HUGH MILLER 79 



of Hume and Robertson about fanaticism, austerity, 

 gloom, enthusiasm, democracy, and popular ferocity, 

 and all the bugbears of the writers so terribly ' at ease 

 in Zion,' would be discounted by a simple regard for 

 facts. When Leighton and Burnet went into the west in 

 1670 to try and induce the people to recognise the estab- 

 lishment of Charles, what did they find? Wranglings 

 or harangues after the manner of Scott's Habbakuk 

 Mucklewrath ? * The poor of the country,' says Burnet, 

 'came generally to hear us. We were amazed to see a 

 poor commonalty so capable to argue upon points of 

 government, and on the bounds to be set to the power of 

 the civil magistrate and princes in matters of religion : 

 upon all these topics they had texts of Scripture at hand, 

 and were ready with their answers to everything that 

 was said to them. This measure of knowledge was 

 spread even among the meanest of them, their cottagers 

 and servants.' Leighton might well have remembered 

 the case of his own father. History loves not the 

 Coriolani, says Mommsen, and Miller has well seized 

 this incident to bring out the popular side of the national 

 religion. To the question, in an inn at Newcastle, what 

 the Scottish religion had done for the people, he could 

 reply, ' Independently altogether of religious considera- 

 tions, it has done for our people what your Societies 

 for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge and all your 

 Penny and Saturday Magazines will never do for yours ; 

 it has awakened their intellects and taught them to think.' 

 But the exigencies of the romance-writer are often 



