f whose logic, when you grappled with him in argument,
seemed equalled only by the strength of his hand-grip when you met him
or bade him good-bye, or by the manly integrity and nobleness of his
character."[8] And again, writing of him as he was at a later date,
the same critic gives this estimate of his old fellow-student's mental
calibre: "I can name one former student of Sir William Hamilton's, now
a minister in what would be accounted in England one of the straitest
sects of Scottish Puritanism, and who has consecrated to the duties of
that calling a mind among the noblest I have known and the most
learned in pure philosophy. Any man who on any subject of metaphysical
speculation should contend with Dr. Cairns of Berwick-on-Tweed, would
have reason to know, ere he had done with him, what strength for
offence and defence there may yet be in a Puritan minister's
hand-grip."[9]

[Footnote 8: _Macmillan's Magazine_, December 1864, p. 139.]

[Footnote 9: _Recent British Philosophy_, pp. 265-66.]

That this is no mere isolated estimate of a partial friend it would
not be difficult to prove. This was what his friends thought of him,
and what they had taught others outside to think of him too. The time,
however, had now come when it had to be put to the proof. During the
first five years of his ministry at Berwick, as we have seen, Cairns
devoted himself entirely to his work in Golden Square. He must learn
to know accurately how much of his time that work would take up,
before he could venture to spend any of it in other fields. But in
1850 he felt that he had mastered the situation, and accordingly he
began to write for the Press. The ten years between 1850 and 1860 were
years of considerable literary activity with him, and it may be said
at once that their output sustained his reputation, and even added
to it. There falls to be mentioned first a Memoir of his friend John
Clark, who, after a brief and troubled ministerial career, had died of
cholera in 1849. Cairns's Life of him, prefixed to a selection from
his Essays and Sermons, fills only seventy-seven small pages, and it
is in form to a large extent a defence of metaphysical studies against
those who regard them as dangerous to the Christian student. But it
contains many passages of great beauty and tenderness, and delineates
in exquisite colours the poetry and romance of College friendships.
"I am greatly charmed," wrote the author of _Rab and his Friends_
to Cair