Mr. Gladstone remembered, 'chiefly out of the town
by the Dean Bridge and along the Queensferry road. On one of our walks
together, Chalmers took me down to see one of his districts by the water
of Leith, and I remember we went into one or more of the cottages. He
went in with smiling countenance, greeting and being greeted by the
people, and sat down. But he had nothing to say. He was exactly like the
Duke of Wellington, who said of himself that he had no small talk. His
whole mind was always full of some great subject and he could not
deviate from it. He sat smiling among the people, but he had no small
talk for them and they had no large talk. So after some time we came
away, he pleased to have been with the people, and they proud to have
had the Doctor with them.[60] For Chalmers he never lost a warm
appreciation, often expressed in admirable words--'one of nature's
nobles; his warrior grandeur, his rich and glowing eloquence, his
absorbed and absorbing earnestness, above all his singular simplicity
and detachment from the world.' Among other memories, 'There was a
quaint old shop at the Bowhead which used to interest me very much. It
was kept by a bookseller, Mr. Thomas Nelson. I remember being amused by
a reply he made to me one day when I went in and asked for Booth's
_Reign of Grace_. He half turned his head towards me, and remarked with
a peculiar twinkle in his eye, "Ay, man, but ye're a young chiel to be
askin' after a book like that."'

RELATIONS WITH CHALMERS

On his way south in January 1834, Mr. Gladstone stays with relatives at
Seaforth, 'where even the wind howling upon the window at night was dear
and familiar;' and a few days later finds himself once more within the
ever congenial walls of Oxford.

_January 19, Sunday._--Read the first lesson in morning chapel. A
most masterly sermon of Pusey's preached by Clarke. Lancaster in
the afternoon on the Sacrament. Good walk. Wrote [family letters].
Read Whyte. Three of Girdlestone's Sermons. Pickering on adult
baptism (some clever and singularly insufficient reasoning).
Episcopal pastoral letter for 1832. Doane's Ordination sermon,
1833, admirable,--Wrote some thoughts. _Jan. 20._--Sismondi's
_Italian Republics_. Dined at Merton, and spent all the evening
there in interesting conversation. I was Hamilton's guest
[afterwards Bishop of Salisbury]. It was delightful, it wrings joy