what they would certainly regard as a rag of prelacy; and it was desirable that the thing should be kept for a few years before the minds of the people, that its first shockingness and prelaticalness of aspect might wear off, before the law should be altered. The vote is taken in the Assembly by the Agent reading over the roll of members, when each member, on his name being called, rises in his place, and says for which motion he votes. We observed, on the vote being taken, that the younger clergy, almost without exception, voted for the approximation to our English ritual. It is remarkable how fast bigoted Presbyterianism is dying out among the educated classes and the clergy of Scotland. When Colonel Dundas first brought forward his measure, a few years since, he had hardly a supporter, while now it is evident that a year or two more will suffice to bring in the proposed change of the law. If we live to see the next Assembly but one, we shall probably see a decided majority in Colonel Dundas's favour. We learn that among his supporters are numbered clergymen of such high standing as Dr. Muir, of St. Stephen's, Edinburgh; Dr. Crawford, of St. Andrew's, Edinburgh; Dr. Hunter, of the Tron Church; and Dr. Robertson, one of the Divinity Professors at Edinburgh. The tide is flowing fast. We may live to see organs in the Scotch kirk yet.

There was a curious discussion on the question, whether a minister who had been deposed a number of years ago, and who now applied for restoration to holy orders, could be re-admitted to them. The deposed clergyman in this case made a becoming profession of penitence, and counsel who appeared for him produced many certificates testifying to the complete amendment of his life (he had been deposed for drunkenness); but it was evident the feeling of the Assembly was against his re-admission.

Our

readers, we doubt not, will recur to Lockhart's story of Adam Blair, who, after a grievous lapse, was, at the end of many years, restored to the holy ministry; and it was admitted that there had been one or

two precedents, the latest being in 1767. But it seemed to be doubted whether a clergyman restored under such circumstances would ever do much good; and to be feared that the blot in the 'scutcheon would never be forgotten. Ultimately the matter was referred to a committee of some old members of the house, and by their recommendation the Assembly agreed to consider the question with a favourable bias, should the applicant's conduct continue correct for another year. It may have a good effect upon the de graded priest to know that the door of repentance is not closed against him, and that there is a possibility of his retrieving his position; it may save him from going straight to the devil; but we confess we see many inconveniences which may arise from restoration being made too easy.

An interesting feature in the Assembly's proceedings, is hearing the annual reports made by the Committees to which is entrusted the management of the various missionary Schemes of the Church,' as they are called. These schemes are, the 'Home Mission,' for building and maintaining churches in Scotland; the Indian Mission; the Colonial Mission, which deals mainly with Canada; the Jewish Mission; the Education Scheme, for supporting schools in poor districts; and the Endowment Scheme, for providing endowments for chapels, and thus raising them to the position of parish churches. In Scotland, the incumbent of what is called a quoad sacra chapel (which we should term a district church), has no seat in any church court, and is subject to other disabilities. But as soon as a clear endowment to the amount of £120 a year can be secured permanently, upon application to the Court of Tiends a district is allotted to the chapel, which thus becomes a parish church, with all its rights and privileges. Within the last five or six years, mainly by the wonderful energy of Dr. Robertson, the convener, or president of this Endowment Scheme, no fewer than forty new parishes have been formed; and it may afford our readers some idea of the life that remains in the Church of Scotland, to know

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that the subscriptions to this scheme within the last twelve months, amount to £45,000. We believe that the sum obtained by Dr. Robertson in the last three years is above £120,000. A collection is made in each church in Scotland for each scheme, once a year, and these collections, with some donations from individuals, forms the income of the Mission. The income of the Indian Mission last year was £7153; that of the Home Mission, including the balance from the previous year, £8892; that of the Education Scheme, £9859; that of the Colonial Scheme, £3332; that of the Jewish Mission, £3309. We think it only fair to place these figures before our readers, for we have met with intelligent Englishmen who, misled by the trumpet-sounding of the Free Church,' have supposed that all the zeal and liberality of Scotland are confined within its limits. We know that the clergy of the Scotch Church think that, considering the numbers and wealth of its adherents, the missionary income of the church should be much greater; but we confess that, to ourselves, such sums, collected by the little kirk from her twelve hundred congregations, appear extremely creditable.

ap

Of course, whenever each Missionary Committee has given in the report of its particular scheme to the Assembly, a process of bearbaiting is commenced by the halfdozen wrong-headed members of the house. The luckless Convener is cross-examined as to all the details of the mission's history for the past year; and every matter which pears to have been slurred over in the report is probed to the uttermost. Every malcontent presses his peculiar crotchet and finds his especial fault. But a great deal of discontent that would have been perilous if bottled up, passes off in this healthful effervescence; in an hour or two every one is quite satisfied that everything has been quite right; and the Moderator conveys the thanks of the Assembly to the Convener for all the trouble which has been taken by him and his committee.

There was a great crowd in the Assembly one day to hear a speech

13

from Dr. Cumming, who came down as the representative of the Church of Scotland in England. He gave a pretty and pleasing speech; and his silvery voice and graceful elocution contrasted strongly with the yelling of Professor Robertson and the howling vulgarity of Dr. Pirie of Aberdeen, both of whom pressed themselves upon the Assembly a great deal more than was at all necessary. The recollection of what Dr. Robertson has done for the church in the way of founding new parishes, will always, we trust, cause him to be listened to with respect; and his speeches are really characterized by massive sense, great acuteness, and much piety and earnestness. But he seems to feel it incumbent upon him to speak at tremendous length on every question that comes before the Assembly; and he is beyond comparison the most insufferably diffuse and tedious speaker we ever listened to. He has a fatal fluency which enables him to speak on any subject for any given time. He generally sits at the table, and speaks standing beside it. The stranger entering the Assembly Hall at any hour of any day, is quite sure in a little while to perceive a short, very stout old gentleman, with white hair, rise from his seat near the Moderator, and begin to speak in a fearfully harsh voice, with an awful Aberdeenshire accent. With a snuff-box in his hand, and turning on his axis like a roast before the fire, he gradually talks himself into a hurricane of loudness, the very driest metaphysical matter being apparently sufficient to excite him to the highest degree. Why on earth does he say K-k-k-k-royst when he would utter the Saviour's name? Why does he talk of athurratah when he means authority? and wherefore should he speak of ivvoorhlasstan loife,-of poands, shullens, and panse,-of the Endoamunt skaim and its great oabjuct, of the saving of the taxus and the advantage to the wurrreeld that would follow if that skaim were maintahned akkurding to the views of the reverend doctor on the other soyd of the house?

Among the most conspicuous members of the Assembly are Dr. Hill, mild, kind, judicious, always

speaking briefly, and making speeches which really tend to expedite the business; Dr. Bryce, tedious, good-natured, quite content to talk away, though no one is listening; Dr. Robert Lee, neat, pointed, fluent, gentlemanlike, desperately wrong-headed; Principal Lee, impracticable and testy, yet dignified and esteemed; Dr. Muir of St. Stephen's, perhaps the finestlooking man in Scotland, amiable, decided, intensely honourable, not a little prejudiced-the ideal of the High Tory and High-Churchman ; Dr. Pirie, pert, flippant, tedious, and intolerable; Dr. Grant of St. Mary's, a master of that deliberative eloquence in which every word tells; Dr. Macfarlane of Duddingstone, keen, though fat, the sharpest man at a reply in the Assembly; Mr. Norman M'Leod of Glasgow, one of the most remarkable of Scotchmen, -a great preacher, barely second to Mr. Caird, a telling platform orator, a brilliant conversationist, a tremendously energetic manager of business, a popular author, a great traveller, an extremely stout man. Among the younger clerical members of the last Assembly, Mr. Muir of Dalmeny and Mr. Wilson of Paisley made several admirable speeches. And of the lay members, perhaps the most conspicuous was Mr. Campbell Swinton, a law professor in the University, a fluent and energetic speaker, and apparently a man of high talent and great liberality of sentiment. George Clerk made a very judicious speech on the question of receiving from the East India Company grants in aid of the Mission schools; and Sheriff Barclay of Perth made one or two brilliant appearances. Mr. Cook, an eminent advocate already alluded to, spoke several times with good effect. We think we have mentioned most of the speakers who took a prominent part in the debates; but in addition to these, there was a host of outsiders, who sprang up here and there on the back benches, said a few words in manifest trepidation at the sound of their own voices, and then sank down blushing, amid good-natured cheers, or may hap roars of laughter: proud, however, that they might go back to their country charges, and there

Sir

to the end of their days make incidental allusions to the time when they spoke in the General Assembly.

As a general rule, the debates of the Assembly are conducted with as much gravity and decorum as can be looked for in so numerous a company of men who are all equally entitled to express their opinion. Anything like applause or disapprobation is promptly repressed. There was one outburst of feeling from the whole house, on occasion of Mr. Brewster of Paisley (brother of Sir David) calling Louis Napoleon' a perjured tyrant' and 'a monster.' But, on the whole, there was a great deal of that propriety which becomes a convocation of churchmen, whose proceedings begin_and end with prayer, and on whose table the Word of God is conspicuously displayed. But we cannot say so much for the degree of attention with which the members of the house listened to many of the speakers. There was very often such a buzz of conversation as rendered the person addressing the chair quite inaudible. It was interesting, however, to sit on one of the benches in the most thronged quarter of the Assembly, and to notice the greetings of old friends that were going on, and to catch the echoes of the shaves of the house. We cannot help repeating narrative, which we heard on one such occasion, told with infinite gravity by a clergyman whose name we at once inquired about, and of whom we shall only say that he is one of the best and worthiest of the sons of the kirk, and knows when to be serious as well as when to jest. Don't tell me,' said he to a simple-looking Highland brother, who had apparently made his first trial of railway travelling in coming up to the Assembly, don't tell me that tunnels on railways are an unmitigated evil; they serve high moral and aesthetical purposes. Only the other day I got into a railway carriage, and I had hardly taken my seat when the train started. On looking up, I saw sitting opposite me two of the most rabid Dissenters in Scotland. I felt at once that there could be no pleasure for me in that journey, and with gloomy heart and countenance I leaned back

a

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in my corner. But all at once we plunged into a long tunnel, black as night, and when we emerged at the other end, my brow was clear and my ill-humour was entirely dissipated. Shall I tell you how this came to be? All the way through the tunnel I was shaking my fist in the Dissenters' face, and making horri ble mouths at them, and that relieved me, and set me all right. Don't speak against tunnels again, my dear friend!' The Highland brother listened with a thoughtful air, and evidently thought there was something in the idea. We trust that if upon his way back to Aberdeenshire he should chance to have a Free Kirk minister for his travelling companion, he may not too suddenly pass from the shades of a tunnel into daylight as he is acting upon the advice of his facetious friend.

The Commissioner holds two or three levees during the sitting of the Assembly. There is one to which all the judges and barristers go, and another upon the Queen's birth-day, the 29th of May, to which all who go are expected to appear in court dress. His Grace has a dinner party at the Palace every evening, except that of her Majesty's birth-day, upon which the Commissioner's wife, or some female relation if he is unmarried, has an evening party. Gentlemen only are invited to dinner, in numbers varying (after the first day) from fifty to a hundred. The dinners are of the handsomest kind, the contract being (as unhappily the records of the Court of Session can tell) for 'every luxury of the season.' It is an established institution that there shall always be green peas on the first day of the Assembly, and there is a tradition that the costly dish was once entirely devoured by a country minister, quite unaware that it had been provided for the use of the Commissioner and his most distinguished guests only. The Commissioner sits on one side of the table, midway between its ends; the Moderator, who dines with him every day, sits opposite. When Dr. Chalmers was Moderator, he procured the abolition of the Sunday dinners. The toasts after dinner are all given in the shortest

VOL. LIV. NO. CCCXIX.

15

possible form by the Commissioner himself, with the exception of the health of the Commissioner's wife, which is proposed by the Moderator. The last toast is always Prosperity to the Church of Scotland,' and directly after it the Commissioner rises, and the party breaks up. There are no speeches. Lady Belhaven's drawing-room this year went off with much éclat. About eight hundred ladies and gentlemen were present, who overcrowded the picture-gallery and the two or three other apartments thrown open for their reception. The chambers were prettily decorated with flowers and evergreens, and a couple of military bands, one in the gallery, and the other in the quadrangle of the Palace, kept up a constant supply of music. When Lord Mansfield was Commissioner, his entertainments were on the most magnificent scale. His drawingroom was attended by about sixteen hundred persons, and champagne and burgundy flowed at his table in a way which his successor in office has not attempted to emulate.

The Moderator has apartments provided for him at Barry's Hotel, in the west end of Edinburgh. Every morning, at nine a.m., he has a breakfast-party, which is attended by from one hundred to one hundredand-fifty ladies and gentlemen. The scene is a gay one. The tables are set out with hot-house plants sent by the neighbouring families. The room is a very lofty and handsome one. The ladies are dressed in their most becoming attire, and radiant with their happiest temper. The entertainment is brief: beginning very punctually at nine o'clock, it is over long before ten.

The

Moderator is allowed £200 to maintain his dignity; and this sum we have reason to believe does not cover his expenses.

Two Sundays occur during the sittings of the Assembly, and upon these the Commissioner goes in state to attend divine service in the High Church of Edinburgh. There the arrangements are very much as on the opening day of the Assembly; and an immense crowd of sightseers testifies to the interest excited by any State accessories to the plain service of the kirk. The High

B

The

Church is the choir of the ancient Cathedral of St. Giles, and although disfigured by heavy galleries, which cut the shafts supporting the centre vault, it is a stately and noble church, and can contain, we believe, about two thousand people. Commissioner occupies the throne facing the pulpit, supported by his chaplain and purse-bearer. The Moderator, accompanied by six Doctors of Divinity in canonicals, occupies a front gallery-pew to the Commissioner's right. Further on towards the pulpit sit the judges, and opposite them the magistrates, all in the glory of their official array. A great number of the clergy are present, and a very crowded general congregation. Two select preachers are appointed for each day, one of whom officiates in the forenoon, and the other in the afternoon. In accordance with an old custom, introduced when the Scotch people had an absolutely unlimited capacity of listening to preaching, the forenoon preacher's appointment bears that he is to lecture and preach before his Grace the High Commissioner;' but this has degenerated into a formal exposition of some ten minutes' duration, and the service is little longer than on ordinary occasions. The select preachers are appointed by the old Moderators; and, as a general rule, the most popular preachers, members of Assembly, who have not already preached before the Commissioner, are appointed; unless, indeed, when any ex-Moderator has in the church a son, brother, nephew, son-in-law, cousin, brother-in-law, toady, or henchman, who is ambitious of the distinction. The preacher goes to the pulpit when the bells have ceased, and there awaits the arrival of the Commissioner. His Grace comes with tolerable punctuality, and is ushered to the throne with much ceremony, the whole congregation rising to receive him. He bows to the preacher, who returns the salutation with much humility, and then begins the service. The sermons

are

now scrupulously free from allusion to the proceedings of the Assembly, or any political reference; in this respect forming a contrast to the discourses of the bolder divines of an earlier age, who from the

same pulpit were wont to beard the real monarch, seated in the selfsame throne. Once James the First (Sixth of Scotland) was so irritated by some attack made upon him by the preacher, that he rose from the throne, and, addressing the occupant of the pulpit, said, Either speak sense, or come down from that pulpit! To which the obedient and candid ecclesiastic replied, 'I will neither speak sense nor come down from this pulpit!' and we doubt not he avoided either alternative.. At the close of the service, the Commissioner again bows to the preacher, and the preacher to the Commissioner. It was in preaching upon this occasion that Dr. Chalmers made so brilliant an appearance as induced a result unheard of in any place of worship-an involuntary murmur of applause on the part of the congregation. And two years since, Mr. Caird preached his sermon on Religion in Common Life, which has since attained such an unexampled popularity and circulation. The preachers this year were Mr. Wilson of Forgandenny; Mr. Thompson of Ormiston; Mr. Boyd of Kirkpatrick-Irongray; and Mr. Mitchell of Peterhead: all, we believe, clergymen of not many years' standing in the church.

But the General Assembly is drawing to the close of its brief space of power. All this while the current of white-neckclothed men has been ebbing and flowing all day along the Mound, to and from the Assembly Hall: the touters have been standing about its door, pressing the advertisements of enterprizing tailors and stationers upon all who enter; the beefeaters and powdered lackies have been lounging in the lobbies; and the leading members, in earnest conversation, have been walking in twos and threes up and down the gas-lit tunnel which leads to the house. But the Commissioner is beginning to look sleepy, and the throne is vacant for long intervals, during which business proceeds as usual: the really interesting work of the Assembly is over; and the Monday, the last day of its sitting, is devoted to a number of small matters of detail. There are great blanks on the benches that forenoon, and the