street, and he was looking up at the old town which rises high before you.
"The Shrine."
From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.
"'When I walk along this grand street,' he said, 'I am always glad when I come to the cross streets, for then I look from the works of man to the works of God.'
"This remark no doubt was justified by the general tameness and monotony of the street architecture not only in Edinburgh, but in London, at the time when the new town of Edinburgh was built.
"'But,' said I, 'have you no eye for those palatial structures which are now rising all along the street to vary the monotomy of the original three-storied houses?'
"'No,' said he, 'I hate high houses.'
"'Why?' said I.
"'Because,' said he, 'they are bad for people with rheumatic legs!'
"Either this was a joke, or it showed a certain confusion of the ethical and the æsthetical which sometimes seems to mar the soundness of his judgment in matters of art."
We were standing at the window, and for a moment, before going through the other rooms of the house, Professor Blackie remembered something regarding some of the men whose portraits we had just glanced at. There was Dr. Guthrie.
"He was an intimate friend of mine," said the kindly Professor; "a splendid humorist, and a true Scotchman. He overflowed with humour. One Sunday he had been up at Inverness assisting at the Sacrament. On the Monday there was a meeting, and the Doctor happened to be particularly merry. There was one man in the front seat who eyed the Doctor with great gravity, and as he gave out joke after joke, his face became graver still. When the meeting was all over, he went up to Guthrie with a fear fully solemn face, and said, 'Ah! Dr. Guthrie, Dr. Guthrie, if it hadn't been for the grace of God ye might have been a splendid comic actor!'"
I was now looking at John Bright.
"I lived at Oban in the summer season," continued Professor Blackie, "and John Bright lodged at Taynuilt. It was one day when sitting in John Bright's chair at the inn that I wrote the two sonnets to him." And he reads out with fine dramatic effect the two beautiful poems which are familiar to all students of his works.
"Ah! that portrait is of Norman MacLeod. He told me a capital story once, which well illustrates the severity with which the Scotch people regard the Sabbath. The church in Skye is some fifteen or twenty miles from the parish, and one bright and glorious summer day a grave old elder and a young man of happier inclinations set out to walk this distance. As it was Sunday, they walked on for some miles either without speaking a word to each other. At last the younger man had to speak.
"'It's a verra fine day,' he observed quietly.
"The old elder looked at him, and with a gravity sufficient to silence anybody, replied, 'Yes, it is a fine day; but is this a day to be talking about days?'"
Professor Blackie leaves me for a moment, and as I sit down in a recess by the window I turn over in my mind his own ideas of the observance of the Scotch Sabbath. He says frankly that the good people of the Highlands are too strict—much too strict, though he does not question for a moment the sincerity of their convictions. He believes, as the ancient Greeks did, that the body, which is the temple of the soul, should have as much care bestowed upon its culture as is bestowed on the spiritual part of our
