ; perhaps he merely had a dim 
 and confused idea that it was the proper thing to be capable 
 of rising towards attainment of such a state of feeling, while 
 he was as far from it in reality, as he supposed the wicked 
 themselves to be. But this is a digression, and in a direc- 
 tion where there is very little to be got. The Foiirfold State 
 
264 '^^^ INVALID. 
 
 is, I believe, already consigned to dark oblivion ; it is dead 
 and gone — dead as the proverbial door-nail, or my best 
 sermon ; and perhaps when I entombed it at the bottom of 
 my rubbish-box I was merely the typical sexton of Fate, 
 performing an act of burial that had long been due. In the 
 meantime, just to prove to myself that I am at peace with 
 all men against whom I ever had any ground of quarrel, I 
 have set the old anatomy upon a book-shelf in respectable 
 company ; and whenever I look at it I say to myself, 
 " The Rev. is a nice man, and so are all his co- 
 presbyters — all nice men ; and, good heavens, what an 
 amiable creature am I ! " . . . 
 
 As regards my health physically, which you inquire after 
 particularly, I believe I am not going back. I feel stronger 
 this spring than I have done either of the last two. Indeed, 
 I have begun to wish that I had something to do — some- 
 thing of an easy kind of course, not requiring one to hurry 
 about the streets, nor to waste one's precious wind in much 
 speaking. All I want in the meantime is to make a 
 beginning cautiously, and see what I can do. My ideal of 
 life at present is to be in such a position as to make a very 
 moderate income during the day, and to have long evenings 
 all my own. It would be a great relief even to make one's 
 own living by one's own labour. When a man arrives at 
 thirty he ought to be at least a self-supporting institution ; 
 and I take it for a good sign in myself that I have begun of 
 late to desiderate a revenue most Jmgeously. 
 
 Perhaps you may find time to let me know whether you 
 mean to be at the Synod or not. It is very likely I may 
 come to Edinburgh sometime in the course of that week, 
 and I could leave a note for you at the Hall. I suppose 
 Brown will be there too, so I may see you both. . . . 
 
 It is nearly post-time, and therefore I must hurry. If it 
 hadn't been for that, I should have written out and sent you 
 
" THERE WILL I BE BURIED." 265 
 
 one of those pomes of which I spoke last time I wrote. In 
 the meantime, however, you have had enough of me ; this 
 screed will take you a week to read. 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Bankend, May ist, 1869. 
 .... Speaking of tombs, there is a mausoleum perched 
 upon a hill overlooking Teviotdale, and right opposite to 
 my favourite " yett." General Menteith Douglas of Stone- 
 byers, who died recently, had it built for his body's accom- 
 modation, and now lies in it. Last Sunday, looking across 
 the valley towards the mausoleum, I made this speech for 
 the tenant of it. Write it down in your usual half text, and 
 add to the heap — 
 
 " AND THERE WILL I BE BURIED." 
 
 (SUGGESTED BY A MAUSOLEUM IN TEVIOTDALE.) 
 
 Tell me not the good and wise 
 
 Care not where their dust reposes — 
 
 That to him in death who lies 
 Rocky beds are even as roses. 
 
 I've been happy above ground ; 
 
 I can ne'er be happy under 
 Out of gentle Teviot's sound — 
 
 Part us not, then, far asunder. 
 
 Lay me here where I may see 
 
 Teviot round his meadows flowing, 
 
 And around and over me 
 
 Winds and clouds for ever going. 
 
 To the Rev. William T. Henderson. 
 
 Bankend, May 6th, 1869. 
 
 .... I am glad somebody has told you I am keeping 
 
 pretty well. I think I have never been so well since the 
 
 beginning of the present dispensation as I am just now. 
 
 Sometimes I go so far as to indulge in a little manual 
 
266 THE INVALID. 
 
 labour; I have even entered into the spirit of muck- 
 spreading ! Did you ever spread muck, William ? Or do 
 you know what muck-spreading is ? It is jwt a metaphor for 
 preaching bad sermons ! Therefore, you needn't take a red 
 face at all. Yesterday I was planting and sticking peas, and 
 the day before I was raking and burning thorns. In short, 
 if I could only go on improving at this rate for other fifty 
 years, I should not despair of achieving a respectable old 
 age. In the meantime I still cough ; but I have learned 
 now to put up with life on these terms ; so I cough and 
 •' keep never minding." Speaking seriously, I begin to 
 think I might perhaps be able to do some light work, and 
 (iraw a revenue — especially the latter. . . . 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Bankend, May 7th, 1869. 
 I send you some verses [which, however, he afterwards 
 recalled and destroyed]. They are not good ; in fact, I 
 dread they are nambical-pambical, but they are not about 
 death nor yet about burial, and that perhaps will be some 
 recommendation. The first verse has been sticking in my 
 scribbling book for a long time, and, pitying its solitary 
 state, I gave it the others for company. 
 
 His visit to Edinburgh at the time of the annual 
 meeting of the Synod extended from the nth to the 
 29th May. It will be long remembered by many 
 friends. The greater cheerfulness characteristic of 
 more recent letters, and the improvement in general 
 health of which these letters speak, were equally 
 evident in his manner and appearance. We were all 
 greatly cheered, and though it was manifest that he 
 would never be able to preach again, we felt war- 
 ranted to cherish the hope that he might be spared 
 
A COTTAGE IN THE AIR. 267 
 
 for many years, and might have strength to accom- 
 pHsh something to enrich the hterature of his country. 
 He was confessedly the chief centre of attraction at 
 the Synod to those members of the reverend court 
 who had the privilege of knowing him, and it is to be 
 feared that — so strong was the fascination of his com- 
 pany — they were even more than usually neglectful 
 of the business on the Roll of Causes. 
 
 On this occasion he brought to Miss Dunlop, 
 who was generally the first recipient of his poems, 
 a new contribution to the too slender store of verses 
 which he has left us : — 
 
 A COTTAGE IN THE AIR. 
 
 I WILL build my sweetheart a hour 
 
 Doun and within yon valley sae sweet ; 
 
 Roses shall cluster around her door, 
 And bending lilies shall kiss her feet. 
 
 Beside yon Burn this bour I will set, 
 
 Where owre the wee stanes it ripples and dimples, 
 And mennens play i' the gowden net 
 
 Woven out o' the sunshine and wimples. 
 
 I will learn the birk an' the aik 
 
 To droop and spread their branches abune ; 
 They will lend for my Love's sake, 
 
 Their bield in December, their shadow in June. 
 
 The live-lang day, while I am away, 
 
 Birds in their branches wi' singin' shall cheer her ; 
 And a' the round year I will toil for my Dear, 
 
 That care may never never come near her. 
 
 He was the guest of Mr. Macdonald of the High 
 School, who did his utmost to overcome Davidson's 
 reluctance to publication, but was only able to effect 
 
268 THE INVALID. 
 
 a compromise, by obtaining leave to arrange for the 
 insertion of some of the verses in the Scotsman. The 
 conductor of that newspaper heartily accepted poems 
 which had been declined by editors of magazines, the 
 pages of which are opened month after month to far 
 inferior productions. It is not often that our serials 
 are conducted by editors like Thackeray, who have a 
 quick eye to discover merit in the writings of name- 
 less men. He accepted one of Davidson's College 
 exercises ; though it showed little more than a 
 promise of the power that was revealed in after 
 years. Other " able editors " politely declined " On 
 the Cheviots " and the " Premature Report." The 
 two earliest contributions to the Scotsjuan appeared 
 with his name in full. This distressed him, and 
 he insisted that the rest should be marked only with 
 his initials. He thus writes : — 
 
 The full name was prefixed to these two pomes by a sort 
 of mistake, they having been printed off before the proof 
 was returned. I think the initials are better ; they are not 
 so glaring and obtrusive. No doubt T. D. may stand for 
 "Tea Dust," as you object, or for " Te Deum," or 
 " Delirium Tremens " inverted — (the latter must be some- 
 thing very bad indeed). It may stand for all these ; it may 
 even stand for " The Deil ! " Still, I prefer it to the whole 
 name, both for the reason already given and for the addi- 
 tional reason that there is a man in Jethart who publishes a 
 weekly newspaper. 
 
 When returning the first proofs for the Scotsman to 
 Mr. Macdonald, he says — " I enclose also along with 
 these another short pome, intended to be in the lighter 
 
TO AMANDA. 269 
 
 antique manner ; he was born this week, and your 
 eyes are the first he has been submitted to. Will 
 he do ? " 
 
 TO AMANDA. 
 
 WHO HAS ACHIEVED HER FIRST WHITE HAIR. 
 
 " Out, pale traitor ! " didst thou say ? 
 
 Prithee, have good counsel, Lady : — 
 Let it grow till all be grey ; 
 
 All the world is old aheady ; 
 The world is old, the times wax late, 
 And youth, my dear, is out of date. 
 
 When this old and foolish Earth 
 Takes her annual fit of beauty, 
 
 Poets call it her new birth ; — 
 Feigning is the Poet's duty, 
 
 But well I know, — too well, alas ! — 
 
 'Tis but an ancient trick she has. 
 
 Out of Time and out of Space 
 
 Winged youth his flight has taken ; 
 
 Nor may any lingering grace 
 
 Rest with thee, all else forsaken : 
 
 In Time is no anachronism. 
 
 And nature brooks nor breach nor schism. 
 
 Wherefore, watch thy locks grow hoar 
 
 Gaily and without regretting ; 
 Each white hair but brings the more 
 
 To proportion with thy setting. 
 And nearer to the garment's hem 
 Of silver-crowned Methusalem ! 
 
 Soon after his return to Jedburgh he was much 
 grieved by hearing of the resolution of his friend Mr. 
 Elliot to accept of an appointment as Rector of the 
 Public School of Burghersdorp in Cape Colony. 
 
270 THE INVALID. 
 
 To William Macdonald, Esq. 
 
 Bankend, July 3rd, 1869. 
 
 Your news about the poor shepherd's mournful fate 
 throws me sadly out of gearing. It went to my heart like 
 a knife, although I cannot say that it was quite unexpected 
 either ; only I have found occasion to make it a rule never 
 to believe the very worst until it occurs. How I am to get 
 on without him is by no means apparent — he has been a 
 resource and " a very present help " to me so long. . . . 
 I must see his face again before he goes, and, in fact, 
 if he were at any loss about the " lowest A," I could 
 almost find it in my heart to go as usher ! Perhaps it 
 would help either to mend my broken bellows or to break 
 them sufficiently for good and all. 
 
 When we met at Edinburgh in May, Davidson pro- 
 mised to visit me in the course of the summer. This 
 promise was fulfilled early in August. He came to 
 us when we were on holiday at Loch Ranza in Arran. 
 It was his first visit to the island ; he was compara- 
 tively well ; the weather was glorious ; and so he 
 greatly enjoyed the fortnight he spent with us. Dr. 
 William Robertson of Irvine, Professor Duff, and 
 some other friends lay and clerical were staying at 
 Loch Ranza. They were deeply interested in my 
 guest, and intercourse with them added to his enjoy- 
 ment. He was unable to walk far, but we arranged 
 that he should accompany us in our rambles among 
 the hills, and hired for his use a black pony belonging 
 to a neighbouring cottar. It was by no means hand- 
 some, but it was sure-footed, and well accustomed 
 to the mountain paths. The ruggedness of these 
 
VISIT TO LOCH RANZA. 
 
 271 
 
 paths rendered speed impossible, and so he sat easily 
 in his saddle and took part in the conversation — 
 enjoying the bracing mountain air and the splendid 
 scenery. To guard against the effects of fatigue on 
 his slender store of strength, we were careful to pro- 
 vide a flask containing some strengthening cordial — 
 sherry, or the " wine of the country " — which was 
 administered to him occasionally. These " drams," 
 as he called them, were an unfailing source of amuse- 
 ment, and in the letters written with reference to 
 his visit, are referred to in terms that, but for the 
 explanation I have given, might possibly be mis- 
 understood. There was one longer expedition for 
 which other means of transit than the black pony 
 were needed. Of that expedition he speaks in the 
 second of the following letters : — 
 
 Bankend, Jedburgh, July 24, 1869. 
 I have got your two notes, and will use the information 
 about the new route. I expect to reach you between 
 the middle and end of next week — probably about Thurs- 
 day or Friday. I have seen fit — as if the weather hadn't 
 been warm enough — to catch a little cold. I think and 
 hope it will turn out a little one ; my large ones now 
 are quite solemn matters ; they move on like a stately 
 and serious bit of high tragedy. Indeed, I always make 
 my will about the third day, and never burn it until I am 
 better again. This is the second day of the present 
 visitation, and so to-morrow I shall either be improving 
 decidedly or making another will. If I be better, I trust 
 to be with you by the time I have mentioned ; and if I am 
 not, I shall not overlook your claims to a legacy. — Ever 
 yours. 
 
2/2 THE INVALID. 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Loch Ranza, Arran, 13th August, 1869. 
 .... I ought to have been elsewhere than at Loch 
 Ranza by this time however ; I ought to have been, and 
 indeed honestly meant to have been, at Millport with 
 Henderson. But it is difficult to leave a place when one 
 has got a little settled down and collected in it ; and, 
 besides. Brown is difficult to depart from. . . . But I have 
 been gradually resolving, and now my resolution is very 
 strong indeed that 
 
 " Here nae langer maun I stay." 
 
 I would have been off yesterday had it not been for an 
 expedition to Corrie and Brodick and (by some of us) to 
 Goatfell. We were in great force ; it took a spring cart, a 
 waggonette, and Sandy Macallister's muck-cairt to hold us 
 all. I went in the waggonette, and returned in Sandy's 
 machine. You have no idea what a Higlilandman's cairt 
 can do in the way of speedy motion ; but the jingling of 
 the chains, the jolting of the wheels, and the rapid oscilla- 
 tions, tremblings, bumpings, and convulsions of the whole 
 cairt^ especially in trotting down hill, cannot be adequately 
 set forth on paper. Whenever I sit down to-day Sandy 
 Macallister's muck-cairt, witli all its convulsions, reproduces 
 itself Sandy Macallister's muck-cairt is partly incorporated 
 with myself It was great fun. . . . 
 
 To the Rev. Williaisi T. Henderson. 
 
 Loch Ranza, August 7th, 1869. 
 .... I am staying here with your co-presbyter, Mr. 
 Brown of Paisley, who is holidayising in this nook — one 
 of the finest nooks I have ever been in. Yesterday, from 
 the top of a neighbouring hill, I had the pleasure of looking 
 down upon your kingdom, and remembering you with a 
 pleasant spirit. " Be kind to him," I said, " be kind to 
 
AT RO THESA V. 273 
 
 him, for is it not Friday afternoon ? How he must be per- 
 spiring." 
 
 After a short visit to Mr. Henderson at Millport, 
 he went to Mr. Macdonald who was spending his 
 holiday at Rothesay. " I have a very pleasant time 
 of it here with Macdonald," he writes, " we manage 
 tolget out to Port Bannatyne in a boat every day 
 and try our hand at the fishing. We have had no 
 success till yesterday evening, when we caught four 
 whitings. Mrs. Macdonald is quite delighted with 
 them, and they are to form part of the breakfast 
 this morning." He sends a pen-and-ink sketch of 
 the fishing. 
 
 To Miss Dunlup. 
 
 Rothesay, August 29th, 1869. 
 
 .... Do you know that I don't know what to say to 
 you ? I am filled with the desire to say something that may 
 comfort you, and yet I feel that I am the very poorest of 
 comforters in all the world. I well remember, though, that 
 God is the fountain of all comfort, and I will pray Him to 
 comfort you. He has not in His providence left you com- 
 fortless. He has sent your father a pa i/i less and quiet death, 
 and that is always an unspeakable blessing. What a comfort 
 and pleasure, too, it will be to you to look back upon the 
 pleasant and loving intercourse with all of you which has 
 formed the course of your father's life ! And, best of all, 
 you can never be sufficiently thankful that Heaven has 
 afforded you the deepest possible conviction of your father's 
 perfect welfare in the kingdom of light. There are a thousand 
 mourners to-day who would give much to have such a hope 
 as yours. . . . 
 
 He returned from his visits in the west in better 
 
 s 
 
274 '^^^ INVALID. 
 
 health than he had enjoyed since the beginning of 
 his illness, and he began even to think of a longer 
 journey. 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Bankend, September yth, 1869. 
 
 You see I have reached the old and familiar date once 
 more. White and Elliot accompanied me to the train, where 
 Elliot and I took our farewell of each other, and so departed. 
 He is going seriously to look about him for some kind of 
 place or employment for me in these " fresh woods and 
 pastures new." I told him I was quite serious in my 
 profession of readiness to come out should Mr. Micawber's 
 hypothesis ever fulfil itself, and " something turn up." The 
 Shepherd said that the bare possibility of a reunion there 
 was a point of light in his prospect ; and I have no doubt it 
 will "prod" him on in his research not a little. ... I hope 
 you are beginning to have some little taste of resignation. 
 It does not come early, and it will not come all at once, but 
 the hand of time, which is always the hand of God, will 
 bring it by and bye. . . . 
 
 The latter half of September was occupied with a 
 visit, in the company of his mother and sister, to the 
 neighbourhood of Berwick-on-Tweed. After his return 
 Mr. White came to see him, and they took a short 
 
 trip together. 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Bankend, October yth, 1869. 
 .... I think I told you a week or two since of this 
 visit of White's. We intended it to consist of a series of 
 jaunts up and down the country-side to look at things that 
 are old, famous, and queer. But we contemplated its 
 coming off in September at that time ; and now that 
 September is gone and October come all muffled up in 
 
THE BEGINNING OE THE END. 275 
 
 mists and "haar," I think we shall be wise if we jaunt but 
 little. Therefore, it is but little that we shall jaunt. . . . 
 October 13, Tuesday morning. — I have just returned from 
 seeing Thomas White off by the train. He and I have been 
 jaunting a little after all. We went by train to Roxburgh on 
 Saturday, and walked down by the side of the Teviot to 
 Kelso. It was a very beautiful and sunny day, and we made 
 the most of it — sitting here and lounging there, and walking 
 a short spell to bring our destination a little nearer. There 
 are few places that catch so much peculiar beauty from the 
 visit of autumn as Kelso does ; there are so many woods 
 and clumps of trees to be seen all round it. We stayed over 
 the Sunday. Yesterday we visited Norham Castle, and re- 
 turned home here in the evening. Our jaunt has been 
 shone upon as regards weather ; but now that I have seen 
 my compagnon de voyage off, the day is thickening in and 
 apparently has rainy intentions. 
 
 The fatigue involved in the pleasant trip thus 
 described had probably been too much for his 
 strength. A few days after his return he had a very 
 serious attack of blood-spitting, which proved to be 
 " the beginning of the end." In his letters to his 
 weekly correspondent, he, with characteristic con- 
 sideration, makes no allusion to this illness for more 
 than a month, and does not speak of it plainly till the 
 following February, when its disastrous effects could 
 be no longer hidden. A quaint and graphic descrip- 
 tion of it will be found in a letter to myself of date 
 November 27th, which is given below. Meanwhile 
 he writes as if nothing special had occurred. But the 
 sadness of heart which the illness brought found ex- 
 pression in verses which are interesting when read in 
 
2;6 THE INVALID. 
 
 contrast with the song entitled "Jed Water," written 
 five years before. The reader who compares the two,, 
 will, understand why the later lyric was, like "The 
 Restoration," kept concealed in his scrolling book. 
 
 JED IN OCTOBER. 
 
 I COME, sweet Jed, to hear again 
 
 The strain I heard thee trill in summer ; 
 
 This nicht, thou chimes a dulesome sang 
 Under yon wan mune's eerie glimmer. 
 
 I canna see but dim, deid lichts 
 
 r the cauld munebeams that shine o'er thee ; 
 I canna see but sad hearse plumes 
 
 r the wanin' weeds that wave aboon thee. 
 
 I canna see but windin' sheets 
 
 In siller mists that rise an' hide thee ; 
 
 Thy sang's a death-dirge, dowie Jed, 
 I canna, canna sit beside thee. 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Bankend, October 23rd, 1869. 
 
 .... For myself, I honesUy believe I don't "girn" a 
 very great deal. For one thing, I have so very poor a 
 matter in the shape of a life to look back upon, that I don't 
 observe any great want of symmetry in its want of the crown 
 of success. I mean, in plain words, that I have deserved 
 very little. When I did begin to wish that I were settled 
 down, I am afraid my desire was not so much to settle down 
 and be useful, as to settle down and be comfortable and 
 happy. And so you will perceive that I can hardly have the 
 conscience to " girn " very much. . . . 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Bankend, November 12th, 1869. 
 .... By the way, I want you to send me a book. It is 
 a book about nothing whatever — it is a book that never was 
 written and never was read ! It is, in fact, a note book. I 
 
MEMORIES OF ARRAN. 277 
 
 can't see the thing I want here. I want it a smallish quarto. 
 If it be ruled at all, let the lines be narrow- — wide ones are 
 a botheration. Let the boards be pliant, so that one could 
 make a cylinder of the book when one liked. And, finally, 
 let it not be dandy. I want it for the purpose of writing 
 down and keeping hold of those pomes which have a habit 
 of flying away whenever I write them out, so that there are 
 some of them which at the present moment I have no copies 
 of at all. So you see the book will be partly mine and 
 partly yours — will, in short, be our book. . . . 
 
 To the Rev. James Brown. 
 
 Bankend, November 27th, 1869. 
 
 I hope you will not attribute my long silence to forgetful- 
 ness; that would be to accuse me of ingratitude, and, 
 behold, I am only lazy. Perhaps I might even plead want 
 of leisure, for you have no idea how every small action I get 
 myself to do must be environed far and wide with rest. It 
 is a square yard of labour in a square mile of inaction ; it is 
 as Falstaff's bread to his sack. Now, all this long time I 
 have never enjoyed any extensive tract of honest leisure 
 after all ; I have been going to and fro, and walking up and 
 down, and also I have been what we of the sacerdotal faction 
 call " laid aside." 
 
 But, seriously, the patience and the kindness which Mrs. 
 Brown and yourself showed to a certain dull, taciturn, and 
 ill-thriven poor devil, render it very unlikely indeed that 
 that poor devil should ever forget you. Indeed, I took so 
 much of a dumb interest in everything — in all the circum- 
 stances and doings attending my stay with you — that I think 
 I shall remember them all for a very long time. The walks, 
 the talks, the jokes, the smokes, Glen Catacol, the Fallen 
 Rocks, Goatfell, the picnics, the herrings, the drams, the 
 butchers bidual and diurnal, the Highlandman's black pony, 
 Sandie Macallister's cart. They form quite a constellation 
 
2/8 THE INVALID. 
 
 of shining points which it is very pleasant to shut one's eyes 
 and look at. Sometimes I have thought of building up a 
 great and magnificent song upon the subject, but somehow 
 — very likely because my habits for some time previous to 
 my stay with you had been quite abandoned to mere 
 abstinence — anyhow, I never have been able to get past 
 those delightful drams, as thus : — 
 
 Now to drink let us offer a stan/.a. 
 Great Bacchus doth dwell at Lochranza : 
 
 We had blood of the vine 
 
 In all manner of wine 
 
 Between Tagus and Rhine, 
 
 And whisky divine — 
 O, we drank like high Jove at Lochranza ! 
 I Stayed with Macdonald at Rothesay an unconscionable 
 time waiting for Elliot. At last I gave him up, and came 
 away home, but on the way I found the dog in Edinburgh 
 getting his life insured, and quite placid in his mind ! I 
 next turned up in the town of Bervvick-on-Tweed. 
 
 There is a dingy, muddy, sooty, ferruginous little place 
 in that neighbourhood called Spittal, just redeemed from 
 the exclusive use of the devil and his angels by luckily 
 possessing a mile of very pleasant sea-beach. It is much 
 affected as a watering-place by the people of this country- 
 side ; and my mother and sister went down for a fortnight, 
 taking myself with them to guide them, philosophise for 
 them, and befriend them, because I am of active, cheerful, 
 and lively habits, and a great wag. Here I addicted myself 
 much to the study of the weather by comparing daily the 
 readings of two barometers. I became a great proficient in 
 meteorology, and I know exactly how many drops there will 
 be in the next shower of rain. Here, too, I read a great 
 deal of missionary literature ; one could realise so well the 
 descriptions of naked savage life by just taking a walk along 
 that sea-beach which redeems Spittal, as I said before. I 
 
A LITTLE OWHYHEE. 279 
 
 read in my Record that Mr. Anderson, on his way to the 
 chapel in the morning, meets Mungjungo on his way to the 
 shrine of the great log Jungmungo, as naked as he was born. 
 Then I look up and the whole rencontre transacts itself 
 
 before my eyes ; for here is that lusty agriculturist Mr. 
 
 sauntering across to the German Ocean as naked as he was 
 born, and exactly ten yards from the point of my mother's 
 nose and my own. To relieve my mother — my blushing 
 mother — I turn and walk in the other direction ; but there 
 
 are all the rising and risen Misses , only half as far off 
 
 as I could throw a pebble, " linkin' at it i' their sarks." Of 
 course all this is only illustrative to me of missionary life 
 in savage lands. / know that all flesh is grass ; but I must 
 be off to my barometers. 
 
 November 30. — I forget what more I was going to say 
 about this delightful little Owhyhee when I was interrupied 
 by nothing more dignified than my porridge. It is not an 
 inspiring dish, porridge ; don't betake yourself to it when 
 you find your nose against a brick wall in the midst of 
 secondly. I always find it "to be a rather over-zealous 
 partisan of the body against the spirit, and on this occasion 
 it quite unhorsed me. However, at the present time I am 
 very much in the body's interest myself, and don't very 
 greatly grudge it any few partisans it can enlist. About six 
 or seven weeks ago I had quite a thrilling and romantical 
 visitation in the shape of bleeding at the lung. I don't 
 know very well what brought it on : it may have been over- 
 exertion in the way of walking or lifting weights ; or it may 
 have been the sudden swoop of severe weather which took 
 place then ; or it may have been a cold, for I had a cold— 
 we all had colds, and the whole household was in a state of 
 " hoasts encountering hoasts," as the paraphrase has it. In 
 
 short — 
 
 " How it cam' let doctors tell — 
 Ha ! ha ! the bleedin' o't ! " 
 
28o THE INVALID. 
 
 Come it did — -first two slight attacks which I suppressed, 
 and then another one which caught me at the fireside 
 reading Juventus Muudi after breakfast, and which was of 
 too fountaincoHS a nature to be suppressed. My mother 
 thought I was going to die ; for myself I had an avalanche 
 of three hundred and seventy-six thoughts at once ; my 
 sister went for the doctor — having some thought that there 
 might be " succour in God and good leeching." In a minute 
 or two the affair hushed itself up again for the time, and 
 under persuasion of morphia its visits became more and 
 more of the angelic kind — shorter and farther between — 
 until in a week they happily ceased altogether. To-morrow 
 it will be five weeks since I had the last of them. The 
 morphia often made my eyes too heavy for reading, and to 
 keep myself from moping during the demi-semi-lucid inter- 
 vals, I endeavoured to extract some faint amusement out of 
 the attempt to lampoon myself and my rickety old lung. I 
 send you the result, that you may see what I can do in the 
 hobgoblin line. I fear there is too much horror and too 
 little wit in it. As for my present condition, the net result 
 of this bloody business was a burden of stark weakness, 
 which was extremely oppressive and disagreeable. I am 
 getting away from this now, and rapidly losing the feeling of 
 what the Yankees call " demoralisation." I can whistle a 
 little, especially " Deil stick the minister." I can step over 
 a straw, too, if it don't be a bean one. And on sunny days 
 I run races with a black snail who lives in my father's 
 meadow. Indeed I am out every day that is at all fit to be 
 entered in an average calendar. But the winds all blow 
 through me, which produces strange effects. I am quite used 
 now to the sound it makes, and for all the world it is like 
 that of the wind in a Martinmas oak ; people stare at me as I 
 pass them, and think — quite the reverse of the man in the 
 miracle — that they have seen a tree like a man walking ! So, 
 
MODERATE HOPES. 281 
 
 upon the whole, with care, cod-liver-oil, and a quiet life 1 
 expect to make reasonably steady progress towards a fair 
 share of health again. The care and the cod-liver-oil I can 
 answer for myself; and the quiet life too I have done what 
 I can to secure, I have written to such of my friends as I 
 suspect of harbouring the kind intention to visit me, and 
 have begged them to leave me alone for a while yet. Not 
 at all on the principle of 
 
 " Leave Marmion here alone to die " ; 
 
 but only that Marmion may have his leaky old chest 
 cobbled up again a little, for the said Marmion intends to 
 show a little more fight yet before it comes to " Charge, 
 Chester, charge ! " with him. 
 
 And now I have sworn a solemn oath to end my letter at 
 the foot of this page. If I thought it Avouldnt bother your 
 righteous soul to answer them, and if I didn't think that I 
 have behaved too badly to be answered at all, I would fill 
 the remainder of the paper with questions. How is my 
 friend little Mary Agnes Brown? I wager nine sweeties she 
 doesn't recollect anything about me. And yet I remember 
 her so well that I have taken almost a whole hour to make 
 this little valetudinarian song for her : — 
 
 O Winter Day, be short, be sliort ; 
 
 O Winter Night, be long ! 
 A short little day to eat and to play, 
 
 And a long night to sleep and be strong ! 
 
 Quoth Mary Agnes Brown. 
 
 But, indeed, I hope that both Mary Agnes and all of you 
 are too well to need valetudinarian songs. Amen. — I am 
 curious to know if your Oriental trip is going to get itself 
 transacted ; I should be sorry to learn it isn't. And now, 
 pray remember me with all manner of kind friendship to 
 Mrs. Brown. 
 
 And so I pray God bless you. 
 
282 THE INVALID. 
 
 The Lampoon, or " Hobgoblinade," as he called it, 
 which accompanied this letter, reveals a growing 
 power strangely out of proportion to his state of 
 physical weakness. But it is chiefly interesting as 
 showing his feeling towards the " last enemy," who 
 was now approaching to meet him with rapidly- 
 increasing strides. It is only the superficial reader 
 who will see any impropriety or unbecoming levity on 
 the part of a dying man in thus making mirth out of 
 his mortal malady. All who have eyes to see into the 
 heart and meaning of this strange poem, will recognise 
 in it an evidence that the writer has already, by God's 
 help, won the victory over death. To him who can 
 thus laugh at the grim Adversary, his sting has been 
 taken away. No death-bed experiences that were 
 ever written could reveal more satisfactorily, to those 
 who have learned to understand anything of the moral 
 and spiritual characteristics of this man — the loyal, 
 submissive, and fearless spirit to which he had attained 
 through long discipline of affliction. 
 
 A DOGGEREL ALLEGORY OF HEMOPTYSIS. 
 Part I. 
 The singer i.ast niaiht I left my door ajar, 
 
 catcheth cold. „, , '^ t i • 
 
 1 o-day I much repent it ; 
 For there stepped One into the floor 
 Unbidden and unwanted. 
 
 " I'm Death," said he. " I know," said I, 
 " I know already ; bless you, 
 The merest babe could ne'er mistake 
 That wondrous want of tissue. 
 
A DOGGEREL ALLEGORY. 283, 
 
 " For I have seen your effigy 
 
 On tombstones and on hearses, 
 And all about you told at length 
 In epitaphic verses." 
 
 At that he bowed (and as he bowed 
 
 I heard his back-bone creaking) ; 
 I bowed in turn, then waiting stood 
 
 To learn what he was seeking. 
 
 " I'm tired," he said, " I've trudged all day 
 Until I'm almost cripple, 
 And seeing your door ajar, I thought 
 I'd call and taste your tipple." 
 
 " H'm ! you mistake," said I," the inn's 
 A little up the water, — 
 They're decent folks, and you'll be served 
 By their own pretty daughter. — 
 
 " The prettiest " — " Pshaw ! in fact, I'm dry ; 
 Time's short, we mustn't waste it. 
 There's liquor in that cask of yours, 
 And by the Gods, I'll taste it ! " 
 
 I yielded, bade him sit ; he sate, 
 
 I gave him drink ; he drank too. 
 At the first draught I shook to see 
 
 The depth the liquor sank to. 
 
 With one long shank he stirr'd the fire. 
 
 Then threw it o'er the other 
 And, " Now, we'll make a night," said he, 
 
 " My lanky friend and brother." 
 
 With that he poked me in the ribs. 
 
 And chuckled grim jocosely ; 
 I thought the fun one-sided, and 
 
 I answered him morosely ; — 
 
 That '• drink and I could ne'er agree," 
 (I own that I was fibbing) ; 
 " Oh, then," said he, "you'll draw and fiU^ 
 And I will do the bibbing ! " 
 
284 
 
 THE INVALID. 
 
 The Singer 
 
 reflecteth 
 
 upon the 
 
 •disadvantages 
 
 of spitting 
 
 blood. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 What bag occult received his drink 
 
 I know not, but the taper 
 Shone through his form and left a mere 
 
 Gridiron on the paper. 
 
 Perhaps it all went to his head — 
 
 A common destination — 
 Perhaps his fiercely burning thirst 
 
 Produced evaporation ! 
 
 But sad and silent, — drear and sad 
 
 And silent was this revel. 
 With gloomy eye upon the wine 
 
 I watched its sinking level. 
 
 O dreariest bout I e'er sat out 
 
 Or e'er in fancy fashioned ; 
 What devil-revel e'er could match 
 
 This orgie unimpassioned ? 
 
 The Singer 
 
 IS prescribed 
 
 for by the 
 
 Doctor and 
 
 taketh 
 morphia. 
 
 Part III. 
 
 But it fell about that night's mid-hour, 
 That midnight hour full dreary — 
 
 I was aware, thorough the air, 
 Of a friendly whisper near me : 
 
 A voice that whispered, " Drug the wine 
 
 There is no trust like trial," 
 And of a hand that placed in mine 
 
 The poison-freighted phial. 
 
 So, when that placid Bacchanal 
 Again had drained the beaker, 
 
 I handed a replenished cup — 
 The poison in the liquor. 
 
 Death put the beaker to his head — 
 I groaned, " 'Tis now or never ! " 
 
 And heard thro' all his bones a kind 
 Of desiccated shiver. 
 
A DOGGEREL ALLEGORY. 285 
 
 He took the beaker from his hps, 
 
 And in the embers cast it, 
 Rose, clutched his scythe, and gasped at length, 
 " Great Styx ! what have I tasted ? " 
 
 " Indeed, Sir Death," said I, grown bold, 
 " So low the wine was getting, 
 I thought I'd eke it out, you know, 
 Just to prolong the sitting I " 
 
 "Good friend," said he, "leave jokes to me 
 When Death is in the question ; 
 I've known him give an ugly turn 
 To such untimely jesting. 
 
 Part IV. 
 " However, since your wine's as bad J^^ Singer 
 
 . • 1 T)ii • IS cured and 
 
 As even your joke, 1 11 spare it ; thankful. 
 
 Good-bye ! I never crushed before 
 A cup of thinner claret." 
 
 And off he stalked. " Thank heaven 1 " said I, 
 
 " I'm still a living sinner ! 
 To keep such topers from my tap 
 
 I'd almost have it thinner." 
 
 At any rate, I'll keep at hand 
 
 This most effectual bottle : 
 So, let us pray. Heaven send us health. 
 
 And make grim Death tee-total. 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Bankend, 26th November, 1869. 
 
 .... As a kind of refuge or asylum from wearying to 
 which I may betake myself, I have set about making a new 
 pome. I am not going to tell you anything about it, be- 
 cause I am not able as yet to tell you very much. I have 
 the general notion of it before my mind's eye, but it is still 
 too vague for telling to another, even though that other be 
 you. Generally, it will be a kind of story embodying or 
 running alongside of a moral. It is to be in the Don Juan 
 
286 THE INVALID. 
 
 stanza, because that stanza is reasonably free, and also 
 reasonably easy ; but the final couplet of each I mean to 
 make a double rhyme. Finally, I have four stanzas of it 
 done, which I may perhaps write out and send you with this 
 to-morrow. You can gather nothing about the pome from 
 them, excepting merely the style, and perhaps the pitch of 
 it; but you will tell me whether or not you think them good 
 verses, and if you like the looks of them. But you musn't 
 ask me how I am getting on with it, for I am liable to 
 frequent and protracted " sticks " and standings-still, so 
 that I may not add a stanza sometimes for a whole month. 
 The four I speak of were mostly finished a fortnight 
 since. . . . 
 
 The Pome-ViOo\. arrived last night. It is my idea's very 
 body — but prettier, brawer, and altogether, as Old Edie 
 would say, "mair aristorkaticer-looking." . . . 
 
 I had a " dwam " about five or six weeks ago, which has 
 sent me down hill a little, but I think I have got pretty well 
 stopped again this week. . . . Will you inquire at Jim, or 
 somebody else who knows, on what terms Members of 
 Council get books from the College Library ? I am some- 
 times at a loss for certain books, and I might perhaps take 
 advantage of that source now and then if you could send 
 me the books out. 
 
 The poem referred to here was, alas ! never finished 
 — only three stanzas were added to the four which 
 accompanied this letter. The unfinished fragment is 
 no inapt symbol of the broken life, which, it would 
 seem, the poem was intended to portray — for in the 
 little that is told us of " My old friend Will "—it is 
 not difficult to recognise Davidson himself — 
 
 " Of most grave countenance, yet of most keen skill 
 To set a truth within a jest was he. ' 
 
HIS LAST POEM. 287 
 
 It is not a little touching — in view of the evident 
 autobiographic purpose — that the last we see of the 
 hero is his resting by the wayside, when the sun has 
 gone down, before his journey is quite done. The 
 poem, like the Life, is full of rich promise. He had 
 intended to name it " Chiaroscuro : a Tale of Light 
 and Shadow," and he thus wrote of it : 
 
 To Miss DuNLOP. 
 Honestly I meant to name the place when I began the 
 sentence. But second thoughts are best ; and my second 
 thought on the present occasion was that the place really 
 lies so far from the beaten tracks of British Travelling and 
 Touring that the very memory of it as the scene where the 
 matters took rise would be enough to give the little story of 
 them an air of unlikelihood. ... It is a short chapter, 
 I grant you ; but even so, it is the more in proportion to 
 that which is to be the whole. I hold, if your book is to 
 be big, big should be your chapters ; and if little, then 
 little. If you have set about the building of that which is 
 to be a city, it is well to pile up storey on storey in houses; 
 l)ut I am only building a little village — a mere hamlet — 
 therefore I choose that my cottages shall be lowly. 
 
 Chap. I. — Introduces the Story. 
 
 Chap. II. — DaUies with it. 
 
 Chap. III.— It. 
 
 Chap. IV. — It, continued. 
 
 HIS LAST POEM. 
 
 LEFT UNFINISHED. 
 I. 
 
 This Rhyme I build on what my old friend Will 
 As having happ'd himself, once told to me. 
 
 Of most grave countenance, yet of most keen skill 
 To set a truth within a jest was he. 
 
2SS THE INVALID. 
 
 Of a fine wisdom he had store, but still 
 
 So held in poise of whimsicality, 
 Few deemed him wise but me ; it was his nature 
 Rather to stoop than overstretch his stature. 
 
 Nor did he hate the Devil with all his heart, 
 But found some little wrinkles in his horn 
 
 So comic-taking that he could not part 
 
 From some small kindness to that king forlorn. 
 
 I will not name them, we have such an art 
 Of branding little flaws with blame and scorn 
 
 Beyond proportion ; only, like his fellows, 
 
 This friend of mine had, too, his peccadilloes. 
 
 III. 
 
 This fairly wise and pretty virtuous man, 
 
 Will Brown, to visit his friend Smith went forth. 
 
 Who in a town, by the " vext ocean " 
 And insulated far within the North, 
 
 Dwelt and had duties. Grim as eye could scan 
 A troop of craggy isles on a wild Firth, 
 
 Frowned in the face of this poor town ; behind it 
 
 Stretching far round and off, dim moors confined it. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Dreary ; — ^but sometimes the repentant Sun 
 
 Would turn him on his threshold round at even, 
 
 Surprising sea and isle and moorland dun 
 
 With bounty, that this town seemed built and paven 
 
 All regally ; men's vexed hearts would be won 
 To peace, and set a-musing upon heaven ; 
 
 The very children, 'mid the noise and pother 
 
 Of their rude games, would stop and kiss each other. 
 
 'Twas on an evening when the heavens did make 
 
 Rehearsal of such golden episode, 
 Will topped the last ascent, and on him brake 
 
 Full, that transfigured landscape far and broad 
 
" ON DING a SNA IV." 289 
 
 Whose sudden splendours so his spirit did take 
 
 With ecstasy, still in the place he stood 
 With foot half-lifted, resting half a tip-toe, 
 Joy in his eyes played — played on cheek and lip too. 
 
 VI. 
 
 , But the year had reached its dim penultimate 
 
 Of all his months, and twilight's too prompt hand 
 
 Deplenished soon of glory and bright state 
 And left to their old sadness sea and land ; 
 
 Then tension of Will's gaze, too, 'gan abate 
 With the abating brightness, then his stand 
 
 He left, and sitting down on a great boulder, 
 
 Unstrapped his knapsack from his aching shoulder. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Alack ! alack ! hadst thou, sweet friend of mine. 
 In spite of aching joints, but onward fared 
 
 And, spite of rallying flushes or decline 
 
 Of beauty in the landscape, thou hadst been spared 
 
 That memory of the lamp's illusive shine ; 
 No tale had been to tell, nor to be heard, 
 
 Thy journey had been happy and unstoried — 
 
 'Tis too late. Will: Time's one lock shades his forehead! 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Bankend, 3rd December, 1869. 
 I fear for your letter to-morrow. I am told it is " On 
 ding o' snaw," and the prospect being so very white is very 
 black indeed. The weather is gone all wrong. The year 
 has run out of winters, and is begun using old ones over 
 again, such as the grey-haired seniors tell us about. " Time 
 has run back, and fetched the age of cold," as Milton 
 would put it, and the consequence for me is that I have 
 taken to skulking a good deal. You see I am anxious to 
 prevent any return of dwams, and I think they have some 
 kind of connection with the cold weather, for the one I told 
 you about exactly synchronised with that sudden swoop of 
 
290 
 
 THE INVALID. 
 
 frosty days which we experienced about the middle of 
 October. I therefore make a practice of sneaking out 
 about noon, and walking backwards and forwards in the lee 
 of the northern wall of the orchard. I am glad you like 
 the x\Q.\M pome as far as it goes, only your praises are so loud 
 and emphatical that they a little stagger me. I don't think 
 it is " grand," and when you say it is " grandly new," 1 
 begin to fear your style is growing spasmodic. . . . 
 Pray for good weather and spring. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Baxkexd, December loth, 1869. 
 
 That " December loth" which I have written down for a 
 date to this letter is the first little circumstance that much 
 stirred my attention as a reminder of the year's age — its old 
 age. Now that it is old, I am glad it is so old. I wish it 
 would make haste to be done altogether. It is behaving 
 really very ill with its little remnant of weather. Its days 
 are not days, for there is no light in them. Neither are 
 they nights, for one cannot sleep through them, but must 
 be up and eating. I almost believe they are days that 
 have escaped from Lapland, and are running southwards to 
 get the ice and snow thawed out of them ! How they 
 steam ! how they reek ! how unbreatheable is the air of 
 them ! But I must stop this abuse lest I diverge into 
 slander : for it is possible to go too far, even in criticising 
 the weather. Let us hope to-morrow will be a better day — 
 not a mere gaoler like to-day. 
 
 In the meantime, when I have managed to reach the 
 sunniest corner of the orchard walk I try to amuse and cheer 
 myself by picturing what it will be like when spring is come 
 round again. Then there will be blossom upon all the 
 apple and pear trees ; blackbirds and mavises will build 
 their nests and sing songs ; the ground will be covered with 
 waving ryegrass and leafy clover (for it is sown with grass 
 
FAMILY SURROUNDINGS. 291 
 
 this year), the sun will shine, and I will sit upon this big 
 stone and rejoice and thank God that " the winter it is past, 
 and the simmer come at last." So I say to myself, and 
 then I give a look to the wintry sky, and a hitch to 
 White's mauve mits, and march home again. Let patience 
 have her perfect work ! 
 
 During his long illness Davidson was specially 
 happy in his family surroundings. We have seen at 
 earlier stages of his history how tenderly he thought 
 of home when he was far away from it. And now 
 that he was withdrawn from the activities of life, it 
 was an unspeakable comfort to him to be in the midst 
 of a large circle of kind and sympathising friends. 
 Those members of the family who were married were 
 all settled near their father's house, and the invalid 
 brother was an object of tender affection to every one 
 of them. Their visits cheered him, and he took a 
 lively interest in all their affairs. He says playfully : 
 " I am well informed in babyology, I have such a 
 following of nephews and nieces. I believe I must be 
 at least a thirty-fold uncle ; think of that. To be 
 uncle to three must be as responsible a predicament 
 as being father to one ; think, therefore, of my having 
 responsibility on my back equal to that of the father 
 of a family of ten." He had peculiar pleasure in the 
 society of his elder brother — ten years his senior — 
 who was then engaged in business in Jedburgh. He 
 was his guest during the time that Bankend was under 
 repair, and after that he visited him daily as long as 
 he was able. The relation between the strong health- 
 
292 
 
 THE INVALID. 
 
 ful man of business occupied with the bustle of the 
 market-place, and the pale student whose work was 
 done, was very touching and very beautiful. Every- 
 thing connected with "Jack" was matter of deepest 
 interest to Davidson. It was of his eldest son that he 
 wrote thus in February, 1868 : — 
 
 The day before yesterday young Tani (Tombie) did a 
 very notable thing : he tottered five steps and then fell into 
 the gratulative arms of his fond father. This exploit has 
 been the event of the week. Speech on any other subject 
 excepting that and the weather is not tolerated in either 
 house. John, I do believe, regards his first-born as the 
 inventor of the walking-art, and as entitled to have his 
 rights protected by Letters Patent from the Queen. Of 
 course I still hold in my own mind that " there have been 
 brave men before Agamemnon," that I have been occasion- 
 ally conscious of moving from place to place by means of 
 the device of standing on my feet, and then moving them 
 alternately past one another; in short, that Tombie is work- 
 ing on a patent which is as ancient as Adam and Eve, or the 
 Gorilla, or the great progenitor of all the cocks and hens. I 
 say that I am conscious of all that in my own mind ; but I 
 have not yet had the hardihood to own my secret opinion, or 
 even to hint in that direction. In the meantime I under- 
 stand that my " last new nephew," as you called him, is able 
 to totter more steps every day, and that he weighs 24lbs. 
 avoirdupois. 
 
 The little fellow whose earliest steps were thus 
 spoken of, was destined to finish his short journey 
 several months before Davidson entered into rest. 
 They now lie side by side, and the same drooping 
 willow-tree sheds its leaves on both their graves: — 
 
TOMBIE'S DEA TH. 
 
 293 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Bankend, December i8th, 1869. 
 
 .... We are living in the Valley of the Shadow — that 
 is, it has been darker to us all this week than it is now 
 habitually with me (did you ever give God thanks for the 
 23rd Psalm?), for we have at length lost our little Tombie, 
 and the thought of him keeps toddling every now and then 
 across my mind. He died on Monday forenoon, and he 
 was buried yesterday. We all miss him sorely. He had 
 been ill again for about six weeks past, but for three or four 
 days before he died he seemed to be getting brisker 
 again. Then, on Monday morning after breakfast, he took 
 a slight fit of coughing, and his father lifted him out of 
 bed on to his knee, where he lay looking up in his face 
 and patting his cheek till he died. And that was the end 
 of little Tombie. 
 
 Almost all the town and neighbourhood knew him or 
 knew about him and his long sad fight for life, so there 
 were a great many people at his funeral ; it was quite a 
 large one for a child. I had a strong liking for him, for I 
 saw him often, and he was a nice little fellow ; but, besides 
 all that, there was always connected with his little life a kind 
 of personal interest for me, for he happened just to enter 
 life the very day I was leaving it behind me — he was born 
 on the evening of December 21st, 1866, just about thehoui 
 that I came home with my little amount of work done. Oh, 
 how little, how very little that work was ! 
 
 I am grieved for my brother ; the world has prospered 
 with him, and he does deserve it. We look at each other 
 in a dumb sort of way. I can say little to comfort him, and 
 I am too near Tombie to mourn, but I want you to send me 
 the 1863 hymn. I never told you that I gave away my copy 
 to a poor woman in Ireland. It was a break in that wretched 
 journey to Ballymena. Poor mother ! She was in great 
 
294 
 
 THE INVALID. 
 
 distress about her bairnie. (She and her husband were 
 returning from the funeral, and she was evidently in bad 
 health.) I heard her story, and spoke to tliem both for a 
 while, and, in a moment of inspiration, as I was leaving 
 them, I remembered the little hymn. I had some idea you 
 would not reproach me for giving it thus away, and now you 
 can once more be a "daughter of consolation." So send it 
 out to me, and this time I shall not give it away, but will 
 write it out myself, and keep your one. 
 
 To th: Same. 
 
 I5anki:ni> 25th December, 1869. 
 .... It is time to wish you a happy Christmas, for it is 
 already past eleven o'clock of the day. So I wish you not 
 only the happiness of this Christmas, but that all your 
 Christmases to come yet may be much happier ones than 
 this. I suppose that we shall have to depend for the 
 happiness of the present one a good deal upon ourselves, 
 and not very much upon our circumstances : a good deal 
 upon what hopes we can get to bud out in our minds, and 
 not very much upon present realities. You know we all 
 draw mostly upon the future for our present delectations ; it 
 is the trick of all humanity, and we practise it all the year 
 round. So let us try to make a little halo of the seasonable 
 " merriness " around the head of this rather wan and lugu- 
 brious Christmas, by hoping that another year will bring 
 better fortunes for us, and that as our to-day is but a dull 
 and beclouded one, we shall have many " gay to-morrows " 
 yet, and " rejoice according to the days wherein we have 
 seen evil." I believe that last quotation is Scripture, which 
 reminds me that we sometimes profess to be religious 
 people to some little extent — you and I ; and that some 
 little measure of happiness — perhaps not a little — may be 
 won by the endeavour on our part to enter into the spirit of 
 the time's associations, which, if we lose sight of, or thought 
 
THE NEW YEAR. 295 
 
 of, these sick Christmases of ours would be unhappy indeed. 
 But we need not be-preach each other. A happy Christmas, 
 and many happier ones to follow it. 
 
 .... Talking of Bill and of presents, he has got a terrier 
 for me, said to be a very fine specimen. It is of the Dandie 
 Dinmont persuasion, and, as respects colour, dark and dun 
 — dark-bodied and dun-legged. I have been considering 
 the all-important question of name, and have almost made 
 up my mind to call him "Jim," after the Shepherd, but I 
 am still open to suggestions, if they be of a judicious 
 kind. . . . 
 
 I'o tJic Same. 
 
 Bankknd, January ist, 1870. 
 
 .... And now it is a new morning, a new month, a new 
 year, a new decade — it is 1870 at last, I wish you a happy 
 new year. I am glad it is come ; and I am glad its prede- 
 cessor is gone and done with. Not that I ought to dislike 
 the old year altogether either, for I have had a good deal of 
 enjoyment out of his reign. But latterly he has turned 
 rather against me, and I have not had very much to be 
 thankful for at his hands in the end of his days. I look 
 forward to the new comer with better expectations. His 
 days are, at any rate, of the lengthenmg sort, and every one 
 of them, I hope, will bring more and more sunshine than 
 its predecessor, with more and more warmth and genial 
 weather, longer walks, and pleasanter saunterings up and 
 down. If only these small wants be attended to by our 
 young friend, it will soon be spring again, and all will be 
 well. 
 
 One of the last acts of '69 with respect to myself, was 
 the awakening in my left shoulder of a certain violent, hot, 
 fierce, and temper-trying pain, which once assailed me in 
 the same quarter about two years ago. It is better again 
 now, heaven be thanked, but it was bad enough while it 
 lasted. It began on the Saturday evening — last Saturday 
 
296 THE INVALID. 
 
 evening, that is — and left off being intolerable on the even- 
 ing of Monday last ; since which time it became first quite 
 tolerable, then mild, and then unworthy of any further 
 notice. At present it is only by a few digs in the shape of 
 rare and occasional stounds that I am still kept in mind of 
 the rogue's existence. 
 
 .... You have broken bargain a little in asking after 
 the poem's growth : you must not ask about it, because I 
 only take to it by fits and starts, and then leave it alone 
 again for as long as you like. There are only other two 
 stanzas come into being ; so that its growth, you see, is 
 quite sufficiently deliberate. . . . 
 
 ' To the Same. 
 
 Bankend, January 8th, 1870. 
 Let me begin this letter with a word of friendly remon- 
 strance and expostulation. Do you, after all the witty, 
 elegant, and wise letters that I have written you — do you 
 take me to be so little master of " our English " as to call 
 my chest my s/iouldcr, and my shoulder my chest ? Is thy 
 servant an ass after all ? Has he only been speaking good 
 grammar all this time by some special inspiration or ven- 
 triloquism like Balaam's, and now is he reverting to his real 
 and vernacular bray ? No, no, the pain was in the 
 shoulder, and not at all in the chest. Moreover, it is gone 
 away again, and its place knows it no more. So, do not go 
 digging into the earth, nor flying into tlie air, nor diving 
 into the seas, in search of matter for alarm ; but take our 
 ills as they are, or try to imagine them less rather than 
 larger. To be sure, the pain in the shoulder was bad 
 enough, and has mauled me not a little, but I am beginning 
 to gain ground again, and to eat as voraciously as ever. . . . 
 Still I don't manage to grow fat : for that dzaam in the end 
 of autumn has rendered me so subject to colds that I have 
 to take great care if I wish to go out and come in again 
 
THE LAST LINK. 297 
 
 without catching a httle one. Luckily, I have caught no 
 big ones, however. . . . 
 
 I told you about the terrier I was to get, and which was 
 to be named after the Shepherd. He arrived in the bottom 
 of a basket, borne by two boys, last Monday forenoon, and 
 his name being already " Dick" and not Jim, I have con- 
 cluded to let him be Dick all the days of his life. Chang- 
 ing names is always an awkward affair, whether it be the 
 case of your Joshua Bug, or the case of your terrier Dick. 
 As regards the tyke himself, he is as nice a little hobgoblin 
 as one could desire — a goblin of most fierce, wild, and 
 dishevelled aspect ; and we mean to be very great friends, 
 indeed. He is between three and four months old. . . . 
 
 In what rash and inconsiderate hour did I hint at that 
 pome? Positively you must not jog me; if you jog me I 
 shall stand still, of malice and set purpose. Indeed, I have 
 some thought of laying it aside for a while, at any rate until 
 I see the end better. In the meantime, I send you these 
 three verses under protest ; I send them just because I am 
 weak, and the temptation to please you is strong ; I send 
 them under protest because I shall probably alter them all 
 again, as well as the verses you have got already. They 
 are quite unfinished. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Bankp:nd, January 14th, 187c. 
 
 The Percy ta'en, the Douglas slain, 
 
 I watch'd them borne for Teviotdale, 
 Till I, too, in the proud, sad train 
 
 Bore bloodied sword and batter'd mail. 
 
 But suddenly the dream did fail : 
 Vanish'd the form of either Earl 
 
 With spear and pennon from the vale, 
 For there sate she, the winsome Girl 
 Of Redesdale. 
 
298 THE INVALID. 
 
 There now ! That is the shape of the " missing link " in 
 Redesdale. Will it do ? Say yes, for it will have to do. 1 
 have no more poems to give you this week : and as for your 
 last letter in January, which you threaten to make a. Jogger 
 of, I hereby set it at utter defiance, and the more you jog 
 the more will I stand still ! Moreover, I don't see my way 
 at present, and have half-and-more laid that pome aside for 
 a while. Hence I have gone back on " Redesdale," you 
 see. Besides, you have not yet criticised those verses I 
 gave you in my last letter ; only I reflect you must have 
 been greatly hurried to get your answer ready in time. So, 
 never mind, but don't put me off by telling me that, as 
 the first instalment was " grandly new," the second one is 
 " newly grand." We are passing through a stratum of colds 
 here just now. My father and mother have been laid up, 
 and my mother is still in bed. I thought I had escaped, 
 but I feel symptoms this afternoon that I am mistaken. I 
 mean to take measures at once — i.e., mustard and gro7C'/. 
 
 The repetition here of this stanza, ah'eady given in 
 the poem of " Redesdale," will be pardoned in view of 
 the fact that it was the last verse Davidson ever 
 wrote. It is not a little touching to note that his 
 latest poetical utterance is an echo of the Ballad 
 literature which was the delight of his boyhood. He 
 has been " allured and brought into the wilderness," 
 but he is " singing again as in the days of his youth." 
 To the Rev. James Brown. 
 
 Bankend, January 17th, 1870. 
 
 Your letter was very welcome and very exhilarating ; in 
 fact, it diffused all about me something quite resembling 
 daylight. For you must know we have had no days here 
 this long time — nothing but nights of the deepest dye — 
 "nights deep-drenched in misty Acheron." I sigh for Arran 
 
THE WISPS OF STRAW. 299 
 
 shore, for it's there I fain would be, drinking drams in the 
 sun in that bonnie countrie ! Oh those drams ! 
 
 And then your letter did so smack of the Orient that ray 
 head has been filled with the turban ever since I read it. 
 I would to the heavens I could have gone a-crusading along 
 with you. . . . 
 
 I have enclosed, you will see, other three snatches ot 
 verse— one of them a sonnet^ — which I don't think you 
 have seen, but which I think you will like, a little. It 
 doesn't mean to be thoughtful, of course ; but I think it is 
 rather poetical in the expression, and I have reason to know 
 that the feeling it embodies is extremely real. But, behold 
 how this man praiseth himself ! It would certainly be a 
 great advantage to me in every way to get some of those 
 things into a good magazine ; only, 1 beseech you not to go 
 far out of your way, nor yet bring your soul nigh to an\- 
 thing that is disagreeable to accomplish this end. More- 
 over, don't be disappointed or annoyed on my account if 
 you shouldn't happen to succeed. " He that is down need 
 fear no fall." I remember some seven or eight years since, 
 when I was living in Edinburgh, and happened to get 
 inconveniently out-at-elbows, I sent to Maaniila/i that copy 
 of verses which was printed in the Scots/nan last summer, 
 " On the Cheviots." It was in a very crude and dishevelled 
 condition, however, barely finished, and not quite intelligible 
 even to myself at that time ; therefore they sent it back 
 along with a circular as ingeniously contrived as any fair- 
 minded recipient could desire to " let him down softly." 
 So I put the poem into my desk again, and a good wisp of 
 straw into each elbow, and got over the disappointment ver}- 
 soon. If, then, you should have to write No, remember 
 that you write it to one who knows all about No already ; 
 and we have plenty of good straw here. . . . 
 
 ^ " A Sick Man to the Earliest Snowdrop." 
 
300 THE INVALID. 
 
 Now you are the very kindest of men to take all this 
 trouble, and you will undoubtedly go to heaven. But for 
 all that, take care of the perils which beset those who go on 
 pilgrimage. Beware of " Shrieks " and " Dragonmen," and 
 all men of Belial of that sort. As for myself, I have no 
 more tales of blood to tell you ; but I make uncommonly 
 little progress in the right direction. However, I will turn as 
 strenuous a hand as I can to that old Tshmael whose hand 
 is against us all, and try not to be dead when you come 
 back. ... I commend myself to those of your fellow- 
 travellers whom I know, and I bid them and you God-speed. 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Bankend, 2ist January, 1870. 
 .... I am glad you liked so well that missing link in 
 " Redesdale," now that it has been found. I finished 
 yesterday the heavy task of writing them all into the 
 morocco book. It is about one third filled with them ; 
 and glad am I that I have got the affair dragged to its end 
 — transcribing is really so wearisome, both to the flesh and 
 to the spirit. About the " grandly new " one, there is 
 nothing to report whatever. I never take it up into my 
 thoughts at all just now. As for the stumbling-block of a 
 " But," I put it in for the sense's sake, for one thing; and 
 also to keep people from swimming along the rhythm too 
 easily and monotonously. Verse grows wearisome if it don't 
 be varied, and the reader is made careful by being now and 
 again taken aback. I stand up for the " but " : just make 
 as good a job of the "year" as you can, and go on. In 
 the meantime I am quite in earnest when I say, Don't jog 
 me. Anything I do in this line at this season is by mere 
 chance. To write steadily, or think often on poetical sub- 
 jects, I must be in the habit of going out and coming in as 
 I like among green fields, green woods, and good weather. 
 This is the time of all the year when I don't "get on." I 
 
BODINGS OF THE SPRING. 
 
 301 
 
 am not en rapport with nature : she gives me no pleasure : 
 I have to skulk from her. Indeed, since I had that pain in 
 the shoulder I have not been out of doors at all ; and this 
 last cold has not made me very much better. . . . These 
 matters, I believe, have a good deal to do with my not 
 getting on with \\\t pome, too ; for your praise is so pleasant 
 to me that I think I could make shift to get over some of 
 the other impediments to get more of it. They also kept 
 me from going for that P. O. order ; perhaps you can give 
 Jim the money in the meantime, and he can get me some 
 books just now when passing through. Massinger's Plays, 
 Palgrave's Travels in Arabia, Stanley's Life of Arnold, I 
 will name at present. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Thank Heaven ! February 4th, 1870. 
 
 You see that I begin for once in a becomingly grateful 
 strain. I have written the words gratefully, for I begin to 
 have forewarnings and pleasant bodings of the coming of 
 the Spring. To-day, for instance, looks like a forerunner ; 
 it is genial and clear, and some wafts of air that I have 
 caught through open windows have quite a mild feeling 
 about them. There will soon be snowdrops, I have no 
 doubt, concerning which you know what has been said or 
 sung by a certain sick man of our acquaintance. The same 
 sick man would say to a very dear and faithful inquirer that 
 he thinks "if Spring were come we may begin to hope again 
 in a mild and humble sort of way." But the '' conscious- 
 ness " you say you have gathered from my letters, that 1 
 am not so well as I have been, is quite correct ; indeed, I 
 have somewhat carefully endeavoured to make their tone 
 such as would, not abruptly and violently, but as gently as. 
 possible, lead up to this same consciousness. I fear I shall 
 not be so strong this year as I was last. I have been losing 
 ground a good deal this winter, especially since I have been 
 
302 THE INVALID. 
 
 shut up within doors. My arch-enemy, or at least the 
 enemy who first succeeded in bringing me down again, was 
 the attack which I have always talked about rather vaguely 
 as the " Dwam." You were so " dowie, and heartless, and 
 wae " at the time that I could not find it in my heart to tell 
 you that the Dwam was neither more nor less than an attack 
 of bleeding at the lungs ! I think it was brought on by 
 over-fatigue and cold. At first it was so trifling that I said 
 nothing about it ; then it came on again one morning while 
 I sat reading at the fireside after breakfast, where it could 
 be concealed no longer. So my mother sent for the doctor, 
 who gave me some morphia, which gradually brought the 
 attacks to a close. I did not lose much more, I am sure, 
 than half-a-pint of blood altogether ; the doctor said the 
 loss was trifling, and that if I stayed indoors until my slight 
 cold passed away, I might go on as usual. I thought very 
 little of the matter myself, too, excepting only the main 
 attack; indeed, I amused myself between the doses oi 
 morphia with composing a lampoon on the whole business 
 — an employment in which I was interrupted once or twice 
 by little returns of the phenomenon. I don't know whether 
 you would like to see the lampoon or not; if you would 
 like it I will send it to you. You may wish to have it as a 
 curiosity from the circumstances in which it was written. 
 If I had as much blood in my body as you people of the 
 stout persuasion, I should certainly never have missed what 
 little I had lost ; but, when I began to go about again, after 
 two or three days in the house, I found I only liked short 
 walks and easy ones. Then I would catch annoying little 
 colds, and they bothered me ; then I had a violent pain in 
 the shoulder for some days, and that bothered me ; then I 
 got a heavy cold not long since, which, though I managed 
 to stifle it pretty well by taking it in time, has, nevertheless, 
 Iiothered me very much indeed. Indeed, I have had the 
 
BULLETINS. 303 
 
 doctor again this week. He says I want open-air exercise 
 as soon as the weather is good ; and, praise God, I heard a 
 bird singing this morning before any of us were out of 
 bed. So there you have a succinct resume of the whole 
 matter. . . . Indeed, I am getting rather Hveher again 
 these last few days. 
 
 1\> tlu- Same. 
 
 Baxkend, February i8th, 1870. 
 
 You want a bulletin. Marry, I don't know that I can 
 give you any other tlian I have given you already, to wit, , 
 that I'm nae wanr. I never have any pains. Indeed, I 
 think I begin to feel stronger this week ; but, of course, in 
 a case of my present kind progress can only be marked at 
 longish intervals. I am very sensibly better than I was a 
 month since. So let us tiiank God, and take courage. 
 You will get the lampoon next week. And, as regards that 
 po)iie, be it known that I have designedly banished all 
 thoughts of it from my mind for a time, until my head get a 
 little stronger again. ... 
 
 'J'o t/w Sai/ic. 
 
 Rankknd, March 5th, 1870. 
 I am better again than I have been for a good while. 
 The weather, too, looks a little better to-day, and so I am 
 preparing my mind, body, and clothes for a sortie the very 
 first time that a "shining hour" appears that shall offer 
 reasonable prospects to a somewhat frail " improver." How- 
 delightful it will be. If it should do no more than merely 
 break up the monotony of one's daily life indoors, and 
 induce or enforce the slightest change of habits, it will do 
 one good and be a blessing. 
 
 Let us thank God if, after all our afflictions, we are con- 
 scious of any softening of our hearts to other people's ills 
 and failings ; or of any increased earnestness in wrestling 
 against our own arrogance of mind or temper ; or even of 
 
304 THE INVALID. 
 
 any increased readiness to own its presence in our breasts 
 when it is there. But, lo ! is not this preaching again ? . . . 
 I find I am not yet strong enough to make much of the old 
 dramatists : I must read modern for a while yet. I should 
 like Stanley's Life of Arnold; Henry Taylor's Plays ; Dean 
 Milman's Poems. . . . 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Bankend, Marcli 12th, 1870. 
 I must make an era of this week, a favourable era too, 
 for I thank heaven I have once more been in the open air. 
 Thursday was the day, the blessed heaven-born day that 
 brought me the renewal of intercourse with Nature, this 
 renewal of free access to the sunshine and the softer winds. 
 Did you ever experience a restoration of this kind ? Unless 
 you have, you cannot form any notion of what it is really 
 like to the restored. It is a quarter of a year since I was 
 out of doors last, and I own to you that the imprisonment 
 has been irksome enough. And so, I suppose it is not to 
 be wondered at very much that when I got to the open air 
 on Thursday (it was the loth of March, mark it with a red 
 letter), and saw the sunlight lying on the fields, and the 
 water of the Jed glinting beneath it, and felt the soft wind 
 blowing on my face again, it brought the water into my 
 eyes, and a sensation into my throat that made me unable 
 to answer when my father spoke to me. . . . 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Bankend, March 19th, 1870. 
 .... The time available for writing your letter was 
 consumed in this great out-of-door enterprise, and in the 
 preliminary and subsequent arrangements for it. For you 
 must know that my goings-out are not mere matters of 
 hat-donning and doing it. Ah ! no. They are expeditions, 
 undertakings, high and perilous enterprises. They are the 
 cynosures of all the eyes in the establishment. When I set 
 
WINTER IN THE CHIMNEY CORNER. 305 
 
 out I am loaded with plaids, coats, and good advices ; and 
 when I come in again I am greeted like one returning from 
 a far country. In short, it is great fun. . . . 
 
 To the Rev. Robert P. Douglas. 
 
 Bankend, March 23rd, 1870. 
 
 My ever-dear Boy, — Why have I not written to you long 
 ago ? Not because your image is grown indistinct to me, 
 for I think of you too often to allow that to grow possible. 
 Nor because I have been careless either, although appear- 
 ances are a good deal against me. Nor yet because your 
 letters have been uninteresting to me ; for they have been 
 quite the reverse, and have all been read and read again 
 oftener than I can tell you — especially that one about your 
 perils among those Annandale lions on your way to Leeshens. 
 But, alas ! Robert of mine, the truth is, I have not been 
 able to write, at least not without an amount of pain and 
 labour attending the effort, the contemplation of which was 
 too oppressive to permit that eftbrt to be made. This state 
 of affairs dates from the middle of October, when I had a 
 rather smart attack of bleeding at the lungs. I didn't think 
 all the blood that I lost would turn out to be very material 
 after all, but I was wrong ; for this same attack proved to 
 be the commencement of a series of aches, ails, colds, 
 catarrhs, and such matters, which finally brought me ex- 
 ceedingly low. I have not been out of doors since before 
 Christmas until the other day, and, in short, I have had a 
 very miserable winter in the chimney corner. 
 
 March 24. — I was stopped here yesterday by something 
 or other, I forget what. I am easily stopped just now ; and, 
 when I am stopped, it is a hundred to one but I don't start 
 again. I suppose the fact that I have resumed so soon may 
 be taken as a sign of improvement. Indeed, I was inclined 
 to believe myself decidedly improving during those three or 
 four fine days which we had recently, and when I managed 
 
 u 
 
3o6 ' THE INVALID. 
 
 to get out of doors ; but this fresh descent upon us of the 
 " enemy, winter and rough weather," has somewhat knocked 
 the heels from under my hopes, and left them sprawhng. I 
 suppose they will gather their legs again when decent 
 weather returns. In the meantime there is nothing for it 
 but the attitude of the sheep in winter as our Walter de- 
 scribes them — 
 
 " With meek despondency they eye 
 The withered sward and wintry sky." 
 
 By the way, do you ever remember the weather in your 
 last prayer on Sundays ? Don't forget it, my suckling 
 apostle ! 
 
 But, ah ! my budding Saint Paul, what is this you tell me 
 of being unpopular in the vawcancies ? Don't be unpopular, 
 my boy ; it will never do. Look at me ; I was unpopular ; 
 and behold the state of wreck, shelvation, and overwhummle- 
 ment generally. Now there is no use saying that it is 
 pleasant to be wrecked, shelved, and overwhummled ; for it 
 isn't — experto crcde. Roar, therefore, swing your arms and 
 beat your pulpit till the Bible dances upon it, and, in short, 
 have at them violently, and there is no fear but some of 
 them will give you a call for your roar. Speaking seriously, 
 it is necessary to be popular in some degree, and I know 
 very well that the attainment of that necessary degree lies 
 quite in your power, Robert ; indeed, I am not sure but it lies 
 even in my own — that is to say, it did lie, before my heavens 
 fell about my ears. At any rate, if the Divine Healer were 
 ever to see me, " Be cured, and preach again," I think I 
 should make a stronger effort to be popular than I did 
 before. Of course, to seek popularity for its own sake, or 
 for the sake of bread and butter, is not the search I am 
 speaking of ; but, if one is to work, he must get into some 
 field or other; and ours is a field to which that is the only 
 gateway I am aware of. So, Robert, my dear, " improve the 
 
HOPE DEFERRED. 
 
 307 
 
 shining hour," and get a " sphere " for yourself. Get a quiet 
 country one, if possible, but get some sort or other ; for the 
 "shining hour" has a trick of passing away and not coming 
 back again — 
 
 " There was a craw sat on a stane, 
 It flew away and there was nane." 
 
 I am glad you have seen and like that " Premature 
 Report." It was made since I saw you. The other poems 
 were put in the Scotsman to see how people would like them. 
 Some people liked them very well. Brown would tell you 
 of my visit to his summer-quarters, which I enjoyed very 
 greatly, and which, indeed, greatly benefited me. . . . 
 Now write immediately, and let me know your new appoint- 
 ments and journeys ; it will cheer me up to hear from you. 
 Indeed, I could almost stand a visit of you soon, if the 
 weather would mend and let me out of doors again. I 
 have been quite unvisitable all winter. Half an hour's talk 
 knocked me up. I had a letter from Geordie a {t\N days 
 ago ; pray let him know why I have been silent so long. I 
 hope your mother and Sandy are keeping well. Remember 
 me to all your friends. 
 
 To Miss Dunlop. 
 
 Bankend, March 26th, 1870. 
 
 Behold at long and at last and at length the so-called 
 Lampoon, or rather to be named the " Hobgoblinade " than 
 anything else. My latest impression of it on reading it over 
 at length is that it is dull : say truly does it strike you as 
 being of that nature ? I don't care if you do say so. 
 
 I really don't know whether to lie down and give in or 
 not. Storms and snows again ; and yet last Saturday I 
 thought they were over and gone for the year, and past for 
 good and all. This renewed visitation, I confess, is really 
 to be put in the catalogue of things which justify the saying 
 that " hope deferred maketh the heart sick." However, it 
 
 u 2 
 
3o8 THE INVALID. 
 
 would scarcely be reasonable either to succumb now. It 
 would be rather pusillanimous to bear up through a whole 
 protracted winter, and then to lie down in dust and ashes 
 and a pool of tears, when I have already smelt spring air 
 and seen the crocus. That would be sinking in harbour 
 alongside the quay. No, we will not give in ! " Men ought 
 always to pray and not to faint." 
 
 I was progressing pretty well during those fine days. The 
 first two of them I kept cautiously to the end of the house 
 where the sun was shining, and there paced backwards and 
 forwards. Then I made my way to the wooden bridge — my 
 father going with me in case I should break down ; but I 
 didn't break down. And last Sunday I launched out courage- 
 ously and alone, and managed to walk as far as to the other 
 end cf the orchard walk and back — a feat which surprised 
 the whole family and myself too. On Monday I repeated 
 the exploit ; and on Tuesday it was on ding d snoiv again. 
 
 I have benefited so much, however, by these walks and 
 draughts of fresh air, that I have felt stronger all the rest of 
 this week, although I have been close prisoner again all the 
 time. Still, I cannot help screwing the Psalmist's prayer 
 into my own point of view and saying — " Turn thou my 
 captivity like the streams in the south ; then shall my mouth 
 be filled with laughter, and my tongue with singing." . . . 
 
 To the Satnc. 
 
 Bankend, April 2nd, 1870. 
 Here is a shining, gleaming, altogether magnificent spring 
 morning — a jewelly morning; and my father insists upon 
 getting my overshoes drawn on to mine feet, and seeing me 
 start for the Orchard Walk. O, sunshiny spring morning, 
 thou wert not made for sitting indoors and writing letters ; 
 let me be out to be a portion of the sunshine and of thee ! 
 So he declares, or would declare, if he only knew his Byron ; 
 but he neither knows him nor cares therefor. His earnest- 
 
''AT THE WELL." 309 
 
 ness, however, leads me to compromise the matter with him, 
 and so I am going to have the overshoes donned and sally 
 forth — one part of the compromise being that at the same 
 time I shall take the letter and a pencil along with me, and 
 do part of your epistle as I sit in the sun and enjoy the 
 delicious weather. I was along the same way yesterday, 
 and, in the course of my walk, which was only half-way 
 along, I saw a bee, a fly, and a sodger (insect clad in 
 scarlet), so that the signs of spring are now unmistakable. 
 yitxQxwious,^ too, has planted a series of seats all along the 
 walk, right in the sun's eye ; and I can lounge along from 
 one to another of them without any necessity of fatiguing 
 myself. And now I will " bundle and go." 
 
 Then follows the rest in pencil : — 
 
 " The Well." — And so we return to our muttons — that is 
 to say, our pencil at the well. This well is rather more than 
 half-way along the walk ; it is situated in a roundish recess, 
 very well sheltered from wind, but superintended almost all 
 the day long by the sun ; and here Mercurious has judi- 
 ciously placed one of his seats. . . . 
 
 I must not forget to mention that there are several buds 
 of a small early chamcedrys — a kind of speedwell — to right 
 and left of me, which have come into bloom since yesterday. 
 They are extremely beautiful and cheering to look at, and I 
 can't keep my eyes from seeking them whenever I look off 
 the paper. 
 
 I had no idea the " Hobgoblinade " would prove so sen- 
 sational as it seems to have done in your case. I suspect 
 you have been thinking of the thing more than of \hQ pome. 
 As for the bringing of myself to do it, I can't say I felt any 
 special difficulty. It was a mere amusement interjected be- 
 
 ^ A fun-name for his nephew, John, because he used to take his 
 letters to the post. The mis-spelling was intended. — Ed. 
 
310 THE INVALID. 
 
 tvveen attacks and closes. The ciulness I spoke of referred to a 
 want of speed in the action, and in the succession of the parts. 
 Write out some copies, and send them in the book parcel 
 next week. ... 
 
 To tlic Same. 
 
 Bankend, April 8th, 1870. 
 
 The books (Froude, Vol. XII., and Taylor's Poems) 
 arrived all safe. 1 am unlucky in my choice of biographies ; 
 it seems that my taste in that direction coincides with that 
 of so many other people, that we are always pushing one 
 another from attaining that which is common goal to the 
 body of us. Never mind, we have at last secured Taylor, 
 and he, I think, formed one of my first list. 
 
 Talking, bulletinically (I am not sure if this word be in 
 the smaller dictionaries), this has been a good week for us. 
 My mother and I have been out every day, more or less, 
 until to-day, which is raining, but not to be very much 
 abused, considering the dry company of its predecessors. 
 We can afford to give up one day in the seven to winds and 
 rains, when the remainder is so breezy and sunny and full 
 of the operations of the spring. 
 
 I can't say that I am conscious of such improvement yet, 
 however ; but, so far as my recollection of this class of affairs 
 goes, I rather believe this is to be expected. I remember 
 crawling about for several weeks in the spring of 1S67 with- 
 out knowing myself any stronger at all, but only more 
 despondent and down-in-the-mouth. I am not despondent 
 and down-in-the-mouth this time, for I am grown wiser now, 
 and, I hope, more patient and less fretful than when I had 
 left good health only a few months behind. Tliis condition 
 of spirits will tell in my favour bodily by and bye. I find it 
 at present very difficult to walk much, my limbs are so stiff 
 and jointless, and my allowance of wind as yet so limited. 
 But I spend always about two or three hours in the open 
 air, sitting and lounging upon Mercurious' rough-and-ready 
 
THE ORCHARD ROUND. 
 
 311 
 
 benches, and bearing my mother company in her essays at 
 resuming open-air habits of Hfe. I don't know whether you 
 would laugh or cry to see our going out and our coming in ; 
 I think, perhaps, you would do both at once. We sally 
 forth in the forenoon when the sun has well asserted its 
 power, each with a stick (the sticks are of hazel), and hirple 
 along to bench the first. We sit there a good while (indeed 
 my mother has never gone any ferther yet). By and bye I 
 start on another stage of my constitutional, and, achieving 
 with a pcch the next Mercurial bench, I cast myself down 
 there for a few more minutes ; and so throughout the series, 
 until I reach the well where stands the last of them, and 
 whence I start again and da capo the process until I come 
 up to my mother's station, where we remain until it is almost 
 
 time for dinner. ... 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Bankend, April i6th, 1870. 
 .... Talking of the preaching era, I have had several 
 letters from Robert, poor fellow — who could get no infor- 
 mation respecting me — and each letter louder and more im- 
 portunate than its predecessor in beseeching me to let him 
 know if I were well or ill. At last I wrote him, and have 
 heard from him again. ... I have advised him to go in 
 for a quiet country kirk if possible. Oh, that I were able to 
 do it again myself ! You see I am not ambitious now ; 
 a quiet little congregation, and a quiet little manse, and 
 two quiet little sermons on the Sunday — how pleasant it 
 would be. . . . I am going to get the loan of Arnohfs Life 
 from Scott out of the Wallace Green Library, which will 
 save any further trouble on that head. . . . 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Bankend, April 23rd, 1S70. 
 Behold a small note. Receive the poor little (^ ) 
 
 ^ Word omitted. The first time such an omission has occurred in 
 these letters. — Ed. 
 
3 I 2 THE INVALID. 
 
 tenderly, for it is of a humble disposition, and makes no 
 pretension whatsoever to be a full grown letter. It merely 
 professes to be a sort of boy-herald, bearing the message 
 that the principal person will arrive on Monday morning, 
 but that he has unfortunately been unable to get himself 
 written in time for the postal arrangements. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Bankend, April 24th, 1870. 
 
 I hope the letterette, the notie, the lean little missive 
 which' I sent off to herald the somewhat larger document I 
 am beginning to-day, reached you all safe last night, and 
 kept you from indulging any alarms, apprehensions, terrors, 
 or dreads about this epistle's non-appearance. The fact is, 
 I can scarcely tell you, just in a single breath, what it was 
 that prevented me. It was no big and decisive cause in 
 particular, but rather a train of small ones. I was impeded 
 and entangled ; not stopped as by a nine feet wall. I 
 caught a slight cold, somewhere, I think, about Thursday. 
 It showed its hoof — its cloven one — unmistakably on Friday 
 afternoon, and so the beginning of your letter was deferred 
 till the Saturday. But at the same time, I was prescribed a 
 course of breakfasts-in-bed by my flither and mother. So, 
 just to please them and annoy my cold, I have submitted 
 to the mean and ignoble expedient. I take breakfast in 
 bed ! How chopfallen I am now ! How cowed. ... If 
 ever you took breakfast in bed you will know that when 
 you have an honest desire to get up in decent time, your 
 only chance of so doing lies in the exercise of speed and 
 promptitude. You musn't lie down again, or you are lost. 
 You must jump out resolutely as soon as the door closes 
 upon the retreating tray. In fact, you had better make 
 a spring at your empty cup and saucer. Now, yesterday 
 I didn't attend to this precaution. No, but I was so lost to 
 caution and to sense, and to my own knowledge of the risk 
 
HIS LAST LETTER. 
 
 313 
 
 I was running, that I lay down again, and rose not up until 
 it was too late. . . . 
 
 And now, isn't it time to leave this topic ? But, before 
 leaving it, I ought to have said that the cold is just about 
 better again, and that if the day had been a fine one, I 
 should have been out and trying to take my usual " walks 
 abroad ! " I don't manage this matter of walking well yet. 
 My limbs have been so stiffened by having sat almost all 
 winter, that I find it no easy matter to supple them again. 
 Of course practice will do it, but practice requires mor.e pith 
 than I am possessor of at present. So I have been making 
 a paction with my father to take his arm for some time every 
 day, and, as he is a swift walker, I shall have to compass 
 greater distances with him than I can possibly manage when 
 left to my own devices and those of my hazel stick. It 
 makes me conscious of a certain mingled and mixed feeling, 
 akin to sorrow and akin to shame, to remember that I am 
 thirty-one and my father seventy years old. In the mean- 
 time my motlier is improving very fast, or at least she is 
 resuming her old busy ways and habits very fast. This I 
 know principally by her thousand-a-day attentions to myself 
 — nameless little attentions which are full of comfort, and so 
 soothing that I sometimes imagine that I must be getting 
 babyish again. But if I don't stop this strain of talking, I 
 shall run the risk of making my whole letter a bulletin of 
 health. . . . 
 
 As for books, I cannot give you any list this week. I 
 find that I can only read passably stiff" books for an hour 
 or two in the forenoon. Froude suits me : Taylor I cannot 
 read yet. So, liglitish is the word. I will say more about 
 this next week if I can. . . . Pray for good weather. God 
 bless you. 
 
 This was his last letter. It was written on the 
 Sunday. On the Monday he was out of doors. His 
 
314 
 
 THE INVALID. 
 
 father accompanied him, carrying a seat on which he 
 rested when he was fatigued : for the spaces between 
 the benches which his nephew had put up in the 
 orchard were now too long for his feeble strength. 
 The grass with which the orchard had been sown 
 was beginning to appear in tender blade. The in- 
 valid, who had cheered himself in dark December by 
 picturing what that grass would be like, smiled when 
 he saw it, and said it was very beautiful. He was never 
 in the open air again. On the Thursday evening 
 he retired to rest apparently no worse than he had 
 been for several days; but early on Friday morning 
 his father heard him coughing more than usual, and 
 went to his bed-side. He saw at once the signs of 
 an impending change, and called the other members 
 of the household to take their long farewell. Mr. 
 Poison, his faithful friend and minister, was sent for, 
 and to him Davidson quietly and in iow words — as 
 was his wont — gave humble expression to the Christ- 
 ian hope which sustained his heart. Like John 
 MacLeod Campbell, " He spoke not much of religion 
 when dying. His silent death was like his life an 
 ' Amen ' to God's will." He passed calmly away at 
 noon on the 29th of April, 1870. Thus he fell on 
 the very threshold of the summer for which he had 
 longed so intensely. When they carried him out to 
 his grave " there was blossom on all the apple and 
 pear trees ; blackbirds and mavises were building 
 their nests and singing songs ; the ground was cov- 
 ered with grass." They bore him through the old 
 
THE END. 315 
 
 familiar streets up to the New Cemetery, and laid 
 him on a gentle slope that lies to the sun and looks 
 up the Jed-water. In two months the mother, who 
 had been his companion in weakness, was laid by his 
 side. In death they were not divided. He lies in 
 an honoured grave ; it is marked by a tombstone on 
 which the followinef words are inscribed : — 
 
 "^Thomas 5''^i'i^^o"> 
 
 LICENTIATE OF THE UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 
 
 Born at Oxnam Rmv, -jt/i j'lify, 1838, 
 Died at Bankenci, Jedburgh., i>)th April, 1870. 
 
 THIS STONE IS RAISED IN SACRED REMEMBRANCE 
 BY HIS COLLEGE COMPANIONS. 
 
 THE END. 
 
^vinteft at the SitibcvsitH ^ress, 
 
 BY ROBERT JtACLEHOSE, 153 WEST NILE STREET. 
 
1 1012 01042 8250 
 
 ... .' , . 4i j 
 
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