To return to the youthful Glasgow student. Perhaps nothing can convey so accurate an idea of what he was at this early age as a letter written in most delicate and legible characters to one of his elder sisters. In it we already see something of that blending of thought and feeling, of self-control and reflectiveness with spontaneity, which distinguished the man. It shows, too, how happy and loving was the home-circle he was nurtured in a circle, I have heard him say, of which no member permitted him or herself an uncourteous tone or the disrespect of personal comment towards any other. There was a latent fire in the dark eyes of all, and a tacit conviction prevailed that such a liberty would be resented. I copy the letter verbatim. It was written in the summer of 1822: :

MY DEAR ESTHER, I surely need not tell you with how much pleasure Selina's letter was received. Need I say, I shall be glad to see you all. With how much pleasure I look forward to the happy time, how many fond anticipations, and how many expectations I indulge! You have lately felt all these, and know them well; but you cannot tell the change my mind has undergone. Before the arrival of that joy-bearing letter, I had been "making up" my mind to spend my summer at Glasgow, and perhaps part of that summer alone. I say “making up,” for it was a kind of process, and one rather tedious and difficult. For, as I told my dear mamma, the thought would often come with great force, "How I should like to see them all! Now this would greatly retard the process, and therefore I set strict watch over my thoughts; and when they rambled to North End, I checked them, after a very short indulgence, for fear they should end in a desire to visit that happy corner. has set all in a flame. Those smothered feelings burst forth, hope and expectation shine with double lustre, all is light and gladness. And shall I see you all so soon? Yes, I shall, I shall!

It

This is the first time I have stopped to take breath since I began this letter, for, whenever the subject of home comes across

my mind, it imparts such an impulse that there is no resisting it. Perhaps it has carried me on with precipitation in this case. Sometimes it crosses my path while I am taking a walk, and then it is sure to make me take extraordinary long steps, or make fantastic leaps. In short, wherever it comes it gives an irresistible stimulus, which no gravity can withstand and no will restrain. But gently! gently, my pen!

There is one little circumstance I cannot help mentioning. When Theyre had perused the letter, and knew how the contents would please me, he put on a grave look, and, with a solemn manner, read to me that part which contained the news. The contrast was very great, for, while he was standing in this solemn manner, I was laughing and wriggling about the chair, as though bewitched. Well then, you may expect us the first week in August, at the latest; and glad shall I be when that week comes, for I do so want to see you all.

No doubt it will give you pleasure to hear that Theyre has carried off the first prize in the Logic class. There are in every class a certain number of prizes given, and they are distributed according to the votes of the students. Theyre obtained his unanimously. He also was successful in a prize essay. I must also tell you that the Greek professor gave me one for two or three poetical translations I wrote. There is no little ceremony in distributing them, but I will not trouble you

with that.

How many circumstances are there which are constantly directing our thoughts to that place where our affections are placed! The most trifling thing will sometimes carry us away many miles, and detain us there for a long time. The other day, as I was demonstrating a proposition (for I am attending a little to mathematics), I happened to put the lid of the case of instruments upon my compass, and, twirling it round, it made a noise like a rattle. This rattling immediately reminded me of May-fair; it was but a step to North End, and, when once you have set your foot there, you know how many difficulties to take it away again. Well, some time after I found myself looking intently on the proposition, and holding the compass and the case on it in my hand, but quite ignorant of what I was doing. I seemed to have been roused from a vision.

Then follow messages of love to the different members of the family, and a little significant postcript: "You promise you won't keep me!" which proves how much the college life was appreciated.1 But though he did return at the commencement of the next session, a sharp attack of inflammation of the lungs soon led to his being sent away home, and in the January of 1823 his father died, at the age of sixty-three.

And now came many changes, all of them fraught with pain. There was the loss of the indulgent father, the spectacle of the mother's meek, deep-seated grief, the break-up of the cheerful home, and in addition there was the closing of the college career, for the climate of Glasgow was pronounced too severe to be safely returned to; and the youth in whose secret soul the problems of the metaphysician and the visions of the poet were already

1 My husband throughout life entertained a very decided preference for the Scotch system of mental training. I may illustrate this by some observations of his in an article, written in 1855, on the Life of Lord Metcalfe. That distinguished man, as a young Oxonian, professed to "abhor metaphysics," and in his journal prayed to be delivered from "the abominable spirit" of reliance on reason as a guide; "blessed reason," as he in irony termed it.

"One cannot help remarking that a Scotch youth of the same age might be equally pious, equally steadfast in his faith, and perhaps more conversant with the several articles of his creed, but he never would have expressed the tenacity of his convictions in this manner, never would have spoken of blessed reason' ironically. . . . His first and last boast would have been that his faith was the perfection of reason. A Scotch lad, who had only breathed the air of Glasgow or of Edinburgh, would have never shrunk from intellectual contest, or professed that the creed he held and cherished was not in perfect harmony with the truly blessed reason. He would as soon have thought of proclaiming himself a lunatic in the public streets, and avowing a preference for a slight shade of insanity. Such distinction we cannot help noticing between the systems of education in England and Scotland; but we have no intention of pursuing the subject, or drawing any laboured comparison between their respective merits."

seething, found himself destined to an uncongenial calling, that of the law. "He was articled," I quote from a letter of Mr. Weigall's, "to Mr. Sharon Turner, the Anglo-Saxon historian, who was by profession an attorney; but the office routine was so distasteful to him that he soon solicited Mr. Turner to cancel his articles. Mr. Turner told him he did not feel justified in doing so, as he did not consider William at that time the best judge of what was expedient for him. William dragged through the weary hours he was required by his agreement to spend in Mr. Turner's office, and has often told me they were the most tedious and profitless in his existence." When it is remembered, too, that at this early age necessity was laid upon the earnest seeker after truth to loose from the old moorings and put forth, he alone, -he-so loving, so sensitive, so considerate of the feelings of others — alone on what then seemed "a dim and perilous way," one towards which, at all events, no member of his home ever so much as glanced, it need excite no surprise that he viewed this period of his youth as profoundly unhappy. He would occasionally revert to it, but I never encouraged any reminiscence that cast a shadow over his spirits. I feel, however, that the following passage from one of his early works sprang from personal experience :

It generally happens that the external influences of daily scene and customary actions oppose their timely resistance to the desponding humour of our early days. But in my case the outward scene of life was such as to foster and encourage it. The encroaching disposition became sole possessor of my mind. The ivy grew everywhere. It spread unhindered on my path, it stole unchecked upon my dwelling, it obscured the light of day, and embowered the secluded tenant in a fixed and stationary gloom. . . . In this moody condition of my soul, every trifling disgust, every casual vexation, though disregarded of themselves, could summon up a dismal train of violent and afflicting meditations. The first disturbance, the first ripple on the sur

...

face, soon indeed subsided; but, to take an illustration from some fairy tale I have read, the pebble was thrown upon enchanted waters, and it roused the gloomy and tempestuous genius that lay scarce slumbering beneath them.

Yet nothing could be more true than that "his misanthropy injured no one but its owner." Such was the sweetness of his nature, and his equitable recognition of the claims of others, that I doubt if his devoted mother, or any one of the home-circle "to whose hilarity he conspicuously contributed," ever suspected that beneath such a sunlit smiling surface any gloomy genius whatsoever dwelt and stirred. A lady, however, who in her character of acquaintance may have observed more accurately than relatives, who often stand too near to see, describes him at this period as "most gentle and gracious, but seemingly quite apart from the rest in his dreamy, gentle way.' She adds: "Looking at his face, one could only think of the wonderful depth and intellect of his eyes,- this was something marvellous."

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And now comes a period of which I can give scarce any account, for to my husband, whose life had long been one of abstract thinking, — impersonal, one might almost say, any attempt to recall dates was distinctly painful; and I, while gladly garnering any crumbs that fell for me from his past, was aware that he could not, even had he tried, reconstruct it consecutively. But I know that he lived with a most tender mother, a mother in whose eyes whatever William did was right; to whom his very leaving off attending church and chapel, though it might have disturbed her in the case of others, could not seem wrong. I know that his first visit to Switzerland, first sight of the Lake of Lucerne and the glories of the mountains, was paid during an early period of youth, while there was on him that misanthropic Byronic mood, in which, to use his own words, a love and an enthusiasm for nature was a compensation for want of cordial sympathy with man,

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