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 singu lar the anomalies and contradictions that, even in a

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

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, though in it, were not of it, the squad was well represented by its hero Charles, a demoralized, reckless, yet generous

hearted fellow, the only blackguard Hugh 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

rocks of King'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