nimble, sharp, exact
man, who made us explain and name everything. Of Scotch stories he had
as many original ones as would make a second volume for Dean Ramsay. How
well I remember the very corner of the room in Biggar manse, forty years
ago, when from him I got the first shock and relish of humor; became
conscious of mental tickling; of a word being made to carry double, and
being all the lighter of it. It is an old story now, but it was new
then; a big, perspiring countryman rushed into the Black Bull
coach-office, and holding the door, shouted, "Are yir insides a' oot?"
This was my first tasting of the flavor of a joke.

Had Dr. Heugh, instead of being the admirable clergyman he was, devoted
himself to public civil life, and gone into Parliament, he would have
taken a high place as a debater, a practical statesman and patriot. He
had many of the best qualities of Canning, and our own Premier, with
purer and higher qualities than either. There is no one our church
should be more proud of than of this beloved and excellent man, the
holiness and humility, the jealous, godly fear in whose nature was not
known fully even to his friends, till he was gone, when his private
daily self-searchings and prostrations before his Master and Judge were
for the first time made known. There are few characters, _both sides_ of
which are so unsullied, so pure, and without reproach.

I am back at Biggar at the old sacramental times; I see and hear my
grandfather, or Mr. Horne of Braehead, Mr. Leckie of Peebles, Mr. Harper
of Lanark, as inveterate in argument as he was warm in heart, Mr. Comrie
of Penicuik, with his keen, Voltaire-like face, and much of that unhappy
and unique man's wit, and sense, and perfection of expression, without
his darker and baser qualities. I can hear their hearty talk, can see
them coming and going between the meetinghouse and the _Tent_ on the
side of the burn, and then the Monday dinner, and the cheerful talk, and
the many clerical stories and pleasantries, and their going home on
their hardy little horses, Mr. Comrie leaving his curl-papers till the
next solemnity, and leaving also some joke of his own, clear and compact
as a diamond, and as cutting.

I am in Rose Street on the monthly lecture, the church crammed, passages
and pulpit stairs. Exact to a minute, James Chalmers--the old soldier
and beadle, slim, meek, but incorruptible by proffered half crowns from
ladies who thus tried to get in before the