This firmness appeared strange in so young a man, and gave deep offence to Dr. Chalmers who had mistaken the Earl's outspoken sympathy, and his hearty agreement on particular points, for a general concurrence in the ecclesiastical leader's programme.
Dr. Chalmers' friends placed Lord Dalhousie's name on his committee. But, says Captain Trotter, 'Lord Dalhousie not only refused to sit upon it, but delivered a solemn protest against the policy which he had been supposed to sanction. In accepting Dr. Chalmers' motion, the Church, he declared, "had already rung out her knell as the Established Church of Scotland." For his own part, he could no longer remain a member of the General Assembly. Suiting the action to the word, he took up his hat and walked out of the hall[1].'
The sense of isolation caused by this parting from friends whose talents he admired, and whose motives he respected, was deepened by the death of his mother. The Dowager Countess died in 1839, and the young Earl at twenty-seven years of age was henceforth to face life, stripped of all his immediate kindred among whom he had grown up. In 1842, the Queen paid a visit to Dalhousie Castle and admired from the drawing-room window, as her Journal records, the 'beautiful wooded valley, and a peep of the distant hills.' It is charac-
- ↑ For full details, see The Friend of India, January 31, 1861.
