FAMOUS SCOTS SERIES The following Volumes are now ready — THOMAS CARLYLE. By Hector C. Macpherson ALLAN RAMSAY. By Oliphant Smeaton HUGH MILLER. By W. Keith Leask JOHN KNOX. By A. Taylor Innes ROBERT BURNS. By Gabriel Setoun THE BALLADISTS. By John Geddie RICHARD CAMERON. By Professor Herkless SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON. By Eve Blantyre Simpson THOMAS CHALMERS. By Professor W. Garden Blaikie JAMES BOSWELL. By W. Keith Leask TOBIAS SMOLLETT. By Oliphant Smeaton FLETCHER OF SALTOUN. By G. W. T. Omond TH

My cordial gratitude is due to Mr. William Isbister—’best of smokers’—for allowing me (and that with so good a spirit) to quote from the Memoir of Norman Macleod . The present piece will not have been written in vain, as the saying is, if it sends readers to that entertaining quarry. I have also to thank Mr. J. C. Erskine, Hope Street, Glasgow (’Be calm, Erskine’), for furnishing me with certain letters never before published, specimens of which will be found in the text. The extracts from the Q

1812-1837 DESCENT—BOYHOOD—STUDENT YEARS Nothing astonished Dr. Johnson so much, when he was roving in the Hebrides, as to find men who lived in huts and quoted Latin. These were the ‘gentlemen tacksmen,’ and no more remarkable tenantry was ever seen on any soil. What they did for agriculture I cannot say; as much, perhaps, as their destroyers, who made a solitude and called it sheep: but they had bread to eat and raiment to put on (though they might sometimes sleep with their feet in the mire),

1838-1843 LOUDOUN—NON-INTRUSION CONTROVERSY Just after his return from this tour, Macleod was presented, virtually at the instance of Chalmers, to the living of Loudoun, in Ayrshire. On March 5, 1838, he was ordained. From this time onward his private journal is largely the record of religious introspection. With the other earnest ministers of that period, he took up the feelings and the language of the old Puritans. One cannot forget Robertson, on his appointment to the charge of Ellon, pacing

He was led to ponder the social as well as the religious problem presented by life in the slums. In the events of the year of revolution he took a keen interest. ‘The Chartists are put down,’ he remarked scornfully, seeing with Carlyle that the matter would by no means end with the victory of the special constable. ‘Snug the joiner,’ he observed, ‘is a man as other men are, having a body finely fashioned and tempered, which in rags shivers in the cold, while the “special” goes to his fireside, w

1851-1860 THE BARONY PARISH—MACLEOD AS PASTOR—AS PREACHER—HIS SYMPATHY—POSITION IN THE CITY. The minister of the Barony—henceforth for many years commonly called ‘young Norman’ to distinguish him from his father—was a shining exception to the prevailing type of the Established clergy, if not the rising hope of those who looked for the rebuilding of the National Zion. The Free Church, popular from the first, was going on prospering and to prosper,—her tabernacles set up everywhere cheek by jowl w

The next refers to the birth of his first child: (5) My first volume is out on Friday—bound in calf-skin, with cloth- guilt on the back and front, and very small type—less than a 64mo. Author and Publisher doing well. But I do not expect the sale to be great for eighteen years. I hope then some great London firm will purchase it for a handsome sum. I cannot, however, complain of the delivery by the trade as yet! I send you MS. All must be printed, and some more beside. Be calm, Erskine. (6) Mast

BALMORAL If the cry for vital being— ‘Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, More life, and fuller, that I want’— ever came from Norman Macleod, it was answered only too well; like a certain prayer for rain, which was interrupted by a ridiculous flood. Not only were his activities immense and various, but there was always an expenditure of corresponding emotion; nay, and what in the life of most men would have been simply an event was in his a crisis, what was a fleeting image with others was w

1860-1866 TRAVELS—BROAD CHURCH MOVEMENTS No minister, whose hands were full at home, ever travelled more or further, whether as tourist or apostle, than Norman Macleod. At least once a year on an average he spent time on the Continent. In the summer of 1860, with a view to preach to the Scottish artisans residing at certain places in Northern Europe, he started for St. Petersburg. Elsinore, where he landed in honour of Hamlet, he was disappointed to find no ‘wild and stormy steep,’ but a quiet l

At the first sight of India, a land so full of romantic and mysterious interest, Macleod as a Briton, and still more as a Christian, was strangely moved. The working plan of the deputies may be stated in a dozen words: Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, with a loop of travel at each. In one city as in another Macleod had much the same round of triumphs and of toils. He conferred with missionaries of different Churches; inspected colleges and schools; and, accompanied by the highest aristocracy, both nati