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?' 'Oh! 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 facetic' (we!-the sober-eyed!-the grave-featured!—the demure !—we!)—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! 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

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 casement, 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!' 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 right— the 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 also 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

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 Edinburgh Building Committee had tarred the Free Kirk, all out of sheer economy, and 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. Her 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

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, cæteris 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

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 versa, 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 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

own.