1859.]

reason forsaid; and besides the whole brethren were forced to flie from their houses.

1647.-There could be no meeting in February because of the gret storme; nor hitherto in March be reason of continowall armies and parties of highlanderis remaining within the bounds of the Presbytery.

In 1649 the brethren recover from their panic, and the interrupted meetings are resumed. In the interval, however, the parishes have been sadly demoralized by the presence of the wild hillmen. There is scarce a rustic wench brought up for clerical admonition during the next year or two who does not attribute her misfortunes to 'ane godless trooper of Montros.' Nor are their own troubles at an end. Before the echoes of the thanksgiving for the notable victory gained over the rebels at Philiphaugh' have died away, another enemy rises up, and in the spring of 1651 the meetings are keepit not on account of the storme being great, and the country exceedingly troubled with the English.' Troubles and

anxieties continue to gather round them, until, in 1652, a solemn day of humiliation is held for Sion's breaches and exposure to foxes.' Stormy times these, when pastor and people were forced to shift for themselves as they best could.

When the brethren do get to gether, the business is opened by a discourse from one of their number, which the others are at liberty to comment upon, like the essay in a debating club. When they disagree with the style or doctrine they do not hesitate to say so; on the other hand, if the 'exerceeses' of their reverend brother are found to be orthodox, they approve his 'travils,' as indeed seems commonly to have been the case. The subjects which occupied these discourses-De Libero Arbitrio, or De Ecclesia an errare possit, for instance are characteristic of the tendencies of an age which undertook to adjust many of the most intricate questions in practical morals and politics, with vehement energy indeed, yet with indifferent success.

They are rigid disciplinarians, these reverend gentlemen. In 1631 they ordain that a new pair of

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"stockes" be made for the punishment of stubborne and unruly delinquents,' and the jogges,' the 'brankes,' and the cutty-stool,' are seldom without occupants. Those who harbour Papists, who are present at fights, who do not come to church, who do not communicate, who drink during divine service, who 'let on' of bonfires, who do not attend the minister's examinations on the Sabbath afternoons, are either excommunicated, or ordered 'to satisfy as adulterers.' Patrick Wilson, for drinking after cockcrow, has to stand in sackcloth two Sabbaths at the church door, and is fined four merks. George Thomson and Elspit Gray are fined four merks of penalty, and required to sit in the stool of repentance two Sabbaths, for drinking during divine service.' Barbara Lownie is to stand in the jogges and brankes till the congregation are satisfied,

because she has no gear,' the 'stool,' we infer, being reserved for sinners of quality. And finally, George Gordon, in Raynie, is cited to appear for profaning the Sabbath, by gathering grosers in time of

sermon.'

And the secular inquisition thus maintained by the Church was not confined to clerical anathemas. To incur excommunication was not merely to lose caste, but to be exposed to practical inconveniences of a most serious kind. In 1637 it was ordained, for instance, that every brother' make intimation out of his pulpit that none of his parishioners receive Margaret Charles, who was lately parted with chylde in the parish of Dumbennand.' It is difficult for us thoroughly to appreciate the merci. less severity of such a sentence. The unlucky girl quits the native village which misery has rendered hateful to her, and strives to hide her shame among strangers. But the inexorable Church will not let her rest. It pursues her, it fastens on her, it torments her. If, like another Margaret, she enters the house of God, the terrible anathema rings in her ears; if, footsore, and weary with the bitter burden on her breast, she stop, and for God's sake implores a morsel of bread, again the Church steps in, and motions

back the outstretched arm. We can afford to smile now at the threat of excommunication, but even under a Protestant régime it was once no light burden to bear.

How came our ancestors to tolerate this obnoxious and microscopic inquisition? The whole system is so utterly repugnant to the personal liberty of action which Englishmen so jealously maintain, that we cannot now altogether understand how the system should ever have been permitted to exist among us. It was, in truth, a reminiscence of the ecclesiastical scheme which the Reformation displaced. Catholicism stepped in between the feudal landlord and his dependent, and absorbed into itself -no doubt for beneficent purposes at first-the family rights and privileges out of the public recognition of which feudalism had arisen. In the barbarous age of our history the Church was the reformer, the destructive; it represented in the mediæval society the radicalism of modern politics. And so long as the Church maintained its own purity, it no doubt, by interposing a barrier between the nobility and the people, contributed to preserve the purity of the national life. That it should have tried to retain this authority when it was no longer needed for the protection of the people; that it should then have become a burden instead of remaining a defence; and that it should have handed down the tradition to the dominant sects that arose upon its ruins, is nowise to be wondered at. Protestantism retained many Catholic traditions besides that which instigated a jealous scrutiny into private life, and a despotic interference with the family relations. Few of us are aware, for instance, that murderers were reconciled to the covenanting Church of Scotland upon paying a small donation, pro usus ecclesiæ.' Rome issued its pardons and dispensations; Geneva exacted its small donations, pro usus ecclesiæ,'donations exacted very religiously as we find. And the people submitted to either exaction because they had been used to it for generations, because the system had become part of the habit and furniture

of their lives, because it required centuries to loose the leadingstrings which were tied when they were children, many centuries to teach them what individual liberty and individual responsibility meant, and how much more potent these are to impose an intelligent restraint than the impotent anathemas of the priest.

But even in the seventeenth century the system was not very firmly planted, and the fulminations of the Strathbogie ecclesiastics were sometimes received with derision. Their valley might be considered in some sort indeed a camp of the Philistines, for it lay in the very heart of the Gordon country, along the slopes of those hills behind whose barren ridges the Papist and the Malignant still held his own. So no doubt, if the proof could be got now, the restiveness of their congregations might be traced to the inspiration and countenance of the great family with whose opinions, backed as they could be any day by a thousand spears, the ministers did not care to meddle. Some of the outbursts are sufficiently amusing. James Middleton tells his minister, who threatens to put him in the jogges, that neither he nor the best minister within fifty miles would do as much.' James Horn took up a straw, and held it out before the Session, and said that he would not give that straw for all that they could do or say to him.' John

Bullock answerit, the deil a hair cared he for their excommunication; excommunicate him the morne if they pleased.' And the Rev. Mr. Reid, who had been requested to reason with William Mair, reports that his unruly parishioner was so far from giving obedience, that he had earnestly requested the said William Reid to doe him the favour to excommunicate him. Whereupon,' the minute continues, the brethren convened ordained the said Mr. William to obey the request, and to excommunicate him the next Sunday thereafter.' Mr. William Mair was certainly a bit of a wag, but he found his match in the members of the Presbytery, who excommunicate him, and relish the jest.

Many writers have never been quite able to understand how the

have failed to notice that the clergy were the most cruel and merciless of the opponents engaged. Their lay associates were forced to restrain clerical excesses which would have excited horror and indignation in every civilized community; to teach moderation and charity to the ministers of the Church of Peace! And the same spirit undoubtedly infected the administration of justice in their local judicatures. It is impossible to study the contemporary records without seeing that the men who in the Assembly advocate the use of fire and the sword, are those who practise at home petty cruelties, and ignoble and irritating persecutions. We would not harshly condemn the Covenanters. They were spiritual fanatics-religious enthusiasts, if the words sound better-who believed that the sword of the Lord and of Gideon had been committed to their keeping; who felt that they were engaged in what seemed to them a most real conflict with the powers of evil; who fought, and prayed, and struggled, often in sheer agony and desperation, to save their souls from the invisible enemies who surrounded them, and who were striving to subdue them. If the darkness came down upon these men, if they hated the perishing shows of time, and forgot that He who made them had pronounced them very good; if they thought bitter thoughts, and spoke bitter words, and did cruel deeds in the darkness, can we not understand how it was inevitable that it should be so, and understanding, judge them lightly? But on the other hand, we cannot recognise the justice or candour of the historian who sees martyrs only on the one side, and executioners only on the other; who denounces with vehement words the cruelties of the royalist armies, and is content to excuse the peculiar rancour and mercilessness of the Covenanting Assemblies; or who chooses to forget that the excesses of the soldiery were preceded

by the excesses of the. priesthood, and that Claverhouse, in sober truth, was but the avenger of Montrose.

The facts we have grouped together in this paper will enable our readers to estimate what of truth there is in the pictures that have been drawn recently of the life of the old Scottish gentry, and to understand how that ecclesiastical machinery was constructed which still exerts so potent an influence. The durability of that machinery in Scotland attests in the most emphatic form the great legislative genius of Calvin. The Scottish nation is the most striking monument that has been raised to the austere memory of the Genevese Reformer. That under the warmth of a more liberal culture and a large-hearted Christianity the bonds which his energetic and despotic intellect imposed are rapidly breaking up, it is impossible to doubt. But even yet he holds his grip with singular tenacity. To him it is owing that in the nineteenth century the metropo litan Presbytery visit with clerical anathemas the 'malignants' who spend the Sabbath afternoon among the woods of Corstorphine, or below the shadow of Arthur's Seat; and that no inconsiderable portion alike of the clergy and of the laity are content to realize on the first day of the week the wild and capricious fancy of the German satirist :-'I knew what I knew, and went weeping to bed, and in the night dreamed that all the fair flower gardens and green meadows of the world were rolled up and put away like carpets and baize from the floor, and that a beadle climbed up on a high ladder and took down the sun.'

We hope on another occasion to be permitted to recur to this subject, and to illustrate from local records and traditions the social condition of the early Scottish people; but in the meantime we have exhausted our space, and must close.

SHIRLEY.

the

In looking round upon nations who are preparing for immediate conflict in Europe, an Englishman does not find one that he cau thoroughly sympathize with. Does he wish Austria to prevail? No; for he calls to mind the inauspicious influence which she has long exercised in the minor Italian States; and having just heard a minute account of the sufferings of Baron Poerio and his companions, an Englishman is more than ever horrified with the doings of the King of Naples, which he in part attributes to the reliance felt by that monarch on the support of Austria.

On the other hand, does the Englishman sympathize with Piedmont ? He does to a certain extent; but his sympathy is restrained and counteracted by the gravest disapproval. He considers what services to freedom and to civilization Piedmont might have rendered had she been content to grow quietly into a great example of constitutional government in Italy. When foreign nations comment with envy on the constitutional government of Great Britain, they, and we too, are apt to forget that it took a long time to grow.

Moreover, in considering the conduct of Piedmont, most Englishmen cannot but censure the rash words of Victor Emmanuel, to which Lord Derby has rightly attributed no small part of the mischief that has since followed. How different are such words from the guarded and dignified language in which our Queen's speeches are framed, especially those parts which have reference to other nations.

Again, can the Englishman sym

AND FOREIGN.

pathize with France in the coming contest ? By no means. He is shocked and alarmed at the large claims put forth by the Emperor of the French for interference on the part of France with other nations. Even if he regards that Emperor as having no mean or selfish projects respecting Italy, he still considers him as a man with fixed ideas of a singularly dangerous tendency for the peace of Europe. And perhaps one of the most fatal things for the world, is when a man of fixed ideas arrives at despotic power. The Englishman, if he be tolerably well read, remembers the sayings of the first Napoleon, and dreads this vague talk about nationalities, which is likely to end in immeasurable bloodshed, and in no good whatever to the nationalities. It appears, by the way, as if the first Napoleon thought that nations were like sweet herbs, which require to be trampled upon in order to give out all their sweetness.

Lastly, does the Englishman sympathize with Russia in her skilful interference on the present occasion? Certainly not. He is prone to repeat to himself the hackneyed quotation, so dear to Parliamentary speakers, Timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes,' and to apprehend nothing but mischief from the good offices of a despotic power, of whose ultimate views he knows so little and suspects so much. To use Lord Clarendon's neat and pointed statement of the case, 'One despotic Power has proposed to another despotic Power that, by means of a Congress, a third despotic Power should pave the way for liberal institutions." There is not much promise of a good result from such mediation.

One comfort, however, in the midst of this sad outlook, the Englishman may have, in seeing the unanimity which prevails amongst British statesmen in their endeavours to promote peace; and he cannot but note that there is not any class of his fellow-countrymen which manifests the slightest desire for war. There must be persons whose interests might be promoted by war,