to her earliest and greatest colony. Historians to its source, studded with little towns and numerallege that the Scots were originally a colony from ous villas, catching the eye amid its many cottages, Ireland, who settled in the western division of Scot-sometimes clustered round a tall chimney, or land; and that before their name was given to this gathered together at the corners of bleaching fields, country, it had belonged to Ireland. No doubt ex- that seem, even in July, to have a covering of snow; ists respecting the original connection, although or over the Castlereagh hills, on the south-east, to its nature may not now be altogether intelligible. || Lough Strangford, with its many islands chequer- ́ The intercourse between countries separated at one ing its wide expanse of water, surrounded by many point by a channel of twenty, and at another point of pleasant villages, so hidden and out of the way of ten miles, must have always been considerable, and the world as scarcely to be known; or the sharp and we meet its consequences in many pages of Scotch distant summits of the Mourne Mountains, raised and Irish history. Still is shown, on the borders by their Maker like a barrier between the of Ulster, the spot where the rash but chivalric || dark South and the black North; or the corner of Edward Bruce fell, in his attempt to drive the wide Lough Neagh and the Ban River, carrying English out of Ireland. When, at a long pos-away its waters to the north, and the Derry Mounterior period, James the First of England deter- tains closing up the scene to the west; or the vast mined to colonise part of Ulster, from England and expanse of bleak country, broken apparently here Scotland, a large body of the undertakers, and and there by streaks of green and yellow, seeming their tenants and retainers, came from Scotland; like crevices, only because we cannot look into the and their descendants now occupy a great part of wide, and sometimes fertile, but always densely the north-eastern counties, forming the majority peopled vales of Antrim, and Slieve Donough to the of the population. At subsequent periods, when north-east, rising cone-shaped like a sugar loaf, persecution reddened its sword and erected its lonely and alone in its pride: any one of all the gallows in the West of Scotland, men fled in great prospects from the Cave Hill, when the sky is blue, numbers, with the love of truth and freedom as their and the summer day nearly done, is worth the stiff heritage, from the western counties to Ulster. To journey upwards twice repeated; and all of them these circumstances, and the probability that the together form a scene that, as a whole, cannot tenets of the Culdees were never entirely forgotten || often be excelled, and in which there are points and obliterated in the North of Ireland, may be that scarcely can be rivalled. Dr. Chalmers loved ascribed the formation of the Irish Presbyterian eminently the works of God. Few men have ever Church, which has its centre in Antrim, Down, and enjoyed them more. A scene like that was to him Derry; and the general prevalence of Protestant- a rich festival. His mind acquired more than its ism in Ulster. Dr. Chalmers was intimately con- wonted exuberance amidst the beautiful or the versant with the history of that body, and sincerely sublime in the works of Creation. desirous for their prosperity. He found them closely Very few disciples of Christianity ever grasped associated with the doctrinal history of the Church of more completely the idea, "My Father made them Scotland; and was, probably, gratified by their ad- all." But looking over this wide scene in the best herence to the Free Church at the period of the part of Ireland, he could not fail to remember the disruption. Six years ago, Dr. Chalmers visited misery and sufferings that occupied a large part in Ireland, we believe, for the last time, and resided the history, and the moral aspect, of a land sinfor a considerable period at the beautiful village of gularly rich in natural resources, and lamentably Rostrevor. He had previously experienced weak-poor in their application. No shadow of the comness, arising, not improbably, from the excitementing famine, fever, and sorrows, of 1845, and the of the period. His residence at Rostrevor, and the subsequent years, then darkened the island; yet, in air of the Mourne Mountains, had contributed to re- many districts, plenty and want, heartlessness and store his strength. We met him one day, when on suffering, dwelt together. He was no sectarian his way homewards, in a curious position for an in the narrow and objectionable meaning of the invalid: the top of one of the range of high moun- title, but he held warmly his own tenets, because he tains that environ Belfast on the north-west, and could not yield a cold and frigid assent to any prinseem to have been cast up between it and Lough || ciple of faith; and, remembering his own country, Neagh. The summit of the Cave hill commands a and the changes accomplished there in a single sweep of great extent on every side; and, on a sum- century, ascribing them in a great degree to the mer afternoon, when the sun's rays sparkle on the religious principles that prevail in Scotland, he distant waters of Lough Neagh, Lough Strangford, believed that the same creed might form similar and the Channel, yields one of the most superb minds to work out the same results in Ireland. No views in our islands. The busy town beneath, with Irishman, of whatever creed, could love the man its fine river, covered with ships of many flags, less that the warm wishes of his heart were concenand every form, gradually widening into Belfast trated in one of those expressive and fervent ejacuLough, and the latter losing itself between the Cope-latory prayers, containing in ten words the force land and the Maiden Islands in the Channel, with the and strength of a hundred, with which his journals Scottish hills in Galloway for a background to the and Sabbath readings have rendered the public fami east; or the same river, winding its course up the liar. Dr. Chalmers, it may be remembered, suffered fertile valley to Lisburn, now lost for a long dis-reproach in advocating the Roman Catholic Emantance, to be again revealed between corn fields or cipation Bill. He prized the friendships he had through trees in a narrow line of silvery brightness,|| formed in society, but while valuing them warmly, and its densely peopled banks, away from the ocean || they were never permitted to sway his mind from the

path that seemed to him the way of duty. The Disruption of the Scottish Church was not the only cr the first example where he set aside the claims of friendship for the paramount demands of principle. In advocating the claims of the Roman Catholics, he undoubtedly alienated for a time the affection and esteem of many of his former admirers. He could not therefore be charged with entertaining an unjust preference for the Presbyterian Church, in believing it likely to become a powerful instrumentality for the emancipation of Ireland from many evils not less injurious than political restrictions. He had supported Roman Catholic emancipation; he had assisted the Episcopal Church in various difficulties; he had attended in St. Andrew's at an Independent Church, while an ordained minister of the Establishment; he lived in terms of intimacy with the leaders of the English Wesleyan Methodists, and acting on just principles to those with whom he could not maintain religious communion, he was also a man of the most catholic spirit; yet he loved not less on that account the broad features of Protestant faith, or the distinctive lines of his own communion. Many rugged points in Irish history catch the eye, but to those who read it well, there is a soft and sombre sadness over the story, that deeply interests the feelings, and leaves the reader anxious that peace at last and prosperity would not be only visitors and wayfarers in the land. Dr. Chalmers possessed this kind of interest in Ireland, and one rising still higher, from other and nobler sources; and seeking its permanent improvement next, probably, to that of Scotland; he expressed his conviction that Scotland and England would not long be prosperous while Ireland was depressed.

and construction of sentences. Perhaps it might be more accurate to say that there exists a similarity of sentiment, and a devotedness of the historian to his subject, that, more than any mere similarity of style, accounts for the circumstance we have noticed. A similarity of spirit goes far to accomplish the end mentioned; and Dr. Hanna, holding the same principles as Dr. Chalmers, living with him long on terms of the closest intimacy and relationship, and almost daily employed, since his death, amongst his journals, in preparing them for the press, would probably imbibe some part of his spirit, and even gradually fall into his style.

Dr. Hanna has sincerely devoted himself to the preparation of Dr. Chalmers' posthumous works, and his life. We know that, two years since, a desire was expressed for his presence and professional assistance in a quarter that he must have felt difficulty to resist, under circumstances that almost rendered it a matter of duty to accept; that would have conferred on him great personal influence, and insured a status in temporal matters equivalent to the highest hopes that can be formed in his connexion. The latter inducement may have possessed comparatively little weight; but a strong current of moral and religious interests, and even of personal associations, must have inclined him strongly towards the acceptance of the cordial invitations warmly pressed on him. A deep feeling of duty alone towards the great work that had fallen into his hands, and which he could best discharge, must have weighed much in dictating a refusal that in scarcely any other circumstances could have been given with a consistent and strict regard to duty, and to those high and immortal interests that he had promised always to promote. We may, appropriately, at this stage, notice the

important series of works has supported the literary efforts to render them what the public would desire, and have some right to expect. They are substantial books. The typography is excellent, the paper good, and the style adopted, renders the VOlumes remarkably easy to read. The outlay on publications of this description is immense. The sale requires to be correspondingly extensive, but that, we believe, has been obtained; and the volumes are standard works that will be current for centuries in the market of literature. With the greater part of that time the publisher and printer, who has hazarded a fortune in this work, or the author's family, have no interest. Dr. Chalmers might have devoted his powerful mental faculties to the collection of money. He would have made an excellent banker or merchant. He might have formed a large fortune, and bought and entailed an estate in his family while his descendants continued. He followed another course, and one still more useful to mankind. Therefore, the property reared by him only belongs to his family for a limited period. He did not belong to party, it is said, but to mankind; and, therefore, mankind agree to appropriate the pecuniary proceeds of his labours, after a given period. So runs the law.

These remarks have, however, diverged from the general subject, and arose merely from the pre-energetic manner in which the publisher of this paration of Dr. Chalmers' life being committed to a gentleman so closely connected with Ireland as Dr. Hanna-who has accomplished that part of his great task, now before the public, in a manner calculated to afford the best idea that can be obtained of the subject. We want not merely a naked narrative of events, chained together in chronological order; but the history of a great mind. If that want is supplied from the man's thoughts, written as time passed away, with its changes; and illustrated with the light which a skilful biographer can throw over them-we have obtained the most desirable result. This first volume is prepared with that object steadily in view. Dr. Chalmers still speaks in a great number of its pages. The biographer keeps himself entirely unseen. We know that he moves the panorama which is to pass before us; that he searches out, puts in order, and joins the various material, but we see nothing of himhe is hidden in his subject, who is kept continually before the reader. We meet frequently with beautiful passages, belonging, evidently, to the historian; but it has been remarked, and we think correctly, that there exists a similarity between Dr. Chalmers' style and Dr. Hanna's mode of writing, that permits the reader to glide out of the one into the other, without perceiving a marked change, or being startled by an abrupt alteration in the complexion

Dr. Chalmers was born in Anstruther, a little burgh on the shores of the Frith of Forth, near by

the East Neuk of Fife. Passing over the intro- young persons derive their first impressions in life duction, the first chapter opens with a brief descrip- || from a bad nurse, like the girl who fixed her chation of the past, and now almost forgotten, great-racter indelibly on the mind of Thomas Chalmers. ness of Anstruther. The family of Dr. Chalmers appear to have been connected with Fife for a considerable period:—

The letter to the Duke does not bear out Ramsay's Unlike many other crowded families, this one was character for dealing easily with his scholars. not early thinned; and one of the disadvantages at- Teachers most probably become inured to "the tending a numerous flock of rivals to a mother's care taws" as they increase in years; but Ramsay's was, that the nurse had the management of Thomas distribution of the governing powers is bad. The at an early age; and a bad nurse she appears to Testament should always be tried before "the taws," have been, since the victim of her anger never in managing Ireland and governing schools; and if entirely forgot the treatment he received. Many the precepts of the Testament had been more con

Thomas Chalmers left school early, and entered St. Andrews College:

sistently applied to Ireland than has been done, we might have found less use for "the taws" in conduct"In November, 1791, whilst not yet twelve years of age, ing its affairs. Dr. Chalmers' good nature was more apparent than his genius at Anster parish accompanied by his eldest brother, William, he enrolled himself as a student in the United College of St. Andrews. He had school. The exercises there failed to inspire in but one contemporary there, who had entered college at an him any love of learning. He went there not to earlier age, John, Lord Campbell; and the two youngest students find instruction, but a refuge; and he appears to became each, in future life, the most distinguished in his separate have been often unsuccessful in his object. Few of sphere. However it may have been in Lord Campbell's case, our greatest men have been precocious students. in Dr. Chalmers', extreme youth was not compensated by any We have grave doubts respecting the propriety of prematureness, or superiority of preparation. A letter written to his eldest brother, James, during the summer which succeeded taxing the intellect greatly at an early age. his first session at college, is still preserved-the earliest extant Parents who expect children to be little men and specimen of his writing. It abounds in errors, both in orthoIt will graphy and grammar, and abundantly proves that the work of women seldom get much good out of them. hardly do, we fear, to try and blot out infancy, learning to write his own tongue with ordinary correctness had boyhood, and girlhood from life. Art is strong, and still to be begun. His knowledge of the Latin language was equally defective, unfitting him, during his first two sessions, to training powerful; but nature will keep its own profit as he might otherwise have done from the prelections of against both, or avenge the theft at a subsequent that distinguished philosophical grammarian, Dr. James Hunperiod. Still the boy contains the germs of theer, who was then the chief ornament of St. Andrews University.? man. Great changes may be produced by the agency of many circumstances, by the force of experience, or, finally, as Scott has it, by the force of truth; but through them all the influences of infancy and youth retain their places, sometimes scarcely perceptible, but always real, and not seldom powerful. The schoolboy character of Dr. Chalmers is clearly marked in the following passages:

"By those of his schoolfellows, few now in number, who survive, Dr. Chalmers is remembered as one of the idlest, strongest, merriest, and most generous-hearted boys in Anstruther || school. Little time or attention would have been required for him to prepare his daily lessons, so as to meet the ordinary demands of the school-room; for when he did set himself to learn, not one of all his schoolfellows could do it at once so quickly and so well. When the time came, however, for saying them, the lessons were often found scarcely half-learned-sometimes not learned at all. The punishment inflicted in such cases was to send the culprit into the coalhole, to remain there in solitude till the neglected duty was discharged. If many of the boys could boast over Thomas Chalmers that they were seldomer in the place of punishment, none could say that they got more quickly oat of it. Joyous, vigorous, and humorous, he took his part in all the games of the playground, ever ready to lead or to follow, when schoolboy expeditions were planned and executed; and, wherever for fun or for frolic any little group of the merryhearted was gathered, his full, rich laugh, might be heard rising amid their shouts of glee. But he was altogether unmischievous in his mirth. He could not bear that either falsehood or blasphemy should mingle with it. His own greater strength he always used to defend the weak or the injured, who looked to him as their natural protector; and whenever, in its heated overflow, play passed into passion, he hastened from the ungenial region, rushing once into a neighbouring house, when a whole storm of mussel shells was flying to and fro, which the angry little hands that flung them meant to do all the mischief that they could; and exclaiming, as he sheltered himself in his retreat, 'I'm no' for powder and ball,' a saying which the good old woman, beside whose ingle he found a refuge, was wont in these later years to quote in his favour, when less friendly neighbours were charging him with being a man of strife, too fond of war."

At St. Andrews College, a number of the professors were" Ultra-Whigs," keen Reformers, and what would now be called "Radicals.” They were also men of exceptional opinions and views in religious matters, which is not a necessary, not often in Scotland-a usual accompaniment of keen reforming opinions. Radicals, as they are called, get no authority for their politics so good as they may find in the Bible, if they carefully read its injunctions. Their opinions influenced the young student. His father was, like many laymen in his day, of more evangelical sentiments than the majority of the ministers; but he was also a Town Councillor of Anstruther, and the official influence he possessed in the burgh, for a councillor stood in no dread then of November, made him a Tory. His son deviated from his father's ecclesiastical and political opinions; and while the latter were recovered in a short period, many years passed before he was restored to the former. Mathematics was his favourite study; but he read the popular political works of the day, and felt a warm interest in political discussions:

"Other subjects, however, besides those of his favourite science, were pressed upon his notice, not so much by the pretensions of the class-room, as by the conversation of Dr. Brown and his accomplished friends. Ethics and politics engaged much of their attention. Yielding to the impulses thus imparted, Dr. Chalmers, at the close of his philosophical studies, became deeply engaged with the study of Godwin's Political Justice,' a work for which he entertained at that time a profound, and, as he afterwards felt and acknowledged, a misplaced admiration. His father was a strict, unbending Tory, as well as a strict, and, as he in his childhood fancied, a severe religionist. By the men among whom he was now thrown, and to whom he owed the first kindlings of his intellectual sympathies, Calvinism and Toryism were not only 'St. Andrews' (we have his own testirepudiated, but despised. mony for it) was at this time overrun with Moderatism, under the chilling influences of which we inhaled, not a distaste only, but a positive contempt for all that is properly and peculiarly ap-Gospel, insomuch that our confidence was nearly as entire in the sufficiency of natural theology as in the sufficiency of natural science.' It was not unnatural that, recoiling from the uncompromising and unelastic political principle with which he had been familiar at Anstruther, and unfortified by a strong individual faith in the Christian salvation, he should have felt the power of that charm which the high talent of Leslie, and Brown, and Milne, threw around the religious and political principles which they so sincerely and enthusiastically espoused; that his youthful spirit should have kindled into generous emotion at the glowing prospects which they cherished as to the future progress of our species, springing out of political emancipation; and that

During his school days, Thomas Chalmers was caught preaching to a single auditor, from the propriate text " Let brotherly love continue." The circumstance is not of much importance, because, as we remember once to have previously noticed, most boys preach at some period of their career; for the same reason that they teach schools and play at "soldiery," without much more probability of becoming " dominies," or following a warlike career, than that of "the Queen of May" to change ber crown of roses for one of diamonds and gold.