. The
accomplishment of verse is at least not a vulgar one." The conversation
went on as we passed together along the street; and he stood for a time
opposite the manse door. "I am forming," he said, "a small library for
our Sabbath-school scholars and teachers: most of the books are simple
enough little things; but it contains a few works of the intellectual
class. Call upon me this evening that we may look over them, and you may
perhaps find among them some volumes you would wish to read." I
accordingly waited upon him in the evening; and we had a long
conversation together. He was, I saw, curiously sounding me, and taking
my measure in all directions; or, as he himself afterwards used to
express it in his characteristic way, he was like a traveller who,
having come unexpectedly on a dark pool in a ford, dips down his staff,
to ascertain the depth of the water and the nature of the bottom. He
inquired regarding my reading, and found that in the belles-lettres,
especially in English literature, it was about as extensive as his own.
He next inquired respecting my acquaintance with the metaphysicians.
"Had I read Reid?" "Yes." "Brown?" "Yes." "_Hume?_" "Yes." "Ah! ha!
Hume!! By the way, has he not something very ingenious about miracles?
Do you remember his argument?" I stated the argument. "Ah, very
ingenious--most ingenious. And how would you answer that?" I said, "I
thought I could give an abstract of the reply of Campbell," and sketched
in outline the reverend Doctor's argument. "And do you deem that
satisfactory?" said the minister. "No, not at all," I replied. "No! no!
_that's_ not satisfactory." "But perfectly satisfactory," I rejoined,
"that such is the general partiality for the better side, that the worse
argument has been received as perfectly adequate for the last sixty
years." The minister's face gleamed with the broad fun that entered so
largely into his composition, and the conversation shifted into other
channels.

From that night forward I enjoyed perhaps more of his confidence and
conversation than any other man in his parish. Many an hour did he spend
beside me in the churchyard, and many a quiet tea did I enjoy in the
manse; and I learned to know how much solid worth and true wisdom lay
under the somewhat eccentric exterior of a man who sacrificed scarce
anything to the conventionalities. This, with the exception of Chalmers,
sublimest of Scottish preachers--for, little as he was known, I will
challe