CHAPTER VI

GLASGOW

IT was in October, 1819, that Irving began his work in Glasgow-the first real work in his own profession which had opened to him. He was then in the full strength of early manhood, seven-and-twenty, the "Scottish uncelebrated Irving," whom his great countryman regretfully commemorates. His remarkable appearance seems, in the first place, to have impressed every body. A lady, who was then a member of Dr. Chalmers's church, and who had access to the immediate circle surrounding him, tells how she herself, on one occasion, being particularly engaged in some domestic duties, had given orders to her servants not to admit any visitors. She was interrupted in her occupation, however, notwithstanding this order, by the entrance of one of her maids, in a state of high excitement and curiosity. "Mem!" burst forth the girl, "' there's a wonderful grand gentleman called; I couldna say you were engaged to him. I think he maun be a Highland chief!"' That Mr. Irving!" exclaimed another individual of less elevated and poetical conceptions —"that Dr. Chalmers's helper! I took him for a cavalry officer!" "Do you know, doctor," said a third, addressing Chalmers himself, "what things people are saying about your new assistant? They say he's like a brigand chief."' Well, well," said Dr. Chalmers, with a smile, "whatever they say, they never think him like any thing but a leader of men." Such was the impression he produced upon the little mercantile-ecclesiastical world of Glasgow. There, as every where, people were instinctively suspicious of this strange unconventional figure-did not know what to make of the natural grandeur about him-the lofty fashion of speech into which he had already fallen, and which seems to have been entirely appropriate to the garb and aspect in which Nature had clothed him. But he found warm friends here, as every where, and by means of all his qualities, mental and bodily, his frankness and warmth, and habit of making himself the friend of the humblest individual he encountered, his splendid person and stately manners, took the hearts of the poor by storm. They are now dying out of those closes and wynds of Glasgow who remember Irving as Dr. Chalmers's helper, but there still lingers here and there a recollection of that kindliest genial visitor. Chalmers himself, though a man of the warmest humanity, had at all times a certain abstract intentness about him, which must have altered the character of individual kindness as coming from his hands. His parishioners were to him emphatically his parishioners, the "body" (not vile, perhaps, but still more profoundly important for the experiment's sake than for its own) upon which one of the most magnificent of experiments was to be tried. But to Irving they were the Johns and Sandys, the Campbells and Macalisters-the human neighbors who were of his personal acquaintance and individually interesting to himself. Such a distinction makes itself known involuntarily. The position he held was one completely secondary and auxiliary, not even answering to that of a curate; for he was still only a probationer, unordained, wirhout any rights in the Church except the license to preach, which was his sole qualification. He was not responsible for any part of the working of that huge machinery which Dr. Chalmers bore up on his Herculean shoulders, and which naturally collapsed when his mighty vital force was withdrawn. The "helper" went about more lightly, unburdened by social economy,'and gained for himself among the poor people whom it was his daily work to visit the place of an undoubted and much-prized friend. Glasgow was at this period in a very disturbed and troublous condition. Want of work and want of food had wrought their natural social effect upon the industrious classes, and the eyes of the hungry weavers and cotton-spinners were turned with spasmodic anxiety to those wild political quack remedies, the inefficacy of which no amount of experience will ever make clear to people in similar circumstances. The entire country was in a dangerous mood, palpitating throughout with deep-seated complaint and grievance, to which the starving revolutionaries in such towns as Glasgow acted only as a kind of safety-valve, preventing a worse explosion. The discontent was drawing toward its climax when Irving received his appointment as assistant to the minister of St. John's. In such a large poor parish he encountered on all sides the mutterings of the popular storm. Chalmers, always liberal and statesmanlike, saw the real grievance, which finally labored and struggled, through the contest of years, into that full redress and establishment of popular rights which seems to make any such crisis impossible now. But Irving's mind was of a different construction. He was one of those men of inconsistent politics, governed at once by prejudices and sympathies, whose " attitude" it is impossible to foretell, and of whom one can only predict that their political opinions will take the color given by their heart, and that the side most strongly and feelingly set forth before them will undoubtedly carry the day. His nature was profoundly conservative; and yet the boldest innovation might have secured his devoted support, had it approved itself to his individual thoughts. His political opinions, indeed, seem to have been such as are common to literary men, artists, and women entirely unconnected with politics, and who only now and then find themselves sufficiently interested to inform themselves upon public matters. Accordingly, he appears in after-life in strong opposition to every measure known as liberal; while in Glasgow, with those poor revolutionary weavers round him on every side, his heart convincing him of their miseries and despair, and his profound trust, not in human nature, but in the human creatures known to himself, persuading him that no harm could come from their hands, he stands perfectly calm and friendly amid the panic, disdaining to fear. That the crisis was an alarming one every body allows. Nothing less than the horrors of the French Revolution-battle and murder, and sudden death-floated before the terror-stricken -eyes of all who had any thing to lose. Whig Jeffrey, a non-alarmist and (in moderation) friend of the people, declares solemnly that "if the complaints of the people are repressed with insults and menaces-if no step is taken to relieve their distresses and redress their real and undeniable grievances-if the whole mass of their complaints, reasonable and unreasonable, are to be treated as seditious and audacious, and to meet with no other answer than preparations to put them down by force, then indeed we may soon have a civil war among usand a civil war of a character far more deplorable and atrocious than was ever known in this land-a war of the rich against the poor; of -the government against the body of the people; of the soldiery against the great bulk of the laboring classes —a war which can never be followed by any cordial or secure peace, and which must end, or rather begin, with the final and complete subversion of those liberties and that constitution which has hitherto been our pride, our treasure, and our support and consolation under all other calamities." It was a conjunction of many troubles, foremost among which was that sharp touch of starvation which makes men desperate; that Want-most pertinacious and maddest of all revolutionaries, who never fails to revenge bitterly the carelessness which lets him enter our well-defended doors-he was there, wolfish and seditious, in Glasgow in the winter of 1819, plotting pikes and risings, with wild dreams of that legislation never yet found out, which is to make a paradise of earth; dreams and plots which were to blurt out, so far as Scotland was concerned, in the dismal little tragi-comedy of Bonnymuir some months later, and there be made a melancholy end of. But while every body else was prophesying horrors, it is thus that Irving, with tender domestic prefaces of kindness and congratulation, writes to his brother-inlaw, Mr. Fergusson, a few months after his arrival in Glasgow. The immediate object of the letter is to congratulate his sister and her husband on the birth of their first-born. Referring to this event in the first place, he says: " You have now consigned to your care a more valuable article than the greatest emperor, who is not a father, can boast of-the care of an immortal who shall survive when this earth shall have removed without leaving a memorial, save in the memories of those spirits to whom it has been the training-place for heaven or hell. How much the difference is between the real value, so much the difference in general is between the reputed value; but, as the mathematicians say, it is in the inverse way. But of you I know and hope better, that you will account of him while you are spared together as a precious deposit the Almighty has thought you worthy of... "You will look for Glasgow intelligence, and truly I can neither get nor give any. If I should report from my daily ministrations among the poorest class and the worst reported-of class of our population, I should deliver an opinion so favorable as it would be hardly safe for myself to deliver, lest I should be held a radical likewise. Now the truth is, I have visited in about three hundred families, and have met with the kindest welcome, and entertainment, and invitations. Nay, more, I have entered on the tender subject of their present sufferings, in which they are held so ferocious, and have found them, in -general, both able and willing to entertain the religious lesson and improvement arising out of it. This may arise from the way of setting it forth, which I endeavor to make with the utmost tenderness and feeling, as well is due when you see people in the midst of nakedness and starvation. Yet we are armed against them to the teeth; and the alarm took so generally that, for all my convictions and knowledge, I had engaged a horse-pistol to stand out in defense of my own castle like a true Englishman! But the storm seems overdriven, although this morning, even, there was a summons to the sharp-shooters by break of day, and all the soldiers to arms in the barracks. Nobody knows a whit, and every body fears a deal. The common ignorance is only surpassed by the common alarm, and that, you know, is the most agitating of all alarms. But from Monday to Saturday I am going among them without the slightest apprehension; but perhaps I may be convinced by point of pike some day, which I pray may be averted for his sake that should hold it. This is not braggadocio, but Christian (feeling); for the blood of the innocent always stains most deeply the hand that sheds it.....I hope my father and you won't forget your Glasgow jaunt. I will introduce you to some of our Calton weavers, now so dreaded, whom Jeffrey the reviewer calls the finest specimens of the human intellect he has met with.... I commend to your affection my dear mother, from whom I have had a most affectionate letter; and George, who will prove a credit, I trust, to such two gifted masters as yourself and your humble servant.... To all others, my good and kind friends, commend your affectionate brother, EDWARD IRVING." It was thus that Irving judged of the dangerous masses, who seemed to other eyes so ripe for mischief; and it is characteristic to observe the difference between the manner in which this opinion is expressed, and Dr. Chalmers's deliverance on the same subject, contained in his letters to Wilberforce. There the clearsighted Scotch legislator, whom his profession bounded to a parish, makes a stride of twenty years to the conclusions of another generation, and lays his hand broadly upon that principle which has now been received among the standard principles of English government. "From my extensive minglings with the people," says Dr. Chalmers, " I am quite confident in affirming the power of another expedient (that is, besides the repeal of certain specified taxes) to be such that it would operate with all the quickness and effect of a charm in lulling their agitated spirits-I mean the repeal of the Corn Bill. I have ever been in the habit of disliking the interference of the Legislature in matters of trade saving for the purpose of a revenue." Irving has no theories of cure on hand. His thoughts do not embrace the polity of nations. He has not contemplated that troubled sea to divine what secret current it is which heaves its billows into storm. He goes down among the crowds which are made of flesh and blood; he stands among them, and calls out with courageous, tender voice that they are all men like others; men trustful and cordial; kind to himself, open to kindness; whom it behooves their neighbors to treat, not with the cruelty of fear, but " with tenderness and feeling, as well is due," he adds, with manly and touching simplicity, " when you see people in the midst of nakedness and starvation." A greater contrast in agreement could scarcely be. A similar testimony to that which I have already quoted, and evidence of the position he took in his Glasgow labors, is conveyed in a letter to Dr. Martin, written upon occasion of the death of a relative, in which, after some thoughtful regrets that men take so little pains to " perpetuate for themselves" ties "which give so much enjoyment here, and which, judging from the proportion of things, must give infinitely more hereafter," he thus conveys his impressions of his new sphere in the light most interesting to his friend: "It gave me singular pleasure the other night to hear a young man, Mr. Heggie, from Kirkcaldy (foot of Tolbooth Wynd), who has been of singular utility in this city, reclaiming by Sabbath-school operations the forlorn hope of the Salt Market and Briggate-to hear him date his first impressions of serious religion from the conversations he held with you before his first communion. This should encourage your heart; for he is, as it were, the nucleus of an establishment including not less than 700 children; and he is giving them spirit and example in truly a Christian style. Thus the Lord has made you in your parlor instrumental in penetrating and pervading the noisome recesses of this overgrown city. For all the impressions which are abroad, I entertain the best opinion of our people, and I consider the leading ones most grossly misinformed, if not misguided by design. Dr. Chalmers's plan is to take up his district of the parish by groups. I have superadded the taking of them up family by family, so that every mortal comes in review before me, and into contact with me upon a subject on which they are spoken of as being held by no bounds. Yet so it is - I have hardly encountered any thing but the finest play of welcome and congeniality; and this very half hour have I returned from so pervading twenty families in our sorest district, and have been hailed as the bearer of good tidings, though I carried nothing with me but spiritual offers.-.. I am making the best of St. John's I can, though I have been of late hardly doing myself justice, being generally compressed to Saturday for pulpit preparations by the week-day occupations of visiting, etc.; yet I think it is well employed." This Glasgow parish had come to singular fortune at that moment. After much labor and many exertions, Chalmers, already the greatest preacher and most eminent man in the entire Scotch establishment, had got himself translated from the Tron Church, which was his first charge in Glasgow-solely in order to carry out those social plans which are the greatest distinctive feature of his life-to St. John's. His theory is well known; but as theories which are well known are apt enough to glide into vagueness from that very reason, it may not be amiss to repeat, in the simplest manner, what it was. The truth was simply that he had been born, like other men of his generation, into a primitive Scotland, comparatively little affected by English usages and manners -a self-supporting, independent nation, ignorant of poor-laws and work-houses, and full of strenuous hatred to all such hateful charities. During all the centuries of Presbyterianism, athe plate," or weekly offering made at the door of the church on entering, had furnished the parochial revenue of charity; and upon this national and universal provision for the poor the statesman eye of Chalmers fixed with characteristic intentness. Like other men of.the greatest type, he was unable to believe that what he might do was yet impossible to others. Resolute to show all Scotland and the world that the Church's ancient primitive provision could yet meet all increased modern emergencies, and able from his high position and influence to bring, half by coercion of moral force, half by persuasion, the Glasgow magistrates to accept his terms, he made it a condition of his remaining among them that this parish of St. John's, one of the largest, poorest, and most degraded in the town, should be handed over to him in undisturbed possession, swept clean of all poor-rates, work-houses, and public parish aid. He did not demand the criminal supervision and power of the sword, certainly; though, at this distance of time, and to English readers, the one might seem almost as reasonable as the other; but he secured his terms with the puzzled civic functionaries, who half believed in him. In this parish Chalmers set up the most surprising, splendid autocracy that has ever been attempted -an autocracy solely directed to the benefit of that little world of people in the most unlovely portion of Glasgow. He was no sooner established in his new dominion than he issued imperial orders for a census, and made one in true royal fashion. There were 10,304 souls. The condition in life of most among them was that of weavers, laborers, and factory-workers. About one family in thirty-three kept a servant, and in some parts of the district this point of domestic luxury was even more rare. Bad times, failure of work, and all the casualties of accident and disease would, according to ordinary calculations, leave a large margin of inevitable pauperism in such a district. But the ministerautocrat had sworn that pauperism was to be no longer, and he made good his word. For three brilliant years "the plate" not only supplied all the wants of the poor in the parish, but did large service besides in the erection of schools; and for thirteen years, as long as the machinery originated by the wonderful imperious vitality of this great man could go on without a new impulse, its success continued as perfect as it was extraordinary. This seems to me the highest and most wonderful victory of Chalmers's life. It is unique in modern annals-a bold return, out of the heart of all those evils of extreme civilization which crush the poor, into that primitive life when neighbor helped neighbor and friend stood by friend. What an ideal despot, grand patriot autocrat, or irresponsible vizier that Scotch minister would have made! In this system of things, Irving took his place in perfect accord, but not resemblance. Statesmanship was not in him, but admiration and loyal service were of his very essence. Without any ulterior views, he visited those "three hundred families" -won their confidence and friendship, in most cases readily enough; and when that was not the case, took them captive by innocent wiles and premeditation. One such case, which must have been a remarkable one, is told in so many different versions, that it is difficult to decide which is the true one. A certein shoemaker, radical and infidel, was among the number of those under Irving's special care; a home-workman of course, always present, silent, with his back turned upon the visitors, and refusing any communication except a sullen humph of implied criticism, while his trembling wife made her deprecating courtesy in the foreground. The way in which this intractable individual was finally won over is attributed by some tellers of the story to a sudden happy inspiration on Irving's part, but by others to plot and intention. Approaching the bench one day, the visitor took up a piece of patent leather, then a recent invention, and remarked upon it in somewhat skilled terms. The shoemaker went on with redoubled industry at his work; but at last, roused and exasperated by the speech and pretense of knowledge, demanded, in great contempt, but without raising his eyes, "What do ye ken about leather?" This was just the opportunity his assailant wanted; for Irving, though a minister and a scholar, was a tanner's son, and could discourse learnedly upon that material. Gradually interested and mollified, the cobbler slackened work, and listened while his visitor described some process of making shoes by machinery which he had carefully got up for the purpose. At last the shoemaker so far forgot his caution as to suspend his work altogether, and lift his eyes to the great figure stooping over his bench. The conversation went on with increased vigor after this, till finally the recusant threw down his arms: " Od, you're a decent kind o' fellow! do you preach?" said the vanquished, curious to know more of his victor. Tqhe advantage was discreetly, but not too hotly pursued; and on the following Sunday the rebel made a defiant, shy appearance at church. Next day Irving encountered him in the savory Gallowgate, and hailed him as a friend. Walking beside him in natutal talk, the tall probationer laid his hand upon the shirt-sleeve of the shrunken sedentary workman, and marched by his side along the well-frequented street. By the time they had reached the end of their mutual way not a spark of resistance was left in the shoemaker. His children henceforward went to school; his deprecating wife went to the kirk in peace. He himself acquired that suit of Sunday " blacks" so dear to the heart of the poor Scotchman, and became a church-goer and respectable member of society; while his acknowledgment of his conqueror was conveyed with characteristic reticence, and concealment of all deeper feeling, in the self-excusing pretense"H e's a sensible man, yon; he kens about leather!" The preacher who knew about leather had, however, in conjunction with that cordiality which won the shoemaker's heart, a solemnity and apostolic demeanor which might have looked like affectation in another man, and has, indeed, been called affectation even in Irving by those who did not know him, though never by any man who did. Probably his long silent contemplation of that solitary mission which he had set his heart on had made him frame his very manner and address according to apostolic rule. When he entered those sombre apartments in the Gallowgate, it was with the salutation " Peace be to this house," with which he might have entered a Persian palace or Desert tent. "It was very peculiar;. a thing that nobody else did," says a simple-minded member of Dr. Chalmers's agency; " it was impossible not to remark it, out of the way as it was; but there was not one of the agency could make an objection to it. It took the people's attention wonderfully." A certain solemn atmosphere entered with that lofty figure, speaking in matchless harmony of voice, its "Peace be to this house." To be prayed for, sometimes edifyingly, sometimes tediously, was not uncommon to the Glasgow poor; but to be blessed was a novelty to them. Perhaps, if the idea had been pursued into the depths of their minds, these Presbyterians, all retaining something of ecclesiastical knowledge, however little religion they might have, would have been disposed to deny the right of any man to assume that priestly power of blessing. Irving, however, did not enter into any discussion of the subject. It was his habitual practice; and the agency, puzzled and a little awed, " could not make an objection to it." He did still more than this. He laid his hands upon the heads of the children, and pronounced, with imposing solemnity, the ancient benediction, "The Lord bless thee and keep thee," over each of them —a practice startling to Scotch ears, but acquiesced in involuntarily as natural to the man who, all solitary and individual in picturesque homely grandeur, went to and fro among them. So grave a preface did not detract from the entire heartiness with which he entered into the concerns of the household, an. intercourse which he himself describes with touching simplicity in his farewell sermon addressed to the people of St. John's. It is impossible to give any account of this part of his work half so true or so affecting as is conveyed thus, in his own words: "Oh, how my heart rejoices to recur to the hours I have sitten under the roofs of the people, and been made a partaker of their confidence, and a witness of the hardships they had to endure. In the scantiest and perhaps worst times with which this manufacturing city hath ever been pressed, it was my almost daily habit to make a round of their families, and uphold, what in me lay, the declining cause of God. There have I sitten, with little silver or gold of my own to bestow, with little command over the charity of others, and heard the various narratives of hardship-narratives uttered for the most part with modesty and patience; oftener drawn forth with difficulty than obtruded on your ear-their wants, their misfortunes, their illrequited labor, their hopes vanishing, their families dispersing in search of better habitations, the Scottish economy of their homes giving way before encroaching necessity; debt rather than saving their condition; bread and water their scanty fare; hard and ungrateful labor the portion of their house. All this have I often seen and listened to within naked walls; the witness, oft the partaker, of, their miserable cheer; with little or no means to relieve. Yet be it known, to the glory of God and the credit of the poor, and the encouragement of tender-hearted Christians, that such application to the heart's ailments is there in our religion, and such a hold in its promises, and such a pith of endurance in its noble examples, that when set forth by one inexperienced tongue, with soft words and kindly tones, they did never fail to drain the heart of the sourness that calamity engenders, and sweeten it with the balm of resignation -often enlarge it with cheerful hope, sometimes swell it high with the rejoicings of a Christian triumph." A more affecting picture of the position of a Christian visitor, " with little or no means to relieve" except by sympathy, and testimony to the consolatory uses of the Gospel, was never made. There does not exist human misery under the sun which would not be cheered and softened by such ministrations. Hie who was "often the partaker of their miserable cheer," who blessed the poor meal and blessed the house, and linked himself to the sufferers by such half-sacramental breaking of the bread of sorrow, could never fail to find his way into their hearts. He was not always, however, without silver or gold of his own to bestow. A little legacy was left him just at the time he describes, a legacy of some sum between thirty and a hundred pounds-for tradition has come to be doubtful as to the amount. Such a little windfall, one might suppose, would have been very acceptable to Dr. Chalmers's helper, and so it was, but after a fashion entirely his own. Irving melted his legacy into the one-pound notes current in Scotland, deposited them in his desk, and every morning, as long as they lasted, put one in his pocket when he went out to his visitations. The legacy lasted just as many days as it was pounds in "value, and doubtless produced as much pleasure to its owner as ever was purchased by money. What Dr. Chalmers said to this barefaced alms-giving, in the very midst of his social economy, I can not tell. As to its destination nobody but Irving was any the wiser. It melted into gleams of comfort, transitory but precious; and he who shared the hard and scanty bread on the poor man's table, could share the better meal when it was in his power to bestow it. This was Irving's idea of his office and functions among the poor. He had learned it:theoretically from no other teacher than his own heart; but he had learned the practice of it, which so many fain would acquire without knowing how, in those primitive journeys of his, where his lodgings were found in the cothouse and cabin; and it was his pleasure to make himself as acceptable a guest as if the potato or porridge had been festive dainties, and his entertainers lords and princes. Such a gift of brotherhood, however, is as rare as any gift of genius. Irving was unique in it among his contemporaries, and has had but few equals in any time. Matters, however, had not changed much up to this period in respect to his preaching. Friends who accompanied him to church when it was his turn to conduct the services, tell, as a very common incident, that the preacher going in was met by groups coming out with disappointed looks, complaining, as the reason of their departure, that "it's no himsel' the day." Nothing better was to be looked for when himsel' was such a man as Chalmers; and if his assistant felt at all sore on the subject, his mortification must have been much allayed by the unrivaled gifts of his great colleague. There is, however, no sign of soreness or mortification in him. A brilliant vision of what he yet might attain had flickered before his eyes all through his probation, as is apparent by many tokens, but he never disguised from himself his failure in popularity. He smiled to his companions, not without an appreciation of the joke, when the good people came out of the church door because it was " no himsel'." He did not forget what he had said, that if this people bore with him, they were the first who ever would; nor did he hesitate to repeat that " this congregation is almost the first in which our preaching was tolerated," and even that still, " we know, on the other hand, that our imperfections have not been hid from your eyes." Yet this unpopularity, admitted with frankness so unusual and perhaps excessive, was by no means universal. Within the great assembly who venerated Dr. Chalmers was a smaller circle who looked upon Irving with all the enthusiastic admiration naturally given to a man whose merits the admirer himself has been the first to find out. " Irving's preaching," said Dr. Chalmers, evidently not with any very great admiration of it, " is like Italian music, appreciated only by connoisseurs." But he does not hesitate to compare the influence of his assistant, on another and more cordial occasion, to a special magnetic spell, which went to the very hearts of those susceptible to it, though it fell blank upon the unimpressionable multitude. On the whole, Dr. Chalmers's opinion of him is the opinion of one who only half understands, and does not more than half sympathize with, a character much less broad, but in some respects more elevated than his own. A certain impatience flashes into the judgment. The statesman and philosopher watches the poet-enthusiast with a doubtful, troubled, half-amused, half-sad perplexity; likes him, yet does not know what he would be at; is embarrassed by his warm love, praise, and gratitude; vexed to see him commit himself; impatient of what he himself thinks credulity, vanity, waste of power, but never without a sober, regretful affection for the bright, unsteady light that could not be persuaded to shine only in' its proper lantern. This sQrt of admiring, indulgent, affectionate half-comprehension is apparent throughout the whole intercourse of these two great men. That Chalmers was the greater intellect of the two I do not attempt to question, nor yet that he was in all practical matters the more eminent and serviceable man; but that Irving had instinctive comprehensions and graces which went high over the head of his great contemporary seems to me as evident as the other conclusion. A light quite peculiar and characteristic falls upon Glasgow by means of these two figures-Chalmers with a certain sweep and wind of action always about him, rushing on impetuous, at the height of his influence, legislating for his parish in bold independence, perhaps the only real autocrat of his day-Irving, almost loitering about the unlovely streets, open to all the individual interests thereabouts; learned in the names, the stories, the peculiarities of his three hundred families; still secondary, dependent, dallying with dreams of a time when he should be neither, of a Utopia all his own; not influential at all as yet, only remarkable; noted on the streets, noted in the houses he frequented, an out-of-the-way, incomprehensible man, whose future fortune it was not safe to foretell. In the anecdotes told of him he often looms forth with a certain simple elevation which is unmoved by ordinary restraints and motives, and always leaves some recollection of his imposing presence upon the memories of all whom he encounters. Amid all the luxuries of rich, lavish Glasgow, he still set forth afoot in his times of relaxation, in primitive hardness, carrying his own belongings on his shoulder, or helped the weak on his way without a moment's consideration of the propriety of the matter. Thus, on one occasion, he is reported to have been on his way to some Presbytery meeting in the country-probably some ordination or settlement which attracted his interest, though not a member of the court. The ministers of the Presbytery were to be conveyed in carriages to the scene of action; but Irving, who was only a spectator and supernumerary, set off on foot, according to his usual custom. The "brethren" in their carriages came up to him on the way-came up at least to a tall, remarkable figure, which would have been undeniably'that of Dr. Chalmers's helper but that it bore a peddler's pack upon its stalwart shoulders, and was accompanied side by side by the fatigued proprietor of the same. To the laughter and jokes which hailed him, however, Irving presented a rather affronted, indignant aspect. He could see no occasion for either laughter or remark. The peddler was a poor Irishman worn out with his burden. "' His countrymen were kind to me," said the offended probationer, recalling those days when, sick at heart, he plunged among the Ulster cabins, and got some comfort out of his wanderings. He carried the pack steadily till its poor owner was rested and ready to resume it, and thought it only natural. On another occasion he had gone down to visit his old friend, Mr. Story, of Rosneath, in that beautiful little peninsula; and in the sweet gloaming of a summer night stood on the narrow tongue of land called Row Point, and shouted across the tiny strait for a boat. As he stood with his portmanteau on his shoulder, among the twilight shadows, he heard an answer over the water, and presently saw the boat gliding across the loch; but when it had reached half way, to Irving's amazement and impatience, it turned back: some commotion arose on the opposite side, lights flickered about the'bank, and only after a considerable interval and manyimpatient shouts, the oars began again to dip into the water, and the boat approached heavily. When Irving demanded why he had turned back, and had kept him so long waiting, the boatman, gliding up to the beach, looked discomfited and incredulous at his passenger. "I thought you were a man on horse!" cried the startled ferryman, looking up bewildered at the gigantic figure and portmanteau, which distance and darkness had shaped into a centaur. He had gone back to fetch the horse-boat, which in all its cumbrous convenience was now thrust up upon the shingle. Irving did not appreciate the consideration. It even appears that he lost his temper on the occasion, and did not see the joke when the story was told. In one of those walking excursions he penetrated into the depths of Ayrshire, and reached at nightfall the house of the Howies of Lochgoin —a name which recalls all the covenanting traditions of that wild district. The family were at prayers-or " worship," as it is usual to call it in Scotland-and one of its members remembers the surprising apparition of the tall stranger in the spence, or outer room, when they all rose from their knees, as having had a rather alarming effect upon the family, whose devotions he had joined unheard, and to whose house he bade his usual " Peace." Though they were entirely strangers to him, Irving not only made friends, but established to his own satisfaction a link of relationship by means of the Waldensian Howys, from whom he himself boasted descent. The original family of refugees, according to his own account, had split into two branches, one of which wandered to Ayrshire, while one settled in Annan. The link thus accidentally found was warmly remembered, and the Orations, published when Irving was at his height of early glory, and one of the most largely read and brilliantly criticised of modern works, found its way, by the hand of the first traveler he could hear of, from that world of London which turned his head, as people imagine, down to the moorland solitudes of Lochgoin. The year after his arrival in Glasgow he made another visit to Ireland, which was attended by one amusing result, upon which his friends often rallied himn. He had made an appointment with a young Glasgow friend to meet him at Annan, in his father's house, with the idea of guiding the stranger through those moors, and mosses of Dumfriesshire which were so dear and well known to himself. But while his friend kept the appointment carefully, Irving, seduced by the pleasures of his ramble, or induced, as appears from a letter, to lengthen it out by a little incursion into England from Liverpool, forgot all about it. The accommodations of Gavin Irving's house at Annan were limited; and though there was no limit to Mrs. Irving's motherly hospitality, it was not easy to entertain the unknown guest. The youngest of the handsome sisters had to exert herself in this emergency. She showed the young stranger the way to the waterside and all the modest beauties of the little town. The young man did not miss his friend, nor was any way impatient for Edward's arrival; and when the truant did come, at the end of a fortnight, he was called upon to greet the stranger, whom he had himself sent to Annan, as his sister's affianced husband-an astonishing but very happy conclusion, as it turned out, to his own carelessness. At another holiday time Irving accompanied a member of his congregation in some half-pleasure, half-business excursion in a gig. During this journey the pair were about to drive down a steep descent, when Irving, whose skill as a driver was not great, managed to secure the reins, and accomplished the descent at so amazing a pace that several of a little party of soldiers, who were crossing a bridge at the foot of the hill, were driven into the stream by the vehemence of the unexpected charge. Some little distance farther on, the gig and the travelers paused at a roadside inn, into the public room of which entered, after a while, several of these soldiers. Two of them regarded with whispered conferences the driver of the gig; and when an opportunity of conversation offered, one of the two addressed Irving. "This man," said the skillful Scotch conversationalist, "thinks he's the wisest man in a' the regiment. What do ye think, sir? He says you're the great Dr. Chalmers." "And do you really think," asked Irving, with an appeal to the candor of this inquiring mind, "that I look like a minister?" " My'certy, no!" cried the simple-minded warrior, " or you wouldna drive like yon /" Such comic lights, often dwelt upon and much appreciated by his friends, played about this unusual figure, necessary accompaniments of its singular aspect. To his intimates he opened his heart so freely, and exhibited all his peculiarities after so transparent a fashion, that those points of his character which might have appeared defects to the eyes of strangers were dear to those who loved him, originating as they did in his own perfect affectionateness and sincerity. " He was vain, there is no denying it," writes a dear friend of his; " but it was a vanity proceeding out of what was best and most lovable in him-his childlike simplicity and desire to be loved-his crystal transparency of character letting every little weakness show through it as frankly as his noblest qualities; and, above all, out of his loyal, his divine trust in the absolute truth and sincerity, and the generous sympathy and good-will of all who made friendly advances toward him." But his aspect to the general mass, who saw him only "in society" or in the pulpit, was of a different kind. The solemnity of his appearance and mannersl impressed that outside audience. He spoke in language "such as grave livers do in Scotland use," with a natural pomp of diction at all times, and took a certain priestly attitude which is not usual in Scotland-the attitude of a man who stands between God and his fellows. A story, for which I will not vouch, is told -of one such remarkable appearance which he made at a Glasgow dinner-party. A young man was present who had permitted himself to talk profanely, in a manner now unknown, and which would not be tolerated in any party nowadays. After expending all his little wit upon priestcraft and its inventions, this youth, getting bold by degrees, at last attacked Irving-who had hitherto taken no notice of him-directly, as one of the world-deluding order. Irving heard him out in silence, and then turned to the other listeners. "My friends," he said, "I will make no reply to this unhappy youth, who hath attacked the Lord in the person of his servant; but let us pray that this his sin may not be laid to his charge;" and with a solemn motion of his hand, which the awe-struck diners-out instinctively obeyed, Irving rose up to his full majestic height, and solemnly commended the offender to the forgiveness of God. Whether this incident really occurred I can not tell; but it is one of the anecdotes told of him, and it certainly embodies the most popular conception of his demeanor and bearing. The labors of all engaged in that parish were unceasing; and in addition to the two services on each Sunday, which were Irving's share of the work, and the perpetual round of parochial visits and occasional services, he was "always ready"-as says Mr. David Stowe, the educational reformer of Glasgow, whose lifelong work was then commencing in a great system of Sunday-schools-to lend his aid wherever it was required. When the Sunday-scholars were slow to be drawn out, or the district unpromising, or a more distinct impulse necessary than could be given by mere visits and invitations, Irving did not hesitate to go down with the anxious'teacher to his "proportion," and, with his Bible in his hand, take his station against the wall, and address the slowlygathering assembly all unused to out-of-door addresses, a species of ministrations which were at the period considered rather be. Bneath the dignity of ministers of the Church. Irving had also the charge of visiting the convicts in prison, and is said to have done so on some occasions with great effect. One of those unhappy persons had been condemned for a murder, though strenuously denying his guilt. After his conviction, the unhappy man succeeded in interesting his visitor by his assertions of innocence; and when Irving left the prison, it was to plunge into the dens of the Gallowgate, taking with him as assistants a private friend of his own and a member of Dr. Chalmers's agency, to make a last anxious effort to discover whether any exculpatory evidence was to be found. The surviving member of that generous party remembers how they searched through the foul recesses of the Glasgow St. Giles's, and went to all the haunts of their wretched client, a charitable forlorn hope. But the matter, it turned out, was hopeless; what they heard confirmed, instead of shaking, the justice of the conviction, and the bootless investigation was given up. But the kind of work in which he was thus engaged was not the great work in which his fame was to be gained, or his use in his generation manifested. In all that is told of him he appears in the shade —only supplementing the works of another; and it is amusing to observe, even at this long distance of time, that the ancient office-bearers of St. John's, once Dr. Chalmers's prime ministers in the government of that, his kingdom, can scarcely yet forbear a certain patronizing regard toward Dr. Chalmers's helper. They all went to hear him, like virtuous men, who set a good example to the flock, and tolerated the inexperience of the strange probationer; and sat out, with a certain self-complacence, those sermons which were to stir to its depths a wider world than that of Glasgow. One here and there even detected a suspicion of unsoundness in the vehement addresses of the young preacher; and I have been told of a most singular, unorthodox sentiment of his -unorthodox, but at exact antipodes from later sentiments equally unlawful-which one zealous hearer noted down in those old days, and submitted to Dr. Chalmers as a matter which should be noticed. Wise Chalmers only smiled and shook his head. He himself had but an imperfect understanding of his assistant, but he was not to be persuaded by the evidence of one stray sentence that his brother had gone astray. Thus Irving lived in the shade. Some of those friends to whom he attached himself so fervently, young men like himself, not yet settled down into' the proprieties of life, supported his claims to a higher appreciation with vehement partisanship, which proceeded as much from love to the man as from admiration of his genius. Here and there an eager boy, in the ragged red gown which Glasgow uses for academical costume, recognized, with the intuition of youth, the high eloquence flashing over those slumbrous heads. But, on the whole, the Glasgow congregation sat patronizingly quiet, and listened, without much remarking what the "helper had to say." As much as the ordinary brain could bear they had already heard, or were to hear the same day from "the doctor himsel'." Under such circumstances, it was scarcely to be expected that they could do more than listen calmly to the addresses of the other preacher, whose manner and-looks, and mode of address were all undoubtedly exceptional, and subject to criticism. Such a strain would have been impossible to any merely mortal audience; so the good people drowsed through the afternoons, and were kind to Mr. Irving:; they were very glad to hear the doctor found him so serviceable among his poor; that the agency made such a good report of him; and that, altogether, he was likely to do well. They told the current stories of his gigantic form, and doubtful looks, and odd ways; laughed at his impetuous individuality with kindness, but amusement; and had as little idea of the fame he was to reach as of any other incomprehensible event. The profound unconsciousness in which this strange little community, all dominated and governed by their leader and his great project, held lightly the other great intelligence in the midst of them, is as strange a picture of human nature as could be seen. It reminds one of that subtle law of evi-.dence which Sir Walter Scott introduces so dramatically in accounting for the recognition of his hero Bertram, in Guy Mannering, by the postillion, who had seen him without an idea of recognizing him before. "Wha was thinking o' auld Ellangowan then?" says Jock Jabos. The principle holds good in wider questions. The Glasgow people had their eyes fixed upon one man of genius and his great doings. They certainly saw the other man in the shadow of his chief, and had a perception, by the way, of his stature and peculiarities. But who was thinking of genius or extraordinary endowments in Dr. Chalmers's helper? Their eyes had not been directed to him; they saw him always in the shade, carrying out another man's ideas, and dominated by another man's superior influence; and this most natural and prevailing principle of human thought kept Irving obscure and unrevealed to their eyes. The same influence gradually wrought upon himself. It is. apparent that there was much in his Glasgow life which he enjoyed, and which suited him; and no more loyal expression of regard for a master and leader was ever written than the dedication afterward addressed to Dr. Chalmers, in which he thanks God for "that dispensation which brought me acquainted with your good and tender-hearted nature, whose splendid accomplishments I knew already; and you now live in the memory of my heart more than in my admiration. While I labored as your assistant, my labors were never weary; they were never enough to express my thankfulness to God for having associated me with such a man, and my affection to the man with whom I was associated." To the same tenor is the tone of his farewell sermon, the first production which he ever gave to the press, and in which, not without much strenuous argument for the freedom of individual preaching, his favorite and oft-repeated theme, he acknowledges "the burden of my obligations to my God" in respect to his residence in Glasgow. "He has given me," says the preacher, his heart swelling with all the gratitude and affection which kindness always produced in him, and the warm impulse of his nature casting all drawbacks behind, "the fellowship of a man mighty in his Church, an approving congregation of his people, the attachment of a populous corner of his vineyard. I ask no more of heaven for the future but to grant me the continuance of the portion which, by the space of three years, I have here enjoyed. But this I need not expect. Never again shall I find another man of transcendent genius whom I can love as much as I admire-into whose house I can go in and out like a son-whom I can revere as a father, and serve with the devotion of a child-never shall I find another hundred consociated men of piety, and by free will consociated, whose every sentiment I can adopt, and whose every scheme I can delight to second. And I feel I shall never find another parish of ten thousand into every house of which I was welcomed as a friend, and solicited back as a brother.'" This was one side of the picture; sincerely felt and fully expressed, without any restraint from the thought that on the other side he had expressed, and yet should express as fully, his weariness, his longings for a scene of action entirely his own, his almost disgust with a subordination which had now exceeded the natural period of probation. It was no part of Irving's temper to acknowledge any such restraint. What he said in the fullest, grateful sincerity, he did not stumble and choke over because he was aware of having on another occasion expressed, with equal warmth, another phase of feeling, equally sincere, though apparently inconsistent. That he should have been content with the position which he describes in such glowing colors would have been simply unnatural. He had now attained the age when it becomes necessary for a man to do what he has to do in this world for himself, and not fbr another: he was approaching the completion of his thirtieth year. Nature herself protested that he could remain no longer dependent and secondary, and that it was time to be done with probationary efforts. His thoughts, which had been so long kept silent while his heart burned, and so long indifferently listIened to by a preoccupied audience, must have full course. His energy must have scope in an independent field. tio stand aside longer, with all his conscious powers burning within him, was gradually becoming impossible to Irving. At the very moment when he recognized with generous enthusiasm the advantages of his position, he felt its limits and confinements like a chain of iron round his neck. The bondage, though these were the most desirable of bonds, was gradually growing intolerable. He was a man fully equipped and prepared, aware of a longer probation, a sterner prelude, a harder training than most men. We will not venture to say that the natural sweetness of his heart could have been embittered even by the continuance of this unencouraging labor; but, at all events, nature took alarm, and felt herself in danger. He received an invitation to go to Kingston, in Jamaica, to a Presbyterian congregation there, and is said to have taken it into serious consideration, and only to have been deterred from accepting it by the opposition of his friends. White men'or black men, what did it matter, so long as he could build, not upon another man's foundation, but do his own work as God has ordained to every man? And failing that, his ancient missionary thoughts returned to his mind; I can not help thinking that there is something wonderfully pathetic and touching in this project, which he carried so far upon the way of life with him, and to which, up to this moment, he always recurred when his path became dark or impracticable. I could fancy it a suggestion of heaven to turn aside his feet, while it was yet possible, from that fiery ordeal and passage of agony through which his course lay. The same thoughts which once filled his chamber in Bristo Street came back in the winter of 1821, when, after two years' labor in Glasgow, he saw himself no farther advanced in his independant way than when, full of hopes, he had come there to open his mouth in his Master's service. Dr. Chalmers could get many assistants, but Edward Irving could get but one life, and was this all it was destined to come to? Again he saw himself going forth forlorn, giving up all things for his Lord; carrying the Gospel afar, over distant mountains, distant plains, into the far Eastern wastes. It was an enterprise to make the heart beat and swell, but it was death to all human hopes. When he grasped that cross the roses and laurels would fade out of his expectation forever. Love and fame must both be left behind. It was in him to leave them behind had the visible moment arrived and the guidance of Providence appeared. But he understood while he pondered what was the extent of the sacrifice. Just at this moment the clouds opened-he has described it so well in his own words that it would be worse than vanity to use any other: "The Caledonian Church had been placed under the pastoral care of two worthy ministers, who were successively called to parochial charges in the Church of Scotland; and by their removal, and for want of a stated ministry, it was reduced to great and almost hopeless straits. But faith hopeth against hope, and when it does so, never faileth to be rewarded. This was proved in the case of those two men whose names I have singled out from your number, to give them that honor to which they are entitled in the face of the congregation. Having heaid through a friend of theirs, and now also of mine, but at that time unknown -to me, of my unworthy labors in Glasgow as assistant to the Rev. Dr. Chalmers, they commissioned him to speak to me concerning their vacant church, and not to hide from me its present distress. "Well do I remember the morning when, as I sat in my lonely apartment, meditating the uncertainties of a preacher's calling, and revolving in my mind purposes of missionary work, this stranger stepped in upon my musing, and opened to me the commission with which he had been charged. The answer which I made to him, with which also I opened my correspondence with the brethren, whose names are mentioned above, was to this effect:'If the times permitted, and your necessities required that I should not only preach the Gospel without being burdensome to you, but also by the labor of my hands minister to your wants, this would I esteem a more honorable degree than to be Archbishop of Canterbury.' And such as the beginning was, was also the continuance and ending of this negotiation.... Being in such a spirit toward one another, the preliminaries were soon arranged-indeed, I may say, needed no arrangement —and I came up on the day before the Christmas of 1821 to make trial and proof of my gifts before the remnant of the congregation which still held together." Ere, however, going to London, he seems to have made a brief visit to Edinburgh, where he obtained from the Rev. Dr. Fleming, one of the most highly esteemed evangelical ministers there, a letter of introduction to Dr. Waugh, of London, which I have found among other papers relating to his removal to London. These credentials were as follows: "Edinburgh, 13th December, 1821. " DEAR SIR, —Allow me to introduce to you Mr. Edward Irving, preacher of the Gospel, who goes to London on invitation to preach in the Caledonian Chapel, with the view of being called to take the pastoral charge of the congregation assembling in that place. I need not tell you what you will at once perceive, that he is a large, rawboned Scotchman, and that his outward appearance is rather uncouth; but I can tell you that his mind is, in proportion, as large as his body; and that whatever is unprepossessing in his appearance will vanish as soon as he is known; his mind is, I had almost said, gigantic. There is scarcely a branch of human science which he does not grasp, and in some degree make his own. As a scholar, and as a man of science, he is eminently distinguished. His great talents he has applied successfully to the acquisition of professional knowledge, and both his talents and acquisitions he is, I believe, sincerely resolved to consecrate to the service of his great Master. His views of Scripture truth, while they are comprehensive, are, in my judgment, sound. His exhibition of them, indeed, I thought at one time exceptionable, as too refined and abstract for ordinary hearers; but that was when he contemplated the duties of a preacher as a spectator, being ordinarily occupied with other important avocations. For some time past, however, he has been actively employed in the vineyard, in the character of assistant to Dr. Chalmers, of Glasgow, and it is no small commendation that the doctor is in the highest degree pleased with him and attracted to him. His, connection with the doctor has probably accelerated what experience would have in time produced in a man of his mind and principles: it has brought him down to the level of plain, sound preaching. This effect has been still farther pronmoted in the exercise of a duty which he has had to perform, visiting the families of the parish, and conversing with them about their spiritual interests. This was a duty in which he engaged with great zeal, and he is considered as possessing a particular faculty for performing it. As a man, he is honorable, liberal, independent in his mind, fearless in the discharge of his duties, and exemplary in his general deportment. In short, taking into view his whole character and qualifications, his * Dedication of the Last Days to WV. Dinwiddie, Esq., Father of the Session of the National Scotch Church; W. Hamilton, Esq., Secretary of the Committee for building the National Scotch Church; and to the other members of the Session and Committee, talents, his acquirements, his principles, his zeal, and his capacity of exertion, I know nobody who seems better fitted for discharging the duties of a Gospel minister in the metropolis faithfully, usefully, and respectably than Mr. Irving.... If you can be of any service to Mr. Irving, either with the managers of the chapel, or in the event of his remaining in London, by introducing him to any of your friends in the ministry, I shall esteem it a favor.... Mr. Irving has come upon me unexpectedly, and I have barely time to add that I am, with great regard, dear sir, yours faithfully, "' THOMAS FLEMING,." The kind elaboration of this old-fashioned recommendatory letter, written in days when people thought it worth while to fill their paper, secured Irving a friend; and many of its carefully detailed particulars are sadly amusing in the light of all the afterrevelations, as, indeed, the calm unconsciousness with which an ordinary man holds up his light to show forth the figure of an immortal has always a certain ludicrous-pathetic element in it. Armed with this, and doubtless with various others which have not escaped oblivion, the " large, raw-boned Scotchman" set out for London with unconcealed and honest eagerness. What he wanted was not a benefice, or even an income, for hopeless enough in that way were the prospects of the little fainting Scotch Church, buried amid the crowded lanes about Holborn, which successive vacancies and discouragements had reduced to the very lowest point at which it could venture to call itself a congregation. If it had been practicable —if, as Irving himself says, "the times had permitted," there can not be the slightest doubt that the vehement young man would have been content to conjoin any apostolic handicraft with his spiritual office rather than resign that longedfor pulpit, in which he could say forth unchecked the message that was in him; and he does not attempt with any affected coyness to conceal his own eager desire for this, the first independent standing-ground which was ever placed fairly in his power. From the moment that he heard of it, the idea seems to have taken full possession of him. Nowhere else could he do such good service to his Master's cause. Nowhere could the human ambition which possessed him find readier satisfaction. Nowhere else was the utterance with which he was overbrimming so deeply needed. He seems to have felt with magical suddenness and certainty that here was his sphere. His own appreciation of his welcome in London, and the hopes excited in his mind by this new development of affairs, may be learned from the following letter, addressed to his much regarded pupil and friend, Miss Welsh. I" Glasgow, 34 Kent Street, 9th February, 1822. " MY DEAR AND LOVELY PUPIL,-When I am my own master, delivered from the necessity of attending to engagements, ever soliciting me upon the spot where I am, and exhausting me to very lassitude before the evening, when my friendly correspondence should commence, then, and not till then, shall I be able, I fear, to discharge my heart of the obligations which it feels to those at a distance. Do excuse me, I pray you, by the memory of our old acquaintance, and any thing else which it is pleasant to remember, for my neglect to you in London, and not to you alone, I am sorry to say, but to every one whom I was not officially bound to write to, even my worthy father. Forget and forgive it; and let us be established in our former correspondence as if no such sin against it had ever taken place. I could say some things on my own behalf; but, till you go to London, which I hope will not be till I am there to be a brother to you, you could not at all sympathize with them. " And know now, though late, that my head is almost turned with the approbation I received-certainly my head is turned; for from being a poor desolate creature, melancholy of success, yet steel against misfortune, I have become all at once full of hope and activity. MIy hours of study have doubled themselves-my intellect, long unused to expand itself, is now awakening again, and truth is revealing itself to my mind; and perhaps the dreams and longings of my fair correspondent* may yet be realized. I have been solicited to publish a discourse which I delivered before his Royal Highness the Duke of York, but have refused till my apprehensions of truth be larger, and my treatment of it more according to the models of modern and ancient times. The thaOks of all the directors I have received formally -the gift of all the congregation of the Bible used by his Royal Highness. The elders paid my expenses in a most princely style. My countrymen of the first celebrity, especially in art, welcomed me to their society, and the first artist in the city drew a most admirable half-length miniature of me in action. And so, you see, I have reason to be vain. "But these things, my dear Jane, delight me not, save as vouchsafements of my Maker's bounty, the greater because the more undeserved. Were I established in the love and obedience of Him, I should rise toweringly aloft into the regions of a very noble and sublime character, and so would my highly-gifted pupil, to retain whose friendship shall be a consolation to my life; to have her fellowship in divine ambitions would make her my dear companion through eternity.`' To your affectionate mother, whose indulgence gives me this pleasant communication with her daughter, I have to express my attachment in every letter. May you live worthy of each other, mutual stays through life, doubly endeared, because alone together, and therefore doubly dutiful to Him who is the husband of the widow and the Father of the fatherless. I have sent this under cover to my * He refers to his young friend's affectionate prophecies of his future fame. Friend T. C., not knowing well where you are at present. If in Edinburgh, offer my benedictions upon your uncle's new alliance. I hope to be in Edinburgh soon, where I will not be without seeing you. I am, my dear pupil, your affectionate friend, " EDWARD IRVING." " Wherewith" (namely, with the trial of his gifts) " being satisfied," he continues, in the dedication already quoted, "I took my journey homeward, waiting the good pleasure of the great Head of the Church. Many were the difficulties and obstacles which Satan threw in the way, and which threatened hard to defeat altogether our desire and our purpose of being united in one. Among others, one, which would have deterred many men, was my inability to preach in the Gaelic tongue, of which I knew not a word." This absurd stipulation originated in the connection of the Caledonian Chapel with the Caledonian Asylum, the directors of which are those whom he records as having thanked him formally-an institution originally intended for the orphan children of soldiers and sailors, and of whose office-bearers the Duke of York, the commander-in-chief, was president. This institution is still in existence, and, until the disruption of the Church of Scotland, still sent its detachments of children into the galleries of the National Scotch Church, built to replace the little Caledonian Chapel. But at that period it was its connection with the great charity which alone gave the little chapel importance. Other Scotch churches, more flourishing and prosperous, were in existence, but the chapel in Hatton Garden had a trifling Parliamentary allowance, in direct consideration of its connection with the Asylum, and the minister's powers of preaching Gaelic. This initial difficulty called forth from Irving the following characteristic letter: "To my honored friends, Mr. Dinwiddie, Mr. Simpson, Mr. Robertson, Mr. Hamilton, and others connected with the Caledonian Chapel, to whom I have the pleasure of being known, and who take an interest in my coming to London: "' GENTLEMI:EN,-My friend Mr. Laurie has called to report to me the result of the last meeting of Directors of the Asylum; and as Mr. Hamilton requested him to make it known to me, I feel myself called upon to do my endeavor to make you comfortable under, and also, if possible, to extricate you from, the embarrassment in which you may feel yourselves. "First. Let my interest be as nothing. The Lord will provide for me; and since I left you His providence has presented me with the offer of a chapel of ease in Dundee, with the probable reversion of the first vacant living in the place. This, of course, I refused. The people of New-York are inquiring for me to succeed the great Mr. Mason-at least are writing letters to that effect. This I do not think will come to any head, because I am not worthy of the honor. But I mention both to show you in what good hands my fortune is, when it is left to God alone. " Secondly. But if, for the interests of your own souls, and religion in general, and the Scotch Church in particular, you do still desire my services among you, then I am ready at any call, and almost on any conditions, for my own spirit is bent to preach the Gospel in London. "Thirdly. If the gentlemen of the Asylum would not mistake for importunity and seeking of a place what I offer from a desire to mediate peace, and benefit the best interests of my countrymen, I pledge myself to study Gaelic; and if I can not write it and preach it in six months, I give them my missive to be burdensome to them no longer. There was a time when the consciousness of my own powers would have made it seem as meanness so to condescend; but now the lowness of condescension for Christ's sake I feel to be the height of honor. "Fourthly. But if not, and you are meditating, as Mr. Hamilton says, to obtain another place of worship to which to call me, then be assured I shall not be difficult to persuade to come among you; and I shall not distress your means; but content with little, minister, in humble dependence upon God, the free grace of the Gospel. " Finally, gentlemen, should I never see your faces any more, my heart is toward you, and my prayers are for you, and the blessing of the Lord God shall be upon us all if we seek his face; and we shall dwell together in that New Jerusalem where there is no temple and no need of any pastors; but the Lamb doth lead them and feed them by rivers of living waters, and wipes away all tears front their eyes. " Commend me to your families in love and brotherhood, and do all regard me as your obliged and affectionate friend, " EDWARD IRVING. "Glasgow, 21st February, 1822." The Directors of the Caledonian Asylum were not, however, " so far left to themselves," as we say in Scotland, as to insist upon the six months of Gaelic study thus heroically volunteered. The Duke of York exerted his influence to set aside the stipulation; and after it had answered its purpose in stimulating the warmth of both parties, and adding a little more suspense and uncertainty to Irving's long probation, the difficulty was overcome. Or rather, to use his own words, " God, having proved our willingness, was pleased to remove this obstacle out of the way." Upon this another difficulty arose. It is a rule of the Church of Scotland not to ordain any minister over a congregation until they are first certified that the people are able and prepared to provide him with a fit income —"to give him a livelihood," as Irving says simply. This is usually done in the form of a bond, submitted to the Presbytery before the ordination, by which the stipend is fixed at a certain rate, which the office-bearers pledge themselves to maintain. This was a difficult point for the poor little handful at Hatton Garden, who had only been able to keep themselves together by great exertions, and to whom only the valuable but scanty nucleus of fifty adherents belonged. The Presbytery, in consequence, demurred to the ordination, and once more the matter came to a temporary standstill. The following letter, addressed to Mr. William Hamilton, one of the principal members of the Caledonian Chapel, will show how Irving regarded this new obstruction: "' MY DEAR SIR, —Though I received so many and so kind attentions from you in London, the great diversity of my occupations, and my frequent visits of late to different parts of the country, in the prospect of removal, have hindered me from ever presenting my acknowledgments, not the less felt, be assured, on that account. The confidence and frequency of our intercourse makes me assured, when I come to London, that we shall find in each other steady friends; and it is delightful in the prospect opening up that I have such friends to come to. The bearer is my brother-in-law, Mr. Warren Carlyle, a young man of most admirable character, both moral and religious. He is in London on business, and will be able to inform you in all my affairs. I am doing my utmost to get the Presbytery to consent to my ordination without a bond, and I hope to succeed. But if they will not, I come in June, ordination or no ordination; and if they are not content with the security I am content with, then I shall be content to do without their ordination, and seek it elsewhere, or apply for it after. But I augur betterl..... Mr. Dinwiddie must not consider me wanting in affection that it is so long since I wrote to him personally. Assure him and all his family, I pray, of my gratitude and high regards, which many years, I trust, will enable me to testify... May all good be with you and my other acquaintances; and may I be enabled, when I come among you, to do more than fulfill all your expectations-till which happy junction may we be preserved in the grace of the Lord. "Yours most affectionately, EDWARD IRVING. "Paisley, 24th April, 1822." To Paisley, from which this letter is dated, Irving was in the habit of walking out on Saturday afternoons, to snatch a little domestic relaxation at the tea-table of the family into which his sister had married, and had a liberal habit of inviting chance fellowtravelers whom he encountered by the way to accompany him, occasionally to the considerable confusion and amazement of his kind hosts. On one of these occasions he introduced a stranger of shy and somewhat gruff demeanor, who spoke little, whose name nobody heard distinctly, and whom the good people set down as some chance pedestrian, a little out of his ease in "good society," whom Irving had picked up on the way. They were not undeceived until years after, when a member of the family, then in London, had one of the greatest of living authors, Thomas Carlyle, reverentially pointed out to her, and recognized, with horror and astonishment, the doubtful stranger whom she had entertained and smiled at in her father's house. The " bond," however, which Irving, generous and impetuous, would have been well content to dispense with, but which the prudent Presbytery insisted upon, was at length procured. "Another obstacle to my ordination your readiness," says Irving in the dedication already quoted, " without any request of mine, removed out of the way. To those brethren who came forward so voluntarily and so liberally on that occasion, the Church and the minister of the church are much beholden; and all of us are beholden to God, who useth us, in any way, however humble, for the accomplishment of his good purposes." Every thing was now settled, and only the necessary ecclesiastical preliminaries remained. The young man was at the highest pitch of hope and anticipation. As he had not concealed his eagerness to go, he did not conceal the high expectations with which he entered the longed-for field. Expressions of his hopes and projects burst forth wherever he went-misconstrued, of course, by many; received with cold wonder, and treated as boasts and braggadocio; but understood and believed by some. And the only evidence of other sentiments which appears in his correspondence-contained in a letter to Dr. Martin, evidently written in a moment of depression-still characteristically exhibits the high pitch of his anticipations: " There are a few things which bind me to the world, and but a very few," writes the young man in this effusion of momentary weariness; " one is to make a demonstration for a higher style of Christianity, something more magnanimous, more heroical than this age affects. God knows with what success." These wonderful prophetic words, written in some moment of revulsion, when the very height of satisfaction and triumph had brought a sudden depth of temporary depression to his sensitive soul, are the only visible trace of those clouds which canll never be wholly banished from the brightest firmament. During the last week of his residence in Glasgow he went to Rosneath to visit and take farewell of his friend Mr. Story, accompanied by another clerical friend, who went with him in wonder and dread, often inquiring how the farewell sermon, which was to be delivered on Sunday, could come into being. This good man perceived with dismay that Irving was not occupied about his farewell sermon, and declared with friendly vexation that if any thing worthy of a leave-taking with the people of St. John's was produced by the departing preacher under such circumstances, he would prove himself " the cleverest man in Scotland." Irving, however, was not dismayed. lIe went joyfully over loch and hill in that sweet holiday of hope. The world was all before him, and every thing was possible. No more limits except those of the truth, nor obliteration under another man's shadow. All this time he had been but painfully fitting and putting his armor together; now he was already close to the lists, and heard the trumpets of the battle, with laughter like that of the war-horse; a little longer, and he should be in the field. One day in this happy period, when going about the country with his friend, Irving, active, as of old, and full of glee and energy, leaped a gate which interposed in their way. This feat took the minister of Rosneath a little by surprise, as was natural. "Dear me, Irving,".he exclaimed, "I did not think you had been so agile." Irving turned upon him immediately, "Once I read you an essay of mine," said the preacher, " and you said,' Dear me, Irving, I did not think you had been so classical;' another time you heard me preach,'Dear me, Irving, I did not know you had so much imagination.' Now you shall see what great things I will do yet!" In this state of exulting expectation, he was not more patient than usual of the ordinary orthodoxy round him. While himself the sincerest son of his mother Church, and loving her very standards with a love which never died out of him, he was always intolerant of the common stock of dry theology, and the certified soundness of dull men. "You are content to go back and forward on the same route, like this boat," he is reported to have said, as the party struck across the swelling waters of the Gairloch; "but as for me, I hope yet to go deep into the ocean of truth." Words overbold and incautious, like most of his words, yet wonderfully characteristic of the unconcealed exaltation of mind and hope in which he was. So he returned to Glasgow, still accompanied by the alarmed and anxious friend, who could get no satisfaction about his farewell sermon. Such an occurrence as this solemn leave-taking, to which the little world looked forward, was an event in the history of the parish. It was an occasion such as preachers generally make the most of, and in which natural sentiment permits them a little freedom and deliverance from the ordinary restraints of the pulpit. And it was, perhaps, the first opportunity which Irving had ever had, with all eyes concentrated on himself, to communicate his thoughts without risk of the inevitable comparison, or the jealousy equally inevitable, of those who resented the idea of the assistant attempting to rival "the doctor." He was now no longer Dr. Chalmers's assistant, but a London minister elect;. and when the bonds which bound him were unloosed, all the kindnesses of the past rushed warm upon the memory of the impulsive young man. He came into the pulpit glowing with a tender flush of gratitude; his discontent and weariness had dropped off from him, and existed no longer; he remembered only the love, the friendship, the good offices, the access he had obtained to many hearts. In that sermon, of which his companion despaired, the materials required little research or arrangement. The preacher had but to go back upon his own life of two years, seen in the warm reviving light of farewell kindness. He stood up in that pulpit, the last time he was to occupy it by right of his present position, and calmly told the astonished hearers of his own unpopularity, of their forbearance yet not applause, of the "imperfections which had not been hid from their eyes," yet of the brotherly kindness which they, and especially the poor among them, had shown him; and proclaimed the praises of his leader with a warmth and heartfelt fullness which distressed and overwhelmed that sober Scotsman, unaccustomed to and disapproving of such demonstrations of attachment. Even upon that unenthusiastic and preoccupied audience this farewell address seems to have made an impression. Hee left them at peace with all men; and forgetting, as his affectionate temperament had a faculty for forgetting, all his annoyances and discomforts there. This farewell took away every possibility of bitterness. They were all his friends whom he left behind. He gave a wide, but warm, universal invitation to all. His house, his services, all that he could do, were freely pledged to whosoever of those parishioners might come to London and stand in need of him. He meant what he said, unguarded and imprudent as the expression was; and the people instinctively understood that he did so. It was thus with the warmest effusion of good-will that he left Glasgow, where, as in every other place, there was no lack of people who smiled at him, were doubtful of him, and patronized him with amusing toleration, but where nobody now or then had an unkind word to say. When the farewell was over, and the sermon had met with its award, that good, puzzled companion, who went with the incomprehensible preacher to Rosneath, confided all his doubts and troubles on this subject to the private ear of a sympathizing friend. "Such a sermon would have taken me a week to write!" said this bewildered worthy. Possibly a lifetime would have been too short for such a feat, had the good man but known. Immediately after this leave-taking Irving proceeded to Annan, to his father's house, there to appear once more before the Presbytery and go through his final " trials" for ordination. He chose to have this great solemnity of his life accomplished in the same church in which he had been baptized, and in which a third sad act awaited him. But there was no foreboding in the air of that sweet spring, which he spent in a kind of retreat of calm and retirement in his paternal house. The breathing-time which he had there, as well as the hopes and interests which pleasantly agitated it, are described in a letter addressed to his friend and frequent correspondent, Mr. David Hope. " Annan, 28th May, 1822. " I am snugly seated in this Temple of Indolence, and very loth to be invaded by any of the distractions of the busy city. I would fain devote myself to the enjoyment of our home and family, and to meditate from a distance the busy scene I have left, and the more busy scene to which I am bound. My mind seems formed for inactivity. I can saunter the whole day from field to field, riding on impressions and the transient thoughts they awaken, with no companion of books or men, saving, perhaps, a little nephew or niece in my hand. " You may from this conceive how little disposed I am to take any task in hand of any kind; and I had almost resolved to refuse flatly the flattering requests of my friends to publish that poor discourse; but yesterday there came such a letter from Mr. Collins, full of argument and the kindest encouragement, lthat I have resolved to comply, and shall signify my resolution to him by this post. "For the other matter, it gives me the most exquisite delight to think my friends remember me with attachment. That they are about to show it by some testimonial I should perhaps not have known till I received it. It is not my part to make a choice; but if I were to think of any thing, it would be that very thing which you mention. But of this say nothing as coming from me." The matter here referred to was a present which some members of St. John's Church were desirous of making him. It was decided that it should be a watch; and I have been told, without, however, being able to vouch for the entire authenticity of the story, that when the matter was entirely decided upon, and the money in hand, Irving was consulted to know whether he had any particular fancy or liking in the matter. He had one, and that was characteristic. He requested that it should be provided by a certain watchmaker, whose distinguishing quality was not that he was skillful in his trade, but that he was an Annandale man. The good donors yielded to this recommendation; and Irving had the double delight of receiving a very substantial proof of his friends' attachment, and of throwing a valuable piece of work in the way of his countryman. Whether the watch itself was the better for the arrangement tradition does not tell. While the prospect of this tribute, or rather of the affection which it displayed,.gave him, as he says, in the fullness of his heart, "exquisite delight," the publication of his sermon was also going on. But the discourse, in which Irving had poured out all the generous exuberance of his feelings, fell into dangerous hands before it reached the public. Mrs. Chalmers laid hold upon the offending manuscript, and without either the consent or knowledge of the writer, cut down its panegyric into more moderate dimensions-a proceeding which the luckless author, when he came to know of it, resented deeply, as I suspect most authors would be disposed to do. "Returning some months afterward to Glasgow," says Dr. Hanna, in his Life of Dr. Chalmers, " his printed sermon was handed to Mr. Irving, who, on looking over it, broke out into expressions of astonishment and indignation at the liberties which had been taken with his production-expressions which would have been more measured had he known who the culprit was." Such a meddling with his first publication was enough to try the temper of the meekest of men. Immediately after his ordination he returned to Glasgow, and there assisted Dr. Chalmers in the solemn and austere pomp(pomp, not certainly of outward accessories, yet it is the only word by which I can describe the importance given to the half-yearly occasion, the "sacramental season" of Scotch piety, separated as it is by long array of devotional services from the ordinary course of the year)-of a Scottish communion. Irving himself describes this as " having experienced of my dear friend Dr. Chalmers the singular honor of administering the sacrament to his parish flock, being my first act as an ordained minister." It was a graceful conclusion to his residence in Glasgow. From thence he set out, amid honor and good wishes, with the highest hopes in his mind, and charity in his heart, on the morning of the 8th of July, 1822, to London. The future seems to have glowed before him with all the indefinite brightness of early youth. Certainly that little chapel in London, in those dread wastes about Holborn, far out of hearing of the great world as might have been supposed, with fifty undistinguished members, to their own knowing strenuous Scotch churchmen, but, so far as the great indifferent community about them was concerned, lost in the crowd of Dissenting chapels, nameless and unknown places of worship, had little in itself to lift the anticipations of its minister to any superlative height; nor did he carry with him any comforting consciousness of success; unflattered, undeceived, fully aware and never scrupling to confess that his preaching had hitherto, except in individual cases, been little more than tolerated, it might have been supposed a very homely and sombre perspective which opened before this young man. So far as actual realities were concerned, it was so; but the instinct of his heart contradicted reality, and showed, in wonderful indefinite vision, some great thing that was to come. He calls himself " aman unknown, despised, and almost outcast; a man spoken against, suspected, and avoided;" yet, withal, proceeds to his obscure corner of that great wilderness of men, in which so many men, greater than he could pretend to be, had been swallowed up and lost, with a certain ineffable expectation about him which it is impossible to describe, but which shines through every word and action. He did not foresee how it was to come; he could not have prophesied that all London would stir to the echoes of his voice. All that memorable tragic life that lay solemnly waiting for him among the multitudinous roofs was hid in the haze of an illumination which never takes visible shape or form. But Nature, prevoyant, tingled into his heart an inarticulate thrill of prophecy. He went forth joyfully, wittingly, aware of all the hazards of that battle, into the deepest of the fight-amid all the exaltation of his hopes, never without a touch of forlorn dignity, acknowledged without any bitterness, the consciousness of a man who, however he might triumph hereafter, had known many a defeat already. Thus Irving went out bf his youth and obscurity, out of trials and probation not often exceeded, to the solemn field full of lights and shadows greater than he dreamt of, where his course, for a time, was to be that of a conqueror, and where, at last, like other kings and victors before him, he was to fall, dauntless but mortal, with the loss of all save honor.