A correspondence in the ‘Scotsman,’ roused by Professor Blackie's poem called “Canaries and Creeds,” indicates the troubled waters of theological controversy in Scotland during that year and those following. The epoch had its loud pretensions to infallibility, its response in the acclaim of the ignorant, its inquisitors, its traitors, its martyrs, its outcome of the triumph of a wider revelation for which its martyrs suffered, and for which they now are crowned.

Occupied with his College duties and with lectures at Galashiels, Linlithgow, and Govan, he was able to grant Mrs Blackie a very unwonted leave of absence in London, where a new but already greatly valued friend had claimed her presence. This was Miss Pipe of Laleham, who became acquainted with Altnacraig in the summer of 1876, and whose school in Clapham Park had for many years heralded and achieved the larger, stronger, and more radical education for girls, now become a commonplace of our time.

During his wife's absence many letters on the subject of his book on Gaelic reached him, and on her return he went north to Inverness for a couple of days on Celtic Chair business. On this subject Mr Froude wrote to him early in February:—

It seems to have been in August 1861 that Professor Blackie, on his way from Sudbrooke to Southsea, stopped at Winchfield and tramped over the brown heath to Eversley, to visit Kingsley.

Lectures on “Education,” on “Ancient and Modern Poetry,” articles for ‘Macmillan's’ and other magazines, a paper on “Athens” for the ‘Daily Review,’ supplemented his work on Homer and his academical duties that year and the next. He spent May 1862 in London, and the summer months were divided between Methven, Dollar and Lowland rambles.

The foregoing chapters have been written in vain if the reader, personally unacquainted with Professor Blackie, has not by this time realised what manner of man he was. But there are aspects of his public life and conversation to which justice can only be done by giving them the necessary emphasis with a multitude of small touches. An attempt to vivify his portrait in this way may therefore be made in a chapter set apart for the purpose.

Blackie at home and Blackie abroad differed considerably. He was a compound of two individualities both wholesome and good, but not the same in manifestation. At home he was gentle, considerate, methodical, serious; only at table relaxing into discursive talk and occasional explosiveness. His domestic pleasantries were tranquil, and took the form of genial banter and of equally genial irony. To the latter kind belonged the continued narration of the married life and adventures of Mr Bob Melliss. He was a mythical schoolfellow, gifted and amiable. In an evil hour, allured by her rank and pretensions, he had married the Lady Letitia Lambert. This stately personage belonged to the school of “white-satin-shoe philosophers.” Her dainty nerves endured no breath from the plebeian world, but required an environment of patrician and ceremonious elegance. The easy-going Bob had to surrender every friend and every habit of his bachelor days, and became a model husband for this lofty and sensitive dame. He forgot the very meaning of liberty, ate and drank as her stern glance directed, spoke and kept silence at her command. He was not unhappy,—far from it,—but he was a slave, a well-dressed appendage to the Lady Letitia's train.

15 κἂν ἃποπτος ἦς ὅμως. In his Lehrbuch der griechischen Bühnen alterthümer, p. 151, note 1, Dr Albert Müller holds that this clause is to be understood as merely a general remark (‘als allgemeine Bemerkung zu fassen ist’). He supposes that Athena appears, not in the air (on the θεολογεῖον), but on the λογεῖον itself, and is visible from the first to Odysseus. It is true that Greek Tragedy furnishes several instances in which a deity, who opens the first scene, must be conceived as appearing on the λογεῖον,–or let us say (since there are those who deny the existence of a stage), on the place from which the actors ordinarily spoke. This is the case with Apollo in the Alcestis; Hermes in the Ion; Dionysus in the Bacchae; Poseidon and Athena in the Troades; and possibly Aphroditè in the Hippolytus (though this last is an instance in which the θεολογεῖον may well have been used). But here it is surely inconceivable that, if Odysseus saw Athena standing near him, he should say to her, ‘How clearly I hear thy voice, even when thou art unseen.’ Such ‘a general remark’ would be too weak.

17 κώδωνος ὡς Τυρσηνικῆς. The scholiast on Iliad 18. 219 enumerates six kinds of trumpets,–the first being ἡ Ἑλληνική, μακρὰ τὸ σχῆμα, ἥν Τυρρηνοῖς εὗρεν ἡ ᾈθηνᾷ,–which is the kind meant in this verse.

The home in Douglas Crescent had been brightened since 1890 by the presence of the Professor's nephew, Dr Stodart Walker, who filled the place of a son. But the winter began and continued with sickness and sorrow. First Mrs Blackie succumbed to influenza, then the Professor, and lastly Dr Walker.

The winter's leisure was spent in getting into brief emphatic expression the Professor's many thoughts upon the formation of a well-balanced manhood, which his long acquaintance with young men, and his observation of their tendency to turn from sanity and righteousness at the call of any “philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world,” had suggested. He noticed to what class of character each beguiling call appealed, and he endeavoured—by a book which might serve as a rallying cry to all open-minded readers—to summon them back to the right starting-point.

Some exception has been taken to the title of this little volume. “Self-culture,” it has been urged, means self-worship; but the objection is pedantic, and the term conveys correctly the writer's meaning. Mind, body, and spirit go to form a human being, and each needs recognition, instruction, education, to interfuse its influence with the others into integral health and symmetry. The Professor, himself of sane mind and wholesome habits, loving life for all its joys and lessons, having learned, in reverence for God the creator and provider, and in communion with His Spirit, how momentous a gift is this of life, impressed in wise words upon the young the right attitude toward life, the right use to be made of its opportunities. “Having,” he says, “by the golden gift of God the glorious lot of living, let us endeavour to live nobly.”

His counsel is conveyed in brief, apt, and vivid expression. Ko dull reiteration saps the interest with which we read the little book.

The years from 1880 to 1885 are significant for the Professor's public utterances and writings on the Crofter question. His studies in Italy had been made for the express purpose of accustoming his mind to the consideration of all problems involved in the subject of land-tenure, varying as these problems do in the varying customs and conditions of that country. He was thus better fitted to deal with what was becoming a matter of immediate moment.

He began 1880 by lecturing in Glasgow on the Crofters, and “preached a sermon to the lairds with more than usual applause and acceptance.” In February he issued a pamphlet on the subject, which treated of the passing of Highland estates into the hands of Southrons indifferent to the peasant population; of eviction and expatriation; of farm added to farm; of clearance for deer-forests and pasture-land. Letters to newspapers and a constant correspondence with proprietors, factors, farmers, crofters followed, and kept the matter well to the front, increasing his store of material for the book which wound up his public action in the cause.

But Greek pronunciation and the restoration of St Giles’ Cathedral gave him relief from his more insistent labours.

In England the middle classes can rarely boast of connection with a romantic past. Their progenitors may have been worthy, capable, useful in their day and generation, but how seldom have they left traditions stranded on the flats of present provincialism. Whatever their local worth, the grandfathers of a middle-class Englishman inspired no ballad, as warriors on the moorland in the wake of a ruined dynasty—as martyrs in the lowland singing the psalms of the Covenant while Episcopal bullets whizzed about their ears. In Scotland, the blue blood of a squandered loyalty, of a faithfulness unto death, whatever the cause, fills the veins of the middle classes. Their ancestors were Jacobites or Covenanters, and so, even unto this generation, men are to be found inheriting their strong individuality, refusing the dull canals of conventional life, and working their way in self-worn channels, through obstacles as unrelenting as their granite rocks.

Perhaps for lack of “causes” the Scotchmen of to-day are growing tame, but the men born within the first quarter of this century were still endowed with free gesture and plain speech, and through their hearts ran rills of poetry from the springs of ancestral suffering.

From a stock of solid Borderers John Stuart Blackie took his name and something of his nature.

Professor Saalfeld gave him a letter of introduction to Professor Raumer at Berlin, and lie carried with him other introductions both to Professors and to residents in the capital. His journey was uneventful. But Eisleben and Mittenberg, as he passed through them, provoked glowing apostrophes to “undaunted Martin Luther,” although it was eight o'clock on Monday evening when they stopped to change horses and to sup at the latter town. The wide plain which stretches towards Berlin was veiled by night, and he was glad when, at six o'clock on Tuesday morning, the coach passed through Potsdam, and an hour and a half later drove along the Leipziger Strasse and landed him in Berlin.

Two hundred miles were covered in the thirty-six hours. He stayed three days at an inn, spending most of the time in a hunt for lodgings. His father wished him to live if possible in the house of one of the Professors, and so to obtain all the advantages of intercourse with an educated German family; but Professor Eaumer, whom he consulted on the subject, assured him that such a practice was unknown amongst the Professors. The intention had to be abandoned, and a search for rooms to be substituted.

It was not till Friday, November 4, that the search was successful; but by the evening of that day he found himself installed in most comfortable rooms in a house in the Luisen Strasse, for which he paid no more than thirty shillings a-month. During intervals snatched from househunting, he had managed to matriculate at the University and to take tickets for four courses of lectures.

The early part of the year 1841 was productive of some well-written papers. The ‘Foreign Quarterly Review’ for January contained an account of the ‘Memoirs of Varnhagen von Ense,’ and its April number introduced Luchvig Uhland and his followers, grouped as “Suabian Poets,” to the reading public.

‘Blackwood's Magazine’ for February contained a review of the ‘Memoirs of Baron Strombeck,’ whose account of King Jerome Buonaparte's dramatic appearance in Westphalia, as its satrap for Napoleon, was full of interest for the world of fifty years ago. In August, John Blackie also contributed to ‘Maga’ a notable article on the “Traits and Tendencies of German Literature,” enlarging with point on the influence of the State upon the national mind.

For ‘Tait's Magazine’ he continued the popular “Burschen Melodies,” and wrote an article on “Protestantism, Puseyism, and Catholicism,” contributing to the Poet's Corner “The Emigrant's Song,” “To a Caged Eagle,” and “My Lady's Picture.”

The routine of this year's spring was varied by an episode, sudden, tumultuous, and fleeting, which can scarcely be ignored. He fell violently in love with a lady whose identity the fragmentary indications of flashing eyes and imperious temper, with the solitary information that her name was Mary, cannot help us to discover. He met her once without speaking to her, a second time with five minutes’ ordinary talk, and after, dreamt of her for two months together. Then came a fortunate Wednesday evening, when he was permitted to escort her home from a party, and when she graciously gave him leave to call.

John Blackie was hurried away from Berlin by his impetuous friends, John and Francis Forbes, who arrived on the scene earlier than they were expected, and stayed a much shorter time than was quite convenient. Excellent fellows as they were, their patriotism was of that type which scorns to be greatly interested in foreign sights, and it disposed them to make short work of a tour imposed upon them by the paternal wisdom, but offering no particular attractions to sound Calvinists and practical Aberdonians. Francis scouted as ridiculous John Blackie's assertion that he could stop a week at every place they passed, and being a masterful spirit, he swept the little party forward. Now and then young Blackie rebelled, and insisted on a longer stay where his interest was specially awakened. Their first halt was at Dresden, from which place he wrote to his father. This letter describes the hurry imposed on his final arrangements and leave-takings at Berlin, but speaks with sincere regard of his comrades. He managed to take impressive farewells not only of Miss Minna Doering, but also of other gracious Fräulein, who deigned to accept the little volumes of English poetry which he offered as parting tokens, not without a tear or two on either side—those facile Teutonic tears that come for little, and go as they come.

The farewell visits to the Professors were of sterner stuff, and less evanescent in their results. For Neander gave him a most valuable introduction to Mr Bunsen, Prussian Ambassador at the Papal Court; and Boeckh provided him with a letter to Professor E. Gerhard, an archaeologist at Rome of European fame.