During all these years of useful, cheerful, happy employment at Frome, Edward Ramsay never forgot the land of his forefathers and of his own youth.  He sometimes visited Bath and London to hear Edward Irving preach, to see Kean act, to stare at old books and prints in the shop windows, to revel in the beauties of Kew Gardens; but every summer he found time for a visit to Scotland, and spent his holiday with boyish delight amongst the scenes and friends of his childhood.

It was on one of those visits to Scotland, in the autumn of 1822, whilst Mr. Ramsay was spending his holidays among his friends on Deeside, that the managers of St. Paul’s Chapel, Aberdeen, offered him the place of second minister to that congregation, along with Mr. Cordiner.  He was much gratified, and would gladly have accepted the appointment.  He liked the place—­his native town; thought highly of the respectability of the congregation; but there was one objection, which to him was insuperable.  The congregation had for some time been Episcopal only in name, and it went against Mr. Ramsay’s conscience to minister in a church calling itself Episcopal, but without the communion or discipline of a bishop.  He explained to the managers his objection, and thought for a time it might be overcome by a union with the Scotch Episcopal churches in the diocese.  He had yet to learn the strength, of the Scotch prejudice against bishops; perhaps to learn that the more shadowy the grounds of dispute, so much the more keenly are ecclesiastical squabbles fought.  Worthy Bishop Skinner would have been glad to have Ramsay a fellow-labourer in his city upon whatever conditions.  Yet he could not contradict his younger friend’s honest and temperate adherence to his principles and to Episcopacy.  The correspondence all round, which I have before me, is quite decorous; but after Ramsay had stated his objection, and that it was insuperable, the managers wrote to him, 1st October 1822, that “a unanimous election would follow if he accepted the situation under the present establishment.”  It would have been easy to divide the congregation, but this did not suit Ramsay’s feelings or nature, and he courteously bowed to the decision of the managers, and returned to Frome, where his income from both curacies was L100 a year,—­a poverty the more irksome to a man of culture and refined tastes.

Not long after (still, I think in 1823), the Journal records—­“Mrs. Forbes, my aunt, had just come into her accession of fortune, and presented me with L5000.  A man may live many days in this world, and not meet the like gift in a like kindly spirit[5].”

Of the year 1823 the Journal remarks very severe winter.  “Marmaduke and Edwin with me at the Pear-tree[6]; a delightful tour in South Wales with the Sheppards and other friends most agreeable and good-humoured,—­botany, sketching, talk, and fun.  Life has few things to offer more enjoyable than such tours.  I have found in them the happiest hours in my life.”  And then follows the wail for so “many of them departed; so many dear good friends; all different, but all excellent!”