he claret they liberally imbibed after their pious discussions.

Dr. Doddridge's famous Colonel Gardiner came to reside in Minister
Carlyle's parish, and told the story of his remarkable conversion, with
his own lips, to the clergyman. The hook which turned him from his
wicked career was Gurnall's "Christian Armor," a volume placed many
years before, by a mother's hand, in his trunk, and until then
neglected. Young Carlyle hoard Gardiner tell the story of his change of
life several times to different sets of people, and he thought Doddridge
had marred the tale by introducing the incident of a blaze of light,
which the Colonel himself never spoke of having seen, when he related
his conversion.

When Alexander was eleven years old, he took a little journey with his
father and another clergyman by the name of Jardine; and the two pious,
elderly gentlemen, having a great turn for fun and buffoonery, made
sport wherever they went. Turning their wigs hind-part foremost, and
making faces, they delighted in diverting the children they encountered
on the way.

Of many of the incidents of the Porteous Mob young Carlyle was a
witness. He was in the Tolbooth Church, at Edinburgh, when Robertson, a
condemned smuggler, who was brought in to listen to the discourse and
prayers before execution, made his escape. The congregation were coming
into church while all the bells were ringing, when the criminal,
watching his opportunity, sprang suddenly over a pew, and was next heard
of in Holland. When, a few weeks afterwards, Wilson, another smuggler,
was executed, Carlyle, with some of his school-fellows, was in a window
on the north side of the Grass-Market, and heard Porteous order his
guard to fire on the people. A young lad, who had been killed by a slug
entering his head, was brought into the house where the boys were on
that occasion.

In the summer of 1737, young Carlyle might have been seen during the
evening hours walking anxiously about the Prestonpans fields. That
season he had lost one of his fellow-pupils and dearest friends, and
they had often agreed together that whichever might die first should
appear there to the other, and reveal the secrets beyond the barrier.
And so the survivor paced the meadows, hoping to meet his old companion,
who never appeared. In November of that year he was at college, and his
acquaintance with Robertson, afterwards the eminent historian, then
began. John Home, celebrated at a later period as