ii2 FAMOUS SCOTS 



books as a stock not worth more than two pounds, 



I believe, quickly independent of all aid not all 

 a gain, for I am now sensible that my spirit of self- 

 reliance too often manifested itself in an unsocial, 

 unamiable light, while my recollections of "honest 

 poverty " may have made me too eager to attain and 

 secure worldly prosperity. Had I possessed uncles 

 such as yours, I might have been much the better of 

 it through life.' 



The close was cheered by the thought that he had 

 fairly earned the admiration and confidence of his 

 country. Yet nothing that could in any way fetter his 

 editorial independence or freedom of action could he 

 permit. When the money invested in The Witness was 

 offered to him by Chalmers it was firmly declined, and 

 the proposal to requite his services to the country by 

 providing him with a residence he would not allow. 



I 1 know,' he said, c that as the defender of Free Church 

 principles my intentions have been pure and loyal, but 

 I am not quite sure I have been successful in doing 

 the right thing, nor have I done anything that is worthy 

 of such consideration from my friends. I believe my 

 way is to make yet.' The same was his answer to a 

 proposal to allow his name to stand for election as 

 Lord Rector of Marischal College in Aberdeen; he 

 met it pretty much in the vein of Carlyle at Edinburgh, 

 when he felt that here was a generation in young 

 Scotland rising up who seemed to say that he had not 

 altogether, after a hard-spent day, been an unprofitable 



