HUGH MILLER 71 



intrinsically for having been, in such way as was then 

 possible to be, the bravest of all Scotchmen ' harder 

 still, say we, that the subject of Milton's great eulogy 

 should be judged by minds of the notes-and-queries 

 order, or by those of the class of Hume and Robertson, 

 who have such a gentlemanly horror at everything that 

 savours of enthusiasm as to miss the central point, the 

 coincidence of civil and religious liberty. 



c In every sense a man's religion is the chief fact with 

 regard to him. A man's, or a nation of men's/ Yet 

 we find Hume writing to Robertson that if the divine 

 were willing to give up his Mary, the philosopher was 

 willing to give up his Charles, and there would at least 

 be the joint pleasure of seeing John Knox made com- 

 pletely ridiculous. ' Who,' writes Robertson to Gibbon, 

 4 is Mr. Hayley ? His Whiggism is so bigoted, and his 

 Christianity so fierce, that he almost disgusts one with 

 two very good things \ ' Christianity was then only a 

 good thing when it had good things to offer to pluralists 

 of the Warburtonian order. Yet these two garbled and 

 distorted narratives are still the most widely known 

 versions in England. Little wonder, therefore, is it 

 that Carlyle should ask, ' I would fain know the history 

 of Scotland; who can tell it me? Robertson, say 

 innumerable voices; Robertson, against the world. I 

 open Robertson ; and find there, through long ages too 

 confused for narrative, a cunning answer and hypothesis 

 a scandalous chronicle (as for some Journal of 

 Fashion) of two persons : Mary Stuart, a Beauty, but 



