ey fell upon Chalmers, we think
there was a droll felicity in the accident, which constitutes for it
an irresistible claim of being the terminal one in the series. The
climax reached its point of extremest elevation; for even should our
infidel-dubbers do their best or worst now, it is not at all likely
they will find out a second Chalmers to hit.

We concluded our course of educational articles; and though we
afterwards saw the distinguished man to whom our eye so frequently
turned, as, under God, the wise pilot of the Free Church, and were
honoured by a communication from him, dictated to his secretary, we
did not again touch on the subject of education. We were, however,
gratified to learn, from men much in his confidence and company--we
hope we do not betray trust in referring to the Rev. Mr. Tasker of the
West Port as one of these--that he regarded our entire course with a
feeling of general approval akin to that to which he had given
expression in his note. It further gratifies us to reflect that our
course had the effect of setting his eminently practical mind
a-working on the whole subject, and led to the production of the
inestimably valuable document, long and carefully pondered, which will
do more to settle the question of national education in Scotland than
all the many volumes which have been written regarding it. As in a
well-known instance in Scottish story, it is the 'dead Douglas' who is
to 'win the field.'

But we lag in our narrative. That melancholy event took place which
cast a shade of sadness over Christendom; and in a few weeks
after, the posthumous document, kindly communicated to us by the
family of the deceased, appeared in the columns of the _Witness_. We
perused it with intense interest; and what we saw in the first
perusal was, that Chalmers had gone far beyond us; and in the
second, that, in laying down his first principles, he had looked at
the subject, as was his nature, in a broader and more general aspect,
and had unlocked the difficulty which it presented in a more
practical and statesmanlike manner. _We_ had, indeed, considered
in the abstract the right and duty of the civil magistrate to
educate his people; but our main object being to ward off otherwise
inevitable bankruptcy from a scheme of our Church, and having to
deal with a sort of vicious Cameronianism, that would not accept of
the magistrate's money, even though he gave the Bible and the
Shorter Catechism along with it, w