_Kinnaird Cottage, Pitlochry [June 1881]._
MY DEAR MACKAY,--Thank you very much for your kind letter, and still
more for your good opinion. You are not the only one who has regretted
my absence from your lectures; but you were to me, then, only a part of
a mangle through which I was being slowly and unwillingly dragged--part
of a course which I had not chosen--part, in a word, of an organised
boredom.
I am glad to have your reasons for giving up the chair; they are partly
pleasant, and partly honourable to you. And I think one may say that
every man who publicly declines a plurality of offices, makes it
perceptibly more difficult for the next man to accept them.
Every one tells me that I come too late upon the field, every one being
pledged, which, seeing it is yet too early for any one to come upon the
field, I must regard as a polite evasion. Yet all advise me to stand, as
it might serve me against the next vacancy. So stand I shall, unless
things are changed. As it is, with my health this summer class is a
great attraction; it is perhaps the only hope I may have of a permanent
income. I had supposed the needs of the chair might be met by choosing
every year some period of history in which questions of Constitutional
Law were involved; but this is to look too far forward.
I understand (1_st_) that no overt steps can be taken till your
resignation is accepted; and (2_nd_) that in the meantime I may, without
offence, mention my design to stand.
If I am mistaken about these, please correct me as I do not wish to
appear where I should not.
Again thanking you very heartily for your coals of fire I remain yours
very sincerely,