HANNA'S LIFE OF CHA LM ERS.*
Tun characteristic of the third volume of Dr. Chalmers's biography is continued in the fourth and last. The subjects relate rather to the public career than the private life of the great Scottish preacher : in fact, the bulk of,the volume is a history of the causes which led to the separation of Chalmers and his followers from the Ecclesiastical Establishment of Scotland, and the foundation of the Free Church. It is of course onesided to this extent : the views are those of the seceding party, and the man Chalmers is as con- spicuous as the events, and much more conspicuous than the other actors. Tlfe narrative, however, will be very interesting to those who take an interest in the subject, from the completeness of the story, and the fulness with which the personal characteristics of Chalmers as an ecclesiastic and party leader are displayed. Per- haps, indeed, the disruption may be found the great event of his life for posterity; it certainly exhibited the energy of his cha- racter and the readiness with which he threw himself into any new pursuit. He had divided life into seven decades, corresponding with the days of the week; and the last decade of the threescore years and ten he had called the Sabbath, and intended to devote it to rest. He had turned sixty when the dispute began ; and imme- diately threw himself into it, if not with all the physical activity yet with all the mental energy of a young man, besides displaying a foresight and a power of organization which a young man would scarcely possess. That he did not contemplate separation, or like it when it came, is true ; but as soon as he saw the inevitable ten- dency of events, he warily prepared for the inevitable result, so that the seceders at last were not taken by surprise or without means of instantaneous action. It is possible that Chalmers was not so much a moving spirit as he seemed to be ; but there can be little doubt that the weight of his authority influenced many to withdraw who might otherwise have remained—no doubt that the popularity of his name and the effect of his eloquence gave an éclat to the Secession which it would otherwise have wanted, and procured pecuniary assistance, without which the Free Church would have fallen to a mere schism.
The subjects of this volume, not directly or indirectly connected with the great Church movement, are few and not important. The lectures on Church Establishments, delivered at the Hanover Square Rooms, when the Tories invited Dr. Chalmers to London to counteract the supposed tendencies of the Melbourne Ministry, fall into this period, 1836-184'7. There are also a further discussion of the system of enforced poor-laws, an attempt to carry religion and education into the neglected districts of Edinburgh, and some matters connected with universities. The more private topics em- brace a tour to France, and several home-trips, including visits to London in connexion with his lectures or the Non-intrusion and Free Church question. These give rise to descriptions, sketches, and anecdotes from his own pen in letters or journals, but scarcely, we think, so racy or striking as similar things in the previous volumes, when the world was newer and perhaps more attractive to the observer.
Among the exceptions to this remark, the following is one of the most curious. The poet truly sings— "That hallowed form is ne'er forgot
Which first love traced ; Still it lingering haunts the greenest spot On memory's waste."
But surely it seldom appears so vividly as in the case of the great Presbyterian orator, an old married man of sixty-five. In the spring of 1845 Dr. Chalmers paid a visit to the scenes of his youth, and hunted up all the old acquaintances that were living.
"But the most interesting visit of all was to Barnsmuir, a place a few miles from Anstruther, on the way to Crail. In his schoolboy days it had been occupied by Captain R--, whose eldest daughter rode in daily on a little pony to the school at Anstruther. Dr. Chalmers was then a boy of from twelve to fourteen years of age, but he was not too young for an at- tachment of a singularly tenacious hold. Miss R— was married (I believe while he was yet at college) to Mr. F—, and his opportunities of seeing her in after life were few ; but that early impression never faded from his heart. At the time of his visit to Anstruther in 1845 she had been dead for many years ; but, at Dr. Chalmers's particular request, her younger sister met him at Barnsmuir. Having made the most affectionate inquiries about Mrs. F.— and her family, he inquired particularly about her death ; re- ceiving with deep emotion the intelligence that she had died in the full Christian hope, and that some of his own letters to her sister had served to soothe and comfort her latest hours. Mrs. W—,' said he, eagerly, 'is there a portrait of your sister anywhere in this house ? ' She took him to a room and pointed to a profile which hung upon the wall. He planted him- self before it, gazed on it with intense earnestnesa, took down the picture, took out his card, and, by two wafers, fixed it firmly on the back of the por- trait, exactly opposite to the face. 'Having replaced the likeness, he stood before it and burst into a flood of tears, accompanied by the warmest expres- sions of attachment. After leaving the house, he sauntered in silence round the garden, buried in old recollections, heaving a sigh occasionally, and mut- tering to himself, ' More than forty years ago !' It is not often that a boy-
• Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Chalmers, D.D., LL.D. By his San-in-law, the Reverend William Hanna, LL.D. Volume IV. Published by Con- 'table and Co., Edinburgh; Hamilton and Adams, London.
ish feeling survives so long, and still less frequent that after such a life of variety and occupation as his had been it should break out so freshly and strongly."
The death of Dr. Chalmers was so sudden, and the particulars were so fully stated at the time, that Dr. Hanna could ad nothing to the closing scene. As he approaches it, he gives an interesting account of the habits of his father-in-law.
"It may gratify a natural curiosity should we follow Dr. Chalmers through the different engagements of a day at Morningside' and furnish some details of his personal habits and mode of domestic life. Whatever variety the day exhibited, it had one fixed essential feature. The motto 'nulls dies sine lines' never met with a more rigorous fulfilment The period allotted to what he called 'severe composition had never (if we except his first winter at St. Andrews) exceeded two or three hours at a time' and in ordinary cir- cumstances there WAS seldom more than one sitting daily at such work. The tension of the mind during the effort was extreme, but it was never so long continued as to induce fatigue or exhaustion. During the last six or seven years of his life his daily modicum of original composition was com- pleted before breakfak written in short-hand, and all done in bed. The preparatory ruminating or excogitating process was slow, but it was com- plete. He often gave it as the reason why he did not and could not take part in the ordinary debates of the General Assembly, that he had not the faculty which some men seemed to him to possess, o/ thinking extempore ; nor could he be so sure of any judgment as to have comfort 111 bringing it before the public till he had leisurely weighed and measured it. He was vehement often in his mode of expression ; but no hasty judgment was ever penned or publicly spoken by him. 'I have often fancied,' he once said to me, that in one respect I resemble Rousseau, who ergs of himself that his processes of thought were slow but ardent,'—a curious and rare combi- nation. In proportion, however, to the slowness with which his conclu- sions were reached, was the firmness with which they were rivetted. He has been charged with inconsistencies ; but (putting aside the alteration in his religious sentiments) I am not aware of any one opinion, formally ex- pressed or published by him which he ever changed or retracted. This slow and deliberate habit of thinking gave him a great advantage when the act of composition came to be performed. He never had the double task to do, at once of thinking what he should say, and how he should say it. The one was over before the other commenced. He never began to write till, in its sub- jects, and the order and proportions of its parts, the map or outline of the future composition was laid down ; and this was done so distinctly, and, as it were, authoritatively, that it was seldom violated. When engaged, there- fore, in writing, his whole undivided strength was given to the best and moat powerful expression of preistablished ideas. So far before him did he see, and so methodically did he proceed, that he could calculate for weeks and months beforehand the rate of his progress, and the day when each separate composition would be finished.
"The same taste for numerical arrangement was exhibited in the most insignificant actions and habits of his life. It regulated every part of his toilet—down even to the daily stropping of his razor. Beginning with his minimum, which was two strokes, he added one stroke more each day suc- cessively, till he got up to a number fixed on as his maximum, on reaching which, he reversed the process, diminishing the number of his strokes by one each day, till the lowest point was touched ; and so, by what he would have called a series of oscillations between his maximum and his minimum, this matter of the stropping undeviatingly progressed. It would be tedious, perhaps trifling, to tell how a like order was punctually observed in other parts of his toilet. He did almost everything by numbers. His staff was put down to the ground regularly at each fourth footfall ; and the number of its descents gave him a pretty accurate measure of the space over which he walked. Habit had rendered the counting of these descents an easy, in- deed almost a mechanical operation ; so that though meeting friends and sustaining an animated conversation, it still went on. • • •
"'I find,' he says, that successful exertion is a powerful means of ex- hilaration, which discharges itself in good-humour upon others.' His own morning compositions seldom failed in this effect, as he came forth from them beaming and buoyant, with a step springing as that of childhood, and a spirit overflowing with benignity. If his grandson or any of the younger members of his family were alone in the breakfast-room a broad and hearty Rune! hurro ringing through the hall, announced his coming and carried to them his morning greeting. As his invariable mode of dealing with introductions was to invite the introduced to breakfast, very interesting groups often gathered round his breakfast-table. In the general conversa- tion of promiscuous society, Dr. Chalmers did not excel. There are minor acts of governing, such as those needed for the management of a House of Commons or the conduct of a General Assembly, in which he was utterly defective; and there are minor graces of conversation required for its easy guidance through varied and fluctuating channels, which his absorption with his own topics, and the massive abruptness of his movements, made it diffi- cult, perhaps impossible, for him to practise. But at his breakfast-table, with Ulf-a-dozen strangers or foreigners around him, his conversation was in the highest degree rich and attractive. Opportunities naturally occurred, or were willingly made, for him to expatiate' upon some passing public topic, or upon some of his own favourite themes, and he was never seen nor heard to greater advantage. His power of pithy expression (remarkably ex- hibited in his occasional employment of vernacular Scotch) and of pictorial narrative his concentrated and intense moral earnestness, his sense of hu- mour, his boundless benignity, the pure, transparent, and guileless simplicity of his character, received many of their happiest illustrations at such tames."
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