But, after all, there are few trials to which a man of lofty intentions and an elevated ideal can be exposed, more severe than the entirely unexpected one which comes upon him when he has had his way, and finds himself for the first time in the much desired position in which he can carry out all the plans of his youth. Perhaps few people arrive so completely at this point as to acknowledge it distinctly to themselves; for, to be sure, human projects and devices have a knack of expanding and undergoing a gradual change from moment to moment. Something of the kind, however, must accompany, for example, every happy marriage; though perhaps it is the woman more than the man who comes under its influence. The beautiful new world of love and goodness into which the happy bride supposes herself to be entering comes to bear after a while so extraordinary a resemblance to the ordinary mediocre world which she has quitted that the young woman stands aghast and bewildered. The happiness which has come has made a more subtle happiness, that ideal perfection of being to which she has been more or less looking forward all her life. Colin, when he had gone through all his trials, and had fairly reached the point at which the heroic and magnificent existence which he meant to live should commence, found himself very much in the same position. The young man was still in the fantastic age. To preach his sermons every Sunday, and do his necessary duty, and take advantage of the good society at St. Rule’s, did not seem a life sufficient for the new minister. What he had thought of was something impossible, a work for his country, an elevation of the national firmament, an influence which should mellow the rude goodness of Scotland, and link her again to all the solemn past, to all the good and gracious present, to all the tender lights and dawns of hope.

Colin had derived from all the religious influences with which he had been brought in contact a character which was perhaps only possible to a young Scotchman and Presbyterian, strongly anchored to his hereditary creed, and yet feeling all its practical deficiencies. He was High Church, though he smiled at Apostolic succession; he was Catholic, though the most gorgeous High Mass that ever was celebrated would have moved him no more than one of Verdi’s operas. When other enlightened British spectators regarded with lofty superiority the poor Papist people coming and going into all the tawdry little churches, and singing unintelligible Latin, horribly out of tune, Colin for his part looked at them with a sigh for his own country, which had ceased to recognise any good in such devotion. And all through his education, from the moment when he smiled at the prayer-book under the curate’s arm at Wodensbourne, and wondered what a Scotch peasant would think of it, to the time when he studied in the same light the prelections of the University preacher in St. Mary’s, Colin’s thought had been, “Would I were in the field!” It appeared to him that if he were but there, in all his profusion of strength and youth, he could breathe a new breath into the country he loved. What he meant to do was to untie the horrible bands of logic and knit fair links of devotion around that corner of the universe which it has always seemed possible to Scotsmen to make into a Utopia; to persuade his nation to join hands again with Christendom, to take back again the festivals and memories of Christianity, to rejoice in Christmas and sing lauds at Easter, and say common prayers with a universal voice. These were to be the outward signs; but the fact was that it was a religious revolution in Scotland at which Colin aimed. He meant to dethrone the pragmatic and arrogant preacher, whose reign has lasted so long. He meant to introduce a more humble self-estimate, and a more gracious temper into the world he swayed in imagination. From this dream Colin woke up, after the rude experience of the objectors, to find himself at the head of his seven hundred and fifty communicants, with authority to say anything he liked to them (always limited by the knowledge that they might at any time “libel” him before the presbytery, and that the presbytery might at any time prosecute, judge, and condemn him), and to a certain extent spiritual ruler of the parish, with a right to do anything he liked in it, always subject to the approval of the Kirk-Session, which could contravent him in many ingenious ways. The young man was at last in the position to which he had looked forward for years—at last his career was begun, and the course of his ambition lay clear before him. Nothing now remained but to realize all these magnificent projects, and carry out his dreams.

But the fact is that Colin, instead of plunging into his great work, stood on the threshold struck dumb and bewildered, much as a bride might do on the threshold of the new home which she had looked forward to as something superior to Paradise. The position of his dreams was obtained, but these dreams had never till now seemed actually hopeless and preposterous. When he took his place up aloft in his high pulpit, from which he regarded his people much as a man at a first-floor window might regard the passers-by below, and watched the ruddy countrymen pouring in with their hats on their heads and a noise like thunder, the first terrible blow was struck at his palace of fancy. They were altogether different from the gaping rustics at Wodensbourne, to whom that good little curate preached harmless sermons out of his low desk, about the twenty-first Sunday after Trinity, and the admirable arrangements of the Church. Colin upstairs at his first-floor window was in no harmless position. He was put up there for a certain business, which the audience down below understood as well as he did. As for prayers and psalm-singing, they were necessary preliminaries to be got over as quickly as possible. The congregation listened and made internal criticisms as the young minister said his prayers. “He’s awfu’ limited in his confessions,” one of the elders whispered to another. “I canna think he’s fathomed the nature o’ sin, for my part;” and Colin was conscious by something in the atmosphere, by a certain hum and stir, that, though his people were a little grateful to find his first attempt at devotion shorter than usual, a second call upon them was regarded with a certain displeased surprise; for, to be sure, the late minister of Afton had been of the old school. And then, this inevitable preface having been disposed of, the congregation settled down quietly to the business of the day. Colin was young, and had kept his youthful awe of the great mysteries of faith, though he was a minister. It struck him with a sort of panic, when he looked down upon all those attentive faces, and recalled to himself the idea that he was expected to teach them, to throw new light upon all manner of doctrines, and open up the Bible, and add additional surety to the assurance already possessed by the audience that it was a very well-instructed congregation and knew all about the system of Christian theology. It gleamed upon Colin in that terrible moment that, instead of being a predestined reformer, he was a very poor pretender indeed, and totally inadequate to the duties of the post which he had taken upon him thus rashly; for, indeed, he was not by any means so clear as most of his hearers were about the system of theology. This sudden sense of incapacity, which came upon him at the very moment when he ought to have been strongest, was a terrible waking up for Colin. He preached his sermon—but with pale lips and a heart out of which all the courage seemed to have died for the moment; and betook himself to his manse afterwards to think it all over, with a horrible sense that, after all, he was a sham and impostor, and utterly unworthy of exercising influence upon any reasonable creature. For, to be sure, though a lofty ideal is the best thing in the world, according to its elevation is the pain and misery of the fall.

The consequence was that Colin stopped short in a kind of fright after he had made this first discovery, and that, after all his great projects, nothing in the world was heard all that winter of the young reformer. To return to our metaphor, he was silent as a young wife sometimes finds herself among the relics of her absurd youthful fancies, contemplating the ruin ruefully, and not yet fully awakened to the real possibilities of the position. During this little interval he came gradually down out of his too lofty ideas to consider the actual circumstances. When Lauderdale came to see him, which he did on the occasion of the national new-year holiday, Colin took his friend to see his church with a certain comic despair. “I have a finer chancel than that at Wodensbourne, which was the curate’s object in life,” said Colin; “but, if I make any fuss about it, I should be set down as an idiot; and, if any man has an imagination sufficiently lively to conceive of my ploughmen entering my church as our poor friends went into the Pantheon——”

“Dinna be unreasonable,” said Lauderdale. “You were aye awfu’ fantastic in your notions; what should the honest men ken about a chancel? I wouldna say that I’m just clear on the subject mysel’. As for the Pantheon, that was aye an awfu’ delusion on your part. Our cathedral at Glasgow is an awfu’ deal mair Christian-like than the Pantheon, as far as I can judge; but I wouldna say that it’s an idea that ever enters my head to go there for my ain hand to say my prayers; and, as for a country kirk with naked pews and cauld stone——”

“Look at it,” said Colin with an air of disgust which was comprehensible enough in a Fellow of Balliol. The church of Afton was worth looking at. It illustrated with the most wonderful, almost comic, exactness, two distinct historic periods. At one end of it was a wonderful Norman chancel, gloomy but magnificent, with its heavy and solemn arches almost as perfect as when they were completed. This chancel had been united to a church of later date (long since demolished) by a lighter and loftier pointed arch, which, however, under Colin’s incumbency, was filled up with a partition of wood, in which there was a little door giving admission to the church proper, the native and modern expression of ecclesiastical necessities in Scotland. This edifice was like nothing so much as a square box, encircled by a level row of windows high up in the wall, so many on each side; and there it was that Colin’s lofty pulpit, up two pairs of stairs, rigidly and nakedly surveyed the rigorous lines of naked pews which traversed the unlovely area. Colin regarded this scene of his labours with a disgust so melancholy, yet so comical, that his companion, though not much given to mirth, gave forth a laugh which rang into the amazed and sombre echoes. “Yes, it is easy enough to laugh,” said Colin, who was not without a sense of the comic side of his position; “but if it was your own church——”

“Whisht, callant,” said Lauderdale, whose amusement was momentary; “if I had ever come to onything in this world, and had a kirk, I wouldna have been so fanciful. It’s well for you to get your lesson written out so plain. There’s nae place to speak of here for the prayers and the thanksgivings. I’m no saying but what they are the best, but that’s no our manner of regarding things in Scotland. Even the man that has maist set his heart on a revolution must aye begin with things as they are. This is no a place open at a’ times to every man that has a word to say to God in quietness, like yon Catholic chapels. It’s a place for preaching; and you maun preach.”

“Preach!” said Colin; “what am I to preach? What I have learned here and there, in Dickopftenburg for example, or in the Divinity Hall? and much the better they would be for all that. Besides, I don’t believe in preaching, Lauderdale. Preaching never did me the least service. As for that beastly pulpit perched up there, all wood and noise as it is——” but here Colin paused, overcome by the weight of his discontent, and the giddiness natural to his terrible fall.

“Well,” said Lauderdale, after a pause, “I’m no saying but what there’s some justice in what you say; but I would like to hear, with your ideas, what you’re meaning to do.”

To which Colin answered with a groan. “Preach,” he said gloomily; “there is nothing else I can do: preach them to death, I suppose: preach about everything in heaven and earth; it is all a priest is good for here.”

“Ay,” said Lauderdale; “and then the worst o’t is that you’re no a priest, but only a minister. I wouldna say, however, but what you might pluck up a heart and go into the singing business, and maybe have a process in the presbytery about an organ; that’s the form that reformation takes in our kirk, especially with young ministers that have travelled and cultivated their minds, like you. But, Colin,” said the philosopher, “you’ve been in more places than the Divinity Hall. There was once a time when you were awfu’ near dying, if a man daur say the truth now it’s past; and there was once a bit little cham’er out yonder, between heaven and earth——”

Out yonder—Lauderdale gave a little jerk with his hand, as he stood at the open door, across the grey, level country which lay between the parish church of Afton and the sea; and the words and the gesture conveyed Colin suddenly to the lighted window that shone feebly over the Campagna, and to the talk within over Meredith’s deathbed. The recollection brought a wonderful change over his thoughts. He took his friend’s arm in silence, when he had locked the door. “I wonder what he is doing,” said Colin. “I wonder whether the reality has fallen short of the expectation there. If there should be no golden gates or shining streets as yet, but only another kind of life with other hopes and trials! If one could but know!”

“Ay,” said Lauderdale, in the tone that Colin knew so well; and then there was a long pause. “I’m no saying but what it’s natural,” he went on afterwards with some vagueness. “It’s aye awfu’ hard upon a man to get his ain way; but once in a while there’s one arises that can take the good out of even that. You’ll no make Scotland of your way of thinking, Colin; but you’ll make it worth her while to have brought ye forth for a’ that. As for Arthur, poor callant, I wouldna say but his ideal may have changed a wee on the road there. I’m awfu’ indifferent to the shining streets for my part; but I’m no indifferent to them that bide yonder in the silence. There was one now that wasna in your case,” continued Lauderdale; “he was aye pleased to teach in season and out of season. For the sake of the like of him, I’m whiles moved to hope that a’s no so awfu’ perfect in the other world as we think. I canna see ony ground for it in the Bible. Naething ever comes to an end in this world, callant;—and that was just what I was meaning to ask in respect to other things.”

“I don’t know what you mean by other things,” said Colin; “that is, if you mean Miss Meredith, Lauderdale, I have heard nothing of her for years. That must be concluded to have come to an end if anything ever did. It is not for me to subject myself to rejection any more.”

Upon which Lauderdale breathed out a long breath which sounded like a sigh, and was visible as well as audible in the frosty air. “It’s aye weel to have your lesson written so plain,” he said after a minute, with that want of apparent sequence which was sometimes amusing and sometimes irritating to Colin; “it’s nae disgrace to a man to do his work under strange conditions. When a lad like you has no place to work in but a pulpit, it’s clear to me that God intends him to preach whether he likes it or no.”

And this was all the comfort Colin received, in the midst of his disenchantment and discouragement, from his dearest friend.

But before the winter was over, life had naturally asserted its rights in the mind of the young minister. He had begun to stretch out his hands for his tools almost without knowing it, and to find that after all, a man in a pulpit, although he has two flights of stairs to ascend to it, has a certain power in his hand. Colin found eventually, that he had after all a great deal to say, and that even in one hour in a week it was possible to convey sundry new ideas into the rude, but not stupid, minds of his parishioners. A great many of them had that impracticable and hopeless amount of intelligence natural to a well brought-up Scotch peasant, with opinions upon theological matters and a lofty estimate of his own powers; but withal there were many minds open and thoughtful as silence, and the fields, and much observation of the operations of nature could make them. True, there were all the disadvantages to be encountered in Afton which usually exist in Scotch parishes of the present generation. There was a Free church at the other end of the parish very well filled, and served by a minister who was much more clear in a doctrinal point of view than Colin; and the heritors, for the most part—that is to say, the land-owners of the parish—though they were pleased to ask a Fellow of Balliol to dinner, and to show him a great deal of attention, yet drove placidly past his church every Sunday to the English chapel in St. Rule’s; which is unhappily the general fortune of the National Church in Scotland. It was on this divided world that Colin looked from his high pulpit, where, at least for his hour, he had the privilege of saying what he pleased without any contradiction; and it is not to be denied that after a while the kingdom of Fife grew conscious to its other extremity that in the eastern corner a man had arrived who had undoubtedly something to say. As his popularity began to rise, Colin’s ambitions crept back to his heart one by one. He preached the strangest sort of baffling, unorthodox sermons, in which, however, when an adverse critic took notes, there was found to be nothing upon which in these days he could be brought to the bar of the presbytery. Thirty years ago, indeed, matters were otherwise regulated; but even presbyteries have this advantage over popes, that they do take a step forward occasionally to keep in time with their age.

This would be the proper point at which to leave Colin, if there did not exist certain natural, human prejudices on the subject which require a distinct conclusion of one kind or another. Until a man is dead, it is impossible to say what he has done, or to make any real estimate of his work; and Colin, so far from being dead, is only as yet at the commencement of his career, having taken the first steps with some success and Éclat, and having recovered the greater part of his enthusiasm. There was, indeed, a time when his friends expected nothing else for him than that early and lovely ending which makes a biography perfect. There is only one other ending in life, which is equally satisfactory, and, at least on the face of it, more cheerful than dying; and that, we need not say, is marriage. Accordingly, as it is impossible to pursue his course to the one end, all that we can do is to turn to the other, which, though the hero himself was not aware of it, was at that moment shadowing slowly out of the morning clouds.

It is accordingly with a feeling of relief that we turn from the little ecclesiastical world of Scotland, where we dare not put ourselves in too rigorous contact with reality, or reveal indiscreetly, without regard to the sanctity of individual confidence, what Colin is doing, to the common open air and daylight, in which he set out, all innocent and unfearing, on a summer morning, accompanied as of old by Lauderdale, upon a holiday journey. He had not the remotest idea, any more than the readers of his history have at this moment, what was to happen to him before he came back again. He set out with all his revolutionary ideas in his mind, without pausing to think that circumstances might occur which would soften down all insurrectionary impulses on his part, and present him to the alarmed Church, not under the aspect of an irresistible agitator and reformer, but in the subdued character of a man who has given hostages to society. Colin had no thought of this downfall in his imagination when he set out. He had even amused himself with the idea of a new series of “Tracts for the Times,” which might peradventure work as much commotion in the Church of Scotland as the former series had done in the Anglican communion. He went off in full force and energy with the draft of the first of these revolutionary documents in the writing-case in which he had once copied out his verses for Alice Meredith. Poor Alice Meredith! The bridle which Colin had once felt on his neck had worn by this time to such an impalpable thread that he was no longer aware of its existence; and even the woman in the clouds had passed out of his recollection for the moment, so much was he absorbed with the great work he had embarked on. Thus he set out on a pedestrian excursion, meaning to go to the English lakes, and it is hard to say where besides, in his month’s holiday; and nothing in the air or in the skies gave any notice to Colin of the great event that was to befall him before he could return.