THE
LIFE AND TIMES
OF
HUGH MILLER
BY THOMAS N. BROWN.
"A star hath left the kindling sky,
A lovely northern light:
Many a planet is on high,
But that hath left the night."
NEW YORK:
RUDD & CARLETON, I30 GRAND STREET,
(BROOKS BUILDING, COR. OF BROADWAY.)
MDCCCIX.




AUTHOR'S EDITION.
R. ORAIGHEAD,
PRINTEB STEREOTYPER, AND ELEOTROTYPU
8axtaot 833tilzting,
81, 83, and 85 Centre Street.




C o n t e n t s
-0Page
Introductory,...           I
1. Ancestry and Early Life,.                            I5
2. The Dame's and Grammar Schools,                        26
3. The Quarry,....          42
4. The Bothy,.....   63
5. Edinburgh,.                                        77
6. Christianity,...                     93
7. Poetry and a Patron,.o. Io8
8. Church and State,...                 24
9. Non-Intrusion,....             15 3
io. The Witness,....                           64
I I. Popular Distrust,....               8 I
t2. State Carpenters,....              193
13. The Disruption,.                             208
14. A Retrospect,...  225
15. Hero Worship,...                 242
[6. Education,......  266
17. Modern Light Literature,...          288
8. Science,......  312
19. Death,.....  329
Appendix,..  343








INTRODUCTORY.
IT is somewhere said by Goldsmith, that the life of a
literary man seldom abounds with adventure.  His
fame is acquired in solitude; and the historian, who
only views him from a distance, must be content with
a dry detail of actions by which he is hardly distinguished from the rest of mankind. Though embodying
a general truth, the observation we have quoted does
not exactly sum up the life we have chosen to illustrate.
Its even tenor was, indeed, not much disturbed by adventure, but it can scarcely be said of Hugh Miller
his fame was acquired in solitude, or that his actions
were not in a very marked degree distinguished from
the actions of the mass of mankind. On the contrary,
the more closely his life and writings are scanned, the
more clearly will Scotchmen begin to discover that,
amongst the men of genius these latter times have produced, Hugh Miller is Scotland's representative man.
This statement is made with a full appreciation of its
1




2                  Introductory.
import, and with a perfect knowledge that names will
instantly rise in many minds, disputing the pedestal on
which we seek to place the Cromarty stone-mason. It
may, therefore, be well the reader should distinctly
understand that, in claiming for Hugh Miller this representative character, no comparison is instituted, and no
superiority is asserted for him over such men as Burns
and Scott, either of whom may be supposed, by a
large class of admirers, to possess superior claims to the
position we seek to assign the late editor of the TWitness.
It may even be acknowledged that, in native intellectual
force, Scott and Burns equalled-nay, in certain special
mental attributes, excelled-Hugh Miller; while yet it is
asserted, that neither so fully gathered up into himself
the ideas, sentiments, and passions, that mark the representative man.
Notwithstanding his geniality and breadth of character,
Sir Walter Scott was rather a relic of feudalism than a
representative of modern times. Without the conscious
and pronounced loathing of the present, everywhere to
be met with in the writings of another great countryman,
Scott turned instinctively to the golden glories of the
past-his spirit revelled in the jousts and tournaments
of the age of chivalry; but for all that had been done
in Scotland subsequent to the Reformation era he had
little sympathy, and certainly no enthusiasm. It was
this chasm of centuries —lying a great gulf between Sir




Introductory.                  3
Walter and the ideas and sentiments of his countrymen
-which, though coloured with the exaggeration of controversy, gave a tone of truth to the elder MI'Crie's assertion, that his characters were for the most part mosstroopers and Border reivers, rather than genuinely
Scottish. The laureate of chivalry fallen upon an age
from which chivalry was gone-whelmed in the wideweltering chaos French democracy had created-Scott's
mission was to gather up that minstrelsy of the Scottish
Border; and in those metrical and prose romances with
which his name is now so indissolubly and so gloriously
associated-the image of the vanished age-bequeathing
to democracy a mirror in which it might evermore behold
a faithful portrait of the glories laid in the dust in its
march to universal dominion. That mission accomplished
-the literature of chivalry carried to the ends of the
earth-Scott's work was done. " No sky-born messenger, heaven looking through his eyes," was the Lord of
Abbotsford; and no voice from the celestial land did
the literary Vandyke of a demi-savage age bring near to
the children of men. A couple of trivial and seemingly
unimportant facts brought together, will better illustrate
the antithesis, on the spiritual side, between the characters
of Scott and Miller than a whole chapter of dissertation.
If we recollect aright, it is the Ettrick Shepherd who
relates how charmed Scott had been with the conversation of an intelligent mechanic, whose acquaintance he




4                 Introductory.
had made on the lands of Abbotsford; but on discovering that this intelligent operative, fiom whose converse
he had enjoyed so much delight throughout the week,
was a Baptist preacher on Sabbath, Scott never spoke
with him more. Hugh Miller, in his "Scenes and Legends
of the North of Scotland" (his first prose work), has not
scrupled to present his readers with one of the finest
illustrations of unostentatious Christian philanthropy, in
the person of an humble Baptist shoemaker.
Burns did embody at once in his intuitions and
ideas-very distinctly embody-the spirit of the age, in
certain of its aspects; he had, indeed, an affection for
the antique, but the dead past did not, as in the case of
Scott, swallow up his sympathies for the living present.
What, then, was necessary to complete his representative
character? assuredly neither native force nor established
and diffusive fame. The foremost man of all his time,
after gauging his intellectual capacity, pronounced him
fitted to excel in whatever walk of ambition he had
chosen to exert his faculties. And in our day we are
witnesses of what could scarcely have been predicted in
his own, the voice that first rose in lowly cadence in
that " auld clay biggin' by the banks o' bonny Doon,"
is now "heard on every wave, and sounds on every
sea." Yet, despite his superior endowments and pre.
eminent fame, there is a fatal flaw in the character of
Burns which prevents us assigning him the position we




Introductory.                 5
claim for Hugh Miller. We allude, as our readers will
easily comprehend, to the discord between the poet and
the man, which has always constituted the chief difficulty with the critics of our national bard. There is
a point of view from which Burns appears altogether
lovely; and there is a point from which he appears quite
the opposite of attractive. As either of these phases of
his character is dwelt upon too exclusively, we obtain
a false, or at best, imperfect view of Burns as a whole.
Few, indeed, of his biographers, have been able to hold
the balance with that scrupulous exactness even-handed
justice demands-extenuating nothing, nor yet setting
down aught in malice. Certainly it is with no feeling
of regret we have observed, the more attractive features
of his character are the features on which writers in
general have loved to linger. It is perhaps well that
such should have been the case. Gloating over the
errors of humanity or the aberrations of genius, displays
no amiable feeling; and his must ever be a thankless
task who seeks to break the spell by nature bound
around the voiceless dead. Yet without gloating over,
while in point of fact mourning, the errors of the bard,
we cannot forget the jarring and the dissonance between
his higher and his lower, his nobler and baser self. The
powers of light and darkness seem to have been mated
within him, and to have waged a terrible, and but too equal
strife, during his entire earthly pilgrimage; now beckon.




6'Introductory.
ing him to heaven, now bending him to earth: and
alternately, as either principle waxed or waned, Burns
is seen soaring into the region of the holiest sentiment,
or sunk in the mire of an odious sensuality. Nor let it
be supposed there is anything incongruous in all this.
MIan is neither an angel nor a demon; the wheat and
the tares grow together in the soil of the human heart;
and unless we shut our eyes to facts, there is no denying
that black and polluting passions were-often the tenants
of the breast which poured forth the address to the
mountain daisy, and that the bosom which heaved with
emotions of the most touching tenderness and exquisite
sensibility, was often set on fire of hell.
We say not these things because we have any pleasure
in calling attention to the failings and shortcomings of
one of whom Scotland has so much reason to be proud.
Nor do we homologate, in any measure, the untenable
opinion held by certain narrow souls, that Burns was
wanting in what modern moralists have called the religious sentiment. The very opposite we believe to have
been the case. Again and again throughout his letters
we meet the genuine outbreathing of this sentiment. It
is related by his brother Gilbert how very profoundly
Burns was impressed with the solemn beauty and power
of the words, "  Let us worship God."  That this simple
utterance, heard from childhood beneath the paternal
rooftree, known by him as the call which summoned




Introductory.                  7
thousands of Scottish households, to offer up to heaven
the morning and the evening sacrifice —should have so
completely penetrated his soul, and bowed it beneath
a sense of the awe and mystery of the infinite and the
unseen, tells in language neither to be mistaken nor
misinterpreted, the depth of religious feeling which, like
a fountain sealed, lay struggling for utterance within his
soul. Pity it was that this religious sentiment, natu,
rally so deep and ardent, was not permitted to work
itself clear of the dross which had gathered round it,
" staining the white radiance of eternity."  The men
and the times on which he had fallen, in great part
prevented this. That latent scepticism which good old
Wodrow, in his Analecta, mourns as having entered the
Church of Scotland, had, in Burns' day, borne some of
its most noxious fruits. A false philosophy had eaten
out the heart of the historic religion of Scotland amongst
Scottish literati and Scottish theologians. The church
of Knox, Melville, and Henderson, was now represented
by Dr. William Robertson and Dr. Hugh Blair. Unhappily, the New-Light priesthood found in the rustic
bard at once a powerful and popular ally; for, without
doubt, the controversies into which he plunged with
its approbation, exerted a most sinister influence, at a
most critical hour, on his religious nature. Cut off,
not by any innate want of sympathy, but by a fatal
misdirection of his faculties, from  the creed of his




8                 Introductory.
country-nay, publicly pitted against it, as the fighting
man of the illuminati of his age-Burns missed becoming Scotland's representative man.
Thus has it come to pass that neither in Abbotsford
nor in Ayrshire-not by the banks of the Doon, but by
the Bay of Cromarty, must we seek the embodiment
of the genius and tendencies of our country. We again
repeat, that however great, however potential in their
respective individualities Scott and Burns undoubtedly
were, the defects we have pointed out are fatal to their
claims as representative men. A nation with such
glorious souvenirs of freedom, could not crown the laureate of feudalism; and though he who sang "A man's
a man for a' that," and "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace
bled," has infinitely higher claims, yet a nation whose
religious struggles surpassed even the splendour of her
conflicts for civil freedom, cannot call the author of the
"Holy Fair"' a type of the children of the covenant.
In his " Sartor Resartus," Carlyle, with that felicitous
pictorial power for which he stands unrivalled among
modern writers, has gathered up into a single sentence
that photographs on the mind for ever, a magnificent
image of the influence and the unity of mankind.'" On
the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped inon the last rear of the host shall be read traces of the
earliest van." Subordinated to this general unity, and
infolded in its ample circumference, lie the various




Introductory.                  9
national unities; and he who would adequately represent a nation must be himself the heir of all the epochs
through which that nation has passed. The puerile rant
indulged about Scottish nationality by certain writers
and speakers during recent years, has so burlesqued
the subject, that it is all but impossible to obtain the
public ear for the soberest and most philosophic statemnent of its claims. Fortunately, the object we contemplate in adverting to the topic now, will be sufficiently
served by the recapitulation of a few facts which even
the most sceptical will not attempt to challenge.  It
may be asserted with something like axiomatic accuracy,
that the peculiar character of a nation is determined by
the spirit with which it rises equal to those great crises
in its history which sooner or later overtake all peoples
in the development of the drama of the world. Three
such epochs have occurred in Scottish story, and it has
been the fortune of Scotland, on each occasion, to encounter the fiery trial through which she was called to
pass, in the most heroic and dauntless spirit.
The first crisis was the patriotic struggle for Scottish
nationality in the actual, not in the heraldic sense
Blind Harry's heroes were men of a very different stamp
from the windbags who, a short while ago, set England
a laughing at Scotland and Scotchmen. And, however
easily Punch snuffed out the babblers about nationality
in our own day, we believe southern chivalry found it
1*




10 o              Introductory.
no laughing matter to deal with the thirteenth-century
defenders of Scottish rights.
The conflict of which Wallace was the representative,
fused the various races which had come together on the
soil of Scotland, but had hitherto dwelt apart without
community of interest or unity of feeling. The battle
with England, fought out so gloriously, so victoriously,
animated the victors with a passion for nationality, such
as never before possessed them. The unity of the nation,
thus perfected through suffering, was destined to exert
a most salutary influence upon the fortunes of another
great struggle which wax aoon tQo all, not sotland only,
but Europe to the conflict. What Wallace was in the
thirteenth century, such was Knox in the sixteenth.
The foe is now no longer England, but the Pope; not
a powerful sovereign, but a powerful superstition it is
the people are called to combat. We need not say how
more comnpletely here than in any other corner of
Christendom, if perhaps we except Geneva, the work
was done. Yet once more was Scotland summoned to
the battle-field. Again the conflict is mainly ecclesiastical. She has been equal to the occasion hitherto,
whether the foe was England's sovereign or the Roman
pontiff: will she be equal to the conflict when the enemy
is her own king? Deep-seated in every Scottish heart
was the attachment of the people for the descendants of
the hero of Bannockburn. Through long centuries that




Introductory.                11
royal race had gone out and in before them, and, whether
in the halls of debate or in the field of battle, had not
been wanting to the nation.  Iuch, very much, did
Scotland suffer from the Stuarts before, stung into
rebellion, her sons took the field against them.  Yet
generous and ardent as had been their devotion to their
kings, in the camp of Leslie the highest earthly royalty
was esteemed but as the dust in the balance, when
weighed against the claims of Christ's crown and cove.
nant.
From the elements which mingled in this last struggle
it was necessarily very protracted. During thirty years
did the best and bravest of our people wander the
wilderness, pouring out their blood like water in defence
of the good-the holy cause.  The battle descended
from sire to son, and even in what seemed its triumph,
though a period was put to the fierce persecution which
had devoured the nation, the principle for which Scotland had taken arms against Charles Stuart was not
conceded by William of Orange. We deem it of some
importance to note this fact; for, in the definite perception, that so far as Scotland's ecclesiastical position was
concerned, the revolution of 1688 was rather a drawn
battle than a victory, lies the key to the comprehension
of some of the most important events that have trans.
pired in our times. These being the phases through
which the nation has passed, we should expect to find




12                Introductory.
its representative man imbued with the passion for
civil freedom which fired the soul of Wallace, inspired
with the zeal for religious liberty which animated Knox,
and panting to decide in the light of the principles of
the great Reformer, the drawn battle the revolution
bequeathed-a bone of contention to the men of our
times. If, in addition to rehearsing the storied past, we
found this man had fully caught the scientific spirit of
the present, incredulity itself were vanquished. It is
our belief that more completely than any other Scotchman, Hugh Miller sustains this complex representative
position, and in the development of the leading incidents
in the life, and in the salient features of the character of
our great countryman, we hope to inspire our readers
with a kindred conviction.
KXunaGc PARi, GLASGOW, 10th March, 1858.




HUGH MILLER.








CHAPTER I.
ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE.
THOMAS (CARLYLE, some time ago, lamented with a
very sincere regret the lack of material for the study
of English history, in the want of good and reliable
portraits of historic characters. We can easily understand that regret: a genuine likeness would sometimes
go far to solve a historical problem. By the aid of such
insight as portraits would supply, the annalist might
gather up something like a conception of the blended
influences different families had exerted upon each other,
whose blood had mingled together. How interesting
such a collection might be made, we know from the
interest that attaches to even the portraits of a single
eminent individual, taken in the successive stages of life.
Seen as passing through life's seven ages, we catch a
glimpse, through the canvas of the painter, of the vicissitudes which time and circumstance exert upon man.
We have not the fortune to possess such a gallery of
the ancestors, by either the male or the female line, of
the subject of this biography; but we are fortunate




16         Ancestry and Early Life.
enough to possess in HIugh Miller's " Schools and
Schoolmasters," what, in the want of such a gallery,
may supply the gap its absence creates-the traditionary reminiscences of that ancestry for several generations. Judiciously enough, these traditions are not
rendered unnecessarily prolix, while yet sufficient of
incident and of character are reproduced, to enable us
to form a very definite idea of the tributary human
streams from which the Cromarty stone-mason sprang.
In fashionable and aristocratic biographies, one often
meets some statementlike thefollowing; meant, no doubt,
to overawe the plebeian mind, and gratify the pride of
birth:-the family is one of very ancient date, having,
it is believed, come into England with the Conqueror.
Hugh Miller honestly tells us that his progenitors were a
long line of seafaring men, skilful, adventurous sailors,
-who had coasted along the Scottish shores as early as
the times of Sir Andrew Wood and the bold Bartons,
and mayhap helped to man "that very monstrous shippe,
the Great Michael, that cumbered all Scotland to get
her to sea." These sea-kings appear to have been a
worthy race; superior, we opine, to the shaggy northmen who accompanied Duke William to the conquest
of England. But the buccaneers of the earlier period,
who, " by the splendour of God," took seizin of the soil
of the Saxon, were ennobled; while old John Feddes
and his comrades, whether disappointed in love or other



Ancestry and Early Life.            17
wise, who did business on their own account in the
Spanish Main, though quite as honest, were not quite so
fortunate. We obtain a very penetrative glance into the
basis of kindness on which the energetic characters of
Hugh Miller's progenitors reposed, from the following
story of his father's early life. Iis mother had consigned him to the care of an aunt married to a neighbouring farmer, that in the acquisition of agricultural
tastes, he might be saved from the hereditary fate of the
family, who, in its male members at least, had, during
many generations, all of them made ocean their tomb.
But destiny was not thus to be foiled; the family fate
was not to be so avoided. Sent from the farm-house to
drown a litter of puppies, the boy, after some intermittent fits of irresolution, took his way to his mother's
house, arriving there in the dusk of the gloamin, with
the doomed doggies tucked up in his kilt. The good
woman in consternation at his appearance in such circumstances, exclaimed "0 my unlucky boy!"  6 Mother,"
said the youth,, " the little doggies, mother; I couldna
drown the little doggies, and I brought them to you."
The unlucky boy having no ambition to become a
model farmer, was ultimately sent to sea, and exhibited
throughout a checkered, yet not unsuccessful career,
the best qualities of a British sailor. The tender-hearted
youth, "who couldna drown the doggies," afterwards
did very effective execution upon the Dutch off the




18         Ancestry and Early Life.
Dogger-bank, on that day, memorable in the annals of
British naval warfare, doing the work of two men.
Pressed into the service of his country without his
consent, Miller is one evening found absent without
leave, and the next glimpse we have of him, he is master of a craft that sails from his native Cromarty. Fortune smiles upon the shipmaster; he builds a new house
beside the ancient cottage of his buccaneering grandsire,
of more imposing proportions than satisfied the modest
ambition of old John Feddes. The dangers of the sea
are proverbial, both in song and story; and nowhere does
adversity follow faster on the heels of fortune in individual instances, than on that element which has built
up the greatness of Britain. Early in November, 1797,
Miller's square-rigged sloop, which had lain for some
days wind-bound in the port of Peterhead, left its moorings on the gloomy night of a gloomy day, and bore out
to sea. The breeze, which had lured the craft from her
haven, speedily freshened into a gale, the gale into a
hurricane; and despite the most herculean efforts, and
the most skilful seamanship, his bark, the -Friendship,
next morning is in spales on the bar of Findhorn. His
fortunes thus wrecked, Miller was on the eve of selling
his house at a disadvantage, to provide himself with a
new vessel, when a friend interposed and advanced the
money required. The new sloop, though not quite
equal to the lost one in point of size, was wholly built




Ancestry and Early Life.            19
of oak, every plank and beam of which he had super.
intended in the laying down; and so, though he had to
satisfy himself with the old house, with its little rooms
and its small windows, and let the other house to a
tenant, he began to thrive as before. Shortly after this
the master of the sloop, who had been now for some
years a widower, married a second time, and in 1802,
not 1805, as some popular biographies assert, Hugh
Miller was born in the low long house built by his
great-grandfather, the buccaneer. The memory of the
child awoke early; his recollections dating from some
months before the completion of his third year. Most
of these reminiscences are of a pleasing character. " The
young spirit has awakened out of eternity, and knows
not what we mean by time; as yet time is no fast hurrying stream, but a sportful sun-lit ocean; the fair garden, life, rustles infinite around, and everywhere is dewy
fragrance and budding hope."
But sterner memories are at hand. The cloud that
is to cast so dark a shadow over his fortunes, already
hangs on the skirts of the horizon. As agent for the
Leith Glass-works, his father had been for some months
sailing round the Hebrides, collecting kelp; and towards
the end of October, 1807, deeply laden, he had threaded
his way round Cape Wrath, and through the Pentland,
and across the Moray Frith, when a severe gale compelled him to seek shelter in the harbour of Peterhead.




20         Ancestry and Early Life.
From this, to him ill-fated port, on the 9th November,
1807, he wrote his last letter. On the following day
he set sail from Peterhead; soon a storm arose, more
terrible than the tempest in which the Friendship went
to pieces. Miller's vessel was last seen by a townsman
and shipmaster, who, safely moored in an English harbour, marked the square-rigged sloop in the offing
from morn to night, exhausting every expedient of nautical science to keep aloof from the shore. Skill and
perseverance seemed successful; for, clearing a formidable headland, mottled with broken ships and
drowned men, the sloop was seen stretching out by a
long tack into the sea. "Miller's seamanship has saved
him once more," said the Cromarty skipper, as quitting
his place on the outlook, he returned to the cabin. But
the night fell wild and tempestuous, and no vestige of
the hapless sloop was ever more seen. Thus perished
a man, whom his comrades called the best sailor that
ever sailed the Moray Frith.
No foreboding of the catastrophe had reached the bay
of Cromarty. The Peterhead letter had shed light and
hope into the master's humble dwelling. The night
after the reception of this missive, the sailor's household
are gathered arouhd the family hearth; the mother
plies the cheerful needle by the cottage fire; her son,
a boy of five years of age, is sitting by her side-when
the house door, which had been left unfastened, fell




Ancestry and Early Life.            21
open, and the youth is despatched to shut it. Of what
followed, the man shall tell the recollections of the
child. "Day had not wholly disappeared," says HIugh
Miller, "but it was fast posting into night, and a grey
haze spread a neutral tint of dimness over every more
distant object, but left the nearer ones comparatively
distinct, when I saw the door open. Within less than
a yard of my breast, as plainly as I ever saw anything,
was a dissevered hand and arm stretched towards me.
Hand and arm were apparently those of a female; they
bore a livid and sodden appearance; and, directly
fronting me, where the body ought to have been, there
was only blank transparent space, through which I could
see the dim forms of the objects beyond. I was fearfully startled, and ran shrieking to my mother telling
her what I had seen.  I communicate the story as it
lies fixed in my memory, without attempting to explain
it. The supposed apparition may have been merely a
momentary affection of the eye, of the nature described
by Sir Walter Scott in his Demonology, and Sir David
Brewster in his Natural Magic. But if so, it was an
affection of which I experienced no after-return, and its
coincidence with my father's death seems at least curious."  We shall best respect the memory of the dead,
and best consult the tastes of the living, by leaving the
story of this singular apparition as its author has left it,
unexplained. Right or wrong, we like as little as Hugh




22         Ancestry and Early Life.
Miller possibly could, to draw aside the veil of enchant.
ment in which he obviously loved to shroud this vision
from the too curious scrutiny of science. We know the
fishers of Cromarty are, or at least were, a superstitious
people, devout believers in all sorts of demonology and
witchcraft; and it may be possible that, living on the
confines of the fisher-town, the vivid imagination of the
-boy had become tinged with the superstition of the
place. Friends, we are aware, have offered this explanation of the vision, and probably it is the true one.
But we pass from all attempts to furnish the rationale
of the apparition, simply remarking that seldom indeed
have we found much either of goodness or greatness in
any man whose young heart was not profoundly imbued
with a love of the marvellous. Before departing from
this topic, we may mention that, though just turned five
years of age, this was not the first vision seen by the
boy. Old John Feddes, his buccaneering ancestor, dead
fully half a century before, had already appeared to the
youth in the identical light-blue coat he wore when in
the flesh. There are more things in heaven and earth
than are dreamt of in our philosophy. And those
dreams and visions of which we sometimes hear the
wondrous story, may they not have their origin in
mental phenomena which the plummet of philosophy
will never be able to sound?
But whatever opinion may be entertained about the




Ancestry and Early Life.            23
reality of the apparition, there can be none about the
loss the boy had sustained; and he tells how, day after
day, he used to climb the grassy protuberance of the
old coast-line immediately behind his mother's house,
that commands a wide reach of the Moray Frith, and
to look wistfully out, long after every one else had
ceased to hope, for the sloop with the two stripes of
white and the two square-topsails. But months and years
passed by, and the white stripes and the square-topsails
he never saw. Those who have seen life in its gloomiest
aspects, and sorrow in its saddest forms, have often
wondered what preternatural power it was that gave
such marvellous fascination to the grief of a child. The
secret of the spell we apprehend to be this: —Lighthearted as children generally are, and for the most part
their sorrow only an April shower, there is yet a pensive melancholy of which childhood is susceptible, lost
in youth and early manhood, that comes back upon
man when his powers are matured by reflection and
mellowed by experience, uniting by a mysterious bond,
subtler far than any electric affinity, the gloamin of his
years with " the love of life's young day." Perhaps in
all men a measure of this feeling is to be found; but in
the man of genius it receives its special and most marked
development. And far truer herald of genius do we
deem it than any dux medal of even the best-appointed
public school-that this boy of five years of age should,




24         Ancestry and Early Life.
day after day and month after month, long after hope
had died in every breast save his own, be seen climbing that grassy knoll from which was beheld the most
glorious of prospects stretching away into infinitude,
yet utterly oblivious of every marvel of nature with
which he is surrounded; his eye sweeping the farthest
verge of the horizon, intent only on discovering amid
that yeast of waves the bark which has borne his father
from him never to return. Hugh Miller mourning his
sire reminds us of the first great sorrows of Cowper, of
Kitto, and of De Quincey, all of whom were early taught
in the deaths of dearest friends how soon "shades of
the prison-house begin to close around the growing
boy." It was the death of Kitto's good grandmother
that constituted his first great sorrow. A sister's death
was De Quincey's earliest grief. Kitto's impressions
upon receiving the tidings that his grandame was no
more, recorded in his workhouse journal, remind us, in
their dirge-like plaint, of De Quincey's wail by his
sister's bier, with only this difference, that while the
expression of anguish is in both cases nearly equal, the
sorrow of Kitto has in it less of the fantastic and imaginative. There is a pomp of woe-an affluence of grief
about the wail of the child of fortune-wanting in the
plaint of the workhouse-boy. Cowper, fifty years after
the event, dedicated one of the noblest of his minor
poems to the memory of a mother lost in childhood.




Ancestry and Early Life.           25
HIugh Miller, in opening manhood, embalmed in verse
the record of the catastrophe which so early made him
acquainted with grief; but poetry was not Hugh's province, and though not destitute of a certain rugged force,
and vigour, and sensibility, the stanzas on his father's
death have about them little of the true minstrel fire.
That sorrow was too deep to find adequate utterance in
any verse which "a journeyman stone-mason" could
write; and probably it had been better he had never
attempted the theme. The painter who could not express the excess of grief, covered with a veil the face of
Agamemnon.
2




CHAPTER II.
THE D^AME'S AND GRAMMAR SCHOOLS.
YOUNG Miller's loss of his father, so keenly mourned,
was supplied, as far as the best earthly fiiends could
make up a bereavement so sad, by his two maternal
uncles; types of a class of men that, firom age to age,
have been the ornament of the peasantry of Scotland,
but who, generation after generation, are permitted to
pass away without any adequate memorial of their many
virtues. We, therefore, gladly pause to read the inscription on the stone of remembrance, which, in his
" Schools and Schoolmasters," Hugh Miller has erected
to that pair of noble brothers. "' My elder uncle, James,
added to a clear head and much native sagacity, a
singularly retentive memory, and great thirst of information. He was a harness-maker, and wrought for the
farmers of an extensive district of country; and as he
never engaged either a journeyman or apprentice, but
executed all his work with his own hands, his hours of
labour, save that he indulged in a brief pause as the
twilight came on, and took a mile's walk or so, were




The Dame's and Grammar Schools.   27
usually protracted fiom six o'elock in the morning till
ten at night. Such incessant occupation, of course, left
him little timne for reading; but he often found some
one to read beside him  during the day; and in the
winter evenings, his portable bench used to be brought
from his shop at the other end of the dwelling, into the
family sitting-room, and placed beside the circle round
the hearth, where his brother Alexander, my younger
uncle, whose occupation left his evenings free, would
read aloud from some interesting volume for the general
benefit-placing himself always at the opposite end of
the bench, so as to share in the light of the worker.
Occasionally the family circle would be widened by the
accession of from two to three intelligent neighbours,
who would drop in to listen; and then the book, after
a space, would be laid aside, in order that its contents
might be discussed in conversation. In the summer
months, uncle James always spent some time in the
country, in looking after and keeping in repair the
harness of the farmers for whom he wrought; and during his journeys and twilight walks on these occasions,
there was not an old castle, or hillfoot, or ancient encampment, or antique ecclesiastical edifice within twenty
miles of the town, which he had not visited and examined over and over agalin. He was a keen local antiquary; knew a good deal about architectural styles of
the various ages, at a time when the subjects Awere very




28   The Dame's and Grammar Schools.
little studied or known; possessed more traditioiary
lore, picked up chiefly in his country journeys, than
any man I ever knew.  What he once heard he never
forgot; and the knowledge which he had acquired, he
could communicate pleasingly and succinctly, in a style
which, had he been a writer of books, instead of merely
a reader of them, would have had the merit of being
clear and terse, and more laden with meaning than
words.  From his reputation for sagacity, his advice
used to be much sought after by the neighbours in
every little difficulty that came in their way; and the
counsel given was always shrewd and honest. I never
knew  a man more entirely just in his dealings than
uncle James, or who regarded every species of meanness with a more thorough contempt."
Uncle Alexander was of a different caste from his
brother both in intellect and temperament, but he was
characterized by the same strict integrity; and his religious feelings, though quiet and unobtrusive, were
perhaps more  deep.  James was somewhat of a
humorist, and fond of a joke; Alexander, grave and
serious. An old sailor, he had served under Nelson at
Camperdown, taken part in the campaign under Abercrombie in Egypt; and though wanting his brother's
fluency, yet by his descriptions of foreign plants and
animals, he succeeded in inoculating his nephew with
his own special tastes.  In his lengthened rambles on




The Dame's and Grammar Schools,   29
the wold or by the sea-shore with the old naval hero,
young Miller was initiated into the study of natural history: Uncle Sandy was in point of fact his earliest, his
only professor.
Before his father's death, Hugh Miller had been sent
to a dame's school, where, under the tuition of an old
lady, its superintendent, who, most likely, had she been
living in our days, would not have received a government certificate, or been favoured with any pupil
teachers, he groped his way through the Shorter Catechism, the Proverbs, the New Testament, and at length
entered her highest, the Bible class. Even thus early
was that peculiarity, which we shall afterwards meet as
nearly marring his prospects, fully developed.  In
deference to his superiors he had, after a manner, made
a kind of acquaintance with the rudiments of knowledge; but having no adequate sense of the tendency of
his lessons, all was dark and chaotic. There are certain minds that probably might not have felt in any
perceptible degree uncomfortable in such circumstances; but Hugh Miller was not one of these minds.
He could not go on day after day getting crammed by
some superior, without questioning whereunto that
cramming should grow; he liked to see the reason of
things-sought above all else to know the central principle around which the details, either of business or of
study, grouped themselves.  In this strongly-ma rked




30    The Dame's and Grammar Schools.
mental peculiarity is embodied every pregnant hinlt
for educationists. So soon as Hugh Miller made the
discovery, that the art of reading was the art of finding
stories in books, all the darkness and all the drudgery
fled. Have the friends of education kept sight of this
important fact? we are afraid that, in too many instances,
the powerful lever it would place in the hands of the
teacher has been left to rust unused.
Having seen that reading was the key that unlocked
a boundless store of mental pleasure, young Miller's
progress, which had hitherto been nothing extraordinary,
accelerated in something lilke at geometric ratio. The
story of Joseph, the stories of Samson, of David and
Goliath, of Elijah and Elisha, all were speedily mastered.
And from these Hebrew tales-the joy of many generations of the youth of Scotland-Hugh Miller turned to
those classical romances of childhood, Jack the GiantKiller, Jack and the Bean Stalk, The Yellow Dwarf,
Blue Beard, Sinbad the Sailor, Beauty and the Beast,
Aladdin or the Wonderful Lamp; and passed from
these without break or conscious line of division to the
Odyssey: for even so early had he seen that no other
writer could cast a javelin with half the force of Homer.
At this time, too, it was he found in that marvellous
production of the tinker of Elstow —"The Pilgrim's
Progress " —a sacred Iliad; and subsequently he made
the acquaintance of that class of works which we mlay




T'he Dame's and Grammar Schools.   31
designate, not inappropriately, our Scottish Martyrology
— " Howie's Scots' Worthies," "Naphthali, or the IHind
let loose," "The Cloud of Witnesses," &c.; blending,
in his mind, by a perfectly natural transition, the patriotic and religious struggles of the nation whose story
these works record. It was the tone and colouring that
the heroism of those humble men, "men who lived unknown till persecution dragged them into fame," had
given to the mind of Hugh Miller, that, when in 1831 he
came a stone-mason to the metropolis, so instinctively
led him to Dr. MLCrie's humble chapel. None of the
great men he saw in Edinburgh on this his first visit,
produced the same powerful impression upon the wanderer from Cromarty, as the biographer of Knox and
Melville.
The best part of his father's library had perished with
his parent. Still there were a few books, curious and
rare, that had been left behind. Among these were the
"Miracles of Nature and Art," to which we find Dr.
Johnson referring, in one of the dialogues chronicled
by Boswell, as scarce even in his day. It contained,
also, what to one who subsequently became so great
an admirer of Goldsmith must have been a volume of
no little interest, the only copy he ever saw of the
"Memoirs of a Protestant" condemned to the galleys
of France for his religion; a work which had been translated from the French by the author of the " Vicar of




32    The Dame's and Grammar Schools.
Wakefield" in his day of obscure literary drudgery,
and which exhibited the peculiar excellencies of his
style. Books of theology and books of travel made up
the rest of the collection. Flavel's works, Henry's Comlnentary, and Hutcheson on the Lesser Prophets mingled with the voyages of Anson, Drake, Dampier, and
Raleigh. It might not, indeed, be such a collection as
the Useful Knowledge Society would have altogether approved of placing in the hands of a youth; nevertheless,
we believe it to have been just about the kind of collection to suit the versatile tastes of young Miller. The aim
of the Useful Knowledge Society was no doubt excellent,
and, like most things done with good intentions, it was
productive of some beneficial results. It failed, however,
because it attempted to make of the rugged steep man
must climb in quest of knowledge, never to be scaled
without earnest toil and endeavour, a kind of macadamized road which all might travel with nearly equal ease
and equal progress. The error was indeed an error into
which the author of the " Novum Organon" fell, but the
delusion was not less pernicious because shared by Lord
Bacon. We do not, therefore, wonder that Hugh Miller
should have designated the works with which that so.
ciety sought to flood the nation "intolerable nuisances,
tenebrious stars, shedding their blighting influence on
youthhood."  About this time Hugh Miller's uncle,
James, put into his hands Blind Harry's "Wallace."




The Dame's and Grammar Schools.   33
When he had read how Wallace killed young Selbie,
the constable's son; how Wallace had fished the Irvine
Water; and how Wallace killed the churl with his own
staff in Ayr,-his uncle, with that dry humour that
makes a joke tell, said to him the book seemed rather a
rough sort of production, which he need read no more
of unless he liked; but young Hugh rather did likewhat boy ever did not?-to read of Wallace. He was
intoxicated with the fiery narratives of the blind bald
-all he had previously read of the marvels of foreign
parts, of the glories of modern battles, seemed tame and
commonplace; in a word, he was now a Scot. From the
story of Scotlancl's hero-guardian, he passed to the story
of her hero-king, and in Barbour's " Bruce" read the
glorious consummation of the work Wallace had so
gloriously begun.
After some twelve months' instruction from the old
lady who taught the alphabet in the antique style,
young Miller was duly transferred from the dame's
school to the grammar-school of Cromarty. The master
of that seminary was, what not seldom happens, a good
scholar, but by no means an energetic instructor; at
college he had distinguished himself in mathematics and
the languages, and if a boy wished to learn he could
certainly teach him; but if a boy wished to do nothing,
he was not required to do more than he wished. Ile
was in the habit of advising the parents or relations of
2*




34   The Dame's and Grammar Schools.
those whom he deemed his clever lads, to give them a
classical education; and, meeting one day with uncle
James, he urged the worthy harness-maker to put his
nephew into Latin. Uncle James, on data of his own,
having arrived at a similar conclusion to that of the
schoolmaster, his proteg6 was transferred from  the
English to the Latin form. In the Latin class, however, it would appear Hugh Miller had either forgotten
his axiom about the art of reading, or thought the story
of old Rome not worth the trouble of mastering a language to know. The account he has given of his progress in acquiring the Roman tongue is quite explicit
enough to show that, even with greater perseverance,
he was not likely to have become a rival to Cardinal
Mezzofante. "I laboured," says he, "with tolerable
diligence for a day or two, but there was no one to tell
me what the rules meant, or whether they really meant
anything; and when I got as far as penna, a pen, auid
saw how the changes were rung on one poor word
that did not seem to me of more importance in the old
language than the modern, I began miserably to flag
and to long for my English reading, with its amusing
stories and picture-like descriptions. The Rudiments
was by far the dullest book I had ever seen-it embodied no thought that I could perceive, and certainly
it contained no narrative. None of my class-fellows
were by any means bright; and yet, when the class,




The Dame's and Grammar Schools.   35
which the master very soon learned to distinguish as
the heavy class, was called up, I was generally found at
its nether end."  Thus was thrown away MIiller's only
chance of acquiring the tongue of Cicero and Caesar.
In "M'emorials of His Time," Lord Cockburn tells us
that, when at school, the beauty of no Roman word, or
thought, or action, ever occurred to him; nor did he
fancy Latin was of any use except to torture boys. In
youth-hood the future geologist and the future judge
seem to have thought very much alike on this matter.
Nor were their fates very different. If Miller was
generally at the nether end of his class, Cockburn never
got a prize, and (a more humiliating reminiscence than
any the stone-mason has recorded) once sat booby- at the
annual public examination. Some critics have lamented
Miller's inaptitude for Latin, as having left his style
destitute of the majesty and rhythmic cadence of 3Milton,
Gibbon, and Macaulay. In reply to such regrets, we
have to say that we should not desire to have seen his
style other than it is. We admire-who does not admire?
-that illustrious triad of English classics; but we certainly should not have more, but less admired Hugh
Mille.t had we discovered in his pages either the cadences of Cromwell's Latin secretary, the balanced antithesis of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,"
or the sonorous rhetoric of the historian of England.
Style, it should not be forgotten, consists quite as much




36    The Dame's and Grammar Schools.
in knowing exactly what to say, as in the excellence
with which it is said. That delicate taste, which spontanecusly rejects a false word with the same unerring
instinct that the musician rejects a false note, is something native, not something acquired. How else could
we account for the multitude of eminent linguists who
yet remain through life the most indifferent English
writers, and whose styles, so far from being musical,
are in a very special degree destitute of that mingled
strength and beauty, that rhythmic cadence, which the
admirers of the classics suppose the masterpieces of antiquity pre-eminently bestow?
Some of the wealthier inhabitants of Cromarty, dissatisfied with the small progress their boys were making
under the parish teacher, got up a subscription-school,
to which their children were transferred; and uncle
James, sharing the general impatience, sent his prot6ge
thither also. Unfortunately, though rather a clever
young man, this teacher proved quite as unsteady as he
was clever. Getting rid of him, a licentiate of the
church was procured, who promised well; but getting
immersed in the Baptist controversy, he resigned his
charge. A third teacher was got; but he too soon lost
health and heart, and in a labyrinth of perplexity also
gave up. Young Miller's opportunities for rambling
the coasts, and exploring the caves of Cromarty, Were,
in consequence of these mishaps, quite as great as before.




The Dame's and Grammar Schools.   37
The many wanderings in which he indulged at this time,
besides permanently forming his taste for the study of
natural science, and laying the foundation of that very
extensive and accurate knowledge of the marvels of
nature, which remain for ever unknown to unanointed
eyes, have enabled us to catch a glimpse of what was
the condition of the Highlands before the Highland
lairds had made the very notable discovery of how
much a sheep was better than a man, or had hushed
the hum of humanity in the glens of the north by the
cry of the curlew and the wail of the plover. Hugh
Miller's recollections of excursions into the interior
made by him at this early period, lift the veil which,
during fifty years now, has been falling over northern
society, and discover to us somewhat of the condition
of the Gael ere the march of modern improvement had
transformed" the land where Fingal fought and Ossian
sang" into sheep walks and deer forests. In these reminiscences, shadowy and imperfect as they may seem,
are not wanting traces of the germs of a transition-era;
the bloom of a new civilization loomed on the future of
that interesting people; but all has been suddenly and,
we fear, for ever arrested by a ruthless political economy,
which, during the last forty years, has realized itself
in the clearance system.
Schoolmaster, number four, has now been appointed
to the subscription-school of Cromarty-a combination,




38   The Dame's and Grammar Schools.
it would appear, of the coxcomb and the pedant, and
being such, naturally enough soon became obnoxious to
his pupils. Throughout life as little as possible of either
pedant or coxcomb, it is not surprising that Hugh Miller
did not keep long on the most amicable terms with the
new teacher. The antique pronunciation of the alphabet, which he had learned at the dame's school, still
clung to him, and in spelling he had to translate
the old Scotch into English sounds; thus rendering
the operation not only somewhat painful, but tedious.
Neither had he been originally taught to break the
words into syllables. The result of this neglect was a
serio-comic termination of his school career. "When
required one evening," says Hugh Miller, "to spell the
word awful, I spelt it word for word without break or
pause, as a-w-f-u-l.'No,' said the master,'a-w-aw, f-u-l
awful; spell again.' This seemed preposterous spelling;
it was sticking in an a, as I thought, into the middle of
a word where I was sure no a had a right to be; and
so I spelt it as at first. The master recompensed my
supposed contumacy with a sharp cut thwart the ears
with his tawse, and again demanded the spelling of the
word. I yet again spelt it as at first; but, on receiving
a second cut, I refused to spell it any more."  A fight
followed, which no sooner finished, than young Miller
takes down his cap from the pin and marches out of
school, never more returning to do homage to the




The Dame's and Grammar Schools.   39
Cromarty pedagogue-having got as little good fiom
teachers as probably ever did any man of equal eminence. Though, perhaps, there is nothing wonderful in
this, quite as often as otherwise it has happened that
those distinguished in after have been little distinguished in early life; while, in not a few instances,
early eminence has only been the presage of after
obscurity. Academical distinctions are by no means
badges of permanent celebrity. "In the world's broad
field of battle," the booby of the schools has not seldom
snatched the laurel from the dux. The distinguished
have thus no cause for presumption; the dullards not
much reason to despair.
Surrounded by images of the fleeting and evanescent,
whence comes that passionate desire to baffle mutation,
which so early takes possession of man, and leads him
on to all those devices to conquer time's tyrannic power,
and perpetuate, amidst every change, the memory of his
noblest and most cherished associations? Are we wrong
in assuming that it comes up from out those deeper
feelings of our nature that mysteriously ally the present
with all its changefulness to the eternally unchangeable?
In this instinct, if we may dare to call a thing so sacred
by such a name, lies the source of the sorrow with
which we interchange the farewell word with the friend
from whom we are about to part for ever, or take the
last fond look of the scenes to which we have bid a




40 The Dame's and Grammar Schools.
final adieu. A crisis had now arrived when Hugh
Miller and his comrades were about to partake of this
sacrament of sorrow. The band of which he had been
the leader, hitherto more famous for rambling than for
study, was about to break up; some going to sea, others
going south to complete their education. Before, however, they are scattered abroad, they shall erect a
memorial of their fraternity. The common school-book
story of the Persian shepherd, who, when raised by his
sovereign to high place in the empire, derived his chief
pleasure from contemplating in a secret apartment the
pipe, crook, and rude habiliments of his happier days,
suggested to their chief that the band should also have
its secret apartment, in which to store up for future
contemplation, their bayonet, pistol, pot, and pitcher.
The proposal was favourably received; and selecting a
solitary spot among the trees as a proper site, and procuring a spade and mattock, they began to dig. At
le-ngth the mysterious chamber was completed, a huge
pit, six feet, lined with spars. Unfortunately, while
exultant over their success, Johnstone, the forester of
the district, discovers the pit, and being altogether a
orne-idead man, not able to fancy it was meant for any
nobler purpose than the maiming of cattle, began to
talk about a proclamation and a reward for the appre.
he-sion of the excavators of the cattle-trap. Miller's
known acquaintance with all kinds of books on natiral




The Dame's and Grammar Schools.   41
history, led the forester to some very definite conclu.
sions about his share in the work. IHe was certain the
rascal had acquainted himself by books with the mode
of entrapping wild beasts in the forests abroad, of which
this trap for his master's cattle was a copy.  Thus
speedily confounded and brought to nought was this
humble memento of the joys and companionships of
youth, and the band left to console themselves with the
philosophic reflection that "the best laid schemes o'
mice and men gang aft agley."




CHAPTER  III.
THE QUARRY.
TuE hour has come when Hugh Miller must gird
himself in earnest for the real business of life. Nearly
all his early companions are gone from the scenes of
their boyish and youthful rambles; his mother, after a
long widowhood of eleven years, has entered anew into
the married state; and now, after tasting so much of
uncontrolled liberty and enjoyment, he finds himself
standing face to face with a life of labour and restraint.
The necessity of ever toiling from morn to night seemed
a dire one, and fain would he have avoided it.  But
there was no escape. Unwilling, however, that labour
should wield over him a rod entirely black, and remembering the long winter holidays of his cousin George,
he selected the profession of his cousin as his own,
trusting to find, like him, in the amusement of one-half
the year, compensation for the toils of the other half.
And yet, it was not altogether amusement which he
sought. Even at this time, notwithstanding what he
calls the antecedents of a sadly mis-spent boyhood, he




The Quarry.                  43
looked to higher than mere amusement, and dared to
believe that literature, and mayhap natural science, were,
after all, his proper vocation-a belief which, we doubt
not, that sadly mis-spent boyhood went a long way to
kindle. For the future geologist, we could scarcely
conceive a better training than it was the fortune of
Hugh Miller to I-eceive. What lectures on natural
science, by professor however eminent, were to be
compared to those rambles with uncle Sandy, in which
he became acquainted with nearly every organism about
Cromarty? It was the deep love of nature which this
early familiarity with its every feature inspired, that
threw around Hugh Miller's scientific treatises, so many
of the charms of poesy. When resolving to be a mason,
with literature and science as his ultimate aim, he also
resolved that much of his leisure should be consecrated
to the study of our best English authors. Such resolution fairly carried out, will place the stone-mason on a
vantage-ground which multitudes who are wasting their
guineas at the university will never attain.  The
grandest human intellects-are they not enshrined in
books? have they not shed their souls into those types
and that printer's ink? What is the art of printing, but
the art of making us familiar with the best thinking of
the wisest and the best in every age of the world's history?  Is there aught that men have done, devised, or
discovered, that is not to be found in books?  How




A44               The Quarry.
truly did Milton say, " a good book is the ethereal and
fifth essence, the life's blood of man embalmed and
treasured up for a life beyond life." In the existence of
books, and in the access which all men have to their
pages, we discover the hollowness and the pedantry of
the distinction made so much of in some quarters
between educated and uneducated men.
The resolution to become a stone-mason sorely vexed
both Hugh Miller's uncles, especially James; they had
expected to see their nephew entering and attaining
eminence in some one or other of the learned professions,
and here he was about to become a mere operative
mechanic like themselves. Though the labour of their
hands was their only wealth, they offered to assist him
in getting through college; nay, he might, if he chose,
come and live with them, the only condition exacted
being, that he should give himself as sedulously to his
lessons as, in the event of becoming a mason, he would
have to give himself to his trade. To the suggestions
and to the entreaties of both his uncles, with characteristic pertinacity, Hugh Miller demurred.  He had no
wish, no peculiar fitness, to be either lawyer or doctor;
and as for the church, that was too serious a direction
in which to look for one's bread, unless he could regard
himself as called to the church's proper work, which he
honestly could not. This deeply conscientious feeling
now interposing itself between him and a life of learned




The Quarry.                  45
leisure, we shall have occasion frequently to notice.
Nor were his uncles, though anxious to see their nephew
rise to eminence, at all desirous he should do violence
to any honourable and sacredly conscientious feeling.
Better, said they, be anything honest, however humble,
than an uncalled minister. Whatever may have been
the difference between the spiritual conditions of the
uncles and the nephew, here they shared in common a
hereditary conviction. The echo of the protest of old
Donald Roy against the intrusion of an unworthy, an
uncalled minister-which so startled the reverend intrusionists that they retreated precipitately from the scene
of their unhallowed work, much in the manner in which
we might suppose some guilty king of Israel to have
cowered and fled from the terrible warnings of the
prophet of the Lord-seemed yet to ring in their ears.
The Reformation let in upon the Scottish mind a clearer
light upon this topic, than was let in upon the mind of
all Christendom besides. The wholesale manufacture
of priests without any pretensions to peculiar fitness for
the sacred office, had disgusted the nation with the old
religion. The satiric muse of Sir David Lindsay of the
Mount preceded the sermons of Knox, in denouncing
the traffic in the holy office. This feeling, which Hugh
Miller has well said was the strength of the recent
conflict in the Scottish church, lay at the very basis of
the Scottish Reformation. In the instincts of the Spirit



46                 The Quarry.
ual children of that great revolution did the reformers
seek their consecration to the sacred office, not in
priestly manipulation.  Any other system  produces
parrots, not teachers; conduits, not fountains; men who
speak not that which they do know, but only that which
they have learned.
Slowly and reluctantly did Hugh Miller's uncles resign their nephew to a life of manual labour: at length,
however, consent was wrung from them, and their proteg6, whom they would gladly have sent to the university,
becomes a mason's apprentice, has agreed to serve for a
term of three years, and may now be seen arrayed, not
in the gown of the scholar, but in a suit of moleskin
and pair of heavy, hobnailed shoes.
With Miller's dreams of ambition there had also
mingled strange dreams of the luxury of a life of solitude.
Something of the same reluctance to mingle with the
world had taken possession of his mind, and seemed to
hold his spirit entranced, as compels the religious devotee
to shun the society of man, and to seek in the solitude
and seclusion of the cloister that deep and unfading repose that seems for ever denied to ordinary mortals.
In Miller's case, however, it was not religious feeling
that awakened this predilection, but simply "the timidity of the yet undeveloped mind that shrinks from grap.
pling with the stern realities of life, overshadowed by the
formidable competition of men already practised in the




The Quarry.                 47
struggle."  With such feelings mantling his spirit did
Hugh Miller, just turned of seventeen, commence his
labours in the quarry of Cromarty, the masons of his
native place combining both occupations. The necessity
that made him a quarrier taught him geology, and now
he is to reap the first fruits of his excursions with uncle
Sandy. Confined to this quarry, which formed part of
an upper member of the Lower Old Red Sandstone, he
was not long in discovering among its ancient strata the
same phenomena he had witnessed on the sea beach when
laid bare by the ebb tides. In his new occupation, and
working surrounded with the loftiest images of grandeur,
of beauty, and of liberty on every side, the young
spirit of the future geologist speedily shook off the
shrinking and timidity with which it had been seized,
and the remembrance of how unworthy were his fears
and how gloriously they had all been falsified, inspired
the apostrophe to labour with which he has adorned his
"Schools and Schoolmasters."  " Noble, upright, selfrelying toil! Who that knows thy solid worth and
value would be ashamed of thy hard hands, and thy
soiled vestments, and thy obscure tasks,-thy humble
cottage, and hard couch, and homely fare! Save for
thee and thy lessons, man in society would everywhere
sink into a.sad compound of the fiend and the wild
beast; and this fallen world would be as certainly a
moral as a natural wilderness."




The Quarry.
The ills he so much dreaded on entering the school of
labour had proved only imaginary, but some real evils fol
lowed his toil which he had not calculated upon. Even
so early as this, his seventeenth year, do we discover
premonitions of the malady which, in the maturity of his
powers, so suddenly called him hence. The seeds of that
mysterious combination of physical and mental disease,
which at length did its work in so very terrible a manner
in his solitary chamber in Portobello, were sown in the
quarry of Cromarty. In page 149 of his "Schools and
Schoolmasters," Hugh Miller thus describes his appearance at the age of seventeen. " Short, seven inches, of
my ultimate stature; and my frame-cast more at the
time in the mould of my mother than in that of the robust sailor, whose'back,' according to the description of
one of his comrades,'no one had ever put to the ground'
— as slim and loosely knit; and I used to suffer much
from wandering pains in the joints, and an oppressive feeling about the chest, as if crushed by some great weight.
I became subject, too, to frequent fits of extreme
depression of spirits, which took almost the form of
a walking sleep,-results, I believe, of excessive fatigue,
— and during which my absence of mind was so
extreme, that I lacked the ability of protecting mysel;
against accident, in cases the most simple and ordinary.
Besides other injuries, I lost at different times during
the first few months of my apprenticeship, when in




The Quarry.                 49
these fits of partial somnambulism, no fewer than seven
of my finger nails."  In some of the symptoms here
enumerated there was nothing peculiar, nothing alarming, being incidental for the most part to youthhood.
But that absence of mind, so extreme and so painfal,
was a symptom calling for the exercise of peculiar care;
and though he experienced no after-return of it until long
subsequently to the period of his apprenticeship, it is
manifest the disease had never been got rid of, but had
continued lurking in his system, and, like a traitor who
has stolen into a beleaguered fortress, only waited the
favourable moment to accomplish its purposes of destruction.
Uncle David, by whom Hugh Miller was initiated
nto the mysteries of mason-craft, was a person of plodling, persevering industry, a most conscientious workman, and something of a character. At first he was of
opinion that his friend would do but little credit to him
as a workman; but in the course of a few months, he
acquired the mastery over the mallet, and one morning
astonished the old man by setting himself to compete
with him, hewing nearly two feet of pavement for his
one. In the midst of the oppressive toils of the operative,
young Miller was assailed by the temptations which the
drinking usages of our country are constantly casting in
the path of virtue, and taking his own statement as not
exaggerated, stood on the brink of a very perilous pre3




St                 The Quarry.
cipice, from which the love he bore to learning only
saved him. Here is his narrative of the crisis:-W-"' When
overwrought, and in my depressed moods, I learned to
regard the ardent spirits of the dram-shop as high
luxuries; they gave lightness and energy to both body
and mind, and substituted for a state of dulness and
gloom, one of exhilaration and enjoyment. Usquebaugh
was simply happiness doled out by the glass, and sold
by the gill." On going home one evening, after having
assisted at drinlking a "royal founding pint," Miller
found on opening the pages of a favourite author, the
letters dancing before his eyes, and that he was no longer able to master the sense. Disgusted with himself
for this indulgence, in that hour he resolved never again
to sacrifice his capacity for intellectual enjoyment to a
drinking usage, and, through God's help, he was enabled
to hold by the determination. We have sometimes
wondered that one who had himself confessedly so narrow an escape from the ruin that awaits the confirmed
tippler, saw nothing more in the temperance movement,
than " a useful fanaticism." The question was, however,
one which he had never studied for himself, and probably looking at it only in the light of the characters of
its chief apostles in the metropolis, the self-glorification,
egotism, and enormous vanity of these leading lights
disgusted him, as they might very easily have disgiusted
a man with even a less nice sense of propriety than [Ilugh




The Quarry.                  51
Miller possessed. Those who are ever mistakilng the
blowing of their own penny trumps for a music which
the world should hush itself to hear, are more likely to
find men of the intellectual calibre of the author of the
"Old Red Sandstone," laughing at than listening to them.
In nothing, perhaps, is the modern mind more favourably distinguished from the mind of antiquity, than in
its love of nature. Amongst the ancients, the passion
for art swallowed up all admiration of natural scenery.
Even Homer does not impress us with any vivid love
for nature as existing in his soul; and we have the
authority of Humboldt, in " Cosmos," for saying that no
description has been transmitted to us from antiquity
of the eternal snow of the Alps, reddened by the evening glow or the morning dawn, of the beauty of the
blue ice of the glaciers, or of the sublimity of Swiss
natural scenery, although statesmen and generals, with
men of letters in their retinue, continually passed through
Helvetia on their road to Gaul; and even Julius Cssar,
the foremost man of all his time, when returning to his
legions in Gaul, employed himself, while passing over the
Alps, in preparing a grammatical work, without once
troubling himself with the marvels of nature with which
he was everywhere surrounded. It is not a little peculiar,
and would almost seem to indicate that sympathy with
the beautiful and sublime in the world around us is an
emanation of Christian sentiment. So soon as Chris.




52                The Quarry.
tianity had shed a gleam of its glory over the darkness
of Paganism, we find this love kindled in the breasts of
its disciples, and a taste for solitude and contemplation
taking possession of some of its finest minds, and colouring the style and language of the times.  The tendency
of the Christian mind to prove from the order of the
universe and the beauty of nature the greatness and
goodness of the Creator, gave rise to a taste for natural
description, of which it may not be amiss to cull a few
examples from the work already alluded to.  Basil, in
his Homilies on the tIexahemeron, describes the mildness
of the constantly clear nights of Asia Minor, where,
according to his expression, the stars, "those everlasting
blossoms of heaven," elevate the soul from the visible
to the invisible. When, in the myth of the creation, he
would praise the beauty of the sea, he describes the
aspect of the boundless ocean-plain in all its vaiied and
everchanging conditions, "gently moved by the breath
of heaven altering its hue as it reflects the beams of
light in their white, blue, or roseate hues, and caressing
the shores in peaceful sport."   We meet with the same
sentimental and plaintive expressions regarding nature
in the writings of Gregory of Nyssa, the brother of Basil
the Great. "W Vhen," he exclaims, "I see every ledge
of rock, every valley and plain, covered with new-born
verdure, the varied beauty of the trees, and the lilies
at my feet decked by nature with the double charms




The Quarry.                  53
of perfume and of colour; when in the distance I see
the ocean, towards which the clouds are onward borne,
my spirit is overpowered by a sadness not wholly devoid
of enjoyment. When in autumn the fruits have passed
away, the leaves have fallen, and the branches of the
trees, dried and shrivelled, are robbed of their leafy
adornments, we are instinctively led, amid the everlasting and regular change in nature, to feel the harmony
of the wondrous powers pervading all things.  He who
contemplates them with the eye of the soul, feels the
littleness of man amid the greatness of the universe."
Whilst the Greek Christians were led, by their adoration
of the Deity through the contemplation of his works,
to a poetic delineation of nature, they were, at the same
time, during the earlier ages of their new belief, and
owing to the peculiar bent of their minds, full of contempt for all works of human art.  Thus Chrysostom
abounds in passages like the following:-" If the aspect
of the colonnades of sumptuous buildings would lead
thy spirit astray, look upwards to the vault of heaven,
and around thee on the open fields, in which herds
graze by the water's side. Who does not despise all the
creations of art, when, in the stillness of his spirit, he
watches with admiration the rising of the sun as it
pours its golden light over the face of the earth; when
resting on the thick grass beside the murmuring spring,
or beneath the sombre shade of a thick and leafy




54                The Quarry.
tree, the eye rests on the far —receding and hazy dis.
tance!"
These passages serve to  corroborate the opinion
we have ventured to state respecting the connection
of Christianity with the revival of a genuine love
of nature. We may not trace here the varying fortunes of this feeling, or mark with any degree of precision the epochs in Europe's history when it waxed
or waned. It is, however, impossible to overlook the
important influence modern poets have exerted in rekindling this admiration. Pre-eminent amongst these
for the influence they have exerted, is William Wordsworth. At an epoch when Europe was steeped in a
materialistic philosophy, and when  a sneering  and
critical spirit mocked at all that was deep or sincere, his
was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, calling men
to return from their false worships and literary idolatry,
and, renouncing the gods of their poetical pantheon,
listen anew to the melody of the voice of nature, which
even now in the old age of the world sounds fresh and
solemn as on creation's dawn. Wordsworth more than
any other poet, if, perhaps, we may except Dante, has
seized the evanescent points of nature's beauty.  The
daisy with its eye of gold looking up into the sky
o'erhead, the solitary star shedding its reflex on the
November ice, the mists that mantled his native mountains or slumbered over the stillness of the lakes, all




The Quarry.                  55
that ever-shifting yet beautiful scenery midst which he
dwelt was familiar to him, not merely in outline, but in
each minutest detail.
Quite independently of Wordsworth's influence, though
after a similar manner, had Iugh Mliller become a
worshipper in the same temple; amidst the serenity of
the external world his mind became attuned to nature's
harmonies; the scenes amidst which he laboured were,
even more than books, the ministrants to his geniusthe hidden manna on which his spiritual nature fed.
He communed with rock, flower, and stream, until each
inanimate object was clothed in attributes and surrounded with associations that awoke within him feelings of almost human affection. Quitting the longwrought quarries of his native town, and crossing the
Moray Frith, Hugh Miller began to work in one recently
opened in an inferior member of the Old Red Sandstone.
He had not been long employed on this northern shore,
ere he discovered by the hill of Eathie, a liasic deposit,
amazingly rich in organisms. The description he has
given of this early discovery, will, we think, amply sustain all we have just said of his sympathy with nature,
while illustrating the range and delicacy of his descriptive powers. "I can scarce hope to communicate to the
reader, after the lapse of so many years, an adequate
idea of the feeling of wonder which the marvels of this
deposit excited in my mind, wholly new as they were




56                The Quarry.
to me at'the time. Even the fairy lore of my first
formed library-that of the birchen box-had impressed
me less. The general tone of the colouring of these
written leaves, though dimmed by the action of untold
centuries, is still very striking. The ground is invariably of a deep neutral gray, verging on black, while the
flattened organisms, which present about the same degree of relief as one sees in the figures of an embossed
card, contrast withit in tints that vary firom opaque to
silvery white, and from pale yellow to an umbry or chestnut-brown. Groups of ammonites appear as if drawn in
white chalk; clusters of a minute undescribed bivalve
are still plated with thin films of the silvery nacre; the
mytilaceae usually bear a warm tint of yellowish brown,
and must have been brilliant shells in their day; gryphites and oysters are always of a dark gray, and plaz
giostomae ordinarily of a blueish or neutral tint. On
some of the leaves curious pieces of incident seem
recorded. We see fleets of minute terebratula3 that
appear to have been covered up by some sudden deposit
from above, when riding at their anchors; and whole
argosies of ammonites that seem to have been wrecked
at once by some untoward. accident, and sent crushed
and dead to the bottom. Assemblages of bright black
plates, that shine like pieces of japan work, with
numerous parallelogrammical scales, bristling with nail.
like points, indicate where some armed fish of the old




The Quarry.                   57
ganoid order lay down and died, and groups of belem.
nites, that lie like heaps of boarding-pikes thrown carelessly on a vessel's deck on the surrender of the crew,
tell where sculls of cuttle-fishes of the ancient type had
ceased to trouble the waters. I need scarce add that
these spear-like belemnites formed the supposed thunderbolts of the deposit. Lying athwart some of the pages
thus strangely inscribed, we occasionally find, like the
dark hawthorn leaf in Bewick's well-known vignette,
slim-shaped leaves coloured in deep umber; and branches
of extinct pines, and fragments of strangely-fashioned
ferns, form their more ordinary garnishing. Page after
page, for tens and hundreds of feet together, repeat the
same wonderful story. The great Alexandrian library,
with its tomes of ancient literature, the accumulation of
long ages, was but a meagre collection —not less puny
in bulk than recent in date-compared with this marvellous library of Scotch Lias." This description were
of itself enough to indicate that here was a mind not
meant to vegetate among the flats and shallows of science,
but possessing sufficient strength to scale her loftiest
heights, or penetrate her most abysmal depths and
subterranean recesses, clothing the while every nook
and cranny, and mantling even her sternest cliffs with
the enamel of its own gorgeous and picturesque vocabulary.
The profession of a mason had been chosen by Hugh
3*




58                The Quarry.
Miller because of its winter leisure; and now his first
winter is come, his year of labour is over, and the next
three months are all his own.  His cousin George is
about to visit his father-in-law, an aged shepherd
residing in the upper recesses of Strathearron. Hugh
is invited to accompany him, and gladly he accepts the
invitation. The road from Cromarty to Strathearron
was a dreary moor unopened by any public way. The
journey enabled him  to see something more of the
devastating influence of the clearance system. The
noonday refreshment of the cousins was eaten in an
uninhabited valley, among the ruins of fallen cottages,
where once had dwelt some of the best swordsmen in
Ross, lost to Scotland by a compulsory emigration.
Cousin George came out strongly against the lairds. On
arriving at the cottage of their friend, the shepherd, a
highlander of large proportions, but hard and thin, and
worn by the cares and toils of at least sixty winters, sat
moodily beside the fire. Disease had smitten his flocks,
and his mind was filled with strange forebodings. He
had gone out after nightfall on a previous evening to a
dark hollow in which many of his sheep had died. The
rain had ceased a few hours before, and a smart frost
had set in that filled the whole valley with a wreath of
silvery vapour, dimly lighted by the thin fragment of a
moon that appeared as if resting on the hill top; when
suddenly, the figure of a man, formed as of heated metal,




The Quarry.                     59
sprung out of the darkness, and after stalking over the
surface of the fog for a few brief seconds, as suddenly
disappeared, leaving an evanescent trail of flame. The
old shepherd had merely seen one of those shooting
lights that in mountain districts so frequently startle the
night traveller; but the apparition now filled his whole
mind, as one, vouchsafed from the spiritual world, of
strange and frightful portent —
"   meteor of the night of distant years
That flashed unnoticed, save by wrinkled eld
Musing at midnight upon prophecies."
This visit enabled Hugh to view in the forest of Corrychalgan the last remains of that arboreous condition
of our country, to which the youngest of our geological
formations, the peat mosses, bear such significant witness, which still largely existing as the condition of the
northern countries of Europe, remains to attest, more
than even the records of history, the youthfulness of
our civilization.
Returned from his highland tour, he made, or per
haps, to speak more correctly, he renewed acquaintance
with William Ross. Five years before, Ross had come
from the neighbo'iring parish of Nigg, an apprentice to
a house-painter; but though known to each other, there
was then too great a disparity between them for friend



60                The Quarry.
ship. William was a lad of genius, drew truthfully,
had a nice sense of the beautiful, and possessed the true
poetic faculty; but of melancholy temperament and
extremely diffident; thin and pale, fair hair, flat c;hest,
and stooping figure, already a drooping and withered
flower; in seven years afterwards, he is in his grave.
Hie had been unfortunate in his parents; his mother,
though of a devout family of the old Scottish type, was
an aberrant specimen-she had fallen in early youth,
and had subsequently married an ignorant, half-imbecile
labourer, with whom she passed a life of poverty and
unhappiness; of this unpromising marriage William
was the eldest child. From neither of his parents did
he derive his genius. His maternal grandmother and
aunt were, however, excellent Christian women. With
them William had lived from an early age. His boyhood had been that of a poet; he had loved to indulge
in day-dreams in the solitude of a deep wood beside his
grandmother's cottage, had learned to write verses, and
draw landscapes, as no one in that locality had written
or drawn before; and, as the nearest approach to an
artist in those primitive regions was a house-painter,
William was despatched to Cromarty, to cultivate his
taste for the fine arts, papering rooms and lobbies, and
painting railings and wheel-barrows. The house-painter
and the stone-mason having once fairly re-established
old recognizances, the new friend went a long way to




The Quarry.                 61
supply the gap which the breaking up of the band to
which we have alluded, left in Hugh Miller's acquaintanceship. In their converse together, they beat over
all the literature with which they were in common
acquainted, and though the literary tastes of William
were more circumscribed than the tastes of Hugh, in
the field of nature both perfectly harmonized. Many a
moonlight walk had the friends together, visiting after
nightfall the glades of the surrounding woods, listening
to the night breeze as it swept sullenly along the pine
tops.  It is deeply interesting to note the marked
difference in the kind of enjoyment which the youths
drew from those lofty images of the sublime and the
beautiful with which they were equally enamoured.
Hugh Miller, full of hope, joy, and life, yearning for
the large excitement the coming years would yield,
already looks out upon nature as a companion with
whom he is destined to enjoy at once a lengthened and
most familiar intercourse. William Ross already carried
about with him the consciousness that, in a very special
manner, here there was for him no continuing city.
The shadow of the cypress shed its sadness into his soul.
The joy with which the contemplation of nature filled
him, was overcast by the melancholy foreboding that
soon her raptures would be for other eyes than his.
And yet, ere William has gone to the silent land, as the




62                The Quarry.
German'Salis has it, we shall meet him valiantly doing
battle with labour against capital in the metropolis of
our country.




CHAPTER IV.
THE BOTHIY,
IN nothing does Hugh Miller's freshness, strength,
and perfect freedom from conventionalism, come more
clearly out, than in the unreserved disclosure of all that
was really interesting or peculiar in his early career:
never do we detect any attempt to dress up the story of
his life in a manner that would indicate a wish to leave
some other than the actual impression facts would produce. That tendency to shun the homely for the grand
(the besetting sin of so many writers), never once
seduced him from his simplicity. His experiences of life
were occasionally sufficiently humble, and occasionally
brought him in contact with the most vicious forms
social and domestic existence have assumed in modern
times. The bothy may appear to some a very vulgar
place, out of which it was by no means likely any man
of genius or science should come, and where if unfortunate enough ever to have been, it might just be as well
not to shock delicate nerves by saying anything of its
rough ways. Hugh Miller had, however, undertaken




64                 The Bothy.
to give the world a history of his " Schools and Schoolmasters," and had he confined himself to the genteel, we
had probably never possessed his autobiography; his
experiences of the conventionally genteel, especially
in early life, being of the very slenderest kind. All
honour to thee, brave one, for thy perfect unreserve on
this matter!  Now that public attention is being
gradually awakened to this colossal social wrong, by
which nearly every usage of civilized life is held in
abeyance, and man almost reverts to the savage state,
thy views are worth a waggon-load of the grandiloquence
of sentimental philanthropists, who find in talking about
the grievances of labour a cheap mode of establishing a
reputation as the poor man's friends. Of old, the w6rkman required to be warned against demagogues of his
own order: now he stands in nearly equal, if not greater
danger from demagogues of the genteeler sort, who
affecting a great interest in his well-being, are in point of
fact only making his grievances, real or supposed, the
rostrum from which to acquire the little passing personal
notoriety they are silly enough to mistake for fame.
We left Hugh Miller enjoying his winter holidays
with William Ross. The holiday season is now over.
Winter with its moonlight walks and moody reveries is
gone, and spring has come again, bringing with it its
round of labour-quarrying, building, and stone-cutting.
But before midsummer work has failed uncle David, his




The Bothy.                  65
squad is thrown out of employment, and after a most
vexatious interregnum, the old man, now during more
than a quarter of a century an employer of labour,
is reluctantly compelled to become a journeyman.
Misery, it is said, makes man acquainted with strange
bed-fellows, and this misfortune of his master, whom
Hugh was too loyal to leave in the hour of adversity,
first brought him into contact with that degrading form
of social life known as the bothy system. It was at
some twenty miles' distance on the Conon shore, one
of those lovely spots where, as Heber has it, "every
prospect pleases, and only man is vile," that he entered
this new and noisy school. Despite the criticism of
Foster, there is much if there be not even absolute
truth in the poet's aphorism, "the proper study of mankind is man;" and here certainly man might be studied
to very great advantage by the competent student. In
old and settled societies like our own, nearly all of character and peculiarity is either taken out of the mass of
the population, or is veiled with so thick a crust of conventionalism that it is well nigh impossible to discover
its original features. The liberalizing influence of travel
springs mainly from its power to counteract this sinister
result of an old civilization. The wanderer in foreign
parts gets emancipated from the tyrannic power of
custom, the edge is taken off his overweening admiration
of the conventional, and he is enabled to contemplate




66                 The Bothy.
his fellow-man without those accessories through whictI
alone many deign to look at him at all. Very graphically
has John Kitto described this influence. " Oh! how it has
delighted me," says Kitto, " to take a man distinguished
firom his brother man by a thousand outward circumstances, which make him appear at the first view almost
as another creature; and after knocking off his strange
hat, his kullah, or his turban; after helping him off
with his broadcloths, his furs, or his muslins; after
clipping his beard, his pigtail, or his long hair; after
stripping away his white, black, brown, red, or yellow
skin, to come at last to the very man, the very son
of Adam, and to recognize by one touch of nature, one
tear, one laugh, one sigh, one upward or downward
look, the same old, universal heart-the same emotions,
feelings, passions, which have animated every human
being, from the equator to the poles, ever since that
day on which the first man was sent forth from Paradise."
Hugh Miller had not seen foreign parts, had not mingled
with men of many nations, tongues, and peoples; the
turbaned and pigtailed sons of the Orient were known to
him only by report; but his peculiar experiences in the
bye-paths of social life at home, taught him nearly as
much as most men learn abroad. The minuteness of
his acquaintance with Scottish life, especially in its
lowlier forms, was probably never surpassed. In collecting his Border minstrelsy, Scott had indeed made him.




The Bothy.                  67
self pretty familiar with that life in even its humblest
walks; its "lights and shadows" have been painted, as
Christopher North alone could paint their glory and their
gloom. Burns knew its every aspect, from its most
exalted to its most abject phase; and whether in the
halls of the noble, carrying duchesses off their feet, or
careering on the crest of riot in the rag-castle of Poosie
Nancy, seemed equally at home. But neither Scott,
Wilson, nor Burns, was ever the victim of that most
vicious of all social arrangements, the barrack life; in
lMiller's youth only in its infancy, but unhappily now too
generally diffused over Scotland. The impression which
that life produced upon the prudent, studious, contemplative youth was far from pleasant; and though the
bothy was not destitute of a certain amount of boisterous
hilarity, life in such circumstances was in reality sad.
3Say we hope that Hugh Miller's experiences upon this
topic will be duly weighed and pondered by the friends
of social reform, and that the remembrance of such a
man having been for a time the victim of so atrocious a
system, will stimulate their efforts in its destruction?
From reason's earliest dawn until reason was no more,
Hugh Miller seems to have been encompassed with a
strange machinery of the wild and supernatural. Go
where he would, he was perpetually meeting some
ministrant to that element of the mysterious, which so
often sheathes in clouds and darkness the flame of reason,




68                The Bothy.
leaving man the prey of gorgons, spectres, and chimeras
dire. It might have been supposed that bothy-life was
not likely to bring the young mason in contact with
anything more than the riotous glee and practical jok.
ing of the barrack; but it was not so. He had repaired to
a hayloft, the only place of shelter he could find on the
first night passed in this new school; and flinging himself
down in his clothes on a heap of straw, was soon fast
asleep: but unaccustomed to so rough a couch, he awoke
about midnight, and took his station at a small window
that looked out upon a dreary moor, a ruinous chapel,
and solitary burying-ground. The evening was calm
and still, bnt dark for the season; when to the great
astonishment of the solitary tenant of the loft, a light
flickered among the grave-stones and ruins —now seen
-now hid, like the revolving lantern of a light-house;
and what seemed a continuous screaming was distinctly
heard. The light, quitting the churchyard, came downwards across the moor in a straight line, though tossed
with many a wave and flourish. In a moment one of
the servant girls of the mansion-house came rushing out
half-dressed, and awakening the workmen, summoned
them immediately to rise,-" mad Bell had broken out
again." The men instantly arose, and as they appeared
at the door, were joined by the solitary watcher from
above; but on striking out a few paces into the moor,
the maniac was found in the custody of a couple of men




The Bothy.                  69
dragging her to her own cottage, about half a mile
away. On entering her hut they proceeded to bind her
down to the damp floor. Hugh Miller and a comrade
simultaneously and successfully interfered-the maniac
was not bound. Her song ceased for a moment; and
turning round, presenting full to the light the stronglymarked features of a woman about fifty-five, surveying
the youths who had spoken good for her with a keen
scrutinizing glance, she emphatically repeated the sacred
text, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain
mercy."
Next morning, neatly dressed, and save for her
marked features scarcely recognizable, Bell introduced
herself to her benefactor —had come to consult him
about the deep matters of the soul. The abstruse questions connected with the doctrines of the fall and
original sin, at this hour exerting and exhausting the
ingenuity and the erudition of the profoundest theologians,
had come up before poor Isabel in all their force. The
mason and the maniac had both read Flavel, and both
appeared to have about equally understood his questionable metaphysics; the former, however, had the important advantage over the latter, of discovering that
Flavel was nearly as much in the dark upon the subject
as themselves.  But tlough Isabel had not fathomed
the doctrines of the fall, or of human depravity, what
was capable of being known appears to have been




70                The Bothy.
pretty well understood by her. Her knowledge of the
highland character, her perception whence sprung the
sins and the sorrows of the Celt, was incomparably
superior to many much saner people.  The ancient
highlanders, said mad Bell, were bold faithful dogs,
ready to die for their masters, and prepared -to do at
their bidding, like other dogs, the most cruel and wicked
actions, and as dogs often were they treated. The pious
martyrs of the south had contended in God's behalf,
whereas the poor highlanders of the north had contended
in behalf of their chiefs; and so while God had been very
kind to the descendants of his servants, the chiefs had
been very unkind to the descendants of theirs. Bell's
opinion may seem a harsh one; but we do not see
that a much different estimate of the Gael is formed
by many who affect to mourn the depopulation of the
Highlands, but whose sorrow, when analyzed, simply
resolves itself into a regret that certain fighting tools
are gone from beneath the shadow of their native
mountains to hide themselves in the heart of the Australian bush, or the backwoods of Canada. Theology,
tradition, social science, political economy, formed the
themes of many other conversations between Isabel
Lauchlan and Hugh Miller. The mercy shown her in
the hour of her distress was never forgotten, and when
the mason had gone to the metropolis in the pursuit of
his profession, the maniac walked some twenty miles to




The Bothy.                  71
see his mother in Cromarty. Her end was a melancholy
one; fording the Conon in such a mood as that was in
which HIugh had first met her, she was swept away by
the stream. Thus perished the sister of one of the
ablest and most accomplished ministers of the north.
Hugh Miller's speculations upon the peculiarities of
professional character, which barrack-life enabled him to
study with advantage, are ingenious and interesting,
and, so far as concerns the specific profession to which
he belonged, just. It is only when he throws his plummet over other branches of labour, and seeks to gauge
the differentia between them and his own peculiar
craft, that the passion for analogical reasoning seduces
him into rather imperfect, hasty, and we may add,
juvenile generalization. We do not blame him for
having cherished the opinion that his own profession
is more favourable than any other to the development
of genius. We believe that for minds such as his own,
it 1really is so. Had Hugh Miller become a banker's
clerk some dozen years before he entered the bank at
Cromarty, he would probably not have been so great a
man. His was cne of those natures that seem rather
dwarfed than developed under any specially-forced
culture. For those meditative observant powers for
which his writings are so pre-eminently distinguished,
we should seek in vain a better training than they re.
ceived amidst those marvels of nature, in whose com



72                 The Bothy.
panionship so much of his life as an operative was passed.
But while this peculiar training gave his intellect and
character a kind of granitic strength and tenacity on
the one side, it left it only partially developed on the
other.
A point on which he obviously piqued himself here
became his weakness.  Indiscriminate eulogists praise
Hugh Miller for the resolute way in which he stood
aloof from all trades' unions. It is our belief that had
he mingled but a little with these associations, instead
of standing aside scanning their weaknesses with the
most lynx-eyed scrutiny, though he might probably
not have reaped much profit as a handicraftsman from
descending into the arena where labour and capital
waged their all too-unequal strife, he would have taken
lessons in a school, the want of whose lessons was a
much greater disadvantage in after life than the neglect
of that classical lore in which he cut but so sorry a
figure in the Grammar School of Cromarty. His general
estimate of the worth of trades' unions might not be
far from just; but while he would have exhibited more
of the temper of the philosopher, had he been a little
more tolerant of their failings, and a little more kind
to their faults, he would also have enjoyed the opportunity of studying men in masses, and of noting the
influence a dominant idea exercises upon a host of minds,
each differently constituted from the other, yet all an.iI




The Bothy.                  73
mated by the same potent impulse. The result of such
experiences upon a mind so pre-eminently capable of
being taught by experience, but so little capable of being
taught by aught else, would doubtless have been, that
while retaining in undiminished power the capacity for
appreciating with admirable precision and comprehensiveness the historic epochs through which a people
have passed, he should no longer have failed to comprehend the exigencies of acted history. We do not
think he was ever very far astray, in the matter of
principle, in any of the conflicts into which he sometimes entered with so much vehemency and maintained with so much ability; but without losing an
atom of independence, had Hugh Miller ever been a
director, instead of always an opponent of trades' unions,
it would have taught him greater tenderness for the
exigencies of a church-leader, by enabling him better
to comprehend the difficulties of such a position.
Some haughty ecclesiastic may, perchance, be disposed to smile at the comparison of great things with
small, implied in the presumption of any analogy between the direction of a trade's union, and the leadership
of a clerical confederation. If so, let such remember
the historian of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire" was not ashamed to confess, that to his very
modest military attainments as a captain of Hampshire militia, he owed a more definite conception of
4




74                 The Bothy.
the phalanx and the legion, than to all his reading
besides; nor can we doubt that the vividness with which
Lord Macaulay has portrayed the growth, struggles, and
itsrigues of political parties, springs in no small measure
from having himself mingled in the strifes of faction.
Hugh Miller could study, estimate, comprehend, but
could not well co-operate with his compeers. In this
primary fact is to be found the key to the partial
estrangement that latterly existed between himself and
certain leading lights of the Free Church. It was
scarcely possible that two so very differently constituted
minds as those of Candlish and Miller, should long have
been found in harmony with each other. Candlish the
man of the hour, always equal to the occasion, ready to
grapple with any emergency, the most dexterous tactician Scottish ecclesiastical polemics ever produced,what had that musing, contemplative, stubborn stonecutter, whom the drift-currents of the moral world had
separated from his native North and set down in the
editorial chair of the Witness newspaper, in common
with the agile church leader, skilled in the ways of
diplomacy, an adept in "circumlocution and the language of friendly intercourse?"  Nothing-absolutely
nothing! As speculative writers on church principles,
had they compared notes, they might not, indeed, have
been found far apart; but upon almost all the modes in
which these principles were to be made dominant, their




The Bothy.                   75
mindls Cwere nearly the antipodes of eachr other. And
without robbing either of the guerdon justly cndue to
great talents perseveringly and honourably exerted in
a most honourable cause, it may be acknowledged, that
while to Miller belongs the credit of that far-reaching
sagacity which comprehended at a glance the future of
the Free Church, and could define its peculiar sphere
with an almost mathematical precision; to Candlish
belongs the honour of having breathed into what might
else have proved a mere inert mass of pretentious
ecclesiastical machinery, the energy and resolution of
his own dauntless, and restless as it is dauntless, spirit;
and if occasionally, on field days, he boasted a larger
muster-roll than was altogether warranted by facts, let
men forget his error in his devotion-the ends he sought
were at least always noble, if the means by which he
sought them were not always equal to the ends. And
yet, perhaps, it was well the impetuosity of Candllish was
tempered and kept in check by the sagacity of Miller.
Through a dearth of men either able or willing, we do
not exactly presume to say which, Dr. Candlish has been
necessitated to do much of a kind of work in church
courts, usually left by a leader to his lieutenants. The
consequence has been, that, occasionally forgetting the
more exalted in the more subordinate position, he has
been seen, as sometimes Napoleon's best generals were
seen, compromising the common safety by a special im.




76                The Bothy.
petuosity. In point of fact, for a commander-in-chief he
mingles too much in the ranks, and as a natural consequence, the smoke and tumult of the battle occasionally
deprive him of that clearness of vision and serenity of
soul so indispensable in the direction of all great contests, whether on the tented field or on the floor of
a general assembly.




CHAPTER V.
EDINBURGH.
WHEN just attaining his majority, work failing in the
North, Hugh Miller, bidding adieu to his beloved mother
and his worthy uncles, sailed from his native town for
the south of Scotland. On the evening of the fourth
day from losing sight of the hill of Cromarty, he landed
at Leith. After a somewhat hasty survey of a small
property he was unfortunate enough to possess-a property not of the advantageous sort with which the
freehold societies profess to invest the working classes,
but a property reminding us rather of Rip Van Winkle's
farm, the most pestilent bit of ground in the whole parish-Hugh Miller proceeded at once to the Scottish
capital. While sauntering along the streets, admiring
with a fresh eye the picturesque groups of ancient
buildings with which that most magnificent of cities
abounds-as yet looking but little to the population, he
was laid hold of by a slim lad in pale moleskins: it was
William Ross; and during what remained of that night,
the stone-cutter and the house-painter explored the city




78                   Edinburgh.
together.  With that true eye for the beautiful and the
sublime, whether in art or nature, which never failed
him, Hugh Miller at once detected what gives to Edinburgh its peculiar fascination. Like Jerusalem  of old,
beautiful for situation, that beauty is superlatively enhanced by the circumstance, that to the stranger it discloses at a glance, not one, but two cities, a city of the
past and a city of the present.  When Hugh Miller
first visited Edinburgh, its ancient features were inl a
state of considerably more perfect pleselrvation tllatl
they now are. Many mementos of thle renown of centuries have disappeared within the last thirty-five years.
No small portion of the old town now exists only in thle
recollections of the antiquary. As in tile country, tlhe
small crofting of other days has given pl)ace to the large
farm, so the memorials of her antiquity wityll w]ich
Edina was erewhile so thickly studded, hlavee, inl sonle of
their most interesting featsures, been swept away by tlhe
march of modern improvement, whicll is yet in many
instances not improvement.  All old enougll to remenlllber the vanished glories, whose places tllese so-called inprovements have usurped, are filled with feelings much
akin to those which inspired such of thle captivity of
Judah as, recollecting the glory of thle first tenmple, lived
to witness and to share in the erection of the second.
Through the good offices of a fiiend, Hugh /Miller
procured work at a manor-house then being erected in




Edirburgh.                 79
the vicinity of Niddry mill, and beneath the shade of
Niddry woods did the Cromarty stone-cutter commence
his labours. The squad with which he worked appears
to have been tainted in even an extreme degree with
the narrowness and exclusiveness common among the
more ignorant class of operatives, and to them Miller
became an object of undisguised hostility and dislike.
The Norlander, in their opinion, if not chased back to
his own cold clime, would carry home half the money
of the country. This district into which the exigencies
of his daily toil had brought him, extended Hugh
Miller's acquaintance at once with natural and social
phenomena. In the woods of Niddry he discovered not
a little that had no existence two degrees farther north,
and in the immediate neighbourhood of Niddry mill he
met a rude and ignorant race still bearing the stain, if
not the brand of slavery.
It will scarcely be believed that so late as 1842, when
Parliament issued a commission to inquire into the results of female labour in the coal pits of Scotland, there
was a collier, still living, that had never been twenty
miles from the metropolis; who could state to the commissioners, that his father, his grandfather, and himself were slaves; and that he had wrought for years
in a pit in the neighbourhood of Musselburgh where
the majority of the miners were also serfs. How singular the anomalies and contradictions that, even in a




8o                 Edinburgh.
period pre-eminent for political and social progression,
may yet be permitted to live on uncorrected. Poets,
orators, and statesmen were constantly declaiming about
how impossible it was for a slave to breathe in England, at
a time when the Scotch lairds held the liberties of the
poor colliers and salters completely in their iron gripe.
That slavery was all the more reprehensible from the
circumstance, that it was not a relic of ancient serfdom,
but had originated in comparatively recent decisions of
the Court of Session. Even the statute passed in 1701,
extolled as the Scotch Habeas Corpus Act, brought
this pariah race no relief. After reciting the precautions
against wrongous imprisonment and undue delays in
trials, the statute goes on to say that this act in no
way extends to colliers and salters. Even after the first
link of their chain had been broken in 1775, their freedom was so clogged with conditions that it was little more
than nominal. The eulogists of the Court of Session are
constantly declaiming about the immense advantage it has
been to Scotland; but with the exception of one brief
and brilliant epoch in its history, nearly as little has
been done for Scotland by her law-lords as by her
land-lords. On almost every critical occasion, ecclesiastical or political, the majority of them has generally
been found on the wrong -side. As might have been
expected, the condition of the inhabitants of the village
of Niddry, even of that part of them not belonging to




Edinburgh.                  8i
the proscribed race, was of the lowest order; while the
colliers themselves carried in their faces the too certain
index at once of their social and intellectual condition,
being mostly of that type to which a very strong resemblance is found in the prints of savage tribes. The
effect of the emancipation of these poor creatures has
been, that in less than a quarter of a century this type
of face has disappeared throughout Scotland.
With the exception of the foreman and a labourer
of the squad in which Hugh Miller worked, and perhaps
a couple more who were, however, rather polemical
than devotional in their religion; hostility and indifference to Christianity might describe its spiritual condition.
Hugh Miller was a churchman, and accordingly was
somewhat surprised to find the only religion among his
comrades belonged to the dissenters. Like uncle Sandy,
some of these men were great readers of the old divines;
Durham, Rutherford, Baxter, Boston, old John Brown,
and the Erskines, formed their favourite companions;
but unlike his uncles, both of whom still retained an
unwavering faith in the Establishment, they had begun
to question the propriety of such institutions, nay, to
hold it might be none the worse, but much the better
for religion, that they were uprooted. With the exception of this small fraction of devout men, who, thoughl
in it, were not of it, the squad was well represented by
its hero Charles, a demoralized, reckless, yet generousA6*




82                Edinburgh.
hearted fellow, the only blackguard Huglh Miller ever
found possessing magnanimity and generosity.
It was while a stone-cutter beneath the shade of
Niddry wood that Hugh Miller first became practically
acquainted with combinations. Hallowday had come,
and with Hallowday a reduction of wages from twentyfour to fifteen shillings per week; the reduction was, by
nearly two shillings, more than it ought to have been;
but such were the circumstances of the mass of the
masons, that a single fortnight would have more than
exhausted their resources. Hugh Miller predicted that
the contemplated strike would be a failure, and Charles,
the leader of the squad, more than half admitted he was
right; but the abandon and glee of a day's fun, and the
excitement of a monster meeting on Brunsfield Links,
outweighed the dictates of prudence; so the squad
marched away from beneath the elms and chestnuts of
Niddry to the gathering on the Links, which they joined
amidst the cheers of the assembly. After a good deal of
speech-making they adjourned, to meet again in the evening in one of the halls of the city of Edinburgh. A
low tavern in the upper part of Canongate received the
heroes from Niddry; there, amidst the excitement of
drinking and the excitement of drawing the badger,
the men of the mallet grew deaf to time, and became
oblivious to all about the strike. Hugh Miller having
left his comrades to their revel, was exploring the trap




Edinburgh.                 83
rocks of Hiing's Park, and instead of attending the evening meeting, he passed the night with his friend William Ross, who, contrary to what might have been expected from his antecedents, took a warm interest in
strikes and combinations, officiated as clerk for a combined society of house-painters, and entertained sanguine
hopes about the happy influence the principle of union
was yet to exercise upon the position of the workman.
Amiable dreamer! Stubborn individualist! when last ye
met together in your native North, it was not to debate
the rights of man, but to hold high fellowship with
nature amidst scenes of surpassing beauty and sublimity:
then ye were at one; now your sentiments are the
antipodes of each other. Shall we mete out indiscriminate approval on the one hand-unqualified censure on
the other?  We cannot. William Ross was probably
too enthusiastic in his expectations; certainly, were we
to judge of the power of the principle to which he
devoted himself by its operative influence among the
painters of Edinburgh, we should be compelled to conclude that it has achieved but little. Yet foolish and
futile as the mass of combinations have been, we cannot
share Hugh Miller's utter repudiation and total want of
sympathy with them, neither can we say they have been
wholly useless. Society tolerates many strange abuses,
which, so long as they do not touch itself or produce
any general inconvenience, are left to right themselves




84                 Edinburgh.
as best they may. But for certain strikes some very
clamant evils, now swept away, would still have been
left to grind their victims. Is it to be supposed, that
bad the enslaved colliers and salters been able to give
a tongue to their grievances, they would not have
been redressed at least half a century before justice
was done them? While, therefore, William Ross may
have been too much of an enthusiast, there are those
who will consider his mingling with his comrades in
a common cause, and endeavouring to guide by his
superior discretion their general deliberations, a more
pleasing trait of character than the Harry-of-the-Wynd
style in which Hugh Miller held his own. It is indeed
true, that the post of leadership-in nearly all societies
a thankless, if in some a brilliant position-is in trades'
unions peculiarly critical; and very often what Hugh
Miller calls the fluent gabber, is substituted for the man
of sense, just as in more important councils; what George
Canning called a big voice is mistaken for a genuine
statesman. Nevertheless we are reluctant to think
them wholly hopeless. The great difficulty they have
to contend against is the circumstance, that the men
naturally qualified by ability and experience to be the
leaders of trades' combinations, seldom remain in the
operative ranks, but for the most part step out and
step up into the master class.
But though the two friends could not agree in their




Edinburgh.                 8;
opinions of the value of the principle of trades' unions,
there were tastes and sympathies which they shared in
common, in which they forgot their differences about
strikes and combinations. It was, however, with grief
and pain of no ordinary kind that Hugh Miller discovered his early companion fast losing confidence in
his own powers, and in consequence narrowing the
circle of his enjoyments. In reply to an effort to rally
him, William Ross, with the characteristic modesty of
his nature, exclaimed, "AJh, Miller, what matters it how
I amuse myself! You have stamina in you, and will force
your way, but I want strength; the world will never
hear of me." And so it was; like a flower withered on
its stalk, which waited only the visit of the first rough
blast to blow it into dust, one after another of his
favourite pursuits was discontinued, until at length he
quietly dropped into the grave. In his fine, if somewhat circumscribed tastes, delicate constitution, and
early death, William Ross reminds us much of the
bard of Lochleven, Michael Bruce; and looking at how
nearly equally unfit both painter and poet were to endure
life's fitful fever, the same epitaph may serve both
tombs-" Weep not for the dead; neither bemoan them."
When next the Niddry masons are seen on the march
for Edinburgh, it is the great fires of the Parliament
Close and the High Street that have summoned them to
the city. Graphic pens have described the picturesqne.




86                 Edinburgh.
ness of these terrible conflagrations. Sir Walter Scott
and Lord Cockburn have both recorded their impressions
of the sublimity of the spectacle. Over Hugh Miller's
soul there swept all the varied feelings the scene was
fitted to evoke, and in descriptive power the record of
his recollections will bear comparison with even Scott's
magic pen, while there is a touch of human interest in
Miller's narrative peculiarly his own. He had been
surveying, not without some degree of enjoyment, a
phlegmatic barber, who, in the very midst of the blazing
ruins, was coolly operating upon the face of an immensely
fat old fellow, on whose round bald forehead and ruddy
cheeks the perspiration was standing out in huge drops,
and whose vast mouth was opened to accommodate the
man of the razor. Suddenly a poor workman emerged
from a close with a favourite piece of furniture, a glass
cupboard, evidently snatched not without difficulty
from the general wreck of his household gods. The
poor fellow, continues Miller, was followed by his wife,
and seemingly had got the cherished heir-loom out of
the reach of danger, when, striking against some obstacle
that lay in his path, he tottered against a projecting
corner, and the glazed door was driven in with a crash.
There was hopeless misery in the wailing cry of the
wife-" O! ruin, ruin; it's lost too!"  Nor was his own
despairing response less sad, "Ay, ay, puir lassie, it is
at an end noo."




Edinburgh.                 87
When Hugh Miller was quietly working as a stone
cutter at Niddry, Dugald Stewart yet lived, Jeffrey and
his brilliant staff were in the zenith of their renown,
Christopher North and the Blackwood club were enjoying their famous " Noctes Ambrosianve," the lyre of the
mighty minstrel was still unbroken, and the historian of
the Reformation yet preached and wrote. Not London
itself was the centre of a greater literary activity than
was the Scottish capital. Yet, though living in the
light of that galaxy of glorious spirits, Hugh Miller was
never fortunate enough, with the single exception of
Dr. M'Crie, to obtain a sight of any of them; though
frequently of a Saturday night, when his comrades
were drawing the badger in Canongate, he might be
seen lingering in Castle-street, eager to catch a glimpse
of the author of "Waverley," but, singularly enough,
always unsuccessful. Of Dr. M'Crie alone, therefore,
has he been able to give the world any personal recollections that date from this period.
The peculiarly powerful impression made by that
able and learned divine upon the mind of the young
stone-cutter, is not to be wondered at, when we reflect
how essentially manly, and how intensely national were
both men. In the substratum of their minds they had
much in common, nor had their tastes and reading lain
very far apart. Even at that comparatively early period
of his career, Hugh Miller was more conversant with




88                 Edinburgh.
Scottish church history than nine-tenths of her clergy;
as a matter not merely of duty but of pleasure, there.
fore, did he make haste to obey the injunction of his
uncles, "Be sure and visit Dr. M'Crie's church when in
Edinburgh." That thin, spare, semi-military, semi-eccle
siastical figure, with an air of melancholy spreading its
soft shadow over his features, was worthy of the homage
even of Hugh Miller. When the humble dissenting
minister girt himself. fr the labour of his life, the
names of the Scottish reformers were names of which
Scotchmen had become almost ashamed. Historians
destitute of all sympathy with the great religious
revolution of the sixteenth century, had been left to
give the world their estimate. of the heroes of the
Reformation. The natural result, as might have been
anticipated, was, that everywhere the most exaggerated
opinions were entertained about their utter want of all
delicacy and sensibility of nature. Men looked at their
characters through the tears of Mary Stuart.  That
weeping beauty had so completely fascinated alike the
Scottish and the English literati, that neither could see
anything good about men whose lives, unfortunately
for their fame, though happily for their country, had
been spent in resisting her will. The revolution in the
public sentiment respecting the real aims and the real
characters of the reformers, which has taken place
within the last thirty years, is mainly attributable to




Edinburgh.                 89
the influence of the writings of the biographer of Knox
and Melville.
What Thomas Carlyle has done for the memory of
the hero of the commonwealth of England, that did
Thomas M'Crie for the hero of the Scottish reformation.
Lamartine's History of the Girondists, it is' said, did
much to precipitate the revolution of 1848. Scotchmen
are not so mercurial as their Gallic neighbours, and are
therefore not so easily moved by a book, even though
the book should be a very good one. But it is only
saying the truth, when we say that the ecclesiastical
writings of M'Crie did very much to precipitate the
disruption of the Scottish church. He it was who first
led the higher and more earnest minds of the Scottish
establishment out of that fiigid zone of Erastianism,
amidst whose wintry influences they threatened to be.
come so miserably dwarfed. What Scotchman who
had drunk in the inspiration breathed from the lives of
John Knox and Andrew Melville, could fail for evermore to combat for those great principles of spiritual
independence for which those heroes contended throughout a lifelong struggle with kings and princes? In
point of fact, just to the extent that the leaders of the
evangelical party in the Scottish church took these men
for their models, did they succeed; and where they
failed to do so, either through misapprehension, timidity,
or false views, were they unsuccessful. Had they shared




90                 Edinburgh.
as fully the political as the ecclesiastical sentiments of
the reformers, there can be no doubt their position
would have been less complicated, and their triumph
even more complete. We are not making any revelation when we say that the power of the Free Church
was not a little crippled in the very hour of its birth, by
the attempt of certain leaders to carry into it men who
had nothing in common with that noble band, who,
esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the
treasures of Egypt, left all to follow the fortunes of a
sacred principle.
The stone-cutters of the metropolis of Scotland are
a short-lived race; the peculiar fineness of the stone
amidst which they work brings with it disease of the
lungs and chest. Though a temperate mason, Hugh
Miller was no exception to the general fate. After
about a couple of years' labour, he felt the absolute
necessity of relaxation, and resolved to return, for a
time at least, to his native town. This visit to Edinburgh, though it introduced him to the acquaintance of
none of the lions of the city, furnished him with the
opportunity of observing what may be deemed the
transition-era of the large towns of Scotland from the
proud position which they held as the abodes of learning, piety, and virtue, into the refuges of that pariah
race which now nestles in their midst, and whose
existence forms so perplexing a problem to modern




Edinburgh.                    91
civilization.  The peril with which this large class
threatens society is at once apparent, and has often
been pointed out. "Let," said Dr. Chalmers, fully
a quarter of a century ago —"let but some extraordinary convulsion take place in society, and it
will speedily be discovered how feeble a barrier our
civilization presents to utter social demoralization."
"Dare we," says Isaac Taylor, "had we the infant
human race in our arms, dare we turn ourselves to that
careworn creature, modern civilization, sitting at her
factory gate, and say, Take that child, and nurse it for
me?"  We are afraid, however, that these authorities,
Hugh Miller included, have made a mistake in supposing that the class in question is so peculiarly the
growth of modern times and of great cities. Our own
opinion is, that all that modern cities have done has
been simply to form centres for such a population. So
far back as the age of Knox, we find this class in existence under the appellation of " sturdy beggars," and
we have the authority of Fletcher of Saltoun for stating,
that, at the period of the Revolution, not less than
200,000 of these waifs of society were scattered over
Scotland.- It is a melancholy reflection that, after all
that has been done by the combined exertions of the
philanthropists and the religious, this class should continue to outgrow, and seemingly overmaster, all the
checks to which it is subjected.




92                 Edinburgh.
The churches have of late years set about the re
clamation of this class, and in the few instances in which
superior men have devoted themselves to the work, the
success has been most gratifying. Unfortunately, however, these home missions have fallen largely into the
hands of preachers who have been unsuccessful in regular charges, and whose general mental power is not
such as enables them to exert any salutary influence.
Called to combat the dissipation and sensuality of a
class in whom dissipation and sensuality have become
chronic, it is not to be wondered at, should these intellectual weaklings be unable to effect much amongst a
population so degraded. If home missions are ever to
be more than a sort of decent house of refuge for those
who have broken down in what is deemed the more
regular work of the Christian ministry, a totally different
class of men must be appointed to labour in that interesting and important sphere of evangelistic effort.
After a tedious voyage, Hugh Miller again set foot on
the beach of Cromarty, and was received with the cordial greetings of his two uncles, his cousin George, and
other friends and relations; and was soon again in the
enjoyment of all the happiness of their united friendship.




CHAPTER ViL
CHRIISTIANITY,
WHEux Christianity appeared, it met a world in waiting. The superstitions which had sustained the nations,
had degenerated into effete and sterile things long ante.
rior to His coming, to whom the gathering of the people was to be. Even the representative people had
done its work-its mission was accomplished-the purposes for which God had selected Israel from amongst
all the families of the earth had been fulfilled, and the
privileges which had been withdrawn from the race
within the circle of the chosen nation were again to
encompass' a world, and again to infold in their ample embrace all kindreds, and tongues, and peoples, and nations.
It was about to be made manifest it was not for themselves alone that Israel's Divine Father had gilded with
the sunshine of his favour the hills of their inheritance,
but that his way might be known on earth, and his saving
health amongst all nations.   Such an authoritative
and inspired avowal of the cosmopolitan purposes which
Judaism was intended to serve, might surely silence the




94                Christianity.
cavils of the sceptic about the narrowness and exclusiveness of the faith of Israel: it was narrow for the wisest
of reasons; it was exclusive for the most benignant of
objects. And when at length the middle wall of partition fell, which had during so many ages divided
mankind; and Jew and Greek, so long severed by antipathies the most inveterate, and by habits the most
diverse, met to do homage to a common lIaster, and to
worship one only Lord, it then became apparent what
an unspeakable treasure it was which that repellent
race who peopled Palestine had conserved for the world.
For a time, the new faith went on its way rejoicing;
without let or hindrance it sped upon its magnanimous
and godlike mission, mingling not with the things of earth.
Conscious that the world by wisdom knew not God, the
early teachers of Christianity, from the elevation which
they had reached, looked down with indifference upon
all the philosophy and all the science of heathendom,
and eyed with jealousy every attempt to commingle
Christianity with the conception of even the loftiest
sages of antiquity. Such was the temper of the majority of the first heralds of the gospel; and notwithstanding the censure with which it has been visited by some
recent writers who aspire to being considered men of
enlarged and liberal thought, we must be permitted to
consider that temper a salutary one. It served better
than any other course of action could have served, to




Christianity.              95
point out the fact that the new religion was in a high
and peculiar sense not of this world,-that amongst all
the multifarious forms of worship which had found a
shelter and a home beneath the eagles of old Rome, it
dwelt apart, and was not to be reckoned as one of
them. Humanly speaking, had Christianity in the
morning of its existence got entangled in the meshes of
a vain philosophy, its power, and consequently its progress, would have been immeasurably crippled. Its
capacity to turn the world upside down would have departed from it, and the cross would soon have ceased to
be an ensign to the peoples.
There is much that we now know of the scheme
of human redemption of which its early teachers probably knew but little. Religion was with them more a
thing of the soul, than a thing of system. Their vivid
intuitions of divine truth had not yet passed through
the alembic of the logical consciousness; many of its
heights were left unsealed, and many of its depths unsounded; but the image of the grand leading features
of Christianity had been daguerreotyped upon the souls
of all of them with an intensity and a faithfulness of
which a martyr age can alone furnish us with an
adequate conception. Pity it was that that day of glorious action should so soon have been succeeded by a
night of gloomy speculation. Within the bosom of the
church herself, there speedily arose those who imagined




96                Christianity.
they could lend additional weight and value to the unsearchable riches of Christ, by incorporating with them
the treasures of a world's wisdom-that thus the gospel
might in this new dress, and clad in this motley robe,
gather around it those to whom its unadorned simplicity
was repulsive. Full soon, however, did this alliance
prove more baneful than beneficial. It speedily became
apparent to even the most casual observer, that not
a little wood, hay, and stubble, had been mingled with
the gold, silver, and precious stones. Christianity gained
nothing when it began to flow through the arteries of
Grecian philosophy, and the Attic bird,' thrilling her thickwarbled notes, marred the melody of the Messianic message. We know it was, in the then circumstances of the
world, in the nature of things impossible that Christianity
could altogether escape from this comparative contamination. Its heralds announced a message that touched
all the deepest problems which philosophy had attempted
in vain to solve. The themes Plato had discussed were
decided by Paul; the scattered members of truth's
lovely form were collected in Christ; and the flickering
starlight of philosophy, which men in their darkness had
so deified, sank before the majestic sun of eternal truth.
All this was no doubt fact, but all this was in the last
degree humiliating to men who had so long been gazing
upon mere fragments of the truth that they had come
at length to regard the disjecta membra as more beauti



Christianity.              97
ful than the perfect image. Thus arose that opposition
which the gospel was fated to encounter, and thus
originated that contamination which it was destined to
undergo. The reaction of philosophy against Christianity culminated in Julian the Roman emperor, who renouncing the gospel, embraced with all the ardour of a
neophyte the outward creed of paganism. Julian did
all that a man, and that man an emperer, could do,
to restore the ancient mythology to its former place of
power; with a zeal worthy of a better cause he laboured
to reinvest the gods of Greece with the glory which had
departed from amongst them.  He was, we believe,
a mind peculiarly susceptible to the seductive influence
of'the old worship; and we can account for his abandonment of Christianity without branding him as an apostate, in the ordinary or odious sense at least in which
that word is employed. He had seen little amongst his
relations to recommend the new religion. The rulers
of Rome who had embraced the gospel were far-very
far, from being living epistles of Christ; and that dash
of chivalry which was in Julian's nature, combined with
his ardent admiration of external beauty, gave the
weight of his name and power to the falling faith. It
seemed to him a robbing earth of its glory to restrict
our conception of God, as revelation does, to an invisible being.  He aspired to restore those halcyon
days of the world when Grecian mythology, all glorious
5




98                 Christianity.
within, and radiant with the light of the land of the
sun, swayed an unchallenged sceptre over the souls
of men.
The paganism of Julian was pantheistic in its tendencies, as was indeed all the philosophical idolatry of his
age. This fact renders an attentive study of the epoch
imperative upon every one who would comprehend
aright the present phases of unbelief.  However important the question of the evidences and the proof
from miracles may be, it is not on these grounds alone
that the battle between faith and infidelity must now
be fought. It is useless to talk of evidences or of
miracles to men who assert that belief in a personal
God is " theosophic moonshine," or who look upon the
claim for Messiahship set up for Christ as only affording
a premium to a crooked and a perverted logic. These
men must be encountered with other weapons than
those which vanquished the Voltairian school. We
must seek in an earlier age than the age of the encyclopaecdists for the type of their scepticism; we must go
back to a time when the young church was contending
with the philosophy of the old world, for the rudimentary principles of the unbelief of these latest assailants
of our faith. We do not say-we are very far from
saying —that either the treatment of the evidences, or
the proof from miracles, should even for a moment be
lost sight of. Such forgetfulness would be pelilous in




Christianity.               99
the extreme. We simply say that it is not enough, and
that if we would successfully grapple with the higher
forms of scepticism, the old bulwarks must be supplemented with something else, and something more. The
difficulty in this matter is to abstract ourselves from
our present and Christian modes of thought, for the
occupancy of a pagan or Neoplatonic view-point; but
until we in some measure accomplish this, we cannot
hope to cope successfully with the men who have become fascinated with the one, or are idolaters of the
other —men who have even the hardihood to tell us that
our Christianity is in the " Phodo."
Efforts have recently been made to show that philosophy was advancing to a solution of some of those
abstruse and weighty problems which had so long
baffled the utmost efforts of its loftiest sages; and the
hymn of Cleanthes, and the dogmas of the Pythagoreans,
have been pointed to as proofs that, had time only been
granted, they would have accomplished, unaided, what
it is the peculiar glory of Christianity to have achieved
for man. Nothing so forcibly reminds us that our
modern sceptics tread " a land of darkness as darkness
itself," as the intense interest with which they gaze
upon any gleam of light which may meet them on
their pilgrimage. Like the traveller, faint and weary
with traversing the trackless wastes of Sahara, they
feel more intensely interested with the few stunted




100               Christianity.
shrubs to be found in the oases of the desert, than
when embosomed in vegetation "thick as leaves in
Vallambrosa."..
At the era of the revival of letters, which immediately
preceded the Reformation, it was feared by some that
the passion for the classics would revive the worship of
antiquity. The age of the Medici and Leo X. was unquestionably more pagan than Christian in its tendencies, and the transformation which was feared then, is,
to a considerable extent,, being realized now through
the influence of modern idealism. The men whose dark
and lowering crests are to be seen in the van of the
scepticism of the age: are, for the most part, men who
have either lost their way amidst the fogs of German
metaphysics, or whose souls have been chilled and
frost-bitten by some one or other of the numerous
critical systems to which that land of doubters has given
birth.
Though not a student of German metaphysics, nor
much acquainted with the numerous critical systems,
that, like meteors of the night, are ever shooting athwart
the intellectual horizon of "the thinkers of Europe,"
Hugh Miller had not altogether escaped the wintry influences of a sceptical philosophy. Never, indeed, had
he at any time made that philosophy a faith;: yet its
chill had passed over, though it failed to petrify his
spirit. A strong dash of hereditary prejudice kept him




Christianity.               l o1
from being whelmed in its dark and troublous waters,
even in the absence of any higher light to guide his
steps into the way of peace. The period had, however,
now come, when the mists of scepticism  are to take
themselves off, and religion's tranquil star, which these
mists had obscured, is to shed over his soul its selectest
influence.
On his return to -Cromarty, he found an old companion, one of the band he, so long led in days of
youthful frolic,:relinquishing superior commercial prospects, and entering the curriculum of preparation for the
work of the ministry. The two early friends' spent much
of their time together,'and frequently their talk was upon
religious topics.' The perfect disinterestedness of his
companion's abnegation of every worldly advantage
under the impulse of religious devotion, brought Christianity as an operative power upon the heart, not a mere
system of doctrines, prominently before him. Previous
to this period, he seems to have thought Iowie's description of that Scottish Ulrich von Hutten, Balfour
of Burley's relations to' the covenanting cause, would
have very well described his own religious condition;
and it is with the characteristic reserve of; a true
Scotchman Hugh Miller tells the story of the great
transition-era in his religious history.
Scottish theology, whether in its extreme or moderate
form, has unfortunately for the most part presented




102               Christianity.
Christianity to the people of Scotland rather in the
light of a scheme of doctrine to be embraced, than as
embodying a being to be loved.  The linsiman-redeemer of the " Marrow men" was indeed an exception;
but somehow this benignant aspect of the theology of the
Bostons and the Erskines was long lost sight of, and
not until comparatively recent times did it again, under
somewhat altered forms and a modernised nomenclature,
emerge from the obscurity into which it had fallen. It
was from out the glowing heart of Edward Irving —
while yet Edward Irving held fast his integrity-this
noblest blossoming of the antique creed of our country
again bloomed into beauty. With this theology, one
so familiar with the evangelical writers of the Scottish
church as was Hugh Miller, could not have been unacquainted; but hitherto it had been to him rather a
wandering voice than a thing of power. How his religion became a religion of the heart, as certainly as of
the intellect, shall be told in his own words:-" I was,"
he states, "led to see at this time, through the instrumentality of my friend, that my theological system had
previously wanted a central object to which the heart
could attach itself; and that the true centre of an
efficient Christianity is, as the name ought of itself to
import,'the Word made Flesh.' Around the central
sun of the Christian system-appreciated, however, not
as an abstraction, but as a divine person —so truly man




Christianity.               103
that the affections of the human heart can lay hold
upon him; and so truly God that the mind through
faith can at all times and in all places be brought into direct contact with hin, —all that is really religious takes
its place in a subsidiary and subordinate relation. I say
subsidiary and subordinate. The Divine man is the
great attractive centre-the sole gravitating point of a
system, which owes to him all its cohering, and which
would be but chaos were he away. It seems to be the
existence of the human nature in this central and paramount object, that imparts to Christianity in its subjective character its peculiar power of influencing and
controlling the human mind. There may be men who,
through a peculiar idiosyncrasy of constitution, are
capable of loving after a sort a mere abstract God,
unseen and inconceivable, though, as shown by the
air of sickly sentimentality borne by almost all that has
been said and written on the subject, the feeling in its
true form must be a very rare and exceptional one.
In all my experience of men, I never knew a genuine
instance of it. The love of an abstract God seems to
be as little natural to the ordinary human constitution,
as the love of an abstract sun or planet. The true
humanity and true divinity of-the adorable Saviour, is
a truth equally receivable by at once the humblest and
the loftiest intellects. Poor dying children, possessed of
but a few simple ideas, and men of the most robust




1 o4              Christianity.
intellects, such as the Chalmerses, Fosters, and Halls
of the Christian church, find themselves equally able to
rest upon the man Christ, who is, over all, God blessed
for ever.
"Of this fundamental truth of the two natures, that
condensed enumeration of the gospel which forms the
watchword of our faith,-' believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ, and thou shalt be saved'-is a direct and palpable
embodiment, and Christianity is but a mere name without it. How or on what principle the Father was
satisfied I know not, and may never know. The enunciation regarding vicarious satisfaction may be properly
received in faith as a fact, but, I suspect, not properly
reasoned upon until we shall be able to bring the moral
sense of Deity, with its' requirements, within the limits
of a small and trivial logic. But the thorough adaptation of the scene to man's nature is greatly more
appreciable, and lies fully within the reach of observation and experience."
Such is an epitome of Hugh Miller's confession of
faith. Its great merit is its harmony with the oracles
of divine truth; and, though the doctrine of the incarnation "squares not with the blowing clover nor the
falling rain," it is not, therefore, as some of our transcendentalists insist, to be discarded as incredible.
Man's relation to the infinite is not to be learned from
the book of nature alone, nor is the fatherhood of God




Christianity.                105
to be discovered from the mere material universe,
God's creative energy and omnipotent power are, we
know, inscribed at once on the curtain of the heavens
and the caverns of the earth, but his paternal character
is taught elsewhere. It is the lack of any light to
disclose the heart of Deity that is the key to the coldness with which the pantheism  that has enamoured
not a few of the more eminent of our modern litterateurs is so justly charged. The material of which it is
made up is perhaps fitted to form that kind of character
Campbell has so well hit off in a single line of his
" Gertrude of Wyoming," —
" A stoic of the woods, a man without a tear."
But it is utterly destitute of all those sympathetic -elements which form the peculiar glory of Christianity, and
which shall ultimately realize in a higher and holier sense
than poet or patriot ever dreamed, that reign of liberty
and equality for which the nations thirst.
Pantheism, of old the creed of intellectual and imaginative dreamers,-its resurrection and popularization by great names may, indeed, float it again for a
time over the surface of society, but it will bear no
higher fruit in modern than in ancient days. It is a
system utterly unfit to combat the many evils existing
5*




10o6              Christianity.
throughout the world: indeed, why should it seek to
combat that which it does not recognise in any proper
sense as an antagonist force?  It has nothing of the
Christian sense of evil about it; it sees not that in
every garret there is either a " haill Paradise Lost or
Paradise Regained;" its ethical theory, notwithstanding
the snaky fascination with which the magic of genius
and the glitter of antithesis have invested it, is a meagre
and jejune substitute for the morale of the Sermon on
the Mount.  That compensatory system with which
some of its votaries are so much charmed, and which
Emerson has so adorned that the dread bird of destiny
which hovers over it is not once perceived by its
disciples, was' preached of old to that man of Uz, who,
perfect and upright, feared God and eschewed evil.
The consolation it brought near to Job in the midst of
his cumulative calamities, extorted from even his patient spirit the upbraiding cry, "Miserable comforters
are ye all."  In a certain weakness of the human mind
lies the power of the pantheistic system; for that large
class who dislike a dogmatic theology, it has a certain
nameless attraction and indescribable charm.  It is
precisely the kind of thing for those who prefer to look
at their relations to the infinite through a subdued and
coloured medium, rather than in the white light which
a definite theology sheds on man's nature and destiny;




Christianity.               107
and it is only natural the predilections of this class
should go with a system which disports itself with the
imagination, rather than one that addresses itself to
the conscience, and which just sheds over earth enough
of the hues of heaven to impart thereto a diviner beauty
and more intense fascination.




CHAPTER  VII.
POETRY AND A PATRON.
FOR several months after his return to Cromarty, Hugh
Miller continued in a delicate and rather precarious
state of health. The stone-cutters' malady had made
deeper inroads upon his system than he at first supposed; ultimately, however, his constitution threw off
the disease, and he began to experience the quiet and
exquisite pleasures of convalescence. An ornate stone
dial which he cut for his uncles at this time still exists,
a memorial of his superior skill as a workman, even in
the more elaborate and ornamental department of the
craft. When health had become more fully established,
he set about executing sculptured tablets and tombstones in his native town and neighbourhood, becoming,
in point of fact, a sort of improved edition of Old Mortality, minus the pony; only that it was for money
rather than love he gave what immortality his iron pen
could bestow upon many whom, probably, the satiric
couplet of Byron might correctly have described," When all is done, upon their tombs are seen
Not what they were, but what they should have been."




Poetry and a Patron.            log
The style in which this work was executed was of a
superior order to any that had been attempted in the
North, while the biblical knowledge and literary tastes
of the craftsman prevented him from falling into any
such mistakes as did an English mason engaged upon
the same kind of employment.
A bereaved widower had hired the Englishman to
erect a tablet to the wife of his youth, and with great
good taste selected for her tombstone one of those
aphorisms of the wise king of Israel, which condense
into a single sentence what feebler men would require
a page to describe: "A virtuous woman is a crown
unto her husband."  Whether John Bull had been
studying Crabbe's synonyms, or from what other cause
report sayeth not; but, casting over in his mind what
relation a crown bore to the other coin of the realm,
with about as little reverence for the authorized translation as any one of the appellants for an improved
version, he "gave bond in stone" to this very important announcement-a virtuous woman is five shillings
to her husband.
Work failing Hugh Miller in the vicinity of Cromarty, by the advice of a friend whose opinion of
his skill as a sculptor was very decided, he visited
Inverness, and inserted an advertisement in one of
the newspapers soliciting employment. As a voucher
for the truth of his advertisement, which described




110o         Poetry and a Patron.
his tablet-cutting as neat and correct, he brought
with him  a bundle of poetry, and, favoured with
a letter of introduction to an influential minister,
he repaired without delay to the residence of the
reverend gentleman. After waiting some time in the
ante-room, amidst a concourse of paupers.and intending
communicants, he at length obtained audience, and
presented the reverend man with his letter, together,
with an ode to the Ness he had just written.  The
clergyman belonged to that pretty numierous class of
divines who keep "the gloss of the clerical enamei"
always peculiarly bright;; doubtless, he thought it an
act of very great condescension indeed, even to read
the verses of the stone-cutter. It was, however, particularly unfortunate that he attempted to criticise them.
The solemn shake of the head, in which:they are
invariably perfect, is the only safety of such men. A
shake of the head may mean anything, and, as our
Lord Justice Clerk judiciously remarks, cannot be
taken down; but, forgetting the aphorism of the' royal
sage-"' even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is
accounted wise"-he unhappily stooped to a verbal
dissent, and, to his dismay, instantly:found the artizan
armed at all points, prepared to dispute, and able to
dispute with success, every critical position he assumed,
until, hunted out of each successive loophole- of retreat,
his reverence was fairly at bay. Only the most mag.




Poetry and a Patron.. 11
nanimous of patrons could have relished such horseplay, and certainly that was the very opposite of the
mode in which most men would have: expected to
interest any patron in their behalf Hugh Miller
adopted. Legree, according to Harriet Beecher Stowe,
began to look upon the avenger of Uncle Tom with
something like consideraton n, after Master George had
laid the ruffian on his back by a well-dealt body blow;
but the prompt, and opposite as it was prompt, appeal
to a host of the highest authorities in favour of the use
of words the clergyman had declared obsolete, awoke
in the reverend breast not consideration, but impatience. The result, we need hardly say, Ied Hugh Miller to determine that henceforth he should try and do
without letters of introduction.
Within his own chosen circle, the worthy man who
thought marge no longer in use among our poets, would
no doubt pass for an oracle. Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths,
who were wont, as a matter of duty, to revise the
manuscripts of Oliver Goldsmith, would most unquestionably appear to the admirers of "gig respectability"
every way superior to the erratic Irishman, over whose
compositions they exercised so watchful a surveillance.
But the rattle of Griffiths' chariot has long since ceased
to swell the din of mighty London, while the trumpet
of perpetual fame is filled with one long, long echo to
the renown'of Erin's ill-starred son; and that humble




112          Poetry and a Patron.
stone-cutter who, in the year of grace 1828, stood cap
in hand before official pomposity in the manse of
Inverness, lived to see his works the text-books of
Oxford, and his name familiar as a household word on
the lips of the first savans of Europe. Reader, behold
the noble revenge of genius upon the little fantastic
tricks which the insolence of office or the accidents
of position may have played it, while yet on the bleak
side of the hill of life, before success and prosperity
sunned its path!
True, it may be answered, as in some sort a defence
of the kind of treatment we seek to reprehend, it is
not often that genius crosses the path of a parish priest
in the disguise of a stone-mason, or comes near the
eminent publisher in the form of a bookseller's hack.
Within a given range, this defence may be admitted as
valid; nay, knowing the evil influences of a too easy
or too early triumph, it is perhaps well that, as a
general rule, the position of the literary man as one of
the forces of society, as a power in the state, can only
be attained through much tribulation. Those mighty
spirits who yet rule us from their urns, even they were
in their time treated with the same indifference and
neglect as the struggling genius who but yesterday
emerged from obscurity.  Go back but a couple of
centuries, and we find certain pretentious scribes flip.
pantly talking of "that dull poet, Mr. Milton."  To be




Poetry and a Patron.            -113
misunderstood and to be misrepresented seems the fate
of all, in every age of the, world's history, who have
possessed greater intellectual power or greater moral
energy than their fellows. And yet it is not' to be
doubted, even admitting the full force of the considerations we have stated, that a sense of: the world's indifference has untoned many a fine spirit, and changed
notes that had otherwise been musical as Apollo's lute
into harsh and crabbed utterances.
Hugh Miller's skill as a stone-cutter received the
promptest recognition in Inverness. His merits as -a
poet were more slowly acknowledged. Some verses
which he had sent to one of the local papers having been
rejected, piqued with the disappointment, all the more
galling that he had let cer:tain friendsinto his confidence,
led him to resolve on the publication of a volume Of
poetry. Hugh Miller: cannot, indeed, be said to have
lisped in numbers, yet at a very early period of his life
he must have paid court to the muses, though with what
we think but indifferent success; his poetry being, for
the:most part, only prose in the fetters of verse. Poetry
with him was imitation in a balder and more restricted
sense than, we presume, Aristotle meant his definition to
be understood. We are not, therefore, surprised that
even before his volume had issued fiom the press, he
became conscious he had committed a blunder, his
thinking faculty having far outgrown the accomplish.




114          Poetry and a Patron.
ment of verse. The die was, however, cast, and tho ugh
the work was by no means hurried through the press,
" Poems by a journeyman stone-mason," at length
emerged firom the printing-office of the Inverness Courier;
and now the crisis had come when Hugh ]Miller must
run the gauntlet of the critics. The style in which
the work was received was characteristic of the ordinary mode of reviewing, which still obtains amongst
a large portion of the public press. By some journals'
he was patronized as a young man of genius; by
others he was recommended to rely more on hlis chisel
than his pen. A third class pursued a medium course;
and while admitting his volume contained some fair
verses, reminded him it was not every man who could
expect to reach the high poetic eminence of Charles
Doyle Sillerey, a poet now forgotten, but who, if Hugh
Miller is to be credited, owed the praise he received to
the very substantial pudding he bestowed upon certain
members of the metropolitan press. A generous critique
by a competent reviewer, the late Dr. Brown, author of
a "History of the Highlands and the Highland Clans,"
more than compensated for any annoyance the curs of
criticism let loose at his heels by this poetical adventure
had caused. Looking at these poems after the lapse of
fully more than a quarter of a century since their publication, during which great modifications of poetic taste
have taken place, we cannot say that they furnish any




Poetry and a Patron.               115
adequate token of the transcendent powers of their
author. Hugh Miller, we believe, could at no time write
anything very foolish; his volume is therefore, as might
be expected, destitute of all that silly sentimentalism
which infects with so sickly a hue the major portion of
the volumes of verse that in these days issue firom the
press. But though free from anything very foolish, it
contains nothing very fine; a certain massive strength is
indeed there, but so totally dissevered from the delicacy
and sweetness, which amidst all its strength are the grand
characteristics of his prose, that one is very apt to take
the poet at his own word when he describes his lays as"Scarce hauflins warmed wi' minstrel fire,
And little skilled in lear o' ryme."
If poetry be, as Wordsworth asserts it is, the breath
and finer spirit of all knowledge, then assuredly Miller's
prose is more worthy of the name than any verse he
ever wrote; and yet, though relinquishing in set phrase
all claims to poetic excellence, it is obvious that to'his
latest day he never ceased to look back upon the poetic
offspring of his youth with all the tenderness of a first
love.  The very ingenious manner in which he has
contrived to introduce so large a portion of them into
his "Schools and Schoolmasters," shows the tenacity of
this affection; but, though his volume of verse did
little for his fame, it had at, least this advantage-it




116          Poetry and a Patron.
brought him in contact with one of the most accom.
plished of modern journalists and litterateurs, the editor
of the Inverness Courier. To the columns of that able
newspaper Hugh Miller contributed some descriptive
sketches, unsurpassed by aught' he ever afterwards accomplished. The theme was an humble one, and might
seem  at first sight rather unpromising —t wasthe
herring fishery; nevertheless, with this comparatively
commonplace topic on which to exercise his descriptive powers, his style blossoms into the noblest prose
poetry. These papers were reprinted from the Co'urier,
so great was the interest they created. This triumph in
the treatment of a topic so lowly and unpretentious,
at once revealed the man of genius. It is only the
mediocre artist who is necessitated to travel into the
region of the distant and the unknown for the materials
on which to work; the true artist, knowing that all
nature is instinct with poetry, seeks and finds it in the
men and scenes with which he is surrounded. These
literary efforts in prose and poetry had awakened considerable interest in his fortunes among a class that do
not usually interest themselves much in the fortunes of
the working man. Hugh Miller, in point of fact, now
become a local celebrity, was pointed out to strangers as
the Cromarty poet. When on a visit to Inverness, the
late Principal Baird expressed a great desire to make
his acquaintance, and, anticipating it might be of some




Poetry and a Patron.            117
advantage to bring the two men together, Mr. Carruthers despatched an apprentice from Inverness to
Cromarty to intimate the desire of the Principal. The
interchange of sentiment between the graduate of the
schools and the graduate of labour was both interesting
and instructive. Principal Baird was something very
different from a monkish scholar who knew nothing
save his books.; his conversation with Hugh Miller
shows him to have been a man of the ripest and most
practical wisdom, and to his suggestion do we owe it
that his " Schools and Schoolmasters" was written.'"The distinction between the educated and uneducated
literary man is absurd," said the Rev. Principal; "all
are educated in some way, and the more unusual the
way, the more interesting its record. Write the history
of yours."  In these observations lay the germ of the
most delightful of all Hugh Miller's works.
About this time also he made the acquaintance of
Sir Thomas Dick Lauder. He had likewise got pretty
familiar with certain ladies of Cromarty, belonging to a
small but select circle, who had cultivated with some
success literary tastes and pursuits.  Not unfrequently
a group of these ladies might be seen in the old buryingground, where the stone-cutter was at work, discussing
topics of the freshest interest in literature and science.
During one of these conversations with some rather
elderly females, a young lady of very considerable per



118          Poetry and a Patron.
sonal attractions, apparently about nineteen, all flurried
with running, came hurrying down to bid the group
come away, and as instantaneously departed. IIngh
Miller did not observe that she had even looked at him,
and yet it was for him alone that she had put herself to
the trouble of taking so much care of her friends. The
young lady's mental powers were equal to her personal charms.  She had heard of Hlugh Miller as
the poet of'his native town, and longed to see him;
curiosity ripened into love, and, in due time, Lydia
Mackenzie Fraser became Mrs. Miller, and has since
been known to fame, not only fiom her relation to the
editor of the TWitness, but as the author of several
works of remarkable interest and ability. The family
to which Mrs. Miller belonged is a family in which
talent seems pretty generally diffused; her brother, the
Rev. T. Mackenzie Fraser, late of Yester Free Church,
now of Singapore, is known  to  possess remarkable
native powers, and no less remarkable acquirements.
Shortly after the publication of his poetry, a branch
of the Commercial Bank was opened in Cromarty;
the office of accountant was offered him by the agent,
and, after some hesitation, accepted.  To gain the
necessary experience of the workings of such an establishment, Hugh Miller visited Edinburgh, and was
transferred to one of the branches of the Commercial
bank at Linlithgow. As might have been anticipated,




Poetry and a Patron.             119
he looked a little awkward ill his new vocation. The
same mental peculiarity which made reading so irksome, until he found the secret of reading to lie in the
stories it unlocked; which made stone-cutting so irksome that Uncle David despaired of making him  a
tradesman; now made banking irksome and mysterious,
and for a time left an impression upon his superiors of
his utter incompetency. But, as in all the other cases,
so in this; having mastered the central principle around
which the details grouped themselves, he suddenly shot
up into an accomplished accountant, was left in charge
of the bank during the absence of the manager, and,
fortunately enough, did not discount a single bad bill
while his superior was away.
After a stay of about two months in Linlithgow,
Hugh Miller returned to Cromarty, and was regularly
installed accountant of the Commercial Bank now
opened in his native town. It was during the first
year of his accountantship his " Scenes and Legends of
the North of Scotland" appeared, and, during the
second, Lydia Mackenzie Fraser became his wife. The
spirit in which this important step was taken may be
gathered from the following verses inscribed upon the
blank pages of a pocket Bible which he presented to
Miss Fraser on the eve of their marriage:"Lydia, since ill by sordid gift
Were love like mine express'd,




120             Poetry  and  a Patron.
Take Heaven's best boon, this Sacred Book,
From him who loves thee best.
Love strong as that I bear to thee
Were sure unaptly told
By dying flowers, or lifeless gems,
Or soul-ensnaring gold.
"I know'twas He who formed this heart,
Who seeks this heart to guide;
For why?-He bids me love thee more
Than all on earth besideYes, Lydia, bids me cleave to thee,
As long this heart has cleaved;
Would, dearest, that his other laws
Were half so well received I
"Full many- a change, mny only love,
On human life attends;
And at the cold sepulchral stone
Th' uncertain vista ends.
How best to bear each various change,
Should weal or woe befall,
To love, live, die, this Sacred Book,
Lydia, it tells us all.
"0, much-beloved, our coming day
To us is all unknown;
But sure we stand a.broader mark
Than they who stand alone.
One knows it all: not His an eye,
Like ours, obscured and dim;
And, knowing us, He gives this book,
That we may know of Him.
"His words, my love, are gracious words,
And gracious thoughts express;
He cares e'en for each little bird
That wings the blue abyss.




Poetry  and a Patron.                121
Of coming wants and woes He thought,
Ere want or woe began;
And took to him a human heart,
That He might feel for man.
"Then, O, my first, my only love,
The kindliest, dearest, best!
On Him may all our hopes repose,On Him our wishes rest.
His be the future's doubtful day,
Let joy or grief befall:
In life or death, in weal or woe,
Our God, our guide, our all."
A hundred pounds did not now seem quite so large
a sum  as Hugh Miller had once imagined, and, to eke
out his income, he began to write for the periodicals.
The first that came in his way was "Wilson's Tales of
the Borders," to which he contributed some of the
finest tales that appeared in that popular serial. The
remuneration not proving altogether what it ought to
have been, the accountant made an offer of his services
to Mr. Robert Chambers, and duiing two years he
contributed to his well-known journal, receiving the
most liberal remuneration.  In  his "Schools and
Schoolmasters," Hugh Miller takes occasion to acknowledge the kindness of Mr. Chambers, not merely in his
own case, but expresses the opinion that perhaps no
writer of the present day has done so much to encourage struggling talent as that gentleman. This opinion
is one which, we believe, will be endorsed by all who
6




122          Poetry and a Patron.
know anything of the genial and benevolent nature of
that accomplished man.  Some local squibs, written
in defence of his favourite minister, Mr. Stewart, who
had refused to subordinate his sacramental services
to the orgies of a coronation-day, procured  Hugh
Miller a gentle reprimand from the bank authorities in
Edinburgh. This attempt at dictation on the part of
the bank, in a mnatter with which they might seem, on
the first blush of the thing, to have no concern, we
might be disposed to class in the same category with
the dictation to Burns by the excise authorities; but a
moment's reflection will show, that, without particularly
blaming Hugh Miller, with whom, probably, the offence
was a sin of ignorance, his superiors were substantially
in the right. The Commercial Bank was meant on its
establishment to be quite distinct in its character from
the then existing banks, which were all of them political
engines. Speaking of their directorates, Lord Cockburn
says:-" They were made up of respectable men, but
without any talent or general knowledge, and the conspicuous sycophants of existing power."  Excluding
politics from its trade, the Commercial could not well,
in consistency with its character, especially at that early
period when party feeling ran so high, even seem to
violate its fundamental principle. The reprimand, however, we have said was a slight one, and Mr. Ross, his
superior in Cromarty, made it still more mild. Gradu



Poetry and a Patron.            123
ally, however, was Hugh Miller drawn into the vortex
of a controversy unspeakably more important than any
merely local squabble. The battle between the Scottish
Church and the Imperial Parliament had convulsed Scotland; Hugh Miller caught the contagion, and plunged
with all the earnestness and all the energy of his nature
into the thick of the combat.
Though under somewhat modified forms, this battle
was essentially the same as that in which the Church of
Scotland was engaged, almost from her earliest settlement; it is therefore important that we pause here to
take a brief retrospect of the conflicts of the Scottish
Church.




CHAPTER VIII.
CHURCH AND STATE.
NOTHING has so much tended to complicate all ecclesiastical movements in Scotland, as the circumstance
that the exact relations of the Scottish Kirk have never
been accurately defined. The Reformation was consummated during the minority of Mary. When the
Scottish queen came from France to Scotland to ascend
the throne of her ancestors-apt pupil of the wily
Cardinal of Lorraine-she took good care to legalise as
little as possible of the doings of the reformers. The
voice of the nation was too decidedly in their favour to
allow even the queen to set herself in open opposition
to what had been done. In these circumstances she
very naturally resorted to what is, on almost all occasions, the strategy of the weak-dissembling. When
Mary had abdicated the throne, and James VI. reigned
in her stead, that amalgam of the pedant and the
tyrant, though he blessed God that the Scottish kirk
was the purest kirk in Christendom, did not, on that
account, leave it to manage its own affairs. It is pro



Church and State.             125
bable the vain-glorious monarch imagined, that for
much of its purity it was indebted to the circumstance
that he deigned to lift upon it the light of the royal
countenance. And despite his eulogium, no sooner had
Jamnes succeeded to the throne of "' that bright occidental star," Elizabeth, than getting enamoured with the
smooth ways of England's bishops, the vigorous selfassertion of the Scottish presbyters became odious in
his eyes, and the famous Hampton Court conference was
held, to convince Andrew Melville and his coadjutors
how antiquated and unscriptural were their ideas. The
Scottish clergy, who had been summoned before the
king, were a set of stubborn republicans: neither crown
nor crosier could induce them to swerve firom the sinplicity of presbyterial order. The routine and pompous
ceremonial of Episcopacy only served as a theme for
the satire of the intrepid rector of the university of
Glasgow; and after enduring the most humiliating discomfiture, James was obliged to let go the Scottish
presbyters, without the gratification of a solitary conversion. Episcopacy being deemed a more pleasant
form of faith than the Presbytery, the great object of
the Stewarts was to upset, as best they might, the Presbyterian Church. So long as James VI. lived, the
scheme was pursued with something like respect for the
predilections, and something like consideration for the
prejudices of the nation. But, from the moment that




126           Church and State.
his son Charles ascended the throne, the scheme of
amalgamation or assimilation was pursued with a hot
htaste that indicated an utter disregard of the feelings of
the country. Happily, Jenny Geddes's cutty-stool cut
short the monarch's magnificent plan.  " Thou foul
loon, wilt thou daur say mass at my lug?", gathered up
into a single sentence a nation's idea of Episcopacy.
Jenny's stool proved the tocsin which summoned the
nation to the conflict with its ancient kings. I-Iow that
struggle was fought out, need not be here recapitulated.
The story of the whole Iliad of woes through which the
nation passed, is "familiar in our mouths as household
words."
At the Revolution Settlement, unfortunately, what was
only a drawn battle was veiled under the semblance of
a triumph. The party was undoubtedly defeated who
had sought to trample in the dust the " standard of Zion,"
but the principles of the martyr-heroes did not receive
that sanction and that prominence which they were
entitled to receive. William, with none of the bigot's
zeal which induced his father-in-law, Jamnes VII., to
forego, as the French sarcastically expressed it, "three
kingdoms for a mass," had all the love of power which
characterized the Stuarts; and he, more than any other
British monarch, is the father of Erastianism in the
Scottish Church. Diplomacy did much during his reign
to bring to reason the Scottish clergy; and the spirit




Church and State.             127
and temper which William managed to introduce into
the Church, rendered the encroachments upon her
liberties, which took place under a subsequent sovereign, capable of comparatively easy accomplishment.
The Revolution Settlement brought indeed peace, but
it did not bring liberty to the Scottish Church. I1er
spiritual independence, for which on so many a battlefield her sons had contended unto the death, was yet unsecured. To prove this, one has only to listen to the
formula with which the General Assemblies of the Scottish Kirk are to this day closed. The first quarrel of
the Kirk arose out of the circumstance of the sovereign
disputing its right to meet independent of his will. And
to this day the Church of Scotland is opened not only
by a Royal Commissioner, but, what is more striking
and more important, when the Moderator has, in the
most solemn manner, and in the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ, declared the Assembly dissolved, the Commissioner instantly rises from his chair of state, and, as if
in solemn mockery of the Moderator, repeats precisely
the same formula, with this slight difference, that the
authority.under which he declares the Assembly dissolved is not, like the Moderator's, the authority of the
Lord Jesus Christ, but his sovereign lady the Queen's.
The scars of the fiery trial through which Scotland
had passed, were too deeply imprinted on the heart of
the nation to be obliterated even by a change of dynasty.




128            Church and State.
The product of the persecution was a fierce and defiant
fanaticism, ready to dare anything in behalf of ideas for
which so much had been suffered; while, by the side
of this stoical piety and fortitude, there had gradually grown up, to the great grief of the faithful, a
wild and ribald licentiousness both in thought and
manners. In their correspondence, the good men among
whom there still lingered the last fires of the antique
piety of the heroic age which had passed away, are
constantly bewailing the heresy and the infidelity of
their times. Wodrow's description of the illuminati
of his day is by no means exaggerated. "They were
born," says the minister of Eastwood, " under the bright
light of the gospel, and pains taken in their education,
and they want not a certain measure of head knowledge;
but their light eats out their exercise, and they rest, I
fear, too much on their knowledge, and turn light, airy,
and frothy, and woefully evaporate in questions and
debates too high for them."
At no former epoch in the history of the Scottish
Church, had there been so great a dearth of intellectual
power among her clergy. Since the death of Alexander
Henderson, so quickly followed by the death of Gillespie,
the Church of Scotland produced no leader worthy to
be named in the same breath with the three great men,
who had in each eventful crisis of her history hitherto
guided her destinies. In Knox, Melville, and in Hender.




Church and State.             129
son, religion had kindled a blight flame of patriotism:
purity of soul, contagious eloquence, and iron strength of
will, shone resplendent in them all. But the Revolution
of 1688 produced no tribune of the Church. The name
of the then principal of Edinburgh University is, perhaps, her highest name; partial historians have, indeed,
painted him as a man, the dint of whose pen had been
felt by Stillingfleet: but we suspect the polemical
bishop was more annoyed with the dint of the pen of
John Locke than aught ever written by Gilbert Rule.
In point of fact, the ablest man connected with the
Scottish Church at the Revolution had become what no
Scottish minister had ever been,-a courtier; and to
comprehend exactly the position of the Church of Scotland, and rightly trace the progress ofthe Erastian element
in her constitution, it is necessary that we look for a little
at the character of this extraordinary man. William
Carstairs was, unquestionably, one of the most remark
able men of the Revolution. We may almost say that
Glasgow has the honour to have been his birth-placehe was a native of Cathcart. Educated by a most distinguished scholar, an indulged Presbyterian minister,
under whom he acquired the most complete mastery of
the classics; to save him from  embroilment in the
politico-religious troubles of the times, under the disguise of a wish still further to perfect his education, his
father sent him to Utrecht. On his journey to the con.
6*




130            Church and State.
tinent he carried with him a letter of introduction to an
eminent and public-spirited London physician, who
happened to be one of those men with whom Flagel,
a pensionary of Holland and one of William's agents,
carried on an active correspondence. The physician
gave young Carstairs a' letter of introduction to
Flagel, and the pensionary was so much struck with the
superior abilities and polished address of the Scotchman,
that he at once introduced him to his master, the Prince
of Orange. The perfect comprehension of the state of
parties in Scotland which Carstairs evinced, won the
favour of William, and from that day until the day of
his death the great Dutchman and the Scottish divine
were fast friends.
Carstairs while in Holland was made chaplain of the
Prince of Orange, and minister of the English Protestant
congregation at Leyden. On every battle-field he was
William's companion; and when the army of the Prince
landed at Torbay, as yet it stood along the beach,
Carstairs, placing himself at the head of the host that
was to deliver England, invoked the divine blessing
upon the enterprise; the entire body of the troops
uniting in the jubilant notes of that grand old Hebrew
song of deliverance and triumph, the 118th Psalm, in
that hour consecrated by the biblical genius of our
countryman as the Marseillese of the Revolution. Car.
stairs counselled William to observe the strictest impar.




Church and State.             131
tiality towards the various parties into which Sco(tland
had been split, and to be very careful to abate nothing
of the royal prerogative. He did not wish ill to the
Church of Scotland, but he wished her in a greater
measure subordinated to the royal will, than the Scottish reformers could ever brook.
Not that in him we detect the full-blown Erastianism
which, a little later, characterized the leaders of the
Scottish Church.  In ecclesiastical politics, Carstairs
occupies a position midway between Henderson and
Robertson. He did not share the religious enthusiasm
of Henderson-he had not stooped to model his church
principles upon the philosophy of Hobbes. His name,
however, marks the epoch when diplomacy, rather than
religious earnestness, became the one thing needful in
an ecclesiastical leader. With the last of the Cameronians, the brave Renwick, perishing on the Castle Hill
of Edinburgh, religious earnestness was gone from the
Scottish Church. The Church did indeed yet struggle
for supremacy, but the struggle was continued more
in the spirit of a paltry personal egotism, than in the
broad and generous spirit that had characterised the
contendings of her early reformers. It vindicated its
rights with the narrowest bigotry. Patronage was indeed abolished, much against the will of William; once
and again had he given it to be understood, it was his
wish, that nothing should be done prejudicial to the




132            Church and State.
interests of patrons. Nor were the assemblies of th6
Church to meet except at his pleasure.'" The walls of
Jericho," which whoso should attempt to build, Alexander Henderson had cursed with the curse of Heil the
Bethelite, were thus again rising all around.
A glance at the muster-roll of the Church at the
period of the Revolution Settlement, will enable us to
comprehend, not only how it was her liberties were so
indifferently secured under William, but also how they
were so easily filched from her in the succeeding reign.
When the Prince of Orange became king of England,
there were three parties in the Scottish Church. First
in order and in honour were the aged ministers ejected
at the beginning of the persecution-now the representatives proper, the old guard, of the second reformation.
Next there were the indulged clergy, and lastly, the unconquered followers of Cargill and Cameron. Of the
men who had shared in the work of Alexander Henderson, not more than sixty remained; of the indulged
ministers there were at least twice sixty; and of the
Cameronians there were but three.  With the evangelical and patriotic party so outnumbered, with no
commanding mind to direct its energies or shape its
policy, it is not wonderful that party should have been
unable to make much headway against at once the
indifference, if not absolute hostility of the majority of
the Church, the king's Erastian policy, and the tempo



Church and State.              133
rizing management of his adviser Carstairs. Nor, while
such was the aspect of its outer, was the Church's
inner life greatly more satisfactory. In her best days,
the perfection of her government was not more marked
than the purity of her doctrine. Now, alas! she
had in a great measure become a nest of heresy.
In such circumstances it had not been surprising if
we found the more earnest minds among the clergy,
in an age yet so unenlightened upon the principles
of toleration, resorting to rather harsh measures for
the conservation of what they esteemed orthodox
opinions. Not that we are prepared to justify the narrowness that characterized even the best men of that
time. This much only we may state, if not in defence,
at least in explanation of their intolerance,-almost all
of what is now designated liberality of thought was
then, in Scotland at least, associated with principles
subversive at once of civil and religious freedom. The
dissidents from the confessedly rather stern creed of
their country, were generally found on the side of the
oppressor.
The case of Greenshields, which has been so often
pointed to as a proof of.the intolerance of the Presbyterians, doubtless evinces an exhibition of temper with
which we are apt to be equally surprised and disgusted.
It should be remembered, however, in palliation at
least if it do not excuse the spirit of the people, that




'I-4           Church and State.
the episcopal clergyman of that age was not the quiet,
gentlemanly, decorous, and polished gentleman of the
present times, reading the liturgy unexceptionably on
Sunday, and lecturing, mayhap, on poetry or architecture on the Monday to the elite of tne population.
He was to the Scottish Presbyterians-the symbol of
thirty years of bloody persecution, and a man more
likely, should opportunity offer, to make them acquainted with the merits of the thumb-screw, or the
newest improvements on that terrible instrument of torture, "the boots," than the latest advances in aesthetics.
But though jealous, impatient, and intolerant of dissent from her standards, the Scottish Church of this
epoch is not guilty of the terrible crime Lord Macaulay
has laid to her charge. Her ministers were not the murderers of Thomas Aikenhead. If inquisition is made
for the blood of that youth, it is in the Scottish privy
council and among the lords of session we must seek
the authors of the deed. To prevent any misconception, it may be well to state at once, that we have not
one word to utter either in defence or in palliation of
tha mode in which the poor youth was hurried into
eternity. That was doubtless a sad tragedy, and fitted
to awaken the saddest emotions, which the authorities
of Edinburgh enacted on that gray January morning
of 1697. A speculative and studious, if rash youth,
not yet major, expiating on a scaffold the crudities of




Church and State.             135
his philosophy and the falsehood of his theology, was a
spectacle fitted to kindle the deepest sympathy in all
hearts where fanaticism had not frozen the fountains of
sensibility; and had Lord Macaulay's withering denunciation been directed against the parties really
amenable for the crime, he would have been worthy of
all commendation. Unfortunately, however, for the
reputation of the Scottish Church, the historian has not
given a fair version of the facts of the case.
Lord Macaulay's readers cannot go far without discovering, that among the many excellent qualities he
exhibits, not the least conspicuous are the vigour and
strength of his hates. The contempt and scorn which
he pours upon whole classes, rise at times almost into
the sublhne. The fate of Thomas Aikenhead presented
the historian with a theme on which he could exercise
his peculiar talents, and display his peculiar antipathies
to the very greatest advantage.  While defending
religious toleration, and execrating bigotry at the tomb
of its unfortunate victim, he was at the same time
lashing with the scorpion-like scourge of his stately
eloquence a batch of Presbyterian divines, an apostate
whig lord advocate, and a brawling republican chancello'r of the privy council.
" Aikenhead," says Lord Macaulay, " might undoubtedly have been, by the law of Scotland, punished with
imprisonment until he should retract his errors and do




136           Church and State.
penance before the congregation of his parish; and
every man of sense and humanity would have thought
this a sufficient punishment for the prate of a forward
boy. But Stewart, as cruel as he was base, called for
blood. There was among the Scottish statutes one
which made it a capital crime to rail at or curse the
Supreme Being, or any Person of the Trinity. Nothing
that Aikenhead had said could, without the most violent
straining, be brought within the scope of the statute.
But the Lord Advocate exerted all his subtilty. The
poor youth had no counsel. He was altogether unable
to do justice to his own cause."
One would suppose from this account, that the Lord
Advocate had indicted Aikenhead upon the extreme
statute alone, and that he thus at once placed himself
in a position where, to secure a conviction, it would be
necessary to strain every artifice of the special pleader,
and also that the form of the indictment placed the
jury in the dilemma of either acquitting altogether, or
finding guilty of the capital offence. No reader depending upon Lord Macaulay for his information, could
ever suppose that the minor statute, to which he refers
as one whose penalty would have sufficiently punished
the prating of the forward boy, was actually in the indictment as an alternative charge; yet it really was so.
The jury were not therefore left, by the subtilty of the
Lord Advocate, exactly in the difficulty Lord Macaulay




Church and State.             137
has represented.  Nay more; this modified act had
only been passed in the session of the then current
parliament; and yet the Lord Advocate gives to Aikenhead the benefit conferred upon any one in his position,
which was precisely such benefit as is conferred upon a
criminal who has been guilty of what the crown, by the
exercise of a little dexterity, might easily prove murder,
but which they indict as murder or culpable homicide.
We know that the effect of such indictments, in the
majority of cases, is to acquit the panel of the capital
offence. That it failed to do so in the case of Thomas
Aikenhead, we must ascribe to some other cause than
the subtilty of the Lord Advocate.
That it may not be supposed that we are stretching
a point in favour of that functionary, we reproduce the
precise words of the Acts under which Thomas Aikenhead was indicted:-" It is statute and ordained that
whosoever, not being distracted in his wits, shall rail
upon or curse God, or any of the Persons of the blessed
Trinity, shall be punished with death." This Act was
passed in the reign of Charles II. And by the fourth
Act of the fifth session of the current parliament, 1696,
ratifying the aforesaid act, it is further enacted, "That
whosoever shall by their writing or discourse deny, impugn, or quarrel, or argue, or reason against the being
of God, or any of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity, or
the authority of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and




138            Church and State.
New Testaments, or the providence of God for the
government of the world, shall, for the first offence, be
punished with imprisonment," &c.
- No evidence exists to show that the Lord Advocate,
although the public prosecutor, took the initiative in
this trial; on the contrary, we find it was forced upon
him through a minute of the Privy Council, by which
Aikenhead was delivered over to Sir James Stewart
"to be tried for his life;" such are the precise words
of the minute as it stands in the records of the Council.
While the only connection of the ministers of Edinburgh
with the case, so far as authentic testimony goes, is a
connection highly honourable. Lord Macaulay says
that the ministers not only desired the death, but they
desired the speedy death of the poor youth. The whole
evidence for this serious charge is a letter from a member of the Privy Council in which these words occur. It
was told that if the ministers would intercede, the youth's
life would have been spared. The reader will notice
the peculiarity of this testimony or accusation. Lord
Anstruther does not say of his own knowledge, that it
was the want of intercession on the part of the ministers
that was the cause of Aikenhead not receiving a respite;
he merely says it was told, that is, he heard somebody
say so. Only imagine Lord Macaulay compelled to
make good his charge against the ministers of Edinburgh
in a place where his sonorous rhetoric would avail him




Church and State.             1o9
nothing. Suppose him examined by our able but in.
exorable Lord Justice-Clerk. The colloquy we might
imagine to be somewhat as follows:You are Thomas B. Macaulay, now commonly called
Lord Macaulay?-Yes. You are a literary man of some
celebrity?-(The historian  modestly bows assent.)
You have recently written a "History of England?"
-Yes.  That book has been fortunate enough to
secure a very large circulation?-Yes. As you are
so influential and popular a writer, you will of course
be very careful to say nothing in your works without
good authority?-I am. You will be all the more
careful on such a point when character is at stake?
-Certainly; the historian who is not so, I regard as a
moral assassin. You have made some very serious
charges against a class of men whom we cannot suppose a gentleman of your high principle would slander.
-I do not exactly comprehend to whom you refer. Is
it statesmen or churchmen? It is a charge against
churchmen, sir, to which I allude. You have asserted
In the fourth volume of your "History of England,"
that the ministers of Edinburgh were the murderers of
an unfortunate youth who was executed for blasphemy
in 1697; of course, you would not make such a charge
except upon the best authority?-No, my lord; I had
the very highest authority for my statement-the letter
of a Lord of Session, Anstruther. Did Lord Anstruther




140            Church and State.
make the statement'in that letter from his own know.
ledge, or did he speak upon the authority of another?
He wrote what he was told. Is the court, then, to
understand it was only a hearsay on the part of Lord
Anstruther?-Witness hesitates.  Lord Justice-Clerk
(gruffly): Show me the letter. (Reads the ]litter.) I
find it is so. The writer of this letter does not know the
certainty of what he affirms; he seems only to have
been told it. (Turning to Lord Macaulay.) Have you
any further evidence to support your charge? —None.
The Lord Justice-Clerk: Do you then, sir, deem the
record of a hearsay a sufficient basis for the odious
charge you have made against the ministers ofxEdinburgh? (Dead silence-sensation in court.) No answer.
Lord Justice-Clerk: You may go down, sir.
There is still another point in connection with this
letter to which we wish to direct attention. This Lord
of Session, who, at the last moment, indulges in some
snivelling sentimentalism about the eminent Christian
the youth might have proved, was not only a member
of the Privy Council, but formed one of that Council
on the day when it delivered up Aikenhead to the
tender mercies of the Lord Advocate. No trace of any
dissent from the deed of the Privy Council is to be
found in its records from the hand of the accuser of
the Edinburgh ministers. We must, therefore, be
permitted to look upon the evidence of humanity mani.




Church and State.             141
fested by him at the eleventh hour as somewhat sus.
picious. It was very natural that a weak man like
Anstruther, when seized with remorse for the deed of
blood in which he had from the first borne a part,
should attempt to throw the odium of that deed upon
the shoulders of others; and, if he could persuade himself that the clergy were equally guilty with himself,
his superstitions and his fears might be set at rest. We
have said that this is all the proof which exists of any
participation by the Edinburgh ministers in the guilt of
Aikenhead's murder.  But even this incidental and
second-hand evidence is not left to be confuted by its
own improbability and incoherence. We are in a
position to confront it with direct counter-testimony
given under the hand of one who speaks that which he
knows, not simply that which he has heard. Mr.
Lorimer, an English minister, though a Scotchman by
birth, and a man of some celebrity and talent, was in
Edinburgh at the time of the execution; and, in a preface to two discourses, one of which he preached before
the authorities of Edinburgh during the period that
Aikenhead was under sentence, he states distinctly that
the ministers of the city used an affectionate tenderness
towards him, and further, that some of the ministers, to
his certain knowledge, particularly " the late learned,
prudent, peaceable, and pious George Meldrum," then
minister of the Tron church, interceded for him with




142           Church and State.
the government, and solicited for his pardon; and
when that could not be obtained, he desired a reprieve
for him, and he joined with him in it.
Who then, it may be asked, were the parties really
guilty? A brief recital of the conduct of the judges of
Aikenhead will form the completest and most satisfactory
answer to that question. This, we believe, will be admitted to have been peculiarly a trial in which it was
the duty of the presiding judge to have given the jury
the benefit of his experience. The alternative charge
in the indictment was a new act, its limitations and its
compass ought to have been distinctly pointed out.
Such, at least, is now the custom in our courts of law.
But no attempt at either explanation, definition, or restriction was made in the present instance. Nay more,
when Aikenhead offered very valid objections to the
testimony of Mungo Craig, these objections were repelled by the judges, and Craig's evidence received against
him, though that evidence was in the highest degree
suspicious —in point of fact, vitiated to a very great
extent, by the peculiar relations which had subsisted
between himself and the panel. It was not proven
on the trial that Aikenhead had been guilty of the
higher form of blasphemy, at least directly guilty of
it. Craig did certainly swear to the cursing of Christ,
but his evidence was not corroborated; the nearest
approach to a corroboration being Patrick Middleton's




Church and State.            143
declaration, that he had heard the panel say the authors
and propagators of the doctrines of redemption were
the damnedest crew in the world. In the very able
articles reprinted from the Witness, entitled " Macaulay
on Scotland," it is indeed stated, that it was distinctly
proved upon the trial that Aikenhead had been in the
habit of calling Christ a -- impostor, in addition
apparently to the evidence of Mungo Craig, which is
given on another page, and in addition likewise to the
evidence of Patrick Middleton, which is also given.
But after examining minutely Cobbett's and Howell's
" State Trials," together with the " Records of Justiciary,"
in the Register-Office, we have not been able to find
anything approaching to this dash. In fact, such a thing
is an absurdity. Whatever is spoken in evidence is
spoken out and recorded-nothing is left to be supplied.
Had it been there at all, not the dash, but the word the
dash is meant to represent, would have been plainly
written down. But such an expression is not to be
found in the original manuscript record of the evidence.
We notice this fact, because, had the expression existed,
in addition to the testimony of the other witnesses,
it would have proved the capital charge, and the theory
by which we bring home to the judges and the Privy
Council the guilt of this murder would have been a
groundless theory; Aikenhead would then have fallen
with, at least, the forms of justice.




144            Church and State.
Balloting the jury had not been introduced in those
days in Scotland, and, unfortunately, Aikenhead was
tried by a batch of Edinburgh bailies. Bailies in those
days no doubt represented, as they still represent very
well, the respectability, the orthodoxy, and the mediocrity of the population, and, in all that did not demand
too great a strain upon their intellectual faculties, were
no doubt pretty fair judges; but here was a case in
which they were taken at once into a region of speculation altogether foreign to their habits of thought.
What the Paternitas-filiatio and Hagio-pneumatos, about
which Aikenhead speculated, were, they would have
but a very dim conception indeed. Some of them
might have heard the expressions uttered occasionally
in pulpits by clergymen with a turn for theological
controversy and speculation, but these would be the
better-informed of the jury; to the others, all such
phraseology would remain a mystery. It was, therefore, peculiarly necessary in such a case as Aikenhead's,
where justifiable speculation was mixed up with much
unjustifiable levity and quibbling dialectics, that the
presiding judge should have carefully defined to those
who sat upon his trial, and who held his life in their
hands, the precise force of the statutes under which he
was indicted; pointing out most carefully the distinction
between that arguing and reasoning which constituted
the lesser offence, and that railing and cursing in which




Church and State.             145
lay the essence of the greater or capital crime. But
no such instructions were given, and no such definition
was attempted; not the least trouble was taken to
enlighten the jury on the point of law. The consequence was, as might have been expected, that, not
distinguishing properly between the statutes, they
returned a verdict finding the panel guilty of the capital
offence. One might have expected that this, if nothing
else was able to do so, would have awakened the judges
to a sense of their functions as guardians and administrators of justice, especially as the poor youth before
them had no counsel: but it was not so. Instead of.
sending back the jury to reconsider their verdict, that
verdict was received by the court without murmur or
objection, although only an inferential verdict. Sentence of death was passed by the doomster upon the
unhappy youth, and the 9th January, 1697, saw the
scholar and speculatist released from all earthly sorrows
by the hand of the executioner.
In none of all this procedure do we find any trace of
clerical interference.  Aikenhead was sent, we have
seen, by the Privy Council, " to be tried for his life"
before the High Court of Justiciary. We have also
seen that even the forms of justice were violated against
the panel. Upon whom, then, are we to visit the odious
charge Lord Macaulay has attempted to fasten upon the
ministers of Edinburgh-who were the boy's murder7




146            Church and State.
ers? Not the clergy, but the Privy Council and the
lords of Session. Supposing even the ministers entertained-what it has not been proved they did enter.
tain-revengeful feelings against Aikenhead; supposing
it were even proved-though the very opposite has
been proved-that they would not intercede for the
youth! would that absolve the judicial tribunals from
the guilt of immolating the heresiarch contrary to
the statute law of the realm? While turning from the
deed of blood with shuddering abomination, let us be
careful our reprobation falls upon the parties really
guilty.
Had Lord Macaulay been half as eager to reprobate
the rapacity of the Scottish aristocracy, as he has been
to reprobate the intolerance of the Scottish clergy, he
could easily have found the amplest materials for his
brilliant invective in its sordid bearing to the Church of
Scotland. The act of 1690, which abolished patronage,
gave patrons a very substantial compensation for their
lost patrimony; yet when, in violation of the act of
security in 1712, the son of Lord Stormont, inspired by
the Scottish Jacobites, introduced the bill restoring
church patronage in Scotland, no mention was made of
any restoration of the compensation the nobles had
received on its abolition. At the period of the Reformation they appropriated fully two-thirds of the
Church's revenues. At the period of the R[evolution




Church and State.              147
they compounded with the Church for the surrender of
a usurped right, and within little more than twenty years
of the compound, they resumed the right so definitely
resigned. The blow thus aimed at the Church of Scotland was meant as a precursor of the restoration of the
exiled family to the throne of their ancestors. It was
anticipated the old heroic spirit of the earlier better days
would resist the invasion of the Church's rights, ahnd that
out of the confusion consequent upon such a conflict, the
opportunity of the Jacobites would arise. But a church
with the pure gold of Christian principle impregnated
with so large an alloy of worldly policy, was no longer a
martyr church; and no longer possessing the spiritual
might necessary to bear aloft her ancient banner, she
bowed ingloriously to the yoke.
Carstairs, though holding no extreme opinions on the
subject of popular election, but fully aware of the sinister
political bearings of the restoration of patronage at this
crisis, exerted himself to the utmost against the act;
but all effort was vain.  The influence of William's
chaplain, so omnipotent with the Prince of Orange,
was nearly nil with the ministry of Anne. Whatsoever
a man soweth that shall he also reap. In the act he
now deplored, Carstairs saw the fruits of the juste milieu
policy to which he had advised his master. King and
chaplain were alike afraid of the fanaticism  of the
Covenanter. Both deemed it the perfection of state.




148            Church and State.
craft to keep in equal countenance prelate and pres.
byter. But, unfortunately, the perfect equilibrium of
parties they had sought to establish, was now somewhat
rudely shaken, and the Revolution Settlement itself
jeopardized by the fanaticism, not of the Covenanter,
but the Jacobite.
From this hour the Church of Scotland, which, notwithstanding her imperfections, had shone so resplendent
among the churches of the Reformation, began to feel
herself a waning light. There were not indeed wanting,
even in the darkest hour of her fortunes, voices calling
her up fiom amidst the toils of statecraft in which she
had lost her way, and in which her lamp had well-nigh
gone out. These voices, however, though betokening
a yet unextinguished vitality, gave little earnest of
returning power. But as the darkest hour is the prelude of the dawn, so, from out the all but utter eclipse
of the Church's hopes, consequent on the triumph of
her enemies, light was seen lacing the lowering clouds
that hung bodeful over her future. In a past crisis of
her history those solemn words on the lips of the minister of Kinnaird-" He that entereth not in by the door
into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the
same is a thief and a robber "-piercing the soul of the
minister of Leuchars, had transformed the proteg6 of
Gladstanes into the antagonist of Spottiswoode, and the
author of the Covenant. Now another text is about to




Church and State.             149
kindle another flame, destined to burn on even into our
own day, not only with undiminished, but with increasing brilliancy.
Some twenty years after the yoke of patronage had
been placed anew on the necks of the people of Scotland,
it was attempted still more firmly to rivet its chains by
a kind of supplemental act, depriving the people of the
last vestige of popular privileges they yet enjoyed.
The deep undertone of discontent with which this proposition was received, found a tongue in the famous
sermon of Ebenezer Erskine, preached before the Synod
of Perth and Stirling, October 10, 1732. Devout men
inly hailed Erskine on that day as a noble witness for
the truth. But, unfortunately, the mass of the ministers
of the Church of Scotland were rapidly becoming so
deeply leavened with the Erastian spirit of the existing
powers, as to be no longer willing "the stone which
the builders rejected should be made the headstone of
the corner." Light could not any more be borne by
ecclesiastical judicatures; and Erskine, Fisher, Wilson,
and Moncrietf, bore with them, in their secession, the
torch of truth, with which they had sought, but sought
in vain, to relume the flickering altar fires of the church
of their fathers.
Complaint has been made by ecclesiastical historians
entertaining substantially the principles for which the
Erskines contended, that they should not rather have




150            Church and State.
stayed within the Church, and endeavoured to turn the
tide, then so strongly set in favour of moderatism, into
an evangelical channel.  Whether this could have
been accomplished by some astute tacticians we do not
presume to say. But it could not, we think, have been
well effected by the fathers of the Secession-men obviously rather evangelical teachers than  ecclesiastical
leaders. The reluctance of the seceders to return to
the bosom of mother church has also, we think, been
too harshly dealt with. The Church of Scotland of that
day is judged too favourably if judged in the light of
the spasmodic efforts made to induce Erskine and his
coadjutors to retrace their steps.
In the history of the next twenty years we shall find
the amplest material for the corroboration of this opinion.
At the close of that period, moderatism has found its
true chief. William  Robertson, of Gladsmuir, afterwards known as Principal Robertson, inaugurated his
accession to the post of leadership by the direction of
proceedings issuing in the deposition of the Rev. Thomas
Gillespie of Carnock, founder of that branch of the
Secession long known as the Relief Church. The manifesto of the moderate party which this case drew forth,
(drawn up by Robertson,) seems almost identical in its
principles with the principles of Thomas Hobbes'of
Malmesbury. That a modern sceptic should garnish
his philosophy with the maxims of a heathen moralist is




Church and State.              151
not wonderful; but that any Christian minister should
have been found virtually asserting "the state is the
highest ethics," was surely passing strange. For more
than a quarter of a century did Robertson guide the
policy of the Scottish Church. When he resigned the
reins so long held with so firm a hand, a party had
arisen in the Church (his own special friends) demanding that subscription to the Confession of Faith should
henceforth be discontinued.
Dr. Hill of St. Andrews, successor of Robertson in the
leadership of the Church, pursued the Robertsonian
policy; going even a step further than his predecessor.
That wary leader had, while supporting to the utmost
the rights of patrons, always preserved the form of a call
in deference to the traditions of the Church. Hill, bringing a narrower and severer logic to the consideration
of the question, seeing, as no doubt Robertson also saw,
that patronage and a call were virtually destructive of
each other, proposed that the call be abolished.  The
counsel was not exactly followed, but the fact of it having been given shows the desolate and dangerous coast
on which the church was rapidly drifting. Amidst the
general unfaithfulness, a bold and energetic voice-the
voice of Dr. Thomas Hardy-is heard, honestly declaring
that the experience of seventy years, and the revolt of one
hundred thousand of her people, are proofs that absolute
patronage is irreconcilable with the genius of presbytery.




152           Church and State.
What a man so honest and so able as Hardy might
have done for the church, had life been given him, we
cannot tell; as it was, he had little more than time to
lift the trumpet to his mouth, and to sound this jarring
and dolorous blast in the ears of the moderates of his
day, ere death summoned him from the church militant
to the church triumphant. At this epoch moderatism
may be considered to have fully developed itself as a
system within the Church of Scotland. How far it had
deflected from the doctrines and the spirit of the Reformers may be learned from two facts,-its leading
lights had been the friends of Hume-their followers
were the tools of Dundas.




CHAPTER IX.
NON-INTRUSION.
SINGULARLY enough, to the pecuniary difficulties of
the Edinburgh Town Council does Scotland owe it,
that the dreary and leaden reign of moderatism was
first broken. In 1810, Dr. Andrew Thomson was
brought to Edinburgh; in 1814, he became minister
of St. George's. His popularity was unbounded; he
filled the coffers of the Town Council, and he destroyed
the prestige of the moderates, who up to that hour
had numbered in their ranks the leading intellect of
the Church. This tribune of the people clothed himself
with a threefold power; from the pulpit, the platform,
and the press he assailed, with all the energy of his
intensely-earnest nature, whatever opposed itself to the
purity of God's truth, or the freedom of God's children.
Five years after Thomson is settled in Edinburgh,
Chalmers is settled in Kilmany-like stars in the horizon, one by one the evangelical leaders of the Scottish
Church are appearing. From Kilmany Chalmers went
to Glasgow; from Glasgow to St. Andrews; from St.




15~4            ENon-Intrusion.
Andrews to Edinburgh. In Edinburgh, he was surrounded with a group of coadjutors worthy of hirnsell,
of whom he was the central figure. The "voluntary
controversy," the elements of which had been gathering
for nearly half a century, now burst forth over Scotland with the fury of a tornado. Soon the leading
men, alike of the Establishment and Dissent; were
drawn into its vortex. A spirit of the most rigorous
inquiry and investigation was abroad, searching, as with
a lighted candle, the corruptions, real or supposed, of
the Scottish Church. In the pictures which the leading
voluntary agitators drew of the Kirk of Scotland, her
sons scorned to recognize their mother; denouncing
their representations as caricatures, but conscious of
the power they wielded over the popular mind. Dr.
Chalmers, —irritated that the popular feeling threatened
to leave the evangelical party
" Like some gallant bark,
Well built and tall, which angry tides have left
To rot and moulder in the winds and rains
Of heaven,"
-exclaimed, "The Voluntaries have taken the platform,
we must follow them there."  They did follow them.
The voluntary controversy merged in the non-intrusion
controversy. The leaders of the evangelical section of
the Scottish Church carried into her courts the sentiments to which they had given utterance from the




Non-Intrusion.               I55
platform. These sentiments, acted out, speedily brought
them into conflict with the Court of Session and the
Imperial Parliament. It was in the crisis of the struggle the quondam stone-cutter's voice was first heard as
a controvertist. A sleepless night passed by Mr. Miller,
after learning the decision of the House of Lords in
the Auchterarder case, resulted in "A Letter fiom one
of the Scotch people to the Right Hon. Lord Brougham."
This letter was despatched from Cromarty, so soon
as finished, to the manager of the Commercial Bank,
Mr. Robert Paul, a gentleman who had shown Mr.
Miller no  small kindness.  Mr. Paul carried  the
pamphlet to his minister, then the Rev. Mr. Candlish
of St. George's. On perusing it in manuscript, the
keen eye of the leader of the Free Church detected
in its writer the man his party had been looking out
for to edit their contemplated organ. At once, in the
extent of its popularity, and in the circles into which it
found its way, this first brochure was a successful hit.
It was read by most of the members of the ministry of
the day, including the late Lord Melbourne.  Daniel
O'Connell enjoyed its racy English, and Mr. Gladstone
noticed it with approval in that elaborate work on
"Church Principles," which Lord Macaulay subjected
to such a trenchant criticism.
Thus does the Cromarty-bank clerk address the
ex-Lord Chancellor of England:



156                 Non-Intrusion.
"With many thousands of my countrymen, I have waited in deep
anxiety for your lordship's opinion on the Auehterarder case. Aware
that what may seem clear as a matter of right, may be yet exceedingly
doubtful as a question of law,-aware, too, that your lordship had to
decide in this matter, not as a legislator, but as a judge, I was afraid,
that though you yourself might be our friend, you might yet have to
pronounce the' law our enemy. And yet, the bare majority by which
the case had been carried against us in the Court of Session,-the
consideration, too, that the judges who had declared in our favour, rank
among the ablest lawyers and most accomplished men that our country
has ever produced, had inclined me to hope that the statute-book, as
interpreted by your lordship, might not be found very decidedly
against us. But of you yourself, my lord, I could entertain no doubt.
You had exerted all your energies in sweeping away the Old Sarums
and East Retfords of the constitution. Could I once harbor the
suspicion that you had become tolerant of the Old Sarums and East
Retfords of the church I You had declared, whether wisely or otherwise, that men possessed of no property qualification, and as humble
and as little taught as the individual who now addresses you, should
be admitted, on the strength of their moral and intellectual qualities
alone, to exercise a voice in the legislature of the country. Could I
suppose for a moment that you deemed that portion of these very men
which falls to the share of Scotland, unfitted to exercise a voice in
the election of a parish minister — or rather, for I understate the
case, that you held them unworthy of being emancipated from the
thraldom of a degrading law,-the remnant of a barbarous code,
which conveys them over by thousands and miles square, to the
charge of patronage-courting clergymen, practically unacquainted
with the religion they profess to teach. Surely the people of Scotland are not so changed, but that they know at least as much of the
doctrines of the New Testament, as of the principles of civil govern.
ment,-and of the requisites of a gospel minister, as of the qualifications of a member of Parliamentl
"You have decided against us, my lord. You have even said that
we had better rest contented with the existing statutes, as interpreted
by your lordship, than involve ourselves in the dangers and difficul.
ties of a new enactment I Nay, more wonderful still I all your sym



Non-Intrusion.                    157
pathies on the occasion seemed to have been reserved for the times
and the memory of men who first imparted its practical efficiency to
a law under which we and our fathers have groaned, and which we
nave ever regarded as not only subversive of our natural rights as
men, but of our well-being as Christians. Highly as your lordship
estimates our political wisdom, you have no opinion whatever of our
religious taste and knowledge. Is it at all possible, that you, my lord,
a native of Scotland, and possessed of more general information than
perhaps any other man living, can have yet to learn that we have
thought long and deeply of our religion,-whereas our political
speculations began but yesterday; that our popular struggles have
been struggles for the right of worshipping God according to the
dictates of our conscience, and under the guidance of ministers of our
own choice; and that when anxiously employed in finding arguments
by which rights so dear to us might be rationally defended, our discovery of the principles of civil liberty was merely a sort of chanceconsequence of the search. Examine yourself, my lord. Is your
mind free from all bias in this matter? Are you quite assured that
your admiration of an illustrious relative, at a period when your judgment was comparatively uninformed, has not had the effect of rendering his opinions your prejudices? Principal Robertson was unquestionably a great man,-but consider in what way. Great as a leader,
-not as a "Father in the Church;" it is not to ministers such as the
Principal that the excellent among my countrymen look up for spiritual
guidance amid the temptations and difficulties of life, or for comfort
at its close. Great in literature,-not, like Timothy of old, great in
his knowledge of the scriptures; aged men who sat under his ministry
have assured me, that in hurrying over the New Testament, he had
missed the doctrine of the atonement. Great as an author and a man
of genius,-great in his enduring labors as a historian,-great in the
sense in which Hume, and Gibbon, and Voltaire were great. But
who can regard the greatness of such men as a sufficient guarantee
for the soundness of the opinions which they have held, or the justice
or wisdom of the measures which they have recommended? The
law of patronage is in no degree the less cruel or absurd from its
having owed its re-enactment to so great a statesman and so ingenious
a writer as Bolingbroke; —nor yet from its having received its full




158                 Non-Intrusion.
and practical efficiency from so masterly a historian, and so thorough
a judge of human affairs as Robertson;-nor yet, my lord, from the
new vigour which it has received from the decision of so profound a
philosopher, and so accomplished an orator as Brougham."
Roused by his labours, even while yet unaware of
the success of his first effort in defence of just principles
of ecclesiastical polity, Mr. Miller had begun a second
pamphlet. About the year 1820 a remarkable case of
intrusion had occurred in a neighbouring parish. Lapse
of time had rendered the people indifferent or forgetful of the violence that had been done to their
Christian rights, and probably, like his neighbours, Mr.
Miller had not hitherto thought much over the matter;
but Lethendy, Marnock, and Auchterarder had now
thoroughly awakened the more earnest portion of the
membership of the Scottish Church.  Mr. Miller's zeal
was at white heat, and on a Saturday evening he set
out for the house of a friend, that he might attend the
deserted church on the following Sabbath, to glean
from  actual observation the materials of a  truthful
description, which; he trusted, would tell in the controversy. That description Mr. Miller has given entire in
his " Schools and Schoolmasters," nor shall we mutilate
the passage:" There are associations of a high and peculiar character connected
with this northern parish. For more than a thousand years it has
formed part of the patrimony of a truly noble family, celebrated by,




Non-Intrusion.                      159
Philip Doddridge for its great moral worth; and by Sir Walter Scott
for its high military genius; and through whose influence, the light of
Refbrmation had been introduced into this remote corner, at a period
when all the neighbouring districts were enveloped in the original
darkness. In a later age it had been honoured by the fines and proscriptions of Charles II.; and its minister, one of those men of God
whose names still live in the memory of the country, and whose
biography occupies no small space in the recorded history of her'worthies'-had rendered himself so obnoxious to the tyranny and
irreligion of the time, that he was ejected from his charge more than
a year before any of the other non-conforming clergymen of the
Church. I approached the parish from the east. The day was warm
and pleasant; the scenery through which I passed, some of the finest
in Scotland. The mountains rose on the right, in huge Titanic masses,
that seemed to soften their purple and blue in the clear sunshine
to the delicate tone of the deep sky beyond; and I could see the yet
unwasted snows of summer, glittering in little detached masses, alone
their summits; the hills of the middle region were feathered with
wood; a forest of mingled oaks and larches, which still blended the
tender softness of spring with the full foliage of summer, swept down
to the path; the wide undulating plain below, was laid out into fields
mottled with cottages, and waving with the yet unshot corn; and
a noble arm of the sea winded along the lower edge for nearly twenty
miles, losing itself to the west, among blue hills and jutting headlands,
and opening in the east, to the main ocean, through a magnificent
gateway of rock. But the little groups which I encountered at every
turning of the path, as they journeyed with all the sober, well-marked
decency of a Scottish Sabbath morning, towards the church of a
neighbouring parish, interested me more than even the scenery. The
clan which inhabited this part of the country had borne a well-marked
character in Scottish story. Buchanan has described it as one of the
most fearless and warlike in the north. It served under the Bruce at
Bannockburn. It was the first to rise in arms to protect Queen Mary,
on her visit to Inverness, from the intended violence of Huntly. It
fought the battles of Protestantism in Germany, under Gustavus Adolphus. It covered the retreat of the English at Fontenoy; and presented an unbroken front to the enemy after all the other allied troops had




1 to                 Non-Intrusion.
quitted the field. And it was the descendants of these very men whc
were now passing me on the road. The rugged robust form, half bone,
half muscle; the springy firmness of the tread; the grave manly countenance;-all gave indication that the original characteristics survived
in their full strength; and it was a strength that inspired confidence,
not fear. There were grey-haired, patriarchal-looking men among the
groups, whose very air seemed impressed by a sense of the duties of
the day; nor was there aught that did not agree with the object of the
journey, in the appearance of even the youngest and least thoughtful.'" As I proceeded I came up with a few people who were travelling
in a contrary direction. A Secession meeting-house has lately sprung
up in the parish, and these formed part of the congregation. A path
nearly obscured by grass and weeds leads from the main road to the
parish church. It was with difficulty I could trace it, and there were
none to direct me, for I was now walking alone. The parish buryingaround, thickly sprinkled with graves and tombstones, surrounds the
church. It is a quiet solitary spot of great beauty, lying beside the
sea-shore; and, as service had not yet commenced, I whiled away
half an hour in sauntering among the stones, and deciphering the inscriptions. I could trace in the rude monuments of this retired little
spot a brief but impressive history of the district. The older tablets,
grey and shaggy with the mosses and lichens of three centuries, bear,
in their uncouth semblances of the unwieldy battle-axe and doublehanded sword of ancient warfare, the meet and appropriate symbols of
the earlier time. But the more modern testify to the introduction of
a humanizing influence. They speak of a life after death in the' holy
texts' described by the poet; or certify, in a quiet humility of style,
which almost vouches for their truth, that the sleepers below were' honest men, of blameless character, and who feared God.' There is
one tombstone, however, more remarkable than all the others. It lies
beside the church door, and testifies, in an antique inscription, that it
covers the remains of the' GREAT. MAN. OF. GOD. AND. FAITHFVL.
MINISTER. OF. IESVS. CHRIST,' who had endured persecution for the
truth in the dark days of Charles and his brother. He had outlived
the tyranny of the Stuarts, and, though worn by years and sufferings,
had returned to his parish on the Revolution, to end his course as it




Non-Intrusion.                     161
had begun. He saw, ere his death, the law of patronage abolished,
and the popular right virtually secured; and, fearing lest his people
might be led to abuse the important privilege conferred on them, and
calculating aright on the abiding influence of his own character among
them, he gave charge on his death-bed to dig his grave in the
threshold of the church, that they might regard him as a sentinel
placed at the door, and that his tombstone might speak to them
as they passed out and in. The inscription which after the lapse of
nearly a century and a half, is still perfectly legible, concludes with
the following remarkable words:-' THIS. STONE. SHALL. BEAR. WITNESS. AGAINST. THE. PARISHIONERS. OF.  *  $  *  *  *  *  *  *
IF. THEY. BRING. ANE. UNGODLY. MINISTER. IN; IERE.   Could  the
imagination of a poet have originated a more striking conception in
connection with a church deserted by all its better people, and whose
minister fattens on his hire, useless and contented!
"I entered the church,. for the clergyman had just gone in. There
were from eight to ten persons scattered over the pews below, and
seven in the galleries above; and these, as there were no more'John
Clerks' and' Michael Tods' in the parish, composed the entire congregation. I wrapped myself up in my plaid and sat down, and the
service went on in the usual course; but it sounded in my ears like a
miserable mockery. The precentor sung almost alone; and ere the
clergyman had reached the middle of his discourse, which he read in
an unimpassioned monotonous tone, nearly one-half his skeleton congregation had fallen asleep, and the drowsy listless expression of the
others showed, that, for every good purpose, they might have been
asleep too. And Sabbath after Sabbath has this unfortunate man
gone the same tiresome round, and with exactly the same effects, for
the last twenty-three years;-at no time regarded by the better clergymen of the district as really their brother,-on no occasion recognized
by the parish as virtually its minister; —with a dreary vacancy, and a
few indifferent hearts inside his church, and the stone of the Covenanter at the door I Against whom does the inscription testify?-for
the people have escaped. Against the patron, the intruder, and the
law of Bolingbroke, —the Dr. Robertsons of the last age, and the Dr.
Cooks of the present. It is well to learn, from this hapless parish, the
exact sense in which, in a different state of matters, the Rev. Mr.




162               Non-Intrusion.
Young would have been constituted minister of Auchterarder. It is
well too to learn that there may be vacancies in the church where no
blank appears in the Almanac."
It would have been marvellous indeed, if writing
like this, and the appearance of such an ally at so
critical a juncture, had not created a sensation. The
non-intrusion party powerful in the church courts;
victorious over the moderates in every General Assembly; proudly elate with its triumphant position, had
yet one sad drawback to its popularity; —it was but
feebly supported by the press of Scotland.  Whig
journalists could not aid a movement which threatened to overthrow that peculiar subordination of the
church to the state, with which the traditions of their
party had immemorially associated a regulated liberty.
It was also somewhat unfortunate, and contributed
not a little to a misconception of the real aims of
the non-intrusionists, that many occupying advanced
positions in the movement-party of the church, had,
during the great political struggles through which the
nation had then but recently passed, been found ranged
on the side of toryism.  Suspected of sinister aims by
their political antagonists, they naturally enough expected some assistance from their political friends; but,
despite the utmost finesse and management by certain
ecclesiastics noted for their diplomatic adroitness, political toryism recoiled from even seeming to support a




Non-Intrusion.               163
cause which it deemed the cause of spiritual republicanism.
The non-intrusion leaders were thus left to seek their
allies among those devout men, of all shades of political
opinions, in whom religious earnestness rose superior to
all political considerations. It is not wonderful that the
anomalous position in which- they found themselves
towards both sections of the great parties in the state,
induced them to consider the propriety of establishing
a journal devoted to the advocacy of those principles
the evangelical party in the Scottish Church were
known to represent.  To start a party organ was a
comparatively easy matter. The peculiar difficulty was
to find an editor, able to make such an organ respected.
Hugh Miller's pamphlets at once proved his passport to
the office. No sooner had Dr. Candlish read the first of
those rare tractates, than with characteristic promptitude
and acuteness he exclaimed, " Here is an editor for our
Witness."
A letter was despatched to Cromarty inviting the
bank clerk to meet the leading non-intrusionists in
Edinburgh. In obedience to the invitation, Hugh Miller repaired to the Scottish capital, met the men so soon
to be the heroes of the Disruption, in the manse of
Liberton, (the Rev. Dr. Begg's,) accepted the editorship
of their projected organ, arranged to enter upon his
duties, and, returning to Cromarty, terminated his en
gagement with the Commercial Bank.




CHAPTER X.
THE WITNESS.
IT was on the 15th January, 1840, that the first
number of the Witness newspaper appeared. At the
call of duty, not the mere whim of either taste or
temperament, its editor flung himself into the stormy
ecclesiastical controversy then raging in Scotland. It
had been his ambition to leave the world a something
it would not willingly let lie. He knew well how much
of newspaper-writing must necessarily be of comparatively temporary interest, and above all, he knew
how ephemeral and short-lived papers on ecclesiastical
controversy, however well written, invariably prove.
Such work was felt by Hugh Miller, as John Milton
felt the controversies of the evil times on which he had
fallen, to be a kind of writing to which he brought, as
the poet expresses it, "at best only his left hand."
And yet such had been his peculiar training, and his
peculiar reading, that it may be questioned, even laying
the matter of genius out of consideration, and looking
at Hugh Miller merely as an accomplished litterateur, if




The Witness.                165
another man could have been found in all Scotland so
well fitted for the task for which he had now girt himself.
The moderate section of the Scottish Church had
somehow, up to a very recent period, embraced within
its pale all-at least almost all-the literary talent of
the Church. The representatives of evangelical truth,
though unspeakably more powerful as preachers than
any men the moderate party could show, were utterly
unable to cope in the field of general literature with
the Robertsons, the Blairs, the Homes, and the Logans
on the Erastian side of the Scottish Establishment. Not
until Thomson and Chalmers rose, did that reputation
for comparative illiteracy, which had become inseparably associated with the idea of an evangelical Scottish
minister, begin to break up and pass away. As the
mists. of morning are lost in the rays of the rising
sun, so this unfortunate misconception, to which accident had given a colouring of probability, disappeared
in the blaze of the blended literary and scientific
glory which the Astronomical Discourses of Chalmers
shed over evangelical truth. Henceforth it was felt
that not alone the genuine piety, but the genuine
ability and genius of the Church, would gravitate rather
to the doctrines of the modern "Marrow-men" than
to the clay-clad creed of men who had transformed the
Scottish Church from a genuine Christian institute into
a mere State machine. Still, notwithstanding this con



166              The Witness.
viction, shared by all the earnest men of the Establish.
ment-a conviction which the events of the Disruption
proved to be well-grounded-the representatives of that
old party mustered strong in the Church; some of them
possessing genuine ability, of a peculiar order it is true,
but yet not to be despised or under-estimated. The
literary man on the evangelical side, who should combat
this party successfully, must needs be a man who understood it thoroughly, possessing an intimate acquaintance
with its history, its traditions, and its literature. In
all these respects Hugh Miller was amply endowed for
the work he was called to perform. Perfectly acquainted
with not the acts alone, but also the aims of the founders
of the Scottish Church-having a most accurate conception of the ground-plan, so to speak, of the Scottish
Reformation-able to put his finger at once upon all
those points which indicated how widely the moderates
had deflected firom the ecclesiastical polity of Knox and
Melville-at home in their favourite literature-knowing
its excellencies no less than its defects-he entered
upon his duties, a workman needing not to be ashamed,
and descended into the arena of ecclesiastical conflict,
armed at all points, so far as the discussion of principles
was concerned.
Without being justly chargeable with any undue
proneness to moralizing, we cannot contemplate Hugh
Miller in the position he was now called to occupy,




The Witness.                       167
without feeling how peculiar are the leadings of Providence. He who in early life felt no call to become a
minister of the church, in the maturity of his powers
voluntarily assumes the onerous position of defender of
that church's most sacred spiritual privileges.  And,
though certain histories of the Ten Years' Conflict are
strangely oblivious of the advent of the Wi'tness, thousands will peruse with interest those words of greeting
with which its editor addressed his readers on the
threshold of his mighty toils:" We enter upon our labours at a period emphatically momentousat the commencement, it is probable, of one of those important eras
never forgotten by a country, which influences for ages the condition
and character of the people, and from which the events of their future
history take colour and form. We enter, too, upon them at a time
when, with few exceptions, our Scottish contemporaries in the same
field-unable, it would seem, to lead, and unwilling to follow —neither
guide the opinions of the great bulk of their countrymen, nor yet echo
their sentiments. Strange as it may seem, it is a certain fact, which
in the nature of things must every day be coming more and more
obvious, that on one of the most important questions ever agitated in
Scotland, the public and the newspapers have taken different sides.
"A few simple remarks on the point at issue may show more conclusively than any direct avowal, the part which we ourselves deem it
our duty to take. There are parties which continue to wear their first
names long after they have abandoned their original principles; and
the historian, in tracing their progress, has to regulate his definitions
by his dates. There are parties, on the contrary, which remain unchanged for years. The followers of Werter are in every respect, in
the present day, what they were when their extraordinary leader first
organized their society. There is, on the other hand, a section of our
Scotch Seceders who see nothing to fear from the counsels or the in



168                  The Witness.
crease of Popery, and who can compliment the Gowdies and the Simpsons of the time on the policy which drove the Fishers and the Erskines
out of the Church. But the remark is exemplified at least equally
well by two antagonistic bodies which, for the last century and a
half, have composed the same corporation. The differences of the
contending parties within the Church of Scotland arise solely from the
circumstance, that the one retains its original principles, and that the
other has given them up: nor is it at all improbable, that it shall be
decided by the issue of the present conflict, whether the Church shall
continue to unite its old character to its old name, or whether for the
future it shall retain the name only.
"The cause of the unchanged party in the Church is that of the
Church itself; it is that of the people of Scotland, and the people
know it; it was the cause of their fathers, and the fathers of the Reformation;-it is the cause of a pure, efficient, unmodified Christianity.
And the cause opposed to it is exactly the reverse of all this. We
appeal to even our opponents. We urge them to say whether, in the
expressive language of Dr. M'Crie, the cry which now echoes throughout the country be not the identical' cry which has not ceased to be
heard in Scotland for nearly three hundred years?' We request them
sincerely to consider their present position, as illustrated and determined by the history of the Church. Among what party (in the pages
of Calderwood and Wodrow, for instance) do they recognize their
types and representatives of the body to which they are opposed?
History is more than usually clear and definite on the point —it is one
of those, regarding which the testimony of the present age regarding
the past, anticipates that of the future regarding the present. It
would be no overbold matter to class the John Frosts of our times
with the Jack Cadeg of the times of Henry VI., or to compare the
part taken by the nmiyor of Newport in the late riots, to that taken by
the mayor of London in the disturbances of Wat Tyler. There are
general similarities of conduct and circumstances which occur to every
one, and which constitute the simpler parallelisms of history. But
there are also cases that are more than parallel, and circumstances
that are more than similar. It was identically the same, not a similar
Christianity, which was denounced by the Sanhedrim, and which
suffered in the Ten Persecutions. It was identically the same Pro



The  Witness.                    169
testantism for which John Huss endured martyrdom on the Continent,
and George Wishart in our own country. It was identically the same
Presbyterianism for which Melville died in exile, and Guthrie on the
scaffold. Is there no such well-marked identity of principle between
the churchmen on whom the fires of Middleton and Lauderdale fell
heaviest, and the churchmen exposed in the present conflict to the
still more merciless exactions of the Court of Session? and would not
such of our bitter opponents as profess a high respect for the fathers
of our Church, do well to remember, that what has already occurred
may possibly occur again, and that there once flourished a very respectable party, who, when busied in persecuting the prophets of their
own times, were engaged also in building tombs to the memory of the
prophets slain by their fathers?"
In this preface to his great work, one knows not
whether more to admire the calmness of statement,
or the precision of definition by which it is distinguished. To some, indeed, it may seem in certain
passages breathing only the egotism of the partisan,
the sectary, and fanatic, ever ready to identify his
own crotchet with a national cause. But that surely
must be acknowledged to have been something nobler
than  a crotchet, which shook Scottish  society to its
foundations, brought a national Church into  deadly
antagonism with the highest courts of the realm, and
ultimately, in obedience to the behests of a great truth,
led hundreds of the noblest of the Scottish clergy —
men pre-eminent in learning, eloquence, and piety, to
abandon the church of their fathers. A great logician
has, we know, described the Disruptionists as "martyrs
by mistake." Posterity, we suspect, will pronounce the
8




170              The Witness.
mistake to have been all on the right side. No student
of Scottish ecclesiastical history can for a moment fail
to perceive, that the principles the party represented
by the Witness asserted, were substantially the prin.ciples for which "Melville died in exile and Guthrie
on the scaffold." And had the logical position of that
party, then the majority in the General Assembly of
the Church of Scotland, been equally invulnerable
with its historic position, the Disruption-ministers had
this day been the Scottish Church. It was the flaw in
-the logical position of the evangelical, as opposed to the
moderate party in the Establishment, that precipitated
the crisis of 1843. In ascertaining the exact nature of
that flaw, we shall best comprehend the somewhat
anomalous position from which the descendants of the
Erskines looked down upon the Ten Years' Conflict;
and also discover how far the Scotch Seceders, on
whom  Hugh Miller has here cast a rather suspicious
glance, and to whom he has assigned a somewhat questionable position, were justified in the attitude they
assumed.
The founders of the Scottish Church, in common
with the men of their timl,, had obviously but very
ill-defined ideas of the distinction between the temporal
and the spiritual powers. The sanguine anticipation,
that Scotland "under an opened gospel" was immediately to become as one of the kingdoms of Messiah,




The Witness.                171
naturally enough led the framers of the "First Book
of Discipline" to assign to the civil magistrate "the
conservation and purgation of religion." Should any
doubt be entertained whether in the opinion of Knox
such was the duty of that functionary, his "Letters
from Geneva" will at once dissipate that doubt.  In
these letters the Reformer distinctly states, that "to the
civil magistrate specially appertains the ordering and
reformation of religion." In the enunciation of such a
sentiment, Knox may seem to some little less than the
patron of a full-blown Erastianism. But those ready
to leap to this conclusion forget a very fundamental
distinction between the sentiments of Knox at this early
epoch, and the sentiments of those who, to adopt the
phraseology of a later period, sought to set "the power
of the sword" above "the power of the keys." That
distinction lies in the oft unremembered fact, that with
Knox, as with Calvin, the idea of a Christian Church
and a Christian Commonwealth were identical, each
being commensurate with, and involving the other.
The theocratic thought of the heroes of the Reformation
has, unfortunately for the world, never been realised.
Not until His coming whose right it is to reign, may
men behold the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. But in the year
of grace 1560, the year that gave to Scotland its First
Book of Discipline, such a transformation was still with




172               The Witness.
the Reformers a glorious possibility. A quarter of a
century of conflict between the spiritualism of these
Christian confessors and the secularism of the Scottish
aristocracy, sufficed to turn this bright hope, then
robed in the most celestial light and putting forth its
noblest blossoming, into darkness and dust.
The results of that mournful conflict are to be found
embodied in the Second Book of Discipline. In that
book the distinction between the ecclesiastical and the
civil government is stated at length. In that statement
we find the Church-the reformed Church of Scotland
— entrenching itself behind positions which had served
of old to set the tiara of the Roman pontiff above the
crown of the Caesars. In vindication of the leaders of
the Scottish Church, it must, however, be borne in
mind, they took refuge in these principles, not as Rome
had taken refuge, in the interests of priestly caste and
for the advancement of priestly ambition, but solely as
a means through which to conserve the spirituality of
the Church of Christ, perpetually menaced by those
they had fondly dreamed would have been nursingfathers and nursing-mothers to the nascent reform.
The exigencies of their position had taught the framers
of the Second Book of Discipline, that the civil and
the sacred powers were in their natures distinct. But
the legitimate corollary to that proposition, viz., that
things thus radically distinct in their natures could not




The Witness.                173
safely be incorporated, had not yet dawned upon them.
Not even the fierce and prolonged persecution which
so soon enwrapt the Church, brought near to her sons
a conviction of this salutary truth. And, when persecution no longer raged-when the Revolution of 1688
was a fact accomplished, and the tyrant who had so
"persecuted the Church of God and wasted it" had
become a fugitive and a vagabond on the face of the
earth-when all this was done, and when under another
regime those encroachments of the civil powers were
renewed, which separated the fathers of the Secession
from the National Church, the calamity was attributed
rather to accidental circumstances, than to any flaw
in fundamental principles. A century's experience
taught the descendants of the Erskines, that the combination of secular prestige and spiritual power their
ancestors had sought in vain to realize in the Establishment, and to which the evangelical section of the
Scottish Church still clung so tenaciously, was utterly
incompatible. When, therefore, almost in the very
hour this light dawned upon them, they found a formula
of spiritual independence-the watchword of a martyr
age, once again "in bannered bloom unfurled," was it
wonderful that, undazzled by the glorious souvenirs
under which the non-intrusion, now the dominant
party in the Establishment, combated, they estimated
its battle-cry by the light of the logic of events, as




174              The Witness.
developed in some three centuries of the history of the
Scottish Church, rather than in the lustre with which, in
the enthusiasm of the hour, the conflict stood invested?
Long, very long, had they themselves clung to the daydream that now fascinated their evangelical fiiends;
and with the blinding mirage, which throughout a
hundred years had veiled the stern facts of the case,
just fallen from their eyes, it would have been too
much to have expected they would do more than just
endeavour to laugh those friends out of their delusion.
Such a temper, it may be granted, was not the most
Christian that might have been manifested in the circumstances. But while making this acknowledgment,
a sense of justice compels us to add, that neither was
the attitude of the leading advocates of the spiritual
independence of the Church of Scotland towards Scottish Dissent, the attitude best fitted to evoke its brotherly kindness and charity. But, as it is altogether
foreign to our purpose to revive the memory of mutual
wrongs, perpetrated in the excitement of controversy,
we refrain from any more specific allusion to the unseemly antagonism between evangelical churchism and
evangelical dissent, too often manifested throughout
the non-intrusion and voluntary controversies.  Before,
however, passing from this topic, a word, partly in
vindication, and partly in reprehension of the Scotch
Seceders, is necessary. There is no denying, it was one




The Witness.                175
of the delusions with which a newly-discovei ed principle is so often found to intoxicate its votaries, tnat
induced the Seceders to assert, "Popery is no longer
Popery when it declares on the side of voluntaryism."
There was just that infinitesimal amount of truth about
the proposition which served to veil its hollowness and
utter falsity from men panting to right all that was
wrong, whether in Church or State, and inspired with
the conviction that society had only to be conditioned
by their own narrow formula, and the mighty transformation was accomplished. Alas! the "mystery of
iquity " was too profound to be fully fathomed by
unsophisticated Scottish voluntaries. The phase through
which Roman Catholicism was then passing, rendered it
politic for it to assume the garb, and echo the accents of
an extreme liberalism. We need not say how very completely subsequent events have shown how miserable a
phosphorescent meteoric light, gleaming its brief hour
above the Pontine marshes, that was, the Dissenters of
Scotland mistook for the godlike radiance of a star of
heaven. The shallowness of the logic is now transparent,
which induced Scotch Seceders to listen even for a moe
ment to the syren song of liberty on the lips of representatives of a church, whose policy and whose ritual are a
device against the civil and religious freedom of man.
On this point, then, we freely concede, that the representatives of the Fishers and the Erskines amply merited




176              The Witness.
the censure Hugh Miller has meted out to them, in what
may be regarded as the prolegomena of the Witness.
On the second count of their indictment, however,
we cannot say Guilty. The light in which they looked
upon the moderate party in the Establishment, does
not seem to us open to rebuke. Making legitimate
deduction for the asperities of controversy, the dispassionate reviewer of their position must pronounce
them to have been here from the first, as they were
proved at the last, right. It was made matter of bitter
reproach, that they were honest enough to assert the
moderates held the only position compatible with
remaining an established church. Non-intrusionists
indignantly resented the idea, that because connected
with the state, they were thereby fettered. But did
not the Disruption demonstrate the stern verity of that
proposition, with a power transcending even mathematical certitude? The great truth with which that
exodus of the elite of the clergy of the Church of Scot.
land is at this hour silently leavening their flocks, is
precisely the truth for maintaining which Scotch SeLceders were not unfrequently stigmatized as atheistical
voluntaries.
But while asserting that the moderate party in the
Scottish Church occupied the more logical position,
the Seceders were under no delusion about which of
the great sections of the Church of Scotland was inspired




The Witness.               ]177
with the nobler instincts; none knew better to whom
they were indebted, within the pale of the Establishment, for that revival of evangelical religion by which
a large portion of its ministry had latterly been distinguished. It was indeed felt to be a little irritating, and
somewhat unfortunate, that the vision of these good men
in the Scottish Church was generally so circumscribed,
that they saw only the good themselves had done, and
seldom remembered, in estimating the religious agency
and religious influence at work upon the nation, to
estimate aught else than the agency they employed and
the influence they exerted. While ignoring a century
of effort on the part of others, is it marvellous that
those whose efforts were thus lightly esteemed should
have failed to proclaim, as if from the house-tops, this
new-born zeal?  Veterans who had borne the burden
and heat of the day in the Master's work, might be
pardoned when pausing to discover, if from being as
tumultuous, the zeal of these neophytes was likely to
prove as evanescent, as the mountain torrent, which,
leaping from ledge to ledge of the spray-clad rock,
bounding over every barrier, and bearing down all
opposition, is yet, at the terminus of its headlong and
agonizing descent, found altogether lost in the sands of
the valley.
But those slight deductions which Scotchmen who
had renounced the establishment-principle might be
8*




178               The Witness.
disposed to make, in their general estimate of Hugh
Miller's acceptability as the editor of an ecclesiastical
journal, arose out of tendencies and opinions which
qualified him only all the more completely for the task
he had assumed. A brief glance at the nature of that
task, and at the circumstances in which it was entered
upon, will enable us to form something like an adequate
conception at once of the very critical position Hugh
Miller was called to occupy, and the very great services
he rendered to a cause with which his name must henceforth for ever remain so indissolubly associated. The
first difficulty the Witness had to contend with, was the
fact that, originated by a clerical conclave, it might not
unnaturally be assumed to be a merely clerical organ.
Scotchmen have ever cherished a jealous dread of
ecclesiastical influence upon journalism. Nor have
those portions of the press that have fallen under its
control been at all calculated to dissipate that dislike,
or lay their vigilance asleep. Abhorred for its truculence and mendacity, or pitied for its inanity and
senility, the religious newspaper has been by turns
detested or despised; but respected-nfiever. We believe we shall not be contradicted in asserting, that the
Witness is the only journal, avowedly originated to
represent an ecclesiastical party, that has courageously
kept itself aloof from the sin that so easily besets all
ecclesiastical organs. It is no secret, that the main



The Witness.                179
tenance of this independent position cost its original
editor much sacrifice of feeling. He had undertaken
the duties and the responsibility which his onerous posi
tion imposed, from deeply conscientious motives. He
was ready to do battle with all comers in behalf of
those principles upon which he believed the historic and
national Church of the country based, and the herculean efforts made in their defence in the earlier years
of the existence of the Witness, prove, beyond all controversy, his devotion to the principles of the Free
Church. But when the battle was hottest, Hugh
Miller was a loyal combatant, not a free lance; and
no man could more promptly resent dictation and
interference, even when that dictation and that interference came from those he otherwise honoured.
When a certain eminent ecclesiastic proposed to secure
uniformity in the utterances of Free Church journalism,
by appointing something like a censorship over the
editorial columns of the newspapers supposed to be in
its interest; careless how others might think, feel, or
act in the matter; with the spirit of a man zealous to
uphold the independence of the profession he had
chosen, Mr. Miller resented the attempted dictation,
although in resenting he forfeited for a time the good
opinion of those hitherto most highly esteemed. It was,
no doubt, painful to break with some who had first




180              The Witness.
pointed him out as fit to fill the editorial chair; but
with a conscientious man all things cease to be painfu!,
when supported by the consciousness that he has dis
charged his duty.




CHAPTER XL.
POPULAR DISTRUST.
SucIH, then, were the powers, the tastes, and the
temper of the man the non-intrusion leaders selected
to popularise their movement among the people of
Scotland. Hitherto, despite their utmost efforts to dislodge from the popular mind all suspicion of sinister
aims, they continued to be everywhere looked upon
with the greatest distrust. Their zeal for the people's
rights, it was feared, only veiled the intrigues of priestly
ambition. Never before had a nation been so disposed to accept as accurate Milton's aphorism,-" New
presbyter is old priest writ large."  What the state of
feeling among the community generally was, even after
seven years' agitation, down to.almost the very hour
the Witness took the field, may be gathered from the
following passage in a private note, addressed by Hugh
Miller to Mr. Paul, Edinburgh, in 1839, when forwarding to him from Cromarty the manuscript of his
letter to Lord Brougham:-" The question which at
present agitates the country is a vital one, and unless




182            Popular Distrust.
the people can be roused to take part in it (and they
seem wofully indifferent as yet) the worst must inevi
tably prevail." That was a modest, and, as the sequel
has shown, a not ill-grounded hope, to which in the
same letter the writer ventured to give expression in
these words —"The people may perhaps listen to one of
their own body who combines the principles of the old
with the opinions of the modern Whig; and who,
though he feels strongly upon the question, has no
secular interest involved in it."  Mainly to the establishment of the Witness may be attributed the rapid
awakening of the people of Scotland to the real import
of the non-intrusion controversy, by which the years
1840  and 1841  were so peculiarly  distinguished.
Even so late as 1839, Dr. George Cook could state,
without fear of contradiction, that he could scarce enter
an inn or a stage-coach, without finding respectable men
inveighing against the utter folly of the non-intrusionists, and the worse than madness of the Church courts.
Nor are the concurrent testimonies of a sanguine
non-intrusionist and a veteran moderate the only sources
from which we are left to form our opinion of the true
state of public sentiment at this critical juncture. The
Veto act was passed in 1834. The decision of the
House of Lords in the Auchterarder case was given
in 1839. During all the intervening years, petitions
in favour of the independence of the Church had




Popular Distrust.            t83
oeen presented to Parliament; but the paucity of the
signatures obtained had been most marked. Even in
the metropolis of Scotland, the chosen home of the nonintrusion leaders, the scene of the labours of Chalmers
and Welsh, Gordon and Cunningham, Candlish and
Begg, not more than from  4000 to 5000 was the
average number of signatures these petitions received.
The appeals of an eloquence such as had not been heard
in the assemblies of the Scottish Church since the days
of Knox and Henderson, so far from setting the soul of
the nation on fire, had proved but as water spilt upon
the ground. To their dubious antecedents did these
orators owe the scepticism with which their efforts on
behalf of spiritual independence were almost everywhere received. People had a difficulty in believing
men the sincere friends of sacred liberty, who so
very recently were such indifferent friends to civil
freedom. It was peculiarly fortunate for this party,
that the editor of the Witness was above suspicion; no
souvenirs of a sinister career were associated with his
name, or beclouded his character.  His antecedents
were hostages for his perfect independence. The result
of his labours in dispelling the distrust with which nonintrusion principles had been hitherto viewed, was
apparent in the fact, that in 1840, the first year of the
existence of the Witness, the petition sent from Edinburgh to Parliament, in their behalf, contained somo




184            Popular Distrust.
13,000 signatures, being more than double the number
a kindred petition had obtained in the previous year
Already had the Witness disabused a large section of
the public of the fatal suspicion that it was for clerical
power, not popular rights, the non-intrusion leaders so
earnestly contended.
Nor while thus eminently successful in his peculiar
mission as an ecclesiastical polemic, was it merely from
his efforts as a controvertist that his countrymen were
left to gather their impression of his powers. It is
seldom, indeed, that a man of high faculty is not also
many-sided. The old divines were wont to represent
man as a microcosm of the universe; and it would seem
that, just in proportion to his intellectual development,
is the degree of ease with which he intermeddles with
all knowledge.
Whether in science, literature, or criticism, Hugh
Miller seemed equally at home. From out the stormy
arena of ecclesiastical controversy, he turned at will
into the peaceful region of aesthetics. With nature's
self an old acquaintance, we are not surprised to find
him, even so early as the second month of his connec.
tion with the Witness, indulging his readers with certain
glorious recollections of the beautiful and the sublime,
awakened by the contemplation of the triumphs of art
in the annual exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy.
Few first visits to that exhibition ever produced sucl




Popular Distrust.                   185
" criticism  for the uninitiated" as this delicately beautiful description of a northern dell suggested to Hugh
Miller while lingering in the presence, and  under the
opell of one of the richest landscapes of the exhibition:"In this solitary dell the banks, which, on either hand, at every
angle and indentation, advance their grassy ridges, or retire in long
sloping hollows, partake perhaps rather of the picturesque than of the
magnificent; but the trees which rise along their sides, and which for
the last century have been slowly lifting themselves to the freer air of
the upper region, look down from more than the higher altitude
instanced by Rousseau. Often when the evening sun was casting its
slant red beams athwart their topmost branches, and all beneath was
brown in the shade, we have sauntered along this little stream, lost in
delicious musings, whose intermingled train of thought and feeling we
have no language to convey. We have felt that the cogitative faculty
in these woods had not much of activity; but then, though it wrought
slowly, it wrought willingly and unbidden; and around, every minute
thing would sw'ell and expand an atmosphere of delightful feeling,
which somehow seemed to owe its origin as much to the magnitude
as to the quiet beauty of the surrounding objects; and which has
reminded'us fancifully, but strongly, of the minutest of all the planets
-of the Asteroids rather-whose atmosphere rises over it more than
ten times the height of the atmosphere of our own planet. We have
looked up to the branches that twisted and interlaced themselves
so high over our head, and the leaves that seemed sleeping in the
light; we have seen the deep blue sky far beyond; we have caught
glimpses through the chance vistas of little open spaces, shaggy with
a rank vegetation, and which we have loved to deem the haunts of a
solitude still deeper than that which surrounded us; we have marked
the varieties of beauty which distinguish the several denizens of the
forest-the ash with his long massy arms that shoot off from the trunk
at such acute angles, and his sooty blossoms spread over him as if he
were mourning-the elm with his trunk gnarled and furrowed like an
Egyptian column, and his flake-like foliage laid on in strips that lie
nearly parallel to the horizon-the plane, with his dark green leaves




186                Popular Distrust.
In:.d dense heavy outline, like that of a thunder-cloud-the birclh, too,
d tree evidently of the gentler sex, with her long flowing tresses falling
down to her knee; and as we have looked above and around, we have
felt our heart swelling within us with an exquisite emotion that feasts
on the grand and the beautiful as its proper fobod; and surely that
mind must be chilled and darkened by the pall of a deathlike scepticism, that does not expand with love and gratitude, under the influence
of so exquisite a feeling, to the great and wonderful Being who has
imparted so much of good and fair to the forms of inanimate nature,
and has bestowed on the creature such a capacity of enjoying them."
Nor is the following ought less grand:"When standing in front of M'Culloch's exquisite landscape-'Deer Startled'-we were enabled to call up some of our own moonlight scenes of quiet and soothing beauty, or of wild and lonely grandeur. We stood on a solitary shore. A broken wall of cliffs, more
than a hundred yards in height, rose abruptly-here advancing in
huge craggy towers, tapestried with ivy, and crowned with woodthere receding into deep gloomy hollows; the sea, calm and dark,
stretched away, league after league in front, to the far horizon. The
moon had just risen, and threw its long fiery gleam of red light across
the waters to the shore. A solitary vessel lay far away, becalmed in
its wake; we could see the sail flapping idly against the mast, as she
slowly rose and sank to the swell. The light gradually strengthened
-the dark bars of cloud, that had shown like the grate of a dungeon,
wore slowly away-the white sea birds, perched on the shelves,
became visible along the cliffs-the advancing crags stood out from
the darkness-the recesses within seemed, from the force of contrast, to
deepen their shades-the isolated spirelike crags that rise thick along
the coast, half on the shore, half in the sea, flung each its line of darkness inward along the beach. A wide cavern yawned behind us,
rugged with spiracles of stalactites, that hung bristling from the roof
like the icicles at the edge of a waterfall, and a long rule of light that
penetrated into the innermost wall, leaving the sides enveloped in
thick bbscurity, fell full on what seemed an ancient tomb and a
reclining'igure in white-sports of nature in this lonely cave. There




Popular Distrust.                   187
was an awful grandeur in the scene-the deep solitude, the calm still
night, the huge cliffs, the vast sea, the sublime heavens, the slowly
rising moon with its broad cold face l —we felt a half-superstitious
feeling creep over us, mingled with a too oppressive sense of the
weakness and littleness of man. Pride is not one of the vices of
solitude-it grows upon us among our fellows; but alone and ai
midnight, amid the sublime of nature, we must feel, if we feel at all,
that we ourselves are little, and that God only is great.
"The scene passed, and there straightway arose another.' We
stood high in an open space, on a thickly-wooded terrace, that stretched
into an undulating plain, bounded with hills. The moon at full looked
down from the middle heavens, undimmed by a single cloud; but far
to the west there was a gathering wreath of vapour, and a lunar
rainbow stretched its arch in pale beauty across a secluded Highland
valley. A wide river rolled-at the foot of the wooded terrace, but a
low silvery fog had risen over it, bounded on both sides by the line of
water and bank, and we could see it stretching its huge snakelike
length a-down the hollow, winding with the stream, and diminishing
in the distance. The frosts of autumn had dyed the foliage of the
wood-the trees rose around us in their winding-sheets of brown and
crimson, and yellow, or stretched in the more exposed openings their
naked arms to the sky. There was a dark moor beyond the fogcovered river, that seemed to absorb the light, but directly under the
nearest hill, which rose like a pyramid, there was a tall solitary ruin,
standing out from the darkness, like the sheeted spectre of a giant.
The distant glens glimmered indistinct to the eye, but the first snows
of the season had tipped the upper eminence with white, and they
stood out in bold and prominent relief-nearer apparently than even
the middle ground of the landscape. The whole was exquisitely
beautiful-a scene to be once seen and ever remembered."
On the last day of February, 1840, Hugh  Miller's
first geological contribution to the columns of the
Witness  appeared.   Its subject was  "The  Chaotic
Period." The paper embodies certain opinions and
conjectures upon the order of creation which, in "The




188            Popular Distrust.
Testimony of the Rocks," he saw fit considerably to
modify. In little more than a month later, the opening
chapter of " Old Red Sandstone " was published. Twc
years before the advent of the Witness, the substance
of this chapter appeared in " Chambers's Edinburgh
Journal," to which, on abandoning "Wilson's Tales of
the Borders," he had become a pretty regular, and
always a welcome contributor. Even thus early, one
knows not whether to admire more the catholicity of
taste and the versatility of talent, displayed in the
marvellous diversity of topics on which he lavished the
riches of his intellectual and imaginative powers, or the
profundity with which all he touched was treated.
Now he is instinct with the enthusiasm of the hour
combating for non-intrusion principles with a zeal
worthy of a Cameron or a Renwick, mayhap mauling,
with all the gusto of a Junius, some unfortunate apostate from the good cause; and now, withdrawn from
the strife of tongues-a sojourner in the city of the
dead, " the skeletons of nations around the lonely man,"
his sole companions the representatives of the vanished
ages, slowly and laboriously gathering up, by the most
painstaking induction of facts, the materials out of which
his imperial imagination has set as in a hall of mirrors
the glories of the primitive world. Other men of science
might be able-some probably more able —to read the
story of the fragmentary fossil skeleton imbedded in




Popular Distrust.             189
the strata of mother earth; but no one of them all was
so capable of realizing a life-like picture, at once of the
plants that adorned, and the living things that peopled
an earlier world. In breadth and picturesqueness of
description, no writer of this age has surpassed the
author of the "Stones of Venice;" but Ruskin, we
suspect, would find even his powers paralysed on the
pavement of the primitive world. Not so Hugh Miller.
Long study of its extinct organisms had given him a
familiarity with its every feature, which it only required
his powerful imagination to set free from the fossilized
condition in which, like some imperial taskmaster,
nature's mighty forces had through duons of ages remorsely bound them. Nay, we question if it will not
be found that, though in the gorgeousness of diction
Ruskin has surpassed our great countryman, for preRaphaelite-like accuracy of minute detail and severe
truthfulness to nature the guerdon must be awarded
to Hugh Miller.  His geological studies were to him
what the study of anatomy is to the painter; they
enabled him to present, not merely a boldly delineated
image of the thing. or the scene described, but they
also enabled him to preserve, amidst the utmost bold.
ness and vigour of outline, the minutest verisimility.
In literature and in science, as in all else he did,
Hugh Miller worked from a centre outwards. Given
the nature of the rocks of a country, and Hugh Miller




190             Popular Distrust.
would describe its scenery; but to describe its scenery
as he deemed description, such knowledge was necessary.
From a peculiarity of his mental nature, manifested
from the very earliest epoch, and not, as some have
alleged, from an overweening fondness for those scientific
pursuits with which his name has become so honourably
associated, is he found so frequently treating literary
questions in a semi-geological strain.  His was preeminently a pictorial and analogical, rather than analytical mind; and being so, his geological studies were
on all occasions of pre-eminent service, furnishing him
with a perennial source of fresh and apposite illustration.  In this pecular idiosyncrasy, we apprehend,
is to be sought the wholeness of Hugh Miller's scientific speculations. With the positive school of philosophy he had no sympathy, being, in point of fact,
the most conspicuous illustration of its falsity modern
times have furnished.  Instead of finding in Hugh
Miller's works!5 winnowing of science from  those
philosophical and theological puzzles with which in
earlier ages it was laden, —on the contrary, we find it
oppressed with the same problems which, from the
remotest antiquity, have engaged and exhausted the
ingenuity of man-problems which baffled the acumen
of the sages of Arabia thousands of years before they
tasked the acumen of the doctors of the Sorbonne, or
exercised the wits of the illuuninati of our own age



Popular Distrust.             191
while the positive philosophy does not encounter those
difficulties, only because it wants courage to come
abreast with them. It had been the dread of Hugh
Miller, in entering upon his editorial duties, that he
might possibly be deprived of the opportunities he had
formerly enjoyed of prosecuting his favourite geological
investigations. The first year of his connection with
the Witness set these fears at rest. The brilliant success of his papers on the " Old Red Sandstone" showed
how compatible, in his case at least, are the duties of
the journalist with the tastes of the man of science.
Some, we know, for whom the records of the rocks
have no charm, have lamented that so much of his
time should have been given up to the stony science,
thinking it might have been better spent upon topics of
the day. In reply to such fault-finders, we have only
to say, that on looking over that large mass of controversy upon questions of the hour which the TWtness
contains, and on which its editor long so freely lavished
the opulence of his intellectual powers, he surely must
have a most unhealthy relish for polemics, who would
have desired any greater attention to them than they
seem to have received. There is, however, a class of
persons who, because the editor of the Witness was
something more than the echo of the opinions of a coterie
of Church leaders, a presbytery, or an assembly, see in
that fact a want of interest in the pet schemes of his




192            Popular Distrust.
party. Such is ever the fate of the man of superior
powers. He is not absorbed by a special pursuit. A
cause which has swallowed up the entire energies of the
ordinary man, can have justice done it by the extraordinary, and yet leave him leisure for devotion to
other themes, which it may be supposed by the fanatic
bear no relation to what should have been the absorbing
passion of his life. But so far, therefore, from lamenting Hugh Miller's devotion to science, we believe
mainly to that devotion we owe it, that the magnificent
powers with which he was gifted budded and bloomed
to the last. Had it been possible for him to have
lost that taste for those studies nursed in his many
wanderings, until it had become an overmastering
passion, and sunk down into the mere party leaderthe fighting man of his Church-he might indeed
oftener have received the bigot's huzza, but he would
have dwarfed his highest endowments. Operating
under such conditions, that purely illustrative and beau.
tifully analogical power which he possessed, would have
borne no more likeness to the native faculty, than the
stunted and doddered oak upon the blasted heath bears
to the monarch of the forest in his pristine glory;
" The form of beauty smiling at his heart,"
must have drooped and withered beneath that wintry
sky.




CHAPTER XII.
STATE CARPENTERS.
"THE quarrel among the Scotch parsons," which
English statesmen expected the decision of the House
of Lords in the Auchterarder case would effectually set
at rest, after a brief breathing-time became only all the
more portentous in consequence of that decision. It
had not been anticipated the judgment of the Court of
Session would have been affirmed in the face of so influential a dissent as Lords Fullarton, Glenlee, Moncrieff,
Cockburn, and Jeffrey. And though anticipation was
disappointed by a tribunal from whose decision there
lay no appeal, the Church was not disposed to accept
either Lords Brougham or Cottenham as true exponents
of the polity of the Scottish Establishment. In point of
fact, the evangelical party looked upon Lord Brougham,
whose lead Lord Cottenham seemed implicitly to have
followed, as not an independent exponent of the principles of their Church, but simply the echo of the
policy of his great relative, Principal Robertson. To
them it seemed the historian's literary eminence veiled
the odiousness of his ecclesiastical policy, and in the
9




194             State Carpenters.
shadow of a great name the ex-chancellor forgot his
own brilliant antecedents. Long years of earnest toil
inl behalf of popular rights, it was thought, might have
inspired some other feeling than hostility to a principle that aimed to carry into the Church a measure
of that liberal policy of which, in other days, HIarry
Brougham's name had been the symbol. Much of the
power of Hugh Miller's first pamphlet springs from the
dexterity and adroitness with which his lordship's political and ecclesiastical opinions are pitted against each
other. With the more logical, or the more earnest of
the whig school of politicians, such considerations would
doubtless have their force.
It was, however, the misfortune of the evangelical
section of the Establishment, that it should have entered
upon its crusade in behalf of spiritual independence
while its political antagonists were in power. Fully
more than three-fourths of the movement party in the
Church of Scotland belonged to the conservative camp.
The government of Lord Melbourne looked upon Dr.
Chalmers as not merely a political, but almost a personal
foe. Animated by such feelings, mutual distrust was
inevitable. It was no secret to the whig cabinet, that
the party which now approached the treasury in behalf
of their favourite schemes of Church extension and
spiritual independence, sighed for the hour that would
dismiss those now besought to redress their grievances




State Carpenters.            195
to the cold shade of the opposition benches. The pressure from without was, however, great; and the whig
government, after most protracted negotiatiations, at
length announced a measure was in preparation that
would solve the difficulties of the Scottish Church.
But the hope kindled by the announcement was soon
extinguished. The enemy had gained the ear of
government.  Small as was the political influence of
the Voluntaries in the House of Commons, the whig
cabinet could not venture upon an act which would
most inevitably have alienated.them.  Government,
therefore, deeming discretion the better part of valour,
resolved to do nothing, and in answer to the expectations of the friends of the spiritual independence of the
Church, they at length stated, that opinions were so
conflicting, they were unable to devise a measure that
would be at all satisfactory to the varied interests it
was necessary to consult.
The peculiar character of the claim for spiritual
independence now put forth by the evangelical party,
unquestionably renders it less surprising that the,whigs should have declined to help the majority in
the Church into the position it sought to occupy.  In
point of fact, that party scarcely deserved to succeed in
the policy whlich, in this emergency, it made its. own.
Severing the question of spiritual independence from the
question of popular rights, the evangelical was seen in



196             State Carpenters.
voking the aid of the moderate side of the house to pro.
tect the authority of the Church. Without doubt the
two questions were theoretically distinct, and circumstances might be imagined in which they could also be
practically separated. But unfortunately for the success
of this appeal, the position of the Church was such it
was impossible to look upon the one as aught else than
the complement of the other.  Indeed, an impartial
retrospect of Scottish ecclesiastical history can hardly
fail to carry conviction to all minds, that there has
ever existed a pre-established harmony between the
principles. Unquestionably the spiritual independence
of the Church was menaced by the decisions of the
Court of Session and the House of Lords; but, in
the opinion of the moderates, it was so menaced because the evangelical majority had done what, so long
as patronage existed, was an illegal act. It was not
therefore wonderful, that moderatism-cool, logical
moderatism, essentially of the earth earthy-turned a
deaf ear to evangelical enthusiasm. By running counter
to its canny creed the evangelicals had got into difficulties, and the only deliverance it could offer was based
upon unhesitating acquiescence in its own erastian
policy. Not in this way was deliverance to arise; rest
in such circumstances had not been good. It is only
when the battle is fought, when the victory is won,
the good soldier can honourably lay up his arms.




State Carpenters.             197
Might we not imagine the defender of the Church's
spiritual independence in this crisis, thus apostrophizing
his moderate brother, as he declines the last call to enter
the battle-field:-" Well, be it so; perhaps thy outward
life shall be peacefuller. But thou shalt at best abide
by the stuff-like some cherished house-dog, guard the
stuff,-perhaps with enormous gold collar and provender; but the battle, and the hero's death, and the
victory's fire-chariot carrying man to the immortals,
shall never be thine."
And yet, despite their heroism, never, perhaps, did
any body of sincere and earnest men occupy a more
anomalous ox indifferently defined position, than did
the evangelical party in the Scottish Church at this
crisis. So far back as 1833, the historian of Knox and
Melville had publicly denounced any paltering with
the rights of the people by peddling half-measures.
Dr. M'Crie was aware, that not a few of the leading
lights of the evangelical party in the Scottish Church,
much as they disliked patronage, yet "feared the
people." That visionary fear he addressed himself to
rebuke in a vein of caustic irony. " But the people, the
people," he exclaimed, assuming for the nonce the attitude of alarmist-" if we expel the patrons, the people
will rush in like air into a vacuum, and raise such a
storm, tempest, and hurricane as will root up and scatter everything precious and venerable in our Church.




198            State Carpenters.
Good friends, be not so much alarmed. The period of
ecclesiastical agitation is pasf. The popular current is
changed.  The current has turned from religion to
politics. Instead of rushing in, the people have been
rushing out from you. You have told them that it is
a delusion to think that the Christian people have an
inherent right to choose their own minister. But to
pacify them you have added, that every man has the
right of choosing what minister he shall hear,-and
they have learned the lesson. The time may come
when you will need all the assistance the people can
give-when you will be fain to stimulate instead of
stifling their voice, and to ask their suffrages instead of
telling them they are incapable of anything but dumb
and dogged resistance, without the assignment of a
reason." When giving utterance to these sentiments in
1833, Dr. M'Crie was naturally enough esteemed a
man of extreme opinions. Events had now shown it
was sagacity, not rashness, that guided the speaker
upon that day. The period was rapidly approaching
when his counsel was to become the policy of the
Church. Before, however, adopting the simple courseto which such high authority had beckoned them in
the initial stage of the controversy, the leaders of the
evangelical party must once more turn their eyes to the
government of the day. The fate of the whigs was now
sealed. The conservatives filled the treasury benches.




State Carpenters.             199
Sir Rohert Peel and Dr. Chalmers were fiiends. When
on the shady side of those benches, Sir Robert has
said some very amiable things about the Church-nay,
in 1835, he had seized the opportunity his brief tenure
of office bestowed, to embody certain important prin
ciples Dr. Chalmers first enunciated in a funeral sermon
on the death of the Princess Charlotte, in his "king's
speech." All this Peel had done. What then more natural
than the expectation that Peel should now do something
more substantial? Unfortunately it was on fiscal questions, not questions of faith, that Sir Robert was great.
The Scottish Church was therefore handed over to
the Earl of Aberdeen, to be dealt with as the noble earl
saw meet. This state carpenter, by profession a diplo.
matist, entered upon negotiations with the evangelical
leaders of the Scottish Church, with all the finesse of
the professional red-tapist. In a correspondence with
Dr. Chalmers, a misunderstanding speedily arose. The
statesman got sulky-got angry with the ecclesiastic,
and Dr. Chalmers ultimately discovered that he had
about as little to expect from toryism as from whiggery
-that, in fact, the sole difference between whig and
tory on the question was, that while the whig cared
little for an establishment at all, the tory appeared
nearly equally indifferent if the establishment was not
the mere creature of the state.
Probably no man of all the Scottish clergy, whe



200            State Carpenters.
ther moderate or evangelical, was inspired with a
more chivalrous reverence for aristocracy than Thomas
Chalmers.  He loved to think of it, he loved to speak
of it as the Corinthian capital of society, giving grace
and polish to British manners republics could never
possess; and though the feeling was sentimental,
not pusillanimous, there can be no doubt to some
extent it unfitted him for the rough work and plain
speaking the exigencies of the Church rendered necessary. How different in this respect was the church
leader of the nineteenth from the church leader of
the sixteenth century!  Knox stood unawed in the
presence of the feudal barons of Scotland, a veritable king of men among the proudest of earth's nobility. Chalmers was ever somewhat unmanned in
the company of a lord. With such a native tendency,
we all the more admire the vigour of the principle that
rose superior to its subtile and ensnaring power. Indeed, nothing is more marked or more honourable, as
exhibiting the depth of vital principle in the mass of
the evangelical party, than the unwavering constancy
with which they battled on in behalf of the principles of
the Church. " No weakness, Danton," said the revolutionary demigod, when face to face with death; and in
the most private and confidential correspondence of the
heroes of the Disruption even in the darkest hour of
their fortunes, they maintain a calmness and serenity of




State Carpenters.           201
soul worthy of a martyr age. Realizing at length, in
the entanglements of their position, the faithfulness and
sagacity of I'Crie's voice of warning, the Veto act was
abandoned. They had found that, so far from being
muzzled by that act, the monster with which it sought
to grapple had not been even muffled. A more definite
policy was now adopted. Finding it impossible to
regulate patronage, they declared for its abolition.
But just in proportion as the Church awoke to a
conception of what was necessary to protect and insure
her independence, in a like proportion did the State be.
come reluctant to do her justice. The intrigue of " the
forty," so hopeful in the eyes of temporising politicians,
had utterly failed to break down the evangelical majority in the General Assembly. The ministry could
not, therefore, any longer continue to give no sign.
Accordingly in June, 1842, Sir Robert Peel announced
in the House of Commons, that after a full consideration
of the subject, her Majesty's government had abandoned all hope of settling the question in a satisfactory
manner, or of effecting any good by introducing a
measure relative to it. This declaration, so rapidly following the second decision of the House of Lords in the
Auchterarder case-a decision in which Lords Lyndhurst
and Campbell acquiesced with Cottenham and Brougham
-rendered the path of duty plain. " Unto the upright
there ariseth light in the darkness." That light now
9*




202                State  Carpenters.
pointed  in but one direction.  Within  the Establish
ment there was now henceforth for them only darkness
and the shadow of death. The intrigue and management by which statesmen had sought, during the " Ten
Years' Conflict," to fiitter into nothingness a great
principle, are described by Hugh Miller with the most
withering sarcasm.
"It has been remarked, that in proportion as our English dramatists sank in the genius of their profession, they made amends, in some
sort, by becoming adepts in all the merely mechanical parts of it. If
they could no longer attain to the sublime in their poetry, they at least
succeeded in making unexceptionable thunder. If their dialogues
were no longer easy and natural, no one could say the same of their
side-scenes of painted canvas, or their snow showers of white paper.
If wit no longer flashed athwart the scenes, never in any former time
were their flashes of ground rosin equally vivid. If their descriptions
were tame, so were not their draperies and drop-curtains. Their plots
might be unskilfully managed, but their trap-doors were wrought to
admiration. They were masters of costume, if not of character; and
ghosts, lions, and tempests, Nahum Tates and Elkanah Settles, amply
occupied the place of truth, power, and nature-William Shakspeare
and Philip Massinger. The poets disappeared, but their successors,
the playwrights, were ingenious after their kind.
"We live in an age in which, apparently for some purpose of
judgment, the more prominent actors on the political stage are but a
kind of mechanists and playwrights-men that bear the same sort of
relation to true statesmen that the Shadwells and Littles of the English
drama bore to its Jonsons and Fletchers of an earlier period. There
is this difference, however, that whereas the playwrights were skilful
after their kind, our mechanical statesmen are not. They are by no
means mechanical statesmen of a high degree of skill. Their trapdoors creak in the opening-their ghosts awkwardly drop the windingsheet in the rising-their lions betray the pasteboard-when they




State  Carpenters.                   203
thunder, we detect thle roll of the rusted shot in the iron kettle-and
when they lighten, the rosin puffs unkindled in a cloud of white dust
athwart the stage. They are statewrights of an inferior grade.
"Has the reader ever seen a nervous gentleman running on tiptoe
with his coat-tails tucked up under his arm, magnanimously resolved
on clearing at a leap some formidable five-feet ditch, but stopping
abruptly short at the edge, at once panic-struck and angry, and merely
gazing across for lack of courage to do more? Have they seen him
repeat and repeat the vast effort, and bring it in every instance to the
same grave conclusion?  If so, they will find it no easy matter to fall
on a fitter emblem of my Lord Aberdeen and his coadjutors than the
nervous gentleman. Ever and anon his lordship tucks up his coattails, and, taking a last run, to clear at a bound the Church question,
gets panic-struck just as he reaches its nearer edge, and, standing
stock-still, grins angrily across. His last exhibition of the kind our
readers will find recorded in our parliamentary report, and they would
do well to cast an attentive eye over it. His lordship and his lordship's coadjutors have not yet felt what it is they have to deal With.
The steam of their ministerial Sunday dinners so obscures their diningroom panes, that they fail to see through them the religious beliefs
of the country. They mark. on the dimmed glass what they deem
impalpable shadows stalking past, and as impalpable shadows they
persist in treating them. Fools, and slow of heart, who have failed
utterly to know the day of their visitation, do they not even yet see,
that it is not with a handful of clergymen, but with the deeply-based
religion of Scotland, that they have to do?-that they have come in
rude collision, in their blindness, with a principle which, in its long
struggles, has been often overborne and grievously oppressed, but
never eventually overcome, and whose battles, once begun, never
terminate till opposition dies?"
Written on the eve of the Disruption, now that the
passions of the hour are hushed, this satire upon our
"state carpenters" might have been pardoned if found
to  contain  even more than the wonted  amalgam  of
intolerance and enthusiasm, common to controvertists.




204             State Carpenters.
But events have since transpired England was more
capable of comprehending than ought connected with
Scottish ecclesiastical controversy, that have left an
impression respecting the general character of these
statesmen, not materially different from the opinion
Hugh Miller has expressed in his trenchant criticism.
In the attitude of Aberdeen, on the eve of the Russian
war, men discovered the same nervous gentleman of
the " Ten Years' Conflict," with coat-tails tucked up, and
seemingly ready to take the desperate plunge; but
somehow much to the chagrin of the spectators, just at
the moment they expected the thing done, and the
ditch cleared, the earl's courage, like the courage of
Bob Acres, "oozed out at the finger-ends."
A second-rate diplomatist inveterately wedded to the
tactics of his profession, but destitute of the intellectual
sagacity that enables diplomatists of the first order
almost intuitively to discover when their craft can no
longer avail; in a season of calm weather, such a state
pilot may not be very unsafe, though even then likely to
be perpetually overreached in countless small matters;
but the utter feebleness of such a guide only comes
fully out in a period of internal or external tempest.
This want of perspicacity it was, that in both the critical
and stormy epochs alluded to, wrecked Aberdeen's reputation as a statesman.  Sir Robert Peel had, perhaps,
as little native capacity for comprehending the operative




State Carpenters.            205
power of an abstract principle. But the hour struck
when the abstract principle must, for the safety of the
state, assume a concrete form, and be incorporated with
the British constitution: no statesman was so ready to
bow to the inexorable necessity. It was unfortunate
for the Church of Scotland that when Sir Robert Peel
was premier of England, the laird of Haddo House held
a chief seat in the cabinet. Had the son of the Lancashire cotton-spinner bent his eminently practical understanding to the comprehension of the ecclesiastical polity
of the evangelical party in Scotland, he might not indeed
have fully mastered the principles it maintained, but he
would have better appreciated the exigencies of its
position than the Scottish lord. Eminent statesmen
have, we know, sketched the character of Aberdeen in
more flattering colours than it has been painted in the
columns of the Witness. Guizot has described him as
a man of " unfettered, yet judicious mind, as just as
delicate, always ready to understand and admit the
changes of time, the motives and merits of men." But
it must be remembered as some abatement of this very
favourable portrait, that in Tahiti, in Morocco, and in
Spain, Lord Aberdeen had quietly acquiesced in the
dominance of French over English policy. It would,
therefore, have been in the last degree ungraceful had
the great doctrinaire failed to pay a fitting tribute to
that readiness "to understand, and admit the motives




206             State Carpenters.
and merits of men," which so often and so signally
served his interests when first minister of the Citizer.
King.
-In point of fact, remembering the antecedents of
Byron's "'travelled thane, Athenian Aberdeen," had
Hugh Miller sat down to write a historical sketch rather
than to pen a stinging article, he could scarcely have
drawn the portrait in other colours.  George Hamilton
Gordon belongs to that tribe of mediocrities, who, on
the death of Pitt, parted the mantle of the "heaven-born
minister" amongst themselves, and down to the period of
the Reform Bill misgoverned England. For the genuine
power of that great, if erring, statesman, his pseudosuccessors had substituted the basest prejudices and passions of the times. Their policy was a pandering to
popular ignorance; exclusioir was the principle of their
political constitution, and restriction the genius of their
commercial system.
Reasons of state indueed them to cast their blandishments upon the Scottish Church, especially upon the
evangelical section of that Church; and in an evil hour
did the evangelicals give to it their political allegiance,
flattered by being esteemed a bulwark of British institutions. When the manly heart of Chalmers at length
discovered that it was a tool, not an ally, the State
sought in the Church, we can easily understand the
utter revulsion of soul with which he recoiled from con



State Carpenters.            207
tact with so much gartered and coroneted meanness,
found where he had expected to find only the soul of
chivalry. The Earl of Aberdeen did, indeed, affect to
have been made the victim of misrepresentation by
Dr. Chalmers, and most solemnly asserted he had acted
throughout in the most perfect good faith. But Chalmers and his coadjutors were in no mood to accept fair
words as an atonement for foul acts. They knew what
he had done; what his intentions might originally have
been they could not so well compute; and to all assurances of purity of aim and rectitude of purpose, were
disposed to reply much after thee manner Mary Stewart
once addressed a time-serving friend. Lords Ruthven
and Lindsay, in conjunction with Lord Melville, had
borne to the queen a somewhat unwelcome message.
Melville turned, as they retired, to assure her Majesty
that his loyalty and truth were still unchanged. " Tush 
Melville, tush'" said Mary, "what signifies the truth
that walks hand in hand with mine enemy-falsehood?"




CIIAPTER XIII.
THE DISRUPTION.
THE " Ten Years' Conflict" had now brought the leaders
of the evangelical party in the Scottish Church face to
face with the Disruption. The first five years had been
years of effort; the latter, years of negotiation. All had
been done human ingenuity could do, short of dereliction of highest duty, to turn aside the blow about to
be dealt to the religious interests of Scotland. In vain
had Chalmers elaborately demonstrated to the great ones
of the earth, that the principles he had given his imprimatur had really nothing in common with the vulgar
radicalism of the day. With a few honourable excep.
tions, the aristocracy of Scotland continued impervious
to every appeal on behalf of the independence of the
Scottish Church, and the foe, though vanquished in
the field of reason, took refuge in the strong tower of
self-interest, whence he looked forth in laughter at the
shaking of the spear.
"By their fruits ye shall know them," is the test the
highest authority has left us for the trial of men and of




The Disruption.              209
systems; and on the threshold of the catastrophe of
the Church of Scotland we pause to ask, what had
Chalmers and his coadjutors done that they were doomed
to such an alternative? The Church at the period the
men ultimately its evangelical leaders became connected
themselves with it, was in what may be regarded as the
normal condition of an establishment. The majority of
its ministers were "at ease in Zion," loving more the
comfortable independence a benefice conferred, than
the work for which that independence was bestowed.
As an illustration of by no means the worst class theRobertsonian policy had given the Church, a Buteshire
clergyman, whose acquaintance the late Dr. Jamieson,
author of the Scottish Dictionary, made when a proba.
tioner, may be given. The young dissenting licentiate
had received appointments as a preacher in the parish
of this clergyman. Fortunately for Mr. Jamieson, the
man, though fully sharing the irreligion, was free from
the intolerance of his class. The young preacher had
not been many days in the locality, when the parish
minister called and intimated, that as there was plenty
of room in the manse, it was useless being at the expense of separate apartments; he might therefore just
leave his lodgings and live with him. After some
further conversation, the clergyman began to make
inquiry about Mr. Jamieson's habits of study, and his
intentions as to sermon-writing. " Do you," he said



210            The Disruption.
"do you mean to prepare fresh sermons for your people
every week?," Jamieson assenting, the veteran mode.
rate burst out into a fit of laughter at the simplicity of
the young seceder, and narrating his own practice, said
-"I have only preached four sermons during all the
time I have been here. I deliver them every month.
I always take care to change the texts, and I believe,
that, with the exception of blind David, not one of my
parishioners has found me out."
In the best days of the Church's history, among her
more earnest ministry, diets of visitation, especially in
country parishes, were understood to be most powerful
instrumentalities for diffusing and elevating the religious knowledge of the peasantry of Scotland. This
fox-hunting Buteshire parson had improved upon the
ancient system. "I make intimation," said he to Mr.
Jamieson, "that the people of a given district are to
meet me at a particular:public-house, where I have
dinner prepared for them. I go gradually round my
parish in this way. And I believe," he added in a tone
of quiet satire-:" I believe the people relish my visitations much better than they are likely to do yours.",
"This," says Dr. Jamieson in his Autobiography, " was
one of the most kindly-hearted men I ever met." And,
compared with certain of the moderate clergy of his
time, he was indeed quite a model minister. He at
least cared for the bodies of his parishioners, and was




The Disruption.              211
not more indifferent to their spiritual weal than to his
own. Jamieson's visit to the scene of his labours he
deemed quite superfluous; not that he had any jealousy
in the matter; he simply believed that the commodity
he brought with him was not wanted.
The growth of religious earnestness amongst the people in after years had so multiplied the " blind Davids"
throughout the parishes of Scotland, that clergymen of
the class to which the Buteshire parson belonged were
everywhere found out. The nation would have none
of them. The whole aim of the evangelical majority
in the General Assembly had been to give effect to the
convictions of this class. Already, during the brief
period of its ascendancy, it had produced someAof the
ablest and most earnest men that ever graced the pulpits of an establishment.  Not satisfied even with what
could be done within the pale of the National Church,
or with the ecclesiastical machinery at its command as
a State-endowed institution, it had gone forth on a
vigorously-aggressive crusade against that mass of irre.
ligion and immorality, which nestles in our midst
"without God and without hope in the world."  During the ten years preceding the Disruption, not less
than two hundred additional churches had been built
for what Dr. Chalmers called the "unexcavated heathen of our country."
Such great things accomplished by the unaided efforts




212            The Disruption.
of the friends of church extension, it might have been
supposed would have proved a pledge for the purely
religious aims of the movement-party in the Establish.
ment. But it was not so. All who reasoned after this
manner forgot that an establishment may possibly become too much in earnest to be any longer serviceable
for the purposes of statesmen. Sir Robert Peel was the
Church's friend so long as he expected a substantial
quid pro quo for that friendship; but so soon as it was
discovered the Scottish Church could no longer be calculated upon as a political engine, the premier proved a
very candid friend indeed.
Through life Dr. Chalmers had been haunted with a
dread of the spectre of democracy. On him, as on Edmund Burke, the atrocities and excesses of the first
French Revolution had exerted a most obnoxious influence. It is scarcelypossible nowto account for the excess
of terror which that event very generally inspired. Even
the most robust understandings recoiled with aversion
from contemplating the principles of liberty, by reason
of the excesses wrought in its name. Once and again
throughout his works has Dr. Chalmers depicted, in his
own fervidly eloquent diction, the ruin the dreaded
triumph of democracy would inevitably inflict upon
general society. Alas! it was not democracy that was
to deal the most terrible blow to his most cherished
schemes. From that body with which politically he




The Disruption.               21 3
had been through life associated, was the thunderbolt
launched that hurled in the dust the dreams of his
ardent, his holiest ambition. It was a tory majority in
the Court of Session, and a tory ministry in the houses
of Parliament, that upset the Revolution-settlement,
and sealed with its imprimatur the derelictions of moderatism from the principles the Church had received a
heritage from its confessors.
When we look at the roll of illustrious names that at
this crisis led the evangelical party, it seems almost
marvellous how it was they were even politically vanquished. Not only was there one man towering above
the mass of the ministers of the Church, whether moderate or evangelical, at once in native genius and established fame, but there was a legion of younger men
whom the " Ten Years' Conflict" had brought upon the
scene —lieutenants scarcely inferior to their chief as
ecclesiastical combatants. The eloquence and influence
of Chalmers were supplemented by the subtlety and
logical acumen of Candlish, the massive power and
surpassing erudition of Cunningham, the strong common
sense of Begg, the transcendent pictorial power of
Guthrie, the historic lore of Welsh and Hetherington,
the character of Gordon, to say nothing of a host
little inferior to these foremost men. The moderate
party had really no men, with the exception of Dr.
Cooke, Robertson of Ell )n, and Dr. Robert Lee, capable




214             The Disruption.
of being pitted against these illustrious names. It has
been remarked, however, and the history of nearly
every revolution is a signal illustration of the justness
of the remark, that in all great conflicts the victory
remains, not so much with the party possessing the
greatest genius, as with the party possessing the strongest
will. The Girondists-the noble, the eloquent, the
magnanimous Girondists —full of the fire of genius and
imagination, were all reaped away by the sickle of
death, while "pale sea-green Robespierre" remained
master of the republic. The parties which in turn that
dictator conquered, had among them men infinitely his
superiors in genuine power and breadth of intellect;
but none of them produced a man with the same strength
of will and stern vigour of character.
It was the fortune of the moderate party in the
Establishment to possess, not indeed in its clerical ranks,
but in a quarter where more service could be done
by a good servant than in any of the courts of the
Church, a defender uniting qualities rarely found united
-the most passionate vehemence of temperament with
the most indomitable resolution.  The head of the
Scottish bar at this period belonged to an ancient tory
family in which force of character appears hereditary;
and in John Hope, the dean of faculty, now lord-justice
clerk, the evangelical section of the Scottish Church
encountered its most redoubtable antagonist.  In the




The Disruption.               215
council chamber, at the bar, the bar, through the press, and by
correspondence with her Majesty's ministers in every
emergency of the Ten Years' Conflict," from the Ten Years' Contday
he broke  with Chalmers until the day that sealed the
fate of the Church, did he labour to defeat the purposes
of the evangelical majority. This antagonist, at once by
his influential position, vigorous intellectual powers
and dauntless perseverance, succeeded in accomplishing
what had never before been accomplished; establishing by legal decisions the Erastian character of the
Scottish Church.
From the first hour of its existence as an establishment, there had been a conflict of wills respecting the
scope of  e of  t Church's jurisdiction, the ecclesiastical
power ever seeking to establish the utmost freedom of
action for itself. And, in' direct antagonism  to the
Church, the State was ever ready to circumscribe her
authority, and reduc witinthe within the narrowest limits the
rights she claimed. Yet notwithstanding the prolonged
antagonism between the party esteeming itself heir of
the aims of the founders of the Scottish Church and the
representatives of Erastianism, not until the 8th March,
1843, was a final legal form  given to an idea from
which Knox, Melville,'and Henderson would have alike
turned in shuddering abomination. When on that day
the motion of the right honouirable Fox Maule, that
the House of Commons should go into a committee to




216            The Disruption.
take into consideration the claims of the Church of
Scotland, was rejected, honest men could no longer
doubt either their position or their duty.
We can indeed easily understand the difficulty English statesmen had in comprehending the theory of
co-ordinate jurisdiction, by which the position of the
evangelical party had been defended. Lord Jeffrey
had justified his vote in the Court of Session in its
favour upon that principle, and it formed the basis of
the legal argument by which Mr. Rutherford had supported the claims of the majority in the Assembly before
the Imperial Parliament. Nevertheless it was not the
theory upon which the Church of Scotland was founded.
The truth was, that though deflecting in many points
from its original platform, it was still a Church altogether
unique in Christendom; and to comprehend aright what
its founders contemplated it should become, we must
transport ourselves from Scotland to Geneva.
In days when that city-state was the refuge of the
proscribed of Europe, Knox and Melville had successively enjoyed its generous hospitality. Knox had seen
the gospel as freely preached elsewhere; but in Geneva
alone had he seen truth taught and practised with
nearly equal purity. John Calvin was the soul of that
system of government which had so fascinated in exile
our great reformer. What that system was may be
better learned from Ranke than, perhaps, any other




The Disruption.              217
historian. With all the peculiar philosophic precision
and comprehensiveness of the higher order of German
thinkers, has he delineated the Calvinian system of
government. "Calvin's deviation from  Catholicism,"
says Ranke, "did not consist by any means in a desire
to render life independent of the authority of the
Church.  On the contrary, whilst he rejected the
decrees of the Latin Church, he adopted it the more
strongly as taught in the original records of Christianity,
the harmony of whose doctrines he was pre-eminently
qualified to comprehend. Whilst with a powerful congregation separated from the hierarchial corporation
that dominated Europe, he sought to realize the most
perfect communion which lies at the foundation of the
idea of a church; under his guidance-for he also
took part in the temporal legislation-the strongest
fetters of discipline were laid upon outward conduct.
The expenses of clothing and of the table were confined
within certain limits; dancing was prohibited, and the
reading of certain books, such as "Amadis," forbidden;
gamblers were seen in the pillory with the cards in
their hands; once a year an examination took place in
every house, to ascertain whether the religious precepts
were known and observed; mutual imputations of failings which the members of the council observed in one
another, were permitted at their sittings.  No indulgence was known for transgression; a woman was
10




218              The Disruption.
burned for having sung immodest songs; one of the
most distinguished of the citizens was compelled to
kneel in the great square with an inverted torch in his
hand, and publicly to entreat forgiveness, because he
had mocked the doctrine of salvation and personally
insulted the great preacher."
Though not by any means a slavish copyist, it was
very much a transcript of this stern system, found bearing the fairest fruits by the banks of the Leman lake,
Knox took with him from Geneva to Scotland. And
however modified by time and circumstance it might
have become during the lapse of centuries, it requires
but little sagacity to discover, that to make the civil
power dominate such a system, was to annihilate it.
When, therefore, by the most deliberate and solemn
decisions of both houses of Parliament, the Scottish
Church, originally thus theocratic in it's basis, was declared a mere creature of the civil power, nothing
remained for the evangelical party save to sever its
connection with an institution so utterly "fallen from
its high estate." Drs. Hanna, Hetherington, and Buchanan have each in turn, and each after his peculiar
manner, described  that remarkable exodus.  Hugh
Miller shall describe it for us. In the WFitness of the
18th May, 1843, he thus wrote:"How woefully different the state of matters with regard to the
governing powers at the present day I One is continually reminded




The Disruption.                      219
of the complaint of the kelpie in the old legend-the hour is come,
but not the man. Great exigencies have found little men to grapple
with them, and in a style, of course, that exhibits the character of the
men, not the exigencies. The stratagems by which chamber-maids
out-manoeuvre one another in the graces of their mistresses, have been
substituted for the large principles by which the guidance of great
affairs should be invariably regulated; and questions that affect the
deepest feelings, and involve the vastest consequences-questions
that can rest only on the basis of eternal truth and justice, have been
attempted to be settled through the exercise of exactly the same kind
of arts as are employed by jockies when they sell horses at fairs. We
are reminded of the text in which God represents himself as taking
away, for the sins of a people, the prudent and the councillor, the
captain and the honourable, the judge and the prophet, and appointing children to be their princes, and babes to have rule over them.
"The fatal die has been cast. On Thursday last the religion of
Scotland was disestablished, and a principle recognized in its stead
which has often served to check and modify the religious influences,
but which in no age or country ever yet existed as a religion. Not
but that it has performed an important part, even in Scotland. It has
served hitherto to control the Christianity of the Establishment-to
dilute it to such a degree, if we may so speak, as to render it bearable
to statesmen without God. And now its appointed work seems over.
It constituted at the best but the drag-chain and the hook-things
that have no vocation apart from the chariot. But the time has at
length arrived, in which the state will bear with but the hook and the
drag apart from that which they checked-with but the diluting
pabulum apart from that which it diluted. An antagonist force to the
religious power has been virtually recognized as exclusively the principle which is to be entrenched in the parish churches of Scotland.
The day that witnessed a transaction so momentous can be a day of
no slight mark in modern history. It stands between two distinct
states of things, a signal to Christendom. It holds out its sign to
these latter times, that God and the world have drawn off their forces
to opposite sides, and that His sore and great battle is soon to begin
"The future can alone adequately develope the more important
consequences of the event:-at present we shall merely attempt pre



220                The  Disruption.
serting the reader with a few brief notes of the aspect which it
exhibited. The early part of Thursday had its periods of fitful cloud
and sunshine, and the tall picturesque tenements of the old town now
lay dim and indistinct in shadow, now stood prominently out in the
light. There was an unusual throng and bustle in the streets at a
comparatively early hour, which increased greatly as the morning
wore on towards noon. We marked, in especial, several knots of
moderate clergy hurrying along to the levee, laughing and chatting
with a vivacity that reminded one rather of French than of Scotch
character, and evidently in that state of nervous excitement which, in
a certain order of minds, the near approach of some very great event,
indeterminate and unappreciable in its bearings, is sure always to
occasion.
"As the morning wore on, the crowds thickened in the streets, and
the military took their places. The principles. involved in the anticipated disruption, gave to many a spectator a new association with the
long double line of dragoons that stretched adown the High Street, as
far as the eye could reach, from the venerable St. Giles, famous in
Scottish story, to the humbler Tron. The light flashed fitfully on
their long swords and helmets, and the light scarlet of their uniforms
contrasted strongly with the dingier vestments of the masses, in which
they seemed as if more than half engulfed. When the sun glanced
out, the eye caught something peculiarly picturesque in the aspect of
the Calton Hill, with its imposing masses of precipices, overtopped by
towers,and monuments, and its intermingling bushes and trees, now
green with the soft delicate foliage of May. Between its upper and
under line of rock, a dense living belt of human beings girdled it
round, sweeping gradually downwards from shoulder to base, like the
sash of his order on the breast of a nobleman. The commissioners'
procession passed, with the sound of trumpet and drum, and marked
by rather more than the usual splendour. There was much bravery
and glitter-satin and embroidery, varnish and gold lace-no lack, in
fact, of that cheap and vulgar magnificence, which can be got up to
order by the tailor and the upholsterer for carnivals and Lord Mayor's
days. But it was felt by the assembled thousands, as the pageant
swept past, that the real spectacle of the day was a spectacle of a
different character."




The Disruption.                        221
The Assembly opened, the protest read, and the pro.
testors gone, Hugh Miller lingers a moment to mark
the effect of the desertion:"The empty vacated benches stretched away from the Moderator's
seat, in the centre of the building, to the distant wall. There suddenly glided into the front rows a small party of men whom no one
knew-obscure, mediocre, blighted-looking men, that contrasted with
the well-known forms of our Chalmerses and Gordons, Candlishes and
Cunninghams, M'Farlanes, Brewsters, and Dunlops, reminded one of
the thin and blasted corn ears of Pharaoh's vision, and, like them too,
seemed typical of a time of famine and destitution. Who are these?
was the general inquiry; but no one seemed to know. At length the
significant whisper ran along the house-' The Forty.'* There was a
grin of mingled contempt and compassion visible on many a broad
moderate face, and a too audible titter shook the gallery. There
seemed a degree of incongruity in the sight that partook highly of the
ludicrous.  For our own part, we were so carried away by a vagrant
association-and so missed Ali Baba, the oil kettle, and the forty jars,
as to forget for a time, that at the doors of these unfortunate men, lies
the ruin of the Scottish Establishment."
The march of the disruptionists from  St. Andrew's to
Tanfield need not be dwelt upon. A single incident of
the exodus hitherto unchronicled, and not unworthy to
be recorded, we had the pleasure to hear narrated by
* "The Forty," we may explain,.was a middle party mainly composed of
recreant non-intrusionists, who, satisfied in a certain sense with the vague assurances of statesmen, deemed it their duty, when the hour of trial came, to keep
what they had got. The sobriquet took its rise at a meeting of the synod of
Glasgow and Ayr, held some time previous to the disruption. One of the
number, intending to herald the importance of the party, said, " There are folrty
of us in the synod." The worthy man was not a wit, and therefore did not
perceive the ridicule he had brought on his associates. Guthrie and Miller had,
however, too keen a sense of the humorous to let it pass. The phrase daguer
reotyped the faction.




222             The Disruption.
the learned principal of New College, at the jubilee of
the venerable professor of exegetical theology to the
United Presbyterian Church.  When the noble army
of Christian heroes entered Tanfield Hall, as the AModerator, Dr. Welsh, ascended the platform, Dr. Brown
rose and greeted with the right hand of fellowship the
Free Church of Scotland. The glad all-hail with which
the chief of the old saluted the new secession, looked
at in the light of events transpiring in connection with
both these influential sections of the Church of Christ,
almost appears to have possessed an element of the
symbolical and prophetic. In the heat of the voluntary
controversy, Hugh Miller and others had deplored, what
they deemed the aberration of the minister of Broughton from the hereditary faith of his family. But on the
platform in Tanfield Hall, on the 18th day of May,
1843, even the most cynical would recognise the grandson of the author of the Self-interpreting Bible, in his
proper sphere, and doing his proper work.
For twelve days two assemblies have now held their
sittings in the metropolis. In describing the close of
these ecclesiastical congresses, the writer has perhaps
dipped his pen a little too freely in " dyes of earthquake
and eclipse." Nevertheless, though strongly coloured,
the picture as a whole is just. Such as may consider
there is in it rather more than is meet of the alarmist,
should remember that at that hour the general aspect




The  Disruption.                    223
of society, political and religious, seemed peculiarly portentous.  The clouds which then hung the heavens with
blackness have since dislimned; but let us not forget
Hugh Miller wrote within the shadow of their gigantic
glooms.
"The Free and Residuary Assemblies have closed their sittingsthe over-strung mind of the Scottish public demands its interval of
rest; and thrilling excitement and incessant labour give place, for a
brief period, to comparative quiescence and repose.  For our own
part, for at least a few months to come, we shall see the sun rise less
frequently than we have done of late, and miss oftener the earliest
chirp of the birds that welcome the first gray of morning from among
the old trees of Heriot's and the Meadows. The chapter added to the
history of the Church of Scotland has just been completed-the concluding page presents the usual blank interval; and we feel inclined
to lay down the volume for a space, and ponder over its contents.
" How very brief a period has elapsed since the government of this
country could have settled at small expense the Church question 
and how entirely has it passed beyond the reach of human adjustment
nowl In disestablishing the religion of Scotland, there has been a
breach made in the very foundations of national security, which can
never be adequately filled up. The yawning chasm is crowded with
phantoms of terror; —there are the forms of an infidel Erastianism in
front, and surplices, crosses, and triple crowns in the rear; while
deep from the darkness comes a voice, as of many waters, the roar of
infuriated multitudes broken loose from religion, and thirsting for
blood. May God avert the omen I That man must have studied to
hbu little purpose the events of the last twelve days who does not see
that there is a guiding hand ordering and regulating all. The pawns
in this great game do not move of themselves; —the adorable Being
who has'foreordained whatsoever cometh to pass' is working out
his own designs in his own way;-the usurpations of the civil magistrates,-the treachery of unfaithful ministers,-the errors and mistakes
of blind-hearted and incompetent statesmen, —all tend to accomplish




224                The  Disruption.
his decrees; and it would be well, surely, sinep in one way or othel
all must forward his purposes, to be made to forward them rather as
his fellow-workers than as his blind insensible tools. Let the disestablished Church take courage-there is a time of severe conflict
before her, but the result of the battle is certain."
How  genuine a touch  of human interest is that
folded up in these so felicitous allusions to the glory of
the dawn-the music of the minstrels of the grove
"warbling their wood notes wild," regaling eye and
ear and soul of the jaded journalist, as he retires from
his desk to his home. At such an hour, and with such
surroundings, the overtasked intellectual toiler forgets
all lassitude and exhaustion. In the bosom of nature
"dress'd  in earliest light," and amidst the  blended
repose and enjoyment of the good and fair, the perturbed spirit that for a little while has left behind a
thousand anxieties, a thousand earth-born cares, almost
seems already to taste the happiness of the contrast of
the tumult and the unrest of earth with the rest of
heaven.




CHAPTER XIV.
RA RTROSPECT.
NOTHING is more noteworthy about the " Ten  Years'
Conflict," than the revival of all the old traditions and
memories whose spell was still upon the peasantry of
Scotland, by which the movement was distinguished.
From the period of the enactment of the Veto law,
until the catastrophe of 1843, how marvellous was the
resurrection of ancient Scottish worthies! Every remarkable pamphlet, every remarkable biography that
yet had power to charm, was sought out and reproduced.
No doubt men, even good men, sometimes relaxed into
a smile at the parallel attempted to be instituted between
their own times and times when
"The standard of Zion
All bloody and torn'mong the heather was lying;"
but the success of the effort redeemed it from sneers.
It appealed to certain strongly-marked features of the
national character. A Scotchman ever manifests a
peculiar aptitude for grappling with those ecclesiastical
10*




226               A  Retrospect.
and religious questions, in which the historical and the
logical elements are nearly equally blended. The patristic lore in which so many graduates of Oxford have
lost their way, has no seductions for him. The most
elaborate historical argument the profoundest erudition
could construct, if logically vitiated, he spontaneously
scouts. But let the logical demonstration and the his.
torical be equally valid in his eyes, instantaneously the
Scotchman stands forth, fired not only with the consciousness that he battles for the right; his faith is in
that moment sublimed-risen into the transcendent by
the thought that the voice of centuries ratifies his own
convictions.
A most singular sagacity was therefore, as we think,
manifested in that scattering broad cast over Scotland,
during the " Ten Years' Conflict," the antique literature
of the Covenant.
Long contact with the grandees of the empire had
corrupted the simplicity and purity of state-endowed
presbyterianism. The brilliancy of the evangelical
pearl had been stained by the pollutions of earth. The
patronage the Church of Scotland received from the
Scottish nobles, while bringing with it the minimum
of worldly prestige, brought with it the maximum of
spiritual thraldom. During all the years of contest
that preceded the Disruption, the evangelical section of
the Church was gradually'shaking itself loose from these




A  Retrospect.              227
fetters; and just as it struck its roots deeper in the
hearts of the people, iin a similar proportion did it recede
from contact with the noblesse.
Admirably supplementary of these efforts to popularise the principles of the Church made by its evangelical fiiends, were the labours of the editor of the
Witness, and the epoch the Disruption marks in HIugh
Miller's literary history, seems a not inappropriate point
at which to pause to contemplate for a moment the
service he had already rendered the cause the Witness
represented. The schools in which its editor had
been trained, were schools in which he had become
familiar with the inner life of the peasantry of the
northern counties of Scotland. The west and south
have been pretty well explored, but the north is yet
almost virgin soil. Glimpses of its condition may be
caught in the biographies of its great men; but hitherto
no effective or comprehensive estimate has been attempted
of the peculiar character of the Highlands during that
great transition-era, when all the old forms of hereditary chieftainship were broken up to make way for a more
modern civilization and.a more centralized authority.
It is, therefore, not the least of the services Hugh
MIiller has rendered to literature, that he should have
left, even though scattered throughout the columns of
the Witness, so many mementos of that epoch, which,
but for his pen, must in all probability have perished




228              A  Retrospect.
with the present generation. From these reminiscences
we gather, that somewhere about the period of the
Revolution settlement, a remarkable development of
religious earnestness was manifest in not a few northern counties. A race of men arose representatives of
that movement, who cannot be better described- than
by saying they very much resembled the men of the
Covenant. They came a generation or two later than
the covenanters, and probably their ancestry, in not a
few instances, might have been found in that "Highland host" erewhile so terrible to the Lowlands of Scotland. But now the sons had become obedient to the
faith the fathers destroyed.
The more eminent of those thus won to the evangelical
cause occupied a peculiar position among their countrymen. Known throughout the north as "the men," and
found in nearly all the Gaelic-speaking districts of
Scotland, they exercised a most potent influence among
their countrymen.  On more than one occasion had
moderatism essayed the difficult task of controlling
their fanaticism. It may be acknowledged, indeed, that
in some instances this might have been done beneficially; but the material on which moderatism worked
was a material of which it could make exceedingly little.
Seeing only the eccentricities, not the excellencies of
"the men," it was incapable of dealing effectively even
with their faults. The position they occupied in the




A  Retrospect.             229
Church, though perfectly in accordance with the genius
of presbytery, was somewhat anomalous when compared
with the general practice of presbyterian churches.
They bore to the regular. ministry much the same
relation which the local preacher among the Methodists
bears to the ordained clergyman. But the power they
wielded over their unlettered countrymen, resembled
more the power with which " the man of God" of the
ancient Hebrew theocracy was clothed, than aught in
modern times with which it may be compared. Mighty
in the Scriptures, the Bible their only book, when possessing strong natural powers-and many of them did
possess superior native capacity-the effect of their
religious addresses was superb.
Not long was the WIitness newspaper established, when
Hugh Miller, with the intuition of genius discerning the
important aid "the men" were capable of rendering to
the evangelical cause, commenced a series of papers
illustrative at once of their genuine worth and historic
position. Won to the side of non-intrusion, they were
all of them faithful in the hour of trial. Not the utmost
vindictiveness of the Highland lairds could shake their
allegiance to the good cause. They rallied round the
leaders of the Disruption with the heroic devotion their
ancestors rallied for the Stuarts.
This triumph of the Free Church in the highlands
and islands of Scotland speedily brought her into




230               A  Retrospect.
sternest conflict with the Scottish nobles.  That the
peasantry of Scotland should have dared to think for
themselves, and dared to spurn the spiritual fetters the
peers of Britain had sought to forge for them, was not
to be borne. The peasantry must be put down. There
is incipient rebellion in the attitude they have assumed,
which it is imperative to suppress at all hazards. Out
of these feelings arose the great site-controversy, and
for a considerable period that controversy formed a leading feature in Hugh Miller's labours. Without having
adopted any peculiar theory, or homologating any extreme political views, the editor of the Witness was precisely the man to hold his own in a contest with even
the aristocracy of Scotland. Where principle was at stake
he spared none. From the question of sites he naturally
turned to the discussion of the question of clearances,
and not even the proudest nobles of the realm escaped
castigation. His appeals to the Duke of Sutherland
are models of controversial writing, blending faithfulness with dignity, doing justice to the man while condemning his policy. The most notable, however, of
his efforts at his epoch, if not in intrinsic worth, certainly in its immense popularity, was "Lochiel's Warning." The descendant of that historic house, in answer
to the petition of his tenantry for sites, had counselled
them to stick by the old ship. To him, accordingly,
Hugh Miller addressed the following faithful monition:



A   Retrospect.                    231
"Of all his many square miles of bleak moor and barren hill-side,
mottled over with cottages, the homes of a religious people attached,
in the proportion of ten to one, to the Protesting Church, he cannot
spare so much as a single useless rood, on which the children of the
soil may meet under cover to worship God agreeably to the dictates
of their conscience. And, inditing a very neat letter to say so, he
sends it to the newspapers, that the public may see in what well-turned
sentences a highland chieftain can cast himself loose for ever from
the affections of his clan. Surely it needs no wizard on this occasion
to warn Lochiel of the peril which he is so wantonly incurring. He
lives in an unsettled time, destined apparently to witness the fall of
more than one institution. The formidable masses of the country,
maddened by suffering and broke loose from all moral restraint, bid
fair to possess themselves by and by of a charter admirably fitted to
disannul and abrogate all the charters of Lochiel.'The Lowlands
shall meet him in battle array.' And amid all the various signs of
change that are starting up thick and portentous on the darkening
horizon, we scarce know a sign more ominous than that Lochiel,
regarded as the representative of his order, should be thus throwing
loose from him his people, by coming between them and their God in
the spirit of wanton persecution, and compelling them to detest and
renounce him. His gallant ancestor was a wiser man. The letters of
our intolerant proprietors, of which we have already furnished so many
specimens to our readers, form documents of strange significancy. It
was the shrewd remark of a writer of the last century, that no author
was ever effectually written down save by himself. Nor are we at all
sure that the truth which the remark embodies should be restricted in
its application to a single class. It may refer to our men of land as
certainly as to our men of literature. Our lords of the soil, after
catching no harm from the pens of levellers and ten-acre men, seem
now in a fair way of writing themselves down by their own.
"Be this as it may, however, it is properly a concern of neither the
Free Church nor of the people of Scotland, but of the proprietors
themselves. The question which concerns the Church and the people
is simply this, How are these hostile proprietors to be dealt with?
They have unquestionably great power in their hands. Lochiel virtually possesses power enough to prevent the people of a wide district




232                  A Retrospect.
from meeting for purposes of public worship under the cover of a roof,
and this, be it remembered, in a severe and weeping climate. He has
virtually power enough to prevent the minister of their choice from
residing within many miles of them. He has power enough, if not to
exclude the gospel from his bounds, in its character as a wayfarer,
who takes up lodgings for a night and then passes on,-to exclude it
as a permanent resident. It may be a foreigner travelling on his lands
despite of him; but he can effectually prevent its naturalization, and
declare it incompetent to have a holding on the soil. And all this he
can do in virtue of the legal powers in which he is vested as a proprietor. Our intolerant proprietary take their stand on their legal
rights; and nothing surely can be more obvious, than that in order
adequately to meet with them in the contest, the people must be
enabled to take up legal ground also. It would never do for the
Highlanders of Lochiel to precipitate themselves on their chief now,
as they used to precipitate themselves on his enemies a century ago.
The attempt would involve both themselves and the Free Church in
ruin. In refusing them a site for their place of worship, Lochiel
stands on ground as perfectly legal as that on which they would stand,
were they, if urged in some hour of extremity to rise and fight
for him, to content themselves by just asking in reply, what he had left
them to fight for. His right must be recognised as entirely legal, however oppressively exercised.
"Be it remarked, however, that legal means may be employed for
the furtherance of illegal ends. A rfian may set himself to attain
some definite object, protected at every step of his progress by some
sanction of law, and yet the object itself may have no sanction of
law whatever. Though the way be a well-defended covered-way, if
we may so speak, the position to which it leads may lie unwalled and
open. And well it is for the Church that this is specially the case at
present with the hostile proprietary of Scotland.  They have set
themselves to effect a determinate object, through the employment of
certain legal means; but though the means be legal, the proposed
object is utterly unprotected by any legal line of circumvallation; and
so the true way for the people to meet with them is to take up a determined position, not against their well-defended means, but against
their ill-defended end-not against their covered-way, but against the




A Retrospect.                      233
unwalled and opel position to which the way leads. And thus, ii
carrying on the war, the people and the proprietary of the country
shall stand so far on equal ground, that the position of both will be
perfectly legal.
"Let us explain. The marksman must be enabled to see the butt
ere he can take aim at it with any fair chance of success; and it is of
importance, in present circumstances, that the people should have a
clear sight of the object at which they are to level. What do our
proprietors purpose to themselves by refusing sites on their grounds
for the erection of Free presbyterian churches, or of dwelling-houses
for the accommodation of Free presbyterian ministers?  We do not
think they are at all mysterious on the point. Sir James M'Kenzie
tells the eldership of Avoch, in answer to their application,'that
though a member of the Church of England himself, he is nevertheless
proud to avow that, for the Church as by law established in Scotland,
he entertains feelings of high respect and veneration,' and that, therefore, he will' certainly not lend his aid either to mar its usefulness or
tarnish its reputation.''I love and respect the Church of Scotland
as by law established,' says another very great proprietor of the north,
in reply to a similar requisition. Lochiel echoes the sentiment in all
its fulness. Even the philosophic baronet of Coul, though not quite
satisfied with the craniology of the State institution, prefers her
mightily to the Free Church. She has, he thinks, a much smaller
development of the organs of Wonder and of Hope, and her Veneration
is a vast deal more moderate; and though miserably flat in the coronal
region,'with. a forehead villainously low,' and a huge mass of propensity behind, he is determined to back her at all hazards against the
tall-headed church of the people.
"Thus the palpable, nay the broadly avowed object of all these proprietors, is to bolster up the Erastian institution. They lay the Free
Church under strict embargo, that the chartered corporation may
trade meanwhile without danger of rivalship, and vend its damaged
and unwholesome wares with complete command of the market.
They employ the legal means which the rights of property pult at
their disposal, to accomplish the illegal end of forcing the people into
the communion of a Church which they detest and abhor. We say
illegal end. There are rights of toleration as certainly as rights of




234                   A Retrospect.
property; both are equally embodied in the laws of the country; and
if violently to force from a proprietor, against his will, a portion of
his lands, be an offence against the law of property,-to force a people
into a communion wlhich they abhor, is as certainly an offence against
the law of toleration. The proprietor's means are legal, we repeat,
but the end for which he employs them is grossly the reverse; and
the people, in order adequately to meet with him, must take up their
position, not against his legal means, but against his illegal end.
They must determine not to be forced into the communion of the
residuary Church. If the landlord and his factor sit down on legal
ground to invest their religion, if we may so speak, and put it in a
state of blockade, then must they sit down on ground equally legal, to
invest the residuary clergyman's religion, and put it in a state of
blockade. In every case let the person and property of the hireling
be sacred-whether he occupy the pulpit of Dr. M'Donald of
Urquhart, or of Dr. Burns of Kilsyth,-of Mr. M'Leod of Snizort, or
of Mr. Stewart of Cromarty;-let his person be as sacred as if the
Court of Session had presented to the charge one of its red-nosed
macers, or as if he were not the Erastian parson, but the constable, or
sheriff-officer, or thief-catcher of the district. But to his safety and
his property let this sense of sacredness be restricted. Let it on no
occasion be forgotten, that he is the person on whose behalf the proprietor is flagrantly oppressive and unjust. Let him be regarded as
virtually the one excommunicated man of the district,-the man with
whom no one is to join in prayer,-whose church is to be avoided as an
impure and unholy place,-whose addresses are not to be listened to,whose visits are not to be received,-who is to be everywhere put under
the ban of the community; and until the proprietor raises the siege of
the Free Church on his part, let it be held imperative by the people
that the siege of the residuary clergyman and the residuary church
be kept up on theirs. There is to be a contest of wills in this matter;
and there is standing equally legal for both the antagonist parties
engaged in it. But while the people have justice as well as law on
their side, our hostile proprietary have law only; and so, if the Scottish character has not lost its old characteristic firmness,-if our
Whiggism of the old school be still the old dour Whiggism,-the
Whiggism  that has been rarely broken, and never once bent, the
better cause in the end must infallibly prevail."




A   Retrospect.                    235
The London press, religious and secular, was alike
indignant at the boldness of this attack.  It formed a
standard topic of controversy with the Witness in the
R]ecord newspaper for weeks afterwards.  The  Globe
asserted that its sentiments might have well enough
suited the gloom of the sixteenth or seventeenth century,
bat the writer had mistaken the clock. Hugh AMiller
answered his assailants in an article entitled the " Posi.
tion of the Scottish lairds." We extract the concluding
paragraphs.  By a dexterous use of the argumentum  ad
hominem, he very successfully turns to foolishness the
counsel of Lochiel:" There is," says Hugh Miller, "one point in the letters of our hostile proprietors which we have not yet directly adverted to, but which
strikes us as tolerably rich in the ludicrous. Nothing can be more
natural to men than the proselytizing spirit. It extends not only to
all modes of religious belief, but to almost all the various negations of
religious belief. It possesses not only the bosoms of fanatics, but of
atheists also. But there is one specific form in which it has begun to
manifest itself in these latter times, in which it does not seem to have
existed before. The fanatic has striven to make men fanatics after
his own type. The atheist has laboured to make them atheists. It
has been reserved for our Scottish proprietors to exert themselves in
behalf of a religion not their own They recommend to others what
they reject for themselves, as if to realize to the letter, and that after
a very striking mode, Voltaire's remark, that the princes who protect
or change the religion of a country seldom have any religion themselves. I am not a member of the Church of Scotland, says Lochiel.
I am myself, you know, a member of the Church of England, says
Sir James of Roseavoch. Thus runs the general preamble, and yet
in every case the advice is in effect the same-We pray you hold fast




236                 A  Retrospect.
by the establishment we ourselves have left, or, as Lochiel pithily ex
presses it,'stick to the ship.' Does it not seem exceedingly natural
to ask in reply,' Then pray, gentlemen, why have you not stuck to the
ship? If desertion be at all a bad thing in us, pray what must it have
been in you? We quit the vessel because the pest has broken out in
her-because the plague flag of the Court of Session floats portentously
at her mast-head. We feel it would be death for us to remain in her
longer. And therefore do we betake ourselves to the long-boat,
determined to effect a landing, let you frame your quarantine laws as
you may."
That the opinions expressed by the editor of the
Witness on the question  of sites, should have been
neither very palatable to whig journalists nor tory
lairds, was to be anticipated. It may be granted the
articles in question were not the most mannerly that
could be addressed to a Highland chieftain; but it
should be remembered, that men bereft of their rights
are rarely in a mannerly mood.  Even though gaining
nothing by it, they like to have out their growl; and
for any exaggeration of tone into which, in the passion
of the hour, Hugh Miller may have been hurried, the
men he lifted his pen to denounce are infinitely more
censurable than he. Flippant journalists, with the
jargon of the progress school on their lips, might talk
of the editor of the Witness having  "mistaken the
clock;" the truth was he had only too accurately gauged
the influences of the age. So far from deeming the opinions embodied in these memorable articles at all extreme, we deem  them  moderation itself.  Perhaps he




A  Retrospect.               237
would have -appeared less vindictive had he taken higher
ground. WVe suspect it would be difficult to maintain,
that any Celtic chief acted legally in refusing sites to his
clan. To legalise such a course, clanship must give place
to feudalism. The law of gavelkind, under which these
chiefs held their lands, rendered the conduct of Lochiel
as illegal as it was vexatious.
The onlypoint in which we might not be disposed
altogether to coincide with -Lochiel's reviewer is in
urging the concentration of the hate and scorn of the
people upon the residuary clergyman, the fact being
that the clergyman was only the representative of
the opinions of the lord of the soil-a mere cipher in
himself.  Dr. Chalmers was right in characterizing
the Establishment, such as the Disruption left it, a
"moral nullity;" and such a rigorous spiritual quarantine as Hugh Miller sought to establish, implied a
greater power of mischief than, except in singularly
rare instances, belonged to any of the residuary clergy.
He has also, as we think, attributed rather too great
generosity to the Scottish lairds, in supposing it was in
the interests of the residuary: clergy they assumed so
hostile an attitude to the Free Church. Except in so
far:as the residuaries served their purposes, they cared
for them as little, and probably respected them less than
the "outed ministers."  They had, however, proved
supple instruments, and it was necessary the instru



238              A  Retrospect.
ments should not be left to perish in the storm of popu.
lar indignation then sweeping over Scotland. They
knew that storm, if not exactly uprooting the goodly
tree the Scottish reformers planted, had stripped it of
its umbrageous foliage, leaving nought save a sapless
trunk and withered branches-the memento of its
vanished glory. It was therefore imperative, to pirevent
its utter disappearance from the scene, that a strong
fence of intolerance be raised' all around. The winds of
heaven must not be permitted to visit it too roughly;
their serfs must see that this shrivelled and sapless thing
is the object of their peculiar care.
All but fifteen years have passed away since the Disruption; and though the results of that event have not
yet fully developed themselves, enough has transpired
to show that Hugh Miller's vaticiuations were neither
the offspring of an unbridled hate nor a misguided
fancy. At this hour the Church of Scotland represents
nothing Scottish. Her ministers, with a few honourable and highly-redeeming exceptions, cannot be said
to be zealous for ought save the maintenance of their
own status. With all changed around them, they continue to cling tenaciously to the relics of a buried past;
and on everything bearing the semblance of advancement, the general assemblies of the Scottish Kirk are
ready to put their most resolute veto. To borrow a
homely illustration, the State Church at this moment




A  Retrospect.              239
very much resembles a carriage broken down in the
centre of a crowded thoroughfare; making no progress
itself, and as far as possible preventing all progress on
the part of others. The prolonged existence of such
an institution cannot be other than intensely pernicious
to the spiritual interests of the nation.
It is matter of deep regret that for what of seeming
strength she has been able to gather into herself since
the Disruption, she is mainly indebted to the mistakes
of the Free Church. Had that church, on the threshold
of its otherwise brilliant career, seen its real position and
discovered its true policy, even the very slender hold
the creature of the Court of Sessions yet retains of
the people of Scotland, would now have been altogether gone. The unseemly and ostentatious repudiation of voluntaryism with which Dr. Chalmers inaugurated its first- General Assembly, gave a kind of galvanic
life to the only embodiment of the antagonistic principle
Scotland possessed. Mankind are not logicians, and the
excellencies and superiorities ascribed to the abstract
principle of an establishment were naturally enough
transferred to its concrete form. In this way it came to
pass, that what the leader of the Disruption meant only
as a middle wall of partition hastily thrown up between
the Free Church and Scottish Dissent, became a buttress
of the residuary and Erastian Church.
We do not attribute voluntary principles to Free



240             A  Retrospect.
churchmen, because we do not believe any great number
of them have even yet adopted those principles. But
without going that length, it will be conceded pretty
generally that at least a more common-sense view of matters is beginning to be entertained. The Free Church
is gradually discovering that an establishment after its
model is a hope not to be realized; and coincident with
this conviction on the one side, voluntary churches have
discovered that the principle of which they are so enamoured, is not the alpha and the omega of Christianity.
In this somewhat modified attitude of both the great
sections of Scottish Dissent towards each other, is folded
up the germ of a future union. Should the movement
for that object, already so auspiciously inaugurated, go
steadily onward to its consummation, we may anticipate
some very important political changes in the position of
ecclesiastical parties. Ireland has permitted the church
of a minority to become the Church of Ireland. But we
greatly mistake the temper of our countrymen, if Scotchmen would continue any longer to tolerate an establishment so vastly outnumbered by a single dissenting
communion, as in the event of such a fusion the Church
of Scotland would inevitably become. The zeal with
which certain eminent statesmen have flung themselves
into the movement for the union of the Free and the
United Presbyterian churches, foreshadows the hour
when the present Erastian institution will be disesta



A  Retrospect.              241
blished, her revenues secularized for educational purposes,
religion liberated from all state-control, and Scotland
enjoying an educational system surpassing the most ardent dreams of the most sanguine educational reformers.
11




CHAPTER XV.
HERO-WVORSHIP.
"'THE worship of great men is now the only possible
religion," is the oracular utterance of one of the leading
lights of our day. Multitudes not yet perhaps prepared
to subscribe his formula, hold substantially his faith.
There is a something about the creed that synchronizes
with "the spirit of the age." It has nothing of the
dogmatic narrowness that belonged to what in other
times "was most surely believed among us."  With the
hero-worshipper, devotion to a principle as such is
bigotry. Alen of the most opposite convictions, and the
most conflicting practices, receive from him the same
meed of approbation. The mission of Mahomnet and
the mission of Moses are looked upon with equal
favour. Moral excellence is forgotten in mere energy
of character. That an ethical theory so bald and so
palpably unsound should ever have gathered around it
any disciples worthy of the name, is not a little surprising. With its votaries, sincerity is the primordial and
crowning virtue of man.




Hero-Worship.                 243
Like most other errors, the now fashionable faith has
seized a fragment of the truth, and it is that fragment
which floats it. Sincerity as a basis of all true nobility
of character is unquestionably indispensable. In every
age of the world's history, hollow-heartedness has been
held in nearly equal abhorrence. The hero-worshipper
has not therefore discovered any latent excellence in
this virtue not formerly perceived by man. All he
has done has been simply to exaggerate it into an importance not its own, making its shadow fall upon
every other grace and every other virtue of the soul.
In acting thus it has forgotten, that sincerity, to be really
worthy of our homage, must be guided by another power
than its own, and in itself considered, is blind. Men
of the most diverse sentiments and the most antagonistic
practices, may be equally sincere. This creed, therefore,
requires qualification, limitation. It is only the man
whose earnestness is under the guidance of just principles, whom we can truly venerate. Earnestness is
a noble quality when nobly directed; directed otherwise, it may be terrible, but noble it cannot be. John
Graham of Claverhouse, and John Brown of Priesthill,
were both earnest men, but whether do the accents of
heavenly resignation which fall from the lips of the
doomed Covenanter, or the fiendish execrations of the
brutal cavalier, sound sweetest in the ear; or shall we
admire both, simply because both were equally sincere?




244             Hero-Worship.
The scourges of the earth, who have waded through
slaughter to thrones, were no doubt earnest men, but
are not their deeds the severest satire on the virtue
which forms the life's essence of this pretentious moral
code?
It is scarcely possible even to think of hero-worship,
without the name of Thomas Carlyle spontaneously sug.
gesting itself. Nor, while dissenting from much he
may have taught on the subject, can any lover of England's great ones withhold a tribute, however feeble, to
the superlative service he has rendered their memories.
His biography of Cromwell solved the mystery which,
from the days of the English Commonwealth to our own
days, hung around the character of the Protector. And
it is with something like proud satisfaction we reflect,
that while British statesmen, in the genuine spirit of
flunkeyism, were refusing England's greatest sovereign
a niche in the new palace of Westminster, a countryman
of our own should have been quietly and unostentatiously, in his modest mansion at Chelsea, laboriously
building up from out " the authentic utterances of the
man Oliver," a monument more enduring than ought
the sculptor's utmost art could bestow. In the depth
and comprehensiveness of his intellectual insight into
the real essence of the Cromwellian era, Carlyle stands
unequalled and unapproached.
Other writers are, indeed, quite as eulogistic, but




Hero-Worship.               245
none so appreciative. Macaulay has exhausted upon it
nearly every epithet of praise his very comprehensive
vocabulary could furnish. Vaughan and Forster are
elaborately minute in chronicling its excellencies. But
the works of these writers, though manifestly the fruits
of solid studies, are all of them wanting in some element
more or less essential. Macaulay wants sympathy for
the intense spirituality which distinguished the statesmen of the Commonwealth, and distinguished none of
these statesmen more than Cromwell. Vaughan, though
possessing perhaps even a still more perfect comprehension than Carlyle of the religious life of the Protector,
is destitute of Carlyle's pictorial power. He reasonshe argues about, rather than portrays character. Forster's enthusiasm for the Long Parliament has made
him unjust to Oliver. Guizot's,"Cromwell and the
English Commonwealth," reproduces most of the prejudices that, despite its excellencies, disfigure his History
of the Revolution. Thirty years ago, Guizot gave the
world his opinion of England's uncrowned king, and
early prepossessions have so incorporated themselves
with the texture of his mind, that all after effort to dislodge them would appear to have proved abortive.
It is, indeed, true, long before the publication of
those "Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell," ample
justice had been done the merely intellectual qualities
of the hero of the Commonwealth. The most inveterate




246             Hero-Worship.
supporter of church and king was ready to concede his
possession of powerful intellect and imperial will. Not
his intellectual, but his moral qualities, were questioned.
It is the crowning glory of Carlyle that he has for ever
dissipated the tissue of calumny which, from the Restoration downwards, veiled the transparent integrity of
purpose by which the career of Cromwell had been distinguished.
But while readily acknowledging it is no vulgar
greatness at whose shrine the sage of Chelsea prostrates
himself; aware that Carlyle is dowered with " a hate of
hate, a scorn of scorn," for much before which the world
is ever forward to kneel; and conscious "the idols of
the tribe" are not the idols before which he bows: it
may yet be questioned if that " hero-worship" over
which he has flung the meteoric splendour of his brilliant
genius anchors itself in ought really different from the
old worship of force, which, ere the dayspring from on
high dissipated the darkness in which they dwelt, was
the religion of our Pagan ancestry. The Norseman was
a hero-worshipper of the most genuine type.  How
far that worship was from conducting him to an adequate conception of the perfections of Deity, a comparison of the ideas of our Scandinavian ancestors with
those of the most unlettered peasant of our own day
will at once discover.
The great gulf which separates Pagan from Christian




Hero-Worship.                 247
thought, is created by Christianity taking off the human
mind from the overweening contemplation and admiration of all those modes of man's activity, in which mere
force of intellect or energy of will exhibit themselves.
The race, under the potent influence of this spiritual
magnet, is being gradually lifted into a loftier region of
thought and feeling. "The earthly guest breathes imperial air" when taught to seek, not in intellect or
energy per se, but in intellect and energy as the handmaids of moral excellence, the highest style of man.
The revolutions of the last sixty years have, we believe, mainly contributed to the creation of a literature
so largely impregnated with the doctrine of hero-worship, as is British literature at this hour. Naturally
enough, perhaps, amidst the numerous schemes of social
regeneration, which, in endless succession, have risen to
the surface of society, only to fall even more quickly
than they rose, our more energetic litteracteurs have
turned in disgust from so much froth and feebleness, to
call the world to worship at the shrines of those heroes
whom fame has eternized, and to whom ordinary mor
tals look up as to a race of superior beings. According to Carlyle, perhaps the truest representative of the
disturbing forces of this revolutionary epoch, the hero
is hardly any longer possible; the association has taken
the place of the individual, the dynamical has been
superseded by the mechanical, and by no possibility




248              Hero-Worship.
can any tone of the eternal melodies be heard in ou
times.
As the antithesis of all this, Carlyle calls us to note
the silent steps by which Christianity, while the dew of
Its youth was yet fresh upon it, took its way to the
dominion of the world; and passing from the rise and
progress of Christianity, to the crusades, to the Reformation, to the English and French revolutions, he asks
triumphantly, how imnmeasurably superior is the dynamical to the mechanical. Doubtless, there is a large
amount of truth in Carlyle's somewhat cynical estimate
of the age. It has too much faith in systems and
organizations, and too little faith in individual effort; it
does not recognize sufficiently the potentiality of man
as man. Men are so massed, they have lost the sturdy
individuality wont to characterize them. Mechanicism
takes off the edge of all those angularities and peculiarities which give picturesqueness to national character.
But while admitting so much against mechanicism  as
exhibits a beautiful principle pervading all things, which
serves to check the pride of man, even in his loftiest
efforts, by revealing that his -most splendid attainments in one department are often followed by loss in
another, thus serving to keep in something like equation
the sum of the happiness of the race in all ages of the
world's history-we have to ask, is the mechanical so
completely the antipodes of the dynamical that there is




Hero-Worship.                249
no possibility of making the one subservient to the other?
Cannot the lesser principle become the auxiliary of the
greater, or must they for ever wage an internecine war'?
Can we not put soul into machinery? Is not machinery
only bad, and only degrading when it is made the substitute for that which it can never replace-the living,
breathing, energizing spirit of man?
Carlyle's own illustrations furnish the refutation of the
theory they are adduced to support? Had not the apostles the key to all the languages of the nations which
then dwelt upon the face of the earth? Was there not
a universal empire, which facilitated in a remarkable
manner the mission of the -first heralds of the cross?
And with respect to the myriads who flocked to the
standard Peter the Hermit unfurled in the face of
Europe, and took their way to Palestine to combat for
the Holy Sepulchre, will it be maintained that it was
better that crusading host had to make the tour of Europe
before setting foot upon the'soil of the Saracen, than
that it should, like our own braves, have been transported to the scene of its operations in comfortable
ships? From the want of mechanicism, these crusaders,
notwithstanding all their enthusiasm, perished -by thoulsands and tens of thousands ere they caught a glimpse
of the land of Israel. With respect to the Reformation,
it is true the central force was dynamical; the Reforma.
tion lay in the soul of Luther-but how vain had been
-I ~ -




250              Hero-Worship.
Luther's efforts, as were indeed the efforts of many of
his precursors, had the printing-press not come to his
aid, putting him in possession of a power more than
nmatch for the combined efforts of crook and crown to
crush the nascent reform.
In point of fact, the Reformation owed its success
mainly to the harmony between the dynamical and the
mechanical forces employed in its furtherance; and
though Carlyle sneers at the universities, it should not be
forgotten that it was from the universities principally
the light of a Protestant Christianity radiated over the
surrounding darkness. A reference to the leading men
who filled their chairs at that epoch in Europe's history,
when the sleep of ages was broken, would effectually
prove that at best it was only a half-truth Carlyle
uttered concerning the Reformation in the sixteenth century. With respect to the English and French revolutions,'tis true they were dynamical, but precisely because
they were too purely dynamical were they unenduring.
If the letters and speeches of Oliver Cromwell prove
anything, they prove that, so soon as the strong common
sense of Cromwell failed England, so soon did anarchy
once more lift its head; and France, unhappy France,
could embody its aspirations after liberty, equality, fraternity, in nothing better than a reign of terror. The
revolutionary government of France fell to pieces, because it wanted mechanism, or perhaps, to speak -more




Hero-Worship.                251
correctly, because its only mechanism was the guillo.
tine.
It is to be regretted that the teaching of that school
of which Carlyle is the facile jprinceps, is in so great a
degree illusory. Modern hero-worshippers, like the
ancient artificers in wood, in stone, in iron, and in brass,
have not a little to do with the creation of the objects
of their adoration. And if not the work of their own
hands, at least the creatures of their own fancy, veil
from them a grander ideal, and an infinitely nobler type
of humanity, than is embodied in the highest earthborn
heroism. There is a something deeply mournful about
the ceaseless oscillations of human opinion respecting
not what may be called subsidiary, but essential truth
-truth that must ever form the central principle and
motive power of all moral government. Now, perhaps,
we may find not a few Speculative thinkers, peculiarly
enamoured with a creed, which, if generally accepted,
would convert mankind into a herd of slobbering sentimentalists. Love, without any element of order or
authority, is their ideal of infinite perfection. With
them "God is love," in a sense that excludes infinite
holiness and infinite justice, and no interpretation of
the sterner facts of Divine moral government can be
accepted that does not square with this benevolent
theory; " nature red, in tooth and claw," must be ignored
in presence of these sentimental philosophers. Anon,




252               Hero-Worship.
it is discovered, that whatever root in feeling the theory
possessed, it had no existence in fact. The eternal
verities of the universe are arrayed in serried phalanx
against it, and like the gourd of the prophet which
sprung up in a night, it withers in as brief a period. But,
alas! the false philosophy is abandoned only to rush
into falsehood's opposite extreme. The still small voice
of love is hushed; nothing is heard save the menace of
authority; and man, hitherto the creature of infinite
tenderness, he whose eye, wherever it wandered, turned
on smiles, has become the sport and plaything of " the
necessities and the destinies," and grim fate, like some
Giant Despair, holds his future in his inexorable gripe.
Nowhere shall we find, within the whole circle of modern
writers, a more perfect antithesis to that class of litterateurs" The magnet of whose course is gone, or only points in vain.
The shore to which their shivered sail shall never stretch again"than in the writings of Hugh Miller. The influences
that for the last sixty years have been streaming in upon
modern thought, if they did not leave his thinking
altogether untouched, never drove him from his early
moorings. Happily withdrawn, during that season when
the human spirit is so peculiarly impressionable, from
the malign influences which, during his morn of life,
were pouring themselves over society, the storms of




Hero-Worship.               253
that great revolutionary epoch, so fatal to many a fine
spirit, never once untoned his. It was, indeed, kpown
that a mighty conflict was being fought out between the
antagonistic forces, the hostile camps of Europe; but the
great depths of his being were not broken up by the
tumult of a battle thus only heard from afar. Had the
self-reliant stone-cutter been thrown, at a favourable
conjuncture of circumstances, into the vortex of the
politico-philosophical speculation with which, ever since
the French Revolution, Europe has teemed, the whole
after life of the editor of the Witness might have been
something widely different. As it was in that boreal
region, in which childhood, youth, and early manhood
were passed, his spirit was nursed amidst infinitely
gentler influences than the influences of the age.. His
living teachers, his literature, his theology, all belonged
to an earlier epoch.
No one who has more than the most superficial
acquaintance with his writings, can have failed to perceive how deep, how wide, how accurate is his acquaintance with the writers that immediately preceded the
revolutionary epoch. With the wits and humourists of
the eighteenth century, Hugh Miller was quite as familiar
as Thackeray, admiring with an equal admiration
Addison and Swift.  Hardly any of his works are
wanting in frequent reference to Goldsmith; often
indeed does he turn aside to pay a touching tribute to




254              Hero-Worship.
one whose genius he admired and appreciated, better,
perhaps, than any man since the days of Johnson.
Thackeray, in his own style, has hit off the piquant
peculiarities of poor Goldy, but the portrait is marred
by mannerism. Macaulay, the lucky, the successful
M3acaulay, has little sympathy with the luckless, imprudent son of Erin. Goldsmith's mind did not move
on a scale sufficiently grand fully to awaken the sympathies of De Quincy. After his inimitable biographer,
Forster, Hugh Miller alone, of all our modern litterateurs,
seems inspired with that genuine affection for the warmhearted author of the Vicar of Wakefield, which his
many virtues and fine genius might be expected to evoke.
It was this perfect familiarity with those great masters,
who in other days had imparted so much grace and
symmetry to our lanld's language, that gave to Hugh
Miller's works that style which the late Baron Hume
had begun to regard as one of the lost arts, until, no
less surprised than gratified, he discovered the joy of
his youth untouched by any shade of years in "Scenes
and Legends of the North of Scotland."
The literati of Edinburgh made an immense cackling
about the testimonial to the purity of Principal Robertson's style, which Walpole furnished. In these Scenes
and Legends, written, not within the shadow of the
metropolis, but in a distant and sequestered nook of
Scotland, there is not only all the purity, there is what




Hero-Worship.                 255
Robertson never attained, all the flexibility of the best
English writers. Nay, we venture to claim for Hugh
Miller's style still higher praise. The grace and beauty
of the classics of the eighteenth century are due, not
more to innate taste, than to the scrupulous avoidance
of all those topics which, by demanding deeper thinking,
would have left less leisure to study mere polish of expression. Hugh Miller is the first English writer who
found, in the style of the eighteenth century essayists, a
vehicle for thoughts that touch the human soul at
infinitely profounder depths than any Addison or Goldsmith, Swift or Steele, Richardson or Fielding ever
reached.
Precluded almost equally by the precepts of religion,
and the principles of taste, from elevating to the throne
of his intellect or affections, any one of the gods of that
literary pantheon in which so many men of letters
offered their homage and adoration, Hugh Miller's
heroes were his companions; a genuinely human and
brotherly sympathy existed between them. He had
seen enough of the realities of life, to dissipate the illusion with which the greatest of the sons of men are
invested, and even by the grave of Shakspeare, could
speak as a man should speak.
" How would this master of human nature have judged of the homage that has now been paid him for these two centuries? and what
would have been his theory of' hero worship?' Many a bygone service




256                    Hero-Worship.
of this inverted religion has Stratford-on-Avon witnessed. The jubilee
devised by Garrick had no doubt much of the player in it; but it possessed also the real devotional substratum, and formed the type, on a
splendid scale, not less in its hollownesses than in its ground-work of
real feeling, of those countless acts of devotion of which the poet's birth
and burial places have been the scene.'Man praises man;' Garrick,
as became his occupation, was a little more ostentatious and formal in
his jubilee services,-more studious of rich ceremonial and striking
forms,-more High Church in spirit,-than the simpler class of herodevotees who are content to worship extempore; but that was just all
"'He drew the liturgy and framed the rites
And solemn ceremonial of the day,
And called the world to worship on the banks
Of Avon, famed in song. Ah I pleasant proof
Thatpiety has still in human hearts
Some place, a spark or two not yet extinct.
The mulberry-tree was hung with blooming wreaths;
The mulberry-tree stood centre of the dance;
The mulberry-tree was hymned with dulcet airs;
And from his touchwood trunk the mulberry-tree
Supplied such relics as devotion holds
Still sacred, and preserves with pious care.
So'twas a hallowed time; decorum reigned,
And mirth without offence. No few returned
Doubtless much edified, and all refreshed.'
"Such was Cowper's estimate,-to be sure, somewhat sarcastically
expressed,-of the services of the jubilee. What would Shakspeare's
have been of the deeply-based sentiment, inherent, it would seem, in
human nature, in which the jubilee originated? An instinct so widely
diffused and so deeply implanted cannot surely be a mere accident; it
must form, however far astray of the proper mark it may wander, one
of the original components of the mental constitution, which we have
not given ourselves. What would it be in its integrity? It must, it
would appear, have humanity on which to rest,-a nature identical
with our own' and yet, when it finds nothing higher than mere
humanity, it is continually running, as in the case of the Stratford
Jubilee, into grotesque idolatry. Did Shakspeare, with all his vast
knowledge, know where its aspirations could be directed aright? The




Hero-Worship.                       257
knowledge seems to have got, somehow, into his family; nay, she who
appears to have possessed it was the much-loved daughter on whom
his affections mainly rested,-' Witty above her sexe; but that's not all,Wise to salvation was good Mistress Hall.'
So says her epitaph in the chancel, where she sleeps at the feet of her
father. Thereis a passage in the poet's will, too, written about a
month ere his death, which may be, it is true, a piece of mere form,
but which may possibly be something better.' I commend my soul
into the hands of God my Creator, hoping, and assuredly believing,
through the only merits of Jesus Christ, my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting.' It is, besides, at least something, that this
play-writer and play-actor, with wit at will, and a shrewd appreciation
of the likes and dislikes of the courts and monarchs he had to please,
drew for their amusement no Mause Headriggs or Gabriel Kettledrummies. Puritanism could have been no patronizer of the Globe
Theatre. Both Elizabeth and James hated the principle with a perfect
hatred, and strove hard to trample it out of existence; and such a
laugh at its expense as a Shakspeare could have raised, would have
been doubtless a high luxury; nay, Puritanism itself was somewhat
sharp and provoking in those days, and just a little coarse in its jokes,
as the Martin Mar-Prelate tracts survive to testify; but the dramatist,
who grew wealthy under the favour of Puritan-detesting monarchs,
was, it would seem, not the man to make reprisals. There are scenes
in his earlier dramas, from which, as eternity neared upon his view,
he could have derived little satisfaction; but there is no' Old Mortality'
among them. Had the poor player some sense of what his beloved
daughter seems to have clearly discovered,-the true' hero worship?'
In his broad survey of nature and of man, did he mark one solitary
character standing erect amid the moral waste of-creation, untouched
by taint of evil or weakness,-a character infinitely too high for even
his vast genius to conceive, or his profound comprehension to fathom?
Did he draw near to inquire, and to wonder, and then fall down
humbly to adore?"
He who could thus gaze with undazzled eye upon the




258              Hero-XVorship.
splendour of that mighty orb of song, was, in his tastes
and sympathies, something very different from an echo of
the general trump of fame. For an obscure minister ot
his native village  who "died and made no sign," he
asks our homage as for one of the greatest of Scotch
theologians. Others might ransack the rolls of continental, of English, or of Scottish ecclesiastical history
for the chief of sacred orators. Hugh Miller found
that chief in the friend of his youth. In after years he
enjoyed abundant opportunities and ample leisure to
correct or modify the partialities of youthful friendship.
Bnt in life's gloaming, as in life's noon, Stewart of
Cromarty was still the prince of preachers.
As might have been anticipated, such a man was not
a tuft hunter. In the zenith of his fame, no persuasion
could induce him to go even for a single day, though
often invited, to the mansions of nobility. Urgently
and frequently he was pressed to accept the hospitality
of the most accomplished of our Scottish nobles, yet
that hospitality was invariably and most peremptorily
declined. Whether it was Hugh Miller felt he had
no talent for carrying duchesses off their feet, like his
great countryman, Robert Burns, or whether it was the
ambiguous treatment the bard received from the aristocracy, even when they professed to honour him, that
made the self-taught man of science chary of their
attentions, we do not presume to say; but certain it is,




Hero-Worship.                      259
that with the most obdurate inflexibility did he decline
their every solicitation.:' Love had he found in huts where poor men lie,
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills;"
and with that love and these teachers he seemed
unambitious to extend the circle of his acquaintanceship, even though it should happen to come to him all
stars, garters; and coronets. Possibly he carried the
feeling to the extreme of susceptibility. Yet it was not
without reason he acted thus. He had cast a profoundly penetrative intellectual glance upon the hollowness of the homage offered up to the man of genius
IJ the herd of his bustling patrons. With the tact of
the accomplished journalist, and the sagacity of the
astute observer of men and thimgs, he seized the opportunity afforded by a now nearly forgotten event, " The
Burns' Festival," to show up the sham  which hero-worship may become.
"Could we but lay open the inner springs of this tendency to manworship, they would enable us, we are convinced, to comprehend
many a curious chapter in the early history of the species. Departed
greatness, enveloped by its peculiar atmosphere of reverential respect
and awe, and exaggerated by distance, is suffered to retain within the
bright circle of its halo many an attendant littleness and impurity that
contemporaries would have at least not admired. The greatness is
dcubtless the staple of the matter-that which dazzles, impresses,




260                   Hero-Worship.
attracts; and the littleness and impurities were accidents that have
mixed with it; and yet how strange a tone do they not too frequently
succeed in imparting to the worship I There was much of apology at
the Burns' Festival for the errors of the poet; and it said at least something for the morals of the time, whatever it might for the taste of
the speakers, that such should have been the case. In a remoter and
more darkened age of the world, like those ages in which hero-worship
rose into a religion, the errors would have been remembered, but the
apology would have been wanting. Burns would have been deified
into an Apollo, and his love passages with the nymphs Daphne,
Leucothoe, and Coronis, and his drinking-bouts with Admetus and
Hyacinthus, would have been registered simply as incidents in his
history-incidents which, in the course of time, would have come to
serve as precedents for his worshippers. We are afraid that, maugre
regret and apology, there is too much of this as it is. His hapless
errors, so fatal to himself, have been too often surveyed through the
dazzling halo of his celebrity. The felt influence of his greatness
has extended to his faults, as if they were part and parcel of his greatness. The atmosphere of the sun conceals the sun's spots from the
unassisted eye of the observer; but the atmosphere of glory that surrounds the memory of Burns has not had a similar effect. To many,
at least, it has the effect of making his blemishes appear less as original
flaws, than as a species of beauty-spots, of a fashion to be imitated.
How can we marvel that the old worshippers of the offspring of
Saturn or Latona should have imitated their gods in their crimes, if in
these our days of light, with the model of a perfect religion before our
eyes, hero-worship should be found to exert, as of old, a demoralizing
influence I But it would not be easy to say, where more emphatic or
more honest warning could be found on this head than in the writings
of Burns himself We stake his own deeply-mournful prediction of
the fate which he saw awaiting him, against all ever advanced on the
opposite side;-'The poor inhabitant below
Was quick to learn, and wise to know,
And keenly felt the social glow,
And softer flame;
But thoughtless follies laid him low,
And stained his name.'




Hero-Worship.                      261
"Despite the authority of high names, we are no admirers of hero..worship. We are not insensible to what we may term the natura.
claims of Burns on the admiration of his country, both as a writer and
as a character of great bulk and power. It would be hypocrisy in us
to say that we were. Were his writings to be annihilated to-morrow
we could restore from memory some of the best of them entire, and
not a few of the more striking passages in many of the others. Nor
are we unimpressioned by the massiveness of his character as a man.
We bear about with us an adequate idea of it, as developed in that
deeply-mournful tragedy-his life. But we would not choose to go and
worship at his festival. There was a hollowness about the ceremony,
independently of the falseness of the principles on which its ritual was
framed. Of the thousands who attended, how many, does the reader
think, would have sympathized, had they seen the light some fifty
years earlier, with the man Robert Burns? How many of them grappled in idea at his festival with otherthan a mere phantom of the
imagination-a large but intangible shade, obscure and indefinable as
that conjured up, by the uninformed Londoner, of Cromwell or of
Johnson? Rather more than fifty years ago, the sinking sun shone
brightly one fine afternoon, on the stately tenements of Dumfries, and
threw its slant rule of light athwart the principal street of the town.
The shadows of the houses on the western side were stretched halfway across the pavement, while on the side opposite, the red beam
seemed as if sleeping on jutting irregular fronts and tall gables.
There was a world of well-dressed company that evening in Dumfries;
for the aristocracy of the adjacent country for twenty miles round had
poured in to attend a county ball, and were fluttering in groups along
the sunny side of the street, gay as butterflies. On the other side, in
the shade, a solitary individual paced slowly along the pavement. Of
the hundreds who fluttered past, no one took notice of him-no one
seemed to recognise him. He was known to them all as the exciseman and poet, Robert Burns; but he had offended the stately Toryism of the district by the freedom of his political creed; and sotaihted by the plague of Liberalism-he lay under strict quarantine.
He was shunned and neglected; for it was with the' man Burns that
these his cotemporaries had to deal. Let the reader contrast with this
truly melancholy scene, the scene of his festival a fortnight since.




262                  Hero-Worship.
Here are the speeches of the Earl of Eglinton and of' Sir John M'Neill,
and here the toast of the Lord Justice General. Let us just imagine
these gentlemen, with all their high aristocratic notions about them,
carried back half a century into the past, and dropped down, on the
sad evening to which we refer, in the main street of Dumfries. Which
side, does the reader think, would they have chosen to walk upon?
Would they have addressed the one solitary individual in the shade,
or not rather joined themselves to the gay groups in the sunshine who
neglected and contemned him? They find it an easy matter to deal
with the phantom idea of Burns now; how would they have dealt
with the man then? IHow are they dealing with his poorer relatives
-or how with men of kindred genius, their cotemporaries? Alas! a
moment's glance at such matters is sufficient to show howvery unreal
a thing a commemorative feast may be. Reality, even in idea, becomes a sort of Ithuriel spear to test it by. The Burns Festival was
but an idle show at which players enacted their parts."
But in  sternly  reprobating  man-worship, however
exalted, Hugh Miller was not, therefore, the less just
to his great countryman. None saw more clearly or
could estimate more accurately the worth of his work.
"Robert Burns was the man who first taught the Scottish people to
stand erect. Let us not be blind to the great national faults, and only
lynx-eyed to the faults of the great national poet. A mean and creeping subserviency to the great,-a getting up'to be hanged in order
to please the laird,'-was the master fault of the Scotch people; and
a century of persecution had failed to wean them of it. That part of
the general Epistle of James which speaks of' respect of persons,'
and the undue partiality shown to men with' gold rings and goodly
apparel,' might have been more appropriately addressed to the Scotch,
even after the rich had'oppressed' and'drawn' them'before
judgment-seats,' and'blasphemed the Holy Name,' than to almost
any other people of Europe.  But the independent peasant, who, in
the most trying circumstances, never bent himself before the worthless
wealthy or the little 6great, and who in his ever-living strains asserted




Hero-Worship.                    263
the dignity of manhood, taught them another lesson; and they have
learned it. Yes! the Scottish people have lost the habitual stoop,
and now stand erect; and all honour, say we, to the reformer who,
more than any other, effected the change. His life, as certainly as his
works, were effectual in producing it; and, had it accomplished nothing else, it would not, with all its errors and shortcomings, have
been spent in vain."
Yet, though doing the amplest justice to the poet,
as if to illustrate the imperfection of the justest
thinking and the noblest intentions in reprobating
"the sham," Hugh Miller insensibly assumed the attitude of "the cynic."  With  much said  about the
hollowness of the worship offered to the memory of
Coila's bard, all must acquiesce; but it should not be
forgotten, even while remembering the false, how
many true worshippers of the poet met to honour his
name.
The speech of the Burns' festival was neither the
speech  of the  Lord  Justice-General, of Sir John
M'Neill, nor of the Earl of Eglinton; it was the speech
of Professor Wilson, and  the tribute  of the heart
Christopher North offered on that day to the memory
of the bard, merited a more handsome recognition than
the expressive silence Hugh Miller left to muse its
praise.  Nor can we divest ourselves of the impression
that the genial-hearted Eglinton was only uttering
the genuine sentiments of his soul, when announcing to the gathered thousands that he, the descendant




264             Hero-Worship.
of those who dwelt in the "Castle of Montgomery,"
only felt himself too highly honoured in being permitted
to propose the memory of him who then wandered there
unknown by the banks of the Fail.
Neither can we give up even Sir John M'Neill: true
he has been through life what is called a Tory; but in
the remembrance of the fact that this Tory was among
the earliest and kindest friends of a more friendless son
of genius than. even Burns, the graduate of Plymouth
workhouse, John Kitto,' we read an earnest of the
treatment the poet would have received from the exCrimean commissioner. Nay, was there not in the
genuine pluck and faithfulness of that report of his on
the mismanagement by which a herd of titled aristocrats
decimated the sons of the people, perhaps the noblest
recognition of the poet's creed, " a man's a man for a'
that," modern times have furnished?
Later in life, we believe Hugh Miller considerably
modified his opinions of some of the men to whom, in
his paper on the'Burns, Festival, he had done such scant
justice.: In the year of his death, we had the pleasure
of seeing him on the same platform with not a few of
these same tories, heartilyi co-operating in a common
effort to save the monument of the bard from the vandalism of the town council of Edinburgh. The oratory
on that occasion was done chiefly by Professors Aytoun
and Blackie; but their speeches, so far as they bore upon




Hero-Worship.                265
the object of the meeting, were confessedly echoes of
an article replete with the truest taste, the noblest eloquence, and the most ardent patriotism, which appeared
in the Witness on the previous day.
12




CHAPTER XVI.
EDUCATION.
HITHERTO the course of the ecclesiastical leaders of the
Free Church, and the course of the editor of the Witness,
had run nearly parallel.  Slight variations in policy
and views, had, indeed, occasionally manifested themselves, but no serious disagreement was yet apparent.
A crisis had, however, now arrived, when considerable
discrepancy of opinion and policy was about to disclose
itself. The severe labours, literary, ecclesiastical, and
scientific, undergone by Hugh Miller during the first
four years of the existence of the Witness, compelled
him to forego all literary effort during the greater
part of 1845 and 1846.  Thus necessarily precluded
from forming any very fixed views of what the church
was doing, on returning in renovated health, early in
January, 1847, to his editorial duties, he found her on
the eve of that great educational controversy in which
he was called to combat the church's entire ecclesiastical
artillery, a combat which did not cease until, from his
own solitary but well-appointed battery, he silenced its
every gun.




Education.                 267
No sooner had Hugh Miller returned to Edinburgh,
than Dr. Chalmers, with his wonted kindness, paid him
a visit of congratulation on his convalescence, and in a
long and serious conversation, urged the importance of
maintaining the Witness in honest independency, uninfluenced by cliques and parties, secular or ecclesiastical.
At this interview the prospects of the Free Church
educational scheme were briefly discussed. Dr. Chalmers was struck with the views of Hugh Miller, and
expressed his desire to see the educational question
brought at once to the columns of the Witness, and
probed to the bottom. The opportunity for this discussion soon presented itself. The scheme of privycouncil grants for educational purposes was announced by government.  Dr. Candlish had got the
church committed to a refusal of all participation of
those grants, as inconsistent with the principles of the
Free Church.
So recently disentangled from the meshes of statecraft,
like the bird escaped from the snare of the fowler, it
was not wonderful, they should have been chary of
entering anew into friendly relations with Erastian
politicians. Had this dissatisfaction based itself on
legitimate grounds, and expressed itself in logical forms,
even if not able to hold its own against the powerful
antagonist it encountered in the Witness, it would,
at least, have been more worthy of respect. As it was,




268                 Education.
the " vicious Cameronianism," as Hugh Miller styled
the sentiment with which he had to contend, made but a
sorry figure in conflict with the strong common sense of
the editor of the Witness. In supporting his views of
the propriety of accepting the privy-council grants,
Hugh Miller employed successively every arrow in his
intellectual quiver, turning at will from the gravest
statement to the gayest satire. Now by a calm historical narrative, now by a piece of powerful ratiocination,
anon by the liveliest wit and the broadest humour does
he overthrow the positions of his antagonists. Grave
and reverend seigniors, with whom wit was wickedness,
were startled from their propriety, by finding themselves
occasionally treated in the columns of the Witness, much
after the manner they might have expected to have
been treated in the columns of Punch.
As exhibiting the playful style in which he thus
sometimes clothed important ideas, and the adroitness
with which he could avail himself of the accidents of
the hour for the illustration of permanent principles,
this bit of exquisite banter will suffice. To a brother
editor of opposite opinions on the education question,
and somewhat alarmed at the range and freedom of
illustration Hugh Miller brought to its discussions, he
thus addresses himself:"What sort of -teaching, then, we ask our cotemporary, does he
expect for ten, fifteen, or even twenty pounds per annuml He re



Education.                       269
members, we daresay, the story of Betty the cook-maid and her mistress. Betty, an old and faithful servant, on one day informing her
mistress that she purposed getting married, had got a present of five
pounds from her; and straightway taking her leave, she returned a
morning or two after, to show the good lady her husband. The husband was little, and old, and blear-eyed, and lame of a foot, and did
not take the mistress's fancy at all.'Betty,' she said,' is that the
man you have got?''Ohl Mem,' exclaimed Betty, imploringly,'Oh  Mem, what could we expect for five pounds?' Our respected
cotemporary, who strangely enough accuses us of indulging in'a
variety of faceti' (we I-the sober-eyed — the grave-featured I —the
demure I-we I)-our cotemporary, we say, delights in only grave
stories; and we are quite sure he will luxuriate on this one, for the
sake, not only of its intrinsic properness and sobriety, but also for
that of the high-toned moral which it bears. We ask him imploringly,
in the very vein of Betty-' Oh I Mem, what can we expect for fifteen
pounds!' Cheap articles are not always great bargains,-a fact of
which the Free Church has already had some little experience, and
regarding which, sheerly for the sake of warning in this matter, we
beg leave to submit to our respected cotemporary a brief snatch of
historic narrative, founded on personal observation.
"We travelled, about a twelvemonth since, through a remote part
of the country, and, in the course of a single morning, passed by two
Free Churches erected after the Edinburgh model. As the first came
full in view, at the distance of several miles, it presented to our wondering eyes an appearance which we could not at all understand. It
was the subject, evidently, of some strange mysterious operation.
There were about fifty adventurous Free Churchmen clustered upon
the roof, like so many triumphant Lilliputians on the prostrate Gulliver, or a crew of Dutch Greenlandmen engaged in flaying a whale, —
while about a hundred more, heaving upon good ropes, or tugging at
levers, swarmed thick in the area below. We could hear, as we approached, the stout' yo heave o',' translated into Gaelic, echoing clear
through the calm morning air; and by and by ascertained that the
work on hand was neither more nor less than the skinning of a kirk.
And hard work it was. A ponderous integument of felt and tar played flap, flap, flap, upon the sarking, as the tugging moiety of the party




270                     Education.
below strained in desperation at the cordage, or ever and anon relaxed
their endeavours to sheer but hopeful exhaustion. At length up rose
the enormous cover, in one riddled whole, from gable to gable. It
stuck up on end for half a minute in mid air, as if balanced on the
easement, like the ancient brocade described by Crabbe,-' Silk beyond price, so rich,'twould stand alone;'
and then rolling over in one immense mass on the sward, the stripped
erection stood up in all its nakedness, like a flayed rhinoceros.' What
is all this about?' we asked a decent-looking bonneted man, much
begrimed with pitch.'Oh, that nasty tar I' he replied.' Ye see,
sir, we took the cheap Edinbro' roofing, an' we're noo taking it aff
again to get sclate. It's no little trouble we had wi't fra first to last!'
We walked on, and in about two hours after passed the second Free
Church. It had got considerably in advance of' its neighbour; half a
dozen workmen were just closing in the last course of a capital cover
of Breadalbane slate, that glanced bright in the sun, while the rejected tar-work lay in a forlorn heap beside an adjacent rivulet, like the
cast-off skin of a renovated snake, or the slough of a transformed mermaid. The decent bonneted man was, we found, quite in the rightthe cheap Edinburgh roofing had cost the Free Church a world of
trouble. It did tolerably well in calm, cool, dry weather; but when
the rains descended on the roof, they were sure always to descend
alsd through the roof-not in the character of pure rain, but in the
character of Bishop Berkeley's famous tar-water, till every Free
Church, in a shower, became a sort of medicated Dropping Cave of
Slaines. And then, when the sun shone in its power, down came,
not water, but the tar itself. It descended in long hot trails'on the
worthy men at the plate, like seething pitch cast from a beleaguered
tower on the heads of the besiegers,-bedaubed the Sunday toggery
of the young men, till long-tailed coats looked, in their vigorous youth,
as if fallen into infirm health, and stuck over with strengthening plaster,-did infinite damage to jemmy calicoes and unexceptionable Leghorns, —and stuck fast the whole membership of a congregation to
their pews and to one another, as Cobbler Audley in the story, by sitting down on his prayer-book to protect himself against witchcraft,
and forgetting to note, in his terror, that a ball of his rosin had insi



Education.                      271
nuated itself between his inexpressibles and the cover, stuck himself
fast to' our most excellent liturgy;' or a better comparison still-as our
respected contemporary * * * sticks fast to his subject. It is no doubt
an excellent thing that congregations should be united; but there
exists no reason whatever for sticking them together with tar. It
was, however, when to a hot sun there was a high wind superadded,
that the molten roofing rendered itself most remarkable. It arrested
in their vagrant course wandering bits of paper, voyaging straws. and
flying feathers, till they stuck up thick and manifold over the erection'like quills upon the fretful porcupine,' and at the close of a summer
gale, decent churches came to resemble huge Friezeland hens. The.dinburgh Building Committee had tarred the Free Kirk, all out of
sheer economy, aCnd the chapter of accidents feathered it."
The Free Church in its eagerness to "possess the land,"
and its ambition still to be reckoned the Church of Scotland, had projected a magnificent educational scheme,
gathering round it a phalanx of teachers, incomparably
more numerous than she had the power to support. Hier
principles as a church were not the less pure, nor the
conduct of "the outed" ministers the less noble, that they
were not able to secure the adhesion of the entire ministry
of the Church of Scotland, as by law established, to
their claim of rights. But in the first blush of their
zeal, they could not bear to look the stern facts of their
position fully in the face.
All but two years' seclusion from the turmoil of
church controversy, had served to dissipate the illusion
Hugh Miller had perhaps originally shared in common
with the church's ecclesiastical leaders. And he came
now, after that lengthened period of rustication, with a




272                     Education.
fresh eye to the consideration of the position of his
party.
That position he has thus described:" We found in all the various schemes of the Free Church, with but
one exception, its extensively-spread membership and its more active
leaders were thoroughly at one; but that in that exceptional scheme
they were not all at one. They were at one in their views respecting
the ecclesiastical character of ministers, elders, and Church courts, and
of the absolute necessity which exists that these, and these only,
should possess the spiritual key. Further, they were wholly at one
in recognizing the command of our adorable Saviour, to preach the
gospel to all nations, as of perpetual obligation on the Church. But
regarding what we shall term, without taking an undue liberty with
the language, the pedagogical teaching of religion, they differed in
toto. Practically, and to all intents and purposes, the schoolmaster, in
the eye of the membership of our Church and of the other Scottish
Churches, was simply a layman, the proper business of whose profession was the communication of secular learning; and, as in choosing their tailors and shoemakers, the people selected for themselves the
craftsmen who made the best and handsomest shoes and clothes, so in
selecting a schoolmaster for their children, they were sure always to
select the teacher who was found to turn out the best scholars. All
other things equal, they would have preferred a serious, devout schoolmaster to one who was not serious nor devout, just as, cceteris paribus,
they would have preferred a serious shoemaker or tailor to a nonreligious maker of shoes and clothes. But religious character was not
permitted to stand as a compensatory item for professional skill; nay,
men who might almost be content to put up with a botched coat or a
botched pair of shoes for the sake of the good man who spoiled them,
were particularly careful not to botch, on any account whatever, the
education of their children. In a country in which there was more
importance attached, than in perhaps any other in the world, to the
religious teaching of the minister, there was so little importance attached
to the religious teaching of the schoolmaster, that when weighed
against even a slight modicum of secular qualification, it was found to




Education.                      273
have no sensible weight; and with this great practical fact some of our
leading men seemed to be so little acquainted, that they were going or,
with the machinery of their educational scheme on a scale at least coextensive with the Free Church, as if; like that church-all-potent in her
spiritual character-it had a moving power in the affections of the
people competent to speed it on. And it was the great discrepancy
with regard to this scheme, which existed between the feelings of the
people and the anticipations of some of our leading men, clerical and
lay, that excited our alarm. Unless that discrepancy be removed, we
said,-unless the anticipations of the men engaged in the laying down
of this scheme be sobered to the level of the feelings of the lay membership of our church, or, vice versd, the feelings of the lay membership
of our church be raised to the level of the anticipations of our leaders,
— bankruptcy will be the infallible result."
This passage contains the key to the position Hugh
Miller maintained with so much pertinacity, and so much
success throughout this controversy. Evangelical in
his religious, he was moderate, rather perhaps we should
say, national in his educational views. He loved the
nationality of our schools, and turned in disgust from
the attempt to make what had hitherto been common
ground on which the youth of Scotland met, without
distinction of party, the clerical preserve of any
sect, even though that sect should happen to be his
own. With such views and feelings, he naturally
enough scorned the absurd proposals made to identify
the teachers with the sacred office. There can be no
doubt that, while following this course, and holding these
views, he was much nearer the views of the Scottish
Reformers on the education question than the party ho
12*




274                Education.
opposed. Without dissociating religion from the teaching of the school, the master idea in the minds of all
those men was the importance of providing for the
youth of the country, what, to adopt a modern, and not
altogether unobjectionable term, we may describe as a
secular education. Upon this point, therefore, Hugh
Miller was invulnerable. But with the peculiar opinions
entertained by the Free Church-opinions for which
there was a greater justification in the circumstances of
society and the ideas of contemporary political and
religious parties, than the editor of the Witness was disposed to acknowledge —the acceptance of the privycouncil grants trembled on the verge of treachery to
principle.
None had been more strenuous than the leaders
of the Free Church in denunciation of the vicious
tendency of modern statecraft to the indiscriminate
endowment of all religious creeds. It was only to be
anticipated, therefore, that in accepting these grants as
a religious denomination, and appearing at the door of
the treasury, in common with sects deemed subverters
of the faith, it should be felt by not a few, they had
forsaken their cherished principles.  This anomalous
position in which the church found itself, arose from the
circumstance that its leaders only accepted half the
advice given them by the editor of the Witness, and by
Dr. Chalmers. The strong common sense of Hugh




Education.                275
Miller detected at once the absurdity of taking the
public money as a denomination for religious purposes,
under the minutes of privy council, and protesting
against giving the same aid to other denominations not,
indeed, so orthodox as themselves, but quite as really
as themselves contributors to the public purse. His
withering expos6 of the untenable character of the
original opposition to the privy-council grants, seconded
by certain political influences, to which the church has
often bowed, had, indeed, silenced the hostility of Dr.
Candlish and the majority in the church; but though
dislodged from their original position, they had not yet
reached any really legitimate resting-place.
They had, indeed, taken the money of the state, but
they had done nothing to secure a national, in opposition
to a merely denominational education. True, religious
differences interposed a powerful barrier to the accomplishment of this object; but though the barrier was
powerful in the opinions alike of Dr. Chalmers and of
Hugh Miller, it was by no means insurmountable. Like
the editor of the Witness, Dr. Chalmers aimed to set up
a scheme of education, which, so far as the state was
concerned, should be substantially a secular education.
The matured expression of his views upon the subject
was embodied in a letter addressed to the then Right
Hon. Fox Maule, now Lord Panmure.  As the document is necessary to an accurate comprehension of Hugh




276                         Education.
Miller's position in this controversy, we reproduce it
entire:" It were the best state of things that we had a parliament sufficiently
theological to discriminate between the right and the wrong in religion, and to encourage or endow accordingly. But failing this,
it seems to us the next best thing, that in any public measure
for helping on the education of the people, government were to abstain
from introducing the element of religion at all into their part of the
scheme, and this not because they held the matter to be insignificant
-the contrary might be strongly expressed in the preamble of their
act; but on the ground that, in the present divided state of the Christian world, they would take no cognizance of, just because they would
attempt no control over, the religion of applicants for aid-leaving this
matter entire to the parties who had to do with the erection and management of the schools which they had been called upon to assist. A
grant by the state upon this footing might be regarded as being
appropriately and exclusively the expression of their value for a good
secular education.
"The confinement for the time being of any government measure
for schools to this object we hold to be an imputation, not so much on
the present state of our legislature, as on the present state of the
Christian world, now broken up into sects and parties innumerable and
seemingly incapable of any effort for so healing these wretched
divisions as to present rulers of our country with aught like such
a clear and unequivocal majority in favour of what is good and
true, as might at once determine them to fix upon and to espouse it.
"It is this which has encompassed the government with difficulties
from which we can see no other method of extrication than the one
which we have ventured to suggest. And as there seems no reason
why, because of these unresolved differences, a public measure for the
health of all-for the recreation of all-for the economic advancement
of all-should be held in abeyance, there seems as little reason why,
because of these differences, a public measure for raising the general
intelligence of all should be held in abeyance. Let the men, therefore,
of all churches and all denominations alike hail such a measure,
whether as carried into effect by a good education Wi letters or in any




Education.                        277
of the sciences; and, meanwhile, in these very seminaries, let that
education in religion which the legislature abstains from providing for,
be provided for as freely and amply as they will by those who have
undertaken the charge of them.
"We should hope, as the result of such a scheme, for a most wholesome rivalship on the part of many in the great aim of rearing on the
basis of their respective systems a moral and Christian population, well
taught in the principles and doctrines of the gospel, along With being
well taught in the lessons of ordinary scholarship. Although no
attempt should be made to regulate or enforce the lessons of religion
in the inner hall of legislation, this will not prevent, but rather
stimulate to a greater earnestness in the contest between truth
and falsehood-between light and darkness-in the outer field of
society; nor will the result of such a contest in favour of what is right
and good be at all the more unlikely, that the families of the land have
been raised by the Helping hand of the state to a higher platform than
before, whether as respects their health, or their physical comfort, or
their economic condition, or, last of all, their place in the scale of
intelligence and learning.
"Religion would, under such a system, be the immediate product,
not of legislation, but of the Christian and philanthropic zeal which
obtained throughout society at large. But it is well when what legislation does for the fulfilment of its object tends not to the impediment,
but rather, we apprehend, to the furtherance of those greater and
higher objects which are in the contemplation of those whose d,sires
are chiefly set on the immortal wellbeing of man.
"On the basis of these general views I have two remarks to offer
regarding the government scheme of education.
"1. I should not require a certificate of satisfaction with the religious progress of the scholars from the managers of the schools, in
order to their receiving the government aid. Such a certificate from
Unitarians or Catholics implies the direct sanction or countenance by
government to their respective creeds, and the responsibility, not of
allowing, but more than this, of requiring, that these shall be taught
to the children who attend. A bare allowance is but a general tleration; but a requirement involves in it all the mischief, and I would
add, the guilt, of an indiscriminate endowment for truth and error.




278                    Education.
" 2. I would slffer parents or natural guardians to select what parts
of the education they wanted for their children. I would not force
arithmetic upon them, if all they wanted was writing and reading;
and as little would I force the catechism, or any part of the religious
instruction that was given in the school, if all they wanted was a
secular education. That the managers in the Church of England
schools shall have the power to impose their catechism upon the
children of Dissenters, and still more, to compel their attendance on
church, I regard as among the worst parts of the scheme.
"The above observations, it will be seen, meet any questions which
might be put in regard to the applicability of the scheme to Scotland,
or in regard to the use of the Douay version in Roman Catholic
schools.
"I cannot conclude without expressing my despair of any great or
general good being effected in the way of Christianizing our population, but through the medium of a government themselves Christian,
and endowing the true religion, which I hold to be their imperative
duty, not because it is the religion of the many, but because it is true.
" The scheme on which I have now ventured to offer these few
observations I should like to be adopted, not because it is absolutely
the best, but only the best in existing circumstances.
"The endowment of the Catholic religion by the state I should
deprecate, as being ruinous to the country in all its interests. Still, I
do not look for the general Christianity of the people but through the
medium of the Christianity of their rulers. This is a lesson taught
historically in Scripture by what we read there of the influence which
the personal character of the Jewish monarchs had on the moral and
religious state of their subjects-it is taught experimentally by the
impotence, now fully established, of the Voluntary principle-and last,
and most decisive of all, it is taught prophetically in the book of
Revelation, when told that then will the kingdoms of the earth
(l.OcXcdac or governing powers) become the kingdoms of our Lord Jesus
Christ; or the governments of the earth become Christian governments.-THOMAS CHALMERS."
Within a week of the writing of this paper Dr.
Chalmers was no more, and where its meaning seemed




Education.                279
ambiguous, there was no one to whom conflicting
parties might appeal for the true interpretation. Considerable controversy respecting its precise import
arose in the Free Church. Those whose views it
favoured naturally enough saw in it more perhaps than
the writer meant they should see; and those-on whose
views it frowned, were reluctant to acknowledge so
formidable an authority had pronounced against them.
That Hugh Miller was substantially right in his interpretation of its meaning, we cannot doubt. As far as
was possible for a man of strong religious sympathies,
Dr. Chalmers had committed himself in favour of a
state system of secular education. Any ambiguity upon
that point is removed by the remembrance of the circumstances in which the paper was written. The
document was prepared at the request of the Right
Honourable Fox Maule, that it might form material
to guide government in dealing with the general subject.
Chalmers and Miller were alike reluctant to recognize
Scotland as torn into factions. Both of these great
men had rather loved to look upon the nation as still
a powerful unity, and in the fact that all the great
sections of dissent held substantially a common faith,
Miller discerned the basis of a common system of education. In discussing the question, the editor of the
Witness entered largely into details; Chalmers only
indicated general principles.  But though united in




280                  Education.
principle and aim, we rather suspect they would have
parted company upon these details. The editor of the
Witness appears to have borrowed his conception of the
popular basis on which he sought to place national education, from the common school-system of New England.
And so utterly divested of all those centralizing features,
hitherto the chief objection to modern state education,
is his scheme-so completely has he made it a thing,
not only for the people, but of the people, we are apt
to wonder he stopped short of even the voluntary
principle.  Like Dr. Chalmers, however, Hugh Miller
was singularly sceptical of that principle upon certain
questions, though, like him also, reposing the amplest
faith in its virtues with respect to others.  The extremest voluntary could not have resisted the imposition
of a poor-rate with more zealous tenacity than both
these distinguished men. With that graphic power of
illustrating a principle by the reminiscences of his
experience, the editor of the Witness thus demonstrated
to his own satisfaction the injustice of a statutory
support of the pauper class.
"We resided and laboured in this part of the country (Edinburgh)
for a summer and autumn about eighteen years ago, at a time when
wages were high and employment abundant. There was much dissipation among the working classes of the period; and one of our
brother workmen, Jock Laidlie, was an extreme specimen of the more
dissipated class. Pay-day came round once a fortnight, and then we
were sure to lose sight of Jock for about three days. When he came




Education.                       281
back to resume his labour, he had always a miserable, par-boiled sort
of look, as if he had been simmering for half an hour in a caldron over
a slow fire. He was invariably, too, in that wretched state of spirits
which in those days workmenr used to term'the horrors;' and as men
can't get par-boiled and into the'horrors' for nothing, it was found
in every instance, that Jock's-whole wages had been dissipated in the
process. And such, fortnight after fortnight, was the course pursued
by Jock. Now, employment, though easily enough procured in summer and autumn in Jock's profession, was always uncertain in winter,
even when the winter proved fine and open; and when frosts were
keen and prolonged, and the snow lay long on the ground, there was
no employment for even the more fortunate.  It was essentially
necessary therefore, in the busier seasons, to make provision for the
seasons in which business failed. For our own part, we were desirous,
we remember, to have the winter all to ourselves, and when Hallowday came round and employment failed, we found ourselves in the
possession of twelve pounds, which we had laid by just at its price, if
we may so speak. Twelve pounds relieved us from the necessity of
labouring for twice twelve weeks. Twelve pounds were sufficient to
purchase for us leisure and independence-two very excellent things
-from the end of October to the beginning of May; and we were
desirous to employ the time thus fairly earned in cultivating a little
inheritance which in lesser or larger measure descends to all, and of
which no law of appropriation can rob even working men, but which,
unless resolutely broken in, and sedulously improved, must lie fallow
and unproductive-of no benefit to the possessor, and useless to the
community. Jock Laidlie had not laid by a single farthing. We, on
a very small scale, were a capitalist determined on making an investment. Jock was a pauper; and here, in a state of great simplicity,
in comes the question at issue-Had Jock Laidlie any right to our
twelve pounds? To not one copper farthing of it, say we. It was
all our own-all honestly earned by the sweat of our brow. We had
never claimed to share with Jock in a single gill. We had never
enjoyed one whiff of his tobacco. We had never meddled with hic
earnings; he bad no right to intermeddle with ours.  But Jock
Laidlie had an aged mother, who, without any fault on her part, wa,
miserably poor, just because Joek had failed in his duty towards her




282                  Education.
Had Jock Laidlie's mother any right to our twelve pounds? No Ino right. It might doubtless be a duty to help the poor suffering
woman, but her claim on us was merely a claim of compassion.
She had no right, nor had any third party a right to thrust his hand
into our pocket, and out of our hard-earned twelve pounds, to assist
Jock Laidlie's mother."
We are not about to enter upon any argument in
behalf of voluntaryism, educational or ecclesiastical:
all we say of this illustration is, that it points to principles more fatal to state education than they can ever
become to any argument in behalf of state provision
for the poor. If the unfortunate have no right to life,
what claim-what state claim, we mean, have they for
instruction? As the greater includes the less, if the
right to life is denied, we necessarily deny the right to
education.
But we refrain from doing more than simply indicat.
ing the path on which such a discussion would inevitably
lead. To enter in extenso upon the question of voluntary
versus state education, would be to enter "neither a
vineyard nor an oliveyard, but an intricate jungle of
briers and thorns, from which those who lose themselves
therein, may bring back many scratches, but no food."
TYle issues raised by the controversy have not yet
been decided, though the unsatisfactory position in
which the whole question of popular education has been
left during the last ten years, cannot much longer be
tolerated.  The chief good Hugh MIiller's discussion cf




Education.                283
the subject accomplished, was an indirect good. It formed
the thin edge of the wedge by which successive assemblies of the Free Church have been shattering the vicious
system of management that, from the Disruption downwards, has been the bane of that important ecclesiastical
organization. It may, indeed, be regretted the good was
not achieved without attendant evils. The personalities
with which the discussion was garnished, might have
been spared, while yet the argument retained its undiminished power. But it is not given to man to accomplish unmixed good. As even the finest gold is not
wholly free from alloy, so in the loftiest human wisdom
there lurks a grain of folly, and in man's noblest efforts,
a something amiss"There's something in this world amiss,
Shall be unriddled by and by."
The keen eye of Francis Jeffrey noted in the vigorous
self-assertion of Burns, rather too fierce and defiant a
tone. In the estimation of the great Reviewer, our
national bard sometimes mistook the pride of the sturdy
peasant for the natural elevation of a generous mind.
The shadow of this same vice has occasionally marred
the exquisite delicacy of taste and feeling, by which
almost all Hugh Miller has done is distinguished.
Esteeming him substantially right in his educational
controversies, there are yet episodes in these contro



284                Education.
versies where we cannot veil from ourselves the con.
viction, swagger is mistaken for strength. A morbid
jealousy of his independence seduced him into this
error-this weakness.
We are quite aware that, from a very early period,
attempts were made to control the Witness, and that
probably any two men less resolute than its proprietors,
would have succumbed to the cumulative influences
that sought to seduce from its integrity the solitary
independent organ of the Free Church. Dictation and
intrigue were, however, equally impotent, equally futile:
turning neither to the right hand nor the left, the
Witness pursued the even tenor of its way, not only
undismayed, but inflicting the most terrible chastisement
upon all who presumed to cross its path. Doubtless,
many of the men with whom its editor dealt so cavalierly,
merited his lusty lash, but there were old friends whom
the recollections of the days of other years might have
spared the merciless castigations he occasionallyindulged;
and "glimmering through the dream  of things that
were," was at least one ancient friendship which needed
not to have been so rudely sundered. Mistaken as
was the earlier course of Dr. Candlish on the education
question, he had surely done nothing that might
legitimately warrant the scathing sarcasm of these
sentences so replete with the extremest susceptibility.
"It has been insinuated to us," says Hugh Miller, " that




Education.                285
the Witness newspaper is pursuing on the educational
question a course perilous to itself. We are not careful,
we at once say, to answer for ourselves in this matter.
The editor of the Witness is a humble man, but he stands
on other ground than mere salaried functionaries, of
whom with all deference it may be affirmed, that'a
breath can make them, as a breath has made.' It is to
God, not to patronage, clerical or lay, that he owes that
voice with which he addresses himself to a large circle
of certainly not the least intelligent of his countrymen,
nor does he fear that circle will be ultimately much contracted, should he be compelled to read in behalf of his
country, and of a meritorious though neglected class ot
men, an occasional sermon to a committee, or even to
call a church leader to account."
Had he been content to sink into one of those mere
mercenaries of the newspaper-press who frame special
pleadings in the cause of party, the opportunity, not
unbacked by pecuniary argument, was presented to
him at least two years ere he came forward, in conscious
weakness, to contend for a good cause against the hostile
press of a kingdom. Had he looked to merely secular
advantage, he would have quitted his exposed and
thankless post of duty long ago. These remarks are
unwillingly extorted, nor shall we advert further to the
purely personal matter on which they touch, than in
the words of our noble motto, " I am in the place where




286               Education.
I am demanded of conscience to speak the truth, and,
therefore, the truth I speak, impugn it whoso list."
Unfortunately for his own peace, rigid adherence to his
motto who never feared the face of man, brought the
editor of the Witness into antagonism  with church
leaders on other topics than popular education. On
the college question, on the question of rating and
kindred subjects he was generally found leading the
opposition. In most instances, we think, his hostility
was well-founded; but unhappily the misunderstandings
that arose, the heats and jealousies kindled, had a corroding influence upon his spirit, and ultimately almost
completely alienated him from taking part in the discussion of church policy. But though mingling little
more in the strife of tongues, the freedom with which
he had canvassed the schemes of ecclesiastical leaders,
at a time when something very like a dictatorship had
destroyed presbyterian parity in the general assemblies
of the Free Church, bore fruit. It has been the misfortune of Dr. Candlish that his majorities in the Assembly have too often been made up of the least enlightened
of her presbyteries. No one who has been present at any
division in that venerable court, can have failed to note
that the dexterous church leader mainly owes his success
to the adroitness with which he is able to manage the
"Highland Host."  The prejudices of the north, and
the bigotry of the west, have been the buttresses of his




Education.                287
power. To humour northern prejudices, and to flatter
western bigotry, substantial injustice has not seldom
been done to the best interests of the Free Church.
Hugh Miller has the honour to have been the first to
break up this vicious alliance. His labours were the
prelude of that liberal opposition, which, under the
leadership of Dr. Hanna, is now gradually leavening the
Free Church with more genial sympathies, broader views,
and a higher culture, than under the old rtgime she was
ever likely to attain.




CHAPTER XVII.
MODERN LIGHT LITERATURE.
TURNING aside from the thorny path of ecclesiastical
polemics, Hugh Miller instinctively fell back with
renewed ardour upon his favourite topics, literature and
geology. As might have been anticipated, he who had
so completely mastered the great novelists and essayists
of the eighteenth century, had scanned with an eye
scarcely less keen, if, perhaps, a little less loving, the
great novelists of our own age. It was no more than
to be expected that early associations would render a
man like Hugh Miller partial to the favourites of his
youth. Possibly, were Foster alive to subject the great
writers of this age to the same terribly-impartial interrogation as that to which, in his Essays, he subjected the
great writers of a past age, they too might be found
wanting in much the Christian thinker desiderates. But
though still far from perfect, the literary man is not now
what he was in the days of Johnson and Addison, Steele
and Sterne, Swift and Pope, Wycherly and Congreve.
Our age will no longer tolerate the trifling of other and




Modern Light Literature.         289
earlier days. In the eighteenth century even the purest
litterateurs did not escape the taint of the times. The
noxious atmosphere of the court of the Second Charles
yet radiated all around. So universally had the contagion diffused itself, that Addison —the gentlest spirit of
his age-Addison, who wrote of the immortality of the
soul and on Christian evidences, and of whom Macaulay
has said he deserved as much love and esteem as can
justly be claimed by any of our infirm and erring race
— even he permitted the vice of his times to become his
master, and exposed himself to the coarse wit of Voltaire,
who said, The best thing which he had seen come out
of Joseph Addison, was the wine he had put in him. In
that age literary men seem to have felt none of the
responsibility which many of them are now beginning
to feel.
It was this utter want of all sense of responsibility
which produced that singular combination of frivolousness and fierceness by which the literature of the
eighteenth century is characterized. Mingling with the
pleasing and innocent prattle of Addison and Steele,
might be heard the stinging and waspish satires of Pope,
and the savage howl of the dean of St. Patrick's, Jonathan Swift. We have now a more healthy race of
writers than that age could boast.
The age of which we write might be called the
Augustan age of English literature, so far as the en13




290        Modern Light Literature.
couragement of literary men was concerned: they
basked in the sunshine of royal favour. Addison was
a secretary of state, Steele was a commissioner of the
stamp-office, Prior was ambassador to France, Tickell
held a similar office to Addison. Congreve, Gay, and
Dennis all held offices to which very considerable emoluments were attached. But this profusion of patronage purified neither our literature nor our litterateurs.
The muse of Wycherley and Congreve, and even
Dryden, was tainted with the grossest impurity; and
not until one whom there was no possibility of mistaking for a Puritan-not until Jeremy Collier lashed
into decency the "godless, reckless Jezebel of his
age,"-was there any improvement. For a time, indeed, Congreve maintained with Collier an unequal
struggle in defence of what was utterly indefensible.
At length, however, the literary libertine was compelled
to succumb beneath the vigorous blows dealt by the
witty high-church parson. Looking back upon that
sin-stained and polluted page of our national annals,
and contrasting those times with these, we think we
may say, without egotism and without presumption,
that the relations of literary men to society, are now of
a more healthy kind than they have ever been before.
No doubt there is still a large mass of our literature
requiring an infusion of the moral element to tone and
fit it for blessing the nation. But notwithstanding




Modern Light Literature.           291
every drawback, this much has been gained: no
eminent name in literature would venture to serve up
to the nation the grossness and impurity in which some
of the most distinguished writers of the eighteenth
century revelled. Vice has not yet altogether hid its
head; but no man of genius is found prepared to
prostitute his powers in garnishing its grossness.
The growing sense of responsibility now animating
the literary class, is already exerting a most salutary
influence. The press teems with works devoted to the
solution of great social problems-a proof that literary
men are no longer contented merely to amuse, but are
now seeking to mend mankind. This altered phase of
our literature is, we are proud to think, the product of
our own age. A century ago it had no existence.
The litterateurs of that time would readily with one
consent have buried for the moment their mutual
animosities, and united to pooh-pooh it from amongst
them as unworthy of consideration. To have a care
for the canaille was no business of theirs. To write
for the improvement of the vulgar herd would have
been preposterous. Literature was a heartless, soulless
thing in those days; and such as it was then, such it
was a century earlier still. John Foster has, with all
his peculiar and gloomy power, drawn a picture of the
appalling contrast between the mass of England's population in the Elizabethan age as compared with the great




292        Modern Light Literature.
men of that world-renowned epoch of our national his
tory. "' There was," he says, "then perhaps a learned and
vigorous monarch, and there were Cecils, and Walsinghams, and Shaksperes, and Spensers, and Sidneys, and
Raleighs, with many other powerful thinkers and actors
to render it the proudest age of our national glory.
And we thoughtlessly admit on our imagination this
splendid exhibition, as in some manner involving
or implying the collective state of the people in
that age! The ethereal summits of a tract of the
moral world, are conspicuous and fair in the lustre of
the heavens, and we take no thought of the immensely
greater proportion of it which is sunk in gloom and
covered with fogs. The general mass of the population,
whose physical vigour indeed, and courage, and fidelity
to the interests of the country, were of such admirable
avail to the purposes, and under the direction of the
mighty spirits that wielded their rough- agency-this
great assemblage was sunk in such mental barbarism as
to be placed about the same distance from their illustrious intellectual chiefs, as the hordes of Scythia from the.
finest spirits of Athens." Thanks to an extended
culture, there is now no such marked disparity between
teacher and taught, between sage and swain. If the
swain has not quite shot up into the philosopher, he
is at least capable of understanding him. We look
upon this progress with unbroken, unalloyed de.




Modem  Light Literature.         293
light. We are no believers in the sounding nonsense
talked by the Twickenham bard about the dangerousness of a little knowledge. Nor do we homologate
a statement often in the mouths of the idolaters of
the past, that what culture gains in breadth it will
inevitably lose in depth-that in the rage for light
literature and periodical reading, profound thinkers
and profound thinking will disappear. We have often
suspected, that those who are loudest in this outcry
belong to a class who measure profundity by bulk.
Let a man only write some folio volume, and instantly
he acquires a reputation for profundity, though inane
prolixity and senility be apparent on every page;
while if even a more than Plato were to communicate
his thoughts through the medium of a magazine or a
novel, these solemn fools would designate it a dissipation of your mental energies to trouble yourself with his
divine philosophy.
We have a firm faith that God will never leave the
world without its legitimate quota of profound thinkers;
and if there be any truth in that fine fancy of the poet,
found on all lips, which points us to the many mute, inglorious Miltons who walk our earth, what so likely as
an extended culture to give to them a tongue and avoice,
that thus they may make earth vocal with their melody,
and gladden the world with their song? Talk not of
the cumulative influences now at work to seduce the




294        Modern Light Literature.
thinkers of the age from a profound into a superficial
treatment of the problems they are called upon to solve.
Every age has its temptations-earlier times were no
more without them than our own. To our thinking,
the alternating superstitious dread and senseless adulation to which the pioneers of thought were subjected,
must have exerted a more wintry influence upon their
spirits than any adverse influences their successors are
called to combat. From the vague and imperfect
knowledge of science, and the dim and shadowy conceptions of the- material universe which filled their
minds, the thinking of those much-lauded times was
necessarily as often puerile as profound. No man of
letters need now, as many men of letters in those ages
did, build up a seemingly goodly structure reflecting
the highest lustre upon their ingenuity and acuteness,
but which, from its utter want of any basis of facts,
proved nothing better than a card-castle, which the
first breath of the zephyr might blow into dust.
With all due deference, then, to those who venerate
with an idolatrous reverence the bulky tomes of our
literary sires, we believe that in the present we shall
find as profound thinkers as in any past time. Nor
should such a statement be deemed at all extravagant: if, as Carlyle truthfully and humorously remarks,
the world has been under way ever since Noah left the
ark, we ought to have made some progress-at least,




Modern Light Literature.           295
there should be no retrogression, no degeneracy. And
we have only to scan our present position, to find there
really has been none. We see no necessity for allowing
the gloom which clouds the souls of some, as they contrast the past with the present, to cast its pall over
our spirits. The bow of God and the everlasting arch
of heaven's azure as really o'erspans our horizon as it
did all our fathers'. A question very naturally suggests itself here, To what do we owe this advancement
of society-this progress of the race! We stay not to
indicate all the varied elements which have combined
to produce so gratifying a result. Our business now is
with the purely literary element. That it has imparted
a very powerful and very salutary impetus to society,
will, we presume, be disputed by none, except perchance
the autocrat whose attempts to throttle it have been
thwarted, or some college of cardinals who have beheld
their darling dogmas toppling to their fall beneath its
influence.
We know no more interesting study than tracing
the progress of this power from its state of nonage
to its present maturity and position. In its earlier and
infantile condition, we find it alternately flattered and
frowned upon by the great ones of the earth, as they
imagined it either served or subverted their purposes
-seconded or thwarted their ambition. Now, it has
grown into an authority which, on occasion, makes the




296        Modern Light Literature.
mighty of the earth tremble.  Formerly statesmen
could afford to dispense with the aid of literature,
and could affect to despise its paper-shot; now there
is no measure they can hope to carry until it has been
thoroughly ventilated by the press. Formerly ecclesiastical corporations and ecclesiastical courts could riot,
unchecked, in the caprices of tyranny or rapacity;
now every indication of the exercise of the one, or the
indulgence of the other, is instantaneously denounced
by this subtle and lynx-eyed power.
Not the periodical press alone, but the novelist has
found in these abuses material to interest the people
while influencing authority. Conspicuous among those
who have almost become a political power through the
popular novel, is Charles Dickens. It may be a question with critics how far Dickens has, in his more
recent writings, been sacrificing permanent fame for
immediate effect, by entering this fertile and inviting
field; but there can be no question about the effect.
Lawyers have reclaimed against the treatment they
have met with in "Bleak House;" and had only
lawyers complained, they might perhaps have been
left to nurse their sorrow and their wrath. Unfortunately, from caricaturing Chancery, Dickens passed to
caricaturing Christianity. Like the late Lord Jeffrey,
Hugh Miller enjoyed the most exquisite gratification
from the genial and genuinely English writings of the




Modern Light Literature.           297
prince of modern novelists. Nevertheless, he was unable
to refrain from embodying in one of his latest and most
elaborate articles, a stern dissent from the mode in
which Dickens has abused the opportunities of the
novelist in burlesquing the sanctities of a day, the sole
relic of an innocence that is no more, and still the sacrament of benison and blessing sin cannot destroy:"Never was Burke more essentially wrong, and
never was he more popularly right, than, when speaking of the high tone of civilization in the court of
France, he described it as that unbought grace of life'by which vice itself loses half its evil by losing all its
grossness.' It is not vice, but the accessories of vice,
that shock the feelings of worldly men. A fine gentleman of the Feejee Islands, when he happens to quarrel
with one of his wives, and is resolved that her fate
shall be an example to the rest, takes her into a field,
and orders her to prepare and heat a native oven;
which being done, he clubs her, and putting her into
the oven, coolly sits down till she is sufficiently baked,
when he devours her at his leisure. On hearing of
such an atrocity, the good-natured world holds up its
hands in horror and amazement; while a plain story
of every-day murder excites very little attention. In
like manner, it is not virtue, but the mere adjuncts of
virtue, that command the admiration of the vulgar.
And these, in order to please the popular taste, must
13*




298        Modern Light Literature.
be painted in the most glaring and exaggerated colours,
like Tony's'Bet Bouncer of these parts,' who had'two eyes as black as sloes, and cheeks as broad and
red as a pulpit-cushion.' Well did our old writers of
romance know this failing of humanity; and, therefore,
when. vice was to be pourtrayed, it stalked forth' A monster of such hideous mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;'
and when virtue was brought on the stage, she appeared
in pure white muslin and all sorts of bedizenments, like
the heroine of a provincial theatre.  Our popular
romancer, Mr. Dickens, has improved on this ancient
plan. IHe has the same sort of audience to deal with;
he also must consult the taste of the groundlings; but,
to diversify the entertainment he has contrived to
clothe his vicious characters with some of the most
attractive attributes of virtue, and to exhibit virtue in
some of the most repulsive habiliments of vice. His
Newman Noggs and Dick Swivellers,-characters which,
if met in actual life, would be studiously avoided by
all who had a character to lose,-he invests with the
most amiable qualities, borrowed, like their garments,
from better men. On the other hand, his Pecksniffs
and Dombeys, who, we doubt not, were very- virtuous
and excellent men in their own way, it is his delight




Modern Light Literature.           299
to depict as the most detestable of human beings. To
give still greater zest to this strange compound, another
ingredient has been thrown in. Born in an age when
religion appears as'life in earnest,' —when its influence
cannot be gainsaid, and its fruits cannot be hid,-Mr.
Dickens is yet a professed worshipper of nature. And,
as the result of this anachronism, many of the warmest
admirers of his genius (and we profess ourselves among
the number) cannot fail to regret that, while he  has
invested his anything-but-devotional characters with
all that is pure, and lovely, and of good report, he has
uniformly exhibited his would-be religious ones with
every quality that can excite odium and contempt.
Nor is this all. We fear we must add, that to religion
he has transferred all the grossnesses of vice; and that,
borrowing without acknowledgment from the wardrobe
of religion, he has clad nature in all the graces of
virtue. His heroes and heroines are held up as spotless and charming without religion; alas! all the'more
spotless and charming because without it. Now, we
are no ascetics, and few things excite our bile more
than the fopperies of some pretended religionists. No'
thing gives us more pleasure than to see the mask
torn off from the unmanly face that would employ the
cant of pietism to gIoze over selfishness or sensuality;
or to look at a good caricature of the unwomanly zeal
which would parade a Christianity without charity, or




300        Modern Light Literature.
a charity that begins anywhere but at home. Bat if we
know anything of Christianity, it is the very perfection
of charity, and of everything that is pure, and lovely,
and blessed. Why, then, present it only in its caricature? We like to see the bad shilling nailed to the
counter; but where is the genuine metal?'Surely,
Mr. Dickens,' one feels compelled to exclaim,'you
must have been singularly unhappy in the specimens
of Christianity you have met with. If one may judge
from the figure which it cuts in your pages, you must
never have seen it apart from the sulky scowl of the
bigot, the odious squint of hypocrisy, or the greasy
dawdling simper of half-crazed fanaticism. On no
occasion can it have been your lot to see Christian
principle and piety in alliance with manly dignity or
female loveliness. For certainly, in all the brilliant
creations of your genius, religion seldom if ever appears,
except in the form of a grim sprite, casting its cold
shadow on every scene of innocence and gaiety into
which it intrudes.'
"What'Little Dorrit' may turn out to be it is not
for us, who are seated before the curtain, to say; but
already has the reader been prepared for a stroke at the
inner sanctities of religious life, in the form of an attack
on some of the most questionable of its outer demonstrations. A gentleman of the name of Clennam is introduced, overcharged with melancholy, which is traced to




Modern  Light Literature.                301
a stern religious training, and which, strangely enough
continues to hang about him, even after spending twenty
summers in China.  This middle-aged gentleman gives a
sad account of his parents.' Staid people, as the phrase
is, professors of a stern religion, their very religion was
a gloomy sacrifice of tastes and sympathies that were
never their own, offered up as a part of a bargain for the
security of their possessions.  Austere faces, inexorable
discipline, penance in this world and terror in the next,
-nothing graceful or gentle anywhere, and the void in
my cowed heart everywhere; this was my childhood, if
I may so misuse the word as to apply it to such a beginning of life.' This hideous sketch, however, only forms
the back-ground to the picture that follows, in which we
see the reflection of the past, with its dark shades and
slimy reptiles crawling over the imagination of the
religion-haunted man: —
"' Mr. Arthur Clennam sat in the window of the coffee-house on
Ludgate Hill, counting one of the neighbouring bells, making sentences and burdens of songs out of it in spite of himself, and wondering how many sick people it might be the death of in the course of a
year. As the hour approached, its changes of measure made it more
and more exasperating. At the quarter it went off into a condition of
deadly lively importunity, urging the populace in a voluble manner to
Come to Church, Come to Church, Come to Church l At the ten
minutes it became aware that the congregation would be scanty, and
slowly hammered out in low spirits, They won't come, they won't
come, they won't come I At the five minutes it abandoned hope, and
shook every house in the neighbourhood, for three hundred secondq
with one dismal swing per second, as a groan of despair.




302         Modern  Light Literature.
"'Thank Heaven,' said Clennam, when the hour struck, and the
bell stopped.
"' But its sound had revived a long train of miserable Sundays, and
the procession would not stop with the bell, but continued to march
on.' Heaven forgive me,' said he,'and those who trained me. How
I have hated this day l"
"And then come'the dreary Sunday of his childhood,'-' the  sleepy Sunday  of his boyhood,'-' the
interminable Sunday of his nonage,' —andI'the resent.
ful Sunday of a little later, when he sat glowering and
glooming through the tardy length of the day, with a
sullen sense of injury in his heart, and no more knowledge of the beneficent history of the New Testament
than if he had been bred among idolaters. There was
a legion of Sundays, all days of unserviceable bitterness
and mortification, slowly passing:before him.' All this
might have passed as a satire upon certain Puritanic
habits which may have existed in England at some
remote period; and the exception made in favour of' the beneficent history of the New Testament,' may be
held a sufficient, though certainly a very cheap method
for buying off a dark suspicion, which might otherwise
militate rather expensively against the reputation of
the writer. But Mr. Dickens has left us no room to
doubt that his object is, under cover of reprobating a
forced observance of Sunday, which is as ridiculous as
it must be rare, to aim at the citadel of the Sabbath
itself, and to vindicate a loose un-English observance,




Modern  Light Literature.                 303
or rather non-observance, of that day, in the style in
which it has been  advocated by the Holyoakes and
other disciples of the naturalist school. The following
description identifies him with the party:"' Everything was bolted and barred that could by possibility furnish
relief to an overworked people. No pictures, no unfamiliar animals,
no rare plants or flowers, no natural or artificial wonders of the ancient
world,-all taboo with that enlightened strictness that the ugly South
Sea gods in the British museum might have supposed themselves at
home again. Nothing to see but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to
breathe but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to change the brooding
mind, or raise it up. Nothing for the spent toiler to do, but to compare the monotony of his seventh day with the monotony of his six
days, think what a weary life he led, and make the best of it, or the
worst, according to the probabilities.'
"Nothing is easier, with such a fancy as that of Dickens,
than to cull out of an overgrown metropolis materials
for the gloomy sketch he has drawn; though, even to
the eye of a poet, the spectacle of London's mighty heart
quieted for one day from  the incessant throbbings of
the week, and the hard-toiled artisan permitted to enjoy
a day of unbroken rest of body and mind in the bosom
of his family and the devotions of the sanctuary, might
have suggested a more pleasing, and certainly more
rational picture. The scene of repose of which Dickens
has given such a doleful view, if transferred to the
country, would suggest only images of delight; ant
why should the overwrought sons of labour in towns




304        Modern Light Literature.
be denied the opportunity of visiting such scenes, except
on the only day which religion has provided for them?
We confess we cannot understand the mawkish senti.
mentalism which would deny them a single hour during
the week, which is the property of man, and then, with
an affectation of great liberality, hand them over a
present of the day which is the property of God. But,
indeed, the world would rob man even of that day, if
it could; and, instead of shut shops and silent streets,
we should soon have the unremitting sweat and swelter,
roar and revelry of a Parisian Sunday. We recollect
of being struck, on a certain holiday, when the gay
crowds, released from their employments, were jostling
and jesting along the streets, by seeing a hearse pass
mournfully along, with all the dismal pomp and paraphernalia which seems such a mockery of woe. And
as it moved onward, shaking its plumed head with
ominous meaning at the happy faces turned up to it,
how true it is, we thought, that death keeps no holiday.
And were it not for Christianity, Mammon would keep
no holiday. His grating wheels would roll on with
ruthless intermission; and to every cry from its agonized
slaves, the answer would be that of the Egyptian monarch,' Ye are idle, ye are idle: therefore ye say, Let us
go and do sacrifice. Go now, therefore, and work.'
"Every one has his own taste; but to ours, we confess,
melancholy as is Mr. Dickens's account of stern sabba,




Modern Light Literature.          305
tarianism, there is something still more gloomy in the
thought of genius cringing at the feet of vulgar vice,
and pandering to the low tastes and worse passions of a
London mob. It reminds one of the days of Moloch,
and irresistibly suggests the image of smiling childhood,
garlanded with flowers, and sacrificed, amidst music and
frankincense, to some bloodthirsty deity. And perhaps
the most dangerous and seductive form which irreligion
assumes in the present day, is that which affects the
language of natural religion, rears crystal palaces in
which to offer the fruits of the ground as sacrifices,
appropriates the Sabbath as the best and the only day
for this species of Cain-worship, and engages as its
priests and hierophants our men of science and the
most popular writers of the day. It may be vain to
reason with such men, so long as their minds remain
so obtuse to the paramount claims of religion, and so
long as they maintain the low-minded faith, that man's
enjoyments and aspirations are limited to the present
life. It may be vain to remind them, that ere the common people can appreciate natural beauty, they must
be trained by previous moral and mental culture; else
Nature, viewed in her loveliest forms and her loftiest
moods, will fail to quench a single lust, or inspire a
single generous emotion. It may be equally vain to
impress upon them the weighty words of Pope, that' He who considers this earthly spot as the only theatre




306        Modern Light Literature.
of his existence and its grave, instead of the first stage
in a progressive being, can never view nature with a
cheerful, or man with a benevolent eye.' But there is
another view of the matter to which, as more immediately touching themselves, they may be presumed
inore accessible. The most earthly-minded secularist
is not willing to forego, in behalf of his writings, the
immortality which he disclaims for himself. And yet,
nothing is more certain than that literary productions
that have been prostituted to the service of vice and
irreligion, are incapable of long life. They want the
principle of vitality; their wages is death. Dryden,
with all his genius, and Butler, with all his wit, have
not been able to preserve, the one his licentious plays,
or the other his once famous satire, from a neglect
bordering on oblivion. The filth and garbage of our
literature, which pleased for a time the lovers of such
stuff, have sunk to the bottom, leaving only what was
pure and fresh to flow down the stream of time into
immortality. Bad as mankind may be, they have no
idea of erecting monuments to the memory of people
whose sole distinction was their agility in pulling down
the fences and trampling on the sanctities of moral
obligation.  Even though they may be amused with
such antics, they have no respect for the performer,
whom they may inwardly despise, as the profligate shuns
by day the scene of his nightly debauch.




Modern Light Literature.           307
Entertaining, as we do, a real liking to the man, as
well as admiration of the writer, fain would we whisper
in the ear of Mr. Dickens, that his is a genius too genial,
as well as lofty, to become the common drudge of
metropolitan rascality, or the common drain for carrying off and diffusing throughout the country the fetid
streams which can only raise a crop of rank and
unwholesome vegetation; that we dread the effect of
such writing as he has chosen to indulge in on young
and ardent minds; and that his own reputation depends
on devoting his talents, which are so well fitted for the
task, to the moral elevation of his fellow-men. Let us
respectfully remind him that the Romans at first had a
joint temple dedicated to virtue and honour, and afterwards, when they allotted separate fanes to them, they
were so placed that no one could enter the temple of
honour without passing through that of virtue. And
let us kindly part with him in the words of the poet of
immortality,-'Virtue alone out-builds the Pyramids;
Her monuments shall last when Egypt is no more."'
This elaborately severe reprehension of certain marked
tendencies of the writings, while rendering the amplest
homage to the genius of Dickens, may possibly be
looked upon by southern admirers of the great novelist
as only an amusing illustration of Scottish narrowness




308        Modern Light Literature.
Our Gallic neighbours have a theory, that English
thought partakes of the limitation and isolation of Eng.
land's'soil. Something very similar to prepossessions
which on the further shores of the straits of Dover are
found so freely cherished respecting Albion, would
seem to have taken possession of Englishmen regarding
Scotland. Such of our countrymen as wander south
and get metamorphosed into cockneys, may be permitted
to pronounce upon the merits of southern authors; but
criticism by a Scotchman who has not crossed the border, is for the most part looked upon, not in the light
of its own merits, but through the blinding mists of
national prejudices. That Hugh Miller's opinion of
Dickens is an opinion pretty prevalent among the more
reflective portion of Scotchmen does not, we presume,
admit of doubt, however much southern friends may
dispute the competency of Scottish taste to decide on
English wit.
We should not, perhaps, be disposed altogether to
acquiesce in the charge of pandering to a debased
popular sentiment, which, if not directly made, is rather
broadly hinted as a sin of the novelist. Dickens is, we
believe, in this respect altogether above suspicion.
The author who has not stooped to humour "the
throne," is not likely to be guilty of any mean compliances to humour the mob. The truth is, Dickens
owes his immense popularity to the fact, that at once




Modern Light Literature.          309
in his faults and excellencies, his strength and weak.
ness, he is a perfect representative of the English mind,
minus the theological element; and so feeble is that
element in a large section of Englishmen, its absence
from the writings of their favourite author is hardly
felt. But while this is the condition of England, Scotland has been, so to speak, saturated with theology;
and to a man like Hugh Miller, on whom almost a
double portion of the national tendency and predilection had fallen, nothing was more natural than to
imagine what never, unless by design and the most
studied intention, could be overlooked or misrepresented by himself, must have been intentionally misrepresented by the novelist.
Calvinian theology, so universally the theology of
Scotland, has found but comparatively little favour
south of the Tweed. We are quite aware, some of
England's greatest theologians have been Calvinists; but
at this hour the writings of these theologians are more
read and more reverenced by Scotchiten than by Englishmen. Veneration for usages and ideas understood
to be peculiarly associated with Calvinistic tenets, has
never been very great in England.  Knox brought
with him from Geneva an idea of the man Calvin, which,
I lending with the dogmas of his theology, left an image
of greatness and power that for ever associates itself in
the Scottish mind with the memory of the stern Genevan




310         Modern Light Literature.
reformer. Among Englishmen, even Englishmen hold
ing substantially a Calvinistic creed, no such hallowed
conception of the great Frenchman is found to exist,
Cowper's theology is well known, yet Cowper could
say of Calvin:"Religion, in him intolerant, austere,
Parent of manners like himself severe,
Drew a rude copy of the Christian face,
Without the smile, the sweetness, or the grace."
Dickens's caricatures of religious characters, are little
more than an amplification of Cowper's lines; indeed,
the epithets which the bard of Olney has brought
together in this single verse, would almost exhaust
the portraits of religious life Dickens has drawn.
Given a character intolerant, austere, with a needless
severity of manner, and lacking the smile, the sweetness, and the grace of Christianity, and we realize to
the life the glowing asceticism of Dickens's religious
characters.
Noticing not only in Dickens, but in other scarcely
less popular modern English novelists, pious people always painted of the same obnoxious school, we suspect
it must surely be a degenerate Calvinism compared with
the Scottish type-a sort of parasitic plant that has en.
twined itself with a certain order of the English mind.
In Kingsley's "Alton Locke " we recognize the same




Modern Light Literature.           311
disgusting features in the religious characters, that so
sicken us in the novels of Dickens. They are Calvinistic
clergymen who devour Widow Locke's house, and for a
pretence make long prayers during the process. It may,
therefore, be possible that Scotchmen do English authors
an injustice in sometimes mistaking for caricature what
has been copied from the life.  It may be that, like
plants which flourish luxuriantly in their own proper
latitude, but which get dwarfed so soon as transferred
to a less genial soil, some forms of faith may acquire a
maturity, a strength, and a nobleness among certain
peoples, which degenerate into a puerile fanaticism
among peoples less fitted to profit by their peculiar
power.




CHAPTER XVMII.
SCIENCE.
As years rolled away, Hugh Miller felt his early passion for science growing upon him. The storms of
ecclesiastical controversy had subsided, and though he
bore himself nobly and as a man of honour throughout
the great church struggle, yet the editor of the Fitness
made no secret of the regret he felt for some of the
more personal controversies in which he had been engaged. It was occasionally his lot, during the latter
years of his life, to meet some of those towards whom,
in the earlier part of his connection with the Witness,
he had violated the dictates of good taste. When he
found men on whom in other days he had poured the
vials of his sevenfold wrath, forgetful of the past and all
that had been personal between them, had nothing for
him save honour and attention, the recollection of these
rencounters was intolerable.
Nor was the recoil of such feelings weakened by
the mode in which some he had served only too
well, were disposed to treat his labours. His fame was




Science.                313
indeed no longer in the keeping of any sect or party,
But to a man with the deep attachments of which Hugh
Miller was capable, the approbation of his party would
naturally often be set above the fame which came from a
more extended arena. When therefore he discovered
that approbation could only be purchased by stooping to
the immoralities of party, and laying the Witness at the
feet of a conclave of ecclesiastical censors, was it wonderful his manly but sensitive heart sickened, and became
suspicious of the combination of mendacity and meanness with which his work was rewarded. We hope we
shall not be misunderstood here. It was no vulgar
reward Hugh Miller sought. Indeed, such recognitions
of service as are usually only too highly esteemed in
this world, had not been wanting. The money originally invested in the Witness, was offered him through
Dr. Chalmers, as something of a honorarium for his
eminent services, but as resolutely declined as it was
handsomely tendered.
When, at a subsequent period, Professor Miller representing a select circle of opulent Free Churchmen, waited
upon him to intimate a resolution to bestow a testimonial in the form of a mansion, the proposal met the
same fate. " I know," said the editor of the Witness in
reply to his friend, "I know that, as the defender of
Free-church principles, my intentions have been pure
and loyal, but I am not quite sure I have always been
14




314                   Science.
s;ccessfi-l in doing the right thing, nor have I done
anything that is worthy of such consideration from my
fl lends. I believe my way is to make yet."  But though
1)eJ fectly aware he possessed a large body of the sincerest
admnirers, he was also aware his independent conduct
had created numerous jealousies among that considerable section of the clergy of the Free Church, who
possess no higher idea of the function of a newspaper
editor, than that he should be the echo of their every
crotchet and every whim.  Naturally enough these
gentlemen felt irritated "this courser of the sun could
not be yoked in the harness of the dray-horse."  It
was only to  be anticipated the consciousness such
feelings were entertained respecting him would have
strengthened his distaste for ecclesiastical controversy;
and during several of the last years of his life, he
took but little interest in those squabbles which
furnish so much excitement to polemical divines. He
saw, moreover, what too many ecclesiastics did not
see-that since the Disruption other foes to truth,
and other antagonists to Christianity had arisen, than
any against whom the Free Church had lifted her
protest.  Not some mere outwork  or unimportant
position of the evidences of revealed religion was
now called in question, but its most fundamental
verities. A pseudo-philosophy sought to supersede
creation by development.  "Vestiges of the Natural




Science.                 315
History of Creation," and the discoveries of good MIr.
Crosse, it was thought, were about to resolve life into
a compound of albumen and electricity, and track
the genealogy of man through a maze of degrading
links down to not the monkey only, but the mollusc.
Based upon the speculations of Lamark and Oken, and
gathering into itself whatever seemed the semblance of
support from all the realms of science, written in a
popular and fascinating style, the "Vestiges" had nearly
as great a run as the last novel. In its unprecedented
popularity, Mr. Miller felt a call to put forth what he
deemed the theory of true science on the subjects it
mainly treated. Without loss of time, the " Footprints
of the Creator " was got ready. From the facts of science,
and on the soundest principles of the inductive philosophy, did Hugh 3Miller demolish the specious sophisms
of the "Vestiges."  This work largely enhanced his
reputation. The "Footprints" were noticed with approbation by the most eminent savans of Europe. A
reply was attempted in the sequel to the "Vestiges,"
but no effectual rejoinder was made to the argument of
IMr. Miller, while the breastwork of facts with which he
had fortified his theory remained unshaken. Meanwhile
Lord Rosse's telescope exploded the nebular hypothesis.
The basis of his theory overthrown, the author of the
" Vestiges " was taught, in a sense more saddening than
Campbell sung them, the truth of those well-known lines —




316                   Science.
"When science from creation's face
Enchantment's veil withdraws,
What lovely visions yield their place
To cold material laws."
Friends who knew the growing devotion of Mr. MSiller
to purely scientific studies, and who rejoiced in the
splendid results of those studies, from this time bethought
themselves if it were not possible to procure for him
some position where he might give himself unreservedly
to the work to which he seemed eager to consecrate his
best energies. His own high literary and scientific
fame, the devotion with which he had served the cause
of the Disruption, together with the admirable business
arrangements of his copartner in the proprietary of the
fWitness, Mr. Fairley, had made of that journal an
excellent newspaper property. What was wanted was
simply that Mr. Miller might be secured some situation
where he would not be subjected to the incessant
toil constant contribution to a public journal necessarily entails. At this juncture he was offered, through
the Marquis of Breadalbane, a Government situation,
very similar to the situation Wordsworth so long held.
The duties would have been merely nominal, but he
would have been responsible for considerable sums of
money passing through the hands of his subordinates.
The appointment would have yielded a salary of some
~800 per annum, and what of work he would have




Science.                317
required to do, was of a nature which his early
training in the bank would have enabled him to discharge with the utmost ease. He had beein all but
persuaded  to  accept the  situation.  His friends,
Drs. Guthrie and Hanna, accompanied him  to the
chambers of the political agent who would have
ratified the formalities of the appointment.  Before
entering the office he hesitated, asked his friends a
few minutes for further consideration, and pacing up
and down Heriot Row, he suddenly stopped, and
addressing Dr. Hanna, said, "Doctor, I have made
up my mind to refuse.  I find my memory not now
so good as it was formerly. I forget things I was
wont to remember with ease. I am not clear in such
circumstances about taking upon me any money responsibility." Remonstrance was vain; his resolution
was fixed. No persuasion of friends could induce him
to alter his resolve. He felt he could not conscientiously
take the situation. Was this confusion of memory
which already haunted him, a premonition of that more
awful confusion in which not memory alone, but reason
and life, were ultimately extinguished?
Such was, we believe, the first and the last attempt
made to secure for Mr. Miller a position where he
might have given himself wholly to the special duties
in which he felt so paramount an interest. At an early
period of his connexion with the Witness, he had been




318                  Science
offered a situation on the Times. The salary was such
as showed the high estimate of his powers entertained
in Printing House Square; but circumstances precluded its acceptance. Afterwards, in the city of his
adoption, and in connection with the university, chairs
were vacant none could have filled more worthily,
but no chair was ever offered him. Had the author
of "The Old Red Sandstone" been appointed Professor
of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh,
in a few years his class would have become as popular as were the moral philosophy classes of Dugald
Stewart, Thomas Brown, and Professor Wilson, or as
was the class of logic and metaphysics under Sir WVilliam  Hamilton.  And yet, now that all is done, perhaps there is a greater symmetry about the life of
this self-made man as it is, than had fortune lifted him
out of the peculiar sphere in which he had gathered
so LLach renown, into any government or municipal
appointment.
In the last years of his life, awakened to a conception
of the importance of diffusing a taste for science among
his countrymen, throwing aside his constitutional reserve,
Mr. Miller betook himself to the lecture-room, and on
not a few platforms, both in his native land and across
the border, did he discourse oin his favourite study.
The date, we believe, of his first appearance in this
new capacity is 1852. His audience, on the occasion of




Science.                   319
his maiden effort, was an audience of working men: his
chairman was the Duke of Argyle.
The earliest opportunity we enjoyed of hearing him
discourse on the mysteries of geology was in the City
Hall of Glasgow, when fulfilling an engagement with
the Young Men's Christian Association. The next time
we had the pleasurle of listening to his oral instructions
was in Queen Street Hall, Edinburgh, when fulfilling
an engagement with the philosophical Institution of the
metropolis. On that occasion, just recovering from a
somewhat protracted illness, his friend, Professor Miller,
did the duties of reader with admirable effect, himself
describing the specimens and fossils brought from his
museum, to illustrate the lectures.  Two of the finest
papers in his last work were read upon the occasion.
At these lectures it was we first saw her whose name
and story are now imperishably associated with his own.
There on a front bench of Queen Street Hall, amidst
that numerous and brilliant auditory, not unjustly elate,
we may presume, with the magnificent reception of the
lecturer, sat,'The prudent partner of his blood,
Wearing the rose of womanhood."
Unfortunately Mr. Miller took the field too late in life
ever to acquire the fluency necessary to render his platform appearances altogether comfortable to himself.




320                  Science.
Even as a lecturer, however, though utterly unacquainted
with the tricks of art, he was highly popular. Wherever
he went, crowds flocked to listen. In Glasgow and in
London, taking into account the recondite character of
the topics he discussed, he was the most acceptable
man that appeared before the Christian institutes of
these cities; while, at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, of all the eminent men whom that admirablyconducted association brought to Edinburgh, no one
commanded such audiences as assembled in Queen
Street Hall to listen to his prelections. Such services
were always cheerfully and readily given, so far as
time and strength would allow —often, indeed, beyond
his strength, solely for the luxury of doing good.
With his friend, Professor Miller, he began his career
as a lecturer; both of these gentlemen, with an equal
generosity, gave whatever services they have been able
to render the cause of popular education entirely
gratuitously. Hugh Miller, though he might have
pocketed thousands by such labours, preferred to do
what work he could accomplish in that way without
fee or reward. In this disinterested trait of character
we are reminded of Burns, who, not as a hired soldier,
but as a patriot, would strive for the glory of his
country; so, casting from him the poor six-pence a-day,
he served zealously as a volunteer.
The " Testimony of the Rocks" may be deemed the




Science.                 321
memorial of his platform labours, and with character.
istic affection it is dedicated to Professor Miller. Dr.
Miller was regarded by the editor of the Witness as
one of the best men he had ever met-a genuinely
leal-hearted friend, and was, we believe, the only man
from whom he ever could accept a favour, without the
acceptance weighing upon his spirits in a most unaccountable and uncomfortable manner. So completely
knit in feeling and sympathy were the two men,
any obligation the professor might confer upon the
geologist, was received at once in the spirit it was tendered. Indeed so little did the feeling in question,overpowering on all other occasions and with all other
individuals, attach itself to the good offices of Dr.
Miller, that in the dedication of" The Testimony" he
had almost forgotten to notice the professional kindness
to which he owed so much. On reading the dedication
in manuscript to Mrs. Miller, the quick eye of Lydia
detected the omission; and gently reminding her husband at once of his own neglect and Dr. Miller's
character, by a couplet in which the bard of Twickenham
described an eminent, and benevolent as eminent, physician of his day, on the recital of the lines, Hugh
Miller instantaneously rose from his desk, and taking
a volume of Pope from one of the shelves of his library,
he added to the dedication the tasteful recognition
of Dr. Miller's services embodied in this sentence14*




322                  Science.
"Your kind attentions and advice during the crisis
of my illness, were certainly everyway suited to remind
me of those so graphically acknowledged by the wit of
the last century, when he bethought him of
" Kind Arbuthnot's aid,
Who knew his art, but not his trade."
Of this latest effort of Hugh Miller's genius, this is
not the place to speak, except in so far as it is connected
with the personal history of the closing scene of his
existence. It is enough to say, it nobly crowns the
labours of a noble life, and will take rank with the
works of the fathers of English geology, even for the
profundity of its science; while in affluence of illustration, in wealth and beauty of poetic diction, it is unapproached by either Buckland or Murchison, Sedgewick
or Lyell.
It may indeed be admitted, that Mr. Miller's sacred
hermeneutics are not equal to his scientific attainments. It was not in the region of Biblical criticism
his great strength lay. Hosts of much inferior men
distanced him  in that domain. We do not expect,
therefore, the purely critical, and what may be called
the exegetical portion of " The Testimony of the Rocks"
will be received with the same unqualified admiration,
or will command the same unhesitating acceptance, as
the speculations of Mr. Miller in the field of pure




Science.                      323
science have never failed to call forth. Other readings  of the  story  of the first chapter  of Genesis
will be resorted to, and possibly "The Vision," set
in all the glory of his most superb descriptive
efforts, may be found without foundation, save in
his imperial imagination.  Yet even were it so-even
if the hypothesis embodied in that vision was thrown
aside as untenable, "The  Testimony of the Rocks"
would never fall into that class of works, the productions' of second-rate  minds, working  at secondhand upon materials which higher genius and deeper
culture had brought near to them. Its science, its
eloquence, its poetry, are all too original to admit of it
ever being overtaken by such a fate.
To such of our readers as have not met the work we
commend the following selections, made, not indeed
upon any consecutive plan, but only with a view to give
an idea of the power and style of " The Testimony "CREATION PROGRESSIVE.
"Whether we look to the inspired record in Genesis, or the disclosures of geology, we are taught that the work of creation was a
progressive one. First, there may have been a time when the earth
was simply mineral; then it appears clothed with plants; animals in
due time come forth to browse upon them: and, as the completion,
man stands up to gaze with intelligent eye upon the whole. There
is a unity of plan running along all this series. The plant, when it
comes, is higher than the mineral-a new power, the vital, has been
superinduced; but still tile organic is dependent for nourishment on
the inorganic, and all the forces which operate in the mineral are




324                       Science.
active in the plant. Look at the more complicated crystals-look at
the frostworks on our flagstones and windows, so like the tree in their
ramifications-and you at once see that powers are operating there
which are to appear in a more advanced form in the plant. When the
animal appears, it has something not in the plant-in particular, it
has a power of sensation and voluntary motion; but still it retains
all the power that is in the mineral, and is dependent for food on the
vegetable; and so clearly are the plant and the brute allied, that it is
difficult to draw a line which will decidedly separate the higher forms
of the one from the lower forms of the other. And when man walks
forth to contemplate all these objects, it is evident that there is a
higher principle in him, which is not in the mineral, or in the plant,
or in the brute; but it is just as clear that he has affinities with the
lower creation, arising from the lower creation tending upwards
towards him. Made of the dust of the ground, his bodily frame is
subject to all the inorganic laws of the world, and at last returns to
the dust, out of which it was formed. As an organism, he is subject
to all organic laws; he needs breath and food from without, and has
an allotted period of existence. As an animal, his bones and b;s
muscles, his very nerves and brain, are after the same model as those
of the brutes; like them, he needs organized matter whereon to feed;
and, like them, he is susceptible of pleasure and pain. It may be
maintained that the lower animals are, in a sense, anticipations of
humanity, and have appetites, instincts, attachments-as for offspring
and home-perceptions, and a sort of intelligence, which, though not
identical with, are homologous to, certain of the lower endowments of
man.
"All this does not prove, as some would argue, that man is merely
an upper brute-possibly sprung from the monkey, or removed from
it only as one species is from another. In his bodily frame he may be
simply a new species-the highest of animated organisms-with the
fore limbs turned into hands, and his frame raised into an upright attitude,-and even in this, so far anticipated by the ape. But in his
soul, endowed with the power of discovering necessary and immutable
truth, and of discerning the difference between good and evil: capable
of cherishing voluntary affections-which alone (and not mere instinctive attachments) are deserving of the name of love,-and of




Science.                        325
rising to the knowledge of God, and of communion with him; by
reason of this soul-responsible and immortal-he belongs not merely
to a new species or genus of nature, but to a new order in creation.
In respect of this, his nobler part, he is made not after the likeness of
the brute, but after the image of God. He stands on this earth, but
with upright face he looks upward to heaven.
THE FIRST BEE.
" The first bee makes its appearance in the amber of the Eocene,
locked up hermetically in its gem-like tomb, —an embalmed corpse in
a crystal coffin,-alopg with fragments of flower-bearing herbs and
trees. The first of the Bombycidae, too-insects that may be seen
suspended over flowers by the scarce visible vibration of their wings,
and sucking the honied juices by means of their long, slender trunks,
— also appear in the amber, associated with moths, butterflies, and a
few caterpillars. Bees and butterflies are present in increased proportions in the latter tertiary deposits, but not until that terminal creation
to which we ourselves belong, was ushered on the scene, did they
receive their fullest development.  There is exquisite poetry in
Wordsworth's reference to' the soft murmur of the vagrant bee'-' A slender sound, yet hoary Time
Doth to the soul exalt it with the chime
Of all his years; a company
Of ages coming, ages gone,
Nations from before them sweeping.'
And yet, mayhap, the naked scientific facts of the history of this busy
insect are scarcely less poetic than the pleasing imagination of the
poet regarding it. They tell that man's world, with all its griefs and
troubles, is more emphatically a world of flowers than any of the
creations which have preceded it; and that, as one great familythe grasses-were called into existence, in order, apparently, that he
might enter in favouring circumstances upon his two earliest avocations, and be in good hope a keeper of herds, and a tiller of the
ground; and as another family of plants-the Rosacee —was created
in order that the gardens which it would be also one of his vocations
to keep and to dress, should have their trees'good for food and




326                        Science.
pleasant to the taste;' so flowers in general were profusely produced
just ere he appeared, to minister to that sense of beanty which distinguishes him from all the lower creatures, and to which he owes not a
few of his most exquisite enjoyments. The poet accepted the bee as
a sign of high significance: the geologist also accepted her as a sigl.
Her entombed remains testify to the gradual fitting up of our earth as
a place of habitation for a creature destined to seek delight for the
mind and the eye, as certainly as for the grosser senses, and in especial
marks the introduction of the stately forest trees, and the arrival of the
delicious flowers.
THE LIASSIC AGES.
"There are tridactyle footprints in the red sandstones of Connecticut that measure eighteen inches in length from the heel to the middle claw. nearly thirteen inches in breadth from the outer to the inner
toe, and which indicate, from their distance apart in the straight line,
a stride of about six feet in the creature that impressed them in these
ancient sands,-measurements that might well startle zoologists who
had derived their experience of the ornithic class from existing birds
exclusively...    I have already referred to flying dragons,-real
existences of the Oolitic period,-that were quite as extraordinary of
type, if not altogether so huge of bulk, as those with which the seven
champions of Christendom used to do battle; and here are we introduced to birds of the Liassic ages that were scarcely less gigantic than
the roc of Sinbad the sailor. They are fraught with strange meanings,
these footprints of the Connecticut. They tell of a time far removed
into the by-past eternity, when great birds frequented by myriads the
shores of a nameless lake, to wade into its shallows in quest of mailcovered fishes of the ancient type, or long extinct molluscs; while
reptiles equally gigantic, and of still stranger proportions, haunted the
neighbouring swamps and savannahs; and when the same sun that
shone on the tall moving forms beside the waters, and threw their
long shadows across the red-sands, lighted up the glades of deep
forests, all of whose fantastic productions,-tree, bush, and herb,have even in their very species long since passed away. And of this
scene of things only the footprints remain,'footprints on the sands of




Science.                       327
time,' tha6 tell us, among other matters, whence the graceful American poet derived his quiet, but singularly effective and unmistakeably
indigenous figure.
MAN S DESTINY.
"The appearance of man upon the scene of being constitutes a new
era in creation; the operations of a new instinct come into play, —that
instinct which anticipates a life after the grave, and reposes in implicit
faith upon a God alike just and good, who is the pledged' rewarder
of all who diligently seek Him.' And in looking along the long line
of being,-ever rising in the scale from higher to yet higher manifestations, or abroad on the lower animals, whom instinct never deceives,-can we hold that man, immeasurably higher in his place,
and infinitely higher in his hopes and aspirations than all that ever
went before him, should be, notwithstanding, the one grand error in
creation-the one painful worker, in the midst of present trouble, for
a state into which he is never to enter-the befooled expectant of a
happy future which he is never to see? Assuredly no. He who
keeps faith with all his humbler creatures-who gives to even the
bee and the dormouse the winter for which they prepare —will to certainty not break faith with man-with man, alike the deputed lord of
the present creation, and the chosen heir of all the future. We have
been looking abroad on the old geologic burying grounds, and deciphering the strange inscriptions on their tombs; but there are other
burying grounds and other tombs,-solitary churchyards among the
hills, where the dust of the martyrs lies, and tombs that rise over the
ashes of the wise and good; nor are there wanting, on even the
monuments of the perished races, frequent hieroglyphics and symbols
of high meaning, which darkly intimate to us, that while their burial
yards contain but the debris of the past, we are to regard the others
as chazged with the sown seed of the future.
MEMORY-TRADITION.
"There are events so striking in themselves, or from their accomplaniments, that they powerfully impress the memories of children but




328                       Science.
little removed from infancy, and are retained by them in a sort of
troubled recollection ever after, however extended their term of life
Samuel Johnson was only two and a half years old, when, in accord.
ance with the belief of the time, he was touched by Queen Anne for
the'Evil;' but more than seventy years after, he could call up a
dream-like recollection of the lady dressed in the black hood, and glit
tering with diamonds, into whose awful presence he had been ushered
on that occasion, and who had done for the cure of his complaint all
that legitimate royalty could do. And an ancient lady of the north
country, who had been carried when a child, in her nurse's armsi to
witness the last witch execution that took place in Scotland, could
distinctly tell, after the lapse of nearly a century, that the fire was
surrounded by an awe-struck crowd, and that the smoke of the burning, when blown about her by a cross breeze, had a foul and suffoeating odour. In this respect the memory of infant tribes and nations
seems to resemble that of individuals. There are characters and
events which impress it so strongly, that they seem never to be forgotten, but live as traditions, sometimes mayhap very vague, and
much modified by the inventions of an after time, but which, in floating downwards to late ages, always bear upon them a certain strong
impress of their pristine reality. They are shadows that have become
ill-defined from the vast distance of the objects which cast them-like
the shadows of great birds flung, in a summer's day, from the blue
depths of the sky to the landscape far below-but whose very presence, however diffuse they may have become, testifies to the existence of the remote realities from which they are thrown, and without
which they could have had no being at all. The old mythologies are
filled with shadowy traditions of this kind-shadows of the world's'gray fathers,'-which, like those shadows seen reflected on clouds
by travellers who ascend lofty mountains, are exaggerated into the
most gigantic proportions, and bear radiant glories about their heads "




CHAPTER XIX.
DEATH,
THE labour to which Hugh Miller had been subjected
in the preparation and final revision of the "Testimony
of the Rocks," was the melancholy means of unhinging
his intellectual powers, and leaving him the prey of
those spectral illusions, those paroxysms of horror and
despair, amidst whose deep and awful shadows he so
gloomily perished. In such a state of mind as was
his during the last months of his life, intellectual effort
of any kind ought to have been strictly forbidden
and rigidly foregone. Yet even long prior to these
months, the mischief was done.  Conjugal love had
thrown a veil of the most inviolate secrecy over the
earlier attacks of the insidious malady, so that not even
his physicians knew how deep-seated was the calamity
they at length became aware, only when too late, had
smitten him, as it has smitten many of the most gifted
of earth's sons.
The form which the malady latterly assumed,
was precisely of the nature we might have expected




330                  Death.
from the peculiar mental and physical characteristics
of Mr. Miller. To his medical advisers, to his partner,
and to his family, he talks of strange dreams and
awful visions which, in hours when deep sleep falleth
upon men, came up before him as from the Spirit-land.
Indeed, through life the dark cloud had been gathering over his mental powers; a predisposition to insanity
lurked in that magnificent intellect.  The student of
his " Schools and Schoolmasters" will have noted that,
even when a stripling, he was the subject of peculiar
attacks, in one of which he bit the nails firom his fingers.
Nor can it have escaped the notice of any who have
perused with care his "Scenes and Legends of the
North of Scotland" how deep a hold the supernatural
had taken upon his mind. With Hugh Miller, these
northern superstitions were not-as they would have
been to Sir Walter Scott-merely the raw material of
the artist. We shall not insult the memory of the great
Departed, by insinuating a vulgar belief in a tithe of
the floating traditions he has perpetuated by the
magic of his style; but without asserting so much,
it is not too great a license to assert, that they were
more to him than mere legends. These northern traditions, in which the beliefs of pagan and christian
times were often curiously and grotesquely blended,
mantled his spirit with the weird gloom of the supernatural, which his pLculiar geological studies contributed




Death.                  331
still further to deepen. In the pursuit of the inves.
tigations to which he had devoted himself, he left
the society of men to commune with the stones of
the field; and in the gorge of the wave-lashed rock,
or deep in the bowels of mother earth, did he gather
up those records of the past through which he deciphered the story of an earlier world. On such a
mind as Hugh Miller's, the reflection brought home
by these studies, with a force and vividness those
who only read of it can have no conception-that
this earth of ours was but one vast mausoleum and
burial-pyramid-could not fail to have exerted a surpassing power.  Hugh  Miller did  not share the
scepticism of those who believe the annihilation
which has swallowed up in turn all the races of the
past, will one day, like a mountainous wave, overtake man also; leaving nought to tell he had ever
been, save those traces of his existence the fossils of
the rock may perpetuate. Those doubts the discords
of nature inspire, and which Tennyson has so vividly
portrayed, did not perplex him. He knew there
had been given to man a life that bears immortal
fruit, and that beyond the verge of the present existence was the brightness of eternal day. He knew,
"the song of woe is after all an earthly song," yet
its melancholy moan had touched his spirit.  In the
last days of his earthly pilgrimage, "the light that




332                        Death.
shone when Hope was born" burned low; and in the
hour when reason reeled, all those shadows of the past,
all those shapes of the supernatural, which haunted him
even in the vigour of his powers, hurried to take
possession of the throne from which the monarch had
fallen.
"O life I as futile, then, as frailOh for thy voice to soothe and bless I
What hope of answer or redress
Behind the veil, behind the veil?"
The story of the closing scene of Hugh Miller's
existence, so far as man could tell it, has been told in
the columns of the  Witness by Dr. Hanna, with a
minuteness, a fidelity, a pathos, and an eloquence
which leave almost nothing to be added:" In the belief," says the accomplished biographer of Chalmers,
"that nothing touching the character and memory of such a man can
be regarded with other than the deepest interest, the friends of Mr.
Hugh Miller have thought it due at once to his great name and to the
cause of truth, to lay fully before the public a statement of the most
mournful circumstances under which he has departed from this life.
For some months past his overtasked intellect had given evidence of
disorder. He became the prey of false or exaggerated alarms. He
fancied-if, indeed, it was a fancy-that occasionally, and for brief
intervals, his faculties quite failed him-that his mind broke down.
He was engaged at this time with a treatise on the' Testimony of the
Rocks,' upon which he was putting out all his strength-working at
his topmost pitch of intensity. Hours after midnight the light was
seen to glimmer through the window of that room, which, within the
same eventful week, was to witness the close of the volume and the
close of the writer's life. This overworking of the brain began to tell




Death.                       333
upon his mental health. He had always been somewhat m(odily
apprehensive of being attacked by footpads, and had carried loaded
fire-arms about his person. Latterly, having occasion sometimes to
return to Portobello from Edinburgh at unseasonable hours, he had
furnished himself with a revolver. But now, to all his old fears as to
attacks upon his person, there was added an exciting and overmasterilg impression that his house, and especially that his museum, the
firuit of so much care, which was contained in a separate outer building, were exposed to the assault of burglars. He read all the recent
stories of house robberies. He believed that one night lately an actual
attempt to break in upon his museum had been made. Visions of
ticket-of-leave men prowling about his premises haunted him by day
and by night. The revolver, which lay nightly near him, was not
enough; a broad-bladed dagger was kept beside it; whilst behind
him, at his bed-head, a claymore stood ready at hand. A week or so
ago, a new and more aggravated feature of cerebral disorder showed
itself, in sudden and singular sensations in his head. They came
only after lengthened intervals. They did not last long, but were
intensely violent. The terrible idea that his brain was deeply and
hopelessly diseased-that his mind was on the verge of ruin-took
hold of him, and stood out before his eye in all that appalling magnitude in which such an imagination as his alone could picture it. It
was mostly at night that these wild paroxysms of the brain visited
him: but, until last Monday, he had spoken of them to no one. A
friend, who had a long conversation with him on the Thursday of last
week, never enjoyed an interview more, or remembers him in a more
genial mood. On the Saturday forenoon another friend from Edinburgh found him in the same happy frame. On the forenoon of Sunday last he worshipped in the Free Church at Portobello; and in the
evening read a little work (the Pole Star of Faith) which had been
put into his hands-penning a brief notice of it, his last contribution
to the Witness. About ten o'clock on Monday morning, he took what
with him was an altogether unusual step. He called on Dr. Balfour
in Portobello, to consult him as to his state of health.'On my asking,' says Dr. Balfour, in a communication with which we have been
favoured,' what was the matter with him?' he replied,' My brain is
giving way. I cannot put two thoughts together to-day; I have had




334                       Death.
a dreadful night of it; I cannot face another such; I w ts impressed
with the idea that my museum was attacked by robbers, and that I
had got up, put on my clothes, and gone out with a loaded pistol to
shoot them. Immediately after that I became unconscious. *How
long that continued I cannot say; but when I awoke in the morning
I was trembling all over, and quite confused in my brain. On rising,
I felt as if a stiletto was suddenly, and as quietly as an electric shock,
passed through my brain from front to back, and left a burning sensation on the top of the brain, just below the bone. So thoroughly
convinced was I that I must have been-out through the night, that I
examined my trousers to see if they were wet or covered with mud,
but could find none.' He further said-' I may state that I was somewhat similarly affected through the night twice last week, and I examined my trousers in the morning to see if I had been out. Still, the
terrible sensations were not nearly so bad as they were last night;
and I may further inform you that, towards the end of last week,
while passing through the Exchange in Edinburgh, I was seized with
such a giddiness, that I staggered, and would, I think, have fallen,
had I not got into an entry, where I leaned against the wall, and
became quite unconscious for some seconds.' Dr. Balfour stated his
opinion of the case; told him that he was overworking his brain,
and agreed to call on him on the following day, to make a fuller examination. Meanwhile the quick eye of affection had noticed that there
was something wrong, and on Monday forenoon Mrs. Miller came up
to Edinburgh to express her anxiety to Professor Miller, and request
that he would see her husband.'I arranged,' says Professor Miller,' to meet Dr. Balfour at Shrubmount (Mr. Hugh Miller's house), on the
afternoon of next day. We met accordingly at half-past three on
Tuesday. He was a little annoyed at Mrs. Miller's having given me
the trouble, as he called it, but received me quite in his ordinary,
kind, friendly manner. We examined his chest, and found that unusually well; but soon we discovered that it was head symptoms that
made him uneasy. He acknowledged having been night after night
up till very late in the morning, working hard and continuously at his
new book, " which," with much satisfaction, he said, " I have finished
this day."  He was sensible that his head had suffered in consequence, as evidenced in two ways: first, occasionally, he felt as if a




Death.                       335
very fine poniard had been suddenly passed through and through his
brain. The pain was intense, and momentarily followed by confusion
and giddiness, and the sense of being "very drunk"-unable to stand
or walk. He thought that a period of unconsciousness must have
followed this-a kind of swoon, but he had never fallen. Second,
What annoyed him most, however, was a kind of nightmare, which
for some nights past had rendered sleep most miserable. It was no
dream, he said; he saw no distinct vision, and could remember nothing
of what had passed accurately. It was a sense of vague and yet
intense horror, with a conviction of being abroad in the night wind,
and dragged through places as if by some invisible power. "Last
night," he said, "I felt as if I had been ridden by a witch for fifty
miles, and rose far more wearied in mind and body than when I lay
down." So strong was his conviction of having been out, that he had
difficulty in persuading himself to the contrary, by carefully examining his clothes in the morning to see if they were not wet or dirty;
and he looked inquiringly and anxiously to his wife, asking if she was
sure he had not been out last night, and walking in this disturbed
trance or dream. His pulse was quiet, but tongue foul. The head
was not hot, but he could not say it was free from pain. We came
to the conclusion that he was suffering from an overworked mind,
disordering his digestive organs, enervating his whole frame, and
threatening serious head affection. We told him this, and enjoined
absolute discontinuance of work-bed at eleven, light supper (he had,all his life made that a. principal meal), thinning the hair of the head,
a warm sponging-bath at bed-time, &c. To all our commands he
readily promised obedience, not forgetting the discontinuance of neckrubbing, to which he had unfortunately been prevailed to submit some
days before. For fully an hour we talked together on these and other
subjects, and I left him with no apprehension of impending evil, and
little doubting but that a short time of rest and regimen would restore
him to his wonted vigour.' It was a cheerful hour that was thus
passed, and his wife and family partook of the hopeful feeling with
which his kind friend, Professor Miller, had parted with him. It was
now near dinner hour, and the servant entered the room to spread
the table. She found Mr. Miller in the room alone. Another of the
paroxysms was on him. His face was such a picture of horror, that




336                       Death.
she shrank in terror from the sight. He flung himself on a sofa, and
buried his head, as if in agony, upon the cushion. Again, however,
the vision flitted by, and left him in perfect health. The evening was
spent quietly with his family. During tea he employed himself in
reading aloud Cowper's " Castaway," the " Sonnet on Mary Unwin,"
and one of the most playful pieces, for the special pleasure of his children, Having corrected some proofs of the forthcoming volume, he
went up stairs to his stndy. At the appointed hour he had taken the
bath, but, unfortunately, his natural and peculiar repugnance to physic had induced him to leave untaken the medicine that had been
prescribed. He had retired into his sleeping-room-a small apartment opening out of his study, and which, for some time past, in consideration of the delicate state of his wife's health, and the irregularities of his own hours of study, he occupied at night alone-and lain
some time upon the bed. The horrible trance, more horrible than
ever, must have returned. All that can now be known of what followed is to be gathered from the facts, and next morning his body,
half-dressed, was found lying lifeless on the floor-the feet upon the
study rug, and chest pierced with the ball of the revolver pistol,
which was found lying in the bath that stood close by. The deadly
bullet had perforated the left lung, grazed the heart, cut through the
pulmonary artery at its root, and lodged in the rib in the right side.
Death must have been instantaneous. The servant, by whom the
body was first discovered, acting with singular discretion, gave no
alarm, but went instantly in search of the doctor and minister; and
on the latter the melancholy duty was devolved of breaking the fearful intelligence to that now broken-hearted widow, over whose bitter
sorrow it becomes us to draw the veil. The body was lifted and laid
upon the bed. We saw it there a few hours afterwards. The head
lay back, sideways on the pillow. There was the massive brow, the
firm-set manly features we had so often looked upon admiringly, just
as we had lately seen them-no touch nor trace upon them of disease
-nothing but that overspread pallor of death to distinguish them from
what they had been. But the expression of that countenance in death
will live in our memory for ever. Death by gun-shot wounds is said
to leave no trace of suffering behind; and never was there a face of
the dead freer from all shadow of pain, or grief, or conflict, than that




Death.                        337
of our dear departed firiend. And as we bent over it, and remembered
the troubled look it sometimes had in life, and thought what must
have been the sublimely terrific expression that it wore at the moment
when the fatal deed was done, we could not help thinking that it lay
there to tell us, in that expression of unruffled majestic repose that
sat upon every feature, what we so assuredly believe, that the spirit
had passed through a terrible tornado, in which reason had been
broken down; but that it had made the great passage in safety, and
stood looking back to us, in humble, grateful triumph, from the other
side.
On looking round the room in which the body had been discovered,
a folio sheet of paper was seen lying on the table. On the centre of
the page the following lines were written-the last which that pen
was ever to trace:Dearest Lydia.-My brain burns. I must have walked; and a fearful dream rises upon me. I cannot bear the horrible thought. God
and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon me. Dearest
Lydia, dear children, farewell. My brain burns as the recollection
grows. My dear, dear wife, farewell.
HUGH MILLER.
What a legacy of love to a broken-hearted family I and to us and all
who loved him, how pleasing to observe that in that bewildering hour,
when the horror of that great darkness came down upon that noble
spirit, and some hideous shapeless phantom overpowered it, and took
fiom it even the capacity to discern the right from the wrong, humility,
and faith, and affection, still kept their hold-amid the ruins of the
intellect, that tender heart remaining still unbroken I These last lines
remain as the surest evidence of the mysterious power that laid his
spirit prostrate, and of the noble elements of which that spirit was
composed-humble, and reverent, and loving to the last.
On' Friday, at the request of friends, and under the authority of the
procurator-fiscal, a post-mortem examination of the body took place.
We subjoin the result:Edinburgh, Dec. 26, 1856.
We hereby certify on soul and conscience, that we have this day
examined the body of AMr. Hugh Miller, at Shrubmount, Portobello.
-15




338                      Death.
The cause of death we found to be a pistol-slhot through the left side
of the chest; and this, we are satisfied, was inflicted by his own hand.
From the diseased appearances found in the brain, taken in connection with the history of the case, we have no doubt that the act was
suicidal, under the impulse of insanity.
JAMES MILLER.
A. II. BALFOUR.
W. T. GAIRDNER.
A. M. EDWARDS.
How abrupt, how mysterious this adieu to earth.
Nothing in the circumstances or position of the editor
of the  Wfitness foretokened the great darkness amid
which he descended into the valley of the shadow of
death.  His life was no catalogue of abortive schemes,
blighted hope, baffled ambition.  His name was inscribed
upon the noblest page of our modern history as the
ablest literary defender of those ecclesiastical principles,
and that ecclesiastical polity Scotland's sons received a
spiritual heritage from the heroes of the Reformation;
with a European reputation as the most eloquent living
expositor of the profoundest truths of geological science.
All this achieved while his eye is yet undimmed, and
his natural force yet unabated, it might in the course of
nature have been anticipated, that this man so greatly
beloved would have been spared to the republic of letters, spared to the cause of science, and to the cause of
religion for at least another decade; that so, in the
gloaming of his years, he might have gathered up the
fruits of his maturest knowledge and ripest wisdom into




Death.                  339
that great work he had meant should round the circle of
his scientific labours —' The Geology of Scotland."  But
it had been otherwise determined, and that bright particular star which had hitherto shone with so lustrous a
light, suddenly sunk amidst the murkiest gloom; and
not the broken arch nor the fallen column, tells the
story of the ruin of earth's mightiest empires in language
more impressive than do the tragic circumstances in
which the editor of the JWitness was taken hence, teach
the vanity of even the loftiest human ambition. One
feels that there is something of awe and mystery about
the departure of so gentle a spirit from amongst the
generations of the living, in this sudden and violent
manner. Chalmers went his way in an equally unexpected moment; but he was found sleeping his last sleep
upon the couch of rest. His latter end was peace, and
he went up from that Assembly he was so eager to
meet, to " the general assembly and church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven." In the case
of Hugh Miller death did its work by more violent
means, and that heart which erewhile throbbed with the
noblest and most generous emotion, is torn by bullets,
shattered by a revolver.
Through the kindness of a personal friend of Mr.
Miller, the Rev. Mr. Mackenzie of Dunfermline, we are
enabled to close this memorial with one of the last of
Mr. Miller's letters, so characteristic of the man, so




340                        Death.
genuine in its affection, aild so genial in the touch of
humour which irradiates it.  MrA. Mackenzie will let the
reader underlst:in:l its point and allusions:M3r. Miller had engaged to be present at a lecture to be delivered in
my church by Alexander Macansh, a self-taught genius, in whom Mr.
Miller took much interest.  HIis letter was in reply to one from me,
fixing the day.  He had arranged an excursion to Fordel, three or
four miles from Dunfermline, to see what the country folks called a
fossil man, found some time before in a quarry there. The fossil is, of
course, nothing more than ferruginous stains in the rock, presenting
the rude outline of a human figure.-Yours, &c.
J. MACKENZIE.
To the Rev. James Aiackenzie, Duinfermline.
Shrubmount, Portobello, 16th Dec., 1856.
MY DEAR JAMES,-I have been set aside by one of my severe colds
for a fortnight, and on Saturday, when I got your note, did not exactly
know what to say in reply to it. But I have been getting steadily
better for the last three days, and trust I may be able to be with you
on the 29th. You may at least depend on my making an exertion;
and if, notwithstanding, the fates forbid, must just get somebody else
to sit in my place. Try, meanwhile, and find out the whereabouts of
the Fordel man. With kind regards to Mrs. M.
Yours affectionately,
HUGH MILLER.
On the 29th December a funeral procession is taking
its way from  Shrubmount, Portobello, to the Grange
cemetery.  The funeral is such as has not been seen in
Edinburgh  since the death of Chalmers, and it is the
dust of the editor of the  Wtitnzess that is about to be
laid by the dust of the great Scottish theologian.  In




Death.                       341
that general assembly of the inhabitants of the metropo.
lis that followed his bier, men of all ranks, all classes,
and of all creeds, vied with each other in doing homage
to the mighty dead. It was no common loss the land
mourned; and, amidst a nation's lamentation, was he
borne to his long rest.
"He is gone who seem'd so greatGone I but nothing can bereave him
Of the force he made his own,
Being here; and we believe him
Something far advanced in state,
And that he wears a truer crown
Than any wreath that man can weave him,
But speak no more of his renown;
Lay your earthly fancies down,
And in the vast cathedral leave him:
God accept, and Christ receive him I"








APPENDIX.
THE articles contributed to the Witness by its editor,
during the last month of his existence, exhibit all the
great powers of the great journalist in the fullest play.
His papers on " The Forces of Russia," s" The Felons of
the Country," and " Modern Poetry," are characterized
by the same wide grasp of thought, the same powerful
sweep of imagination, the same felicitous grouping, and
the same richness of literary allusion that had ever distinguished his finest productions.  We give-all our
limits will permit-the last thing he penned for the
Witness, written only three days before in such sadlytragic manner he bade farewell to earth.  We also subjoin his favourite prayer:HUGH MILLER'S LAST ARTICLE.
"THE POLE STAR OF FAITH. Bath: Binns & Goodwin. London:
Hamilton, Adams, & Co.
This is a sound little volume-simple in its plan, but excellent in its
matter. It at once introduces the reader to an interesting circle of
neighbours in a country locality, representative, in the several mem



344                His  Last Article.
bers of which it is composed, of some of the leading religious aspects
of the time. There is a clever young man, tinged, though still
untainted, by the prevailing neologic infidelity; a young lady, his
sister, who has just begun to dream of stained glass, carved images,
crosses, candlesticks, and mystic Gothic steeples that point upwards,
and whose embryo Popery, taken up rather as a matter of taste than
feeling, forms the true complementary colour, if we may so speak, tc
the incipient infidelity of her brother. Their aunt is represented as an
old-fashioned Scottish Episcopalian lady, amiable and simple-hearted,
but whose religion consisted mainly in attending, on Sabbaths and the6
principal holidays, the services of her church, and whose religious
adviser is well hit off as an equally old-fashioned clergyman of the
same persuasion, who, so far as his light extends, is an honest man, but
very considerably moderate in his leanings, and not a little teased and
annoyed by the newly-awakened rage for the medireval which he saw
prevailing.around him. Such are the dramatis personce on the one
side. Those on the other are a lady and son, earnest evangelical
Christians; and an able and thoroughly excellent clergyman of the
same vital school. There is scarce any incident in the work; but
much ingenious and interesting dialogue, and many a sound and judicious reflection; and all is represented as coming right in the end.
The semi-infidel becomes wholly a believer, influenced not more by
the argument than by the disinterested excellence of his friend, and
by his devotion to the Christian cause, for which he is described as
giving up fair prospects of advancement in life, and welcoming the
hardships and perils which encircle the life of the missionary. And
the Puseyite lady loses in thoroughly awakened feeling, all her fancies,
and discovers that religion is not a coloured window or a symbol, but
a great life-influencing reality, that has its home in the heart. As a
work of art the story is defective; but from the concluding sentences,
we infer that it is not a work of art, but a sketch from nature, and that
the mingled tissue of argument and reflection which forms the prevailing tissue of so many of the chapters, has been woven with an eye
to the benefit of actual characters, who stood in need of the teaching
thus imparted. We need scarce say that the doctrines specially dwelt
upon are emphatically Protestant, and that the'Pole Star of Faith'
by which the work teaches to steer, and from which it borrows its
title, is the guiding star of Divine Revelation."




His  Favourite  Prayer.                  345
HUGH MILLER'S FAVOURITE PRAYER, MADE BY JOHN KNOX Al
THF: FIRST ASSEMBLIE OF THE CONGREGATION, WHEN THE CONFESSION OF OUR FAITHE AND WHOLE ORDERS OF THE CHURCH
WAS THERE RED AND APPROVED.
"O Lord God Almightie, and Father moste mercifull, there is
none lyke thee in heaven nor in earthe, which workest all thinges for
the glorie of thy name and for the comfort of thyne elect. Thow
dydst once make man ruler over all thy creatures, and placed'hym in
the garden of all pleasures; but how soone, alas, dyd he in his felicitie
forget thy goodness l Thy people Israel, also, in their wealth dyd
evermore runne astray, abusinge thy manifold mercies; lyke as all
flesh contynually rageth when it hath gotten libertie and external
prosperitie. But such is thy wisdome adjoyned to thy mercies, deare
Father, that thou sekest all means possible to brynge thy chyldren to
the sure sense and lyvely feelinge of thy fatherly favour. And
therefore, when prosperitie wyll not serve, then sendest thow adversitie, graciously correctinge all thy chyldren whome thow receyvest
into thy howshold. Wherefore we, wretched and miserable synners,
render unto thee most humble and hartie thankes, that yt hath pleased
thee to call us home to thy folde by thy fatherly correction at this
present, whereas in our prosperitie and libertie we dyd neglect thy
graces offered unto us. For the which negligence and many other
grevous synnes whereof we now accuse ourselves before thee, thow
myghtest most justly have gyven us up to reprobate mynds and induration of our hartes, as thow hast done others. But such is thy
goodness, 0 Lord, that thow seemest to forget all our offences, and
haste called us of thy good pleasure from all idolatries into this citie
most Christainlye refourmed, to professe thy name, and to suffer some
crosse amongest thy people for thy truth and gospell's sake; and so
to be thy wytnesses with thy prophets and apostles, yea, with thy
dearely beloved Sonne Jesus Christ, our head, to whome thow dost
begynne here to fashion us lyke, that in his glorie we may also be
lyke hym when he shall appear. 0 Lord God, what are we upon
whome thow shuldest shewe this great mercie? 0 most lovynge
Lord, forgyve us our unthankfulness and alle our synnes, for Jesus
15*




346              His Favourite Prayer.
Christ's sake. 0 heavenly Father, increase thy Holy Spirit in us, tc
teach our hartes to cry Abba, dear Father! to assure us of our eternal
election in Christ; to revele thy wyll more and more towards us; tc
confirme us so in thy trewthe, that we may lyve and dye therein;
an I that by the power of the same Spirit we may boldely gyve an
accomrpt of our faith to all men with humbleness and mnekeness, that
whereas they backbyte and slaunder us as evyll doers, they may be
ashamed and once stopp their mowthes, seinge our good conversation
in Christ Iesu, for whose sake we beseche thee, 0 Lord God, to
guide, governe, and prosper this our enterprise in assemblinge our
bretherne to prayse thy holy name. And not only to be here present
with us thy chyldren, according to thy promesse, but also mercifullie
to assist thy lyke persecuted people, our bretherne, gathered in all
other places, that they and we, consentinge together in one spirite and
truethe, may (all worldly respectes set a part) seke thy onely honour
and glorie in all our and their assemblies. So be it."
THE END.




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