in health, and learnt also wisdom in regard to the “management of myself, and certainly in diet.”  It is not necessary to record the little tours with his wife, which now happened almost every season, either to Deeside or the Highlands or his old haunts in Somerset.  On July 2, 1836, I find it recorded that he went with a party to hear Dr. Chalmers at the Dean Church, and returned all in great delight.  He made a long journey that year to hear the great organ at Birmingham, and came home by many cathedrals, and yet “glad to get home.”

In 1838 he notes, after a Highland journey, the “Synod was this year for altering the canons,” He notes a “white-stone visit to the Stranges, Ross-end Castle, with the Bells.  Alas! how many things and people are gone.”

In 1839 “Lady Dalhousie, my admired friend, came to stay with us.  She came January 19, and on the 22d died in the drawing-room in an instant!  It was an awful visitation, and never to be forgotten.”

The following letter, written immediately after the calamity, is from the Marquis of Dalhousie, from various circumstances an object of great affection to the Dean, who consented to take charge of his daughters when he went as Governor-General to India, bestowing on them the care and anxious watchfulness which the young ladies returned with hearty affection:—­

     The MARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE to DEAN RAMSAY.

     Dalhousie Castle, 25th January 1839.

My dear Mr. Ramsay—­I have sent John in, partly because I am anxious that you should let me know how Mrs. Ramsay is to-day, and partly because I cannot rest till another evening without endeavouring to express to you some portion of the very, very deep gratitude which I feel for all your kindness—­for the kindness of your every act and word, and—­I am just as confident—­of your every thought towards us all in this sad time. God knows how truly I feel it:  and with that one expression I stop; for it makes me sick to think how slow and how coldly words come to clothe the feeling which I wish to convey to you.  Believe only this, that to my own dying day I never can forget your goodness.  Believe this too—­that since it has pleased Almighty God that my poor mother’s eyes should not he closed under my roof, and by my hand, I would not have wished any other place for her departure than among friends so kindly, loving, and so well loved.

     God bless you and repay it to you, prays your ever grateful
     and affectionate friend, DALHOUSIE.

     Rev. E. B. Ramsay.

February 27, 1839.—­“My uncle General Burnett died; another limb of the older generation gone; a good and kind man; a man of the world, and not a clever one.  Latterly he showed a considerable desire to know more about religion.  Went with J. Sandilands to be present at the formation of a branch of the Church Society at Glasgow—­made a regular speech!” On September 4th he writes—­“The