His knowledge of the Latin language was equally defective, unfitting him, during his first two sessions, to profit as he might otherwise have done from the prelections of that distinguished philosophical grammarian, Dr. John Hunter, who was then the chief ornament of St. Andrew's University. "My first acquaintance with Dr. Chalmers," writes the Rev. Mr. Miller,* "was in November, 1791, when we entered the University of St. Andrew's together. He was at that time very young, and volatile, and boyish, and idle in his habits, and like the rest of us in those days, but ill prepared by previous education for reaping the full benefit of a college course. I think that during the first two sessions a great part of his time must have been occupied (as mine was) in boyish amusements, such as golf, foot-ball, and particularly hand-ball, in which latter he was remarkably expert, owing to his being left-handed. I remember that he made no distinguished progress in his education during these two sessions. The next year, being the third of our philosophical course, he and I lived together in the same room, and commenced in earnest the study of mathematics, under the late Dr. James Brown, who was at that time assistant to Professor Vilant. Our only companion in doing all the exercises of the class was William Mitchell, a farmer's son from Duniface, who was licensed as a preacher, but died not long after. During our mathematical studies, we had occasion almost every night to be a short time in Dr. Brown's room, for the purpose of correcting our class-notes and exercises before being extended in our books, and there we met with the late Sir John Leslie and Mr. James Mylne, afterward Professor of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow, both of whom were considered in those days (like Dr. Brown) as marked men-ultra Whigs, keen Reformers, and what would now be called Radicals. . . . I have no doubt that Dr. Chalmers at that time gave signs of his more matured character in the ... *In MS. letter, dated Monikie, 6th July, 1847. earnestness and perseverance with which he prosecuted his favorite study. His character, during all my acquaintance with him, was that of the strictest integrity and warmest affection. He was enthusiastic and persevering in every thing that he undertook, giving his whole mind to it, and often pursuing some favorite, or even, as we thought, some foolish idea, while we were talking around him, and perhaps laughing at his abstraction, or breaking in upon his cogitations, and pronouncing him the next thing to mad; and then he would good-naturedly join in the merriment with his common, affectionate expression, 'Very well, my good lad.' I could mention very many instances of his particular attachment to myself, and of his affectionate recollections of our early associations, which proved no small cause of amusement to both when we met in after years." His third session at college, that of 1793-94, was Dr. Chalmers's intellectual birth-time. That intelligence which never afterward knew a season of slumbering inactivity then awoke. That extreme ardor of impulse, and that strong force of will which had shown themselves from infancy, took now a new direction, urging on and upholding him in his mathematical studies. It was better, perhaps, that a mind so excitable as his had not had an earlier intellectual development; that untaxed and unexhausted in childhood, it should have been suffered (growing all the while in strength) to wait till a science, for which it had so strong a natural affinity, took hold of it, upon which its opening energies put themselves forth so spontaneously, so ardently, so undividedly, and so perseveringly. Dr. Chalmers was singularly fortunate in the person who at that time discharged the duties of the mathematical professorship at St. Andrew's. As he has himself told us in his preface to Mr. Coutts' Sermons, "The professor, Mr. Vilant, had long been a retired invalid, and his classes were taught for many years by a series of assistants, several of whom became afterward more or less known in the world. The first was Mr. Glennie, author of a work on Projectiles. He was followed by West, who spent the greater part of his life as rector in one of the parishes of Jamaica, and whose Treatise on Geometry has long been admired, both for its structure as a whole, and for the exceeding beauty of many of its demonstrations. He was succeeded by Dr. James Brown, for some time Professor of Natural Philosophy in Glasgow, a person of singularly varied accomplishments, and gifted with such powers of conversation as to have drawn forth the testimony from Dugal Stewart that he never met with any one who expressed himself with greater elegance, and at the same time with greater precision, on mathematical and metaphysical subjects." Sir James Ivory, Sir John Leslie, and Dr. James Brown, all studied together at St. Andrew's, and were all pupils of Mr. West; and though Dr. Brown has not left behind him a reputation equal to that of his two pre-eminent class-fellows, this would seem to have been due to a constitutional infirmity, which constrained him, after a single year's trial, to relinquish the Chair of Natural Philosophy at Glasgow, and to retire into private life, rather than to any natural inferiority of talent. common with all who enjoyed the benefit of his instructions, or were admitted to the privilege of his friendship, Dr. Chalmers retained throughout his after-life the liveliest gratitude and affection toward him. Another of his pupils, Mr. Duncan, the present Professor of Mathematics at St. Andrew's, had, in 1833, dedicated to Dr. Brown his Elements of Plane Geometry." Dr. Brown, while praising the volume in a letter to Dr. Chalmers, had taken exception to the introduction of his own name. He received the following reply: "I agree in all you say on the subject of Mr. Duncan's work, with the single exception of your remark upon its dedication, than which he could have done nothing more rightly and appropriately. It is the common feeling of us both, that whatever of the academic spirit, or of the purely academic enthusiasm either of us may possess, we are far more indebted for it to you than to all our other teachers put In together. Of all my living instructors, I have ever reckoned first yourself, then Professor Robinson of Edinburgh, and lastly, Dr. Hunter of St. Andrew's, as far the most influential both in the formation of my taste and intellectual habits." Nor was this the temporary effusion of feeling evoked by having the object of it in presence. Three years afterward, Dr. Brown was removed by death; and in writing to his widow on that occasion, the sentiment is reiterated: "I can not adequately express the deep emotion which I felt on receiving the melancholy intelligence of Dr. Brown's death -one of my most respected and earliest friends, and of whoin I have often said, that of all the professors and instructors with whom I have ever had to do, he is the one who most powerfully impressed me, and to the ascendency of whose mind over me, I owe more in the formation of my tastes and habits, and in the guidance and government of my literary life, than to that of all the other academic men whose classes I ever attended. But in addition to his public lessons, I had the privilege of being admitted to a long intimacy with your departed husband, and enjoying the benefit, as well as the charm, of his most rich and eloquent conversation."* When such a teacher met with such a pupil, and had as the subject of his instructions such a science as mathematics, it was not wonderful that more than ordinary interest should be excited, and more than ordinary proficiency realized. Dr. Chalmers became excited and absorbed. Pure geometry had especial attractions for him. With the higher powers of the modern analysis he became afterward familiarly acquainted; but he never lost his relish for the demonstrations of geometry, nor did he ever cease to think that from the closeness and consecutiveness of its successive steps, geometry furnished one of the very best instruments of intellectual training. Other subjects, however, besides those of his favorite science, were pressed upon his notice, not so much by the prelections * See Appendix, A. VOL. I. B 66 of the class-room, as by the conversation of Dr. Brown and his accomplished friends. Ethics and politics engaged much of their attention. Yielding to the impulses thus imparted, Dr. Chalmers, at the close of his philosophical studies, became deeply engaged with the study of Godwin's Political Justice, a work for which he entertained at that time a profound, and as he afterward felt and acknowledged, a misplaced admiration. His father was a strict, unbending Tory, as well as a strict, and, as he in his childhood fancied, a severe religionist. By the men among whom he was now thrown, and to whom he owed the first kindlings of his intellectual sympathies, Calvinism and Toryism were not only repudiated, but despised. St. Andrew's," we have his own testimony for it, "was at this time overrun with Moderatism, under the chilling influences of which we inhaled not a distaste only, but a positive contempt for all that is properly and peculiarly gospel, insomuch that our confidence was nearly as entire in the sufficiency of natural theology as in the sufficiency of natural science."* It was not unnatural that, recoiling from the uncompromising and unelastic political principles with which he had been familiar at Anstruther, and unfortified by a strong individual faith in the Christian salvation, he should have felt the power of that charm which the high talent of Leslie, and Brown, and Milne threw around the religious and political principles which they so sincerely and enthusiastically espoused; that his youthful spirit should. have kindled into generous emotion at the glowing prospects which they cherished as to the future progress of our species, springing out of political emancipation; and that he should have admitted the idea that the religion of his early home was a religion of confinement and intolerance, unworthy of entertainment by a mind enlightened and enlarged by liberal studies. From the political deviation into which he was thus temporarily seduced, he soon retreated: from the Preface to Mr. Coutts' Sermons. |