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CHAPTER V. 



DIFFERENCE WITH DR CANDLISH. 



NO company of earnest men in this world, whether 

 good or bad, whether as imaginatively delineated by 

 the true poet, or as described by the historian, from 

 Achilles and Agamemnon to the Apostles Peter and Paul, 

 have ever been able to agree. An agreeable man 

 the definition is Mr Disraeli's is one who agrees with 

 you, and the talent of agreeing all round is precisely that 

 in which men of original and decisive character, keeping 

 a conscience, are apt to be defective. Hugh Miller, as 

 we have had occasion to see, had his own convictions as 

 to what the Free Church, and the Witness as the prin- 

 cipal representative of the Free Church in the press, 

 ought to be. He had not derived these from man, and 

 there was no man living at whose beck he would change 

 them. On two points his mind was made up with an 

 impassioned emphasis of determination, first that the 

 Witness should be kept independent of party, and, 

 secondly, that there should be no entering into league 

 with * Voluntaries ' for the purpose of assailing the 



