resolution which, once taken, was indomitable. But never were stern qualities set amid more genial surroundings, or united with greater kindliness, courtesy, warmth, and steadiness of affection. Socially, he was one of the most pleasant, interesting, and attractive of men. No description will ever enable one who was a stranger to him personally to realise the depth of humour and the raciness of wit which were in him. This was quite a part of the man, spontaneous and irrepressible in its outflowings, breaking forth often when least expected, so as to relieve the dulness, it might be, of college deliberations, or infuse pleasantry into the occasional fierceness of university polemics.
"He is now with us no longer; the soul that struggled so hard with the hardest things for human thought has passed away after an afflicting illness, that was borne most touchingly, most heroically. We miss the finely-cut, decisive face, the erect manly presence, the measured meditative step, the friendly greeting; but there are men, and Ferrier was one of them, for whom, once known, there is no real past. The characteristic features and qualities of such men become part of our conscious life; memory keeps them before us living and influential, in a higher, truer present which overshadows the actual and visible."
To his friend and son-in-law, Sir Alexander Grant, was intrusted the disposal and revisal of Mr Ferrier's manuscript compositions. Fitted alike by his interest in the subject, and his affectionate intimacy with the
