Obituary Notices. 
Vll 
high position he had assuredly attained as representing the 
literature of Scotland during these latter days. There were more 
than one of his fellow countrymen who had reached a higher 
eminence than he ; but they had migrated tg> England, and were 
counted among its celebrities. His work, however, was all done in 
the city which Scott had made so illustrious, and where Jeffrey 
had sharpened his pen, and not many remained now to vindicate 
its former name. Wilson had departed, and Aytoun followed him 
soon ; but for eighty-six summers Blackie lived on, his restless 
and versatile genius standing almost alone. That naturally drew 
special attention to him, though it will not account for the place 
be held in the hearts of the people. Nor is it easy to say what 
was the root of that reverence which gathered so many thousands 
from all parts of the country to witness his funeral, and to sorrow 
at his departure. Though he filled a Professor’s chair for so many 
years, he was not a great scholar either of the English, or the 
German, type ; but had a great scorn for mere niceties of grammar, 
and would have rollicked in boisterous fun at the idea of being 
the man who knew the mystery of the “enclitic Se.” Yet he was 
familiar with the great classics and loved them ; and if not many 
thorough Grecians came from his classes, not a few men found 
there what is of more moment, a genuine taste for letters, and the 
fine sense of cultured thought. Though he wrote and spoke not a 
little on political questions — on intricate land-laws, e.g . — yet he 
was no politician, and hardly ever read a newspaper unless it 
happened to contain in its columns a letter from himself. 
Aristotle’s Politics he knew, but, I think, he had given no heed to 
the history of English political thought. Yet he touched, now r and 
then, with a gleam of true light, questions of deep concern to the 
poor, and made them feel that, if he had no precise plan for the 
bettering of their lot, he was, at least, deeply concerned about 
their sufferings. Again, though his views latterly were nowise in 
harmony with the Evangelical Theology of the Scottish people, yet 
he had once come under its influence, and that spell continued to 
hold him to the end, so that he never found any other worship 
that gave equal expression to his deepest feelings, and he never 
ceased to glory in the heroic history of its covenanted martyrs. 
Probably the heterodox opinion was condoned by the historic 
