our brothers and sisters pass away before us. I have seen
_ten_ go before me, and am the only one left; and yet it
seems as if the old feeling of their leaving us is being
exchanged for the brighter and happier consciousness that
they are coming to meet us, or at least that the gathering
band are BEFORE us, and looking our way, expecting the time
when we too shall pass through the veil, leaning on the arm
of the Beloved. I earnestly pray, my dear friend, for the
Master's loving help and comfort to you from henceforth
even for ever.

I cannot close this without, in a sentence, expressing my
very great delight in reading your words regarding brotherly
intercommunion among members of Churches who hold the same
Truth, love the same Lord, and are bound to the same "better
land." I do rejoice with all my heart that you have given
utterance to the sentiments so carefully and admirably
expressed by you. I go heart and soul with you in the large
and liberal and Christ-like spirit of the views you propound;
and feel with you that all such brotherly esteem and hearty
and candid co-operation only makes me love my own church
better, because such love is unmixed with the exclusiveness
which sees nothing good save in the Communion to which we
ourselves belong.

Thank you most heartily for what you have written.--Ever very
affectionately yours, D.T.K. DRUMMOND.

When the Ramsays were under the necessity of selling most of their
property in the Mearns, the purchaser of Fasque was Mr. Gladstone, not
yet a baronet; and, what does not always happen, the families of the
buyer and the seller continued good friends, and Sir John, the great
merchant, by his advice and perhaps other help, assisted some of the
young Ramsays, who had still to push their way to fortune. I believe
William, afterwards Admiral, was guided by him in the investment and
management of a little money, which prospered, notwithstanding his
innumerable bounties to the poor. The Dean also was obliged to Sir John
Gladstone, but only for kindness and hospitalities.

On the Ramsays going to London in the summer of 1845, the journal
records what nice rooms they had, and how happy they were at Mr.
Gladstone's, where they saw a good deal of their host--"a man who at
eighty-one possesses the bodily and mental vigour of the prime of life."
The Dean was stru