how well they knew their man.  They appealed to that strain of anxious conscientiousness in him which he had inherited from his father, by urging that all these memorials were “irregular,” and that therefore he had no right to consider them in coming to his decision.  They also undertook to furnish him with the means of devoting more time to theological study than had hitherto been at his disposal.  After a period of hesitation, more painful and prolonged than he had ever passed through on any similar occasion, he decided to remain in Berwick.  He was moved to this decision, partly by his attachment to his congregation; partly by a feeling that he could do more for the cause of Union by remaining its minister than would be possible amid the labours of a new city charge; and partly by the hope, which was becoming perceptibly fainter and more wistful, that he might at last find leisure in Berwick to write his book.

But, although he did not become a city minister, he preached very frequently in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and indeed all over the country.  His services were in constant request for the opening of churches and on anniversary occasions.  He records that in the course of a single year he preached or spoke away from home (of course mostly on week days) some forty or fifty times.  Wherever he went he attracted large crowds, on whom his rugged natural eloquence produced a deep impression.  It has been recorded that on one occasion, while a vast audience to which he had been preaching in an Edinburgh church was dispersing, a man was overheard expressing his admiration to his neighbour in language more enthusiastic than proper:  “He’s a deevil o’ a preacher!”

With all this burden of work pressing on him, it was a relief when the annual holiday came round and he could get away from it.  But this holiday, too, was usually of a more or less strenuous character, and embraced large tracts of country either at home or, more frequently, on the Continent.  On these tours his keen human interest asserted itself.  He loved to visit places associated with great historic events, or that suggested to him reminiscences of famous men and women.  And the actual condition of the people, how they lived, and what they were thinking about, interested him deeply.  He spoke to everybody he met, in the train, in the steamboat, or in hotels, in fluent if rather “bookish” German, in correct but somewhat halting French, or, if it was a Roman Catholic priest he had to deal with, in sonorous Latin.  And, without anything approaching cant or officiousness, he always tried to bring the conversation round to the subject of religion—­to the state of religion in the country in which he was travelling, about which he was always anxious to gain first-hand information, and, if possible and he could do it without offence, to the personal views and experiences of those with whom he conversed.  He rarely or never did give offence in this respect, for there was never anything aggressive or clamorous or prying in his treatment of the subject.