HUGH MILLER 63 



for the starting of a paper. From the press of the 

 capital, and from such provincial organs as The Aber- 

 deen Herald and The Constitutional, as edited by Mr. 

 Adam and Mr. Joseph Robertson, the c travelled thane 

 Athenian Aberdeen ' who drifted into the Crimean War 

 later on, and who drifted with the Parliament House 

 party in a reactionary ecclesiastical policy at this time, 

 had been content to draw such scanty information as he 

 ever possessed on the real issues at stake in the Church 

 of Scotland. Indeed, his lordship had gone so far as 

 to taunt the Evangelical Party as composed but of the 

 intellectual debris of the country, and of the ' wild men ' 

 in the Church. Sir Robert Peel, who really knew 

 nothing of the intricacies of the question, was content 

 to believe that there was a conspiracy to defeat the law 

 and to rend the constitution. But the ignorance of the 

 Premier and the taunt of Lord Aberdeen came but with 

 an ill grace from them when flung against such men as 

 Sir David Brewster, Chalmers, Welsh, Guthrie, Bonar, 

 Duff, and Miller, and the whole intellectual force of the 

 country at large. Indeed, to the very last, the inde- 

 cision and the ignorance as to the state of the country 

 shown by Lord Aberdeen were but the natural results of 

 his holding his ecclesiastical conscience in fee from such 

 men as Robertson of Ellon, Paull of Tullynessle, and 

 Pirie of Dyce these bucolic personages, 'like full-blown 

 peony-roses glistening after a shower,' whose triple and 

 conjunct capacity, joined to that of their master, might 

 have been cut, to borrow the eulogy of Sir James 



