lodgings in Aberdeen. The first to arrive was Mr Stodart's. It was given in charge to the guard of the train which reached Aberdeen at nine o'clock on the evening of the eventful day, and the news banished sleep from the Professor's pillow that night. The landlady was ill, and Mrs Blackie had promised to tie a white handkerchief outside the window should tidings of victory arrive, so that next day their friends in Aberdeen should learn at a glance how the battle had sped without knocking at the door. Inquirers came to the end of the street, saw the ensign's flutter, and went home glad in their success.

Mrs Blackie rejoiced almost more than her husband. Aberdeen was not congenial to her temperament. She needed a wider social environment, a life richer in friends, in mental stimulus and occupation. She longed for the companionship of relatives, of whom she saw but little during their stay in the north. Her release from straitened conditions is the burden of every letter which she received on the day following the election. The first ten years of her married life had been years of material discipline to her, and if they had developed some of her most influential qualities, it had been at considerable cost. Now better times had dawned, and it was not wonderful that the wife rather than the husband hailed

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their promise of larger means and of ampler opportunities. The Professor himself was glad and thankful; but now that the battle was over, he adjusted himself to its result more tranquilly. All life and all activity came to him so naturally; he enjoyed every hour of every day to so full an extent; he was so emphatically the source of his own enjoyment, which was in struggle rather than in attainment, that the results of his activity scarcely surprised and seldom elated him.

But he was fully conscious of the debt which he owed to the strenuous labours of his committee, and for some days his pen was busy with acknowledgments of these. Indeed he owed more to these labours than perhaps was evident at the time. After the election was over, even his opponents were heard to admit that in the points of learning and distinction he was the best of the candidates; but while its campaigns were in progress, it took all the zeal and all the persistence of his supporters to overcome the paltry prejudices which the lenses of sectarianism and personal pique distorted and magnified, and which were almost powerful enough to suppress his greater claims, and to admit to the Greek Chair a man inferior in learning and qualified by the accident of Dissent rather than by the deliberate acquisition of sound and varied scholarship.

Amongst the supporters to whom the result was especially due was Mr Thomas Knox, of the firm of Knox, Samuel, & Dickson in Hanover Street. It is interesting to learn that his enthusiastic support was given as much from his conviction of the Professor's moral worth as from that of his classical attainments. This conviction he had received from an unusual source. A trusted servant in his house had learnt her work in the lodging-house in Dublin Street, whose attics had been John Blackie's home in Edinburgh for some years before he secured the Aberdeen appointment. She had often discussed his diligence, his temperate life, his independence, his constant good-humour, his consideration for others, with her mistress, who, infected by her maid's enthusiasm, espoused his cause with such goodwill that she proved an effective spur in the race. Mr Knox, too, was animated by strong admiration for Mr Robert Horn, with whom he worked in thorough sympathy; and Mr Horn was so identified with Professor Blackie's cause, that when the news of his victory reached the Parliament House a few minutes after two o'clock on that Tuesday afternoon, he was surrounded and congratulated with as much emphasis and cordiality as if he had won the Chair for himself.

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Such friends were worthy of the letters, full of gratitude, which they received from the Professor and his wife. Old Mr Blackie, staff in hand, made a glad pilgrimage to every shrine whose oracle had spoken for his son. His joy can be imagined, his cup was full.

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CHAPTER XII.

EDINBURGH.

1852-1857.

PROFESSOR BLACKIE was the champion of the "forward movement" on the whole campaign of education, and particularly from the old campingground of University teaching, and it was in this position that men in advance of their day hailed him with hopeful welcome. His very

freedom from sectarian exclusiveness, which had threatened to bar the way, helped to pacify the sectarians after the race was won. Just at first there were sinister murmurs that the Westminster Confession would brandish its flaming sword—with a dying menace at the gates of Edinburgh University; but these subsided, and his earlier signature was accepted without demur. As he offered a friendly front alike to the Dis