departed friend. On Sunday, the 16th one of the most amiable of men. Posof March, about a hundred scholars sessed of a childlike simplicity, which went in procession to the house of the alike estranged him from the active deceased, where they laid a silver scenes of the world, and kept him wreath upon his coffin, and after sing- | aloof from the jealousies of his own ing some verses which were composed circle and profession, he was still posfor the occasion, they bore it, sur- sessed of an energy, which, in any rounded by torch-bearers, to the uni- other position, would have earned him versity, where it was laid in state in a greatness. His industry was almost hall hung with black. Here it re- unexampled; his perseverance has few mained till Tuesday, the 18th, when it counterparts; and his kindly spirit of was carried to the Frue Kirche, by the conciliation rendered him at all times students of the Polytechnic school. a messenger of love, as well as the bearer of a lofty intelligence. In his house--where he was blessed with a progeny of three sons and four daughters he was a man of exemplary affection and piety-a father worthy of the blessings of his children. the university he was universally beloved, both by his rivals and colleagues, who valued him for his fairness and nobleness of deportment under every contingency incident to a professor's life; and by the students he was beloved as a father, who was always ready to communicate in the simplest terms, and with the most unassuming diffidence of manner, whatever knowledge a life-time of ardent labour had enabled to attain; while by his fellow citizens he was universally respected as a friend of popular intelligence and liberty, and one of the most moral teachers the people had ever had. The illustrious Oersted went to his grave with a cortège such as waits upon the funeral-march of kings. Thirty thousand persons-one fourth of the entire population of the city of Copenhagen formed the procession which conducted him to his final place of repose. The procession was headed by General Major Von Sehdler, who represented the King of Denmark. Then followed His Royal Highness, the Hereditary Prince of Denmark; the Chamberlain; Baron Juel Rysensteen, representing Her Majesty, the Queen Dowager, Marie Sophie Frederica; the Chamber of the Diet; the Ministers; the Council of State; the relations of the deceased; the Rector Magnificus of the Theological Faculty and the Clergy of Copenhagen; the Professors of the University, and the other educational establishments of Copenhagen; the Academies of Science and Fine Arts, and the other learned corporations; a deputation from the Industrial Association; the Army Staff; nearly all the members of the Diplomatic Body; the Foreign Ambassadors; the Municipality; the youth of the schools; the trading corporations; and finally, men of every rank and class-all contributing their several distinctions to swell the one act of homage to him who had done so much to popularize science in Denmark, and to whom so much was due of the greatness of our common morals, religion, and civilization. There was neither heraldic pomp, nor the blast of that brazen trumpet which signals the world of the demise of titled greatness; but the unspoken veneration of thousands who bore moist eyes in this silent procession to the tomb, told sufficiently well of the esteem in which he was held whom they were now conducting to repose. In character, Professor Oersted was In His lectures were peculiarly original, and were always tinged with that warm breath from the spiritual world which finds so full an utterance in the "Soul in Nature." There was no better friend to struggling talent than he, who was always ready to correct and explain, and who met old and young students in the most friendly manner, and with a kindly heart, ever susceptible of the dictates of justice and benevolence. Not one class alone, but all who were led from the prose of common life into the poetry of any peculiar path of knowledge were his friends and pupils, for his wisdom was extensive, and his philosophy so liberal that there was no department of literature, science, or art on which he could not throw new light, a comprehensiveness of character in which, with the exception of our own Herschel, he stands almost alone. He was the first who began to give popular lectures on scientific subjects to ladies, and the new movement in behalf of female education, and still more the several ladies' colleges which have sprung up within the last few years, owe not a little of their primal impulse to his teaching and example. Added to his other excellent traits as a teacher, he possessed also a wild abandonment-the consequence of his poetic turn of thought-which occasionally seized him and carried him away into a region of rich hues and fancies, where, in the presence of his audience he was lost in an absence of mind which gave a peculiar originality and charm to his teachings, and which was most truly a part of himself. His countenance was calm as his life and temper, and reflected in visible traits of expression the beautiful lineaments of his soul; the soft smile of delight which rested on it when addressing his pupils remaining with them as a dear inheritance of memory, and the most pleasing momento of his fame and name. His peace is sealed, his rest is sure EDWARD IRVING. Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds Along the pebbled shore of memory! ONE of these latter-" a sail of pride and golden-keel'd ". -was Edward Irving; and History is justly chargeable towards him with the injustice deprecated by the poet. His fame was fairly committed to the historic muse. None of his contemporaries spread a broader sheet to the wind of public opinion than he few made a wider or brighter track upon the mind and heart of his generation. He was not a phantom fire-ship, or gala-boat. The genuineness of his genius, and the unfeignedness of his virtue, were admitted by the most cynical of his critics, and the bitterest of his theological detractors. His epitaph has been written by the powerfullest pen of these "latter days." + No other worthy memento of him exists. He was to the last, and is to this new decade, only a tradition-an inscruEndymion, book ii. * + See Carlyle's Miscellanies, vol. v. table, uncared-for tradition. His wondrous eloquence is voiceless, his prophetic energy inoperative. His name is associated with unknown tongues, unfulfilled predictions, and unintelligible polemics. He is never mentioned in the pulpits, but to point a shallow moral-as a warning example how perilous is intellect to a Christian preacher, and how fatal popularity to spiritual life. Gilfillan has used him to illustrate the native proximity of genius to madness. Mr. W. Jones, a voluminous but not very popular writer, compiled for the booksellers a meagre memorial, disfigured by sectarian animus, and now quite forgotten. He appears twice or thrice in the memoirs of Dr. Chalmers. Miss Martineau has reverently alluded to his life and death in her History of England during the Peace," as a feature of the times; and a later historian of the "Half Century," has accorded him a brief but glowing record, as one of the memorabilia of the age and the phenomena of mental science." Beyond these, I recollect scarce an allusion in contemporary literature to the man who made so great a figure through the ten or twelve years of his public life. Even by the church of which he is the reputed founder, he appears to me very inadequately appreciated. It is time at least to attempt to reclaim the memory of Edward Irving from the custody of sectarians and challenge love due to the eminently gifted and good. The present writer can hope to present little that is absolutely new, 66 for it the universal admiration and but trusts to revive and transmit im pressions that should not be allowed to die, as they are in danger of doing; and to impart something of the reverent, though quite unsectarian, affection, in which he holds the subject of this memoir. Edward Irving was born in Annan, Dumfriesshire, on the 15th of August, the year of the French Republic. His 1792 the county of Burns, and in his mother was of the family of the paternal ancestors were from France; Lowthers, reputed to have descended from the reformer, Martin Luther. His father was a tanner, and ultimately a small landed proprietor. There were eight children-three sons and five daughters. Edward was the third son, and, though he died at forty-two, survived his father and brothers. His sisters all married, and four outlived him. His first teacher was an old dame, named Margaret Paine, aunt to the author of "the Rights of Man," and his reputed instructress in elementary learning. His schoolmaster was a Mr. Adam Hope, to whose strict discipline, seconded by paternal care, the grateful pupil subsequently ascribed the scholarship which his own disposition would not have led him to acquire. The boy displayed a greater taste for athletic and daring exercises than for study; yet was a significant elevation of manner noted in him. He would even in childhood seek the companionship of men, and loved to haunt the spots consecrated by Presbyterian tradition, no less than the craigs and glens of his country-side. The only branch of learning for which he displayed a predilection was arithmetic; and in this class he had for companions Clapperton and Dickson, the African travellers. He was sent in due course to the University of Edinburgh, where he so excelled in mathematics as to attract the attention of Professor Leslie, on whose recommendation he was appointed mathematical teacher in an academy at Haddington, even so early as his seventeenth year. It was at this time Carlyle and he met. Writing in "Fraser's Magazine," January, 1835, Carlyle says, "The first time I saw Irving was six-and-twenty years ago, in his native town Annan. He was fresh from Edinburgh, with college prizes, high character and promise; he had come to see our schoolmaster, who had also been his. We heard of famed professors; of high matters, classical, mathematical--a whole wonderland of knowledge. Nothing but joy, health, hopefulness without end, looked out from the blooming young man." At eighteen years of age he was promoted to a more lucrative and responsible position-the rectorship of an academy at Kirkaldy. Here he remained seven years. Having previously designed himself for the ministry, he, during this term, completed the probation required by the Church of Scotland, and became a licentiate. Here, too, he contracted the acquaintance and fixed the affections of the lady who afterwards became his wife - Isabella, daughter of the Rev. Mr. Martin. Let us realize to ourselves what manner of youth he was-this affianced husband of Miss Isabella Martin, rector of a Scottish school, and destined pastor of Scottish kirk. He made a noble, if not pleasing figure, to the outward eye. He was six feet, two inches high. All his limbs were well proportioned. Black hair clustered in profusion over his lofty forehead, and descended in untaught curls upon his Herculean shoulders. His eyes, or rather, eye--for of one the sight was damaged, and had the appearance known as a squint-was dark, piercing, but soft. His face was of that bi-fold beauty, that, viewed on one side, as some one has said, you had the profile a brigand, on the other that of a saint. On his lips there sat the firmness of a ruler, and trembled the sensibility of a poet. He was no awkward giant. He was an athlete, as well as a Hercules. He could walk, run, leap, and swim, with the best of the "neighbour lads." Nor was he, though a scholar and a divine, an ascetic. He had none of the Phariseeism either of society or of the church. "He associated with and lived in the world without restraint," says an anonymous writer, who may be Allan Cunningham," joining the form and fashions of mixed society, even to what would by some be set down as vulgarity, for he at one time was accustomed to smoke his pipe in companies where smoking was introduced." He was remarkable at, the same time, for blamelessness of life. His morals were held to be untainted, and his conscientiousness both acute and regnant. Though he had devoted himself to the church, he had prepared himself for a possible application to the bar, and indeed for any learned profession. He added large classical knowledge to his mathematical excellence, and a knowledge of the modern languages, and of their literature, to both. He also possessed more than the ordinary acquaintance with natural philosophy.* * In an Ordination Charge, delivered by Wall, in March, 1827, he recommends to Mr. Irving at the Scotch Church, London the young minister the favourite studies of his own youth :-"I invite thee to physiology, which is the science of life in all its forms and conditions; and of philology, which is the science of words, the forms of human thought." But even to this capable man a function did not immediately present itself. Even in the church, which should be the most perfect of human organizations, there is not realized without delay the formula, "Every man a place according to his faculty." In the year 1819, Irving left Kirkaldy, determined only thenceforth to preach the gospel and live by the gospel. But his preaching was not accepted, and, therefore, to himself unprofitable. He resolved to | occupy himself for a while in a continental travel. He was invited, however, to preach one Sunday from the pulpit of Dr. Andrew Thomson, of Edinburgh. It was not unknown to the preacher, that Dr. Chalmers was one of his auditory. The sermon led Dr. Chalmers to the resolution of making Mr. Irving his colleague in the ministry of St. John's church, Glasgow. To this circumstance, and the nature of its consequences, Mr. Irving thus alludes, in the dedication of his first published work:— "To the Rev. T. Chalmers, D.D., Minister of St. John's Church, Glasgow. My honoured Friend, "I thank God, who directed you to hear one of my discourses when I had made up my mind to leave my native land for solitary travel in foreign parts. That dispensation brought me acquainted with your good and tenderhearted nature, whose splendid accomplishments I knew already; and you now live in the memory of my heart more than in my admiration. While I laboured as your assistant, my labours were never weary, they were never enough to express my thankfulness to God for having associated me with such a man, and my affection to the man with whom I was associated." In Hanna's Memoirs of Dr. Chalmers I find (vol. ii., pp. 282 et seq.) an account of the circumstances which preceded Mr. Irving's engagement as the Doctor's assistant, and of the manner in which he fulfilled his ministry at St. John's, which is, in substance, as follows: -- There were peculiarities, both of thought and utterance, which made Mr. Irving so unpopular as a preacher that he had given up the prospect of a settlement at home, and had resolved to leave his native land, and betake himself to missionary labour. Full of the chivalrous romance of Christianity, and inflamed, as so many imaginative minds have been, with visions of Oriental life, his intention was, relying simply upon such resources as he could open up for himself by the way, to go as a missionary to Persia, after a preliminary wandering over Europe. To qualify himself for this romantic and arduous enterprise, he buried himself more deeply than ever among his books. "Rejected by the living," as he afterwards told a friend, "I conversed with the dead." It was at this juncture that he received the invitation to preach at Dr. Thomson's church. The sermon had no immediate result. Days and weeks elapsed without any indication of his having made a favourable impression upon his distinguished auditor. He therefore packed up his books, and despatched them to Annan, while he himself set off on a farewell tour round the coast of Ayrshire. The steamboat into which he stepped from the quay at Greenock was going in another direction, however; and after the paddles had turned he leaped ashore. Pacing the wharf in disquiet, he resolved to embark in the next boat, wherever she might be going. He did so, and was taken to Belfast. He wandered for two or three weeks over the north of Ireland, sleeping in the houses of the peasantry, and seeing Irish life in all its lights and shadows. At Coleraine, he found a letter from his father, enclosing one from Dr. Chalmers, requesting his__immediate presence in Glasgow. He arrived there on a Saturday, and found the Doctor gone to Fifeshire. As there was nothing definite in the letter, and several weeks had elapsed since it was written, Irving was on the point of giving up the matter, when Chalmers returned, and told him he desired him for his assistant. "I am most grateful to you, Sir," was his reply, but I must be also somewhat acceptable to your people. [He had from the first a strong aversion to the intrusion of ministers by patronage upon an unwiii revolving in my mind purposes of mis ing people.] I will preach to them if you think fit, but if they bear with mysionary work, this stranger stepped in preaching they will be the first people that have borne with it." He did preach, and so far acceptably that for the two years he continued the Doctor's assistant he took the full half of pulpit duty. In prosecuting the Doctor's favourite system of household visitation, he was pre-eminently effective. "In many a rude encounter," says Dr. Hanna, "the infidel radicalism of the parish bent and bowed before him." His commanding presence, his manly bearing, his ingenuous honesty, his vigorous intellect, commanded universal respect; above all, his tender and most generous sympathies melted the hearts of the people under him. According to another account, his memory was cherished by the poor of Glasgow long after his removal from that city. It appears, from words of his own presently to be quoted, that that event would have taken place even if he had not received the invitation to London which brought him hither on the Sunday preceding Christmas day, 1821. That invitation came from the elders of a church in Cross Street, Hatton Garden, in connection with the Caledonian Asylum. Notwithstanding or, perhaps, in consequence of the church sharing in the Parliamentary grant to the asylum, the few families attending there found a difficulty in keeping open the doors. When the pastorship was offered to Mr. Irving, the congregation did not amount to fifty persons. That he accepted it, may therefore be taken to argue either dissatisfaction with his then position, or an extreme confidence in his preaching powers which his experience was not at all adapted to excite. In dedicating his second volume of discourses to two of the members of this little flock, he thus alludes to the circumstances of his call:-"Having heard through a friend of theirs, and now also of mine, but at that time unknown to me, of my unworthy labours in Glasgow, as assistant to the Rev. Dr. Chalmers, they commissioned him to speak to me concerning their vacant church, and not to hide from me its present distress. Well do I remember the morning when, as I sat in my lonely apartment, meditating the uncertainties of a preacher's calling, and upon my musing, and opened to me the commission with which he was charged. The answer which I made to him, with which also I opened my correspondence with the brethren whose names are mentioned above, was to this effect-'If the times permitted, and your necessities required, that I should not only preach the gospel without being burdensome to you, but also by the labour of my hands minister to your wants, this would I esteem a more honourable degree than to be Archbishop of Canterbury.' And such as the beginning was, was also the continuance and the ending of this negotiation. The merchant shepherds, the hireling pastors of this day, taunted me and scorned me when I laid down the spirit of the apostolic missionary [an allusion that will presently become intelligible ;] but they knew not, in the multitude of their uncharitable speeches, that I learned it in my own experience, and had proved it all in my own person. From the day that I received my commission to preach the gospel, I have never bargained for a hire, nor have I ever sought a bond. The generosity of God's people hath supplied all my wants, and enabled me to minister to the wants of others. Since the days of the apostles, and in their days, there never was joined between pastor and people a union upon more disinterested principles; as, I believe, likewise, there are few which have been productive of more abundant love and consolation upon every hand." When he had consented, in this unworldly spirit, to become minister of the Cross Street church, a difficulty arose. It was discovered that one condition of the public stipend was, the preacher's ability to preach in Gaelic. Irving proposed, in his impetuous way, at once to set off for the Highlands, and acquire that tongue; but by the influence of the Duke of York, and other directors of the Asylum, that qualification was omitted when next the grant was voted; and Mr. Irving commenced his regular ministry in the metropolis in August, 1822. Very speedily was the aspect of affairs at Cross Street changed. The new minister's probationary sermon had so fixed the attention of his |