CHAPTER IV.

GOES TO BRIGHTON, AND THENCE TO CAMBRIDGE.

THE writer of the present Memoir gladly adverts to the testimony, which, as the last chapter will have shown, he has received from Mr. Coleridge, because it exactly accords with his own recollections of the Chisholm. He had ample opportunities of testing and verifying the accuracy of this report; for, on leaving Eton in the beginning of 1828, the Chisholm became his pupil, and continued with him until he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, in the following October. At an age, therefore, when the results of whatsoever process had been pursued in earlier years became in a great degree developed, and its influence, whether for evil or for good, re

ceived fresh impulse from the ardour and energy of rising manhood, it was no difficult or doubtful matter to determine what had been the previous tenor of his earlier life. All that might be expected to be found in him, from a perusal of the preceding pages, was fully realized. Deep piety, ingenuousness, strong intellect, ardent affection, memory richly stored, playful imagination, these were among the gifts and graces richly bestowed upon him. The intimate knowledge of Scripture, already pointed out by Mr. Coleridge, and the facility of expressing himself, either by word or writing, in the loftiest language of Inspiration, were among the foremost and earliest circumstances noticed also by the writer of this Memoir. Nor was it with these treasures alone that the Chisholm's memory was stored. He could repeat, with equal facility, passage after passage from Milton or Shakspeare; and this he did, not with the mechanical readiness of an automaton, but with the zeal and ardour of one who loved to contemplate scenes, the description of which he could thus faithfully recite. With all this, was combined a modesty so

great, that, had it not been for the line of thought and reading which drew forth these stores of his well-practised memory, the existence of them probably never would have been ascertained. Incidents had not been wanting, in his former life, as these pages will have shown, upon which he might have well been tempted to dilate, had he been at all boastful or vain-glorious; but so little did he seem to regard any thing which he might have said or done, in a spirit of self-complacency, that, with all his openness and cheerfulness of spirit, and with every opportunity given to him to indulge it, the writer of this Memoir never knew, until after the departure of the Chisholm from his roof, that any matters so grave and important as those already noticed in these pages, had ever been submitted to him for his consideration, or that he had expressed so clear, and wise, and faithful a judgment respecting them.

His native temperament was peculiarly sensitive and delicate; too much so, perhaps, for what is ordinarily accounted happiness by the world. But present tranquillity is not the object for which man is allowed to have his

being in this life; and if the keen perception of whatsoever is offensive in the sight of God or man inflict, upon those who experience it, distress more acute and harassing than can be imagined by others whose sympathies are more dull, or whose consciences are more torpid, the very pain which is felt does but stimulate the desire to "flee away and be at rest," and lead them to cling more closely and faithfully to the hope which is set before them. To the Chisholm, indeed, the sensitiveness here spoken of may have been the source of more than ordinary disquietude, for it led him to watch more jealously the workings of his own mind than the actions of others. He possessed an exuberance of animal spirits which would hurry him, not unfrequently, to the committal of some act, which the world might call thoughtless, or the utterance of some word, which the world might call foolish, and by such titles gloss over the real cause of uneasiness or shame, but which his own exquisite sense of the requirements of Christian holiness was the first to see ought not to have been said or done. It has already been noticed by Mr. Coleridge with what

quickness and facility he could pass from a serious to a sportive mood; and the writer of this Memoir, while he can bear ample testimony to the same fact, remembers also how that sportiveness was, in its turn, followed by a silence and thoughtfulness so deep, that he could not refrain sometimes from inquiring the cause. In the friendly and unreserved conferences to which such inquiries led, he witnessed the solemn awe with which that young and ardent mind was employed in sitting in judgment upon itself, the scrupulous exactness with which it strove to weigh in the balance of the sanctuary its own frail acts, and the trembling dread with which it shrank from the bare thought of provoking the Lord God to anger.

The writer has touched upon this peculiar feature in the character of his departed friend, because he believes that to many, who knew him not so intimately as himself, it may serve to explain that which might have appeared inconsistent in him. He would gladly detail, in this place, more of his impressions of one whom he never ceased to love, did he not remember that the object proposed to him is