CHAPTER V

AFLOAT ON THE WORLD.

IN 1818, when he had been seven years in Kirkcaldy, and had now reached the maturity of his twenty-sixth year, Irving finally left his school and gave up teaching. The position seems to have been growing irksome to him for some time before. It was not his profession; and he was wasting the early summer of his life in work which, however cordially he embraced it, was not the bestl work for such a man. His assistants, too, on whom, as the school increased, he had to depend, brought him into other complications, and he was now no longer a youth lingering at the beginning of his career, but a man eager to enter the arena where so many others less worthy were contending for the prize; and not only so, but a man engaged to be married, to whom Nature indicated the necessity of fixing himself permanently in life. Moved by the rising excitement of all these thoughts, and apparently not without means of maintaining himself for some time, while he saw what work the world might have for him to do, he finally gave up the Kirkcaldy Academy in the summer of 1818, and resolving henceforward to devote himself to his own profession alone, came to Edinburgh, where he took lodgings in Bristo Street, a locality still frequented by students. Here be was near the college, and in the centre of all that mental activity from which he had been separated in the drowsy retirement of the country town. He entered largely and gladly into all academical pursuits. He renewed his acquaintance with friends who had been with him in his early college days, or whom he had met in his hurried visits to Edinburgh while lingering through his tedious "partial" sessions in the Divinity Hall; and seems to have heartily set to work to increase his own attainments, and make himself better qualified for whatever post he might be called to. It is not a brilliant period in the young man's life. He presents himself to us in the aspect of an unsuccessful probationer, a figure never rare in Scotland; a man upon whom no sunshine of patronage shone, and whom just as little had the popular eye found out or fixed upon; whose services were unsolicited either by friendly ministers or vacant congregations-a man fully licensed and qualified to preach, whom nobody cared to hear. With the conviction strong in his mind that this was his appointed function in the world, and with a consciousness of having pondered the whole matter much more deeply than is usual with young preachers, there rose before Irving the immovable barrier of unsuccessnot failure; he had never found means to try his powers sufficiently for failure; even that might have been less hard to bear than the blank of indifference and "unacceptability" which he had now to endure. His services were not required in the world; the profession for which, by the labors of so many years, he had slowly qualified himself, hung in his hands an idle capability of which nothing came. Yet the pause at first seems to have been grateful. He had nothing to do; but, at all events, he had escaped from long toiling at a trade which was not his. Accordingly, he attended several classes in the college during the winter of 1818-19, among which were Chemistry and Natural History. " He prosecuted these studies," says a fellow-student, " at least in some of their branches, with great delight;" although, in a note written at this period to Mr. Gordon, afterward Dr. Gordon of Edinburgh, he confesses, while mentioning that he had been studying mineralogy, " that he had learned from it as little about the structure of the earth as he could have learned about the blessed Gospel by examining the book of kittle* Chronicles!" He was also much occupied with the modern languages, French and Italian especially. These were before the days of Teutonic enthusiasm; but Irving seems to have had a pleasure in, and faculty for acquiring languages, as was testified by his rapid acquirement of Spanish at an after period of his life. Some of the few letters which throw any light on this period are occupied with discussions about dictionaries and grammars, and the different prices of the same, which show him deep in the pursuit of Italian, and, at the same time, acting as general agent and ready undertaker of country commissions. One of these, addressed to one of his pupils Difficult, puzzling in the manse of Kirkcaldy, conveys, after reporting his diligence in respect to sundry of such commissions, the following advice:' Let me entreat you to pursue your own improvement sedulously, both religious and intellectual. Read some of the Latin and Italian classics with a view to the higher accomplishments of taste and sentiment, directing all your'studies by the principle of fitting your mind still more and more for perceiving the beauties and excellencies God has spread over the existence of man." Such a motive for studies of this description has novelty in it, though it is one that we are well enough accustomed to see applied to all those educational preparations of science with which our schools abound. While he thus occupied himself in completing an education which throughout must have been more a gradual process of improving and furnishing the mind than of systematic study, Irving had also engaged warmly in all the recognized auxiliaries of University training. He' had been in the habit for years before of occasionally attending:the meetings of one of the literary societies of the college, the Philomathic, and, taking a considerable share in its proceedings. "He was sometimes very keen and powerful in debate," says Dr. Grierson, "and, without being unfair or overbearing, was occasionally in danger, by the vehemence of his manner and the strong language he employed, of being misunderstood and giving offense." But on coming to Edinburgh in 1818, he found this society, now defunct, too juvenile for his maturer age and thoughts, and was instrumental in instituting another of riper pretensions, intended " for the mutual improvement of those who had' already completed the ordinary academic course." This was called the Philosophical Association, and consisted only of seven or eight members, of whom Edward'Irving was one and Thomas Carlyle another. Some teachers of local eminence and'licentiates of the Church made up the number. The vast disproportion which exists now between these immortals and the nameless, but, in their own sphere, not undistinguished men who surrounded them, was not apparent in those days, and probably the lesser men were at no such disadvantage in their argumentations as one would'imagine at the first glance. The first essay delivered by Irving in this society was "somewhat'unexpectedly," his old companion says, on the subject of Bible Societies, and'" was full of thought, ardor, and eloquence, indicating'large views and a'mind prepared for" It would be curious to know what he had to say on a subject which afterward caused so much commotion, and on which some of his own most characteristic appearances were made. But the Philosophical Association is also defunct; other generations have formed other societies of their own, and the early sentiments of Irving and Carlyle are. as entirely lost as are-those of their less distinguished colleagues. In the reviving glow of intellectual life, his long pondering upon the uses of the pulpit came to a distinct issue.: He announced his intention of burning all his existing sermons, and beginning on a new system; an intention which was remorselessly carried out. Those prelections which the youth had delivered from year to year in the Divinity Hall, and those discourses which the Kirkcaldy parishioners had despised, and Beveridge the baker had boldly escaped from hearing, were sacrificed in this true auto da fe. No doubt it was a fit and wise holocaust. Sacrificing all his youthful conventionalities and speculations, Irving, at six-and-twenty, began to compose what he was to address to such imaginary hearers as he himself had been in Kirkcaldy church. The wonderful fame which flashed upon him whenever he stood forth single before the world takes a certain explanation even beyond the perennial explanation of all wonders which lies in. genius from this fact. For the four silent years during which he had possessed the right to. speak, other people had been addressing him out of Dr. Martin's-pulpit; all the ordinary round of argument and exhortation had been tried in unconscious experiment upon the soul of.the great preacher, who sat silent, chafing, yet weighing them all in his heart.. He knew where they failed, and- how they failed, far more distinctly than reason or even.imagination could have taught him. Their tedium, their ineffectiveness, their wasted: power and superficial feeling, told all the more strongly upon him because of his consciousness that the place. thus occupied was his. own fit place, and that he himself had. actually something to say; and when the schoolmaster's daily duties were over, and he had time and leisure to turn toward his own full equipment, the result was such as I have just described. Warmed'and stimulated by his own experience, he began to write ? sermons to himself- that -impatient,.vehement -hearer, whose. character and intelligence none of the other preachers had studied. X Perhaps, in the. -midst of all the modern outcry against sermons, the preachers of the w.orld.might adopt Irving's method While he wrote he had always in his eye that brilliant, dissatisfied, restless listener among the side pews in Kirkcaldy church. He knew to a hair's-breadth what that impatient individual wanted-how much he could bear-how he could be interested, edified, or disgusted. I have no doubt it was one of the greatest secrets of his after power; and that the sweet breath of popular applause, pleasant though it might have been, would have injured the genius which, in silence, and unacceptableness, and dire prolonged experiment of other people's preaching, came to be its own perennial hearer-the first and deepest critic of its own powers. One of the first occasions when he preached on this new system, Dr. Grierson adds, "IHe was engaged to supply the pulpit of his old professor of divinity (Dr. Ritchie), when, in his noble and impassioned zeal for the supreme and infallible standard of Scripture, he startled his audience by a somewhat unqualified condemnation of ecclesiastical formulas, although he still unquestionably maintained, as he had conscientiously, subscribed, all the doctrines of our orthodox Confession of Faith." "He was very fearless, original, striking, and solemn," continues the same authority, "in many of his statements, illustrations, and appeals." Though he is described, and indeed afterward describes himself, as still "feeling his way" in respect to some-matters of religious truth, doubt does not seem ever to have invaded his mind. At no period is there any appearance of either skepticism or uncertainty. While his mind took exception at the manner in which the truth was set forth, there is no trace in his life of that period of uncertain or negative belief-that agony of conflict which has come, falsely or truly, to be looked upon as one of the inevitable phenomena of spiritual life in every independent mind. The heroic simplicity of Irving's character seems to have rejected that vain contest among the incomprehensibles with which so many young men begin their career. Even in the arbitrary, reasoning, unreasonable days of youth, logic was not the god of the young man, who never could disjoin his head from his heart, nor dissolve the absolute unity of nature in which God had made him; and he seems to have come through all the perils of his time ?a time in which skepticism; if less refined, was by a great deal franker, honester, and more outspoken than now-with a heart untouched, and to have entirely escaped what was then called Free-thinking. Whether his personal piety originated in any visible crisis of conversion it is impossible to tell. There is no trace of it in his history, neither does he himself refer to any sudden light cast upon his life.'" I was present once or twice about this period," Dr. Grierson tells us, " when he was asked to conduct family prayers. He was very slow, pointed, and emphatic, and gave one, as yet, more the idea of profound, earnest, and devout thinking than of simple and fervent petitioning." But it is impossible to point to any portion of his life as that in which the spiritual touch was given which vivified all. His behavior was at all times blameless, but never ascetical. "He associated with, and lived in the world without restraint, joining the forms and fashions of mixed society," says an anonymous writer, supposed to be Allan Cunningham, who afterward acknowledges, with an apologetic touch of horror, that his social habits went almost the length of vulgarity, since he was once in the habit of smoking when in the company of smokers! But this seems the hardest thing that any one has to say against him. While in Edinburgh, and entering into all the modest pleasures of the little intellectual society above described, Irving met once more the little pupil whose precocious studies he had superintended at Haddington. He found her a beautiful and vivacious girl, with an affectionate recollection of her old master; and the young man found a natural charm in her society. I record this only for a most characteristic, momentary appearance which he makes in the memory of his pupil. It happened that he, with natural generosity, introduced some of his friends to the same hospitable house. But the generosity of the most liberal stops somewhere. When Irving heard the praises of one of those same friends falling too warmly from the young lady's lips, he could not conceal a little pique and mortification, which escaped in spite of him. When this little ebullition was over, the fair culprit turned to leave the room, but had scarcely passed the door when Irving hurried after her, and called, entreating her to return for a moment. When she came back, she found the simple-hearted giant standing penitent to make his confession. "The truth is, I was piqued," said Irving; "I have always been accustomed to fancy that I stood highest in your good opinion, and I was jealous to hear you praise another man. I am sorry for what I said just now-that is the truth of it;" and so, not pleased, but penitent and candid, let her go. It is a fair representation of his prevailing characteristic. He could no more have retained what he felt to be a meanness on his mind unconfessed than he could have persevered in the wrong. With this humility, however, was conjoined, in the most natural and genial union, all that old pugnacity which had distinguished him in former times. Pretension excited his wrath wherever he saw it; and perhaps he was not so long-suffering as his gigantic uncle. A story of a similar description to some already quoted belongs to this period of his life. He had undertaken to escort some ladies to a public meeting, where it was necessary to be in early attendance at the door to obtain a place. Irving had taken up a position on the entrance steps with his charges under his wing, when an official personage came pushing his way through the crowd, and ordering the people to stand back. When no attention was paid to him, this authoritative person put out his hand to thrust the Hercules beside him out of his way. Irving raised in his hand the great stick he carried, and turned to the intruder: " Be quiet, sir, or I will annihilate you!" said the mighty probationer. The composure with which this truculent sentence was delivered drew a burst of laughter from the crowd, which completed the discomfiture of the unfortunate functionary. Thus the session-the few busy months of University laborsthe long year of expectation and hope, passed over amid many occupations and solacements of friendship. But when the door was closed in the dun-colored Bristo Street room, where nothing was to be seen from the windows but a dusty street, which might have flourished in any vulgar town in existence, and bore no trace of those enchantments of Edinburgh windows which make'up for long stairs and steep ascents, the young man's prospects were not overcheerful. He had put forth all his powers of mind and warnings of experience upon his sermons, but the result had not followed his expectation. He was still, after a year's interval, the same unemployed probationer that he had left Kirkcaldy; his money nearly about spent, most likely, and his cogitations not joyful. What he was to do was not clearly apparent. That he was not to be a teacher again seems distinct enough, but whether he was ever to be a preacher on Scottish soil was more than uncertain. When he had shut out the world which would not have him, the young man returned into his solitude, making up his mind with a grieved surprise, which is quite touching and grand in its unthought-of humilty, that this gift of his, after all his labors, was still not the gift which was to prove effectual in his native country. He loved his country with a kind of worship, but still, if she would not have him, it was needful rather to carry what he could do elsewhere, than to lie idle, making no use of those faculties which had to be put to usury according to his Master's commandment. The countryman of Mungo Park and schoolfellow of Hugh Clapperton bethought himself, In all the heathen world which hems Christianity about on every side, was there not room for a missionary according to the apostolic model-a man without scrip or purse, entering in to whosoever would receive him, and passing on when he had said his message? A missionary, with Exeter Hall expectant behind him, and a due tale of conversions to render year after year, Irving never could have been; but in his despondency and discouragement, the youthful thought which had stirred him long ago returned as a kind of comfort and hopeful alternative to his mind. He no longer cast stones into the pools as he did with the Haddington schoolboys, but he set about the zealous study of languages, in order to qualify himself for the kind of mission he purposed. To make his way through the Continent, a religious wanderer totally unencumbered with worldly provisions, it was necessary to know the languages of the countries which he had to cross; and the idea refreshed him in the tedium of his long probation. When the arrival of summer dispersed his friends, Irving took refuge among his books, with thoughts of this knight-errantry and chivalrous enterprise swelling above the weariness of sickened hope. It was not the modern type of missionary, going, laden with civilization and a printing-press, to clear his little garden in the wilderness. It was the red-cross knight in that armor dinted with the impress of many battle-fields; it was the apostolic messenger, undaunted and solitary, bearing from place to place the Gospel for which he could be content to die. The young man looked abroad on this prospect, and his heart rose. It comforted him when the glow of summer found him, country bred and country loving as he was, still shut up in the shabby world of Bristo Street. "Rejected by the living," he is recorded to have said, "I conversed with the dead." His eyes turned to the East, as was natural. He thought of Persia, it is said, where the Malcolms, his countrymen, from the same vigorous soil of Annandale, were making themselves illustrious. And with grammars and alphabets, with map and history, with the silent fathers of all literature standing by, prepared himself for this old world demonstration of his allegiance and his faith. Some letters which have lately come into my hands, and of the existence of which I was unaware at the time the above pages were written, lift the veil from this silent period of his life, and reveal, if not much of his loftier aspirations, at least all the hopeful uncertainty, the suspense, sometimes the depression, always the warm activity and expectations, naturally belonging to such a pause in the young man's existence. They are all addressed to the Martin family, who had done so much to brighten his life in Kirkcaldy; and show how his style in letter-writing begins to widen out of its youthful formality into ease and characteristic utterance. Ever exuberant in his expressions of obligation and gratitude, he writes to the kind mother of the Kirkcaldy manse as "her to whom, of matrons, I owe the most after her who gave me birth;" and warmly acknowledges that " the greater part of that which is soothing and agreeable in the experiences of my last six years is associated with your hospitable house and delightful family;" while, amid somewhat solemn compliments on the acquirements of that family, their former teacher joins special mressages " to Andrew, with my request that each day he would read, as regularly as his Bible, some portion of a classical and of a French author; and to David, that he would not forget the many wise havers he and I have had together." In another letter to Mrs. Martin, the young man begs her acceptance, with many deprecations of the clumsy present, of a bed, which he describes as "the first article of furniture of which I was possessed," confessing that "it is a cumbrous and inelegant memorial." "But let me dignify it what I can," he adds quaintly, "by the fervent prayer that while it appertains to your household it may always support a healthful body, and pillow a sound head, and shed its warmth over a warm and honest heart. After such a benediction you never can be unkind enough to refuse me." To Mr. Martin, Irving writes more gravely of his own affairs, discussing at length some projects for his future occupation, all of which culminate in the proposed travels on which he had set his heart, and which were to be commenced by study in Germany. The following letter opens a glimpse into that youthful world, all unaware of its own future, and thinking of terminations widely different from those which time has brought about, which will show how another career, as brilliant and longer than Irving's, took its beginning in the same cloudy regions of uncertainty and unsuccess: "Carlyle goes away to-morrow, and Brown the next day. So here I am once more on my own resources, except Dixon, who is [betterl] fitted to swell the enjoyment of a joyous than to cheer the solitude of a lonely hour. For this Carlyle is better fitted than any one I know. It is very odd, indeed, that he should be sent for want of employment to the country; of course, like every man of talent, he has gathered around this Patmos many a splendid purpose to be fulfilled, and much improvement to be wrought out.'I have the ends of my thoughts to bring together, which no one can do in this thoughtless scene. I have my views of life to reform, and the whole plan of my conduct to new-model; and into all I have my health to recover. And then once more I shall venture my bark upon the waters of this wide realm, and if she can not weather it, I shall steer VWest, and try the waters of another world.' So he reasons and resolves; but surely a worthier destiny awaits him than voluntary exile. And for myself, here I am to remain until farther orders-if from the East, I am ready; if from the West, I am ready; and if from the folk of Fife, I am not the less ready. I do not think I shall go for the few weeks with Kinloch..... and I believe, after all, they are rather making their use of me than any thing else, but I know not; and it is myself, not them, I have to fend for, both temporally and spiritually. God knows how ill I do it; but perhaps in His grace He may defend me till the arrival of a day more pregnant to me with hours of religious improvement. "I had much more to say of the religious meetings I have been attendinig, and of the Burgher Synod, and of purposes of a literary kind I am conceiving, but lo! I am at an end with my paper and time, having just enough of both to commend me to the love of your household and to the fellowship of your prayers. "Your most affectionate friend, EDWARD IRVING." It was while in this condition, and with contending hopes and despairs in his mind, that Irving received a sudden invitation from Dr. Andrew Thomson, the minister of St. George's, to preach in his pulpit. It would be inconsistent with the loved principles of Presbyterian parity to distinguish even so eminent a man as Dr. Andrew Thomson as of the highest clerical rank in Edinburgh; but he really was so, in as far as noble talent, a brilliant and distinct character, and-not least important-a church in the most fashionable quarter could make him. With the exception of Dr. Chalmers, he was perhaps the first man of his generation then in the Church of Scotland, so that the invitation itself was a compliment to the neglected probationer. But the request conveyed also an intimation that Dr. Chalmers was to be present, and that he was then in search of an assistant in the splendid labors he was beginning in Glasgow. This invitation naturally changed the current of Irving's thoughts. It turned him back from his plans of apostolical wandering, as well as from the anxious efforts of his friends to procure pupils who might advance his interests, and placed before him the most desirable opening to his real profession which he could possibly light upon. That path which should lead him to his chosen work, at home, in the country of his kindred, his love, and his early affections, was dearer to him than even that austere martyr-path which it was in his heart to follow if need was. He went to St. George's with a new impulse of expectation, and preached, there can be little doubt, that one of his sermons which he thought most satisfactory. He describes this event to Mr. Martin as follows, with a frankness of youthful pleasure, and, at the same time, a little transparent assumption of indifference as to the result, in a letter dated the 2d of August, 1819: " I preached Sunday week in St. George's before Andrew Thomson and Dr. Chalmers, with general, indeed so far as I have heard, universal approbation. Andrew said for certain'it was the production of no ordinary mind;' and how Dr. Chalmers expressed his approbation I do not know, for I never put myself about to learn these things, as you know. I am pleased with this, perhaps more so than I ought to be, if I were as spiritually-minded as I should be; but there is a reason for it. To you yet behind the curtain, la voild! I believe it was a sort of pious and charitable plot to let Dr. C. hear me previous to his making inquiries about me as fit for his assistant. Whether he is making them now he has heard me, and where he is making them, I do not know. For, though few people can fight the battle of preferment without preoccupying the ground, etc., I would wish to be one of that few. Full well I know it is impossible without His aid who has planned the field and who guides the weapons more unerringly than Homer's Apollo, and inspirits the busy champions; and that I am not industrious in procuring. Oh, do you and all who wish me well give me the only favor I ask-the favor of your prayers." The important movement, however, passed, and the young man returned unsatisfied to his lonely apartments. He waited there for some time in blank, discouraging silence; then concluded that nothing was to come of it, and that this once again his longing hope to find somebody who understood him and saw what he aimed at was to be disappointed. This last failure seems to have given the intolerable touch to all his previous discouragements. He got up disgusted from that dull probation which showed him only how effectually all the gates of actuallife and labor were barred against him. Even at that disconsolate moment he could still find time to write to his pupil and future sister-in-law about the Italian dictionary which he had undertaken to procure for her. Then he packed up his books and boxes, and sent them off to his father's house in Annan; but, probably desirous of some interval to prepare himself for that farewell which he intended, went himself to Greenock, meaning to travel from thence by some of the coasting vessels which call at the little ports on the Ayrshire and Galloway coast. Sick at heart, and buried in his own thoughts, he took the wrong boat, and was obliged to come ashore again. At that moment another steamer was in all the bustle of departure. Struck with a sudden caprice, as people often are in such a restless condition of mind and feeling, Irving resolved, in his half desperation and momentary recklessness, to take the first which left the quay, and leaping listlessly into this, found it Irish, and bound for Belfast. The voyage was accomplished in safety, but not without an adventure at the end. Some notable crime had been perpetrated in Ireland about that time, the doer of which was still at large, filling the minds of the people with dreams of capture, and suspicions of every stranger. Of all the strangers entering that port of Belfast, perhaps there was no one so remarkable as this tall Scotchman, with his knapsack and slender belongings, his extraordinary powerful frame, and his total ignorance of the place, who was traveling without any feasible motive or object. The excited authorities found the circumstances so remarkable that they laid suspicious hands upon the singular stranger, who was only freed from their surveillance by applying to the Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Mr. Hanna, who liberated his captive brother and took him home with Irish frankness. That visit was a jubilee for the children of the house. Black melancholy and disgust had fled before the breezes at sea, and the amusing but embarrassing contretemps on land; and Irving's heart, always open to children, expanded at once for the amusement of the children of that house. One of those boys was the Rev. Dr. Hanna, of Edinburgh, the biographer and son-in-law of Chalmers, who, at the distance of so many years, remembers the stories of the stranger thus suddenly brought to the fireside, and his genial, cordial presence which charmed the house. After this the young man wandered over the north of Ireland, as he had often wandered over the congenial districts of his own country, for some weeks; pursuing the system he had learned to adopt at home-walking as the crow flies, finding lodging and shelter in the wayside cottages, sharing the potato and the milk which formed the peasant's meal. A singular journey; performed in primitive hardship, fatigue, and brotherly kindness; out of the reach of civilized persons or conventional necessities; undertaken out of pure caprice, the evident sudden impulse of letting things go as they would; and persevered in with something of the same abandon and determined abstraction of himself from all the disgusts and disappointments of life. Neither letters nor tokens of his existence seem to have come out of this temporary flight and banishment. He had escaped for the moment from those momentous questions which shortly must be faced and resolved. Presently it would be necessary to go back, to make the last preparations, to take the decisive steps, and say the farewells. He fairly ran away from it for a moment's breathing-time, and took refuge in the rude unknown life of the Irish cabins ?a thing which most people have somehow done, or at least attempted to do, at the crisis of their lives. When he re-emerged out of this refreshing blank, and came to the common world again, where letters and ordinary appeals of life were awaiting him, he found a bulky inclosure from his father in the Coleraine post-office. Gavin Irving wrote, in explanation of his double letter (for postage was no trifle in those days), that he would have copied the inclosed if he could have read it; but, not being able to make out a word, was. compelled to send it on for his son's own inspection. This inclosure was from Dr. Chalmers, inviting Irving to go to Glasgow; but the date was some weeks back, and the invitation was by no means distinct as to the object for which he was wanted. It was enough, however, to stir the reviving heart of the young giant, whom his fall, and contact with kindly mother earth, had refreshed and reinvigorated. H:e set out without loss of time for Glasgow, but only to find Dr. Chalmers absent, and once more to be plunged into the lingering pangs. of suspense. While waiting the doctor's.return, Irving again reported himself and his new expectations to his friends in Kirkcaldy. "Glasgow, 1st September, 181s "You see I am once more in Scotland; and how I came to have found my way to the same place I started from you shall now learn. On Friday last arrived at Coleraine a letter from Dr. Chalmers, pressing me to meet him in Edinburgh on the 30th, or in Glasgow the 31st of August. So here I arrived, after a very tempestuous passage in the Bob Boy; and upon calling on the doctor, I find he is still in Anstruther, at which place he proposes remaining a while longer than he anticipated, and requests to have a few days of me there. So, but for another circumstance, you might have seen me posting through Kirkcaldy to Anster, the famed in song. That circumstance is Mrs. Chalmers's ill health, of which he will be more particularly informed than he is at present by this post; and then Miss Pratt tells me there is no doubt he will return post-haste, as all good husbands ought. Here, then, I am, a very sorry sight, I can assure you. You may remember how disabled in my rigging I was in the kingdom;* conceive me, then, to have wandered a whole fortnight among the ragged sons of St. Patrick, to have scrambled about the Giant's Causeway, and crossed the Channel twice, and sailed in fishboats and pleasure-boats, and driven gigs and jaunting-cars, and never once condescended to ask the aid of a tailor's needle. Think of this, and figure what I must be now. But I have just been ordering a refit from stem to stern, and shall by to-morrow be able to appear among the best of them; and you know the Glasgow bodies ken fu' weel it's merely impossible to carry about with ane a' the comforts of the Sa't Market at ane's tail, or a' the comforts of Bond Street either. I shall certainly now remain till I have seen and finally determined with Dr. Chalmers; for my time is so short that if I get home without a finale of one kind or other, it will interfere with the department of my foreign affairs, which imperiously call for attention." The letter which begins thus is filled up, to the length of five long pages, by an account of the organization of the Synod of Ulster, and of a case of discipline which had just occurred in it, on which, on behalf of a friend at Coleraine, the traveler was anxious to consult the experience of the minister of Kirkcaldy. In respect to his own prospects, Irving's suspense was now speedily terminated. Dr. Chalmers returned, and at once proposed to him to become his assistant in St. John's. The solace to the young man's discouraged mind must have been unspeakable. Here, at last, was one man who understood the unacceptable probationer, and perceived in him that faculty which he himself discerned dimly and still hoped in-troubled, but not convinced by the general disbelief. To have his gift recognized by another mind was new life to Irving; and such a mind! the generous intelligence of the first of Scotch preachers. But with Presbyterian scrupulosity, in the midst of his eagerness, Irving hung back still. He could not submit to be "intruded upon" the people by the mere will of the incumbent, and would not receive even that grateful distinction if he continued as distasteful as he had hitherto found himself. He was not confident of his prospects even when backed by the powerful encouragement of Dr. Chalmers. "I will preach to them if you think fit," he is reported to have * The kingdom of Fife, fondly so called by its affectionate population said; "but if they bear with my preaching, they will be the first people who have borne with it." In this spirit, with the unconscious humility of a child, sorry not to satisfy his judges, but confessing the failure which he scarcely could understand, he preached his first sermon to the fastidious congregation in St. John's. This was in October, 1819. "He was generally well liked, but some people thought him rather flowery. However, they were satisfied that he must be a good preacher, since Dr. Chalmers had chosen him," says a contemporary witness. It was thus, with littie confidence on his own part, and somewhat careless indulgence on the part of the people, who were already in possession of the highest preaching of the time, that Irving opened his mouth at last, and began his natural career.