but thoughts that chiefly captivated his attention, and therefore it was not
until he had entered the classes of logic and philosophy that he began to attract
the notice of his class-fellows. In the latter he was so fortunate as to have for
his teacher Dr. Thomas Brown, the most acute and eloquent of metaphysicians
of whom he became not only the pupil, but the friend, and finally the affectionate biographer. The ardent attachment of the young student to such a preceptor, the enthusiasm with which he received his instructions, and docility
with which he placed himself under the guidance of such a mind, not only
already evinced the intellectual bent of David Welsh, but predicted his future
eminence, and this move especially, as he had already only entered his fifteenth year.
On joining the divinity hall, which he did in 1811, he brought to the study of theology all the reading and research of his former years ; and although in substantial acquirements he was already considerably in advance of most young students of his early standing, they were accompanied with a shrinking bashfulness, that prevented his supeiiority from being generally recognized. It would be well for towardly young students in general, and especially those of our divinity halls, if they were equally sheltered from that injudicious admiration by which improvement is so often stopped short, and an overweening vanity implanted in its stead. At this period it was of more than usual importance that divinity students should study the great questions of church polity, in reference to their connection between the civil and ecclesiastical powers; for upon them, in their future character as ministers, that uncompromising conflict was to depend which was finally to end in the Disruption. But David Welsh had already embraced that party in the church to which he adhered through life, and those principles for which he was to sacrifice one of the highest standings in our Scottish universities. He was the descendant of a church-honoured line of Tweedsmuir sheep-farmers, who had suffered in the days of the Covenant for their adherence to the spiritual independence of the kirk against the domination of Erastianism and the Stuarts, and these principles had descended to him not only with a sacred, but hereditary claim. While Welsh was, therefore, a Whig in politics, he was decidedly evangelical in his religious sentiments, and thoroughly at one with the party in the church, still indeed a small and struggling minority, by whom they were represented. After having studied theology during the prescribed period of four years, he was licensed as a preacher, by the presbytery of Lochmaben, in May, 1816. As he was still young, having only reached his twenty-second year, he was in no haste to enter upon the important duties of the ministry; instead of this he resumed the work of self-improvement, and continued to add to his store of knowledge as well as experience of the world. It was only thus that he could effectually prepare himself, not only for the duties of a country minister, but the important charges which he was afterwards to occupy. Among these studies the exact sciences held a conspicuous place—geometry, algebra, and natural philosophy. Nor among these should the study of phrenology be forgot, to which he had become a convert through the arguments of its talented apostle, Mr. Combe. There was something in this fresh and tempting science so congenial to his own favourite study of the human mind—and it was so felicitous, as he judged, in its plan of decomposing so complex a thing as a human character into its simple primitive elements—that he soon became one of the most distinguished as well as enthusiastic students of phrenology, while his name, after he was noted as a learned,
