CHAPTER XIV.

A RETROSPECT.

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

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 But let the logical demonstration and the historical 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.

scouts.

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

fetters; and just as it struck its roots deeper in the hearts of the people, in 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 friends, were the labours of the editor of the Witness, and the epoch the Disruption marks in Hugh 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 Miller 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

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

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 Witness 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