REVIEW OF MILL'S "LOGIC".

147

cations. The tone was friendly in the highest degree, and Mill could not help being pleased with the amount of appreciation bestowed. Even the Roman Catholics pure and simple were attracted by the book; but this was only a temporary phase, as I afterwards found when I had to examine pupils from their colleges for the University of London.

Many weeks in the beginning of the year must have been occupied with my review of Mill; the article extending to forty-four pages. It was essentially an abstract of the leading points in the treatise; the inductive portion, which exhibited the most novelty, being copiously set forth. The whole strain of the article was highly complimentary, but not more so than was warranted by the impression that the work made upon me, as the result of my first perusal. When sent to Hickson, he allowed Mill to see it. The consequence was that Mill recommended some of the concluding pages to be left out, as too complimentary in the circumstances. Seeing that he had only recently ceased to be the proprietor of the review, it was not judicious, he considered, to make it the medium of anything like unqualified laudation of himself. At the same time, he gave the article the benefit of verbal revision, by which it was otherwise improved. After all, it

was referred to by different critics as a eulogy rather than a review.

Summer Recess, 1843.

The College session was closed as usual in the beginning of April, and I made preparations, as before, to spend the summer months in London. The fight all over Scotland in connexion with the coming crisis of the meeting of the General Assembly, was becoming hotter every day. I was present at the debate in the Synod of Aberdeen, which ended in a division that practically sealed the fate of the popular party. I had, of course, as I have remarked, been in the habit of talking with Masson on his Banner articles. These went on all through the winter ; and now he had to prepare himself for the final stroke. When I paid a visit to the Manse of Bourtie early in May, the letters Dr. Bisset received from day to day were occupied with the relative returns of Convocationists and Constitutionalists; and, seemingly, the expectation was that there would be a near approach to equality in the two sections, if they ever came to a vote.

In the latter end of May,-by which time the Disruption had been effected, and its consequences fully manifested, I took the Aberdeen steamer

END OF NON-INTRUSION CONTROVERSY.

149

for London. This journey was rendered remarkable to me by the companionship of one of my class-fellows, with whom I had had comparatively little intimacy during the College course. He had not made himself very prominent in class work or distinctions, and, he being at the end of the alphabet, while I was at the beginning, we sat at the greatest distance from each other. His name was William Walker. He was a student of medicine, and a young man of considerable physical energy. Sometime previous to our present voyage I had attended a mesmeric demonstration conducted by him on the lines of mesmeric exposition as then practised. Insensibility to pain under the mesmeric sleep was one familiar item. Still more notable was the forming a chain of subjects by joining hand to hand, and pinching the hand of the person at one end, with the result of the pain being experienced by the person at the other end.

Our conversation on board the steamer took the turn of religious controversy. He was very full of the topic, and unfolded to me, for the first time, the nature of Strauss's handling of the historical parts of the four Gospels. I had never heard the name of Strauss mentioned before; but my curiosity was roused to ascertain more precisely the nature of his work, and I intended

forthwith, on going to London, to find some expository treatise on the subject. In the British Museum, I discovered a very indifferent English translation of a French version of Strauss's Leben Jesu (Miss Evans's translation had not then appeared). I saw plainly what was the drift of Strauss's attack, which, on the negative side, seemed very damaging. His mythical explanation of the origin of the impugned narratives was of far less consequence.

Arriving in London on the 30th of May, I obtained a lodging in Windmill Street, Tottenham Court Road. At Tavistock Hotel, I found Drs. Clark and Cruickshank, who were up as a deputation with reference to the Medical Bill. I went without delay to the India House to Mill and got the first volume of Comte, which I began forthwith. I spent an evening with Arnott, who gave me a slip that he had prepared for the University of London, with reference to the examinations for the B.A. degree, which were still in a very crude and objectionable form.

On my first visit to Carlyle, I found with him old Sterling, the well-known thunderer of The Times and the father of John Sterling. There was very little resemblance between the father and the son.

My old friend, Peter Gray, the Aberdeen

BY STEAMER TO LONDON.

151

bookseller, was now settled in London as bookkeeper in the firm of Peter Taylor, the crate manufacturers. He had taken up warmly some private mathematical researches, and obtained an introduction to De Morgan, who was the means of his being elected a member of the Astronomical Society. I accompanied him to one of the meetings of the Society, which was to me interesting and memorable. Sir John Herschel was in the chair, and the business included the intimation by Hind of some additions to the list of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, which had then reached only a very small number compared with present enumeration. There was also an account of a new star of the sort that appear and disappear, its locality being the Milky Way. A very significant remark by the chairman clung to my memory. Speaking of the recorded appearances of these stars, which went back to the early Chinese annals, and were usually given as in the Milky Way, he remarked that this was a confirmation of the reality of the observations. For, as he said, our visible firmament of stars may be regarded as crowded into the Milky Way, outside of which the distribution is comparatively sparse; so that, by the doctrine of chances, whatever new event occurred would be naturally