io8 FAMOUS SCOTS 



snow was falling so heavily upon the people, that when 

 it was over they could scarcely distinguish the congre- 

 gation from the ground, except by their faces.' Baird 

 of Cockburnspath had passed away in a room, { a few 

 inches above which were the slates of the roof, without 

 any covering, and as white with hoar frost within as 

 they were white with snow without. His very breath 

 on the blankets was frozen as hard as the ice outside.' 

 At Canonbie, Guthrie had passed Johnny Armstrong's 

 Tower, and preached in wind and rain to a large con- 

 gregation, ' old men, apparently near the grave, all wet 

 and benumbed with the keen wind and cold rain.' In 

 Cromarty, Miller's old friend Stewart was now preaching 

 in the factory close, and there, in the summer of 1843, 

 after a night of rain had swept the streets, his mind 

 reverts to the congregations over Scotland in the open 

 air ' I do begrudge the Moderates our snug, comfortable 

 churches. I begrudge them my father's pew. It bears 

 date 1741, and has been held by the family, through 

 times of poverty and depression, a sort of memorial of 

 better days, when we could afford getting a pew in the 

 front gallery. But yonder it lies, empty within an 

 empty church, a place for spiders to spin undisturbed, 

 while all who should be occupying it take their places 

 on stools and forms in the factory close.' The subtle 

 mark of Scottish gentility in the allusion to the pew 

 will not fail to strike the reader. Let it not be said 

 that it savours of 'gigmanity ' in that standing bugbear 

 of Carlyle ! 



