was of a fat habit, even from boyhood, and inclined
to a cheerful and cursory reading of the face of life; and possibly this
attitude of mind was the original cause of his misfortunes. Beyond this
hint philosophy is silent on his career, and superstition steps in with
the more ready explanation that he was detested of the gods.

His father--that iron gentleman--had long ago enthroned himself on the
heights of the Disruption Principles. What these are (and in spite of
their grim name they are quite innocent) no array of terms would render
thinkable to the merely English intelligence; but to the Scot they often
prove unctuously nourishing, and Mr. Nicholson found in them the milk of
lions. About the period when the churches convene at Edinburgh in their
annual assemblies, he was to be seen descending the Mound in the company
of divers red-headed clergymen: these voluble, he only contributing
oracular nods, brief negatives, and the austere spectacle of his
stretched upper lip. The names of Candlish and Begg were frequent in
these interviews, and occasionally the talk ran on the Residuary
Establishment and the doings of one Lee. A stranger to the tight little
theological kingdom of Scotland might have listened and gathered
literally nothing. And Mr. Nicholson (who was not a dull man) knew this,
and raged at it. He knew there was a vast world outside to whom
Disruption Principles were as the chatter of tree-top apes; the paper
brought him chill whiffs from it; he had met Englishmen who had asked
lightly if he did not belong to the Church of Scotland, and then had
failed to be much interested by his elucidation of that nice point; it
was an evil, wild, rebellious world, lying sunk in _dozenedness_, for
nothing short of a Scots word will paint this Scotsman's feelings. And
when he entered his own house in Randolph Crescent (south side), and
shut the door behind him, his heart swelled with security. Here, at
least, was a citadel unassailable by right-hand defections or left-hand
extremes. Here was a family where prayers came at the same hour, where
the Sabbath literature was unimpeachably selected, where the guest who
should have leaned to any false opinion was instantly set down, and over
which there reigned all the week, and grew denser on Sundays, a silence
that was agreeable to his ear, and a gloom that he found comfortable.

Mrs. Nicholson had died about thirty, and left him with three children:
a daughter two years and a