in the year 1835, while upon a visit to Oxford for the recovery of his health, impaired by the fatigues he had undergone in London in the discharge of his public duties, the university of Oxford in full theatre invested him with the degree of Doctor of Laws. The academy of Voltaire, and the university of Laud, combining to do honour to a modern Scottish Covenanter!—never before had such extremes met! Such a triumph, however, needed a slave behind the chariot, and such a remembrancer was not wanting to the occasion. During his stay in London, he had been negotiating for the establishment of a permanent government salary to the chair of Theology in the university of Edinburgh, for at his entrance in 1828, the revenues of its professorship, in consequence of the abolition of pluralities, amounted to not more than ₤196 per annum. It was impossible, upon such a pittance, to maintain the proper dignity of the office, and rear a numerous family; and, although the town council endeavoured to supplement the defect by the establishment of fees to be paid by the students, this remedy was found so scanty and precarious, that Dr. Chalmers could not calculate upon more than ₤300 a-year, while the necessary expenditure of such an office could not be comprised within ₤800. But Government at the time was labouring under one of those periodical fits of economy in which it generally looks to the pennies, in the belief that the pounds can take care of themselves, and therefore the earnest appeals of Dr. Chalmers upon the importance of such a professorship, and the necessity of endowing it, were ineffectual. Little salaries were to be cut down, and small applicants withheld, to convince the sceptical public that its funds were managed with strict economy. To his office of professor, indeed, that of one of the Scottish royal chaplaincies had been added; but this was little more than an honorary title, as its salary was only ₤50 per annum. Thus, at the very height of his fame, Dr. Chalmers was obliged to bethink himself of such humble subjects as weekly household bills, and the ways and means of meeting them, and with the heavy pressure of duties that had gathered upon him to take refuge in the resources of authorship. A new and cheap edition of his works, in quarterly volumes, was therefore commenced in 1836. It was no mere republication of old matter, however, which he thus presented to the public, and this he was anxious should be generally understood. "It so happens," he thus writes to the Rev. Mr. Cunningham of Harrow, "that the great majority of my five first volumes will be altogether new; and that of the two first already published, and which finishes my views on Natural Theology, the "Bridgewater Treatise," is merely a fragment of the whole. Now, my request is, that you will draw the attention of any of the London reviewers to the new matter of my works." To such necessities the most distinguished man in Scotland, and the holder of its most important professorship, was reduced, because our Government would not endow his office with a modicum of that liberality which it extended to a sinecure forest-ranger, or even a captain of Beef-eaters.
These, however, were not the greatest of Dr. Chalmers' difficulties and cares. The important subject of church extension, that most clamant of our country's wants, annihilated all those that were exclusively personal, and after years of earnest advocacy, a bright prospect began to dawn that this want would be fully satisfied. The King's speech in 1835 recommended the measure; the parliamentary leaders of the Conservative party were earnest in supporting it; while the Earl of Aberdeen in the House of Lords, and Sir Robert Peel in that of the Commons, were the most urgent advocates for the extension of the Church in Scotland. But very different was the mood of the Whig ministry, and the
