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In Delta, rather, it was that true manhood, so full of reverential trembling sensibilities toward the mysterious fountains and issues of our being-that noble-heartedness spoken of by Jean Paul Richter :Nothing recalls the close of life to a noble-hearted young man so much as precisely the happiest and fairest hours which he passes. Gottreich, in the midst of the united beauty and fragrance of the flowers of joy, even with the morning star of life above him, could not but think on the time when the same should appear to him as the evening star, warning him of sleep."

Charles Dickens presided at the opening of the Glasgow Athenæum in the end of 1847. Sheriff Alison, Professors Aytoun and Gregory, Colonel Mure of Caldwell, George Combe, and Robert Chambers, were among the speakers. The distinguished guests of the evening were proposed; and Delta, who was present, was enthusiastically called upon to reply. "I do believe," he said, after the usual courtesies of acknowledgment, "that there is no nation in the world which has greater cause to rejoice than this. With a hungry soil beneath our feet, with a bitter sky over our heads, and with stormy seas around us, we have contrived to enjoy all the luxuries of the sunny south. To our merchants and our mariners we owe it, that the products of the most distant climes can be imported to us, and, when manufactured into the finest tissue, by the wonderful economy of our

processes, can again be exported to undersell the natives in their own markets. During the last thirty years, when circumstances have enabled men to cultivate the arts of peace, how many millions have been added to the population of Great Britain! how many thousands of acres have been reclaimed from the waste, so that it may almost be said that 'the solitary place has been made to rejoice, and the desert to blossom as the rose!' But, mighty as have been our triumphs over physical difficulties, still more mighty, and still more important, have been our intellectual and our moral triumphs. It is because of her parochial economy that Scotland has for centuries been celebrated. It is no boast, on the part of the humblest mechanic in our workshops, and peasant in our fields, that they can read and write and cipher, but a disparagement and disgrace if they cannot. Hence it is that, under circumstances apparently the most hopeless, men have started up from time to time among us, and attained a high place in literature, science, and the arts. Poetry raised Robert Burns from the plough, Allan Cunningham from the quarry, and James Hogg from the shepherd's shieling. Lord Campbell was born in a parish manse, so was Sir David Wilkie; and in every town and village in Scotland you will find that men have risen from the humblest ranks of life. About sixty years ago there could have been pointed out, on the streets

of Edinburgh, three boys, of whom one was the future Lord Jeffrey, the prince of critics; another, Lord Brougham, the most extraordinary man that has sat on the woolsack since the days of Bacon ; and the third, a greater than either, the author of Marmion and Waverley-the man who, to use the words of Thomas Campbell, 'has more completely conquered Europe by his pen than ever Napoleon did by his sword.'" Moir was not indifferent to applause; but his best joy of the evening must have been his meeting with Dickens-such was their cordial regard for one another.

In 1848 Mr Moir was appointed to represent the burgh of Annan in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The office and honour

were conferred upon him every succeeding year, during the remainder of his life. The following are passages from some of his letters of 1848 :— To DAVID VEDDER, 15th January.-"Very many thanks for The Pictorial Gift-Book, and the kind note by which it was accompanied. It is a very beautiful volume, both in pictorial embellishment and poetical illustration, and I have derived much pleasure from it. My favourite among the lithographs is 'Shakspeare;' it has all the depth and effect of line engraving. Among the verses, my favourites are, 'To Frederick the Great,' 'The Aurora-Borealis,' and 'Love at First Sight.' All are, however, worthy of your pen-to whose productions, for many years, I have been no stranger.

Your own case I understand to be one very similar to my own. In early youth I had many aspiring feelings to dedicate my life to literature, and to literature alone; but I thank God-seeing what I have seen in Galt, in Hogg, in Hood, and other friends-that I had resolution to resolve on a profession, and to make poetry my crutch, and not my staff. I have, in consequence, lost the name which, probably, with due exertion, I might have acquired; but I have gained many domestic blessings which more than counterbalance it, and I can yet turn to my pen, in my short intervals of occasional relaxation, with as much zest as in my days of romantic adolescence. I am delighted to see that a similar frame of mind is your own; and that, from the roughnesses and the prose of life, you have also an elysium, 'by Fancy's fingers drest,' into which you can on occasions retire. That this may ever remain to you, and that everything good may attend you and yours, is my very sincere wish." To Myself, April 2.-" These are strange times. France is on the edge of a volcano. It is delightful to think that the demonstrations at Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, and Manchester, only prove how sound our own country is at the core. Not a human being within the verge of respectability had anything to do with these abortive outbreaks - thanks to our own true religion ! And a curse on the heads of all the pseudo-philosophers, who would so fain mislead the

vain, the presumptuous, and the ignorant! As to the stuff uttered by clever lunatics like Emerson, the thing is to be deplored. But wherever such men unhinge a belief, they must in some degree answer at the bar of conscience for the consequences. I have had an opportunity more than once of conversing with Lord Jeffrey regarding Emerson, and was pleased to find that we were at one in our opinion. Depend upon it, whenever a writer is obscure, he is weak; and when you do come to a hidden meaning, it is not worth knowing. I spent a delightful hour with Dickens about a month ago. He is a genius of the right stamp, fresh and clear." To Mrs A-, 12th August.— "What a little time brings forth ! You may indeed wonder at knowing that poor Elizabeth is a married wife, and that I have a son-in-law. Under other circumstances I might have boggled; but, if a separation was to take place, it could not be in a gentler form-as she was still to be our neighbour -almost one of our family, and as her interests in life were still to continue one with our own. the honour, integrity, talent, and sound moral and religious principles of her husband, I had long been convinced, from these having been put to the test on many trying occasions, and never found wanting; and, excepting on the score of her youth, I could not have, and had no objections. A year of probation alone was required of them; and, at its expiry, they were united—I trust, to be long happy

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