Ireland, as he had often wandered over the congenial districts of his own country, for some weeks; pursuing the system he had learned to adopt at home,-walking as the crow flies, finding lodging and shelter in the wayside cottages, sharing the potato and the milk which formed the peasant's meal. A singular journey; performed in primitive hardship, fatigue, and brotherly kindness; out of the reach of civilised persons or conventional necessities; undertaken out of pure caprice, the evident sudden impulse of letting things go as they would; and persevered in with something of the same abandon and determined abstraction of himself from all the disgusts and disappointments of life. Neither letters nor tokens of his existence seem to have come out of this temporary flight and banishment. He had escaped for the moment from those momentous questions which shortly must be faced and resolved. Presently it would be necessary to go back, to make the last preparations, to take the decisive steps, and say farewells. He fairly ran away from it for a moment's breathing time, and took refuge in the rude unknown life of the Irish cabins ;-a thing which most people have somehow done, or at least attempted to do, at the crisis of their lives.

the

When he re-emerged out of this refreshing blank, and came to the common world again, where letters and ordinary appeals of life were awaiting him, he found a bulky enclosure from his father, in the Coleraine postoffice. Gavin Irving wrote, in explanation of his double letter (for postage was no trifle in those days), that he would have copied the enclosed if he could have read it; but not being able to make out a word, was com

36

96

INVITATION TO GLASGOW.

pelled to send it on for his son's own inspection. This enclosure was from Dr. Chalmers, inviting Irving to go to Glasgow; but the date was some weeks back, and the invitation was by no means distinct as to the object for which he was wanted. It was enough, however, to stir the reviving heart of the young giant, whom his fall, and contact with kindly mother earth, had refreshed and re-invigorated. He set out without loss of time for Glasgow, but only to find Dr. Chalmers absent, and once more to be plunged into the lingering pangs of suspense.

While waiting the Doctor's return, Irving again reported himself and his new expectations to his friends in Kirkcaldy.

"Glasgow, 1st September, 1819.

"You see I am once more in Scotland; and how I came to have found my way to the same place I started from, you shall now learn. On Friday last arrived at Coleraine a letter from Dr. Chalmers, pressing me to meet him in Edinburgh on the 30th, or in Glasgow the 31st Aug. So here I arrived, after a very tempestuous passage in the Rob Roy; and upon calling on the Doctor, I find he is still in Anstruther, at which place he proposes remaining awhile longer than he anticipated, and requests to have a few days of me there. So, but for another circumstance, you might have seen me posting through Kirkcaldy to Anster, the famed in song. That circumstance is Mrs. Chalmers's ill-health, of which he will be more particularly informed than he is at present by this post; and then Miss Pratt tells me there is no doubt he will return post-haste, as all good husbands ought. Here, then, I am, a very sorry sight, I can assure you. You may remember how disabled in my rigging I was in the Kingdom*; conceive

* The Kingdom of Fife, fondly so called by its affectionate population.

INTEREST IN CHURCH AFFAIRS.

97

me, then, to have wandered a whole fortnight among the ragged sons of St. Patrick, to have scrambled about the Giant's Causeway, and crossed the Channel twice, and sailed in fish-boats and pleasure-boats, and driven gigs and jaunting-cars, and never once condescended to ask the aid of a tailor's needle. Think of this, and figure what I must be now. But I have just been ordering a refit from stem to stern, and shall by tomorrow be able to appear amongst the best of them; and you know the Glasgow bodies ken fu' weel it's merely impossible to carry about with ane a' the comforts of the Sa't Market at ane's tail, or a' the comforts of Bond Street either. I shall certainly now remain till I have seen and finally determined with Dr. Chalmers; for my time is so short that if I get home without a finale of one kind or other, it will interfere with the department of my foreign affairs, which imperiously call for attention."

The letter, which begins thus, is filled up, to the length of five long pages, by an account of the organisation of the Synod of Ulster, and of a case of discipline which had just occurred in it, on which, on behalf of a friend at Coleraine, the traveller was anxious to consult the experience of the minister of Kirkcaldy. In respect to his own prospects, Irving's suspense was now speedily terminated. Dr. Chalmers returned, and at once proposed to him to become his assistant in St. John's. The solace to the young man's discouraged mind must have been unspeakable. Here, at last, was one man who understood the unacceptable probationer, and perceived in him that faculty which he himself discerned dimly and still hoped in-troubled, but not convinced by the general disbelief. To have his gift recognised by another mind was new life to Irving; and such a mind! the generous intelligence of the first of Scotch preachers. But with Presbyterian scrupulosity, in the

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DOUBTFUL OF HIS OWN SUCCESS.

midst of his eagerness, Irving hung back still. He could not submit to be "intruded upon" the people by the mere will of the incumbent, and would not receive even that grateful distinction, if he continued as distasteful as he had hitherto found himself. He was not confident of his prospects even when backed by the powerful encouragement of Dr. Chalmers. "I will preach to them if you think fit," he is reported to have said; "but if they bear with my preaching, they will be the first people who have borne with it!" In this spirit, with the unconscious humility of a child, sorry not to satisfy his judges, but confessing the failure which he scarcely could understand, he preached his first sermon to the fastidious congregation in St. John's. This was in October 1819. "He was generally well liked, but some people thought him rather flowery. However, they were satisfied that he must be a good preacher, since Dr. Chalmers had chosen him," says a contemporary witness. It was thus with little confidence on his own part, and somewhat careless indulgence on the part of the people, who were already in possession of the highest preaching of the time, that Irving opened his mouth at last, and began his natural career.

CHAPTER VI.

GLASGOW.

It was in October 1819, that Irving began his work in Glasgow-the first real work in his own profession which had opened to him. He was then in the full strength of early manhood, seven-and-twenty, the "Scottish uncelebrated Irving," whom his great countryman regretfully commemorates. His remarkable appearance seems, in the first place, to have impressed everybody. A lady, who was then a member of Dr. Chalmers's church, and who had access to the immediate circle surrounding him, tells how she herself, on one occasion, being particularly engaged in some domestic duties, had given orders to her servants not to admit any visitors. She was interrupted in her occupation, however, notwithstanding this order, by the entrance of one of her maids, in a state of high excitement and curiosity. "Mem!" burst forth the girl, "there's a wonderful grand gentleman called; I couldna say you were engaged to him. I think he maun be a Highland Chief!"-"That Mr. Irving!" exclaimed another individual of less elevated and poetical conceptions—“That Dr. Chalmers's helper! I took him for a cavalry officer!" "Do you know, Doctor," said a third, addressing Chalmers himself," what things people are