Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/567

Rh in his friend Dalton, and on which he wrote an article for the "North British Review." In church matters, he made one of the first suggestions that led to the formation of the Evangelical Alliance; he took a prominent part in the disruption of the Church of Scotland, and was one of the founders of the Free Church—at the cost of much tribulation and an unsuccessful suit to eject him from his chair as Principal of St. Andrews; and throughout his life he stoutly upheld the harmony between the results of scientific investigation and his orthodox religious faith. Then we find him a warm believer in the authenticity of Mr. Macpherson's "Poems of Ossian"; an interested spectator of the beginnings of the electric telegraph; putting aside his dislike to prominent positions to act as President of the Peace Congress in 1851; discussing the doctrine of the plurality of worlds; investigating the spirit-rappings; and finally inquiring into every new phenomenon, and busying himself with everything that could contribute to the advancement of knowledge or the benefit of mankind.

The reform of abuses was one of the passions of his life. For three years he lived at Belleville, on the estate of his wife's sister, and had a full field for gratifying it on a property which had been for many years "too indulgently superintended." He "awakened a warm and abiding attachment among the majority of the Highland tenantry, who anticipated with delight the time, which never came, when he might be their landlord in very deed. They were proud of his scientific fame, which indeed spread far and near. I remember four working-men coming a considerable distance from Strathspey, with the petition that they might see the stars through his telescope; while on another occasion a poor man brought his cow a weary long journey over the hills, that the great optician might examine her eyes, and prescribe for her deficiencies of sight; and all, as was ever his wont, were received courteously, and had their questions not only answered, but answered so clearly and patiently that the subjects were made perfectly intelligible and interesting."

"All who knew him," says Miss Forbes, afterward the wife of the Rev. Canon Harford Battersby, "will, I am sure, unite in testifying to his readiness to explain, it might be, the simplest principles of a science to some insignificant person, and the wonderful enjoyment he seemed to find in so doing—quite as much, indeed, as in talking of some of his latest discoveries to the most learned—if only his listener were thoroughly interested and anxious to learn." One person, "himself the possessor of genial gifts and genius," is quoted as having remarked, "When I have been with other great men, I go away saying, 'What clever fellows they are!' but when I am with Sir David Brewster, I say, 'What a clever fellow I am!' "Miss Horsbrugh, whose tutor he was from 1799 to 1804, gives a pleasant picture of him as a great favorite with the children, especially with those who could enter