in
danger of having my beliefs unsettled by reasonings of this stumbling
cast. "Be sure," said both my uncles, as I was quitting Cromarty for the
south, "be sure you go and hear Dr. M'Crie." And so Dr. M'Crie I did go
and hear; and not once or twice, but often. The biographer of Knox--to
employ the language in which Wordsworth describes the humble hero of the
"Excursion"--

"was a man
Whom no one could have passed without remark."

And on first attending his church, I found that I had unwittingly seen
him before, and that without remark I had _not_ passed him. I had
extended one of my usual evening walks, shortly after commencing work at
Niddry, in the direction of the southern suburb of Edinburgh, and was
sauntering through one of the green lanes of Liberton, when I met a
gentleman whose appearance at once struck me. He was a singularly erect,
spare, tall man, and bore about him an air which, neither wholly
clerical nor wholly military, seemed to be a curious compound of both.
The countenance was pale, and the expression, as I thought, somewhat
melancholy; but an air of sedate power sat so palpably on every feature,
that I stood arrested as he passed, and for half a minute or so remained
looking after him. He wore, over a suit of black, a brown great-coat,
with the neck a good deal whitened by powder, and the rim of the hat
behind, which was slightly turned up, bore a similar stain. "There is
mark about that old-fashioned man," I said to myself: "who or what can
he be?" Curiously enough, the apparent combination of the military and
the clerical in his gait and air suggested to me Sir Richard Steele's
story, in the "Tattler," of the old officer who, acting in the double
capacity of major and chaplain to his regiment, challenged a young man
for blasphemy, and after disarming, would not take him to mercy until he
had first begged pardon of God upon his knees on the duelling ground,
for the irreverence with which he had treated His name. My curiosity
regarding the stranger gentleman was soon gratified. Next Sabbath I
attended the Doctor's chapel, and saw the tall, spare, clerico-military
looking man in the pulpit. I have a good deal of faith in the military
air, when, in the character of a natural trait, I find it strongly
marking men who never served in the army. I have not yet seen it borne
by a civilian who had not in him at least the elements of the soldier;
nor can I doubt t