rguing, and above all debating, he disliked. He had no turn for it. He
was not combative, much less contentious. He was, however, warlike.
Anything that he could destroy, any falsehood or injustice, he made for,
not to discuss, but to expose and kill. He could not fence with his mind
much less with his tongue, and had no love for the exploits of a nimble
dialectic. He had no readiness either in thought or word for this; his
way was slowly to _think out_ a subject, to get it well "bottomed," as
Locke would say; he was not careful as to recording the steps he took in
their order, but the spirit of his mind was logical, as must be that of
all minds who seek and find truth, for logic is nothing else than the
arithmetic of thought; having therefore _thought it out_, he proceeded
to put it into formal expression. This he did so as never again to undo
it. His mind seemed to want the wheels by which this is done, _vestigia
nulla retrorsum_, and having stereotyped it, he was never weary of it;
it never lost its life and freshness to him, and he delivered it as
emphatically thirty years after it had been cast, as the first hour of
its existence.

[21] One day my mother, and her only sister, Agnes--married to
James Aitken of Cullands, a man before his class and his
time, for long the only Whig and Seceder laird in
Peeblesshire, and with whom my father shared the _Edinburgh
Review_ from its beginning--the two sisters who were, the
one to the other, as Martha was to Mary, sat talking of
their household doings; my aunt was great upon some things
she could do; my father looked up from his book, and said,
"There is one thing, Mrs. Aitken, you cannot do--you cannot
turn the heel of a stocking;" and he was right, he had
noticed her make over this "kittle" turn to her mother.

I have said he was no swordsman, but he was a heavy shot; he fired off
his ball, compact, weighty, the _maximum_ of substance in the _minimum_
of bulk; he put in double charge, pointed the muzzle, and fired, with
what force and sharpness we all remember. If it hit, good; if not, all
he could do was to load again, with the same ball, and in the same
direction. You must come to him to be shot, at least you must stand
still, for he had a want of mobility of mind in great questions. He
could not stalk about the field like a sharp-shooter; his was a great
sixty-eight pounder, and it was n