_Noctes Ambrosiance_; and fain would I have seen, for but a
moment, from some quiet corner, the men whose names fame had blown so
widely; but I have ever been unlucky in the curiosity--though I have
always strongly entertained it--which has the personal appearance of
celebrated men for its object. I had ere now several times lingered in
Castle Street of a Saturday evening, opposite the house of Sir Walter
Scott, in the hope of catching a glimpse of that great writer and genial
man, but had never been successful I could fain, too, have seen Hogg
(who at the time occasionally visited Edinburgh); with Jeffrey; old
Dugald Stewart, who still lived; _Delta_, and Professor Wilson: but I
quitted the place without seeing any of them; and ere I again returned
to the capital, ten years after, death had been busy in the high places,
and the greatest of their number was no longer to be seen. In short, Dr.
M'Crie was the only man whose name promises to live, of whose personal
appearance I was able to carry away with me at this time a distinct
image. Addison makes his _Spectator_ remark, rather in joke than
earnest, that "a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure till he
knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or
choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of
the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an
author." I am inclined to say nearly as much, without being the least
in joke. I think I understand an author all the better for knowing
exactly how he looked. I would have to regard the massive vehemence of
the style of Chalmers as considerably less characteristic of the man,
had it been dissociated from the broad chest and mighty structure of
bone; and the warlike spirit which breathes, in a subdued but still very
palpable form, in the historical writings of the elder M'Crie, strikes
me as singularly in harmony with the military air of this Presbyterian
minister of the type of Knox and Melville. However theologians may
settle the meaning of the text, it is one of the grand lessons of his
writings, that such of the Churches of the Reformation as did _not_
"take the sword, perished by the sword."

I was accompanied to the vessel by my friend William Ross, from whom I,
alas! parted for the last time; and, when stepping aboard, Cousin
William, whom I had scarce expected to see, but who had snatched an hour
from business, and walked down all the way to Leith