He was passing along the main street of the town, in a day of wind and rain from the sea, with his head half-buried in his breast, when he came violently in contact with a thatcher’s ladder, which had been left sloping from the roof of one of the houses. A much less matter would have sufficed to awaken the wrath of Mr. Russel: he laid hold of the ladder, and, dashing it on the pavement, broke with his powerful foot, ere he quitted it, every one of the “rounds.” [Sidenote: MR. RUSSEL THE MINISTER.] For at least the last six years of his residence in Cromarty he was not a little popular as a preacher. His manner was strong and energetic, and the natural severity of his temper seems to have been more than genius to him when expatiating, which he did often, on the miseries of the wicked in a future state. The reader will scarce fail to remember the picture of the preacher dashed off by Burns in the Holy Fair; or to see that the poet’s arrows, however wickedly shot, came from no bow drawn at venture:-- “Black Russel is nae spairin’; His piercing words, like Highland swords, Divide the joints an’ marrow His talk o’ hell, where devils dwell, Our verra sauls does harrow Wi’ fright that day. “A vast unbottom’d, boundless pit, Fill’d fou o’ lowin’ brunstane, Whase ragin’ flame and scorchin’ heat Wad melt the hardest whunstane. The half-asleep start up wi’ fear, And think they hear it roarin’, When presently it does appear ’Twas but some neebor snorin’ Asleep that day.” I have seen one of Russel’s sermons in print; it is a controversial one, written in a bold rough style, and by no means inferior as a piece of argument; but he was evidently a person rather to be listened to than read. He was quite as stern in Church matters, it is said, as in those of the school; but men are less tractable than boys; and his severity proved more effectual in making his pupils diligent than in reforming the town’s-people. He converted a few rather careless boys into not very inferior scholars; but though he set himself so much against the practice of Sabbath-evening walking, that he used to take his stand every Sunday, after the church had dismissed, full in the middle of the road which leads from the town to the woods and rocks of the Southern Sutor, and sometimes turned back the walkers by the shoulders after he had first shaken them by the breast, the practice of Sabbath-evening walking became even more common than before. Instead of addressing himself to the moral sense of the people, he succeeded in but arousing their combative propensities; and these, once awakened, took part against a good cause, simply because it had been unwisely and unjustifiably defended.