HUGH MILLER 85 



with the very lowest spiritual ebb in the country, to which 

 his own long regime had in no slight degree contri- 

 buted. The Spaniard dates the decline and fall of his 

 own country from the days of Philip IL, segundo sin 

 segundoj as Cervantes bitterly calls him, 'the second 

 with (it was to be hoped) no successor.' Even in 1765, 

 such had been the spread of religion outside the national 

 establishment that the Assembly was forced to reckon 

 with it. They found c a hundred and twenty meeting- 

 houses, to which more than a hundred thousand 

 persons resorted.' Patronage was found, after debate, 

 to be the cause. It is no tribute to Alva that he 

 found the Low Countries a peaceful dependency 

 of Spain and left them a free nation ; none to the 

 policy of l thorough' that it sent Laud and Strafford 

 to the block. An impartial verdict will be that Robert- 

 son undermined for ever the edifice which Carstares 

 had reared. 



An attempt has been recently made again to cast a 

 glamour over the old Scottish moderates of the eigh- 

 teenth century. Their admirers point to Watson the 

 historian of Philip n., to Henry the historian of 

 Britain, to Robertson, to Thomas Reid the philo- 

 sopher, Home the dramatist, Blair the sermon-writer, 

 Adam Ferguson, Hill of St. Andrews, and George 

 Campbell of Aberdeen. Not even the Paraphrases have 

 escaped being pressed into the field to witness to the 

 literary and other gifts of Oglivie, Cameron, Morrison, 

 and Logan. But the merits of a class are not best seen 



