READING IN PHILOSOPHY AND IN LITERATURE. 47

them greatly. I liked the style, although it was an exaggeration of Johnson and Hall; the sermons exhibiting a much freer and more healthy tone than those of our Scotch preachers. Parr's learned discussions on Jurisprudence were refreshing, from the copious citation of ancient authors unknown to me. Among biographies, I was I was tickled by Monk's Life of Richard Bentley, and was led to make a serious study of Bentley's Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris, which Parr had eulogized as a miracle of learning. I also made an attempt on Bacon's works. The first book of the Novum Organum made the greatest impression of any; indeed, it was the most enchanting of all my studies of that summer. Herschel's Natural Philosophy had long been familiar to me; and the motto from the opening of Bacon's Novum Organum had inspired my curiosity to read the work: still, nothing that I had yet encountered diminished the freshness of thought and language in that wonderful first book. Then, the amazing mixture of vigour and paradox in Warburton's Divine Legation of Moses had its charm. It appears that I included Milton in the summer's reading-probably, my first perusal. I kept up my Latin by a daily chapter of Livy for a portion of the summer: partly, no doubt, as lesson work for College. Further still, I find

references in my notes to readings in Biography and History, apart from the books specifically named. I was also beginning to be inured to political philosophy, of which there was a good deal in Hall's works.

Equally important with the course of reading now detailed, were my companionships and societies. With my old tutor and ally, David Smith, I had regular meetings for joint readings and discussion. But, while I formed a number of friendships among class-fellows of the previous winter, the greatest of all was the attachment to George Walker, a man of extraordinary powers, in humble circumstances, like myself, but more completely tied to daily work. He was then a lawyer's clerk, and kept long office hours, but, by strength of constitution, could rise early and gain time for study. During this summer, I used to go of an evening to the office where he worked; and a little society met there, at which I gave essays (I only remember one on Freethinking), and heard others that I could profit by, and, of course, discuss. One I remember on the Beauties of Milton's Prose. The writer was John Bulloch, well known in Aberdeen, both in his own person and through his descendants. I was still attending the Mechanics' Mutual Instruction Class, where I delivered my first notable com

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position in Mental Philosophy, consisting of three essays on Philosophic Genius. My recollection

of them is that they stimulated in myself a vast amount of thought on the philosophy of the intellect, and probably contained the beginnings of the view of Association that I laid so much stress on which I was engaged for years in maturing, and for which I placed under contribution the great Shakesperian outbursts, as well as the Newtonian discoveries, and particularly Gravitation. the mind had now become with me incessant and over-mastering. I was perpetually striking out new thoughts that for the moment seemed all-important; and the habit of continued selfobservation with a view to ascertaining the laws of mental successions was now established for good, and has remained through life.

But, indeed, the study of

The studies of the recess tended more and more to my dissent from prevailing religious creeds, and was, therefore, not favourable to religious warmth, which I still aimed at cultivating. On the problem of conversion, I had come to the belief that repentance was the work of the creature's own self; Divine assistance being given in the way of ordinary providence, or the use of means, and not through extraordinary grace.

My bodily condition had considerably deterio

rated during the year since entering college ; partly in the course of the college session, but still more during the summer recess. In previous years, my health had been excellent in every way, which could never be said again. As I distrusted doctors, I consulted no one. The chief derangement that overtook me, and has been more or less present all through life, was indigestion.

As there was at that time a prevailing belief that drugs did more harm than good, being too copiously administered in those days, I dreaded taking physic, which, no doubt, would often have set me right. We were now approaching the era of prevention in the treatment of disease, as set forth in the writings of the Combes, which I took in greedily. For the present, I was liable to fits of depression, and was frequently overtaken with fears of being physically incapable of the strain of study now indulged in.

Winter Session, 1837-38.

This was a far more momentous session than

the previous one. The subjects were more varied, and the pressure of class attendance greater, in time at least. There was a continuation of the classics, six hours a week, divided between Greek

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and Latin. In Greek, we got into higher authors. The Edipus Tyrannus was gone through, and the more difficult prose in the Collectanea Majora, extracts from Thucydides being included. In Latin, Melvin gave us the sixth book of Virgil, which was interesting from the subject, and further portions of Horace and of Livy, with exercises in translating both ways. I never kept pace with the best of my class-fellows in Latin, but stood well in Greek, and took a certain measure of delight in it, with the result that I got the third prize at the end.

We had also a class in mathematics, one hour a day, under the admirable conduct of Dr. Cruickshank. The work was all easy enough to me; being Euclid, Plane Trigonometry, and Algebra, as far as quadratics. As I had already gone over all the ground, what I gained from Cruickshank was the correction of many slovenly ways of dealing with the propositions of Euclid, and an improvement in precise handling generally -just what the self-taught student is deficient in.

Owing to a foolish misconception of the figure named trapezium, my answer to one of the questions in the prize competition was a failure, and I lost the first prize in consequence. The successful man on the occasion might have