sense of high responsibility will move and sustain him to the faithful performance of its duties, and that his interest in them and his love for them will make his light to burn more brightly from year to year. We believe that, arrived as he is at that desirable age when men retain the freshness and vigour of youth, while they have parted with its impetuosity and rashness, having a full comprehension of the exigencies of the time, and a ready tact in discerning the resources and methods with which best to meet them; and at the same time that he is conversant with the products of free thought, both at home and abroad, possessing a rare power of discrimination, which enables him to take forth the precious from the vile, to make use of the useful and reject the noxious, we believe that, with these and other essential qualifications which the time requires, he will be found to discharge with efficiency the duties of his office. In such circumstances we shall all surely look forward to his coming among us most hopefully and confidently, and we shall all feel justified in anticipating for him, should God spare him, in his new position, a long career of high honours and eminent usefulness.

"I take some credit," says this faithful and life-long friend, thirty-two years after, when that bright career was over, "for having been so fully prophetic." The prescience of brotherly affection and understanding was indeed thoroughly proved and justified.

It was with such prognostications and surroundings that the new Principal entered upon his larger sphere.

CHAPTER VI.

UNIVERSITY WORK.

It was not until the summer of 1855 that the Principal's family settled down in St Mary's. I wonder what the fashionable controversialists of the present day would say to the pecuniary conditions of this great promotion which landed the young pair, with an already numerous and still increasing family, in the large and beautiful old house, requiring servants and cares unnecessary in a country manse, with, of course, duties in the way of entertainment and ceremony from which a country minister was quite free, upon the magnificent income of £300 a-year. This was, with an official house, all the stipend that belonged to the Principalship. Principal Haldane had held a cure of souls along with his high office, but pluralism even in such a cheap and inoffensive way was against the newly developing ideas of the time. Even in money this was very little advance on the stipend of Kettins; and, taking all things into account, it was as a matter of fact a poorer means of living. The new appointment, I presume, awakened the public attention to the miserable inadequacy of such an income, but it was not until 1858 that any action seems to have been taken in the matter.

There is not much material by which to learn the history of the first few years at St Andrews, for Tulloch seems to

have been much absorbed by his work, and seldom from home; while of his two chief correspondents, one, Mr Dickson, was within reach of continual meetings, and he complains of Mr Smith's "obstinate silence," a reproach repeated from the other side, both friends by this time being fully engrossed by the business of life, and with less and less time for letter-writing. For the first time the Principal found himself in the midst of a thoroughly congenial and indeed brilliant little society. St Andrews has become too well known to demand much description. Its fame, which is partly of letters, but I fear still more of golf, has extended far and wide, and there are now few places where the visitor is more likely to meet with other pilgrims from all quarters of the world. The little grey town with its rocks and ruins, the stately relics of a historico-ecclesiastical period now entirely passed, and leaving no sign except in these monuments of a lodging far more magnificent than faith or learning has ever since had in Scotland,-with the dark and dangerous reefs below, which make St Andrews Bay a name of fear to seafaring men; and around the half-encompassing sea, sometimes grey as northern skies can make it, sometimes crisp and brilliant in its blue breadth, as full of colour as the Mediterranean; the long stretch of sandhills and cheerful links, the brown and red roofs all clustered about an old steeple or two, thinning out into farmhouses and cottages landward among their spare and wind-swept trees, running down into fisherhouses, and the bustle of a little storm-beaten port towards the east, stands now, as then, upon its little promontory, with all those charms of situation and association which make a place of human habitation most dear. I think there is no such sweep and breadth of sky anywhere. The "spacious firmament on high" sweeps round and round, with the distant hills in soft outline against its tints of pearl, and the levels of the sea melting into it, yet keeping their imperceptible line of distinction, brimming over in that vast and glorious

SOCIETY IN ST ANDREWS.

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cup. The great globe sways visibly in the summer sunshine, so that the musing spectator seems to see its vast circumference, the level of its human diameter, the circle that holds it separate from all other spaces and worlds. Nowhere else has my mind received the same impression of the round world and all that it contains. And there could be no more magnificent sight anywhere than the sunsets that flame upon the western sky over the long levels of the links, or the rush of the aurora borealis in the intense blue of the midnight frost, or the infinite soft gradations of earth and sea and air in the lingering summer evenings, when the gleam of half-a-dozen lighthouses comes out intermittent, like faint earthly stars in the dim celestial circles when silence reigns and peace.

The edge of the little promontory was not obscured then as it is now with commonplace houses; but the green of the Scores was free, with no interruption until the upright lines of the ruins and the heavy old immemorial tower of St Rule gave a climax to the landscape; and the town was still under the all-improving sway of Sir Hugh Playfair, whose hand swept and garnished into uniform tidiness even certain scraps of ruin-such as the Blackfriars Chapel in South Street-but no doubt did good service elsewhere. The society, I believe, was more stationary than it has been since, and more entirely disposed to make of St Andrews the pleasantest and brightest of abiding-places. Sir David Brewster was still throned in St Leonards. Professor Ferrier, with his witty and brilliant wife-he full of quiet humour, she of the wildest wit, a mimic of alarming and delightful power, with something of the countenance and much of the genius of her father, the great Christopher North of Blackwood's Magazine'-made the brightest centre of social mirth and meetings. Westpark, their pleasant house, is now metamorphosed into a big stony mansion, which the Muses know no more; but at the period which I record it was ever open, ever sounding with gay

voices and merry laughter, with a boundless freedom of talk and comment, and an endless stream of good company. Professor Ferrier himself was one of the greatest metaphysicians of his time-the first certainly in Scotland; but this was perhaps less upon the surface than a number of humorous ways which were the delight of his friends, many quaint abstractions proper to his philosophical character, and a happy friendliness and gentleness along with his wit, which gave his society a continual charm. It is permitted to speak of this lively and delightful household, because that pair, so full in their way of native genius and originality, have both passed from the haunts of men. I cannot add, for the reason that this has fortunately not happened in other cases, more than the names of the Sellars, the Fischers, and other members of the mirth-loving community. The house of the late Mr John Blackwood at Strathtyrum added, at a later period, other elements of wit and delightful social intercourse. Society has become more reticent in later days. It permits itself no such liberties as those which in the flow of wit and high spirits were freely taken with individual peculiarities and the quips and cranks of intellectualism. It has become perhaps tant soit peu précieuse, cultured, thoughtful, and other fine things. But the native gaiety, the exuberant fun, the freedom and friendliness, mingled with the best of talk upon all subjects, and a lively acquaintance with everything going on, which existed thirty years ago—no such very long period after all -has died away. It lingered longer in St Mary's than anywhere else, until trouble and sickness, and the fading off of the elder generation and the coming in of a new order, chased the last traces away.

It was into the heart of this pleasant company that the new Principal came; and probably the walk that could be taken with Ferrier, the pleasant meeting at the philosopher's house, the humours of the characteristic company altogether, made correspondence and even change of scene less neces