240 EDITOR. 



ceeded to Canonmills Hall. There had been no intention 

 on the part of the protesting ministers and members to 

 form a procession, but when the first exultant shout with 

 which the emerging figures were greeted had subsided, 

 the crowd fell back on either side in spontaneous rever- 

 ence, and formed a lane through which the procession 

 moved. Dr Welsh, the Moderator of the preceding year, 

 with Chalmers and Gordon, two men whose appearance, 

 the one for its massive and leonine manhood, the other 

 for its severe intellectual majesty, would have attracted 

 notice in any assemblage in Christendom, led the way. 

 Cunningham, Candlish, MacDonald of Ferintosh, Camp- 

 bell of Monzie, Murray Dunlop, men whose names had 

 become household words in Scotland, followed. As they 

 headed the long column on its way down the broad swell 

 of undulation on which the new town of Edinburgh is 

 built, the Frith of Forth before them, the Bass Rock far 

 on the right, the blue hills of the north closing in the 

 distance, there were lookers-on who, although they had 

 opposed the movement, felt their eyes moisten with proud 

 joy that they had seen such a day. It was the old land 

 yet, the stuff of immortality, the asbestos thread of in- 

 corruptible national character, the light that struggled 

 in Falkirk's wood, and beamed out at Bannockburn, and 

 played in fitful gleams upon the storm-tost banner of 

 the Covenant, survived in Scotland still. 



What to most Englishmen to those AV!IO have de- 

 rived their idea of clerical character from the recent his- 

 tory of the Anglican Establishment will seem specially 

 surprising in this event, is that the Scottish clergy who, 

 in 1843, abandoned their livings, did not find some 

 plausible pretext, some ingenious sophism, some ' softly- 

 spoken and glistening lie,' wherewith to lull their con- 

 sciences and enable them to evade their duty. Such 



