48 NETHER LOCHABER. 



Of Mr. Gladstone, the politician, there are many more enthu- 

 siastic admirers than ourselves, though we would not willingly be 

 supposed to yield to any one in our ardent admiration of his ripe 

 scholarship and unrivalled eloquence ; but we shall think better of 

 him while we live, and have a kindlier and warmer interest in 

 all he says and does, on account of his recent eulogium on the 

 character and writings of Sir Walter Scott. 



And who can speak of Scott, or think of Abbotsford and Melrose 

 and the classic Tweed at the present moment, without also thinking 

 of Allerly and Sir David Brewster, one of the greatest men of science 

 that Scotland has ever produced ; and greater far, as sometimes 

 happens in such cases, out of it than in it, for during , full forty 

 years, wherever, throughout the habitable parts of the earth, science 

 had lit her lamp and could count her votaries, however humble, there 

 the name of David Brewster was familiar as a household word, and 

 his discoveries known and applauded. He was the first really 

 distinguished man of letters and science we ever knew, and it was 

 while writing one of the earlier chapters of this work, on a subject 

 in which he felt the keenest interest, and in connection with which 

 we had occasion to mention his name, that the grand old man, 

 venerable in honours and in years, was breathing his last, with a 

 Christian resignation to the Divine will, and a Christian's joyful 

 faith in the Divine mercy and goodness. Passing through the 

 valley of death, he feared no evil, for his Lord and Saviour sus- 

 tained his steps. Through the first Lady Brewster (nee Macpherson), 

 to whom we had the honour of being known before we had yet 

 seen her distinguished husband, we were fortunate enough to be 

 admitted, at the very beginning of our curriculum at college, to a 

 degree of familiarity with the Principal of our University, that our 

 relative positions would not otherwise have warranted, and which 

 we have the satisfaction to remember we had sense enough to value 

 highly and to be proud of even at that early age. It was by his 



