was not in him; but admiration and loyal service were of his very essence. Without any ulterior views, he visited those "three hundred families,"-won their confidence and friendship, in most cases readily enough; and when that was not the case, took them captive by innocent wiles and premeditation. One such case, which must have been a remarkable one, is told in so many different versions, that it is difficult to decide which is the true one. A certain shoemaker, radical and infidel, was among the number of those under Irving's special care; a home-workman of course, always present, silent, with his back turned upon the visitors, and refusing any communication except a sullen humph of implied criticism, while his trembling wife made her deprecating curtsy in the foreground. The way in which this intractable individual was finally won over, is attributed by some tellers of the story to a sudden happy inspiration on Irving's part; but, by others, to plot and intention. Approaching the bench one day, the visitor took up a piece of patent leather, then a recent invention, and remarked upon it in somewhat skilled terms. The shoemaker went on with redoubled industry at his work; but at last, roused and exasperated by the speech and pretence of knowledge, demanded, in great contempt, but without raising his eyes, "What do ye ken about leather?" This was just the opportunity his assailant wanted; for Irving, though a minister and a scholar, was a tanner's son, and could discourse learnedly upon that material. Gradually interested and mollified, the cobbler slackened work, and listened while his visitor described some process of making shoes by machinery, which he had carefully got

"HE KENS ABOUT LEATHER."

111

up for the purpose. At last the shoemaker so far forgot his caution as to suspend his work altogether, and lift his eyes to the great figure stooping over his bench. The conversation went on with increased vigour after this, till finally the recusant threw down his arms:"Od, you 're a decent kind o' fellow!-do you preach ?" said the vanquished, curious to know more of his victor. The advantage was discreetly, but not too hotly pursued; and on the following Sunday the rebel made a defiant, shy appearance at church. Next day Irving encountered him in the savoury Gallowgate, and hailed him as a friend. Walking beside him in natural talk, the tall probationer laid his hand upon the shirt-sleeve of the shrunken sedentary workman, and marched by his side along the well-frequented street. By the time they had reached the end of their mutual way not a spark of resistance was left in the shoemaker. His children henceforward went to school; his deprecating wife went to the kirk in peace. He himself acquired that suit of Sunday "blacks" so dear to the heart of the poor Scotchman, and became a churchgoer and respectable member of society; while his acknowledgment of his conqueror was conveyed with characteristic reticence, and concealment of all deeper feeling, in the selfexcusing pretence "He's a sensible man, yon; he kens about leather!"

The preacher who knew about leather had, however, in conjunction with that cordiality which won the shoemaker's heart, a solemnity and apostolic demeanour which might have looked like affectation in another man, and has, indeed, been called affectation even in Irving by those who did not know him; though never

112

APOSTOLIC BENEDICTION.

by any man who did. Probably his long, silent contemplation of that solitary mission which he had set his heart on, had made him frame his very manner and address according to apostolic rule. When he entered. those sombre apartments in the Gallowgate, it was with the salutation"Peace be to this house," with which he might have entered a Persian palace or desert tent. "It was very peculiar; a thing that nobody else did,” says a simple-minded member of Dr. Chalmers's agency; "it was impossible not to remark it, out of the way as it was; but there was not one of the agency could make an objection to it. It took the people's attention wonderfully." A certain solemn atmosphere entered with that lofty figure, speaking in matchless harmony of voice, its "Peace be to this house." To be prayed for, sometimes edifyingly, sometimes tediously, was not uncommon to the Glasgow poor; but to be blessed was a novelty to them. Perhaps if the idea had been pursued into the depths of their minds, these Presbyterians, all retaining something of ecclesiastical knowledge, however little religion they might have, would have been disposed to deny the right of any man to assume that priestly power of blessing. Irving, however, did not enter into any discussion of the subject. It was his habitual practice; and the agency, puzzled and a little awed," could not make an objection to it." He did still more than this. He laid his hands upon the heads of the children, and pronounced, with imposing solemnity, the ancient benediction, "The Lord bless thee and keep thee," over each of them practice startling to Scotch ears, but acquiesced in involuntarily as natural to the man who, all solitary

a

INTERCOURSE WITH THE POOR.

113

and individual in picturesque homely grandeur, went to and fro among them. So grave a preface did not detract from the entire heartiness with which he entered into the concerns of the household; an intercourse which he himself describes with touching simplicity in his farewell sermon addressed to the people of St. John's. It is impossible to give any account of this part of his work half so true or so affecting as is conveyed thus, in his own words :

"Oh, how my heart rejoices to recur to the hours I have sitten under the roofs of the people, and been made a partaker of their confidence, and a witness of the hardships they had to endure. In the scantiest and perhaps worst times with which this manufacturing city hath ever been pressed, it was my almost daily habit to make a round of their families, and uphold, what in me lay, the declining cause of God. There have I sitten with little silver or gold of my own to bestow, with little command over the charity of others, and heard the various narratives of hardship-narratives uttered for the most part with modesty and patience; oftener drawn forth with difficulty than obtruded on your ear; their wants, their misfortunes, their ill-requited labour, their hopes vanishing, their families dispersing in search of better habitations, the Scottish economy of their homes giving way before encroaching necessity; debt rather than saving their condition; bread and water their scanty fare; hard and ungrateful labour the portion of their house. All this have I often seen and listened to within naked walls; the witness, oft the partaker, of their miserable cheer; with little or no means to relieve. Yet be it known, to the glory of God and the credit of the poor, and the encouragement of tender-hearted Christians, that such application to the heart's ailments is there in our religion, and such a hold in its promises, and such a pith of endurance in its noble examples, that when set forth by one inexperienced tongue, with soft words and kindly tones, they did never fail to drain the heart of the sourness that calamity engenders,

and sweeten it with the balm of resignation-often enlarge it with cheerful hope, sometimes swell it high with the rejoicings of a Christian triumph."

A more affecting picture of the position of the Christian visitor," with little or no means to relieve," except by sympathy, and testimony to the consolatory uses of the gospel, was never made. There does not exist human misery under the sun which would not be cheered and softened by such ministrations. He who was " often the partaker of their miserable cheer," who blessed the poor meal and blessed the house, and linked himself to the sufferers by such half-sacramental breaking of the bread of sorrow, could never fail to find his way into their hearts. He was not always, however, without silver or gold of his own to bestow. A little legacy was left him just at the time he describes, a legacy of some sum between thirty and a hundred pounds,-for tradition has come to be doubtful as to the amount. Such a little windfall one might suppose would have been very acceptable to Dr. Chalmers's helper; and so it was; but after a fashion entirely his own. Irving melted his legacy into the one-pound notes current in Scotland, deposited them in his desk, and every morning, as long as they lasted, put one in his pocket when he went out to his visitations. The legacy lasted just as many days as it was pounds in value, and doubtless produced as much pleasure to its owner as ever was purchased by money. What Dr. Chalmers said to this barefaced alms-giving, in the very midst of his social economy, I cannot tell. I cannot tell. As to its destination nobody but Irving was any the wiser. It melted into gleams of comfort, transitory but precious; and he who shared