instruction he gave, or was capable of giving, was as if you had boiled ten chapters of the Hebrew Bible in the same kettle with three or four leaves of Hebrew and Chaldee grammar, and drunk the concoction in a series of doses. Carlyle on Rabbi Brunton’s benches would have been a picture for my fancy worth a thousand; and I wish now I had asked him whether he _did_ attend the Hebrew class. Once I spoke to him of Brunton’s predecessor in the Hebrew chair, Dr. Alexander Murray, a real linguist, and one of the finest minds of his time in Scotland, as any one may see who will read his letters published in that most delightful of recent books of literary anecdote, _Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondents_, edited by the late Thomas Constable. This fine scholar and thinker had died in 1813, after having held the Hebrew chair only one year; and Brunton, who had been a rival candidate with him, had stepped into his place. That had been in the last year of Carlyle’s Arts course, and he retained no more than a vague recollection of Murray’s figure as seen about the College. What makes it all the likelier that Carlyle did begin his Divinity course in 1813–14, and did give some attendance in the Divinity Hall that session, is that he informs us in his _Reminiscences_ that he was in Edinburgh in May 1814, and was among the audience in the General Assembly of the Kirk for that year, when he heard Jeffrey plead, and Drs. Hill and Inglis, and also Dr. Chalmers, speak. The annual meeting of the General Assembly in May was then, as it is now, a great affair; and it would have been the most natural thing in the world for a young student of Divinity, fresh from his first session at the Hall, to be in the gallery of the Assembly, to see the physiognomies of the leaders, Moderate or Evangelical, and to hear the debates. If he _had_ resided in Edinburgh through the preceding session, the probability is that he had teaching engagements which helped to pay his expenses. We do not, however, hear definitely of any such teaching employment in Edinburgh in 1813–14, but only that, later in 1814, he applied for the vacant mathematical mastership in his own school of Annan, won the post by competition in Dumfries, and settled in Annan to perform the duties.