with the zeal of orthodoxy, and tending to diverge into sects by their very emulation in forging the heaviest fetters for free thought. We find an aristocracy dishonest and unscrupulous in public life, and debauched in their private morals, who yet affected, with an exaggeration of hypocrisy, the guise of sanctimonious religion.

*

This picture is one which is familiar to all who have studied the history of Scotland during the first thirty or forty years of the last century. No more curious illustrations of it are to be found than those given in the earlier part of his Autobiography by Dr. Alexander Carlyle of Inveresk, cited at the head of this article. We have already had occasion to call attention to this volume, and to draw from it some illustrations of Scottish character and Scottish humour. But we refer to it again for guidance in regard to certain phases of the social and political life of Scotland, which may throw light upon her present opinions. In Dr. Carlyle's reminiscences of his youth, we see the extent of that corruption of society, which was contemporaneous with the sudden triumph of the Covenant. He could remember seeing the well-known and infamous Colonel Charteris at church, and feeling, as a boy, that if he allowed his eyes ever to wander from the Colonel's face, he would be infallibly a dead man.' He gives us a full account of an even stranger character, in Erskine of the Grange-corrupt in politics, cruel to barbarity as a husband, a judge and yet defying the laws, utterly licentious in morals, and yet a real enthusiast.' This Erskine and his companions varied their scenes of drunken debauch by meetings for prayer and pious conversation, and discussed alternately the high points of Calvinism and the intricacies of demonology and witchcraft. There is no doubt,' says Carlyle, of their profligacy; and I have frequently seen them drowned in tears, during the whole of a Sacramental Sunday, when, so far as my observation could reach, they could have no rational object in acting a part. Hypocrisy in this, as in so many cases, was so deeply ingrained as not to recognize itself; and after a fashion their religious maudlin was probably not assumed. Dismissed from the office of Justice Clerk, Grange, in his private diary, records his consolation in thinking that he can improve his leisure by advancing in the knowledge of religion!' And yet this was the man who had his wife carried off by main force to the Highlands, and kept her confined for thirteen years, in bold defiance of the law, in the remote and inaccessible island of St. Kilda!

* Quarterly Review,' vol. cx. pp. 138, seqq.

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Much as there was in the ecclesiastical and religious opinions of the time to foster such a type of character, there were not a few exceptions. In his absurdly overcoloured picture of Scotch society and the Scotch clergy, Mr. Buckle has entirely lost sight of one side of the truth. In the volume of Lectures which we have cited at the head of the present article, Dean Stanley has traced with a sympathetic hand the picture of the early years of that party in the Scottish Church which even then strove to moderate the extremes of fanatical zeal-that party which we believe to have kept alive the best traditions of Scottish thought and religion. In many of those who formed the society round his father's parish, or whom he met at the houses of his kinsmen, Carlyle found men who anticipated the better school of thought which he himself was to do so much to further. Presbyterian Church soon fell into two distinct camps-those who continued the extreme views and the rancorous zeal of the Covenanters, and those who strove to introduce into the councils of the Church something of enlightened theology, who desired to establish a certain order and discipline that would hold in check the fanatical excesses of the ignorant, and who sought to free social life from the sanctimonious hypocrisy which throve under the guise of an apparent asceticism. It was to the latter party-to the Moderates, as they were called, in opposition to the Highflyers, or Immoderates, or Wilds, as the other section of the Church was variously called that Alexander Carlyle attached himself. His attitude in Church matters approaches more nearly to that of Swift than of any one else in England, and the similarity throws some light on the characters of both. They are not likely to see it, who find in Carlyle and his like in Scotland only a worldly and careless clergy, or who accept the superficial view of Swift as a disdainful and hypocritical sceptic ; but it exists nevertheless. For Swift's genius Carlyle had evidently a profound respect, and his contributions to the political or ecclesiastical controversies of the day were framed on the model of Swift's ironic style. With a kindlier spirit, he viewed the attacks on the Scotch Church much as Swift viewed the onslaughts of the political dissenters of his day. He was opposed, like Swift, at once to the disturbing elements of dissent, and to the bigoted zeal of orthodoxy. Like Swift, he felt that the Church must advance in social influence, in independence, in the enlightenment of her ministry, before she could hope to exercise her proper position. He dreaded the Highflyers, not only for the galling restraint which they placed upon private life, not only for their bitterness and rancour and hypocrisy, but still more for

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the disorders which he foresaw as the probable results of their fanatical zeal.

It is a strange illustration of the complication of ecclesiastical and civil politics in Scotland, that even the Porteous mob, which had at first no other basis than the popular dislike to a violent and incautious town-officer, gave rise to a new ground of divergence between Highflyer and Moderate. The riot, as is well known, aroused much indignation, and perhaps exaggerated apprehension, at the Court of St. James's. A proclamation was ordained to be read from the pulpits, offering a reward for information as to the perpetrators. This was interpreted by the extreme party as an interference with ecclesiastical independence; and the refusal to read the proclamation, it was hoped, would serve to mark out those of the clergy who were 'fanatics.' It was to the credit of the Moderates, that they resisted any such scheme on the part of the English Government, and refused to allow their extreme brethren to stand alone. A few read the proclamation-Carlyle's father and grandfather amongst the rest -from a sincere belief that the civil government was acting strictly within its rights. But the bulk of Church influence was against the order; the Moderates were not disposed to defend it; and the whole thing was allowed quietly to lapse. It served only to show how inflammable were the materials of which the ecclesiastical parties of Scotland were formed.

Carlyle's youth fell at a time when new and better influences were dawning for the Church. Amongst his teachers were some who were called 'new lights,' at a time when the theological liberality implied in that name was a term of reproach. From Edinburgh University he passed in 1743 to Glasgow, where this party was strongest, and was represented by Hutcheson, the moral philosopher, and William Leechman, first Professor of Divinity and then Principal of the University. To them it was owing, says Carlyle, 'that a better taste and greater liberality of sentiment were introduced among the clergy in the western provinces of Scotland.' Their lectures were a contrast to those of the Edinburgh professor, who was dull and Dutch and prolix,' and who in seven years had only lectured half through Pictet's 'Compendium of Theology'! But Leechman's appointment had been keenly opposed by the Highflyers of the Glasgow Presbytery, whose fanaticism was just then stirred by the ardour of a Revival outbreak, and who possessed all that keenness of scent after heresy which is characteristic of their lineal descendants. It was not that Leechman was unorthodox, but only that he had not found it necessary in some recent

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treatise to restate all the fundamental' points of orthodoxy. Fortunately for the future of the Church of Scotland, the outcry was unsuccessful. Leechman was established as Professor of Divinity. He was the first of the later and more enlightened school of Moderates: the first of those who refused to believe that literature and scholarship and taste ought to be banished from the repertory of the Presbyterian Church. His whole life gives us a picture of something new to that Church. In place of the untiring rancour that saw in Episcopacy an invention of the Devil, he was ready to seek points of sympathy, under varying church governments, between phases of a common Christianity. You are of the Church of England,' he said to a young clergyman on his death-bed; 'I am a Presbyterian. The difference between us is not great. I give you on my deathbed an old man's blessing on your work.' How unlike the spirit that went before, and that, unfortunately for Scotland, has too often been found since his day!

Carlyle did not aspire to be in any way a leader in theology. A certain moderation in his creed, a hatred of presumptuous dogmatism, whether in the direction of orthodoxy or scepticism, were characteristic of him. His work in the Moderate party was different from that of Leechman. To infuse a spirit of tolerance into social life, to prove that an acquaintance with the polite world was not necessarily a sign of irreligion, to free the conduct of the clergy from that over-ascetic rule, which was the certain fomenter of hypocrisy, was the object which he set before himself. During his university life he was one of a brilliant company of kindred spirits. Robertson, the historian of Charles V. and of Scotland, was in his college days, as in his subsequent life, remarked for a quiet dignity of manner, a moderation of judgment, a taste for polite learning; and not less for some of his later and more ridiculous traits-a craving desire to shine in conversation, that amused his contemporaries by making him dress out their own sayings for their behoof, in dignified and rotund phraseology, and the ill-concealed Scotch 'pawkiness' which made him over-studious of his own personal interests, though in no unkindly spirit to his neighbours. Hugh Blair, at a later day the would-be patron of Burns, was another of the company: with a gift of rhetoric, a taste for letters, a naïf desire to see and be seen of the great world, and a childish eagerness and vanity about trifles that cemented, rather than estranged, his friendships. John Home, the author of 'Douglas,' was perhaps the most popular of allwith an agreeable catching address,' a handsome person, and a ready and quick sympathy that endeared him to any society.

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He chose his company as he liked them, and those he liked he covered with an unceasing and easy flow of flattery. We see him in Carlyle's picture with many foibles, but yet so loved 'that his entry into a company was like opening a window and letting the sun into a dark room.' With all these, and others whose names are less familiar, Carlyle was not so much a competitor for ecclesiastical or literary honours, as a trusted guide, philosopher, and friend. To him more than to the others the world of London was open. He was not unfamiliar with the great: had spent some early years in Rotterdam with Charles Townshend and Doddeswell, afterwards Chancellor of the Exchequer, and had found Wilkes a not disagreeable companion. He had seen the old reprobate Lord Lovat in his cups, and had shrewdly discerned the mountebank under the would-be politician. He was the familiar friend of Garrick, and, at the same time, on intimate terms with not a few dignitaries of the English Church. As the editor of his Autobiography says, 'scarcely a primate of the proud Church of England could overtop in social position and influence the Presbyterian minister of Inveresk.' And he had, above all, the rare tact which could maintain such a position without either meanness or presumption.

Down to the early years of this century he was a prominent figure in Edinburgh society. His personal appearance was so distinguished, that he won the cognomen of Jupiter Tonans, or Jupiter Carlyle-'the grandest demigod I ever knew,' says Scott. His conversation was infinitely amusing, without sinking into the buffoonery characteristic of many of his contemporaries. He was a ready and at the same time a dignified debater, at a time when the debates of the Scotch Assembly hardly fell below the standard of parliamentary eloquence at its prime. His nature was infinitely kindly, and he retained no malice for repeated instances of ingratitude or weak-kneed support accorded to himself. He pursued no selfish ends, and the liberty which he claimed for clerical conduct never in his own case degenerated into licence. Pursued as few men are by domestic griefs, he never allowed his sorrow to run into any cynical vein. Such was the man to whom, in the middle of last century, as minister at Inveresk, fell the work of establishing, strengthening, and directing the most wholesome party in politics and religion that Scotland has yet seen.

The type of the Highflyer may be seen in the man who was the leader of the opposite party when Carlyle entered the Church. This was a certain Dr. Alexander Webster-a man, we are told, ready in expedient, with a certain cleverness of debate; but without weight, or dignity, or learning. He had no

scruples,