at six, excepting on Saturday evenings, when I used to stay late with the Stewarts-which was made up by late rising on Sunday. I have reason to think that, when I ceased going to Elgen, I reverted to my former hours, and seldom again curtailed my allowance of eight hours' sleep.

The books that occupied me in those late hours after school are put down as, first, Simpson's Fluxions, and, next, the second volume of Hutton's Dictionary with its miscellaneous interest, which occupied a number of consecutive evenings, alternated with T. Newton's Conic Sections. This last I soon exchanged for Vince's Fluxions, which engrossed me for a succession of eight or ten nights; being then replaced by Wood's Mechanics from the Library, and Ferguson's Lectures, which the Stewarts had in their collection. I was now engaged with Physics, and henceforth divided my attention between it and pure Mathematics.

I am now near the end of 1834. On the 24th December, Dr. Kidd died-a great event in my religious history. On the same day, Elgen adjourned his school for the holidays; and, that I might not be idle, he gave me Lacroix to take home. Another event that followed cut short my attendance at school. The day after New Year's Day, I caught the infection of typhus fever, and was laid up in the infirmary for five weeks-an

ATTACK OF TYPHUS FEVER.

23

entirely novel experience. The only thing notable that I remember about it was the ennui of convalescence, and how I got through that by repeating psalms and hymns, having as yet no stores of secular poetry.

About the middle of February, I resumed both work and study. It appears I did not go back to Elgen's school, although I had still some weeks of my quarter to make good. I believe this was by a sort of understanding between us, that I could go on quite as well at home; he lending me books, and also promising to help me in difficulties, for which he gave me a general invitation to his house. Lacroix, in particular, kept me at work for several weeks. I went on at the same time with Ferguson's Lectures, and also a work of Laplace— in all likelihood, his popular volume Système du Monde. In the beginning of May, I took Lacroix to Elgen, and he thereupon, to my great joy, lent me the first volume of the Principia. Another of my important acquisitions was Herschel's two volumes in Lardner, Natural Philosophy and Astronomy. These I conned for long. To try my hand at exercises, I bought Bland's Philosophical Problems, collected from Cambridge examinations but I solved very few, as far as I remember. However, I began Newton immediately, and found I could follow the First Book. About this time,

the idea occurred to me to learn Latin; I had still in my memory the Rudiments as mastered at Straith's. I got a Latin New Testament for a help, and thereby became familiar with some of the easier forms of latinity.

At this point, a new development commences, in the shape of a Mutual Instruction Class, in connexion with the Mechanics' Institution. I may, however, go back for a little to complete the account of what I owed to the Stewarts. I must have been in their company not less than three years at the time now reached (June, 1835). I barely remember the beginnings of the intimacy. What I do remember is, that, as regards Mechanics and Astronomy, they were my first masters. They had studied all Ferguson's treatises, and, being mechanics by trade, they made models on his suggestion. One of his ideas was to construct a timepiece by three wheels and two pinions, from which I learnt the machinery of a clock, as far as measuring time went (to this day I never comprehended the striking apparatus). They also constructed a very simple telescope, with an object glass of four feet focus, and an eye glass, fixed on a rod without a tube. Through it we saw the satellites of Jupiter, to our immense delight; we also turned it to the moon, and had a considerable

COMPANIONSHIP OF THE BROTHERS STEWART. 25

increase of acquaintance with the surface irregularities. We kept a look-out for eclipses of the moon, and got up in the night to watch them. I remember one of the posers they gave me was to explain the harvest moon, which was a special point in Ferguson. More than all this, the Stewarts had got deep in the great problems of Metaphysics, with which they posed me at a time when I was an utter novice in that region. From studying Reid's Inquiry, they had got hold of the perceptive theories of Berkeley and Hume, and challenged me to refute them or otherwise to resolve the paradoxes of a material world. I was, of course, quite helpless, but probably had my thoughts in this way turned to the domain of Mental Science. The name of Reid as the leader of Scottish Metaphysics became familiar; but I did not then attempt to read even the Inquiry, as the Stewarts had done.

Again, in theology, they were well posted up. They posed me here too. I remember especially their starting the difficulty of referring the origin of the rainbow to divine appointment, in connexion with the flood. They did not pretend to solve it, nor did they push it to the point of scepticism. Like myself, they attended the ministry of Dr. Kidd, who had written a book on the Trinity, which they possessed and ana

lyzed,—crushing Kidd's metaphysical foundations in their own acute style. The book professed to deduce the doctrine from the nature of Dura

tion and Space. But although we believed in the Scripture doctrine of the Trinity, we were all too deeply impregnated with the literal and scientific properties of both Time and Space, to suppose them capable of generating so great a mystery. The Stewarts, of course, showed me the draft of their criticism, and I must have concurred in it, after ample discussion. They then sent it on to Kidd himself, who invited them to a personal interview, to which they went. Nothing came of it; he rambled away in his own style, and made no attempt to refute their arguments. I often regretted I did not join them in this visit, as it was my only chance of ever holding a private conversation with the man that I most venerated as a preacher.

The Mechanics' Mutual Instruction Class was opened in May, 1835, and was kept in vigorous action for two or three years. All the intellectual strength of the then readers in the Library, both young and middle-aged, was brought into it. I was one of the first to give a discourse; the topic being the Precession of the Equinoxes, which