old place and friends in Somerset.—­“Interesting, very:  received at my old curacy of Buckland with much joy, and on the whole enjoyed my visit.”  At Whitsunday 1827 he came home to enter on St. John’s with Bishop Sandford, being thus half of 1827 in Carrubber’s Close and half in St. John’s.  I was in Edinburgh then, and can well remember what general favour accompanied Mr. Ramsay in church and society.  Perhaps he was not prepared for the vehemence of church dissensions among us.  I do not think there was at that time so bitter war between churchmen of the same profession in England, but the Episcopal Church, of whatever section, had made great progress then in Scotland.  Its fine liturgy, and more decorous ceremonial, had attracted some.  Many of the heads of country families round Edinburgh have been educated in England, and many of them have married in England—­both circumstances tending to keep up their attachment to the Episcopal Church; and in their houses the scholarly, accomplished, agreeable clergyman of the Episcopal Church was a welcome guest, as well as an adviser and influential friend.

In summer of 1827 the journal tells us his brother Marmaduke paid him a visit.  “We read some Italian—­I got a notion of Dante.”

At the commencement of 1829 he enters in his journal—­“This was a most important year indeed, the year of my marriage; and what event has been to me so joyful, so full of interesting recollections?” He tells that in the summer a visitor came to Scotland—­a friend of Lady Dalhousie, and recommended by her to Lady Robert Kerr, at whose house they met.  The lady was Isabella Cochrane, of the well-known Canadian family; writing in 1844 he says—­“Fifteen years of close acquaintance with that lady have taught me the best commentary upon the Scripture declaration that a ‘virtuous woman is a crown to her husband.’  I need not say more than that I believe I owe mainly to her (under Providence) my comfort, success and position here.  But let this suffice.  None but myself can know my full obligations.”  Next year begins—­“As 1829 gave me a wife, 1830 gave me a church, for on the 14th January Bishop Sandford died, and the whole charge was offered to me, which I undertook for three years without a curate—­i.e. without a man-curate, for a most effective assistant I had in dearest Isabella, who wrote to my dictation many a weary hour.”

Except a little parcel of letters touching the negotiation with Bishop Skinner, and the Aberdeen congregation in 1822, I find no letters of Ramsay till he wrote to one of the dear old friends at Frome announcing a visit with his wife.

     Mr. RAMSAY to Miss STUART SHEPPARD, Fromefield, Frome,
     Somerset.

     7 Albany Court, London, 9th June [1831].