seemed to be mysterious and alive; the eagle-like plunge of the lämmer-geier, the bearded vulture of the Alps, the rising of a flock of choughs which I had surprised at their feast on carrion, with their red beaks and legs and their wild shrill cries startling the solitude and silence—till the blue lightning streamed at last, and the shattering thunder crashed as if the mountains must give way; and then came the feelings which in their fulness man can feel but once in life, mingled sensations of awe and triumph, and defiance of danger—pride, rapture, contempt of pain, humbleness and intense repose, as if all the strife and struggle of the elements were only uttering the unrest of man's bosom, so that in all such scenes there is a feeling of relief, and he is tempted to cry out, exultingly—There! there! all this was in my heart, and it was never said out till now."—(Lectures on the influence of Poetry.) In Switzerland he found not only new health but a wife—Helen, daughter of Sir George William Denys, Bart., of Easton Neston, Northamptonshire, to whom he was united in Geneva, and with whom he shortly after returned to England. For the next four years he served as curate to the Rev. Archibald Boyd, incumbent of Christ church, Cheltenham, where his eloquence and originality of thought procured him a growing number of admirers, even under all the disadvantages inseparable from such a subordinate position. At the beginning of 1847 he removed to St. Ebbs, Oxford, to officiate as substitute during the indisposition of the rector of the parish, and here he was beginning to attract and interest powerfully the undergraduates of the university, when he was invited to accept the incumbency of Trinity chapel, Brighton, which had just then become vacant. The offer was an advantageous one, but he referred himself implicitly in the matter to the opinion and judgment of the bishop of Oxford, and it was by his advice that he finally closed with the appointment. On Sunday, August 15, 1847, he preached his first sermon at Brighton, on the text—"For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;" of which discourse it has been remarked by a local hearer and critic, that "though not equal in some respects to many which succeeded it, it was nevertheless sufficiently marked by the peculiarities of his preaching to render it in character distinct from any of the pulpit oratory to which the listeners had been accustomed, and to convince them that it was a mind of no common order to which they were henceforth to look for their spiritual guidance and consolation." "In a very brief period," the same writer tells us, "the feeling which prevailed in regard to the new incumbent was one of enthusiastic admiration. The chapel was now crowded Sunday after Sunday, and by a highly aristocratic audience, and it was soon at rare intervals only that sittings could be procured." Nor was it only the higher and more cultivated class of hearers that felt the charm of a ministry that was at once so full of head and heart. Only a few months after his settlement—on the morning of Christmas-day, 1847—Mr. Robertson, on ascending his reading desk, found there a set of handsome prayer books which had been presented to him by the servants of the congregation as a Christmas gift. Touched by this evidence of kindly feeling, he took occasion in his sermon that morning to advert to the subject of presents, and drew a picture, we are told, of the delight which would fill the heart of a fond brother who, on the morning of his birthday, should awake and find in his chamber a rose placed there by sisterly affection. "That simple gift, almost valueless in itself, would be more prized by that brother's heart than a purse of gold." The application of the figure to the incident of the morning was beautiful and touching. His was, indeed, a brother's heart, both in the flesh and in the Lord, towards all classes not only of his flock, but of his fellow-christians of every name, and of his fellow-men of every rank and of every clime. And it was striking to note how soon this brotherliness of the gifted and popular preacher, was found out and believed even by that class of the community who are the least apt to rely upon the disinterested love of those above them, and who are usually, too, the most alienated from the church and her ministers. Before he had been a year in Brighton he was earnestly solicited by the members of the Working Men's Institute to open the institute with a public address, he felt a deep interest in their movement, but he urged upon the committee that "he was not at all the man that should be selected. They should have some one of standing and influence in the town, and I am almost a stranger, and my taking so prominent a position might fairly be construed into assumption. Again, I am much afraid that my name might do them harm instead of good, for though the institution is intended to be self-supporting, yet there is no reason why it should wilfully throw away its chances of assistance from the richer classes; and I am quite sure that of these very many, whether reasonably or unreasonably, are prejudiced against me, and perhaps the professedly religious portion of society most strongly so." The working men, however, could not be moved from their desire to have him for their inaugural orator. The address was delivered, and created a great sensation amongst all classes. "It was marked," as the editor of his collected lectures and addresses—one of his most intimate friends—observes, "by extraordinary oratorical power, and evinced a faculty for addressing a popular assembly greater even than had been expected." A second address in the collection was not long after delivered to the same institute, and also his two beautiful "Lectures on the influence of Poetry on the working classes," delivered in 1852. He continued till his death to take the most vivid interest in every movement that promised to ameliorate and elevate the condition of the working classes; and in this same volume will be found two public speeches which bear testimony to the strength and depth of his feelings of human brotherhood and christian fellow-citizenship—a speech delivered in 1849, at a public meeting called by the Early Closing Association, and a speech delivered at a meeting of the Brighton District Association for improving the dwellings of the industrious classes, held at the Pavilion in 1852.
It was Mr. Robertson's misfortune to be much misunderstood by many of his fellow-townsmen, both as to his theological and his social views. This was no doubt owing in part to the freshness and originality of many of his ideas upon religious and social questions; but it was also a good deal owing to the strong and unguarded manner in which he was wont to express himself upon subjects that deeply engaged his own feelings; and still more, no doubt, to the fearless freedom which he used in characterizing all sects and parties, whether ecclesiastical or political or sociological, to which he stood opposed. It was inevitable that he should excite dislike and suspicion in those who belonged to these assailed parties, and that he should be compelled to suffer reprisals from those who felt—and sometimes not without reason—that he had caricatured rather than characterized their doctrines and doings. He had not been long in Brighton, as we learn from his own words quoted above, when he fell under suspicion among many of being a rationalist in religion and a socialist in politics. Unquestionably he belonged to the broad school in both departments, and was even an advanced adherent of the school in both. But he always repudiated the charge both of rationalism and socialism; and he was a man of too open and honest and manly a character to have made that repudiation if he had not been perfectly sincere in it. Since the publication of many of his writings, the public have had a better opportunity than before of understanding his real opinions and principles; and it is now well understood that in religion, though he was neither an evangelical nor a high churchman, he was far from being a Socinian or a rationalist, and that in sociology he was as far from flattering the working classes as from fawning upon the rich and great, and that he spoke out plainly to teach both classes alike their duties as well as their rights. Neither the Evangelical nor the Anglican, of course, can read these writings with entire satisfaction, or even without frequent offence, for the author's theology is certainly not in all points, and even in some points of fundamental importance, the genuine teaching of the Church of England, whether as interpreted by the school of Jewel or by the school of Laud. Both Anglicans and Evangelicals must lament the absence of much of what they both concur in holding to be essential truth, and the presence of some tendencies which in other minds less gifted with spiritual life and feeling could scarcely fail of running into dangerous and even fatal extremes. But still all parties can now understand the indignation with which he denied the charges of rationalism and socialism which were sometimes launched against him, and can also understand with what perfect truth and integrity he could use such language as the following in speaking of the fruits of his ministry, in reply to an address presented to him in 1852 by one hundred young men of his congregation—"No man can feel more deeply than I do the deficiencies, the faults, the worthlessness of the ministry of which you have spoken so kindly and so warmly. Others may have detected its faults more keenly; no
