of Carr and Villiers. Mr. Burton accounts for this last peculiarity by the following ingenious theory :

"The king, just growing into manhood, was acquiring that offensive ugliness which even court painters could not help revealing if they produced what could be recognised as a portrait. The ugliness was offensive, because it had none of those qualities which give an interest, and sometimes even a dignity, to ugly faces-as intellect, firmness, or even sternness. But he delighted in having handsome men about him, and good looks were a sure passport to his favour. This weakness seems to have come of the same peculiarity of nature, unaccountable on any reasoning from cause and effect, which makes unseemly people take delight in the fine clothing and brilliant jewellery which only draw attention to their defects.' (Vol. v. p. 497.)

We have no inclination to dwell on those dreary times, and gladly turn to a more inviting theme-the progress of the Scottish Reformation, and the development of Scottish Presbyterianism. It is in this branch of his subject that Mr. Burton has achieved his greatest success. Here his impartiality, amounting almost to indifference, stands him in good stead. For when we come to deal with the struggles, in the seventeenth century, between Presbyterianism and Episcopacy, we tread on embers beneath which the fires are yet living. The passions of men are always excited by religious controversy; and few controversies have raged more furiously or for a victory more trivial than the rival claims of Episcopalians and Presbyterians to be recognised as the true Church of the Scottish Reformation. The respective disputants have, of course, looked at one side of the shield only. Mr. Burton's even-handed justice will be distasteful to both, in exact proportion as it will be prized by the lover of historical truth. It is not too much to say that the best ecclesiastical history of Scotland yet written is to be found in Mr. Burton's pages.

Mr. Froude's favourite source of historical knowledge, the Statute-book, does not greatly aid us towards a true understanding of this matter. Popery was overthrown in 1560, and it was thought wise to confirm this great work in 1567. After the latter date a ritual seems to have prevailed, carefully cleared of any leanings towards Popish doctrine, certain musical observances, and other things which subsequently came to be regarded as abominations, such as the sponsors in the Anglican rite of baptism. These Reformation Acts, if we may so call them, made no special attack on the episcopal hierarchy. On the contrary, the Estates expressly refused their approval to the Huguenot system, in the shape of the First Book of Discipline; and, in a statute passed for the

suppression of Popery in 1572, it is declared that the Kirk is to act through lawful archbishops, bishops, superintendents, and 'ministers and readers.' But in 1580 a different spirit appears. In the Assembly of that year the office of ane bishop is declared to have no sure warrant, authority, or good ground out of the Scripture of God, but to be brought in by folly and corruption; and is therefore abolished. In 1592 we find the Estates establishing the Presbyterian polity in language unequivocal and distinct; in 1597 we find them recognising bishops, abbots, and other prelates;' in 1606 they formally restore the order of bishops to their ancient and accustomed 'honours, dignities, prerogatives, privileges, livings, lands, &c.;' in 1640 they overthrew the whole Episcopal hierarchy, and declared the Covenant the law of the land. All this is not a little perplexing; but if, turning from the dry bones of statutes, we study the changeful life of Scotland during that epoch, we shall find the history of her Church become intelligible. The high-born Reformers of the early period cared little for the spiritual aspects of the movement which they led. What they really valued, what made the new faith truly precious in their sight, was their possession of the Church lands. 'If they can ' have the kirk lands,' wrote Knox of them, to be annexed to 'their houses, they appear to take no more care of the instruc'tion of the ignorant, and of the feeding of the flock of Jesus Christ, than ever did the Papists whom we have condemned, and yet are worse ourselves in that behalf.' Certainly they had no special aversion to prelates or prayer-books. Knox himself was no hater of Episcopacy. On the contrary, he dealt with the proper ordering of the office of a bishop as a matter of importance in the economy of the Church. Had the nobles been steadfast to Protestantism, and gone along with his scheme of education, the bishops would have moved him little. At the very first, in 1559-60, had the Queen Regent shown. good faith, and not attempted to put down the new religion with French money and French troops, the Reformation, guided by moderate men, might have assumed a different character. Mary bettered her instruction. The result was twofold: Scotland was thrown, politically, into the arms of England; a more fiery zeal was breathed into the new Dissent. Knox was driven to extremes by the defection or indifference of the Protestant leaders, by their active opposition to his scheme of education, and by the reaction in favour of Mary and Popery. Thus the defence of freedom and religion fell into the hands of the commonalty; and from five years of civil war there emerged a stern creed and a democratic Church. The horrors

of St. Bartholomew, the terror of the Armada, worked in the same direction; as did also the preference for Episcopacy early evinced by James. From all which causes it came about that, at the union of the crowns, the current of national feeling set steadily towards democratic Presbyterianism, with, it may be, a reactionary eddy here and there at the side, but without effect on the main flow of the stream. We have passed from the comparative liberality of Knox to the harder and narrower, if more logical, doctrine of Melville.

of

When James succeeded to his great inheritance, an English courtier, with the natural curiosity of one receiving a new master, desired to learn the king's disposition from a Scottish peer. 'Saw ye ever,' was the reply of the noble humourist, saw ye ever a jack ape? Because if I hold him in my hands, I can make him bite you; if you hold him in yours, .6 you can make him bite me.' James was no sooner in English hands than he began to bite Scotland, and especially the Scottish Church. He hated, with a manifold hatred, both the Presbyterian system and the Presbyterian clergy. The episcopal polity adapted itself more readily to the political theories of Filmer; the blasphemous adulation of English prelates was more grateful to royal ears than the rude rebukes of Melville. The Hampton Court Conference, unimportant in its issues, revealed the temper and purposes the king. Certain of the clergy were convicted of high treason for upholding the independence of ecclesiastical assemblies; the two Melvilles, and six of the brethren, who had been tempted to London by specious promises of patient hearing and fair judgment, were banished or confined to particular localities in Scotland, because they would not acquiesce in Papist ceremonies, and an unchristian hierarchy.' Finally, Episcopacy was formally restored in 1606. But it was easier to create bishops than to endow them; the nobles refused to relinquish the spoils of the Church; it was found impossible to restore to holy uses even the fragment of the old ecclesiastical wealth which had been vested in the Crown by the Act of Annexation. Mr. Burton gives an amusing account of the piteous and repeated wailings of the new bishops on the score of their poverty. But it was all in vain. The one fact which 'we have to carry out of the whole selfish and cunning struggle is the determined pertinacity of the hold maintained by powerful men in Scotland over the revenues of the old Church.' These men were the worthy predecessors of the same class which supports Episcopacy in Scotland in such a niggardly fashion now.

James's next move was more decided. The celebrated Five Articles were passed in a packed Assembly held at Perth in the year 1618. They were ratified by the Estates in 1621, and when the Commissioner rose to touch them with the sceptre, according to the ancient fashion of the realm, the displeasure of Heaven was manifested by lightnings and thunders, and an 'extraordinary great darkness. To us, looking back on these matters with the cultivated indifference of the present day, it seems strange that the provisions of those articles should have excited so much commotion even upon earth. They enjoined the attitude of kneeling at the Communion, permitted private baptism on necessary cause, insisted on the rite of confirmation, and required the due observation of holy days. What was there in all this to give such dire offence?

'To see how deep these simple rules of ecclesiastical ceremonial, or ritualism, cut into the prejudices of a large portion of the community, it may be proper to glance back at some conditions peculiar to the Reformation in Scotland. The stranger in a Scotch Presbyterian church generally remarks that the form of service seems to have no other ruling principle save that of antagonism to the forms of all the churches which have adhered, in whole or in part, to the traditional ceremonial of the Church of the middle ages. Where in these the suppliant humbly kneels in prayer, in Scotland he stands straight up, with his head erect, as if he would look the Giver of all in the face, and demand what he prays for. Then in the celebration of the sacrament of the Atonement, while in other churches the ceremonies are adjusted so that the communicant shall appear as a suppliant humbly receiving the great boon at the hands of those authorised to render it, in the ministration of the Lord's table in Scotland, scrupulous care seems to have been taken to give the whole as much as possible the aspect of a miscellaneous party assembled for convivial enjoyment round a hospitable board." (Vol. vi. p. 323.)

In contrast with this it may not be out of place to quote the passage in which Lord Macaulay traces the spirit of compromise which pervaded the ceremonial, as well as the creed, of the Church of England.

'Utterly rejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation, and condemning as idolatrous all adoration paid to the sacramental bread and wine, she yet, to the disgust of the Puritan, required her children to receive the memorials of divine love, meekly kneeling upon their knees. Discarding many rich vestments which surrounded the altars of the ancient faith, she yet retained, to the horror of weak minds, a robe of white linen, typical of the purity which belonged to her as the mystical spouse of Christ. Discarding a crowd of pantomimic gestures which, in the Roman Catholic worship, are substituted for intelligible words, she yet shocked many rigid Protestants by marking the infant just sprinkled