THE MODERATES. 191 



the cosmopolitan sympathies and high intellectual tastes 

 of the Moderate party will once again prevail within 

 the Church of Scotland. A few State cobwebs and 

 a few abstract propositions are all that prevent the 

 branches of that Church from again growing visibly on 

 one stem ; and were this the case, religious Scotchmen 

 would be able to think, as they ought, with equally 

 diffused gratitude and pride, of the unrivalled systematic 

 theology of Hill, the sturdy dogmatism and unconquer- 

 able logic of Cunningham, the historic fame of Robert- 

 son, the artistic genius of Thomson of Duddingston, 

 and the moral grandeur of Chalmers. 



In religion Hugh Miller was an Evangelical, but in 

 literature he belonged essentially to the Moderate school. 

 His literary ideal was that of grace and elegance, and 

 quiet glow of imaginative fire ; from declamatory vehe- 

 mence and the strut and stare and swagger of the 

 modern 'earnest' school, he shrank with sensitive re- 

 pugnance. To become what Moderate critics would 

 have pronounced a classic was an object of ambition 

 incomparably nearer his heart, than to dazzle with 

 splendid metaphors, or to produce a temporary sensa- 

 tion. Hence the satisfaction with which we found him 

 mentioning that 'Baron Hume, the nephew and re- 

 siduary legatee of the historian, himself very much a 

 critic of the old school/ had described his Scenes and 

 Legends as a work ' written in an English style, which 

 he had begun to regard as one of the lost arts.' The 

 literary skill with which Hugh Miller was to assail 

 Moderatism had been acquired at the feet of its own 

 Gamaliels. 



The conclusion that the author of the Letter to Lord 

 Brougham was the man to edit an Edinburgh non-in- 

 trusion paper had, as we saw from Dr Candlish's letter, 



