Page:The British Controversialist - 1867.djvu/500

Rh thought, not as logic to overrule practice, but as a metaphysic to harmonize the facts of knowing and being into a system of reasoned and indissolubly linked truths. This he had scarcely accomplished when the illness of his father in law, Prof. Wilson, in 1852. After the keen contest in which sectarianism played a bitter and embittering part in the claims of this highly original thinker or pushed aside by the town council of the Scottish metropolis, on the side issue of university tests, in favor of a gentleman who has pursued a highly honorable career indeed, but who has made no substantive addition to knowledge, thought, or philosophic morality. Ferrier "had endeavored to excel" in new pad, but could only then lay down a slight chart of the speculative latitudes he had reached, and which he had expected to navigate without being wrecked. This disappointment certainly sank deeply into his soul, and caused him with even more persistent labours than before, to place the indubitable evidence of the righteousness of his claim before the philosophic world. With more care for his fame than his life, and greater love of truth than either, he underwent intense solitary toil to pierce—

perhaps failing within himself as Coleridge did in the days of his "Dejection."—

Of his father-in-law's works he fittingly became the editor, being entrusted by Messrs. Blackwood and Sons for the production of a uniform series of 12 volumes, with explanatory prefaces, notes, and comments. This editorial labor was one of love—a love that had grown up in the soul of Ferrier from boyhood, and which had been warmly reciprocated by his uncle and father-in-law. The explanatory preface to the "Noctes Ambrosianæ" (which occupy the first four volumes of the series) is by far the finest criticism extant on these wonderful productions; And the foot notes attached to them in their course or brief, pithy, and to the point. "The Critical and Imaginative Essays form the next four. "The Recreations of Christopher North," and an "Essay on Highland Scenery," fill the two succeeding volumes. A volume of "Tales" follows, and the series is closed by the "Poems." Under the conditions this collection is admirably edited; though we miss from them any specimens of his university lectures or his metaphysical disquisitions. Perhaps professor Ferrier had learned how thorough was the dislike in Scotland to discuss on matters of high