/ OF TH? \ 



( UNIVERSITY ) 

 HUGH MILLER 91 



^^ 



and, unfolding a document which he held in his hand, he 

 read, in a slow and emphatic manner, the protest of the 

 Church. For the first few seconds, the extreme anxiety to 

 hear defeated its object, the universal "hush, hush," 

 occasioned considerably more noise than it allayed ; but 

 the momentary confusion was succeeded by the most un- 

 broken silence ; and the reader went on till the impressive 

 close of the document, when he flung it down on the 

 table of the House and solemnly departed. He was 

 followed at a pace's distance by Dr. Chalmers ; Dr. Gordon 

 and Dr. Patrick M'Farlan immediately succeeded, and then 

 the numerous sitters on the thickly occupied benches behind 

 filed after them, in a long unbroken line, which for several 

 minutes together continued to thread the passage to the 

 eastern door, till at length only a blank space remained. 

 As the well-known faces and forms of some of the ablest 

 and most eminent men that ever adorned the Church of 

 Scotland glided along in the current, to disappear from the 

 courts of the State institution for ever, there rose a cheer 

 from the galleries. At length, when the last of the with- 

 drawing party had disappeared, there ran from bench to 

 bench a hurried, broken whispering, " How many ? how 

 many?" "four hundred": The scene that followed we 

 deemed one of the most striking of the day. The empty 

 vacated benches stretched away from the Moderator's seat 

 in the centre of the building, to the distant wall. There 

 suddenly glided into the front rows a small party of men 

 whom no one knew, obscure, mediocre, blighted-looking 

 men, that, contrasted with the well-known forms of our 

 Chalmers and Gordons, Candlishes and Cunninghams, 

 M'Farlans, Brewsters, and Dunlops, reminded one of the 

 thin and blasted corn ears of Pharaoh's vision, and like 



