gue, with
these opponents. He is specially interesting to us in this place,
because Cairns succeeded him first in his pulpit, and then, after a
long interval, in his chair. Dr. Brown, the grandson and namesake of
the old commentator of Haddington, was a man of noble presence and
noble character, whose personality "embedded in the translucent amber
of his son's famous sketch" is familiarly known to all lovers of
English literature. He was the pioneer of the scientific exposition
of the Scriptures in the Scottish pulpit, and was one of the first
exegetical theologians of his time. His point of view may be seen in a
frequent criticism of his on a student's discourse: "That is truth and
very important truth, but it is not _the_ truth that is taught in this
passage." Being so, it was simply "matter in the wrong place," _dirt_
to be cleared away as speedily as possible.

Cairns had been first attracted to Dr. Brown by his speeches on the
Annuity Tax, an Edinburgh ecclesiastical impost for which he had
suffered the spoiling of his goods, and he had been for more than a
year a member of his church in Broughton Place; but it was only now
that he came to know him really well. Henceforth his admiration for
Dr. Brown, and the friendship to which Dr. Brown admitted him, were
to be amongst the most powerful influences of his life. Among his
fellow-students at the Hall were several young men of brilliant
promise, such as John Ker, who had been first prizeman in the Logic
class in Hamilton's first session, W.B. Robertson, Alexander MacEwen,
Joseph Leckie, and William Graham. Of these, Graham, bright, witty,
versatile, the most notorious of punsters and the most illegible of
writers, was his chief intimate, and their friendship continued
unbroken and close for half a century.

But meanwhile the shadow was deepening over the home at Dunglass. All
through the autumn and early winter his father was slowly sinking. He
was only fifty-one, but he was already worn out; and his disease, if
disease it might be called, had many of the symptoms of extreme old
age. His son saw him for the last time near the close of the year.
"I cannot say," he wrote to Miss Darling, "that depression of spirits
was the only, or even the chief, emotion with which I bade farewell
to my father. There was something so touching in his patience and
resignation, so calm and inwrought in his meek submission to the
Divine will, that it affected me more strongly than raptu