C.x Hi brig Coleman 0. $ai£(ong ti YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS OF AN .OCTOGENARIAN HIGHLANDER #*¦ (rii/ud Vit^Ay J^ Uyv^cayi^ (^"oxitt/^ ^^^^^ REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS OF AN OCTOGENARIAN HIGHLANDER. By DUNCAN CAMPBELL, Wbo was for over a6 years Editor of the " Northern Chronicle," InverncH. THE NORTHERN COUNTIES NEWSPAPER AND PRINTING AND PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED. 1910. CONTENTS. r.\L;K. List of Subscribers ........ xi. FART I.— TIIE FARM LIFE PERIOD. CHAPTER I. Early Days ........ 1 CHAPTER II. Luchd-Siubhail : or Gangrel Bodies . . . . . -21 CHAPTER III. Big Duncan the Fool . . , . . M CHAPTER IV. Tempora Mutantur ........ 45 CHAPTER V. Education and the Church of Scotland ... 50 CHAPTER VI. Scoti Vagi 52 CHAPTER VII. Glenlyon and its Neighbourhood ..... 56 CHAPTER VIII. Some Parish History ..,,.,. 62 CHAPTER IX. Cursory Remarks on the Ossianio Controversy . . .72 CHAPTER X. The Unwieldy Parish Divided into Three .... 74 CHAPTER XI. Religious Revival . . . . , . . .76 CHAPTER XII. Social Life and Morals . . . . . . .81 CHAPTER XIII. The Highland Landlords . ... 88 CHAPTER XIV. Francie Mor Mac an Aba 98 vi. CONTENTS. CHAPTER XV. PAGE. Disappearance of Old Landed Families — Much Regretted . 106 CHAPTER XVI. Patriotism and Politics . . . • • ¦ .110 CHAPTER XVII. The Breadalbane Evictions . . • • ¦ .117 CHAPTER XVIII. The Parting of the AVays . . . . ¦ .121 CHAPTER XIX. The Church Controversy in Glenlyon . . .125 CHAPTER XX. The Outside Discussions . . . . . . .130 CHAPTER XXI. The Veto Act . . 133 CHAPTER XXII. The Coming of the Queen .... .136 CHAPTER XXIII. A Parish Vacancy .... ... 137 CHAPTER XXIV. The Presentee . 139 CHAPTER XXV. On the Edge of the Precipice ... . . 143 CHAPTER XXVI. The Disruption . . 150 CHAPTER XXVII. The Glenlyon Free Church . .... 1 55 CHAPTER XXVIII. The Broken Walls of the National Zion . . . .163 CHAPTER XXIX. The Eccentric Minister , 169 CHAPTER XXX. Eviction ......... 174 CHAPTER XXXL Farewell to the Old Industrial System . . . .186 CHAPTER XXXII. Emigration . . . . 195 CHAPTER XXXIII. A Scramble for Higher Education 208 CONTENTS. Vll. PART II.— THE SCHOLASTIC PERIOD. CHAPTER XXXIV. page. Kerrumore School . 223 CHAPTER XXXV. Cargill 226 CHAPTER XXXVI. An Unexpected Eveut ....... 232 CHAPTER XXX-VII. Fortingall ... 238 CHAPTER XXXVIII. A Population of many Surnames 247 CHAPTER XXXIX. Feill Ceit 251 CHAPTER XL. , Remarks on Parish of Fortingall Church and Affairs . . 256 CHAPTER XLI. A Disputed Settlement — Lord Aberdeen's Act . . . 263 CHAPTER XLII. A Remove 272 CHAPTER XLIII. Balquhidder 274 CHAPTER XLIV. Civil History Notes 276 CHAPTER XLV. The Patron Saint 284 CHAPTER XLVI. Two Notable Balquhidder Ministers 287 CHAPTER XLVII. Balquhidder in 1857-60 298 CHAPTER XLVIII. Proprietors ......... 303 CHAPTER XLIX. Conditions of Parish and People 311 CHAPTER L. Another Remove . . . • • ¦ .318 CHAPTER LI. Off to England 320 vm. CONTENTS. PART III.— JOURNALISTIC. CHAPTER LII. PAOE. In Bradford ......¦• . 325 CHAPTER LIIl. Rambling Ethnological Remarks . 328 CHAPTER LI v. The Great Change and some of its Causes . . 331 CHAPTER LV. Strangers within the Gates .... , 334 CHAPTER LVl. The Native Population , 341 CHAPTER LVII. 345 CHAPTER LVIII. Education . ..... , 360 CHAPTER LIX. Musiugs without Method .... . 368 CHAPTER LX. The Landed Gentry . 381 CHAPTER LXI. Classes and Masses . . 390 CHAPTER LXII. Political Currents and Eddies . . . . . 409 CHAPTER LXIII. London ... . 418 CHAPTER LXIV. Off to South Africa ..... 425 CHAPTER LXV, At Cape Town .,,,,, 428 CHAPTER LXVI, Visitors of many Nations and Races , . 430 CHAPTER LXVII, The Position of the Ruling Race . 436 CHAPTER LXVIII, The Boers . . , ... 440 CHAPTER LXIX. The Britons . 447 CHAPTER LXX. Afloat again . 454 Breakdown OONTENTS. ix. CHAPTER LXXI. page. 470 CHAPTER LXXII. At Thwaites House ....... 473 CHAPTER LXXIU. Neighbours and Incidents . . , 453 CHAPTER LXXIV. The Auti-Vaccinnation Agitation , . . 495 CHAPTER LXXV, Keighley I'luties and Politics , , , , 49^ CHAPTER LXXVl. Farewell to England . . .... 513 CHAPTER LXXVIL Back to Scotland ... . .521 CHAPTER LXXVIIL " The Northern Chronicle " . . . . 529 CHAPTER LXXIX. The Procession of Changes . . . ,531 CHAPTER LXXX, Land and People ...... 536 CHAPTER LXXXI. The Latter Days' Invasions of the Highlands . . 538 CHAPTER LXXXII. Deer Forests and Sheep Farms . . 540 CHAPTER LXXXIII. The Crofters , 556 CHAPTER LXXXIV. The Cry of " Back to the Land " . . 577 CHAPTER LXXXV. The Restlessness of the Present Age .... 583 CHAPTER LXXXVI. The Urban Invasion of the Country ... . 589 CHAPTER LXXXVII. Presbyterian Divisions . . ... 596 CHAPTER LXXXVIII. Some Pleas on behalf of the National Union of Scotch Preslivlerians . ... . 619 LIST OF SUBSCRIBEES. Aberdeen University, per Mr P. J. Anderson, Librarian. Aitken, Mrs, 3 Ardross Street, Inverness. 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Tomlinson, Mr R., Hillcrest, Pietermaritzburg, Natal (large paper) . Urquhart, Mr P., Achanor, Inverness (large paper). Watson, Dr W. J., M.A., B.A. (Oxon.), LL.D., Rector of the Royal High School, Edinburgh. Wilson, Mr T. A., General Manager, Highland Railway, Inverness (large paper). Wimberley, Captain, Ardross Terrace, Inverness. Wordie, Mr John, 75 West Nile Street, Glasgow (large paper) . Wordie, Mr Peter, Millersneuk, Lenzie. Young, Mr David, Bank of Scotland, High Street, Invernese (large paper) . Yule, Miss A. F., Tarradale House, Muir of Ord. REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS BT AN OCTOGENARIAN HIGHLANDER. PART FIRST.— THE FARM LIFE PERIOD, CHAPTER I. EARLY DAYS. I WAS born at Kerrumore in Glenlyon, where my father was a farmer, on the morning of the ninth of February, 1828, when a snowstorm was raging so fiercely that Dr Macarthur and my uncle Archibald, who had been sent for him, had, with their horses, some difficulty in crossing Larig-an-Lochain from Killin. My memory of local occurrences and of self-mental impressions becomes continuous and tenacious at five years of age, when I could read the Gospel narrative fluently in English, v/hich to us Glen children was much like a foreign language, and more haltingly in the Gaelic vernacular because of its system of spelling and the many dead letters thereby entailed. At six I could pass, after sunset and in the darkness of night, St Bran's old church yard near our house, without, as I often did before, using the Lord's Prayer or bits of psalms and hymns as a protection against ghosts. I had also long before this ceased to speculate on the 1 2 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. possibility of reaching a hand to the stars when they seemed to crowd down on the sharp ridge of the opposite hill and to hide themselves behind it. Having been once taken up the side- glen to the shealings and allowed to remain there for some time, I widened my knowledge and got rid of much infantile awe of the wonders of my expanding world, by wandering away to a mountain top from which I had a wide view, and where I found the sky was as far above my head as it was down on the banks of the Lyon. Out of the dim mists of childish recollection an event which took place when I was about three years of age flashes out in vivid light. At Moar farm house some miles further up the glen, died, at an advanced age, my grandmother's aunt. The farm house was on one side of the river and the highroad on the other. It was intended to take the coffin across the river to the highroad, and so to get to the Bridge of Balgie, which was then the only bridge on the thirty miles course of the Lyon, and was quite near to the church-yard. But this could not be done as the river was in flood and a great storm was still raging. So the funeral had to come by a rough and scarcely perceptible footpath, through one of the best marked self-sown remnants of the primitive Caledonian forest that still remain. My grand mother and I were on a bench at the end of the house waiting for it — -we were generally a league of two against the world — and when the funeral came in sight a flash of lightning seemed to dance on the wet mort-cloth and to envelope the whole procession. The thunder peal which followed caused the echoes of the many rocks and hills to reverberate like the fiiing-ofi" of a succession of big gun batteries. EARLY DAYS. 3 No doubt it was the lightning and thunder which permanently stamped the memory of this funeral on my mind. As late as about 1780, a Glenlyon woman, Elgin Menzies, wife of Duncan Macnaughton, Cashlie, who died with her infant in childbed, was supposed to have been taken away by the fairies, and the story ran that she had been seen in dreams and heard to moan in hope of rescue from the three fairy mounds — Tom-a-churain, Tom-a-chorain, and Tom- na-glaice-moire, among which she was shifted about and kept imprisoned. But before my birth, religious teaching had banished the poor fairies from their mounds, although many stories concerning them and mountain hags, kelpies and brownies, were still told round firesides and smearing tubs. Witchcraft was not much spoken of, nor much thought of, although it had not been so outrightly denounced from the pulpit as the fairies. Belief in ghosts was very general, and deemed, from the religious point of view, as orthodox as belief in good and evil spirits, and their intervention in human affairs. Nature with manifold mystic influences keeps her hold on the rural population everywhere, but this hold is particularly strong in mountain lands, lonely isles, and countries which have wide deserts. Nature and God himself can be disregarded by urban masses of people ; but it is otherwise in rural districts. Even on the plains of East Anglia and the flats of Holland, people are influenced by forces and sensations which cannot be accounted for by visible and material causes. Whatever be the reason, Highlanders are deeply laid under this spell of nature influences and scenery environment. This fact is apparent enough in their poetry and traditional stories. It takes a 4 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. pathetic form in their undying love for the place where they were born, or where in former days their ancestors lived, which is cherished by emigrants in the colonies and foreign lands, and by their children and children's children for " Caledonia stern and wild," But it is just in the stern and wild countries in which man, through contact and combat with nature in her various moods, lets his imagination fly on wings of poetry and romance, and is inspired by a patriotism that does not take a worldly account of the material advantages enjoyed by the inhabi tants of more fertile if more prosaic lands. To revert to this Highland belief in ghosts in the days of my youth, it is to be noted that although it was orthodox and very general, it was by no means universal. The sceptics were very numerous. I was one of them myself when I came to anything like years of discretion. The childish fear which made me resort for protection against danger when passing ihe churchyard alone after sunset, or in the night, was largely due to two things which deeply im pressed me. The scare caused by the Burke and Hare case sent such an after-fear into the Highlands that, among others, our churchyard was watched for weeks after every funeral because of the body- snatchers. The key of the churchyard was always kept in our house, and the watcher, with loaded gun, used to come for it. So I heard many resur rectionist stories which frightened me much worse than the usual run of ghost stories. The other frightening thing was the burial outside the church yard of a poor woman of very good character, who, in middle-age melancholic madness, had hanged her self to a beam behind the barred door of her cottage. The Glen people followed Niven, or Macniven, their EARLY DAYS. 0 priest, who joined the Knoxian Reformation at its early stage, and took to himself a wife. Since 1688 they had been, with few exceptions, staunch Presby terians, and when this poor woman committed suicide, they had ultra- Protestant religious views. Yet when startled by this most unusual event of a suicide, they agreed, in council hastily assembled, to fall back upon the traditional Roman Catholic practice of burial of suicides by night outside con secrated ground. This was the chief but not the only thing in which they unconsciously retained remnants of the superseded faith. In speaking of dead people they generally added, "Math gu 'n robh aige." " Sith gu 'n d' fhuair anam," that is to say, they prayed that all should be well with the dead man, and that his soul should have peace. When twelve or thirteen years of age, I passed, one wintry night, through an experience which much increased my want of belief in the general rank and file of ghost stories. On that night when I went to bed, my grandmother seemed to be in her usual state of health, which was a good one for a person of her advanced years. I was roused out of sleep some hours later by my father, who came to my bedside with a lighted candle in hand, to tell me that my grandmother had been seized with a bleeding of the nose, which the means commonly used in such cases failed to stop. He bade me rise at once to go for her married daughters, who lived a mile away. I had to pass the churchyard, and was full of death-apprehension. The moon was shining dimly through a hoar-frost haze. In passing the churchyard gate I had no thought of ghosts, but I shuddered at the idea that it was only too likely my grandmother would have to be buried in 6 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. kindred dust in that dreadfully cold weather. The cold added to my horror, although it could not be anything to tbe dead. I had not gone out of sight of the churchyard before I thought I was haunted by the ghostly head of an old woman which was not attached to any appearance of body. The horrid thing kept quite close to the, right side of my face, always holding the same position whether I ran, turned, or stopped. The cold sweat of fear broke out on me from head to foot. In sheer desperation I put up my hand, and lo ! I caught my ghost. The ribbon of my Glengarry bonnet had happened to get pinched forward behind my ear, and the indented end of it, covered by my breath, had frozen white, and seen close at hand from the tail of one eye, had assumed the appearance of this ghostly head of an old woman with a weird gap between a big nose and a prominent chin. Many years after I had caught this ghost of mine, I gathered a large batch of stories of the supernatural then current in the Highlands of Perthshire, and found, when they were classified, that most of them were stories of wraiths and second sight, and the few which purported to concern returned spirits of the dead were not nearly so well vouched for as the others. There was one Balquidder story which did not seem to belong to either class. It made much local stir in its day, and the unexplainable manifestations were, I was told, witnessed in open daylight by many astonished observers, who gathered from various parts of the district to see articles of furniture thrown about without any visible agency, potatoes thrown out of a creel at the burnside without hands, rhyme, or reason, thatch from the roof tossed off" without a EARLY DAYS. 7 breath of wind, and other singular performances which could only be ascribed to a tricksy Puck, full of mischievous fun spiced with a generous dose of malice. " Riochdan," or wraiths, which meant visible semblances of living persons where their bodies were not, had some similarity to Marconi's wireless telegraphy, but went a long step beyond it. The theory was that when a person strongly wished to be in another place he could throw a visible semblance of himself there. Concentration of a strong will under the impulse of an overmastering desire was required to effect the miracle of pro jection. Such a wonder-working concentration of will was held to be uncanny, and unholy even when the impulse under which it took place was blameless or even genuinely good. So double-gangers were held in some suspicion. But the second-sight people saw the wraiths of people who had no wish what ever to be elsewhere than where they were, and who had not the faintest sub-conscious idea that their semblances were stravaging. This leads me to speak of Mairi Mhor, who had been for nearly all her life a fixture in our house, and who was the last of the Glenlyon second-sighters. A very sorrowful lad of eleven or twelve I was on the stormy wintry day on which Mairi's head was laid in the grave. The custom was that clansmen should have the first and last " togail," or lifting of the dead, and that the coffin should be brought " sunwise " up to the grave. At Mairi's funeral my father held the coffin's head-string as chief mourner and I held the foot one, while four of our clansmen had the first and last liftings. When the strings were thrown in on the coffin and the first spadefuls of mould fell on it, making a hollow sound, I should 8 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. have liked to have a good cry. But as I thought crying unmanly, I restrained, with an effort, the choking sensation in my throat. Hundreds of times had I made Mairi sing the milking song of " Crodh Chailein," " Macgregor from Roro," aud other favourite pieces of Gaelic poetry, some of which survive in printed books, and some of which have undeservedly perished because not collected in due time. The musical gift, which Mairi most liberally possessed, was not bestowed upon me, but for all that I was ardently fond of Gaelic poetiy and tales of ancient days. It was my great-grandfather who brought Mairi into our family. A niece of his who was married to a distant kinsman died, leaving four or five young children. The bereaved father of these children was then in much worse circumstances than he was later on when he went down to Callander and married, for his second wife, a Stewart lass fi-om Glenbuckie. In a way common in the Highlands the kinsfolk came to the poor widower's aid and relieved him of some of his children. My great grandfather took Mairi, then seven years old, to our house, and there she remained until she died inore than fifty years afterwards. She had her first vision in the hill near a reputed fairy mound, and she always thought it was a vision of the fairies, although the shapes she saw were of grey-clothed men and not of green-robed beautiful little ladies. She was willing enough to be persuaded that she had on^ that occasion slept and dreamed, for she looked on second-sight as a frightful affliction which she was afraid of having inherited from her grand father, Iain Dubh, the Laird of Culdare's caretaker of woods and castle-lands. My great-grandfather, who was this Dark John's elder brother, besides EARLY DAYS. 9 being a farmer, was the " Maor," or land -steward. So was his father, Finlay, before him, and so was my grandfather in succession to him, until long after the division of the barony. I do not know how long the maorship had passed from father to son, but I believe the passing was continuous for at least two centuries, although ownership had in that period twice changed. The Finlay above mentioned and his cousin, Finlay Macnaughton, were soldiers for a period of years during the reign of Queen Anne, and when in garrison at Fort- William, they became acquainted with twin sisters, Anne and Janet, daughters of Dark John Maciver, in the Braes of Lochaber, whom they afterwards married. Dark John Campbell was named after his Lochaber grand father, and perhaps it was from that quarter his seership came to him. He was the only one of his father's family who had that troublesome gift. Dark John knew all the secrets of his cunning laird, James Menzies of Culdares, and guarded them with grim fidelity. Culdares was out in 1715, and he and his Glenlyon followers were captured at Preston. His men were sent as seven years' bondsmen to Maryland, but by virtue of powerful influence and looks which were much more youthful than his years, he himself got off" with a short exile on the Continent, whence he returned to the Highlands with larch plants in his valise — the first ever seen or planted in this country. As an estate improver, planter of trees, and promoter of good farming, high credit is due to James Menzies, who, after his son and heir grew up, came to be commonly called Old Culdares. He and his hench man, Dark John, remained at home during the rebellion of 1745. But he sent a gift horse to Prince Charlie by John Macnaughton, who was 10 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. afterwards tried and executed at Carlisle for killing Colonel Gardiner, when he was lying wounded at Prestonpans. The report of the trial does not support the popular surmise that John Macnaughton could have saved his life by informing against the sender of the gift-horse. But no doubt Old Culdares had a bad time of it while the case was pending. He was too artful to commit any act of overt rebel lion after his narrow escape thirty years before. But he was quite content that Cluny and his men should force out the men on his estate, as they had forced out Sir Robert Menzies' men down the water. The Glenlyon men refused to rise unless their laird put himself at their head. The laird declined to lead them, but he used underhand methods to get them to follow a youth of eighteen, Archibald, youngest son of John Campbell, styled of Glenlyon, who did not, at this time, possess a foot of land in Glenlyon, although he owned Fortingall. With this youth was joined an older man, Duncan Campbell, son of Duneaves, who then had the farm of Milton- Eonan on Culdares' estate. But it was to the youth and the old rebel, his father, that the men of the Glen looked as their " duchas," or natural hereditary leaders. Those among the men of the Glen who did not sympathise with the rebellion joined Lord Glenorchy's regiment on the other side. Old Culdares anticipated the Disarming Act, on hearing of the CuUoden defeat, by at once causing all the fire-arms of his men to be gathered and secretly buried in a place near Meggernie Castle, so that they might be available in case of another rising, for which, probably, he never ceased to hope till the day of his death in 1775. There is now plenty of evidence to prove that he was engaged in EARLY DAYS. 11 Jacobite plottings after the death of the Old Pre tender. Pending a Stuart Restoration he did not, however, fail to avail himself of interim chances. He managed to get his heir, Archibald, appointed Commissioner of Customs in Edinburgh, and to obtain for his younger son John a commission in the army of King George. While a perfect double- dealer in his relations with the established Govern ment, he was, to his honour, as true as steel to the disinherited dynasty and all members of the Jacobite party. In the summer of 1746 it was pretty well known in Glenlyon by persons who were used as scouts to guard against surprise, that an important fugitive from CuUoden was lurking about the dens and gullies of Gallin Burn, which has cut a deep ravine down the face of Gallin Hill, but it was only known to Dark John and his master who that important fugitive was, and they took precious care to keep their secret to themselves. Great care was needed, for King George's soldiers had stations at Weem, Fortingall, and the head of Loch Lyon, whence they were constantly patrolling up and down, and often visiting Meggernie Castle, where Old Culdares, as a matter of policy, received them with a show of loyal welcome and Highland hospi tality. It was noted that he had arranged a system of signals by showing lights from turret windows, which would tell Dark John when it was safe for the fugitive to come down to sleep in his cottage, and when he should tell him to keep away. One night in haymaking time, matters must have been thought very critical, for Dark John went down to Inner- wick, and without further explanation than the vain allegation of his being afraid of ghosts, forced an ex-rebel to walk up with him to Gallin. But when 12 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. they got near Dark John's cottage what sounded like the cry of an unknown bird was heard, and the rebel, Iain Dubh Chuilfhodair, who lived to be nearly a hundred, and happened to be my mother's grandfather, was kept from entering the cottage, and curtly told to go home. The seer traded on his uncanny repute at this time to put his cottage under taboo, and used his caretaker's authority to the utmost for keeping prying eyes away from the hill lurking-place of the fugitive. But who could this important fugitive have been ? I can only hint at a probable answer by asking another question. Where did Lord George Murray conceal himself in the long interval between the disbanding of the Jacobite forces assembled at Ruthven and the visit to his wife at TuUibardine ? Although Dark John could use the awe with which his uncanny gift inspired other people for protecting a fugitive from CuUoden, and perhaps other purposes, he always lamented his possession of that gift. No wonder, when his unbidden visions were usually forecasts of the deaths of persons whose deaths were then to be least expected. Old Culdares, to whom John had been grimly faithful for upwards of forty years, died in 1775. To his son and successor, the Commissioner, John had been devotedly attached from that fine fellow's cradle days. When the Commissioner and his recently married wife came to Meggernie to take possession, John was jubilant, although somewhat weak and shaken by a late illness. When at his departing for Edinburgh, the Commissioner shook hands with him and said he hoped to find him in better health when he came back again, John shook from head to foot, and wailed out the words, "We will never meet EARLY DAYS. 13 again." The Commissioner drove off", believing that John expected no I'ecoveiy for himself But no sooner was the carriage out of sight than John, amid sobs and tears, blurted out the explanation, " I may live for years, but his days are numbered. When he shook hands with me I saw the shroud drawn up to his very throat." He immediately repented of having spoken out, and as he could not recall his words, implored those who heard them to keep silent about what he had said till the bad news came, which in a short time was sure to come from Edinburgh. The silence was kept but badly, for all the people of the Glen were aware of what John had said before the news came of the death of the Commissioner, who shortly after his return to Edin burgh was seized by a malignant fever, to which he quickly succumbed in the summer of his years and the fulness of his strength. Dark John survived his beloved master for some years, but was never his old self again. The prophecy of the Commis sioner's death, of which the Commissioner himself had no knowledge or suspicion, was much talked about at gatherings of gentry in Edinburgh, as well as by people in Glenlyon and the neighbouring districts of the Highlands. The gift or affliction of second-sight did not descend to any of his three children. His son, the schoolmaster of Ardeonaig, lived, worked, and died as, in his sphere, a man of light, reading, and piety, on the south side of Loch Tay. His two daughters, who married in Glenlyon, were quite as normal as their neighbours, and so were their children, with the solitary exception of Mairi Mhor. Mairi and her grandfather would probably have been remarkable mediums had they happened to 14 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. live in this age. Their visions came upon them like unwelcome surprises, but if they had willed them instead of willing against them, the case might have been different. Mairi Mhor had not, like Dark John, gruesome visions of shrouds on living persons. Her warnings of deaths came by seeing, in open day, wraiths of persons who were not to die, but to come for the churchyard key, or to officiate pro minently at other people's funerals. She more than once mistook the appearances for the real persons, and under that idea revealed what she would other wise try to suppress, because my father disliked as much to hear about her abnormal visitations as she disliked to endure them herself Mairi was an industrious, humbly pious, thoroughly good woman, who recoiled with horror from her uncanny gift of seeing what was invisible to others. The strangest of all Mairi's glimpses of the future was her vision of the mill-stone, the announcement of which I heard, and the fulfilment of which I witnessed my self I remember very distinctly both the announce ment and the fulfilment, but being then only seven or eight years old, I rely upon the report of my seniors for the fuller form of this story as accepted by the people of the Glen. I think it must have been the time of peat- cutting, when, after an early breakfast, masters and servants went off to their work up the hill, taking with them bottles of milk and oatcakes for their midday meal, and ceming home before nightfall to a supper of broth, meat, and potatoes. Such a meal was in preparation when the smoke of the kitchen sent Mairi, who was asthmatic, to take refuge on the bench at the end of the house, where she stopped till the peat-cutters were sitting down to EARLY DAYS. 15 their food, by evening daylight. Then Mairi rushed in with blazing eyes, and, under strong excitement, told her wonder tale before my father could suppress her. As Mairi's visions were generally forecasts of funerals, he was always anxious to suppress the revelation of them, not so much from the unbelief in them which he pretended to hold, as because of the effect they would have on his wife, servants, and children. On this occasion her vision was such a wonder to herself that she refused to be suppressed. She said she had seen a great gathering of the men of the neighbourhood, pulling by ropes tied to a pole which was stuck through a hole in its middle, a big round thing which they made to roll along over the burn and on past the hillock near the burn. Then my father took her in hand and accused her of falling asleep and dreaming. It was an argument he often used to silence her, and which she knew had some foundation of fact, since it was undeniable that when busy at work, carding or spinning wool, she occasionally dropped off into dream trances. But this time she was sure she was wide awake when the wonder thing passed, and she ended by saying to my father — " I saw you there among the rest." A short time passed, and as nothing hap pened, the dream theory appeared to be justified. But lo ! one hot day the miller, in a huge hurry, and with his coat over his shoulder, came to tell the farmers who had much grain waiting to be ground for the next four months' provision, that the upper mill-stone had splintered that morning, and that the mill would, of course, have to stand idle until the broken stone was replaced by a new one. When Mairi heard of the accident, and listened to a talk about the methods to be used in bringing a new one 16 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. to the mill, she said at once, " That is what I saw." But at first it looked as if her vision would prove false to a large degree, for it was up the Glen that a rock was chosen out of which to carve the mill stone. When some cutting out had been done, a flaw was discovered, and that place was abandoned. Down the Glen, on the Ben Lawers hills, the next cutting out took place, and a good mill-stone was the result, which, with a hole in its middle and roughly dressed, had then to be taken down from its high position and piloted and dragged up to the mill. Through the hole made in the middle of it for suiting its permanent mill work, a young larch tree, stripped and rounded, was driven and used as a rudder, lever, and holdfast for the ropes by which the men pulled it on and kept it back when a drag was required. They thus managed to take it down from a rough and high mountain, and by a con venient ford to get it across the river to the high road which they intended to follow to Balgie Bridge, or a ford opposite Milton if the bridge did not give scope for the free working of their long pole. Had this intention been carried out, the procession would not have passed where Mairi had seen the wraith form. But at a narrow and dangerous turn of the road, within sight of Balgie Bridge, they found they could not get past. So they had to turn back to the ford below the manse, and having crossed there, they had no option but to follow the route of Mairi's vision, since the level fields were barred to them by the rising crops. The vision, therefore, was literally fulfilled without accident or mishap to men or mill-stone. As already said, I met with comparatively few stories about the spirits of the dead returning to EARLY DAYS. 17 trouble the living, in the Perthshire Highlands, and of those few scarcely any was so well vouched for as most of the wraith and second-sight stories. Although in Queen Anne's reign Meggernie Castle won the repute of being haunted, until a bold schoolmaster, with Bible and pistol, undertook to lay the troubled spirit with his mail-armour and clanking chains — and did it — the Glenlyon dead gave so little trouble to the living that there was no other story about them in my early days. But in those early days of mine, what was called " Spiorad na Comhsheilg," caused commotion in Breadalbane, and was much talked about in our Glen and in other neighbouring districts. The story was told before the Killin Kirk-Session, and the session clerk scrolled in writing the complaint of the Spiorad's family, and the tale in defence told by the man who said he saw the ghost and got from it a message to deliver to its family. I found afterwards that the complaint and the defence were not, although written down, entered in the Kirk-Session minute- book, and was told that the matter had been as far as possible hushed up later on, and that threatened proceedings in the civil court for slandering the dead had been given up because the Spiorad sent through the medium a further message to the family which convinced them, by certain revelation of secrets, that it was wiser to let proceedings drop and do what the Spiorad desired. As far as I can recollect, the foUo-wing was the story, which I found many years afterwards still in semi- whispered circu lation. Donald Donn, a farmer in good circumstances and of honest reputation, was lying ill when the heir and widow of another farmer, with whom he had 2 18 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. cross-transactions in former years, claimed payment for a mare Donald had bought from the dead man, and which they, the dead man's representatives, said in the settling of accounts had not been paid for. Donald, on the other hand, declared that the animal had been paid for, and so did his wife in far more decisive words than he used. It seemed indeed at the last that he relied on his wife's certainty of conviction, and not on his own failing memory. As he was clearly drawing very near his end, the claimants said they would let the question be settled by his oath of verity. So a neighbouring Justice of the Peace was called in, and Donald swore in pre sence of the claimants that the mare had been paid for. In taking the oath, he was so weak that his wife had to help him to hold up his hand. Within twenty-four hours Donald was dead, and, to use the phrase regarding people of blameless records, " was honourably buried before God and man." Time passed, and the dispute faded away from public memory, till the report spread that Donald's spirit had come back to redress the mistake he had made regarding the matter of the mare. A weaver, who had a house and a small croft in an upland glade of a wood near Donald's farm, when coming home through the wood from the Killin clachan one night was met by a dog, which, on being threatened with an iron-shod staff", changed into a foal, and then into the form of Donald Donn. In its final shape the spirit fought with the weaver, who found that, while he was grasping what seemed to be only an air- blown bladder, he received electric shocks — or, as he phrased it, shocks from " cuibhle nan goimheanan," or the electric wheel, which was then in repute for curing rheumatic pains and mitigating creeping EARLY DAYS. 19 paralysis. The weaver, despairing of his life, at last cried out, " Donald, why are you so hard with me ?" " Why," said the spirit, letting the man go, " did you not speak to me before ?" Then they entered into pacific conversation, and the spirit explained that he was suffering much from the oath he had taken, when memory and mind were failing him, in regard to the claim about the mare, and that he wanted his family to settle this claim. To shew how much he suffered he opened his long cloak, and his bare body looked like a glass case filled with liquid flame. He gave the weaver some tokens to convince his family that the message sent to them was genuinely from himself The tokens were in sufficient. The wife and children of the dead man were not convinced, but so highly indignant that they hauled the weaver before the Session and threatened to bring him before the Sheriff" or Court of Session. Before the Session the weaver told his story as he had told it to the family, and unflinch ingly maintained that it was the truth and nothing but the truth. But for all his assertions he would have been in serious trouble if the spirit, at a second interview, had not furnished him with further credentials which silenced the dead man's family, and made them anxious to hush the matter up. The hushing up was so well done that the general public never learned whether or not the claim about the mare had been satisfied, but the belief of the country was that it had been quietly settled under a promise to say nothing about it. At the second interview the weaver asked the spirit if he could tell when he, the weaver, would die ? The spirit answered that he could only tell him that when he was at the funeral of a man who lived down the Lochside his 20 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. own funeral would be the next one to the clachan church-yard. The man designated was in good health and much younger than the weaver. The latter determined to take good care to keep away from this man's funeral if he chanced unexpectedly to die before him. Neither kinship nor close personal fi^iendship would make his presence obligatory. But, as usually happened in such cases of forewarning, his " dan," or weird, was too strong for him. News in stormy, wintry weather did not then travel fast, and the weaver's croft and cottage were in a lonely nook off" the road. Business one day made it neces sary for him to go to the clachan. As he came to the junction of his side-glen road with the lochside main road, a funeral overtook him, which, as it was going the same way as himself, he could not help joining. On asking whose funeral it was, he found it was that of the very man whose death was to be the forecast of his own. He took the doom involved very philosophically ; went to the clachan, settled his business there, visited a married daughter and other friends there, calmly told them his story, solemnly bade them farewell, walked back home, took to bed and died within the week. So his funeral came next to that of the other man. LUCHD-SIUBHAIL. 21 CHAPTER IL LUCHD-SIUBHAIL : OR GANGREL BODIES. The people who travelled about in these far off days were all newscarriers, who helped to keep widely-apart Highland districts in living touch with one another. They could be roughly divided into two classes — traders and beggars. But drivers of cattle to Falkirk trysts and harvesters formed another class, and so also did the drovers and cattle dealers. In our district John Macdonald fi:om Badenoch, called the " Marsan Mor," or big merchant, was seventy years ago at the head of the traders. John travelled about with a cart of drapery goods from Inverness to Callander ou the Lowland border. His twice a year visit was something like an event in every glen between the two places. He had been trained to the business, for his father, Alasdair Baideanach, had been long on the road before him. John might have prospered like others to the west of his district, who, starting in the same way, developed into Glasgow merchant princes, landowners, and the fathers of sons who took high positions in State and Church aff'airs. But John gave long credits, and finally failed to gather in the gear once within his reach. At a long distance behind this honest, and too jolly and careless " Marsan Mor," came the eident and also honest Irish packman, Peter Bryceland, fi:om Gldsgow, and the worthy northern packman, Iain Friseil. The pedlars who came carrying boxes containing reels, 22 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. cotton balls, scissors, needles, thimbles, watches, chains, and Birmingham jewellery were a less individually marked because a more variable class. Some of them came out as pedlars on commission for the benefit of their health, or from love of scenery and travelling, and they were sure of finding food and lodging without money and without price, except perhaps a trinket to a child or a thimble to the good- wife wherever they went. I rather think our gipsies, although they had a sprinkling of Romany blood, and a knowledge of the Romany lingo, should properly be called tinkers, or travelling artisans. It seems to me that the tinkers had been a feature in the life of the High lands long before any " Lord of Little Egypt" with his followers came to Scotland and imposed on James V. and his Parliament, and that afterwards gipsies and tinkers got to some extent intermingled in the Highlands, but to an infinitely less degree than they did on the Borders. In my young days tinkers mended pots and pans, and made spoons out of the horns of rams and cattle. In the time of my grandfather, and even later, they still retained their old repute for being capable silversmiths to whom people brought silver and gold to be melted down and to be converted into brooches, rings, and clasps for girdles, or to decorate hilts of swords and dag gers. The " Ceard Ross," whose grandson, Donald Ross, I knew in Balquhidder, was famous over a large district for the highly finished articles with old Celtic designs which he turned out, specimens of which were to be found in many households as long as the old social order lasted. The tinkers of my early days mended old ornaments but made few or no new ones. With the end of plaid, girdle, and LUCHD-SIUBHAIL. 23 buckled-shoe fashion among the Highland men and women came the end of the demand for the neatly finished and artistically designed ornaments the tinkers had been making for untold generations, and when the demand ceased, the art was soon lost. In 1800 there were four corn mills in Glenlyon where there is none now. The sheep regime extinguished the little one in the Braes soon after that date, and when I was about ten, a spate from Ben Lawers destroyed the Roro one, which was not rebuilt, but St Eonan and Invervar mills were kept at work many years later on. Of the two, the oldest, named after St Adamnan or Eonan, and said to have been built by him in the seventh century, was the last to give up the ghost. It continued to grind on till 1880, or perhaps some years after that date. The successive disappearance of the mills shows how the sheep regime and large farms operated to restrict the arable cultivation of the former times. This digression about the corn mills is not so irrelevant as it looks. The grain was dried for grinding in kilns on the farmsteads, and these kilns provided better lodgings for tinkers than tents, which few of them carried about with them. The kiln which my father and the neighbouring farmer had in common was a fairly spacious and well-thatched building, in which thirty or forty old and young tinkers could lodge in what they called luxurious comfort. As it was situated near the middle of the Glen, and at the only bridge over the river, it suited them better than any other "ath" except that at Innerwick, which ranked second in their estimation. In child hood I looked on the coming of the tinkers as a great and welcome event. They usually had a donkey or two with them, and I got liberty to ride 24 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. these animals. Peter Ruadh was a good piper, and set people dancing. I liked to sit on the steps leading down to the fire-place and watch them at their work, men roasting horns and shaping spoons out of them ; women scraping and polishing the moulded and sliced spoons, the better sort of which were not without embellishment ; other men making tin lanterns and cans, and old cunning hands mend ing pots, pans, or rings and brooches. When trade abounded, they were quite industrious. But when money for work came in, they were apt to indulge in a spree and be noisy. Still the quarrelling within a band seldom went beyond words. The serious fighting took place when one band trespassed on the province of another. A ferocious fight took place on one occasion between our kiln band, who were old and usual visitors, and a band of new-comers in the Innerwick kiln, and I think we were all glad when the trespassers were well bruised and beaten off the ground. The tinkers could well have saved some of the money they earned at their trade if prudence had ruled their lives, fbr their living cost them nothing. They lived on the country where- ever they settled for a time. Their old women and young children were persuasive and scientific beggars. Their honesty was curiously crooked and depended on locahty. Our kiln band would not touch a hen roost or steal anything within a pretty wide limit of their dwelling-place. But beyond that limit, say two miles on either side, let people be on the watch against small tinker foraging. Here may be related an exception which goes to prove the rule of limited and crooked tinker honeety. Elijah was a lanky, delicate boy, who, both his parents being dead, became attached to our kiln's LUCHD-SIUBHAIL. 25 hereditary band, through his grandmother, a widow with her two sons in the army, who properly belonged to them. My grandmother had great pity for Elijah, who, besides being then physically a weakling, was supposed to be mentally wanting a penny or two in the shilling. Elijah was therefore invited to come up night after night to get a more substantial supper than he was likely to get in the kiln, where he was a sort of encumbrance, although not ill-treated, but, as my grandmother thought, was carelessly neglected. One winter night, when it was snowing hard, Elijah came and had his supper before the family sat down to table. Our farm servant, Peter, had given the horses and cows their fodder, and was passing the door with four bundles of straw for stirks which were in another place, when he was called in to supper just as Elijah had finished his and was rising to depart. Our " scalag " had left the straw at the door when he was called, and Elijah on going out found it there, thought it would be nicer than dry fern to sleep on, and forthwith lifted it and took it with him. The " scalag " did not hurry over his supper. On going out he was astonished to find the straw missing. It was clear enough who had been the thief, and he wished to go at once to re claim it. My father said that by that time tinkers would be sleeping on it, and that it was not worth while to rouse the kiln at that hour of the night. My grandmother wanted the kiln to be raided at once, but other straw bundles were given to the stirks and the kiln was allowed to sleep in peace, much to her vexation. As she had specially patronised Elijah, she was burning with indignation at his treachery and ingratitude. Next day when an old crone from the kiln came to beg a drop of milk for her tea 26 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. she was angrily refused, with the biting explanation — " Gabh thusa sin airson braid Elijah " — " Take that for Elijah's theft ! " The crone protested, when she was told how Elijah had taken the straw, that she had gone to sleep early, and till that minute had known nothing about the theft, which was probably true. The crone's report of our old dame's rage about Elijah's little lapse from honesty must have caused commotion and discussion in the kiln, for without delay two younger women came as a deputation to say that Elijah had misled the kiln people by saying the straw had been given to him. The excuse only added to the flames. " And if the scamp said so, do you pretend to have believed his falsehood ?^^Tn a hard winter, when food for beasts threatens to be scarce, was it likely that, without your even asking it, freshly-threshed straw should be sent to you when you had already as much dried fern and rushes as should content you ? Be off" with you, and never come here again begging for anything ! What you deserve is to find on your next visit the door of the kiln barred andlocked against you." " Gabhadh sibhse sin airson braid Elijah" — " Take you that for Elijah's theft." The men ofthe band then took the matter in hand. ' They came to her with abject apologies,^ pleading for "mathanas" (forgiveness), urging that she knew well that no such lapse from localised honesty had occurred for forty years before, and promising that nothing of the kind would happen again. So peace was made at last, but " gabh thusa sin airson braid Elijah " became a proverbial phrase when a favour was refused to anyone who had given previous offence. Elijah grew out of his early delicacy, and in time got a wife and family. He lived to a patriarchal LUCHD-SIUBHAIL. 27 age, with a very good name and character. In the latter part of his life he was a sort of high priest among his people. He married the young ones who entered into wedlock with religious solemnity, for he had learned to read the Bible and had a strong turn for religion. The register might be the legal glue in these unions, but they were not thought complete without Elijah's religious seal and blessing. " The craftsman of the kiln " — which is " ceard na h-atha," literally interpreted — was no respecter of the game laws, but, as he had no fire-arms, his poaching did not go beyond snaring hares and snaring or digging out rabbits. He was an expert angler both by day and night. He added the deft busking of hooks and making of horse-hair lines to his tinker industry. He fished sometimes for pearls in the Lyon, and to the indignation of our old bell man, who looked on that fishing as his own monoply, seldom failed to get some. It was assumed that the kiln craftsman restricted himself to trout fishing, which was pretty free to all at the time of which I write, but I suspect that early in the season salmon fi:'esh from the sea was consumed in the kiln when owners of streams and lochs could not get that luxury for love or money. Whatever they might do elsewhere, the tinker women did not dare to spae fortunes in our district, because they feared church denunciations. As herbalists they had a knowledge which was frequently useful to sick persons and beasts. Their eolasan or charms, spells and incantations, had, if spoken at all, to be muttered in dark corners and under promise of secrecy. They were old heathen things to which Christian labels had been incongruously attached many centuries before the Reformation. 28 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. The tinkers that travelled back and forward, plying their vocations, called themselves by High land clan surnames — Maclarens, Macarthurs, Mac- alpines, Camerons, Toiseach or Mackintoshes, Rosses, Mackays, Gunns, etc. If they were, as I think they mostly were, the descendants of native travel ling guilds of artisans who, late in their history, became very slightly mixed up with the outlandish Romany gipsies, their right to clan surnames may, in many instances, have been genuine although t|ie clans were unwilling to admit it. At anyrate they went by the same surnames during successive generations. But those of them who called them selves by the royal name were too numerous for credibility in their Stuart descent. Perhaps it was in consequence of James the Sixth's legislation against " broken men " that so many tinkers put themselves under the protection of the kingly surname. The tinkers took their clannish pretension seriously, and were hotly loyal to the surnames they had inherited or long ago assumed. My grand mother, Catherine Macarthur — who flared up about poor Elijah's theft — had, because of her surname, and because she knew much about their past history, the controlling influence of a patroness over the band of Macarthurs that once or twice a year visited our kiln, as long as they stayed there. She spoke with respect, and so did others, of Duncan Mac arthur, the former patriarch of the band who were nearly all his children and grandchildren and their marriage relations. Duncan, it seems, read his Bible, went to church in handsome clothes wherever he stayed, managed in some way to get a little education for his folk, and kept them under such strong moral discipline that they behaved well LUCHD-SIUBHAIL. 29 during all his days. Duncan's influence survived his death, and sons and grandsons of his, I am informed, took to farming and boating in Argyllshire, where they levelled themselves up to honourable positions among the population of that county. About 1800, John Mor Macarthur, my grandmother's brother, who was fifteen years younger than she was, took a turn at buying and selling cattle. At Dalnacardach Inn, then a great station, he and an Atholl man got into a fierce dispute with half-a- dozen men from the other side of the Grampians who were boasting about their own districts and pretending to run down the southern Highlands. The local patriotism which Tacitus describes as existing among the Caledonians, continued to be the source of many a quarrel over drink down to modern days. In the fight John and the Atholl man would eventually have got the worst of it, if tinker Duncan and his band, who happened to be crossing fi:om north to south, had not unexpectedly appeared on the scene and threateningly intervened. When Duncan declared that he and his would not allow Robert Macarthur's son to be ill-used by any set of men in their presence, peace had to be made on the spot, for Duncan was master of the greater force, and although not a quarrelsome, he was a resolute man who would carry a warning to deeds. However welcome it might have been at the time, John did not at all like to be teased afterwards about the way in which he had been rescued by "his tinker clansmen." He had a high and noble traditional origin for the Macarthurs of Breadalbane and Glenlyon, and refused to entertain the idea that through that traditional origin they might also have some far-off" tinker clansmen. 30 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Dr John Stewart of Fyndynate was by no means so squeamish about admitting tinker claims for clan ranking according to their surnames. He had been a navy surgeon for many years, and when he came home to reside on his small ancestral property in Strathtay, and to establish for himself a medical practice over a large district, he was found still to be a Highlander of the Highlanders in language and sympathies. He was one of the small lairds of long descent who helped much to link all classes together and to sweeten the social life of their locality and their age. He gave the tinkers a camping- place on his property, where they took care to comport themselves so well that no fault could be justly found with them by Justices of the Peace — of which body he was himself a member — nor by ministers, kirk sessions, or the country people. When they encamped on his ground he looked to it that they should send their children to school well cleaned, and as decently clothed as circumstances allowed. The camping ground was open to bands of all surnames, but if two bands came at the same time they had to keep the peace among themselves, or woe to the offenders. The tinkers who used the royal surname of Stewart — and they were numerous — looked up to Fyndynate as their special or almost heaven-born chief, and those of other surnames were not much behind them in their devotion and obedience to him. When the country had no rural police, and kilns were numerous, and there was a large and steady demand for horn spoons and tin smith's work, the tinkers had a tolerably good time of it, although their old silversmith work had come to an end with the eighteenth century in most places. As his part of the country was as orderly LUCHD-SIUBHAIL. 31 and as law-abiding as could be wished, Fyndynate did not see the necessity for Sir Robert Peel's blue- coated police. He soon carae into collision with the one who was stationed at Aberfeldy. He was driving in his dogcart one day to visit a patient whose house was some twenty miles up the country, and when he reached the Weem toll-bar he met the new policeman with a little tinker widow woman in tow. She was a daughter of old Duncan, and her proper name was Jean Macarthur, but she was known on both sides of the Grampians by the nickname of " Co-leaic," whatever that strange com pound word might mean. Amazed at seeing the harmless Co-leaic interfered with, Fyndynate pulled up his horse, and in fiery wrath — for his just indignation at anything which looked to him like oppression of the weak flared up like kindled tow — shouted to the policeman, " Let that woman go. Why have you dared to stop her ? " "I have stopped her," replied the policeman, " because she is a vagrant." " She is," was the stern retort, " what she was born to be. She was at school with me. She has brave sons in the British army. I know her history, and will be her warrant that she has always been a decent, harmless body. Let her go at once if you do not want to get into trouble for being over-officious." Then turning to the Co-leaic, he asked her, " Where were you going when this man stopped you ? " She mentioned a farm some miles further up the water. " I'll be driving past it," said he, " so get up on the back seat and I'll take you there." In this manner demure little Jean was carried off" triumphantly, and the over-zealous policeman was left discomfited. 32 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Politically a Tory ofthe Tories, our worthy doctor was practically a democratic feudalist with a sympathetic heart, unpaid services, an open hand, a voice loud in denunciation of oppression, and persuasive in pleading for the poor and afflicted. To take the tinker class as the lowest, I verily believe he did more good among them by blending kindness with scoldings and quarter-deck discipline than any of the agencies for redeeming them which have been since then set on foot. And they repaid him with reverential devotion and worshipful loyalty. I had in later years, when schoolmaster and registrar at Fortingall, a singularly touching proof of the feelings his tinker people entertained towards him. On a winter day, when the roads were slushy after a heavy fall of snow, and showers were still falling, a young sprightly tinker girl of twenty or there abouts, who, if well washed and dressed, would have been called a pretty girl anywhere, came to my house. She had a newly-born, well-wrapt babe clasped to her bosom, and her errand was to get it registered. She sat by the kitchen fire crooning in the pride of young motherhood to the pink morsel of humanity while I went for the register, and my sister made tea for her. When questioned as to the date of birth and other usual particulars, the story, in all respects a true one, which she had to tell was an amazing one. The child was not yet forty-eight hours old, and yet she had, through the slushy roads and snow showers, walked with it that day four long Scotch miles to get it registered. She made quite light of that feat of hardihood, but shuddered a little when telling what preceded the child's birth. She and her young husband were with the band to which they belonged in Bunrannoch when she began LUCHD-SIUBHAIL. 33 to think that it was nearly her time, and insisted on going away with her man at once, that their child might be born on Fyudynate's Land, where she had been born herself " When more than half way over the hill the snowstorm," she said, " burst suddenly upon us, and after struggling for a while with the storm, I became weary-worn, and my trouble began. Happily the hill barn above the Garth farmhouses was near, and my lad, the dear fellow, carried me and laid me therein. He ran himself panting — ' le anail na uchd ' — to the farm houses for help. And good women, with blankets and lights, for it was now mirk night, came to me, and could not have been kinder if they had been angels from heaven. My bairn was born in the barn, but they soon carried us both to a comfortable bed and warm fireside. It is a pity that the bairn was not born at Fyndynate, but it is a mercy he is a boy, and that he is to be baptised John Stewart." " But," I hinted, " your husband does not call him self a Stewart ?" " Well," she replied, " I am a Stewart, and my first-born is to be baptised John Stewart." When the entry was completed, she was getting to her second cup of tea, and I asked her if she would like an ember in it. " Oh," she said, " I want to be a strictly sober woman all my life, but to-day a drop of spirits would go down — deas-taobh mo chleibh — the right side of my heart." So the second cup was laced -with whisky, and having merrily thanked us and drunk it up, she went on her way rejoicing. I hope John Stewart grew up to be a hardy soldier ; but I never afterwards came across him or his parents, probably because when I went to Balquidder I was outside their travelling ground. 34 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER III. BIG DUNCAN THE FOOL. Big Duncan the Fool was called " Garth's Fool " in Edinburgh, and in the Highland glens and straths and Isles beyond his own district, " Big Duncan the Piper." His home district was the land between Logierait and Drumalbane, watered by the Tay and its tributaries the Dochart, the Lochay, the Lyon, the Tummel, and the GaiTy. Duncan and his sister were twins and both of them were born naturals. Their misfortune could not be attributed to any hereditary cause. Their father and mother were not even distantly related, and were healthy people. The two sons born to them after the unfortunate twins were two as bright lads as could be found anywhere. The father of this family of four was a tailor and crofter who prospered by his industry in a humbly comfortable and most respectable way, until he was struck down by fever and died, when the youngest was still a babe on the knee. His young widow was left heavily handicapped by the twins, and with little means beyond her own spinning industry and general resourcefulness. She had her reward for bearing with courage and hope a burden under which many in her position would have helplessly sunk, for she lived long after she saw the elder of her two younger sons a well-placed and deservedly popular minister of the Church of Scot land, and the other a worthy parish schoolmaster. The boys were clever, ambitious, and persevering. The parish school of Fortingall was taught, when BIG DUNCAN THE FOOL. 35 they entered it, by crippled Neil Macintyre, who, if peppery and a strict disciplinarian, was quick to discern merit, and to give instruction out of school hours to pupils who wanted to go to the University, and shared his own enthusiasm for classical learning. When Neil died his successor found the widow's two clever boys at the top, or nearly at the top of the school. This successor was Archibald Menzies, a probationer of the Church of Scotland, who some years later, by the influence of his Chief of Weem, was appointed to the parish of Dull. The widow- mother of the boys was a Menzies also, and that fact made, I suspect, a clannish connection which helped them on. They certainly could and did make a good fight on their own hand, but when the parish school of Dull became vacant, there can be no doubt the minister of Dull and the Chief of the Menzies clan helped to appoint Robert, the elder of the brothers, schoolmaster of that parish. As Robert wanted to make the school a stepping-stone to the Church, and his junior, Alexander, nourished a similar ambition, the notable expedient was hit upon of making them colleague schoolmasters, so that they could in alternate sessions be at St Andrews University. Robert compassed his ambition, but Alexander, after a session or two at college, married and settled down as schoolmaster of Dull, which position he most honourably held for nearly half a century. Both these Macgregor brothers were good Gaelic poets and very ardent patriots. " When Napoleon's banners at Boulogne Armed in our islands every freeman," they jointly composed a warlike appeal to the High land clans, which had no small rousing and recruiting effect throughout the Highlands. It begins : — 36 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Eiribh suas anns an am so, Gaoh ceannard tha fo'n chrun ; Cumaibh thall na Frangaich, Na leigibh 'm feasd a nail iad ; Ged robh sibh ann an teanndaohd, Na tionndaibh 'ur cui Gus an coisinn sibh lan bhuaidh, 'S am faigh sibh duais is cliu. Gleidhibh taobh na fairge, Is earbaibh ris na suil ; Bibh trie gu clis gar dearbhadh fein, Nach tig iad ann an anamoch oirbh Gus an ruig na sealgairean O gharbh-bheannan nan stuc ; 'S iad na Cinnich as gach ionad A philleas iad gu dluth. After that rattling general call on Highland patriotism, each clan is separately invoked to come forth in force for the national defence. When children, Duncan and his sister were both obedient to their mother. Duncan always remained so, but Margaret when she grew up was a handful to the poor widow. She took violent fits of lunatic disobedience, and on more than one occasion assaulted her mother, who had to be rescued by the villagers. The rescuers had no compunction about binding Margaret in tethers until she recovered what portion of sense she possessed. Duncan, who adored his mother, and was never violent to any body, strongly, if silently, resented Margaret's assaults on their mother. When Margaret died and was buried, he went to the churchyard to see where they had put her, for he never went to any funeral and always kept away from wakes, and when the bell-man showed him his sister's grave he danced on it with joy, and shouted exultingly, " Feuch an gabh thu air do mhathair a nise !" (" See if you can now beat your mother!"). BIG DUNCAN THE FOOL. 37 In childhood, Duncan and Margaret peram bulated Fortingall together. As long as Dr David Campbell of Glenlyon, on whose land they were born and their mother had her cottage, was alive they were constant visitors to the Glenlyon House kitchen, with excursions also to that of Robert Stewart of Garth. When the last Campbell Laird of Glenlyon died, and his property passed to his grand-nephew, Francis Gardyn Campbell of Troup, who was a non-resident, the Garth House kitchen became their objective. The Laird of Garth had a lawyer relative, another Robert Stewart, in Edin burgh, whom his children, and the whole local popu lation in imitation of them, called " Robbie Uncle." One evening the twins came rushing through the field to the house with the announcement that Robbie Uncle was coming in a coach, and that they had cut through the field to bring the news before he could get round and go up the drive. They were believed, although the visit was not expected. Robbie Uncle and his coach, however, were never seen by anybody else. The twins were truthful, but this story of theirs was thought to be a con coction or strange joint hallucination, until soon news came from Edinburgh that Robbie Uncle had died there on the very day on which the twins said they saw him and his coach. Duncan's early and lasting desire was to be ranked among pipers. It was said that he could detect the mistakes and shortcomings of trained fiddlers and pipers. If so, he must have had a good ear for music, although he could never play anything through himself He played bits of laments and marches and reels all mixed up in comical disorder and disharmony. But he admired his own perfor- 38 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. mances, and this made him proud and happy, especially when at weddings he could, apart from the general company, get a lot of children on a green mound to dance and shout about him in an ecstacy of mad fun and frolic. In his early teens he somehow managed to get old pipes. He then began to widen the circuit of his roamings, and to expect a piper's welcome and even fees. From a gentleman he expected a silver coin, but from a common person a copper farthing, halfpenny, or penny, would quite content him if the coin given him had a king's head on it, his motto being, " Is bonn nach fhiach bonn gun dealbh," (" A coin without an image is a worth less coin "). He never consorted with tinkers, meal- poke beggars, or any other gangrel bodies, for in his own estimation was he not a strolling piper and gentleman ? He never paid for anything, and never spent a penny in purchases or gifts. But as long as his mother lived he allowed her, under whining protests^ to turn out his pockets and take his money. He had the gathering and hiding instincts of a raven or a magpie, and after his mother's death took to the habit of concealing his coins in holes in trees and walls, and never took them out again. Several of his hoards have since been discovered, and more of them yet may be found, for although small in value they were numerous. When George IV. visited Scotland, Duncan went to Edinburgh to see him, and on coming home reported that the King was a " duine reamhar tlachmhor " (a fat handsome man). He was in the habit of going annually to the Caledonian meeting in Edinburgh, and on the road and in the Capital was treated generously as " Garth's Fool," while in his own opinion he was Garth's piper. At Queens- BIG DUNCAN THE FOOL. 39 ferry a change of ferryman had taken place. A Pharaoh had arisen there who knew not our innocent Joseph. The old ferryman passed Duncan back and forward without ever asking him to pay for the passage. The new ferryman turned him off the boat because he would not pay, although probably he coull easily have done so had not paying for anything been totally contrary to his fixed principle. On being turned off, Duncan went down to the beach beside the boat, and having looked at the sea, shouted out in a defiant tone, " Ged tha e leathann cha'n eil e domhain ; togaidh mi m' fheile, 's theid mi troimhe ! " (" Though it is broad it is not deep ; I'll lift my kilt and go through it !"). There were Highlanders on board who put his words into English, while Duncan was making visible prepara tions for carrying out his declared intentions. Several off"ered to pay Duncan's fare, but when matters were explained to the new ferryman, he took Duncan on board, and made him the free passenger he had been in the time of his predecessor. After having officiated a time at Braemar, Duncan's minister brother was appointed to the parish of Kilmuir, in Skye. Duncan used to visit the minister when he was at Braemar, but Skye lay outside the circuit of his roamings and the bounds of his topographical and social knowledge. The people there, with the exception of the minister and his wife, would be all strangers to him, and he would be a stranger to them. So he let some years elapse before he set his face towards Skye. But one midwinter, such a longing to see his brother came over him, that he went forth with his pipes on that pilgrimage without telling anyone at home. He must have had some share of the instinct of the 40 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. birds of passage, for he managed to make his way to Portree through districts hitherto unknown to him, and to obtain free ferry passage. Between Portree and Kilmuir, he was overtaken by a wild snow and wind storm. Stranger as he was, he always kept his face the right way, although he finaUy strayed a little from the proper road. He did not know it, but he was pretty near the manse when his half- frozen legs failed him, and he sat down to die. He had some breath left yet, and he used it to blow the pipes for his own coronach. His brother heard the skirling between the gusts of wind, and said at once : " That is Duncan if he is alive, and if he is not it is his ghost. I feel he is in extreme peril. Let us go and search for him." They marched rapidly in the direction of the sound, but as that was soon hushed, they lost some time in finding the place where poor Duncan had laid himself down to die. When discovered he was speechless and help less. They carried him to the manse, where on being thawed and regaining power of utterance, he said, as if in apology for his unwonted break down : — " Mar bhitheadh a ghaoth cha d' thoirinn baol air a chathamh " (" Were it not for the wind I would not care the skin of a bean for the drifting.") General David Stewart, the historian of the Highland regiments, who, on the deaths of his father and his elder brother, succeeded to the Garth estate, was Duncan's hero of heroes and earthly providence and deity. Duncan often carried messages and letters between lairds' houses, and always carried out his instructions with the greatest promptitude and fidelity, General Stewart, in conversation with Sir Neil Menzies, declared his belief that it was impossible by any temptations to make Duncan BIG DUNCAN THE FOOL. 41 break a promise or cause him to deviate from the literal performance of his instructions. Sir Neil said, " Let us put him to a hard test. Send him down to me next week with a note and an empty basket, tied and sealed. Tell him that I will send something else back in the basket, and make him promise that he will deliver it to you as I gave it to him without opening it by the way." The proposed test was carried out. Duncan gave his promise to the General, and delivered note and basket to Sir Neil, who sent him to the Castle kitchen to be well fed there, while he put the mysterious something in the basket, and tied and sealed it very carefully. He solemnly gave Duncan a note to the General and the sealed basket, and made him promise again that nothing should tempt him to open the basket by the way. The day was hot and- Duncan was well fed, and very likely had been on one of his restless roamings the previous night. So when he reached Callwood he went over the wall to have a nice sleep in the shade of the bushes among the ferns, keeping a hand still on the basket. But his repose was in a short time disturbed by movements and noises in the basket. Between sleep and wakefulness curiosity made Duncan forget his double promise. He opened the basket, and out jumped a hare, which in a moment got out of his sight among the bushes. At Garth House he delivered an open basket and the accompanying letter to the General. The latter, having looked at the empty basket, read the note and said, " Duncan, in this letter there is a hare — ." He was not allowed to finish his sentence by the word " mentioned," for Duncan, cutting a caper, cried in huge delight, " Dilliman ! Dilliman ! she has got into the letter though she jumped out and ran away when I opened the basket in Callwood ! " 42 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. At the General Election which foUowed the passing of the Reform Bill, the Whigs of Perthshire brought out Lord Ormelie, the son and heir of the very popular first Marquis of Breadalbane, to oppose the farmer Tory member, and they had a meeting to promote his candidature at Fortingall, which all the local Whig gentlemen attended. Among these was Boreland, who not long before had been tried for manslaughter. In a dark night Boreland fired with small shot at a man who had broken into his house, and when challenged and threatened, neither stopped nor spoke. Some of the pellets intended for his legs hit him in vital parts ; and although he was not kUled on the spot, he subsequently died of the injuries. Duncan of course was present at the gathering, and, in the pauses of the oratory, inter jected some skirls of his pipes. At the close he went round, hat in hand, for his piper's fee, and made a great haul of sixpences and shiUings. Bore land, having no smaller coin, threw a half-crown into the hat. Amazed at getting such a big silver coin, Duncan inspected it on both sides, and ou finding that its "dealbhan" or "images" were all that could be desired, looked up at Boreland and said in a loud voice, " Dhia ! 's math nach do chroch iad sibh " (" 0 God ! it's well they did not hang you !") Duncan's ideas of what should be his fiiU dress as a piper were peculiar. In one thing he never varied. He always wore on his head no Highland bonnet but an old chimney-pot hat. He got their discarded ones from gentlemen and ministers. His jackets were well bedizzened with buttons. He wore a girdle and shabby sporran. His kilt was less like a kUt than a woman's short petticoat. BIG DUNCAN THE FOOL. 43 Brogues and either hose or stockings, as necessity decreed, completed his attire. Very often he was restless at night, and would sleep outside in the daytime. It was lucky for himself and others that he was strictly honest, for had he not been so he might have been very troublesome, since when the night-roaming fit was on him it was his habit to go to bed in one place at the usual hour, and ere morning to be found scaring sleepers at another house miles away, and reassuring the scared ones by saying it was only himself, " 'S mi fhein a th' ann." These house-breaking night surprises were, it is said, made easier for him by the fact that dogs took him for a friend and would not bark at him. He seems to have had a brotherhood relation ship and mysterious influence over most animals. Although it is well vouched for, the following story about that mysterious influence of his is hardly credible. But it gained local belief in the district of which it was the scene, and even was pictorially represented. Here it is as far as I can recollect it:— The Laird of Duntanlich had a fine young bull, for which he got summer-grazing in the Duke of AthoU's deer forest. The animal became rampagious in the forest, attacked dogs and men, and nearly killed a forester. Word was sent to the Laird that the bull would be shot if he did not instantly take him away. Taking him away alive and safe was too risky a task to be readily undertaken by ordinary men. Knowing of Duncan's reputation for having a mysterious influence over animals, the Laird sent for him, told him his difficulty, and asked him if he would go for the wild beast. Duncan said he would on these conditions, that a horse and some lengths 44 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. of cord should be given to him, and that he should be let into the forest to spend a night there, and that the foresters should not interfere with him. Having before night-fall been let into the forest, and the place where the bull was to be found having been pointed out to him, the foresters left him to his own devices. Next morning, when people were rising and lighting their fires, they saw Duncan, with tall hat and pipes, riding down the highway on the back of a quietly marching bull, with the horse, its halter tied to the bull's tail, placidly fol lowing. Whether or not the tale received orna mental touches of fiction in the popular version of it, there is, I believe, no doubt as to the fact that Duncan safely brought home a dangerous animal, which was ever afterwards as tame as any of its kind. Had Duncan, like persons of his sort in the present day, been shut up in a workhouse or an asylum, he would soon have died of a broken heart, and the places of his perambulations would have been deprived of a long, lasting source of amuse ment. He had such a horror of death that it kept him away from wakes and funerals. He loved wedding festivities, and, invited or uninvited, con trived to be present at most of those which took place within two or three parishes. He lived and roamed about till between seventy and eighty years of age. His legs at last suddenly failed him, and he was taken to his brother the schoolmaster's house, where some months later he died. The parish minister used to visit him and speak to him about the present life and the after-death life. Duncan did not much care about either life. The word " aiseirigh," the " re-arising," which is the GaeUc for resurrection. TEMPORA MUTANTUR. 45 aroused his keen attention. "Do we all rise again T he eagerly asked. " The Bible, which is the word of God, says so," replied the minister. Duncan raised his head, clapped his hands, and cried out, " Dilliman ! DiUiman ! I'll see my General again I " — meaning General Stewart of Garth, who died at St. Lucia, of which he was Governor, many years before. To poor Duncan, seeing his General meant heavenly bliss and the fulfilment of his highest desire. CHAPTER IV. TEMPORA MUTANTUR. If, during the twenty years between 1828 and 1848, with which I am now discursively dealing as memories serve and thoughts arise in my mind, a stranger like Dr Johnson in 1772, and Leyden the border poet in 1800, passed through the glens, hills, and straths from Stirling to Caithness, he would naturally conclude that except in orderliness and means of education, the Highlands still remained essentially unaltered. And that conclusion would not be without justifying facts. Within the old Highland Lines Gaelic was still the language of the people, and the people themselves, as their sur names, and the traditions, customs, and superstitions which had come down to them on the wings of untold centuries plainly indicated, were, taken as a whole, of genuine Celtic descent. But the old and the new were already beginning to hustle and jostle one another, and the observer who looked below the surface could see that a great change was in progress, although he might not foresee the revol- 46 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. utionising eff'ect of the railways which were to open the Highlands up in after years. Before the High lands were penetrated by railways, the changing forces at work were economic, educational, and religious. From the unrecorded days of antiquity. Highland farming proceeded unintermittingly on simple lines — the cultivation of every bit of soil on which crops could be raised, and the keeping of large stocks of cattle, horses, goats, and small flocks of little sheep, which produced sweet mutton and fine wool. Cows, goats, and sheep were all milked, for next to stock increase, crops, and on the sea- coast fishing, dairy industry took its place in the family reckoning, although domestic spinning, dye ing, and weaving, besides providing clothing and linen, also supplied the money needed for purchasing what could not be made at home, and much more. Under the ancestral farming dispensation. Highland tenants had in township companies two holdings — namely, winter towns and shealings or summer grazings. The shealings might be adjacent to the winter-towns, or ten or twenty miles away. But whether near at hand or far off", the young and yeld animals were sent to them in the spring, and women, children, and the main stock migrated to them early in May, and remained there till fairly on in the autumn. I saw the last of the shealing life and shared in its romance, and also in its weirdness, when we herd-boys slept in the lonely huts before the spinning milkmaids came up with the cows and the dairy utensils. The ruined mills on many streams dumbly testify, and the records, in which rents in kind are enumerated, bear written evidence to the fact that under the old husbandry the scanty arable lands of the Highlands TEMPORA MUTANTUR. 47 produced heavier crops than they produce at the present time. The old farmers had plenty of farm yard manure, and, speaking in particular for my native district, the tenants used far back a good system of rotation, burned much lime, and so planned that every field that would be the better of the lime application got a dose of it every eight or ten years. Farming implements were simple and rude compared to what they are now, most of them being made at home, but in result cultivation was much better than it is now, and much more land was under crops. Although Jacobites might still hope and plot for the restoration of the Stuart dynasty, within twenty-five years after CuUoden the Highlands, by garrisons, military roads, and, immediately after the battle, by Cumberland atrocities, were brought into the firm grip of law and order. "Creachs" and clan feuds were put an end to for ever more. No room was left for even another Rob Roy. The Church of Scotland, which had all along stood firmly for the Revolution Settlement, and had in many a district of Gaeldom to encounter the hostility of Jacobite chiefs and potentates, was now able to assert a dominating position in regard to matters of faith, morals, and education. Clannishness retained much of its pristine vigour, and still survives as a senti ment of kinship and brotherhood from far off" times. The feudal power of nobles and landowners had, however, its tap-root cut by the abolition of herit able jurisdiction. Therefore proprietors turned their attentions to the management and improvement of their estates. It was not till well on in the next century that they realised the letting value of their fishing and shooting rights, which they were far 48 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. from enforcing strictly as long as they kept them in their own hands. But they were easily persuaded by Lowland advisers that they could get higher farm rents by abolishing the shealings, as far as they were separable from winter-towns, and by stocking them with blackfaced sheep from the Borders, which were much bigger and hardier then, whatever they may be now, than the small native breed, which in hard winters had to be housed and hand-fed. Economically, or from the higher rent point of view, the advice was good, and it held good for the subsequent hundred years, until colonial and foreign wools reduced the value of the home product, and the cost of wintering the home sheep had run up to almost the equivalent of a second rent. Pacification of the Highlands next turned the attention of the Lowlanders to the chances opened to the Lowland sheep-farmers and shepherds, who, acting as proprietors' grieves and instructors of native tenants in Border sheep-farming, gathered gear and courage to take shealing farms themselves. The Lowland invasion of estate-managers, grieves, shepherds, and blackfaced sheep began in 1770. On the part of most proprietors who were continuously resident on their land, excepting for winter visits to Edinburgh, and who had kindly sympathies and relations with their people, the social revolution involved in the abandonment of the old system was fully realised and dreaded. Noblemen who, like the Earl of Breadalbane, had wide stretches of old deer forest lands, turned them into sheep-farms, and on them the blackfaced sheep from the Borders, under the care of Lowland managers and shepherds, were placed and found to be profitable. But tenants' shealings were in most cases left undisturbed for TEMPORA MUTANTUR. 49 the next thirty years. Old Culdares, who was an agriculturalist beyond his age, put blackfaced sheep on his home farm of Gallin and its far away Ben- vannoch shealing, but did not disturb the tenants' double-holdings. In bringing into the Glen Walter Grieve from Huntly, Selkirkshire, and Walter Scott from Wester Buccleuch, Roxburghshire, his avowed object was the teaching of native tenants how to manage club-stocks of southern sheep for them selves. That object was fully attained, although he did not live to see it. In 1779 a temporary back set was given to the new sheep regime by the price of wool falling from 5s to 2s 2d per stone ; but the blackfaced once introduced very soon superseded the small native breed. The native farmers formed club-stocks of them, while their other animals, like the arable land, remained as before in individual ownership. Old Culdares was pressed by debt. His chief adviser, Mr Anderson, afterwards minister of Old Deer, proposed to divide the barony into a few large separate farms, but however pressed for money and tempted by what Mr Anderson assured him was a certainty of gain, Culdares was too much of a Highlander to adopt a plan so radically revolutionary and so harsh to his native tenants. The Lowlanders who came with the blackfaced, and later on with the Cheviots, remained in most cases in the Highlands and drew others after them ; but the conquering Lowland invasion only began with the railway era. 50 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER V. EDUCATION AND THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. In the eighteenth century the Highlands became fully equipped with parish schools, and well sprinkled with side-schools of more kinds than one, but all of which were under the superintendence of the Church of Scotland, As a rule Whig and Pres byterian landlords co-operated with the Church, but it is to the ceaseless efforts and constant pressure of the Church that the remarkable spread of education in the Highlands between the Revolution and 1800 must be attributed. Jacobite landowners as a class, with many exceptions, looked upon the schools as weapons put into the hands of enemies (already too formidable) both to the Stuart dynasty and the feudal power of landlords. Yet before the third part of the eighteenth century had passed into history, a strong conservative element had tempered the doctrinal and disciplinary intolerance inherited from the Covenanters. The Erskine Secessionists and other subsequent bands of sectaries testified loudly against the unfaithfulness of the Moderate rulers of the Church of Scotland, who preached, they complained, cold morality sermons, did not excom municate obstinate offenders, and did not ask the civil powers to burn witches and execute atheists. From the specimens of the decried sermons which have come down, I think the aUegation that they were sound and often excellently composed moral essays rather than purely doctrinal discourses must EDUCATION AND THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 51 be accepted. But the question arises, were the ministers within the Highland line as moderate and cauldrife in matters of doctrine as the Lowland rulers of their Church ? That question as regards many of them must be answered in the negative. In the Highland parishes watered by the Tay and its affluents, the parish ministers of the eighteenth century, from George the First's reign till the beginning of the next century, when a few slack ones appeared among them, were evangelical in their preaching, stern reprovers of the vicious, excellent guardians of the poor, and vigorous pro moters of popular education. Mr Archibald Camp- beU, minister of Weem, who died in 1740, mortified six thousand merks, at that time a large sum, which could not have been saved from his small stipend, for endowing side-schools in three outlying parts of his extraordinarily divided parish, Mr Duncan Macara, for half a century, from 1753 downwards, minister of Fortingall, saw to it that Glenlyon and Rannoch had side-schools, in which reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the Bible and Shorter Catechism were efficiently taught. Mr James Stewart, min ister of Killin, who first translated the New Testament into Highland Gaelic — the Irish version having been used before — was a zealous evangelical preacher. A similar tale had to be told of the large majority of the Highland ministers of the eighteenth century, both north and south ofthe Grampians. The hymns of Dugald Buchanan, who was Mr Macara's missionary-schoolmaster at Kinloch-Rannoch, may, I think, be taken to represent fairly the kind of theology then prevalent in the Highlands. High land theology was in strong contrast to that of the cold morality discourses which evaded the enforce- 52 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. ment of positive doctrines, and seemed to verge on philosophical deism. That fact explains how readily the religious revival which took place in the south in the early years of the nineteenth century received a hearty response in the Highlands, and how hotly afterwards the Highlanders went into the anti- Patronage movement. CHAPTER VL SCOTI VAGI. Highlanders followed with hearty goodwill the leadership of ministers and elders in educational matters. They were passionately attached to their own language, and thought that the Highlands, without Gaelic to wake the echoes of its rocks and fairy-haunted corries, would lose all romance and charm, although scenery, grouse, deer, and fishing waters still remained. But they always desired to be bi-lingual, so that they might through their surplus youth invade the Lowlands and the wide world. They had always in peace and war been carrying on that invasion, and they little dreamed a time would come when the Lowlands and England and Ireland and foreign countries would invade their mountain lands, or when Gaelic would either be extinguished or verge upon extinction before their descendants understood that with its disap pearance Gaeldom would be deprived of a soul- element and make a belated rally to try to arrest that peril. Before they had many schools at home, they used to send their children to serve as herds in the Lowlands in order that they might learn the SCOTI YAGI. 53 "Beurla," and it was the custom for large numbers of their grown men and women to go to the Low lands yearly to earn wages as harvesters, and at the same time to enlarge their knowledge of the sort of English spoken there. When they got schools of their own where pure book English was taught, there was no further cause for going to the Lowlands to learn "Beurla." Englishmen, who as sportsmen, or visitors on other accounts, came to the Highlands from the date of Dr Johnson's journey downwards, found Highlanders who spoke English at all, speak ing pure book English with some ofthe mountain tongue's accents clinging to it in a way frequently pleasing to their ears, while they found the "Beurla" of the neighbouring Lowlands in some districts horribly harsh and hardly intelligible to them. But from time immemorial there had been a permanent necessity for the surplus population, bred and brought up in the Highlands and Isles, to seek outlets and means of existence in the Lowlands or the wide, wide world. " Scoti Vagi" the ancestors ofthe Highlanders had been of old, and "Wandering Scots" the surplus population of Highlands and Isles had to be for all ages while the old conditions lasted ; and while the abler wanderers sought scope for ambition, and the less aspiring better means of subsistence, in the Lowlands and in far countries, the old love of adventure and self-reliance inspired the race as a whole. Swarms of Highlanders went to the last Crusade under the two Celtic Earls — Atholl and Galloway. In succeeding ages swarms of them served and fought in France and Germany. As soon as King James ascended the throne of Queen Elizabeth, adventurous Highlanders found their way to India and the Colonies— or plantations 54 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. as they were then called. And wherever High landers went they drew more of their race after them. Banishment of Highlanders who were rebellious or unruly at home strengthened the British possessions abroad. The Highlanders cap tured at Preston were sent to Maryland, and were soid as bondsmen for seven years to the planters. When their term expired some of these ex-bondsmen came home, and some remained in the land of their exile and called out friends from home to join them there. Upwards of fifty years ago, Mr Shiels, R.S.A., who before 1826 spent many years in the south of the United States painting portraits, told me that when he was in Maryland he was informed that in a corner of that State there was a community of several thousands who still spoke Gaelic in their homes and retained many Highland customs. Those who were banished to Barbadoes, Jamaica, and other West Indian Islands were not founders of Gaelic- speaking communities like those banished to Maryland, or General Oglethorpe's Carolina emigrants, or the later emigrants to Cape Breton and Nova Scotia, but they undoubtedly drew many other Highlanders after them. In his description of James the Fourth to his sovereign Ferdinand, the Spanish ambassador, Don Pedro de Ayala, enumerates the many learned and foreign languages which that charming, chivalrous, and rash King of Scots could speak, and says : — " His own Scotch language is as different from English as Arragonese is from CastUian. The King speaks besides, the language of the savages who live in some parts of Scotland and in the Islands. It is as different from Scotch as Biscayan is from Castilan." Don Pedro accepted without investigation the epi- SCOTI VAGI. 55 thets appUed to the Highlanders by the Lowlanders, who had some justification in raids, spoliations and clan feuds, and civil war commotion, f@r calling the Highlanders " savages." In HUl Burton's " History of Scotland " the old race rancour between Lowlands and Highlands manifests itself without much abate ment. But HiU Burton and other Lowland and general historians overlook the fact that a long- continued pacific Highland invasion, meeting there with the primitive survivals of the Britons of Strathclyde, and the Picts of Galloway, celticised Lowland Scotland itself to an extraordinary degree. Let anyone look at the present day names in assess ment rolls, at the shop signs, the office and firm names, and count up those which are unmistakeably Gaelic — pushing the semi-disguised forms aside — and he will be driven to the conclusion that the Celtic element in the present day population of Scotland is stronger than any other one. The adoption of Chatham's scheme for enlisting Highland valour in defence of the British Empire, by raising Highland regiments commanded by High land gentlemen whom the men were ready to follow anywhere, and with them to do whatever mortal courage, obedience, and endurance could achieve in war, laid the foundation for broad Imperial patriot ism in the Highlands, and brought such a new glory and strength to the British Army that, all down from the capture of Quebec to Waterloo, the Government looked upon Gaeldom as a nursery of soldiers, and in various ways discouraged emigration — especially to the United States. Proprietors who by raising quotas of men got commissions for them selves or their sons and relations, and who moreover cherished kindly sympathies and frequently com- 56 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. munity of hereditary ties with their tenants, like wise discouraged emigration. And although the steady old migration to the Lowlands, and — since the Union of the Crowns — to England, went on in a stronger stream from year to year, and a large number of the young men went into the Army and Navy, the population of the Highlands became more and more crowded than it ever had been before, between 1760 and the end of the century. Mean while the sheep regime, by absorbing the great upland shealings and leading to the consolidation of the winter-town holdings, was aggravating the crowding, and by degrees the profits of domestic industries were departing. But during the long war with France prices for wool, sheep, cattle, horses, and surplus of crops, had so much gone up that while old leases lasted the tenants prospered. Whenever the leases expired rents went up, and on the heels of higher rents, prices went down as the time of inflation was followed by depression. CHAPTER VII. GLENLYON AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. The old system of farming was yet making a stiff" fight vnth the new one, although flocks of blackfaced sheep were on all the brae shealings and on all the hills connected with arable land in the lower end of the Glen. One large shealing called Rialt was, till after 1840, held by Breadalbane tenants whose winter-towns were a good distance away, and the Roro tenants had a shealing in the shadow of Ben- lawers on their own hill, and so had the four tenants GLENLYON AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. 57 of the Eight Merkland of Kerrumore and Craigelig, of whom my father was one, in their own Conaglen. The population was thrice as numerous as it is now. The people were industrious, well clothed, comfort ably housed, and sufficiently supplied with simple frugal and healthy food, such as meal, butcher meat, milk, butter, cheese, and potatoes. Up till 1845, potatoes were at their best and so abundant that, with fish on the Islands and the West Coast, and with mutton, braxy, pork, and milk, butter, and cheese on the mainland, they formed the chief item in the dietary of the humbler classes ; oatcakes, barley scones, and porridge taking secondary rank, especially after the short crop of 1826. As much land as their little middens would manure was given to cottars freely by the farmers, who also bestowed gifts of potatoes on the poor and helpless out of charity. There was a wonderful amount of charity, mutual help and sympathy, among the Glenlyon inhabitants of my early years. No doubt it was so throughout the Highlands generally, as the con ditions and connections were so much alike every where. According to their surnames, our Glen people were descended from twelve or more different clans. But by centuries of inter-marriage they had all become a kind of one clan through affinity and consanguinity. They did not approve of the marriage of first cousins, but unless a man, as happened pretty often, brought a bride from another parish, he could not marry a Glen girl with whom he was not related more distantly than first cousin- hood. While kinship near or far made it the duty of the comfortably-off to help those that were badly- off", usually through no fault of their own, it Ukewise filled the stragglers with such pride of independence 58 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. that, however hardly tried, none of them took the road as beggars going with meal-pokes from door to door. What a lonely woman did was, at clipping time, to go round the fanks "air faoigh oUamh" ; in other words, to ask for puckles of wool, which she took home and spun and so turned into money. Men who drifted into helplessness often quartered themselves for the end of their days on well-to-do relations who did not grudge them their keep. In our Glen a clannish community through inter-marriage was thus formed by people of many surnames. It was much the same in the neigh bouring glens and districts. There never existed on the south side of the Grampians a parish or barony or estate of many farms that was inhabited by people of one surname. I question whether the ideal of one-clan or one-descent ever existed any where on the Highland mainland, or in the larger islands, whatever might be the case in the smaller islands. The one-stock clan idea came out of a precedent Celtic system which was superseded by the feudal system. When the clans in the four teenth century began to raise their heads, they had, in order to succeed, to graft their idea on feudalism, and to accept the mixed population that had gathered themselves under it. On the other hand holders of feudal charters like the Seton-Gordons, the Erasers, Menzieses, Chisholms, etc., had to act like Celtic chiefs to make their charters good. The abolition of the large brae shealings, and the consolidation of some of the lower farms, almost put an end to the summer life romance so dearly remembered by my seniors, and cramped a growing population on the part of the Glen which had most of the arable land. The coming necessity for GLENLYON AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. 59 voluntary emigration or landlord eviction of people for whom there was no room or opening in the Glen was plainly foreshadowed, and understood by the people themselves, who, besides the chronic drifting southward, had sent off swarms of emigi^ants to Canada before 1820. But until the abolition of the club-farms, which was completed in or about 1850, the old industrial order struggled to hold its ground. It was, however, for the last ten years of that struggle, being pressed to death between the two millstones of sheep rule and the lost value of the " calanas " or spinning industry of the women. The manufacturing inventions of the preceding century led to the putting up of water-mills for wool and cotton ; but until steam power was introduced the coalless parts of the coimtry did not realise that they were doomed to lose their domestic industries, nor did they lose them at once, although gradually they began to be less and less profitable. Flax- growing, followed by its spinning and weaving, was a great and very ancient industry in Glenlyon, and indeed in all parts of the Highlands where good flax could be grown in suitable soil, which was as carefully prepared, manured, and weeded as garden beds. Splendid flax was grown in Glenlyon, and fine yarn and linen were produced therefrom, by following the processes of cultivation, steeping, scutching, heckling, and spinning, which had come down from the days of old, and which were carried out by simple means, without any innovation, until towards the end of the eighteenth century, scutch ing mills relieved the home workers of part of the initiative drudgery. The lassies, who went with their mothers and the mUch cows to the shealings, were early taught to spin on the hillsides while 60 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. they were tending calves, by distaff" and spindle, while their elders were busy at their wheels within the huts, between milking times. The cheapness of Manchester cotton goods never so wholly destroyed the value of the Highland flax-spinning and weaving that it should have been abandoned. In spite of the discouragement caused by the cheap cotton industry, Ulster kept its linen industry aud made it pay all through. It never was more flourishing than it is at present. But it is an industry which can only thrive in a well-populated rural district; and Ulster was never depopulated by a sheep- regime invasion and a craze for large farms like the Highlands. Should the central Highlands ever go back to farms of moderately small size — something much larger than crofts — the linen industry might be revived with much advantage. To return to the old order in Glenlyon, all the hard field and hill work was done by the men, while dairy-work, house-work, and the important " calanas" by which all were clothed, and chests were filled with blankets and webs of linen, and revenue secured by the export sale of linen and woolen yarns, fell within the special domain of the women. As long as the large far off" shealings remained, the women had a smaller share than they had afterwards in harvest work or field work of any kind. But before and afterwards there was plenty of work for both sexes although the remuneration was not in propor tion to the care and labour bestowed on the work. It fell as a heavy task to the men in addition to the legitimate farm work, that they had to thatch, repair, and rebuild homes, byres, barns, and stables, pro prietors giving nothing but the timber as it stood uncut in the woods. The cutting and winning of GLENLYON AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. 61 peats formed part of the ordinary farm labour. The manifold calls on their ingenuity and forethought made both sexes very diligent and resourceful. They formed, as it were, a self-contained, self-sustained, self-sufficing community. Whether they went as small feuars to dig out Flanders Moss, or emigrated to the Canadian forests, they took with them a hundred self-helping arts and qualities which in most cases ensured success. They were not, as a class, so well fitted to prosper in manufacturing towns, although some of them did prosper there both as merchants and manufacturers. I do not think that there could possibly be better nurseries for soldiers and pioneers of empire, or better training schools for agricultural emigrants to the colonies, than were the Highland mainland communities that remained substantially under the old order for a century after the reign of law was established on CuUoden Moor and the Church of Scotland covered the country with schools. Soldiers, Hudson Bay Company servants, adventurers and emigrants, took with them everywhere self-helpful resources of many kinds, and a standard of morals which even the wastrels among them could never forget nor violate without prickings of remorse. That standard of morals had Shorter Catechism teaching for its back bone, but that steel-like backbone was invested in the warm flesh, skin and blood of Highland chivalry and undying love of native land. 62 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER VIII. SOME PARISH HISTORY. The parish of Fortingall was in area less like a parish than a small county. The Reformation sup plied it with one parish minister and one parish school-master, who lived close to each other at Fortingall village. It was a long time before Glenlyon and Rannoch were each provided with side-schools, the latter with one at the upper end and another at the lower end of Loch Rannoch. It was in the latter that Dugald Buchanan taught during the early part of Mr Macara's long ministry. The earliest of the Glenlyon schools was set up at Innerwick, and the second at Roro. Mr Ferguson, minister of Fortingall parish from 1719 to 1752, was an uncompromising upholder of the Revolution Settlement and Presbyterian doctrines and discipline. He made himself a sort of terror to the Jacobite lairds of the parish, and was accordingly much detested by them. He succeeded, in 1719, Mr Alexander Robertson, who had been deposed for having read treasonable papers from the pulpit at the time of the 1715 rising. Mr Ferguson during the '45 rising acted with the full courage of his con victions, and when Prince Charlie was at Castle Menzies, within a few miles of his church and manse, increased rather than diminished the emphasis of his denunciations. In 1752 he died from a cold which he caught through having fallen into the river from an upset boat. For over thirty years his ministry SOME PARISH HISTORY. 63 was a long fight with ignorance, immorality, dis- orderliness, and adverse heritors, who, I believe, with the sole exception of Sir Robert Menzies, were Jacobites, and, as long as he lived, adherents to the deposed minister, Mr Robertson, who became an Episcopalian. It was said that at first Mr Ferguson tried concUiation, but if he did he found it of no use, and he soon went on the war-path, which he never afterwards left. About 1726 he forced an augmen tation of stipend on his heritors. Immediately before his death he compelled them to renovate his manse, which, in spite of remonstrances, they had long refused to do. While this work of renovation was going on, he went to lodge with his wife's relatives at Laggan on the other side of the river— hence the river crossing and the boat accident, about which there was a whispered suspicion that it was less accident than a malicious Jacobite trick to give the strong-handed minister a ducking. Be that as it may, Mr Ferguson died of the cold he got by the immersion. He died, was buried, and then the groundless story arose, fi?om a light having been seen in the vacant manse, that after death he walked and found no rest until he had an interview with his successor. His successor was as much a Church mUitant warrior as himself His lot fell on happier times, and he was able to carry much further the work of reform which Mr Ferguson had begun. In 1715 the men ofthe parish of FortingaU, gentry and commons, rose spontaneously on behalf of the Stuart dynasty. They thought it disgraceful that a " wee, wee German lairdie " should succeed Queen Anne in the place of her brother. They had not bothered their heads much so far about the religious and con stitutional questions which came home so acutely to 64 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. hearts and minds in other parts of the country. They had no persecution during the Restoration period. With two or three exceptions the ministers of the then big Presbytery of Dunkeld, if half of them Vicars of Bray by compliance, were worthy men who kept on the old order of worship and forms of discipline without innovation. The only novelty was the re-introduction of a bishop, who was not personally objectionable. It was remembered how before the Restoration, Monk and his Cromwellian troops ruled the Perthshire Highlauds from Finlarig, and how humiliating the rule was to Scotland although it produced unwonted order, stopped the cattle-raiders, was justly administered, and, outside national sentiment, had little of the bitterness of conquest. But, good or bad, they would not tolerate Saxon rule again if they could help it, and whatever evils Whig Statesmen and Lowlanders might predict, they would fight for placing the right heir on the British throne. So they fought and were much disappointed in many ways. Mar was an incompetent commander who by delay allowed the Duke of Argyll to scrape together a smaU army, which won the results of victory at Sheriff"muir although the battle itself was indecisive. When at at last the " right heir " presented himself to his discomfited and angry army at Perth, his gloomy countenance chilled their returning ardour. But worst of all for Jacobitism in the parish of FortingaU was the different treatment received by followers and leaders after the suppression of the RebeUion, Old Culdares — then a young man whose supposed minority was used as a plea in his favour-— John CampbeU of Glenlyon, and Struan, the poet chief of the Robertsons, after a short exile in France, were SOME PARISH HISTORY. 65 pardoned and restored to their estates, while the common men were sent to be sold as seven years' bondsmen to the plantations. Popular resentment arising from this difference of treatment was not lessened by the stories returned bondsmen had to relate. And in the thirty years between the two risings education had been spreading, and the power of the Church had grown into a real check on the old undivided sway of feudal proprietors. Between one thing and another the '45 rising on the south of the Grampians, and in most places on the north side likewise, was far less spontaneous than had been the '15 rising. In the parish of Fortingall, Old Culdares, John Campbell of Glenlyon, and Alexander Robertson of Struan, who had been in the former rebellion, were still to the fore. Culdares was still in the prime of life, but although steeped to the neck in Jacobite intrigues, was far too prudent to endanger that neck a second time. He sent a gift horse to Prince Charles, and remained at home. His second son held a com mission in King George's army, and he was trying to get civil service employment for his elder son. He wanted to be safe whatever happened. He thought that Cluny would succeed in getting the Glenlyon men out while he himself kept aloof; especially as Cluny and his Badenoch warriors had just, under threats of fire and sword, forced out Sir Robert Menzies's tenants, little to their own liking and far less to the liking of their chief The Glen lyon men flatly refused to come out at Cluny 's call, and wanted to know why he did not begin by getting Culdares to rise with him. Culdares plotted and would not rise. But Glenlyon and Struan, who were now too old to fight or even to ride, were 5 66 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. as full of enthusiasm as they were in the former rebellion. Glenlyon, whose eldest son was in King George's army, and had earned praise and the right to promotion at Fontenoy, sent his .youngest son, Archibald, a mere youth, along with a son of Duneaves, to call out the men on the Culdares estate, and about thirty of them responded at once to what was to them a sort of hereditary call ; for although Glenlyon had nothing then of the old glen barony but the empty name, he was the repre sentative of those who in peace and war had led the Glen men for two centuries. Struan fired the heather in Rannoch, although stricken by age and infirmities. The two all-daring veteran rebels did another thing, in conjunction with a younger Sheriff'muir comrade of theirs, Menzies of Shian, which was both romantic and clever. They carried the fiery cross round Breadalbane to raise recruits for Prince Charles, and the device did succeed in raising a few. The Earl of Breadalbane was spending the closing years of a rather useless life at Bath, while his capable and energetic son. Lord Glenorchy, was from Taymouth ruling Breadalbane and striving with might and main to hold it for the Government. The three Sheriffmuir veterans got in with their fiery cross under his guard, and wiled away some of his men, but he kept the bulk of them in his regiment, and also as many of the Glenlyon men as had not gone to fight and fall or fly at CuUoden. Mr Ferguson volleyed and thundered against rebellion from the pulpit of Fortingall Church, and the ministers of the neighbouring parishes were working on the same side, if in a less belligerent strain, while Lord Glenorchy was gathering up into a fighting host the Highlanders SOME PARISH HISTORY. 67 who had imbibed Church of Scotland political views, and had got the keys of knowledge, reading, writing, and arithmetic, in parish schools and side schools. The '45 rising, which was far more disastrous than the '15 to the propertied rebels, possesses a dazzling amount of meteoric splendour. Unlike his gloomy father, Prince Charles had the gift of fascinating his Highland followers, who, through the accounts they gave of him to their children and children's children, exercised a reflected mes meric influence on succeeding generations of people who detested the principles of his dynasty, and who knew about the inglorious latter years of his own life. Long and stoutly as Mr Ferguson fought for the Presbyterian conquest of the whole ofthe unwieldily large parish of Fortingall, by the combined forces of religion and education, he had to leave to Mr Macara the hard task of bringing all Rannoch to the same orderly condition as Fortingall, Glenlyon, and Bolfracks. The lower half of Rannoch, although Jacobite and anti-Presbyterian, was not particularly unruly. The unruly elements gathered in the braes and woods belonging to Struan. In the cattle- lifting days Lochaber and Rannoch raiders were usually co-workers. These days were now over, but thieves of both districts were still at work in a small way. When Mr Macara was inducted as minister of the parish, I believe that rebel and thief, the Sergeant Mor, was still at large and living on the country. His refuge cave Avas in Troscraig, between Rannoch and Glenlyon. An incident in his early life prejudiced Mr Macara against Rannoch evil doers, and an incident in his early ministerial career confirmed that early unfavourable impression. Mr 68 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Macara's father was a saw-miller, carpenter, and timber merchant, at Crieff", who bought a quantity of fir timber fi-om Struan. Mr Macara, then a big lad, wearing a new pair of stout Lowland boots, came with his father's men and horses to feU and fetch away the purchased timber. As the lad was one day at work out of his comrades' sight and hearing, a big thief jumped on his back, and, having thrown him, stripped off" his boots. The incident in his early ministerial career was of a different and, from his point of view, of a far more heinous descrip tion. He had been up to the head of the loch, preaching and catechising, where his duties detained him to a late hour. He was making his way to Kinloch through the pine-wood, when he was stopped by armed men, who pulled him off' his horse, dragged him into the wood, where were an old man, an old woman, and a younger one with an ailing infant child. He Avas ordered on pain of death to baptise the child there and then. He knew his leading assailant to be a married man, and had heard during his perambulations that a servant maid had lately born a child to him. The child got ill, and the poor mother was terribly afraid of its dying un baptised. So was the father of it, who was far fi:'om being thoroughly evil and inhuman, although passionate and violent. The minister, telling the man that he would call him to account for his double misconduct, accepted the girl's father and mother as sponsors, and there and then by torch light in the pinewood, baptised the chUd, who did not die of its infantile ailments. Mr Macara was not vindictive nor revengeful although a hard dis ciplinarian. In this case he had an opportunity for giving unruly parishioners an impressive exhibition SOME PARISH HISTORY. 69 of Church power and discipline. He had the offender in a cleft stick, for had he not violated the law of the land as well as the law of the Church ? The minister did not appeal to the law of the land, but he carried out the law of the Church in regard to adulterers to the utmost extent; and the man, who was well connected, fearing the criminal prosecution to which he was liable, escaped that danger by making twenty-six appearances as a penitent, most of them in the parish church of Fortingall, and some at Kinloch and Killichonaln when the parish minister preached and baptised children there. Similar work was going on in the less unruly parishes. A power, as all saw, had arisen in the land which claimed the right, in God's name, of supervising faith and morals without fear or favour. Mr Macara had elders ordained in every part of his parish, who, along with teachers and catechists, formed what might be called his field army. He had no difficulty with Fortin gall, Glenlyon, and Bolfracks, and he overcame his difficulties in Rannoch. Church and school were in those days one and indivisible, although the parish schoolmaster had his " ad vitam aut culpam " tenure. It had always been so, amidst all State and Church mutations from the Reformation downwards. The parish schools of the Perthshire Highlands were not neglected during the Restoration period, but they were few and far between, and it was only after 1700 that the wide gaps outside began to be filled up by humble but very useful side schools. Glen lyon had three of these schools before I was born. One was at Innervar, another at Roro, and the third at Innerwick. The last was the oldest of the three ; for the story of the laying of the ghost in 70 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Meggernie Castle by its schoolmaster shows that it must have been set up before 1700. But somehow it fell behind the other two before my birth, for instead of having, like them, a settled teacher, it was taught by ever-changing teachers, young men from parish schools who were aiming at going to the Universities, or who were qualifying for getting parish schools. They got their board and lodging at the farmhouses, moving about after their pupils. It was not in all respects a satisfactory arrangement, and it was surely very primitive, but the annually or almost annually changing teachers diligently and efficiently taught the three R's. In the preceding century Glenlyon turned out three or four ministers and two advocates, as well as some army officers and clerks and schoolmasters. The elder of the two advocates was Angus Fletcher, who earned the great distinction of being called "The Father of Burgh Reform." The younger one's career, which proinised to be a brilliant one, was cut short by early death. He was a son of the Roro school master, Robert Macarthur, and a nephew of Mr Macarthur, minister of Kilfinan in Mull. About 1800, Leyden, the border poet, made an excursion to the Highlands in search of remains of Ossianic poetry and traditions. Among many others he interviewed this Mull minister, who was then an old man, and who told him something that seems to indicate that a learning that was never taught in the side-schools, but had come down from ancient days, existed in Glenlyon far down into the 18th century. Mr Macarthur told Leyden that when he was a student at St Andrews, he had, by means of the carrier who brought him supplies from horae, regular fortnightly correspondence with his father, who had no command SOME PARISH HISTORY. 71 of English, and who wrote his Gaelic epistles to him, not in the Roman but in the Irish characters. Another ofthe Glenlyon ministers of the 18th cen tury was Mr Macdiarmid, who was minister of Weem for fifty years— 1778 to 1828. UntU Glen lyon was made a quod sacra parish, the minister of Weem had to preach a certain number of Sundays annually in the Glen, because the Roro district belonged to his parish, and the minister of Kenmore also held an annual service or two there because his parishioners crowded with their cattle to the sheal ing ofthe Rialt, which, however, was iu the parish of Fortingall. Of the schoolmasters that Glenlyon turned out in the 18th century, one was Archibald Macdiarmid, the maternal grandfather of Sir Noel Paton ; another was Duncan Lothian, Dugald Buchanan's pupil and fellow-worker, who made a felicitously-rhymed gathering of Highland proverbial sayings which commences so : — 'Nuair a chailleas neach a mhaoin, 'S gnothuch faoin bhi 'g iarraidh meas : Ged do labhair e le ceill, 'S beag a gheibh e dh'eisdeas ris. Clever boys like the two brothers of Duncan the Fool could go direct from the FortingaU parish school to the Universities of St Andrews and Edin burgh, but similarly clever Glenlyon and Rannoch boys who aspired to the higher education were much handicapped by having to go to the parish or some further-off and more costly intermediate school to get qualified for entering on their college career. But where there was a strong will, a way was found to overcome the difficulties. 72 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER IX. CURSORY REMARKS ON THE OSSIANIC CONTROVERSY. Glenlyon and Fortingall people were not behind other Highlanders in defending Macpherson's " Ossian" against Dr Johnson and other assailants. They boasted that they had twelve forts of the Feinne and Dun-Ossian named after the great bard in their glen. Eight of the forts, which they called CastuUan nam Fiann — not "caistealan," as they called the Castles of Meggernie and Garth, Weem and Taymouth, and the like — are still visible, and so, of course, is Dun-Ossian. They had screeds of Ossianic poetry — to place all the poetic ancient poetry under one label — and prose tales handed down through many generations, which contained the personal names and most of the incidents which Macpherson had manipulated ; so how could the genuineness or authenticity of his English " Ossian" be doubted by anyone less pigheaded than that "OUamh Maclan," who wrapped himself in a mantle of prejudice and invincible ignorance to such a degree that he denied the existence of documents written in Gaelic which were older than a few score years before his own time ? They knew that James Macgregor, Vicar of Fortingall, before he became Dean of Lismore, and his brother Duncan, had put down in writing between 1500 and 1530 a great deal of the Ossianic poetry then current in the Highlands, and which with little change had remained current until Macpherson had made his THE OSSIANIC CONTROVERSY. 73 gathering of manuscripts and materials. They ad mitted that his "Ossian" did not in all respects agree with their traditional poetry and prose tales, but they readily jumped to the conclusion that in the Western Isles Macpherson had got hold of manuscripts that contained the poetry and tales in fuller and better form than did their traditional lore. It was only after Macpherson's death and the publi cation of his Gaelic "Ossian" that they were reluc tantly driven to doubt his good faith. As for his having located the Feinne in Alba instead of in Ireland, that had been done long before his time. And truly the localisation in Ireland is open to much the same objection as the Albanic one. The mythological and prehistoric belongings of the Celtic race were in both countries freely used to invest new scenes and personages with romantic glamour and ancient drapery. Dr Johnson was utterly wrong in maintaining that there was no ancient Gaelic literature ; but he was right in saying that Macpherson's English "Ossian" as presented to the world was an imposture. The Gaelic " Ossian " is not an original but a translation of his English one into good eighteenth century Gaelic. He was a man of genius, but an unprincipled manipulator of materials which, in the main, were undeniably genuine. Subsequent publications of really old Celtic literature have equally confounded him and his John Bull assailant, Dr Johnson. 74 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER X. THE UNWEILDY PARISH DIVIDED INTO THREE. A SHORT time before my birth, and a good many years after Mr Macara's death, the latter's dream of ecclesiastical reform was fulfilled by the erection of Glenlyon and Rannoch into quoad sacra parishes. Each of them got a minister and kirk session of its own, a manse and glebe, a new church and an en dowment of £120 a year out of the thanksgiving parliamentary grant made after the long struggle with Napoleon. It was complained at the time that the Church of England got much more than its fair proportionate share of that grant, but, at anyrate, the portion of it given to the Church of Scotland did a vast deal of good in the Highlands. The parish of Fortingall, formed soon after the Reformation, was properly and legally styled the united parishes of Fortingall and Killichonain, which meant Rannoch. The patronage of the former be longed to the Earls and Dukes of Atholl, and of the latter to the Knights and Baronets of Weem, and the joint patrons exercised their rights by turns ; and it is only just to say that the ministers pre sented by them were, upon the whole, good workers who were worthy of their vocation. Duncan Macaulay, the first Protestant minister of Fortingall, was appointed by the Crown. He lived in peace with his Catholic predecessor's curate, who was allowed to retain raanse, glebe, and other perquisites till his death about 1580. Mr Macaulay was an PARISH DIVIDED INTO THR.EE. 75 active promoter of Reformation doctrines and organisation, who often preached at Kenmore, Dull, aud Killin, until these parishes got Protestant ministers of their own. His influence also extended to the lower part of Rannoch, but although sup ported by the Weem family, who owned the '' Slis-min," styled in charters the Barony of Rannoch, the sons of misrule connected with Lochaber and Clan Gregor raiders were then, and for a hundred years to come, beyond the control of ecclesiastical and feudal authorities. There as everywhere the " broken men," who, when Stuart kings ruled, were denounced and hunted down as thieves, cut-throats, and outlaws, and who, when caught, were executed, exiled, or transported to the colonies, suddenly blossomed into extreme Jacobite loyalty when rebellions and civil broils promised spoils and oppor tunities for displaying the martial qualities in which they undoubtedly excelled. It required the military pacification which came after CuUoden, and all the efforts of resolute Mr Macara and his groups of elders and catechist-schoolmasters to put a final end to the disorders which, with a short exception in James the Fourth's reign, had been chronic in the braes of Rannoch from the murder of James I, downwards. 76 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER XI. RELIGIOUS REVIVAL. The revival movement in the south which is particularly connected with the names of the two brothers, Robert and James Haldane, met a ready response, or evoked a corresponding " dusgadh " or awakening, over a large part of the Highlands. The ground for this " dusgadh" was prepared by the evangelical preaching in churches, the teaching in Sunday and week schools, the publication of the GaeUc Bible, and the institution of family worship, which, beginning with the elders, soon came to be general, and if not held daily, was held at least once a week. I cannot remember how I came to learn to read Gaelic, for it was not taught in our day school, but I have no doubt I and many others learned it very young from looking at the books at family worship. The religious revival took a great hold in Breadalbane, Glenlyon, and In Rannoch also. It had passed from its missionary stage to its separatist one before Glenlyon and Rannoch were made into parishes with ministers and sessions of their own. At first there was no intention of forming new religious bodies. But it came to that. Although in other respects there was no difference between the doctrines preached by evangelical parish min isters and those of the revivalists, a fulcrum for separatism was found in the question of baptism. It was indeed a double question. Should not baptism be by immersion instead of sprinkling ? RELIGIOUS REVIVAL. 77 Should it not only be administered to adults who gave evidence of being converted and took the vows on themselves ? The Haldane brothers on these two questions accepted the teaching of the English Baptists, and many of their followers in Highlands and Lowlands joined with them in forming Baptist congregations. Small congregations of that kind were formed in many places between the Forth and the Spey. We had one in Glenlyon which continued to exist and do good until its excellent minister, Mr Donald Maclellan, died at a very advanced age about twenty years ago. The unpaid pastor of this small congregation in my early days was Mr Maclellan's father-in-law, the fine, genial old Highlander, Archibald Macarthur, our miller, who in the Sunday school worked harmoniously with our minister, Mr David Campbell, although argumentative enough on the baptism question. A rich mine of local and traditional lore was the worthy Muilear Mor. He made Scripture scenes, characters and incidents, seem aU real and vividly alive to us youngsters by throwing over them the glow of his poetic imagination in graphic Gaelic. The Grantown- on Spey hymn - poet, Mr Peter Grant, and Mr WiUiam TuUoch from Atholl, used to come as visi tors and field-preachers to the Glen in the miller's time of leadership, and so did Donnachadh Chalum Thaileir, a glen Highlander from Paisley. Baptist congregations have now, I believe, ceased to exist in Breadalbane, Glenlyon, and Rannoch. When the missionary revivalists split up into parties, the majority of them remained in the Church of Scot land, into which they introduced a hotter and more intolerant spirit than many of her best evangelical ministers wholly approved of They deterred 78 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. worthy people, who could not honestly say they had gone through a process of conversion and obtained an assurance of forgiveness, from becoming communi cants. Hypocrites who made loud professions im posed upon them until they were found out. They looked upon men with life-long blameless records, including elders of the old stamp, as being devoid of the unction of grace, and little better than heathens. Hysterical revival spouters called the old people who had only a good record of morality and humble practical faith, "Gray Egyptians," and later on " Black Moderates." I was without a brother, and although I had plenty of boy cousins, and enjoyed boyish pranks and school play and scrapes, I felt lonely at times, and liked nothing better than to sit at the feet of the "Gray Egyptians" and listen attentively to their talk. They wei^e full of stories of the olden times, which hugely delighted me. They gave the revivalists credit for good intentions, but said they were doing evil unconsciously in denouncing innocent enjoyments such as dancing and singing of songs, practised by the preceding generations. They unfavourably compared the morality of the revival period with that of the last twenty-five years of Mr Macara's spiritual superin tendence, during which they said there had been only two illegitimate children born iu Glenlyon. They regretted that there were no resident landlords in the Glen to modify, by their influence, the new religious tyranny, which, with all the good it was doing or intending to do, was being pushed to a height of intolerance which would only end in evil. The "Gray Egyptians'' agreed with Duncan the Fool, who, when an enthusiast from a field-service came into the farmer's house where he was staying, RELIGIOUS REVIVAL. 79 and, without sitting down, began to sermonise, drew near the old mother of the family and whispered, "Biomaid taingeil do Dhia gu'n d'fhag e ar clall againn"— " Let us be thankful to God that he has left us our reason ! " But the religious revival was a genuine force which had far-reaching consequences. The result first seen was that the awakening made the Church of Scotland stronger and more zealous in good works than had ever, in the Highlands at least, been the case before. The hiving off by small Baptist com- munites and the formation of a very few congrega tions of Independents only stimulated the activity and increased the power of the national Church between 1810 and 1843. The custom of having only one communion a year in each parish had been long established throughout the Highlands, It was a necessity in the early days of the Reformation when Gaelic speaking ministers were rare, and even readers, who could not baptise or officiate at communions, were not sufficiently numerous for holding ordinary services of prayer, scripture reading, and exhortation in all parishes. Few Highland places were so well equipped as Glenlyon with its converted and married clerk, Niven, and Fortingall with Mr Duncan Mac aulay, who, for some years, had also Dull, Kenmore and Killin apparently under his superintending care. The custom which arose out of a temporary necessity rooted itself like a tree of life in the habits of the Highland people. It replaced the pre- Reformation pilgrimages and suited their social instincts ; for it brought together gatherings of people from neighbouring parishes to the field preaching connected with the dispensing of the 80 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. communion inside churches. There was much decorus hospitality and the visiting went round, for the holding of communions was so arranged that ministers could assist one another on those occasions, and the parishioners could follow their ministers in crowds to the places where the communions were held and the field preaching took place. In the contentious years before the Disruption I often listened to the tent preaching of Mr, afterwards Dr, Macdonald of Ferintosh, whose eldest daughter was the wife of our minister, and who was an annual visitor to Glenlyon and Breadalbane at the com munion season. We called him the " DomhnuUach Mor," or Great Macdonald, but he is best known in the Ten Years' Conflict annals by the designation of " The Apostle of the North." It is true that I was young and susceptible, but I think he was, in Gaelic, the most wonderfully eloquent, poetical and mesmeric speaker I ever listened to, and I may add that I heard most of the other Disruption celebrities and afterwards many of England's famous orators, clerical and political. Peace be to his ashes ! I do not remember that he ever introduced into his sermons the controversial topics of the day. He spoke more like an inspired evangelist than an ecclesiastical partisan. His presence at a communion always caused a huge multitude from far and near to assemble. SOCIAL LIFE AND MORALS. 81 CHAPTER XII. SOCIAL LIFE AND MORALS. I HAVE read much, seen much, and lived long, and I do not think it within human nature possi bilities that there ever could be or can be a more morally blameless community of a thousand people than was the one in which I was born and brought up. Of course there were a few wastrels, and not every one of the honestly industrious people was either a born or a converted saint. My friends the Gray Egyptians said that too much religious rule and teaching had done more evil than good, that it had knocked joyousness out of life, and rather lowered than raised the standard of honour, truth fulness, and sense of duty which existed in their own young days and in the days of their fathers. And I think the history of the Glen after CuUoden, to a certain extent, bore out their contentions. Between 1830 and 1843 the spiritual power ruled without a check. Of the three proprietors none was resident. Culdares was a minor away in Eng land at school and college. Chesthill resided down at Duneaves, Fortingall, and Lord Breadalbane had no residence on his Roro estate, which he seldom if ever visited. Divided into wards, each of which had an elder or two, the Glen was wholly ruled in the years mentioned by minister and kirk session. It was good, wholesome rule, although needlessly intolerant in regard to the dancing, fiddling, song- 6 82 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. singing, tale-telling amusements, and shinty play, putting-stone, and hammer-throwing games of pre ceding generations. It was a, rule which regularised wakes, and put an end to excesses at weddings and funerals. " Render to Csesar " preaching did more than excisemen and cuttersmen to convince Glen farmers that smuggling was sinful and should be discontinued. It was not easy to convince any Highland growers of here a,nd barley that the Eng lish Parliament had not done them gross injustice in the whisky business, and that they had not a perfect moral right to convert their grain into malt and whisky, which found a ready market in the Lowlands, and made it easy for them to pay their rents. Glenlyon smuggling was almost brought to an end before I began to range over hills and to take note of the secret places in which, not long before, whisky used to be secretly distilled. The old Highland smugglers, unlike modern ones, turned out splendidly manufactured whisky, which, how ever, required some maturing delay before it attained its perfection. My dear old friend, Mr Murray-Macgregor, minister of Balquhidder, gave me more than once a taste of smuggler's whisky, distilled in Glenbuckie thirty or forty years before then. It was singularly aromatic. It did not grip the throat like raw whisky, but it sent quickly a pleasant feeling of warmth through one's whole bod3^ The excise people had seized the smuggler's big barrel when he was taking it to the Lowlands. After having been declared forfeited by the Cal lander Justices of the Peace, it was sold, and one of them. Captain Stewart of Glenbuckie, bought it. In 1846 Captain Stewart's son sold Glenbuckie to Mr David Carnegie, and went to Argyllshire, where SOCIAL LIFE AND MORALS. 83 he bought the Island of Coll, On leaving Bal quhidder, he gave the minister what remained of the smuggler's whisky — a half-dozen bottles or so — which for the next twenty years the minister doled out to friends as a real curiosity. This leads me to another little story of smuggled whisky. In 1826 Archibald Stewart, Craigelig (Gilleaspa Mor), one of the four partners in our Eight Merkland club farm, was about to marry my aunt, Mary Campbell. He was as strictly honest and honour able a man as ever stood in shoe leather, but he thought it then no sin nor shame to make the whisky for his own wedding out of his own "eorna." He made a o-ood deal more than was consumed at the wedding. He put the surplus — I forget how many gallons — in a big earthen jar, which, carefully stoppered, he carried on a dark night to Car Dun- shiaig, and buried it there in a peat bog where it was to stay hidden until wanted for sale or use. Weeks or months elapsed before he went to see In daylight the place in which he buried the jar on a mirk night. He then searched for it in vain, for in the interval a great flood had washed away his marks and very much changed the whole face of the moss. For the next nineteen years at every sheep gathering he took the beat that led him through Car Dunshiaig, and in passing he searched for his lost jar with a long iron probe, but he never found it. Gilleaspa Mor, with a large family, a mother ninety years old, and two widowed sisters with large families, emigrated in 1846 to the London district of Ontario, where there was a brother previously settled and glad to give them all a hearty welcome. Now, 1908, there is a large clan of Stewarts, exclusive of the many descendants of daughters, representing the two 84 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. brothers in Ontario and Manitoba. Gilleaspa Mor was perfectly sure that no one but himself knew about the burial of the jar in Dunshiaig moss, and almost equally confident that if by chance anyone found it, the discovery would have been revealed to him. From the anti-septic, hermetically-sealing nature of peat, it is likely that the whisky is still contained in the buried jar, and if so, and it is ever found, a bottle of it would be a gift for a king. It must not be supposed that much of the whisky illicitly distilled before smuggling was cried down by the Church was consumed in the Glen itself, for that was not the case. It was made for export and profit, and the very magistrates who sat in judgment on detected smugglers had a good deal of sympathy with them. The obstinate belief of Glenlyon men that they were wronged and robbed of an ancient right, in being prevented from freely making the most profitable use of their fine " eorna" had a good deal of historical justification ; for the making of malt for sale was a Glen trade from the ancient times when kings came there to hunt in their own prehistoric forest. Until he went to reign In England, James VI. came annually with many foUowers to hunt in the then much reduced belt of that old forest which still stretched across the heads of Glenlochy and Glenlyon to Bendoran and the Coireachan Batha, or Black Mount tops, about which the Marchioness of Breadalbane has lately been writing in " Blackwood.' The royal hunter and his party were a drouthy lot. John Dow Malster, the Laird of Glenlyon's " maor," or land steward, was busily employed before the hunting season in con verting the laird's rent In kind " eorna," and the purchased surplus " eorna" of the tenants, Into malt SOCIAL LIFE AND MORALS. 85 and ale. When royal demand failed and finallyceased, the tenants had to carry the malt to Perth and Stirling to be sold there. James II. had a " pubal," or wooden hunting lodge in the braes of Glenlyon, but it was in the days of his grandson, James IV., who had his court at Insecallan, ou the Glenorchy side of the watershed, that the whole district profited most fi-om the annual coming of the King and his followers and many visitors from adjacent Highland districts. With his free command of their language, appreciation of their music, songs, and heroic poetry, and chivalrous if not whoUy faultless personal qualities, James IV. was the king for the High landers, and had his reign not been cut short by the fatal error of rushing to meet his fate at Flodden, the subsequent history of Scotland would certainly have been of a less disturbed and regretful com plexion. His descendant, the British Solomon, was not a man of noble or fascinating character, but he was aff"able, homely, shrewd, and accessible, and, as the last king who spoke Gaelic, " Seumas Mac Mairi," was fairly popular in the forest lands. It was through the forest that the potato got into Glenlyon. I was told that the introduction took place when Seumas Mac Mairi was king, and in corroboration manifest signs of old lazy-beds were pointed out. If the introduction took place early in the 1 7th century, the next century was well advanced before the potato was ranked as a main crop in Glenlyon agriculture. The " Gray Egyptians," on information from their seniors and personal knowledge, asserted that for the century before the religious revival the inhabitants of the Glen were as temperate drinkers as it was physically and morally wholesome fbr any 86 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. community to be. In my time that was truly the case, a few ne'er-do-weels excepted. The smuggling had been cried down, but there were three small licensed inns, one at Innervar, one at Innerwick, and one at Bridge of Balgie. The Innerwick one was the provision Old Culdares made for the clans man who was his officer son's piper, and who brought an Irish wife with him from Ireland. The other two represented alehouses with crofts, which had been in existence for hundreds of years. The whole three disappeared years ago, and now tourists have reason to complain that in the forty miles westward from Fortingall to Tyndrum, and in the cross-country line of twenty miles from Kinloch-Rannoch to Killin, there is not a single licensed house for the entertainment of man or beast. As far as I can see, there never was much general need for the Innervar inn, although it existed as an alehouse firom time beyond memory. Until railways and large Inverness and Perth cattle sales changed the whole situation, there was clamant need for the Bridge of Balgie inn, which, till the bridge was built in about 1780, was situated a little further east, near the churchyard ; and for the later inn at Innerwick, which never was an old alehouse, there was general utility justification likewise ; for these two places of public entertainment were placed at the entrance to Larig-an-lochain, and where the eastern and western passes came together by which the stock of the North was driven to Falkirk trysts and other southern markets. The driving time created no small stir in Glenlyon, and all along the old line of cattle tracks and immemorially appointed stopping stations. It helped to make northern and southern Highlanders known to one another. SOCIAL LIFE AND MORALS. 87 With differences which were generally of a trivial nature, the social and moral life of the Highlands eighty or seventy years ago was very like what I have been describing from information and observa tion as being the social and moral life of the people of my native Glen at that time. A high ideal of individual responsibility and obligation, reverence for age, family affection, love of children and care in training them up to be good men and women, mutual helpfulness of kinsfolk, and ready sympathy with the afflicted were characteristics of the whole race. Primogeniture backed by entail which was profitable to the eldest sons of landed families im posed a self-sacrificing duty in the eldest son of a tenant, whose father happened to die when his children wei-e young. The son had to take the father's place, to keep a roof tree over his brothers' and sisters' and mother's heads, to labour, sweat and struggle, remain celibate until the brothers were launched on their own careers and the sisters were married. Even when the father lived to old age, the eldest son did not escape the bearing of the burdens peculiarly his own. But he generally had his reward in the fealty and patriarchal position he had won by self-sacrifice. REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS CHAPTER XIII. THE HIGHLAND LANDLORDS. Maithean NA Gaeltachd* mustered in full array to give George IV. a superabundantly loyal welcome on his visit to Edinburgh in 1822, and, with hardly an exception, the Highland nobles, chiefs, and landlords who put in appearance on the occasion, represented families who owned land and held sway in the same districts 250 years before then, and in not a few instances twice as long as that. Between 1560 and 1822 there had been many broils, for feitures, and temporary displacements, followed by changing back, first after the Revolution of 1688, and finally by the restorations of their estates to the families who had lost them after CuUoden.. As a political force and factor for keeping the Highlands separate fi?om the rest of the country, Jacobitism was killed long before the death of Prince Charles. It was persistently assailed by the now dominant Church of Scotland, and undermined by the teaching given in the schools. Chatham's bold scheme of raising the Highland regiments for national defence gave rise to a welding imperial pride which never existed among the Highlanders before, and which from the military quarter co-operated with the spiritual power in changing the situation. From Fontenoy and the capture of Quebec to Waterloo, Highland soldiers had pre-eminently distinguished themselves for valour, discipline, and endurance. They were proud to call themselves Breatunnaich * The aristocracy of the Highlands, THE HIGPILAND LANDLORDS. 89 (Britons), and to have done good service in defence of the British Empire, and sustained the martial fame of their ancestors. George IV. was not a bad Constitutional King, although as a man he might be said to well deserve all the contempt poured on him by the Whig writers down to Thackeray, from the time he had ceased to rattle dice with Charles James Fox, their belauded, awfully-debauched and debauching leader. George IV. was not personally liked by his Highland people. They had heard stories about his bad conduct to his wife, and of his relations with other women, including, what they could not forgive, other men's wives. They could be and were far more tolerant than their ministers and kirk-sessions about sexual immorality between unmarried sprigs of the upper classes and peasant girls, but they ground their teeth against adultery, which was indeed an exceedingly rare vice among themselves. What they felt due to George IV. was a modified loyalty as the headman of the British Empire. Had George III. come to Scotland after the restoration of the forfeited estates, he would have received from all classes of Highlanders as heart-felt a "ceud mile failt" welcome as was given to his grand-daughter. Queen Victoria, at Blair- AthoU, Taymouth, and Castle Drummond. Farmer George, the "born Briton," through the reports of homely virtues which reached them, obtained a real hold on Highland loyalty. He was the first of his race who did so. I was present at the Taymouth gathering in 1842, and cannot yet recall without emotion how we all, gentle and simple, old and young, were carried out of ourselves, and thrilled into unity by enthusiastic loyal and chivalrous devotion to our 90 reminiscences and REFLECTIONS. young Sovereign Lady. His countrymen, forgetting recent evictions and well-grounded fears of more to come, were exultingly proud of the Marquis of Breadalbane that day. He spent his money and dispensed his hospitality lavishly, created fairyland effects by flags and coloured lamps, and managed the whole procedure connected with an unusual event with organising .skill and grand success. But when criticism succeeded enthusiasm it was pointed out that, compared with that of 1822, the impressive muster of 1842 exhibited gaps which showed that in the conflict between the old and the new land systems the new was steadily gaining. Ross-shire, Atholl, and Breadalbane gave excellent illustrations of how incoming feudal magnates established their charter rights, and infused a clannish spirit in native tenants of many surnames. Until the Mac- donalds. Lords of the Isles, and Earls of Ross, Avere suppressed, the Mackenzies of Kintail were their vassals, and hardly reckoned among their chief vassals. They raade the most of their opportunities on the fall of their over-lords to enlarge their influence and possessions, and the Pteformation tur moils later on enabled them to lay appropriating hands on ecclesiastical and old Crown lands in Easter Ross. How did they secure their new pos sessions ? By planting out as little lairds or chief tenants all the cadets and near kinsmen of the house of Kintail. The Earldom of Atholl — a much smaller affair than the County of Atholl, which embraced all the regions above Dunkeld between the Garry and the Strathearn border — was, from the reign of King Duncan, the father of Malcolm Ceannmor, an appanage of the Royal family. It passed through many owners ere it was bestowed THE HIGHLAND LANDLORDS. 91 on the half-brother of James II. What did the wise son of the Black Knight of Lome do ? He strengthened the Wolf of Badenoch Stewart element he found in Atholl by bringing in Appin kinsmen of his own and giving them small properties. He also, I think, instituted the policy, which his successors long followed out, of acquiring superiorities by buying or otherwise obtaining estates held of the Crown, and then of selling them on subinfeudation terms. He gave his daughters in marriage to the smaller barons of his district, and by those wise devices, Huntly was prevented from laying grasping hands on forfeited Garth and other lands south of the Grampian boundary. When the present Duke of AthoU's father, then Lord Glenlyon, gave a most hearty Highland welcome to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert In 1842, he was still surrounded by many of the lairds of old lineage who had formed his predecessors' Comhalrle Talghe, or provincial court and family council, and were in war times the officers of their host. The estates of these lairds are now, with very few exceptions, owned by proprietors who cannot, however good, as aliens in race, sur names, traditions and language, fill the places of the vanished families. But in the ducal domains the old kindly relations between the Castle and the farmhouse and cottage, have been throughout the whole long period of mutation and desolation so well maintained, that an old Highlander like myself in visiting Atholl feels himself taken back to the good old days, and Is warmed by a glow of admiration which is in contrast to the cold shudder he has to endure in much depopulated and much un-Celticised districts of his native land. 92 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. " Black Colin of Rome" and his descendants invaded Breadalbane from Glenorchy, much in the same manner as the Kintail Mackenzies invaded the Black Isle and Easter Ross. The Glenorchy Camp bells began their "bris sios" or eastward progress when, as a whole, the wide regions they were in due time to acquire were King's lands, and monastic lands belonging to the Abbot of Scone, and to James the First's newly introduced and profusely endowed Carthusians of Perth. By public services. Court favour, and purchase, the Glenorchy Camp bells, who were not only sturdy warriors, but men wise in council, and educated beyond the greater number of their aristocratic contemporaries, first got the management and part-possession of the King's lands, and forthwith commenced to lay the firm and broad foundations of their future principality, by giving out Lawers and Glenlyon to younger sons, and using their influence to give their own followers foothold on the lands of King and monks. To the Glenorchy Campbells, as well as to the Mackenzies of Kintail, the Reformation afforded a grand oppor tunity for adding Church lands to their already considerable possessions. Infamous Hepburn, the Abbot of Scone and Bishop of Moray, laden with the burden of his sins and fearing coming events, sold his Breadalbane monastic lands at a low price and ready money to Sir Colin Campbell of Glenorchy — the "Cailean Liath" or Gray Colin of local songs and stories — but after Sir Colin's death, his son. Sir Duncan — "Donnachadh Dubh a Churraichd," "Black Duncan of the Cowl," — had, under the revocation law, to pay another purchasing price to King James. I think this same thing happened to the lands ofthe Carthusians. Donnachadh Dubh and Kenneth of THE HIGHLAND LANDLORDS. 93 Kintail were contemporaries. They were much alike in policy and character, although Kenneth was illiterate, and Sir Duncan was able to read and speak In so many languages that he gained the reputation of being a formidable wizard. Both these men were good to their own people and oppressive to their neighbours and rivals. Besides building castles and bridges, making roads, improv ing on the very good estate regulations issued by James V., King of the Commons, to his Breadalbane tenants, and introducing stallions of two sorts from England to improve the native breeds of Highland horses. Sir Duncan, without wronging his eldest son and heir. Sir Colin, gave out estates to his host of sons, legitimate and illegitimate ; portioned his daughters, legitimate and illegitimate, and by the marriage of his sons and daughters with the sons and daughters of other houses, or even chief tenants, organised a semi-clannish league which once formed should in perpetuity make the heads of it great chiefs. But Sir Duncan was only fourteen years in his grave at Finlarig when Montrose burned the whole of the Glenorchy property from the junction of the Lyon with the Tay to Lismore, without, how ever, having been able to take any of its places of strength, Taymouth, the Isle of Loch Tay, Finlarig, Isle of Loch Dochart, and the Castle of Glenurchy, etc. A few years later Cromwell's soldiers, under Monk, had seized on all the strengths, but did not, like Montrose, ravage or oppress the country. No mUitary rule could indeed be milder or more justly administered. But then and on two or three other occasions there was no little danger of collapse for the Glenorchy chiefs and their possessions. Yet Restoration, Revolution, and the two eighteenth 94 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. century Jacobite Rebellions, finally left them with widened possessions and well surrounded with satel lites of their own blood and name, and the other small proprietors connected with them by ties of affinity and custom. Time, of course, had brought about some changes. The Lairds of Lawers, having become Earls of Louden, sold Lawers to the Chief of their house, and Breadalbane knew them no more. Two or three other cadet branches had become extinct. But in 1782 when John Campbell of Carwhin succeeded his kinsman as Fourth Earl of Breadalbane, he found himself surrounded by a large provincial court or assembly of landed kinsmen and allies, and his tenant communities. In winter-towns and shealings, living under the land settlement system of James, which Black Sir Duncan had revived and vastly improved. This Fourth Earl was a truly kindly and thoroughly Highland-hearted man, and a patriot who raised three fencible regi ments during the war with France. He resided very constantly at Taymouth, was a Whig and a Presbyterian, and spent much money on wood- planting and other improvements. He was made a Marquis in 1831. During his longer than half-a- century of sway he saw, as if stricken by a strange fatality, his house council satellites diminishing rapidly to the vanishing point. Although he kept a hospitable house, was a free hand giver, and added to and Improved his vast property, from living so much at home among his people he accumulated much wealth, which he divided among his three children, to wit, his son and successor, and his two daughters. Lady Elizabeth Pringle and the Duchess of Buckingham. He was not, like his son, a Manchester-school political -economist, and in sheer THE HIGHLAND LANDLORDS. 95 kind - heartedness he committed the blunder of making holdings, which the changed conditions of fkrming and the cuntracting value of domestic industries had made already too small, raore con gested still by finding "rooms" for such of his fencible men as were not the eldest sons of tenants. Had the circle of smaller lairds attached to his house not ceased before then to exercise the func tions of informal yet very practical family council, he would surely have been advised by them to leave Black Duncan's land-settlement alone, or if he meddled with it at all, as opportunities offered to increase instead of diminishing the size of the hold ings. The old Marquis lived and died as a great and much-honoured Highland magnate. His son was in personal conduct as good a man as his father, and adralttedly the abler man of the two, but he never was the man for Gaeldom. In 1842 he made a brave and, for the moment, a successful show of being that man, and years afterwards, at the first review of Volunteers in Edinburgh, he did, at the head of his Breadalbane Volunteers, appear to be a great Chief to people who did not know what an isolated magnate he was in his own country, and how he had alienated the affections of his own folk. It was uo fault of his. Indeed, that very few — four or five at most — representatives of the thirty or forty cadet lairds of his house, and affinity lairds of other surnames who surrounded his father in 1782, were about him to receive the Queen in 1842. The dis appearance of these landed families, some by natural extinction, and some by having got into money troubles which compelled selling out, may, however, be taken to account in some measure for the line of estate management he deliberately adopted. He be- 96 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. lieved in the new political economy principles, and consistently carried them out until he died a lonely man and sad, although rich beyond the dream of ordinary avarice, at Lausanne in 1862. To the heads of noble houses, the small lairds of their name and lineage, and those who were con nected with them by affinity or feudal ties, were bodyguards or crios-leine (literally shirt girdles). They were then the connecting links with the common people, and their advisers in the matters which concerned the well-being of the whole com munity within the bounds of their lords' and their own possessions. The magnate only gained mere isolation when he acquired estates by honest purchase of small estates which old bodyguard adherents of his family found themselves compelled to sell. Factors could not, and those of them who could, would not. Inform him so fully about matters he ought to know, as the lairds who were in close touch with the people, spoke their language, and thoroughly understood their circumstances and feelings. On the other hand the magnates used their influence and patronage to open cai'eers in the Army, Navy, and Civil Service, and in the Church, and legal and medical professions, to the sons of the small lairds, and the sons of their own tenants, crofters, and cottars. The unruly spirits among the sons of the mansion-houses, who while sowiug their early wild oats at home, caused vexation to parents and strict ecclesiastical disciplinarians, in many instances illustrated the truth of Burns's lines : " Yet oft a ragged cout's been known To mak' a noble aiver," by blossoming out into sturdy warriors and pioneers of empire abroad, or by turning over new leaves THE HIGHLAND LANDLORDS. 97 at home, and setting themselves resolutely and doucely to useful pursuits. The lairds and their families made life in the country attractive to the magnates and their families by furnishing them with a far less pleasure -jaded society than they were accustomed to in London. The lairds were the acting Justices of the Peace, and in some large parts of the Highlands, as far as the common people were concerned, almost the sole representatives of civil power, while ministers and kirk sessions repre sented the spiritual power. For fifty years after the restoration of the forfeited estates these two powers, working amicably together, preserved good order at small cost, and reduced crimes which had to be dealt with by Sheriff and Assize Courts to a minimum. Most of the then Highland lairds were Presbyterians, and not a few of them elders of the Church of Scotland. Only a few old Jacobite families stuck to Episcopalianism as the pathetic badge of a lost cause. Highland nobles, who were Church of England people in England, when at home in their Highland castles worshipped con tentedly in canopied pews in their parish churches. Political and caste causes which, after the passing of the Reform Bill, spoiled the previous harmony by degrees, had yet to arise, and, practically. Highland depopulation and the annual Invasion of English sportsmen and buying out of Highland proprietors had almost yet to begin. Despite the invasion of Lowland sheep, shepherds and renters of shealing grazings, and disforested old deer forests, the general situation to the superficial observer remained unchanged, say up to 1832. 98 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER XIV. FRANCIE MOR MAC AN ABA. This last Chief of the Macnabs, who possessed what fragment of the patrimony of his ancestors had escaped the vengeance of Robert Bruce, and sub sequent forfeitures and disasters, died twelve years before I was born, and his property was sold at highest market value a few years after his death to his old and very helpful friend, the Earl of Bread albane, who had at a former crisis in his financial affairs saved him by procuring a commission for him as major in the Perthshire and Local Militia, and later on in the Breadalbane Volunteers. Long after his death the country rang with stories of his doings and sayings. He was so eccentric that he was a law to himself His word was his bond, but it was only the word on his honour which could really bind him, while he looked upon a written obligation as a thing to be discharged when it suited his con venience. He was tall, strong, handsome, and brave to excess, but withal too good-natured to be quarrelsome. He had his moral line of prohibition, but he looked on unmarried peasant girls as the natural prey or prizes of long descent chiefs like himself He never married, but was the father of a baker's dozen of children. Rumour magnified the number of tht-.m so generously that a society lady in Edinburgh plumply asked him if it was true that he had twenty-six children. The answer she got was " Madam, I never could count aboon twenty-five." FRANCIE MOR MAC AN ABA. 99 That was mere banter, but as Janet, his house keeper, bore eight children to him, and he had five or more by different servant girls before Janet took command of himself and his house, he was fairly well supplied with offspring. In his early roving days he was a thorn in the flesh to his worthy father, John Macnab of Bovain, and to the scholarly and sensitively religious minister of Killin, the Rev. James Stewart, who translated the New Testament and a good portion of the Old Testament into the Gaelic of the Highlands. Father and minister, the one with his paternal lectures and the other with his Church censures, were such plagues to him that he bought the farm of Cralgruie, in Balquhidder, and went to live there. He paid an instalment of the price by money which had come to him pro bably from his grandmother, but he never completed the purchase. When his father died a lad was sent over the hill to tell him the news, which he received with gladness, being then both without credit and money. As reported to me by Balquhidder men, these were the words which passed between him and the messenger, who came to him bonnet In hand outside the house and said, " Mhic an Aba, tha ur n-athair marbh." Macnab — "Mata, 'ille, 's math do naigheachd. So dhuit tri sgilean. Rach a stigh's gheibh thu biadh's deoch." Messenger — "Macnab, your father is dead." Macnab—" Well lad, good is your news. Here's threepence for you. Go In and you'll get food and drink." The three pennies were no doubt all the coins he had in his pocket theu, for he was a liberal giver when he had anything to give. When he succeeded 100 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. to his patrimony and brought Janet to be his house keeper at Kinnell, he settled down to a life of comparative decency. His father provided for the proper bringing-up of the early crop of illegitimate grandchildren. He provided fairly well for Janet's brood himself The daughters married honest countrymen and made good wives to them. Janet's two sons, who did not marry, were well provided for by a property In Callander which their father bought for them at a low price, and promptly paid for, and which turned out to be a profitable invest ment. He was ready enough to admit paternity in every case of misconduct, but to profess penitence and to promise amendment was more than he could be induced to do. When he settled down in regular coucubinage with Janet, he paid his "umhla" or fine to the poor box, got respectable people to hold his children for baptism, and was otherwise let off by more lax ministers than the first he had to deal with, as a half-reformed reprobate. His good quali ties made him popular, and were supposed to out balance his one notorious and incorrigible immorality. In another matter he took a slantendicular view of duty. He was a Justice of the Peace and a friend and patron of the smugglers. This fi^iendship and sympathy suffered no interruption during the few years in which he was himself a licensed pro ducer of whisky. It was shortly before 1796 that he set up a small distillery at Killin on his own side of the river Dochart. That speculation did not pay and had soon to be dropped. When he was residing in Balquidder, a smuggler whom he had befriended came to him in much distress to announce that two barrels full of whisky, which he had hidden in the hills till he could get them conveyed southward for FRANCIE MOR MAC AN ABA. 101 sale, had been discovered by revenue men, who were then taking them with great difficulty (as they had no horses) down to the roadway, whence they were to be carried to Callander to be condemned. "Have they found out that the barrels belong to you?" iisked Macnab. "No doubt," replied the man, " their base informant knew and told that they were mine." " You are a law-breaking rascal, and it would only be like you if you, with your accomplices, followed them to the place on the way where the revenue men, arriving late and tired, will certainly stop to rest, eat, and drink, and if, while they are doing so, you and the other fellows trans ferred under cloud of night the whisky into new barrels, and fiUed the old ones with water — Lord ! if your trick succeeded what a joke it would be when the amazed revenue men, on being called upon to prove they had really seized smuggled whisky, found there was nothing of whisky about them except an old smell!!" The plan suggested was, with some help from the innkeeper of the half-way house of entertainment, easily carried out. The revenue men were covered with ridicule, for they could not swear that the barrels contained whisky when they had seized them, and whatever they might suspect regarding the transfer, they were far firom anxious to confess how careless their guardianship had been. Macnab kept his Volunteer regiment under ex cellent discipline, not so much by military severity as by terrible scoldings in barbed Gaelic. He was ordered to take his men to Stirling, and he took care that there should be no indiscretions by the way, as he was bent on making his regiment a model of military propriety. They were close on 102 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Stirling, and Macnab, looking like an old hero of romance, was riding in state at the head of his men, swollen with pride in their good conduct, splendid marching, and kilted and plaided picturesque appearance, when word came to him from the rear that gangers were trying to stop the waggons to search for smuggled whisky, which, they said, they had learned was concealed among the baggage. A wrathful burst of surprise and indignation proved that on this occasion the smugglers had abused Macnab's confidence. Yet for all that he Avould do his best to cover their misconduct. He or-dered the regiment to halt, and rode back to the rear, taking with him a sergeant and a dozen men. On coming to the waggons he found his quartermaster and the chief of the would-be searchers in hot altercation. He silenced the former by a wave of his hand, and turning to the latter, asked, " My pretty man, who are you and your people ? And what do you want?" The latter explained that he was a revenue officer, and that on information received he wanted to search the waggons for smuggled whisky. " Well," replied Macnab, "the information you declare you have received has been kept from my knowledge, and without proof I'll not believe it. But produce your warrant and you may search away." The other, taken aback, said he had had no time to procure a warrant. " Not time to procure a war rant ? How dare you stop the King's waggons on the King's hlg-h\vay ? Who are you ? Show your commission." He acknowledged that he had not his commission with him. " No search warrant, no commission to be shown ? How do I know that you are not impostors, thieves, and robbers ? " Then turning to the sergeant and his men, he said, "Lads, FRANCIE MOR MAC AN ABA, 103 this is a serious matter. Load with ball." The revenue men scampered off as fast as they could, thankful to escape with their lives. Then, reverting to Gaelic, Macnab first swore at the waggon men for abusing his confidence, and then told them to drive into Stirling as fast as if the deil were chasing them, and if they had whisky among the baggage, to get it out, and out of sight, before the revenue men could come on them with a search warrant. His orders were carried out, and when the search was made in Stirling nothing seizable was discovered. Macnab was punctilious about being properly addressed. No mistake was ever made in Gaelic. Everybody addressed him as Mhic an Aba, "Son of the Abbot." But those who did not know Gaelic and Highland rules of precedence often made him angry by calling him "Mr Macnab." He could not bear that indignity, although he took no offence at aU if he was called Laird of Macnab. One day as he was sitting in an upper room which had its windows open, in his house at Kinnell, he heard the bell of the front door below ring, and when Janet appeared, a stranger asked : " Is Mr Macnab at home ? " The Chief, resenting the unconscious in sult to his dignity, rushed to the open window of his room above, thrust out his head and roared like a bull of Bashan, " There is nae Mister Macnab here. There are mony Mister Macnabs, but deil tak' me if there is but ae Macnab." Macnab's always precarious financial business was managed by the Perth bank, where the officials, by knowing his peculiarities and how to humour him, always got back the money lent to him with full interest. Macnab never thought that it was incum- 104 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. bent on him to pay upon the dates mentioned in his bills. But by mischance one of his bills fell into the hands of a Stirling bank agent, who, when no reply was made to his note asking payment without delay, resorted to legal proceedings, which Macnab ignored, and having got decree against him the agent sent a Sheriff-officer and concurrent to Kumell to poind goods and chattels, unless the debt with interest and expenses should be Instantly paid. Macnab knew that these liinbs of the law were coming forth with to pounce on him, so he thought it best to pay at once a long visit to Taymouth, where he was always welcome, and to leave Janet to deal with the visitors. When he was away they came late in the evening. They were footsore, weary, hungry, and thirsty. When they told their errand, Janet assured them that the Laird had gold in his kist, and would readUy pay them when he got back from visiting his friends. Lord and Lady Breadalbane, at Tay mouth, which return, she hoped, would take place the next day. They got plenty to eat and drink, were elated with the hope of obtaining full payment promptly, and it was in a jubilant frame of mind that they followed Janet to the ground -floor room in which they were to sleep. The moon was shining bright ; the bed was at the room's further end ; while the window, which was near the door, was open ; and Janet, whUe bidding them good-night, and holding the door half-open, advised them to shut the window. The one who went to do her bidding looked out, and seeing the figure of a man hanging to a tree outside, emitted a cry of consternation which drew his companion to his side. " What is that horrid thing?" they asked in one breath. " Oh," replied Janet, " that is only a poor body who FRANCIE MOR MAC AN ABA. 105 has been hanged out of hand by the Laird, because he came bothering about the payment of a miserable debt." Having given her explanation, Janet quickly withdrew, and closed and locked the heavy door behind her. The trembling limbs of the law, believ ing Janet's tale, and fearing a similar fate for bothering the formidable Macnab about a debt, made their escape through the unbarred window and got far beyond the Breadalbane march before the sun rose. What so thoroughly frightened them were old clothes stuffed with straw and a round bag filled with chaff to represent a human head. Wher ever he got the money — perhaps it was lent to him at Taymouth — this particular debt was paid without further delay, and nothing worse than fun sprang out of Janet's trickery. All classes of his countrymen agreed in the opinion variously expressed that Francie Mor Mac an Aba was the most remarkable anachronism that could be found, in the orderly-disposed Highlands of the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. His faults were counter balanced by many good qualities. In grain he was noble and chivalrous. He made no enemies. He was a perpetual source of amusement and eccentric surprises. When in good old age he was buried with his ancestors in romantic Innis Buidhe, he had sincere mourners there, and thousands who were not there said with a sigh, "'We shall never see his like again." His lineage probably went back to William the Lion's Abbot of Glendochart ; and an ancestor of his, to the detriment of his descendants, for the most of his lands was taken from him to endow the new priory of StrathfiUan, fought along with the Lome Chief against Bruce at Dalrigh, where the future 106 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. hero of Bannockburn narrowly escaped death, or a capture which would end in death to him and to the independence of Scotland. Francie succeeded to a small estate which was encumbered by some family charges in favour of junior members of his father's family. At his death Francie's estate was quite hopelessly insolvent. It had, therefore, to be sold, and as the next legitimate heir, Erchie'n Doctair, could not re-purchase it, the Earl of Breadalbane became the purchaser. Thus the candle of an old lineage was removed from the place which had been lighted by it for four or five centuries. CHAPTER XV. DISAPPEARANCE OF OLD LANDED FAMILIES- MUCH REGRETTED. It is a far cry from Glenlyon to Glengarry, and there never had been race or historical connections, or even much direct communication between the two places ; yet there was deep and general sorrow in Glenlyon when the debt-burdened property of the Macdonells had to be sold, and an English lord bought the chief part of it — which, however, he afterwards resold to a worthy Scotsman, "although" — this is how the Highlanders qualified their praise of him — "he had the misfortune to be a Lowlander." When the landless Chief was making his prepara tions for emigrating to Australia, with a portion of his people, his proceedings were watched with exceeding interest — every drover, pedlar, and travel ling tinker or beggar from the north being closely questioned about him. On his departure, he and THE OLD LANDED FAMILIES. 107 his party had the good wishes of all their Celtic countrymen. The news of their arrival in Australia and the welcome they got there excited hopes of success at home, which, while not totally realised, were not totally disappointed. Glengarry's emigra tion, with wooden huts and tents ready to be put up on landing, and with a company of clansfolk, caused Highland emlgi-ants, including a batch from Glenlyon, to go to Australia instead of taking the customary route to Canada, or the United States. The collapse of the Glengarry house was throughout all the Highlands felt to be a whole race calamity. The Seaforth earls. Chiefs of the Mackenzies, had passed away a little earlier, and the remnant of their property which was not sold went to the heir by the spindle side, who, although he claimed to do so, could not on clan principles inherit the chiefship. But Ross-shire was not left without many important landed proprietors of the house of Kintail. There was no such compensation in regard to the disappearance of the Macdonells, a main branch of the Somerled tree from Glengarry. That disappearance was like the fall of a fixed star from the Celtic firmament. It turned war-songs and proud piobaireachd into hollow mockeries or pathetic laments, and took the pith out of the oral traditions. The Huntly Seton-Gordons, who, as Earls of Huntly and Dukes of Gordon, figui'e so largely in the history of Scotland from 1 400 down wards, had wide possessions in the Highlands, and succeeded through marriage to give one of their off-shoots the Earldom of Sutherland. Able and ambitious as these Seton-Gordons were, and anxious as they were at times to act as Highland chiefs, and readily as they were taken fbr such at Court and 108 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. in the Lowlands, they never in Highland opinion levelled themselves up to equality with a Mac- donell of Glengarry, or a Cameron of Lochiel, or even a Keppoch Chief, who was only their tenant. The Duke of Gordon who died in 1836 was genuinely popular in the Highlands, for had he not by his mother's effective if unscrupulous method of recruiting raised the glorious 92nd or Gordon High landers ? It was the minister of Fortingall's son. Sir Robert Macara, who commanded that regiment when Napoleon escaped from Elba, and he fell as a noble warrior should fall, resisting Ney's charge at Quatre Bras. If not the fighting, the Duke of Gordon was the ornamental colonel of the 92nd, and on it he spent much care and money. This kindly man and generous landlord was the last of his race. Our Glenlyon men of age, who were wise and deep in traditional lore, while speaking very kindly of the last Duke of Gordon, did not regret his being the last, seeing that his heir and successor was a Stuart, and bar-sinister descendant of Charles II. Later on their calmness was disturbed by the sale to an Englishman of the lordship of Lochaber, and Inverlochy Castle and the estate attached to it. Transfers of properties by sales or devolution on female line heirs who were strangers and had resi dences elsewhere, furnished our aged sages of all surnames with causes of mourning and with auguries of evil to come. They were all admirers of the state of peace which was established throughout the Highlands within twenty years after CuUoden. As soon as the forfeited estates were restored they thought good rule could be carried on for ever by Church and landlords working together in harmony, and truly between 1780 and 1830 that co-operation THB OLD LANDED FAMILIES. 109 of the spiritual and secular powers was strongly in evidence and produced excellent results. But in course of time the lairds or smaller barons, who were the essential links for connecting the high aristocracy with the classes below, displayed inability to keep their footing. Main lines died out and side line successors had neither their knowledge nor sympa thies. Other most popular families of small estates failed to live within their incomes, and their estates, on coming to be sold, were bought by strangers who might do temporary good by spending money on improvements, but who could not, in one generation at least, be such leaders of the people on their land as their impoverished predecessors had been. I question if any landowner in the southern Highlands could make out a longer claim for his own and his ancestors' possession of the same lands than Francie Mor Mac an Aba. But most of the lairds who were his contemporaries and neighbours or acquaintances, had two centuries of possessory history and had consequently acquired the positioH af natural leaders. This was not a position which in old Highland days could be gained in one generation by strangers. There was a curious form of stability in the seemingly hopeless instability of the times of ancient feuds, broils, rebellions and forfeitures ; for the next up set usually resettled what the previous one had unsettled. no REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER XVI. PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS. "The Children of the Gael " — as they loved to call themselves — had, from the days of their prehistoric wanderings, plenty of race patriotism and conquer ing ambition. They miserably lacked the blessed stolidity which anchored Saxons and other less imaginative races In the places which they had won. Stability, appropriation of other people's inventions and ideas, and the power of building up empires did not belong to world-teachers like the ancient Greeks, nor to world-roamers like the ancient Celtic swarms. But lost opportunities in the past haunted and still haunt the minds of the descendants of both the world-teachers and the world-roamers. It was only when they proudly learned, as soldiers of the Empire, to call themselves Britons, that Imperial patriotism took a strong and lasting hold on the Children of the Gael. The last rebellion of sectional patriotism and politics was the rebellion of 1745, which, while far more picturesque and dramatic, was far less spontaneous and united than the rebellion of 1715. After CuUoden, down to the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832, the Highland people left politics to their nobles, chiefs, and land lords. Paper votes were made by portioning out superiorities generaUy on easy terms of revocation, by the manipulating magnates. So "barons" grew and decayed like mushrooms ; the power of the magnates appeared to be established on sure and PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS. Ill lasting foundations ; and the whole common ali t contentedly looked on, especially after the restora tion ofthe forfeited estates, thankful to enjoy peace under the combined rule of the Church and the landowners. They had cause for thankfulness. The combined rule was the best and cheapest that they could obtain, or, if they obtained, that they could use with advantage. Outside the burghs, of which we had scarcely any in the southern Highlands, the Reform Bill agitation made little noise in Gaeldom. Whenever a little stir got up it was the work of outsiders, who, like our Glenlyon celebrity, the Father of Burgh Reform, had become reformers in Edinburgh and other towns, and wished to get Highlanders to follow their lead. When the bill was passed into law, the newly enfranchised tenants qualified by a £50 rent were not unduly elated by their political importance, for all but a very few left the registra tion of their claims to proprietors and their agents, who forthwith proceeded to act on the assumption that the tenant-electors would follow their lead, as in hosting and hunting did their fathers in bygone times. Landlord influence, through harmonious co operation with the national Church, had wonderfully recovered from the blow inflicted on it by the abolition of heritable jurisdictions and the restriction or sweeping away of various old feudal privileges of a vexatious kind. Why should not the £50 rent electors buttress landlord influence even better than the former " paper- vote " barons did ? Highland lords and lairds, who lived pretty constantly on their properties, were in close touch with their people, and usually worshipped in the same churches with them. Their people looked upon such as 112 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. their natural leaders in politics, and followed them willingly without the least undue compulsion. Radicalism In the Highlands only grew rank when landlord compulsion by agents of non-resident landlords took the place of the former natural and kindly leadership. From Dunkeld to the border of Argyll the people on the land watered by the Tay and its affluents had long been accustomed to form two political groups — the Tory group round the family of Atholl, and the Whig group round the family of Breadal bane. Excepting Roro, belonging to the Earls of Breadalbane, all Glenlyon had been under Atholl superiority since the sale of the barony by Robert Campbell, of the unhappy massacre of Glencoe notoriety, to the Marquis of Atholl shortly before the Revolution of 1688. But when the £50 rent voters on the estate of Culdares were, in the election immediately following the passing of the Reform Bill, called upon to exercise their right, they asserted their independence by voting for the Whig candidate. That candidate was the heir of Breadalbane, who, when his father was created a Marquis in 1831, dropped his former title of Lord Glenorchy, and took that of Earl of Ormelie, which he would not have done had he consulted the Breadalbane people, who liked the title he dropped and superstitiously disliked the one he had assumed, because it was borne by Duncan, the eldest son of the first Earl, who, on account of imbecility, was displaced in the succession by his next brother, John. I was much too young when that first election after the passing of the Reform Bill took place to care for or under stand political questions. But I well remember the fuss and discussions it gave rise to among the newly PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS. 113 enfranchised farmers on the estate of Culdares. What they did in the end was to vote for Lord Ormelie, not because of his political opinions but because he was his father's son — " Mac an duine fhiachail sin, tha sios an Caisteal Bhealaich," " Son of the worthy man who is east of us in Taymouth Castle." Lord Ormelie was triumphantly returned for Perthshire, but as his father died in 1834, he soon passed from the House of Commons into the House of Lords. In 1822 Lord Ormelie married Eliza, daughter of Mr George Baillie of Jerviswood. It was at Auchmore, near Killin, that the new member of Parliament for Perthshire and his lady chiefly resided for the first ten years of their married life. And although, to the great regret of the people and no doubt their own, they had no children, their married life, in other respects, was all that such a life should be. They were in these Auchmore days a very popular pair, and they deserved popularity. The husband's personal character commanded respect even in the dark years to come when, as a landlord, he had lost all his early popularity, and his amiable lady remained popular till her death in 1861. Re joicing gatherings and feastings to celebrate the Whig victory in Perthshire were held in various parts of the country. At Killin, near Lord Ormelie's residence, a big tent was run up close to the hotel, where many hundreds were to dine together and listen to speeches after feasting. In half-witted Willie Chalum, Killin possessed a fool of its own who kept the village and neighbourhood entertained by his sayings and doings, but who, from his prying habits and babbling tongue, could be a plague to those who had anything to conceal. Willie watched 8 114 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. the setting up of the pavilion tent for the festivity, and, on the day appointed fbr the meeting, when those entrusted with the arrangements were busy laying the tables and fixing flags aud decorations, he often stepped inside and was often turned out, but finally got In and out unobserved, with some thing under his " ciotag," or short cloak. This something was a suckling pig roasted whole and now of course cold, which as a garlanded central ornament was to recall symbolically the Campbell tale of lineage and to represent the clan crest — Ceann na muice fiadhaich A mharbh Diarmad 's a ehoill' udlaidh. Decorated, spiced, cold-roasted pigling made Willie's mouth water. He could not resist the temptation of lifting it and running off with it. He got out of the pavilion unobserved, but outside he roused suspicions by running too fast to the bank of the river. He was soon followed. The weather had been hot for some time, and now suddenly, when Willie was being followed, a thunderstorm broke over Killin. He got Into a snug place, under rock and tree shelter, with the pursuers, whom he did not notice, hard at his heels, when the second flash and crash came. Willie, who Avas preparing to dine, looked up at the sky and spoke out loud as if protesting that it was much ado about nothing — " Ubh-ubha ; Nach e sin an stairirich mhor airson uircean firionn muice?" " Oo-oo ; Is that not the great uproar on account of the suckling son of a pig ?" And poor Willie was deprived of his ex pected dinner. The Fortingall blacksmith, George Drysdale, had no vote, but he had a tongue, which he used freely on behalf of Lord Ormelie, and against his opponent. PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS. 115 General Sir George Murray, Wellington's old mili tary secretary, during the election contest. George had been a soldier himself, and the General he wor shipped above all others was Thomas Graham of Balgowan, Lord Lyndoch. George " came up the water" to Fortingall from the Lowland border, and I think it probable that he was born on the Bal gowan estate, although I do not know it for a fact. At any rate George was well known to Jjord Lyndoch, and there was apparently a feudal-clannish tie between the aged General and the ex-soldier. Not long after the election a tragic event took place on the moor of Fortingall between a poacher and a gamekeeper, neither of whom, as it happened, belonged to the district. The poacher was a journeyman-weaver who had been hired for a time to help the village weaver to get through arrears of work. The gamekeeper said that, when he had tried to catch him, the poacher had deliberately fired at him. The poacher said that his gun went off accidentally in a struggle, and that he had had no intention whatever of killing or maiming the gamekeeper. They were alone on the moor, and the gamekeeper was peppered by small shot in the legs, although not fatally nor even seriously wounded. The poacher said that, horrified at the accident, he had willingly carried the wounded man home. The gamekeeper said that, having got hold of the poacher, he compelled him to carry him home. The weaver was tried for attempted murder and sentenced to be hanged. The minister of Fortin gall, Mr Robert Macdonald, wrote out a petition, which the people were signing, when one evening word reached them that the Home Secretary was to be at Taymouth that night, but was to leave next 116 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. morning. A meeting was hastily called, and it was resolved to send a deputation with the petition to the Home vSecretary that night, although the depu tation could not reach Taymouth before bed-time. Lord Lyndoch was in bed before the deputation reached the Castle, but George persuaded his valet to take in his name and mention his errand. He was readily admitted, and the aged peer, then over eighty, having found out that the Home Secretary had not yet retired, got up himself and introduced the deputation. He then took George back with him to his bedroom, and there the two fought their Peninsular battles over again till day -break. In parting Lord Lyndoch gave George a £5 note, say ing, "I understand that in your joy over the victory at the election, you broke all your crockery. See then that you give this to your wife to buy new crockery." But whether he had shillings of his own in his pocket or broke into the crockery fund, George did not pass the village of Kenmore without inviting those he found out of bed and house to drink with him in the Square, the health of the " Hero of Barossa." The weaver escaped the gallows, but I think he was sent to Botany Bay. THE BREADALBANE EVICTIONS. 117 CHAPTER XVII. THE BREADALBANE EVICTIONS. As second Marquis, " the son of his father," contrary to all prognostications, became, as soon as expiring leases permitted it, an evicting landlord on a large scale, and he continued to pursue the policy of joining farm to farm, and turning out native people, to the end of his twenty-eight years' reign. But like the first spout of the haggis, his first spout of evicting energy was the hottest. I saw with childish sorrow, impotent wrath, and awful wonder at man's inhumanity to man, the harsh and sweep ing Roro and Morenish clearances, and heard much talk about others which were said to be as bad if not worse. A comparison of the census returns for 1831 with those of 1861 will show how the second Marquis reduced the rural population on his large estates, while the inhabitants of certain villages were allowed, or, as at Aberfeldy, encouraged to increase. When such a loud and long-continued outcry took place about the Sutherland clearances, it seems at first sight strange that such small notice was taken by the Press, authors, and contemporary politicians, of the Breadalbane evictions, and that the only set attack on the Marquis should have been left to the vainglorious, blundering, Dunkeld coal-merchant, who added the chief-like word "Dun- alastair " to his designation. One reason — perchance the chief one — for the Marquis's immunity was the prominent manner in which he associated himself 118 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. with the Nonintrusionists, and his subsequently becoming an elder and a liberal benefactor of the Free Church. He had a Presbyterian upbringing, and lived in accordance with that upbringing. His Free Church zeal may therefore have been as genuine as he wished it to be believed ; but whether simpl}^ real or partly simulated, it covered as with a saintly cloak his eviction proceedings in the eyes of those who would have been his loud denouncers and scourging critics had he been an Episcopalian or remained In the Church of Scotland. The people he evicted, and all of us, young and old, who were witnesses of the clearances, could not give him much credit for any good in what seemed to us the purely hard and commercial spirit of the policy which he carried out as the owner of a princely Highland property. Such of the witnesses of the clearances as have lived to see the present desolation of rural baronies on the Breadalbane estates can now charitably assume that had he foreseen what his land-management policy was to lead up to, he would, at least, have gone about his thinning out business in a more cautious, kindly, and considerate manner, and not rudely cut, as he did, the precious ties of hereditary mutual sympathy and reliance which had long existed between the lords and the native Highland people of Breadalbane. It is quite true that in 1834 the population on the Breadalbane estate needed thinning. The old Marquis had made a great mistake in dividing holdings which were too small before. In order to make room for Fencible soldiers who were not, as eldest sons, heirs to existing holdings. In twenty years congestion to an alarming extent was the natural result of the old man's mistaken kindness. THE BREADALBANE EVICTIONS. 119 There was indeed a good deal of congestion before that mistake was committed, although migration and emigration helped to keep it within some limits. Emigration would have proceeded briskly from 1760 onwards had it not been discouraged by landlords who found the fighting manhood on their estates a valuable asset ; and when not positively prohibited, emigration was impeded In various ways by the Government, now alive to the value of Highlands and Isles as a nursery of soldiers and sailors. Although discouraged and impeded, emigration was never wholly stopped, and after Waterloo, Glenylon, Fortingall and Breadalbane, Rannoch, Strathearn and Balquidder, sent off swarms to Canada, the United States, and the West Indies. A large swarm from Breadalbane, Lochearnhead, and Bal quidder went off to Nova Scotia about 1828, and got Gaelic-speaking ministers to follow them. In 1829 a great number of Skyemen from Lord Mac- donald's estate went to Cape Breton, where Gaelic is the language of the people, pulpit, and the " Mactalla " newspaper to this day. The second Marquis of Breadalbane would have won for himself lasting glory and honour, and done his race and country valuable service, if he had chosen to place himself at the head of an emigration scheme for his surplus people, instead of merely driving them away, and further trampling on their feelings by letting the big farms he made by clearing out the native population to strangers in race, language, and sympathies. He was rich, childless, and gifted, and he utterly missed his vocation, or grand chance for gaining lasting fame among the children of the Gael. At a later period of my life than this of which I am now writing, I looked into many kirk-session 120 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. books, and found that those of the parishes of Kenmore and Killin indicated a worse state of matters in Breadalbane than existed in any of the neighbouring parishes. Pauperism was increasing at a rapid rate, although it was a notorious fact that rents there were lower than on other Highland estates. The old Marquis was never a rack-renter. Other proprietors, when leases terminated, took more advantage than he did of a chance to raise rents, and when once raised they strove ever after wards to keep them up. But I do not wonder that his son thought that If things were allowed to go on as he found them on succeeding to titles and estates, a general bankruptcy would soon be the result. Without ceasing to regret and detest his methods, I learned to see the reasonableness of the second Marquis's view of the alarming situation. The population had simply outgrown the means of decent subsistence from the carefully cultivated small holdings which were the general rule. Had it not been for the frugality and self-helpfulness of the people, the crisis of general poverty would have come when the inflated war prices ceased, or at least in the short-crop year of 1826, when the corn raised in Breadalbane, although the hillsides were cultivated as far up as any cereal crop could be expected to ripen In the most favourable season, did not supply meal enough for two-thirds of the people. But the "calanas" ofthe women, especially as long as flax-spInnlng continued in a flourishing condition, brought in a good deal of money ; and for many years "Calum a Mhuilin" (Calum of the MIU), otherwise Malcolm Campbell, road contractor, Killin, led out a host of young men to make roads In various parts of the country, and these returned THE PARTING OF THE "WAYS. 121 with their earnings to spend the winter at home. These sources of profit were beginning to dry up when the old Marquis died. What came of the dispersed ? The least adven turous or poorest of them slipped away into the nearest manufacturing town, or mining districts where there was a demand for unskilled labourers. There some of them flourished, but not a few of them foundered. The larger portion of them emigrated to Canada, mainly to the London district of Ontario, where they cleared forest farms, cherished their Gaelic language and traditions, prospered, and hated the Marquis more, perhaps, than he rightly deserved when things were looked at from his own hard political-economy point of view. CHAPTER XVIII. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. Our " Gray Egyptians," who suspected that more evil than good would corae out of emotional religious revivalism, shook their old heads over the Reform BiU likewise. They were local weather seers who could read from signs in earth and sky, and the blowing of the wind, the manners of birds and animals, prophecies of coming weather, good and evil. Gloom on Coir'n Dubhaich portended a storm from the west. When the quickly circling shadow of a mist, which they called the " Fuathas," or Spirit of the Storm, was seen on the conical top of the Cairn Gorm, then very bad weather Avas to come from the east. As people of long personal experience and depositaries of old traditions, they assumed a 122 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. modified right to make predictions in respect to the effect which innovations in Church and State would soon have on the welfare of Gaeldom. They were inconvincible Tories in their way, although they would not call themselves so. While admitting that he committed an error in making small holdings still smaller, they praised the old Marquis to the skies. They deplored his son's cruel evictions, but at the same time confessed the need for a thinning of the population on his estates, and indeed in most parts of the Highlands, since the congestion was daily increasing Avhile the old sources of profit were daily diminishing. As for religious and civil rule, they felt sure there could ncA-er be a better one for Gael dom than the one which had been in existence for fifty years, through the cordial co-operation of Church and State ; the Church looking after morals, education, and the poor ; and the landlords, as Justices of the Peace and Commissioners of Supply, looking after the preservation of civil order, roads, bridges, etc. But the Reform Bill brought Church and landlords to a parting of the ways. The harmonious co-operation was superseded by a separa tion which at first was reluctant and partial, but which the Disruption widened and which grew into completeness when household suffi-age was extended to the country. Old friendship was turned into incipient hostility by causes of offence which arose on both sides. Sir Walter Scott is credited with haAnng been the first man to reveal the Highlands to the English- speaking public and the outer world. That revela tion filled the heirs of Highland lords, chiefs, and lairds, who had been sent to be educated in England, Avith an exaggerated conceit of their own position THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. 123 because they took no notice of an essential condition which Scott had not overlooked, although he had failed to emphasise it sufficiently. " Shoulder to shoulder " union of Highland inhabitants of estates held on feudal tenure, with the legal individual proprietors, depended on proprietors' recognition of reciprocal duty towards their people. The idea of an unwritten compact older than and superior to feudal charters had come down to the children of the Gael from dim days of antiquity, and was the basis of their clannish readiness to follow in war, and obey in peace, the landlord who stood shoulder to shoulder with them as they did to him. As long as magnates were, through family councils of allied lairds, kept well linked with those below them, and as long as the lairds lived on their own estates most of the year, and for a change thought Edlnbur-gh good enough for thera, the Idea of the unwritten compact was well kept in mind by the land-owning classes of all degrees. The new generation of land owners iri many cases lost sight of the old Celtic idea, and with that lost all the hold their elders had on the shoulder to shoulder fidelity of their inferiors. The men of the latter generation had no Gaelic, which their elders knew to be the " open sesame " for reaching Highland hearts ; and many of those whose fathers were Church of Scotland men joined other religious bodies. That desertion was politically a mistake for them, whatever it might be religiously. In short — with exceptions — owners of Highland properties resolved after the passing of the Reform Bill to assert their full feudal rights and something more, to make their £50 tenants vote to order under the implied if not always clearly emphasised threat that If they dis- 124 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. obeyed they would lose their farms at the end of their leases. Throughout the long period of harmonious co operation Highland private patrons had been doing their level best to select worthy men as presentees to their vacant charges, and with an irreducible mini mum of inevitable mistakes their efforts were crowned with eminent success. As a matter of fact congrega tions had almost always a say in the selection. If there Avas a man they wished strongly to have for their minister they made their wishes directly known to the patron, or got some lairds or large tenants who were elders or members to speak to the patron, who generally acted on the request made to him. Patrons and congregations had both a tendency to prefer, other things being equal, one who belonged to their district, and whose character and whose people were known to them. Local clannishness operated in all directions. As long as reasonable attention was paid to the wishes of the congrega tions, and patrons were fellow-worshippers, the theoretical objectionableness of patronage was veiled and almost forgotten by churchmen, and as the compromise system worked well, feudalists felt inclined to give up their fears of and hatred to the representative and essentially democratic character of Presbyterian organisation. Highland ministers took scarcely any share in party jDolItics since the suppression of the '45 rebellion, but were great patriots, and as far as preaching went. Array and Navy recruiters at the time of the Avar with America, and above all during the life-and-death struggle with Napoleon. Shortly after the passing of the Reform Bill, they were hauled by their divided Lowland brethren and the hot- heads among THE CHURCH CONTROVERSY. 125 themselves into party strife within their Church Courts ; and into fighting outside with feudalists, who wished to drive instead of lead the new voters, and with private patrons who now wished to stand on the strict right of presentation without regard to the wishes of congregations, with whom they no longer deigned to associate themselves in public worship. Blundering on the one side evoked answering blundering on the other side. In a short time the heather was on fire, and much of what would have been of inestimable value to the future welfare of Scotland perished. CHAPTER XIX. THE CHURCH CONTROVERSY IN GLENLYON. The early rumblings of the Ten Years' Conflict did not create any stir in my native glen. Our people were very well pleased with their successive ministers presented by the Crown after the Glen had been made into a quoad sacra parish, endowed and provided with a new church and manse out of the Parliamentary grant voted as a national thank- off"ering after the war Avith Napoleon. The first of these was Mr John Macalister, a native of the Island of Arran, who put his foot down on smuggling, although the story ran that before his conversion he had something to do with smuggling himself If he had he knew the evils thereof, and he certainly exposed and denounced them vigorously. When the manse was being built Mr Macalister lodged in the house of our neighbour. Elder Duncan Macalum, and I used to toddle after him down to the river 126 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. bank when he was angling for trout. He was a stern disciplinarian to adults who needed to be admonished or rebuked, but a delightful friend to children. When the raanse Avas ready he went to live there and brought horae a wife. There their eldest son, Donald, afterwards Free Church minister in Edinburgh, was born, and often, on seeing from the other side of the river, his mother carrying him about in front of the manse, I longed to wade across to play with the child, but the depth of the water on the driest day of summer was beyond my small length. Mr Macalister was a fervent evangelical revivalist. In a few years he left us for the Gaelic Church, Edinburgh, whence he migrated north to becorae minister of Nigg in Ross-shire. I do not know on whose recommendation he was presented to Glenlyon, but the next two were appointed on the petition of the congregation through the infiuence of the Marquis of Breadalbane. These two, Mr David and Mr Duncan Campbell, were brothers, and natives of our Glen, We first got the younger brother, Mr David, while at about the same time Mr Duncan was appointed to Lawers, and married the eldest daughter of the Apostle of the North. Mr David's bright and clever wife, Margaret Macbean, was also from the north, the daughter of an Inverness-shire parish- teacher. Probably their marriages had something to do with the first introduction of the brothers to the notice of northern congregations, but it was because of their own undoubted merits that they were one after the other so soon wiled away from their native Glen over the Grampians. Eloquent, warm-hearted, lovable, and peace- loving, Mr David was in 1836 so far "left to himsel' " as to accept a majority call to the East THE CHURCH CONTROVERSY. 127 Church, Inverness. On January 12th of that year a meeting of the elders, managers, and male com municants of that church was held to elect a minister. Provost Fraser, who presided, proposed the election of the Rev. David Campbell, minister of Glenlyon, and Bailie George Mackay proposed the election of the Rev. Archibald Cook, of Bruar. Thirty-three voted for Mr Campbell and twenty- five for Mr Cook. The former on a majority of eight was declared elected. The acceptance of the call by Mr Campbell was laid before the Presbytery of Inverness on March 30th. He was not inducted until November 23rd, and meanwhile Mr Cook's adherents raised such a schismatic clamour, that to pacify them they got the North Church erected for themselves and their favourite. The new minister of the East Church was a man Avho hated strife. His position at Inverness was irksome to him, although he rallied round him many new members and adherents, who made up wholly or in great part for the departure of the Cookites. His fame as a powerful evangelical preacher spread further northwards. At the beginning of September, 1838, he was presented to the parish of Tarbat, East Ross-shire. The patron's choice was endorsed by a unanimous call from the congregation. In Tarbat he laboured faithfully, first as a minister of the Church of Scotland, and afterwards for some fifteen years as Free Church minister. His health, after his wife's death, broke down, and he craved for the air of his native Ben Lawers range, and was glad to accept a call from Lawers, where he died at a good old age. Unlike the then rulers of the Free Church, he died blessing the act which abolished patronage in the Church of Scotland, and hoping 128 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. for the union of the Scotch Presbyterian Churches. He was a lover and preacher of charity, peace, piety, and industry, whose lot was cast in an age of strife and of social and ecclesiastical unsettlemeiit. He liked right and hated wrong. In speaking to me, many years after the Disruption, of the Convocation which preceded it, and of which he was a member, he grew angry over Dr Candlish's adopted proposal to lock the doors of Roxburgh Church so that none could escape voting for or against the official resolutions. Lie went there, he said, determined to vote for the resolutions, but this made him feel that they were being coerced by the device of locking the doors. On the south side of the Grampians we had no minister of the stamp of Mr Archibald Cook and Mr Rory, of Snizort, whose intolerably narrow views respecting conversion, baptism, and communion fitted them better for heathenising than for Christianising congregations ; but we had some braying lay-asses whose mouths had been opened, without a jot of the inspiration of Balaam's beast, by revival and Church dispute excitements. Years after the Disruption the Free Church Assembly appointed a Commission to go to the parish of Snizort, to see and report on the state of matters there ; for complaints had been formally made that Mr Rory refused baptism to the children of parents of irre proachable life and character with whose conversion assurances he was not satisfied, or who refused to give him any such assurances at all. The Free Church minister of Tarbat was a member of that Commission, and at a meeting held in Mr Rory's church was subjected to an insult which deeply touched his sensitive nature. Mr Rory's admirers gathered in force from many quarters and roughly THE CHURCH CONTROVERSY. 129 interrupted the Commissioners and complainers. One woman was conspicuously noisy and insulting. Mr David remonstrated with her, and in Viis earnest pleading for decent behaviour patted her shoulder. Then the virago shouted out, " Tha'm fear so cur laimh orm" (" This man is laying hand on me.") In Gaelic the phrase might mean taking indecent liberties, and such an insinuation, which a differently constituted man would only have laughed at, hui-t Mr David so deeply that he would never go to Skye on a Church business again. When Glenlyon lost dear Mr David, it got as his successor his elder brother, Mr Duncan Campbell from Lawers, and kept him until, shortly before the Disruption, he was presented and called to be parish minister of Kiltearn, Ross-shire. He was an excel lent administrator, a worthy man, and a good solid evangelical preacher, although not so eloquent and sympathetic as Mr David. So far Crown patronage had been exercised in accordance with the expressed wishes of the Glen people. The three ministers who left us for northern parishes, Mr Macalister, Mr David Campbell, and Mr Duncan Campbell, went out at the Disruption. The Church dispute had not arisen in Mr Macalister's time among us. Mr David Campbell did not take it with him to the pulpit. Mr Duncan Campbell could not wholly ignore it, for he had Assembly documents to read and expound from the pulpit, but the subject got very little notice in his sermons. 130 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER XX. THE OUTSIDE DISCUSSIONS. While the Sunday services remained much as they were before, devotional and doctrinal, the Glen people plunged on their own account into discussion and study of the Church question. Before the Reforin Bill I think no more than three or four weekly newspapers came regularly into our district. Some second - hand ones came irregularly from Glensmen In the Lowlands, England, and Canada, and the United States. Intellectual activity was never wanting among the Children of the Gael. It would have been better for the material pros perity of their race If they had more stolidity, less imagination, and a smaller share of mingled mysticism and love of daring adventure. In the period admired by the " Gray Egyptians" there was a wonderful burst of original and, tested by any standard, high-class Gaelic poetry; and the masterly translation of the Bible into Scottish Gaelic, which anticipated many of the recent amendments of the revised English version, had been completed about that time. In that period the spread of education and the freer inter-communication had made the greater number of Highland men and women bi-lingual. So even in our isolated Glen, where Reform and the raising of the Church dispute brought more newspapers, and many controversial pamphlets, we had people ready to translate them round the firesides, and to discuss them on hillsides, or even over their farming work. THE OUTSIDE DISCUSSIONS. 131 I remember how deaved I was by those fireside readings, translations, and the discussions that followed in their train, ere I got fairly into my teens, and when " Robinson Crusoe," the " Pilgrim's Progress," "Arabian Nights," ponderous Guthrie's " Grammar of Geography," and Sir Walter Scott's poems and novels were the English books which I then wanted to pore over. But after all, this imposition had its educational value, and gained in interest as the quarrel progressed to its crisis. In an accidental way the libel case against Mr Mac- laurin, minister of StrathfiUan, which was dragging its sloAv length along before the Presbytery of Weem, intertwined Itself in Glen discussions with the larger question. Mr Maclaurin had been mis sionary minister in Glenlyon before it had been made Into a separate parish. He was a promising young probationer of impulsive and revival-evan gelical type. He married in Glenlyon, and within little more than a year lost the young wife whom he dearly loved, and Avas left with a baby daughter. It seems that after some years of what was acknow ledged to be good service at StrathfiUan, he fell into irregular habits. After a long trial, which went through all the Courts of the Church, he was deposed on the charge of drinking and fighting. He went to the United States, Avhere he recovered himself, and obtained a church and congregation. Our Glen people watched this case in all its stages, and through that watching they for the first time acquired a real knowledge of the constitution of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The deposition of Mr Robertson, of Fortingall, in 1716, for reading treasonable papers in his church at the time of Mar's rebellion, was the only similar case in which 132 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. the Glen had been interested since the Reformation. The Presbytery of Weem had not then been cut out of the huge Presbytery of Dunkeld, and a case heard at Dunkeld was beyond their limit. At first our people discussed the Church question as if it were an abstract one which was not likely to cause trouble to themselves. If their minister re mained with them, all would be well. If, like his predecessors, he went away, why should they not as before get the man of their choice through the action of Crown patronage? Possessed of this sense of what happened to be unsafe security, they looked without fear or passion at the question in all its bearings, and qualified themselves as best they could for an impartial jury business. There was a little parish library under the control of the kirk- session, which contained some books on Scotch history, and one or more copies of the Confession of Faith. These books were now in request, and those who read them expounded their contents to those who could not read them, or, if they could read them, could not easily understand them. All this reading and debating training for intelligently exer cising the functions of an impartial jury took place after the Assembly had crossed the Rubicon by passing the Veto Act. THE VETO ACT. 133 CHAPTER XXI. THE VETO ACT. From the first raising of the question, all our Glen debaters, on the strength of the knowledge they got from their own thoughtful if limited studies, and from the more vehement arguments put forth in the Assembly and in Press reports and pamphlets, unanimously agreed that patronage was not in harmony with the theory of Presbyterian Church organisation, that it had always been considered a grievance, and that having been abolished — imper fectly — after the Revolution of 1688, its restoration near the end of Queen Anne's reign, for a reactionary political purpose, by English Ministers backed by a majority of English members of Parliament, was a fraud upon Scotland ; and if not in the letter, surely enough in the spirit, a gross violation of the 1707 Act of Union. The few "Gray Egyptians" who did not yet sleep with their fathers were by this time too old and feeble to take a leading part in Glen politics. But younger men imbued with their ideas in diluted form contended that it was premature, and consequently most inexpedient, to raise such a weighty controversy, while in the districts they knew best, patronage had been exercised with con scientious care to select excellent presentees — here many names were mentioned — and great deference had been paid to wishes of congregations and the cause of religion, morality, and education. 134 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. The supporters of the Veto Act frankly admitted that in the past the co-operation of landlords and patrons with the Church of Scotland had been kindly and beneficial, but they asserted that now landlords as a class were taking up a hostile attitude to the Church and to the native Highland population. They alleged that at the second post- Reform election, which had just taken place, the Tory landlords — Avith some honourable exceptions- had not let tenants vote as their fathers would have done, but, by factors and other agents, had driven them like dumb cattle to vote for Tory candidates. They next called attention to the Breadalbane and Sutherland evictions to show what hollow mockeries the liberal professions of Whig magnates really were. On these great properties the big farms made by clearing out the native inhabitants were usually let to strangers in race and language. Such was the substance of the rejoinder ; and it is worth being noted. I was so young that it did not Impress me deeply at the time, but at the Disruption I realised that the something felt, if uumentloned, Avhich underlay the religious and ecclesiastical agitation in the Highlands was a seeking for means of native race defence in a democratically con stituted national Church, liberated from infiuences which were formerly friendly but Avere now be coming hostile. The seeking for defence in this direction might not have been vain if the High landers theraselves had not raade it so by leaving the Church of Scotland in 1843. At the time when our Glen people Avere discussing patronage and the Veto Act, anyone who prophesied the Disruption would haA^e been ridiculed as a fool or morally stoned as a lying mouthpiece of Baal. At THE VETO ACT. 135 and after the Disruption a similar fate would have been his who prophesied the Union of the United Free Church in 1900. Our Glen objectors to the Veto Act wished) as almost all Highlanders did, to see patronage abolished in a regular way, since they had to admit sorrowfully that there was too much cause to fear the old harmony was nearly at an end, but they argued that a wrong thing done by Parliament could only be undone and righted by Parliament ; and that the device of giving the majority of male communicants the right of rejecting presentees was a wretched piece of tinkering, even If it were within the legal competence of the General Assembly to confer such a right of rejection at all. The other side did not deny that the Veto i^ct was far from being so satisfactory as the abolition of patronage by Act of Parliament would have been. " Why then," asked the objectors, " do we not ask Parlia ment to give us abolition ? " " Because," replied the others, " there would be small chance of Paidlament soon granting us our request, when all Church of England members, peers and commoners, would join our Scottish Tories in resisting abolition." 136 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER XXII. THE COMING OF THE QUEEN. The booming of the quarrel over the Veto Act, which quickly developed into a bitter war between Church and State, was from south and north soon rolling over the heads of our Glen academic debaters, who still thought themselves safe when the corona tion of Queen Victoria diverted people's thoughts for a moment to a far more agreeable subject, and united all Highlanders in one glow of chivalrous loyalty and devotion to their girl Sovereign, whose age, sex, and loneliness, appealed to their deepest sympathies. Well do I remember being set to read a florid account of the Coronation from an Edin burgh paper — either the "Courant" or "Caledonian Mercury" — -to an attentive audience gathered round our kitchen fire, while my aged grandmother took upon herself the larger part of the task of simul taneously translating the English, sentence by sentence, into Gaelic. She had, pat and perfect, old Gaelic words for throne, coronation, robes, crown, sceptre — Avhich I fear I called "skepter" — and Sword of State, etc., but the globe bothered her so entirely that she had to give it up. She trans lated it "cruinneag" or ball, but could make nothing of its symbolical meaning. She and others of her generation enjoyed the liberty this occasion gave them for going back from Kings of Judah and Israel to the history of Scottish Kings as far as Kenneth Macalpin, which had come down by oral tradition. A PARISH VACANCY. 137 Long afterwards when I read the "Duan Alban- nach," I was much surprised to discover that the substance of it was retained to a remarkable extent in the oral and local traditions which our aged people recalled and told at the time of Queen Victoria's coronation. As for the later Kings from the days of Wallace and Bruce, as Glenlyon was visited by so many of them for hunting purposes until the Union of the English and Scottish Crowns, there was nothing very strange in the fact that the traditions Avere fairly strong and unbroken. CHAPTER XXIII. A PARISH VACANCY. I SHOULD here refer to the losses suffered by Highland farmers in the hard years — "Na Bliadh- nachan Cruaidh" — between 1836 and 1841, but as it would break the thread of discourse on the ecclesiastical subject, I will postpone my remarks till another time. The war was at a roaring height of mutual ex asperation — the State bullying through the Courts of Law, and the dominant party in the Church bullying through the General Assembly, and from pulpits, platforms, and press — when Mr Duncan Campbell left Glenlyon in 1842 for the parish of Kiltearn in Ross-shire. The Glen people had not fixed their minds on any particular person as the man they would like to get as his successor. They were not, however, left long to seek for a successor. The dominant party in the Assembly took good care that a follower of theirs should be recommended to 138 reminiscences and REFLECTIONS. every vacant Highland charge Avhere there was the slightest chance of winning a victory, or failing that, of raising a loud cry against patrons, the Peel Government, and minatory Tory lairds. A Mr Hamilton, of whom the Glen people knew nothing at all, was provided for the Glenlyon vacancy. Presbytery of Weem ministers of his party gave him their turns for preaching in the Glen, He came, was welcomed hospitably, and preached on two Sundays, in English and in Gaelic, as the rule then was. He seemed to be of the sound, solid, and somewhat heavy class of preachers. The general verdict was that he could not stand favourable comparison with any of the three former ministers. But as he belonged to the popular side, and was recommended from headquarters, the Glen people were easily induced to sign a petition to the Govern ment requesting that he should be presented. Sir Niel Menzies, chief of his clan, a kindly old fashioned resident landlord, and a ruling Church of Scotland elder, knew Glenlyon and its people very well ; for besides old social intercourse between Castle Menzies and Meggernie Castle, he was one of the three trustees Avho managed the Culdares estate during the long minority and absenteeism of young Culdares. If Sir Niel, like the new Tories, thought the tenant voters should take their politics from their pro prietors, he led his tenants in the shoulder to shoulder way, without a hint of coercion. Now when the Glen people finished the signing of their petition, they appointed a deputation of three to go over the hills to Rannoch Lodge to see Sir Niel to tell him what they wanted and to beg him to lend them his support — I do not know exactly in what way — and to assure him that why they petitioned in THE PRESENTEE. 139 favour of Mr Hamilton was because they desired to keep out of the Veto Act trouble, which they could not do unless their petition was granted. I suppose Avhat they asked Avas granted, for they came back highly delighted with their reception, and not a little amused by Sir Niel's discovery that one of their number, Archibald Macdiarmid, in Glen par lance, " Gilleaspa Mor Scoileir," or " Big Gillespie the Scholar," was as like Dr Chalmers as if they had been twin-brothers. The likeness was striking, although not so twin-like as Sir Niel declared it to be. The petition was sent to the proper quarter, and its receipt was duly acknowledged. The sanguine waited in hope that the prayer would be granted, and the whole congregation would have been very glad indeed to get a decent minister without being hauled into the turmoil connected with the operation of the Veto Act north, south, east, and west of them. CHAPTER XXIV. THE PRESENTEE. Without any long delay the Glen petitioners received their reply in the substantial form of a presentee — a Mr Stewart, whom they had never seen, and about whom they had no previous infor mation whatever. The Melbourne Liberal Govern ment was in 1841 succeeded by a Conservative Government headed by Sir Robert Peel. To do them justice, the men who passed the Veto Act, and continued through thick and thin to defend it on grounds of spiritual rights Avhich might have 140 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. suited Pope Hildebrand, never pretended that the Veto was the complete remedy, which the Parlia mentary abolition of patronage would have been. If asked, when Lord Melbourne was in office with a Liberal majority behind him, why they did not go to Parliament for abolition, their answer was that it would have been no use to do so, because English peers and English commoners had heavy material interests in English Church patronage, and on this Scottish question they would be sure to side with the Scottish Tories. I believe the supposition was indisputable that nothing more was to be expected from the Melbourne Government than this, that in dispensing Crown patronage some attention would be paid to the wishes of congregations ; as in the case of Glenlyon before the Peel Government came into office. Yet before that event occurred, things had come to such a crisis that only the abolition of patronage by Act of Parliament could bring Church and State out of the conflict in Avhich the rash passing of the Veto Act by an Assembly majority had involved them both. The Veto Act had been declared illegal by the Court of Session and the House of Lords before the Glen male communicants were persuaded, incited, and morally coerced by their ecclesiastical leaders to go through the form of vetoing Mr Stewart. They resented the manner in Avhich their jDetitlon had been rejected when they only wanted peace. Their sympathies were enlisted on the side of the leaders of the majority in the Assembly, and reports of what was happening in other places and cases aroused their Indignation. So before they ever saw or heard him they resolved to veto Mr Stewart. He received a cold but re spectful reception when he did come, very different THE PRESENTEE, 141 indeed fi?om the warm and hospitable one that had been given to the nominee of the non-intrusionist Vetoists. On the two Sundays on which he officiated, young and old flocked to hear him ; and not a few of his hearers frankly said afterwards that they liked his sermons and his looks, and that if he had not been forced down their throats they would willingly sign a call to him. But although he made a favourable impression on them, the presentee did not benefit by it. Matters had come to such a pass that liberty of individual judgment and of congregational action had to give way to war partisanship. Our Glen communicants felt bound in honour to follow the lead of the assertors of popular religious liberties, and if any of them showed an inclination to desert the cause, or decline entering into contest with the declared law of the land, his womenkind kept him in the road laid down for him and vigorously pushed him on. Female com municants were shabbily debarred from exercising the veto, but for all that they were the most zealous of the supporters of the Veto Act. When the Presbytery met in the church the most zealous of the women went there as spectators to see that the men did their duty, and the men fulfilled expectations by putting Mr Stewart under their veto. The Presbytery suspended proceedings pending an appeal to the next Assembly. The next Assembly was that of 1843, and the case was not continued further because Mr Stewart soon got a much better place. Before the people of the Glen had been called upon to testify their adherence to the Veto Act by acting contrary to the statute law as interpreted by the civil Courts, Candlish and Cunningham had 142 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. been to Inverness as fiery-cross bearers, and all over the Highlands, and I suppose the Lowlands also, meetings were held to hear the cause expounded by able debaters sent out from the Church's head quarters. Principal Dewar of Aberdeen in his best Breadalbane Gaelic addressed the meeting held in our church. He did not, like others who were with him, go out at the Disruption. That fact deprived him in his native district of the honour in which, contrary to the proverbial saying, he was formerly held. I must say that In my teens I thought well ofthe people ridiculed as the "Forty Thieves," who made a last futile effort to prevent the Disruption catastrophe, and wished to go to Parliament for the abolition of patronage, and, afterwards, more mature consideration and more experience convinced me that if they had been listened to, a great mistake would not have been made through the blind, passionate intolerance of both the fighting parties, a Government bent upon suppressing by main force a national movement for the redress of a long-felt grievance, and an ecclesiastical party which advanced extreme papal claims of spiritual jurisdiction, and had, when thwarted, soon lost sight of moderation and the wisdom of Avorking out a desirable purpose by patient adherence to, and persistency in, orderly and legal methods. Moderation so lost its character that the word "Moderate" was used then and long afterwards as a term of reproach. ON THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE. 143 CHAPTER XXV. ON THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE. In associations for secular purposes, even whole nations are not incapable of recognising their mis takes and of trying to correct them. But religious associations of all denominations ape at infallibility, and will, as a rule, foUoAv the course they have once set for themselves although it should lead them to the gates of Hades. In this twentieth century those who deplore the deplorable divisions of Scottish Presbyterianism, and who search back for their originating causes, will, I have no doubt, say that the Veto Act was a blunder, albeit a well-intentioned one, Avhich ought to have been repudiated as soon as its inefficiency was discovered, and its illegality de clared, in favour of that perfectly proper course by which the abolition of patronage was obtained thirty years after the calamitous disunion of 1843 had taken place. It was not till the edge of the preci pice had been reached that the demand for abolition was countenanced by the clerical leaders, who stuck to their own inflated spiritual independence and papal Infallibility claims, and who, when they did at last as a great concession to lay-desire for the larger boon, look at the preferable alternative, did not stop the march on the line leading over the precipice. They had given and received provocations not to be forgiven or forgotten readily. Throughout all Scotland, and not only from hot religious zeal, but also, as already noticed, for underlying race defence 144 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. reasons, more blazingly in the Highlands than any where else, the national heather was in flames. Dr Cook and his Assembly minority had not as a party any just title to the name of Moderates. They and the Tory lairds, the private patrons, with a few exceptions, and the Peel Government, had com mitted themselves to a policy of coercive repression which angered the people of Scotland and furnished the heather-firers with fine torches. Enlightened patriotism was compulsorily blind-folded or stricken dumb. By the faults both sides had committed in this contest, they had unconsciously laid broad foundations for the Radicalism which at once took hold of cities and burghs, and came to the top in the counties when household suffrage was extended to them. Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues banished political commonsense to Jericho when, in utter forgetfulness or utter ignorance of the lessons taught by Scottish history, they fell back on the policy of coercion which had been so ruinous to the Stuart dynasty. Their Scotch advisers, lawyers, clericals, Tory patrons, and proprietors who either recommended that policy or meekly endorsed it, were still more culpable because they knew, or ought to know, the fierce nature of the Scottish Presbyterians when called upon by their Church leaders to rally in defence of their religious rights, with which in every blue banner mustering, the cause of civil rights and liberties was dead sure to be inseparably intertwined in some manner. No gleam of second-sight faintly showed to the Church leaders that a generation later on their successors would not only throw away the grand opportunity the abolition of patronage provided for re-union, but bitterly dislike the liberation from the old yoke ON THE EDGE OP THE PRECIPICE. 145 given to the Church of Scotland, adopt a dis establishment policy, plunge into unnatural political association with Irish Separatists, English Socialists, and so-caUed Liberationists, and finally by their 1900 Union with the UP. Voluntaries, stray widely from the principles of the Claim of Right and Protest, and thereby cause other separations. But if deficient in foresight and recklessly careless about the fiiture of Presbyterianism in Scotland, they were adepts at stirring up and organising a big national movement which had many of the features of a general trade-union strike. In 1842 this strike was in the name of the crown rights of Christ and His supreme sovereignty, plainly and professedly directed against the unfavourable decisions of the Civil Courts (which decisions were often garnished with de liberate words of offence), and against the repressive, coercive policy of the Peel Government. It passes human comprehension to understand how the Scottish advisers and supporters of that Government failed to take in the extent and the significance of the popular movement, and to impress upon Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues the necessity for resorting to reasonable compromise. Lord Aberdeen's Act, passed after the Disruption had taken place, fi^om its general impracticability and the varying measure in which ever changing Assembly majorities ad ministered it, proved to be much of a costly sham ; but it was a plausible sham containing a modicum concession. Had it been passed in the session of 1842 it would, at least, have greatly strengthened the " Forty Thieves " and added largely to their numbers. It might even have prevented the catas trophe of 1843. Lord Aberdeen in 1841 introduced a similar Bill in the House of Lords which was still 10 146 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. more of a sham and came to nothing. The rulers of the Church had in the Presbyterian organisation, with its Kirk Sessions, Presbyteries, Synods, and General Assemblies, splendidly constructed machinery for working up the agitation. As, for example, in the deposition of the Strathbogie ministers, for refusing to run their heads against civil penalties, by obeying ecclesiastical injunction, they used their spiritual power as despotically as their opponents used their civil power. Their opponents made some feeble attempts to hold public meetings to pass counter-resolutions and to make counter-protests. But they had no popular organisation at their com mand, and as they found that the people would not attend their meetings, and that they were mocked as mere class and caste demonstrations, they dis continued holding them. They tried pamphlet war with no better success. The arguments put forth in those pamphlets, although some of them were good from the legal and customary point of view, caused the tide of popular opinion to rise higher and higher against their side, and to evoke new Radical argu ments and threats from hot-headed antagonists. As soon as the Peel Government displaced the Melbourne one, threats of separation began to be muttered by irresponsible individuals on the popular side, but it was not till that threat was taken up by the responsible leaders gathered together in Convocation that Government and country were seriously warned of such an extreme project as separation being really contemplated by the then rulers of the Church of Scotland. As a matter of fact I know very well that in our Glen the idea of separation, under any circum stances, was at first most unfavourably received ON THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE. 147 It would not be too much to say that to all but a few thoughtless or reckless individuals it caused consternation. But throughout the whole contest there had been almost perfect unanimity in favour of the abolition of patronage by Act of Parliament. Our people, at the instigation of the Church leaders, had just applied the Veto Act to prevent the settlement of a presentee who was only unaccept able on mere party grounds. They were far from being proud of their tame submission to outside dictation, but they were unitedly convinced that abolition and not the Veto, with its exhaustive process possibilities and indefinite delays of settle ment, was the remedy that should be sought for. As a stone rolling down a precipitous hill gains momentum as it rolls on, so did this movement. There were parishes in the north, such as Daviot near Inverness, and Kiltearn in Ross-shire, which had, years before this, resorted to temporary divisive courses; but in December, 1842, so highly and so justly appreciated was the Church of Scotland by the vast majority of the Highland people as the most precious part of " dileab nan athraichean " — the legacy of their fathers — that if secession had been put to the vote, it would, I feel sure, have been vetoed as plumply as any unacceptable presentee, and that too in defiance of contrary orders from headquarters. How was the alarm calmed ? By assurances given in good faith by ministers and other trusted leaders that the Church of Scotland was not in the smallest danger of being Injured by a threat of secession, which was meant to work in the opposite direction by forcing the Government to change its attitude on the whole matters in dispute. The 148 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. threat was made in time for the Government to change its attitude in the forthcoming session of Parliament, and if it did so there would be a con cordat instead of a secession when the Assembly met in May. But what would happen if the Government refused to make any satisfactory con cessions ? It was said that in that improbable event the majority of the ministers, elders, and people would go out ; but it would be only to be quickly called back again on conditions satisfactory to them. Behind Dr Chalmers were whirlwind riders who were so carried away by the ideas of their own importance, and so inflated by the cheers of excited audiences, that they could not now come down to earth and settle there in comfort unless in a brand new Church where they would be rulers, and by which their farae as founders would be kept high forever. But those whirlwind riders were yet held in check by Dr Chalmers through his commanding intellect and conservative proclivities, supported as he then was by all the older, saner, and more reasonable men of his party, who, whether ranked as leaders or as followers in Church courts, were influential in their own parts of the vineyard. The threat of separation placed both Church and State in a very difficult position. But why should peaceful negotiations be yet despaired of? Both sides had become too obstinate and blind to the reasons for expedient mutual concessions, which reasons were as plentiful as blackberries. So nothing was done between the meeting of Parliament in winter and the meeting of the Assembly in May. Sir Robert Peel, who did not understand Presby terian Church affairs nor the temper of the Scottish people, came to Scotland with the Queen in Sep- ON THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE. 149 tember, 1842. I saw him for the first and last time at Taymouth. He was singled out for more obser vation in that large gathering than any other man. A rumour had reached the Highlands that he had been insulted by an Edinburgh mob, and good care was taken that he should be respected as Prime Minister by the children of the Gael. His visit did not enlighten him on the true inwardness of the Scotch ecclesiastical crisis. Perhaps the exuberant loyalty evinced by all classes towards the Queen led him to suppose that the Queen's Minister might with a light heart refuse concession to a noisy set of ecclesiastical agitators. Scotch officials and Scotch supporters of the Conservative Government deceived him, and, what Is far more strange, honestly deceived themselves by taking a portentously wrong estimate of the importance of the agitation. When the separation threat was issued a short time after his visit, he might well ask why should an English Prime Minister, incrusted in English ideas and sup ported by Scotch Tories, pay any attention to the threat, when he was made to believe by those who should know best, that if he firmly put down his foot and kept it down, nothing worse would happen than the secession of a few agitating ministers whose departure would be a gain. It was not necessary on that showing to yield to a threat when yielding would be humiliating to his own credit and the credit of his Government and party. Having, as they asserted, to defend civil and religious liberty, the threateners had voluntarily placed themselves under a necessity either to humble them selves or to make the State yield. Month after raonth glided by without any practical means being taken to eff'ect compromise and reconciliation, and 150 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS, just in the proportion in which hopeful expectation diminished, the violence of the agitation increased, and so did the popular determination to range up behind those who threatened to throw the unity of the Church of Scotland over the precipice. CHAPTER XXVI. THE DISRUPTION, That threat was dramatically fulfilled on Thursday, the 18th of May, 1843, when the majority of its ministers and elders went out of the Genei'al Assembly, protesting that secession was forced on them by the encroachments of civil law and rule which left the Church no proper freedom for carrying out spiritual functions. But the Protest still em bodied the hope of early restoration by surrender on the part of the Government, for it contained, in legal phraseology, a clalin for compensation on behalf of those who left for conscience' sake, for losses Incurred during the time that they were left in the wilderness. As they were not expelled, but Avent out of their own accord, this claim had a strange look about It. Was it arrogant bravado, or the expression of an over-confident hope that in the face of such a demonstration as that of the 18th of May, and the popular support at the back of it, the Government would, stricken by dismay, yield all that was asked of it ? I have no doubt whatever that among people and ministers in country places, the hope of immediate restoration through Govern ment compliance was very generally entertained for a short time after the 18th of May. Nor have I THE DISRUPTION, 151 any doubt that, had it not been for the assurances they had received on that point, many doubters would at an earlier stage have utterly refused to commit themselves to the secession threat, which the November Convocation had endorsed. A number of the doubters did draw back in time, and incurred no small popular obloquy thereby. Others of them who looked for early restoration and let themselves be hurried forward, repented of their credulity before the Disruption raonth came to an end, for they saAv that the Government remained obstinately inflexible, and that the Free Church leaders, with admirable energy and secular skill, were setting that Church up on separatist founda tions. Telegraphs and telephones were yet undreamed of The Highlands were yet unpenetrated by railways, but stage coaches were running, and favoured places had daily posts. Our Glen was not Important enough to have a daily post except on week days in the shooting season ; but before Sunday we got reports of how the " fathers and brethren" of the General Assembly had riven the veil of the temple of the Church of Scotland from top to bottom in Edinburgh on Thursday, and how the formation of the " Free Protesting Church of Scotland " had been impressively proclaimed. I do not think means had been pre-arranged for the dissemination of the news before Sunday, nor that there was need for doing so, since so many from all parts of the country, besides ministers and elders who were members of Assembly, had flocked to Edinburgh to witness the event, and returned home before Sunday, flushed with the enthusiasm of CoA-enant days or. In more instances than could be openly avowed, depressed by doubts 152 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. and anxieties both on public and personal grounds. In some of the outlying places to which news of the Edinburgh proceedings had not come before Sunday, the sure conviction that secession must have taken place was assumed and acted upon. The storm of ecclesiastical excitement which swept over Scotland from end to end raged like an irresistible tornado in the Highlands north of the Grampians. Yet there were ministers there who held firm and kept the greater part of their congregations, because they had consistently set their faces against secession, and were men of good works and more than average talent and character. In the Highlands south of the Grampians, although it never rose to such violence, the storm was ruinous to the Church of Scotland. Sunday, the 21st of May, 1843, was the people's day for giving their testimony. The Moderates who would not go out had to bear reproaches which were galling to flesh and blood and spirit. They were told that they were faithless Christians, and that on low, personal motives they were deserting In secular, as well as in religious affairs, the cause of the people. Moderate ministers were described in most cases, very untruly, as lazy workers in the vineyard, and lovers of loaves and fishes. Although there was no violence, the adherents of the Church of Scotland suffered no small amount of persecution when they were small minorities. Those who went out on that eventful Sunday were not so unanimous as the act of going out betokened. Some went out on the hope of being soon back again. Without that delusive hope hundreds and thousands of the older people, and of the more or less enthusiastic vounger ones would not so suddenly have com- THE DISRUPTION. 153 mitted themselves to the Disruption. In tha committal, were it, as they hoped not, to lead to permanent severance, they knew they were going against their own convictions and inherited sym pathies. Old parish churches — our Glen church, built in 1830, had no such ancient sacro-sanctity — were placed in the churchyards where the fore fathers of untold generations slept. Of all people Highlanders think most of the reverence due to their dead, and of the privUege of being under the shadow of the old place of worship while living, and when dead of being buried in ancestral graves. In their minds old churches and churchyards seem to unite the living with their dead of many genera tions. The conservatism of mystic association has a strong hold on Celtic minds. A Highlander wishing to replace the old ancestral home by a better one, feels the necessary demolition a painful task because he remembers that at the door of the old building symbolic oat-cakes had been broken above the heads of incoming brides by his people in joy, and their dead had been carried out over its threshold in sorrow. Our Glen church remained closed on that momentous Sunday, the charge being vacant, and the Presbytery too much engaged otherwise to provide a supply. Unless the handful of Baptists met as usual in the school -house, there was no Glen gathering at all for religious worship. It was a fine summer day, and their own feelings made the people think that a portentous solemnity overspread the whole Glen. They gathered in knots in houses or on hillocks, and spoke in hushed tones of what had taken place in Edinburgh three days before, and on what was likely to follow. Exultation was 154 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. predominant, but it was not free from misgiving. While the more sanguine heard a psalm of thanks giving in the voices of the river and the streams, and saw omens of blessing from on high in the sun shine on the hills, the more thoughtful looked with less assurance at the flitting shadows produced by passing clouds, and feared that there was an under tone of wailing in the voices of the waters, and the sighing of the faint breezes in the leafy woods. Moderates were so few and so silent — with one unfortunate exception — that they were looked upon as being practically non-existent. The unlucky exception was Donald Macdonald, the " maor" or ground officer on the estate of Culdares, whose laird was still a minor and an absentee. "Am Maor Ruadh," the Red Maor, was not at all a bad sort of fellow, but his drinking habits scandalised the godly, and his intervention In Church affairs gave deep offence to many who were not exceedingly straight- laced. He would have given less offence if he had not presumed to more than hint that he was the mouthpiece of the trustees and of the young laird. It was well known that the young laird had become an Episcopalian, like many others of his class whose fathers, like his, had been members of the Church of Scotland. Intervention by any outsiders In this quarrel was resented deeply CA^erywhere, and land lords who were staunch Presbyterians only retained extra influence by putting themselves on equality with ordinary members of the Church of Scotland. The Maor Ruadh, after the vetoing of Mr Stewart, lost any discretion he formerly possessed, and plainly threatened the Culdares tenants with eviction on the termination of their leases In 1845, unless they took warning now and remained quietly, as their THE. GLENLYON FREE CHURCH. 155 landlord wished them to do, in the Church of Scot land. This threat, garnished with many oaths, stiffened backs that were limp before. What came to pass in two years' time went far to prove that the Maor Ruadh was really, in 1843, injudiciously acting on instructions from his superiors, although the inhabitants of the Culdares estate then thought so well of the absent young laird that they stoutly maintained the threatening interference on his part to be incredible, and attributed the Maor Ruadh's vapourings to his vanity and love of dictation. CHAPTER XXVII. THE GLENLYON FREE CHURCH. Until July, when the annual Communion was, by established custom, due to be held, our Glen was wholly neglected by the ministers of both sides of the now disrupted Church of Scotland, which, in the height of power and well-doing, had been so sorely stricken. But although ministers did not come to preach to them, the people gathered regularly on Sundays to prayer meetings held by the elders, all of whom had seceded. The smaU handful of Moderates kept as quiet as mice, for they had no leader, unless they took the Maor Ruadh for a leader, and they knew better than to do that. They knew too weU that he had done, unwittingly, service to the Free Church and disservice to his laird, and to what was now caUed, by those who had gone out, the Residuary Church. They were waiting for what the dispensers of Crown patronage would send them in the shape of a presentee, since Mr Stewart was 156 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. not to come. Overwhelmed as they were with organising worries, the newly-formed Free Church Presbytery of Breadalbane took caie that Glenlyon should have a Communion on the customary day. Of course it had to be a Communion in the open air, and it was settled that it should be held just opposite the closed and deserted parish church, with nothing but the burn and its banks between them. When the Maor Ruadh heard that this was to be done, he lost the last remnant of self-control, and took to swearing and threatening at large. The Glen church is situated on the farm of Innerwick, which was then held by my mother's brother, Donald Macnaughton, and where his father and grandfather had been tenants before him. When the Maor Ruadh heard that a tent for the preacher and tables for the communicants were, with Donald's consent, to be placed on the field opposite the church, he at once rushed down from Meggernie to Innerwick, breathing fire and fury to forbid the proposed arrangement in the name of the laird, and to threaten Donald with eviction if he did not withdraAv his consent. My uncle had a temper of his own, and was moreover a man of independent mind and spirit, who had, from the purely religious point of view, decided that it was his duty to join the Free Church, while regretting that such a duty should have been forced on him. As he and the Maor were related, he tried at first to point out to him that the place was the most central and con venient for the people to assemble at. And he went on to say that if he had not been with them, even if he had been the rankest of Moderates, he would not have refused what had been asked of him by the elders. The Maor raged on : — " You had no right THE GLENLYON FREE CHURCH. 157 to grant their request. The land "is the laird's an not yours. An interdict could be taken out against you and your elders." Donald's temper was now roused, and he replied hotly: — "The land is mine for all purposes and uses which are not illegal or not forbidden by my contract with the proprietor as long as that contract lasts. Religious meetings are not illegal, nor is the holding of such meetings on the land for which I pay rent forbidden by the conditions of my lease. What may happen when that lease shall expire I do not know, but I know this, that I will not listen to your threats, nor believe that the young laird knows how you are taking his name in vain, and bringing discredit on yourself" The wrathful estate official having been reasoned with in vain, and then answered in wrath and defied, tent and tables were forthwith set up on the place separated from the church by the burn. Interdicts had been so often flying about in the long Church conflict, that there were some among our Free Church people who believed that the Maor had not been talking mere rubbish when he spoke about the supposed right or intention of the laird to apply for one, and who, indeed, would not have been sorry if an interdict sensation accompanied the holding of the first Glenlyon Free Church Communion. I was at that open air communion gathering at Innerwick, as an attentive hearer and keen observer. I had read so much and listened to, or sometimes taken part In, so many discussions about the Church controversy for several years back, that, young as I was, I had formed opinions of my own upon it. My sympathies were given to the much derided " Forty Thieves." I looked upon the Dis ruption as a dreadful disaster which had been 158 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. brought about by lamentable blunders, the first and worst of Avhich was the attempt of the ruling party in the Church to circumvent an Act of Parliament by the wretched device of the Veto Act, instead of working for the abolition of patronage by orderly political action and legislation, and the last of which was the Pharaoh -like hardening of heart shown by the Peel Government when concession was the only alternative to the event which came to pass on the 18th of May. Yet these views notwithstanding, the almost awful solemnity of this startlingly novel communion raade a lasting impression on me. Memory yet recalls the earnest faces of the people at the tables and of those who formed the outside audience. The day was a perfect summer day, and the scene was such as only a poet of the first rank could adequately describe, or a great artist adequately depict. Whether communicants or onlookers, all present felt that this was a Free Church service of consecration for Glenlyon. Two ministers of the local Presbytery, and Mr Duncan Campbell from Ross-shire, the late minister of the Glen, officiated, and there were many visitors from Breadalbane, Rannoch, and Fortingall. Ere this Glen communion was held, the fond hope had vanished that the ministers who went out on the 18 th of May would be quickly recalled and replaced by Government and Parliament hastening to pass a great Act of grace, such as the abolition of patronage would amount to. With patronage Avould go many other subjects of contention which arose out of it. Before the end of July many of the charges left vacant on the 1 Sth were already filled up, chiefly however by the promotion of ministers of inferior charges to superior ones — Avhich meant THE GLENLYON FREE CHURCH. 159 of course new vacancies. But Government and private patrons were busy rummaging for qualified men to send as presentees to, in all cases, thinned, and in many instances, shadowy congregations, so that every vacancy should be filled up within the period of six months to which patronial right of presentation was limited. Although the hope of restoration through compulsion was in the form of a legal claim to compensation retained in the Protest, I hardly think the advanced section of ecclesiastical rulers and agitators ever entertained that hope ; but it was entertained by many country ministers and by a large portion of the anti-patronage laity. So It was put in the Protest, but meanwhile wonderfully quick progress was being made for securing funds for the sustenance of the ministers who had gone out, and the building of new churches for them. As soon as the intensely devotional and romantic open-air communion was over, the Glen Free Church people mustered their forces by subscribing a formal printed declaration of adhesion to the new denomi nation. They formed fully 80 per cent, of the whole population, and that population was still dense not withstanding the Marquis of Breadalbane's Roro evictions and the steady drawing away by the voluntary migration and emigration which had been going on for a long time. Our Free Church folk were numerous enough to form a good rural congre gation, and they were willing to make heavy self- sacrifice on behalf of the cause to which they had declared their devoted allegiance, and which they had now come to look upon as the Church's cause. But while ready to do their utmost, it was plainly impossible for them to stand the expense of building 160 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. a church and manse like the old ones, and to provide an annual income on Avhich a minister could live decently. Frankly recognising their financial weak ness, they went forward in hope, saying, " We shall do all we can for ourselves, and as for the rest, the Lord will provide." The first thing they had to do was to obtain a site and to run up a building in which they could hold their Sunday meetings during the coming winter. Here the Marquis of Breadalbane came to their aid by placing at their disposal a vacant crofter's house, barn, and byre, at Balnacraig, a mile below the deserted church, on the opposite side of the river. He also gave them timber from Drummond Hill, and window-frames which had been taken out of the old Taymouth Castle and stored when the new one was built. They pulled down the crofter's buildings, quarried and carted in more stones, and set themselves methodically to build a roomy church, made without lime or mortar except about doors and windows. They had of course to attend to their harvest and ordinary farm work at the same time. So they were hard pressed, but their minds were so uplifted that they laboured incessantly without feeling the hardship of it. They divided themselves into parties so that the building should go on by relays every week-day, and every man and big lad give a day's work every week. They quickly ran up strong, neatly built, black walls, piebald with lime about the doors and windows, on which they placed a good roof made watertight by divots overlaid with a thatching of heather. The Glen people were adepts at building and roofing and thatching, for, generation after generation, they had to build and keep in repair their dwellings and farm steadings. THE GLENLYON FREE CHURCH. 161 getting nothing more than the uncut timber from the proprietors. When the sheU was completed the inside fittings were taken in hand without a pause — pulpit, precentor's desk, elders' square pew, and seats for the congregation. Two capable Glen carpenters, who were paid for five days in the week and gave their sixth day's work for nothing, had under them squads of assistants who knew how to use axe, saw, and plane, as well as trained men, for was there not a carpenter's bench in almost every farmer's cart-shed, and were there not carpenter's tools in every house ? Our church-builders, as they had good reason to do, took an honest pride in their work, not so much because it was in itself a credit able piece of work, as because it testified to their devotion to what they thought the cause of Christ in Scotland. There was a crowded congregation when Mr Stewart, Killin, who had scarcely settled in his comfortable manse when he went out on the 18th of May, came to formally open the humble Balnacraig place of worship on behalf of the Bread albane Free Presbytery. Henceforward they had what, summed up at the end of the year, amounted to a fortnightly supply of preachers, although there were several weeks' gaps at times, while at other times a divinity student officiated for a month or six weeks consecutively. On Sundays without preachers, meetings for prayer, praise, and scripture readings were held by the elders, and well attended. The leading elder, Mr Patrick Canipbell, Roroyare, who for many years taught the Roro school, could, if he chose to try, preach better sermons than many a minister ; but he did not choose to try, because on our side of the Grampians lay-preaching was dis countenanced by Presbyterians, who, whether in or 11 162 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. out of the Church of Scotland, stuck to the old traditions of order and organisation, of which deep respect for a learned and trained ministry was a leading characteristic. " The Men," as they were called, invaded the sphere of the clergy in the matter of holding forth like preachers in Easter Ross and other places north of the Grampian line. Genuinely pious many of them were, but even the best of them were full of zeal without knowledge, and an intolerance without charity. Such of the revivalists of the south side of the Grampians as wanted to hold forth like " The Men" in the North only found free scope for their gifts among the Baptists. Our Glen Free Church congregation had to wait for some years for a regularly trained, licensed, ordained, and inducted minister. When John Stewart Menzies of Chesthill, proprietor of the lower part of the Glen, joined them and gave them a feu for church, manse, and school, at Cambus- vrachdan, they at last saw a clear way out of their long troubles and struggles. From the first they had been contributing more liberally than they could well afford to Free Church funds, and now having made an effort to increase subscriptions largely, they gave personal labour as well as money for building the stone-and-lime and slated church and manse. I am sorry to say that in clearing the site for the manse, or in trenching ground for the garden, they destroyed an ancient monument — one of the round forts called " CastuUan nam Fian." This one, however, like the one above the east end of Fortingall, must have been called " Fortur," an alternative name for these old fortresses, for in my early years the old house near it was named " Tigh-an-t- fhartuir," which, although slightly corrupted, meant THE BROKEN WALLS OF NATIONAL ZION. 163 the "House of" or "near the Fortur." Their first minister was Mr Angus BroAvn, who laboured many years among them, then went to Inverness, and was called thence to be Free Church minister of Fort- rose. He was succeeded by Mr Murdo Macaskill, who, when he succeeded Dr John Kennedy at Dingwall, took a prominent part in the resistance of the Free Church Constitutional party to the pohcy of the Rainy-Hutton combination. Mr John Mackay, afterwards of Cromarty, came next, and he was followed by Mr John McColl, whose lengthened ministry led him into the troubles of the Union of 1900, which he joined, whUe the portion of his people who did not join got from the Commission his church and manse. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BROKEN WALLS OF THE NATIONAL ZION. From the Tweed to John o' Groat's, the Church of Scotland was left in a very dilapidated condition by the sweeping "beam sleibh" or deluge burst of the Disruption; but it ravaged the Highlands a hundred times worse than the Lowlands, although a few ministers of high reputation and force of character, and consistency of conduct, firmly kept their footing and the majorities of their congregations. The most popular ministers of the day left the Church, shak ing the dust off" their feet ; and with anything but farewell words of blessing on their lips. Among the Moderate ministers left behind were scholarly, cul tured men, who were excellent parish workers, and, in their sober style, excellent preachers also. The 164 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. least active among them attended decently to their set duties, and few, if any of them, unless sarcasti cally, would use the words of the minister who, when told that many of his people were going off to the Free Church, is reported to have asked his infonnant, "Did you see them carrying away the stipend on their heads?" The Cook Moderates, who had now the majority, were resolute defenders of the Church's broken walls, although their ecclesiastical policy was too much akin to, and too closely con nected with, the Toryism of the new set of landlords, who separated themselves frora their people and thought of driving them instead of leading them, to be ever really reconstructive, since it could never be made acceptable to the people of either Highlands or Lowlands. The redeeming hope and recuperative power depended chiefly on the party of the "Forty Thieves," and particularly on the younger and bolder men who widened their policy, Cookites themselves saw that the legal decisions had imposed undue restrictions on the exercise of spiritual func tions, so relief had to be sought from legislation, and as the Peel Government hearkened to the cry for relief, and perchance felt remorseful for previous inflexibility, the worst of the grievances were removed. But the Peel Government and private patrons had no thought of capitulating to those who went out protesting on the 18th of May. The seriousness of the secession took them completely by surprise, but they still believed that in the rural districts at least it would be found impossible to uphold a Free Church equipment in every parish for any length of time. That happy inspiration of Dr Chalmers — the Sustentation Fund — did what had never been done before, and gave an establishment THE BROKEN WALLS OF NATIONAL ZION. 165 stabihty to a non established church. But it could not give the equality demanded by the Presbyterian theory. Nothing could do that but its own perpetual separate endowment for every parish. However, that was lost sight of in the enthusiastic years during which the rich were giving of their wealth and the poor of their poverty, Hke very brethren, to cover all Scotland with Free Churches and to provide their ministers with in comes. A full generation had to pass by ere Time the Revealer made astonished Highlanders aware of their dependent position, and of the patronage and control which went with the holding of the purse. In truth the spirit in which the Free Church was founded had to give place to a different spirit before that revelation came. But to return to the Broken Walls. Government and private patrons made haste to find qualified men to present to vacant charges. They had difficulty in finding a sufficient number of them for fiUing up all the vacancies in six months, but they managed to do so. They mustered what, without irreverence, might be called a motley host of returned colonials, schoolmasters with probationer qualifications, and not a few old probationers who, hopeless of getting charges, had fallen back into secular work and habits. The young probationers and the divinity students who were nearly ready for being licensed were unfortunately few, the larger number of them having joined the Free Church. In the motley host there were undesirables who, for the next dozen years or so, gave the Church Courts trouble with scandal cases, libel prosecutions, and depositions. But these undesirables were far fcAver than might well have been expected when there had been no opportunity for selection. Most of the men 166 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. who received promotion after they had given up hope and had become Avorthy teachers or had fallen back into secular life, comported themselves with ministerial dignity, and preached to shadowy con gregations with conscientious regularity. They suffered social boycotting, which amounted to moral persecution in many Highland parishes, where, how ever, they performed the useful service of saving parish endowments from lapsing and left them open for successors with better chances than their own. While other consequences of the Disruption had to remain on the knees of Time, two were forthwith perceived, namely, that a new Poor Law Act must be passed, and that the school system, which with little cost had done so much good, was to be subjected to the undoubted evil of division and the equivocal benefit of educational rivalry. I think now, as I thought then, that the Church of Scot land blundered most foolishly and tyrannically in depriving the parish and other teachers who adhered to the Free Church of their offices and incomes. Had these teachers been let alone, a rival set of schools would not have been set up by the Free Church. Although there were some daft fanatics in that communion who thanked God they were not like other men, and who maintained it was not fit that the children of the godly should be taught in the same schools as the children of the Moderates, and by teachers who, albeit professing the same faith, had not all of them the special Free Church unction of grace, that nonsensical view was not held by the overwhelming majority of Free Church parents. The foolish illiberalism of the then rulers of the Church of Scotland, however, gave the -anatics their chance, and they us / t THE BROKEN AVALLS OF NATIONAL ZION. 167 was in 1856 that Mr Moncrief, then Lord Advocate, introduced a BUI into the House of Commons, which, if passed into law, would have remedied a great deal of the mischief done, by throwing the schools open to all Presbyterian teachers, and at the same time would have relieved the Free Church from what was a growing burden to her, notwithstanding what her schools earned from the Government Grant. At our statutory Widows' Fund meeting, we parish schoolmasters of the Presbytery of Weem passed a resolution in favour of Mr Moncrief's Bill, which, on being published, caUed out a small ebulition of clerical indignation that resulted in another meeting being called and in the i-esolution being rescinded by the votes of the members who had not attended the statutory meeting. My neighbour, Mr Macnaughton, school master of Dull, and I stood to our guns ; and our protest against the rescinding of the resolution, and our reason for looking with favour on the Bill being published with the rescinding, the clerical interveners gained little by having meddled in the affair. The ratepayers and taxpayers of this twentieth century, burdened with the upkeep of public boards and bodies with numerous officials, will find it difficult to understand how cheaply and, on the whole, how satisfactorily affairs were administered in the rural districts when country gentlemen, as Justices of the Peace and Commissioners of Supply, did the work now entrusted to County Councils, and when ministers and kirk-sessions looked after the poor. The rapid growth of population in manufactur ing towns and districts had, no doubt, outstripped the powers of the old system to cope with pauperism 168 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. among the heterogeneous multitudes of incomers in such places, but it was the Disruption which made it impossible in rural parishes to continue that good old system any longer. The " box" funds dried up at their source ; for half of the Sunday worshippers everywhere, and a vast deal more than that in the Highlands, had gone off to the Free Church where all the money they could give (and many of them ungrudgingly gave more than they could well spare) was urgently wanted for establishing a non- established Church, from the Tweed to John o' Groat's. Ministers and elders looked of old upon their unpaid services to the poor as a most important part of their religious duty. They were able — as Parochial Boards are not — to discriminate between God's poor and the Devil's poor. The widow, orphan, and those stricken with disease, and the honest old man or woman who had fallen upon evU days, were tenderly cared for, while those poor by their own laziness or vices were put under religious and moral pressure to mend their ways, and openings were found for them to make fresh starts. Under this pressure, and with new chances, the Devil's poor were frequently reclaimed from laziness and evil habits. They were taught that self-help is the best help of all — " Se fein-chomhnadh an comhnadh is fhearr a th' ann." So well did kirk-sessions man age their financial affairs that some of them had money out on interest, when the 18th of May, 1843, gave the old system of poor relief and management its death-blow. THE ECCENTRIC MINISTER. 169 CHAPTER XXIX. THE ECCENTRIC MINISTER. The Government, with the help of the Laird of Ardvoirlich, one of the trustees of the Culdares estate, found, in Mr David Drummond from Comrie, a presentee for Glenlyon. Mr Drummond came of a good farming race, and if he had remained years after having been licensed without being settled in any charge, it was for no other cause than his eccentricity. In life and conversation he was a thorough Christian. His talents and learning were decidedly above the average. I do not know whether it was true or not, but the story we heard about him was that in preparing to compete for some University prize or honour, he had by hard study thrown himself into a brain fever, out of which he emerged different from his former self, and also from the ordinary rank and file. He was always gentle manly, and cleanliness he held to be next to godli ness. He was particular about his dress, but eccentric in regard to his brown, curly wig, which, according to the weather, he took off or put on like a skull-cap. That is what it really was to him. His head was partly bald, and the hair on what was not bald he kept closely cut for health's sake. He had no thought of disguising baldness by the curly wig, which went off" and on just as he felt his head to be hot or cold. One day when he preached at Fortin gaU for Mr Stewart, his treatment of the wig so astonished that gentleman's little son, that after the 170 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. sermon he ran away to his mother to tell her that when Mr Drummond came out of the church, he took off his head and put it in his pocket. When he came to Glenlyon to preach his trial sermons, he saw the desolation of the Church of Scotland there; for he had to preach to congrega tions not exceeding twenty in number in a building which, with its galleries, was then seated for an audience of seven or eight hundred. The Maor Ruadh entertained him hospitably, and the few communicants who remained in signed his call. There was nobody left to object, and the settle ment was carried through without a hitch of any kind. When settled in the snug little manse, where a studious bachelor like him should in other circumstances feel happily lodged, he found himself placed very much like a sun-loving plant compelled to pine beneath the shadow of a yew-tree. His kindly sociable nature craved for the sympathy and social intercourse which were denied to him. He had a high idea of his ministerial responsibilities, wished to do good, and found no scope for doing it left to him. He could not say that the Free Church folk persecuted or insulted him openly, but he suffered just as badly as if they did. They treated him politely, but as a stranger who was always to remain a stranger among them. It was well for him that he could find refuge in books fi-om the boycotting he had to endure. As the years slipped by the boycotting slackened. His peculiarities were laughed at, but his blameless, guileless character, and high ideals were admired. The coming of Mr Drummond to the Glen was a great gain to me. I was beginning to struggle with Latin, and could get no help in that study from the the eccentric MINISTER. 171 young man who was that year the teacher of our side-school — and a capital teacher of the three R's he was. Mr Drummond, who took much interest in the school and often visited it, found out my difficulty, and at once invited me to come to the manse for evening lessons. I was as eager to learn as he was willing to teach. So throughout the winter I walked round by the bridge, or crossed the river below the manse on stilts night after night to be drilled in Latin by a man bursting with classical learning and naturally gifted for imparting instruc tion. I worked hard, and under his stimulating tuition made rapid progress. I was only a young lad, but when I shook off my shyness, and saw what a lovable man, a Nathaniel without guile, my teacher was, I became warmly attached to him. From being teacher and pupil we became life-long friends. Nothing could be better for a young lad than close contact with such a cultured, noble- minded teacher. On the other hand, in getting a pupil so eager to learn, the isolated hermit found an opening for doing go®d and some mitigation of his trying position. I was the first, but not the last, of Mr Drummond's pupils. There was quite a number of Glenlyon lads placed under a similar obligation of unending gratitude to him. It mattered little to him whether these boys were the sons of Established Churchmen or Free Churchmen. Mr John Mac lellan, the eldest son of the worthy Baptist pastor, was a specially favourite pupil of his, and he was proud indeed when this pupil became minister of the Edinburgh Baptist congregation that Mr James Haldane had founded, and of which he was the pastor till his death at an advanced age. Mr Drummond carefully wrote out his sermons, both English and Gaelic. When we got to be con- 172 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. fidential, he told me that he was troubled about his Gaelic, which he had not cultivated as much as he ought to haA'e done at Comrie, where it was already in his boyhood showing signs of dying out. I had to listen to him reading his Gaelic sermons before their being preached, and give help in correcting the mistakes which slipped into them. His command of Gaelic words was extensive enough for all purposes, but the case changes and euphony modifications, which seemed easy and natural to me from habit, were perplexing to him, and led him into awkward expressions. His English sermons, in diction and substance, Avere of more than good average quality. But he had an ambition for extempore preaching which frequently caused him, after reading the opening sentences and the headings, to roll up the manuscript and use it as a baton for beating the pulpit bookboard to give emphasis to thoughts which had just come into his mind, and which were not in the written sermons. The written sermon Itself had generally been delivered to the fishes on Saturday, if the weather was fine; for to commit it to memory, which he Avas never able to do, it was his habit to read it aloud while walking back and forward in his glebe on the bank of the river. In similar perambu lations he spoke aloud long passages of the sermons which he was intending to write. When I was schoolmaster of Fortingall, during Christmas week I went up Glenlyon late on a Saturday night to my father's house with the intention of going to a big hare hunt on Monday ; for at Christmas the schools had a few days' holiday. Ou Sunday morning snow was falling heavily, and there had been plenty of snow and ice on the ground before this second storm had come. Owing to the storm I was a little THE ECCENTRIC MINISTER. 173 behind time in getting to church. When I went in I slipped into the nearest seat, and was just in the act of sitting down when, to my confusion, the minister, who had opened the Bible to give out the psalm, haUed me from the pulpit, asked me when I had come up, and said he was glad to see me there that day — "For," said he, "we are a smaU company, but still a larger one than that of the Apostles." Minister included, we numbered seventeen. That day he kept his hat on the top of his curly wig while giving out the psalms, reading the lessons, and preaching, but he always took it off at prayers and singing. He had a most reverent soul, and yet on sudden impulse he could commit irreverent in discretions unconsciously. Mr Drummond had been preaching for fifteen years or longer to a skeleton congregation, looking well after the side-school and catechising the children that went to it, and, as a labour of love, helping ambitious lads to a higher education than could be obtained in that useful class of schools, when he received a heavy blow. A double calamity indeed befel him in one year. His trustworthy servant man died of fever after a short illness. That loss threw him into a state of sorrowful excitement which was sad to witness. But the second loss was much more tragic. His brother's son, Peter Drummond, who had come from Comrie to live with him, and whom he was beginning to train for coUege, was accidentally killed by the fall of a tree, when the schoolmaster and the elder scholars were cutting down birch trees which were given to them for school-house fuel. Young Peter was beloved by his school-companions, and well-liked by all that knew him. He was a bright, intelligent, good-looking 174 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. and most amiable lad of fourteen or so, and the idol of his poor uncle, who had fairyland hopes of the boy's future career. Long before this sad accident occurred the Free Church folk had considerably altered opinion and demeaaour in regard to Mr Drummond. They threw away aU reserve on this occasion, and warmly expressed their sympathy and affection. Their sympathy helped him to bear his loss with outward composure, but he could not for get, he could not sleep as he used to do, and his oddities graduaUy increased. The result was that some years later he retired on a pension, and went back to his people at Comrie, and there ended his days and slept with his fathers. CHAPTER XXX. EVICTION. Ronald Stewart-Menzies of Culdares completed the twenty-first year of his age on the 3rd of January, 1845. His minority had been a long one. He was a five-year-old boy when his father died, and on his mother's death soon afterwards, was taken away from the Glen, to which he only returned on attaining his majority. He was educated in England and came back from Eton and Oxford as much a stranger to the people on his property as they were strangers to him. Had he been educated in Scotland and spent his holidays on his own land many things might have been different. The reason for his being brought up thus like a stranger was that his excellent mother died so soon after his father. She was an Appin Stewart, a daughter of eviction. 175 the Laird of Fasnacloich, and a Gaelic speaking lady with all the kindly old Highland sympathies which knit gentle and simple together. Her husband was an amiable man and a just and considerate land lord. It was naturally hoped that the young Laird would, as a landlord, tread in the footsteps of his father and mother, notwithstanding his English education and alien rearing. As soon as it was made known to them by the Maor Ruadh that he was coming to Meggernie Castle with college com panions and local gentry to celebrate his coming of age, preparations were made for giving him a hearty welcome. Tar barrels and logs of birch and pine were hauled up the steep " leacuin " to the top of Craig-an-fhaoraich to be piled in a high pyramid there for a grand bonfire that would throw its light far up and down the Glen. On the day of his com ing the tenants met him at the march of his estate on horseback, and escorted him to the castle. On his birthday the Laird gave a great feast to guests and tenants in the long empty peat-house forming one side of the court-yard, which the Maor Ruadh, who had a genius for such matters, had transformed Avith evergreens into a summer bower. The dinner was followed by a ball, tp which all the people on the estate were invited, and between dinner and this ball there was a display of fireworks on the wide lawn which lighted up the fine old trees round the castle. Old Duncan Dewar and I had been told off to light the bonfire. The signal for applying the torch was to be the firing of a gun at the castle. And we were scolded by the Maor when we got to the castle fbr lighting it a quarter of an hour too soon. It seems the shot we heard and mistook for the appointed signal was fired at Milton-Eonan by 176 reminiscences and reflections. some one who, in the dusk, took a pop at partridges lying among the stubble. The Maor swore terribly at the unknown poacher, but his adjutant hinted it was a lucky accident because the premature firing shortened the after-dinner drinking before it had gone too far. At anyrate the bonfire blazed splen didly, and with the undeserved scolding for a blessing, old Dewar and I had a good dinner and then hastened to see the fireworks. Outdoor and indoor Highland music of the best was supplied by pipers and fiddlers of more than local celebrity. At the ball the dancing was kept up with spirit throughout the long winter night. I never was a dancer, and never felt that I had been wronged in not having been taught dancing in early years. As an onlooker I enjoyed this ball very much, which was not the case with the lads and lasses of my age, who took the floor and came away from the merry gathering full of vexation, and in a spirit of revolt against ministers, elders, and parents, who, on mistaken religious grounds, had prevented them from being regularly taught dancing like the generations before them. Dancing had been so strongly preached down that there had been no dancing school held in the Glen for twenty years. It was only surreptitiously that boys and girls were taught to dance to the Jew's harp or to "ceileireachd" in out-of-sight places by a few of their elders who loved the old ways, and were looked upon by the godly as frivolous persons or incorrigible sinners, although they were as honest, industrious, and moral as the best of the pious. As soon as I got into my teens, I was an outspoken rebel to the authority of ministers, elders. Baptists, and the "unco guid" of both sexes in regard to song-singing, fiddling, and EVICTION. 177 dancing, and I could be all the more outspoken because I did not care to dance, and because I was unable to sing ; having, strangely enough, consider ing my father's fondness for scraping a fiddle for his own amusement, no musical gift whatever. I think the gloomy, ascetic piety which looked upon inno cent joyousness of life as either sinful or leading to paths of sin was more genuine and wide-spread in Glenlyon before than it was after the Disruption. Ecclesiastical controversy is not conducive to the advancement of real piety of any sort ; for it fills the minds of the controversialists with other thoughts than those of introspection and supererogatory analyses of positive and relative good or evil. The spirit of the Disruption was not a spirit of mystic asceticism, but one of holy war, sacrifice, and con struction. It was, in modern form, the spirit which sent Crusading armies to Palestine, and impeUed mediaeval Europe to build grand churches and monastic establishments. The Meggernie Castle ball was an eye-opener to the young people who had not been allowed to learn dancing properly — though most of them had surreptitiously practised steps and got some idea of figures. They felt shy and awk ward because of their ignorance of the art, but they went in for the dancing with all their heart. A spell was broken, though what had been lost could not be restored. The young people were all the more vexed because parents who formerly yielded to or sided with the prohibitionists now danced as merrUy as if the days of their youth had been brought back to them by the fine fiddling of their Roro countryman, and coeval little Mackerchar of Dunkeld, and the rest. The dancing of the elder people was so excellent as to put that of their sons 12 178 reminiscences and reflections. and daughters to open shame. I watched the kirk- session elders who were present, to see whether the music and dancing excitement would so thoroughly renew their youth as to compel them to take the floor. They resisted the temptation, but they looked on with beaming faces. A great shinty match concluded the coming of age celebrations. In the Glen we called shinty "camanachd" — from "caman," the bent stick or club, — and football we named "creatag," which simply means ball. In both forms the game was a favourite one with schoolboys. The Kirk had very rightly put down the Handsel Monday cock-fighting at the school, but left the other games untouched. These were shinty, football, rounders, duckstone, terzie or "eun-corr" (odd bird), races, wrestling, etc. As a very little boy I was present at the last cock fight held at Innerwick, and did not like it at all, though seemingly the grown-up people who came to see it liked it well. But to revert to the Meggernie Castle "camanachd"; boys under fourteen being rejected from the ranks of war, divided themselves into rival teams, and went off to play in a separate part of the long, level haugh. Culdares and a friend of his divided the multitude of adults between them, and the battle, which began early in the morning of a frosty day, was finished by moonlight. Among the players were several heads of families who would not see fifty again. Pipers played stirring war-music, which warmed their blood. The spirit of fun and frolic seized upon them, and they entered the lists feeling their youth renewed. But the reverse of what happened at the ball happened on the field. In the dancing the young were put to shame by the better-taught, elderly people ; on the eviction. 179 field the young men and lads showed the "bodaich," who strove their best, that their sons were the better players. We called Culdares and his com pany the Castle Defenders, and their opponents the Invaders. I myself belonged to the Invaders. Victory was to be decided by the Avinning of two of three goals or "taothalan." The companies were evenly matched. I think all the Glen people wished that Culdares should fairly win. I am sure that such was my own wish, but I played my best for the Invaders, and so did the rest of my side. Our captain was good at arranging his men and retriev ing defeat. Culdares and his company won the first "taothal" easily. We (the Invaders) struggled hard to win the second, and very barely succeeded. Then came the concluding struggle, which was the longest of all, and which, as the light was failing, ended in our favour rather by accident than merit. As we confessed that it was accident and bad light which gave us the victory, both sides were pleased, and we parted with loud cheers of mutual good-will and pleasure. On the Sunday which came after the Camanachd, Culdares and his guests, among whom it was said there was not a single Presbyterian, went in carriages, as in a State procession, to the parish church. It was known beforehand that this was to take place ; but if the idea was anywhere entertained that people who had joined the Free Church would be led by sycophancy or curiosity to go that day or ever back to the church they had left, it was at once proved to be a delusion. The Castle party only saw the desolation the Disruption had wrought there. Young Culdares was much misled if he was made to believe that his temporary patronage of a church to which he did not belong 180 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. would have any influence In changing the opinion of the Glen people on church questions; opinions which they had deliberately formed for themselves, and deliberately resolved to act upon. In secular poli tics they were not so stiff-necked. At the 1841 Election, all the tenants on the Culdares estate, with a solitary exception, voted willingly for the Tory candidate, Mr Henry Drummond, who won the seat for Perthshire, because they relied upon Sir Robert Peel, little foreseeing his 1846 conversion, to resist the abolItioU of the Corn-laws. The exception was the oldest elder in the Glen, Duncan Macalum, who was one of the four partners on the Eight Merkland club farm. When the short visit came to an end the people on the estate thought themselves blessed in having a young laird in whom they saw blended all the good qualities of father and mother, and who had far more advantages on entering on his inheritance than fell to their share. Glen people were sharp readers of character. They read their young Laird's character very correctly. He possessed all the good qualities they ascribed to him ; yet, when they wished he would soon make a happy marriage and find a wife with strong will and plenty of common sense, they hinted that they suspected that he was one of those amiable well-intentioned people who are easily influenced by those who are their intimate companions. The happy marriage came and the suitable wife was found, but ere that happened the young Laird had made haste to do something which could never be undone, and which there is good cause to believe he much regretted afterwards. In January the people on the Culdares estate were boasting loudly of their Laird to their neighbours EVICTION. 181 on other properties. They saw no cloud on their own sky, for although the last short leases granted by the trustees were to expire in May, they had no doubt but that they would be renewed on just terms. They were ready to offer the former rents, because seasons and prices were mending, but as the trustees, during the six hard years, had not been able to give abatements of rent like proprietors who were free to do what they thought right, and as the losses In curred in these hard years were yet a heavy weight on them, they hoped the Laird would listen to their request for a small lowering of the rents which had been sent up to Avar price thirty years before and had been kept up ever since. But if he would not give that small reduction for the ensuing nine years' leases, they would struggle on to pay the old rents, or even more, rather than be turned out of their holdings. During the life-time of the young Laird's father, they had been accustomed to bargain face to face with him and his factor. When leases termin ated the trustees advertised the farms to let, which the late Laird did not do, but continued the practice of giving the old tenants an opportunity for mending their offers ; so whUe the trust lasted there were no changes at all, except such as must always occur by the dying out of families or their resignation of holdings. The young Laird took good care that the old tenants should not get the chance of haA'ing a personal conference with him. He held his setting or re-letting meeting in the offices of the Edinburgh firm which did his legal and factorial business for him. The Maor Ruadh was caUed to Edinburgh, and came back with his own dismissal notice in his pocket. What the Laird decided to do was to turn 182 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. eight farming families out of their holdings, and three crofters out of their small bits of land. The four farmers of the Eight Merkland, of whom my father was one, were among the evicted. The whole big club farm was let to one tenant, who offered a small advance on the old rent ; but gave up the farm at the end of his nine years' lease, and left the Glen. At that time there was a craze for making large sheep farms out of holdings in which the arable land was divided among tenants who had the adjoining hill-grazing in common. The Marquis of Breadalbane and the Duke of Sutherland had above all others set this fashion. In this year of grace (1909) the cry is for sending people back to the land. And a very good cry it is, but all the same it was much easier to send them off the land in last century than it is now to induce them to go back to it. Here I may, in passing, make a remark or two about club farming and crofter farming, as in my youth I was necessarily well acquainted with the large club farms in Glenlyon, and in after years, when schoolmaster of Fortingall, was one of forty who had hill grazings in common and arable land separately. The crofter township system is so well known that I may pass over my Fortingall experience, and as regards large club farming I shall at once confess that in my opinion separate holdings would on the whole be much preferable, if they could be obtained in such a way that there might be some proportion kept between arable and hill distribution. What I have in view is the formation of farms large enough to give employment all the year round to an average farming family, and a chance of profit sufficient to provide simple life subsistence, and modest fair wages for labour and EVICTION. 183 a smaU return on the tenant's Invested capital. There are few places in the Highlands in which separate farms of moderate size can be so con veniently parcelled out as in the Lowlands. Club farming in one or other of the forms used of old is the only way by which a due apportionment of the small arable and meadow land, and of the large hill grazings and rocks, can be in a measure obtained. Now the club farming of Glenlyon, to which I was in early days accustomed, worked well and smoothly. The arable land was much better cultivated than it has been ever since. The sheep stocks were well managed, and the stock of cattle and horses, kept and wintered, Avas very large. What made the losses of the hard years so heavy was that at that time too many sheep were wintered at home. Consolidation was not believed to be the Laird's sole motive in turning out the four tenants of the Eight Merkland Avithout as much as giving them an opportunity for mending the offers they had sent in. Duncan Macalum, the premier elder, who voted against the Tory candidate in 1841, was a marked offender, and aU the four tenants had joined the Free Church. As for the tenant of Innerwick, there could be no mistake in his case. His farm was a one man's farm, and remained so ever afterwards. He was himself the best tenant that farm ever had. He sinned beyond forgiveness by letting the Free Church open air communion be held, in spite of the Maor Ruadh's threats, on the bank of the burn opposite the Innerwick Church. As for Gallin and Ross, it was subsequently alleged that the former was to be taken to enlarge the Meggernie home farm. Ross, strange to say, was soon let to the evicted Innerwick tenant and his partner, Hugh 184 * REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Maclaren, who had taken the big sheep farm of Lochs on the Breadalbane estate. The poor Maor Ruadh had acted seemingly on his instructions in trying to browbeat the people at the time of the Disruption. He meant weU by them although he acted injudiciously. Though too fond of strong drink and strong language, he was a clever estate manager and a faithful servant to his employer. It was his unhappy fate, on behalf of an absent employer who knew not the nature of the Highland people, to have to intermeddle unsuccessfully in the Church question. If his bullying had prospered, perhaps his unsteadiness inight have been forgiven. He took a pledge of total abstinence when he left Glenlyon, and kept it during a long period of service in Isla as an estate official. He came back from Edinburgh in 1845 in a most dismal mood, lament ing the eviction of old tenants much more than his own dismissal. He admitted enough to show that he fully believed the eviction had been pre determined, but he would neither deny or corroborate the story which gained currency to account for the young Laird's precipitate action. That story was to the following effect. In 1843, some cause — probably the Atholl Gathering — had brought about a large assemblage of landed proprietors. Such of these as were of the new post-Reform Bill school of Toryism put their heads together, and agreed to hold a secret meeting at some place — I think Pitlochry was the place named — to discuss the Disruption and the best means for counteracting its apprehended Radical tendencies, and effect on party politics. The men who attended this secret meeting were either young proprietors like Culdares, or the heirs of old gentlemen whose EVICTION. 185 lives were nearly ended. The conclusion come to was — so ran the report — that Free Church tenants should be driven in Church matters as they had already been driven to vote as their proprietors asked them to do. A resolution to this effect was passed and signed by all present, excepting two or three who protested and pointed out that what was contemplated could not be carried out, and that if it could, its consequences would be disastrous to just and reasonable landlord infiuence. Culdares was the first member of the secret conclave who, by the expiry of leases, had power to re-let his farms as he liked. He probably thought himself in honour bound to act in accordance with the iniquitous policy of the foolish compact. He did what he thought he was in honour bound to do ; but he was the only one of the conclave who did so. When the others had the freedom of re-letting their farms they had not the courage or unwisdom to do as he had done, and as they had bound themselves to do. I believe this story had a solid foundation of truth, although there may not have been a written and signed, but merely verbal, agreement to push the driving policy of the new Toryism beyond party politics into the ecclesiastical sphere. Such an extension Scotch people, whether Highland or Lowland, were dead sure to resent and to resist victoriously, and keep in resentful remembrance ever afterwards. 186 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER XXXI. FAREWELL TO THE OLD INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM. The eviction notices gave rise to much commotion in the Glen. Astonishment, indignation, and conster nation were all mingled together. The opinion they had formed of the young laird was wholly contrary to his unexpected action ; and yet that favourable opinion was upheld by his future conduct. Hot indignation arose that Culdares, who, unlike his father, was not a Presbyterian, should use his power as a landlord to punish people for exercising their religious liberty, with which none but themselves should have anything to do. The consternation was momentary, but bitter while It lasted. The Glen people were accustomed to take the blows of evil fortune standing, and to seek at once for self-help as a means of recovery and an outlet of escape. For forty years they had been unwillingly feeling that the old industrial system was slipping off its ancient foundations — cattle and calanas — and migrants and emigrants were going out from among them to seek their fortunes in Lowland towns and in the Colonies. When the huge shealings of the Braes and of Lochs had been turned into sheep runs, a fatal blow was given to the old system from which it could never recover again, although the high prices of the war times and the still very flourishing state of the domestic flax-spinning industry threw a veil over the approaching fatality. In 1845 it was obvious enough that in the Highlands sheep-farming now FAREWELL TO OLD INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM. 187 paid best, and that the domestic industries were being made unprofitable and killed by mill machinery and steam power. The flax industry, however, might have been kept as it was in Ulster had it not been given up in despair when large sheep-farms became the rule, and when the old communities were upset by changed estate management, con formed to changed conditions of profitable labour, and, finaUy and worst of all, by the self-evictions of the people themselves, who poured into the towns and manufacturing and mining districts, with chances of disappointment if they went away in large groups and in families, for town-life is not natural to High landers, nor do they take readily to urban industries. As fbr individual Highlanders who migrated to towns sixty years ago, they found free scope for their various ambitions, and as a class they took with them, from their glens and isles, moral and mental qualities which, as a rule, ensured moderate and, in exceptional cases, eminent success. How completely sixty years have reversed the then state of affairs ; cities, towns, manufacturing districts, over-crowded, and urban life and habits undermining the national manhood ; the rural districts desolated by their people deserting them for uncertain wages, amenities, and vices of towns; Highland large sheep- farms no longer lettable at half the former rents, and not a few of them converted into deer forests, while "back to the land" is the cry of the people who would not know how to work the land if they got it for nothing, and would undoubtedly prefer the fate of Poplar and West Ham paupers to the simple and hardy life of weU-to-do Highland farmers of the first half of last century ! Naturally, in consequence of the loss of the shealings and the lessening value of domestic Indus- 188 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. tries, there was more congestion of population on the Roro and Chesthill estates, in the lower part of the Glen, than there ever was on the Culdares estate. The Marquis of Breadalbane took advantage of the impoverishment the losses of sheep in the hard years had brought sipon the Roro tenants to make a clearance there. On the Chesthill estate it was impossible that the Innervar crofters should get on as they did before, when the flax and other industries helped to keep them in frugal but cheerful contentment. Their welfare depended on the now superseded ancient industrial system which had existed without any important variation firom the time of which we have any fairly full written records — say the reign of Alexander III. — until the sheep regime invaded it in the last thirty years of the eighteenth century, and manufacturing machinery and steam power gave it its death blow in the next century. Highland proprietors and the Highland people were flotsam and jetsam in the swirling eddies of a resistless stream of change. In this twentieth century we are in the back-flow of that stream, and, horrified by urban congestion, and the moral and physical degeneracy it entails, we take up the cry — " Back to the land." Before the 1845 disturbances, the estate of Culdares would have suited the present-day land reformers who wish to see the country divided into moderately sized farms, interspersed with artisan and crofter villages. Its farms, where there was arable land, were large enough without being too large. The crofters, who were not many, comprised a carpenter, a smith, a weaver, and some working men famUies. As for the Braes, which formerly were shealings, they have no arable land worth FAREWELL TO OLD INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM. 189 maintaining, and can only be used as shealings or deer forests, or sheep runs. Mr Charles Stewart had them, along with the farms of Cashlie and Chesthill on the Chesthill estate, until he was knocked out by the losses of the hard years. He was a famous breeder of Highland cattle, and his blackfaced sheep stock was ranked among the best in Scotland. When he failed, through no fault of his own, but through the inclemency of the seasons, which ruined many large sheep and stock farmers, the Braes, after a few years, fell into the hands of Border incomers, who never resided there per manently, and who, to the end of their long holding, never assimilated with the rest of the people. Speaking of the hard years reminds me that in one of them, 1839, I nearly lost my life in a snow storm. The harvest of 1838 was not gathered in, and late black oats were not cut, when frost and snow came early in November, and the grouse left the hiUs to cluster on the stocks. A short-enduring thaw, however, allowed the harvest work to be finished in a hurried way ; but the ice on the river never broke up. For eleven weeks at a stretch people who wished to shorten the distance to church in some places crossed the river on the ice ; and no plough could turn up the frozen glebe until the seventh of April, There was a succession of snow storms up to the end of March, with intervals of cold winds and sunshine between, which left the high tops of the hills and the sharp hillocks on the lower ground bare, while the rest remained under a heavy snow cover. I think it was at the end of February, but it may have been March, when I was sent early one dreadfully stormy morning to tell the Craigelig men to turn out to gather in the sheep to 190 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. sheltered places, and to dig out such of them as they found in hollows covered with the drifting snow. I was then a boy of eleven, and, like all Glen boys of my age, wore the kilt, which Is a good dress for summer mountaineering but not for deep heaps of snow in which one sinks up to the knees at every move, I had only a mile to go, and although the wind had risen to hurricane pitch, and the falling and drifting snow were blending together, I did not think of danger, nor did anybody else. The first and larger part of the distance I got over without much difficulty, but when I was so near my journey's end that in calm weather I could send a shrill cry for help to the nearest farmhouse, I got stuck in a soft, newly-formed wreath of snow, and when I at last ploughed through it breathless and exhausted, it was to find another and bigger wreath barring further passage. The whistling, hissing wind and drifting snow affected me curiously. I feared noth ing. The only wish I had in the world was to rest and sleep. But I was the bearer of a message which ought to be delivered without delay, and so must struggle on. It then flashed on my mind that as those heaps had gathered at a bend of the park wall near the road, if I got to the wall 1 could walk on the top of it. That thought saved me. I managed to struggle in the hollow between the two snow barriers to the wall, which I reached in a dazed condition. But as soon as I got upon its rough, uneven, slippery stone-coping, strength, confidence, and care of life, absent before, at once returned. There was no further difficulty. I reached the houses and delivered my messages. The sheep rescuers turned out and marched away, not on the blocked road on which I had so nearly stuck, but by FAREWELL TO OLD INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM. 191 the wind-swept fields within the park wall. I remained behind resting and recovering until the hurricane abated, and followed iu their tracks. One youthful recollection recalls others. I think it was in the same winter of 1838-39, the worst of the whole bad series, that the foUowing incidents occurred. I had been reading " Robin Hood " stories, and also hearing from local seanachies the tale of a wonderful feat of archery when one of the Malcolms or Calums was king, and Glenlyon was a royal hunting ground and a place in which there was a summer mustering of the Feinn. The mound from which the famous shooting took place is called " TuUach Calum," or the mound of Calum, to the present day, and the far away spot on the other side of the river which the arrow reached is, or at least was then, kept in remembrance. The archery stories which took such a hold of me I passed on to my schoolmates, with the result that a mania for making bows and arrows seized on us. With the help of Peter, our ploughman, I made for myself a stiff hazelwood crossbow, and three arrows with heads hardened in the fire, and feathered in a kind of way too. We were forbidden to tip them as we wanted to do with big pins or headless nails, lest serious accidents should be the result. Even with the blunt arrows we were a nuisance while the craze lasted. We tried shooting straight and shooting compass, and sometimes killed a crow, but usually our arrows failed to hit the object aimed at, although they always struck pretty near it. I only once in my school life played truant, and this archery craze was the cause of my doing so. My cousin, Duncan Macintyre, was my companion in this affair. We slunk early past the schoohouse 192 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. with our bows and arrows, and went away to where we knew crows to be diligently working for their daily bread, and sure to be found. We did find the crows, and worried them with our arrows, which on a few occasions hit but never killed or disabled them. In pursuing the crows we came to heath- clad sands and gravel hillocks on which grouse gathered, it being a sunny day between storms, and, tops excepted, nearly the whole land was lying under snow. We knew well that it was a high offence in the eyes of our parents, as well as in those of the gamekeeper, who rather encouraged us to kill rabbits, and could wink at the killing of hares, to meddle in any way with the grouse. But how could boys in possession of bows and arrows resist the temptation of shooting at birds that gathered in clusters like targets ? We let fly again and again, and our arrows always fell among them or very near them, but not one of them lost a feather by our archery. That day's experience cured our craze, and our truancy escaped detection and the punishment it deserved. My other bit of poaching that year was no poaching at all, because I went to tell my grievance to Donald Stalker the gamekeeper, who lent me a trap and said I was free to kill the depradator if I could. From my earliest years I had a strong instinctive, but wholly uninstructed, liking for gardening. How that came to me I do not know, for, like most Highlanders, the Glen people, although the best of farmers, were negligent and bad gardeners, who cultivated hardly anything more than curly greens and cabbages, with some gooseberry and currant bushes among them. At the same time they were full of nature feeling, and FAREWELL TO OLD INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM. 193 had a wonderfully wide knowledge of plants, as well as of wild creatures. Now my father had two gardens, one close to his house, and what we called the "Garadh Dubh," or Black Garden, below the churchyard, which had for hundreds of years been the garden of the alehouse or inn of BaU-na-h' eaglais. When the Bridge of Balgie was built, the inn was removed to the end of it, and a new garden and croft provided for it. Through the removal of the inn my father came to have two gardens. He gave me a part of the Black Garden, in which I pottered away with my amateur experiments. I dried potato apples on strings, and raised new potatoes from the seed of them. With onions, leeks, and peas I had likewise fair success. I sowed little beds of cabbages and curly greens for planting out next spring, and it was to save these beds and other things that I got a trap for killing a hare which had made night ravages among them. I set the trap at dusk with much care, and when I went to see it next morning what did I find in it but my mother's best cat with a fore leg broken and the bones protruding. The poor creature, furious with pain, scratched my hand pretty badly when I was opening the trap. V/hen freed he hobbled painfully to a hollow tree-stump at the churchyard Avail, into the hole of which he sank out of sight ; and there, being so much damaged, he must soon have died in the fi?eezing weather. I re-set the trap and kept sUent, hiding as best I could my wounded hand. Next day when I went to see the trap I found the robber hare in it; and when I triumphantly handed over the second catch, I told all about the cat affair, and having confessed, felt a weight off my conscience. 13 194 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Of all the wild creatures the badgers were the least troubled and distressed during the hard years. They had their usual fare in the open season and slept comfortably In their lairs throughout the long and stormy winters. We had two badger lairs on the Eight Merkland hills, one in the Faradh above Craigelig, and the other three miles away at the further end of Larig Bhreissladh. Crows and rooks. as well as all the tribes of small birds, pushed them selves among the hens and pigs to snap up some food. The gulls, fortunately for themselves, always got away to the sea In time to escape the early winter storms and did not come back until spring ploughing was going on. I believe it was in the winter of 1839-40 that a pole-cat came down from his hiding place on the high hills to forage among the hen-roosts. At most farm-steadings the hen roost was placed over a heap of peats at the inner end of an open cart shed. Now this foraging pole cat one night killed six or seven of the elder's hens, and the very next night killed seven or eight of ours. He did not eat much of their flesh but merely sucked their blood and left them. There were lamentations over the ravaged roosts, and fears about the yet unvisited ones. This sly and rare pole-cat unless hunted down and killed, would be a perfect vampire for the Glen poultry. Therefore men and dogs gathered to hunt him down. The first day's hunt was not successful. Perhaps he needed to sleep and rest after having gorged himself with so much hen's blood. But, if so, he was in a day or two awake and out at night for further mischief This time he killed three hens in the inn byre, and was disturbed before he could proceed to kill more. Unluckily for him he had to run away EMIGRATION. 195 to his hole under the roots of a tree on the river bank, leaving foot-marks on the thin cover of new snow. There in his temporary stronghold he was besieged in the morning by men and dogs. The tree was cut down, but he still remained safe in a recess behind it until he Avas smoked out and killed on the ice of the linn when trying to run away. In the final struggle he had no chance, but he did not allow himself to be killed before he gave the dogs and men malodorous proof that he belonged to the skunk class of animals notwithstanding his fine fur. CHAPTER XXXII. EMIGRATION. The people he turned out of their holdings did not hate or curse the Laird, but rather pitied him and excused him on the score of youth, alien upbringing and education, the influence of English views on property rights, and of the new Scotch Toryism which left nothing really Highland to many young men with large estates and long lines of ancestors glorified in Gaelic songs (which these degenerates could not understand) beyond empty pride in a vanished past and the gewgaws of Highland dress and accoutrements. The larger number of those he evicted never saw him again. He remained in England or on the Continent or elsewhere in Scot land until they cleared away ; but for that absence he fully atoned by providing them with work and wages during the year they had necessarily to remain for delivering their crops at Martinmas, selling their household chattels, and winding up 196 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. their whole affairs in Scotland. The trustees had been chary in spending money on improvements ; but they saved money which the laird was now spending freely, and wisely also, in planting, drain ing, fencing, repairing and enlarging Meggernie Castle, and generally making up for arrears of neglect during his long minority. The majority of the evicted at once resolved to emigrate as soon as their affairs were settled. Emigration indeed was always more or less steadily going on since the war with France ended. The idea of it was never absent from the thoughts of the young and adventurous. In the year before the eviction a small band of young people from the Culdares estate had gone to Ontario, then called Upper Canada. Some years earlier a larger band from the Glen had gone to Port Philip, Australia, which now means Melbourne — not then in existence. Stray individuals had also found their way to New Zealand and South Africa. The migrations at home which had been perpetually, if silently and little noticed by historians, going on from immemorial times had now become brisker than ever before. Expanding cities and towns, railway construction, mining districts, and manufacturing districts offered boundless openings to incomers. But although at first sight it might seem natural that Highland families should follow the " calanas," that coal, steam, and mill-machinery had taken away from them, the southward migration from the central Highlands remained for many years what it had ever been, a drifting of individuals rather than of families. The potato disease, however, caused a great drove to go to Glasgow and its neighbouring districts from Argyll, the Isles, and the West Coast. EMIGRATION. 197 To our Glen people emigration was a familiar and far from disagreeable idea, and the thought of town life and work, especially for the women and children, was more than unattractive, positively abhorrent. They thought deeply, reasoned thoroughly, and resolved wisely. If they went with their families to manufacturing towns, they would have to begin life anew as unskilled labourers, their women and chil dren would be the slaves of the mill, and they would have to put up with miserable homes amidst low- class neighbours, who had no faith or morals. They admitted that many Highlanders who went south flourished in business or professions, both in England and Scotland, and they were proud that among them were Glensmen and relatives of their own ; but they said that only young men without family cares, and with determination to succeed, could be certain of getting on by migrating, while emigration would enable whole families to live and work together as they had been accustomed to do. In towns, the knowledge of farming and country life which they possessed would be of no use ; while in a new country and on land of their own, they would be of infinite value to themselves and of advantage to the new country. So they resolved to emigrate. They could not have done anything better. They could pay their passage, and, after arriving in Canada, have money with which to buy forest farms and to keep themselves supplied with necessaries until they cleared land and raised crops. Habitable dwellings could be easily run up in the woods, and what had they to learn in respect to cattle and farming except slight climatic differences, to which a year's experience would teach them to adapt themselves ? In their estimate of themselves there was no 198 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. exaggeration or mistake. They were about the fittest and most resourceful farming colonists that any new country could possibly have. The United States had no attraction for them. They were full of British loyalty, and wished to live under the British flag, and their descendants to do the same in secula seculorum. They preferred Canada to all other Colonies, because they had there many kith and kin to give them welcome and helpful advice. The connection with Canada began with the capture of Quebec, when among the other Highland soldiers who re mained behind as colonists, were two or three Glen lyon men who drew out their relations across the Atlantic to join them. The connection thus formed broadened a good deal during and after the war between Great Britain and the United States, and about 1816 it received a new accession of strength by the company of Glenlyon emigrants who joined other Highlanders in colonising Glengarry and its chief village or town, Lancaster, some seventy miles above Montreal. Our people of 1845 never thought of any other place of refuge. Although the time of mail steamers and cheap postage had yet to come, they had correspondence with emigrated friends in various parts of what is now the wide Dominion of Canada, and with at least one Glensman on the hunting prairies, Robert Campbell , who rose high in the service of the Hudson Bay Company. They were therefore fairly well informed about Canadian scenery, climate, productions, and varieties of soil. Their later emigrants and many Breadalbane ac quaintances had gone to Upper Canada — now Ontario — and settled in a successful way about places subsequently called London and Ailsa Craig. EMIGRATION. 199 Among the pioneer Highland settlers in that region was Iain Mor Stewart from Innerwick, who, with his wife aud a large family of children, chiefly sons, went out in 1833. Iain Mor was the eldest son of his father, but as he got a farm of his own and married in his father's lifetime, his next brother, Gilleaspa Mor, who, after the old man's death, married my aunt (Mary Campbell), took his place in the paternal Craigelig holding, and his widowed mother remained with him. Now Gilleaspa Mor, with his wife and eight children, and his two widowed sisters, each with families almost equally large, formed the solid core of the 1846 band of Glenlyon emigrants, and in one way or another, by kinship or affinity, the others were almost all con nected with them. The old settlers made arrange ments for receiving those who were to emigrate from Glenlyon and Breadalbane in 1846, and facilitated the placing of them. The outgoers formed a numerous company. They had a favourable but tedious voyage, in a sailing ship of course, and lost none of their number by sea or on the land journey afterwards. Glad indeed they were when they reached their destination. The most picturesque figure of the Glenlyon exodus was Margaret Macnaughton, a dame of ninety, who was still as straight as a girl of eighteen, and walked with firm and almost springy step. She was the mother of Gilleaspa Mor and the two widowed sisters, and the grandmother of their children, more than twenty in number. With this squad of descendants she was marching away to Ontario, where she would see once more her eldest son and his wife and their large family. Another son, Duncan, the youngest, who was an 200 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. officer of Excise on the Moray Firth, and had also a large family, remained behind in Scotland. She had, at the head of her emigrating band, therefore, good cause to consider herself a patriarchal chief- tainess. But her thoughts took another line. She was afraid of being left behind and provided for, as had often been done in cases like hers when old people feared to face the long voyage and land travelling. She feared none of these things, and yet, I daresay, had never in her long life been fifty miles away from her birthplace. Her father had followed Prince Charlie into England, and had fought at CuUoden. His adventurous spirit had descended to his daughter, although she did not know it until the belated test came. I may mention that her rebel father, Black John of CuUoden, as he came to be called, was my maternal great-grandfather. He lived till he was within a few months of completing his hundredth year. Four of his five children died without reaching the age of seventy ; while Margaret, who went with her troop of des cendants to the Ontario woods at ninety, lived fully seven years after arriving there. She was a great spinner of flax and wool, and had had a tum at her wheel before breakfast on the day on which she died. After breakfast she told her grand -daughter that she did not feel well, and would go and rest in bed for a while. She went to bed, and seemed to feel comfortable, but in an hour or so when her grand-daughter went to look at her she was dead. On the voyage she was the only one of the party of emigrant passengers who Avas not sea-sick. She felt more tired of the land travelling, but bore its dis comforts bravely and patiently. Black John's elder brother, Duncan, was with him at CuUoden, having EMIGRATION. 201 left his newly-married wife behind him ; and while he was campaigning their first child, Janet Mor, was born, and in his absence baptised by Mr Ferguson, minister of Fortingall, who was hated by the Jacobites because he prayed so emphatically for "our lawful sovereign. King George," and acted so resolutely against their cause. Of Janet's brothers and sisters, only one, Duncan the Maor, attained the age of eighty. He was my godfather, and always gave me sixpence — a great sum in my eyes, when a penny was the usual gift — to buy sweets or apples at the annual local fair at Innerwick ; but when I was small and shy he plagued me terribly by saying that Janet Mor wanted to marry me. That was a joke of his which two generations of boys had to put up with. When I knew Janet more intimately, that joke of his lost its sting. She was a merry old soul with a youthful mind, and with a good memory, up to the last, of ordinary events of Glen life during her time, and of the genealogies of Glen people. But she was not half so interesting as her cousin, Margaret, who had a large store of legends and songs. I wish I had paid more attention to her local songs, and written them down ; for several of them were of high merit, and had stories attached to them. All of them have now perished, with the exception of two taken down by Turner, the " Lament for Macgregor of Roro," and the lament of his CampbeU Avidow for Gregor, the Chief of the Clan, who was beheaded at Bealach or Taymouth in 1570. Turner, in taking down the lament for Gregor, fell into a blunder, because he thought the lamenting widow Avas the daughter of Sir Duncan Campbell, or his father. Sir CoUn CampbeU of Glenorchy, when in reality she 202 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. was the daughter of their near kinsman, Duncan CampbeU of Glenlyon. To my grand-aunt's annoy ance, he muddled two verses to suit his theory. Gregor had committed atrocities which the Regent could not overlook. His hunting down was a State affair ; and when captured he was tried at Bealach before the Earl of Atholl, Lord Justice Clerk, and an assemblage of local barons. He was fully convicted, and forthwith beheaded. The correct verses are — 'S truagh nach robh m'athair ann an galar Agus Cailean ann am plaigh ; 'S gaoh Caimbeulach a bha'm Bealach Gu giulain nan glas-lamh. Chuirinn Cailean Liath fo ghlasaibh, 'S Donnachadh Dubh an laimh, Ged bhiodh nighean an Ruadhainich, Suathadh bhas a's lamh. Pity it is that my father (Duncan Roy of Glenlyon) is not in illness. And Colin (her brother, afterwards called Cailean Gorach) is not plague stricken. And every Campbell in Bealach made to wear hand-cuffs. 1 would put Grey Colin (Sir Colin of Glenorchy) under lock And Black Duncan (his son and heir) under arrest. Although Ruthven's daughter* rubbed hands and palms in grief. Turner's muddled version is — 'S truagh nach robh m' athair ann an galar Agus Cailean ann an plaigh, Ged bhiodh nighnean an Ruadhainich Suathadh bhas a's lamh. Chuirinn Cailean Liath fo ghlasaibh, 'S Donnachadh Dubh an laimh, 'S gach Caimbeulach a bha'm Bealach Gu guilan nan glas-lamh. "Lord Ruthveii'.-i daughter wa.s Sir Colin'.s wife and the motiier of his heir, Black Duncan. EMIGRATION. 203 When the large clearances, and after them the long- continued systematic lesser evictions on the Breadalbane estate, escaped general pubUcity and criticism, such a small side-swirl in the broad sea of change as the turning out of a few tenants on the Culdares estate was not likely to receive any notice from the press ; yet the unlikely came to pass, through the impression which the stout-hearted chieftainess of ninety made upon a journalist of some fame in his day, and one who had an enviable gift of writing vivid sketches and artistically neat para graphs. This was Mr Macdiarmid, editor of the Dumfries Courier, who, then on holiday, chanced to meet our emigrants at the head of Loch Long, whence they were to ship to Liverpool and embark on the sailing vessel in which they were to cross the Atlantic. Macdiarmid sought an interview with the old dame, and wrote a paragraph about her in the Dumfries Courier, which many papers copied. Had he been able to converse with her in Gaelic he would have been as much struck with her mental, as he was with her physical, vigour and courage. Our emigrants cheerfully and carefully made their preparations for the long journey, following the directions sent them by the friends who had gone before them. They talked hopefully of the homes they would make for themselves, God willing, in the new far-off country to which they were going. It was not until the parting wrench came that they realised or were willing to admit the clutching hold which the scenery of their native Glen, with all its associations, and the graves of their dead of many centuries, had on their hearts. Travelling to and fro on the face of the earth was not then so cheap and easy as it is now. Those who went to the south 204 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. of the British Isles, or to Ireland, could revisit the places from which they or their fathers had gone, and be thrice welcomed by kindred who listened with interest to the stories they had to tell, and who in return told what had been passing since they or their fathers had gone away. A good deal of money earned in the south filtered back to the Highlands from successful migrants who ever remembered the old folk at home. Emigrants to Canada had no hope, even as late as 1846, of ever seeing again the glens of their youth, and the friends they left behind them — unless they followed them, as some of them intended to do, and did ere many years had gone over their heads. "Cha till, cha till, cha till sinn tuille" — return, return, return we shall never — was still the Highland emigrant's pathetic farewell to the beloved native land, which, with all the hardships of life there, had laid a spell of love on his soul, which he transmitted without much lessening force to his children and children's children. In this twentieth century the Canadian Premier, Sir Wilfred Laurier, has been calling the Scots emigrants the salt of the Dominion. Of that salt the Highland emigrants were not the least important part; for in the first generation they took, as a class, almost exclusively to farming; and although rulers like Sir Allan Macnab and Sir John Macdonald came out of their ranks, their children, as a rule, kept hold of the soil, and sent off-shoots further and further afield till they spread over to the Pacific Coast. None of the elderly people ofthe Glen emigrants of 1846 did ever come back to revisit their birth-place. But some of the younger generations and of the next swarm of self-evicted ones who went out in the fifties, came back and saw a depopulated Glen, in EMIGRATION. 205 which all had changed except the grand scenery. The depopulation was completed, as in other places, by the people, of their own free-wUl, going away to seek better openings for themselves either in the south or in the colonies. What happened in Glen lyon was typical of what was taking place over most of the Central Highlands sixty years ago. As for the West Coast and Isles, the potato disease did the worst and most hurried ravaging of population — as it did in Ireland — by driving away and pauperising the people. So the old order perished. Nothing could have averted the doom pronounced by radically changed economic conditions of national commerce and industries. From 1600 till the dispersion, Glen lyon population remained essentially unaltered. It consisted of people of about a dozen different sur names, with separate graves in the old churchyard, but who, by intermarrying, were knit together as a kith and kindred clan. The Privy Council Records be tween 1600 and 1620, in giving lists ofthe Glenlyon people who were fined for resetting Clan Gregor, denounced as rebels, conclusively proves this asser tion. Sir James Macgregor, Vicar of Fortingall, afterwards Dean of Lismore, and his brother Duncan, began a Chronicle about 1500, which was continued by a clansman who was curate of Fortin gall until 1579. This Chronicle indicates that between 1400 and the reign of James the Sixth, a few new surnames had been introduced into an older community which still and aKvays retained, numeri cally, dominating position. Dynasties of proprietors rose and fell, but tUl the old order passed, the people held their ground without any wholesale change. In Ontario emigrants from adjacent districts like Breadalbane, Glenlyon, Rannoch, and Fortingall, as 206 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. long as selection of lots of land was anything like free to choose, clustered together, and continued the religious, moral, and social and industrious life they had led at home. As a body they prospered better than they ever could have done either by remaining on their old holdings or by removing in families to manufacturing towns and mining districts. The large tribe of the chieftainess of ninety has by this time grown into a very large clan, but It is a widely dispersed clan, for while the main section of it remains and prospers In Ontario, there is a strong swarm in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The High landers of Canada have always been most loyal to the British Flag and citizenship, notwithstanding the unfriendly feeling to some nineteenth century Highland landlords which they took with them to their new homes, and which indeed they displayed strongly during the crofter agitation in this country twenty years ago. They rose in arms to defeat the Fenian Invasions of Canada from the United States. They looked with anger and disgust at advocates of annexation like Mr Goldwin Smith, and they are ever suspicious of Washington policy lest it should have a snake hidden in its fine, innocent-looking grass. When Riel's rebellion threatened to sever the vast prairie land of the West from Canada, and to establish some mongrel sort of a hostile State between Canada and British Columbia, who volun teered more promptly than Highlanders of Ontario for the expedition to squash that rebellion ? And who showed more hardihood and capacity for bearing the discomforts and overcoming the diffi culties of the long marches by water and by land ? In the gallant band led by Sir Garnet Wolseley were grandsons of our Glenlyon dame of ninety. EMIGRATION. 207 who, with other Gaelic-speaking acquaintances, resolved when the rebellion was over to settle in Manitoba. It is their children and relatives who are now spreading themselves over into Saskat chewan and further west even to the Pacific. If the Scottish sections, which are very large, of the Canadian population have a just right to be called the salt of the Dominion, it is because whether of Highland or Lowland descents they devoted themselves more than any other sections to farming and healthy country pursuits, and less than others plunged into the speculating madness and enervating habits of cities and towns. Although it has a fair show of mineral wealth, the Dominion is and always must remain an agricultural, pastoral, fishing, lumbering, and hunting country. For all of these pursuits people of Scotch rural descent have heredi tary inclination and both natural and acquired qualifications. The owners and the tillers of the soil must of necessity be the backbone of every nation on the face of the earth which has a patent of long endurance with the force and patriotism requisite to make that patent good. The High landers of the Dominion appeared there as farmers, levellers of primeval forests, and Hudson Bay Com pany hunters. Long may their descendants keep out of the urban life, and retain their hold on the soil and the simple healthy open-air existence. 208 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER XXXIII. A SCRAMBLE FOR HIGHER' EDUCATION. I WAS nearly fifteen when I began to learn Latin by myself, and next year when Mr Drummond took me in hand to inspire, guide, and drill me properly, he was pleased to find that I had made substantial rudimentary progress. By that time my mind was stored with a curious medley of information. The humble school furnished me with the three keys of knowledge, and outside the school I did a great deal for myself. From infancy I was becoming insensibly saturated with the traditional lore of old Gamaliels — tales of the Feinne, fairy stories, local history (which subsequent publication of State records proved to be wonderfully correct) back to John of Lome (called by us Iain Dubh nan Lann, who married Janet Maciosaig, the grand-daughter of Bruce in 1360, and got as her tocher from her uncle. King David, Glenlyon), and old songs most of which have perished, and which carried, in prefatory explana tions in prose, information of various kinds on their backs. From the age of five I could read English and Gaelic, and get enjoyment for myself from easy books in both these languages. AU we children of that time were well drilled in the Shorter Catechism, Avhich, no doubt, we repeated by rote at first, but which, as the years passed, took hold of our under standing and furnished us with a canon of reasoned theology, and, what was of more importance, a rule of life to which we might not always make our A SCRAMBLE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION. 209 conduct conform, but which always kept its grip on us. It was not such a hard task to commit the Catechism to memory as to find the proofs for the dogmatic assertions contained in It by searching the Bible. That part of our task belonged more to the Sunday than to the week school. It was the part which I liked least myself, and in it boys and girls, especially the girls in my class, were often ahead of me. The " Ceasnachadh," which carae once a year, when the minister, accompanied by the elders of each ward into which the parish was divided, went his rounds to examine old and young, was less a terror to us youngsters than it was to some of the grey-headed old men, whose early Catechism education had been neglected, or who had forgotten what they had once learned. We school children took a wicked pleasure in their worry and blunders, and afterwards made fun among ourselves of their wrong or haphazard answers. Bible narratives had such an overwhelming fascination for me that one summer, when quite a small boy, I read all the historical books, and because of their historical references to ancient nations, most of the prophetical books likewise. That summer my daily occupation was to herd calves, and to keep them out of corn and hay land, on a stretch of banks and bogs within the park wall which extended from above the churchyard to Clachaig, named so, the Place of Stones, because the old Druidic stone circle was there. Herding alone would have been tedious enough, had not this Bible-reading made the time pass pleasantly. My dog Torm, indeed, did the biggest part of the herding, for he knew as well as myself how far it was free for the calves to go, and when it was his 14 210 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. duty to deal with them as trespassers. When on a very rainy day we had taken them to a corner above Clachaig, and I told him to take care of them there, I could go off to Calum Macgibbon's house with an easy conscience and stay there for a while. On returning I was sure to find the calves more closely pinned up in their corner than when I left them. Torm then would come rushing to me with self-satisfied eyes to be praised and patted on the head, and given leave to go on a scamper of his own if he felt so Inclined. He liked to have such runs, but never went too far to hear being called back by a whistle. The worst fault of the faithful, intelligent creature was that he would not let a strange dog pass on the road without looking on him as a trespasser and wanting to fight with him. When ten years old, the medley of information which I had gained out of school was derived from the following sources : — Glenlyon traditional lore, Bible history, the " Pilgrim's Progress," " Scots Worthies," " Robinson Crusoe," and the "Arabian Nights." About the latter I had much trouble with my mother, whose own reading was limited to her Gaelic Bible. She highly approved of my Bible studies, and knew enough about the " Pilgrim's Progress " and the " Scots Worthies " to think the reading of them commendable. I gave her such an account of Robinson Crusoe's adventures that she became interested in them herself I was Indeed rather in the habit of telling in Gaelic round the kitchen fire on winter nights the stories I had read in English. It was that habit which brought down maternal condemnation on the un-Christian tales of the "Arabian Nights." She wanted to restrict my reading to Boston's "Fourfold State" and the A SCRAMBLE POR HIGBER EDUCATION. 211 similar prim books which were contained in the parish library. My father's authority was invoked, but, although no scholar, he could read and speak English, and had broader views than hers. He saw I was mutinous, and thought it was best to let me follow my own course. But till I reached the age of twelve, when she gave up her attempt at censor ship as a bad job, my mother was suspicious, and bothered me a good deal about the books I read. Because the poetry of Burns was under clerical ban in our Glen and my mother knew it was so, I had to read it out of her sight, and found it as sweet as stolen waters. Had she known as much as the little she did about Burns about other books which I devoured between the ages of twelve and fifteen, she would have been truly horrified, although perhaps Defoe's " History of the Devil " might have passed muster as perfectly orthodox ! My grandfather, who received a good middle- class education at the parish schools of Muthil and Crieff, left behind him a collection of English and Gaelic books, which were kept stored in a cupboard until I rummaged among them. I found that in other farm houses there were many old books which nobody read, and which were gladly lent to me. The books of friends who died in the South came back to their relations in the Glen, but these were books of the beginning of the last century, and were more read than the others. The others stretched back in a straggling way to the time of the Refor mation, and forwards to 1770. How did these old books come into the possession of people who did not, and few of whom could, read them or under stand them ? I believe it was because they were sold with the furniture in Meggernie Castle on the 212 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. death of Commissioner Archibald Menzies in 1776. His father, Old Culdares, died the year before. When his son died, leaving a widow and an infant daughter, the upper and bigger part of the barony went to John Stewart of Cardeney under the deed of entail, and the Chesthill end fell to the Com missioner's daughter, but it was so burdened with debt that it soon had to be sold to her uncle by marriage, Archibald Menzies, Chief Clerk to the Court of Session. No doubt that at this sale of effects the books went so cheap that, with an eye to the future, people who could not read them were tempted to buy them for possible use by their descendants. The most ponderous, and to me not the least attractive, was Hackluyt's " Collection of Voyages and Travels." Interspersed with imperish able literature were publications of the Restoration period, some of which were witty and Avicked, and some of which were simply dull and immoral. I judged Charles II. and his Court with the mercUess severity of a young Puritan or Covenanter, but was quite tolerant about the disreputable doings of heathen gods and goddesses. I do not think it did me the least moral harm to get in early life a peep-show knowledge of the seamy side of human life. That side of human life was much dwelt upon in the Bible itself, in the authority. Inspiration, and infallibUity of which we were taught to believe implicitly by our own spiritual guides. And was there not much of it in our own ancient Celtic poetry and prose tales ? I remember I sided strongly with Prometheus against thundering Jupiter, and felt glad that the latter's autocratic tyranny was at times controlled by Fate. I pondered often on the similarities between the full-fledged mythology of A SCRAMBLE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION. 213 Greece and Rome and the fragments of Celtic mythology which came down to us in the Cuchullin and Feinne stories. Was not Cuchullin himself the Hercules of our race ? Then my own clan claimed descent from Diarmid O'Duibhne, who eloped with his uncle Fionn's wife, or, at least, betrothed bride, Grainne. Was their story not somewhat like the elopement of Paris and Helen ? Comparative rumi nation cleared paths for rae through the tangles of classical mythology. But I thought less of assorting than of acquiring knowledge. I had a retentive memory, and stored my mind like a pawnbroker's shop with miscellaneous goods that had to wait for sorting out at convenience, Everythlnj^- in the shape of a book was fish that carae into my nets. I had read Pope's Homer and Dryden's Virgil before Mr Drummond took me in hand, and was full of the enthusiastic hope of being some day able to read these great poems in their original languages. Knowledge of Gaelic is a great help to any young student of Latin and Greek. Bi-lingualism of any kind is in itself a mental discipline and an educa tional ladder. The desultory reading which I began in my early youth became a habit which clung to me throughout my life. It was my form of dissipation. I had much hard work to do to earn my daily bread, and at first that work had nothing in connection with books. But although I did not know it, I was qualifying myself for the journalistic work into which I ultimately drifted, and at which I remained for forty-six years. When I began to learn Latin I intended to go to a University ; but I did not know to what profession I should devote attention. The ministry was the usual aim of Highland lads of 214 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS, my kind, but I did not think myself pious enough for that calling, for the revival doctrine of conversion was then overawing the rising generation, and I knew I could not honestly say to myself or others that I had gone through any process of conversion. I had more leaning towards the medical than to the legal profession. But to get some learning was my first craving, and the choice of a profession would be made when I had more knowledge of the world and of ray capacity, likings, and chances. Mean while the great thing was to earn money, and with the money I earned to scramble for a higher educa tion. I was the eldest of my parents' family of five children, and the only son. But before my father had lost the farm on which he and his ancestors had been for tAvo hundred years, it was tacitly under stood by all concerned that I was to turn my back on farming and to shape a course for myself. Had my people kept on the ancestral farm they could manage to work It without me, for a bachelor brother of my father's had lately come home after long service with Mr Charles StcAvart as his manager at Chesthill. When my father went out of the old farm, he never took another one, and he needed his sraall means and industry for his own family needs. I was determined to earn for myself what I was to spend on my own education. In the process of earning that raoney by my own eftbrts, I steadily kept the idea of a University career before my mind. It was useful as a stimulus to exertion and saving, but as things turned out, I was never to get nearer to a University training than two partial sessions at the Edinburgh Training College, or Normal School, as it Avas then called. A SCRAMBLE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION. 215 My scramble for a higher education was made with strenuous self - effort ; as mutatis mutandis was that of many country lads. Highland and Low land, who broke away from their birth-spheres and shaped their own careers. Not a few of such youths fell short of their aims by overworking brains and bodies, and throwing themselves Into consumption or some other fatal or disabling illness. But such as succeeded increased that aristocracy of merit which, in Scotland from the Reformation downwards, did so much to link classes together, and to harmonise old- fashioned feudalism and clanship with a Church and system of education established on democratic principles. From fifteen until nearly twenty, I was spending in fees, books, bread, and lodgings, money I had earned in the country. I raight almost call myself a jack-of-all-trades; so many were my employ ments that it would be difficult for me now to enumerate them in consecutive order. I did my share in planting the wood on Meggernie hill. For several years I was gillie to the Earl of Sefton during the shooting season. Lord Sefton had Meggernie Castle, and the shooting and fishing both of the Culdares estate and of the Marquis of Breadalbane's Roro estate, for fifteen years. He knew the Glen and its people better than the pro prietor whose shooting tenant he was ; and the people knew him and his wife and children, and, although shy of showing their feelings, they looked upon the Sefton family with almost clannish affec tion. One day I heard Lord Sefton pay a high compliment to Glen honesty. Looking at the carcases of two fat wedders hanging up in an open shed, he said — "In Lancashire these would have been stolen before morning unless kept under lock 216 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. and key. Here the people would never lay hands on anything which did not belong to them." He was not in his former robust state of health when I was his gillie. When not equal to the exertion of going far up the rugged hills, he and I and his two favourite dogs, Nelson and Juno, went by ourselves up the Loch hills, to the bottom of which he rode, and when he got tired of shooting, he would join his lady and children at the Loch's side and take a turn at fishing. My business then was to row the boat. Hauls of salmon were got on the Lyon by nets on the linns and by poke-nets at the falls between Gallin and Moar. Rod-fishing, too, was often resorted to by Lord Sefton, and, less often, by one or more of his guests. Although Lord Sefton gave me credit for being very efficient at the river and loch business, considering my want of training, it was the joy of the hill sports my memory treasured up for ever more. How often in smoky towns I thought of the mountain tops where ptarmigan and golden plover were to be found ; of the corries where deer that strayed from the Black Mount could be stalked, and of the heather slopes on which the passing breezes caused billowy movements like waves of the sea ! How often when in fair and fertile country scenes, free from the smoke of long chimneys, the clatter of streets, and the rattle of machinery, I said with Byron : — England, thy beauties are tame and domestic To one who has roved o'er the mountains afar ; Oh, for the crags that are wild and majestic ! The steep, frowning glories of dark Loch-na-Garr ! When our neighbour the elder was turned out of the Eight Merkland holding like ourselves, he took the farm of Balnahanait on the Roro estate, and A SCRAMBLE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION. 217 there I worked under him as farm servant for six months. The work was hard enough for a growing lad, but it was one to which I was accustomed, and we were all of us a cheery household of friends and acquaintances. That was the end of my farm life, and it does not corae In here in proper sequence, but I am rather grouping my chief employments during the jack-of-all-trades' years than giving them in the order in which they occurred. An odd job after the shooting season was the smearing of sheep at Lochs. This in itself was far frora being so pleasant as ranging the hills or cutting hay with a well-balanced scythe, or indeed any field-work. A month of It was enough at any time, and in wet weather even too much, for blackened nails and sore hands. But the smearing - house company always kept itself hearty with songs, jests, and stories, and, not in frequently, with discussions like a debating club. Smearing has long been displaced by dips, to the detriment of the poor sheep, and, I almost think, of the grazings too. It could not be kept on much longer than it was, because, with the desolation of the country districts, smearers were not to be found in most places. So the sheep had to lose their warm, water-tight, winter cloaks, and to put up with less clean skins than the tar and butter or oil unction had given them. On losing the ancestral holding my father took a series of contracts for repairing and rebuilding head- walls which separated arable and hay lands from outer grazings. In carrying out these contracts he had to associate others with himself, sometimes only one — his cousin, Duncan Dewar — if it was merely repairing, sometimes three, two for each side of the wall, when it meant building or rebuilding altogether. 218 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Of all his wall contracts the one which was looked upon at first as a bad bargain turned out to be the most profitable. This was the long wall between the Dalreoch and the Leacan Odhar remnant of the self-sown Caledonian forest. The park and the wood are on the other side of the river opposite Meggernie Castle. His associates in building this wall were Duncan Dewar, Duncan Macnaughton (Donnachadh Ruadh), and myself. Donnachadh and I built the hill-side and my father and Duncan Dewar the inside of the wall. The wall that was there before had fallen into utter disrepair, and it had originally been one of the Irregularly built structures of the cattle age which would keep cows in or out but would be no great hindrance to more audacious climbing or jumping animals. It was plain that much new building material would be required, hence the doubt of the value of the con tract. But we soon discovered that we had stones in plenty quite near us concealed under the long heather, mixed with cranberry patches, juniper bushes, and anthills. Outside the park everything was little different from what it had been in the days of Galgacus and Agricola. The roe-buck herd itself was as primeval as Its surroundings, although it must lately have been inconvenienced by the wintering of sheep in its preserves. Blackcocks and woodcocks no doubt resented that invasion also. But all the ancient denizens were now to be relieved of their woolly Invaders who disturbed their immemorial heritage. The new building material being so easily won made it possible for us to earn a considerably higher daily wage than the average one of the district at those times, when two shillings a day was considered good pay. We about doubled that A SCRAMBLE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION. 219 and were quite content. Early in the spring we began leaving home by dawn of day and returned at dusk ; for we had to go two miles to get to our work. Until I hardened to this work I was glad enough when the seventh day's rest came round. Donnachadh Ruadh and I were, notwithstanding the great disparity of age, the best of friends and the best possible companions. He was an old ex perienced hand, and I was a young willing one at the work on which we were engaged. Any little controversy that arose came from old Dewar on the other side of the wall, who wanted to boss everyone except my father, and who now and then accused us, unjustly as we thought, of not doing our just part in packing the wall interior with pinning and fiUing stone fragments. Our wall face at any rate was as good as his and my father's. But it was old Dewar's nature to find fault with somebody, when company working. On the other hand he was the best and most diligent of servants when his master kept out of sight. My finger-nails, worked down to the quick, and the worn skin of my hands, sorely needed the Sunday's recuperative rest and restora tion. But, after all, it was a joyous time for me. In my jacket pocket I always took with me to the wall-building a small neatly-printed edition of the poems of Horace, published In 1814 by R. Morlson, Perth ; and then, or a short time afterwards, I used to take the small copy of Greenfield's Greek New Testament with lexicon with me to church, and I used it for following the scripture lessons and the text. I fear that I sometiraes continued my own reading of it, seeking In the lexicon the words which were new to me, instead of listening to the sermon. In learning Latin and Greek I thought it best to 220 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. peg away at my task with grammar and dictionary^ and not to look at any translation until I had first done the best for myself. With the little edition of Horace I used a crib made in the reign of Queen Anne, but it was not until I had gone over It all and could enjoy the Latin text without any help that I realised the charms of the Burns of Roman literature and polished society in the great Augustan reign. With his revelations of himself, his great fear of death, his Epicurean philosophy and observance of the rites of a mythology which he did not believe, and his love of the country life when in Rome, and his desire to be back at Rome when on his Sabine farm, Horace makes himself so personaUy and intimately known to his reader that he exercises a peculiar fascination. PART II, THE SCHOLASTIC PERIOD. PART 11— THE SCHOLASTIC PERIOD. CHAPTER XXXIV. KERRUMORE SCHOOL. This school had been removed, when I was about six years old, from Innerwick, where it had been since the reign of Queen Anne. My first attendance was at Innerwick before the building of the new, slated, and, for that time, commodious school - house at Kerrumore. There had been at one time a school - master's house at Innerwick, and a permanently placed teacher, but that better arrangement had come to an end, I believe, about 1783, when the Barony of Glenlyon was divided into the estates of Culdares and Chesthill. What remained was an endowment of £10, half from the estate of Culdares and half from the Bishopric of Dunkeld fund. As already mentioned, the teachers were young men who usually changed from year to year, and who, instead of fees, received board and lodging by going about from house to house after their pupils. The school session was shorter than in most places, for there was much herding to do, aad other summer occupations for children were numerous. It does not come in here in chronological order, bat after having been at my first session at Perth, Mr Drummond got me to teach the Kerru more school for the usual period of seven or eight months. I would rather have tried my 'prentice 224 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. hand elsewhere, for it was a habit of big lads to come to school in the dead months of the winter after having done their corn-threshing, feeding of animals, and other duties in the morning. Some of these lads were as old as myself, and had been in former years my class-mates and companions. As for the younger ones, I knew I could easily rule them, for I could always readily make friends with and exercise influence over children and dogs. I had over sixty pupils in winter at Kerrumore School. I need not have been afraid of the big lads, my co-evals and former class-fellows. They respected my new magisterial position fully as much as I did myself, and were my faithful henchmen and assistants in the daily mending of quill-pens which were then in use. I had got the name of being a book-worm, and it was supposed that having been for ten months at Perth schools, I had come back A^dth a load of learning. These first ten months at Perth left me much run down physically, and with an empty purse. I had been working very hard and living frugally, though not at all half-starving myself, as others of my kind too often did. Having paid everything I owed, and given the servant at the lodging-house a shilling or two, I bought books with what remained, packed my box, paid the carrier for taking it home, and then found I had not money enough for the coach-fare to Aberfeldy. It was the afternoon of a fine summer day when the schools broke up, and I resolved to start at once and to tramp all the fifty miles home by road, for I did not then know the hill short cuts well, and much of my journey would be by night. So, having bought some Abernethy biscuits, I set off by the road to Dunkeld late in the afternoon, and got to Aberfeldy KERRUMORE SCHOOL. 225 bridge by daylight. I rested there and half-dozed for a while, and then tackled the next twtmty miles, at the end of which I felt as tired a.s ever I did in my life. I have no doubt that I more than once walked quite as great a distance on the hills without being a penny the worse for it next day. But hill- walking is different from hard road-walking. Not a few of my pupils at Kerrumore came from places three or four miles away, and in the winter months had to start in the grey dawn. They raade good haste to come, but in going home in the evening they loitered and played by the way till the night quite closed in. It was so when I myself was a pupil. When the new schoolhouse was being built, and the old one at Innerwick had quite collapsed, the school was held one winter in the servants' hall at Meggernie Castle. Every evening we came home In grand style from the Castle, for in John Macfarlane, youngest son of the Innerwick smith, a lad of ten or eleven, we had a piper of our own, who played marches and reels and laments on miniature pipes. His father was the fourteenth of a series of Macfarlane smiths, who were famous of old for making swords and daggers of excellent quality. John's father himself had more than local fame and custom as a sgian-dubh maker. John became a Free Church schoolmaster, but, to the regret of all who knew him, died ere he reached middle age. It was indeed supposed that the juvenile piping, of which he and his little troop were so mightily proud, did John's health serious harm. My own Kerrumore scholars were a hardy, cheerful lot, who were easily ruled in school, and out of it indulged in no more fun, frolic, and childish 15 226 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. pranks than healthy children are justly entitled to. In school they had to speak English. Gaelic was their vernacular, and they were all the more easily taught because bi-lingualism had sharpened their brains. Every morning they brought with them, in the primitive way of the time, peats and sticks to feed the schoolhouse fire. Besides the daily collection of peats and sticks, birch trees on the opposite hill slope were given each winter to the school. These were felled, sawed, and split by the elder boys, while all helped to carry them home rejoicingly. The fatal accident to Mr Drummond's nephew, which has been already referred to, occurred when these trees gifted by the estate were being cut down. CHAPTER XXXV. CARGILL. In Perth I was taught Latin and Greek by Mr James Davidson, who kept a classical academy in Melville Street, while his wife, who had received a good education, taught French and German. Mr Davidson had become totally blind, although one would not know it to look at him. But his memory was prodigious and his mind was richly stored with Greek and Roman lore. Mr Davidson was at the head of his profession In Perth. Except on Satur days his time was wholly taken up with his various classes. He had many town boys in the lower classes, but his higher ones contained big lads from the country districts who intended to be ministers, doctors, and lawyers, and, io the vacation months. CARGILL. 227 schoolmasters desirous of advancing their classical knowledge. It was useless for dolts and lads who had neglected to learn prescribed lessons diligently to go to the Melville Street Academy, for they would meet with anything but forbearing tolerance there. Mr Davidson was an enthusiastic teacher, and his pupils, with their own projects in view, responded to their master's enthusiasm and strove hard to fulfil his expectations, and made wonderful progress. I am proud to say that I became a favourite with Mr Davidson because I was as strenuously bent upon acquiring, as he was on imparting, instruction. In my second year at Perth Mr Davidson one day surprised me by asking me if I would go to Cargill to teach the parish school there instead of the parochial schoolmaster, Mr Peter Cochrane, who had been disabled for some time by paralysis and was consequently obliged to provide a substitute. The proposal came upon rae unexpectedly, but I accepted it. I was to have the house or as much of it as I wanted, the glebe, the school fees, and a few pounds of salary. At that period of my life I thought it would be a fine thing to have the teaching of a parish school. The disabled school master lived at Perth, so there would be free scope for his assistant to do his best in his own way. But I was beginning to have some small tutorial work at Perth, and felt unwilling to break off the course of ray own studies. Mr Davidson suggested that I should come in on Saturdays and go over with him what Latin and Greek I had been reading for myself during the week. That suggestion put an end to my objections. I went to Cargill, and liked the place, the people, and the work. When I went to Cargill in 1848, the parish school was up on the high ground at Newbigging, a 228 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. good distance above the village parish church and manse. I believe the building at Newbigging was formerly the minister's manse. It was a tall build ing, solidly built. Its lower storey contained the school-room and a large kitchen. The flat above, and the attics above that, gave good and plenty house room to the schoolmaster. There was a glebe of four acres of arable land, including the garden. I had more than sixty pupils. They were, with few exceptions, the children of well-to-do farmers, farm- servants, and workmen on the Stobhall estate. Only two or three of them were over thirteen years of age. The custom, so common in the Highlands, of older pupils coming back for a spell of schooling in the Avinter did not exist in Cargill, nor in the Lowlands generally, I believe. When the children left school to work, they generally left it forever ; or if their parents were well off, they were sent for higher education elsewhere. No doubt the Cargill children had suffered from the disability of the master and the annual changing of his substitutes, but it did not seem to me that the desire for education, beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic, was so keen in Cargill as it was in the Highlands. I liked the children, and, in parting, they made known that they liked me. They were orderly in the school-room, attentive to their lessons and tasks, and cheerfully frolicsome without being quarrelsome in the play-ground. I occupied only a bedroom and the kitchen, and when the school was dismissed lived all alone in the big building, doing my own cooking — such as it was — and sending out my washing to the neighbouring ploughman's wife. My nearest neigh bours, the farmer of Newbigging, Mr Irvine, and CARGILL. 229 his wife, were kindly concerned about the hermit life I was leading, and often made me come over and have supper with them. I was a bad cook and housekeeper, and if someone had not come to join me and take the management of the house in hand, I daresay that my health raight have been seriously injured. But I did not feel the least bit lonely, and preparatory studies for the Saturday readings with Mr Davidson fully employed my mind, and made spare time fly on fast wings. It was a break in my hermit life when, every Saturday, whether it was fair and frosty or wet and snowy, I tramped off to Perth to give Mr Davidson an account of my week's studies. Nine miles there and nine back made a good day's walk and insured sound sleep. By going to the station a mile or two out of my direct way I could have taken the train, but that meant paying railway fares, and I had no money to throw away. In truth I was nearly at the end of my money when payment of the first quarter's school fees brought me relief The parents of the Cargill children were the best of payers. Dunsinane, with the ruins of Macbeth's Castle on it, was near at hand, and as I was full of Shakespeare I soon paid it a visit, and looking across to Birnam, I thought the men of old must have had wonderful power of sight to see the wood moving. Coupar Angus was within four miles, and I went to see what remained of its Abbey, which had become dreadfully demoralised before the Reformation put an end to it. The Abbey of Scone was equally infamous before it was swept away ; but I happened to hear more about Coupar than I did about Scone, because of the way in which the corrupt Coupg,r Angus abbots endowed their illegiti- 230 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. mate children with Church lands, which habit was the cause of the feud between Argyll and Airlie. Stobhall, the ancient patrimony of the Drummond Chiefs, and the place from which Robert III. got his excellent wife. Queen Arabella, had its own interesting history, variegated with lights and shades, of which the Cargill parishioners of 1848 seemed to have no such vivid traditions as would have been handed down from generation to generation regarding a similar seat of Chiefs in the tllghlands. Yet these people as a whole must have been of the sarae stock as the inhabitants of Queen Arabella's time or centuries earlier than that. The practical Lowlander concentrated his vigorous attention on the present, leaving the past to records and writers of books, while the more visionary Highlander cherished traditional history strung together on long genealogies and enlivened by snatches of song. There were songs also in the Cargill parish bothies and in sheds in which women were weaving for Dundee employers, but they had nothing to do with local stories. My hermit life ended when my second cousin, Duncan Mackerchar, came down to join me from the Braes of Glenlyon. He was a good bit older than I, and had been sheph'^rding since boyhood. He had saved a little money, and was now bent upon leaving the glen and getting into commercial life. He wanted to perfect himself In arithmetic, learn book keeping, and improve his knowledge of English grammar and composition. He was very Intelligent, and, when tending the sheep on the hills, had mused on many subjects beyond his proper calling. When Duncan took the house-keeping In hand, the cooking vastly improved, and the parts of the house which CARGILL. 231 we occupied became forthwith neat and orderly. We had pleasant days and studious nights together. When I left CargUl, he went to Greig's Academy, Perth, after Avhich he went to England; from which, in the course of years, he returned to Glasgow, where he settled, married, and modestly prospered until his death, now a long time ago. About Christmas time, when the weather happened to be mild and foggy, I was worrying myself as to how I could get the glebe ploughed so as to be ready for oat-sowing in spring. That difficulty was soon solved by the generous and spontaneous action of the farmers whose children attended the school. They sent me word that on a certain day — a Saturday, I think — ^they would send men, ploughs, and horses sufficient for doing the whole job in less than one day. The thing had never been done before, and it was a great kindness and high com pliment to a young stranger who had so recently come among them. Duncan and I — he more than I — had to make arrangements for giving the plough men a plentiful if but a rough-and-ready feast. If Mrs Irvine had not helped, we should have been without the necessary equipment of spoons, knives, forks, and plates. Duncan and I were practically total abstainers, but on that evening, when the ploughing was done, whisky circulated pretty freely round the festive board. I suspect from the price given for it that whisky never paid duty. Duncan bought it from a trader from Glenisla, who made periodical visits to our district. At any rate it suited the ploughmen, who, after singing "Auld Lang Syne," departed in a merry mood, but sober enough for all purposes. 232 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER XXXVI. AN UNEXPECTED EVENT. Duncan Mackerchar and I were so much en grossed in our own affairs that we seldom wrote letters to our friends in the Highlands, and they too seldom sent us any news down the Pass of Dunkeld. So it was quite a surprise when I got a letter from Mr Drummond, saying that he and my father thought I ought to apply for the Fortingall Parish School, which had fallen vacant, because my name sake Duncan Campbell, who had taught it for twenty years, had gone to Lesmahagow, where he vigorously exercised his vocation for the next twenty- five years. I thought that Mr Drummond and my father were expecting too much for me, and I at first declined to becorae a candidate, both because I wished to continue ray own education and because I thought myself too young and inexperienced for the management of such a large school. But while my reply was in the course of transmission by the winter Aveekly post, Mr Drummond had actually sent in my name, aud, on knowing this, I felt bound to attend on the day appointed at Fortingall for ex amination before the heritors. Through delay I was the last. Five or six had been examined, and some way or another, none of thera seemed to have given satisfaction. An Edinburgh professor and Dr Duff of Kenmore had prepared test questions which ranged over a fair amount uf history, literature, Latin, Greek, and practical raathematics. AN UNEXPECTED EVENT. 233 Duncan Mackerchar and I walked together from Cargill to Port-na-craig, opposite Pitlochry. It is a long way from Cargill to Port-na-craig round by Dunkeld, and we stopped there for the night. Next morning before daylight I left my companion and crossed the hill to Strathtay, and walked on to Fortingall, another pretty long walk, so as to be there at twelve o'clock. I had not the least expectation of being appointed, so I was not in the least flustered when Doctor Duff took me in hand and put the questions of his examination catechism to me. Finding that I had read a great deal more Latin than the former candi dates, he passed beyond his catechism, and I really got interested in the proceedings, and was not a whit concerned as to what the issue would be. To my astonishment I was appointed, subject, of course, to another examination by the Presbytery of Weem. The old hotelkeeper and his wife took care to give me a good dinner before I set off' on my return journey. Night closed round rae soon after I left Weem — rather stormy, and with heavy showers of snow. In crossing from Strathtay I lost my way and wandered westward off the line amidst bogs and ice, so that it was a dilapidated youth I was when I finally reached Port-na-craig. My boots had got soaked in ice water, and next morning my toes were blistered, and I had a sore journey back with Duncan Mackerchar round by Dunkeld to Cargill. Pitlochry looked a very small village when Ave passed through it on that sunshiny morning after the snowy night on our return to Cargill. Some eighteen years had yet to elapse before railway connected Perth and Inverness, and caused forth- 234 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. with to make old villages expand into towns and new villages to arise for the accommodation of summer visitors. In the winter of 1849 Aberfeldy, although a small village, was bigger than Pitlochry and of more local importance. Birnam had scarcely begun to tower over and absorb little Dunkeld. MIckle or old Dunkeld, with its now partly restored cathedral, has remained throughout the whole era raore unchanged than any place on the line from Perth to Inverness. It still belongs to the far off past. The old villages which expanded into towns and the new ones which have been called into existence by railway and steamer com munications with the crowded cities and Industrial districts of the South, as well as with the whole world, have now made the Highlands a happy hunting - ground for sportsmen, and one large shealing for summer visitors. Mingled good and evil are the result. The old humble shealing existence was part of the agricultural systera. It helped mightily to keep a large and hardy popu lation, dependent on cultivation and grazing, spread out over the face of the country, people content with simple, natural life if they only had a bare sufficiency of absolutely necessary means of sub sistence. To all appearance the Highlanders, with their ancient language, were impregnably race- defended. But with the sheep regime began the change which culminated in the conversion of the Highlands and Isles into summer resorts. Visitors brought with them the artificial life of towns, and Highlanders who served them com menced to turn their backs upon farming pursuits and forget their ancestral language, although bi- lingualism would often be materially, and always AN UNEXPECTED EVENT. 235 intellectually, useful to themselves and to their children. " Sluagh gun teangaidh, sluagh gun anam"^ — a race which loses its language loses its soul — but it would only fortify its soul to acquire other languages while carefully keeping its own as a sacred inheritance and source of Inspiration. Gaelic suffered no fatal detriment from the sheep regime and the invasion of the Lowland farmers and shep herds. The real destroyers have been the children of the Gael themselves ; and I fear the Gaelic Societies, Mod, and Comunn Gaidhealach, began their revival movement when the decay had gone too far for being but very partially stopped. Before leaving Cargill, I had to look for a substi tute, and was lucky enough to find one at once, who sowed and reaped, or rather sold the crop which grew on the glebe the farmers had so generously ploughed for me. My substitute was a Highlander from Aberfeldy, who went to some other school in the Lowlands next year. For seventy or eighty years before the setting up of the school board system. Highland schoolmasters were constantly drifting southward, very many to the Lowlands, and not a few to England. I suppose they must have been good teachers in other respects, but I suspect they met with special favour in various places where broad dialects held sway, because they spoke and wrote book English. After the passing of the Scotch Education Act, Highland school boards reversed the former rule by preferring teachers from the Lowlands to Highland ones. This preference contributed to the forces which were killing the Gaelic language. In this matter, the Gaelic revival movement has done much to induce school boards in Gaelic-speaking places to appoint teachers who 236 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. can understand, read, and speak and teach the language of their pupils. But the southward drift ing of the Highland teachers continues and must continue, since the professorial chances in the south are much better than they are In the Highlands. Examination before heritors was rather a new thing. It was the usual custom that, on personal knowledge or certificates, they should select and nominate a man for the parish school vacancy, and that the Presbytery should examine him, and either appoint him or reject him. As it happened, I had to undergo two examinations ; for the Presbytery examination was the real seal of appointment, and not the one before the heritors. In my own case, the examination before the heritors was of a more searching kind than the legal one before the Presby tery. But I did myself far more justice in the first than in the easier one, for when before the heritors, as I had no idea of being appointed, I was perfectly self-possessed, and rejoiced in being catechised in such a manner as allowed me to make use of some of my desultory reading as well as of my more scholastic studies. Before the Presbytery I must have been flurried and nervous, for I managed, or mismanaged, to misstate a mathematical proposition with which I was quite familiar. In Latin aud Greek I succeeded much better, and in general knowledge subjects I passed muster. My appoint ment was therefore ecclesiastically confirmed. As the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and the parish schools were covenanted State institutions under the Revolution Settlement, ministers and schoolmasters had to take the same oaths of loyalty as officers of , State, Members of Parliament, Magistrates, and others holding public office. On the morning of the AN UNEXPECTED EVENT. 237 day on which I was examined by the Presbytery at Weem, Mr Stewart, the minister of Fortingall, took me to Moness House, where I was sworn by Mr Campbell of Glenfalloch, a ruling elder of the Church of Scotland, whose son, fourteen years later, suc ceeded the evicting Marquis as Earl of Breadalbane. His son's son is now the third Marquis. Parish schoolmasters might hold different views on the public questions of the day, but few, if any of them, took any pronounced part in politics. They did not think it suited their profession to speak, write, or act as political partisans. I fully agreed with that view, and acted upon it all the years I was a parish schoolmaster. As an ex-officio freeholder, I had the right to be registered as a voter. But I never allowed myself to be registered, because I wanted to keep out of party politics while teaching the children of Whigs and Tories, and was In honour bound, as I thought, to remain neutral in the conflict which divided the parents of ray pupils. The schoolmasters who did register themselves gave quiet votes, and were never mixed up with hot political agitations. Their school board successors do not always act so wisely. 238 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER XXXVII. FORTINGALL. My predecessor and namesake, who drifted south to Lesmahagow, left the Fortingall school in an excellent condition. During the months of vacancy its teaching was carried on by the parish minister, Mr Stewart, assisted by Duncan Macgregor, Don nachadh Ruadh, who had been one of the best pupils of my predecessor. On taking possession of the dwelling-house, which was connected with the schoolhouse, I found that when it was unoccupied all the rats of the village had made it their stronghold and nursery. It was no easy^ matter to overcome the rat nuisance, for they had drains and a space under the schoolroom floor to take refuge in, and to resort to poison produced another trouble when they died and rotted in their secret places of abode. I never saw a brighter school than the one at Fortingall. During my nearly eight years of labour there three of its pupils passed out of it to become ministers, four to become doctors, two bank agents, and half-a-dozen or so to become schoolmasters. Others drifted south to enter into commercial life and various business callings. There was a responsiveness of youthful eagerness between the teacher and the taught that made work enjoyable. On the occasion when the Celtic Society of Edinburgh sent down a heap of books to be competed for by the schools within the Presbytery of Weem, my pupils made me very FORTINGALL. 239 proud, for they nearly carried all before them. But it was said for the other schools that the com petition was scarcely fair to them, because their pupils were younger than several of the Fortingall prize-winners. To some extent that was the truth, but the juniors in Fortingall ranked up pretty closely with their seniors. In winter it was the custom in Fortingall to send back to school lads and lasses above fourteen years of age who had other employments during the outdoor working season, and these came back very eager to advance after having pondered on what they had learnt before when at other work. Owing to this habit the schoolhouse was overcrowded with about a hundred and forty pupils in the winter months. This number diminished to seventy or eighty in summertime. In the winter season the scholars were far too many for one teacher, and I often had prickings of conscience in regard to the younger children, who had to be left to the teaching of advanced pupils whose fees were remitted. Their income debarred parish schoolmasters from getting any help from the Government Grant, and were It otherwise the space of the Fortingall schoolroom was insufficient in winter, according to the regu lations of the Education Department. Perhaps there should have been less strict space regulation for the country than for the town schools ; for although Inconveniently crowded, the Fortingall schoolhouse did not appear to have a bad effect on the health of the pupils, a good number of whom came from places three or four miles distant. The little ones were brought fairly well forward on the lower steps of the ladder of learning by the hearty efforts of my upper class assistants. But there was 240 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. no need for their being sent to the parish school at all until they had learned to read easy books, and to do a little writing and arithmetic, for there were three salaried dame-schools in the district, in which infants were taught English as well as sewing ; and this double work was well done at the Keltneyburn and Tynayare dame-schools. The valley of Fortingall had no resident pro prietor when I was schoolmaster there, unless Mr John Stewart Menzies of Chesthill — a true hearted Gaelic-speaking Highlander of the old stamp — might be reckoned as one because he owned " Fearan na Craoibh," or Moncrieff's land there, and his residence up Glenlyon was not far away. He had only recently sold Duneaves to the Marquis of Breadal bane, who thus became proprietor of both sides of Drummond Hill. The Garth or East End belonged to Mr Macdonald of St Martin, and the Fortingall end to Mr Gardyn Campbell of Troup — both of them absentees. There was one large farm and three or four well-sized ones. But the bulk of the arable land was divided between forty small farmers and crofters, Avho had the hill grazings as a com munity under old regulations. I had a small croft myself with horse, cow, and some twenty sheep, not to mention pigs and poultry. The minister had one also, besides his glebe. We both foUowed the example of our predecessors, no one could say how far back. Sheltered by two low hills in firont of high ranges, warm, fertile, and soft-featured, Fortin gall always looked curiously like a bit of romantic English scenery, set like a gem in the rough bosom of the Grampians. It looked more so than ever when I saw it last (1907), for Sir Donald Currie, proprietor of the whole of it except Duneaves, had FORTINGALL. 241 SO transformed the village and farmsteads by new buildings, which harmonise with the scenery, that the natural beauty of the whole has been increased. Unlike depopulated Glenlyon and Breadalbane, Sir Donald Currie's Fortingall property has still a full population who are, in the main, descendants of the native stock. When I was schoolmaster of Fortingall one or two swarms of emigrants went off to Canada, and a southward migration of the more energetic and ambitious young people was ever going on. That process of depletion was required to keep the population from extending beyond the local means of subsistence. Congestion would have been more felt than it was ere then by the stay-at-home ones had it not been that a large number of them found employment and wages near at hand in the Marquis of Breadalbane's woods, and in the trench- ings on his Comrie home farm. The Fortingall people were benefited by the Marquis's evictions. They also sent out farm and domestic servants of the best brand over a wide district where the depopulating effect of the big sheep farms was already being felt. At home they were good farmers, and for a good many years their surplus potatoes nearly or altogether paid their rent. Up to 1842 the kirk session funds and the benevolent help of friends and neighbours sufficed for the support of the poor, and indeed till about then the kirk session had money out on heritable bonds, paying interest. In my time pauperism was increas ing, but, on the whole, it was confined to old men of honest records, who had been left lonely and had become helpless, and to diligent old women who had now lost the old value of their spinning industry, or to mental or bodily afflicted sufferers. There 16 242 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. was occasionally too much drinking, but habitual drunkards were few, and strangely enough the few included some of the most capable men of the community. I had hard enough work to do in the crowded Fortingall school, work which would have been exhausting if its hardness had not compensations and relaxations. But I was young and ardent, and the eagerness of bright scholars made the labours of the teacher light and enjoyable, for he was re warded by the progress due to combined efforts. And In teaching the upper classes of such a school his own self-education was ever expanding. Then at the end of the session came seven or eight weeks of holiday time, when health and strength were recruited by open air life, and botanising excursions, although private studies were never wholly neglected. At the back of Fortingall lies weird Sithchallion, and westward, towering In the not far-off distance, is Ben Lawers, which, with the whole range of which it is the chief, has many rare plants and, in general, a rich flora. How it came into existence I know not, but we had an informal botanical club or excur- sionary association in our district, of which an Aber feldy college student, Hugh Macmillan, afterwards Dr Macmillan, the Fi'ee Church minister of Greenock, and distinguished author, was facile princeps. The majority of us were content with a knowledge ofthe flowering plants, but he pushed his researches deep among the crotals or lichens. We were rather a numerous band of mountain climbers and rock and ravine searchers, but, as far as I know, only three of us are alive to-day (August 25, 1908). How vividly the recollections of those botanising days, with the perfumes of mountain flowers and the FORTINGALL. 243 inspiring freshness of the Ben Lawers' breezes, come back to me at the fireside, an old decrepit man ! I was never a systematic botanist, but at one time I had a good unsystematic knowledge of most of the flowering plants in the _^ora Britannica. Even yet I recognise the plants when I see them and remember where we got the rare ones, but I stumble over their names chiefly, I think, because Ave had Gaelic, English and Latin names for them, and those three nomenclatures have becorae mixed. However, I have thus three chances, and after an effort rarely fail to make one hit. Old Highlandei-s had names for all the plants and the crotals also, and knew their qualities and the uses that could be made of them. They had likewise a system of grouping them more on natural than on Linnean lines. But, as I have said, I was never a thorough botanist ; my inclina tions were indeed leading me in another direction — local history and the conditions of life In former days. From youth upwards I had a slight con nection with newspapers, especially with the Perth shire Advertiser and the Edinburgh Ladies' Journal, To the former I sent many contributions on local history, and to the other verses which I thought were poetry, but afterwards discovered to be only rhyming without any poetic afflatus ; while sending articles on local history to the Advertiser I over hauled kirk session records, and furnished the paper with gatherings of extracts, some of which threw light on the obscurities of family and genealogical affairs, some on the Covenant war times and on Cromwellian occupations as they affected that part of the Highlands. My friend, the late Mr John Cameron, a native of Lawers, fortunately gathered the Gaelic names of plants, before they had been 244 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. swept away by the deluge of changes and depopula tion. I did a little towards the rescuing of traditional lore from complete oblivion. The overhauling of written records and the gathering of oral traditions were, like the botanical excursions, recreations during the holiday weeks. But there was also something of a more exciting kind — hare-hunting — in which I took part. How it came to pass I cannot tell, but three evils — potato disease, grouse disease, and a plague of white hares — came closely upon one another's heels. In those days fishing rights were not so much valued and not so strictly enforced as they are now, and, moreover, the parish schoolmaster was usually a sort of privi leged person. I could have had wide permission to fish for trout on rivers, burns, and lochs, had I been an angler, but I never took to the gentle craft. Shooting and hill- walking I enjoyed intensely, and during the vacations I had plenty of both. The estate of Culdares was the first and, perhaps, the worst infested, but the hare invasion extended over all the big sheep farms of Perthshire. The evil came to such a height, and the tenants complained so loudly of the damage done through the eating and fouling of grass by the hares, that exterminating hunts had to be resorted to in many places. In not a few of such hunts I was one of the shooters. The schoolmaster of Fortingall had also a right to cut peats in a certain place on the East-End hill. I do not know when the parish school of Fortingall was first set on foot, but it was in existence when Charles the Second recovered his father's throne, I do not know when the Fortingall people first took it upon themselves to gather in force and cut the schoolmaster's peats — thirty peat cart-loads or more FORTINGALL. 245 in one day — but my predecessor and I enjoyed the benefit of that custom, which seemed to be an old one. The cutting of the schoolmaster's peats was an annual event which was looked forward to with pleasant anticipations as a social as well as a work ing function. It was the duty of the schoolmaster to provide an abundance of oat-cakes, cheese, and milk, and an ungrudging but not dangerously large supply of whisky, for the workers, and, whatever the weather, the work went on merrily; and I would not vouch for it that understandings, which some times led to marriages, were not come to by some of the young people. Peat-winning, and thatching and repairing or rebuilding dwellings and outhouses required much time and labour when I was at Fortingall. When it could be got, broom was the thatching preferred, but ferns and straw were used when broom was not to be had. Heather was used largely in Rannoch and parts of Glenlyon and Breadalbane. It was the most picturesque of the thatching materials, and it was almost or wholly as lasting as broom. Peat -cutting has now been almost altogether discontinued in most parts of the Perthshire High lands. Perchance, dearness of coal may force people, where peat abounds, to resort to it again. But it was well, in view of such an event, that the peat deposits should have rest and time to fill up and condense, for in some places they had been so run upon that they were wholly used up, and, in others, pretty nearly exhausted as far as good black peat was concerned. It is well for the future that while old woods are being cut down, the area under trees is yearly increasing. The planters may not see more than the beauty of their improvements, but 246 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. their successors wUl find the value of that long unprofitable investment. Considering how American and Russian forests are being cleared, and the care Germany and France bestow upon the prevention of timber scarcity by State protection of forests, and considering the rate at which our British coal deposits are being worked out, it is surely full time for the Government and the proprietors of this country to pay close attention to arboriculture. While areas newly planted with trees must be a deferred investment fbr a long stretch of years, they are certain, after they produce useful timber, to pay owners high profits, with compound interest for delay, and give country people a permanent industry. Fortingall was comparatively well- wooded sixty years ago, and it has now been much further enriched in that respect by Sir Donald Currie's new plantations. Sixty years ago it was a good place for keeping bees, and no doubt it is so yet. I found it very profitable myself The school children seeraed to be as much interested in watch ing them in swarming time as I was myself. On week-days no swarm could escape, but my bees were Sunday breakers, and occasionally went beyond bounds when people were at church, and the village quiet, and the sun shining. A POPULATION OF MANY SURNAMES. 247 CHAPTER XXXVIII. A POPULATION OF MANY SURNAMES. Fortingall has an early Chronicle extending from 1400 till 1579, begun by Sir James Macgregor, vicar of Fortingall, and his brother Duncan, and continued by a Macgregor curate, whose name we do not know. But the records of the post-Reforma tion period down to Mr Macara's induction have been lost. It would seem that Mr Robertson, the minister who was deposed in 1716 for reading rebel documents from the pulpit, kept the older parish books, as many more of the displaced Jacobite ministers did when not compelled by legal pressure to hand them over. As for the books kept in the time of Mr Fergus Ferguson, they and some later ones perished or disappeared when, at the beginning of the war with France, a mob of furious women from Glenlyon and Rannoch, with a number of old men, surprised and mobbed the parish schoolmaster, Thomas Butter, as well as the local magistrates, with a view of preventing the making out of lists for militia enrolments. Militia riots were numerous at that time, but this particular one was due to an alleged attempt to hand over to the East India Company a regiment raised for service in the American War, and which should have been dis banded, as indeed it had to be, after mutiny and much discussion in Parliament at the end of that war. It was a pity that the parish records were wrecked because of the attempted and frustrated 248 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. breach of faith. And immediately afterwards who were so ready as the mobbers' sons and grandsons to en list in the Highland regiments, and to join militia, fencibles, and volunteers ? The early Chronicle of Fortingall, written by the three Roman Catholics, contained most of the surnames which the Fortingall people bore in my time, such as Macnaughtons, Robertsons, Macdougals, Menzieses, Macgregors, Stewarts, Maclellans, Campbells, Irvines. The introduction of most of these surnames could be traced by the procession of proprietors. John of Lome, who received Glenlyon as tocher with his wife, the nelce of King David Bruce, was not indeed proprietor of Fortingall, but he was the " toiseach " or King's representative, and uplifter of his rents and dues until the next reign, when the Wolf of Badenoch, who placed an eagle's nest up at Garth, " intromitted " with his charge, and got the heiress of Fortingall, Janet Menzies, married to his son James. John of Lome placed a Macgregor vicar in Fortingall, and introduced Macdougal clansmen of his own there. The Stewarts began to come in with the Wolf's usurpation, and afterwards had additions from the Appin-Innermeath line. They were divided into the " Stiubhartaich Dubh-Shuil- each" and " Na Stiubhartaich Gorm-Shuileach " — that Is to say, the black-eyed and the blue-eyed Stewarts. Huntly, on the forfeiture of NeU Ruadh of Garth, had temporary hold of the superiority of that place, and introduced the Irvines. The Mac naughtons, many of whom were called Mackay — that is, the Children of Aodh — were transported from the North to the banks of the Tay by William the Lion. The Chief of the old AthoU clan— afterwards called Robertsons— and Fergus, son of A POPULATION OP MANY SURNAMES. 249 Aod or Aoidh, were lessees of Fortingall and other thanages before John of Lome appeared on the scene. As for the Maclellans, named after St Fillan, they came at a later date to Fortingall from Glenlyon. I think the Macnaughtons and Robert sons are the people of longest descent in Fortingall. The Macintyres were late comers from Argyll, and the Andersons and Fishers were also late comers from Breadalbane. So were the Campbells from Glenlyon and Breadalbane, and also the much- scattered Clan Charles Campbell branch of the Black Dougal of Craignish stock. With the variations of a small kind which a long period of time must bring about anywhere, the Fortingall population had retained the same complexion and composition for four hundred years. The Militia riot, in which the Fortingall people took no part, was an abnormal incident due to a particular cause. Law-abiding as the Highlanders had become since CuUoden, they had lost nothing of the warrior instincts and qualities of their race. The parish of Fortingall — as yet undivided — was behind none of the Gaelic-speaking places in sending forth its sons to fight Napoleon by land and sea, and to establish British supremacy in India. While many of those who went forth to fight in their country's cause fell on battle-fields or died of wounds and fever, a goodly number returned home with medals and pensions to keep the military fire alive among boys of the next two generations. Although the number of our veterans was much reduced when the Crimean war broke out, several still survived to gloat and glory over the achievements of the High landers at Alma and Balaclava, and to read with sad and angry feelings about the insufficiencies of 250 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. organisation and the sufierings of the troops during the horrible winter of storms, and the disappoint ments which nearly culminated into fatal disasters. I was at that time treating myself to the unwonted luxury of a daily newspaper, and before I could scarcely glance over It, a veteran who had fought under Abercromby in Egypt Avould come to hear the news and to ask for the paper when I had read it. This was John Campbell, called "Iain Caimbeul a Chlaidh" — John CampbeU of the Churchyard — because his house stood near the famous old yew tree and at the churchyard gate. John was a reader of history and a critic of military affairs. Sir Colin Campbell was at that time the hero of all Scotland; but when, on the death of Lord Raglan, people said that Sir Colin should have been made Commander- in-Chief, John, rising above clannishness, thought that it was a wise decision to select another, and that Sir Colin, however good in the open field, would not have been the most fitting man for a siege. After Sir Colin had quelled the Indian Mutiny, John came to the conclusion that he was fit for any military achievement whatever, A gloom fell over Fortingall when the news came that General Sir John CampbeU, whom all the population of the village knew intimately, was killed in the brave but abortive attack in the Redan. Sir John's father. General Sir Archibald Campbell, who was a descendant of the Duneaves family, bought the estate of Garth, which he sold again ten years later to the trustees of Macdonald of St. Martin's. Sir Archibald and his wife were Gaelic-speaking people who belonged to the parish by race, and whose children were well known to the Fortingall people. Sir John's death was deeply and universally FEILL CEIT. 251 regretted, but yet some consolation was drawn from the fact that his body was found in advance of those of the others who fell In that assault. They all praised the Russian Commander-in-Chief for chival rously restoring to the family the ancestral sword which Sir John was wearing when he fell. We were expecting to hear of the fall of Sevastopol two days before the news of it reached us. Postal and telegraph arrangements then were far from being what they are now. But at last the news did come, and so late at night that many people had gone to bed before the mail came in. But when the announcement was read out to the people who were waiting for It, a rush was made to the church, the bell was rung furiously, and from different places, at some distance from each other, bonfires blazed up to show that the message of the bell was understood and welcomed. All next Sunday's sermons were of a thanksgiving character. CHAPTER XXXIX. FElLL CEIT. Railway transport and sales in large towns and central places have almost effaced the old local fairs, and reduced the Falkirk trysts themselves to mere shadows. " Feill," often contracted to " FU," meant both festival and fair. The festival was in honour of the patron saint of the locality, but the religious gatherings led to secular business in early times, and after the Reformation the saint element was almost entirely forgotten except in a few Roman Catholic corners. Cedd, one of the Saxon pupils of 252 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Saint Aidan, was the patron saint of Fortingall, and his festival, the Feill-ma-Chaoide, was a lamb market held in August. Fill-Ceit, of course, means the Catherine Festival or Fair, but I do not think that it was a Saint Catherine that gave the fair a name. I was told by Fortingall ancients that it was called after a daughter of the Laird of Glenlyon, because she had persuaded her father or brother to give a better stance for what had been a small fair for the sale of goats held at Balnauld at the beginning of December. When changed it continued to be held at the old date, and soon grew into importance. When I was schoolmaster of Fortingall the FUkate, as the Lowlanders called it, was rather a provincial institution than a small parish fair. Thousands of people gathered to it from five or six parishes. Perth merchants flocked to it to settle accounts with rural shopkeepers and farmers, and to get new orders. Farmers paid servants' wages and made new con tracts of services with them or renewed old ones. It was quite a great feeing market ; for it had grown into a habit with male and female servants to put off till FUkate closing engagements with employers even when determined to stay on in their places, and those who consented to be feed at home would not be content without going to the FUkate to spend more than arles there infairings and drink. Thegather- ing was, to a large extent, a servant's saturnalia. At it employers and employed were on a footing of equality. A great deal of whisky was consumed, and the pockets of the women were filled with sweets. There were at times quarrels and fighting among a few of the young men who were rivals in love, and it might happen that old grievances among older people who had taken too much of the mountain FEILL CEIT. 253 dew might find outlets in angry language. Still the two or three policemen who assembled to keep the peace had usually nothing more to do than to look on and enjoy themselves as far as the Highland people were concerned, but they had to keep a sharper eye on some of the doubtfully honest characters who came from beyond the pass of Dunkeld or across the Highland line from other directions. Mishaps of a serious nature rarely happened, but a few years before my time a fatal accident did occur. After the FUkate, a man from Strathtay who attended it was discovered to be missing. Suspicion of foul play arose, because on the evening of the fair the boots and feet of a prostrate man had been seen coming out of straw in an empty stall of the hotel stable. The Procurator- Fiscal came to hold an enquiry in the village. Those who believed that there had been foul play had two theories. The first was that the man had got into a tipsy quarrel, been accidentally killed, and that his body had been put in the stable straw and afterwards taken to some better hiding place. The second that he had been waylaid, robbed, and killed, and thrown into the river by some of the rogues who had come to the fair from distant towns. No one who knew him could believe that the stableman had anything to do with the disappearance. He was indeed capable of taking a dram too much on odd occasions, and he admitted that this fair-day was one of them. He had been working hard the previous day and much of the night, felt weary, took whisky to brace him up, and then laid himself down in the straw to sleep. His straightforward ¦story was corroborated by fellow-servants. So the stable story was reduced to nothing. The quarrel 254 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. theory also broke down. The missing man was of a pacific disposition, and his acquaintances said he had no enemies in the world. The enquiry of the Procurator-Fiscal left the matter as it was before. But far down its stream the river Tay, after some time, rendered up the missing man's body, which the Lyon had borne into it. There were no marks of violence on the body, and in the purse found on it were receipts for accounts he had had settled, and the balance of the money he was known to have taken with him to the FUkate. The night was dark, and he must have stumbled into the Lyon, then in flood, where it flowed close to the road east of Drumcharry. Among those examined by the Procurator-Fiscal was Peter Macdougal, one of the two tenants of Balnacraig. Peter was called Paraig Eoghain — Peter the son of Ewan — in Fortingall, but outside the village he was widely known as Paraig na feile — Peter of the kilt— because he habitually wore the garb of old Gaul. Peter aud his twin brother, Alastair, were so closely alike in person, face, and voice, that it would have been difficult to distinguish one from the other If Peter did not wear the kilt and Alastair trousers. Peter told the Fiscal that he had had a talk with the missing man before noon on the fair day, together with a friendly dram. " Did you see him after six o'clock at night ?" asked the Fiscal. Peter's reply was prompt and thorough. " Lord bless you, how could I, when before two my son and daughter took me home shoulder high and sent me to bed ? " The shoulder high was a flourish, but, no doubt, Peter had indulged in a good spree before his son and daughter interfered. He was no drunkard nor habitual tippler, but a Ught-hearted FELL CEIT. 255 social creature who could enjoy a bit of a spree now and then. As Peter was a widower, his daughter, Isabel, who was a religious Free Churchwoman, ruled his house. She had an idea that the kilt was not a fit garment on communion days, and, without consulting him, got him a pair of sacramental trousers. With much persuasion she induced him to wear them at the next Kenmore communion — to which the Free Church people of Fortingall resorted because they had then no church or minister of their own. At that communion Peter caught the first bad cold of his life. It sent him to bed for days, and his first act on getting up was to throw the trousers on the fire, from which Isabel rescued them in a scorched condition. Peter was seventy-seven when he went with his well-doing family and other friends to Ontario. Before he went away people told him, to tease him, that he would have to wear the condemned but carefully stored garment on board ship. He declared he would not, and asked who would like to go out in clothes that would smell like a singed sheep's head ? Peter lived long in Ontario. His people had taken up land and settled near where the migrating myriads of pigeons passed, and Peter with his gun and kilt annually marched off to shoot the pigeons until he was a very old man. 256 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER XL. REMARKS ON PARISH OF FORTINGALL CHURCH AFFAIRS. Before he died, Mr Macara had the satisfaction of getting missionary ministers placed in Rannoch and Glenlyon. This was a long step in advance of the catechist help of schoolmasters on which he had to rely before, but a quarter-of-a-century had still to elapse before Rannoch and Glenlyon were created into quoad sacra parishes. In 1804, Mr John Mac naughton, a native of the Glen, was the missionary minister at Innerwick, and Mr Alexander Irvine held a similar position at Kinloch Rannoch. The latter, as Dr Irvine of Little Dunkeld, was, when he died in 1824 at the premature age of fifty-two, prominent among the leaders of the Church of Scotland. Because he set his face as hard as steel against the narrow views and intolerance into which the revivalists plunged headlong, he has been classi fied among the Moderate leaders of the Church of Scotland ; but in his preaching he was as fervently evangelical as any of the men who went out at the Disruption. His memory is still green in Little Dunkeld and Strathbrand as an eloquent preacher in English and Gaelic, and an indefatigable parochial worker. He was born at Garth, where his father was a farmer; licensed by the Presbytery of Mull as missionary at Kin tra in July, 1797 ; removed to Rannoch in 1799 ; and, on Mr Macara's death, was presented to Fortingall by Sir Robert Menzies, whence FORTINGALL CHORCH AFFAIRS. 257 he was transferred in fifteen months to Little Dunkeld. His marriage with Jessie, the younger daughter of Robert Stewart, Laird of Garth, and sister of General David Stewart, the historian of the Highland Regiments, was a romantic outcome of early boy and girl love. Caste feeling refused sanction to the marriage. The son of a small tenant, however superior in natural talents and scholarship, was not thought a fit mate for the bonnie daughter of the laird. So, as the straight forward application for her hand was refused, the lovers made an elopement marriage, and the laird and his family soon became proud of their son and brother-in-law. The graceful, lively style of General Stewart's History owes much to Dr Irvine's revision and assistance. He was a ready debater, with flights of fancy and touches of humour to set off solid arguments, an impressive preacher, and a whole-hearted Highlander who did much for Gaelic literature and the gathering of the Ossianic poetry which had come down orally from generation to generation. Mr Irvine was succeeded, first in Rannoch and soon afterwards in Fortingall, by Mr Robert Mac donald, a younger son of the Laird of Dalchosnie, and uncle of General Sir John Macdonald. Mr Macdonald was licensed by the Presbytery of Mull in October, 1802, and ordained by the Presbytery of Abertarff in May, 1803, whence he removed to Rannoch. He was presented to Fortingall by John, Duke of Atholl, and inducted there in September, 1806. He died in February, 1842, in the seventy- second year of his age, and the thirty-ninth of his ministry. He prejudiced his position among the local gentry — and among the common people like 17 258 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. wise — by marrying his servant maid, who, although uneducated, made a good wife for him. It was indeed said that she was a kind of guardian angel to him as long as she llA-ed, and that after her death he deteriorated in respect to strict sobriety and diligent discharge of his ministerial duties. He took life easy, and was too much inclined to boon companion sociality, but never went so far as to lay himself open to Church discipline or censure. That he was a jolly good fellow nobody could deny, nor that he had talents and knowledge which would have given him ministerial influence had he made the most of them. But he was always far more liked as a man than he was respected or reverenced as a minister. He wrote the paper on his parish given in the "New Statistical Account of Scotland." I have seen other documents written by him, which showed that he could state a legal case or draw up a petition with singular ability. He was fond of Gaelic poetry, and possessed a great store of stories. Mr Macdonald was succeeded by Mr, afterwards Dr, Alexander Irvine — eldest son of Dr Irvine, Little Dunkeld. He came to Forting-all from Foss, where he had been minister for some years, and was soon after the Disruption taken to Blair- Atholl, Avhere he spent the remainder of his life. Mr Irvine was followed by Mr Donald Stewart, from Tober mory. He was a native of Breadalbane, the pious and worthy son of pious farming people. His wife, Agnes Shiels, was descended from a brother of the author of the " Hind Let Loose." It is rather singular that Mr Macara, Mr Macdonald, and Mr Stewart should not now have a single represen tative, and I am not sure that Mr Fergus Ferguson FORTINGALL CHURCH AFFAIRS. 259 has any either. Sir Robert, who fell at Quatre Bras, was Mr Macara's only child, and he died unmarried. Mr Macdonald and Mr Stewart had sons and daughters who all died unmarried. The deposed Mr Robertson is still represented by his daughters. General Sir Archibald Campbell and his wife were both of them great-grandchildren of his. In 1842 dissent in Fortingall was confined to a small number of Baptists who were associated with the Baptists of Lawers, and whose pastor was worthy Mr Duncan Cameron, father of the author of the " Gaelic Names of Plants," and also of Mr Robert Cameron, a north of England member of Parliament. Mr Donald Maclellan, cousin of Mr Cameron, Lawers, another Fortingall man, was for many years Baptist minister in Glenlyon. During the revival movement out of which the Baptist communities arose, Mr Macdonald, the easy-going parish minister, was so far from coming up to the popular ideal of ministerial zeal and strictness of life that it is almost a wonder the sectaries were so few. Of the many stories told about him two small harmless ones may be related briefly. A good many young men of the upper classes who gathered to a Christmas entertainment at Glenlyon House were amusing themselves putting the stone and throwing the hammer when the minister happened to be passing by. They hailed him, and he joined them. He was then beyond middle age, but having been in his youth an athlete, he boasted of former feats and ran down their performances. He was handling the hammer while delivering his criticism, and they challenged him to throw it, and he did so, but he was out of practice, and the 260 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. hammer, having taken a wrong swirl, fell close to him. At this mishap there was much laughter. The minister, now on his mettle, asked for another throw, and sent the hammer several feet beyond their farthest mark. He then went away, saying to them as he left — " When you go beyond my mark, send down word to the manse, and I'll come up and put off my cassock." For the last period of his preaching life he had made a selection from his written sermons, and used to read them in order, Sunday after Sunday, till he came to the end of the parcel, and then, turning it over, began at the beginning again. People with good memories knew beforehand what would be next Sunday's sermons, for they were in pairs, English and Gaelic. Some years before his death he went for a month or two in the summer to live in the thatched house belonging to the croft he rented and farmed along with his glebe, because repairs were being made on the manse. In this temporary abode an outbreak of fire took place one night, which caused more alarm than damage to anything, except the disarrangement of the minister's sermons. His New Year sermon was familiarly known to his congregation. The text was: — "Observe the month of Abib, and keep the Passover unto the Lord thy God : for in this month of Abib the Lord thy God brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt by night." Now there was no month of Abib sermon on the New Year Sunday after the fore-mentioned incident. But in the March of that year the Abib sermon turned up again. The minister, after the fire, had never troubled himself to re-arrange the sermons as they were previously, but took them one by one in the order in which they chanced to fall, FORTINGALL CHURCH AFFAIRS. 261 without looking at the text before he went into the pulpit. When chaffed about preaching a New Year sermon in March, he good-humouredly replied that March was the month of Abib, and that the old Christian year used to begin then. In the changes brought about by time, the Jacobite Episcopalianism with which Mr Ferguson had to contend died out utterly. Lively memory of Mr Macara's evangelical preaching, stern discipline, and all round ministerial efficiency counteracted Mr Ma.cdonald's slackness largely, but, I believe, al though they liked him as a man, the Fortingall people must have felt the flouts and gibes of the Baptists keenly, and during the Ten Years' Conflict the sneers of their neighbours about their minister, and the feelings so roused, coloured their after conduct in the case of the disputed settlement In which I was subsequently involved. In their short and far separated periods of service at Fortingall, the two Irvines, father and son, kept up the Macara tradition, and the son, although far from being such a popular preacher as his father, helped to confirm not a few of the Fortingall people in their determina tion to stick to the Church of Scotland at the Dis ruption. Those who seceded were not numerous enough to form a separate congregation. They put themselves under Mr Sinclair, the Free Church minister of Kenmore. They regularly crossed Drummond Hill to go to church Sunday after Sun day, but in time they got a meeting house on Chesthill's land at Croftgarrow, to which Mr Sinclair came at stated times to preach. They communicated at Kenmore until 1857 or a year later, when, having accession through the split in the parish church congregation as the result of the disputed settlement 262 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. case, they got a church and a minister of their own. They never made an attempt to set up a Free Church school. Those who did not secede in 1843 were more happy in their next minister, Mr Donald Stewart, presented by the Duke of Atholl. Mr Stewart was an earnest evangelical preacher, of amiable peace-loving character, who applied himself assiduously to his pastoral duties, and in the fiercely hot days after the Disruption gained the respect of those who did not go to hear him. Candid Free Churchmen said they only regretted that they had not themselves more ministers like him, and the more critical of their party could say nothing worse of him than that he was a Moderate, and had attached himself to the Avrong side. He died, un fortunately, at the end of 1855, when in the fifty- fifth year of his age. Having, when in Mull, been induced to become security for a relation who came to financial grief, he had to bear the burden of the debt so incurred for the remainder of his days, and he did not live long enough to pay it all off, although, notwithstanding his numerous family, that end was not far off at the time of his premature death. He kept his trouble to himself, and it was only when he died that people understood how manfully he bore his trials. A DISPUTED SETTLEMENT. 263 CHAPTER XLI. A DISPUTED SETTLEMENT. — LORD ABERDEEN'S ACT. I HAD been nearly seven years among the Fortingall people when Mr Stewart died. The quoad civilia parish of Fortingall was legally the " United Parishes of Fortingall and Kilchonain" (probably Kil-Chomgain), and as such it had two patrons, who exercised their rights alternately. The Duke of Atholl was patron of Fortingall, and the Chief of the Menzieses patron of Kilchonain or Rannoch. Glenlyon before the Reformation days had belonged to the Abbey of Scone, and after the Reformation merged into Fortingall. The later presentations were as follows. The Duke of Atholl presented Mr Macara, Sir Robert Menzies presented Mr Irvine, the Duke of Atholl presented Mr Macdonald, Sir Neil Menzies presented Mr Robertson Irvine, and the Duke of Atholl, when Mr Irvine was promoted to Blair-AthoU, presented Mr Stewart. On Mr Stewart's death it was the turn of Sir Robert Menzies, Sir Neil's son, to present his successor. Soon after Mr Stewart's death it was rumoured that Sir Robert was being persuaded to present a young man who had been assistant at Dull, and was then at Straloch. In the after proceedings I was called, by the legal representatives of patron and presentee, "Captain of the Fortingall people" by way of denunciation, and from the Bar of the General Assembly it was pleaded that in addition to its being the law of the land, " it was much 264 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. better that patronage should be attached to status and property than given up, as was sought in this case, to a clever but unscrupulous schoolmaster." Now the simple fact was that the opposition had gathered sweeping force before I had anything whatever to do with it. I knew less about the presentee than did many of my co-parishioners, and my slight knowledge of him was rather in his favour, for he had likeable qualities, and the alleged flightiness which was objected to in him might well be attributed to youth and inexperience. Those who got up the opposition founded it on independent grounds, but there were others who wished strongly that Sir Robert should be respectfully asked to present Mr Grant, of Tenandry. Now, unlike the greater number of the people, I had never heard Mr Grant. He was, I knew, a man of good report, and a popular preacher, but he suffered from bad health. Sir Robert, who was living at Foss House, was quite accessible. It was thought wise to suggest to the patron that Mr Grant would be a very acceptable presentee, and not to mention any other name at all. At this stage of the congrega tional movement I certainly did become a sort of leader, because the people had no one else to fall back upon. I had found by this time that they had cause to believe their objections were not base less, and had become convinced that there would be a split if the man objected to was settled as minister of Fortingall. Mr John Robertson, Glen lyon House, one of the elders, and myself were appointed to go to Sir Robert and bring Mr Grant's name before him as that of a man who would be gladly and thankfully accepted at his hands. When we reached Foss House we were told Sir Robert A DISPUTED SETTLEMENT. 265 was out with a host of shooters and beaters on a great hare hunt on the hill, but Lady Menzies received us most kindly and hospitably. We explained our errand to her, and she expressed a very high opinion of Mr Grant, but mentioned his unsatisfactory state of health. She readily promised to lay the matter before Sir Robert, and we went away pleased because assured that no presentation had yet been issued, and hopeful that Lady Menzies's influence would be used In favour of an appointment by which all trouble would be avoided. But on the hill, amidst a snowstorm, we came up to the line of shooters and beaters, and had a short conference with the patron himself, which was not quite so reassuring in character, but it did not leave us hopeless either. We were sanguinely deceiving ourselves. In a short time the man to whom our people objected was their presentee. When he came to preach his trial sermons. Sir Robert and other gentlemen, who were all Episco palians, and a company of non -parishioners came to hear him, and, in fact, to overawe the Fortingall congregation. That, however, was impossible. The same device was again resorted to, and again in vain, when the Presbytery met in Fortingall Church to moderate in the call. By this time the war spirit had seized upon us and united us in a solid body of objectors determined to resist the settle ment under the provisions of Lord Aberdeen's Act. It was at this stage that I did willingly become a leader, because I happened to know more about Lord Aberdeen's Act and ecclesiastical procedure than the rest of the objectors. At the Presbytery meeting the call was signed by so very few members or adherents of the congregation that 266 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. if it had retained any of its theoretical vitality the presentee should have been rejected then and there. Theoretically the call was what gave the presentee his spiritual commission, but in practice the call had been whittled down to a mere formality which two or three signatures of communicants made valid. Still, in a case like ours, the call remained a test of congregational feeling. It was signed by a very few of Mr Stewart's former hearers and by some non-Presbyterian heri tors. That Free Church elder, the Marquis of Breadalbane, who was a large heritor in the parish, honourably held aloof Still his name was so un scrupulously used to influence workmen on his home farm by all who were beating up recruits to sign the call that one of the elders, Mr John Anderson, and myself went to see him at Taymouth Castle. But before that interview a batch of his workmen, some of whom were Free Churchmen, and others who, though parishioners, went to worship at Kenmore, came late one night and signed the call. Mr Anderson and I found the Marquis very affable. We had a long conversation with him, and he did not let us away without giving us supper. He was annoyed at hearing that his name had been used, and gave us authority to contradict the false report. He said they were not free from troubles in his own Church, and that to fan fires of discord in another Church was the last thing he would think of With the exception of the few from the home farm, the Free Church people of Fortingall held aloof like the Marquis. They showed indeed that they expected and wished the objectors to be defeated, but they had a just idea of fair play, and, as Presbyterians they knew how hotly outside inter- A DISPUTED SETTLEMENT. 267 ference would be resented. Besides all this they felt sure that their own party would gain by the defeat of the objectors, which they predicted was sure to be effected by the combined forces of land owners and Moderatism. The case was the first which had arisen under the Aberdeen Act, not only in the Presbytery of Weem, but — as far as I can remember — in all the southern Highlands. It was therefore keenly watched with contrary hopes and fears by both Church of Scotland and Free Church people. The Aberdeen Act had been boasted of on the one side and sneered at on the other for years, and now It was to be tested in a Highland parish. If the objectors looked at the case from the local point of view, its broader aspect as a test of the worth or worthlessness of the Aberdeen Act was what engaged the attention of the general Highland public. Both sides engaged legal agents, and issues were joined before the Presbytery. The relevancy of the objections lodged had first to be dealt with, and that was not any easy thing to settle, for any thing which amounted to libel could not be admitted under the Act. That contest being finished, witnesses were examined, first on behalf of the objectors and then on behalf of the presentee. On relevancy and other points appeals were taken to the Synod and Assembly, but it was to the honour of the Presbytery of Weem that no change of consequence resulted from the appeals. The work was a new one to the Presbytery, yet it was carried through with conspicuous ability and fairness. When it is mentioned that the case went before two Assemblies — first on relevancy and then on merits — it may be seen what a weary long contest it was. It was indeed wearisome, trying, and costly to both 268 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. sides, and to one who knew no more than what was admissible in the objections under the Act it might seem to be much ado about nothing, or an illustra tion of the old couplet : — " 1 do not like thee, Doctor Fell ; The reason why I cannot tell." The working out of the deceitful Aberdeen Act imposed great hardships both on objectors and presentees. It is different now, but in 1856 any presentee to a Gaelic-speaking parish who had no Gaelic could be rejected without much trouble to parishioners or any slur on his own fitness for an English-speaking parish. Our Fortingall presentee had excellent Gaelic, for he had been thoroughly taught by his uncle, Mr Samuel Maclaren, school master of St Fillans. It would have been better for both sides if he had made the wretchedly-signed call an excuse for retirement before issues had been joined, but he could not have done that without giving offence to those who wanted, in pursuance of a mistaken policy, to force him upon an almost unanimously objecting congregation. From begin ning to end the Fortingall people stood firmly shoulder to shoulder. Open and underhand efforts to divide them united them more closely than before. Near the end of the proceedings a rumour went forth on bat-like wings over all the parishes of the Presbytery of Weem that many of the objectors were now repenting of the action taken and wished to withdraw. When indignant people sp jke to me about it, I did not think that this rumour was worthy of more serious consideration than other falsehoods of a hostile nature which had gone before it. But so many of our side were so angry at the malicious intention, and so much afraid of its A DISPUTED SETTLEMENT. 269 possible consequences, that a petition to the Presby tery flatly contradicting it and repeating unshaken adherence to the original objections was sent round and signed by all the original objectors, and also by some others who were not at home on the previous occasion. That retort killed the lie before it could do any mischief by being circulated underhand, if not openly used as an argument in Synod and Assembly. The Assembly of 1857 had two cases of disputed settlements to dispose of — the first from Fortingall and the second from KUmalcolm. The Fortino-all case was taken up on the evening of the day which was observed as the Queen's Birthday. The pleadings were long, and ministers and elders who were invited to or gave Birthday dinners went away on the understanding that no decision should be come to until the next day's meeting. This informal understanding did not bind Mr Procurator Cook, who, when he had cause to believe himself at the head of a majority, set his face against adjourn ment, and had the satisfaction, in the small hours of a misty morning, of getting by a majority of six the chance of throwing aside the case of the objectors, and ordering the settlement of the presentee to be proceeded with at once. More than a score of the members who went away under the belief that an adjournment would take place recorded their pro tests the next day against what had been done in the night, and others who did not record their protests spoke in wrathful terms about what they called a dirty party trick. We heard many stories about the way in which the trick had been engineered, some of which were probably untrue, but one of them was partly corroborated by the fact 270 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. that after dining several of those who voted for Mr Cook's motion came back, while those of the other side, believing in the adjournment, did not. It was customary on the Queen's Birthday to adjourn early in the evening. Without any informal under standing at all it was contrary to that custom to continue proceedings throughout the night. The wrong done to the Fortingall people under cloud of night, and other accidental or cunningly contrived misconceptions, turned out to be balm in Gilead for the Kilmalcolm objectors. Their case was by far the weaker of the two, but they got rid of their undesired presentee in a short and sharp manner. It was clear to every one that the two decisions were as inconsistent as they could be, and that besides its other faults the Aberdeen Act was subject to all the uncertainties of a fluctuating Assembly, which in cases of this kind had no such guidance of precedents and principles as in libel cases. I will not refer to the subject again, but will say that the after history of the Fortingall settlement vindicated the objectors and reflected no honour on the wisdom of the Assembly's decision. Ere many years its sequel was a failure that ended in a tragedy. Most of the objectors joined the Free Church and then had a minister of their own. The ludicrous contrast betw^een the two decisions of the Assembly given at the interval of a few hours led to something more important and far-reaching than the settlement of the Fortingall presentee and the summary rejection of the one for Kilmalcolm. On the day on which the protest of the absent ones had been recorded and the Kilmalcolm case disposed of, a hasty semi-private meeting of members of the Assembly and others was held, at which the first A DISPUTED SETTLEMENT. 271 step was taken for forming an organisation to work for abolishing patronage by Act of Parliament and the paying out of the patrons. The movement thus instituted marked a turning point in the latter-day history of the Church of Scotland ; and as a greater result Presbyterian union would long ago have been happily brought about had the spirit of religion and reason been stronger than the pampered cult of con creted sectarianism and suicidal perversity. For a period of years after the Disruption the party of the "Forty Thieves" had neither the force nor the courage to contend energetically on behalf of their own sound principles. They accepted Lord Aberdeen's Act as a great and valuable concession ; and in respect to the recognition of the full spiritual powers of the Church Courts in purely spiritual matters, so it was. After ten years' trial it was found to be a delusion in regard to disputed settlements and a snare, cumbrous, costly, unceitain, a dreadful ordeal for presentees, and a worrying and disintegrating bone of contention for congregations. The younger, more resolute and clear-sighted ministers and ruling elders scarcely needed to be convinced that the Act was a failure. But a sudden illumination was required to brace up the half-measure and less courageous sec tion of the party to go in at once for the abolition of patronage. This movement for the abolition of patronage, once it was properly started, gained momentum like a stone rolling down a steep hillside. At the end of sixteen years a Conservative Govern ment granted the relief which had been so often petitioned for to no purpose for two hundred and sixty years, and that, too, in a fuller measure than our ancestors had ever sought to obtain it. Noth ing short of the total abolition of patronage would 272 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. give general satisfaction to the laity of the Church of Scotland after ten years' experience of the work ing of Lord Aberdeen's well-meant but disappointing Act. Could it by any conceivable possibility have been so carried out as to fulfil the full promise of its plausible phraseology ? No, because its working could never be divested of party characteristics, and placed on the same judicial non-party platform as regular libel cases. Throughout all its existence decisions on cases under it were arrived at less on judicial principles than like votes in the House of Commons on party grounds. The policy of abolish ing patronage was truly conservative, while that adopted by many patrons and the Peel Government after the passing of the first Reform Bill was short sighted and radically destructive. CHAPTER XLII. A REMOVE. I CAME out of the Assembly Hall that misty summer morning on which the surprise decision was given fully resolved to resign the mastership of the Fortingall School and to leave that neighbourhood. I could not acquiesce in the justice of that decision, and the contrary one a few hours later in the Kilmalcolm case made it certain to me that the Fortingall people would leave the Parish Church in a body and go over to the Free Church. It needed no prophetic spirit to guess at what was likely to happen in other respects. If I loved war, my position as parochial teacher made me independent as long as I did my duty In the school and did not A REMOVE. 273 lay myself open to libel on moral grounds, and the Presbytery had to deal with me in precisely the same way as a minister. But manse and school- house were near each other, and continual friction Avas abhorrent, and it was only fair to the new minister and to myself that I should go away and leave him a clear ground of action. After what had taken place I could not help being looked upon as the head of the party opposed to the minister. Well, I formed my resolution to go away, and stuck to it without any wavering, I thought of emigrating to Canada, where so many of my kith and kin were already settled. Being an unmarried man under thirty, " flitting " was comparatively easy. I had no misgiving about being able to make a living in Canada, as teacher, farmer, or by a mixture of both, with a dash of journalistic or magazine work besides. I never had wild dreams of wealth or wild ambitions. The dream which from youth to age best pleased my fancy was to be the owner of a one-farm little island where I could read books in the sunshine with my back to a rock and my face to the sea. Perhaps the modest scope of that island dream goes far to explain what is a puzzle to myself, namely, the constancy with which I adhered to principles and convictions accepted on what I thought sufficient reasons, and the drifting slackness by which I left to the unsolicited action of friends the determination of leading events in my life. Mr Drummond and my father's unauthorised sending in of my name as candidate led to my going to Fortingall. Mr Charles Stewart, Tigh 'n Duin, and the Laird of Chesthill were the ultroneous agents in sending me to Balquhidder. Chesthill remonstrated with me for thinking of emigrating to 18 274 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Canada, and on his return from a Falkirk tryst he met a crowd of Balquhidder people at the Kings- house and gave them such a character of me that they were anxious to have me. CHAPTER XLIII. BALQUHIDDER. Excepting the parts of Comrie parish on both sides of Lochearn which are ecclesiastically attached to it, the parish of Balquhidder is, as outlined by its hills and waters, not unlike the three-legged symbol of the Isle of Man. The head waters of the Teith gather In the braes of Balquhidder and flow from west to east through two lochs and connecting river links to Stronlsancy, and this first valley represents one leg of the symbol. At Stronlsancy the river Balvaig turns at a sharp angle through Strathyre to Loch Lubnaig, which folds itself about the foot of Ben Ledi, and Strathyre is the second leg. Beyond the low ridge below the Kingshouse and opposite Stronlsancy the burn which is the fountain head of the Earn flows eastward into Lochearn, This third leg is shorter and less strongly marked than the other two, and it belongs of course to a separate water system. Lochearnhead has two romantic side glens in Glenample and Glenogle. The former enjoys primitive solitude in the shadow of Ben Volrlich and the embraces of old Glenartney Forest. The latter, traversed by road from immemorial time, and now penetrated by raUway, is well known to tourists, but only tourists who walk through on foot can understand what Larig-h-Ile, as this whole BALQUHIDDER. 275 wonderful pass is called, meant to the men of the fighting days of old, Agricola, for instance, had good cause for not trying to penetrate Caledonia by the passes of Lenjr and Larig-h-Ile. Ben Volrlich towers like a pyramid over the whole three sections of Balquhidder, and shines from afar to distant places. Its favourable position, standing up free from competition by near rivals of almost equal height, gives it more prominence and individuality than belongs to it by right of elevation. On the other hand, Ben Ledi, at the Loch Lubnaig border, suffers from its position, and only asserts Its superiority to those who approach the Highlands from Stirling. The peaks and mountains which are crowded in two lines fronting one another in the Braes of Bal quhidder would be more Imposing if spread out, and not placed out of the way of tourists. Several of these are fit to rival Ben Volrlich and Ben Ledi in height, and still more so in regard to the steepness with which they spring up from the bottom of that long and low valley ; but as seen from the Kings- house, they look like a group of low hills. If distance robes them in their azure hue to the eyes of the beholder, it robs them of their Alpine magnificence. It is like looking through a long avenue of arching trees, or the wrong end of the telescope. Those who wish to see the high peaks and the huge hills of Rob Roy's farm must go on that one errand where the blaeberries grow midst the bonnie blooming heather. My ^friend the present farmer would like the heather to be more plentiful than it is, and could dispense with the blaeberries. This is the finest summer grazing land in the High lands, but it has the drawbacks of too much wet land and of the want of heather, bushes, and shelte 276 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. for the purpose of wintering sheep. The principal side-glen of the Balquhidder valley is Glenbuckie, which strikes off from the river Balvaig at Stronvar and stretches back to march with Glenfinlas — which, alas, is no longer occupied by the community of Stewarts who farmed it for long centuries. CHAPTER XLIV. CIVIL HISTORY NOTES. The history of Balquhidder has yet to be written. An obscure mist hangs over it until the marriage of James IV, who settled Balquhidder on his bride, Margaret Tudor, as part of her dowry. Sir Walter Stewart was Queen Margaret's bailie of Balquhidder. It Is clear that when King James married his Tudor princess Balquhidder was, like the forest lands in its neighbourhood. Crown property. It may have been so from ancient days, yet it is not unlikely that when Albany was regent it had beconie detached for a period during which Stewarts began to be placed as principal men in it. I only jot down hints and facts which may give help to the future historian of this beautiful and romantic part of the Highlands. About 1600 the Church patronage and superiority of Balquhidder, along with possessions of a large portion of the land of the parish, belonged to David Murray, Lord Scone. It was he who built the post-Reformation church which now exists as a picturesque ruin. The narrow chancel of the old Roman Catholic building was left out of that edifice, and it was within its precincts that Rob Roy was buried. How and when and why the Atholl family CIVIL HISTORY NOTES. 277 took the place of the Mansfield family in Balquhidder I do not know, but the event must have taken place before the Athollman, Mr Ferguson, was appointed minister of the parish. He was the gentleman into whose glebe Rob Roy used to place a gift cow or two by night each year at Martinmas, It was the long-continued habit of the AthoU family to extend their influence by buying properties held of the Crown, and then of selling thera to feudal vassals, while they retained the superiority and the Church patronage. The estates of several sraall single OAvners in Balquhidder sprung out of this Atholl custom. The most curious of the small estates was Muirlaggan, which belonged to " portioners" of the Macintyre clan. At, or shortly before, the beginning of last century the Church patronage and Avhat remained of Atholl lands in Balquhidder passed to Sir John Macgregor of Lanrick, who is better known under the name of Murray in Indian history. Sir John also bought the adjoining small estate of two unmarried co-heiresses. They were the last repre sentatives of Patrick Beag, an illegitimate son of Sir Duncan Campbell of Glenorchy. Black Duncan, beoides giving Edinchip to his son, Patrick, about 1600, took possession of a stretch of land at the loch end and along the side of it. He also purchased from the Earl of Argyll Edinample and Glenample on the south side of the Loch, and there he built Edinample Castle. For a long time the Edinample estate, belonged to the Earls of Argyll, and when they sold it they made the purchaser promise to protect the Maclarens, or Clan Laurin of Bal quhidder, as they themselves had been wont to do. Local tradition tells of a time when that protection failed against the Buchanans who took possession 278 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. of Strathyre in the fifteenth century. "Cailean Uaine" — Green Colin, so called from the colour of his armoui" — a younger son of the first Earl of Argyll, came to the help of the Clan Laurin, but was defeated and slain. His cairn is yet pointed out at the top of the Kirkton Glen. Lord Moray, I think, possessed the Braes before either branch of the Murrays had any rights in Balquhidder. The Moray lands, Buchanan lands, and Campbell lands, barring Edinchip, still belong to the representatives of their old owners, while all the little properties have disappeared. In 1860 the inhabitants of Balquhidder, under many surnames, were, with the fewest possible exceptions, of undoubted Celtic descent. They spoke the excellent Gaelic of the days of Robert Kirke and Dugald Buchanan, but there were not many of them who could not well speak English also. It was a singular thing that the people bearing the names of the oldest proprietors — Stewarts, Buchanans, and Campbells — made such a small numerical show in the nominal muster. Fergusons came in with the Atholl minister of the first half of the eighteenth century. The Mac- donalds of Monochyle and Blarcriche came from Glenlyon in the preceding generation. It is pro bable that when Colin, Earl of Argyll, held a Justiciary Court in Balquhidder in 1526, he brought in Macintyres to strengthen his clients, the Clan Laurin, against the Clan Gregor, who were even then becoming more dangerous to the peace of the district than the Buchanans had been in the former century. By the end of that century, Balquhidder, out-lying place as It was, without any strong-handed local magnate invested with official authority. CIVIL HISTORY NOTES. 279 became a convenient resort for the unruly Clan Gregor. It was in the kirk of Balquhidder that they went through their "ethnic" ceremony of swearing over the head of murdered Drummond Ernoch. Fearfully Avere they punished for that murder and that heathenish ceremony. In I860 the number of people bearing tbe StcAvart surname was surprisingly small, considering that they had had a footing in the parish as early as 1400, and that being of the King's clan they were favoured above others, especi ally when Sir Walter Stewart ruled in Queen Margaret's name, and that they got legal titles to the Braes, Glenbuckie, Gartnafuaran, and other places. The Earl of Moray has still kept the Braes, but the other Stewart properties were all gone before my time. The bigger one of them, Glen buckie, was sold in 1846 to Mr David Carnegie of Stronvar, who added to it by other purchases until he left his son the far-largest and best estate in the parish. In 1860 the people of the Clan Gregor surname were numerous. I had great-great-grand children of Rob Roy in my school, although the most of his male descendants went to the West Indies soon after the execution of Robin Og. Rob Roy's youngest son, Ranald, who was not mixed up with the evil doings of the others, remained behind, and died as tenant of the Kirkton farm in good old age. In 1860 there were at least two old men, Hugh Macgregor and the old bellman, who re membered him perfectly. He was still living when the lame boy, Walter Scott, was gathering strength and stories at Cambusmore, ten miles away, and lived a good many years more. We have not in " Rob Roy" and the Introduction thereto, all the information Sir Walter had about Rob's descendants. 280 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. good and bad. If the negative records of public records can be trusted there were no Clan Gregor people, at least none who could give trouble in Balquhidder, when the helm of the ship of State was in the firm hands of James the Fourth. The trouble began after Flodden. As a kindred the Clan Gregor existed and were certainly widely spread, although not very numerous before 1400, but it was later than that before their clan name appeared in public records. Its first appearance, as far as I know, occurred about 1429, when notice is taken of a disturbance caused by some Clan Gregor men in Strathearn. About the sarae time, or a little later, the Maor of Crieff was a Macgregor. Duncan Beag, who, about 1456, obtained a seven year's lease of the toiseachd or thanage of Roro In Glenlyon, as successor of Allan Stewart, who failed to pay the King the stipulated rent, is not called Macgregor but Duncan Beag. He was, however, the founder of the important Roro branch of the Clan Gregor, an off-shoot of which was the Dunan Clan-house on the moor of Rannoch, although the lease by the knight of Weem was given to their chief of Glenstrae. On his lands of Roro and the Braes of Rannoch Sir Robert Menzies kept, or allowed the descendants of Little Duncan to remain in Ptoro as middlemen, and in Dunan as kindly tenants. Sir Robert's successors had to put up with Clan Gregor middlemen and tenants whom they could not get rid of for a hundred and fifty years. A Clan Gregor tenant was placed or placed himself on the lands of Bealach or Taymouth belonging to the Abbey of Scone, or more properly to that Abbey's Priory of Loch Tay, and it took a vigorous and lengthy effort to turn out his descendants. The Clan Gregor CIVIL HISTORY NOTES. 281 undoubtedly had a grievance which impelled its members to launch out into the excesses of the sixteenth century under such ferocious leaders as Duncan Ladosach, Gregor, the Clan Chief who was hunted down and tried before the Earl of Atholl, Justice-General, and beheaded at Bealach In 1570, and the next chief, his son, Alexander, who presided at the " ethnic " swearing on the murdered man's head in the kirk of Balquhidder. But what was the grievance which worked up the most energetic and the most romantic of our clans to such a pitch of ferocious madness that they defied all law and order, and perpetrated atrocities which were in themselves wholly inhuman, and yet beyond themselves were curiously contrasted with chivalrous fidelity, heroism, and instances of redeeming love and tenderness ? This question is one which I cannot answer. I hope, however, that others will search for an answer and find it. The fact that there was a grievance which deeply affected the whole clan can hardly be doubted. I, for my part, have a suspicion that the answer is to be found in the feudalising of what had been King's lands. That feudalising process, which had been slowly going on since Bannockburn, progressed by leaps and bounds in the reign of James the Fourth, who not only set old Crown thanages to individual OAvners on feu-ferme tenure, but placed sheep in Ettrick forest, and brood mares in the Inchcallan forest, with which the Glenstrae Chiefs were so closely connected. He also cut out farms from that great forest which formerly stretched along the watershed from the head of Glenlochay to the hills of Lochaber. Dunan was one of the farms so cut out of forest land. Formerly Crown thanages were 282 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. let on leases of seven or more years to middlemen like Little Duncan Roro, and the leases were often renewed to the same people until they thought they had a "duchas" or hereditary right. If we may suppose that the leading men of the Clan Gregor had for ages been the Kings' foresters, thanage undertakers, and officials, it is easy to see how the feudalising process would throw them out of living and employment; and, with them, the clansmen who depended on them. The secularisation and the feudalisation of Church lands at the Reformation would aggravate the hardship, for Bealach was not the only place on which members of the clan had a hold by fair bargain or without-your-leave squatting. From the feudal law point of view, the Clan Gregor were as landless a tribe in the reign of James IV. as they were when persecuted by James VI. They had not then a stable permanent charter to any scrap of land, and yet for all that they were in profitable occupation of much land and very widely dispersed. The supposition that they had been for ages the foresters, and often acted as officials and thanage undertakers, would, if proved, explain the wide dispersion and the resentful grievance when the old order changed, and to their horror and surprise left them stranded. Before Sir John of Lanrick's purchases of land in Balquhidder, his father, and perhaps his grandfather, possessed one of the small Balquidder properties created during the Atholl overlordship. This was Glencarnaig, a small Brae farm which has long formed part of the large sheep farm of Monachyle. It was the one of the race who married the daughter of Campbell of Lix who acquired Glencarnaig. Glencarnaig and Glengyle were rival claimants for CIVIL HISTORY NOTES. 283 the chiefship of the Clan Gregor, the right of which had been in dispute since the death of Patrick, brother of John of Glenstrae, about 1750. John died leaving only daughters. Patrick his brother raised the Clan to fight for King Charles. He married Jean Campbell, daughter of Sir Robert Campbell of Glenorchy, and they had children. I think that he had a wife before this Jean, who was the young and well-dowered widow of Archibald, Younger of Glenlyon, and who, after Patrick's death, married Duncan Stewart of Appin, by whom she also had children. The Glenlyon genealogists told me that Jean had two sons by each marriage. Patrick's sons must have died young, or else there could not have been the long dispute about the Chiefship. Glengyle, in 1745, joined Prince Charles, and Glencarnaig took the Government side. They divided the clan between them. It was long after the '45 when Sir John came home from India that the great majority of the Macgregors, by a formally signed document, recognised him as their Chief. But Glengyle and his adherents declined to accept that recognition, and continued to contend that it was contrary to justice and genealogical facts. Glenlyon opinion was, I think, wholly against Glengyle and in favour of Sir John. But it is time to leave the entangled Clan Macgregor story, and to turn to the Balquhidder people who have the oldest surnames. These are the Maclarens or Clan Laurin, who derive their designation, and presumably their lineage, from a Culdee Abbot of Cuil who lived in the later times when the Culdees married. A married Abbot of Glendochart was the founder of the Clan Macnab, and Laurence Abbot of Cuil founded the Clan 284 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Laurin of the adjoining district, Cuil is on the Edinchip estate. Not the smallest vestige of its monastic structures remains ; probably they were wooden buildings, as was usual in Columban and Culdee days. But the memory of it and the names of its Abbots have been preserved in ancient ecclesiastical documents. So faint grew the local tradition about the Cuil monastery, and so much was Abbot Laurence forgotten, that in my time fanciful members of the Clan Laurin began to claim tribal origin from a Scoto-Dalriadic prince of Argyll. It is not unlikely that the protection of the clan by Earls of Argyll long afterwards suggested this fancy. Had Abbot Laurence belonged to the early era of Columban missionaries, he might well have been a Dalriadic-Scot or Irishman. But as he belonged to a very much later time, he was much more likely to be of the Pictish race. CHAPTER XLV. THE PATRON SAINT. Saint Angus, the patron saint of Balquhidder, appears to have belonged to the eighth or ninth century. Perhaps he might have been Angus of the Feilire. The Balquhidder church was the only one dedicated to his memory. I found local tradition very vivid about him. He had evidently lived long and worked with success in the parish. He very likely belonged to the Pictish Church after it had asserted its independence of lona. The hillock on which he used to preach is still called " Beannach Aonghais," which means " the Blessing of Angus." THE PATRON SAINT. 285 He had a stone built oratory — Oirrionn Aonghais — in the field below the church and churchyard. I saw the large foundation stones of this oratory removed from the middle of the cornfield in which they had been tolerated out of reverence age after age, although certainly very inconvenient to the Kirkton farmers. The oratory had been a small but solidly constructed building very unlike the perishable wooden structures of the early Columbans. Angus died in Balquhidder, and was buried inside the parish church, or, more likely, the parish church was built afterwards over his grave. On his grave was placed a flagstone on which was sculptured, in out line, the figure of a man in a clerical garment. This flagstone, named after Angus " Clach Aonghais," is still to the fore. I have no doubt that the grave and its flagstone were, in pre-Reformation days, in front of the high altar which, irrespective of the reverence in which the patron saint was held, would make it necessary for people marrying to exchange their matrimonial vows upon it. The small old chancel was excluded from Lord Scone's re-built church, but Clach Aonghais was taken in and placed in the passage before the pulpit so that people coming to marry could still exchange vows upon it. The harmless superstitious belief that a special blessing was obtainable by being married on Clach Aonghais was tolerated by Protestant ministers for two hundred years. But shortly before 1800, during the incumbency of Mr Stewart, the last of the ministers presented by the Atholl family, the church was re-seated and re-arranged inside. The pulpit and Clach Aonghais then lost their old relative positions, and the minister then, for the first time, apparently, understood the significance 286 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. attached to the sacred flagstone, and realised the tenacity with which the people held to the custom of being married upon it. Mr Stewart was a true blue Presbyterian, and he summarily put an end to the ancient custom of Balquhidder marriage rites by putting Clach Aonghais out into the churchyard. When Mr David Carnegie built the handsome present church fifty odd years later, taking the old one for his family burial place, Clach Aonghais was taken inside the picturesque ruins, and placed up right against a part of the old wall. By all accounts Mr Stewart was a painstaking, hard working, and efficient parish minister, who had no tolerance for what he called Popish superstitions. No doubt it was he who, when the church was re-seated, caused the rudely massive old boulder-stone font to be burled out of sight under the floor. It was dug up when the inside of the church was being prepared for burial vaults, and so was the skull, with a ball rattling within it, of that unfortunate Stewart laird of Glenbuckie, who Avas found dead in bed at Leny House after a convivial gathering of post-CuUoden Jacobites. TWO NOTABLE BALQUHIDDER MINISTERS. 287 CHAPTER XLVI. TWO NOTABLE BALQUHIDDER MINISTERS. Mr Robert Kirke and Mr Alexander Macgregor were both notable men. Mr Kirke was remarkable for his Gaelic and general scholarship, much literary work, and, finally, for being — as was believed — abducted by vindictive fairies. Singularity and longevity distinguished Mr Macgregor from the long series of post-Reformation Balquhidder ministers who, as a class, seem to have been good quiet men that strove to do their duty under circumstances which were of a very trying nature occasionally. Mr Robert Kirke was the seventh and youngest son of Mr James Kirke, minister of Aberfoyle. After having taken his degree in Edinburgh, and studied theology in Saint Andrews, he was inducted minister of Balquhidder in 1669, and stayed there until the end of 1685, when he succeeded his father as minister of Aberfoyle. It was when he was at Balquhidder that he made his Gaelic metrical version of the first hundred psalms. In poetical rhythm, force and flow, there is no metrical version in English which can stand favourable comparison with Kirke's work. He must have had high poetic gifts as well as a thorough knowledge of Hebrew, and full command of an ancient language into which Hebrew thought was easily transmitted. The Highland ministers and others who, before 1740, completed the metrical version of the psalms in Gaelic, imitated Kirke to the best of their ability, and so gave the 288 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. whole version a very homogeneous appearance. Although Kirke faithfully adhered to the original, he permitted himself the use of phrases at which Dr Smith of Campbellton and his revising committee boggled in the last century, and which they altered, or of which they reduced the use to a minimum. " Pubal," the proper Gaelic word for tent, was properly used by Kirke and his imitators. The revisers went so far wrong as to substitute for It the mongrel word " pailluin" — pavilion. As non- scriptural terms, they looked askance at " Dia nam feairt " (not " feart "), God of strengths, and " Righ nan dul," King of the Elements, or of all existence. Our old Glenlyon miller of Milton Eonain had some cause for his indignant declaration : — " Thug Mac- aghobha agus a chuldeachd an smiorchaUleach as an t-salmadair." (" The son of the Smith and his Committee have taken the spinal marrow out of the psalm book.") That was going too far. They made not a few good amendments, but they ought to have respected Kirke's poetic words and phrases, which were far more telling than any they could substitute. Kirke's last year in Balquhidder was darkened to him by the death of his young wife, over whose grave he placed a flagstone with a suitable inscrip tion in English, followed by a Latin quotation. He married again in Aberfoyle. The Irish Gaelic Bible of Bishop Bedell and William O'Donnell, as it was printed in Irish characters, was not easily read by Highlanders who were taught to read only books printed in Roman letters. Mr Kirke wrote out the whole Irish Bible firom Genesis to Revelation for the purpose of putting it in the plain Roman alphabet which Highlanders were taught in the schools. It was a laborious undertaking which must have TWO NOTABLE BALQUHIDDER MINISTERS. 289 absorbed a great deal of his time for a number of years. His Bible was published In London In 1690. I have a copy of it, which belonged to my grand father, and which, I suppose, had come down to him from his grandfather. Mr Kirke adhered strictly to the Irish Bible wording, but had, of necessity, to supply the place of the useful Irish dot by the vagabond " h," which exercises so many functions in Gaelic, Avritten or printed in Roman characters. His work undoubtedly removed a difficulty, but it would have been more satisfactorily removed by teaching children both the Celtic and Roman alphabets. The Celtic alphabet, besides being beautifully ornamental, suits Gaelic, whether Irish, Scotch, or Manx, much better than the unorna- mental Roman alphabet. Mr Kirke, as the metrical version of the psalms demonstrates, was master of the best style of the Highland Gaelic ; a style which passed on to the Balquhidder hymn writer, Dugald Buchannan, in the next century. It seems a pity, therefore, that instead of trying to popularise Irish Gaelic, he did not devote himself to writing the Bible in his own excellent Scottish Gaelic. He appended to his work a vocabulary of several hundred words in which Irish and Highland Gaelic differed, and this vocabulary was the first foundation stone of our after-time Gaelic dictionaries. With all his learning Mr Kirke believed in the fairies, and wrote a curious pamphlet in English about them, called the " Invisible Commonwealth." Sir Walter Scott, who did not know a,bout Mr Kirke's valuable Gaelic work, got hold of the " Invisible Commonwealth" pamphlet and the story of Mr Kirke's death. When walking alone on a reputed fairy mound near his Aberfoyle manse Mr Kirke 19 290 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS, fell down in a fit and was dead when found there. It was, therefore, believed that the fairies had abducted him in revenge for having revealed their secrets, and that the body found on the mound was one of their usual delusive Impostures. Mr Alexander Macgregor, presented by Sir John Macgregor of Lanrick, was inducted in November, 1804, and died In May, 1836. The notice of this man in the "Fasti" does not tell where he was born, or where educated, or how he was employed during the first fifty years of his long life. It states that he was licensed by the Presbytery of Kintyre on the 2nd of January, 1788, and ordained by them as chaplain to the Highland Society of London. I can supply some of the deficiencies. Mr Macgregor was a native of Rannoch, and of the Macgregors of the Smithy— " Griogaraich na Ceardaich" — a strong, swarthy race. He was in the habit of telling people of later generations that, as a bonnetless boy, six or seven years of age, he saw the mustering of the rebels of Rannoch who marched out at the beginning of the rebellion to follow Prince Charlie. That oft- repeated story of his pretty nearly agreed with the universal belief of the Balquhidder people that he was a hundred and three years old when he died. But what had he been doing between the bonnetless boy date and 1788 ? I do not remember how I got it, but I have been always under the impression that he was attached as chaplain, assistant chaplain, or perhaps as teacher and catechist, to a Highland regiment, and that he had been with his regiment in America during the war with the United States. There must have been past services in his favour to account for his being licensed and ordained at such an advanced age, for he was then sixty years of TWO NOTABLE BALQUHIDDER MINISTERS. 291 age. When first settled in Balquhidder he was, on his own showing, sixty-six or sixty-seven years old, yet he looked and felt like a man in the prime of life, and for the next quarter of a century his eyes did not grow dim, nor was his natural strength much abated. It was stiffness in his legs that made him incapable of mounting to and descending fi:om the pulpit, which caused him to get an assistant a year or two before his death. The old man went regularly to church and sat with the elders, and one day when the assistant said some thing which did not agree with the Confession of Faith, the alert critic below exclaimed — "That is wrong and heretical." As a minister he was sui generis. Without being scholarly, cultured, or gentlemanly, his force of character and the rightness of his views gave him a drill-sergeant mastery over gentle and simple. In London he had seen much of high society, and had come into contact with many distinguished people, and elsewhere he had seen life under various aspects. And to judge from his manner, the conclusion to which he had come was that people of all classes needed to be driven to cultivate Christian morals, and in their different spheres to be dUigent and well-doing, and to act up to their respective responsibilities. Old parishioners spoke with awe of strong-handed acts of his, and at other times chuckled over his unclerical sayings and doings. They said he was pitifully tender and very liberal with his own money to the affiicted, and to those whose poverty was no fault of their own, while he scourged with the scorpions of his tongue those who did not use all diligence to help them selves by honest work. Loafers and tipplers feared him, and so did sluttish women who did not keep 292 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. their homes tidy and see to It that their families were well clad in homespun. He kept a comfortable house, hospitable in a plain way, for the wages of servants were low, and he raised a great part of his food supplies on his own glebe. Far as he was from being a niggard, he lived so well within his com paratively liberal stipend that his savings swelled up to £1600. Towards the end of his long life he became troubled as to how he should dispose of that money. He had outlived almost all his blood relatives. When at last he began to think of making his avUI, his next-of-kin was a sister's grand son or great-grandson of the (to him) appalling Lowland surname of Kitchener. Little foreseeing the fame which the future was to throw on that surname, he would mutter in Highland scorn — " Kitchener, Kitchener ; pots and pans and smells of greasy messes !" Therefore he went one day to the Chief of his clan with his bank deposit receipt, intending to hand it over to him endorsed there and then. The Chief said he would gladly take any thing left to him in a properly-made will, but that he could not honourably take his money in any other form. The intention of making a will was never carried out, and the heir-at-law, notwith standing his surname, came in for the whole little fortune. He denounced cruelty to animals, advocated protection to all harmless creatures in their breeding season, impressed upon children the idea that it was a heinous crime to disturb or rob the nests of little singing birds, and constituted himself a truculent water-bailiff to prevent poachers from blazing the river and killing the fish in spawning time. He did not care a straw if poachers killed any amount TWO NOTABLE BALQUHIDDER MINISTERS. 293 of fish and game outside the breeding season. Let proprietors look to that, it was no business of his. His bellman, who was still bellman in my time, and lived to be nearly a hundred years, held his memory in awful respect, and, when telling me stories about him, lowered his voice to a whisper as if he feared the ghost of the doughty despot was listening near him. It chanced that once upon a time the minister caught Calum, one of the bellman's sons, killing fish in the spawning season, whereupon he fell into a fierce rage and raised such a storm that the lad fied from the parish until his father should make peace for him. The bellman, much alarmed about losing his own post, waited one day on his knees on the gravel for the coraing out of the minister, and when the minister did come out, as was his habit to do after breakfast, he made abject apologies and gave the most profuse assurances that Calum would never offend in the same way again. So conditional pardon was granted and Calum came back to his father's house. The harvest of 1826 — the year of the short corn — was, for the whole United Kingdom, the most de ficient in yield of food for man and beast of all the harvests of the nineteenth century. The potato disease, heavily as it fell in some districts, was not such a general calamity as the bad harvest of 1826. In that year there was no rain in the growing and ripening period. The sun scorched the fields and much of the lighter grazing lands. The corn crop was so stunted that In many places it was pulled instead of being cut, and, in not a few instances, it was neither pulled nor cut, but animals were turned in to graze upon it. Food supplies from the outer world were not so quickly or so easily obtainable as 294 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. they are now. Scarcity and dearness of provisions had to be faced. The minister of Balquhidder, like so many others, caught the alarm, and bestired him self to prepare for the coming ordeal. In ordinary years the kirk session fund barely coped with the needs of the parochial pauperism, and there was no reserve, as in many other parishes, to fall back upon. So the minister civilly asked the heritors to aid the kli'k session by laying a rate on themselves, for the relief of the poor. When the heritors delayed compliance with this request he waxed wroth and threatened legal action to compel them, under the useful, but seldom resorted to. Act of Charles II. to meet and stent themselves for the relief of the poor. It was a plain case of emergency and the minister had the law on his side, and he was not a man whose threats could be disregarded. A meeting of heritors was accordingly held at the hotel at Loch earnhead, which the minister, of course, attended, and at which, as the advocate of the poor and the minister of the parish, he asked for more than was granted to him. His assertions in regard to the gloomy outlook for Strathyre and Lochearnhead, which had both a crowded population already im poverished by the shrinking profits on the spinning of flax and wool, were ridiculed by all the heritors and pertinaciously controverted by one of the single- farm proprietors — five or six were then to the fore — who, as a resident, was held to be sure of his facts. The minister lost his temper and so did the little Laird. The dispute became so hot that at the close of the meeting the minister refused to stay to the dinner which invariably followed occasions of this kind. Although beyond his ninetieth year he was still a splendid walker He had come three miles on TWO NOTABLE BALQUHIDDER MINISTERS. 295 foot to the meeting and thought nothing of striding back again. Besides this he had to call at a house on the way In which there was illness. The stiffness which disabled him at the end of his life did not come upon him until he was bordering on his hundredth year. It was wet weather, for immedi ately after the deficient crops had been gathered in the rain, so long withheld, poured down in deluge abundance. His visit to the house of sickness so delayed the minister that the little Laird, who was riding, overtook him at Achtoo. Flushed with meat and drink, and made more angry than ever by being chaffed at dinner about what the minister had contemptuously said to him and of hira, the Laird rashly renewed the controversy when he overtook the minister, and swaggering on his horse with fiis whip at a spot where the dry and dusty ditch of summer time was now filled with muddy water, he happened to strike and knock off the minister's hat. In an instant he found himself pulled out of his saddle and on his back in the ditch, a grim giant bending over him, who said in sternest tones, " larr mathanas airson do beatha ! " (Beg pardon for your life). He had to do what he was commanded, but when he got on his feet he earnestly declared that the whip smack on the hat was a pure accident for which he was truly sorry. The explanation, which was perfectly true, was at once accepted, and the incident closed. The minister's forecast of the evil about to fall upon many honest and industrious people in Strathyre viUage and the Lochearnhead district was exceeded by the sad reality. The distress, which then attained Its height, continued in a lessened degree until some years later the congestion in those two places was relieved by a 296 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. large flight of emigrants to Nova Scotia and Cape Breton. Yet the Laird was far from being wrong in contending as stoutly as he did that, taken all together, the crops and grazings of Balquhidder came nearly to an average in the year of unexampled drought. Most moist and upland places where ripening is backward in ordinary years, produced good and early ripened crops of grain, and wet meadows had excellent yields of hay in the dry and hot year when other lands were parched. HoAvever he picked it up, our old clerical despot held the Covenanters' severe and all embracing theory of church discipline, and, what was more, carried it out inflexibly in practice. Combining In his own person the functions of policeman, sheriff, and parish minister, he suppressed any remnant which remained of the wildness of the Rob Roy period by putting down drinking excesses, fighting among young men, and quarrelling among older people. His aims were always good, but his methods were simply his own peculiar ones. In his public rebukes of the fathers of illegitimate children, he habitually lost control of tongue and temper. He let off the women offenders with scoldings before the session, but male offenders had to stand up in church to be scolded before the congregation. As soon as a male offender was cited to appear in church, word of the coming affair went forth to the neighbouring districts, and on the appointed day people came from other parishes to enjoy Avhat was fun to them, but a sore ordeal to the rebuked sinner, whose punishment did not end with that one day. Words and phrases of the torrent of abuse which poured on his head from the pulpit, stuck like burs in the memory of the pubhc. TWO NOTABLE BALQUHIDDER MINISTERS. 297 and he was sure to be reminded of them through the rest of his days. These were the opening sentences of admonishment of a lad of twenty, who became a delinquent before he was quite out of his trade-apprenticeship : — "Eirich suas a bhiasd ghreannaich 's gum faigh thu cronachadh do pheacaidh. Nach e chuis-naire 's an nith graineil gum biodh tusa, nach eil fhastast a coisneadh luach peic mhine 's an t-seachduin, a falbh mar tharbh sgireachd feadh na duthcha, anns an oidche, 'sa briseadh challaidean 's a dol mar ghad- aiche, a stigh troimh uineagan," etc. " Stand up, ye touzle-haired little wretch, that you may be rebuked for your sin. Is it not a shameful and abominable thing that you, who do not yet earn the price of a peck of meal in the week, should go, like a parish bull, through the country in the night, and be breaking fences and going through windows like a thief?" etc., etc. Fear of his pulpit reproofs promoted some hasty marriages. As for children born out of wedlock, they were carefully looked after by ministers and elders all over Scotland. The Balquhidder minister and his elders took great pains to have such children properly brought up and treated as well as if no stain rested on their birth. In the eye of the law there was a wider difference between the two sets of children than there was in the eye of the Church. 298 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER XLVII. BALQUHIDDER IN 1857-60. As long as the Macgregor Chiefs had the patronage, they naturally presented clansmen. Mr Alexander Macgregor was succeeded by Mr Alexander Murray Macgregor, who, before his translation, was minister of Atharacle in Argyllshire. He was related to a landed family in that district, and his father had been a captain in the army. There may be a hidden similitude in contrast, but to the people who knew him there were only two binding links between these two Macgregors, and these were their names and their striving to reach one end by pursuing widely different ways. It was a blessing for one to know Mr Alexander Murray Macgregor. Of all the good ministers and priests of the different denomi nations into which the Christian world is divided, with whom I came in contact during a long life, I thought I had found in him the finest type of the Christian guide and example most fully realised. During the Ten Years' Conflict he sympathised with the popular party, and was reckoned one of them. But like the rest of the "Forty Thieves'" party, and like so many of those who were hurried out at the Disruption, he wished to exercise patience and to proceed by civil methods to seek the removal of grievances. He was by nature and reflection bound to recoil from violent agitation and a policy which, after the meeting of Convocation, directly threatened to destroy the integrity of the Church of BALQUHIDDER IN 1857-60. 299 Scotland. And because he did not go out in 1843, the "Witness" assaUed him in one of its bitterly unfair articles in which it was then running down the ministers with popular sympathies who did not go out. Fiercely hot and, too frequently, scan dalously unjust as were the mutual recriminations of those days of angry partings, it is impossible to believe that, had he personally or by truthful report known the minister of Balquhidder, Mr Hugh MUler would have allowed that particular article to go into the "Witness." Peace-loving, pious, and charitably- minded, Mr Macgregor was a sensitive man who was no seeker of vain-glorious applause, but he expected justice fi:om his fellow-men. The instant he read the attack upon him, he decided to give up his charge. Forthwith he sent his resignation to the Presbytery of Dunblane, packed his boxes, and, having provided for pulpit supplies, left the parish. After seven years' service among them, the Bal quhidder people knew his worth, and even those who had joined the Free Church were unwilling that the parish should lose him. As for his own congregation, they were thrown into a state of consternation and sorrow at first, but, rallying quickly, they sent remonstrances after the fugitive minister, and unanimously petitioned the Presbytery of Dunblane to refuse the acceptance of his resig nation. The Presbytery did so, and added its remonstrances to those of the parishioners. Deeply moved and conquered by these proceedings, which he looked upon as amounting to a renewal of his commission, he came back, declaring that as long as he could do his work there nothing would tempt him to leave Balquhidder. He kept to that reso lution when he might have had more lucrative and, 300 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. what some would have considered, more desirable charges. The incident of Mr Macgregor's resignation and triumphant restoration helped to clear and sweeten the local ecclesiastical atmosphere, surcharged as it was for a short while with Disruption electricity. No one could deny that the parish minister had been enthusiastically recalled and elected by his congregation after seven years' work. The placing of the Free Church and manse at Lochearnhead also did much to reduce sectarian friction. At Lochearnhead the Free Church was less like a rival than a desirable supplement to the parish church. In far-off days, indeed, the Bishops of Dunblane placed at Carstran, very near where the Free Church stands, a chapel of ease, the ruins of which were pointed out to me and may yet be visible. It was at Lochearnhead and Strathyre that the Free Church strength lay. And the Lochearn head congregation were fortunate in getting Mr Eric Findlater for their first minister, and in having him for a long period of years at their head. Parish minister and Free Church minister were personally good friends with separate spheres of labour. So there was more peace in Balquhidder than was usually found in Highland parishes after the Dis ruption. Mr Findlater came from the north side ofthe Grampians. And so, a quarter of a century before, did his uncle, Mr Robert Findlater, who gained a high reputation when missionary minister at Ardeonaig on the south side of Loch Tay as an ardent young revivalist. He was called back to a more important charge in his native region, and died before the Disruption. His successor at Ardeonaig, Mr Hunter, was a revivalist who, in a few years, received a BALQUHIDDER IN 1857-60. 301 better appointment, and In 1843 lost repute among his former admirers by not going out. The sturdy, rustical, short- trousered successor of Mr Hunter in Ardeonaig, Mr Donald Mackenzie, seems to demand a nod of recognition. He was the nephew of Mr Lachlan Mackenzie, minister of Lochcarron, in Ross- shire, Avho was believed to have the gift of prophecy. The nephew shared in that belief, and revered his uncle's memory. Outside the range of the ideas held by the pious folk of Ross-shire regarding dreams, visions, and sudden flashes of communication with the unknown world, Mr Donald Mackenzie was the most practical of men, and his sermons were of the same practical character as the cultivation of his carefully farmed glebe. But he imported from Lochcarron the sing-song habit of intoning which the Ross-shire " men " loved, and their favourite ministers imitated. The sing-song intoning of Mr Donald Mackenzie spoiled his English sermons, but in his Gaelic seemed to fall into not unmusical cadence. He went out at the Disruption without the slightest hesitation, although he had not taken any prominent part in the preceding controversy, and after the parting there was no lessening of the old friendship between him and the scholarly, scientific and gentlemanly Dr Duff, minister of Kenmore, his former ecclesiastical superior. Balquhidder had four schools. Three of these, the parish school and the side schools at Strathyre and Lochearnhead, were under the superintendence of the Church of Scotland. The fourth was the Free Church school at Lochearnhead, which received an endowment from the Maclaren Trust. This Trust was formed by the will of Mr Donald Maclaren, a native of the parish, who, as banker and wool dealer 302 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS, at Callander, made what was then held to be a large fortune, and left the bulk of it fbr Free Church purposes, chiefly in the locality with which he was connected by birth and business. Poor Mr Carleton, my predecessor, lingered on in a dying state for six weeks after I began the teaching of the parish school, and after his death, some more weeks elapsed before I was fully installed, as I had first to be appointed by the heritors, then examined by the Presbytery of Dun blane, and sworn again to bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Victoria. Throughout the whole of that houseless time I was the guest of Mr Macgregor at the manse, and a happy time it was for guest and host until a fearful outbreak of diphtheria among the children filled many homes with sorrow and threw gloom over the whole district, and especially saddened and harassed the parish minister, who had been partially educated for the medical profession before taking to the clerical profession, and as the nearest doctors were ten and seven miles away, gave medical aid in simple cases, and in serious cases saw to it that the doctor's instructions were carried out. In 1857-8 diphtheria was a new disease to the British people, just as appendicitis was to a later generation. No doubt there had been cases of both in former days, but they had been too few to be classified as specific diseases. The deaths of five children of the Dean of Carlisle, Dr Archibald Campbell Tait, who, after being Bishop of London, became Archbishop of Canterbury, took place not very long before the Balquhidder outbreak, and raised discussions in the medical journals about what was called " Boulogne sore throat," but no treatment beyond burning the PROPRIETORS. 303 throat affected with nitric acid seems to have been found out. At Mr Carnegie's expense, Dr Julius Wood, Edinburgh, gave help as a specialist to the local doctors, but it was the coming of snow and frost which really stopped the plague suddenly and thoroughly. Before the purifying snow and frost, there had been a long spell of foggy, oozy weather, when people looking down from their homes on the flooded meadows could almost feel as if they were beginning themselves to get covered with green moss. The victims of the scourge were the smaller school children and those who were too young to be sent to school at all. There were no deaths among children in their teens, and adults were not attacked at all. CHAPTER XLVIII. PROPRIETORS. The Marquis of Breadalbane and the Earl of Moray, who had their residences elsewhere, were represented in Balquhidder by their factors, who were also residents elsewhere. There was, however, one occasion when the Marquis came in a hurry to visit his Lochearnhead land. This was when the report reached him that gold had been found in the bed of a burn on Leiter hill, and that hundreds, with pickaxes, spades, and shovels, were out digging for the precious metal. The discoverer of gold in this hill burn was a gold miner who had returned from Australia with a little pile, and who, therefore, ought to know what he was about. He probably did discover some grains of gold in the graA'el of that 304 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Leiter burn, but as the gold-diggers found nothing on the hillside, they charged hira with having per petrated a wicked joke upon them. The heiress of the Buchanans of Arnprior was a minor, who was being brought up and educated in England ; and had she been of age, and her estates out of the hands of trustees, her home would have been at Cambusmore, near Callander, and not at Ardoch, in Strathyre. Thus the three who represented the farthest back possessors of Balquhidder lands were constant absentees. The Macgregors were not considered absentees, for whenever it was possible for them they lived at Edinchip House, They were poor, popular, and energetic. Lanrick had left them, and so had half of the Balquhidder lands purchased by old Sir John. His son did not know how to keep what his father had won, and amiable Sir John, the grandson, was unable to retrieve damages. The great-grandson, Sir Malcolm, was a navy officer, who was always away on foreign service ; but his mother and the younger members of the family lived at Edinchip one of the three summers I was in the parish. Two years earlier the eldest daughter had married Lord Stormont, the son of the Earl of Mansfield. Indeed they were connected by many marriages with several of the highest families In the kingdom. Not only their own clan, but Highlanders of all surnames cherished a feeling of hearty goodwill to the Macgregor chiefs and all their branches. In regard to all such families, Highlanders felt as if they had a right of common interest in them. Mr David Carnegie of Stronvar bought the estate of Glenbuckie in 1846, when the last of its Stewart owners thought it safest to sell because he PROPRIETORS. 305 got into a panic about the ruinous effect which he apprehended Sir Robert Peel's free-trade policy would have on landed property of every description. He went away to act as the Duke of Argyll's factor at Campbeltown, and when the evils feared by him did not come to pass, he bought the Isle of Coll, which he left to his son. Mr Carnegie made his fortune in Scandinavia as the head of the great brewing firm at Gothenburg in Sweden. The Swedes elected the French Marshal Bemadotte to succeed the last king of their old dynasty. He reigned under the name of King John, and horrified at the excessive drinking of bad spirits distilled from turnips, potatoes, and raw grain, granted monopoly privileges to a British company for brewing porter and ale, in the hope that malt liquors would supersede illimitable drinking of spirits and so bring about comparative temperance. Teetotalism, shrewd King John knew to be out of the question. Prohibition of any kind would pot be submitted to. But the temperate Frenchman expected good results through attacking the national social evil by the indirect method of giving the Swedes a choice of liquors. As the story was told to me, the Swedes were slow in taking to the drinking of malt liquors, and for some years the Company made more losses than profits. Such was the discouragement that some of the original pro moters were glad to sell out at low prices, and Mr Carnegie's uncle, who had faith in the undertaking, bought their shares and introduced his nephew into the concern. With the advent of the nephew, prosperity set in. Mr David Carnegie was un doubtedly one of those clear-headed, high-principled, born-business men who gain honour for themselves 20 306 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. and their native land throughout the world. He married his uncle's daughter and heiress, and, when his uncle died, became the head of the firm, Mrs Carnegie was very much admired and loved by the Balquhidder people, and her death was sincerely lamented. She and her sister-in-law. Miss Jane Carnegie, were constant in quiet works of charity and kindness, which were deeply appreciated and gratefuUj' remembered. Mr Carnegie added to his first Balquhidder purchase until he left his son an estate which had formerly been divided among five or six owners. Although not a Highlander, he had the advantage of being a Scotchman who understood Scotch ways and habits of life and thinking. He saw through all things at a glance, and could not be imposed upon. But if a hard man in a deal, he was always willing to be just to his tenants. He kept a large part of his property in his own hands, and farmed it skilfully. His knowledge as a farmer taught him to understand farmers' positions, and that rents should not be run so high as not to allow of interest on farmers' capital, and a fair return for management and labour. He was descended fi:om a landed branch of the Forfarshire Carnegies, and was connected with other landed families. He was manifestly ambitious of founding a county family with an undoubtedly genuine long pedigree, and that ambition gave a foreseeing character to what he did on the lands he purchased. He. and his family spent the summers in Balquhidder, They were all lovers of rural life and enjoyments. Mr Carnegie built farmhouses and steadings on his estate, drained, fenced, planted — in short, wrote his poem on the face of the land. He fought with the ferns which spread over fine-grass hillsides when PROPRIETORS. 307 sheep succeeded cattle and houses ceased to be fern-thatched. The fern- spread afflicted the sheep with trembling disease. By constant cutting Mr Carnegie nearly conquered it. As he lived to be an octogenarian, he saw something of the beauties which his improvements gave to the naturally- beautiful scenery of a romantic district. And he gave so much employment by these improvements that day labourers from Strathyre and other places outside his estate found work and wages to support them. The old stock of tenants remained on the land which was not in his own hands, and if they had anything to complain of or any favour to ask, they could go to him with their complaints or petitions. Although Mr Angus Macdonald, bank agent, Callander, collected his rents and saw to it that the instructions he sent when away were carried out, he was practically his own factor. His large host of gardeners, shepherds, ploughmen, and day labourers grew grey and usually died in his service, except such of them as went off to better situations, which were easier for them to get because they had been trained in his employment. The only one of the Balquhidder heritors who constantly lived on his property in the parish, summer and winter, year in, year out, was Mr John Macdonald of Monachyle. His estate of Monachyle had formerly been divided into the three small separate estates of Cralgruie, Monachyle, and Glen carnaig. The three united extended to 5525 acres. It made a pretty brae estate with fine grazings and a small allotment of arable land, all of which Mr Macdonald farmed himself, as his elder brother had done before him. Their father, Mr Archibald Mac donald, with his wife, came from Glenlyon about 308 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 1780 to be tenant of Cralgruie. They brought with them some Glenlyon cattle, from which came the famous Monachyle Highland cattle herd of the first half of the next century. Archibald Macdonald larmed the land carefully, and his wife and her servant maids were diligent at their wheels, spinning flax and wool. The flax spinning was then at its height. When Cralgruie came to be sold, the tenant bought it ; but I have heard that far more of the purchase money came from the " calanas," or spinning, than from the farm. After Cralgruie was bought, things throve so well that the old people were able to place their son Donald as tenant in the much larger neighbouring farm of Monachyle. Mr Donald Macdonald was a leading stock farmer and breeder of Highland bulls and cattle in the first half of the last century. Another son, Angus, was an array officer in the great war with Napoleon, and when he retired he joined his youngest brother, John, in taking a lease of Lord Moray's 10,000 acres farm of Inverlochlarig, once tenanted by Rob Roy. Angus died unmarried, and John remained at Inver lochlarig as sole tenant until the death of his brother Donald through a dogcart accident, when he succeeded to the estate of Monachyle. He then gave up Inverlochlarig, out of which he came with a comfortable fortune, although the rent had been raised step by step much higher than can now be paid for it. He was by no means as well educated as were his two elder brothers. This was, I suppose, because he was a short-sighted, shy, and delicate child, and the Benjamin of the family. But he had learning enough for all his needs, and a great share of natural shrewdness, ajid keen observation, lurking under a genuine veil pf PROPRIETORS. 309 simplicity. Some of his hit-the-mark sayings became locally proverbial. He was a saving man, but not at all mean. I was inspector of the poor as well as schoolmaster at Balquhidder, and once or twice in sad, sudden emergencies, I had to ask help for accidentally distressed families from Monachyle in the absence of Mr Carnegie, and although the distressed were not on his property, he always gave me more than I asked for. He never mentioned his own deeds of charity, which were numerous. He Avas a Gaelic-speaking Highlander who stuck to Highland habits and traditions, and readily re cognised kith and kin near at hand or far off. One case was that of a brother of his mother, who, after having seen better days, came to the end of his means. He took this uncle of his and had him with him at Inverlochlarig as an honoured guest until he died there many years later. Two old sisters, born at Carle in Rannoch, paid him periodical visits. One, a widow with a weak-minded child, lived at Deanstoun, and the other an old spinster, lived at Ross in Glenlyon. The kinship between them and Mr Macdonald was real, but so remote that outside the Highlands it would have been ignored by the rich relative. Monachyle recognised it, hospitably received each kinswoman when she visited him, and sent her off rejoicing with a five pound note in her pocket. He was very content to live a yeoman- farmer's life at Monachyle, but was latterly induced for the sake of Dr Stewart, who was then the nephew that was to inherit his estate, to build a handsome mansion-house at Cralgruie, and to let Monachyle to Duncan Stewart, the nephew who had been his right hand in farming, and whose son, as fate decreed, became the heir to the estate in the 310 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. end, for Dr Stewart, after marrying, and living with his uncle at Cralgruie, died childless. Monachyle stuck to the homely habits and saving ways in which he had been brought up. As a landed pro prietor he was the least pretentious of the sons of men ; but he took a great pride in his career as a Highland sheep and cattle farmer. That had been his life-long employment, and it was the life which he was eminently suited for and the only one he could thoroughly enjoy. Removed from the Bal quhidder braes and transported to a town, he would certainly have found himself an exiled, lost, and miserable man. As he lived far within his income his money steadily increased. And he liked to see it grow, though it had no miser grip on his mind and he never spoke about it. While the three sons of his father, of whom he was the youngest and the longest lived, remained bachelors, the daughters all married and had families. It was a fixed idea with him, and with his elder brother before him, that the estate must go undivided to one, and if John, who was then well-advanced in years, did not marry and have children, it was arranged when Donald was dying that Dr Stewart should be the heir to the land. Fate set aside that arrangement, and John ultimately left the estate under trustees to the infant son of the nephew who had been for long years his faithful farming assistant. As for the rest of his wealth it was ever his intention to divide it equally among the other nephews and nieces, and years before his death it occurred to him that he should like to divide a large part of it among them himself out of hand, and that it would be good for them not to have to wait for their shares until he died. So he made his preparations for distribution CONDITIONS OF PARISH AND PEOPLE. 311 secretly, and invited all his nephews and nieces to come to dine with him at Cralgruie. They came not knowing what this novel gathering meant. He had the minister and his own cousin and banker, Mr Angus Macdonald, with him, and these were the only guests who knew Avhat was going to happen. After dinner Monachyle handed a cheque for £800 to each nephew and niece. He distributed that night among them a total of £16,000. Perhaps he had a thrifty eye to the saving of legacy duty, but his chief motive was to benefit his relatives in his life time. When Monachyle died another sum about equal to this one he had distributed at his dining- table was divided among them. CHAPTER XLIX. CONDITIONS OF PARISH AND PEOPLE. In 1857 the nearest railway station was at Dun blane, but the line from Dunblane to Callander was in course of construction, and when opened it brought railway communication as near as ten miles to Balquhidder Church. As long as the railway stayed at Callander, the summer visitors to Bal quhidder might still think themselves far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, in a purely romantic Highland district. But even before the passes of Leny and Glenogle were forced, profaned, and vulgarised by the Callander and Oban railway, the old was slowly giving place to the new. The occupancy of the land did not much differ from what it had been a hundred years before. There were large grazing farms, with little arable land or 312 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS, none at all worth speaking of, which took up a big portion of the area of the parish, moderate-sized, well-managed, and diligently cultivated farms in the occupancy of good tenants, crofts, and Strathyre village feus. As the old spinning industry no longer brought in a revenue, the smaller crofters had to be craftsmen or labourers to make ends meet, and had to send their children out to service. There was not much pauperism among them as long as they were blessed with health and found work to do. Before the coming of the railway, which caused renovation and the building of better houses for the accommodation of summer visitors, Strathyre village was a row of stoutly-built and slated peasant feu houses, with a good space of land attached to each, which might have been — but, except in a few cases, were not — made into excellent gardens. Over all the Highlands gardening was shamefully neglected, as it yet is in so many places. Owner ship of the feu properties often changed, but there were some who held on for three generations. Selling out took place when owners died, and what they left had to be divided among children or relatives. The resident feuars of my time were a respectable class of industrious men and women who had small independent means or were supported by wealthier friends. The village had two inns, and thereby got the nickname of Nineveh, by which it was known to drivers and drovers from Falkirk to Skye, and which its inhabitants deeply resented. They said the name was given it long ago by a traveller, who, when bound to hasten elsewhere, lost himself there for three days, not preaching repentance, but getting drunk, sleeping, and getting drunk again. Whatever abuse of drinking facilities CONDITIONS OF PARISH AND PEOPLE. 313 existed was mainly due to way-goers and the ten ants and lodgers of non-resident feuars. Resident feuars and the people of the neighbourhood were far from being habitual drinkers or frequenters of the two inns. The other two licensed places in the parish were the hotel at Lochearnhead and the Kingshouse half-way between it and Strathyre village, which owed its name and existence to General Wade's road-making, as did Kingshouse in the Black Mount, and several other places of public entertainment. The Highlands had still to be thoroughly penetrated by railways, and years after that had to elapse before railway transport and sales in central toAvns interfered with local fairs and cleared the roads and passes of the droves and herds driven southward to Falkirk trysts. Mr Robertson, minister of Callander, an erudite Highlander, as can be seen in his description of his parish in the old Statistical Account, anticipated the Wizard of the North in expressing appreciation of the scenery of Loch Katrine, the Trossachs, Loch Vennacher, Loch Lubnaig, and the Pass of Leny and Callander districts. But it was Sir Walter who made that district and Rob Roy's country known to all the world. Ever after the publication of the "Lady ofthe Lake" and "Rob Roy," many visitors from Edinburgh and Glasgow, besides pilgrims from afar, came in summer to see the glens and lakes and hills on which the revealing light of Sir Walter's genius had flashed. By -and -bye steamers were placed on Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine — much to the annoyance of superseded boatmen — and hotels were built and stage-coaches run to accommo date the ever-increasing stream of tourists. Anglers made incursions when and where they could ply 314 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. their gentle craft. Artists and wearied professional men sought out private lodgings wherever they could get them, and business men sent wives and families to Callander, or preferably to capacious farmhouses when they could be got, coming to see them on what would now be called week-end visits. In my time Balquhidder was its own Highland self in winter, while in summer it came much in contact with the outside world. In the winter of 1858 or '59, however, on a sunny winter's day when the whole landscape was white with snow, and Ice covered lochs and streams, Balquidder was shaken out of its repose for a moment by the unexpected passing through of a very distinguished personage in the Duke of AthoU's open boat -carriage. This was the Empress Eugdnie, the half-Spanish, half- Scotch, and at that time wholly beautiful consort of Napoleon III. She had come to visit the country of her maternal ancestors, the Kirkpatricks, as a private person, and wished to be as little noticed as possible in her winter wanderings. Word was sent to me to put on good fires in all the rooms of my house, as the Empress was to come to see Rob Roy's grave a few hours later, and might wish to warm herself at a fireside while the horses had a feed of corn and a short rest. The order was obeyed, but for some reason the Empress gave up the visit to Rob Roy's grave, and the horses stopped at Kings- house, where a small gathering of parishioners saluted her respectfully, who afterwards raved about her good looks and especially of her glorious hair, which, when the sunlight shone upon it, lit up into a halo of gold. Poor lady, what trials and sorrows were in store for her ! How irapossible it was then for her or anybody to foresee the tragical end of the CONDITIONS OF PARISH AND PEOPLE. 315 Napoleonic dynasty and the calamities which France had to go through ! Speaking of artist visitors in the Highlands, I met at Fortingall, besides other aspirants who after wards became well-known, Mr then, in days to come. Sir John Millais. He came on his marriage tour to visit his brother, Mr William MUlais, who was then painting AUt-da ghob, a burn which from high up the hill top all down to the river Lyon is one white chain of cascades in rainy weather, and which in all weathers attracts the attention of everyone who has an eye for scenery. Handsome young Mr Millais was at that time too much wrapt up in his art and his bride to have much to say on other matters. The Pass of Glenlyon impressed him much. He walked up the hill to have a look at Sithchallion from a distance, but when he returned it was not of the mountain he spoke but of a flowering plant which grew abundantly on the Fortingall grazings at Fanduie, This was the misnamed Grass of Parnassus, a plant he had never seen before, and which, I believe, he afterwards introduced into one or more of his pictures. Fionnsgoth (the lovely flower) is the Gaelic name, and a beautiful flower it is, whose place among the orders of plants is difficult to determine, although it has been assigned to the saxifrages. At Balquhidder I had Mr Waller Paton lodging with me one summer, while he was making an oil painting of the waterfall above the Church yard — bought when finished by Mr Carnegie — and many exquisite water-colour sketches of other places. He gave me one of these water-colours, which I have ever since highly prized. It is a capital sketch of the main valley taken from a place east of the manse and looking westward to the blue-purpled 316 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. brae hills. What a wonderful facility he had for knocking off in a short time an artistic and faith fully true sketch of land and sky and light and shade. But he had little of the poetic mysticism and creative power of his more famous brother, Mr, afterwards Sir, Noel Paton, Their sister, Mrs D. 0. Hill, took a considerable rank among sculptors. Their father was a splendid designer in his day, and an out and out admirer of Queen Mary, a collector of curios and old furniture, and what perhaps had more than all to do with giving a special colouring to the varied gifts of his artistic family, a fully convinced Swedenborgian. There was also a strong Celtic source of hereditary inspiration on the mater nal side. The maternal grandfather of these gifted people was a native of Glenlyon, Archibald Mac diarmid, who was a schoolmaster in Atholl, and married a daughter of Rob Ban Robertson, who was a near relation of the Struan chiefs. Archibald Macdiarmid could not paint pictures, but he could make as well as sing Gaelic songs. It seems to me that Sir Noel Baton's poetry, fairy and allegorical pictures, and Arthurian chivalry tendencies reveal Celtic heredity. The only things the Kirkton of Balquhidder had in common with the general run of clachan villages were the church, churchyard, and school buildings. In my days there were only four dwelling-houses, the farmer's, the schoolmaster's, the gardener's — formerly an inn — and the cottage occupied by a weaver's widow and her mason son. The old school buildings were situated on the top of the bank above the road, and so close to the churchyard wall that Rob Roy's grave was within a few yards of my kitchen window. They were old buildings, and CONDITIONS OF PARISH AND PEOPLE. 317 would have been unsightly, too, if ivy, roses, and tropseolum, and a good position had not redeemed them. The schoolroom, which had two bedrooms over it, was fitter for condemnation than the dwell ing-house, which had four bedrooms upstairs, and downstairs a good room, kitchen, and small closet. Mr Carnegie, soon after I left, caused new up-to- date school buildings to be erected on another site, and the old ones were completely obliterated. So the part of the churchyard wall which they screened was laid open to view. The old church and church yard were exceedingly well placed on elevated ground, but in an over-crowded space. When Mr Carnegie gave the parish the fine new church, he added new land to the crowded space, had gravel walks made, and used brain and money to make the Balquhidder burial and worship-place the finest of its kind anywhere to be found. If any sweet, romantic spot in splendid scenery could make one in love with death, this Balquhidder churchyard should do it sooner than any country churchyard I have ever seen in Scotland or England, and I have seen not a few that had various strong charms of their own. 318 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER L. ANOTHER REMOVE. I HAD, for three years, a pleasant time of it in Balquhidder, amidst lovely Highland scenery and a kindly people. After my Fortingall experience, it was not oppressive work to teach a school of seventy children, and as the parish was a compact one, the inspectorship of the poor was not such a heavy adjunct to the school work as it would have been in a wider district. The outside paupers in Glasgow and Stirling and two or three lunatics gave a little more trouble than the decent old bodies resident in the parish. My income was sufficient for my needs, and left a margin for buying books and other purposes. I had spare time for a good deal of miscellaneous reading in the school season, and during the vacation I did a lot of walking among the hills and of gathering traditional lore and infor mation from kirk -session records and other sources. The Perthshire Advertiser got most ofthe gatherings I thus made. For about ten years I was a rather profuse contributor of local history articles and antiquarian notes to the Advertiser, and occasionally of other literary stuff to other publications. These vacation and spare-time amusements of mine led to my being suddenly, and in a manner undreamed of and wholly unsought by me, launched into English journalism. My friend, Mr Sprunt, editor of the Advertiser, had been editor of the Bradford Observer, and had afterwards kept up friendly and ANOTHER REMOVE. 319 professional connection with Mr William Byles, proprietor of that paper. Mr Byles wrote to Mr Sprunt that he was in want of an editor, and asked if he could recommend one for the situation. Mr Sprunt sent him my name, coupled with higher praise than deserved. So, one day, I was surprised by getting two letters, one from Perth and one from Bradford, telling about the correspondence which had taken place without my knowledge, and offering me the situation. I felt flattered by the unasked offer, and having crossed the hill to Killin and con sulted with my friend, Mr Charles Stewart, Tigh'n- Duin, I resolved to accept it. When I look back I cannot help wondering at the fact that I owed all the situations I ever held to the extraneous and ultroneous action of friends. I must have been constitutionally deficient in self-pushing energy and initiative, and yet I had my full share of fighting spirit when principles and circumstances called for its display. As Mr Sprunt assured me, and as I found afterwards to be the case, the Observer was then, and remained for the next many years, a moderate organ of old Whig principles. There was only one thing on which Mr Byles and I could not agree, and that was the question of the national recognition of religion. He was far from being an ardent member of the Liberation Society, and far from being blind to the enormous value of the religious and educational work which was being done by the Church of England, but he belonged by birth, training, and conviction, to the old religious Independents, and now and then let articles written by Dissenting ministers and professors go into the paper. We agreed to disagree on this matter, and I never was asked or expected to write on this 320 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. subject. A long and intimate acquaintance with Mr Byles caused me to look up to him as an ideal type of the sincerely-religious, high-principled, and unusually tolerant and broad-minded Puritans of the nineteenth century. Having agreed to go to Bradford, what remained for me to do at Balquhidder was to give timely notice of resignation to heritors and parochial board, to have a sale, and to wind up my small affairs in Scotland. The two offices vacated by me were filled before I left, and so there was no hitch in regard to school or poor. My successor was session-clerk, as I and all the teachers before me had been, but the poor inspectorship was then separated from the schoolmastership. It was with a sharp wrench that I went away from beautiful Balquhidder and the kindly people among whom I had enjoyed three years of restful and happy life, free from care, and passing rich on £100 a year. CHAPTER LI. OFF TO ENGLAND. December, 1860, was a month of severe wintry weather. Having spent the previous night with my hospitable friend, Mr Alexander Macdonald, the &rmer of Cambusmore, I took the morning train at Callander when the sun was shining on whitened hiUs and vales, and ice-bound lochs and streams. In the south snow was falling again before I crossed the Tweed — -for the first time. The low and dreary Northumbrian coast, under its snow sheet, I felt depressive, and such is the force of first impressions OFF TO ENGLAND. 321 that when many times in years to come I saw it in summer sunshine, something still of the old feeling remained. With the exception of Whitby and Scarborough I never could muster up admiration for any other part of the east coast of England. The West Highland coast had spoiled me, and until I saw the Devonshire and Cornwall hills rising over the British Channel I quite underestimated the many attractions which others find on the English sea coasts. At York, where there was an hour's stoppage, I saw the Cathedral in pale moonlight flecked partly by gaslight, and the massiveness of the building left an image of such vastness in my mind, that after wards when I saw the grand minster in broad day light, and inspected it in and out, I was disappointed unreasonably with its exterior, while I thought I could not admire its interior too much. Such was the effect of a delusive yet tenacious first impression. I would have stopped that night at York had I known that I should have to freeze for long hours at Normanton, which had then but a miserable station. Between leaving Callander and next morn ing looking down from the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway station on Bradford in its forked valley, twenty-four hours had gone by. It was weary travelling, especially south of the Tweed, be cause of many stoppages, darkness, and inclement weather. I was glad enough to get a wash and breakfast at the first inn I came to in Bradford, which happened to be an unpretentious old aud comfortable one, close to the station. Railway companies had not then taken to building and running station hotels. 21 322 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Although for a quarter of a century railway making had made prodigious progress, in 1860 most of the criss-cross lines by which the manufacturing and mining districts were later on chequered like a Highland plaid or chessboard had yet to be made. So the jointing loops connecting trunk lines were few and far between, and with uncertain train con nections, stoppages were inevitable. The trunk lines themselves were waiting for straightening, extensions, and completions. In country districts coaches and carriers continued still to ply their vocations as of old, and the canals of the eighteenth century continued to carry coal, wool, timber, build ing stones, and minerals much as before. Roadside inns with their bright fires, rounds of corned beef, and foaming tankards were scarcely yet conscious that they were doomed to be superseded except in some few obscure and thinly inhabited places. The canals of the eighteenth century had, by facilitating transport, given an enormous impetus to trade, the building of towns and mills, and helped also to make railway construction easier than it otherwise would have been. And at the back of the canalization facilities of transport came the revolution of industry caused by Arkright's spinning machine. Watt's steam engine, the use of the power loom, and all the long train of subsequent inventions. The old handicraft trades were swamped by the new inven tions, and the new order much amounted to this, that men, women, and children should be adjuncts to machinery. Hence the Luddite riots, which preceded the Chartist movement, and the more orderly and better organised trade-unionism of the time when I fir.st went to England. PART III. JOURNALISTIC PART III- JOURNALISTIC. CHAPTER LII. IN BRADFORD. With literary work I had been long acquainted, but I had a good many things to learn about the office work on which I now entered in Bradford. Mr Byles, however, helped me over technical stiles, and his and his family's kindness made me feel from the first much at home in my new location. I got comfortable lodgings in Springfield Place, and never changed them until, on marriage, I took a newly- built house on the road between Peel Park and the Undercliffe Cemetery — a hilltop, airy situation, with a varied outlook. My dear wife, Mary Catherine Aspinall, and I were married at Horton Lane Chapel on the 31st of March, 1864, by Dr J. R. CampbeU, in the presence of a cloud of witnesses. My fair young bride was twenty-one years old in the previous December, and two months after that I saw my thirty-sixth birthday. The Bradford of the sixties was very different from the Bradford, say, of 1900. A process of extension and of transformation had, indeed, been going on since the beginning of the railway era, if not earlier. Extension was visible in the new tentacular streets which connected Manningham, Bowling, and Horton with the Bradford overlooked by the Parish Church of St. Peter's. Architectural 326 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. advance was visible in Peel Square, St. George's Hall, and some other business buildings, dwelling- houses, and places of worship. But the great architectural transformation, rectification of streets, covering of offensive becks, and getting rid of the stinking canal, which had served its day, were yet mostly all to come. Peel Park, indeed, had been acquired and well laid out before 1860, but its young trees required years to grow before its beauties couid be developed. The nobly wooded Manning- ham Hall Park was, until many years later, the property and residence of Mr S. C. Lister, afterwards Lord Masham, whose inventions made many men's fortunes besides his own. The smaller public parks were not yet thought of or desired. New wants grew with the town's growth and its wealth and dense population. When on the morning of my arrival, I first looked down on Bradford with its mills, workshops, and dwellings pouring out black smoke amidst the hilly, snow-white scenery, I was surprised to see that most of its buildings were covered, not by slates as in Scotch towns, but by weather-beaten sandstone flags, which in many instances had weathered the gales and storms for hundreds of years. Like the iron and coal which gave life to the adjacent foundries of Bowling and Lowmoor, the sandstone quarries helped to enrich the place, and furnished the best possible building material for the wonderful extension and architec tural transformation which were just beginning. Bradford had, before I ever saw it, made itself in the manufacturing line the capital of the worsted trade, while Leeds had gone in for broadcloth, and Halifax for carpets. The first attempt to add fabrics made from alpaca w to the original worsted IN BRADFORD. 327 trade ended in disappointment, because the machinery which suited the wool's natural curl did not at all suit the different one of alpaca. It was, I was told, a Highlander of the name of Mackenzie who finally invented means to overcome the difficulty. He did not live to reap the benefit of his Invention, which was bought on terms that would have been sure to enrich him had his life been prolonged, by Mr Titus Salt, who, after having built the great mill and handsome village of Saltaire by the profits made from alpaca manufacturing, of which he and some associates had at first a practical monopoly, w^s created a baronet. The crinoline fashion, introduced or at least patronised by the Empress Eugenie, brought much gain to Bradford and to all the worsted manufacturing villages and hill and glen mills which sold their goods in Bradford market. After that, the civil war in America, which caused starvation in Lancashire, enriched the worsted district. I knew a Bradford tinsmith who made a modest fortune by furnishing blockade-runners with watertight cases, which, filled with goods, were sunk at appointed places on the coasts of the Confederate States, and which when taken up and emptied were filled with cotton, sunk as before, and then taken up again by the blockade-runners. In this enterprise it was said Wesley-an manufacturers had more success than others, because they were better served by their co-religionists and agents on the other side. In the flush of worsted district advancing prosperity, the ambition of invading the Continent seized upon Bradford's great inventor, " Sam Lister," on whom in advanced age the title of Lord Masham was tardily bestowed in recognition of the fact that he was truly one of his country's 328 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. most remarkable captains of industry in the nine teenth century. He set up manufacturing works in the north of France and in Saxony which in the end turned out to be more profitable to others than they were to himself CHAPTER LIIL RAMBLING ETHNOLOGICAL REMARKS. Ancient Britons, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Nor wegians, Danes, and Normans, were well shaken to gether and compounded to form the English nation. In rural and inland districts that composition re mained substantially unaltered from the death of King Henry, the Conqueror's youngest son. In 1136, to 1800. The mixture varied in different localities. From Kent to Leith on the whole of the east coast of Great Britain, the Teutonic, Scandinavian, Frisian, and Danish element undoubtedly so markedly predomin ated that the aboriginal British element almost appeared to have been eliminated, which, however, could scarcely have been the case. Wessex also was pretty thoroughly Saxonised, and its kings were able to extend their sway over nearly all modern England, and to impose their language, by degrees, on their whole dominions. But Wales remained independent, and Devonshire, Cornwall, and Cumberland, and Westmoreland and Lancashire also, did not lose their native British population. On the West side, from the Channel to the rock of Dumbarton, the British element remained as pre dominant as the non-Celtic element was on the island's other side. How was it that the ancient RAMBLING ETHNOLOGICAL REMARKS, 329 Britons of the west side of the country so early adopted the language of their Saxon rulers, when they themselves continued to be the people of these districts much as they had been under the higher civilisation of Roman domination ? Well, it is a characteristic of all the large branches of the Celtic stock to be able to acquire foreign languages with much facility, and to be proud of that gift of theirs, while it is otherwise with more stolid and stable descendants of the followers of Hengist and Horsa. During the Roman domination many of the ancient Britons had, no doubt, learned to speak and write the language of their rulers, and to neglect their own. A Saxonised Church was at the back of King Alfred, and of his less civilised and very truculent predecessors. But here it is to be noted that Alfred's language, once nationalised, held its ground firmly against a further overwhelming change. Although after the Conquest Norman French was, for upwards of three centuries, the language of court, feudal nobility, and legislation, Saxon stolidity, with its immovable tenacity, has to be thanked for giving the British Empire the language of Shakespeare. Upon Saxon stability, solidly resting upon limited practical aims and upon Celtic restlessness, backed by boundless imagination and initiative potentialities, the Norman Conquest deeply impressed the seal of cementing feudal order. Before, their common faith more than secular organisation, was the bond of union between badly amalgamated races with discordant traditions. The Church founded by Augustine and Paullnus was arrogant from the beginning. It absorbed the work of the lona missionaries in Northumbria, and trampled on the feelings and rights of the bishops 330 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. and clergy of the old British Church, but it breathed into the races possessing England a sort of con solidating unity. Setting aside the numerous and widely variegated incomers of recent time, and excepting the dalesmen of old Danish descent who still retain marked ancestral characteristics, there are not many among the native people of the West Riding of Yorkshire belonging to the white-skinned, fair-haired, blue- eyed type that Pope Gregory said should not be called Angles but Angels. The prevalent type everywhere is that of medium-sized, dark-eyed, brown or black-haired, alert and energetic people. This is particularly the case in the district which includes Leeds, Bradford, and Halifax, with their dependent townships, villages, and glens. Charlotte Bronte has embalmed, in her wonderful stories, the dialect of the English language which was spoken over that whole district in her time, and is yet spoken pretty largely, although board school teaching is killing it by degrees. It retained onJ the face of it marks of high antiquity. But language can pass from race to race like the bird from bush to bush ; and, as said already, the Celtic races have always been ready learners of new languages. They have proved this in Great Britain and Ireland. Race types are a very different thing. The Brigantes of Yorkshire, who sent a colony called the " Clan Breogan " to Ireland, probably in the time of Agricola, were submerged under Latin domination, Saxon rule, and Norman feudalism, but if one can judge from the looks of the native in habitants of the West Riding, descendants of the submerged Brigantes always retained their position as the people of that part of the country, and in last century became masterfully resurgent. THE GREAT CHANGE AND ITS CAUSES. 331 CHAPTER LIV. THE GREAT CHANGE AND SOME OF ITS CAUSES. In 1860 and years thereafter there were thousands and tens of thousands still living in the West Riding of Yorkshire and in Lancashire whose fathers and mothers belonged to the end of the old industrial period, when wool and cotton were wheel-spun round household fires and the yarn woven on hand- looms. The spinning jenny and other inventions caused manufacturing mills to be put up on rlA'ers and becks, but the change was gradual until the steam engine and the power loom crushed out the old handicraft trades, and led to the Luddite riots, which were exceedingly foolish, and withal very natural. The ignorant rioters were kicking against the prick of fateful progress, but they were in their futile way fighting for that individual freedom which they feared, with reason, would be lost under the new mechanical dispensation. Trade-unionism cannot be said to have restored individual freedom ; it has merely counteracted the power of capital by a power of combination adverse to individual freedom. Socialism of the present day kind would put an end to individual freedom altogether. Canals and roads first facilitated transports, and facilitated means of transport, made the almost intact mineral wealth of the country more available and profitable. Then came railways and steamers to complete the transformation. If we say the great change began to make itself somewhat freely felt in 332 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 1780, we can add with confidence that it conquered before 1860. It inevitably involved a corresponding revolution in political and municipal affairs. Mining districts attracted large populations. New towns started into existence, small old towns grew into big cities, and, on the contrary, cities and towns of historical renown in purely rural regions fell into decadence. The radically altered relations of town and country, in respect to both population and wealth, necessitated large constitutional and muni cipal reforms, and made the maintenance of the Com Laws in war time form untenable, before the Irish potato famine gave Sir Robert Peel an acci dental excuse for sweeping them away. Later experience has shown that the Cobden-Brlght dream of free trade all round was nothing better than a gross delusion, and that it would have been wise to have retained a small corn duty as a weapon of defence against foreign countries which shut out British Trade by tariff walls, and also as a means for consolidating the British Empire by giving a little preference to the produce of colonies and dependencies. The new start given to British industry and commerce at the end of the eighteenth century, by improved machinery and ever-increasing facilities of transport, would have received a terrible back-set had Napoleon managed to ferry over the Channel the army of invasion he had gathered at Boulogne. His conquering ambition was thwarted by the British fleet, which, besides protecting the coasts of our tight little islands, maintained throughout the long Titanic struggle the sovereignty of the sea. The Berlin Decree, by Avhich Napoleon Intended to shut British trade out of the EurojDean Continent, THE GREAT CHANGE AND ITS CAUSES. 333 although detrimental, was never so effective as he wanted it to be. How could it when he had not enough of naval power to shut even all the French ports against British trade, and when running his insufficient blockades became a sporting and profit able profession to daring smugglers ? French hold in India was lost. The seizure of Egypt and Syria could not be made good, and the mastery of the Mediterranean was not his. With all the oceans and seas of the world in general free, British commerce found new outlets while the war was still going on and its issue still doubtful. Out of the hard struggle by land and sea our country emerged with enhanced reputation, enlarged posses sions, and a heavy burden of debt. That burden of debt had its full compensation In the escape from invasion and the other advantages already referred to. The escape fi-om invasion secured the undis turbed progress of industries, while on the Continent industries were ravaged, except so far as they administered to war purposes. Confidence and credit were for a time almost destroyed and it required a long period after peace came to repair damages, and to learn from us, whose industrial progress had not been disturbed, how to utilise material resources, and to adopt new means for changed conditions of production and commerce. No doubt the depression which always follows inflated war prices was, with bad harvests, severely felt by a large section of our people for ten years or more after Waterloo, which depression was further accentuated by the trying way in which the collec tive steam-power dispensation was crushing out the old handicraft individualism. But all the time trade was expanding and wealth Avas almost magic- 334 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. ally accumulating in the hands of those who were in a position to take advantage of the chances opened to them by the new industrial reform, or who possessed properties or shops in growing towns. So when the time came for making railways, and for covering the seas with steamers, there was plenty of money available for these undertakings. It was long ere other countries could overtake the start before them which, owing to these causes, and the reliable, steady, and forecasting character of our people, British industry had gained on them. The Manchester school of political economists were right enough in agitating for the abolition of the war time Corn Laws, but time has proved their dream of world-wide free trade a grim delusion, and that a rigid adherence to free imports had its drawbacks when it obstructed British Empire consolidation and gave tariff-fenced States an undue advantage in our unfenced markets. CHAPTER LV. STRANGERS WITHIN THE GATES. The industrial revolution everywhere led to a vast disturbance and new assortment of population. Country people deprived of their domestic industries flocked to the manufacturing mills and to the mining and ironwork localities. In the Bradford district the revolution seemingly worked itself out up to about 1830 more gradually than in the majority of similar cases. In this district the old communities were, till the time mentioned, half rural. Bradford itself was surrounded with small STRANGERS WITHIN THE GATES. 335 farms, all of which are now covered with streets, roads, railways, and buildings, or as parks dedicated to urban amenity and recreation. Sanitation did not proceed pari passu with enlargement. The formerly clean waters of becks were polluted, and the necessity came for bringing pure water supply from afar. The canal connecting Bradford with Shipley was a stinking sink before it was remedied, and so was the beck in the valley before it was covered in, as earlier had been done with its tributary rivulets which passed through the town, and which old people said they saw running clear and bordered with banks beautified by wild flowers. As far up as Keighley the river Aire itself was so polluted that trout could not live in it. The whole district is hilly and naturally attractive, even to a Highlander, but it got sadly spoiled by smoke-laden atmosphere and polluted waters before energetic, costly, and, to a large degree, effective means were taken to remedy what had grown into intolerable evils, and to restore to the scenery a part of what God had originaUy bestowed upon it. The earliest incomers were from the rural districts of the West Riding itself. They were the same in race dialect and habits as the native population. Next came others from both the north and south of England to try their luck in a place which offered many chances. So far the gathering muster was almost exclusively English. After 1830 the flowing-in stream changed its character a good deal. Scotchmen, Irish, and Germans poured in, first in driblets, and then in large numbers. In 1860, Mr Robert MiUigan, the head of one of the largest merchant firms in the town, kept in his lobby at Acacia, with honest pride, the travelling 336 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. merchant's pack with which he had began his strictly honourable and exceptionally successful career in England. Other Scotchmen of the past generation were then leading merchants, manu facturers, doctors, ministers, professors, teachers, and shopkeepers, or trusted officials in various kinds of employment. With their better education and, as a rule, prudent conduct, the Scotch incomers had good chances of prospering. They made them selves respected. So did the Germans whether they belonged to the Teutonic race or the ubiquitous race of Jacob. The Scotch mingled, as they were sure to do, with the native population, and kept their names and numbers, but after the defeat of France and the founding of the German Empire, many of the sons of the Fatherland, taking with them the commercial and mechanical knowledge they a,cquired in England, returned home to take part in the fierce trade rivalry which has since been going on between their country and ours. It is a probable supposition that when the primitive race of cave dwellers who have left so many traces behind them, came into our land, there was a broad dry land connection between England and France at the Strait of Dover, and another between Scotland and Ireland at the promontory of Cantyre. On this supposition the United Kingdom in a far off era would have been an antler-like horn of the European continent. But as far back as we have any gleam of historic light to guide us. Great Britain and the Lesser Britain, or Ireland, were separate islands as they are now, and the diverse races which founded our composite nation came in at successive periods by sea. Ireland and Alba — or Scotland — north of the firths of Forth and Clyde STRANGERS WITHIN THE GATES. 337 escaped the Roman Empire rule to which the rest of Great Britain had to submit. It is likely that they were places of asylum to British fugitives who rebelled against Roman rule, or had committed crimes which put their lives in peril from Roman justice. The Romans meditated the conquest of Ireland, but the intention was never carried out. The subjection df that country to England in the reign of Henry II. was brought about, not by Saxons, but by Norman and Welsh adventurers, who, in a generation or two, became more Irish than the Irish themselves. The conquest and settlement of Ulster, and the " strike down the Amalekltes " of Cromwell, might, Avith more truth, be called the " Saxon Conquest." It is a strange fact that the early conquest was nominally carried out with Papal warrant to bring Ireland under corhplete subjection to the Holy See, and that the latter conquest was nominally intended to make Ireland a Protestant country. Irish politics got curiously twisted with Irish religion. Had the audaciously priest-predicted son been given to Mary Tudor, and the anti-Protestant policy of her reign been continued with success under her successor, it is more than likely that Ireland would have become ultra-Protestant. As matters otherwise turned out, Ireland fought for Catholicism and the cause of expelled James II. and his successors. For all the bitter hatreds begotten by race and religious differences, plottings, rebellions, and suppressions thereof, the Irish did their share as soldiers, sailors, colonists, and daring adventurers in defending and extending the British Empire. The pacific invasion of England by masses of Irish working people, who came to stay, commenced in 22 338 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. last century, when the industrial revolution was pretty far advanced. Previously there used to come bands of harvesters, men and women, who returned home with the wages they had earned in England when the crops were gathered in. Rail way construction, mining, manufacturing, caused by degrees many of them to take up permanent residence among the " Saxons." Next foUowed the dispersion which the potato famine time enforced, and ever after the Irish invasion of England assumed, in places, a conquering aspect. In the worsted district, however, the Irish incomers found themselves submerged amidst a native population that always could, and always calmly did, hold the first place. Divided between Church of England and Dissenting Churches, that population was very Protestant, and yet very tolerant. As far as I am aware, there was not, before the incoming of the Irish, a single Catholic place of worship in the whole parish of Bradford, which was of far wider extent than the area of the town. Church and Dissent, while fighting between themselves on other questions, were united in defence of the Revolution Settlement and the Protestant Faith. The Irish incomers had to put up with the Gunpowder Plot annual satur nalia ofthe Sth of November, when the youth ofthe town and district Indulged in a sportive riot of crackers and bonfires which often led to police court cases, and sometimes produced serious injuries, or ended in tragedies. But, on the other hand, they could be a little riotous themselves on St. Patrick's Day, and noisy enough at municipal and Parlia mentary elections. From Ulster and Dublin came Orangemen who, although comparatively few in number, exercised counteracting influence as men of STRANGERS WITHIN THE GATES. 339 a much higher standard of acquired knowledge and superior social status. As a body, the Catholic Irishmen sympathised with all the separatist and rebellious proceedings of their people at home, and, when they got them, gave their votes to the English candidates for seats in Parliament who promised the biggest surrender. But in every-day life and conduct they were a hard-working, orderly, warm-hearted, lovable people, who attended well to their family and religious duties, and sent a good deal of the money they earned to old parents and needy friends they left behind them in Ireland. Under the provocation of what they had just cause to consider a gross attack on the Catholic Church, they got up a tre mendous riot, when the Frenchman called Baron de Camin came to hold open-air meetings in Bradford, at which to denounce papal policy, Jesuit intrigues, and alleged immoralities of continental monks and nuns. But they learned moderation and respect for freedom of speech from their surroundings and the manner in which their most Radical friends and allies resented the mobbing of Baron de Camin, whose worst allegations were mere echoes of the language used by the anti-clericals of France, Italy, and Spain. Having learned by sharp experience that to get they must give toleration, and that in respect to freedom of speech and action within the wide limits of law there was a broad difference between Bradford and Cork, they kept prudently quiet when Gavazzi thundered to a crowded audience against the Church from which he had openly revolted, belauded Cavour and Mazzini, crowned Garibaldi with the hero chaplet of Italian patriotism, and in floods of stirring eloquence advocated the complete unity and independence of the whole 340 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Italian peninsula, which in a short time afterwards came to be effected. Those of the young people from Ireland who entered into ' domestic service quickly learned their various duties, and, remaining true to their Church, assimUated themselves with their new environment, and, in a manner reminding one of Highland clan nishness, attached themselves to the families they served. When we married, my young wife brought with her as our servant, Kate Carty, from Nenagh, Tipperaray, who had been servant to her father and mother for three years. Kate and her young mistress were of the same age. They had been girls together, and had, under Mrs Aspinall's super vision, gone through the same excellent English domestic training. Kate remained with us for seventeen years. She went with us to the Cape, came back with us to England, and when we came from England to Inverness, she accompanied us, and stopped with us until her mother, getting helpless by age and infirmity, called her home to her birth place in a manner which a dutiful and affectionate only daughter felt at once bound to obey. She saved while in our service a good bit over a hundred pounds, which she took to Ireland with her, and yet she had been annually paying out of her not-exorbitant wages the rent of her mother's little house and holding. Her day of departure was a day of sorrow to my wife and myself, and, stiU more so, to our large group of young children, who looked upon her as a permanent and indispens able member of the family. She had been like a sort of second mother to them all, but the boys were her special favourites. She took one of them out to the Cape, and two of them home, and these first THE NATIVE POPULATION. 341 two were her special favourites until a younger boy worked himself forward into the front rank, by promis ing to adopt her as his daughter. In telling them the story of her early Irish hfe, and how the death of her father had left her an orphan, four years old, Willie cried out — " Kate, I'll be your father." That infantile promise of paternal protection tickled Kate's fancy, ; but the little boy took a rather artful advantage of the position, lie had so easily gained. When, she had to refuse any of his requests or to rebuke his restlessness, he got round her by the threat — "Kate, Ifll not be your father." CHAPTER LVL THE NATIVE POPULATION. I HAD abundant opportunities between 1860 and 1880 of seeing at close quarters how firmly the natives of the Bradford worsted district kept their predominant position, and came to the conclusion that as long as they remained the same in character as they then were, they would ncA'er lose strength nor be. submerged. They had passed, ere I saw them, through the severe ordeal of the industrial revolution which superimposed the collectivism of the big steam-engine mills and other works upon the individualism of the handicraft arts which their forbears combined with small farming pursuits. It was a painful trial to conform to an order of things which made men and women and children slaves to machinery instead of retaining the skilful mastery of simple tools, with the individual or family freedom which they had before. After a few 342 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. ructions and riots they saw they had no chance but to conform, and that in the matter of work and wages the revolution would have its compensations. They yielded to necessity, but their surrender was not unconditional, because they brought into the new order as much as possible of hereditary habits and moral ideals. With imperturbable unconscious ness they spliced the new order with the old in a manner which was as conservatively wholesome as it was, in some of its aspects, singular to behold. Was it not, for Instance, a remarkable thing that long after Bradford had a population of over a hundred thousand, it should not ha\'e a single bakery, because its housewives had continued the ancestral habit of baking their own home-made bread, than which no better bread could be found anywhere ? Between Bradford and Skipton there were many thousands of garden allotments worked diligently and profitably by working men In their leisure hours. And in a corner of the allotment was often found, snugly housed and much cared for, the family pig, which, when fattened and killed, Avas cured and converted into fine bacon with all the skill which had come down from days of old. After having been to church or chapel fathers and mothers, with their children, could be seen making Sunday visits to the allotment gardens to see how the pig, the pot vegetables, and the flowers were growing, and to hold there. In fine weather, their little pic-nlcs. Such a firm hold had the majority of the native operatives kept on the arts pertaining to rural life, that at home or in the colonies " back to the land " would have well suited them if they saw advantage in the change. THE NATIVE POPULATION. 343 The practical and seemingly harsh outer crust of native Yorkshire character covers a large store of soft inner virtues, domestic affection, lovingkind- ness, self-denial, noble aspiration, and high idealism not wholly of this world. Castes and classes may and do arrange themselves under different banners, but are at bottom united by hereditary habits, common ideas of right and wrong, national patriotism, and conservative instincts which can be disowned but never entirely shaken off. These qualities helped the working classes of the worsted district to pass through the ordeal of the industrial revolution with wonderfully little damage to family life and the moral training connected therewith. Factory Acts have brought about a vast improve ment, but, I fear, mill work can never be made thoroughly conducive 'to the cultivation of the higher domestic virtues, including the relation of parents aud children and the habits, arts, and amenities which throw a halo round household hearths. Honour and grateful thanks, however, are due to the sturdily stable working people of the past who bore the first dislocating brunt of the bewildering industrial revolution without demoralis ation, and who managed so well to splice the old with the new as to preserve moral, social, and national continuity. One must take it for being in obverse accordance with their hard grit and naturally noble race that the Yorkshire man or woman who takes to an evil course will keep on it resolutely and defiantly, and be evil indeed, yet with streaks of goodness now and then bursting out. If the worst housed and most crowded parts of Bradford, Bingley, Keighley, and the surrounding villages should be called slums, 344 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. these slums, in my time, were far more inhabited by low class and poor strangers, than by natives who, as loafers, drunkards, thieves, and prostitutes, had fallen out of the native ranks. The comparative smallness of the native race fringe of worthlessness and criminalism could be partly accounted for on mere race grounds, and very much on grounds of family and religious training, which helped to, steady the young lads and lasses who earned wages that made them prematurely independent. What they did, as a rule, was to marry early, and to begin housekeeping on the sensible lines they had learned from their parents. The young couples often had ambitions which they strove hard to realise, and they often succeeded in doing so, and going even far beyond their most sanguine expectations. Ambition to rise was not useless when it failed to attain its material object, for it strengthened self-respect and self-control and promised well for the children of parents who missed the material advance they had qualified themselves to deserve. The best of the men who rose to wealth from little or nothing did not ignore their poor relations, nor fail, if they were reliable, to give them chances for bettering them selves. The crops of children consequent on early marriages kept the vital statistics all, right, and ensured steady increase to the native people, of whom, through personal acquaintance, I formed a much higher estimate than the one I. had got from Charlotte and Emily Bronte's novels. The grim- looking old father of the gifted sisters was, for. several years after I went to Bradford, stUl living, like Ossian after the Feinne, in the wind-swept mountain -top parsonage at Haworth. His daughters and his gifted, errant son could scarcely have got RELIGION. 345 their genius fi:om him ; but Emily seems to have inherited his fierceness of character. Charlotte, fortunately for lasting preservation, caught up the dialect before it sustained any damage or showed the marks of coming decay, which, in my time, were slowly making themselves visible under the influence of pulpit, press, and School Board English. But if it is doomed to die it will yet take some generations of gradual killing before it will quite cease to be spoken, and when it ceases to be spoken it will be embalmed In a great deal of local literature, as well as in the Bronte novels. CHAPTER LVIL RELIGION. Solemn Sunday rest with cessation of work came once a week to the Bradford district. It was preceded on Saturday by a great house cleaning, and washing of persons likewise from the grime of six days' labour. The many places of worship were well attended by men, women, and children in their best clothes. The line of demarcation between Church and Dissent was much more broadly marked in things civil than in matters of faith. Excluding the recently imported Irish Roman Catholics and some minor sects, the whole population might well be said to wear the same decided Protestant brand. Dissenters had to justify the continuance of separa tism by exaggerating small points of difference, manufacturing fancy grievances as soon as the old real ones disappeared, and by carefully raking to gether the embers of ancient feuds which once were 346 reminiscences and reflections. of importance, but which had been, in course of time, deprived of sensible meaning. The Church, assailed without by the Liberation Society and its train of strangely assorted Roman Catholic and Secularist auxiliaries, was, at the same time, beginning to be troubled within by the ritualism which was, in the main, the natural reaction to rationalism, and in some cases, too, the outcome of individual petty arrogance or the desire to create sensations, and to pander to the theatrical and superstitious tastes of society ladies, or to appeal to the element of mysticism which is strong in speculative dreamers, and is not wholly absent frora any human mind. Ritualism found very little of congenial soil In which to strike its roots within the diocese of Ripon, whose then bishop, Bickersteth, was a strong Evangelical, and one of the most earnest preachers of his day. There should be room for the Ritualists as well as for the Evan gelicals and Broad parties in the Church of Eng land ; and it has to be acknowledged that they have done much good, self-denying work in the slums of London and other places. That rescue work should be set off to the credit side of their account against their priestly pretensions, their ministering to the theatrical tastes and superficial remorses of society sinners, and their sending to Rome the more logical and thorough receivers of their doctrines. The laity of the Church of Eng land are, taken in the mass, I verily believe, more immovably Protestant than the Dissenters who speak so much about the Romanising mischief done by ritualism. The English Church people are tolerant to an exceptional degree. They will listen apathetically to sermons and discourses by high and RELIGION. 347 dry clergymen who refrain from introducing innova tions in worship, but they set their teeth in deadly wrath against new priestly garments, and postures, and genuflexions which they denounce as Popish. If they had the right to elect their clergymen the Evangelicals would be chosen almost everywhere. They like good sermons, but can put up with dull and foolish ones, because they think the Prayer Book services sufficient for the need of Christians, and that as long as he cannot add to or take from these services it does not much matter what may be the clergyman's personal views or character. The Church of England gains breadth from theoretical imperfections and startling contrasts. It is aristo cratic and popular, rich and poor, lax in some matters of importance, and rigorous in some small ones, such as confirmation of children, which has no importance beyond that of custom, and yet which acts as a barrier against the entrance Into communion of outsiders wishing to come in from other de nominations, who have ten times more of scripture knowledge, and far deeper religious feelings than the youngsters on whose heads bishops lay their hands. Evangelical awakening in the Church was so directly and unmistakably due to the eighteenth century revival outside of it, which is connected speciaUy with the names of Whitefield and Wesley, that the one thing might be considered an off-shoot of the other. To the same pressure of external influence must, in a large measure, be ascribed the generating ofthe reforming force which, by degrees, swept away many old abuses, such as pluralities, absenteeism, and scandals of clerical life. Ritualism, and the Anglican High Churchism of modem days, must be taken as protests of religious people against 348 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. the materialism of an unbelieving age, which is cutting away human beings from tbe highest sources of inspiration and forcing them to deprive their souls of the spiritual wings with which God had furnished them. In sense and purpose, the protest Is commendable and timely, too. But it has taken a form which is detestable to the majority of English people. Many Intelligent Romanists would, if they possibly could, get gladly rid of the supersti tious lumber of the Middle Ages to which, our self-styled Catholics of the Church of England are striving to bring back a people stubbornly Protestant, who anchor themselves on Bible and Prayer Book, and are, in country places especiaUy, loyaUy attached to the old churches, which are often museums of local historical monuments, and about which the dead of many ages have been buried. In the worsted district I found that the Church of England Avas by far the strongest single religious denomination, although it had not perhaps a numerical majority against all the other sects. Christian, Jewish, Secularist, when pooled, together. Out in non-manufacturing rural districts the Church was predominant, and Dissent, in all its formSj was weak and wavering in character and fortunes^ al though subsidised and patronised by urban co religionists. In Bradford and district, as indeed all over England, Old Dissent, hailing back to Commour wealth time, and in less definite form to the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was represented by Independents, Baptists, and Presbyterians. The Quakers were so few that they hardly counted, and the old English Presbyterians had, at the end of the eighteenth century, slided into Unitarianism^ RELIGION. 349 except those of them who joined the Independents, or Wesleyans, or slipped badk into the Church of England. With the exception of very few places, the English 'Presbyterians of Baxter days, who had the majority of the four thousand ministers expelled from vicarages and rectories on St Bartholomew's Day, 1662, had lost their chapels and endowments, and all but ceased to exist as a religious denomina tion. But the Scotch incomers of the industrial revolution built new Presbyterian chapels for them selves, and imported ministers from benorth the Tweed, which, I believe, would rarely have been done if, in the First ParliameUt of the Restoration, clericals and cavaliers had not, by the Uniformity Act, shut the door on conciliation by refusing to recognise any but episcopal orders, and by putting obstacles in the way of men and women of non- episcopal churches joining the Church of England. Educated, fair-minded English Church people of recent times regret the exclusiveness embodied in the Uniformity Act, which is in such a contrast to the servility of passive obedience, recognition of the divine right of kings, and hailing such a scamp as Charles II. with the blasphemous title of Sacred Majesty. But the punishment came with the endeavour of his brother and successor to make logicEtl use of these professions of abject servility for reimposing the Papal yoke on Protestant England ; and the trial of the bishops brought a sort of absolution to the self-degraded Church which all the while had many good and learned men among its ministers. If James II. of England and VII. of Scotland had possessed half the insight and cleverness of his gay, profligate, and wholly selfish and unprincipled 350 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. elder brother, he would never have dreamed of forcing Protestant England — England of the Smithfield martyrs, of the Armada, and the great Elizabethan reign and literature — back into the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church, nor would he have placed reliance, as if bond slaves because of their profession of the servile obedience, on the clergy of the Established Church. The man was, however, fatuously sincere in his religious fanati cism, while in his relations with women nearly as immoral as the preceding Sacred Majesty. The Church of England, by slavish professions of loyalty on the one hand and oppressive proceedings against Nonconformity on the other, damaged its character In England as the willing aider of attempted royal despotism, earned the disrespect of a blood-stained, persecuting aggressor in Scotland, and by the Act of Uniformity cut itself off from alliance and inter communion with all the Reformed Churches of the Continent, whose existence was placed in danger by French conquests. The fact that from such an abyss there was a quick recovery, Jacobite plottings notwithstanding, proved beyond dispute the strong hold their national Church had got on the freedom- loving English people. In the dark days before the 1688 Revolution, the Nonconformists of all denominations were the real champions of civil and religious liberty, and as such they acted throughout the next century, and as such they love to pose to the present day, though matters are so changed that the nominal championship slips with fatal ease into petty persecution of foolish vicars and rectors with swollen priestly heads, who try to uphold prerogatives and customs, which common- sense, or contrary laws, have consigned to the tomb of all the Capulets. RELIGION. 351 The idea of perfect religious liberty is a plant of such slow growth that even yet it has not come to flower and fruit in all civilised countries. It took no real root at all in any land during the fierce religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In our own country the desire for toleration changed as the three main parties into which Protestants had become divided, changed from top or to bottom their respective positions. Unitedly the English Protest ants passed through the ordeal of the Marian perse cution, to get divided by different ideals in the reign of Elizabeth. But these divided parties acted like one in keeping down the Catholics, although the latter acted like true patriots in defence of their native land in the year of the Armada. It was no double dose of original sin but greater opportunities which made the Church of England the greater and longer oppressor of the outside Protestant parties. When Henry VIII. deposed the Pope he put himself in his place as head of the English Church. That headship principle was maintained by the succeeding Tudor sovereigns with the exception of the much-to- be-pitied " Bloody Mary," who was as brave as any of her remarkably strong-headed race. The Tudors were popular despots, who attached themselves to great national causes, and established law and order in a turbulent time. Elizabeth got a poor law passed which solved a long-standing difficulty, and took care that the meanest of her subjects should get justice against big superiors. The Puritans provoked her by outspoken denunciation of the slack discip line and doctrines and constitution of the National Church into capricious acts of persecution, and yet they remained all the time her loyal subjects. When the headship passed on to the " Scotch Solomon," 352 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. the aspect of political and religious affairs very soon assumed a stormy appearance. For all the pedantry and personal oddities which made James an object of ridicule to his English subjects, he was the farthest- seeing, and, except in regard to unworthy favourites, the wisest of the four Stuarts that sat on the throne of England. Unity of Church and State on the Royal headship accorded admirably with the kingship prin ciples he frankly expounded in his " Basilicon Doron," and which, in a later time, Hobbes more thof-oughly and logically argued out in his " Leviathan." James had come out of Scotland with a perfect dread of the democratic nature of Presbyterianism, and muttering — " No bishop, no king." He had laboured artfully, with patient perseverance, to pave the way for his accession to the English throne by the creation of Scotch bishops, who at first were without a shadow of pretension to the shadow of historical and so-called canonical Apostolic succession, magnified in England. After he got to a safe distance from the recalcitrant and loudly rebuking Presbyterian ministers and the fear of their ultra-Protestant followers, and had for his ecclesiastical design in Scotland the whole infiuence of the Church of England at his back, he pushed forward the completion of his Episcopal-Presbyterian blend. With similar artfulness and the willing'help of his bishops, he throttled the independence of the Scotch Parliament through a juggling manipulation of the Lords of the Articles. He would never have committed his son's error of letting Laud or any Englishman, clerical or lay, presume to interfere, far less to dictate in the affairs of the Scotch Kirk. His design was to bring about both ecclesiastical and parliamentary union between England and Scotland. What marred that great design was the kingly des- RELIGION. 353 potism which he intended to place on the top of It. His son set the heather on fire in Scotland by treating that poor, proud, and warlike country as if it had been made a conquered province of England ; and the revolt of defiant Scotland gave the English Parliament and the English freedom-loving patriots their opportunity for calling Stuart despotism to strict account. Banded together as Covenanters, the Scotch Presbyterians were every whit as intolerant as their former oppressors had ever been, or were destined again to be during the, to the whole realm, dark- clouded Restoration period. Throughout the whole struggle they had an earnest desire to preserve the hereditary kingship when it was deprived of the despotic powers claimed and exercised by James and his more stately yet far less astute son. They also, in a reverse way, adopted James's policy of ecclesias tical union. He wanted by his royal power to impose Anglican Episcopacy on Scotland. They hoped that Presbyterianism would be voluntarily adopted by the English Parliament and people, because, they argued, it was the system of Church Government which was more consistent with constitutional monarchy. The arguments from the Scriptures and the early records of Christianity, with which the learned disputants of both sides belaboured one another, had far less weight with the public, who did not find any clearly defined and unalterable scheme of Church Government in the New Testa ment, than this plain constitutional argument. It was the force of this constitutional argument, and the solution of very pressing difficulties, which led so many of the English Church clergy and laity to surmount their international prejudices against tak- 23 354 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. ing a lesson from Scotland and Geneva, and to avow themselves Presbyterians. Hence the strong muster of Presbyterians in the Long Parliament before it was violently reduced to a mere faction. Hence the Westminster Assembly of Divines, whose Confession of Faith, although truly the work of the English majority, was at once accepted in Scotland, and still remains, nominally at least, the Confession of Faith of the various sections into which the Kirk got unhappily divided. The English reformers, clerical and lay, who wished to preserve what was good in the past, and to bring the continued Kingship under constitutional restrictions, saw that Episcopacy had made itself condemned not because of inherent demerits but because Charles, Laud, and Stafford had involved it in the discredit of having been used as the servile drudge of a system of political and ecclesiastical despotism to which the British people would no longer submit. The Congregational Puritans hated with good cause the Episcopal system and refused to look with favour at the Presbyterian alternative. They had long and nobly testified against crowned and mitred tyranny, and manfully suffered for their testimonies. They had a just right to look upon themselves, especially in the Restoration period, as the torch- bearers of heavenly light in a long night of darkness and as the standard-bearers of civil liberty. But they had no scheme for preserving national continu ity and making an orderly re-settlement come after the upheaval. In their view every single worshipping and faithful congregation was a perfectly organised and divinely ordained Church. The wildly theocratic views of some of them transcended the bounds of reason altogether. They looked for miscellaneous RELIGION. 355 inspiration as the outcome of individual religious fervour, and so could dispense with a learned and regularly appointed ministry altogether. Of course, those were the views of extremists and not of the more sober-minded Congregationalists. But they were views which took hold of the army, and decided the course of public events against the larger nuraber who wanted to stop at constitutional reform of a very extensive character, and to obtain an ecclesiasti cal system which would accord with that reform. Although they had not so much as the shadow of a practical reconstructive plan, the extremists, with the help of the army, got their destructive Innings. By " Pride's purge" the Long Parliament was reduced to a rump which would have been simply farcical if it had not also been so tyrannical and inhumanly intolerant. The Cromwell dictatorship then followed as a blessing undisguised. It effectually stopped the rapid progress of anarchy and rescued the precious heritage of the past from irreparable damage. Abroad it restored British prestige, and boldly vindicated British honour and interests. At home, after war devastations and the fierce collisions of parties and factions, it enforced peace and order, accompanied with a more impartial administration of justice and a larger amount of religious toleration than England ever enjoyed before or after under a Stuart king. While the English Presbyterians within a hundred years of the death of Richard Baxter disappeared almost entirely, by partly lapsing into Unitarianism, and partly dispersing themselves among orthodox dissenters or joining the Church of England, the Congregationalists — Independents, Baptists, and minor sects holding their one-congregation one- church organisation views — stiffiy retained in cities, 356 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. towns and populous districts their historical continu ity through all trials and ups and downs, until the Reform Bill gave them their reward in the shape of an enormous increase of their political and municipal power. In Bradford, when the majority of the much decayed Presbyterian body there became Unitarians, and, by keeping the old name, managed to possess themselves of chapel property, the orthodox minority joined the Independents, and founded a new chapel for themselves, which in 1860 had one of the largest congregations in the town and whole district. This was typical of what was earlier or at the same time taking place at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century in mostly all places in England in which, at St. Bartholomew's Day, 1662, Presbyterianism had been strong. Exter iorly it suffered from adherence to the principle of monarchy, while not accepting the rule of bishops, and interiorly the philosophies of the eighteenth century and sympathy with the first promising phase of the French Revolution hastened disintregation which only left a shadowy and misleading simulacrum. The Congregationalists retained a large portion of the bitter hostility of their ancestors to the Church of England, although in other respects they professed and practised liberal sentiments and promoted in and outside their own country philanthropic and human itarian objects and projects. For the root thing in which they showed an unforgiving and un-Chrlstian temper, they had the wrongs of many ages to plead as a kind of justification. Hereditary hostilities between religions long resist eliminating influences, and are paradoxically conservative. During the twenty years I was in the West Riding, Purltannic doctrines among the younger ministers were obvl- RELIGION. 357 ously losing their hold, and giving place to rational istic, philosophical, or unmistakably evasive pulpit eloquence and platform dissenterism. In proportion as spiritual Puritanism decayed the Liberation Society grew stronger in number, and so did the ambition to dis establish, cripple, and destroy the Church of England. However purely spiritual their faith may be, and however high their original aims, religious association of all sorts more or less quickly harden into secular interests that cannot help getting earth-cased and clogged in A^arious forms and degrees. The policy of the Liberation Society seems to me to have brought into unblessed prominence and suicidal activity the little something devilish which by natural law was always mixed up with the much which was really divine in ancient Puritanism. Discipline had lost its early inquisitorial severity before I went to England, yet ministers and deacons did not neglect proper over sight of members and adherents of their congrega tions ; and moreover, they made themselves helpful in many ways to young people in search of openings, and to widows, orphans, and disabled or afflicted men and women of their respective communions. They had no very large proportion of helpless ones, or ne'er-do-wells among them ; for they were to an extent beyond ordinary companies of hard-working, well-conducted, and generally fairly well off upper- class operatives, shopkeepers, and artisans, and their leaders, and often their employers, were the middle- class aristocracy of the newly enriched, who had croAvs of their oAvn to pluck with the old feudal aristocracy. In my long residence among them, Liberation Society policy, decay of Puritanic doctrines, and municipal and parliamentary electioneering did not seem to detrimentally affect the good old life 358 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. habits of the people who worshipped in congrega tional chapels. Their Christian ideal of duty and their standard of morality were as high as they had ever been. In Bradford and its district I found the Wesley ans, or Methodists as they preferred to call them selves, very numerous and still largely animated with the enlivening spirit of the great revival movement, which shook Christian England out of lethargic slumbers in the eighteenth century, and had its Calvinistic counterpart in Scotland and in Wales also. Let evolution theory, higher criticism and science limited to materialistic researches, do their worst, but in spite of all, human beings conscious of possessing immortal souls will always be seeking spiritual connections with God, or the Soul of the Universe, and that seeking will ever and anon after a period of slackness become intense and burst forth in a revival which may take a warlike shape like the Crusades, or a monastic form, as often happened in the Roman Catholic Church, or a doctrinal and purifying overhauling and reconstruction like the Reformation, or a pacific religious enthusiasm such as that in which Wesleyanism originated. The move ment began in the Church of England ; and Wesley anism as a missionary organisation might have con tinued in affiliated union with and subordination to the Church of England had not the first Cavalier Parliament of Charles the Second fettered freedom and furnished the hierarchy with a good excuse for neglecting a great opportunity, and stupid rectors, vicars, and squires with weapons of contumelious offence and paltry persecution. John Wesley died without ever separating himself from the communion and mt-mbership of the Church of England. Long RELIGION. 359 after his death, the Bradford Wesleyans, although they had a chapel and njlnistry of their own, communicated only in the parish church as long as the evangelical vicar, who deeply sympathised with them, held the incumbency. I think it was not until 1816 that the severance was made complete. Unlike the Congregationalists, the Wesleyans had no hereditary roots of bitterness planted in the dust of the Civil War and of the Restoration time. They were dissenters by no design, or Irreconcilable prin ciples of their own, but because the Church of England had failed to find for them a field of work within its vineyard. If the rulers of that Church despised and neglected them, and if some rectors, vicars, and squires despitefully treated and abused them, others, like the vicar of Bradford, befriended them, and so did not a few of the nobility and gentry. So far were they from objecting on principle to the recognition of religion by the State, and from thinking that every congregation should rule and uphold itself, that by a Deed enrolled in Chancery they established their missionary-board scheme for securing corporate funds and a circulating ministry. They had had their troubles and divisions in the first half of last century. The waves of the revival tide had broken on rocks of strife and secular interests, but for all that I found between 1860 and 1880 there was a good deal of the old purely religious revival force operating among the whole of them. They accepted the Bible as their unerring guide and did not con cern themselves with the controversies regarding its composition and contents raised by what is called the higher criticism. If their religion was emotional it was lovable and kindly and brotherly to outsiders. 360 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. But reluctantly and slowly the Wesleyans, as far as their ruling and representative bodies could do it, were drawn into the net of the Liberation Society, and thereby placed in antagonism to their original and natural principles, and the system by which they had made themselves an unendowed but estab lished denomination under the binding guarantee of the law of the land. This conquest by the Libera tion Society was not completed when I was in England. I question whether it can ever be made quite complete as long as the old revival spirit continues to operate with sensible effect. CHAPTER LVIII. EDUCATION. The re-animating and, it might almost be said, re creative Renaissance at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century, preceded and intermingled with the Reformation, necessarily stimulating it, but sometimes trying to limit and divert it. Many of the scholars and apostles of the Renaissance, like Erasmus, the chief of them all, while mercilessly exposing and bitterly satirising the scandalous corruptions into which the Western Church had fallen, wished to preserve its wonderful organisations, thoroughly purified, and with a General Council instead of the Pope, in supreme command. This was an alterative, although it turned out to be a thoroughly impracticable ideal. The art of printing, which unfettered and gave wings to the vast stores of classical and Christian lore formerly imprisoned In manuscripts which were EDUCATION. 361 only accessible to the few, was the chief agency In producing theRenaissance movement in its diversified forms and manifestations. It was a contributive coincident that simultaneously the Vatican should have sunk to its lowest point of degradation ; and something, too, was due to the capture of Con stantinople by the Turks, and the flight of learned Greeks carrying precious manuscripts with them to Western countries. The Renaissance took a strong and early hold on England. Caxton's early press set an example to the reformers which they soon learned to imitate. Henry VIII. was born and trained under the influence of the Renaissance. Cardinal Wolsey, using the funds of dissolved small and scandalous monastic institutions, founded and endowed Christ Church College, Oxford, with several professorships, and gave his native town of Ipswich a college which, unfortunately, had but a short existence. Dean Colet spent his fortune in founding and endowing St Paul's School, London. He was the friend of Erasmus, and quite as an advanced reformer as that learned Dutchman. A vigorous and popular preacher. Dean Colet attacked the Church and monastic vices of his age, and spoke with a good man's scorn of the celibacy of the clergy, which was so badly abused by many of those who took the vow. It was, perhaps, fortunate for himself that he died in peaceful retirement before Bluff Hal quarrelled with the Pope, but one cannot help believing that had he lived to have had a hand in educational affairs after the separation from Rome, the schooling of the English people would have profited thereby, as his views in regard to teaching was of a piece with his views In regard to preaching, that it should reach down to the masses. 362 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Zeal for extending the light of the new learning Avas not confined to the leaders of the religious Reformation movement, which had to pass to severance through many wars and troubles. Sir Thomas More — a son of the Renaissance who ad hered to and died for the Roman Catholic Church — was a keen student of classical lore, and had generous, even Utopian, views of his own upon the spread of education and a reconstruction of society on something like more scientific principles than feudalism. Colet's example in founding and endow ing grammar schools was followed largely by Edward VI. , Queen Elizabeth, private individuals, and trade guilds. Nor was it lost sight of in after tiraes. Oxford and Cambridge were splendidly equipped for keeping the lamps of the higher learn ing brightly burning, and for advances in science and arts. Several of the grammar schools did the work of complete colleges, and the humblest of them were local centres of light and leading. The Reformation and the discovery of America, superadded to the art of printing, which gave wings to ancient lore, woke the nations out of long uneasy slumbers to a life of extraordinary intellectual activity, daring specula tion, and romantic adventure. Out of that came the magnificent crop of the Elizabethan literature. But while the children of the landed gentry and of professional classes, and rich citizens were enjoying what was, for the age, high educational privileges, and breathing the intoxicating air of almost a new life, the masses of the people were left without much schooling, except what came to them from Church and ruling classes, or what they acquired by experience as sailors, soldiers, and apprentices to artizans and traders. In the century of unsettle- EDUCATION. 363 ment and resettlement, England had great scholars and great authors, and the multitudes followed their leaders and under them performed glorious achievements. But while England had many Colets and Cranmers, many thinkers, many poets, one Shakespeare, and able statesmen and sea-kings in abundance, it missed having a John Knox with fiery eloquence and a brain to conceive and a backing strong enough to give effect to a system of parochial schools by which the whole people would be brought into an all sweeping educational net. True it is that aspirants from the lowest social grades were not excluded from English grammar schools and universities. On the contrary, fair provision was made for their entrance and maintenance ; but with out a national system of elementary education, the masses could not be much raised by the few from among them who shot out of their birth-spheres by means of superior knowledge and ability. So much from the passing of the Reform Bill downwards had been said and written about the deficiency of popular education in England that I was quite surprised and delighted to find so little evidence of it in the Bradford district. Very few of the native people were incapable of reading the Bible, the Prayer Book, hymn book, and news papers. Absolute inability was only to be found among in -comers from the country and from Ireland, and in the second generation of them also it was surely disappearing. With little book knowledge, the old women of the native working classes were, as wives, housekeepers, and mothers, a credit to their sex and a blessing to their country ; and among them were many who were as full of individual character and proverbial philosophy, garnished with sharp personal 364 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. observation, as Mrs Poyser herself It is only just to the Congregationalists to state that all along they had striven, by means of private and boarding schools, to give their children a fair amount of education. As a body they were a select and prosperous host of middle-class people. The Wesleyan revival and the counter evangelical revival in the Church of England produced along with the religious an educational awakening among the masses. But the transition period of the industrial revolution caused a serious backset until the Factory Acts rescued the children from being wholly made mill slaves, bereft of schooling instruction and healthy open-air exercise. Before legislation checked it, rather serious damage, physical, moral, and mental, was done to the child slaves of the mill ; but home life kept that damage from spreading as widely as would otherwise have been the case, and has been the case in other countries, where family and religious influences have not been equally strong. Elementary education made a great advance in England between 1835 and 1860. The Church of England tried to establish a national school, not only in every parish, but In every part of a town, or district of a country parish, in AvhIch there were children to be gathered together for weekly instruction. The Wesleyans showed similar zeal and enterprise in building many schools. Roman Catholics, and smaller Christian and non-Christian sects, followed suit. State aid, encouragement, and grant payments, according to results of examination by official inspectors, gave increased momentum to a movement which had the whole-hearted sanction of public opinion. On every hand sprung up mechanics' EDUCATION. 365 institutes, which turned smUing faces to science and politics, and shrugging shoulders to the religious teaching in the denominational schools, which in England were by this time doing the work that had long been done in Scotland by parish schools and side schools. The Secularists had a hall in Brad ford, in which Bradlaugh and Holyoake expounded their views, whUe Huxley and other scientific agnostics gathered large audiences in St George's Hall to listen to their lectures. There also, blind Mr Fawcett vigorously endeavoured to elevate political economy, impressed with the seal of the then, m towns, all popular Manchester School, to the rank of an exact science. Between the numerous State-aided and State- inspected denominational schools and many private aud boarding schools, which were doing excellent work in an unobtrusive way, and old grammar schools which needed to be reformed so as to better adapt them as connecting links with colleges and universities, Bradford and its district Avere well furnished with educational machinery before the first English Elementary School Bill Avas passed. The Minister of Education who sponsored that Bill was one of the Bradford members of Parliament, Mr William Edward Forster,as hon est, patriotic, and fair- minded a man as ever stood in shoe leather. He was a broad churchman himself, aud the pupil and son- in-law of Dr Arnold, of Rugby, but was by lineage connected with Quaker families of high standing and historical renown. He entered enthusiastically into the Volunteer movement, and took a deep and enlightened interest in foreign and colonial affairs. Fate, in the shape of Mr Gladstone, played him a cruel trick on the defeat of the Beaconsfield Govern- 366 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. ment, by making him Chief Secretary for Ireland, where, although the kindest of men by nature and training, he got the nickname of" Buckshot Forster." On the education question Mr Forster was an optimist, who thought that the Board School system to be established by his Bill would only add 3d in the pound, or at the utmost 6d, to the rates. He proclaimed with conviction that the new system would not supersede or despitefully ill-use, but merely fill up the gaps left by the State-aided and State - inspected schools already In existence, on which the people of different religious persuasions — the Church of England leading — had spent vast sums of their money. It was confessed on all hands that better general organisation was desirable; that in many places there were sad gaps waiting to be filled up, and that compulsory attendance of children in school should, up to a reasonable limit, be en forced. Mr Forster had great admiration for the Scotch parish school systera, which, without much intermediate help frora higher-grade schools, enabled clever and studious lads from the country districts and the villages, as well as the farm-houses and mansions, to get to the universities, and afterwards to distinguish themselves In all callings and profes sions. I had some correspondence Avith him before he introduced the Scotch Bill, which was to be the companion and complement of the English one, from which I gathered that he was anxious to preserve as far as possible the features and qualities of the Scotch schools, which had succeeded so long and so successfully in continuously eliminating an aristo cracy, not of wealth, but of merit, out of the whole Scotch people. EDUCATION. 367 As three-fourths of the Scotch people were Presbyterians who all professed adherence to the Westminster Confession of Faith as their subordinate standard ; as the Free Church schools were to be willingly handed over to the new School Boards ; and as " use and wont" was to be conceded, it was much easier to deal in bulk with the Scotch than it was with the English education problem. Mr Forster had in his large-minded way of measuring others by his own reasonableness, overlooked the sleepless hostility of the Liberation Society to the Church of England, and the dead certainty that it would use for its disestablishment levers every ful crum that malevolent and skilled observation, or even imagination, could find or read into the Elementary Education Act. On the 25th clause of the Act an agitation was at once raised, which made a good deal of noise, but received less support than its promoters had expected. It was in that agitation that, along with Dr Dale, Dr George Dawson, and others, Mr Joseph Chamberlain made his first appearance in public life. Birmingham agitators were so far advanced towards Unitarianism and Agnosticism that the Nonconformists who still clung to old Puritan doctrines, were unwilling to accept them as leaders. But all Nonconformists that marched under the Liberation Society banner voted for members holding disestablishment views at the first election of School Boards, and wherever the men they returned found themselves in a majority balm in Gilead was found for their party ; and gall and wormwood for the Church of England and the schools on which its public had spent their millions of money. When he spoke of a 3d to a 6d rate, in the vast majority of cases Mr Forster optimistically assumed that the School Boards would only put up 368 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. their schools where there were glaring gaps of educational machinery. Wherever they had the power, the Liberation Society men, disregarding the pockets of the ratepayers, ran up palatial school buildings in open opposition to the national and other denominational schools which had to be content with humbler buildings, and in these had done educational services of the highest importance to the children of the masses, and poorer middle classes. The Congregationalists, who looked well to the education of their own children, generation after generation, had, in proportion to their wealth and numbers, done least of all for the education of the masses until they got their hands, by control of School Boards, into the pockets of the ratepayers. As soon as they got their opportunity, they found deficiencies everywhere, and plausible arguments for tacking profligate expenditure on equipment and costly fads and fancies to the reading, writing, and arithmetic limits of elementary education. CHAPTER LIX. MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD. To keep strongly the unity of a nation which had, as has been the case with most States of the world, arisen out of the co-mingling of various races, with various race traditions, predilections, and proclivities, a coramon national designation is scarcely less of importance than one central Government : — One flag, a common State language permitting of the con tinuance of sectional languages older than itself, common laws, and as much sameness of standards of faith and morals as full religious liberty will permit. MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD. 369 The Romans knew the two islands which form our United Kingdom as Britannia Major and Britannia Minor — the Greater Britain and the Lesser Britain. On the coins is put the inscription. King or Queen "of the Britains." But, unfortunately, the docu mentary and legislative formula is King or Queen "of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland." This want of a common designation has accentuated the sea severance and all the other causes by which Irish discontent and feelings of alienation, carefully fostered by professional agitators and disloyal conspirators, have so long been kept in active operation. The laudable suggestion of the inscription on the coins has proved abortive, be cause effect has not been given to it in the two Treaties of Union. The kingdom of the British Isles was the common designation it suggested. The Irish, I believe, never recognised the Roman title of the Lesser Britain as a proper one for their country, but they would certainly have been less offended by the irrepressible arrogance of the "pre dominant partner" if that style of co-partnership had been adopted, and more heard of the British Government, the British Parliament, the British Army, the British Navy, and less of the English Government, the English Pailiament, the English Army, and the English Navy. Even Lord Palmerston, in the great speech in which he so splendidly defended his conduct of foreign affairs, boasted that he was "the Minister of England." As for the late Lord Salisbury, he was on this matter a constant offender, who did not see that he was giving offence to Scotchmen, Irishmen, and Welshmen, who had in war and peace done somewhat more than their pro portionate share In building up the British Empire. 24 370 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. The project of an incorporating union between England and Scotland was entertained and discussed for a hundred years before it was accomplished. One name had to be found for the united countries, and choice lay between reviving the old name of Albion or adopting that of Great Britain. The Romans had made the name of Britain familiar to literature and the whole civilised world of their own and after- times. Albion was only kept in memory by the Picts of Galloway and the people, their race relations, north of the Friths of Forth and Clyde, whom the Romans had never conquered. At the Northallerton Battle of the Standard, which King David of Scotland fought for his niece, Matilda, and her son, Henry Plantagenet — a battle which he disastrously lost — the Gallowegians rushed fiercely at their foes shouting "Albannaich! Albannaichl" Their compatriots north of the friths called their country Alba, or Albyn, and that is the only name which Gaelic - speaking people have yet for all Scotland. Like England, Scotland received its present name in a curiously-indirect way. The Welsh retained the name of Britain, and so did the Britons of Strathclyde, who called their capital on the cliff of the Clyde, Dun Breatunn (Dumbarton) — the Britain stronghold. In all the Celtic tongues of these islands, and, I think, in the Breton language also, the Angles are put aside, and only the Saxons and Norse are recognised. England is named Saxonland, the English people are Sasunnaich or Saxons, and their language is called Beurla, which is a word of doubt ful character. Now, when one comes to think of it, the Celtic words agree with the actual facts, and it does seem curious that England and English are MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD. 371 words which disagree with these facts. What had the East Anglicans to do with the work of consolida tion ? Was it not by the West Saxon kings and people that the Heptarchy was swept Into a united Saxon kingdom ? The adoption by the West Saxons of the Anglican names for themselves, their language, the kingdom they had formed out of the unruly Heptarchy, is indeed passing strange. Per haps the Church founded by St Augustine, which had its head- quarters in Kent, and its second seat of power and infiuence at York, had something to do with the self-abnegation of the West Saxons. The legend ran, and it bears every mark of being a perfectly true one, that good Pope Gregory the Great, when a young man and as yet only a deacon, saw one day in the market place of Rome youths of fair hair, fair skin, and blue eyes, bound as captives, to be sold into slavery, and that, struck by their beauty, he asked who they were and from what country they had come, and was told they were Angli, or Angles, and had come from a part of Britain than called Deira, On hearing this he remarked they should not be called Angles but Angels, and plucked from the wrath of God by faith in Christ. We do not hear that he succeeded in rescuing the captives and converting them, but, when Pope, he remembered the fair Angli, who should be angels, and, in 596, sent St Augustine and holy monks to convert the pagans of the newly formed Saxon kingdom. Those who go to the West Riding expecting to find most of the people there proving Saxon descent by bearing in their personal appearance the descrip tion of the Germans given by Tacitus in his Germania, the Pope Gregory story, and the state- 372 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. ments of many later writers, will be, as I was myself, surprised to find that the predominant type is that of rnedium - sized, well built, energetic, dark or brown-haired, and dark-blue or brown -eyed people. Those with milk-white skins, light-blue eyes, and fair hair, or the hair tinged with red, which, when touched with the sun's rays, flashes into gold, can be found indeed, but are comparatively few in number, and do not always belong to the native stock. On the eastern seaboard and In the southern counties, the modern representatives of the Germans of Tacitus, and of Pope Gregory's angel-like Angles from Deira, are, however, far more numerous. Mercia, the latest-founded of the Heptarchy king doms, had plenty of internal troubles, but, being inland, was less frequently visited and ravaged by invaders from the sea than the regions to the east and south of it. Being hilly and presumably in former days much-wooded, its inhabitants could better defend themselves and escape being killed, or captured to be enslaved, or forced to flee away from their native district to seek asylum elsewhere. The district called Elmet appears to have retained a sort of independence during the Heptarchy period, and after England had been united under the West Saxon monarchy. Elmet included Leeds, Bradford, Halifax, and probably extended at times far up Craven. Loidis in Elmet was its chief town, and those who speak the ancestral dialect call Leeds Loids to the present day. Whether Elmet was finally conquered by force of arms, or absorbed by infiltration and necessities of common defence against outside invaders, is not clearly known, but the fact is undoubted that long before the turmoils at the end of the tenth and In MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD. 373 the early part of the eleventh century the Saxons had imposed their ruling supremacy and their language, laws, and institutions up in Elmet as on all the rest of Mercia, and that the whole population of this great internal region had laid aside past inter-racial hostilities, and learned to think of them selves as Englishmen and to act together as one people. By the co-mingling of Saxons, Ancient Britons, and Romans, a blend was produced which accounts for the characteristics, physical and mental, of the natives of the West Riding as a whole, and of those of the Elmet district especially. They com bine the best qualities of all the races from which they have sprung. William the Conqueror, burdened with many other cares and heavy undertakings, would gladly have left the North of England for a while alone if Edwin and Morkere, the Saxon Earls of Mercia, had not made an untimely revolt. Their outbreak caused him to march north through the middle of England with an army composed of both Normans and Englishmen. The rebels yielded, but a second outbreak led to the occupation of York and the thorough subjection of Mercia and Northumbria. William's son, Rufus, conquered Cumberland, and before the Conqueror's youngest son Henry's reign ended, the West Riding, like most of the rest of England, was placed under Norman barons. Ilbert de Lacy, Lord of Pontefract, had Bradford and its district, which stretched along the hills as far as Haworth. Another Norman baron built a castle at Bingley, and ruled over that neighbourhood. Robert de Romeli or Romily ruled Craven and Upper Wharfedale from his rock stronghold at Skipton. They had their day, these Norman barons, who were 374 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. good war captains, capable organisers, but rapacious local despots, who, in a singular manner, joined refinement with cruelty, while each of them made himself as much as he could a despot king in his own domain. All of them were ever seeking, as a ruling clan, to extort more and more of feudal right from their sovereigns. So it required all the excep tional talents ofthe Conqueror, the ferocity of Rufus, and the statesmanship of Henry to keep them in order. If the best that can truly be said of Rufus is that he was a strong beast of a ruler, whose beastly forcibleness overawed the rebellious, rapacious and, on their own domains, the brutally despotic Norman barons, who had to be rewarded out of the spoils of England, and never were satisfied with what they had got, it cannot be disputed that William the Conqueror and his youngest son, Henry I., were far-seeing statesmen, who wanted to estab lish orderly national and local institutions upon a perfected feudal system, which would bind rulers by mutual responsibilities upon graded classification and fixed law. Out of the conflicts between the Norman baronage and their sovereigns English liberty slowly evolved, and the English people again raised their heads, after having learned much from their Norman masters and much profited by what they had learned, and likewise unlearned, in the school of adversity. I do not think there were many places in all England in which the oppressiveness of the Norman barons was less heavy and less lasting than in the district between Low Moor and the upper end of Craven, the district with which I am chiefly con cerned in this part of my miscellaneous scribbllngs The Norman lords of Pontefract do not appear to MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD. 375 have ever had a castle or residence of any sort in the Bradford part of their possessions. As they were absentees who had urgent need of all their foreign retainers at Pontefract, the probability is that almost from the beginning and all through they made trusted natives their deputies in the Bradford district. There are no persons bearing their name in the district now. In fact as far as record evidence goes, there were never, four centuries ago, any De Lacy's there. The Bingley barons of two lines — Le Bruns and Paganels, if I rightly remember — did not add, as far as can be ascertained, people of their name and lineage as a new element to the native and permanent population. The line of Robert Romily soon ended in a female heiress, Alice Romily, who married the Scotchman, William Fitz-Duncan. Rombold's Moor is called after Robert Romily. In regard to place-names the Normans made no great innovation. Domesday Book proves they took and perpetuated the place-names as the Saxons had left them, and only imposed Norman names on a few castles, halls, and forests of their own making. The Teutonic and, in a less degree, Scandinavian invaders changed place - names wherever they went, took possession, and established authority. This was no doubt partly due to race-pride, but it seems to have been more largely owing to invincible linguistic conservatism. Even yet the English people are behind other nations in learning foreign languages. Their Saxon ancestors would use no language at all but their own, excepting their scholars who learned Latin. The Saxons effaced as far as they possibly could the British and Roman place - names they found in England, and when they could not wholly deface an old name, they usually masked it beyond 376 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. easy recognition. Who can easily discern Eboracum under its York mask ? Castra, the Roman camp or great military centre, is more discernible in the Chesters, with Saxon caps on their heads, such as Manchester. In the district with which I am chiefly concerned, there was a junction Roman station where the great Roman road from the south by Otley Chevin to York was joined by the cross country road from the west coast, but the old Roman name of that station is not easily recognis able in the Ilkley to which the Saxons degraded it. Of the many ancient British place-names which have in this district been similarly maltreated. Craven has suffered the least damage. Craven in Gaelic would be Craig-bhan or White-rock-land. It takes its designation from the limestone rocks with which it abounds. Penyghent and Penistone, while retain ing the Celtic 'ben,' in Cymric 'pen' get spoiled tails. Farther north the Pennine chain which separates the waters which flow east from those which flow west, mean a chain of hills with pointed or ben tops. In Gaelic 'pen' would be 'beinn,' but in Cymric 'p' takes the place of 'b.' It Is a far cry from West moreland to the Alps, but the Pennine Alps and the North of England Pennines have exactly the same meaning. When a proper search is made into the disguised and transformed place - names of the Mercian hill districts, perhaps some good guess can be made as to what was the language of the Brigantes, and whether they belonged to the Cymric or Gaelic Celts, or were something between the two. Their colony In Ireland, mapped by Ptolemy, became Gaelic-speakers before St. Patrick's time, but as all the Celtic races quickly caught up new languages, that Gaelic-speaking in Ireland Is no proof at all to MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD. 377 US of what division of the Celtic race the Brigantes belonged, and Avhat Celtic dialect was spoken in Mercia. Although Norman French was for three hundred years the language of their rulers, the English people with characteristic, stolid, and patriotic conservatism refused to learn it, and so in the end made Englishmen of the descendants of their former haughty foreign conquerors and oppressors. When David, King of Scotland, invaded England in 1138, with all his forces, to support his niece Matilda's cause against King Stephen and his supporters, his nephew, William Fitz-Duncan, and his wife, Alice Romily, held Skipton Castle, and had probably openly espoused Stephen's cause, since David's host, on their march to meet defeat at Northallerton, committed ravages and sacrileges in Craven, which caused such remorse to pious David that he afterwards sent a silver chalice to every Craven church as a sign of his penitence and as an expiation offering. William Fitz-Duncan was his nephew, and had he chosen to assert his claim to the throne of Scotland he might have been his formid able rival. William's father was that eldest son of Malcolm-Ceannmor who as Duncan II. reigned over Scotland for two years. The legitimacy of William's birth was never challenged, but that of his father was. The children of Malcolm by his Saxon queen, Margaret, and their descendants saw to it that Duncan, in chronicles and documents written after his death, should be called nothus or bastard. Malcolm was seemingly a widower when he first saw the Saxon princess who became his second wife, and the mother of the three sons who were kings afterwards. Malcolm's first wife was the widow, or 378 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. as some suppose the daughter, of his cousin, Thorfinn. According to our present law the marriage was per fectly legal, and the issue of it, Duncan II. , was legitimate. But it seems that a flaw was found in it by the new Margaretan clergy, which suited the second wife's family, and the clergy too, by declar ing the first marriage null and void, and setting Malcolm's eldest son aside as one of illegitimate birth. It was on "Tanistry" or eldest prince ofthe blood ground — something like the Turkish law — that Donald Ban claimed a right to succeed his brother Malcolm. Duncan's claim was that of legitimately born eldest son of Malcolm. William, son of Duncan, had been married in Scotland, and left children there before he went to England and married the great Norman heiress, Alice Romily. Descendants of William — Mac Williams — as well as descendants of Donald Ban, gave many and long- continued troubles to the kings of the Queen Margaret line. Succession to the Scotch and English thrones had gone far off the straight lines when David led the forces of Scotland into England to support the cause of his Norman niece, Matilda, against Stephen, and never mentioned the undis- putable fact that on his uncle, Edgar Atheling's death, he had himself become the sole legitimate heir to Alfred's throne and dynasty. When his West of Scotland levies, on the march to Northaller ton, passed the rock of Skipton, in the fortress on the top of it dwelt his nephew, William, the son of Duncan, who had, as far as can be now judged, a better right than himself to the throne of Scotland. As for the hilly route followed by the Scotch western levies, it was the one which, no doubt, their ancestors used for their invaislons in Roman days. MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD. 379 whenever they had the opportunity, and it was the one that their after race always used down to the union of the crowns. It was a route on which they could not be well attacked by mail-clad horsemen. The Scots were always defeated in heavy cavalry and in mail-clad fighting. That deficiency was the cause of their defeat in the battle at Northallerton. William Fitz-Duncan and Alice Romily's only child was the Boy of Egremont, who was called so because he was born at Egremont, near Liverpool. The Boy was his mother's darling, and the heir to very extensive estates. Some contemporary writer, quoted by Palgrave, hinted that there was an obscure conspiracy among a party of the Norman barons to nominate him as their candidate for the throne during the struggle between Stephen and Matilda. If so, the project was put an end to by his early and tragic death. But as he had no hereditary right, as far as is known, of any kind to the English throne, the story is in the highest degree improbable. The Augustinian Canons, who as early as 1121 had a monastic house at Embsay, were the Boy's teachers, and he was accompanied by one or more of them when he went one day with dogs on leash to hunt in Barden Forest, and was drowned when jumping the Strid. I easily jumped the Strid myself, both back and forward, but would certainly have no dogs on leash when doing so. The Strid Is a narrow channel with jagged edges, and with, at the lower end, rock points and boulders, cut through the rock bed of the river. When the Wharfe is moderately low most of the water rushes foaming and madly singing through this channel, which is very much like a mill lead made by Nature's hand. The Boy was drowned, and the monk who had to take the sad 380 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. news to his mother, according to tradition — but it is likely they both spoke in Norman French — began by asking the bereaved lady — " What is good for a bootless bene ? " meaning a prayer which had not been answered, and she, quickly realising the great calamity which had fallen upon her, replied — "End less sorrow." This is truly a pathetic story of a bright youth of great expectations suddenly cut off in his teens, and of a poor mother, no longer young, plunged by his death into endless sorrow. The sorrowing mother turned to religion as her only source of consolation, and built Bolton Priory, which it has long been the local habit to erroneously call Bolton Abbey, as the Boy's monument. So the Augustinian Canons, keeping their house and lands at Embsay, and getting much of new land, erected the fine buildings and church on the fair Bolton field. Although it was a priory and not an abbey, it had territorial possessions large enough for any abbey. The lordship of Skipton having passed through severe vicissitudes, reverted to the Crown, and was given by Edward II. to his favourite. Piers Gaveston, who was not long able to keep it. Then the Cliffords got it, and although they now and then lost it, always regained it, and kept it until the last Earl of Cumberland died, and it passed to a female heiress, the Countess of Pembroke, and afterwards to the Earls of Thanet, the last of whom left his own Kent property and the large Clifford estates in Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Craven, to his illegitimate son, Richard Charles Tufton, who was created a baronet in 1857. As for the plunder of the priory, it went by marriage with an heiress first to an Irish nobleman, and then by a similar marriage came to the Cavendish family, and is in possession THE LANDED GENTRY. 381 of the Duke of Devonshire to thl.a day. The priory church, which was a grand one, is partly In ruins and partly in use as a parish church. The other monastic buildings have all perished except the gate-house, which, with additions, has been made into a lodge for use by the Duke and his party in the shooting season. What was the gateway with a fine arch in the monk's time is now the central hall of the transformed building. CHAPTER LX. THE LANDED GENTRY. The Duke of Devonshire, owner of the Bolton Priory lands, and Sir Richard Tufton, heir of the Cliffords, were our big landed magnates, and as they had their chief seats elsewhere, they only paid visits to their Yorkshire estates. The Duke and his sons were sure to come for a week or two to Bolton in the shooting seasons. Sir Richard seldom left Appleby Castle and his southern residence to visit Skipton, whose castle stood a three years' siege on behalf of Charles I. , and when at last famished into surrender, was dismantled by order of Parliament, and rebuilt after the Restoration. If these two landed magnates were practically absentees. It must be said for them that they were just and generous landlords. Sir Richard indeed had the name of being the easiest- going landlord in the whole of the West Riding. As for the rest of our district, it had got, as far back as the reign of Edward I., parcelled out into moderate-sized manors, smaller township estates, single-farm yeoman properties, and urban freehold 382 reminiscences and reflections. or burghal holdings. That parcelling-out, however owners might change, passed on essentially unaltered through the political earthquakes of the Wars of the Roses, the Pilgrimage of Grace Uprising, the Commonwealth War, the Restoration, and the Revolution of 1688, and stiffiy endured untU the industrial revolution assailed it with sap and mine forces of a wholly new and irresistible kind. The parcelling-out led to the building of many manorial and other halls ; few of which, however, could claim a higher antiquity than the latter end of the reign of Elizabeth. The proprietors of the manors and smaller estates who built these halls were men of English names and lineage. They forraed the ruling class, but were not by caste, pride, or difference of blood so separated from the rest of the inhabitants as the Normans had been. I met many old people who remembered the time when the minor landed gentry were, as Justices of the Peace, lords of manors, and owners of small properties of different kinds, "the quality" or ruling aristocracy of what soon afterwards steam and machinery turned into manufacturing towns and villages, which by degrees bought out most of the old families. Bradford itself was a manor, and so were Bowling, Horton, and Manningham, which it clutched into its embrace and incorporated with itself The estate of the manor of Bradford was almost all covered by streets and buildings before 1860. Years after I saw the town, the Corporation at long last bought the Manor House and the manorial rights at a high price. An old-world ceremony ushered in the twice-a-year market held in the streets. The bellman and his attendants were like the Tower beefeaters in quaint uniforms, and THE LANDED GENTRY. 383 the "Oh yes I Oh yes ! Oh yes!" proclamation ended with : " God bless the Queen and Elizabeth Rawson, the Lady of this Manor ! " " Elizabeth Rawson, the Lady of this Manor," did not live in the Manor House, nor anywhere else in the Bradford district. The lands and minerals of Bowling Manor had been acquired long before my time by the Bowling Iron Foundry Company, and its hall had got buried and degraded amidst street buildings. The great inventor, familiarly called Sam Lister, who in old age was created Lord Masham, retained portions of Manningham, his ancestral patrimony. He gener ously half-gifted, half-sold, his new hall and its grounds for a public park to the town when the profits from his Manningham mill and his latest invention for silk manufacturing enabled him to buy the Masham estate near Ripon. He never took much part in Parliamentary or municipal politics. But a brother of his, who died young, was the first member Bradford sent to the House of Commons. The inventor was a churchman and a Conservative, whose influence would have been great in public affairs had he chosen to exert it. But he was all his life one of the hardest workers in the United Kingdom, and his work resulted in adding to the industrial development of his country, and in making others wealthy before wealth, to stay, came to himself Horton Hall, and the strips of land which encroaching streets and buildings yet left to it, belonged to Mr — afterwards Sir — Francis Sharpe Powell, who resided in Lancashire. The Sharpe name, with the Horton Hall estate, had come to him through the Dean of York, who was the son of James Sharp, Archbishop of St. Andrews, too well known in the miserable history of Scotland during the Restoration period. 384 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Bolton Manor and Heaton Manor were still considerable landed estates, although slices of them had been sold. Bolton Hall, with a slice of its land, were purchased for Peel Park. Saltaire was built on a purchased slice of Heaton Manor. About the time I went to Bradford, the old Bolton Manor family had died out. But Mr Atkinson-Jowett, who had till then been a small farmer who went round selling his milk, proved his descent from a far-back cadet of that family, and succeeded to a property which, I was told, brought him an Income of about £8000 a year. He built himself a new hall overlooking Peel Park from the hill-top, and com ported himself with kindness and modest discretion in his new position. His children got the better education which he missed himself As for Heaton Manor, Mr John Filmer Field was succeeded by two daughters — co-heiresses. Mary, the elder of the two, married the Irish Earl of Rosse, of monster telescope and scientific fame, and became the mother of four sons. She, of course, resided with her husband in Ireland at Birr Castle, Parsonstown, King's County. Ht-r younger sister also seldom or never visited the Heaton estate, the hall of which was let on lease for many years to Mr S. Laycock, banker, who reraembered Bradford before it had gone through its Industrial revolution transformation. When with Irresistible force the new order of things was superseding the old one, which, in its main features, had existed from the Norman Con quest, there was one stieve squire in the district who constantly resided on his property near Bingley, and who stood up like the grim keep tower of a dilapi dated feudal fortress amidst its ruined battlements and lower buildings. This was Mr William Busfield THE LANDED GENTRY. 385 Fearand, to whom had descended the compact united estates of Harden Grange and St Ives. Mr Ferrand was a Tory of the Tories, who hated innovations in State and Church, and detested the political economy thinkers of the Manchester school. Mr Disraeli's Reform Bill made him angry with the leaders of his own party, and when Mr Gladstone disestablished the Church of Ireland, and began his Irish land legislation, it was said he felt for a moment inclined to sell his estate to Sir Titus Salt, who would give half a million for it. But if he had such an intention he soon changed it. Selling out at any price would leave him without a vocation. He was by nature a fighting man, and the greater the odds against him the greater his pleasure in his natural vocation. Socialism is an elusive term, which has many mean ings. Mr Ferrand might be truly called a Tory- Socialist. As against the new aristocracy or pluto crats of manufactures and commerce, his sympathies were with the labouring classes. He was a member of the House of Commons when the first Factory Bill was introduced, and so vehemently supported it that the Cobden-Bright party, who opposed it on what they called economic principles, nicknamed him " the Bull of Bingley." It was not only in the House of Commons, but on platforms and at open- air mass meetings, along with Richard Oastler and other agitators, that his strong voice resounded on behalf of the children and women, on whose virtual slavery he maintained large fortunes were being made by unscrupulous tyrants. They were not as a class intentionally cruel, but yet Mr Ferrand, who thoroughly knew the state of things in his own district, had too many facts not to be disputed at the back of his denunciations. So " Bill Ferrand," 25 .586 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. as they familiarly called him, earned the affection and gratitude of the working classes of his own district in particular, and of Yorkshire and Lanca shire in general, although he was such a Tory of the Tories. Vain attempts were made to show him up as a landlord tyrant. But his relations with his tenants and dependents were such as could bear any inspection. He was a good farmer himself, and the tenants were spurred on by his example, and some times by his scoldings, if he saw that they were not making the best of their opportunities. They were a comfortably-off lot, and when undeserved mis fortunes fell on any of them, they had a forbearing and helping landlord in the gentleman whose bark, they said, was worse than his bite. As he constantly lived among them, and went daily in and out among them, he intimately knew them and they intimately knew him and his ways. He could get angry over a trifle, and scold intemperately, but it was all a passing storm which left no bad feeling behind it. Under appearance of masterful despotism, he was in reality a kind-hearted man, who sincerely sought to do his duty to his own people and also to abate evils and nuisances in his neighbourhood. I may here relate one instance of his kindness which came under my own observation, John Mitchell, an old labourer, who was fond of gardening, had a cottage and a garden plot on Mr Ferrand's outskirt farm of Morley, near Thwaites' House, where I and my family lived for eleven years. Old John told me the story him self when doing some gardening for me. John was nearing eighty when he told me how kind Mr Ferrand had been. Some ten years before then age and stiffness had knocked him out of the ranks of able-bodied farm labourers. He took THE LANDED GENTRY. 387 then to gardening for himself, and to putting in order the small gardens of other people, while his wife brought in a small revenue from eggs and poultry. They were like many of the labouring section ofthe native race, far too independent-minded to fall back upon parish relief or charity of any kind. That was the sort of people whom Mr Ferrand most heartily admired. So he gave John a well-grown apricot tree, and told him he would give so much — 3d I think — for every apricot he sold to him. For years the fruit of this tree paid more than John's moderate rent. But from some cause or another the profitable tree suddenly died, and John was left forlorn, until one day a waggon came to his cottage from Harden Grange, and on it, carefully packed with roots and earth on them, was another well- grown apricot tree to replace the lost one. Mr Ferrand was hard on poachers, and yet the story ran among them that in his youth he had been an audacious poacher himself on the lands which were bound to come to him, because the relatives then in possession did not give him the shooting liberties he required. He was a preserver of game for sport, and not for profit. When he and his friends and dogs had had their sport, much of the game killed was freely given away, partly to tenants and partly to charitable institutions and persons in the towns whom the squire respected. On his own lands the poachers had small chance, because the tenants were as opposed to them as Mr Ferrand was himself. The poachers indeed were, upon the whole, thievish loafers from the towns and villages, whom Mr Ferrand stigmatised as Irishmen and tramp incomers from other districts. With the full-blown prejudices of local patriotism, he wished 388 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. to persuade himself that criminals and offenders were rarely of the native stock of people, and that the few of them who lapsed owed their fall to the demoralisation of mills, factories, and other employments of the new industrial era by which the atmosphere was clouded with smoke and deleterious fumes damaging to animal and vegetable life, and the once- clear hill stream and the Aire itself were polluted into stinking sewage. Although urban and industrial necessities made it impossible to fully restore the natural beauties of a really beautiful region of dales and glens, moors and bushy recesses, and to make the Aire and the Wharfe as pure as they were when salmon ran up in shoals from the sea to their head waters, and when they and the streams which flowed into them were full of fine trout, Mr Ferrand lived long enough to see a vast abatement of the smoke and water-pollution nuis ances, and child and woman slavery in crowded and insanitary mills abolished, or at least reduced to a minimum. He had a right to rejoice in these ameliorations, for he had laboured long and vigorously to bring them about. He had a powerful voice, and was an able and ready speaker who had always the courage of his convictions — or, as opponents said, of his invincible Tory prejudices. He paid constant attention to his duties as Justice of the Peace, and made an excellent chairman of the local Bench. He had a good knowledge of law and procedure, and seemed always to leave all his pre judices and prepossessions outside when he entered the court-house, but took them up again as soon as he went out. He scolded first offenders for their good, and then let them off with as lenient sentences as law and custom permitted. Liberal colleagues THE LANDED GENTRY. 389 admitted his thorough impartiality, and valued his guiding common-sense and experience. Ritualists found as little favour in his sight as did agitating Radicals. He looked upon them both as being, in their different ways, enemies of the Church of Eng land, who were working for bringing about dis establishment, the former i)y Popish or foolish innovations AvhIch all sound-hearted Protestants abominated, and the latter by open assaults, at the back of which were sectarian spitefulness and hopes of plunder. Although he usually held himself dis creetly aloof during trade disputes, the working people believed that he always sympathised far more with them than with their employers, but they knew well if they committed riots and breaches of the peace they would change him at once into a formidable foe. His keen watchfulness on one occasion saved the district from what might have been another Holm- firth or Sheffield valley reservoir disaster. When Bradford polluted its own becks and wells, it made water dams In the nearest places to it where water for household purposes could be gathered and im pounded. The supply from these dams soon became insufficient, and then the Corporation foraged far along the moors for more pure water sources, and under Parliamentary powers bought gathering rights and sites for dams. Two of these dams were made in the Cottingley valley, one above the other. The lower one was on Mr Ferrand's land, but I don't recollect from whom the moor water rights and the site for the dam were purchased. If the moor dam burst, the roaring flood from it, rushing down from a height, would certainly have broken the other dam, and the combined flood, besides destroying 390 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. many farmsteads and small villages, would have swept Saltaire and other places along the Aire. The Corporation believed that all was right with the two — having had no information from their own officials to the contrary — when suddenly Mr Ferrand raised a loud alarm about the moor dam's embankment, which he said was about to give way. For a few hours he was supposed to have raised a false alarm, but as soon as the embankment was inspected by the Corporation's engineers, they said the alarm had just been i-aised In time to prevent what would have been a deplorable catastrophe, I drove out next day, on behalf of the Observer, to see what was the true state, and found that the embankment was letting a stream large enough to turn a mill Avheel through a hole it had made in the puddle that ought to have been Avater tight. By that time the danger was nearly over, because the water in both dams was being allowed to flow by the proper outlets in a properly controlled manner. CHAPTER LXI. CLASSES AND MASSES. In the Immediate neighbourhood of Bradford, as already indicated, the "quality," between sales of land, absenteeism, and the dying-out of some old families, fell so low that Mr Ferrand AA^as left alone as a residential and unyielding exponent and champion of superseded feudalism, with its strong blend of Tory-Socialism. Between 1833 and 1860, power and wealth had passed from the old landed gentry to the manufacturing and trading classes. CLASSES AND MASSES. 391 So, when household suffrage and the ballot came, it was chiefly the ruling influence of the newly-enriched which they diminished. As for professional classes, ministers of religion, lawyers, doctors, and teachers, they kept Increasing in number in proportion to the growth of population, but they had no prominent part in public affairs. The Irish Roman Catholics formed a class by themselves. In political and municipal matters they were not so much guided by their priests as by the disloyal and separatist organisations in Ireland and the United States, for which most of the priests had no love ; which, indeed, they had good cause to detest, because the Clan-na-Gael crimes in America and the Fenian crimes at home not only brought discredit on their Church, but also because by these unholy secret societies great numbers were led away into utter infidelity. However remiss in the observ ance of their religious duties many of the young Irishmen of bur district might have become, and although some of them might even have swallowed doses of infidel poison imported from Chicago and New York, they all rose like one man in defence of the true faith, to mob the foreigner, called the Baron de Camin, when he came to Bradford to hold forth upon the alleged immoralities of monks and nuns abroad, and especially to denounce the intrigues of the Jesuits. What a riot those defenders of the faith kicked up ! English-born Irishmen cannot keep long, by association and environment, from being insensibly Saxonised and forced to look at all public questions in a broader and clearer light. In public life, and, in a more restricted way, in social life there was a broad line of distinction between Church and Dissent, but on the Church 392 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. side the line wavered far more than it did on the other side ; this was because the chapel organisations were all gathered into a solid host under the Libera tion Society and Free Trade conjoint banners. The Church had no counterbalancing organisation and mostly all its manufacturing and commercial mem bers and adherents were free-traders, who had not yet understood that the beautiful dream of free exchange of goods all round was never to be realised, but to lead shortly to the dumping of their goods in our open markets by foreign rivals who shut our goods out of their markets by bounties and prohibi tive tariffs. Free imports of food, however, were so great a boon to the working classes that they mis took this part ofthe theory for the whole and lost sight of the other side of the matter. When Liberal platform speakers could not otherwise get a rise out of apathetic audiences, it was quite a common device of theirs to bring in, by heels or head, the names of Cobden and Bright, which usually, yet not always, evoked loud cheers. Not always, for on questions of foreign policy the masses, with their deep heredi tary patriotism and pride in their native land, believed far more in Lord Palmerston — " Old Pam " — than in Manchester school political economists, however much they felt obliged to the latter for free importation of food. Radical working men did any thing but bless the " broad brims " of his Cabinet who prevented " Old Pam " from effectively interfer ing to save Denmark from German plunderers. It was the general custom of the more advanced Liberal writers and speakers, before and after the Civil War, to belaud the constitution and institutions of the United States — slavery excepted. American republicanism was held up for admiration as if the CLASSES AND MASSES. 393 United Kingdom would not be what it should be untU it had a President and a Congress. Well, " Uncle Tom's Cabin," John Brown of immortal memory, and the whole long agitation against the slavery in the Southern States of the Union, had enflamed our masses against slavery, and made them at first hot partisans of the North. But when a blustering Federal Navy captain dragged Mason and Sliddel, the deputies sent by the Confederates to plead their cause in Europe, out of a British mail steamer on the high seas, a scowl of rage darkened the faces of our patriotic operatives, which changed into a gratified grin of joy when " Old Pam " promptly resolved to send troops out to Halifax and to make ready for war unless the indignity was atoned for by liberating the seized deputies — Avhich was done. That incident, with the wonderful generalship of Lee, the Cromwellian heroism of Stonewall Jackson, and the gallantry of the hope lessly outnumbered Confederates, caused a revulsion of feeling in favour of the weaker side, and, on the suppression of the rebellion, the doings of the carpet baggers in the Southern States stripped the Great Republic of a deal of its old reputation. Since then scandals of millionairism, syndicates, combines, and gigantic swindles by people who get the manipulation of honest folks' money, have been a constant night mare to all true American patriots, who wish nobly to find correctives, but as yet have not met with the desired success. The constitution and institutions ofthe United States are theoretically good, and if they were in the right hands and worked in the right spirit should fulfil expectations. The misfor tune is that they have been captured by organised parties looking for spoils, and that by the very 394 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. machinery decreed for ensuring fulness and freedom of elections and the choice of the worthiest have, by the party ticket trick, been reduced to what is nearly a sham. Liberal payment of members keeps the ball of corruption merrily rolling. Those who would be best men for Congress and State Legis latures, in many Instances, turn away from public life, and the voters, who, in the main, are patriotic, honest people, leading industrious, moral lives, are driven to put up with the ticket candidates. In this twentieth century the two great English- speaking nations live in bonds of peace and amity. It ought to be so for ever. The bond of blood and brotherhood, their common history, and law, legisla tion, and social customs should draw them ever closer as the years slide by. But mutual criticism of fair and kindly nature can only do good for both of them. Our Radicals want payment of members of Parliament, They openly advocate that as a first step, but they do not intend to stop at that. Socialists, in their general schemes of plunder, wish to get for the members of all public bodies paid salaries. What has come out of such payments in the United States ought to be taken by sensible Britons as a warning, and not as an example to be imitated. Our constitutional monarchy is after all the truest form of Republicanism, and it saves us from the quadrennial turmoil of a presidential elec tion, followed, when parties change sides, by a Avholesale distribution of offices from the highest to the lowest — from the village postmaster to the President. Disestablish ers at one time were never weary of extolling the United States as a country which was a highly-religious and Christian country, in which all creeds were free, and In which there CLASSIiS AND MASSES. 395 was no Church connected with the State. I do not know whether they will venture so loudly to praise the religious and moral conditions of things there now. At anyrate when, for obtaining their support at elections, they appeal to the predatory instincts of Socialists and Radicals, by suggesting that a vast amount of plunder would be made available for distribution were the Church of England and Church of Scotland disestablished, they should remember that in the United States the various I'eligious bodies have been allowed to accumulate property far exceeding that of the two national Churches of this land, which alone make sure provision for continuous religious worship in every parish from Land's End to John 0' Groats. Republicanism as a speculation and subject of debate was attractive to young men who fancied themselves disciples of Mill, Huxley, and Morley, and likewise to older men who posed as pundits of the so-called science of political economy then in fashion. The hope of a successful rebellion in Ireland was dear to the Irishmen who were con nected with Fenian or Land League conspiracy, but, take them in all, our classes and masses were loyal subjects of Queen Victoria, and even chivalrously and romanticaUy proud of their dear Sovereign lady. George Odger, one of the wildest of the London revolutionaries of that time, confessed that revolution would be impossible during the Queen's reign when he said — "Me and my friends have resolved that the Prince of Wales shall never ascend the throne of these realms." He and his friends did all they could to make the Prince of Wales unpopular, and little did they profit thereby. The marriage of the Heir- Apparent with the Princess Alexandra of Denmark 396 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. was celebrated in all our district with great rejoic ings. Towns and villages, even country-houses and scattered farm-steads, were made to look gay with flags, arches, and devices of a benedictory and festive character. Bonfires and illuminations followed at night. I have never seen anything so striking as the effect of the Bradford illuminations and bonfires that night. Far up in the sky a dome of light hung over the whole place. No doubt this was caused by the situation of the town, which rises up surrounding heights from the bottom of forked valleys. Soon after their marriage the Royal couple came to visit Lord Ripon at Studley Royal, and the Prince on that visit opened the new town hall of Halifax. The West Riding people on that occasion gave them as hearty and unanimous a welcome as could possibly be given. Years afterwards, when the Prince Was lying between life and death ill of fever at Sand- rlngham, the bulletins were scanned with gloomy anxiety from hour to hour until the crisis was over and recovery ensured. Then a feeling of joyful thankfulness spread over all the country. The newly enriched middle classes, who, in urban and mining and manufacturing districts held supremacy from the passing of the Reform Bill to the coming of household suffrage with the ballot, were not lacking in self-confidence, nor in good intentions either. They administered local affairs uprightly and sagaciously. Their ready acceptance of the really grand, although never to be realised, doctrine of cosmopolitan Free Trade somewhat twisted and contracted their patriotism — of which, however, they had plenty. The individual freedom and open career which formed part of the Manchester school political-economy creed suited the self-made CLASSES AND MASSES. 397 or luck-made people of that period of transition from handicrafts and domestic industries to the capitalist and company monopolies which were to come, and had to be confronted and counteracted by defensive, and sometimes offensive and detrimental, trade- union forces. To persons who happened to own fields or houses of little annual value before the transformation began, fortunes came without their OAvn merit, but in ninety per cent, of cases it came by devotion to business honestly conducted, prudent investments, and habits of life moulded by Christian morality, and a frugality which, as a rule, was quite consistent with helpful aid to poor relations and general liberality. Here a few typical cases of the rise of the newly enriched may be cited In illustra tion of the changes brought about by the industrial revolution, Mr Gathorne - Hardy, created Earl Cranbrook in 1892, received his peerage in reward of political services, but derived his wealth from great ironworks near Bradford, in which he had inherited a heavy stake, and which had first been made profitable in a high degree by the chemical discoveries of a clerical ancestor of his. Mr Samuel Cunliffe-Lister — created Baron Masham — belonged by birth to the old smaller gentry of the locality, but it was in his inventlA^e brains that he had an unfailing mine which finally made him wealthy in old age, after having made and lost one or two previous fortunes by letting others manage his business while he became himself engrossed in new inventions. Mr Titus Salt, I think, was the first of our successful captains of industry who was created a baronet. Mr Salt, who had made a moderate fortune as a wool-stapler, got hold of a loom fit for 398 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. weaving alpaca wool, then a drug in the market, and boldly launched into manufacturing that wool, when for a time he could have a monopoly of that branch of business. Wonderful success crowned his efforts. When his wealth grew with something like the rapidity of Jonah's gourd, he bought land on the east of Shipley, on the bank of the Aire, and on it built a gigantic mill, a fine village, and an Inde pendent chapel, on the plan of the Paris Madeleine, in which, when his time came, he was buried, and which he intended to be forever his own and his descendants' mausoleum. He had the biggest funeral that had ever taken place in the Bradford district. A high-class statue of him, in a shrine, was placed In front of the Bradford Town Hall ; and and a Dissenting minister wrote a florid biography of him. He liked praise and flattery, and in life and death got plenty of both. He called his new model village Saltaire, joining his own and the river names together. He was generous with his money, founded and endowed a school for Saltaire, was kind to the poor, the old, and the afflicted, and gave donations to many charities. Within his proper limits he was admirable as the organiser and con troller of a great undertaking, and the provider on fair terms of comfortable and sanitary houses for his working people. But at the same time he was an enlightened despot to them, or he that must be obeyed. He transgressed his proper limits when he, in his paltry quarrel on a political question with Abraham Holroyd, acted the despot, Abraham Holroyd was a poor, honest man who had a book stall on the land of Sir Titus. In literary ability and general intelligence he was the baronet's un doubted superior. Having convictions of his own CLASSES AND MASSES. 399 and the manliness to express them, and his views being contrary to the views Sir Titus had adopted, Abraham, who refused to recant or be silent, was deprived of his bookstall stand. On second thoughts, however. Sir Titus saw he was wrong, and hand somely acknowledged his mistake. Masterful but just, generous and well-meaning by nature. Sir Titus, I think, was somewhat spoiled by the obsequiousness of his own people, the hero-worship given to him by his political and religious party, and the well-deserved praises which were bestowed on his model village in home and continental publi cations. Up the hills in the direction of Halifax there is a village on the steep which for some cause — per haps the sign of a roadside inn — was once called Queenshead. Its centre of industrial life was Foster's mill, and as mill and village steadily grew together the inhabitants objected to let the place be any longer called by a name which had come by public usage to mean a postage stamp. They there fore had their village renamed Queensbury. Mr John Foster, the founder, and in my time, with his up-to-date sons as partners, the head of the manu- fucturing firm which gave this hill place its prosperity and importance, was, while an excellent business man, an unassuming old gentleman, who liked to speak the dialect and stick to kindly, homely, old-fashioned ways. There were not a few other employers who had gained respect and clannish loyalty from the people in their employment ; but I think the relations between Mr John Foster and his operatives were the most patriarchal and materially trustful and confidential that existed anywhere in a district in which much of what was best in the 400 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. spirit of feudalism had passed from the " quality" to the newly enriched. The Hornby estate with its fine historical castle having come into the market, Mr John Foster bought it for a high price, which he paid down on the nail. He was not the man to buy a pig in a poke, and so we may be sure he had expert opinion to go upon before the sale took place. It seems that he did not himself visit Hornby until after the price had been paid and the transfer com pleted. One day a man who looked like a well-to- do, honest farmer, and who spoke the dialect as to the manner born, entered the Hornby village inn, and said he wanted to have a smoke and a glass of beer. The innkeeper, who had no other customers at the time, took him into the room reserved for his genteeler guests, and then went for a glass of beer, a churchwarden pipe, and a screw of tobacco. On coming back with these supplies, he found that some uppish young men had entered the room, and that they were looking on the placid, farmer-like man as if they objected to his presence. So, to propitiate these gentry, the innkeeper said to Mr Foster, " Will you please come Avith me to the kitchen, as I think these gentlemen want to have the room to themselves ? " Mr Foster rose at once and said nothing would suit him better than to have his smoke and his drink at the kitchen fireside. When host and guest settled themselves in the warm, comfortable kitchen, they soon became chatty. The stranger asked questions about the district, and the host, puzzled by these questions, tried to find what was the stranger's business in that part of the country, where he had never seen him before. At last the host, finding that circumlocution would not do, put a direct question. The answer was — CLASSES AND MASSES. 401 " Oh, I have bought some land hereabouts, and I have come to see it." " Do you mean you haxe bought a farm ? " " Yes." " I have not heard of any farm having been sold in this neighbourhood ; what is the name of your farm ? " " The name of it that was given to me is the Hornby Castle estate." Boniface was overwhelmed with surprise and very unnecessary regret at having taken his new landlord to the kitchen, but it was just the sort of incident best suited to please Mr Foster. Bradford, when I went there, had a large staff' of merchants — English, Scotch, German, Jewish — who traded with all parts of the world, and who, in their Chamber of Commerce, discussed in the' light of experience questions affecting trade, finance, and navigation. Besides those scattered out elsewhere. Peel Square was surrounded by splendid merchant warehouses. But until 1835, or thereabouts, the state of things was wholly different. The manufac turers of the town and neighbourhood brought the product of their mills to the old Piece Hall in Market Street, and sold them there, chiefly to Leeds merchants. When that old yoke of dependence was shaken off, a feeling of rivalry, which continued long, sprang up between Leeds and Bradford. But when once started, the emancipation movement could have but one issue. Bradford, in a few years, made itself the unchallengable capital and emporium of the worsted district. One of the earliest and biggest Bradford merchant firms, that of MiUigan & Forbes, was founded by two Scotchmen, who were a credit to their native land. Mr Forbes, on coming to Bradford, set up a draper's shop, in which he modestly prospered for many years. He was dead before my time. Mr Robert MiUigan, the senior 26 402 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. partner, who, for years after 1860, actively superin tended the great business of the firm, started his remarkable career in England as a packman. He brought with him from Scotland a good parish school education, spiced with Shorter Catechism theology, and the aptitude for business and moral qualities which led to success. An observant and most intelligent and, withal, a most unassuming young man was Mr Robert MiUigan. When a merchant prince and held in high reverence and respect by the whole community among whom he had lived and prospered so long, he was so far from concealing his humble start in life, that he placed his old pack in the entrance hall of his mansion of Acacia, and was always leady to draw the attention of guests to it, and to tell stories of his experiences and adventures as a pedlar or travelling merchant who carried all his stock-in-trade on his back. Mr MiUigan had the clannishness of a Scotchman. So he found openings for many of his relations, and also for not a few countrymen who were no relations at all. As he had no children of his own, his great wealth was by his will carefully and justly distributed among a large number of people connected with him by blood or marriage, his wife's kindred sharing with his own. William Brown, a saddler by trade, came from Otley, his native place, to Bradford, and bought or rented two united cottages in Market Street, then newly made, one in which he lived and the other in which he had his shop and working place. Having thus established himself, he looked about for a wife, and found one who was a treasure in herself in Elizabeth Ingham, of a good old Bradford stock. Their marriage took place shortly before or after CLASSES .VND MASSES. 403 1800. If the cottages were not his own at first, he became the owner of them before his death some ten years later, when his widow and their only child, Henry Brown, Avere left with these cottages as all that came to them from husband and father. They prospered because the widow was a strong-minded, high-principled business woman, who managed to lay broad and firm foundations for what has long been, and still is, the largest drapery and outfitting establishment in Bradford and its district. When they married, William Brown was a Churchman, and Elizabeth Ingham belonged to the Independent Chapel which the orthodox Presbyterians founded, when the Unitarian majority got hold of the old Chapel Lane place of worship and its endowment. The strife between Church and Dissent had, at the beginning of last century, for several reasons much subsided in Bradford. One of these reasons was the lapsing of the majority of the Presbyterians into Unitarianism, which gave a shock to orthodox Dissenters, and another was the Wesleyan revival, which swept into its broad stream both church-folk and chapel-folk. It was not also without a modifying effect that the then vicar of Bradford was a fervent evangelical who compelled respect from the old Dissenters, and whom the Wesleyans so honoured that during his life they continued to communicate and have their children baptized and confirmed in the Parish Church. After marriage, while William Brown continued as before to worship in the Parish Church, his wife stuck to her Independent Chapel, and took their boy Henry with her there as soon as he could walk to it. There is, I suppose, everywhere a business connection side to religious associations, and in England, I think, this side is far more 404 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. apparent than in Scotland. Whether or not her husband's connection with the Parish Church brought customers to Elizabeth when left a widow, I cannot say with certainty, but there is no doubt at all that she profited by chapel connection. On her husband's death she disposed of his stock-in-trade, and con verted his saddlering cottage into a drapery shop and a store for children's ready-made clothes. She sold for cash down to the general public, and only gave short credit in exceptional cases to purchasers she well knew and could trust. She had a head for business and closely attended to it. Her customers soon became numerous. They knew her straight forward way, and that there was no use in haggling with her. They had to pay' the price she first mentioned, or else to leave without getting what they wanted. She made few or no losses. She was content with small profits, but as these small profits grew into tidy heaps, she looked about for safe investments, and as the town was growing at a great pace, readily found them. While of a saving disposition, she was anything but miserly. To kith and kin wbo needed help, she gave It liberally and ungrudgingly. She took care that Henry, her son, should have a good education, and should from Infancy be brought up in the way he should go. She bestowed similar care on cousins of his who came under her protection. Her son, Henry Brown, ful filled her expectations. He was for a life-time a member of the Bradford Town Council, was elected Mayor three times in succession, and took a promin ent part in the public life and progress of the town and neighbourhood. The business built by his mother on sure foundations enormously increased under the management of Mr Henry Brown and his CLASSES AND MASSES. 405 brother-In-laM', Mr T. P. Muff, whom he took into partnership with him, and in due time new and spacious premises were built for it on the sites ofthe old cottages and their annexes in Market Street. Mr Brown's son, an only chUd, died in his infancy. Having no child of his own to educate and provide for, Mr Brown spent a large portion of his wealth upon the promotion of the higher education of the children of other people, especially those who could not afford to pay fbr it. The Bradford Grammar School and the corresponding higher school for girls received large endowments from him while living, and more by will. Besides what he spent on charit able and educational institutions when alive, his executors had to pay £26,000 to charities of various kinds before distributing the rest of his fortune among his blood relations by father and mother's side, some fifty in number, according to the specific instructions contained in his will. Old Mrs Brown was able to grow with her circumstances and to wisely enjoy the fortune she had made, although to the last she was, by precept and example, a preacher of righteousness against waste, laziness and fechlessness. When she saw the business flourishing in her son's hands, she removed her habitation from Market Street to a commodious house In the suburbs, in which friends and acquaintances were sure of receiving a hospit able welcome, and which was a place of recuperance for the many young relatives whom she had helped on their onward course. Mrs Rennie, the well- endowed and comfortably housed widow of a merchant, was not able, like Mrs Brown, to grow with her circumstances, and yet she was a sympa thetic and generous helper to afflicted people she 406 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. knew, and liberal in her donations to chapels and charities. As far as food, fire, and other comforts were concerned she did not stint herself and her servants. But she stuck to some habits of her early days, probably days of pinching and struggling, which made her seem very eccentric to later genera tions. When her husband was alive she made dresses fbr herself out of fents or remnants of webs, of different shades of one colour — say red, blue, or grey, because the fents could not be better utilised, and the dresses were as clean and comfortable as if they were of the same shade of colour. From early days to the end of a long life, Harrogate was the only place to which she went for her summer " outing." There were some cottage lodgings there Avhich she had trysted from year to year. She used to go with the carrier's cart, and to take supplies from home with her. Then came a year when a coach regularly plied between Bradford and Harro gate, but Mrs Rennie stuck to the carrier, and would not look at the coach nor afterwards at the railway either. Unfortunately her faithful allegiance to use and wont gave her, when quite an old widow, a broken leg, through a fall from the top of the carrier's cart. After that accident, I think she gave up going to Harrogate. She had no patience with dressy servant maids nor with any man or woman that would not put their hand to any kind of useftil work. A lady friend, when passing Mrs Rennie's house one day, saw her hastily coming out with a jug in her hand and crossing the street to a milk cart standing on the other side, where she got it filled, and paid the milkman. The lady stopped till Mrs Rennie crossed back, to remonstrate with her for not sending her maid on ail such errands. CLASSES AND MASSES. 407 " Bless you ! " was the reply, " my maid would take half-an-hour to dress before she would think herself fine enough to come out of the house, and do you think I could let the man stop waiting for her when I could come myself at once for my three pennies' worth of milk ? " It was in a larger measure than is generally recognised OAving to the British mothers who kept a firm grip on Christian faith and morals that a hundred years ago our country escaped the double danger of conquest by the greatest war lord the world has ever seen, and of suffering severe and instant demoralisation from an industrial revolu tion, which substituted collectivism for the old handicraft arts and domestic industries, and made the working classes to a large extent mere attach ments and slaves to machinery. With unshaken confidence and fixed family-life principles, which they knew to be blessed by Almighty God, the noble British mothers of that era bred and trained brave sons and virtuous daughters. Many of the sons went forth to fight for their country by sea and land. By sea victory was always with the British warriors. By land the British soldiers fought on undismayed by trials and disappoint ments until Napoleon was finally defeated at Waterloo, and sent like a caged eagle to the lonely yet pleasant island of St Helena. The daughters had to fight their own battles against demoralising influences in the mixed assemblages of mills and other places where many Avorked together, and upon the whole they fought these fights victoriously, and became in their turn wives and mothers like the mothers who had borne and trained them. 408 REMINISCBNCB6 AND REFLECTIONS. One of my first impressions of the natives of the worsted district was that they were much alike, whether rich or poor, a hard-headed, practical people, of whom it was not easy — even for a Yankee, although that happened once if not oftener — to get the better in a deal. But if hard they were upright in their dealings, and in social relations their hardness frequently converted itself into the generous deeds, which shun rather than seek pub licity and applause. Further acquaintance revealed unsuspected strains of romance and stores of senti ment, well kept out of sight, but which had still a softening influence on life and character. They had much humour of a caustic kind, which sometimes, as in the case of a Wesleyan local preacher, assumed an irreverent or grotesque form. When working up a revival movement, this local preacher is said to have fervently prayed, " Lord, send down Thy Spirit upon us this minute, through the ceiling, and never mind expenses." On another occasion, to illustrate how easy it was to slide downward into sin, and how difficult to pull upwards without Divine help, he slid down the bannister on the outside of the pulpit stair, and then began to struggle to pull himself up AvIth puffing and difficulty. But the highest flight of his peculiar humour took place in an outlying village, where he was to hold a feerles of meetings. He was much dissatisfied with the poor attendance at the first meeting, and said so. Lie then with a solemn face announced that at the next meeting he intended to make a pair of shoes in the pulpit. That singular announcement gave him a crowded audience at the next meeting all agog to see how he was to fulfil his promise. He made his way through that crowd i'OLITICAL CURRENTS AND EDDIES. 40^ with a pair of old boots in one hand and a big sharp knife in the other. He mounted the stair into the pulpit, turned to the audience without a smile on his face, cut off the tops of the boots and flung them over the side, then held up the truncated remains, and caUed them the pair of shoes he had made in their presence. After that he launched out in racy dialect ridiculing them for their readiness to be attracted by such a silly device as a promise to make a pair of shoes in a pulpit, and their unreadiness to assemble to hear God's Word, and to come with their sins, to pray for grace and mercy and guidance at His footstool. CHAPTER LXII. POLITICAL CURRENTS AND EDDIES. In the twenty years between 1860 and 1880, all true Britons, whatever their rank and callings, were as far asunder as are the North and South Poles from Keir Hardie Socialism and twentieth -century gospel of universal revolution in theology preached from the erstwhile orthodox pulpit of the City Temple, — which has been endorsed, I feel sure, to the amazement and disgust of the majority of English operatives, by the Labour Conference held at Hull in January, 1908. The Liberation Society, indeed, in its blind hostility to the Church of England, baited Its disestablishment policy by the suggestion that after life-interests had been exhausted and liberal grants of buildings and funds had, as in Ireland, been made to the dispossessed Episcopalians, there would ultimately be a heap of capital available 410 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. for secular and popular purposes. This policy was accepted by the Welsh Labourists in its barefaced form, and they destined the plunder for education and the payment of salaries, as in the United States, to members of Parliament. It was a policy which had, in the plurality of election contests in England, to be carefully masked, because the full avowal of it would alienate Liberal Churchmen and scare away the candidates for whom the sturdiest Noncon formists had a vei-y decided preference. Faddists, theorists, and enthusiasts were held in check in the worsted district by the commonsense of an industrious, practical people intolerant of shams and wild dreams. Plutocrat and democrat of the native breed were at bottom both Conservative, and thoroughly agreed about the sacredness of private property, and the justice of giving full compensation and something over for land or heritages required for public or railway company purposes. However ready the plutocrat on a Liberal platform might be to promise going on with perpetual tinkering of the Constitution, he would, of course, be the last man to concur in projects which would rob him of his possessions or diminish the value of his securities and investments. His ambition was almost invari ably from the beginning of his career to become owner of a landed estate, and many of his class attained that position, and left estates and baronet cies to their sons. Feudalism did not die, but transmigrated to the newly-enriched. Shopkeepers, small traders, and artisans sought to acquire a real property stake in their country before they took to invest in bank or railway shares, or in Consols or other stock. The thrifty workman had no peace of mind until he became owner of his house. POLITICAL CURRENTS AND liDDlES, 4ll Trade-unionism had two sides, a fighting with capital side, and a benefit society or mutual assur ance side to provide against want of work, or sickness, or old age. There were strikes and lock outs in the worsted district between single firms and their operatives ; but I did not see anything like a general strike or lock-out. In the conflicts which did take place employers were, in my opinion, oftener in the wrong than the employed, who re luctantly spent union funds on a strike Avhen driven to extremity by the greed and injustice of employers. Our operatives felt that while the strike was their best weapon of defence and offence, it was well to keep it as much as possible hanged up in terrorem,, because the use of it was costly to the union funds, which were wanted for benefit society purposes. Our unions had then a local character and a spirit of Independence in politics and trade affairs which agreed with the sturdy character of the people that formed them. The officials of these local unions were not glib-tongued agitators, but intelligent business men who kept accounts straight, and as soon as opportunity came used their connection advantages to start in some line of business as employers. Every good member of a trade union wished to develop into an employer or, at least, to have an independent career and a stake in the country. While employers and employed, rich man and poor man, were ambitious to acquire real property, and held the same views regarding the rights of property, I rather think the instructive and genuinely patriotic conservatism of the masses was stronger than that of the Avealthier and better educated classes, whether they called themselves 412 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Liberals or Conservatives. Our working people did not realise how conservative they were in their principles, habits, practices, and ambitions. They had been taught by Liberal politicians to dislike the Tories. The word " Tory " was one to be hissed at. But for all that, they retained hereditary respect for the " quality," and never forgot that it was Sir Robert Peel who gave them the free imports, which they called free trade, and that their out-and-out Tory neighbour, Mr Ferrand, advocated with all the strength of his vigorous nature the passing of the Factory Bill, which Mr Bright and Mr Cobden opposed on economic grounds. Because of the boon of cheap and plenty food they were always willing to give cheers fbr Cobden and Bright, but not at all disposed to follow their lead on all questions. Mr Bright, because of his ancestral creed, con curred in the sending of a foolish Quaker embassy to Czar Nicholas, which made the Crimean war inevitable, by convincing the haughty autocrat of All the Russias that peace at any price would be the British policy, whatever might be that of France. He was sure of Austria's neutrality, and of the fetch and carry conduct of Prussia. Mr Cobden bitterly opposed British participation in the Crimean war, because he was plunged and lost in a wild Utopian dream of his own, little expecting the collision of armies and the war of tariffs which were fated to come. He believed that in a few years the doctrine of free trade in all its fulness would be accepted by all nations, and that as a consequence of that acceptance tbe world at last would enjoy a Golden Age for evermore. This visionary hope made the Manchester school of political economists careless about retaining the colonies as Integral POLITICAL CURRENTS AND EDDIES. 413- parts of the British Empire. Mr Bright, in a speech glorifying the United States, assumed that it would absorb the Dominion of Canada, and possess all from the North Pole to the Gulf of Mexico, and, I think, the Isthmus of Darien. He lived long enough to see the big wars on the Continent, as well as the Civil War in the United States, with the demorali sation which followed thereon. He saw the war of tariffs, and like the good patriot he ever was when freed from Utopianism, he set his face like flint against Mr Gladstone's mad proposal to give the Irish a measure of Home Rule, which they could soon and easily use for the disintegration of the United Kingdom, which would leave Great Bi"itain open to attacks from Irish separatists and foreign enemies in alliance with them. It was clear, from the way in which working men, who called themselves Radicals, and were so on reform and free trade matters, spoke of Lord Palmerston, both before and after his death, that they always had had unbounded trust In his conduct of foreign affairs, and that they had no confidence at all on that matter in the men whose names they cheered at public meetings, and for whose candidates they demonstrated noisily at election times, before household suffrage and the ballot put the electoral supremacy at their disposal. In regard to the colonies and dependencies which formed the outer and greater Britain, our working people were proud of them, and wished strongly that they should ever remain in unity of allegiance and citizenship with the Mother Country. They had close ties with these outer parts of the Empire, through sons, daughters, and friends, who went there and found themselves happier and more at home under the old flag than 414 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. they could be ever under the Stars and Stripes of the United States, hoAvever many the openings and however high the wages that were to be had in that go-ahead country of boundless extent and resources, where, until after the Civil War, carpet-baggers, and swindlers, and syndicates, and combines had not vitiated pristine republican virtues and perverted constitution and institutions into instruments for running " machines " to benefit birds and beasts of prey by the defrauding of honest citizens, to the endless vexation of true patriots down to President Roosevelt, the strongest of them all. Our working men went merrily into the Volunteer movement, regardless of the cold water thrown upon it by the peace-at-any-price dreamers of vain dreams. When I first went to Bradford, I found the town represented in the House of Commons by Mr Wickham, a Conservative, and by Mr Titus Salt, a Liberal, who had too great a stake in the country to be really much of a Radical. Mr Salt, who found attendance at Westminster incompatible with the close superintendence of his big mill at Saltaire, soon resigned his seat, and was afterwards made a baronet. On his resignation, Mr William Edward Forster, manufacturer, in partnership with Mr Fison, was elected in his place. Mr Forster, who had in him the make of a broad-minded and truly patriotic statesman, was a representative of whom any con stituency might well be proud, altogether apart from party considerations. It is as the man who had the fashioning and the piloting through Parliament of the first Education Bills for England and Scotland that his memory will be preserved in history. The Bills were drawn upon right lines, but Mr Forster had not the least idea of the huge cost to which POLITICAL CURRENTS AND EDDIES. 415 they would lead under School Board and Education Department management, nor the least conception of how the new system in England and Wales would be abused to the purposes of sectarian attacks upon the Church of England schools. At the head of the Education Department, Mr Forster was the right man in the right place. He was, in Mr Gladstone's 1881 Administration, sadly misplaced when sent to Ireland as Chief Secretary. He soon sickened of Ireland, but got out of it without being assassinated. The West Riding, before it was divided, had two members. The last two were Sir John Ramsden, owner of large estates in England by inheritance, and of an Inverness-shire sporting estate by pur chase, and Sir Francis Crossley, one of the three brother - partners of the famous Halifax carpet- manufacturing firm. Sir Francis was a newly-made baronet, while Sir John's baronetcy dated back to 1680. On the West Riding being divided and two seats being given to each division. Sir Francis and Lord Frederick Cavendish, second son of the Duke of Devonshire, were returned for our Northern Division. I was present at the big meeting in St George's Hall, at which — accompanied by Sir Francis, who was well known — Lord Frederick made his first appearance as a candidate. The play of "Lord Dundreary" had, a little before, been per formed in that hall, with Suthern as the inimitable representative of the chief character. Now It so happened that, in the opening sentences of his speech. Lord Frederick, in nervous flurry, spoke so like "Dundreary" as to cause irrepressible laughter. He said that, on being asked to stand, he hesitated, because he thought an older and more experienced 416 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. man would be a fitter candidate for such an impor tant constituency. He then proceeded: — "If I was then afwaid, what must be my feelings now when I see this magnificent Avoom cowded from the floor to the v-v-wewy Avoof ?" He, that night, in his opening sentences, had a stammer in addition to the slippery lisping over certain letters. The burst of laughter put him on his mettle, and he made a clever speech which read very well in print. I often heard him afterwards, and wondered at the way in which, like Demosthenes, he had conquered his stammering, and got rid of his youthful " Dun- drearyism." Sent to Ireland as Chief Secretary, in succession to Mr Forster, he had just taken the oath, when, crossing Phcenix Park in company with Mr Burke, the Permanent Under-Secretary, Fenian scoundrels beset and assassinated them. That tragic event, which sent a shock of horror, mingled with righteous indignation, through the whole British Empire, took place In May, 1882. From the passing of the first Reform Bill to the coming of household suffrage and the ballot In Parliamentary elections, the two currents of Liberalism and Conservatism balanced each other over all England in a manner which Tories of Lord Eldon's type deemed to be utterly impossible, since they only trusted in feudal leadership, and had no faith in the wisdom of newly-enriched upstarts, and no true conception of the Inherent caution and patriotic intuition of the common people. When Mr Disraeli cut the ground from under the feet of Lord John Russell and the Liberals who wanted to keep the franchise at much higher qualifications, by boldly digging down at once to household sufli-age in the boroughs, he relied upon a spirit of Conserva- POLITICAL CURRENTS AND EDDIES. 417 tism among the masses, the existence of which was quite as much doubted by Liberals as by the most Tory members of his own party. What happened when power passed from the middle classes to the masses was that the two main political currents became full of eddies and side-whirlings which were apt to confound the calculations of electioneering agencies. In our district. Liberalism was usually predominant, but it had ebbs and flows Avhich, superficially looked at, seemed very perplexing. For instance, when Sir Francis Crossley died, the elec tors of the Northern Division gave Lord Frederick Cavendish a Conservative colleague. That, however, was nothing in comparison with the sweeping changes which afterwards took place, back and for ward, in Parliamentary representation. All the twenty years I was in close touch with English politics, the masses of voters seemed to act consis tently upon the principle of giving each of the two political parties a turn about of office. By plunging into the bog of Irish Home Rule, and by Majuba and Convention blundering in South Africa — without which there would have been no Boer War — Mr Gladstone threw power a great deal longer into the hands of the Unionists than on the turn-about plan of action they would otherwise have been thought justly entitled to. 27 418 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER LXIII. LONDON. The first time I saw London was when I was sent on newspaper business to the opening of the Exhibition of 1862, As London was to be invaded by myriads of visitors from all countries of the world as well as from all parts of the United Kingdom, lodgings had been in good time secured for me in Aldersgate, which were very comfortable, and where my fellow lodgers were exhibitors from Manchester and York shire. One day, however, when I continued my work in the Exhibition buildings so late that on coming out I saw the last of the conveyances driving off before I could reach it, I had to walk back on foot, and was saved from losing myself on the way by a strong sense of locality which made it pretty easy, either by night or by day, to find out places I had once seen without looking to street names or asking policemen. As I represented two newspapers, I had two tickets of admission for the opening day, besides a season pass. One of the two tickets I gave to my landlord, who was so pleased with the little gift that he put himself in place of a guide, and went with me to see the Tower, the Guildhall, Covent Garden, the Docks, St Paul's, and A^arious other places. My fellow lodgers and I, and our landlord got into the Exhibition buildings among the first, all in a batch, and had, therefore, a free choice of places. We stationed ourselves in what I may call a park of LONDON. 419 artUlery, Armstrong guns, Krupp guns, and so on, near the platform. I perched myself on a field gun with our two exhibitors, and we had some trouble all day in so balancing ourselves as to keep it from playing tricks by swaying up and down. Its height gave us a wide view of the immense building, and we watched with interest how it filled up with people as time Vent on. Our landlord sat below us on a big Krupp gun, which was solid and ugly enough for anything. After a while came the splendid procession, and passed close to us to the platform, which also was very near at hand. Foreign Ambassadors, Ministers and ex-MInisters of State, men eminent in arts and sciences and literature, the Lord Mayor of London, and other chiefs of municipalities. In their robes and decorations, made that day a splendid muster. Then all eyes were concentrated on the royal personages who were to take the chief part in the formal open ing ceremony. Owing to the recent death of Prince Albert neither the Queen nor any of her children could take part in the opening ceremony. The Duke of Cambridge was deputed to officiate, and he was supported right and left on the platform by the Prince of Prussia, afterwards the Emperor Frederick of Germany, the Queen's son-in-law, and by Prince Oscar of Sweden, who afterwards succeeded his elder brother and reigned long as Oscar II. , but had the misfortune before his death to see, through no fault of his, Norway separated from Sweden. Broad, burly, and of more than medium height as the Duke of Cambridge was, he was that day overtopped by the Prussian Crown Prince, a blonde giant and one of the handsomest of the sons of men, and by the dark and slimmer Prince Oscar of 420 REMINISCENCES AND RBFLBCTIONS. Sweden, who had inherited the French type of the Bernadottes. I gazed at him with peculiar interest on account of his name. His father, Oscar I. of Sweden and Norway, was the godson of Napoleon, who gave him the name of the finest hero of the Ossianic cycle of Gaelic poetry. But of all the Royal personages at the opening ceremony, the best known and best liked and most vigorously cheered by the huge crowd was the Princess Mary of Cambridge, who soon afterwards married the Duke of Teck. I sat up all night writing my account of the opening ceremony, and when I went to bed at last in broad daylight the headache of exhaustion and excitement kept me for an hour or so awake. As the procession passed within a few yards of me, and afterwards when its members arranged themselves on the platform close at hand, I was astonished to find how easily I could identify many of the celebrities of the day, whom I had never seen before, by their pictorial representations, particularly " Punch " caricatures of them. The musical part of the ceremony was grand, and I was glad to observe that a place had been found for Highland bagpipe music also, which in such a vast building sounded as if coming down a glen in a May morning, raising stirring memories of a thousand years, and harmonising itself with the voices of the mountain streams, and of breezes which made heather slopes bend and curl like waves of the sea. For the first few days I had long hours of constant work in the Exhibition. I dined in the well-ordered French refreshment place, and after losing the vehicles once, took care to be out in time to catch them ever afterwards. The well-guarded stand on LONDON. 421 which the Koh-i-noor diamond was exhibited had always a little crowd about it. With its glow of light within itself, it is no doubt a wonderful stone, but to me it had little more attractiveness than if it had been a piece of glass of the same size and humpy form. I admire emeralds and pearls, and some of the other gems in a moderate degree, but I have a curious dislike to diamonds, as if in a previous existence I had come to connect them with guile and crime. I have never been a fanciful person, and this unexplainable antipathy remains a puzzle to me to this day. Sunday brought a welcome cessation fi-om news paper work, but I was too anxious to see as much as possible of London to rest in my comfortable lodgings. I went to the morning service in St Paul's. Dean Milman, whose writings I much admired, officiated. He was then a bent old man, but had such a clear voice that every word he spoke was distinctly heard by all the huge congregation. Several of us, with Exhibition tickets, banded together for going to Westminster in the afternoon. A river steamer landed us on the terrace of the Palace of Westminster, and we had drinks of beer in the crypt by gaslight before going to the Abbey. Mr Forster, our Bradford M.P., had sent me a ticket for the Speaker's Gallery for the sitting of the House of Commons on the Monday, but the business happened to be of a humdrum kind on that evening. I gazed with unbounded admiration at the splendid exterior of St Paul's, by which London appeared to be wholly dominated and to be largely redeemed from architectural commonplace, but was dis appointed with the interior, which was then in a far less finished state than it is now. At West- 4^2 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. minister my sensations were quite different. The Palace of Westminster — or Houses of Parliament — outwardly dvvarfed the Abbey, but the Inside of the Abbey is without comparison. There was a remarkable contrast between the quietness of London on Sunday and the crowded state of the streets and roaring traffic on week-days. In 1862 all the movements of the people and all the carrying of goods were above ground. Underground railways and tubes had yet to come. So had tramways, motor cars, and London County Council improvements. Temple Bar still stood in its old place, bearing oj_ its tops the spikes on which the heads of traitors had been placed of old, and strangulating traffic in a main artery. It was not so ornamental a relic of the past as I had imagined it to be ; but it was ornamental enough to be entitled to be kept In possession of the Corporation, and placed in some appropriate public place for perpetual preservation. Considering its connection with the history of the past. It should not have been sold as rubbish to a private buyer, but kept as an interesting ancient monument. Subsequent visits corrected some of my first impressions of London, but my first impression of its vastness only got magnified and, so to speak, more oppressive as my knowledge of the apoplectic head of the United Kingdom enlarged itself In 1862 I neither saw a London mob disturbance nor inhaled an oily fog so thick that it might be cut with a knife. Whatever might be the tragedies of life in many of its homes, whatever the brutal vices and crimes in its festering slums, or the gilded profligacies and immoralities in its aristocratic quarters, to the happily lodged casual visitor the London of more than forty years ago. OFF TO SOUTH AFRICA. 423 although in respect to population a nation within a nation, appeared to be a most orderly city, full of attractions of all sorts, and rich in beautiful as well as in historical places, and with far from a bad climate notwithstanding superabundant fog and rain at times, and the want of a roma,ntic situation, like Edlnbui'gh for instance. Since that time London sanitation ha? been vastly improved, and so have the London streets and their architecture. LXIV. OFF TO SOUTH AFRICA. On the Sth of November, 1865, my dear young wife and I, with our little boy, ten months old, and our loyal Irish maid, Kate Carty, embarked at South ampton for Cape Town, on board the " Roman," Captain Dixon, of the Union Line. We left port late in the evening, and had a rough night down the Channel. The next morning the sun was brightly shining on the " Roman" at anchor in Plymouth harbour. As we had to stay there until the after noon, I went on shore and had a good look round the town and its neighbourhood. It was discovered when the ship came to anchor, that one of the crew was missing. There could be no doubt as to his having fallen overboard during the stormy night when still under the Influence of the spree in which he had indulged before he left Southampton. The captain had to go on shore to report the incident, and to hand over the lost man's kit to the authorities. This caused the usual period of de tention for passengers and cargo to be a little 424 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. lengthened, but on leaving we had a good view of the bold Devon and Cornish coasts which are such a pleasant contrast to the flat east coast of England that from Kent to Berwick can only boast of a few romantic places like Whitby and Scarborough. The rough weather in which we bade our native land good night, followed us through the ever restless Bay of Biscay, with sea sickness as its consequence. I am not a good saUor at any time, but on this occasion I was not absolutely sick, but miserably queasy for, I think, a whole week. I almost felt as if the cook and waiter, by showing the roast joints for dinner at the door of the saloon were in a conspiracy with the sea. But when the uneasy feeling passed and a keen appetite returned, all that discomfort was soon forgotten. Palmas was the only land we saw on the passage out. One fine morning it lay before our eyes, set in a calm sea with shores, hill slopes, and glen depressions like a panoramic little map. Another incident was an invasion of locusts which struck sails and ship further on when we were more than a hundred miles fi'om the nearest part of the African coast. Lots of them fell on deck, and created quite a sensa tion, especially among those of us who had never seen a flight of locusts before. The wind was driv ing them out to sea where the cloud of them that passed over the " Roman" must have found a watery grave. The " Roman" was not trying to make a record, but merely an economical voyage. So when the wind was favourable coal was spared, and we jogged on for days under sail. We took thirty-two days between leaving the Southampton docks and coming to anchor in Table Bay, and that was then considered an average good voyage. OFF TO SOUTH AFRICA. 425 When the first uneasy days were over, we, the first-class passengers, settled down and soon became acquainted with one another. The Army was represented by a general and a captain, and the Navy by a quarter- master appointed to Ascension, Avho, with his Avife, children, and governess, had to go to Cape Town in order to be able to get back from there to his grilling station, and its turtle beds. Mr Williams, who was going out to be Dean of Grahamstown, and had his wife, child, sister-in-law, and servant maid with him, represented the Church of England militant, and a Free Church probationer who was going out to be a Gill College professor, made a meek representative of Presbyterianism. I was going out to edit a new bi-weekly Conservative newspaper, " The Cape Standard." Three young ladies, one English, one Scotch, and one Irish, were going out to be married to gentlemen who could not get leave to go to fetch their brides. There were many Colonials who had been " home," as they affectionately called the old country, and were returning to their businesses, trades, and farms in South Africa. In addition, there were several who were voyaging for health and pleasure, or whose trade undertakings called them, after South Africa, to India, China, and Japan. The second class passengers were a decent lot of outgoing mechanics, and servants, and young men in search of situations. If there were any steerage passengers, they were so mixed up with the crew as to be not discernible. Upon the whole, we were a sort of happy family, well fed and lodged, and with as few frictions among ourselves as could well be expected. The children, although, poor things, they suffered from prickly heat, were a source of general pleasure and enjoyment. 426 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Dean Williams, to his honour, instituted a daily short religious service — Prayer Book readings and prayers, which many of us regularly attended. As the Dutch passengers Avere mostly Presbyterians, and aslDean Williams was so bellicose, so down ou Bishop Colenso, so full of the Lambeth Conference, and so incapable of seeing good in any non-Episcopal communion, that he annoyed people of his own church, and also the Presbyterians on board, there was a move to set up the Free Church probationer as a rival to officiate turn about. But the probationer very sensibly declined to interfere with the Dean's monopoly ; and in truth, for a short daily worship, the Prayer Book is more suitable than anything else. The Dean was as full of admiration for Pusey's " Eirenicon," published that year, as he was of condemnation for Colenso, and contempt for non- Episcopal denominations. He certainly had the full courage of his opinions. A time was to come when he would keep the Bishop of Grahamstown out of his Cathedral, because he, the Dean, stood upon his right as a dignitary of the Church of England, and absolutely refused to recognise the newly formed Episcopal Church of South Africa, although it remained in union and communion with the Church of England. No two men could be more unlike than Dean Williams with his aggressive and unreasonable traditional dogmatism, and gentlemanly scholarly Bishop Colenso, with his logical and arithmetical habits of analysis, and yet circumstances placed them incongruously on the same platform of opposition to Avhat most of their co-religionists naturally held to be canonical authority. One night when Ave went to bed on the "Roman," we knew that Table Mountain and its OFF TO SOUTH AFRICA. 427 outliers — the Lion's Head and the DevU's Kop — would be in sight next morning. I was one of those who were up on deck early to enjoy that sight, and truly a grand sight it was. We must have been still more than twenty miles out at sea when the shadows of night dispersed, the panoramic scene opened on the view, and the flocks of seabirds came out to meet us. Nature has been strangely niggard to Africa in regard to sheltered harbours and land locked bays. As a rule that big lump of a continent has a low-lying malarial seaboard without openings, and in the few places where the coast line is high and rocky, it has breakers in front and no fertile land behind. Table Bay is a remarkable exception to the general rule. Delagoa Bay is an exception also, but in my time it was considered a malarial death - trap because of the surrounding marshes, which began only to be drained when the railway was made to the Transvaal. As for Table Bay, the approach to it from the sea Is grand because of the range of high mountains. At the entrance to it is Robben Island, which, in 1866, was occupied by rabbits, lepers, political prisoners, and official care takers of the two latter classes. The political prisoners were native chiefs and followers who had been involved in the Kaffir invasion of the Eastern Provinces or in rebellions elsewhere. Natives con victed of ordinary crimes, to the number of five hundred or more, were employed on the breakwater and grand docks then in course of construction. Sheltered as the bay looked, there was much need for the breakwater and docks to make it safe from the one wind which could sweep it, and had the year before driven about twenty ships ashore. I was sorry to lose sight of the Great Bear, which had looked down upon all the great events in 428 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. the past history of the human race, and felt strongly when I reached Cape Town that the Southern Cross had for incalculable milleniums been looking down on lands which Avere waiting their chance for making history of their own. Table Bay has few, if any, equals in the whole world. The Dutch founders of Cape Town deserve praise and everlasting gratitude for the judicious way in which they laid out broad streets sloping from the mountains to the shore, on the hill-enclosed plain. The castle fronting the bay was, I daresay, sufficient at first for the whole ofthe white people, as It had space enough within its circuit. But when the town became more a place of call for ships passing to the Far East, and return ing, care was taken to make wide streets, and to set aside a large space for the splendid Government Gardens and residence for the Governor. CHAPTER LXV. AT CAPE TOWN. This was the way in which I was led to go to Cape Town. Mr John Byles, nephew of my Mr Byles, was sent home to buy an Otley printing machine, types, and other office furnishings for a Conservative newspaper at Cape Town, started by gentlemen who undertook to supply the capital for fioating it, and who appointed Messrs Pyke and Byles their printers. These two had previously been the proprietors of a provincial paper at Swellendam, where they were doing fairly well until they were burned out by one of the most destructive veldt fires that had ever taken place in the Colony — a fire which burned all AT CAPE TOWN. 429 before it for a length of three hundred miles and a breadth of twenty or so. The selection of an editor was entrusted to Mr Thompson, a London merchant. I was asked through Mr John Byles if I would take the situation, and at first declined to do so. When I was approached again, seeing that the salary offered was pretty liberal, I said I would, provided if at a year's end I and mine would have a free passage home, as well as the free passage out, should either side wish to terminate the engagement. The fi-ee passage home was consented to, which was fortunate for me, because at the end of nine months I got a trouble in my right knee which kept me long in pain before it came to a crisis, and then made me walk on crutches for the rest of my life, which was a sad affliction for a man in his prime, who loved to breathe the air of mountain tops. But I scaled Table Mountain, shot snipe on the Downs, and had several visits through the clench to Camp Bay before my ailment began. On landing we were taken to Wynberg, and hospitably enter tained in a capital reed-thatched house there, until the office in Cape Town was fitted up, and until I took a house above the Government Gardens, near the waterworks, where on one hand we had Sir Cristofer Brand, the Speaker of the Assembly, for a neighbour, and below us Dean Douglas, afterwards Bishop of Bombay, with whom I had many walks and talks when he was going to the Cathedral and I to the "Standard" office. He was a man whom it did one good to come in contact with. When we were at Wynberg I explored, besides the Downs and their splendid heaths, the beautiful places held in the loving embrace of the mountain range from Constantia, famous for its wines, to the neighbour- 430 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. hood of Cape Town. My wife and I liked the country and climate so well, that if it had not been for that wretched knee disablement, we would probably have not thought of ever returning to England except on a visit. But perchance if we stayed I would have passed from journalism to farming, for which I always retained a hereditary hankering that made me a crofter at Fortingall and Balquhidder. LXVI. VISITORS OF MANY NATIONS AND RACES. It was not until 1869, when the Suez Canal was opened, that Cape Town lost its Importance as a place of call. On the jetty there — the new docks being yet in course of construction — one could see men of almost all the tribes of earth coming ashore and going back to their ships, whether steamers or sailing vessels, whether traders or warships. Russian frigates manned by handsome Baltic coast sailors, took out big dusky Cossacks to Vladivostock or the mouth of the Amoor, and returned with the troops which had served their time in that region. The Siberian railway had still to be made, and to use a Yorkshire word, the gainest way for the passing back and forward of troops was by sending them in war vessels round the Cape of Good Hope, which its first Portuguese discoverers had just cause to call the Cape of Storms. We had visits fi'om German and American trading ships, but I do not remember seeing any of their navy vessels in Table Bay in 1866. Spain and Portugal, like Russia, were regu- VISITORS OF MANY NATIONS AND RACES. 431 larly sending out to, and taking back from, their Far East possessions, armed forces and officials in warships. So was Holland and so was France. Even Ismail, Khedive of Egypt, sent down the east side of Africa his gunboats used as traders, which gunboats were usually officered by Europeans, English, French, Italian, and Greek, while the crews were meek-looking tillers of the soil from the valley of the Nile, Arabs with adust complexion, hearty negroes and Levantine rascals. All the ships trading with India, China, Japan, Borneo, Cochin-China, Siam, and the Philippines, had speci mens of the native races of their countries among their crews. The whale-fishing of the antarctic seas was then — and, I suppose. Is yet — mostly in the hands of the energetic Yankees, who had sometimes strong Red Indians and many negroes in their companies. The rendezvous of the New England whaling fleet was St Helena, but some of its ships visited Table Bay. I do not think that even San Francisco could at any time boast of such a show of all the tribes of the earth as Cape Town of 1866 could do. As for the Chinese, the sugar-planters of Natal were then allowed to employ indentured Chinese coolies who, when they had served their term, and saved almost all their wages, as the majority of them managed to do, got free passage home to their native land. But some of them did not wish to go back, and cutting off their pigtails, made their way to Cape Town and other parts of Cape Colony, where they began new pursuits and hid their nationality. My barber at Cape Town was one of the ex-coolies who preferred the Colony to China, grew his hair in European fashion, married a half-caste wife, abjured the joss-house, and made 432 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. himself a respectable and modestly prosperous citizen. The hundreds of male convicts employed on the docks and the breakwater were compounded in healthy and spacious ground at the foot of the Lion Head hills overlooking the bay, and lying between the city and the Green Point villas. The enclosure was strongly fenced in and guarded by armed sentries, who were ready by night and by day to shoot down convicts who attempted to escape. Very few such attempts were made. The convicts were weU fed, more comfortably bedded, housed, and clothed than they had been in their days of freedom ; the labour was not excessive, and they learned many useful arts as well as discipline and order. They contained representatives of all the coloured races within the colony, from the big Kaffirs and Basutos to the puny and almost deformed bushmen of Namaqualand, whose favourite weapons were poisoned arrows. There were even among them woolly-headed negroes from the West Coast and Mozambique, who had some way drifted into the colony and got into trouble there. These pure- blooded negroes were physically far superior to the Hottentots, with hair in patches, who were the original inhabitants ofthe western provinces of Cape Colony, and are still very numerous there. Between the native tribes themselves mixed castes had arisen, and there were likewise thousands who were the descendants of white men and native women, and who bore the proofs of their origin in their persons. The largest squad of these who gathered themselves into a tribe were the Bastards, of whom big Adam Cok was the captain, and who in my time occupied the laud on which, after the discovery of the VISITORS OP MANY NATIONS AND RACES. 433 diamonds, Kimberley was built. The Bastards had to be bought out before the whites took possession of their lands. Captain Adam Cok and his tribe were proud of their half-European descent, and wished to live pacific and orderly lives; but I under stand that since then they have much dwindled away, although to look at them, one would expect them to multiply and hold their own. There seems to be some mysterious law about the dying out of hybrid races in Africa and everywhere. As for the Kaffirs, Basutos, Zulus, and their allied tribes, they are certainly not of the negroid stock, although in the long procession of time since they came down from the Persian Gulf or the backlands of Egypt, as the Arabs came afterwards, they got, by intermix ing, partly marked with the African brand. I soon found that the Malays formed a most important section of the population of Cape Town and the neighbouring districts. They had been slaves before their emancipation in the early days of Queen Victoria's long reign. Rebels in Java and Sumatra to Dutch rule, their ancestors had been transported to the Cape, and made slaves there to the Dutch officials and colonists. The banished ones had in most cases, I believe, belonged to the upper classes in their native land. Generations of slavery failed to degrade them. It might be truly said to have improved them. They stuck, under diffi culties, to their ancestral Mohammedan faith, and learned in the furnace of tribulation to get rid of ancestral faults, and become a truly pious and patient people, with a high standard of morality. The instant they were emancipated they took to well-doing, and prospered. Very few Malays found their way to the convict establishment, except it 28 434 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. might be as sellers of food supplies. Diligent and honest in business, and serving the Lord according to the light of their creed, the Malays of Cape Town and its neighbourhood gathered gear in a quietly pro gressive way as soon as they were freed. They highly valued education, and managed, I cannot say how, even when in bondage, to have their children taught to read the Koran. Afterwards, a higher education came within their reach, and they took full advantage of it. They owned much of the smaller house- property in Cape Town when I saw them, and plots of land outside the town limits. They were artisans, small traders, and general utility people, who did not often go Into service, although always ready for any employment which did not interfere with their well-ordered domestic life. They would not taste wines or spirits, but the least strict of them had no objection to take a drink of the frothy Cape beer, or " pop," which had hardly any Intoxicating power. The law did not interfere with polygamy among the native race. Whenever a native had money to spare he invested it in the purchase of another wife. The Koran sanctioned polygamy, but the Cape Malays were monogamists almost to a man. In fact, the only one I heard of who had two wives was my friend Ishmael, the imaum of one of the mosques, who, when an old man of seventy, was induced by his old wife to marry an orphan niece of hers, so that his property would descend to her, Ishmael was the swearer-in of Malay witnesses in the Supreme Court, and the interpreter when required. He was also paid a small sum monthly for the Information he supplied to the " Standard." Great liars were many of the native witnesses, and some of the white men too, but a sworn Malay could be trusted to tell the VISITORS OF MANY NATIONS AND RACES. 435 truth under examination, although he might be a reluctant witness on many occasions. Our Cape Malays were, I was told by persons who had been in Java, a handsomer people than the stock from which they had come. Under thirty they might pass with their clear olive complexions for Andalusian Spaniards. Their children were neatly if cheaply clad, and clean and bonnie bairns. Cleanliness was, no less than predestination, part of the Malay creed. A boy of twelve or so, who used to come to our door, selling fruit, would, for a painter or sculptor, have made a splendid model for a boy Apollo. The loyalty of the Cape Malays appeared to be imbued with a spirit of religious fervour. On the Queen's birthday they mustered on the Castle esplanade in their gala dresses and ornaments, each mosque congregation headed by its imaum, bilals, and gatieps — say, its minister, elders, and deacons. They had previously prayed in their mosques for long life, happiness, and prosperity to Her Majesty, and mingled their prayers l^with thanksgiving for their own redemption from slavery. 436 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER LXVII. THE POSITION OF THE RULING RACE. In 1866 Cape Colony, thanks to help of Imperial troops in defeating the Kaffir invasion of the eastern provinces, was in a peaceful and settled condition. The Kaffirs were punished by being deprived of a large piece of their former roving and hunting lands, half a million acres of which, divided into farms, were sold In the above year on quit-rent terms for very small purchase money. But the purchasers had to go out into wilds where there were no roads, and no easy access to markets, unless for horses, cattle, and sheep, that could go on their own feet far distances, where they would have feeding and watering resting-places at day-march distances. They had also to put up boundary marks, and to defend their households and cattle kraals against native raiders, who thought it an honourable feat to buy their first wives by stolen cattle. The Hottentots and other mixed tribes of the western provinces had learned to be submissive. The Cromwellian masterfulness of the Dutch pioneers who had first come among them had taught them obedience. On my arrival at Cape Town the war between Moshesh, chief of the Basutos, and the Orange Free State was near Its conclusion ; the result being that the Basutos were defeated aud deprived of laud which added 1500 large-sized farms to the Boer Republic. So, under the presi dency of Mr John Brand, who was afterwards THE POSITION OP THE RULING RACE. 437 knighted by Queen Victoria, the Orange Free State became as orderly and, as long as Sir John Brand lived, as well ruled as Cape Colony. Natal and the Transvaal were far from enjoying sirailar blessings of order and security. Railway construction was in its infancy. The Paarl Avas the furthest place to which one could go from Cape Town. Mail carts, however, traversed the interior, and Resident Magistrates and other officials, with very little force at their backs, upheld justice and authority. The Zulus had yet to learn that there was a great, far-away, and irresistible Power at the back of the smaU minority of whites who had assumed rule over South Africa, and whose rule, once firmly established, brought in its train advantages which had been utterly unknown and undreamed of during the perpetual tribal wars and unspeakable atrocities which preceded the coming of the white men on the scene. Great as the disparity formerly was between the rulers and the ruled, with huge extensions of territory it has now become greater still, notwith standing the increase of the white race during the intervening period. Diamond diggings and gold mines were not thought of in 1866, and trading inland had to be done by waggons drawn by teams of oxen over tracks which were roads only in name, and streams without bridges. Roads, railways, and bridges have since very much changed the situation in favour of white men's rule, and it is undeniable that wherever that rule is established in British South Africa, the natives are now treated with all the consideration which is consistent with the cause of general order, and, besides being rescued from old tribal wars and barbarous atrocities and customs, are 438 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. being taught the useful arts of peace and ideas of social and moral duties, to which their ancestors were total strangers. They do not wither away through the change like American Red Indians, or with difficulty keep on the edge of that withering away like the Maories of New Zealand, who are naturally superior to all of them except the Kaffir, Basuto, and Zulu tribes that, like the whites, are themselves incomers of a far-back era. From the little I saw, and the much I have read and heard, I believe the enduring source of pros perity for British South Africa is to be found in the cultivation of the soil, and not in the gold mines and diamond diggings. These act as magnets for the time only, and by-and-by will get exhausted. The culture potentialities of the land, on the other hand, appear to be immense In extent, as well as inexhaustible in quality. But this is a source of prosperity which has scarcely yet been as much as fairly tested. The heat is too great for white men's field work in by far the larger part of the country. White men can "boss," and their "bossing" will be needed, but if the cultivable land is to be cultivated, natives or Indians will have in many fertile districts to be the field-workers. I have mentioned the Indians, because of the controversies raised about their admission to British Colonies, and because, I think, in Uganda and the British part of the valley ofthe Zambesi, wide tracts of land now practically waste could be set apart for our Indian fellow- subjects to colonise and cultivate like the very similar plains of Bengal, for the same banking and irrigation methods would be needed, and soil and climate would be similar. THE POSITION OF THE RULING RACE. 439 Half-a-century ago Boers and Britons Avere, as they are yet after a big war between themselves, the rulers of South Africa. The whites of various nationalities who sought an Alsatia there were nuisances to both ruling parties, and the ubiquitous Jews who went In search of trade were far from being welcomed by the Boers. There was, however, one set of new white incomers who deserve special notice. During the Crimean War, when Prussia was playing into the hands of Russia — and the feeling of the Baltic German States was against that policy — the project of raising a German Legion was advocated by Prince Albert and sanctioned by the Government of the day. But when the Legion was being mustered in London, the war came to an end. The legionairies, without smelling gunpowder, got the reward of warriors. They were offered free grants in the land about Williamstown, which had been taken from the Kaffirs, and a free passage there with their wives and families, while no similar offer was made to British veteran soldiers. The Germans Avent and settled on their African little farms, and setting themselves to work, prospered, as they deserved. They were Protestants, and readily fraternised with the Wesleyans and the Dutch Reformed churchmen of the eastern provinces. They took no part with the Boers in the late war, but comported themselves as loyal British subjects. 440 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER LXVIII. THE BOERS. I MENTION the Boers first because they were the first white settlers. At the beginning — say 1646 — they were burghers gathered within the lines of Cape Town to guard the important place of call for the ships of the Dutch East India Company. It was when they increased in number and spread out over the neighbouring districts that they called themselves "Boers" or "Farmers." As adventurous farmers they had quarrels with Holland as they had long subsequently, for less good reason I think, with the British Government. The Dutch policy from the beginning was to make colonial possessions directly profitable to the Mother Country, or in effect to deal with them as if they were private estates of the United Provinces, and all the settlers in them, white or coloured, were tenants at will. To this day that policy in a modified manner is carried out in regard to Java and Sumatra. Now the Dutch burghers of Cape Town, when they got beyond the lines and seized upon farms, with long gun in one hand and Bible in the other, naturally objected to being treated as tenants at will. So there were frictions, and out of these evolved the desire among the Boers to wander out further and further so as to escape the yoke of the Mother Country and the monopolistic restrictions of the Dutch East India Company. THE BOERS. 441 They came to South Africa full of bitter memories of Alva and the Spanish Inquisition, and with the stern Protestantism which had been steel-hardened in the fires of religious persecution and in the desperate struggle for national existence, which did not end with the collapse of Spanish power after the defeat of the Armada and the death of Philip. Louis XIV. of France took up and renewed the contest between Roman Catholicism and Protestant ism, which from the race point of view, was also a death or life contest between Northern and Southern Europe. England and Holland sheltered the fugi tives who escaped from the disgraceful and terrible pei'secution which fpUowed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by the French king. Holland sent a batch of the refugees to the Cape, and there they introduced the culture of the vine, and ^readily amalgamated with the Dutch population, who had the same creed and form of Church government as themselves, and whose ancestors had gone through the same fiery furnace. Amalgamation intensified the ultra-Protestantism of Boers and Huguenots, and yet, when under the Union Jack they enjoyed more security and better rule than they had ever had before, they thought themselves ill-used. As the earliest white settlers they looked upon themselves as the divine-right inheritors of all the wild land which lay before them, and their confident pioneer bands that went forth to conquer new lands, spoke of continuing their victorious march until they reached Jerusalem. They entirely forgot that without the help of Queen Elizabeth and the defeat of the Armada by her navy, the heroic struggle of the Dutch for faith and country would have been in vain ; and that the 442 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. all-conquering and persecuting schemes of Louis XIV. Avere brought to nought at Blenheim and RamlUies by Marlborough, the greatest of English- born generals, in whose complicated character the extremes of greatness and meanness met and blended. They refused to look at the fact that British rule was founded on the double right of conquest and purchase, and that Java had been surrendered after having been justly taken possession of. Another more important fact of which they lost sight was that without having the British power at their back they would be in peril of being overwhelmed by the natives, and, if Britain withdrew, of seeing South Africa seized by some raore truculent and despotic Power. There were Boers and Boers, with a broad line of distinction dividing them, and yet in affairs of State and Church they all were a united body. The people of Dutch, French, and mixed Franco-Dutch descent in Cape Town and its adjoining districts had before my time learned to speak English, and took care that their children should be well educated. Cape Colony in 1866 had two elective Houses of Parliament. It was the transitional stage of repre sentative Government. Responsible Government which enabled Parliament to change Ministries, and gave the Legislative Assembly unlimited powers in financial matters, had yet to come, and all the Boer members were working to bring it about. They felt it a grievance that the salaries of the higher officials should be beyond their reach and review, and that these officials should be appointed by the Crown and mainly Englishmen, whom they accused of putting on " side," and looking presumptuously down on the numerically predominant and, in faith THE BOERS. 443 and morals, the less faulty people. The Dutch who possessed adequate knowledge of English and other requisite qualifications received many minor, and some of the higher, official appointments. There were, for instance, three judges of the Supreme Court, and of these one was an Englishman, one a Scotchman, and one a Dutchman. The Attorney- General was an Irishman, and the Colonial Secretary was Mr Southey, a nephew of the poet's, and Sir Philip Wodehouse was Governor and High Com missioner. Theoretically imperfect as it was, the Governmental machinery in the hands of the high officials appointed by the Crown was worked with impartiality, efficiency, and cheapness. Responsible Government brought with it ever increasing expenditure, with official spoils and political pre dominance for the foes of English rule. The Church of Scotland and her offshoots have the same organisation as the Dutch Reformed Church. The Shorter Catechism and the Cate chism of the Synod of Dort are much alike in their exposition of doctrines. Scotchmen, therefore, had no difficulty in joining the Dutch Reformed Church, while the Church of England put in the Colony the foolish barrier of confirmation against outsiders joining it. Because of religious community, Scotch men understood far better than Englishmen did the real inwardness of Boer character and projects. The Boers looked upon the intrusion of the Church of England into their country as an aggravation of their subjection to a foreign Power, and they were irritated still more by the air of superiority the intruding clergy had assumed. Lord Bishop of Cape Town, Lord Bishop of Grahamstown, Lord Bishop of Natal, aye, and Lord Bishop of the Free 444 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Orange State — all lords in virtue of patents from Queen Victoria — very reverend deans, venerable archdeacons, and so on ; how fiercely the Boers resented all this brave show of superiority ! And how they grinned when Bishop Colenso was deposed, and his deposition was legally declared invalid ; and how they mocked when the Bishop of the Free Orange State fled from canonical trial, and when my ship acquaintance. Dean Williams, kept the Bishop of Grahamstown out of his cathedral ! Henry Grey, Bishop of Cape Town, did the work of a man of God in giving the South African Episcopal Church a higher and nobler character than the one with which the intrusion started. The Boers com pared their own ministers, educated at Edinburgh and Leydon, very unfavourably with the first squads of English Church ministers. There can be no question about the fact that the ecclesiastical grievance acted as a dividing factor from the first establish ment of British rule down to the late big war. In gathering themselves up for that war, the Boers indiscriminately used, or abused. Church organisa tion, nachtmaals, or communion gatherings, and masonic lodges. They proved themselA^es as astute in conspiring skill, as they were brave In fight, and obstinately tenacious of their policy of separation and independence. I believed the Boers to be a genuinely religious people, and that their family worship, church attendance, and domestic life in the older settled districts testified to that effect. Wherever they trekked, they got ministers as soon as ever they settled down. But in practice their religion had crooks and corners. They had Scripture, they thought, for making all coloured people as descen- THE BOERS. 445 dants of Ham their servants or slaves. The only slavery the law ofthe Colony ever recognised was that of the Malays ; and out of their bondage the Malays emerged with their religion unimpaired, and I think I may add, with improved morals and civilised habits. It was in the process of taking possession of what they called waste lands that the Boers committed the deeds which Dr Livingstone and other missionaries so loudly and justly denounced ; but when they took possession and established their authority, the natives found them to be far less oppressive masters than their former chiefs or conquerors had been. The Boers are not by nature a cruel or hard-hearted people. But they believed that the slavery of the children of Ham was ordered by divine decree, and their belief suited their per sonal interests. They hated British missionaries, and abolitionists, and they had as their motto, " Put out the light," when extending their conquests or securing them. "Put out the light" meant to keep missionaries, tale-bearing traders, and news paper men in ignorance about their actions. They received compensation for the emancipation of their legal Malay slaves, but the mode of payment, unhappily adopted, added to their grievance. They should have been paid in hard cash, instead of in promises to pay, which many of them foolishly sold for a small part of their value to cunning money brokers before they had matured. Beyond the neighbourhood of towns, the Boers did little for the cultivation of the soil. They had, indeed, in districts without markets and means of transport, no inducements for raising more crops than were needed on their separate farms. Soil cultivation was more congenial to the vineyard 446 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. French immigrants than it was to the Boers, and for a generation or two these growers of grapes and producers of wines did not spread themselves far away from Cape Town. The liking of the Boers was for pastoral farming. Cattle, horses, sheep, and goats they raised in huge numbers. A Boer's idea of bliss was to have a grazing farm of such an area that he could not see from his house the smoke of a neighbouring Boer's chimney. He wanted to be monarch of all he surveyed, and irresponsible lord of the natives within his bounds ; and, as a rule, he managed to be what he desired. As a rule, too, when his earth -hunger was satisfied, and his authority was established, he was a mild despot to his natives, although he might scold them and crack his bamboo whip at them like the tyrant he was not. In bis family he was father, priest, and as much of a king as his good wife and his daughters allowed him to be. When his sons grew up, and wished to be married and settled, they went forth to acquire farms of their own in the approved appropriating fashion, and only one remained with the old folk. In this manner, before and after the great treks consequent on the abolition of slavery in Cape Colony, the Boers spread themselves out widely, and took possession of the land. THB BRITONS. 447 CHAPTER LXIX. THE BRITONS. From its very beginning and all onwards British rule strove to introduce and establish a better order and more impartial justice than had existed in South Africa before. But the many opportunities which presented themselves, time after time, for giving that rule a firm hold were almost always thrown away, partly through the negligence or shortsightedness of Governors and local officials, but chiefly through the faults of the Imperial Govern ment and the ill-instructed humanitarianism of the British people, which ended in producing the inhumanity of wars and rebellions that In most cases could have been easily evaded had British colonisation been early resorted to and persistently promoted. The Wesleyan colonisation of the Port Elizabeth and Grahamston region showed what should and could easily have been done. So did the British sugar-planters and farmers of the sea-board side of Natal. But what about the land taken from the Kaffirs after they had attempted to kill or drive all the whites of the Eastern Provinces into the sea ? Free grants of land and free passages, with other help, could be found for the warriors of the German Legion, who had never seen the war for which they were raised ; and they and their wives and families were settled in more comfort than they had ever enjoyed in their native land. Why then were not the other half-million acres distributed in a 448 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. similar generous manner among British agricultural colonists instead of being sold in big grazing farms ? Besides being, as compared with the Boers inside and outside the colonies, in the minority, the Britons, in 1866, were badly distributed, being mainly collected about the towns, and only in a few places spread out as farmers. The people who are rooted in the soil as owners and occupiers are the real backbone in every land. British traders, mechanics, and other urban classes were good enough in their way where there were openings for them, but they were not at all the sort of people for amalgamating with and influencing the Boers so as to bring the kindred white races into something like the bonds of brotherhood, which, in the eye of reason, their position among the natives so emphatically recommended. The great trekking bands of Boers, who, with bag and baggage, went away in hot rage at the abolition of slavery to attempt to take Natal, and to successfully found the Orange and Transvaal Republics, were allowed to go away without being obliged to take the British flag with them. That early fatal folly was even worse than the throwing away of chances for promoting British agricultural colonisation in Cape Colony and Natal. The new backland Boer Republics hardened the hostility of the colonial Boers to British rule, and when the mineral wealth of the Transvaal came to supply sinews of war to the empty Boer treasury, the widespread anti - British conspiracy passed from smaller aims to the grand one of making all South Africa a Boer State, and driving the British into the sea or the grave, and making the children of Ham obediently serve their masterful white brethren. THE BRITONS. 449 All who did not shut their eyes to facts, and cherished self-deception, understood perfectly well in 1866 that revolt was in the minds of the Boers, and that they were silently banded together, ecclesi astically, linguistically, socially, and politically, to obtain minor aims meanwhile, and to wait patiently for a great chance. There was, however, a section of them that did not expect nor wish for a great chance to be given to the would-be revolters. These were the better educated men and women, who had learned to speak English, and who intermarried with British men and women. The Anglicised Boers, like the generality of the Britons, little foresaw that a time would come when the Imperial Government should play into the hands of the anti- British Boers, and with the gold of the Transvaal, promote the scheme of conquest, which was so daringly undertaken at the end of the century. In 1866, no British colonist or English-speaking Boer thought it probable or in the least degree possible that the Imperial Government would ever commit the incredible blunders of unavenged Majuba, the cancellation of the Shepstone annexation of the Transvaal, and the infamy of the surrendering Conventions. Up to 1868, or a year or two later, the South African Britons were confident their countrymen at home would never, in any time of trial, leave them unsupported. Before 1880 that trust was well founded, although Downing Street now and then blundered, and now and then by oversight and care lessness let affairs go wrong. One thing which they thought went wrong was the Delagoa Bay dispute with Portugal about the ownership of Dela goa Bay. They saw that the British Government, 29 450 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. in the case submitted by them to the arbitration of Marshall MacMahon, was ridiculously imperfect, and so weakly expressed, as to justify the French President in giving the two sides of the Bay to Portugal, although it was quite clear that one side of it, by prior right of possession, belonged to the British Empire, At the time of the arbitration the future value of the then malarious region along the Bay was not foreseen by either party, and Portugal probably would ha,ve sold the whole for a very moderate sum. Marshal MacMahon indeed, taking the probability of sale in view, so far recognised the right to one side of the Bay as to give our country a right of pre-emption. Trust in the firm backing of the Imperial Govern ment was restored by the Zulu war, in which the Prince Imperial, Napoleon III.'s son, unfortunately, lost his life. But that confidence was shaken by the clamour raised by Nonconformist and Exeter Hall humanitarians against Sir Bartle Frere, whose bold policy was to bring all the wild unannexed regions up to the Zambesi under the British flag, leaving the two Boer Republics alone. It was a propitious time for carrying out that project, and had it been carried out, Dr Karl Peters and his filibustering band would not have been allowed to raise the German flag in Great Namaqualand and Damaraland, when Lord Granville delayed replying to Prince Bismarck's note of enquiry until it was too late. German policy is exhibited on the present day maps by the horn of their south - west African colony, which they pushed east-ward to the Zambesi ere Cecil Rhodes came on the scene as a British Empire builder, when the British flag was taken far north of the Zambesi. THE BRITONS. 451 Past damages were then, as far as possible, redeemed, and poor Sir Bartle Frere's policy was vindicated, after his Nonconformist enemies had hunted him into his grave. They tried the same persecuting game with Governor Eyre for daring to save Jamaica from negro rebels, but he was made of tougher stuff than Sir Bartle Frere, and lived to enjoy his pension for many years after his persecution. As their treasury was empty, and as they were in peril from a native revolt, which a first failure to crush would make a general rising, the Transvaalers peacefully acquiesced in the Shepstone annexation of their country. The native rebels feared the Power that had defeated Kaffirs and Zulus, and their project of a general rising collapsed like a castle of cards when the Union Jack was hoisted at Pretoria. The annexation would assuredly have been maintained, and there would have been no Majuba, no surrendering Conventions, no inde fensible Jameson raid, and no costly or bloody war between Boers and Britons, had the Conservatives not been, in 1880, replaced by Liberals under the inspired blundership of Mr Gladstone, whose great qualities were marred by what seemed the gift of some malicious fairy, unlimited in effect, to mislead himself and others, which, whenever a craving for heroic home legislation, or a mere desire for gaining new supporters, beset him, he was easily tempted to use, and think himself acting under divine command. His first patriotic impulse was to wipe off the stain on Britannia's war shield by avenging Majuba. An army to do so was gathered in Africa, and then, when all was ready, he suddenly changed his mind, and declared it would be " blood guiltiness " to employ that army for the purpose for which it had 452 REMINISCBNCB6 AND REFLECTIONS. been gathered. His pseudo-humanity disgraced his country, and involved not only the surrendering Conventions, but made the recent Boer war inevitable. Foreigners believed that weakness and not humanity inspired this misguided, whirl-about policy. So did the Boers ; and for the first time loyal colonists were driven to suspect that under a Liberal Ministry in London there would be small security for the Britains beyond the seas, and for the integrity of the British Empire. Ever since there has been mistrust of Liberal administration among loyal colonists and subjects abroad, and corresponding trust in getting chances for doing mischief among foreign and domestic foes. The political sky of South Africa is yet far from clear, and is likely long to have some dark clouds on it. But the storm clouds between the two white peoples, that impended over the land from Majuba to the end of the late war, have, I hope, dispersed, never to return again. In the tough war-struggle, Boers and Britons learned to appreciate each others' good qualities better than they ever did before. Mutual respect has grown out of that better under standing. The Boers of the two republics, and also the Boers of some parts of the colonies, who did not come much in contact with Britons of the higher motal stamp, cherished many fond delusions about the inferiority of the latter, which delusions the war has dispersed to the four winds. The coming of Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders to the help of the Mother Country im pressed the Boers with the vastness of the British Empire and the strength of the ties of loyalty and common citizenship by which, although as yet unorganised, the various parts of it are held THE BRITONS. 453 together. They were at one time persuaded by the encouragement given to them by noisy Irish dis loyalists that the United Kingdom itself was on the eve of disintegration, and that self-governing colonies were hastening to proclaim themselves independent states. The German Kaiser flirted with them, and the German press assured them that the British Empire was in an advanced stage of decay and slowly bleeding to death. They have now gauged correctly the value of Irish encourage ment, and the motives of the German flirtation. They know what is going on in German South-west Africa, and the knowledge tends to make them thankftil, since their own project failed, to be under the British flag, and citizens of an Empire which girdles the world. For various reasons they lost faith during the war in the light and leading of office-seeking Hollanders of their own stock ; and as for the Germans, Jews and Gentiles, who were attracted by the mineral wealth of the Rand, and who promoted companies and manipulated stocks and shares and war contracts, they have no good and much evil to say. The Britons with whom they have been acquainted for a century, now that fostered delusions are no longer tenable, have risen so high in Boer estimation, that combination with gradual amalgamation is quite possible ; especially as all the backlands of Rhodesia are under British rule. The situation of the whites as a small ruling oligarchy, spread out over an immense territory, among an overwhelming number of coloured people, is a compulsory cause for the political union of Boers and Britons, who have before them a harder task than our sentimental humanitarians appear to 454 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. be capable of understanding. Things are different now from what they were in the early history of colonisation, or even in the time of the treks, when armed Boers could go boldly forward among tribes who fought with clubs and assegais. By no law and by no vigilance can the smuggling of fire-arms among the natives be wholly prevented. The French Protestant missionaries more than forty years ago taught the Basutos how to make tolerably good gunpowder. The materials necessary for its production are abundant in most districts of Africa, and the knowledge how to produce is dead sure to pass from tribe to tribe and district to district. But even without this home resource, the smuggling of ammunition is a much easier thing than the smuggling of rifles and revolvers. CHAPTER LXX. AFLOAT AGAIN. On leaving South Africa, our number was raised from four to five by our second boy, born at Cape Town. We had our choice between returning by a sailing ship, or by a Union liner as we went out. I preferred the sailing ship because I hoped the longer voyage would be good for my health. The barque " Chathara," Captain Thurtle, which had been doing transport of troops work in India, was lying In the bay repairing some damage it had suffered in a storm off Cape Agulhas. I went on board to see what kind of quarters we should have in it. It's poop cabins were comfortable, and the stern one, with two broad windows, which my wife and I were AFLOAT AGAIN. 455 to have, was a nice square room in which a bed was set up for my wife and the baby, while I slept on the bulkhead under the two windows. My bed was comfortable, except on stormy nights, when I was liable, with blankets and mattress, to be thrown out on the floor, which was only a foot below the bulkhead. Having settled our few small affairs, and sold our house furniture at a heavy loss, we embarked, bag and baggage, when the captain thought we would sail in two days, as his Admiralty case concerning the damages suffered in the storm was concluded. But he was deceived. Some hitch occurred, and the decision was postponed for a fort night. We did not much grudge the delay ; for we amused ourselves by fishing from the deck. It was the high time for the mosquito nuisance on shore, and the little plagues did not venture out on the bay. I discovered that I could, while stretched on my mattress reading a book, fish in a lazy way by sending my lines out through the stern windows. I had a pail beside me in which to throw the caught fish, some of which were of the sardine kind, and others of a much larger sort. The snook, a fish of salmon size and shape, did not come often further than the breakwater, where it was in shoals, but stray specimens of the species paid us visits, and escaped capture because we were not looking for them. We sailed at last, and in starting lost an anchor, which loss the captain took quite philosophically, although he was apt to lose his temper about trifles. There were but two passengers besides ourselveSj Dr Burllnson, from Mauritius, and young Mr Scar borough from the Oliphant River Valley, whose stepfather had been striving to carry out a vast 456 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. scheme of agricultural improvement, and showing the Boers what they might do if they took to soil cultivation. He did not, unfortunately, reap the reward he deserved, and the Boers stuck to their old easy-going pastoral ways. We left Table Bay in fair weather, but got into a rough gale before we parted company with the sea birds, or lost sight of the Lion's Head and Table Mountain. We scudded before that gale for several days on our way to St Helena, but did not suffer from sea sickness as we would certainly have done in a steamer. Barring loss of time and risks from storm, one enjoys the sea far more in a sailing ship than in the most up-to- date and luxurious liner, with Its moving hotel company. On coming out on deck one morning, after a rainy night, I saw that we were sailing close to the rough, abrupt, and barren cliffs of St Helena, which looked as sooty black as if they had in the long ago been crowded stacks of chimneys for Vulcan's under ground furnaces. There is plenty of lava and scorlse scattered about on the surface of St Helena, and plenty evidence of extinct volcanoes, but the sooty cliffs owe their forbidding colour to their own basaltic substance. We passed one narrow valley and then came to another, at the mouth of which is Jamestown, the capital of the island. In front of it is the roadstead, where, among the other shipping, we cast anchor. The roadstead has good anchorage, which is fortunate, for the Island has no harbour, and even here the landing on the stairs Is not easy when the Atlantic rollers are being driven by wind. From the sea, St Helena has the appearance of having been intended to be a towering mountain like Ascension, and to having stopped in elevation at AFLOAT AGAIN, 457 half the intended height, with a tableland top. I would not think it, in my Highland walking years, a long journey to go round its circumference of little more than thirty miles in one sun-lit day. Almost as soon as we anchored, the Governor sent notice that the " Chatham " was wanted for Government service, and must await orders. The captain was delighted, and neither Dr Burllnson nor we were sorry about the fortnight's stay. The service required was to take home old artillery guns, with shells, round shot, and chain -shot, old muskets, and other obsolete military and naval accoutrements which had been sent out when George the Third was king. In the fortnight of detention we had ample time for exploring the little Island, with its hot, tropical, narrow valleys, and its pleasant tableland. Here plants and trees of temperate and hot countries flourish well together. We happened to arrive at the end of the early rain, and when vegetation was reviving. The early St Helena rain comes in January and February, and the late one in July or August. I never saw a hay-stack at the Cape, but on the tableland of St Helena there were not a few of them, and the grazing fields were like English ones. So were the homes of the farmers, and the villas of the traders, who wanted to breathe cooler air than they had In Jamestown. This island is, notwithstanding its small size and its tropical position between the African Coast and Brazil, wonderfully well watered all the year round, thanks to the rain clouds which so often visit and bedew it. The steam era had already partly put an end to St Helena's old importance as a place of call, but in 1867 it was a rendezvous for the Americans who prosecuted the Antarctic whale fishing, and also for 458 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. the squadron which watched the African Coast for putting down the slave trade ; and it had then, and for years afterwards, a small British garrison to man its strong fortifications. Its resident popu lation were of many races and shades of colour, but there was no mistake in this lone isle of the ocean about British supremacy. Like all visitors to St Helena, we went to see Napoleon's empty grave, and LongAvood, where he lived and died, the doctor and captain on horseback, and my wife and I in a small phaeton drawn by smart little ponies. How refreshing It felt after the stifiing heat of the narrow valley to breathe the upland air and to look out on the surrounding ocean and hear the thunder of its huge waves dashing themseh^es high against the black, barren, frowning cliffs ! Napoleon III. was on the throne of France, and naturally cherished the memory of his uncle. The Crimean war brought him into close alliance with our country, and it pleased him to be allowed to guard Longwood and the empty tomb, whence years before Louis Philippe had, to his own dynastic detriment, transported Napoleon's body to Paris, " to repose on the banks of the Seine among the people he had loved so well." So we found Longwood and the valley, or depression of the tomb, guarded as sacred by courteous French soldiers. The valley of the tomb was a lovely place to be buried in. The willow under which Napoleon used, when alive, to stop and meditate was close to the tomb, and vigorously fiourishing. Canary birds were flitting among the samphire bushes, and we started on our way a covey of partridges. Longwood has a delightful situation. The house is very like many residences of small farming proprietors or yeomen AFLOAT AGAIN, 459 in England, comfortable, with good rooms, and of no great size. The room in which Napoleon died had been put back into precisely the same state in which it was when he breathed his last there on the Sth of May, 1821. Longwood might well have been an ideal residence for a modern philosopher, or for a brotherhood of mediseval monks who cultivated the fruitful soil and served future generations by writing annals and transcribing precious ancient manuscripts. To the restless greatest leader of hosts the world had ever seen, Longwood was a prison, and the whole island a cage against whose bars the captured eagle was perpetually flapping Its wings, and tearing with beak and talons in impotent rage. It was shabby on the part of the Allies to refuse him the title of Emperor. Russia, Austria, and France — again under the Bourbons — sent representatives to St Helena to see to it that he was kept by Britain in safe custody. Well was it for the prisoner of Europe that he had not been placed in the hands of any one of the other three Powers, and that his captivity was in no worse place than St Helena. But, excusably, he and his devoted partisans were constantly plotting a repetition of the escape from Elba, and Napoleon personally got some amusement out of the nervous anxiety in which he kept Governor Sir Hudson Lowe. Could Napoleon have seen himself as after ages see him, he would surely not have acted like a lion changed into a cat, which tormented a caught mouse by playing with it before dispatching it. Before descending to Jamestown we dined — the four of us — in the cool of the evening, in the Rose and Crown Inn, which is at the top of the steep ascent, and in the neatly kept lawn of which there 460 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. were camellias that grew to the size of small trees. I have a camellia walking stick and a little twig from Napoleon's tomb as St Helena memorials to this day. A chief item of the well-cooked dinner Avas the delicate fish called bullseye. St Helena is Avell furnished with many kinds of fine, and less good, eatable fish, and the names by which the various sorts have got ticketed, such as buUseyes, old wives, soldiers, five fingers, hogs- in -armour, are even more curious than the fish themselves. The large conger eels, so ugly to the eyes, are splendid to eat. The rocks and stones in or on the edge of the sea are covered with active black crabs which scuttle out of sight when people approaches. Boys in boats come out with ground bait to fish among the shipping. Bonita, a fish nice to look at and poor to eat, was a fi-equent capture of theirs. We had aldermanic turtle soup on board the " Chatham" one or more days. The fishermen had just caught some turtles, one of which was excessively big, which had floated in with a gale from Ascension, and Captain Thurtle bethought him of giving us a treat. He always kept a good board, but at St Helena he was doing a profitable business, and was extra liberal. It happened, fortunately for Captain Thurtle, that when he anchored In the roadstead, the islanders had exhausted their supply of sugar, and that he had Mauritian sugar, intended for England when he bought it, to sell to them, and that, at the same time, the St Helena Government had a cargo of old war stores to give him for taking home. Sugar went and the old war stores came in, and our " ol4 man" was in the best of humours. He, therefore, made no objection to fit out and man one of his AF-LOAT AGAIN. 461 boats for conveying himself, the doctor, and me, with a band of the island officials, for whom there was no room in their own boat, on a fishing excur sion to guano rock-islets some nine miles away from the anchorage. Provisions, solid and liquid, for luncheon on the rocks were stowed in our boat, and on the other boat likewise, yet when far on and passing nearly away from the other corner of St Helena, it was discovered that there was not a frying-pan in either ; but, with difficulty, our sailors managed to guide the boat through the surf near enough for the revenue man stationed there to let a frying-pan down upon us. On our return in the evening the sea was calmer, and the frying-pan was landed with less trouble than it had been embarked. On approaching our destination, we saw a Scotch vessel — from Aberdeen, I think — moored close to the biggest rock of the group, and Its crew busily engaged in lading it with guano. The stuff they gathered seemed too white and new to be of the best quality, but had no doubt a good manurial market value. Although the greater number of the birds must then have been out at sea foraging for their daily food, a screeching cloud of them fluttered in a disturbed state about the rocks, in no thankful mood of mind regarding the intruding humans who, for their own ends, were scraping and cleaning their polluted residence. We took our boats to a rock which had been cleaned out previously, and round it many sorts of fish were swimming, ready to swallow, or suck any bait. We had fishing there to our hearts' content. Our rock had a hollow in the middle of it, and in this hollow our black cook and his assistants built a fire, placed the borrowed frying-pan over it on an improvised tripod, and 462 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. cooked to perfection, for our sumptuous luncheon, as many as could be consumed of the fish freshly landed. The heat was excessive, but we came prepared for it, and also for the coolness that would come with the evening breeze and the setting sun. When we left the guano islets, we turned in to the false bay or snip in the St Helena coast, where we had to land the frying-pan. Here we had such a catch of big conger-eels that we did not leave until night closed in around us. Anchored a little away from us on the Jamestown roadstead was quite a large squadron of wooden sailing vessels — some small and some of large size — which had been condemned, and were in process of being broken up, because of the way in which strength and safety had been stealthily eaten out of them by white ants. They were vessels which had been employed in the trade of the West African coast. I am not sure, yet I think I was told that the white ants were not indigenous pests of St Helena, but were imported there by the West Coast trading ships. At anyrate they had got by 1867 a strong hold on the capital of St Helena, and spread beyond. On going to the public library one day, I saw that both it and the other buildings near were being gutted, because every bit of timber in them had been hollowed and ruined by these wretched pests, which conceal their ravages by hiding them selves in the heart of the beams or posts, or anything else that is wooden, on which they prey, leaving the outside untouched. In the gutted and re-roofed buildings at Jamestown they were putting in iron instead of the eaten-out wooden beams. But I am lingering too long over the pleasant time we stayed at St Helena. Let us now be off to AFLOAT AGAIN. 463 England. After hoisting sail, and setting off, we had a favouring breeze and quick passage to Ascen sion, the conical mountain island, which lifts its tall bully's head to the sky, and has little more than its turtle beds to recommend it. The scorched, dark- gray, barren rocks of the base of this mighty hill made it by contrast refreshing to think of Ben Lawers covered with snow. But I was told that the top of Ascension was pretty cool, and well watered in the dry season by catching the passing clouds, and that on It lived in peace and comfort a small colony of pensioned naval and military veterans, who raised crops and garden vegetables and fruits. Ascension was placed under the British flag, as an outpost to St Helena, the year before Napoleon had been sent there. Although of small area and small account, in the event of war, these lonely islands might turn out to be possessions of much value to the British Empire. At the Ascen sion sea birds, which were numerous and divided into companies, we shot with ball from small bore rifles. The many that were frightened suddenly dived, whUe the two or three which were killed floated away on the surface of the sea. A favouring breeze sent us out of sight of Ascension, at our highest rate of steed — ten or twelve knots an hour. When it deserted us, a few days afterwards, we found ourselves becalmed in the Doldrums, that space about the Equator where there is a gap, sometimes wide, and sometimes narrow, between the two trade-winds. It happened to be wide when we fell into it, and was a perfect trap for sailing vessels. We found one vessel held up before us, and more came up as the detention was prolonged, until we were seven, all so close 464 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. together, that a project of mutual visits and enter tainments was just about to be carried out when a sudden breeze dispersed us as if by a magician's wand. Water-spouts, porpoises, and flying fish are in this equatorial, middle of the Atlantic region, but we saw no birds but a few Mother Carey chickens. It is certainly a lonesome place to be held up in. Like " painted ships upon a painted ocean," the seven were kept there for upwards of a week, drifting a little forward and backward with the turns of the tide, and always coming back to their old positions. The rising of the sun out of the sea in the morning, and its sinking into it at night, was a grand sight. At noon, when It was right overhead, it seemed small, and glittering down on us like an evil eye. But under covering the heat was not so excessive as it Is occasionally felt In the height of summer at Cape Town, because of the effect on the city of the bare cliffs of Table Moun tain, which keeps its own head cool by the table cloth of morning mist. When we left Table Bay I forthwith began to write a story called " Uncle George." The plot which I had in mind to begin with was never fully developed but merely indicated, for the thing became a gallery of character sketches mingled with various speculations. The writing of it made the time fly, and caused forgetfulness of the pain of my knee, which, although never absent, was less on board than it was on land, both before and after wards. Most of the story was written on deck, but on stormy days I lay on my bulkhead bunk and contentedly scribbled on. The only time when I stopped was when the dead lights were on the stern cabin windows. My scanty supply of what I called AFLOAT AGAIN. 465 civUised copy paper gave out long before the story could be wound up, however abruptly, and the end of it was written ou the backs of old ship papers which the captain kindly rummaged out for me. This story was first published in the South African Magazine, a shilling monthly brought out by Mr WUliam Foster, M.P. for Namaqualand, who suc ceeded me as editor of the Standard. After appearing in the magazine, it was brought out as a separate volume of upwards of 600 octavo pages. Mr Foster threw up a good commercial situation to launch out in newspaper and literary undertakings. In which I think he might have succeeded if his business methods had been more careful and his views less sanguine. I got £46 out of the story. Before I left Cape Town Mr Foster engaged me to act on reaching England as a monthly home correspondent of the Standard; which meant that I should send out monthly a summary, with comments, of British and Continental events, that would form a sort of European supplement to the Standard. I did so for years, until the Standard was amalgamated with another Cape newspaper. I liked Mr Foster very much, for he was a cultured gentleman with high ideals, but always disposed to expend money on things which were more showy than profitable or absolutely necessary. The Standard had a good circulation, and made — on the face of its books — a good income. But it cost, in days of mail cart and other slow travelling, a big sum to collect accounts over the whole colony. It was not a small item of expendi ture to keep a boat for boarding every ship tha.t came into the bay, and to pay my friend the imaum, for interpreting and reporting services connected 30 466 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS, with Malay evidence in the Supreme Court. Mr Foster, who was the son of King Leopold's steward at Claremont, did not study the small economies, and the consequence of this was that, after a gallant fight, he ultimately came to financial grief, and his paper passed into other hands. Embroidery work kept my wife as fully employed as I was with my scribbling. Mr Barry gave me a goat at Cape Town which furnished our two children and the cabin tea with milk. Kate milked the goat twice a day, and she and, indeed, all the sailors had to watch our elder boy, whose ambition was to climb the poop deck, whence a roll of the ship would have thrown him into the sea. One day he was lost sight of An alarm was raised, but the supposed lost one came out of the captain's cabin with a banana in his hand, quite unconscious of the com motion he had raised. Our Afrikander baby, who was beginning to feel that feet were for standing and walking, spent his days mainly in trying to pull himself up to the brass capstan by the loose end of its cable, and took all his falls, when the ship rolled, like a small philosopher. But he made up for the capstan's good behaviour by having a noisy fight with his mother about being put to bed before he felt inclined. The whole of us on board the " Chatham " formed a fair approach to a happy family. Captain Thurtle could, I believe, have been as promptly energetic as Captain Kettle himself in a dire emergency. He was of the old school of skippers, while the mate, Mr Marsden, was of the new. The cook was an Irishman, and the rest of the crew were English, except three shipwrecked foreigners who were working their passage home from the Far East. One of them, Mr Lyons, was a AFLOAT AGAIN. 467 quiet Dutchman, who acted as second mate, and thought much about his wife and children in Holland. The second was a small Breton French man of fiery mein and temper, whom the Dutchman kept under stern control. The third was a big, good-natured Dane, who always went about his work with a smile on his face and top-boots on his legs. He and his boots were so inseparable that Dr Burllnson would wish us to believe that he slept in them. When we got out of the Doldrums, Captain Thurtle had to mark our course on a new chart section, and by a careless matching of the old with the new section, about which he was afterwards very angry with himself, he began his fresh markings on a wrong degree of longitude. We, therefore, to the captain's surprise and vexation, found ourselves, one rather stormy morning, in the Sargasso Sea, sailing among large and small heaving islands of weeds, by which, as far as we could see, the water around us was all covered. The channels between these islands were often closing, and new ones were often opening, so that It was impossible to keep the ship clear of the clogging masses of mysterious weeds. A lunar observation told us where we were, and then the charts were overhauled and the cause of our wander ing into the Sargasso Sea was discovered. We had rough weather among the weeds, and then such calm weather that when we neared Flores, the doctor and I persuaded the captain to call there and let us have a run ashore, while he did trading with the islanders. But an hour later, a high gale set in, and before daylight the " Chatham" swept far past Flores, and was going down into valleys, between mountain waves, and rising like a duck out of what 468 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. looked like a pit of destruction. The storm was a long continued one, and the ship was so strained that pumping was never afterwards wholly neglected. As we were swept pa.st Flores in the dark by the gale, which developed into a prolonged storm that caused many vessels to be lost on the British, French, Spanish, and Portuguese coasts, we saw no land between Ascension and the mouth of the Channel ; and what we first saw there was not land but St Mary's lighthouse in the Scilly Isles. The sea was still heaving with the after-swell of the recent storm, and the little islands lay so low amidst the high waves that the lighthouse appeared to stand on the sea, and almost to be swaying like a floating edifice. It was not quite dark when we passed the Eddystone lighthouse, and got among the crossing and passing-out and coming-in ships. Further up the Channel we found ourselves in a dead calm, and for three or four days could not get out of sight of the Ventnor cliff and its flagstaff. We sent letters ashore, and waited impatiently for a breeze. At last it came, dispersed the fog, and one wet morning we passed Dover and Margate, and ere mid-day reached the mouth of the Thames, and cast anchor at Sheerness. There I and mine landed, and took train to London, But before leaving the old " Chatham," for which we had contracted a sort of home affection, the Captain gave us a parting dinner, for which his last fattened goose had been killed and cooked to perfection. My father-in-law, Mr George Aspinall, one ofthe kindest and best of the sons of men, met us in London and took care of us all. His little namesake, the Afrlckander boy, found his feet in Mrs Cordeau's quiet hotel. A steady floor suited him better than AFLOAT AGAIN. 469 the rolling deck and the capstan cable. Our elder boy, John, three years, had become absurdly nautical. He called the banks of deep railway cuttings shores ; when we stopped at a station asked where were the boats, and when taken upstairs to be put to bed, called it going up-a-deck. We were two or three days in London, and It was on one of these days that a riotous mob pulled down the Hyde Park raUings. My troublesome knee swelled for the first time when we were becalmed In the Channel. I could still walk, and perhaps I walked about more than was good for me in London. At anyrate there was no doubt about Its having got worse then, and pf my being nearly disabled for walking when we reached Bradford, and were welcomed and sheltered by my wife's father and mother. In my journey through life I have met with kindness from all sorts of people, but theirs exceeded all, and it was heartily shown in time of need, when I was more helpless than I had ever been before, or ever have been since. Little did I think in that time of trial that I should live to eighty years and upwards, and do my full man's share of work in the journalistic vocation, into which I had happened to drift. 470 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER LXXI. BREAKDOWN. On landing in England on May, 1867, the knee trouble which was acute before we left Cape Town, and seemed to subside on the voyage, changed its character, and slowly and painfully worked up to a crisis, out of which I emerged as a cripple for the rest of my days. I never was very robust, but my constitution was tough enough to struggle with the flaw in it, and finally to, in a manner, surmount it. For eighteen months I was next thing to being laid on my back. We were most of that time with my wife's parents in Bradford. From a visit to Burton I returned in a worse plight than when I went. In August and September I took my wife with me to the Highlands, and we stayed among our hospitable friends there for a month or longer. That did me no good, and recollections of what I Avent through during the ensuing winter is like the ghost of a bad nightmare. In the summer of 1868 I found myself so much better, that having got house-room from my uncle, who then had the farm of Laurick, on Loch Vennacher's side — the mustering place of the Clan Gregor in the "Lady of the Lake " — we all, wife, self, the two boys, and Kate, went there and stayed there for a couple of months. That was a happy time for us. Throughout the whole illness, I regularly wrote my despatches for the Cape, and also leaders for my old Bradford paper. My general health remained satisfactory all through, and the BREAKDOWN. 471 pain in the limb stimulated rather than diminished mental activity. Reading and writing were a solace, and these and native air helped to make me sleep soundly at Laurick, a blessing which was made more enjoyable by contrast with the insomnia from which I had previously been often suffering, and which at one time became so severe, that Dr Goyder, whose patient I was when in Bradford, brought me a sleeping draught, which I was unwilling to take, because having seen the effect of opium on people who indulged in it. In South Africa, I hated to resort to it. I told him to put the phial on the mantelpiece, and that perchance looking at it would suffice, as I had been without a wink of sleep for two or three successive nights. The looking or wearying out did the business ; and now, as an octogenarian, I am able to say that I have never taken a narcotic drug. Ere this severe breakdown, I had, ever since I entered into my teens, earned, like Longfellow's blacksmith, my night's repose by daily work of some kind, and like him, could look the whole world in the face as I owed not anyone, except in the mutual good-will and interchange of affections, which are the hoops of society. Unambitious, somewhat dreamy, and a lover of nature and books, I was still a diligent worker, and felt contented with, and proud, too, of my position of small independence. I knew I could in half a dozen ways earn my living before the breakdown, but was so deficient in what is called push, that every change in my vocation was brought about, not by myself, but by the spontaneous action of other people. But it remained for the teaching of adversity to confirm my faith in the innate goodness of human nature. We — my 472 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. dear wife and I —in our period of trouble and trial, were not only lapped round by the lovingkindness of kith and kin, but likewise solaced by the sym pathies of many with whom Ave had no such ties, and not, in some instances, any previous intimacy. As already raentioned, most of the medical men of the district Avere either born Scotchmen, or men who had got their professional training in Edinburgh University, when its fame as a medical school had reached its highest. Many of them in my time of worst trials were as good to me as if I had been a forlorn and shipwrecked brother with an imperative claim on their attention and help. To one of them, my dear friend, the late Doctor William Dobie, Keighley, I and mine fell under obligations for which endless gratitude was the only repayment. During ten years Dr Dobie and his assistants did all the medical work myself and family required for nothing at all ; and besides, he and his wife were our dearest and closest private friends in the Keighley district. Dr Dobie, born at Langham, where his father was a United Presbyterian minister, represented the Borders, as I and Dr Angus Cameron from Rannoch, and Dr Jack frora Ross-shire, did the Highlands. Dr Murray, soon afterwards of York, and Dr Arthur, from near Stirling, belonged to the Lowland Mid lands, and were, as their surnames showed, of far away Celtic descent, Dr Rabaghliati's father, in the days of the Austrian domination of Lombardy, came to Scotland as a political exile, and taught modern languages in Edinburgh. He married a Rannoch wife, and so their only child was half a Highlander by birth, and more than half by sympathies. When the Austrians were expelled AT THWAITES HOUSE. 47S from Lombardy, the confiscated property of the Rabaghliaties was restored, and our friend " Rab" got his share of it. He married the daughter of Mr Duncan M'Laren, for a long time M.P, for Edinburgh, and of his second wife, Priscilla Bright, sister of Mr John Bright. We had good friends among the English medicals outside this Scotch company. When Scotchmen cross the Tweed, or go out into the colonies and all parts of the world, they forget home distinctions of High landers and Lowlanders, remember their Caledonian brotherhood, and draw up shoulder to shoulder, not for offence or aggressiveness, but for mutual social intercourse and help, and the cultivation of Scotch memories and sympathies, worthy of preservation. In England, Scotchmen are very much at home, and mingle easily enough into the English people among whom they reside. CHAPTER LXXII, AT THWAITES HOUSE. As already indicated, I was far from being out of work during the breakdown period, when I had to lie most of my time on my back, for besides the monthly budget for the Cape, I wrote many leading articles and reviews of books for other papers. I chose my own subjects, and wrote as I honestly thought on those subjects. Before I went to South Africa I was by habit and conviction what I may call a Palmerstonian Whig. So, at the time of my editorial connection with it, was the Bradford Observer, and its proprietor, Mr William Byles. 474 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. There was only one subject on which he and I agreed to differ, and that was the aggressive policy of Mr Edward Miall and the Liberation Society towards the Established Churches of England and Scotland. Dissenters, I knew, had grievances which ought to be redressed, and Avere by degrees being redressed, in rural districts where squire and parson looked upon themselves as monarchs of all they surveyed, but Mr Byles, who belonged to the old class of religious Dissenters, was ready enough to admit that the two National Established Churches had done, and were doing work which, if they were levelled down. Voluntaryism could not undertake to do, and he did not deny that their work and historical continuity were the backbone of Protestant strength not only at home but in the United States, where there was no Established Church. On this one subject I never wrote in his paper, nor did he want me to do so. The truly religious Dissenters of his generation and training did not realise how among the younger generation political dissent was already eating out the heart of puritanic belief, although happily to a large extent the old standard of morality was still upheld. Mr Byles, with his long business experience, was far less sanguine than I that co-operation and limited liability would go far to solve the capital and labour difficulty. Co-opera tion stores, with their assured customers and ready money payments, under ordinary good management, cannot help being comparatively successful. But co-operation mills and other works have not stood the test of many fair trials. Individual manage ment in competent hands must always beat collective management, however careful and free from the corruption of secret commissions and scandals such AT THWAITES HOUSE. 475 as those of Poplar, West Ham, and Mile End. I always valued the colonies and dependencies as the Greater Britain there was to be, and always resented the tone adopted towards them by Messrs Cobden and Bright, and all their Manchester School fol lowers. I came back from the Cape a strongei- Imperialist than when I went there, and with new doubts about the abiding value of the free import policy which we glorified by calling it free trade when it never got to be anything of the kind. A political era closed with the death of Lord Palmerston and the going to the House of Lords of old Lord John Russell. The leaders who came after them, Mr Disraeli and Mr Gladstone, had began public life, the former as a flashy, philosophical Radical, and the latter as a High Church Anglican Tory. After Mr Disraeli's democratic Reform Bill, establishing household suffrage in boroughs, and ten pound suffrage in the counties, and Mr Gladstone's disestablishment of the Irish Church, the old desig nation of parties as Whigs and Tories lost their meaning ; and the new ones of Liberals and Con servatives became more appropriate. As for the disestablishment of the Irish Church, the only thing I deeply regretted myself was that the confiscated ecclesiastical funds were not retained and pro portionately shared among Catholic parish priests and Protestant ministers of all denominations for permanent endowment purposes as far as they would go. The Protestant Episcopal Church of Ireland was in very truth " A garrison church," which represented English domination, and a half conquest, which was much more irritating and ten times less beneficial than a settlement on com plete conquest might have been. I had read all Mr 476 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Disraeli's published works, and while fully aware of the genius displayed in them, I did not like their foreign-like glitter, superlatives, and class and caste limitations in regard to his subjects and the way he treated them. But on questions of foreign and colonial policy his views seemed always to be as far- seeing and truly patriotic as those of Mr Gladstone were hazy and unreliable. It was after the time I am writing about that Mr Gladstone took to having special revelations like Mahomet, which suited personal and party interests. When he disestab lished the Irish Church, he was yet far enough from Irish Home Rule, and from the passionate claptrap of the Bulgarian atrocity agitation. He had, with wonderful gifts of oratory and financial talents, the singular faculty of persuading himself as well as others that on every occasion of his making a new departure In politics he was acting on the highest motives, as if he had a revelation and order from heaven. No one could listen to his glowing oratory without being to some degree mesmerised, but when his speeches, with their bursting sentences — so troublesome to reporters — were read in print, the mesmerism of tone and personality disappeared, and one wondered how the sought-for impression could have been produced at the public meeting or in the House of Commons by a flow of words, which were in sense frequently elusive, however imposing in form. I think I must admit that I got an early prejudice against Mr Gladstone, because he was the only House of Commons member of Sir Robert Peel's Government in 1842-3 who understood the dispute which ended in the Disruption, and who, instead of doing all he could to prevent the catastrophe, joined with Manning and others in setting up the Glen- AT THWAITES HOUSE. 477 almond College, for Anglicanising the sons of the Scotch nobility and gentry. On returning from South Africa, I found myself, like many more of the Ne quid nimis Palmerstonian Whigs, out of sympathy and general agreement with the new Liberalism, and filled with distrust of Mr Gladstone's tendency to heroically plunge into all sorts of domestic policy innovations, and of his capacity for blundering in foreign affairs, and for neglecting the colonies and British Empire con solidation. So henceforward I was, like others of my kind, ranked as a Conservative, and as the years passed got accustomed in words and writings to express my fears and ever increasing convictions of the dangers ahead, with Highland forcibleness of language. I lost, no doubt, professional chances by refusing to float with the current of Gladstonian Liberalism, but I lost none of my old friends, not withstanding political separation at the parting ofthe ways, and in after years not a few of them were driven by Mr Gladstone's Home Rule plunge to join the ranks of the Unionists. This is all preliminary to what I have to say about our eleven years' residence at Thwaites House, within a mile of Keighley, but by a small field's breadth inside the parish of Bingley. I returned from the Highlands on the second visit with health so much improved that we forth with began to look out for a house in the country, where we should for the third time since our marriage set up our penates. Ere long we heard of Thwaites House. My wife and her mother went to see it, and their report was so favourable that I took it without having first visited it. I was delighted with it when I did see it. It had been built in 478 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. succession to an older homestead by one of a line of Rishworth proprietors about 1780. The houses then put up, like this one, were built to last as it were for ever. The fold of farm buildings claimed a much higher antiquity than the homestead, which con sisted of a broader main building and a narrower kitchen end, with plenty room for the farmer, Mr William Wilkinson, and his wife, and the wife's father, who resided with them until his death, a few years later. The Wilkinsons had no family, and when the wife died the husband's niece came to keep house for him. Worthy, hard-working, and excellent neighbours they all were. With the exception of one upstairs room, we had all the main building — five rooms, two of which were very large, with a kitchen, cellar, and broad staircase. Our front door and the face of the whole house faced the mid day sun, while the door of the farmer's part of the building was at the other side. When there was level ground so near, it was a strange fancy of the old proprietors to have stuck in their homestead at the foot of a steep grassy brae, over which the larks delighted to sing like mad, while they rose and fell in the air as if dancing to their own music. The farmer had the better and more level half of the old garden, our part being an intake from the steep hillside. But it was enough for our needs, and, besides vegetables for the pot, and salad stuffs, produced plums, apples, gooseberries, rasps, and strawberries. I was always fond of gardening, and it did me good to spend spare hours in fighting this unlevel piece of ground. The house roofs were covered, not by slates, but by Yorkshire grit flags, as was the case with most of the old buildings of the whole district, A later Rishworth built, some time in the AT THWAITES HOUSE. 479 early half of last century, three cottages at the end ofthe homestead, with their fronts and doors facing away from the mid-day sun. Slate, I believe, was not much known, or at anyrate much used, before the making of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. In the fifties or early sixties, the Rishworths sold their Thwaites House property, and went to Tuam, in Galway, where they established themselves as manufacturers. Their history was like that of many others of the old class of small landowners who were tempted to sell in order to launch out in new careers, or to divide capital among a numerous family of children. The area of the Thwaites House property was just enough for a snug farm, which, before the arable and level part was sold and cut off' for the Keighley Gasworks, Mr Wilkinson and his wife, with a ser\'ant man's aid in spring and autumn, were able to manage very well. We went to Thwaites House with two children, the boys we brought back with us from Africa. We left it with a family of nine, and two more were born to us at Inverness. Between Keighley and Bingley, on the Thwaites or west side of the Aire, the scenery is exceedingly pretty, being varied by low fields, and some boggy still lower nooks, where willows for basket-work were profitably cultivated — an industry which ought to be introduced into many places in the Highlands, which are undoubtedly suitable for willow cultivation. Besides Bingley wood, trees and hedges abounded everywhere. By rising abruptly from the plain, the upper grazings, with their trees, bushes, and hedges, made a successful attempt to produce the impression of being rather lofty, or at least very picturesque hills. But when 480 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. we climbed the abrupt little hill above our house, so beloved of larks, starlings, and other birds, we came to a fairly level farm, above which rose the higher small and romantic rocky hill which had at some unknown date acquii-ed the name of the Druid altar. Rights-of-way, by roads and footpaths, had been carefully preserved, throughout all the varia tions brought about by encroachments of towns and changes of industrial and social life. So there was free access to a lovely scenery, rich in flower and fauna, where the air was pure, and smoky towns and polluted streams could be forgotten. On the east or Rumbold Moor side of the river, the scene was less varied, and the much higher hill was less Interesting- until the heather was reached and the open lower slopes, with ancient halls, were lost sight of. While we could fancy ourselves out of the world in this rural retreat, we were yet in it, not only because of my work for various newspapers, but likewise because we had many callers, such as friends and acquaintances of various classes, politicians, and clergymen of different Churches, Episcopalians, Nonconformists, and my good friend Father Kiernan from Tipperary, whose Gaelic, to his huge regret, had in the days of his youth been neglected. Political opponents liked to have arguments with me. Among these was Mr Moggridge, who succeeded me as editor of the Observer, and flung himself conscientiously into the Radicalism from which I had determinedly revolted. Mr Moggridge was the son and heir of a Welsh landowner. While at the University he had fallen under the influence of John Stuart Mill's economical theories, Herbert Spencer's AT THWAITES HOUSE. 481 metaphysics, and Goldwin Smith's shaUow political philosophy. He made sacrifices for his opinions. He had studied for being a clergyman of the Church of England, and drifting into Agnosticism, renounced his church connection and sure prospects of promotion, disappointed his father and relatives, flung himself into journalism, and married a nice lady of the fair Saxon type, who was the niece of the enemy of grouse and game — Mr Peter Taylor, for a long time the Radical M.P. for Blackburn, but who drew the line at Irish Home Rule, and died a firm Unionist. Mr Moggridge himself was a dark Welshman, and so was their daughter the brightest, sylph-like, of young lassies that could be found, while their boy was like the mother. Mr Moggridge and I had many discussions on the evolution theory and kindred subjects. He admitted it was not at that time fully proved, but believed that it was wholly true, and expected that the missing links would soon be found. I admitted that for generalisation and classification purposes it might have its usefulness, but contended that, rightly defined, the distinction of species was on this planet, as far as men knew or could know, immutable and eternal, and that the history of hybrids in plants and animals sustained my contention. We both realised the far-reaching consequences of the evolu tion doctrine if accepted for proved truth. Mr Moggridge, I always felt, could not find rest all his life in the cold atmosphere of Agnosticism. He was too fond of Homer, Plato, and even the Arthurian stories, and naturaUy too religious for becoming rooted in his thin unbeliefs. High aspira tions and ideals connected him too closely, despite reasoning and will, with the soul side of the universe 31 482 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS, to be satisfied with the materialism, which science can only dissect like a dead corpse, leaving the soul side alone. It would not have been impossible for him, I thought, to find, when averted from Christianity, something to suit his imagination in Buddhism or the creed of Pythagoras, but I deemed it far more likely that he would rather, when he revolted from materialism and found out that human nature was, for good and evil, not what he had dreamed of, like Cardinal Newman, put himself under the authority and discipline of the Church of Rome. But he contented himself with return to the Church of England. He left Bradford several years before we left Thwaites House. I missed his visits many a day, but as I always disliked to keep up correspondence by letters with friends as much as I liked to talk with them face to face, I lost sight of him for a long time. It was a good while after we came to Inverness that I was one day startled by reading In an Aberdeen or Elgin paper news of his death on the Moray Firth coast, where he had been in charge of an Episcopal Church and congregation. Had I known sooner that he was there, I would certainly have gone to see him, and to invite him and his to come and see me and mine at Inverness. neighbours and INCIDENTS, 483 CHAPTER LXXIII. NEIGHBOURS AND INCIDENTS. The gate which opened on the highway was a short distance up above a small portion of field separating the parishes of Bingley and Keighley. But small as the distance was this access was only used for wheeled vehicles and horses and cattle. A footpath led straight to a stile in the boundary wall, and then through a little field, and another stile into Thwaites viUage. From the village to Keighley the way of foot passengers was, on crossing the Midland Railway a few yards below the village, by a long " snicket," or narrow path between the railway wall and the well-kept hedge above the lawns of the String Close mansion which had not many years before been erected by a Keighley manufacturer. These little matters are mentioned to show how jealously old rights-of-way were preserved amidst all the changes, and how England is super-abundantly provided with short cut footpaths, besides the public roads. The vUlage had a shop, an inn, called the Shoulder of Mutton, and a carpenter's workshop, but it lived in pure air outside the region of smoke and clatter of machinery, as it had no manufacturing mill or ironworks. The villagers were as good-living, hard working, and honest a set of people as could be found anywhere. Religiously they appeared to be mostly divided between the Church of England and the Wesleyans. Their girls worked in the mills and 484 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONB. shops of Keighley, and their men were artisans or workers in mills, ironworks, or trading firms, except the few who were employed in farm and garden Avork. I daresay a liberal amount of beer was imbibed by the major part of the male population at their gatherings in the Shoulder of Mutton, but, if so, they managed their drinking with such dis cretion as to give their neighbours no offence and the police no trouble. I was only once inside the Shoulder of Mutton, and that was when I was summoned to a coroner's jury that had to sit on the body of a poor boy, who was killed on the crossing, by trying, against warning, to rush a coming train within sight of him. The inn was, for a village, one of a superior sort, and a well managed one also. Good management was made easy by the habitually good conduct of the village frequenters. The inn keeper's trouble, however, occasionally was apt to come on holidays, when hundreds, or it might, in fine weather, be thousands of the town young men and women came out to the woods, fields, and Druid Altar, and on their return, full of joyousness, stopped to refresh at the Shoulder of Mutton, and created a bit of stir and noise there. I am tempted to diverge here for the purpose of referring briefly, and in no chronological order, to two incidents which flash on my mind with compelling vividness. The first of these was the wind-storm of December, 1879, in which the Tay Bridge went down, and the second the trip of my wife and myself to the Isle of Man. The storm was sweeping over our district through the whole afternoon, but in was in the night that, with every successive gust, it gathered its thunderous destructive forces. My wife, with the then baby neighbours and INCIDENTS. 485 and younger children, was on a visit to her people in Bradford, and I lingered an hour or two after the boys and Kate had gone to their respective bedrooms over some writing I had to do. When I did go to the big bedroom, and laid down to sleep alone, the thundering gale made sleep impossible. The feeling I had was not fear of it, but a sort of mad desire to be out in the midst of its wild turmoil. Raging winds and raging waters have always excited me In this way. Well, I listened and did not sleep, and some of the slabs which covered the roof, when the storm reached its highest force, rattled down with a despairing noise of their own, heard weirdly through the roars of the tempest. Solidly as it was built, the old house shook, but whatever damage the roof might sustain, I was sure it would outstand the fiercest wind storm ever heard of in the British Isles. Besides the strong outer walls, there was an inner wall of such thick dimensions that the door entrance of it was like a culvert. The one end of the solid oak beams, which in the rooms below and above stairs supported the ceilings, rested on this thick interior wall, and their other end upon the house walls. The roof was of a similarly strong construction, and the chimney-stacks would have outlived a Skerry- more ocean blast. Sure enough next morning, in the fairyland calm succeeding the violent tempest, Thwaites House stood up stieve and stern, and barring the slabs which had rattled down from its roof with such uncanny noise in the night, alto gether undamaged. But round about us a deal of damage had been done to buildings, and many fine trees had been blown down. StiU, as I found later on when I made a flying visit to Glenlyon, the 486 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Highland woods had suffered much worse than ours. It saddened me to see so many of the magnificent beech trees planted about 1710 by Stewart of Ballied, the maternal grandfather of James Menzies of Culdares, uprooted, smashed, and huddled, as if by the hands of furious giants, on the top of one another, and fir trees, larch trees, and oak trees and birches prostrate in all the Glen woods. In Upper Airedale we escaped the worst wind-storm damage which ravaged the woods of Atholl and other parts of Scotland. My wife and I remember with pleasure the trip to the Isle of Man, which was to us both like a romantic elopement and a new honeymoon. After we settled down at Thwaites House, we were seldom free to go out together, unless on a day excursion to Morecombe, Blackpool, or to visit the Leeds Exhibition, or to witness some Bradford great function. Since the enjoyable and, to me, recupera tive sojourn at Loch Vennachar-side, we never had any real outing together until we went to the Isle of Man in the summer of a year I do not presently remember. I always, indeed, had an annual sort of holiday ; but when I made a run to the Highlands my wife could not leave the children to go with me. That was a great drawback, and there was this other one in addition to it, that some of my work was sure to follow me, and make me feel as if at every step I dragged a lengthened chain. The writing of articles which at home would have been always easy, and frequently pleasurable work, was in the outing time forced labour and penal servitude. I hated to write letters, and hated to see newspapers. Even on a rainy day I could not sit comfortably In a house to read a book, however entertaining. Now our trip NEIGHBOURS AND INCIDENTS. 487 to the Isle of Man was made ten times more enjoy able to us by perfect security against what was, to me, such a source of Irritation in both apprehension and fact, that the bad temper it Invariably en gendered would spoil my wife's pleasure as well as my own. Mrs Aspinall, my wife's always helpful and kind-hearted mother, undertook, with Kate, to rule our house and children Avhen we were away. So we quietly slipped away without leaving an address, got to Barrow-in-Furness, which then was rising into great importance, thanks to Iron ore, and the liberal and enterprising help of the Duke of Devonshire. A few years before our visit Barrow had been a small old-fashioned seaside place of no account whatever, but it has now grown into one of the most important towns in the North of England. At Barrow we embarked in the small steamer which was then plying between Barro'vv and Douglas in the Isle of Man. When we embarked the sea was lively and the wind was rising. I expected to be seasick, especially if I saw any of the children and women on deck first giving way. My former experience was that I was very Imitative, and had to pay a tribute to Neptune before having much pleasure on his watery domain. After that entrance tribute was paid, I found sea life very happy, but more so in a sailing ship than in a fioating hotel steamer. I withdrew down stair, and was settling myself among coils of ropes, when my wife came and persuaded me to go up again upon deck. She Avas confident she was not to be sick herself, and I am not sure she did not, in a soft way, accuse me of nervous fancifulness and what amounted to moral cowardice. Ere the Barrow coast looked like a dim dark line, the breeze hardened into a half gale, and 488 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. there were several cases of seasickness on board. But the sight of the afflicted did not affect me in the least, nor did the heaving sea, nor the plunging boat, nor its smoke, nor its smell of oil. On the other hand, my wife was not so fortunate. She had slightly to give way just when we were within a few miles of our destination, and just when I was ex patiating to her, with glowing enthusiasm, on the picturesqueness of Douglas Bay and its neighbouring coasts. Douglas is splendidly situated in irregular crescent form on rising ground round its beautiful bay. Its name is pure Gaelic, aud has the same " dark-grey " meaning as the surname of our famous Gallowegian Douglases, who played such prominent and diverse parts in the history of Scotland. Like Barrow, Douglas is a,n upstart of recent date, but nearly a century older than the former. When the Duke of Atholl built Castle Mona to be his palatial residence as Lord of Man — the kinship having before then been sold under compulsion, on what now seems inadequate price, to the British Crown — I was told that Douglas was nothing more than a small collection of thatched houses, inhabited by fisher men, smugglers, and crofters. The Duke, who was the last Lord of Man, is called in Atholl " John the Planter," and the woods of Atholl are his lasting memorial. He has left the marks of- his taste, tree-planting passion, and rather rfeckless expenditure on the Isle of Man likewise. Castle Mona, with spacious, well laid-out, and finely wooded grounds, was devoted to grand hotel purposes, at the time of our visit to the island. Very likely his costly planting of the hills of Atholl — which could only be profitable to his successors — his building of NEIGHBOURS AND INCIDENTS. 489 Castle Mona, and the fine Bridge of Dunkeld, and other various undertakings, had run him into financial difficulties, but without these, I believe, it would have been necessary for the Crown, in the reign of George IV., to buy him out under com pulsion, since otherwise the revenue could not be protected from the extensive smuggling of the Manxmen. Before the royalty was bought up, debtors and outlaws from England, Scotland, and Ireland sought, and, in spite ofthe " Kings in Man," whether Stanley or Murray^, found asylum in the island. It was during the long war with France that the smuggling of the Manxmen, supported as it was by British and foreign capitalists and blockade- runners, assumed intolerable dimensions, which could only be effectively dealt with by gathering all powers into the hands of the British Government. I could not help feeling sorry that the AthoU family had to part first with the royalty and afterwards with all their feudal, patronial, and territorial rights in the Isle of Man, but it was at the same time clear that only the British Government could put down the evils which urgently called for drastic repression. The Atholl regime in Man made a real and recent connection between that island and the Perthshire Highlands. When I was schoolmaster of Fortingall, we had living among us John Macgregor, the piper of Duke John the Planter, who had come back after his master's death to end his days, which were pro longed in the place of his nativity. John was one ofthe sept of musicians and lorists, or seanachies, who were called Clann an Sgeulaiche — children of the story-teller or reciter. John, who could play on many instruments, and had carried off chief prizes of musical contests held at the Tinwald and 490 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. elsewhere, was full of Manx music, songs, and legends. In his time steamers had not yet begun to bring in hosts of visitors from England, Ireland, and Scotland. Douglas had not grown into a reception place and settlement for " foreigners." The natives all over the island spoke their native Gaelic dialect, into which the Bible had been translated and phonetically printed for them, and which was preached to them in their places of worship, both by their Church of England clergy and by their Methodist rivals, I gathered that John had no difficulty in understanding and speaking Manx Gaelic. And, indeed, there was no reason that he should, for it was, as far as the vocabulary and grammatical construction were concerned, the twin or "lath-bhreac" of his own Fortingall Gaelic, although the pronunciation differed pretty widely. In the interval of thirty years between John's fare well to Man and my visit to it, a great change had taken place. When I asked, on the first Sunday we were there, where I should go to hear service and sermon in Manx Gaelic, I was told that in Douglas and Its neighbourhood religious services had ceased to be regularly held in Gaelic, but that two men — the old and very popular vicar of Kirkbraddan and a Methodist local preacher — held such services occasionally, and that they were eagerly attended by the old people, while the young ones gave them the go-by. We got good lodgings up the hill behind the shoulder of the Castle Mona wood, in the house of the English man and wife who kept the bathing machines down on the shore ; and here, from the Manx girl-servant of those two "foreign" invaders, I had an object-lesson about the way in which Manx Gaelic was dying out, and, in languages. NEIGHBOURS AND INCIDENTS. 491 the imitative character of the Celtic race. The girl, not yet fully woman-grown, with her brown hair, black eyes, round face, and mental and physical alertness, was typically Celtic. When I tried to make her speak in Manx Gaelic, she denied that she could speak it, but said her grandmother spoke nothing else. "And why then," I asked, "did you not learn it from your grandmother ? " The reply, after hesitation, was, " Because it isn't nice." Next morning, when at breakfast, I heard her through the open window scolding a man with a basket of fish or groceries, in fiuent Manx Gaelic, about some blunder or other. I had no idea then that In after years I should see the same assimilative snobbishness playing havoc with the native language of the Highlanders, who, while mastering English, should not have lost their hold on Gaelic ; for bi-lingualism is in itself an aid to education, and Gaelic Is rich in pabulum for the feast of reason and the flow of souk We had such glorious summer weather all the time we were on the island, that we spent our days out of doors, either about Douglas or making excursions into the country. On our first Sunday we went to Kirkbraddan, but it happened to be the day on which the new church was being opened, and although services were simultaneously held in the handsome and capacious new edifice and in the old church near it, which was to be kept up as a memorial of past times, such crowds attended, that with hundreds more of the later comers we had to stop in the churchyard, and only heard the singing through the open windows. But in the evening we went to hear the local Methodist, who preached In Gaelic to some three or four hundred, among whom were few young men or women, and no children at 492 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. all. My wife, of course, did not understand a word of what the preacher said ; she had to practice patience while listening to language which was wholly unintelligible to her. At first I was much at sea myself, as I was then wholly unacquainted with l^ianx Gaelic. But by the time the first prayer and singing were over, I began to gat my bearings, and to follow the preacher when he read a chapter of St John's Gospel and preached from it. His Gaelic and mine were substantially the same, but differed much in pronunciation and to some degree in the use of words which, although known to me, were not quite of the same meaning in Highland Gaelic and Manx Gaelic. When, after the service, the preacher and I spoke to one another, we found that, with ease, we could make ourselves mutually intelligible, and the good old man bewailed the way in which the young islanders were, while properly enough learning English, foolishly and needlessly dropping the old native language entirely. We went to Castletown, Peel, and the Tinwald. The Tinwald, although the Parliament Mound of the Kingdom of Man, from which laws must stiU be proclaimed ere they take effect, is, with its three stages, a pretty little mound, not at all so imposing in size and form or so commandingly situated as Tom-na-cuairteig, the similar law and justice mound above Kerrumore, in Glenlyon, where I was born. I looked in vain for fair-headed, blue- eyed descendants of the Scandinavians among the country population. The prevalent dark Celtic type appeared to connect them with the Irish more than with the Gaels of Scotland, although their language is nearer Highland than Irish Gaelic. NBIGHBOURS AND INCIDENTS. 498 The Norse domination of three centuries left behind it place-names, burial-mounds, and various other memorials, but it passed over the original inhabi tants without changing their language or physical appearance. The marks of the Norse domination, although few and far between, are certainly more discernible on the people of the Scotch islands than they were forty years ago on the people of Man. But the English invasion was even then rapidly abolishing their language, and changing, in Douglas, Ramsey, and other places that were frequented by regular or excursion steamers, the ethnological situation. From early boyhood I was familiar with the story of Diarmid and Grainne, as it used to be told by ceilidh seanachies. There was a rock above my father's house, which was called " Craig na Grainne" or "Rock of Grainne," where there was a sheltered nook in which the fugitives could have, and were supposed to have rested. Moreover, the Campbell clan claimed with far - back, although not well- sustained, confident audacity, thin descent from Diarmid O'Duibhne and Grainne, and in that belief adopted the boar's head for their clan crest. In their genealogies they had a Diarmad and a Duibhne, and that fact led no doubt to their appro priation of legend and crest. Of course I believed when a boy in the ceilidh myth, and in that myth Diarmid was made the pupil of Mannanan Mac Lir, the weird magician who owned and gave his name to the Isle of Man — Eilean Mhannain, as we called it in Glenlyon. In bidding — looking far back — a long farewell to the Isle of Man, where, away from our world and all its cares, my wife and I had our glorious outing in 494 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. glorious weather, I may mention that I, ever since I remember, have had a liking for islands that was strange in one born and brought up in an inland Grampian glen, the soul of whose grand scenery entered into and mixed inseparably with the souls of its children. The kinks and crooks in human nature are very inexplicable. My life, I can truly say, has been that of a hard-working, practical man, who had no time for indulging in futile reveries and luxuriating in deceptive pleasures of the imagination. Yet I did refi-esh wearied mind and body when the day's task was done by building castles in the air which were as evanescent as the smoke from my pipe. But there was one of these castles in the air which persistently reared itself anew. This was the thought that there could be no better earthly paradise for me than to possess a one-farm little island, not far from a mainland, where, on sunny days, I could read a book with my face to the sea and my back to a cliff, and where, in other weather circumstances, I could look out from a cosy study window on raging storms and wars of the elements. The long spell of good weather lasted till some time after we got home, and found all well there. The sea was as calm as the proverbial mill pond when the little fussy steamer brought us back in the morning from Douglas to Barrow. We broke our journey at Furness to see the ruins of the Abbey, which are in a sheltered hollow amidst grand old trees. Furness Abbey had, in days of old, close relations with the Isle of Man, and some connection likewise with the Scotch Galloway, which remained long Celtic in race and language. To use a High land phrase, the day was one of those rare ones which threw a white or fairyland calm on sea and THE ANTI-VACCINATION AGITATION. 495 land — " feath gheal air muir 's air tir " — and in delibly impresses the picture of a lovely scene on one's memory. CHAPTER LXXIV. THE ANTI-VACCINATION AGITATION. In resisting the law compelling the vaccination of children, Keighley and its neighbourhood took rank next to Leicester. I am not sure that at starting the Keighley agitation was of local spontaneous generation ; for an enthusiastic tailor and clothier Avho had come from the south was, from the begin ning, its most ardent promoter. Whatever the history of its origin, there could be no dispute about the fact that the opposition to compulsory vaccina tion took a strong hold upon a large number of the inhabitants of the Keighley district. Consequently opportunity was seized upon to elect members of the Board of Guardians who were avowed anti- vaccinators. When such guardians found themselves in a majority, compulsory vaccination ceased to be enforced. They would neither allow their own children to be vaccinated nor subject others to the obligations of a law which they denounced, and were doing their best to nullify. This line of conduct brought them into collision with the State authorities and courts of law, and then they preferred imprison ment as rebels in York Castle to submission to injunctions to carry out compulsory vaccination as their statutory duty. The rebel guardians had a popular send-off as martyrs In a noble cause when they left Keighley to be imprisoned in York Castle. 496 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. When they came back they received a hearty " see the conquering hero come " welcome home again. Later on smaUpox broke out in Keighley, and caused such a scare there that many former oppo nents of Jenner's protective remedy resorted to it in a panic. As soon as the panic subsided the agitation recovered much of its temporarily lost strength. Putting aside the plea of conscientious objection, which too often in the present day is a cloak for some purpose that it is not convenient to avow, the most convinced upholders of vaccination, among whom I number myself, had to confess that the anti-vaccinators were not without some solid excuse for their agitation. They firmly believed that the taint of several bad diseases was introduced into the blood of healthy infants. In discussions with my medical friends, who were all fervid advocates of vaccination, I found that they could not deny that it was possible to transmit certain kinds of disease from one child or one person to another, unless care was taken that the lymph came from an untainted source. Medical practitioners had not all of them been careful not to use inoculating matter which did not come from healthy cows, the original source, or from patients that neither inherited nor acquired the seeds of a class of transmissible diseases. The agitation took a violent form in places like Leicester and Keighley, when a panic was created by a few isolated facts which appeared to be conclusively proved. It led at once to greater care in regard to the gathering of the inoculating matter from cows and healthy patients. So far the agitators did the public a desirable service. But that partial success did not satisfy THE ANTI-VACCINATION AGITATION. 497 them. They wanted to get rid of compulsory vaccination altogether. Finally they got their plea of conscientious objection recognised, and on that plea exemption for themselves. In the long wrangle arguments were used on both sides which struck far down into the heart of fundamental principles. As for the arguments the agitators tried to derive from the Bible, they were too shadowy to impress even the ignorant. Their sounder contention was that parents were the natural guardians of their children, and that while they strove to do their best for their offspring, they should not be Interfered with by the State. Red-hot Radicals in this agitation spoke loudly and angrily against grandmotherly legislation, and in support of the sacred rights of parents and, unless in cases of gross neglect or incompetence, the inviolability of the family institu tion, and they were applauded and hotly supported by multitudes of those who held the raost con servative views in regard to all other questions of a public nature. Political and ecclesiastical separation hedges were thrown down or jumped over for the nonce. The defenders of compulsory vaccination were of a similarly mixed description. The medical men did not much obtrude themselves on public notice during the heat of the controversy. They left the defence of the law to the authorities and to the more thoughtful majority of the nation ; and those who spoke or wrote for that majority relied upon the proved benefits of Jenner's prophylactic, and, perhaps with too little qualification, upon the maxim, Salus populi suprema lex. Scarred and pitted faces among the older people, and undis- figured faces of the younger generations that had 32 498 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. been protected by vaccination, proved beyond dispute the great change for the better which had been brought about by the widespread voluntary adoption of vaccination of infants In the early part of last century, which the compulsory law intended to make universal. CHAPTER LXXV. KEIGHLEY PARTIES AND POLITICS. From the Revolution of 1688 to the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832, the freeholders of Keighley foUowed the lead of their Cavendish Lords, who belonged to the old Whig and Protestant Reforma tion aristocracy, and had been enriched directly by Catholic Church spoils in the sixteenth century, and succeeded to more of It by intermarriages in subse quent ages. The passing ofthe Reform Bill had no weakening effect on the allegiance of the Keighley voters ; but new parties complaining of grievances and calling for enfranchiseraent appeared on the scene, and the coming of the borough household franchise, in 1867, modified without revolutionising the traditional political situation. I think the Duke of Devon.shlre, who died in 1858, either through his own fault, or the altered state of things through the growth of local industries, must have held the reins loosely, and lost much of the dominating influence exercised by his predecessors. He was succeeded by his cousin, William Cavendish, Earl of Burlington, a distinguished Cambridge scholar, Avho, before his succession to his grandfather's peerage, represented that University in Parliament. He was also one of KEIGHLEY PARTIES AND POLITICS. 499 the earliest Chancellors of the University of London. Although a Whig magnate by birth and training, and an adherent of the Manchester School of political economists by conviction, he had no ambition for taking the leading part he could have done in public life, and no liking for city life and society. He loved rural life, and cultivated a studious life as far as the conscientious management of his large and largely separated estates gave him leisure to do so. He was deeply interested in agri cultural and horticultural affairs, and dealt with rent-roll more as a revenue for carrying out improve ments than as an income which he had a right to spend with individual irresponsibility. He left active politics to his two elder sons, Spencer Compton, Marquis of Hartington, his heir and successor, who refused to follow Gladstone in his plunge into the bog of Irish Home Rule and disunion, and later on, as Duke of Devonshire, refused to look with favour, or tolerance, at Tariff Reform for safeguarding British trade and consolidating the British Empire. His second son. Lord Frederick Cavendish, was a rising politician, when his career was cut short by being assassinated along with Mr Burke in the Phoenix Park, Dublin. The third son, whose son is now Duke of Devonshire, took small part in political life. If the Cavendish influence waned to some extent between 1832 and 1858, it waxed again under Duke William, and was not much shaken by household suffi:"age given to boroughs in 1867, and extended to the counties in 1885. UntU Mr Gladstone betook himself to inspirational plungings, there was, for twenty years after the repeal of the Corn Laws, a sort of transitional period in party politics, during 500 reminiscences and REFLECTIONS. which almost all the inhabitants of this district, with the exception of a few uncompromising and inconvincible Tories like Mr Ferrand, were ardent Free-traders, and thought they had got free trade in free imports, which for a pretty long time improved trade, as well as cheapened food. Mr Ferrand made himself the headsman of the Eldon School Tories, not only in his native parish of Bingley, where he was the chief landowner, but in the whole district from Bradford to the upper end of Craven. His thorough Tory followers, however, were numerically feAv, and his prophecies of coming tariff wars and rural depopulation were disregarded as the heated fancies of an intemperate man. On the other hand, this extreme Tory of loud voice, strong personality, thorough knowledge of the people of his district, with kindly interest in their welfare from the standpoint of feudal relationship with them, had, by the prominent part he had taken in passing the Factory Acts, earned the respect and gratitude of the working classes in spite of his Toryism and their Radicalism, which, indeed, was greater in supposition than in reality, as future events brought to light. Duke William was not a resident proprietor, but merely an annual visitor in the shooting season to Bolton Abbey, but he was a kindly and improving landlord, a Whig Free trader, and a man who admirably managed his large scattered estates, on the improvement of which he spent much of his princely revenue for the benefit of the inhabitants more than for the return the outlays were ever likely to yield to himself and his successors. In knowledge of agricultural affairs, and in sympathy with farmers and working people, he was not much inferior to Mr Ferrand himself KEIGHLEY PARTIES AND POLITICS. 501 When new machinery and steam power super seded the old handicraft industries which used to be carried on In towns, villages, and isolated homes, in conjunction with agricultural and pastoral pursuits, the richer class of natives of Keighley built mills and set up in nworks, and workshops for collective industries. More exclusively than, I think, in any other part of the West Riding, the heads of Keighley firms of all kinds were, between I860 and 1880, the descendants of inhabitants of the place, whose names were to be found In the muster roll for Flodden and in the local records and documents of the reign of Queen Elizabeth Under the monks of Bolton, and the Cliffords and Cavendishes, a middle class of yeoman gentry had arisen and taken hereditary root in the soil, who led the lower class of feudal vassals and labourers, and in peace and war served as henchmen of their over-lords. In Keighley the hereditary loyalty of the newly- enriched and thoroughly independent captains of the new order of things survived the abolition of the feudal system and the industrial and political revolution. The visit of Bums to Inverary chanced to be ill- timed, for it happened when the place was crowded by important county visitors, who had gathered to give Field- Marshal Joljn Duke of Argyll a "ceud mile failt" on his home-coming after a long absence. The neglected poet vented his spleen in a couple of angry verses, the first of which runs : — Who e'er is he that sojourns here, I pity much his case. Unless he comes to wait upon The lord, their god, his Grace. Radicals of republican views, who wished to get rid of kings and nobles, spoke much in the same strain 502 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. of the welcome given by Keighley to the Duke of Devonshire when he came to the agricultural show, and to his sons when they came to make speeches at political meetings. But the men who felt so indignant at what they called the servility of the Keighley people were not of the native stock, but outsiders who had no share in the history of the parish and the hereditary ties and sympathies between the over-lords and people. Of the native stock Radicals, James Leach was the most pictur esque and outspoken specimen that could be found, but catch James, with in other matters almost unbounded freedom of speech, butting his hard head against a sentiment which had its root deep in ancient history, and the continuance of which was justified by the existing relations between the Duke of Devonshire and the Keighley community. I feel I must here break the thread of discourse to give James Leach the recognition for which, whether good or bad, his frank egotism craved, and which his peculiar character and position in the com munity earned for him. When I became acquainted with him he was a sturdy man over sixty, who was assisted by his second wife and a niece. He never had children of his own ; kept a flourishing greengrocer's shop in Low Street, and owned some house property, with other investments. By way of endearment, he often called his wife by a foul and inappropriate epithet, which she received in the spirit in which it was given. But, although he could swear on small provocation, like Uncle Toby's army in Flanders, he was really a good-hearted man of generous disposition. For years he liberally supported a childless and husbandless sister of his, who was slowly dying by an incurable disease, and. KEIGHLEY PARTIES AND POLITICS. 503 strange to say — for he was the vainest of self-made men — claimed no merit or public notice for doing so. He had been a miner In his early days, and had never "got religion" to curb the licence of speech he had thus acquired. Between his mining and green grocery employments he had tried his hand at many things, and apparently never ^iled to secure enough for his wants, and slowly to pile up a little fortune against the rainy day. His Radicalism, so bound less, if so confused in theory, was conditioned in practice by contempt for loafers and belief in strenuous self-efforts. There were a few Secularists and Socialists, mostly outsiders, among the Keighley folk, and likewise extreme Trade-unionists, whose revolutionary ideas, besides being less confused, went far ahead of the Radicalism of Leach. But until they afterwards learned to hook themselves on to Liberationists, who wanted to disestablish and disendow the Church of England, and who drifted in pursuance of that object into reluctant acceptance of irreligious. State-aided, and controlled education, the followers of George Holyoake and Charles Bradlaugh, the admirers of United States institu tions, and the would-be despoilers of capitalists and of individual freedom, were of small account com pared with James Leach, whose self-assertiveness, command of the dialect in its raciest form, and thorough knowledge of local affairs, had always to be taken into account by the Liberal managers of Keighley at political and municipal meetings. When he rose to speak, he took the attitude of a man that could not be put down, and had to be listened to. He could, by turns, speak as buffoon and sage, and had invariably the backing of those of the audience who enjoyed the fun of seeing him 504 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. "riled," and giving straight blows and backhanders to those who wished to silence him. So he worked himself up into a kind of power, and was placed on district and municipal boards, where he dltl occasionally good service as a man of independent raind and experience. His inordinate vanity was so inflated by the distinction he thus obtained, that he set up a monument in the public cemetery recording his services, and leaving a blank meanwhile for the date of his death. His first wife's name, age, and date of death AA^ere all filled in. His second wife, on being buried, received her equal rights. Then, when bordering on eighty, he married a third time, and on that occasion Keighley gave the newly- married pair a reception Avhich flattered, but unnerved, the aged bridegroom. A liberal share of Reformation Church spoils to begin Avith, and to end with the union in bis person by right of Inheritance of what had formerly been large separate estates, made William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, the patron of over forty Church of England livings. In the exercise of his patronial rights, he took the utmost care to select good men, giving the preference to evangelicals and reformers. His appointments suited the views and wishes of North of England congregations so well, that few complaints were made by churchmen, and the complaint of Liberationists was that they gave no rise to clerical scandals, or afforded chances for the scientific picking of quarrels with pig-headed incum bents. On the rectory of Keighley falling vacant, the Duke selected for it an energetic and altogether worthy gentleman, whom he knew to be a good worker in the vineyard, and a good Liberal in politics, but who, when instituted, developed KEIGHLEY PARTIES AND POLITICS. 505 moderate tendencies towards the High Church ritualism, which gave offence to those Avho had been accustomed to the evangelical preaching, which best suited the people, not only of Keighley, but of the whole district. When the Duke heard of this, by him, unexpected cause of discontent, he seized, on Buxton falling vacant, on the opportunity for transferring the gentleman who caused discontent from Keighley to that place. I heard, and believed, that in 1832 the parishioners of Keighley, Churchmen and Dissenters, masters and men, were, Avith the fewest possible exceptions, all ardent supporters of the Reform Bill, They were nearly as unanlnrious in regard to the abolition ofthe Corn Laws. But there was no such unanimity about the Factory Acts, AvhIch liberated women and children from Avhat almost amounted to slavery. Tories and Chartists co-operated in bringing about that much needed emancipation, which was resisted on economic grounds by Cobden and Bright, and was anathema maranatha to manu facturing employers, who plumed themselves on being great reformers, but Avould fain. If possible, keep far aAvay from their profit-making establish ments the searchlight investigations and purgatorial reforms to which they Avere so willing to subject despotic landoAvners and arrogant parsons of the Established Church, whose follies operators of the Liberation Societies knew well how to bring into light and exaggerate. It was by the friction of classes, and reforms brought about by mutual retaliation, that a splice was being made between the old and the new order of things ; but at the time I am writing about, the slumbering sub terranean powers of Trade Unionist and Socialistic 506 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Utopianism were little understood by either of the two great political parties or the working classes themselves, who, in England, at least, are funda mentally more Conservative than they are themselves at all times aware of In many parts of England traditional feudal allegiance long survived changes of law and condi tions with a sentimental tenacity similar to High land clannishness. In Keighley the Cavendish influence, never obtrusively or oppressively asserted, had a moderating effect on the acerbities of party politics, especially before the Congregationalists and Wesleyans, and other Dissenters, assisted by Secularists and various extreme factions, took advantage of the School Board system to try to build out and starve out the Church of England schools, which had, with old endowed schools, been carrying on the main part of the educational work of the town and district before, of which the Wesleyans also had been doing their fair share. Notwithstanding many grievances, amounting at times to persecution, inflicted on them in rural districts by despotic landlords and inimical incum bents, the Wesleyans inherited deep sympathies with the Church of England, and had they been recognised as such in the eighteenth century, might have remained long as a missionary organisation in union and communion with it, which was what their founder intended. They looked for a long time askance at the disestablishing and disendowing projects of the Congregationalists, but finally their ruling bodies — for they had been divided among themselves in a generation after John Wesley's death — joined the Liberation Society and brought to it not only the greater part of its numerical KBiGHLEY PARTIES AND POLITICS. 507 strength, but an accession of religious force that it much needed. In Keighley, before the disestablishment of the Irish Church and the passing of the English Elemen tary School Act, of which the member fbr Bradford, Mr Forster, was sponser, the relations between Church and Dissent were more friendly, or less unfriendly, than was the case in other places. Dissenters had, in truth, no grievance of a practical kind, except Church rates, of which they made the most, and of which Churchmen were tired and very willing to see abolished. It might almost be said that all the inhabitants of the parish, voters and non- voters, were reformers between 1832 and 1846, and between the last date and 1868 reformers plus free-traders. With a preponderance for Dissent, the heads of firms and employers of mill and workshop hands were divided between Church and Dissent, and they were usually the leading men in their respective congregations. Leadership in churches and chapels, accompanied by liberal donations, in creased their influence over the working classes, with whom they were thus religiously as well as industrially closely associated, and made trade union disputes fewer and less bitter than they would otherwise have been. At bottom the native in habitants of the parish, while professedly Liberals, or Radicals, were in reality Conservatives, although at election times they, as a rule, acted like partisans who obeyed orders from the Liberal headquarters, and echoed the party cries which then were popular and supposed to be catching. The unwieldy West Riding, with its two seats in the House of Commons, was divided into three electoral districts by the Disraeli Reform BiU of 508 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 1867, and these divisions were further subdivided by the Gladstone Reform Bill of 1885, Keighley formed an important part of the Northern Division between 1867 and 1885. Now it chanced that a vacancy occurred In the Northern Division in 1872, Avhen unexpectedly 'a strong Conservative and strenuous defender of the 'Church of England, Mr Francis Sharpe Powell, was returned. Two years later, at the General Election of 1874, the Liberals recovered their previous predominance, and Mr Sharpe Powell had to find another seat in Lan cashire. The Conservatives of Keighley and neighbourhood found themselves strong enough to establish a club and weekly newspaper. The Liberals called them Tories by way of reproach. When one thinks of what William Pitt and the Tories of his time did for their country. It is difficult to understand Avhy the word "Tory" should be, down to the twentieth century, used by any sensible person, as a contumacious epithet. Among the Keighley Conservatives, who were labelled "Tories," there was scarcely anyone who was not a free-trader — as free-trade was then understood — and a moderate Liberal, who would in 1832 have been classed an advanced reformer. The aggressive policy of the Liberation Society alienated Churchmen everywhere, and it in Keighley hastened political severance and gave ConserA^atlsm a backbone of organisation. Between 1868 and 1874 other causes for political division came into operation. David Urquhart — from Cromarty — the apologist of the Turks, the knower and foe of Russia, and the writer of many able publications about the Western Asia races, had been prophesying evils to come in the House of Commons as long as KEIGHLEY PARTIES AND POLITICS. 509 he had a seat there, and when out of Parliament remained a force still, through the Foreign Affairs Committees his followers had formed in many places. We had one of these Committees at Keighley, and now and then a visit from Urquhart himself, who was a man of picturesque personality, as well as of wide knowledge and singular ability, albeit not what could be called an eloquent platform orator. Russia lost no time In taking advantage of the prostration of France in the war with Germany to get rid of the restrictions imposed on her by the Treaty of Paris in regard to the Black Sea. I do not see how the Gladstone Government, with France for the moment effaced, and Germany and Austria not disposed to dispute Russia's demands, could have offered efficient opposition to the cancellation of the Black Sea clauses of the Treaty of Paris. But Urquhart and his followers rightly understood the purpose behind the cancellation, and were true prophets who loudly foretold the Russian invasion which was to follow the cancellation. Mr Urquhart accordingly gauged Russia's ambi tion to obtain predominant power in Europe and Asia, and understood her methods of advancement by preliminary intrigues, fraudful diplomacy, and fine pretences, which were crowned by ruthless force when things were ripe for its application. He looked upon Turkey as the mainstay of the balance of power in Europe against Russian extension to the .Mediter- ranian, and upon the Turks as inherently the noblest of the Oriental races, while he admitted their faults as rulers, and hoped they would reform themselves. His committees, wherever they were set up, did much to widen people's knowledge on international 510 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. affairs in general as well as on what was called the Eastern Question. In Keighley — as everywhere else — the followers of Mr Urquhart, although they could not be silenced — were overwhelmed and next thing to ostracised during the Bulgarian atrocity agitation, into which Mr Gladstone flung himself with all the intensity of his sympathy with the Eastern Church Christians and his hatred to the Disraeli Government, and its chief But when Russia sent her hosts into Roumania, and across the Danube, Urquhart's Keighley followers raised their heads and voices, and found a response to their doctrines among the masses, many of whom yet continued to obey the instructions from the Liberal headquarters, and managed, on some occasions, with some difficulty, to get public meetings to pass the stereotyped Liberal party resolutions. The Bul garian atrocity agitation, which preceded the Russian invasion and gave a sort of Cross versus Crescent sanction to it, broke down party barriers for a short time in this country. The Turks, under great provocation, had undoubtedly committed savage atrocities on Christian victims. So they were, with hot indignation, denounced, and Con servative Church of England clergymen, and the ministers of the Dissenting communions, fraternised on platforms and vied with one another in the vigour of their denunciations. It was a genuine but most hysterical agitation, not a dishonest political dodge like the cry raised about Chinese chains and slavery in the Transvaal at the 1905-6 General Election. When the British people saw how bravely the Turks fought in the hopeless war with the over whelming Russian forces, they, according to their generous nature, turned to sympathise with and KEIGHLEY PARTIES AND POLITICS, 511 admire the weaker side. So Radicals nudged one another with satisfaction, or openly praised the Disraeli Government when the British fleet was sent up the Hellespont, and the menace of war with Great Britain made the Russians halt when they were almost at the gates of Constantinople, and when further south they had reached Gallipoli. This bold and successful move appealed to the underlying instincts and pride ofthe British people for approval, and received it. Its consequence was that Lord Beaconsfield brought home " peace with honour " from Berlin, and that Turkey got with diminished territory an oppor tunity for reforming itself — of which as yet it has not till just lately made the best possible use — and that Russian advances to the Mediterranean was meanwhile barred. It was of no party use for Sir William Harcourt and our much respected local M.P., Mr Forster, to head agitations against the purchase of the Khedive's Suez Canal shares and the acquisition of Cyprus, for the current of opinion in the rank and file of their own party, although it might not be frankly avowed, ran strongly in favour of these two ventures of the Conservative Government. Beaconsfield's prediction that Cyprus, in British hands, would be made into an important Mediterranean place of arms has not yet been fulfilled, but who knows what the future may bring forth. It is there ready to our hands should there be need for it. As for the Suez Canal shares, the purchase of them turned out to be a most profitable investment as well as a stroke of timely political sagacity. Trade - Unionists are liable to imperil their class interests, and damage national interests, by 512 REMINISC^^XCES AND REFLECTIONS. acting, in their contests with employers, on con tracted views, or in complete ignorance of the Gordian knot subtle interlacings by which capital and labour are bound to one another and inseparably tied together with individual freedom, thrift, and morality, public and private. But they are not wholesale revolutionists, like the Socialists, whose theory is that a regenerated order of things could be established on universal plunder and regimented despotism. The Irish Nationalists work for separa tion and the uprooting of landlords, but having obtained these objects they propose to establish their Irish Republic on old principles of law and Individual rights. Nonconformist policy, as shaped by the Liberation Society and Its allies, would willingly stop short at the smashing up and plundering of the old National Churches of England and Scotland. But while seeking their different ends, all those parties work together, and all the concessions which co-operation brings about tend to strengthen wild Socialism and to undermine the foundations of free and civilised Society. The drag upon the progress to the brink of the precipice which overlooks the cauldron of chaos exists, how ever, in the underlying conservatism of the British people as a whole, and of the English part of that people in particular. Deep down in the most of the English people Is the conviction that safety lies In giving political parties turn about in office. In Scotland allegiance to party, or to party names, which have no longer their old meanings, brings dishonour on Scottish patriotism, intelligence, and education ; and yet that degrading allegiance is a curious form of inverted Conservatism, FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. 513 CHAPTER LXXVL FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. Being crippled for life, the fireside miscellaneous newspaper work in which I was chiefly engaged during the eleven years at Thwaites House suited me well enough. I usually got plenty of it to do, notwithstanding fluctuations, some of which were due to two health breakdowns on my own part, and some to outside changes. For several years I con tinued to send my monthly budget to the Cape, and that connection came only to an end with changed proprietorship. At one time, for a lengthened period, I was writing leaders and other articles to three daily papers. On having formed their Club, the Conservatives of Keighley determined to have likewise a weekly newspaper. I was its editor for some years, and through its leader columns gave vigorous expression to moderate men's views, and their fears of the devious paths into which Mr Gladstone was leading his party. I happened to have a right to call myself the godfather, if not the father, of the Keighley Press, for I was the first editor of the first newspaper — a weekly one — Keighley ever had. This first paper was an offshoot of the Bradford Observer when, except on the Liberation Society's policy, it was still of the old Whig type. The Conservatives of Keighley kept to the old paths, while the followers of Mr Gladstone had, in our opinion, strayed away into the path that, if followed far, would lead them to secular education, 33 514 reminiscences and reflections. as well as the separation of Church and State, to interference with parental rights and responsibilities, and all kinds of rights belonging to and forming the soul of individual freedom. Among the Keighley Conservatives were, I think, no more Tories than could be counted almost on the fingers of one hand. The rest of us were old Whigs, or moderate Liberals, who refused to be dragged into the new path that led to revolutionary perUs. I felt strongly, and wrote strongly, but made no personal enmities. Educa tional enthusiasts, Liberationists, and Radicals saw that I wrote as I spoke, and gave me credit for speaking honestly as I thought on public questions. When the time for parting came, and after the Conservative Club had presented me with a valuable timepiece, bearing a complimentary inscription. Liberal and Conservative friends joined to give me a farewell dinner, and to send me off with a well-lined new purse. During my twenty years' absence I took a lively Interest in legislative measures, and all other things which concerned Scotland. I know that people of my generation and rearing remained true to Scot land wherever they went and however long away, and I hope it is so yet, and ever will be. I was much excited and buoyed up with inflated hopes of Presbyterian reunion when the Conservative Government proposed to abolish patronage In the Church of Scotland. English old Tories, large and small patrons of all political parties, and pundits of the English Universities would like to stop short at an amendment of Lord Aberdeen's Act. Mr Gladstone, looking with High Church hostility at a project of liberation which, reason ruling the divided bodies, might again give Scotland a mighty FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. 515 Presbyterian Church, tabled a series of adverse resolutions, from which, however, he fled when the time for moving them came. The English Libera tionists and the Scottish United Presbyterians were more valorous in their opposition than either Mr Gladstone or Dr Rainy and his Free Church followers. I wrote a long letter to Lord Advocate Gordon, in the opening sentence of which I told him I did not want him to reply — and he did not, except by sending a copy of the Bill, which was a perfectly satisfactory reply. In my letter I gave him my own and other people's experiences of the mockingly illusive nature of Lord Aberdeen's Act, with its costly, prolonged procedure, so irritating to objecting parishioners, and so damaging to objected presentees, whether the frequently inconsistent decisions were favourable to them or the reverse. I was afraid not so much of Gladstone and Non- ccnfprmist hostility as of the feeling which was rather prevalent among English Conservatives that a mere tinkering of the Aberdeen Act should suffice, and that to abolish patronage in Scotland would be the first blow of the axe to patronage In England, which has a market value it never had north of the Tweed. In my letter to the Lord Advocate and in the English newspapers which allowed me free expression of opinion, I pleaded earnestly for total abolition, with reasonable compensation to patrons. The Lord Advocate and the Government stood to their guns. Hesitating English Conservative members were reassured, and followed their leaders ; and if I remember rightly, some Liberal peers and commoners, who were well instructed in Scottish history, past and contemporary, supported the policy of root and branch abolition, which was carried out. 516 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. And as soon as the Act was passed, several (Jukes and other noblemen of Scotland, who were the chief lay patrons, generously resolved to forego their claims to compensation, and the extensive Crown patronage, which in the main had formerly belonged to the bishops, was also relinquished without com pensation. With this relief, and its Revolution and Treaty of Union guaranteed rights and privileges, the Church of Scotland was made the freest of all the Churches of Christendom, whether established or non-established. The Church of Scotland was thus much strengthened, and yet the ardent friends of Presbyterian reunion had much cause to feel deeply disappointed. Instead of the reunion, which they believed would have been, religiously, morally, socially, and economically, in the highest degree beneficial to Scotland, they saw the hedges of par tition trimmed afresh, and armed with the barbed wire of the separation of Church and State, devised by English Nonconformists when, losing hold of their Puritan doctrines, they had stepped into political dissenterism. In the later years of the seventies, while clearly seeing the trend towards secular education, and the adoption of hasty devices, pregnant with dangers to come, in making the splice with the past which altered circumstances required, there were surprises impending which I could not have believed if an angel from heaven had foretold them. Who could then believe the plunge into the bog of Irish separation possible ? or deem it credible that any British Ministry would, through unavenged Majuba, the retrocession of the Transvaal, and the miserable Conventions, make the Boer war, as soon as the Boers ccmpleted their preparations, as sure as death, FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. 517 unless our once great country sank so low as to abandon her loyal children in South Africa, and to eat her leek of dishonour before envious and mighty Powers, who wished for opportunities to seize British colonies and dependencies ? In the seventies I saw, in their initiating stages, movements in operation which I feared would develop into dangers to all existing institutions and principles of liberty and order, on which nations had built up their somewhat va,ried forms of Christian civilisation. As yet indeed Holyoake, the argumentative thinker, and Bradlaugh, the blustering orator of infidelity, had not a numerous array of followers, and the all-plundering and all-levelling theory of Socialism had got only a slight grip of the maddest of trade-unionists in strikes and wars with capitalist employers and companies. Higher criticism, archae ology, and the unproved theory of evolution were working together to undermine the old reliance on the plenary inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible which had so long been common, with variations of interpretation to all the Churches of Christendom, but as yet neither the attacks on the Bible nor the evolution theory, which went far beyond them, had much visibly weakened the faith or changed the habits of nine hundred in the thousand of the British people. From early youth I was conscious of the great revolution that was being irresistibly worked out by new mechanical inventions, steam power, rail ways, and steamships, and looked with apprehension upon the growth of cities and towns, and the dispersion, by healthy emigration to colonies or unhealthy migrations to centres of crowded urban industries at home, of the rural population that 518 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. had ever been in all times of trial the backbone of national strength. But in 1860, when I left Scot land, children were brought up in the old way, which had given Scotsmen for centuries a high ranking among the nations of the world. The three parties Into which Presbyterians had divided themselves, Avhile bitterly wrangling over minor matters, Avere zealously working on the old prin ciples in worship and education. They had by their divisions lost the moral policing power of the grand parochial system, which had been in rural districts the marvel-working agency for religious and civil advancement before the Disruption. Professing the same creed, and having the same form of Church government, and looking fully in the face the war with Infidelity which was already waxing hot, it was reasonable to expect that a reunion of the Presbyterians of Scotland would take place when patronage, the chief cause of disunion, had been abolished root and branch, and when, in electing their ministers. Church of Scotland congregations had got a voting equality between the rich and the poor members, which is very rarely found among Dissenters, because those who are the greater givers of money are of more account than poor and perchance more pious members. In the seventies I was fully conscious of the fact that the white-race nations were doomed to go through the ordeal of a transition period which involved far more than wild outbursts like the French Revolution or wars of conquest. It seemed to me then, and it seems to me so yet, that Christianity alone can be relied upon as a break water against raging floods of materialistic degra dation and suicidal revolutionarism, and that with FAREAVELL TO ENGLAND, 519 readjustment of creeds, broadening of views, and co-operative efforts, Romanists, Greeks, and Pro testants should form solidly into battle line to defend faith in God and life beyond the grave against those to whom the present life is the be-all and end-all, and also against the predominating pretences of science to transgress beyond the realm of matter, its proper sphere, wherein it works wonders, while of the soul-side it knows nothing. While looking forward t(5 the greater muster of the forces of Christianity, I was in the seventies griev ously disappointed because the three sections of Scottish Presbyterians did not at once seize upon a great opportunity for closing up their ranks. I was not so much surprised at the hardened Liberation Society sectarianism of the United Pres byterians as at the renegading recalcitrancy of the ruling majority of the Free Church. The old sects of Seceders in 1847 formed their Union by burying the " Testimonies" of their founders, and erecting on the tomb an obelisk inscribed, " Voluntaryism." I had no idea that during my absence from Scotland the new rulers of the Free Church had — '43 men not yet having disappeared or changed — been quietly burying Disruption principles, and making ready an obelisk of their own, which as yet had no clear inscription. The political element was already making sad inroads on the spiritual life of Dissenting Churches. Reactionary Ritualists were alienating or provoking Church of England Protestants, but there was still so much religious vitality — a thing which has not so much connection as many people suppose with flourishing finances and grandiose places of worship — -in all our Churches of the Reformation that one had a right to expect a 520 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. general rally of all denominations in support of Christian ethics, and the laws, customs, and insti tutions which had been founded on them. Full of the hope that there would be such a rally as soon as the Christian laity understood how faith and morals were endangered by the streams of revolu tionary and utterly subversive ideas which were flowing in from various and widely separate sources, I Avrote a series of articles, expressive of my mingled hopes and fears, which appeared in the Glasgoiv News, and it was in consequence of these articles that, to my surprise, I was called back to Scotland. One fine day in September or October, 1880, I received a note intimating that Mr Charles Innes, solicitor, Inverness, and Sheriff-Clerk of Ross-shire,' who was in search of an editor for a Aveekly Conservative newspaper about to be started at Inverness, was coming to see me, and hoped to find me at home. As we were living in the country, this note only reached me a few hours before Mr Innes arrived. We talked the matter over freely and frankly. I was a cripple for life, and subject to breakdowns, which did not disable me for writing but kept me tied to the home, sometimes for a few days, and sometimes for a week at a stretch. I was in my fifty-third year, and felt it a serious matter to pull up stakes. That night we came to no settle ment, but he called me again to meet hira and dine with him at Leeds, and there and then I was per suaded to make the venture. I trusted in Mr Innes, Avho was to be managing director. That trust at first sight was more than justified by our friendly and mutually co-operative relations for a long period of years, till Mr Innes, who was ten years my junior, died. BACK TO SCOTLAND. 521 CHAPTER LXXVIL BACK TO SCOTLAND. The first issue of the new paper at Inverness was to take place in the first week of 1881, but I thought it would be well to make a preliminary survey of my new sphere of labour by personal observation and conversation with people of different classes and callings. With this purpose In view I left England about the middle of November, 1880. My wife, with our large brigade of young children, remained with her own people until I got a house for them. As it happened, the house was ready fbr them several weeks before they could get to it, because of the snowstorms and blocks on the Highland Railway. But they were happy where they were, and Mr and Mrs Aspinall were glad to have them for a longer time than had been foreseen by us when I left England. My first halting place was Dunmore. Mr Archi bald Campbell, the Earl's factor, one of my dearest friends from the time he was a little delicate pupil of mine in the Kenmore school, until his pre mature death, after a bright and most honourable career, when factor of the Colquhoun estates, had pressingly invited me to diverge from the direct route to the Highlands and stop with him a couple of days. He threw in as an inducement the information that " Manitoba" would be my fellow guest, and would come by my train with me from Edinburgh to Larbert, where he would meet us with 522 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. a dogcart and drive us to his picturesque factorial residence. " Manitoba" and I missed one another in the murky dark of the station in Edinburgh, but our host picked us up quickly enough when we emerged from our different carriages at Larbert. " Manitoba " meant Mr Robert Campbell, a Glenlyon man, who, in his modest way, had done more than he was aware of for the extension of the territories of the Dorainion of Canada, and the establishing of British authority over the Indians of the great North- West. I was quite a small boy when Robert went away from shepherding his father's farm of Dalchiorllch to Hudson Bay, to enter the service of the old Royal Charter Company of traders and hunters. In that service he passed through many adventures and hardships, and proved his sagacity and tough powers of physical endurance. But he was one of those men of action who are sparing of their words. The best way for getting a full story out of him was to spread a map before him, and to make him describe his march, stage by stage, from coraraenceraent to finish. By means of a very imperfect map, Archie and I got him to tell us, stage by stage, the story of the expedition into the unknown wilds, of which he was chief, which dis covered the Yukon Valley, and penetrated under great difficulties into Alaska, which was then Russian territory, with an undefined boundary between it and British territory. If first discovery counted in the settlement of the boundary, the whole of the Klondyke hinterland should belong to the Dominion, because no white man's foot had ever traversed these regions before Robert Campbell led his hardy little party over it. He rose, as he deserved, to be one of the Company's chief officers, BACK TO SCOTLAND. 523 and was in charge of Fort-Garry on the Red River, where the large city of Winnipeg now stands, when the rebellion of Riel and the half-breeds took place. He was, however, far away on his annual trading expedition, with the best and most faithful of his men, when the outbreak took place. He had some years before then married Miss Stirling from Comrie, and she and their children were left behind In the fort, which was in the charge of Thomas Scott, and could not be held against the rebels within and without. Mrs Campbell rallied together some fugi tives and faithful Indians, who seized upon boats, and with them escaped, while "President" Riel and his half-breeds were employed in looting the stores and in condemning Scott by mock court-martial, and most barbarously murdering him. Mrs Campbell took care to bring away with her the books and papers ofthe factory when she and her children and companions slipped away out of Riel's clutches, and hastened to put between them and the "President" as much distance as they could. There was, however, no real safety for white loyalists until Colonel Wolseley came with his Red River expeditionary force of 1200 men of all arms, by lakes and hitherto pathless forests, from Canada. Two -thirds of that little, hardy, well - organised army were volunteers from Quebec and Ontario, formed into two battalions — the 1st or Ontario Rifles and the 2nd or Quebec Rifles. From Glengarry and other places not far from Montreal, there were among the French and English-speaking riflemen of Quebec, a good many second and third generation men of Gaelic-speaking descendants of the old-time emigrants. The men of the Ontario battalion were mostly all Scotchmen, and the 524 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. younger men of the recent emigrations from High land glens, straths, bens, and islands were particularly conspicuous both by number and readiness to endure fatigue and conquer difficulties, which now can be scarcely understood by those who travel in their trail by railways and steamers. Among the Ontario Highland volunteers were several descendants of the old dame of ninety who marched off with her band of children, grand-children, and other relations from Glenlyon, as I have previously related. When the rebellion of 1870 was put an end to, and Riel, by timely flight, escaped to the United States, whence, in after years, he returned to give fresh trouble until he was captured, tried, and executed, a good many of the Scotchmen of the Ontario Rifles, High landers and Lowlanders, seeing the capabilities of the virgin soil, and comparing its easy cultivation with the clearing of forest land, resolved to take up farms in Manitoba, and to bring their lares and penates from Ontario to establish them in the boundless and fertile prairie regions. Among those who so resolved were two stalwart grandsons of the old dame, Donald and David Stewart, the former being my first and the latter my second cousin, and in addition my mother's godson. Other relations and acquaintances from both Ontario and Scotland soon began to join the ex-riflemen. So the farming colonisation, which assumed at first a strong Scottish colouring aspect, steadily progressed, and the city of Winnipeg rose where Riel had hoisted the flag of half-breed rebellion and murdered poor Scott. It so happened that the new Scotch settlers found themselves among previous settlers of their race who, on retiring from the service of the Hudson Bay Company, took to farming patches of land near the forts, and hunting and trading routes. BACK TO SCOTLAND. 525 Altogether dear Archie's friendship is to me one of my most unalloyed pleasures of memory, although shadowed by sadness because of his early death. We were a clannish little gathering in the factor's house at Dunmore. Our host was the young man of the party, I the middle-aged one, and " Manitoba" the patriarch of three-score and ten, who lived to be over eighty, without much abatement till past the four-score of mental or physical vigour. Then Archie, who never married, had his youngest sister, Jessie, a bright, genial, lovable girl, not yet out of her teens, as housekeeper, who listened with interest to our feast of reason and flow of soul when we spoke in English, but having been born at Monzievaird, when the old language was dying out there, could not follow us when we launched out into Gaelic. I dwell on this visit to Dunmore because, besides being a pleasant remembrance, it much widened my views in regard to the agricultural wealth which yet slumbered, waiting for colonising farmers, in the vast plains between Winnipeg and the Rocky Mountains. From early youth I had been pretty well posted in the history of Lower and Upper Canada and Nova Scotia, and of the life and euAdronment of High landers, who, from the capture of Quebec downwards, had been settling in these regions. All I had read about the Hudson Bay Company's hunting and trading regions, and about those of the other Com pany which was its rival for a time, and then united with it, left me quite unprepared for Robert and Archibald Campbell's astoundingly high estimate of the agricultural and pastoral potentialities of the huge area of land lying west between Winnipeg and the Rocky Mountains, and south and north between the boundary line of the United States and Athabasca, 526 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Both of them were the sons of Highland farmers who had grazing and arable land ; and both of them had increased their initial and hereditary farming knowledge — Archie as factor, and Robert by taking to farming in Manitoba on retiring from his Com pany's serA-ice. In that service Robert had travelled over much of the land from Hudson Bay to the Rocky Mountains, and while rather sorry that, outside Athabasca, the buffalo was doomed to extinction, and the hunting area to be restricted, and the roving Indian to be sent into reserves, con fessed that on the fertile prairie lands the whole population ofthe United Kingdom, if they took to farming and went there, could not cultivate all the cultivable lands of that region. Archie had quite lately been to Manitoba and further westward, com missioned to select and buy blocks of land where the Canada Pacific Railway, then in course of construction, was to pass. I think the chief of the purchasing gentlemen was Sir J. Elphinstone, but probably the Earl of Dunmore, who had before then been hunting and exploring in the then Wild West — before railway -making had got far from Winnipeg — had also a share in the enterprise. At any rate, Archie executed his commission so satisfactorily that he was rewarded by a generous slice of the purchased land for himself He stayed for some time with my cousin, Donald Stewart, at Totogan — as the Earl of Dunmore had done before him, — saw many of the 1870 settlers, heard their opinions, and their practical experiences confirmed the view he had taken himself of the future importance of that part of the British Empire. We left Dunmore early on the sunshiny morning of a fair winter day. Our host drove " Manitoba' BACK TO SCOTLAND. 527 and me to Stirling and saw us entrained there ere bidding us " good-bye." But we parted at Dunblane, for " Manitoba" was going round by Crieff to see his late wife's people at Comrie, and from afar the snow-capped top of Benledi, shining in sunlight, was giving me a cheerful invitation back to Bal quhidder, where I had long ago spent the three most restftil years of my life. I only stayed a night and a day at Balquhidder, where I found twenty years had brought about fewer changes than in most places. My former pupils were now heads of families, and In their turn beginning to get grey. Owing to the coming in of the railway the village of Strathyre had increased in size, architecturally improved, and adorned itself with flowers for attract ing summer visitors. Farms were much the same as before, and the old population stock continued to flourish. The only other thing which struck me was that the children were insensibly beginning to lose firm hold of the excellent Gaelic of their forebears — the Gaelic of Kirke and Dugald Buchanan. From Balquhidder I passed on to Killin, where, as usual, I enjoyed the hospitality of my staunch old friend, Mr Charles Stewart. Retired from banking and wool-stapling business, Tighnduin— as he got by this time to be called — was now engaged in gathering up broken threads of ancient history, and in making his valuable " KiUin Collection" of Gaelic poetry and music. Oh ! what an ardent Highlander he was, and what natural talents he had ! And how many Highlanders owed him grateful thanks — as I did myself— for acts of kindness and helpful counsel and guidance ! He had much experience, and saw below the surface of things pretty far. He crammed me on this occasion with useful information 528 REMINISCENCES AND REFLEC!TI0N8. on the agricultural situation, the social situation, and future prospects of the diminished, and still diminishing rural population. If his judgment on some few questions might be warped by prejudices inherited or acquired, his facts were always reliable and his knowledge of the state of the whole High lands was extensive. My cousin, Iain Ruadh Macnaughton, drove me in his dogcart from Killin, over the hills of my youth, to the farm of Cashlie in the braes of Glen lyon, of which he then was tenant. After a stay of two or three days there, during which I was told all that had to be told about Glenlyon affairs, I got to Fortingall, stopped there a day, and made Aberfeldy my next stage. Thence I went by railway to Birnam, where my cousin, William Macnaughton, met me, and drove me to his farm of Ridhop, some four miles above Dunkeld. There I had been resting for two or three days, and enlarging my information, when I got a message from Mr Innes, who wished me to hasten on to Inverness. It was snowing when I got this message, and I narrowly escaped being blocked by snowdrifts by setting off next day. That winter the Highland line was twice or thrice seriously blocked, and the disastrous one, in which fat cattle for the Christmas London market perished at Dava, took place just after I passed through from Grantown to Forres. the northern CHRONICLE." 529 CHAPTER LXXVIIL "THE NORTHERN CHRONICLE." This was the name which, after consideration and discussion, Avas given to the Conservative Inverness weekly paper, of which I was editor from its first issue in the beginning of January, 1881, until May Day, 1907. The capital fbr its establishment was raised by a company of over two hundred share holders. Before and after its advent, the North had a plentiful supply of local newspapers, but none that represented the growing conservatism of what was not the least intelligent section of the population. What Carlyle called the " shooting of Niagara," by household suffrage given to the boroughs in 1869, was now in a few years to be extended to the counties, and its coming was sure to sever old Whigs from the Radical wing of the Liberal party in fear of rash innovations. On the other hand, the representatives of Tory old families had come to see that readjustment, called for by the wholly altered relations between town and county, and between capital and labour, and landlords and tenants, should have to be made cautiously and progressively, but not rashly and indiscriminately, if danger to national character and to the stability of fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and equity could be escaped. I was allowed a perfectly free hand in dealing with home, foreign, and social questions. Except once, before the first issue appeared, I never was called upon to a meeting of 34 530 reminiscences and reflections. the company's directors, and with Mr Innes, the managing director, and his successor, Mr WiUiam Mackay, I had always pleasant relations. Mr Innes was an outside tower of strength to us during the early period of the Chronicle's career. His knowledge of the rocks, under the smooth sea surface, saved us from raany mistakes in regard to local news and communications from districts beyond our ken. By energetic searching, careful selection, happily aided by good luck, Mr Innes mustered a " Chronicle crew " of competent workers in all departments. Of those of them who entered into the serA^ice of the company when young, a few are still to the fore, holding their former or higher places ; and of those who went away to Canada or elsewhere to seek their fortune, good reports, as a rule, come back to their old office. Trade Unionists found so little favour in Mr Innes's eyes that he would not have any of them in the Clironicle office. Coining from a district in England where Trade Unionism was rampant, I thought he ran a risk in setting his face like steel against Unionists. But he carried out his purpose, and, having had experience of many offices, I have no hesitation in saying that he got together as competent, and, in all respects, as highly respectable a set of compositors and machine-room people as could be found anywhere. Their wages and their hours of work were fully better than if they had been Unionists, and they annually got £20 for a sail on Lochness, or a trip by railway with wives and children. As many of them aspired to be some day employers themselves, or to rise in their vocations by their good Avork, the spirit of individual freedom and self-reliance pervaded them all. the PROCESSION OP CHANGES. 531 From what I afterwards was told by several of themselves, I have reason to believe that almost all the original shareholders looked upon the money they put into the concern as money dedicated to the purpose of giving the Highlands one organ of Conservative opinion in affairs of State and Church, and would be content if the Chronicle paid its own working expenses, and did not, in the course of a few years, collapse as several similar ventures on both sides of politics had already done, or Avere verging upon doing. As far as working expenses were concerned, the paper paid its Avay almost from the beginning, and after two or three years it steadily paid a five per cent, dividend upon the capital invested in it from first to last. Mr Innes was the most sanguine prophet of commercial success when the paper was started, but the success it had attained long before his lamented death, and Avhlch since then has been sustained, far exceeded his most sanguine expectations, at the time he went to see me at Thwaites House. CHAPTER LXXIX. the PROCESSION OF CHANGES. It was my intention when I began to scribble these "Reminiscences" to stop short at 1881, and leave what I may call contemporary history alone. Now, however, I feel tempted to string loosely together, in a sort of epilogue, some detached observations on new outcomes or further developments of the industrial revolution, with its compelling economic changes, which I have endeavoured already to describe as I saw it. 532 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. When I left for England in December, 1860, the sheep-farming regime had reached its zenith. Wool was paying the rent, and the wintering expenses had not yet risen very high, nor had shepherds and other servants wages ; fbr although self-evictions had followed and far exceeded the previous landlord evictions, the clachans and crofter villages supplied all the servants the farmers wanted. On coming back to the Highlands exactly twenty years later, the servant-supply in the southern and central parts of the Highlands had become scanty, and wages had risen. The process of joining farm to farm was still going on, but after 1870 rents were steadily falling, for colonial wools and foreign wools were swamping the value of the home-grown wools, and the impor tation of live stock and preserved meat from other lands came in competition with the home butcher- meat productions, although the carcase prices all through remained high. In 1860, railways had not yet penetrated the Highlands. The stage coaches were running as before, and cattle, sheep, and horses were driven by the ancient routes to Falkirk trysts and other southern markets on their own feet. Twenty years later the situation was radically changed by the opening of the Highland Railway and the railway connection of Inverness with Aberdeen, while, in subsequent years, further railway extensions and new lines called for hosts of navvies. Lawyers also shared In the general prosperity of that time of activity, for rival companies warred with one another about predatory invasion of each other's spheres of monopoly, and especially about getting or keeping a grip on Inverness as a centre of appropriating activity in regard to the whole North. THB PROCESSION OF CHANGES. 533 Money circulated freely all round, and there was plenty of employment both for skilled and unskilled workers. So, when I came to Inverness, and for a number of years after that date, the Highlands, as a whole, were full of unwonted employment and pros perity. The two main springs of that prosperity flowed from the capital of the railway shareholders, and from the heavy burdens laid on the rates for building school premises and other objects deemed necessary for advanced civilisation, which had been dispensed with and not missed by previous genera tions. Besides the ordinary railway shareholder, who had, at the end of a period of prosperity, to put up with small dividends — or, once or twice, none at all — and the school buildings, for the somewhat profligate outlay on which ratepayers were heavily burdened, proprietors of fishings and shootings were putting up shooting lodges for sporting tenants, or, when new OAvners, sumptuous mansions for them selves. For upwards of a quarter of a century, whenever and wherever railways extended, buildings of a superior kind rose up along the lines at chosen spots, where feus were to be had, as if by the magic of Aladdin's lamp. In the neighbourhood of stations in the wilds, new villages sprung up, and old ones were improved beyond recognition ; and, like Pit lochry, Kingussie, Grantown, Aberfeldy, and places north and west of Inverness, enlarged from humble clusters of heath, fern, and straw-thatched dwellings into towns with large populations, big hotels, hydro pathics, stately streets, fashionable shops, and no end of lodging accommodation for summer visitors. Owners of woods, land to feu, and lime and stone quarries, shared in the profits of the building trans formations. So, as carriers, did the railways. 534 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Money flowed and work abounded as long as the building and railway-making activity went on. But in the nature of things that activity could not last for ever. In this twentieth century, although the stream of summer visitors has not diminished, and is, indeed, likely to go on indefinitely, the fall in the value of buildings and house-property has been serious everywhere, and disastrously so where feu-duties are high and where over-building has been carried on to a mad extent. The Highland building trade, Avhich, up to 1890 or so, engaged so many hands, may now be said to be almost dead, and without much hope of an early or large revival. Highland railways have done far better for the Highlands than they have been able to do for their ordinary shareholders. With the cessation of build ing activity, their carrying trade diminished. Compared with Lowland and English lines passing through centres of industries and dense population, and bridging spaces between such centres as ports for export, or internal places of demand and exchange. Highland railways far from coal and iron, and passing through long spaces with scanty resident population, were from the start dis- advautageously placed. When they had no longer to carry building materials, what steadfastly remained for them was the carrying of passengers, cattle, and fish. Fast steamers competed for part of the fish trade. Bicycles, and then, with more serious effect, motor cars affected their passenger traffic. Coal became dear, and workmen's wages increased, and it required exceedingly good manage ment to secure very modest dividends to the ordinary shareholders that represented the people by whose capital and credit the lines had THE PROCESSION OF CHANGES. 535 been constructed. Traction engines, noisy, slow, dangerous to weak bridges, have taken In hand much of the work for carrying timber and stones, and other heavy materials, in places where shipping ports are near, or local building is still going on by small spurts and starts. Bic3^cles, motor cars, and traction engines have come to stay. To the many changes caused by railways, new inventions are daily adding others, which, while not reversing, alter and modif)^ some of the previous changes. Railways soon put an end to the running of stage coaches on the roads which General Wade had made passable in the eighteenth century, and which were perfected in the early part of last century. More slowly, but surely and steadily, railways and steamers put an end to the driving of animals for sale from the islands and mainlands by roads and by prehistoric routes, over moors and through mountain passes, to Falkirk trysts and other markets. The markets, national and local, which showed their antiquity by being named after saints, either lost importance or died out entirely. Dying out has been for local fairs the rule and not the exception. The cause of all this was the transport of our animals and produce by railway to cattle sale centres and town markets. 536 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER LXXX. LAND AND PEOPLE. On my way to Inverness, and more fully after I settled there, I heard two stories about the land and the people, which, on the face of them, appeared to be contradictory of one another, but both of which were the truth, looked at from different points of view. Old Highlanders bewailed In eloquent Gaelic the desolating change which had come over the rural districts, and which was still going on as if it would never end. On the other hand, I met with young Highlanders, who, pointing to the growth of population along the railway lines, contended that there were more people now within the Highland lines than had been in the times to which the old ones looked back with so much vain longing, and that also there was room for further increase. The further increase took place as predicted, but not in the manner expected. As new railway lines were opened, new lodging places for summer visitors sprung up, and some of the older places of resort losing many of their visitors, who went off to the new places, found to their cost that they had over built themselves, and had to suffer for their rashness. The summer A'lsltors — with a few winter ones thrown in — are still what they have been from the start — the mainstay of the places along the railway lines. Trade prosperity makes the stream of them larger, and trade depression smaller. Many of them like to go to fresh scenes, and change their summer habitats LAND ANI) PEOPLE. 537 every year, but the majority stick pretty closely to favourite places. Payment for houses, lodgings, and service is far from being all the profit brought by summer visitors. Brisk trade comes in their train to grocers, butchers, bakers, and others, as well as to hotel -keepers and people who have furnished houses or lodgings to let. The traders of the towns and villages along the railway lines supply not only their own places, but the adjacent stretches of country, to which they send out their vans with all the necessaries and most of the luxuries of life. To do away with grocers' licenses would not suit these traders, but the suppression of old licensed country inns, in the name of temperance, would not be unwelcome to them. The owners or tenants of mansions and shooting lodges are their best cus tomers, and such of them as get goods from Army and Navy or other London stores, forfeit popularity by not encouraging local trade. The population of those towns and villages has become a little mixed. The people of Highland descent are largely in the majority, and likely to be so always. But while the fathers and mothers spoke Gaelic habitually and universally, few of their children do so. The next Important section of the inhabitants are Lowlanders, who came with or followed the railway making. Then we have Irish and English incomers, the ubiquitous Jew, the Italian cream shop keeper, and the German waiter or hotelkeeper. While men and women of High land blood and surnames hold the front places, to which they have a race-hereditary right, in the life, trades, professions, and other activities, in our much changed town and new village communities, other Highlanders who have drifted in from country 538 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. places have not fared so well. Some of them had been workers on the ra,ilways, but old farm servants and crofters, who thought they could with gain pass from occupations they had been accustomed to, to other employments of which they know nothing, were those deluded ones who deserved most pity. CHAPTER LXXXI. THE LATTER DAYS' INVASIONS OF THE HIGHLANDS. It is not only the Highlands, but all the rural districts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, which are now annually invaded by hosts of strangers. Nor are such Invasions confined to the small United Kingdom. The whole world is a scampering ground for globe-flying — not trotting — Americans, and also for Europeans who have money to scatter, or are trying by fair means or foul to catch Dame Fortune by her back-blown hair, or to chase elusive pleasures and new sensations. Enough has been said already about the suppression of the old social and Industrial system of the coal-less Highlands by the sheep regime, wliich began to be introduced about 1770. The next invasion was that of the sportsmen who took fishings and shootings. There were isolated cases before then, but it was not until 1820 that pro prietors of Highland estates began to find out the lettable value of the moors, lochs, and rivers which their predecessors had kept in their own hands, and shared with their friends and tenants. The opening up of the Highlands by railways led to the building of many shooting lodges, and to the INVASIONS OF THE HIGHLANDS. 539 preserving and letting of shooting and fishing rights, which, as being of an inferior kind, were neglected by their owners, when I first began to hear and take notice of what was going on in the Highlands. To the Highland people the sportsmen have always been welcome invaders. They brought much money among them, and their coming gave an army of gamekeepers, and, later on, of foresters, regular employment which suited, above everything, Highland temperament and inherited mountain- walking and wild nature proclivities. Boatmen, fishing-men, gillies, and ponies, as a summer reserve array, had likewise their wages and participation iu sport during a part of the year, and were enabled to join crofting to advantage with this secondary employment. The shooting and fishing rents lined the pockets of proprietors, and the rates paid on them alleviated the ever-increasing pressure of local burdens. The sporting tenants, moreover, did not directly intermeddle with the life and habits of the Highland people ; for were they not birds of passage, who, when the sporting season ended, returned to their native habitats ? It is true that for a genera tion after they first put in appearance, the sporting visitors to moors and lochs were not perceptibly an innovating force ; but they were destined to become that when the craze for deer forests set in, and Highland estates and islands, and coast places with anchorage for yachts, released from old entails, came freely into the market, and fetched fabulous prices. 540 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER LXXXII. DEER FORESTS AND SHEEP FARMS. In 1860 the deer forests were few and far between. They were mere remnants of the old forests of the time of James IV., who first put sheep in Ettrick forest, and was ashamed to own it, although he gained thereby. He also had brood mares summer ing in the Inchcallan forest, of which the Black Mount was an appendage, which mares and their followers he removed in winter to Falkland and other Lowland possessions of his. Along the ridge of Alba, and in mountains elsewhere, deer and sheal ings held their own stiffly, although with many changes, down to the institution of the sheep regime after CuUoden days. Even after 1770 scattered deer were to be met with wherever the shealings still existed ; and by a "timchioU mor" or great circuit drive-in they could be gathered together at the "co-sheilgs" and "ioUcraigs," which had been the slaughtering - places from Immemorial times. The Jacobite rebellion of 1715 received its baptism of deer blood at such a great circuit drive on the Braes of Mar. When James VI. went to England, the royal forests in the Highlands were still of large extent. Bit by bit they were given out or sold to private owners, and after 1770 nothing but a shadowy ghost of them remained. It must be acknowledged that, in the old days, the royal forests and the forests belonging to the great nobles were often refugees for outlaws and thieves, and that the DBER FORESTS AND SHEEP FARMS. 541 sheep regime marked the full establishment of the reign of law in what had been the deer forest soU- tudes ofthe olden times. The vacant shealing huts, within and on the skirts of the forests, provided the outlaws and thieves with winter residences, and they killed the deer for food. When in perU in one place they could shift off readily to another place. This shifting about gaA^e rise to a sort of trade-union between the outlaws of districts widely apart. The Clan Grigor, with their certainly real, although to this day not clearly ascertained grievances, from the turmoils consequent on the disaster of Flodden to the death of Rob Roy, furnished the outlaws with the leaders that are most notorious in song, legends, and Privy Council minutes — such as Duncan Ladosach Gregor of Glenstrae, beheaded at Bealach in 1570, Alastair, his son, who officiated at the gruesome ceremony over the head of the murdered King's forester in the kirk at Balquhidder, and fought with the Colquhouns at Glenfruin, Gllderoy and John Dubh Gearr of Charles the First's time, and Patrick Roy, brother of John of Glenstrae, who seized upon Menzies of Weem's Brae of Rannoch lands during the Covenant War disturbances, when almost all the outlaws, hoping fbr spoils, made themselves inlaws by taking the side of the King, and fighting for him most manfully. Lochaber, Glencoe, Moidart, Arisaig, the islanders, and Gunns of the North were much associated with the Clan Gregor, and the whole of the lawless had a market in Ireland for such of their spoils as they did not need for themselves. Until Jacobitism received its death blow, loyalty to the dethroned dynasty secured the protection of great chiefs and landowners 542 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. to raiders and outlaws. The law-abiding population could defend themselves, and did defend themselves in their winter towns, but were never quite safe from having their cattle stolen from their shealings. It was not so much as a robber as an insurer against depredations by other robbers, that Rob Roy raised his " blackmail," and in Perthshire and Argyleshire, in a unique way, gained far from ill-deserved popularity. When outlaws and raiding bands were put down, and individual thieves were got well in hand, thanks to the combined forces of law and religion, sheep could for the first time be safely put upon shealings and on ancient forest lands. Imperative economic reasons — the sure hope of making much profit for themselves, induced the larger number of the Highland proprietors of the last thirty years of the eighteenth century to do so. But still not a few of them were so tenacious of use and wont that they declined to move on A\dth the main body of their class, and went down to their graves leaving their estate to their heirs much in the same condition as they found them. The men, however, who would not go in for change were not the owners of large farms and shealing stretches, but owners of small or moderate-sized estates with, for the Highlands, liberal shares of arable land. Enlightened self interest induced Highland nobles, chiefs, and other landlords, between 1770 and 1800, to convert the mountain solitudes into sheep runs until there was nothing left of them unstocked but the few old forests, or bits of them, which a few magnates kept still under deer for their own and their friends' hunting. But I question if any of them thought then of ruthlessly breaking and DEER FORESTS AND SHEEP FARMS. 543 brushing aside the thousand kindly ties with the people who lived on their lands. They were, like these people, for a long time blind to the impending doom of the domestic industries on the profits of which the coal-less districts fairly well participated, until new machinery driven by steam power, division of labour, and concentration in towns and mineral districts, changed the whole industrial order. If evictions were thought of — as they must have been by the foreseeing — they were not much spoken of or carried out until after Waterloo, when the Highlands lost their previous value as a nursery for soldiers, and Avhen the calanas was already suffering from the blight which was slowly and surely killing it. Feudalism and clannishness — in the Highlands the two always by a mysterious process amalgamated together, — simple habits of life, and simple tools of industry, gave the superseded order a stability which the lapse of centuries did not essentially change. The case is now entirely different. Who of the landlord promoters of the sheep regime foresaw that in a century sheep-farming should commence to be superseded by deer forests In raore than the places which had been of old devoted to shealings and deer ? Change follows change in endless chain. To change the metaphor, rural life is tossing on a heav ing sea of changes in a badly-equipped boat striving to struggle to land. When I went to England in 1860, mountain sheep farming had reached its highest point of expansion. Grouse moors and fishings were also paying high rents, and shooting lodges were being run up. A few derelict Highland estates had passed into the hands of new owners, but there was yet no reason to suppose that the change of ownership 544 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. should proceed very far when the rent - rolls of Highland properties had so 'remarkably swelled up, and when old landed families were, or should be, tenacious in keeping a firm hold on the ancestral lands. After twenty years' absence from Scotland, I found when I came to Inverness that the 1860 situation was undergoing a series of changes, the end of which has not yet been reached. For one thing the profit and loss scale was turning decidedly against sheep-runs, the rents of which were falling, and in favour of deer forests, the rents of which were rising, and the purchasing demand for which was far exceeding the supply. The Earl of Dudley, as tenant of the Blackmount Forest, was paying a rent of £4500 to the Earl of Breadalbane. It was, however, an American millionaire, Mr W, L. Winans, Avho " topped creation " by his taking of moors and forests between Beauly and Kintail. He took all he could get regardless of the huge cost he had to pay, and was vexed that he could not get more. He paid a rent of £5750 to Lord Lovat, of £2940 to the Chisholm, and of £1104 to Mr Mackenzie of Kintaih And for all this extravagance he could not be called a true sportsman. He believed in drives of deer and grouse, and in sumptuous hill pic-nics. Others of his countrymen who rented Highland forests, shootings, and fishings, were true sportsmen, and so, too, were his own sons. Sir John Ramsden, who purchased 138,000 acres of mountain land in Upper Badenoch, including Ben Alder Forest, may be taken to represent the class of new proprietors who bought estates in the Highlands, mainly for sporting purposes. Sir John Ramsden was not indeed the first English purchaser of a great Highland estate. DBER FORESTS AND SHEEP FARMS, 545 for Lord Dudley had been before him as oAvner of Glengarry, which, however, he did not keep long before he sold it to the good Scotsman, Mr Ellice. The earlier purchasers got better bargains than the later ones. Prices rose as if bidders had gone mad, and the temptation to sell was too strong to be resisted by many old owners who were either burdened with debts and settlements, or anxious to provide their children with means for making new starts in life under promising conditions. So all over the Highlands and Islands land has, bit by bit, and, sometimes. In big lumps, for now a long period, been passing from old families to new owners. The boom is yet on districts where sheep-runs can easily be changed into deer forests. But I doubt whether it can last much longer at its present height. It has slackened already in crofter community districts, Mr Andrew Carnegie got the estate of Skibo at a price much reduced from what his predecessor, Mr Sutherland, had paid for it. The same economic reason — natural love of profit — which, at the end of the eighteenth century, caused shealings and forest lands to be stocked with sheep, led to the reversal of that process at the end of the nineteenth century. But when an almost mad demand arose for the creation or purchase of deer forests it could not be suddenly and completely met. Owners who would gladly sell for the fancy prices readily offered were tied down by strict entail restrictions, until heirs, born after 1848, succeeded their father, and regained liberty of sale by com pounding with expectant heirs. Sheep farmers of lands wanted for making new deer forests, had often long leases, for the expiry of which impatient sports men, and profit-expecting landlords wishing to sell, 35 546 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. could not wait. Their tenants had therefore to be bought out, and between compensation for giving up their leases and high valuation for their stock, they went off to pastures new with full purses and rejoicing hearts. Lest I should otherwise overlook a subject which not long ago was of first class importance, and has not yet lost all its importance, although restricting conditions in new leases haA-e changed matters, I will digress a little to make a few remarks on stock A^aluations. It was proper that an acclimatised stock on a farm should be bought at a higher rate than an unacclimatised one in open market. From the first, in granting leases, landlords had made it a condition that the out-going tenant should deliver at valuation the stock to the incoming tenant, or failing such a tenant, to the landlord himself, who was bound to receive it and pay for it. Up to 1860, or some years later, in the delivering of sheep stock, the allowance made for acclimatisation was so reasonable that landlords and incoming tenants had little or nothing to complain of except it may be that in some few instances out-going tenants so managed that they delivered more stock than the grazings could regularly carry. I am not quite sure, but have some reason to believe, that it was in the hot haste to make new deer forests an upward hitch was given to valuations, which went higher and higher over the whole land, until incoming tenants could not stand it, and landlords thought they had good reason to think themselves swindled. The sheep farmers having their own grievances and sore trials, defended themselves as they best could against ruinous losses. Their best weapon of defence was the high valuations for stock on going DEER FORESTS AND SHEEP FARMS. 547 out of their farms, which, having once been established on the principle of a great difference between farm-bred stock and flying market stock, could only be adjusted by resort to new forms of contract. Looking forward to recovery of losses by high valuations, they took care to have very full stocks for delivery. As a class the only relations between them and their landlords were the purely commercial ones of contract — buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest markets. They had invested much capital in their stock. £1000 meant quite a small farm, and £5000 a good regulation one, and £10,000, or upwards, a topping one. In taking long leases they had not foreseen the frightful fall in the prices of wool, which fall was but wretchedly compensated by a rise in the value of the carcase. Then, as the years rolled on, the wintering rents rolled up, and so did servants' wages. The sheep likewise lost much of their old foraging hardihood, and new diseases got in among them— notably the " crithein," or " trembling." This disease was unknown, or so rare as not to be marked, when cattle and horses and goats ate the coarser grasses, and sedges, and when the ferns they did not trample and destroy, were pulled for thatching and cut for bedding. A steadily, if stealthy, progressive deterioration of hiU grazings went on, which old natives were the first to notice. They remembered the days Avhen herds of cattle, with many horses, were mixed with the sheep stocks, and when every bit of arable land was carefully cultivated, and even the last of the shealings had not been left vacant in summer. They said that the bigger animals manured the ground behind them, and consumed the rougher 548 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. herbage ; that the droppings of the sheep had no manurial value, and that, while incapable of keeping down the rougher vegetation, they nipped every patch of fine grass so. close to the ground as to lay its roots bare to be destroyed by winter frosts. The green spots which marked the old hill shealings, and abandoned spots of old cultivation, have certainly, within my own memory, much contracted or effaced themselves, while rushes and ferns and sedges have spread themselves into nuisances, I have no doubt that there was much truth in what the ancient natives said. The sheep farmers of shealing regions, aud of big holdings formed by the turning out of old communities of winter towns, where arable and pastoral pursuits used to be conjoined, profited for a long time by the unex hausted manures and other leavings of the old system which had been superseded by the sheep reign. Whatever were its passing fiuctuations, and whatever happened to individuals who did not know their business, or hazarded beyond their means and credit, that reign for a hundred years was a profitable one to landlords whose rents were doubled or trebled, and to farmers who knew how to make good use of their opportunities, and secure them selves from losses by wintering out the young of their flock. At the end of a century of prosperity for both, appeared the Nemesis Avhich threw landlords and large sheep farmers into fierce conflict — all on commercial lines. Smaller sheep farms with arable land continued to be easily let, generally to the old tenants, on moderate reductions of rent, but the big sheep-runs, on the expiry of lease, were thrown on landlords' hands, because that was the only way DEER FORESTS AND SHEEP FARMS. 549 in which the outgoing farmers could hope to recoup losses, and retire if old to live on that capital, or if young to take farms again on new conditions if outgoing, and rents so reduced that they could be fairly sure of profits, or safe against losses, and with comfortable homes and the occupations which suited them. Some Avho went out came back after a while into their old farms, on rent reduced from what they had once been by a third, or in some cases by a half. The financially-embarrassed landlords, on whose hands sheep-stocks at high valuations were thrown all in a row — as leases usually expire in batches — saw nothing before them but trouble likely to end in bankruptcy unless they sold their estates. Some have done so, and others may follow their example, which, indeed, is worldly-wise, while fancy prices can be obtained for Highland forests ; yet it hurts one to see old landed families disappear from the places which had so long known them. Political economists look only to money profit and loss, but the sentimental associations which they scorn are binding cords in social life, the value of which cannot be estimated in pounds, shillings, and pence. On the political economist's code rules, the embarrassed landlords who take advantage to sell out when the market boom for Highland estates lasts are certainly acting very wisely. They get rid of their burdens, and recoup themselves like the sheep-farmers who have pushed them to the wall. Probably when they have paid all their liabilities, they will find them selves financially in a better position than they had been before. The purchasers, in giving such fancy prices for Highland estates, thought more of sport than of making profitable investments. They wanted 550 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. forests of their own, spent money freely on planting, fencing, and other improvements, and some of them, like Sir Donald Currie on his Glenlyon estate, by joining large grazing outruns to arable and meadow land, and putting deer fences between these outruns and the forest hills, formed separate farms of size enough for giving employment to families all the year round, with chances of steady and just returns on capital and labour, and have initiated what is un doubtedly an improvement on crofting communities — the plan of separate holdings of the moderate and manageable size to which it would be most desirable to resort. There are few obstacles now to sales and transfers, because successive Acts of Parliament have, in a majority of Instances, put an end to entails, and in all cases reduced their operations to a minimum of obstruction. The owners of estates equal in area to small English counties, who had no wish, and, if they lived within their incomes, no need to sell portions of their land, found themselves "held up" by their larger tenants when they, in self-defence, took to giving up their holdings, on high valuations, unless they got rents reduced by a third or a half, and the other concessions they demanded, so to speak, at the points of their conquering spears. It was a hard choice between taking over farms and stocks and agreeing to accept such heavy reductions of pastoral rents as had not been heard of for a hundred years. But when the outrageously large farms turned into white elephants, why were they not at once divided by landlords into small and moderately-sized, separate holdings, for which there always continued to be a good demand by a very good class of people who had, by industry and frugality, saved sufficient DEER FORESTS AND SHEEP FARMS. 551 capital for stocking and equipping, and knew all which concerned utilising grazings and arable lands? To hereditary landlords there was a formidable difficulty in going back to smaller holdings by dividing the big ones which had turned into white elephants. They or their predecessors, chiefly the latter, had made heavy outlays on building stead ings, and farmhouses that might be called gentlemen's modest mansions, on the big holdings. When these were sub-divided there would only be one division of them which would have farm buildings on it, and to that division the buildings on it would be a vast deal more than it wanted. The thatched houses, barns, and byres of former days, which tenants built for themselves and kept in repair, getting nothing more than timber from their landlords, had been swept away. The new tenants of sub-divided huge holdings expected, as a matter of course, that the landlord would put up new boundary fences and comfortable stone-and-lime and slated buildings when they were to pay rents which, in the aggregate, would far exceed what he could now get for the undivided big holding. From such an undertaking hereditary landlords recoiled, and having re-let at much reduced rents the more manageable farms, and having, at a heavy loss, sold at market prices the stock of the practically unlettable mountain sheep- runs, they turned them Into deer forests for which, after a stocking interval, they thought themselves sure to get high rents, or they made sure at once by selling such lands to people who had made large fortunes in business and trade, and who, looking less to investment than to sport, and the strangely attractive social status of landed gentry, did not much care what price they paid for their Highland forest, shooting, and fishing purchases. 552 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Imperative economic causes brought the old industrial system ef the Highlands to an end and established the reign of sheep. At the end of a century similar reasons are, to a great extent, superseding sheep by deer. Those who hold Cobden-Club views in logical purity should, there fore, rest content ; for if true to their professed creed economic reasons ought to be accepted and acted upon, without respect to cherished sentiments. Cobdenism and science are much alike in excluding from consideration the innate principles of human nature and the soul-side of the universe. They have undoubted truths to teach, but Avithout those complements they are too liable to be used or abused as poisonous because imperfect truths. The sheep reign deeply hurt the Highland people. The present phase of reversion to deer and the coming- in of new sporting landlords with plenty of money, and willingness to expend it on their sporting pleasures, and on such valuable Improvements as planting, fencing, and buildings, are materially beneficial to the native population. Employment as foresters, gamekeepers, home-farm servants, and gardeners has great benefits for young Highlanders, and keeps them from going away from their birth places to towns and colonies. Previously unsuspected causes so often lead up to unexpected results, that it is quite within the Avide range of possibility the placing of mountain side glens, corries, and hill-tops under deer, may turn out to be the means for creating a great number of desirable small separate farms, far larger than crofts, but not too large for being taken and advantageously worked by people who possess a few hundred pounds of saved money. The process has DEER FORESTS AND SHEEP FARMS. 553 began in other places, as well as in the one already referred to. It is a natural process to form farms of the arable lands and hay meadows where cultivation can be carried on, and to give each of them grazing outruns, divided from the forest wild lands by deer fences. Wild talk has been plentifully indulged in by radical agitators and newspapers, about the Avickedness of dedicating to sport land fit for cultivation. It would be certainly wicked to do so. But is the Highland land put under deer, land fit for cultivation ? People who talk so loudly, should try to know what they are talking about. Before the installation of the sheep reign in full form, cultivation was pushed to the farthest limits, within which it was possible to find small patches of suitable soil. But even before the sheep put an end to the shealings, the cultivators of patches of promising, exceedingly well-manured shealing land, discovered to their cost that there was a line beyond which crops would not grow and ripen for the harvest. Let the decriers of wickedness inspect the existing Highland forests before denouncing them on a false cry. Let them watch the making of new forests, and if they find that cultivable land, to the extent of an acre in a thousand, is being- included in them, shout for penal legislation. At present they have no case for calling out for penalising the owners and tenants of forests by differential rates and taxes. They are already paying rates far above what their places would have to pay if they remained under sheep, and the rents of them fluctuated down to the lowest pastoral level. It is safe to confidently predict that the reign of deer will not last so long as the reign of sheep has done, and that it wiU never extend beyond 554 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. uncultivable mountain and moor lands. Were it to spread itself out, so as to include areas fit for mixed grazing and agricultural farming, it would, no doubt, be dealt with by prohibitive legislation. But there is no need for legislative interference, as long as only uncultivable spaces are placed under deer, because that is the most profitable, selling, letting, and rating use which can be made of them in present circumstances. Grouse moors and fishing are in a different category, and may retain their value Indefinitely. People who are not ranked among the Avealthy, have grouse, hare, rabbit, partridge, and ptarmigan shootings, and salmon and trout fishings within their reach. Deer forests are luxuries In which only rich people can indulge. They are bought at fancy prices, and let by old proprietors who do not sell lands at fancy rents. Happ}?^ are the owners who have well-stocked deer forests with good lodges in these days to let. But the new ones which are being formed in places cleared of sheep, take five or six years, with care and expenditure, to stock with imported deer, and partly, too, with deer that have strayed in from neighbour ing forests. Straying away to pastures new, from which they do not come back, calls fbr the erection of deer fences between adjoining forests. Between forests and farms the need for such fences is still more clamant. The deer ravage crops and meadows to an intolerable degree. Fences and walls which shut in or shut out other animals are not barriers to them. Out of their OAvn grounds, they are wild beasts of nature, whose raiding ravages are to be stopped by getting killed and eaten by those who suffer. So deer must be shut in by deer fences in their own grounds If they are to be saved from the DEER FORESTS AND SHEEP FARMS, 555 fate they deserve. And when fenced in they have still to be guarded by hosts of foresters, reinforced in the hunting season by many gillies. After new forests have been fenced, stocked, and furnished with sumptuous lodges, the heavy cost of upkeep will remain ; and the more new forests are made, the less will become the letting value and the less the selling price of foriner forests. It is quite easy, by multiplying them, to exceed the demand for deer forests, for that demand avIU always be restricted to the very rich, who can afford to please themselves, or to the reckless who march on the road to ruin. There are changes of fashion in sports as well as in ladies' dresses. With fast steamers on sea, airships in view, and railways, and roads for motor-cars opening up formerly sealed countries, and bringing all parts of the earth in close proximity, it is not at all unlikely that hunting elephants and other large game in what used to be called "Darkest Africa" will come into deadly competition with deer- hunting in the Highlands. All things considered, I look upon the present process of converting sheep- runs Into deer forests as a passing phase in a period of general transition, the end of which it is impossible to foretell. But If nothing more than a passing phase, it Is, at any rate, for many reasons a good one for the children of the Gael, and it promises, if left to run its course, to be a helpful factor In keeping Highlanders on their native land, and in leading up to the formation of much-to-be-desired moderately- sized, separate farms. 556 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER LXXXIII. THE CROFTERS. Farmers' associations preceded and set the example of combination to crofter agitation. Classes and castes, secular and religious, in all lands and throughout all the ages, aimed at monopolies and dominating influence. The masses also had occasional outbursts of revolt AA-hen their burdens and grievances were more than flesh and blood could bear. Trade unionists learned from aristocracies. Churches, and political parties In Constitutional States how to put up cactus-hedges of separatism in self-defence, and when household suffrage and the ballot came, how to master their masters by strikes or threats of strikes, without the least regard to general interests and future trade and employment. The country people, farmers and labourers, were slow to imitate the town trades unions. In Eng land and the Lowlands of Scotland the feudal system had woven many connecting ties between landowners and tenants, and in the Highlands clannishness made these ties almost sacred when the chief of the clan was the landlord. Although in not a single instance known to me the people on such a chief's land were all, or mostly all, of his own surname, yet the non-clansmen Avere as much his faithful followers as were his clansmen. They all looked up to him as their natural leader in peace and war. Their ancestors had foUowed his ancestors in days of old, and many rattling Gaelic songs, and sad laments. THE CROFTERS. 557 commemorated the triumphs and sorrows of their conjoint legends and more recent histories. And clannishness of a strong kind existed between old landed families and their people where there was little or no blood relationship at all. As long as Highland landoAvners spent most of their time on their estates, knew all their people, and their circumstances, and worshipped with them in the parish churches, their was no chance for the agitator to stir up a war of classes. So deeply rooted in Celtic minds is the habit of clannish looking up to the landlord as natural leader-, that men Avho bought Highland estates and used them for residential purposes, succeeded frequently to gain the respect and influence which belonged, as of right, to the extinct or superseded families whose places they occupied. Evictions, sheep-runs, the incoming of Lowland farmers and shepherds, weakened, but did not wholly break, the kindly ties. Highlanders did not fully realise, although some of them did at the beginning of last century, or later in between the war with Napoleon and the revolution which the railways brought In their trail, that the old system of domestic industries and shealings, and small farms, had fallen under the doom of economic causes. They understood well enough that it was necessary for them to send out swarms of their young people to seek their fortunes in towns and colonies, or to serve in the army or naAry as had always been done ; but they thought, rightly or wrongly, that they had claims for help, guidance, and sympathy on their landlords to which many of them who could afford to do so, did not generously respond. While they grieved and murmured at being deserted, hustled. 558 reminiscences and reflections. and concussed by not a few of their natural leaders, they did not think of breaking out into lawlessness and forming secret leagues for perpetrat ing atrocities by night or by day. On the West Coast and in the Islands, the potato famine produced a crisis of distress equal to that in the worst parts of Ireland. In that crisis landlords, upon the whole, did their utmost to save their people from starvation. Several of them mortgaged their estates to obtain inoney for buying provisions for their people. Some old families, who were struggling before, wrecked themselves entirely for the sake of their people, and not only endless gratitude is felt for them to this day by all Highlanders, but the careers of their representatives and offshoots are watched with the affectionate respect due to unjustly-deposed royal dynasties. With the potato famine set in the determined full current of self-evictions, which the Crofter Acts have done something, but not as much as should be wished for, to stem. When I came to Inverness in December, 1880, there was as yet no movement of any consequence among the crofters. Farmers' associations, on the contrary, had, by that time, spread themselves all over Scotland. The movement first arose among the Lowland arable farmers ; and then it took hold on the sheep farmers of the Borders and Highlands. The agricultural farmers had suffered much from the abolition of the Com Laws, and were as yet only very slowly recovering from losses incurred during the currency of former long leases. It was, I believe, in 1873 that I heard an English corn-miller, who had untU then been a rank Radical, denouncing, in racy Yorkshire dialect, "Bob Lowe," the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, for abohshing, when THE CROFTERS. 559 nobody asked him, the shilling per quarter registra tion duty on imported grain, to which the Cobdenites had not objected, and which by that time was pro ducing a tidy revenue. The angry miller prophesied that the causeless remission of that duty would go far to destroy the corn -milling business in this country, because the remission would throw the meal-making of Imported cereals into the hands of the foreign exporters. His prophesy turned out to be true, although it seemed at the time like the exaggeration of a man who was looking through a narrow and twisted self-interest chink. On return ing to Scotland seven years later, I found that many corn-mills on Highland streams and rivers, which were at work in 1873, had alread} been closed ; and since then many more of them have gone on the list of the unemployed. But in the sheep - farming regions, the letting-out under grass of former arable land Avas not so much due to "Bob Lowe's" remission of the shilling duty as to the pasturing, and especi ally the wintering requirements, of stock, and higher servants' wages. Lowland farmers also let out under grass the less valuable parts of their arable land, and, besides other advantages, got higher and higher rents for wintering sheep that came down to them at the harvest end from the hill districts. Wheat cultiva tion, because made unprofitable, ceased alike in Essex and Easter Ross ; but Scotch agriculturists learned much sooner than their English fellow- sufferers how to recover themselves by labour- saving implements, feeding cattle for the butchers, the use of nitrates, and other artificial manures — the stimulating effect of which is visible, but the ultimate consequences to soil, animal life, and human salubrity 560 reminiscences and reflections. must yet be held to be somewhat questionable. Above all they set about fencing themselves by a monopolistic class association to protect them against outside bidders when leases had to be renewed, and to place landlords in the position in which they had placed their tenants, when the old relationship had been changed Into contracts on purely commercial lines. The Hypothec Law was indefensible on commercial and equitable principles, for when a tenant became bankrupt it gave the landlord a sweeping preference over the other creditors. But for all Its iniquity. It was the ladder by which many, who now cried out against it, had climbed from small beginnings into the position of large farmers. Those climbers did not wish that others with small capital and trust in themselves should climb up after them, and, as bidders for farms, whistle up rents which they, in possession, were working strenuously and artfully to compel landlords to reduce, far below open market obtainable value. Hypothec they succeeded in reducing to practical nullity. I must confess that I admire the energy and skill with which the agricultural farmers acted in most trying circumstances, and the readi ness with which they adopted new methods for retrieving losses and securing their class interests. But neither sheep farmers nor arable land farmers, when they formed their farmers' associations, took crofters and working people into serious consideration. They were both of them thoroughly convinced that large farms could be more economically managed than small ones ; and all things being considered on commercial principles, and from class interest point of view, they had a good deal of reason for the belief that was in them. The large farm involved a the crofters. 561 large outlay of capital in stock and equipments. How could the one plough farmer compete with the many plough farmer who invested many hundreds of pounds on new labour saving machines, and when seeds and artificial manures required to be purchased, or famous bulls and fancy price tups and splendid horses, needed only to sign cheques on his banker ? While taking small or no account of crofter and farm servant questions, farmers' associations aimed at perpetuating large holdings, and at reducing the rents of these holdings by excluding free competition, and exercising a trade union pressure on landlords. The crofter agitation presented one aggressive front against landlords, and another against the large farmers. That agitation did not spring up suddenly nor without forewarnings for many years. The crofting townships, with one hand on the land and the other on the sea, were long incited by out side enthusiasts of their race and by Irish object- lessons before they rose in revolt. They grumbled, but in fact they did not attempt a combined move ment untU they got household suffrage with the ballot, and the political magicians, with their bags of tricks and promises, came among them. Among these agitators were honest enthusiasts, who cared less for political economy and actual facts than they did for the race- interests of the children of the Gael. But most of the politicians were self-seekers, who would promise sun, moon, and planets for votes to give them seats in the House of Commons, with such social and other profits as might with proper care result therefrom. The crofters were by no means so simple as they chose to appear. With their better knowledge of the real situation, they looked with concealed contempt on the bagmen politicians, but 36 562 reminiscences and reflections. at the same time thought they could make use of them as supple tools and loud-mouthed House of Commons brayers. So it came about that landlord and large farmer candidates were defeated at the polls by outsiders. But it was a different affair when County Councils and other local bodies had to be elected. After crofter members got a single trial turn they were set aside, and landed gentlemen and men with good local standing were elected. Crofters and household suffragists, while wanting many things — many of which were not attainable — wished their local affairs to be managed by men whom they knew and trusted. The simplest among the crofters, how ever, Avere made to believe, and others of them who knew better pretended to believe, that there was " plenty of inoney in London," part of which could be obtained by putting pressure, as the Irish did, on a squeezable Government. It would be nice to get extensions of grazing outruns from deer forests as well as from sheep-runs, and so the crofters joined heartily in the outcry of outsiders against deer forests, although they knew very well that no crop- bearing use could be made of many acres of the large area given up to the deer, the hunting of which brought so much money into the country, and with rents of moors and fishings, such relief to the rates which would otherwise have been intolerable. Not withstanding incitements from without, and the folly of a few hot-heads within, the Highland crofters, un like the Irish, refused to be drawn into criminal acts. The nearest approach to such acts Avere the farcical raiding of a deer forest In the Lews, many years ago and the quite recent Vatersay seizure of land by Barra men, which, after seeming by their action, or rather non-action, to countenance, the Radical THE CROFTERS. 563 Secretary for Scotland, Mr Sinclair, and his colleague - blunderer, Mr Thomas Shaw, Lord- Advocate, has since in a new form officially denounced. As proprietors of the Kilmuir estate in Skye, our pubhc rulers were also placed in an object- lesson difficulty. Before the passing of the Crofters' Acts, High land crofters, whether on the sea coast or inland, had real grievances to complain of, from which people of their class did not suffer In the Lowlands. They had to build their houses and byres and barns, and to keep them in habitable repair. They had to pay rents out of proportion with the rents paid for similar land and acreage by their neighbours, the large farmers, who, in the Inland districts, although not on the sea coast, added to their wintering old parish clachan crofts left vacant by the departure of weavers, shoemakers, smiths, and millers who, under the new dispensation, had lost their trades. They were subject to evictions at the will of the landlord. If they added to their arable land by trenching part of their grazings they were not fairly compensated if evicted. There was, however, more trenching and reclamation of wild land on the east than on the west side of the water line. I believe more of that work had been done in Sutherland than in all the Highland counties put together, and after the great upset of " Gloomy Memories," land lord rule in Sutherland was not oppressive and evictions were not capricious. In verity the old dispensation farmers had pushed cultivation in most Highland districts to its utmost limits, and tried to raise black oats for fodder beyond the line where they had any chance of ever ripening, unless in a most exceptionally dry and hot season. 564 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Fair rent, fixity of tenure, and compensation on disturbance for improvements effected, have infinitely improved the condition of the crofters. And what is the visible result of this bettering of conditions ? In almost all places new buildings of the stone and lime and slated order, and, particularly on the east side of the water line, better stock and better farming of the arable land. Better gardening is in its initial stage as yet, but I hope it is sure to follow the other betterings. There is a wide scope for it, and much pot and fiower-beauty need for it. In gardening Highlanders have always been as far behind Lowlanders as the latter have, with some exceptions in a few localities, been behind their English fellow-subjects. Whoever knows the crofters and their modes of thoughts and habits, however adverse to some of their land-question views and actions, cannot honestly refuse to admit that they have extraordinarily good qualities, and that they cherish higher ideals of duty, religion, and morality, which they fairly try to act up to as a class, than are to be found anywhere else among what are called " the lower orders " because the poorer in purse section of society. I cannot say from personal knowledge how the crofters of Argyle and the Western Isles are using their chances, but I can confidently say that since the passing of the Crofters' Acts, the advance made on the northern mainland from the Grampian divide to Thurso, and also in Skye, has been most gratify ing, and in particular districts almost marvellous. Crofter townships are by no means up to the ideal standard of what would be best for land settlement if the land-settlers had no obstacles to encounter when carrying out their scientific plans. But there THB CROFTERS. 565 are not only possessory rights, which the State might remove by purchase if it had boundless funds, and feared not to undertake boundless risks stand ing in the way of the theorists, but, likewise, natural obstacles arising from the way in which the scanty proportion of crop-bearing soil is distributed among the uncultivable areas. The separate holding, whether big or little, is doubtles.^ly far raore desirable than the township system of common grazings and separate arable plots. And most desirable of all would be the formation of many moderately-sized farms, well fenced, which would have arable land sufficient for the working of a pair of horses, and grazings sufficient for a score of cattle and some hundreds of sheep. Things are drifting towards the formation of such a middle class of holdings, between large farms which only men with thousands of capital can venture to take and the usually small holdings of township crofters. The separate holding, be it a good-sized croft or a small farm, puts the occupier on his mettle. With fair rent, fixity of tenure, and compensation for improvements on dis turbance, the energetic, thoughtful, frugal, and diligent occupier is sure — barring what are called visitations of God, such as loss of crops by blight or bad weather, and loss of stock by cattle and sheep plagues — to make more than ends meet, although he may benefit his country by having many hardy, healthy children, and training them up in the way they should go straight in paths of well - doing through life. On separate holdings the good and diligent would be as sure, as anything is sure in this world, of reaping the rewards of their merits ; and the slothful, foolish, or debauched would, sooner than in township communities, fall under the 566 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. punishment of their demerits. In the crofter town ships the wastrels are indeed much fewer than they are proportionately among other sections of society, high or low ; but few as they are, thanks to the influence of moral and religious public opinion among the crofters, they can make themselves pests to their neighbours, and some thorns in the flesh to their blood relations. Such black sheep are loud-tongued in public- houses, still more loud-tongued at local and parliamentary elections, and, In their own opinion, enlightened politicians of the predatory Socialistic school to which all loafers who seek to be kept up at honest people's cost, without being treated as self- made paupers worthy of coercion and forced labour, rightly belong. In the higher Socialism there is a wild but pure enthusiasm which claims respect, not withstanding its madness; in the lower or loafer and criminal Socialism nothing of a redeeming character is discernible. While the formation of farms of moderate size and of fairly large separate crofts should be looked upon as the best means for land settlement, it is a plan which cannot be everywhere carried out in the Highlands, although the building difficulty should in some way be got over, and the mountain tops and corries should be left to the deer as long as they yield higher rents than sheep, and relieve rates, and bring much money into the country. The township community system will have to continue where people have one hand on the sea and another on the land, and also, I fear, in inland places where the small areas of arable land are so situated among extensive grazings, that divisions of holdings would leave some without potato ground in their grazing stretches, and give to others more than their share of arable. THE CROFTERS. 567 and less of the better grazings, than their neighbours had. If introduced where people had not been for untold generations accustomed to it, the community system would be prolific in frictions and fractions, and produce wholesale discontent. But the High landers of the crofting regions know how to work it under time-honoured regulations, and settle any quarrels which arise quietly among themselves. Most of the faults of a theoretically bad system can be covered up by equitable administration. The crofting township is the remnant of what was once the general land system of all the Highlands, and of part of the Lowlands likewise. The crofting town ships of to-day represent the immemorial order, when foundations were undermined by the invasion of sheep at the end of the eighteenth century, and which was blown almost entirely to pieces in the first half of the last century. By twenty years' good conduct, and very notable material progress, the crofters have falsified many prophesies of evil, disarmed many prejudices, and gained the respect of former opponents. Landlords excusably defended their property rights, and thought, perhaps with some justification, that the Highlands were on the verge of becoming as unruly and criminally lawless as the worst parts of Ireland. They know better now, and discover also that without the crofter communities there would be a dearth of honest and capable farm and domestic servants, gamekeepers, foresters, gillies, and police men, over all the Highland counties, whether under or not under the Crofter Acts. And without them where would have been the stalwart, trusty, and easily trained Highlanders of the new Territorial Force, and the brave recruits who serve in the Navy 568 REMINISCENCES AND RKFLECrCIONS. or in the Regular Army ? So thoroughly has the temporary alienation been succeeded by renewed friendship, that nobility and gentry spare no effort to promote crofter material interests, and especially to save and give new life to the spinning, weaving, and dyeing domestic industries, which, after ceasing elsewhere, were kept alive in a Aveak state by the crofters' wives and daughters, with many other useful, self-helping arts which have come down from past ages. In boyhood I saw in every house wheels merrily spinning flax and wool, much home-dyeing done, and country weavers busy at their looms. In early manhood I saw the profitable flax industry brought to its end, and after that the woollen industry brought to such a low state, step by step, that at last it had not an abiding place except among the crofter communities. These also were not sure cities of refuge until renovation, under a new stimulus, set in a few years ago. Welcome as it Is, that renovation is too artificial for being relied upon as having an enduring commercial foundation. But it saves the arts of domestic industries from being lost, and it is possible that these arts may have yet a great value. Coal, steam, and machinery concen trated manufacturing industries in favoured localities. Division of labour robbed the workers of a great deal of inherited skill. They became mechanical adjuncts of division of labour and machinery, and, before the Factory Acts, the women and children were reduced to something like slavery, and the men themselves were thirled to capital until they organised themselves in trade unions, which do good when wisely used for legitimate defence, but are liable to be abused for the destruction of trade THE CROFTERS, 569 and for the oppression of non-unionists. I now and then indulge in a pleasant dream. I imagine that centralisation of organised manufacturing Industries has reached its furthest limit ; that decentralisation — which means the emancipation of individualism — is about to begin, if it has not, in a small way, began in some directions already. Lady Electra throws her weird light of hope over this pleasant dream of decentralisation and emancipation. The Falls of Foyers are only one of the many places in which electricity can be caught and stored in our land of mountains and streams and lochs and arms of the sea. The sight I dream of is the restoration ofthe "calanas" to the coal-less Highlands by means of electricity as a motive power, so harnessed that in every house a woman can work a spinning jenny and a loom. What is between us and the realisation oi that dream ? Nothing which science and iuA-entors cannot overcome. I suspect that the adaptation of machinery and the harnessing of electricity for domestic industries would soon be done if inventors and men of science turned their attention to that object from other objects which hold forth promises of higher fame and rewards. Is there not among all the scientific and inventive children of the Gael any who will solve the problem, and give to the Highland women remunerative work which will keep them at home to be wives and mothers of Highlanders, instead of drifting away, as too many of them now do, to seek service in cities and towns, where many of them find neither happi ness nor fortune, and some meet a worse fate than all that.In former days of town and mining districts' growth and prosperity, there Avas excuse for the 570 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. drifting to these places of multitudes of single persons and of whole families from the country. There is no such excuse now. The hoarse distress cries of the unemployed, mingled in some instances with threats of riot and robbery, should make aU who have the slenderest means of decent living in the country stick where they are, or, if move they will, let them g-o to Canada or some other British colony, and keep there to the rural pursuits for Avhich they are so well qualified. The life of towns is not the natural life for the children of the Gael. Crofter-bred boys and girls, with exceptional talents and ambition to shoot out of their birth sphere into one or otber of the professions of this age, must be a rule to themselves. But they will find most of the professions over-crowded, and the struggle upwards correspondingly severe. There are in nearly all parts of Scotland three, or perchance four or five, ministers of religion where one was before 1843, and that one, with the assistance of his elders, did more than the batch can do for practical religion and moral policing. Lawyers and doctors are so numerous that nothing short of universal litigation and chronic plagues could give them all the employ ment and fees they desire. The mania for education of the sort noAv In vogue has probably reached its climax, but the army of male and female teachers will, no doubt, be very large and costly for a long time yet ; and in colonies and other outside lands the call for teachers perhaps may get yet much stronger than it Is at present. I raay be a prejudiced octogenarian " dominie," but I doubt very much whether the present sort of popular education is as sound iu principle as was the old parochial school system, which qualified the clever pupils for entering THB CROFTERS. 571 the universities, and having furnished the less clever ones with the reading, writing, and arithmetic keys of knowledge, let them go back to the most useful vocations for which they were fitted, without attempting to drive them through the asses' bridges of crams and exams. I think the pupils of the parochial and humble side-schools were better taught to exercise their own thinking faculties on matters of faith, morals, and patriotism, than are the pupUs of the new schools. The old class of pupils had more reverence for God and man than their successors of the present day, unless I happen to be entirely mistaken. When so many who hoped to forge ahead in lucrative trades or professions find themselves disappointed, they become discontented, and in their discontent take up the wildest views of this unsettled and unsettling age. I have met with many men of little learning, and very humble positions, who seemed to me to think more deeply and justly on questions, both of a public and private nature, than learned pundits, literary stars, and popular politicians are capable of doing, because they are less experienced in the science of human nature, or themselves bound to pander to the crafts or party factions which are fashionable for the moment, and promise them notoriety in literature, or seats in the House of Commons with prospects of offices or birthday honours. The readiness with which former opponents have recognised their good qualities; the kindly considera tion with which people of all classes and parties are wiUing to deal with claims of theirs which are reasonable in themselves, and can, with some State help, be granted without injustice to others ; the world-wide fame gained by Highland soldiers in 572 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. many wars, and the honours and success acquired in many lands by Highlanders in various callings, have laid the crofters under a burden of obligation to uphold by worthy conduct the high character of their race for manly honesty, morality, and patriotic loyalty. It is scarcely any exaggeration to say that, from the beginning of the crofter movement to the present day, all the dispersed Highlanders in all parts of the world have been watching it with the keenest interest and, at one time, AAdth some fear lest it should compromise race-fame by slipping down into lawless Irish ways and methods. Irish and Clan- na-Gael incitements to enter into lawless and criminal conspiracies were not wholly wanting. Within the crofters' own ranks, foolish, blustering voices were heard, but not listened to by many. As a class the crofters could not let themselves down from the religious and moral platform to which, whether Presbyterians of divided communions, or old-fashioned Roman Catholics, they had been raised by ancestral training, and on which they were fixed by inclination and habit to discriminate right from wrong. I have the firm conviction that there will be no descent from the high platform now. Poli ticians willing to make unlimited promises for their own ends are seen through very clearly, and used as convenient and only temporary tools. It would be no great surprise if' on the next appeal to con stituencies, the unlimited promise givers found themselves sent about their business, and their seats given to native candidates. The crofters are not over-fond of "colgrich" or strangers, and many of them Avould like to fall back upon trusted native representatives, who did not make promises which could not be fulfilled, or, if fulfilled in some sort of THE CROFTERS. 573 way, Avould ignore the eternal distinction between right and wrong. In a certain sense we are all Socialists. Society, rightly constituted, has number less mutual inter-connections for foundation corner stones. The crofters are, by the township system under which they live, compelled to be more Socialistic than other people. They know better than others how far Socialism, comparable with justice and individual fr"eedom, is workable ; and their knowledge makes them determined enemies of the Socialism which seeks to deprive the individual of freedom, to confiscate property, and to level all to an equality abhorred by natural laws, and denounced and scorned by all communities which are not falling into imbecility and the abyss of chaotic destruction. Socialists have no chance for making converts in Ireland and Wales, and as for the Highlanders, they are, outside the land question, as conservative a people as can be met with in any country. Every State — or incorporated nation — has the right to take possession, on just purchase from former private owners, of all the land of its country, for redistribution, under new conditions, should com pelling national needs require it and the purchase money be obtainable. State infringement on private rights, without purchase or compensation, shakes confidence and credit, and is a gross violation of rules of equity and sound policy. Of the pleas urged for State intervention on behalf of the crofters, two at least were thoroughly well-founded and so peculiar to the Highlands that Lowlanders had no share whatever in them. These were the building and maintenance of houses and premises by the people themselves, and no compensation for 574 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. reclamation of land or any other improvement of lettable value on eviction, whether just or capricious, or on the tenant giving up his holding in a voluntary manner. I do not believe that capricious evictions were very numerous, but certainly they were not altogether unknown. Nor were a few cases in which, when a man had made improvements, his rent was raised forthwith. Highlanders have tremendously long memories. The tradition of tribal possessorship, with, in every district, a toiseach at the head of every locality, and a maormor at the head of a province, with a king over all, is ignored in feudal charters and records of the kingdom of Scotland from the reign of King David dowuAvards. But this Is mere negative disproof The long- cherished belief was at least a fiction based upon facts. It was no stretch of the long Highland memory at all to recall the events of comparatively near times, when nobles, chiefs, and other proprietors resided almost constantly among their people in their Highland castles and mansions, and when between them and their people there was mutual knowledge baptised in clannish sympathy. In war and peace, and very generally in parish church worship, there were strong ties of union and com munion between Highland landlords and people until Napoleon was finally crushed at Waterloo. After that the unpreventable industrial revolution, the evictions, and the introduction of the large-farm system, would not have wholly cut the old ties if noble landlords with huge estates had not delegated their powers to commissioners, chamberlains, and factors, and took to living away most of their time from their Highland residences, and had not other chiefs and proprietors got into financial difficulties. THE CROFTERS. 575 which left them no freedom to act on kindly intentions. Nothing was more certain to alienate Highlanders from those to whom they had been accustomed to look upon as their natural leaders, than to be subjected to the delegated power of factors, some of whom had ends of their own to carry out through acts of guile and insolent tyranny, and others of whom had no knowledge of High landers and their language, or patience with their fair claims of right. No doubt the honest Lowland factors were doing what they thought right, and which in law was justifiable. They were true to their employers, and not designedly cruel to the Highland people, with whom they had to deal on strictly legal principles. But the factor rule — good, bad, or indifferent — ran up a heavy score against the invisible or, at least, unapproachable landlords. Having been made into a privileged class, and having, on the whole, proved themselves by material progress and sensible conduct, which disarms hostile criticism, worthy of the privileges bestowed on them, the crofters could have got in the first part of the Parliamentary Session of 1908, by concurrence of Lords and Commons, an Act to amend and extend the Crofter Acts, if the Secretary for Scotland had not resolved to roll up the cause of the crofters with his scheme for the Lowlands, whose case is radically different. Lord LoA^at's Bill, and other moves and declarations, indicated the willingness of Highland landlords to remove reasonable grievances, and to meet the wishes of the crofters as far as they seemed to be just and practicable. How different is this appreciation of and kindly feeling towards the crofters by the landlords from the attitude most of them assumed, excusably, it must be said, in the 576 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. early days of the crofter agitation ? The use the crofters are making of their privileges has been the chief factor in this conversion, although other factors have played their part in it, such as the scarcity of upright and capable servant men and women, and the shuttle cock and battledore game between sheep runs and deer forests. Much has been won, and more can be won, by the crofters' peaceful behaviour, and their quiet persistence in making the best use of their privileges. Let the crofters, by continuing in well-doing, strive to keep and augment the sympathy and respect which they have gained far and wide from people who are not of their race. Let them strenuously uphold " Cliu nan Gaidheal." Let my wild but pleasant dream of the restora tion of profitable "calanas," in a huge volume, to our coal- less land of mountains and of streams, by the reversing wave of Lady Electra's fairy wand, be set aside in the limbo of vain imaginings for the present ; but yet in the ordinary developments of changes* which must proceed, with or without legislation, prospects of recovery in their native land are brightening for the children of the Gael, and by patience and wise use of increasing oppor tunities, the crofters may do more than other Highlanders towards turning these fair prospects into fairer realities. Highlanders scattered abroad and at home, and the descendants of Highlanders who left their country ages ago, look upon the crofter townships as the centres from which chiefly the Highlands are in time, and without noise or strife of any kind, to be again re-peopled by High lander^, who, while as able to use English as Oxford and Cambridge professors, will retain along with it THB CRY OF " BACK TO THE LAND." 577 the language of their ancestors. If they drop the ancestral language, they will cut themselves off from an ever-flowing fountain of refreshment of mind and hereditary inspiration. It is really in the crofter townships that Gaelic has just now its last place of retiral and refuge ; and even in them the security of the refuge is far from being lastingly guaranteed. CHAPTER LXXXIV. THE CRY OF "BACK TO THE LAND." This cry is a sign of grace, although, as always happens, unprincipled politicians and party agitators make a base use of it for their miserable personal ambitions or levelling down theories. The land Is a nation's sole enduring asset, the corner stone of the whole edifice of confidence and credit, and the only property which nothing short of submergence in the sea can deprive of all value. Wealth in other forms can melt away or take wings and fly away to other lands. " Back to the land " signifies realisation of more than one kind of danger. Like the other cry about the preservation of Gaelic, it has been raised after destructive mischief has gone far ; but better late than never. There is yet scope for salvage work in both cases. It is of primary importance that the people already on the land should be got to stay there. They know best how to work the land for raising crops, and how to use pasturage to advantage. Their practical knowledge of soils, seasons, herds and flecks, and stable and farm yard denizens, and the gathering and applying of the most wholesome manure stuffs, is far more 37 578 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS, useful than anything which the urban agricultural tyro can leam from books. The born farmer and bom farm labourer have inherited and accumulated a vast amount of information, habits of precaution, and natural fitness for their vocations, which it takes a long time for novices to acquire, with the help of all the farming literature in the world, and under the most favourable circumstances. It is not, indeed, to be denied that novices can learn in a long time, and after going through trying dis appointments become good farmers here, and still better ones in colonies where farming of new soil is more rudimentary and with fewer pitfalls, or at least with less severe consequences should there happen to be one or two mishaps, which in this country would be disastrous, should they precede the victory of persistence and the gathering in of the fruits of victory. But at home and abroad the born farmer and the born farm labourer have always and every where a natural superiority. Still the others deserve to be encouraged. When mixed with practical farmers, whose advice they take, and whose doings they imitate, those of them who persevere, and arew content with rural life, will get on, and strengthen the rural population both numerically and socially ; for they will infuse a stay in the land feeling among farmers and rustics with wavering inclinations to leave the vocations to which they had been born. Those who seek to change urban for rural life are missionaries of reformation and recuperation, whose message is not rendered of less account by many individual failures. The failures are nearly sure to happen among persons who have been too long accustomed to urban life habits, amenities, and vices, to put up with country humdrum pleasures THE CRY OF " BACK TO THE LAND." 579 and hard AVork. Persons of that kind are bound to fail and drop back to urban degradations like dogs to their A-omlts. Salvation Army experiments in Essex, although not as pecuniarly self-supporting as should be desired, have proved that town children can be trained up without difficulty to be capable and hearty agriculturists, with a health, strength, and morals that would have been beyond their reach if they had not been rescued from slums and streets. If " Back to the land " be a good cry, " Keep on the land " is a far better one, but there is no reason why the two should not be conjoined. " Keep on the land," with patience, industrial orderliness, and the operation of economical forces which are already at work will suffice for the re-peopling glens and straths and Isles with native Gaelic-speaking and English-speaking inhabitants. Our share of culti vable Highland soil Is so scanty that our people will need it all, and would be able to work it more pro fitably if they could get it. It Is in England, and in parts of the Lowlands of Scotland, that agricul tural colonists back from the towns can find room and be exceedingly useful. Market-gardening work and the raising of pigs and poultry can be taught to them in drilled companies, and from that stage the taught individuals with capacity and enterprise will launch out into undertakings of their own, and attain the same, or nearly 'the same, level as the best class of farm servants, Avho elevate themselves into prosperous farmers whenever success, hard to reach, lies at all in the line of their diligent endea vours and prudent, frugal way of living. Nature has immutably decreed that a nation's strength and its guarantee of power, and even of its very existence, must be its rural population. 580 REMINISCBNCBS AND REFLECTIONS. That truth is beginning to be slowly realised in this country, where it had too long been set at defiance by sacrificing country to town interests, and trusting all to free imports, labelled free trade. Money and trade are good, but are not the all-good which the Manchester School political economists of sixty years ago supposed them to be. Wealth, which is without sufficient Army and Navy defence, is apt to suddenly be seized upon by war-victors, or undermined and slowly appropriated by other means of conveyance, such as tariff walls to shut out British merchandise from the markets of other nations, who pour and dump their goods, free of duty, into the British markets. As soldiers, town-bred men cannot be ranked as equal to country-bred men, simply because they have not the same power of physical endurance, however full of courage and love of country. The late African war gave many proofs of the difference between the enduring qualities of soldiers that came out of towns and those who had been bom, brought-up, and hardened to bear fatigues and make long marches in rural places here and in the Colonies. The lowering of physical strength in toAvns Is one of the penalties ti;hat are not to be avoided, though it is possible to lighten this particular one by sanita tion, pure water, clean houses, temperance, and military and athletic exercises. It has been charged against Paris that in three or four generations it kills out the people who constantly reside in it, which charge, put in other words, comes to this, that the population of Paris has in every hundred years to be renewed from the outside. A tardy recognition of the fundamental truth that the country people are the mainstay pf national THB CRY OP "BACK TO THE LAND.' 581 strength is surely wrapt up in the cry of " Back to the land." So is a recognition of the other fact that it is only in country air and country pursuits town-bred people must seek the fountain for renew ing their youth. Inducements of a more substantial character than empty recognition of fundamental truths are required to make those born on the land stay on the land, when the Colonies offer them hearty welcome and free land. Still more are inducements necessary for alluring town people to go back to the land. Rates, which get heavier every year, would in some Highland parishes amount to rack-rents were it not for the sportsmen's contri butions. In bulk the country people of England and Scotland are as honest as any in the world — it would not be much of a stretch if I called them the most honest people on earth. They cling to Christian ethics and to the old fashioned, yet perpetually new principle of equity, " Let every one have his own," or if, for public purposes, he has to sell, " Let him have top market value for it, with something over for compulsory sale." The lawless terrorising of Irish conspirators themselves stops short at asking that landlords should be bought out at prairie value. The new peasant landowmers of Ireland are as great upholders of their property rights as the sternest or most oppressive of the old landlords had ever been. Levelling Socialism will never take firm root among farming people. It is in urban places, and in temporary alliance with trade unionists, who do not believe in it, that the upas tree of Socialism can rear its head and throw its poisonous shade over pelitical, municipal, and Ppor Law affairs. Genuine Socialists believe in their wUd theory, that if the 582 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. State seized upon all kinds of property, and made itself the sole employer of labour, the regimented labourers, although In a manner enslaved, would find themselves In a Golden Age. Socialism could never spring up spontaneously among farming people, Avho have a more thorough knowledge than their unborn theorists of human nature, and the conditions of the greatest and most permanent of natural industries. Small is the number of convinced Socialists in com parison with the predatory hordes AvhIch follow in their wake, looking out for prey and easy loafing life at the expense of the honest and Industrious. Were Socialism in a full-fiedged form to be adopted, certain it Is that all free Avealth would spread Its wings and fly where It would be safe ; then manu facturing mills and workshops, by the passing away of trade and commerce, Avould become habitations for bats and owls, and house property would lose its value, and grass grow on what are now busy streets. But the land would remain, and its inhabitants would find themselves in the position of hard working slaves to tyrannical urban paupers. Con vinced Socialists appear to labour under the gross delusion that the land is such an inexhaustible mine of Avealth as to be equal to any amount of imposts. Country people know the land to be already overburdened with rates and taxes, and ascribe to the overburdening the going away of farmers to British colonies or jDerchance to Pata gonia, and the drifting in past years of country labourers to London and otlier large cities and towns. They are not thankful for County Councils, Parish Councils, School, and other Boards, because of the lavish manner in which they spend the ratepayers' money, and borrow on the future rates. THE RESTLESSNESS OF TUB PRESENT AGE. 583 They growl about the number of paid officials and the salaries paid to them. They hate over-officialism and its interference, as well as its cost. They look back with sighs of regret to the cheap and less interfering local and county governing methods of the past, and they look forward — at anyrate the more thoughtful — to some relief for the ratepayers by reforming and simplifying the new methods. But it is probably In fiscal reform that their wisest men place their trust for relief and some revival of agricultural prosperity. CHAPTER LXXXV. THE RESTLESSNESS OF THE PRESENT AGE. Are the white rulers of the world losing staying and holding power when so many of them have taken, like children of Cain, to move to and fro on the face of the earth ? Never within the historical period has such aimless gadding about been witnessed before. Wars of conquest and defence; the barbarian invasion and overthrowing of the Roman Empire when luxury and wealth had destroyed Its manli ness, and filled all departments of its administration with corruption and inefficiency ; the further-back overthrow of Darius and his purple and gold-clad Persians by Alexander the Great and his shaggy Macedonians ; the religiously - inspired Crusaders ; and to come by a fong jump to recent times, the Napoleonic wars, — had all definite aims and mean ings. The present-day gadding about has for its openly-avowed object lov^ of pleasure and a crave for new sensations. Though a little elusive, its 584 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. hidden meanings are not difficult to get at, and when unearthed they are found to augur badly for the continuance of white - race leadership and stability. We do not know how in prehistoric times the human race was parcelled out in all lands. Clearly the earth was then going through a series of cata- clysmal changes, which ended in severing lauds formerly connected, and Avhich also caused backward and forward alterations of climates, and relative positions of land and water. What we do know is that from the era of the cave-dwellers downwards, there could have been no very rapid movements of people on the surface of this planet until steamers and railways, followed by motor-cars and bicycles, provided the means for rapid locomotion on land and sea. To some extent the locomotive facilities diminish the evil significance of the to - and - fro ramblings pf all who can afford it, and of many who cannot but trust to their wits either as parasites or thieves and impostors. When full deduction is made for facilities of locomotion to Cassandra-like alarmists, whose prophecies are not believed, the significance of the roving fever will lose very little of its seriousness. The gloomy prophets will still continue to regard it as positive proof of decay of morality and manhood, and point to accessories of it which confirm their pessimistic views. America, the historically young and boastingly ft-eest and wealthiest country in the world, is, in respect to evil signs, the farthest gone in decay. It is certainly the leader in the roving line. And President Roosevelt bears witness that its wealth is associated with a stupendous amount of fraud and corruption, — fi-aud that ingeniously circumvents THE RESTLESSNESS OF THE PRESENT AGE. 585 good laws, and corruption in municipal and political affairs which serves monopolistic trusts and syndi cates, and makes it possible for those who get control of other people's money to use it improperly for their own speculations. In the United States the farming classes on the whole are just as honest, religious, and moral as they are in this country. It is through them that purgation and redemption will come if they are ever to come. With free represen tative institutions, many lightly say — "Reform is easy." But how can it be easy when the anti- reformers have by clever devices, as well as unblushing corruption, got hold of the electoral machinery ? The gambling crave for money- making and money-catching by fair means or foul, and the selfish love of roving from one pleasui'e haunt to another, place marriage at a heavy discount, widen the gates of divorce, and fatally affect the family life, and prevent the raising and training of adequately numerous crops of children. In this and other European countries the evils Avhich threaten to brand the young and great go-ahead Republic of the United States with marks of prema ture decrepitude and decay are in operation, although far as yet from having reached the excess of New York and Chicago, Churches and creeds are troubled by inward shakings and outside assaults. Literature, whether in the guise of science, critical philosophy, or popular fiction, is drifting away upon unknown seas without a compass or the guidance of familiar stars. Un settling notions, of a most unwholesome nature, are as numerous and weU-winged for dispersion by breeze and gale as are bur dandelion seeds at 586 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Inverness — worst pest of our gardens. The vital statistics of the United Kingdom, although very much better than those of France and of the native-born and Anglo-Saxon sections of the United States population, are far from satis factory. The crop of children has fallen below its former level. Infant mortality has increased. Women are in more or less reA-olt against marriage and motherhood — by God's decree their highest functions. As for the women who, having the rating qualifications or propert}^ of their own, claim a voting equality with raen, their claim is right enough, although their methods are not to be always commended or excused. In self protection they are fully entitled to have votes on the same qualifica tions on which men have it. I remember, when Mr Disraeli's Bill, giving household suffrage to borough constituencies, was under discussion, arguing with a Radical in favour of giving qualified women votes like men, and of his emphatically condemning the idea of doing so. Looking at It from what was then the Radical party point of view, he Avas, I daresay, quite right. Women householders, or owners of separate property, are sure to be more Conservative than loafers who possess the franchise even when they recelA^e, as unemployed, public aid like paupers. Wonderful scientific discoveries and admirable mechanical Inventions have, like the head of Janus, two faces — one beneficent and the other maleficent. Terrorists quickly learned how to make powerful bombs and how to make atrocious use of them. All the discoveries and inventions of the white nations pass on to the yellow and broAvii races, and will In time pass on to the African races. Even now many Zulus, Basutos, and Kaffirs possess good firearms THE RESTLESSNESS OF THB PRESENT AGE. 587 and suitable ammunition. Jewish and other traders of the unscrupulous kind smuggle old firearms and ammunition up the country and from the west and east coasts to the tribes of the interior, and against that smuggling strict regulations and frontier and port watching- are by no means perfect protection. The roving spirit, or love for adventures and experiences by land and sea, comes Avith us into the world, and we \Aoald be poor creatures without it. It sent forth the knight-errant to fight monsters and redress Avrongs, and hardy voyagers and travellers to sail upon unknoAvn seas, and to plunge, taking their lives in their hands, araong savages and the pathless forests and deserts of unknown lands. Except the Ice-circles about the poles there is nothing of the lands and waters of the earth now left to be explored. The days of new discoveries and romantic adventures belong to the past. The old, old spirit, however, still survives, and seeks such outlets as It can find in sport on Highland moors and rivers, and shooting elephants and lions in Africa, or other animals In the Rocky Mountains. AU these hunting "outs" raake considerable demands on hardihood, and are healthy exercises. So much cannot be said of the " outings " of the crowds who carry their luxurious habits with them in grand steamers, and pass on land along beaten tracks over-abundantly furnished with magnificent hotels and all the attractions for capturing vanity and moral instabUity. Yet the moving about is in its worst form a protest against the burden of over- civUisatlon, and a ludicrously weak attempt to escape for a while from that burden. Health, wealth, pleasure, and leisure are not the highest ideals for men and women to keep before their eyes. 588 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. but there is a good deal to be said for each of them, while taken as a whole they are incompatible with one another. Cricket, football, tennis, golf, curling, and, in short, all athletic exercises, help to break the weari some monotony of present-day life, and to give some increase of health and contentment of mind and body to the workers in towns and centres of indus tries. But as regards all the able-bodied young men of the United Kingdom, it would be good for themselves and for their country if they went into the Territorial Army, and while learning to be disciplined soldiers, at the same time inhaled vigorous health from pure air, and hardened their muscles by military drills and campings and march ing. What the clubmen of London, and the jaded business men, and the nobility and gentry get from shootings and fishing, working-class young men can get by joining the Territorial Army, and qualifying themselves for the patriotic defence of their native land should the call for defence come, as come it may at an unexpected moment. In a bit of a poem on Scotland, which some time ago I saw in the " Scotsman," the secular side of the old way of training of the young of our country appeared to me to be happily summarised in the lines — " Let virtue crown the maiden's brow. And valour mould the man." We lose all if we do not keep that aim before us. THE URBAN INVASION OF THB COUNTRY. 589 CHAPTER LXXXVI. THE URBAN INVASION OF THE COUNTRY. Country life, with aU its drawbacks, is the natural life ; and Nature, though expelled with a fork, will now and then return to the most cynical and selfish and sensual of city men. What a pleasure it must be to London slum dwellers to go a-gipsying once a year to the Kent hop-gathering? How glad are peers and commoners to scurry away on week-end excursions to the country by trains and motor-cars? How sadly washed out by pursuit of pleasure become Society ladies, and how good it is for them to seek rest in the country and forget balls, operas, and all junketings and racketings of city life among trees and flowers, listening to the songs of birds ? What a mistake they make if they rush off to the Continent instead of going to the far more pleasant rural retreats at home which belong to them, where they have duties to discharge ? Well, the shooting season does fill halls and manors with owners and guests. And it is just to acknowledge that both classes of land-owning people— the old and the new — are far from being negligent in the discharge of their duty to those who live on their estates. Still the number of noblemen and gentry who spend the greater part of their time on their estates, and shun city life unless taken in small dozes, is not so large as should be desired for their own and their people's good, and for the union of classes and masses in a critical transitional period of national history. 590 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. The industrious, prudent workman who is earning daily wages can afford to pay one visit to the Continent. Paris and Rome, the Rhine, and even Egypt and Jerusalem, with Jericho thrown In, are quite Avithin his reach. But why should his fancy roam so far aAvay ? Is it not far wiser for him to he content with what he can so readily find at home — beautiful scenery, mountain air, and refreshing sea- breezes ? As a matter of fact, the well-to-do, comfortably - off, middle - class inhabitants of our Scotch cities and towns are not much given to roaming abroad. Neither are those of the wage- earning class, unless In the way of employment. It was not the case of old, but now "the Scot abroad" is usually one who has emigrated to a British colony, or one who holds a position in the public service or In a banking or business establishment. There are many scenes of beautiful landscape in England besides the Lake district, which exhibits in miniature form, with the omission of sea lochs, firths, and rocky shores, the features of Highland scenery. The Scotch Borders, Wales, and Ireland put in rival claims to favourable comjiarison. But Highland scenery is alone and aboA^e comparison with anything of Its kind in the United Kingdom. It laid Its spell upon the stranger who saAv It before railways had been dreamed of, and before passable roads joined glen to glen. The romance of Highland history likewise laid hold upon those avIio knew about it, or who merely observed with intelligence the picturesque peculiarities of the Highland people and their clannish propensities. The peculiar people romance has now almost become as shadowy as Ossian's ghosts. As the Highlands became more and more accessible, the summer visitors grew from a small THE URBAN TlVVAIION OF THE C^OUNTRY. 591 beginning into a host, dlA'ided into three classes, namely, sportsmen, passing tourists from all countries, and families and individuals from Scotch cities and towns, Avith some from a furtlier distance, who came to the villages along the raihvays and to sea side places, and took lodgings for the summer. Some of this third class built or bought houses for them selves in the Highland summering resorts which they liked best, or which best suited their business or professional vocations, near enough to give the raen Aveek-end excursions to see the Avives and families they sent awa}' to summer In the country. The first of the invading classes were the sportsmen. A few of them appeared with the making of fairly good roads, and the opening of the Caledonian Canal, and the few grew into many on the coraing of the railway. The circulating tourists and the day- trippers come and go, leaving no trace. The sports men are quite free from innovating intentions, but most of them being Church of England people they innocently and unconsciously help to accentuate the ecclesiastical separatism of the upper classes frora the masses, who are themselves separated by unreasonable ecclesiastical hedges. The third class are the mainstay of the Highland summer resorts, which grcAv up like Jonah's gourd the Instant railways and steamers opened up the Highlands. They exercise a fai- more direct Innovating Infiuence on Highland character, habit, and language than the others. That, hoAvever, is not the fault of the visitors, but of Highland imitativeness. The good in the said influence is mixed with positive evil, or what In another generation, should it not be stopped, wiU strip Highlanders of their best Highland characteristics. 592 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. The Scotch town-folk who, to compare great things with small, use our summering resorts, as Highlanders of the olden times used their shealings, are douce and decent folk, as well as profitable and welcome visitors. Without them the extensive lodging accommodation provided for summer visitors would be a dead loss. As it is, too much of building for such visitors has taken place. The stream of the desirable class of visitors shrinks or swells according to the prosperity or depression of trade. There are, no doubt, many persons of independent means in the annual class of visitors, whom fluctations in trade will not keep from coming every summer to the Highlands. But withput thpse who depend upon trade the stream of visitors would shrink to a small rivulet, like a mountain burn during a severe drought. And more than those who had lodgings to let would suffer from the shrinkage. The inter - dependencies of all sections of modern society are as numerous and complicated as the mechanical inventions for manufacturing processes, and main tenance of trade and commerce to which compelling causes have driven us, like other manufacturing nations. Laden with blessings is the annual retreat to what may be called Highland shealings, to denizens of cities and towns. From worries of professions and business cares, heads of families shake themselves free, and get a freshening feeling of youth renewed. Young men and maidens sauntering in woods or scaling mountains often step into a paradise of their own. It is happiest of all for the school children, emancipated from the yoke of crams and exams., and with unbounded capacity for making the most of novel and blameless enjoyment. The small THE URBAN INVASION OF THE COUNTRY, 593 trotters are amazed and delighted that they can run in a few minutes from houses to heather or bushes or crystal clear streams. The very babies wheeled about in perambulators fill their lungs with pure air, and with solemn round eyes look round them, and in a wordless way seem to be mightily pleased with the wonderful change in their surroundings. The truth of the saying — " God made the country, and man made the town," has been self- evident in all ages and in all lands. But for many ages in Scotland town and country life were of old more alike than they are now. It was not until the early part of last century that the present state of matters began — at first almost imperceptibly, and then of a sudden grew into a sweeping flood, which swept away all the old relations of urban and rural districts. What were our ancient Scotch cities when James VI. set off to England to sit on the throne of Queen Elizabeth ? Small places crowded with buildings within walls for defence, and, as a rule, commanded by castles belonging to or held for the King. In such a state they remained long after the union of the Crowns. They were the seats of learning, arts, crafts, and legis lative judicial and administrative organisations. Their inhabitants, like those of the early and most heroic days of Republican Rome, were cultivators, or farmers, or owners of land near their walls, and as interested and skilled in rural matters as the country people themselves. It was the industrial organisation which steam power and mechanical inventions brought about in last century that drew a hard and fast line between urban and rural life, and made a sacrifice of rural interests to urban, 38 594 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. or, in a broader sense, manufacturing and trading interests. As our industries were better organised and better capitalised than those of other countries, our enterprising traders poured British goods into the markets of the world, and forthwith our trade advanced by leaps and by bounds, and our cities and towns spread themselves out In a corresponding manner. So country life and country interests were complacently sacrificed or neglected until it began to dawn on a younger generation that other countries were, by tariff walls, getting up to us and ahead of us, and urban life was sapping out strength physically, morally, socially, and religiously. The town-dwellers who are able to escape once a year from smoke, bustle of streets, noise of machinery, and pressure of monotonous business to rustication places where they can breathe pure air, and where connection with Nature refreshes body and soul, have In Scotland, England, Wa,les, and Ireland, an infinite number of places of retreat from which to make a choice, each of which is more fitted to give the health benefits they are in search of, than a rush to Paris and a scamper on the Continent. And in their beautiful retreats they will have the additional pleasure of giving themselves credit for patriotism, because they spend their " outing " inoney in their own country. But they cannot help bringing with them into the country luxuries and habits of town life — such as town clothes and foods, and house comforts — which country people too readily imitate. This imitation is more damaging to country girls who take to domestic service in summering retreats, than to other natives. They are the best of domestic servants after a little training, and the most honest and trustworthy. So, many of them THE URBAN INVASION OF THE COUNTRY, 595 are drawn away by the visitor mothers of famihes into the cities and towns, where they meet with various fortunes — some good and some evil. And those who do not go away, learn to turn their backs upon dairy and field Avork, and lose in health more than they gain in wages, neatness, and aped ladyism. Thoughtful students of vital statistics and scien tific experts preach return to the simple life. They stand aghast when they look at the diminishing crop of children, infant mortality, and such signs of degeneracy as decay of teeth and defects of sight in so many of the children who survive infancy, and are to be the fathers and mothers of the next generation. The oculist, spectacle-maker, and the dentist have numerous clients, where they should not have them, in the ranks of the young. I cannot recollect a case of decay in a child's first set of teeth when I was a boy, and I knew many men and women who had their second set of teeth, full, or nearly so, in advanced old age. Country folk then lived on home-grown food, and women worked in youth and age more then they do now in the open air from early spring to the end of the harvest. The simple life is no longer what it used to be in the farmhouses, or in the crofter's or even the cottar's home. Oatcakes, barley scones, and porridge and milk, are not prized as they used to be. Kail and fish keep their footing well, but tea and groceries and loaf-bread, which in my early days were luxuries sparingly used in country houses, are now classed as necessaries of life by farmers, farm servants, crofters and cottars. But enough of the simple life remains among the country folk for their own preservation, and the town folk who come to what I may call Highland shealings in summer are asking renova tions in the best way open to them. 596 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER LXXXVII. PRESBYTERIAN DIVISIONS. I BELIEVE that eighty per cent, of the native-born population of all Scotland call themselves Presby terians, and the proportion exceeds that figure in the Highlands. It is clear to everyone who has eyes to see, and intelligence to understand, that our country, and other countries as well, must pass through the fiery ordeal of a transitional era, which already exhibits not a few of the dangers it carries in its bosom. The cause of religion, sound education, wise and firm government and administration, calls loudly for organised defence and cautious progress on lines which will lead to safety and save us from plunging into chaos, to find destruction there instead of the Socialist Golden Age. When proverbially and actually union is strength, and disunion Is weakness, the question which every Christian possessing commonsense should put to himself is — "Why do we not knock down paltry hedges of partition, and unite into a great host, fit, should there be need, to repeat the achievements of our ancestors in a new form ?" In 1860 the Free Church was as yet pervaded by the preaching fervour of evangelicalism and revivalism, and flourishing on Disruption principles, from which there could be no lapsing as long as the ruling power remained in the hands of those who had gone through the excitement ofthe "Ten Years' Conflict," and sealed their testimony by leaving the PRESBYTERIAN DIVISIONS. 597 Church of Scotland in May, 1843. The repre sentatives of Old Secessions that united in 1847 on the platform of Voluntaryism, and threw aside the testimonies and declarations of the founders of their little communions, counted fbr nothing in the High lands, but were of consequence in the southern towns, and had a footing in southern villages and rural districts. They took a lively part in political and municipal affairs, and were worthy and pros perous people, who, in the opinion of their less bustling and less self-confident neighbours, had not the least need to pray the Lord to give them a good conceit of themselves. Their ministers were orthodox evangelicals, and they kept themselves as much as they could out of the political and municipal affairs in which their hearers liked to display their gifts, and from which they often snatched the prizes of their ambition. In the South the Church of Scotland had, before 1870, in a great measure recovered from the staggering blow of the Disruption, and the party within her walls who wished to throw Lord Aberdeen's Act to the dogs and get patronage abplished root and branch, were gaining power and courage to fight and conquer. In the Highlands the smashing-up had been too thorough to allow of any thing more than very slow recovery. The majority of Highland Church of Scotland ministers had to put up for a long time with skeleton congregations, and although a vast improvement has taken place since the abolition of patronage, some of them have to do so to this day. In 1880 the Presbyterians of Scotland remained divided as they were in 1860 between the Church of Scotland, the Free Church, and the United Presbyterian Church. But in the interval of twenty 598 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. years the policy and relations of the three bodies had changed, and modifications of theology with innovations in worship were insensibly going on. The abolition of patronage, which popularised the Church of Scotland, in place of being hailed as a blessing was, unfortunately, resented as a grievance by the ruling party in the Free Church, and having taken their stand on the narrow platform of Volun taryism, the United Presbyterians had committed themselves to the policy of the English Liberation Society and clamoured for disestablishment. The abolition of patronage gave to disunited Scotch Presbyterianism a grand opportunity for a union Avhich involved no sacrifice of any principle worth keeping and which would promote the cause of religion and morality, and give Scotland ecclesiastical peace. Surely it Is to be deeply regretted that the opportunity was not eagerly and instantly seized upon, and that the work of rebuilding the broken Avails of the Presbyterian Zion was not immediately taken in hand with united forces. The spirit of rival sectarian interests spread her wings on the blast. Instead of the spirit of patriotism and religious harmony. Had there been the will there would have been the means, by using money thrown away on worse than useless strife, for providing funds to meet life-interests, and save every superfluous minister from unjust loss. Feelers were thrown out, and union negotiations, tried in a half-hearted way, were carried on for some years. They could not be whole-hearted since the disestablishment agitation which the Free and the U.P. Churches set on foot left no place for a successful issue when the Church of Scotland had to encounter a A^'ar of aggression with a war of self-defence. PRESBYTERIAN DIVISIONS, 599 As long as power remained In the hands of Disruption ministers and of the laymen who had gone out with them, and had been their partisans or foUowers and pupils during the "Ten Years' Conflict," there was no visible sliding away from the principles of 1843, among which the Establishment principle, or the union of Church and State in a manner Avhich left spiritual freedom to the Church, was emphati cally asserted. The abolition of patronage swept away the grievance round which all the other controversies had fixed themselves as barnacles. But as death diminished, from year to year, the number ofthe Disruption ministers and elders, their successors drifted into politicalism, ceased to wish for reunion, and bitterly resented the abolition of patronage as it was sure to strengthen the Church of Scotland. What they desired and sought was alliance with the United Presbyterians who had tied themselves to Voluntaryism and disestablishment. Modifications of theology, common to all Churches, and abatement of Disruption-time religious fervour and discipline, accompanied the development of political activities. In the Highlands the abolition of patronage did much to rehabilitate the Church of Scotland In public opinion, and to make ministers and congrega tions hold up their heads. " Mpderate " ceased tp be the term of reproach it had been in the mouths of Free Churchmen for a generation. Assailed by disestablish ers from without, the " Auld Kirk " had peace within, Avhile the Free Church was internally in a chronic state of commotion. Highland Free Churchmen stuck to the principles and religious fervour of Disruption days, from which they saw with horror their rulers and co-religlonists in the 600 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. South were, at first surreptitpusly, and at last quite openly, falling away. The founders ofthe Free Church claimed to be the true successors of the Covenanters in doctrine, dis cipline, and purity, and, with the blue banner over them, looked down on the "Moderates" with the pity or dislike of the orthodox for lapserians. The Free Church " Highland Host " stuck to that orthodoxy after it had lost its vice-like grip on the Free Church ministers, elders, and laity of the South. The Robertson -Smith heresy case so much excited the " Highland Host " that, if the heretic had not been got rid of, there might have been a split there and then over the first case which aroused the suspicion of unorthodoxy finding a lodgment among Free Church professors and rulers. Matters had much changed, and the " Highland Host " had, by the loss of leaders like Dr Kennedy, of Dingwall, and Dr George Mackay, Inverness, become less formidable when the far-reaching departure from orthodoxy contained in Professor Drummond's " Ascent of Man " was gently slided over. In its day of power the Highland Host comprised, with very few exceptions, all the Free Church ministers of the Highlands and a large majority of the Highland people. The ministers had no doubt about their divine commission. They preached with authority and effect, because they preached what they thoroughly believed to be God's truth and message to the world. The infiuence of the old ministers of the '43 was like an Elijah's mantle over the younger ministers. Behind the ministers were a laity, drilled and marshalled as Christian soldiers by catechists and the " Men," who gathered on Communion Fridays to discuss the " question " PRESBYTERIAN DIVISIONS. 601 and exercise their functions as critics of faith and morals. The " Men " Avere peculiar to the North. They are now a lost tribe, but their memory Is cherished, and some survivors of their order still are influential in a few places. It was impossible not to respect the deep piety of the " Men," and the consistency Avith which they carried out their doctrines in their lives ; but, at the same time, their views were narrow and their intolerance extreme. They plagued good and faithful ministers with in judicious interference, and they laid themselves open to the jeers and gibes of the irreligious, and the laughter and mimickry of those who only saw the grotesque side of their character and pro ceedings. " Moderates " had a right to make fun of the denunciations which the " Men " poured on them pretty continuously ; but it was significant of thoroughly changed relations when speakers and writers of the Rainy party took to holding them up to ridicule and scorn. The Highland Host and its Southern associates called themselves the Free Church Constitutional Party. It was a perfectly correct designation. They were undoubtedly the real representatives of the founders of the Free Church, and the defenders of the principles on which the Free Church was set up. They manfully resisted the Rainy-Hutton disestab lishing crusade, admitted that the abolition of patronage made reunion with the Church of Scot land not so impossible as it had been heretofore, and stuck tenaciously to the establishment principle. It was chiefly on their adherence to that principle the House of Lords sustained the remnant Free Church's claim of right many years afterwards. In 602 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. the quicksands of a shifting and sifting age, their unyielding resolution to keep the faith they nursed when young — the faith, as they maintained, which was once for all delivered to the saints, was, from one point of view, admirable and enviable. Who would not like, if he could, to have unshakable convictions on the questions which concern the soul ? They were charged with Ignorance, or wilful blindness. No doubt they refused to pay the least regard to the causes which were elsewhere giving trouble to churches and to individuals. Evolution, higher criticism, geology, historical researches, and the " finds " made by archaeological diggings In Egypt, Babylonia, and other lands, they personally knew little about, and would care less were it not that they were furnishing infidels with Satanic weapons, and unsettling the minds of young ministers, who were even now beginning to evade the assertion and Inculcation of long-accepted doctrines of Christianity in their flowery moral essays of sermons. True believers, they said, found the oracles of God and the words of eternal life In the Bible and only there. Looking back a quarter-of-a-century, when the " ncAv theology " was yet undreamed of, one can almost believe that intense, if narrow, piety gave to people unlearned, or learned only In Bible knoAv- ledge, a spirit of real prophecy. Secularism has in the interval made great strides towards conquest of schools and creeds. But such a conquest, however deplorable, cannot be lasting, fbr mankind must have some form of religion ; and the ethics of Christianity will survive the trials of this transi tional period, however creeds may be modified and worshipping forms altered to suit two sets of people who retain religieus instincts notwithstanding all PRESBYTERIAN DIVISIONS. 603 uncertainties of mind regarding the foundations of their belief The one set may be described as unavowed Unitarians, who will not admit to them selves the length they have traversed from the faith of their ancestors, and the second set as those Avho seek relief from their perplexities by abnegating freedom of will and the right of using self-judgment. Neither the unavowed Unitarians nor those who plunge back seeking something like a lifebelt to keep them afloat in a troubled sea, in sacerdotalism and mediaeval rites and ceremonies, can be blamed in the least. Both sets retain the worshipping instinct and haA-e the taproot of faith, and both are entitled to seize upon the aids to devotion which best suit their contrasted proclivities. The Free Church Constitutionalists all through their fight with the huge majority of their co religionists made a tremendous noise about purity of worship. Organs, "human hymns," and much music were abominations to them. They were certainly proofs of the dying away of the religious fervour and assurance of the Disruption time, and from another point of view they were conservative devices. Doctrinal or expository sermons were losing their former hold on congregations, and the ministers were losing the belief their predecessors had in their divine commission, and in every part and particle of the creed to which they pledged their allegiance. The old spiritual life existed longer, unconscious of lessening force, than it did in the Lowlands, and the Highlanders who so loudly protested against innovations knew by experience that where there was a seeking after religious revival, a simple service of praise, prayer, and exhortation held on a hillside or In an empty barn 604 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. had more soul-inspiring potency than the most elaborate services that could be held In beautiful churches or the grandest cathedrals. In their wild outcries against organs and hymns, the zeal of the champions of purity of worship outran their discretion. Organs cannot be forced on congregations that do not want them, nor can they on any religious ground be refused to those who do want them, pay for them, and provide salaries for organists, along with inevitable choir and incidental expenses. Organs are an expensive luxury, in which only large or wealthy congregations can indulge. In an unspiritual age like ours they help to draw to public worship numbers of careless people infected with Secularist ideas, who otherwise would not darken a church door, nor spend their Sundays otherwise than like week-day holidays. But, I think, it was in denouncing the use of hymns in public worship that the worse mistake was made — a mistake which by some is regretted already, and which, if persisted in, will be troublesome in the future. The collection of psalms which bears the name of David, is very grand as a whole, and not to be surpassed as an Intense outpouring of mono theistic faith in an d adoration of Almighty God, the Creator and Ruler of the Universe. But it is by no means clear in its recognition of the immortality of the soul and the life beyond the grave. The hymns, on the other hand, are saturated with Christian sentiments, and full of New Testament ideas. From the early days of Christianity, pious believers have been In many lands and many languages pouring out their deepest and holiest thoughts in sacred song. It therefore has come to pass that in the hymns of all nations, and all ages. PRESBYTERIAN DIVISIONS. 605 there is a rising above thoughts and things earthly, and a freedom from controversies theological and secular, which, if not amounting to positive inspira tion, at least provides suitable praise and prayer means of expression for the thoughts and heart-desires of present-day believers, and which, moreover, has a greater mesmeric power over the unbelievers than pulpit discourses or doctrinal sermons have in the days and changed situation to which, without exception, all the Churches of Christendom have now come. Questions about organs and hymns had not arisen among Presbyterians when the Free Church was founded. But I know, and my coevals know, that the ministers of '43, before and after they left the Church of Scotland, had no scruple in using the paraphrases in public worship. Nor did they draw a line between the paraphrase and the five " human hymns" appended to them. The first and last of the five were special favourites both in churches and homes. On the abolition of patronage there was no defensible cause to prevent the union of the three Presbyterian Churches. Religion, reason, economy, and efficiency demanded the consummation of noble reunion, and so did Scotch patriotism and honour, both pf which had suffered heavily frpm disunion. Why was the glorious opportunity so lamentably missed ? It was what the Americans would call "the pure cussedness" of sectarianism, with its con creted party interests and personal ambitions of men who would lose importance and ruling power in a re-united National Church, which really caused the throwing-away of the glorious opportunity. The other reasons and arguments that were mustered against national Presbyterian reunien were as 606 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. ragged an array as Falstaff's recruits. Against this ragged array had to be set the contemporanepus relaxatipn of doctrines and discipline by the very men Avho were such sticklers for trifles which they labelled " principles." The ruling party in the Free Church rejected the grand project of the national reunion of the Scotch Presbyterian communions on the old guaranteed foundations for which the first Reformers and the Covenanters contended, and to which the Revolution of 1688 and the 1707 Treaty of Union with England gave legal, and, as far as it could be, perpetual sanction. That rejection was deplorable enough in itself, but it was made ten times worse by the adoption of the project of union with the United Presbyterian Church for disestab lishing the Churches of England and Scotland. For worthy people it was surely an unworthy course to take ; but sectarian rivalries cause religious and moral blindness when warmed and cherished after justifying reasons for disunion have come to an end. The Rainyites displayed skill and patience in seeking to accomplish the union for disestablishing the National Churches. They brought to their work the wisdom of the serpent, if not in all cases the innocence of the dove. It took them twenty years of continuous struggle to reach their goal, and, when reached, it was not all they had wished to find it. There was opposition to their policy in the Lowlands as well as in the Highlands. But the opposition in the Lowlands was confined to certain towns and localities. It had in Dr Begg and others able leaders, but behind these leaders there was no solid army. Politicalism, influence of the largest giver to church funds, and the lowering of spiritual forces among the masses had done their work in the Low- PRESBYTERIAN DIVISIONS. 607 lands, while in the Highlands there had been no marked change since the Disruption in the religious life and ideals of the people. The Highland Host had therefore to be taken in hand and dealt with as the main army of the Opposition. The Host, in place of joining in the disestablishing campaign, at the head of which Dr Rainy placed himself and came with his henchmen to the North, stood aloof, and then held protesting demonstrations of its own. Free Churchmen stood and spoke on anti-disestab lishment platforms side by side with Established Churchmen. After death deprived the Host of the notable Disruption ministers who had long been its leaders, the Rainyites fondly hoped the time for their victory had come at last. So, one year they brought the Free Church Assembly to Inverness, where they held its meetings in a spacious wooden building on which floated the blue banner of the Covenant bearing the old inscription — " For Christ's Crown and Covenant." To flatter the Host one of their surviving Disruption ministers, Dr AIrd of Creich, was elected Moderator. Outwardly, all passed pleasantly, but a professor from the South nearly raised a tempest by assuming a bullying tone which gave offence that was instantly resented. Though outwardly there was a truce, the war went on after the Inverness Assembly on the part of the people who suspected the backsliding, as they called it, of some of their ministers, with Increasing bitterness and determination. Although I belonged to the "Auld Kirk," I was, as editor of the Northern Chronicle, kept well informed about every phase of the long contest, and especially so regarding the proceedings, opinions, suspicions, and grievances of 608 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. the Host. The purpose for which the Free Church Assembly was brought to Inverness was, of course, understood by both parties, and the soldiers of the Host considered that incursion, and Dr Rainy's various visits to the Highlands with his " tail on " like a chief gone out to war, as fair campaign tactics. Cajoling flattery, along with attempts to persuade by arguments, were not listed among the grievances of the minority, who were convinced that they had right and truth on their side. Such perverting attempts were simply to be rejected as they deserved. It was freely granted that, having the majority in the Assembly, and a great one to boot, entitled the Rainyites to rule — within the Constitution — and control the administrative machinery, superin tend the finance and take care of title deeds of churches, manses, and all other sorts of property. Rightly or wrongly, it was complained that matters had been so artfully managed as to enable the majority to use, quite legally, some special funds for party campaigning purposes. Rightly or wrongly, it was vehemently suspected, rather than proved, that undue pressure was brought to bear on ministers of the minority to make them desert their party. Highland Free Church people, whether they belonged to the Host or not, felt much hurt by being accused of making smaller contributions to the Sustentation Fund than they could and should do if they so willed it. It was Dr Ross Taylor's duty to work up the Sustentation Fund, but he knew the Highlands too well tp make such a charge in the gTossly insulting form in which it was made by speakers and writers of the Rainy party who did not know the Highlands and liked to give a sharp prick to Highland pride. The sting of the charge PRESBYTERIAN DIVISIONS. 609 was that it was colourably true. The number of Highland cpngregatipns which were self-suppprting was small, while the number whose ministers received more out of the Sustentation Fund than the contributions sent in to it by their congrega tions, was relatively very large. The indignant counter-assertion Avas that on a comparison of means and numbers the wronged and insulted Highland congregations were more liberal contribu tors than the large and wealthy congregations of the South. That assertion I beheve to be true. It was a very injudicious thing to accuse Highland congregations of the niggardliness of their givings, and consequent beggary and dependence : a de pendence which indicated the duty of humility and servile obedience to the Southern paymaster whom Dr Rainy and his followers were amply authorised and commissioned to represent. Politics and their Church polity were mixed and roUed together by the Rainyites, who found them selves dragged after Mr Gladstone into the bog of Irish Home Rule, and into alliance with Roman Catholics on the one hand and Socialists and Secularists on the other. The Host tried very hard to keep politics and the religious controversy entirely separate, and they did so to an almost miraculous degree. Having gpt household suffrage, the crofters, cottars, and labourers of the Highland counties in most cases elected parliamentary re presentatives who promised to do, or attempt to do, great things on the land question. But the political strangers who made all things square with the voters on the land questipn, had to be cautious and conservative en the disestablishment questipn. At the 1885 General Electipn, pf all the Radical- 39 610 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Gladstonian candidates for Highland county and burgh seats, as far as I can remember, only one, Mr Walter B. Maclaren, who contested the Inver ness Burghs against Mr Finlay, proclaimed himself a disestablisher. Mr Finlay had drawn up a Bill Avhich was intended to facilitate the union of the Free and Established Churches, by removing some real and also some fancied obstacles ; and that Bill was so well received that, at a crowded meeting in the Music Hall, Inverness, Dr Macdonald, of the High Church, and Dr George Mackay came arm in arm to the platform, followed by a crowd of Free and Church of Scotland ministers. That spontaneous and hearty demonstration in favour of the larger union represented Highland ecclesiastical views and wishes far more truly than did any of the dis establishing demonstrations which the Rainyites, with their better organisation and ample command of money and possession of electioneering skill, could ever at that time get up in any part of the Highlands. As the years rolled on the Disruption leaders of the Constitutionalists died out, and the new leaders who stepped into their places had not their weight of personal authority and experience. The old leaders knew what were Disruption principles far too well to be misled, and their testimonies kept others from being misled. When Dr Begg came to Inverness to attend a large gathering of Constitutionalists he was the last of the ministers who had taken a conspicuous part in Church affairs before the Disruption, and was ever afterwards a prominent personage in the Free Church Assembly. Age did not rob Dr Begg of his natural forcibleness of character, tenacity of ppinlpns, and dpwnright PRESBYTERIAN DIVISIONS. 611 mode of expressing them ; but age added to his authority, because the course of events proved his former foresight. After that visit to Inverness Dr Begg also in a short time slept with his fathers. While death deprived the Constitutionalists of their Disruption leaders before the war within the Free Church came near its climax, they were suffering loss of strength from another cause — the effect of unsettling science and literature upon their new ministers and upon their own younger people. Religious numbness was creeping pyer the whole land, and the younger ministers could not help being less sure of their theological tenets than the old ones had been, and wishful to get relief from strict Formula adherence to everything contained in the Confession of Faith. They are not to be condemned for assuming that for the general cause of religiou-s worship and life i'^ Scotland relaxation and modification were required to suit reasonable requirements of the restless spirit of the age. Anyone who will try to imagine himself in the position of a minister of any Protestant Church will sympathise with the men who are confronted by the clerical difficulties of the time in which we live. But was it not like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire for the harassed ministers of the Non- established Protestant Churches of England and Scotland to throw themselves into political turmoil, and substitute disestablishment crusading for lost spiritual doctrines and confidence in their own calling? A good deal more could have been said in defence of the theological compromises of the Rainyites had they not been coupled with the dis establishment crusading against the Established Churches of Scotland and England, whose chief 612 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. offences are historical continuity and superior capacity for serving the religious needs of every parish in Great Britain. In opposing the Free Church Declaratory Act, the " Men " and those who followed their teaching and example took up a more unyielding attitude than did some of the protesting ministers. I gathered from conversations with some of the out- and-out opponents of change that they had been reading and studying the Confession of Faith from beginning to end, and had come to the conclusion that the attack on the Confession was a false one to divert attention from the real attack, which was aimed at the plenary inspiration and authority of the New Testament. They spoke of Robertson- Smith's case, and said the first attacks had been made on the Old Testament, and they were now followed by attacks on the New Testament, under the pretext that nothing but the Confession was being meddled with. The passing of the Declaratory Act caused the secession of a few ministers and divinity students, who forthwith founded the small Free Presbyterian Church. The Declaratory Act secessionists departed shaking the Free Church dust off their feet, and making no claim to buildings or funds, as they well might have done. Their secession pleased the Rainyites and weakened the ranks of the Host, for the secessions of little companies of the Free Church people were spread over wide districts and zealous above measure. The Constitutionalists who protested but did not secede, as subsequent events demonstrated, were wiser than those who went out on the Declaratory Act. By resisting, protesting, and remaining in, they served themselves, on the PRESBYTERIAN DIVISIONS. 613 union with the U.P. Church, legal heirs to the Free Church of the Disruption, and got a good share of its property and funds. It is my firm belief that if the majority, when they carried their unfortunate union project through the Assembly, offered a proportionately fair share of buildings and funds to the unconquerable minority, the offer would have been accepted, and thereby all the subsequent troubles avoided. The minority, bpth ministers and people, believed themselves to be the genuine Free Church. Many of them feared that their rights might have been circumvented by the skilful arts and devices of their opponents. Why did the majority not make a generous offer of partitions of buildings and funds ? Later on it was said by them, or for them, that they had it in their minds to treat the minority generously, after they had proved their own exclusive right to the name as well as to the whole property of the Free Church of the Disruption. That may have been their intention, but their previous methods of dealing with the minority were not calculated to make the latter expect any kindness or semblance of justice from the majority. Moreover, they did not relish the idea of being picked up after having allowed themselves tp be cpntumeliously knocked down and robbed of what they thought their proper inheritance. The majority professed to be quite certain that if the minority went to law with them, the Court of Session and the House of Lords would give them all they asked. By ingenious, if sophistical reason ings, they had gained numerous converts from the Constitutionalists between the passing of the Declaratory Act and the completion of the Union with the United Presbyterians. Their ministers 614 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. declared from their pulpits that the Declaratory Act and the proposed union neither abandoned nor essentially altered the principles pf 1843, npr the dpctrines of the Confession ; and I believe that the men who made these assertions were, with few exceptions, saying what they thought was true. Perhaps a small number of Constitutional ministers owed their conversion, or perversion, to undue pressure and fear of losing their modest share of the loaves and fishes ; but higher motives shaped the conduct of the larger portion of those whom their former Host associates came at the severance time to think of as backsliders. The confident boastful- ness ofthe majority that they were sure to gain the whole property of the Free Church, and also serve themselves heir to the title as well, got to be louder- voiced than ever in consequence of their Court of Session victory, of which perhaps the less said the better. " Would the minority venture to appeal to the House of Lords ?" was then the question. They had no such financial resources as the majority. The narrow, technical view of the case taken in the Court of Session, along with the cost of appeal, might, it was thought by many, induce them to throw up the sponge. But those who thought so, thought wrongly. The appeal was persisted in, and the money for paying its cost was obtained without much difficulty. The House of Lords judged the case on the broad principles of law and equity, applicable to all societies, religious or secular, who exist under articles of association, and hold property for defined purposes. The judgment of the House of Lords was an astounding surprise and a stunning blow to the majority, who had made themselves so sure of victory all along the line. They, however. PRESBYTERIAN DIVISIONS. 615 upon the whole comported theraselves with remark able dignity of demeanour and moderation of speech and action. Wild ebullitions of wrath and threaten- ings by the few were only the exceptions which went to prove the calm dignity with which the many bore the unexpected blow. It may be safely assumed that the blow did not fall altogether as a surprise on the most thoughtful persons of the majority, although, as a matter of policy and prudence, they bad beforehand concealed their doubts and fears. Spiritual independence, and even religious liberty itself, must have their limits. Property and rights, under society terms of contract, can never be withdrawn from the review of the Civil Courts, when inembers of such associa tion complain of breach of contract by which they suffer wrong. In respect to religious freedom, it finds its limit at the point at which, under the guise of religion, public morals are set at defiance. The Thugs of India sought salvation by assassination, and were as criminals hunted down. The Mormons of the United States for the smaller offence of making pplygamy a part of their religious creed, were placed under the condemnation of public law. Anarchists boldly claim to be a religious sect, but no State in the world can afford to treat them in any other way than as criminals and enemies of mankind, like pirates. Far aloof from criminal association, claiming religious liberty for warring against public morals, are all the communities in which Christians are divided in this country. Every dissenting Christian association among us can formulate its own creed, and form its own governing regulations, and with the assent of all its members it can alter doctrines 616 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. and regulations. But when things came to the pass they did in the Free Church, the protesting minority that opposed the Union with the United Presbyterians, and who refused to give up Dis ruption principles and their rights under the organic deeds of the Free Church, had only a choice between suffering loss of rights and property, or appealing for justice and protection to the Civil Courts. The Civil Courts had nothing to do with the goodness or badness of Free Church dpctrines, principles, and organisations, but simply to find whether, in the case and proofs submitted to them, they were satisfied that the defenders had com mitted breach of contract, and that the appellants were being wronged. In the Court of Session, over the other narrowing technicalities was seemingly thrown the shadow of that unlimited claim to spiritual independence, which would, if allowed, withdraw consideration of breach of contract and of wrong to a minority from review by the Civil Courts. In the House of Lords the case was dealt with on the broad principles applicable to disputes and divisions arising in all societies, whether secular or religious. English precedents were numerous and decisive. In Scotland the case was a new one, and ideas were imported into the pleadings, and not repudiated by the judges, which, if accepted and generaUy applied, would have been far from harmless. English Dissenters had numerous quarrels and splits, with some unions also among themselves, and they never had a scruple about going to the Civil Courts for settling their property quarrels. Hence the numerous English precedents with which the judgment on the Free Church case is in perfect agreement. PRESBYTERIAN DIVISIONS. 617 The judgment of the House of Lords, carefully founded on ascertained facts of this special appeal, and on broad principles applicable in similar disputes and divisions of societies and companies associated for any specific purppses, declared the minority to be the true Free Church, and therefore entitled to all the Free Church property. While this judgment was strictly just, its consequences would have been lamentably unjust had no redress been found. The minority could not possibly use for their proper purposes all the buildings and funds which belonged to the Free Church on the day when the union Avith the United Presbyterians was consummated. Derelict property of all kinds falls in to the Crown, and in this instance, I suppose, it was assumed that all the property of which the small Free Church could not make proper use at once fell in to the Crown, and could therefore be dealt with as Crown property. The preamble of the Act of Parliament appointing the partitioning Commission, and in vesting it with unusual powers, might have stated more clearly than it does the legal theory which justified intervention ; but there is nothing else to account for the legality of the proceedings adopted. Here then is a very curious state of affairs. By the judgment of the final Court of Appeal all the property of the Free Church belonged to the minority, who never abandoned the Establishment principle, or union of Church and State, and the other party, who tried to take all, and legally lost aU, because they wanted to unite with voluntaries, and had taken to campaigning for disestablishment, were now very glad to receive part of the property they had forfeited back from King, Lords, and Commons. 618 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. It Ipoked like Fate's mocking irony that the disinterested defenders of the union of Church and State should be deprived of the larger portion of the property which the law awarded them, and that those who took pride in repudiating State con nection should thankfully receive back the larger part of what they had forfeited in the shape of State endowment. The Commission took a long time pver its work, which was full of difficulties, and of course there was grumbling on both sides over particular decisions, and on the part of the remnant Free Church there was unavoidably a disposition to dispute the fairness of the division when it came near to the finish. Still the Frees got more than equalled their immediate power of prpper user. In the Highlands, north of the Grampians, they are numerically rather strong, and well spread out over mainland and islands. In the awarding of churches and manses, I think the Commissioners not only showed them fairness measured by proportion of numbers, but in some instances generous favour. The ministers of the United Free Church who were "evicted" felt aggrieved enough, but they have been looked after by their new Church, and with all possible speed furnished with new churches and dwellings. The work of the Commission has had rather a sedative effect, for now both of the lately warring parties know where they stand. UNION OF SCOTCH PRESBYTERIANS. 619 CHAPTER LXXXVIII. SOME PLEAS ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL UNION OF SCOTCH PRESBYTERIANS. If the Christian nations are to retain freedom and position in the world — if they are to escape being slowly or suddenly dragged Into chaos through moral and industrial bankruptcy — ^it is surely high time for all the Christian Churches, as the pledged defenders of faith and morals, to federate themselves as a marshalled host against a levelling movement which aims at effacing the old rules of right and wrong, and at swamping all creeds and all civiliza tion under the waters of a universal deluge. Looked at in the light of reason, the divided condition of Scotch Presbyterianism is a sickening scandal. The cause of religion and morality urgently demands union. The worldly wisdom, which is called common sense, endorses that demand ; and the only real obstacle to union is the perversity of unreasoning and degrading sectarianism. Scotland, although a small and poor comer of Christendom, in Reformation days struck out a bold course for itself In regard to the system of Church organisation. Our Reformers, and their successors, the Covenanters, sought their tenets of faith in the New Testament, but there they found no clear guidance for Church organisation. With what New Testament uncertain light afforded, and with their very certain knowledge of the corruption of the pre-Reformation Scotch Church, and what 620 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. King James and his son were aiming at, they had no hesitation in asserting that the jus divinum, of ecclesiastical authority belonged not to Pope pr King, pr bishpp, but tp the believers, exercised through Kirk Sessions, Presbyteries, Synods, and Assembly, which were to represent the clergy and laity, on an equal footing. Unlike English Congregationalism, Presbyterian ism was a system devised for national purposes. The founders of the Free Church took with them into dissent that large national aim, and realised it so wonderfully that in an incredibly short time all Scotland was covered by Free Churches with ministers placed in them. The previous Secession ists also long retained the national Establishment principle, but were never able to extend beyond very restricted areas. It was long, and after long disputes, that they renounced their original prin ciples, and adopted Voluntaryism ; which adoption was a confession of inability to advance beyond narrow bounds, as well as a war-cry against the Established Churches. Through the Sustentation Fund, the Free Church acted like a national Church without endowments for many years — as long as the rule remained in the hands of the Disruption ministers and elders. The poor Highland con gregations were held up as examples of piety and devotion to the rest of the country, and flattered in reports to the Assembly. Little did the flattered and praised ones foresee then that a time Avould come when fidelity tp what gained them credit would be deemed an offence, and that they should be made to feel their dependence, and that their southern financial supporters expected them to be humbly grateful and obedient. That change of UNION OF SCOTCH PRESBYTERIANS. 621 attitude was sure to come with change of policy at headquarters.It appears tp me as dempnstrable as any prppo- sition in Euclid that by no other means than reunion with the Church of Scotland, on the old, well- guaranteed foundations, can Scotch Presbyterianism redeem its character aud recover strength to carry out its responsibilities for the upholding of the cause of Christianity and public morals in the land north of the Tweed. The kind of parity between rich and pppr congregations which has all along existed in the Church of Scotland cannot exist long, if at all, among the non-established Presbyterians. To obtain that parity, each congregation must have a separate endowment which makes it financially independent of contributipns from a central fund. In the Church of Scotland the rule is for the parish minister's stipend to come solely out of his own parish teinds. To that rule the chief exceptions are the new parishes founded and endowed during the last century. Being endowed to a modest extent, the new charges acquire the equality with the old parishes which is not obtainable between rich and poor charges, except by separate endowments in a non-established Presbyterian Church. Were the teinds to be confiscated, as predatory Socialists or reckless politicians wish them to be, the old parishes would be thereby deprived of the sure provision our ancestors had left them for the maintenance of religious service in perpetuity. As for the recently erected and endowed charges, they may be put aside at present, because only the Parliamentary parishes, few among five hundred, could be tcuched by the self-styled Liberaticn- ists withput laying Dissenting Churches exppsed 622 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. to an immensely heavier amount of confiscation. Socialists, if they could, would sweep all ecclesi astical property into their plunder bags, and that all would be small in comparison with the rest of what they are looking forward to. Sectarianism drags good people into bad company, but disestab- lishers are not general plunderers. They would gladly secure their life-interests to the ministers of the Churches they are so fatuously anxious to disestablish and disendow. They say, and it is charitable to suppose many of them are silly enough to believe, that they are animated by zeal for religion in assailing, tooth and nail, the two National Churches. If life-interests were to be respected, the sale of the parish teinds would not bring In much money for immediate use of any kind, and what it brought in would quickly be spent, as in the case of the Irish Church, with little benefit to the plunderers. The parishioners, of course, ought to have, for parish purposes, the whole value of their parish confiscated Church property. But would they be likely to get it ? And if they got it, ' could they make a better use of It than that which had been made of it before, and which puts each parish on a footing of independent equality with any other parish in Scotland ? Voluntaryism has never succeeded in covering the country districts with places of worship, like an Established Church. The Free Church upheld the Establishment prin ciple and repudiated Voluntaryism when performing the wonderful feat of taking seisin of Scotland with Free Churches and ministers. That feat is one that only could take place at a time when the spirit of religious enthusiasm had reached its highest level. It is not a feat which can be often repeated, nor were it repeated could parity be Ipng maintained. UNION OF SCOTCH PRESBYTERIANS, 623 Besides the parity between rich and poor Presbyteries, and town and country congregations, the fully developed Presbyterian system of Church government and representative organisation requires that there should be equality of rich and poor in electing ministers. That Avas always the theory, although in practice it was for a long time the custom to leave the nomination of elders to ministers and kirk-sessions, whose nominees, unless objected to on their names being submitted to cpngregatipns for approval, were forthwith ordained. The practice of leaving ministers and kirk-sessions to select and nominate fit persons for the eldership prevails yet where congregations are satisfied with it, but when direct nominating and voting by the congregation get the preference, the popular claim cannot be refused. Before the abolition of patronage, the Free Church had cause for adhering to the '"43" severance ; but after that there was no justification for further disunion which could be pled In reason's court ; and the mustering forces of secularism formed an unanswerable argument for reunion. But the old sects of Seceders who entered into the Union of 1847 made Voluntaryism the corner stone of their new United Presbyterian Church, and on the abolition of patronage, instead of sticking to Disruption principles and gladly joining with the liberated mother Church, the Free Church, by a great majority of ministers, elders, and people, went over to the United Presbyterians, and adopted their disestablishment and voluntary policy. What a sad result of cultivated and politically - poisoned sectarianism that throwing away of a glorious opportunity for immediate reunion was ! 624 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. The abolition of patronage left the Church of Scotland the freest and most truly democratic Church in the wprld. Futile attempts were made by spme pf those who were indignant at losing the old argument against the "Auld Kirk" to deny that the liberation was complete, because in the event of a congregation failing to elect a minister within six months from the date of the vacancy, the jus devolutum, would come into operation, and the choice would fall to the Presbytery. That jus devolutum, limitation was a very ancient and wise device for preventing prolonged vacancies. We have had now sufficiently long experience of election of ministers by Church of Scotland congregations to feel certain that it was good to retain it. Six months give ample time for looking out for a fit minister and completing his election. But the fear of losing the right of congregational patronage by not exercising it within six months helps to keep down wranglings between the partisans of ministerial rival candidates, and to lead to unanimity of choice in the end. I always felt confident that, in nine cases out of ten, congregations would neither fight among themselves, nor let the patronial right lapse to the Presbytery ; and I am now glad to know my trust in the people has been proved well-founded. Popular election of ministers has not caused many serious wrangles, and in the few cases in which the jus devolutum was allowed to take place. Presbyteries acted so judiciously as to heal possible splits in congregations. To judge by calls at large, and delayed settle ments, there were more troubles about the elections of ministers in the late Free Church than there has been in the Church of Scotland from the abolition pf UNION OF SCOTCH PRESBYTERIANS. 625 * patronage to this time (1909). But the years referred to could not be used for fair comparison, since all that time there was strife within the Free Church and peace within the Church of Scotland. Scotch Presbyterian congregations, to whatever section of divided Presbyterianism they belong, go, as a rule, with fcAv exceptions, about the work of electing their ministers with a solemn sense of responsibility, and carry it out with peaceful decorum. In regard to the voting in these elec tions, it is not so easy to make the rich man's vote and the poor man's vote of equal value in any Dissenting Church as it is in the Church of Scotland, where ministers' incomes do not depend on voluntary subscriptions, whether administered by a central body or a congregational one. This is a matter which rural congregations should bear well in mind, for without the sure parochial endowment they must on the whole depend on outside help, and that out side help, hoAvever carefully the fact may be veiled, robs them of their Presbyterian parity, and reduces them to a position of dependence. If this position hurts the self-respect of poor congregations, it is ten times more trying to their worried ministers, who have to endure lecturing exhortations from head quarters, and waste their time and energy on flattering and beseeching their people for more contributions than they can well afford to give. As for the bazaars which aU Churches now use for raising money, do they not too often bear a close resemblance to Vanity Fair exhibitions, and can they not almost be described as modern imitations of the sale of papal indulgences for raising money for the building of St Peter's, which roused the wrath of Luther ? 40 626 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS, Voluntaryism and Socialism are words which have been wrested from their original good meanings to label purposes which are the reverse of good. In the gpod sense of the term, we are all of us Socialists in recognising the mutual obligations of individuals and of classes and masses. In a similar way we are all Voluntaries. But Socialism, seeking to destroy existing institutions, in the vain hope of establishing Golden Age happiness on the ruins, means in its acutest form the suicidal madness of people who have lost hold on faith in God and belief in their own immortal and accountable souls. We are, or ought all of us to be. Voluntaries in regard to free will contributions of such means as we have for distinctly good purposes. But when Voluntaryism is made the corner-stone of Church policy, and used as the fulcrum for the lever of disestablishment, the good sense of the term is lost, and an evil and ridiculously inconsistent one is substituted. The Church pf England, npt tp mentipn the larger sums devpted to strictly ecclesi astical purposes, raised by free-will offerings since, say, 1836, fifty millions sterling for the secular and Christian education of the English people ; and since the Disruption, the Church of Scotland has, by the same means, equipped and endowed some four or five hundred new charges, besides the big sums spent on other Church schemes, some of which might well have been dispensed with, had it not been for sectarian dissensions and rivalries. Voluntaryism among the Presbyterians of Scot land — in my opinion unnecessarily divided from the day on which the Church of Scotland Avas liberated from that old grievance, the yoke of patronage — I think I may venture to say, has since the Disruption UNION OF SCOTCH PRESBYTERIANS. 627 yielded a total sum which would have been sufficient for the purchase of the fee simple of the Kingdom of Scotland, had it been set up for sale at twenty-five years' purchase of its annual national Income, like a private estate, on the day on which King James departed for England. How much of that total has been wasted on keeping up indefensible disunion, and sectarian rivalries, which weaken and dishonour Presbyterianism, and waste energies as well as material resources that should be concentrated on the high duty of upholding and spreading the Christian faith and zealously guarding Christian morals from its numerous assailants ? Where is the proverbial worldly wisdom of the Scotch people who tolerate, and by their contributions support, profli gate expenditure on keeping up miserable hedges of partition, when the need for union is so overwhelm ingly urgent, and all the substantial reasons for disunion have ceased to exist, except as ghosts of ghosts which are imagined rather than seen even when looked at through the conjuring glasses of sophistry ? Christian Endeavour is much heard of Co operation, of a kind, between disestablishers and defenders of establishments is played at. The value of these things amounts to this, that they are admissions of the desirability of, as soon as possible, getting forward to union, without strict uniformity. In a broad-based union formed to act as a division of the defensive Christian host ranged in battle array against the anti-Christian host, with many banners, there should be scope enough for such small differences as those about the use of organs and the exclusive use of the psalms. Voluntaries could be left to support themselves by their congregational 628 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. contributions and endowments, if they possessed any, while country congregations would be safe with their parochial teinds, and the endowments secured for supplementary charges. If brought about without a delay that might be fatal, how such a union would gather together for the fight on behalf of faith and morals the forces and resources which are dissipated by division, and in a large measure Avorse than wasted on suicidal sec tarian rivalries ! How it would r-edeem the honour of our democratic system of Church organisation and government ! How strongly it would splice the present with the past! How the blue banner of the Covenant would float again over a marshalled Presbyterian nation vowed to defend civil and religious liberty, with order and justice, against worse than Stuart Kings and their Episcopal tools ! Is not the very idea of such a union enough to inspire every true-hearted Presbyterian with an ardent desire for making that desire a realised fact ? When looked at from the higher ground of present time duty and expediency, the hedges of separation are too artificial, costly, and unprincipled to be kept for continued mischief They have done more mischief than can ever be repaired, except through the atoning work of a national Presbyterian union. The real difficulty is how to deal with superfluous ministers. That difficulty is mainly, but not wholly, a financial one. Life-interests must be justly dealt with, and compensation given even to those who wish to " compound and cut." In Africa, India, and the British Colonies there is room for any number of Presbyterian young ministers with University and ministerial qualifications, irreproach able character, and energetic devotion to their high UNION OF SCOTCH PRESBYTERIANS. 629 calling. Divisions at home account for the fact that Scotch Presbyterianism has not kept pace with other denominations in the outside parts of the British Empire. From Canada I have, in corres pondence with friends there, heard about the scarcity of Presbyterian ministers ; and complaints were also made that the Church of Scotland and the Free Church — I do not remember that anything was said of the United Presbyterian Church — had, for the last generation or so, allowed their wastrels, who should have been disciplined at home, to go to Canada and impose themselves on trustful con gregations there, with every chance of in a short time bringing discredit on themselves and on Presbyterianism at large. Cases of that kind could not have been numerous, but, however few, they did damage. The Canadian Presbyterians have now University and theological facilities for producing ministers of their own, but the new settlers on the Western plains would welcome gladly Presbyterian ministers from the Old Country. In South Africa, the Scotch Presbyterians, through apathy, closely connected, if not entirely due, to the divisions at home, failed to provide a connecting link between the Dutch Reformed Church and the Church of England. The Confession of the Synod of Dort, and the Westminster Confession, on all essentials are concordant, and the Dutch have the same Presbyterian Church organisation as we have in this country. But language and race-rivalries kept the Dutch apart more than would have been the case if the Scotch Colonists had, while otherwise in union and communion Avith them, churches In Avhich the services Avere in the English language. In 1866 the only church of that kind was the one at Cape 630 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. Town, of which Mr Morgan was the pastor ; and although neither belonging, by way of official recognition, to the Church of Scotland, or the Free Church of Scotland, or the Irish Presbyterian Church, Mr Morgan and his congregation very worthily represented the whole three of them, and showed In that small corner what healing and cementing work among the whites Presbyterian churches with services in English could have accom plished, if there were many of them and well spread out. As a field for missionary labour, Rhodesia, Uganda, and the West African British possessions can take any number of devoted workers. Where Mahometanism has struck its roots, or made an impression, Presbyterian missionaries will have better chances of gaining converts than almost any others, because of the Mahometan hatred of any semblance of idolatry, and because of more than superficial similarities in modes of organisation. At and before and after the inauspicious and obstructive Union of 1900, aged and infirm ministers of the uniting Churches retired on their pensions, and, to ensure efficiency, others were furnished with colleagues and successors. Were a national union of the Presbyterians of Scotland to be happily accomplished, there would be many resignations, on generous pensions, of aged and infirm men, and much consolidation by the collegiate process. Re formation and restoration by a great national union will undoubtedly require for its satisfactory and just realisation a hearty shoulder-to-shoulder de termination to financially pay the penalty for a disunion continued long after the justification for it had terminated, and the conquering progress of infidelity and steady growth of the lapsed showed UNION OF SCOTCH PRESBYTERIANS. 631 the dire necessity for mustering defensive forces on behalf not only of Christian faith and morals, but also of what in all times and all lands have been, are now, and shall ever continue to be fundamental principles of every form of tolerably just and workable civilisation. Besides the profligate ex penditure on superfluous ministers and church buildings, the Church of Scotland and the United Free Church spend money on other ragged selvedges of disunion, which, if they joined, could immediately be cut off. If the Highlands formed part of a National Church, with teinds and endow ments retained, what need wpuld there be for Edinburgh Highland and Islands Cpmmittees, and for the incursions of loudly-trumpeted ministers and intermeddling deputations from the South ? What ever erroneous views of the Highlanders may be held in the Lowlands, they have in theory and practice more of the faith once delivered to the saints, and, as the fruit thereof, purer morals than are to be commonly found either in the towns or more or less rural districts of the South. Self- respecting Highland pride is hurt at being treated as dependent on Lowland charity, and spoken down to by invaders assuming airs of superiority who do not understand the Highlanders or their language, nor hpw they are themselves judged and fpund wanting. When there is so much lapsing in one and all pf the Churches prpfessing the Christian religipn, they might well drop their schemes for the conversion of the Jews, whose monotheistic faith remains unaffected by the infidel literature and unsettledness of this revolutionary era. By con centration, retrenchment of disunion extravagances, and a national shoulder-to-shoulder suppprt of a 632 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. redeeming project, the financial problem can be solved without imposing much heavier burdens on voluntary contributors than disunion does just now. Then there is this great difference to be taken into account, that while disunion would perpetually require the present, or, if they could be got by hook or by crook, ever-increasing contributions, union would in the course of a few years require less and less for bearing the burden left to It by abolished disunion, and what It asked for and was gladly given would be all devoted to religious purposes universally approved of. Appeal for funds to con summate a national union of the Presbyterian Churches of Scotland would surely meet with a heartier response than it is now possible to give to appeals for money, money, money for keeping up strife and the suicidal policy of disunion. Why do I in this closing chapter of my rambling "Reminiscences and Reflections" plead earnestly, if feebly, for the reunion of the Presbyterians of Scot land on the old foundations laid by our ancestors ? Well, is it not a good excuse that I am a Scotsman, and a Highlander to boot ? In my youth the Church of Scotland was efficiently discharging the religious duties of a National Church from the Tweed to Thurso and the isles beyond, and, in addition, giving unpaid and important services in superintending schools and administering the affairs of the poor, which are now entrusted to new boards and costly officials. Of course, in Glasgow and other towns the inflow of strangers had even then outstripped the powers of the parochial system, which, however, was sufficient for all the require ments of rural parishes until the Disruption diverted by far the larger part of the customary "box" con- UNION OF SCOTCH PRESBYTERIANS. 633 tributions to Free Church purposes. I looked on the Disruption when it took place, and mere sp afterwards, as the heroic mistake of truly pious and honest men, who first committed the mistake of seeking to circumvent an Act of Parliament by an Act of Assembly, instead of working to get it properly repealed, and who, in the after controver sies, became too heated to go back on their steps and attack patronage in the right manner. I hoped, too sanguinely, that on the abolition of patronage the Church of Scotland and the Free Church would gladly unite again, and that in time the United Presbyterians, looking at the clouds Avhich were even then darkening the horizon of Christianity at home and abroad, would likewise be drawn into the great defensive union. Disestablishment, from whatever point of view it is looked at. Is a policy not of reconstruction, but of destruction. It is for one thing used as an auxiliary by those who are directly assailing all Christian denominations. It Is a policy of which the United Free Church of Scotland ought to be ashamed, and of which, indeed, members and adherents of it do feel ashamed when they are called upon to politically associate themselves, on its behalf, with Socialists and Irish Separatists. I have no chance of living to see it, but I still hope that the reunion of the Presbyterians of Scotland is bound to come before this twentieth century is much further advanced. In conversation with men and women of the divided Churches, I meet with none who do not admit re union is a thing to be desired. I find that many are perfectly sick of disunion, and of the profligate cost with which it has tp be upkept, and pf the almpst blackmailing pressure aud arts by which 41 634 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. funds are obtained. Voluntaryism is right enough in its proper place, and the Established Churches- make as free use of it as the Dissenting bodies ; but It cannot be relied upon like teinds and endowments for the perpetual maintenance of religious services in every parish, and for giving every one of them the equality status which is demanded by Presbyterian organisation. Voluntaryism elevated into and in sisted upon as a primary doctrine of salvation raade all attempts for bringing about a union of the Free and Established Churches vain, when the door for it had been opened by the abolition of patronage. The Rainy-Hutton alliance, bent upon effecting Its OAvn scheme of obstruction, and semi-political union, made disestablishment the precedent condition to union with the Church of Scotland. The other objections were palpable shams, I was sorry at the time that the project of the larger union so com pletely failed, but now I am disposed to believe that the obstructive union, in doing its best for the pre vention of Presbyterian reconstruction on the old foundations, has deeply impressed on people's minds the value of the ancestral legacy, and the worse than folly of dissipating and wasting religious energies which ought to be unitedly directed against aggressive Infidelity and spreading immorality. The populace more than the rulers decided cA^eiy great national event in the history of Scotland. The feudal nobility betrayed Wallace, and looked askance at Bruce, while the common people fought stubbornly for the liberty and independence of their native land. At the Reformation, and at the Covenant time, there was a coalition of gentry and commons againt the rulers. In 1688, the Church of Scotland, by the nation's backing, won her Ban- UNION OF SCOTCH PRESBYTERIANS, 635 nockburn Adctory. I do not hesitate to say that it was to a tornado of lay opinion the Disruption owed its completeness and reconstructive strength. The Forty Thieves, with their wise policy, Avould have had many accessions to their numbers had the pressure from Avithout been withdrawn. In this time of unsettlement and encompassing clouds of many dangers, I can think of nothing which makes a stronger claim on the religious duty and the patriotism of Scotch Presbyterians than the project of reunion in a reconstructed National Church, with all the ancestral legacies preserved. And that glorious project can be realised very promptly as soon as the laity will arouse themselves and imperatively demand reunion. 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