here
is a good deal that bids fair to become commonplace in the next. It is
the record of a genuine spontaneous character, seeking its way, its
duty, its perfection, with much sincerity and elevation of purpose, and
many anxieties and sorrows, and not, we doubt not, without much of the
fruits that come with real self-devotion; a record disclosing a man
with great faults and conspicuous blanks in his nature, one with whose
principles, taste, or judgment we constantly find ourselves having a
vehement quarrel, just after having been charmed and conciliated by
some unexpectedly powerful or refined statement of an important truth.
We cannot think, and few besides his own friends will think, that he
had laid his hand with so sure an accuracy and with so much promise
upon the clue which others had lost or bungled over. But there is much
to learn in his thoughts and words, and there is not less to learn from
his life. It is the life of a man who did not spare himself in
fulfilling what he received as his task, who sacrificed much in order
to speak his message, as he thought, more worthily and to do his office
more effectually, and whose career touches us the more from the shadow
of suffering and early death that hangs over its aspirations and
activity. A book which fairly shows us such a life is not of less value
because it also shows us much that we regret and condemn.

Mr. Robertson was brought up not only in the straitest traditions of
the Evangelical school, but in the heat of its controversial warfare.
His heart, when he was a boy, was set on entering the army; and one of
his most characteristic points through life, shown in many very
different forms, was his pugnacity, his keen perception of the
"_certaminis gaudia_":--

"There is something of combativeness in me," he writes, "which
prevents the whole vigour being drawn out, except when I have an
antagonist to deal with, a falsehood to quell, or a wrong to
avenge. Never till then does my mind feel quite alive. Could I
have chosen my own period of the world to have lived in, and my
own type of life, it should be the feudal ages, and the life of a
Cid, the redresser of wrongs."

"On the other hand," writes his biographer, "when he met men who
despised Christianity, or who, like the Roman Catholics, held to
doctrines which he believed untrue, this very enthusiasm and
unconscious excitement swept him sometimes beyond himself. He