agreed with the patron, or had not noticeably dissented. But in the third
case of positive "objections," which (in order to justify themselves as
not frivolous and vexatious) were urged with peculiar emphasis, the
attention of all men was arrested. Newspapers reverberated the fact:
sympathetic groans arose: the patron was an oppressor: the parish was
under persecution: and the poor clergyman, whose case was the most to be
pitied, as being in a measure _endowed_ with a lasting fund of dislike,
had the mortification to find, over and above this resistance from within,
that he bore the name of "intruder" from without. He was supposed by the
fiction of the case to be in league with his patron for the persecution of
a godly parish; whilst in reality the godly parish was persecuting _him_,
and hallooing the world _ab extra_ to join in the hunt.

In such cases of pretended objections to men who have not been tried, we
need scarcely tell the reader, that usually they are mere cabals and
worldly intrigues. It is next to impossible that any parish or
congregation should sincerely agree in their opinion of a clergyman. What
one man likes in such cases, another man detests. Mr A., with an ardent
nature, and something of a histrionic turn, doats upon a fine rhetorical
display. Mr B., with more simplicity of taste, pronounces this little
better than theatrical ostentation. Mr C. requires a good deal of critical
scholarship. Mr D. quarrels with this as unsuitable to a rustic
congregation. Mrs X., who is "under concern" for sin, demands a searching
and (as she expresses it) a "faithful" style of dealing with consciences.
Mrs Y., an aristocratic lady, who cannot bear to be mixed up in any common
charge together with low people, abominates such words as "sin," and wills
that the parson should confine his "observations" to the "shocking
demoralization of the lower orders."

Now, having stated the practice of Scottish induction, as it was formerly
sustained in its first stage by law, in its second stage by usage, let us
finish that part of the subject by reporting the _existing_ practice as
regulated in all its stages by law. What law? The law as laid down in Lord
Aberdeen's late Act of Parliament. This statement should, historically
speaking, have found itself under our _third_ head, as being one amongst
the consequences immediately following the final rupture. But it is better
placed at this point; because it closes the whole review of that topic;
and because it reflects light upon the former practice--the practice which
led to the whole mutinous tumult: every alteration forcing more keenly
upon the reader's attention what had been the previous custom, and in what
respect it was held by any man to be a grievance.

This Act, then, of Lord Aberdeen's, removes all _legal_ effect from the
"_call_." Common sense required _that_. For what was to be done with
patronage? Was it to be sustained, or was it not? If not, then why quarrel
with the Non-intrusionists? Why suffer a schism to take place in the
church? Give legal effect to the "call," and the original cause of quarrel
is gone. For, with respect to the opponents of the Non-intrusionists,
_they_ would bow to the law. On the other hand, if patronage _is_ to be
sustained, then why allow of any lingering or doubtful force to what must
often operate as a conflicting claim? "A call," which carries with it any
legal force, annihilates patronage. Patronage would thus be exercised only
on sufferance. Do we mean then, that a "call" should sink into a pure
fiction of ceremony, like the English _congé-d'élire_ addressed to a dean
and chapter, calling on them to elect a bishop, when all the world knows
that already the see has been filled by a nomination from the crown? Not
at all; a _moral_ weight will still attach to the "call," though no legal
coercion: and, what is chiefly important, all those _doubts_ be removed by
express legislation, which could not but arise between a practice pointing
sometimes in one direction, and sometimes in another, between legal
decisions again upholding one view, whilst something very like legal
prescription was occasionally pleaded for the other. Behold the evil of
written laws not rigorously in harmony with that sort of customary law
founded upon vague tradition or irregular practice. And here, by the way,
arises the place for explaining to the reader that irreconcilable dispute
amongst Parliamentary lawyers as to the question whether Lord Aberdeen's
bill were _enactory_, that is, created a new law, or _declaratory_, that
is, simply expounded an old one. If enactory, then why did the House of
Lords give judgment against those who allowed weight to the "call?" That
might need altering; _that_ might be highly inexpedient; but if it
required a new law to make it illegal, how could those parties be held in
the wrong previously to the new act of legislation? On the other hand, if
declaratory, then show us any old law which made the "call" illegal. The
fact is--that no man can decide whether the act established a new law, or
merely expounded an old one. And the reason why he cannot--is this: the
practice, the usage, which often is the law, had grown up variously during
the troubles of the seventeenth century. In many places political reasons
had dictated that the elders should nominate the incumbent. But the
ancient practice had authorized patronage: by the act of Queen Anne (10th
chap.) it was even formally restored; and yet the patron in known
instances was said to have waived his right in deference to the "call."
But why? Did he do so, in courteous compliance with the parish, as a party
whose _reasonable_ wishes ought, for the sake of all parties, to meet with
attention? Or did he do so, in humble submission to the parish, as having
by their majorities a legal right to the presentation? There lay the
question. The presumptions from antiquity were all against the call. The
more modern practice had occasionally been _for_ it. Now, we all know how
many colourable claims of right are created by prescription. What was the
exact force of the "call," no man could say. In like manner, the exact
character and limit of allowable objections had been ill-defined in
practice, and rested more on a vague tradition than on any settled rule.
This also made it hard to say whether Lord Aberdeen's Act were enactory or
declaratory, a predicament, however, which equally affects all statutes
_for removing doubts_.

The "call," then, we consider as no longer recognised by law. But did Lord
Aberdeen by that change establish the right of the patron as an
unconditional right? By no means. He made it strictly a conditional right.
The presentee is _now_ a candidate, and no more. He has the most important
vote in his favour, it is true: but that vote may still be set aside,
though still only with the effect of compelling the patron to a new choice.
"_Calls_" are no longer doubtful in their meaning, but "_objections_" have
a fair field laid open to then. All reasonable objections are to be
weighed. But who is to judge whether they _are_ reasonable? The presbytery
of the district. And now pursue the action of the law, and see how little
ground it leaves upon which to hang a complaint. Every body's rights are
secured. Whatever be the event, first of all the presentee cannot complain,
if he is rejected only for proved insufficiency. He is put on his trial as
to these points only: 1. Is he orthodox? 2. Is he of good moral
reputation? 3. Is he sufficiently learned? And note this, (which in fact
Sir James Graham remarked in his official letter to the Assembly,)
strictly speaking, he ought not to be under challenge as respects the
third point; for it is your own fault, the fault of your own licensing
courts (the presbyteries,) if he is not qualified so far. You should not
have created him a licentiate, should not have given him a license to
preach, as must have been done in an earlier stage of his progress, if he
were not learned enough. Once learned, a man is learned for life. As to
the other points, he may change; and _therefore_ it is that an examination
is requisite. But how can _he_ complain, if he is found by an impartial
court of venerable men objectionable on any score? If it were possible,
however, that he should be wronged, he has his appeal. Secondly, how can
the patron complain? _His_ case is the same as his presentee's case; his
injuries the same; his relief the same. Besides, if _his_ man is rejected,
it is not the parish man that takes his place. No; but a second man of
his own choice: and, if again he chooses amiss, who is to blame for
_that_? Thirdly, can the congregation complain? They have a _general_
interest in their spiritual guide. But as to the preference for
oratory--for loud or musical voice--for peculiar views in religion--these
things are special: they interest but an exceedingly small minority in any
parish; and, what is worse, that which pleases one is often offensive to
another. There are cases in which a parish would reject a man for being a
married man: some of the parish have unmarried daughters. But this case
clearly belongs to the small minority; and we have little doubt that,
where the objections lay "for cause not shown," it was often for _this_
cause. Fourthly, can the church complain? Her interest is represented, 1,
not by the presentee; 2, not by the patron; 3, not by the congregation;
but 4, by the presbytery. And, whatever the presbytery say, _that_ is
supported. Speaking either for the patron, for the presentee, for the
congregation, or for themselves as conservators of the church, that court
is heard; what more would they have? And thus in turn every interest is
protected. Now the point to be remarked is--that each party in turn has a
separate influence. But on any other plan, giving to one party out of the
four an absolute or unconditional power, no matter which of the four it
be--all the rest have none at all. Lord Aberdeen has reconciled the rights
of patrons for the first time with those of all other parties interested.
Nobody has more than a conditional power. Every body has _that_. And the
patron, as necessity requires, if property is to be protected, has in all
circumstances the reversionary power.

II. _Secondly_, How _were these things done?_ By what means were the hands
of any party strengthened, so as to find this revolution possible?

We seek not to refine; but all moral power issues out of moral forces. And
it may be well, therefore, rapidly to sketch the history of religion,
which is the greatest of moral forces, as it sank and rose in this island
through the last two hundred years.

It is well known that the two great revolutions of the seventeenth
century--that in 1649, accomplished by the Parliament armies, (including
its reaction in 1660,) and secondly, that in 1688-9--did much to unsettle
the religious tone of public morals. Historians and satirists ascribe a
large effect in this change to the personal influence of Charles II., and
the foreign character of his court. We do not share in their views; and
one eminent proof that they are wrong, lies in the following fact--viz.
that the sublimest act of self-sacrifice which the world has ever seen,
arose precisely in the most triumphant season of Charles's career, a time
when the reaction of hatred had not yet neutralized the sunny joyousness
of his Restoration. Surely the reader cannot be at a loss to know what we
mean--the renunciation in one hour, on St Bartholomew's day in 1662, of
two thousand benefices by the non-conforming clergymen of England. In the
same year, occurred a similar renunciation of three hundred and sixty
benefices in Scotland. These great sacrifices, whether called for or not,
argue a great strength in the religious principle at that era. Yet the
decay of external religion towards the close of that century is proved
incontestably. We ourselves are inclined to charge this upon two causes;
first, that the times were controversial and usually it happens--that,
where too much energy is carried into the controversies or intellectual
part of religion, a very diminished fervour attends the culture of its
moral and practical part. This was perhaps one reason; for the dispute
with the Papal church, partly, perhaps, with a secret reference to the
rumoured apostasy of the royal family, was pursued more eagerly in the
latter half of the seventeenth than even in any section of the sixteenth
century. But, doubtless, the main reason was the revolutionary character
of the times. Morality is at all periods fearfully shaken by intestine
wars, and by instability in a government. The actual duration of war in
England was not indeed longer than three and a half years, viz. from
Edgehill fight, in the autumn of 1642, to the defeat of the king's last
force under Sir Jacob Astley at Stow-in-the-wolds in the spring of 1646.
Any other fighting in that century belonged to mere insulated and
discontinuous war. But the insecurity of every government between 1638 and
1702, kept the popular mind in a state of fermentation. Accordingly, Queen
Anne's reign might be said to open upon an irreligious people. This
condition of things was further strengthened by the unavoidable
interweaving at that time of politics with religion. They could not be
kept separate; and the favour shown even by religious people to such
partisan zealots as Dr Sacheverell, evidenced, and at the same time
promoted, the public irreligion. This was the period in which the clergy
thought too little of their duties, but too much of their professional
rights; and if we may credit the indirect report of the contemporary
literature, all apostolic or missionary zeal for the extension of religion,
was in those days a thing unknown. It may seem unaccountable to many, that
the same state of things should have spread in those days to Scotland; but
this is no more than the analogies of all experience entitled us to expect.
Thus we know that the instincts of religious reformation ripened every
where at the same period of the sixteenth century from one end of Europe
to the other; although between most of the European kingdoms there was
nothing like so much intercourse as between England and Scotland in the
eighteenth century. In both countries, a cold and lifeless state of public
religion prevailed up to the American and French Revolutions. These great
events gave a shock every where to the meditative, and, consequently, to
the religious impulses of men. And, in the mean time, an irregular channel
had been already opened to these impulses by the two founders of Methodism.
A century has now passed since Wesley and Whitfield organized a more
spiritual machinery of preaching than could then be found in England, for
the benefit of the poor and labouring classes. These Methodist
institutions prospered, as they were sure of doing, amongst the poor and
the neglected at any time, much more when contrasted with the deep
slumbers of the Established church. And another ground of prosperity soon
arose out of the now expanding manufacturing system. Vast multitudes of
men grew up under that system--humble enough by the quality of their
education to accept with thankfulness the ministrations of Methodism, and
rich enough to react, upon that beneficent institution, by continued
endowments in money. Gradually, even the church herself, that mighty
establishment, under the cold shade of which Methodism had grown up as a
neglected weed, began to acknowledge the power of an extending Methodistic
influence, which originally she had haughtily despised. First, she
murmured; then she grew anxious or fearful; and finally, she began to find
herself invaded or modified from within, by influences springing up from
Methodism. This last effect became more conspicuously evident after the
French Revolution. The church of Scotland, which, as a whole, had
exhibited, with much unobtrusive piety, the same outward torpor as the
church of England during the eighteenth century, betrayed a corresponding
resuscitation about the same time. At the opening of this present century,
both of these national churches began to show a marked rekindling of
religious fervour. In what extent this change in the Scottish church had
been due, mediately or immediately, to Methodism, we do not pretend to
calculate; that is, we do not pretend to settle the proportions. But
_mediately_ the Scottish church must have been affected, because she was
greatly affected by her intercourse with the English church, (as, e.g., in
Bible Societies, Missionary Societies, &c.;) and the English church had
been previously affected by Methodism. _Immediately_ she must also have
been affected by Methodism, because Whitfield had been invited to preach
in Scotland, and _did_ preach in Scotland. But, whatever may have been the
cause of this awakening from slumber in the two established churches of
this island, the fact is so little to be denied, that, in both its aspects,
it is acknowledged by those most interested in denying it. The two
churches slept the sleep of torpor through the eighteenth century; so much
of the fact is acknowledged by their own members. The two churches awoke,
as from a trance, in or just before the dawning of the nineteenth century;
this second half of the fact is acknowledged by their opponents. The
Wesleyan Methodists, that formidable power in England and Wales, who once
reviled the Establishment as the dormitory of spiritual drones, have for
many years hailed a very large section in that establishment--viz., the
section technically known by the name of the Evangelical clergy--as
brothers after their own hearts, and corresponding to their own strictest
model of a spiritual clergy. That section again, the Evangelical section,
in the English church, as men more highly educated, took a direct interest
in the Scottish clergy, upon general principles of liberal interest in all
that could affect religion, beyond what could be expected from the
Methodists. And in this way grew up a considerable action and reaction
between the two classical churches of the British soil.

Such was the varying condition, when sketched in outline, of the Scottish
and English churches. Two centuries ago, and for half a century beyond
that, we find both churches in a state of trial, of turbulent agitation,
and of sacrifices for conscience which involved every fifth or sixth
beneficiary. Then came a century of languor and the carelessness which
belongs to settled prosperity. And finally, for both has arisen a half
century of new light--new zeal--and, spiritually speaking, of new
prosperity. This deduction it was necessary to bring down, in order to
explain the new power which arose to the Scottish church during the last
generation of suppose thirty years.

When two powerful establishments, each separately fitted to the genius and
needs of its several people, are pulling together powerfully towards one
great spiritual object, vast must be the results. Our ancestors would have
stood aghast as at some fabulous legend or some mighty miracle, could they
have heard of the scale on which our modern contributions proceed for the
purposes of missions to barbarous nations, of circulating the Scriptures,
(whether through the Bible Society, that is the National Society, or
Provincial Societies,) of translating the Scriptures into languages
scarcely known by name to scholars, of converting Jews, of organizing and
propagating education. Towards these great objects the Scottish clergy had
worked with energy and with little disturbance to their unanimity.
Confidence was universally felt in their piety and in their discretion.
This confidence even reached the supreme rulers of the state. Very much
through ecclesiastical influence, new plans for extending the religious
power of the Scottish church, and indirectly of extending their secular
power, were countenanced by the Government. Jealousy had been disarmed by
the upright conduct of the Scottish clergy, and their remarkable freedom
hitherto from all taint of ambition. It was felt, besides, that the temper
of the Scottish nation was radically indisposed to all intriguing or modes
of temporal ascendency in ecclesiastical bodies. The nation, therefore,
was in some degree held as a guarantee for the discretion of their clergy.
And hence it arose, that much less caution was applied to the first
encroachment of the Non-intrusionists, than would have been applied under
circumstances of more apparent doubt. Hence it arose, that a confidence
from the Scottish nation was extended to this clergy, which too certainly
has been abused.

In the years 1824-5, Parliament had passed acts "for building additional
places of worship in the highlands and islands of Scotland." These acts
may be looked upon as one section in that general extension of religious
machinery which the British people, by their government and their
legislature, have for many years been promoting. Not, as is ordinarily
said, that the weight of this duty had grown upon them simply through
their own treacherous neglect of it during the latter half of the
eighteenth century; but that no reasonable attention to that duty _could_
have kept pace with the scale upon which the claims of a new manufacturing
population had increased. In mere equity we must admit--not that the
British nation had fallen behind its duties, (though naturally it might
have done so under the religious torpor prevalent at the original era of
manufacturing extension,) but that the duties had outstripped all human
power of overtaking them. The efforts, however, have been prodigious in
this direction for many years. Amongst those applied to Scotland, it had
been settled by parliament that forty-two new churches should be raised in
the highlands, with an endowment from the Government of L.120 annually for
each incumbent. There were besides more than two hundred chapels of ease
to be founded; and towards this scheme the Scottish public subscribed
largely. The money was entrusted to the clergy. _That_ was right. But mark
what followed. It had been expressly provided by Parliament--that any
district or circumjacent territory, allotted to such parliamentary
churches as the range within which the incumbent was to exercise his
spiritual ministrations, should _not_ be separate parishes for any civil
or legal effects. Here surely the intentions and directions of the
legislature were plain enough, and decisive enough.

How did the Scottish clergy obey them? They erected all these
jurisdictions into _bona fide_ "parishes," enjoying the plenary rights (as
to church government) of the other parishes, and distinguished from them
in a merely nominal way as parishes _quoad sacra_. There were added at
once to the presbyteries, which are the organs of the church power, 203
clerical persons for the chapels of ease, and 42 for the highland
churches--making a total of 245 new members. By the constitution of the
Scottish church, an equal number of lay elders (called ruling elders)
accompany the clerical elders. Consequently 490 new members were
introduced at once into that particular class of courts (presbyteries)
which form the electoral bodies in relation to the highest court of
General Assembly. The effect of this change, made in the very teeth of the
law, was twofold. First, it threw into many separate presbyteries a
considerable accession of voters--_all owing their appointments to the
General Assembly_. This would at once give a large bias favourable to
their party views in every election for members to serve in the Assembly.
Even upon an Assembly numerically limited, this innovation would have told
most abusively. But the Assembly was _not_ limited; and therefore the
whole effect was, at the same moment, greatly to extend the electors and
the elected.

Here, then, was the machinery by which the faction worked. They drew that
power from Scotland rekindled into a temper of religious anxiety, which
they never could have drawn from Scotland lying torpid, as she had lain
through the 18th century. The new machinery, (created by Parliament in
order to meet the wishes of the Scottish nation,) the money of that nation,
the awakened zeal of that nation; all these were employed, honourably in
one sense, that is, not turned aside into private channels for purposes of
individuals, but factiously in the result, as being for the benefit of a
faction; honourably as regarded the open _mode_ of applying such
influence--a mode which did not shrink from exposure; but most
dishonourably, in so far as privileges, which had been conceded altogether
for a spiritual object, were abusively transferred to the furtherance of a
temporal intrigue. Such were the methods by which the new-born ambition of
the clergy moved; and that ambition had become active, simply because it
had suddenly seemed to become practicable. The presbyteries, as being the
effectual electoral bodies, are really the main springs of the
ecclesiastical administration. To govern _them_, was in effect to govern
the church. A new scheme for extending religion, had opened a new avenue
to this control over the presbyteries. That opening was notoriously
unlawful. But not the less, the church faction precipitated themselves
ardently upon it; and but for the faithfulness of the civil courts, they
would never have been dislodged from what they had so suddenly acquired.
Such was the extraordinary leap taken by the Scottish clergy, into a power
of which, hitherto, they had never enjoyed a fraction. It was a movement
_per saltum_, beyond all that history has recorded. At cock-crow, they had
no power at all; when the sun went down, they had gained (if they could
have held) a papal supremacy. And a thing not less memorably strange is,
that even yet the ambitious leaders were not disturbed; what they had
gained was viewed by the public as a collateral gain, indirectly adhering
to a higher object, but forming no part at all of what the clergy had
sought. It required the scrutiny of law courts to unmask and decompose
their true object. The obstinacy of the defence betrayed the real _animus_
of the attempt. It was an attempt which, in connexion with the _Veto_ Act,
(supposing that to have prospered,) would have laid the whole power of the
church at their feet. What the law had distributed amongst three powers,
patron, parish, and presbytery, would have been concentred in themselves.
The _quoad sacra_ parishes would have riveted their majorities in the
presbyteries; and the presbyteries, under the real action of the _Veto_,
would have appointed nearly every incumbent in Scotland. And this is the
answer to the question, when treated merely in outline--_How were these
things done?_ The religion of the times had created new machineries for
propagating a new religious influence. These fell into the hands of the
clergy; and the temptation to abuse these advantages led them into
revolution.

III. Having now stated WHAT was done, as well as HOW it was done, let us
estimate the CONSEQUENCES of these acts; under this present, or _third_
section, reviewing the immediate consequences which have taken effect
already, and under the next section, anticipating the more remote
consequences yet to be expected.

In the spring of 1834, as we have sufficiently explained, the General
Assembly ventured on the fatal attempt to revolutionize the church, and
(as a preliminary towards _that_) on the attempt to revolutionize the
property of patronage. There lay the extravagance of the attempt; its
short-sightedness, if they did not see its civil tendencies; its audacity,
if they _did_. It was one revolution marching to its object through
another; it was a vote, which, if at all sustained, must entail a long
inheritance of contests with the whole civil polity of Scotland.

  "Heu quantum fati parva tabella vehit!"

It might seem to strangers a trivial thing, that an obscure court, like
the presbytery, should proceed in the business of induction by one routine
rather than by another; but was it a trivial thing that the power of
appointing clergymen should lapse into this perilous dilemma--either that
it should be intercepted by the Scottish clerical order, and thus, that a
lordly hierarchy should be suddenly created, disposing of incomes which,
in the aggregate, approach to half a million annually; or, on the other
hand, that this dangerous power, if defeated as a clerical power, should
settle into a tenure exquisitely democratic? Was _that_ trivial? Doubtless,
the Scottish ecclesiastical revenues are not equal, nor nearly equal, to
the English; still, it is true, that Scotland, supposing all her benefices
equalized, gives a larger _average_ to each incumbent than England, of the
year 1830. England, in that year, gave an average of £299 to each
beneficiary; Scotland gave an average of £303. That body, therefore, which
wields patronage in Scotland, wields a greater relative power than the
corresponding body in England. Now this body, in Scotland, must finally
have been the _clerus_; but supposing the patronage to have settled
nominally where the Veto Act had placed it, then it would have settled
into the keeping of a fierce democracy. Mr Forsyth has justly remarked,
that in such a case the hired ploughmen of a parish, mercenary hands that
quit their engagements at Martinmas, and _can_ have no filial interest in
the parish, would generally succeed in electing the clergyman. That man
would be elected generally, who had canvassed the parish with the arts and
means of an electioneering candidate; or else, the struggle would lie
between the property and the Jacobinism of the district.

In respect to Jacobinism, the condition of Scotland is much altered from
what it was; pauperism and great towns have worked "strange defeatures" in
Scottish society. A vast capital has arisen in the west, on a level with
the first-rate capitals of the Continent--with Vienna or with Naples; far
superior in size to Madrid, to Lisbon, to Berlin; more than equal to Rome
and Milan; or again to Munich and Dresden, taken by couples: and in this
point, beyond comparison with any one of these capitals, that whilst
_they_ are connected by slight ties with the circumjacent country, Glasgow
keeps open a communication with the whole land. Vast laboratories of
encouragement to manual skill, too often dissociated from consideration of
character; armies of mechanics, gloomy and restless, having no interfusion
amongst their endless files of any gradations corresponding to a system of
controlling officers; these spectacles, which are permanently offered by
the _castra stativa_ of combined mechanics in Glasgow and its dependencies,
(Paisley, Greenock, &c.,) supported by similar districts, and by turbulent
collieries in other parts of that kingdom, make Scotland, when now
developing her strength, no longer the safe and docile arena for popular
movements which once she was, with a people that were scattered, and
habits that were pastoral. And at this moment, so fearfully increased is
the overbalance of democratic impulses in Scotland, that perhaps in no
European nation--hardly excepting France--has it become more important to
hang weights and retarding forces upon popular movements amongst the
labouring classes.

This being so, we have never been able to understand the apparent apathy
with which the landed body met the first promulgation of the _Veto_ Act in
May 1834. Of this apathy, two insufficient explanations suggest
themselves:--1st, It seemed a matter of delicacy to confront the General
Assembly, upon a field which they had clamorously challenged for their own.
The question at issue was tempestuously published to Scotland as a
question exclusively spiritual. And by whom was it thus published? The
Southern reader must here not be careless of dates. _At present_, viz. in
1844, those who fulminate such views of spiritual jurisdiction, are simply
dissenters; and those who vehemently withstand them are the church, armed
with the powers of the church. Such are the relations between the parties
in 1844. But in 1834, the revolutionary party were not only _in_ the
church, but (being the majority) they came forward _as_ the church. The
new doctrines presented themselves at first, not as those of a faction,
but of the Scottish kirk assembled in her highest court. The _prestige_ of
that advantage, has vanished since then; for this faction, after first of
all falling into a minority, afterwards ceased to be any part or section
of the church; but in that year 1834, such a _prestige_ did really operate;
and this must be received as one of the reasons which partially explain
the torpor of the landed body. No one liked to move _first_, even amongst
those who meant to move. But another reason we find in the conscientious
scruples of many landholders, who hesitated to move at all upon a question
then insufficiently discussed, and in which their own interest was by so
many degrees the largest.

These reasons, however, though sufficient for suspense, seem hardly
sufficient for not having solemnly protested against the _Veto_ Act
immediately upon its passing the Assembly. Whatever doubts a few persons
might harbour upon the expediency of such an act, evidently it was
contrary to the law of the land. The General Assembly could have no power
to abrogate a law passed by the three estates of the realm. But probably
it was the deep sense of that truth, which reined up the national
resistance. Sure of a speedy collision between some patron and the
infringers of his right, other parties stood back for the present, to
watch the form which such a collision might assume.

In that same year of 1834, not many months after the passing of the
Assembly's Act, came on the first case of collision; and some time
subsequently a second. These two cases, Auchterarder and Marnoch,
commenced in the very same steps, but immediately afterwards diverged as
widely as was possible. In both cases, the rights of the patron and of the
presentee were challenged peremptorily; that is to say, in both cases,
parishioners objected to the presentee without reason shown. The conduct
of the people was the same in one case as in the other; that of the two
presbyteries travelled upon lines diametrically opposite. The first case
was that of _Auchterarder_. The parish and the presbytery concerned, both
belonged to Auchterarder; and there the presbytery obeyed the new law of
the Assembly: they rejected the presentee, refusing to take him on trial
of his qualifications; And why? we cannot too often repeat--simply because
a majority of a rustic congregation had rejected him, without attempting
to show reason for his rejection. The Auchterarder presbytery, for _their_
part in the affair, were prosecuted in the Court of Session by the injured
parties--Lord Kinnoul, the patron, and Mr Young, the presentee. Twice,
upon a different form of action, the Court of Session gave judgment
against the presbytery; twice the case went up by appeal to the Lords;
twice the Lords affirmed the judgment of the court below. In the other
case of _Marnoch_, the presbytery of Strathbogie took precisely the
opposite course. So far from abetting the unjust congregation of rustics,
they rebelled against the new law of the Assembly, and declared, by seven
of their number against three, that they were ready to proceed with the
trial of the presentee, and to induct him (if found qualified) into the
benefice. Upon this, the General Assembly suspended the seven members of
presbytery. By that mode of proceeding, the Assembly fancied that they
should be able to elude the intentions of the presbytery: it being
supposed that, whilst suspended, the presbytery had no power to ordain;
and that, without ordination, there was no possibility of giving induction.
But here the Assembly had miscalculated. Suspension would indeed have had
the effects ascribed to it; but in the mean time, the suspension, as being
originally illegal, was found to be void: and the presentee, on that
ground, obtained a decree from the Court of Session, ordaining the
presbytery of Strathbogie to proceed with the settlement. Three of the ten
members composing this presbytery, resisted; and they were found liable in
expenses. The other seven completed the settlement in the usual form. Here
was plain rebellion; and rebellion triumphant. If this were allowed, all
was gone. What should the Assembly do for the vindication of their
authority? Upon deliberation, they deposed the contumacious presbytery
from their functions as clergymen, and declared their churches vacant. But
this sentence was found to be a _brutum fulmen_; the crime was no crime,
the punishment turned out no punishment: and a minority, even in this very
Assembly, declared publicly that they would not consent to regard this
sentence as any sentence at all, but would act in all respects as if no
such sentence had been carried by vote. _Within_ their own high Court of
Assembly, it is, however, difficult to see how this refusal to recognise a
sentence voted by a majority could be valid. Outside, the civil courts
came into play; but within the Assembly, surely its own laws and votes
prevailed. However, this distinction could bring little comfort to the
Assembly at present; for the illegality of the deposal was now past all
dispute; and the attempt to punish, or even ruin, a number of professional
brethren for not enforcing a by-law, when the by-law itself had been found
irreconcilable to the law of the land, greatly displease the public, as
vindictive, oppressive, and useless to the purposes of the Assembly.

Nothing was gained except the putting on record an implacability that was
_confessedly_ impotent. This was the very lunacy of malice. Mortifying it
might certainly seem for the members of a supreme court, like the General
Assembly, to be baffled by those of a subordinate court: but still, since
each party must be regarded as representing far larger interests than any
personal to themselves, trying on either side, not the energies of their
separate wits, but the available resources of law in one of its obscurer
chapters, there really seemed no more room for humiliation to the one
party, or for triumph to the other, than there is amongst reasonable men
in the result from a game, where the game is one exclusively of chance.

From this period it is probably that the faction of Non-intrusionists
resolved upon abandoning the church. It was the one sole resource left for
sustaining their own importance to men who were now sinking fast in public
estimation. At the latter end of 1842, they summoned a convocation in
Edinburgh. The discussions were private; but it was generally understood
that at this time they concerted a plan for going out from the church, in
the event of their failing to alarm the Government by the notification of
this design. We do not pretend to any knowledge of secrets. What is known
to every body is--that on the annual meeting of the General Assembly, in
May 1843, the great body of the Non-intrusionists moved out in procession.
The sort of theatrical interest which gathered round the Seceders for a
few hurried days in May, was of a kind which should naturally have made
wise men both ashamed and disgusted. It was the merest effervescence from
that state of excitement which is nursed by novelty, by expectation, by
the vague anticipation of a "scene," possibly of a quarrel, together with
the natural interest in _seeing_ men whose names had been long before the
public in books and periodical journals.

The first measure of the Seceders was to form themselves into a
pseudo-General Assembly. When there are two suns visible, or two moons,
the real one and its duplicate, we call the mock sun a _parhelios_, and
the mock moon a _paraselene_. On that principle, we must call this mock
Assembly a _para-synodos_. Rarely, indeed, can we applaud the Seceders in
the fabrication of names. They distinguish as _quoad sacra_ parishes those
which were peculiarly _quoad politica_ parishes; for in that view only
they had been interesting to the Non-intrusionists. Again, they style
themselves _The Free Church_, by way of taunting the other side with being
a servile church. But how are they any church at all? By the courtesies of
Europe, and according to usage, a church means a religious incorporation,
protected and privileged by the State. Those who are not so privileged are
usually content with the title of Separatists, Dissenters, or
Nonconformists. No wise man will see either good sense or dignity in
assuming titles not appropriate. The very position and aspect towards the
church (legally so called) which has been assumed by the
Non-intrusionists--viz. the position of protestors against that body, not
merely as bearing, amongst other features, a certain relation to the State,
but specifically _because_ they bear that relation, makes it incongruous,
and even absurd, for these Dissenters to denominate themselves a "church."
But there is another objection to this denomination--the "Free Church"
have no peculiar and separate Confession of Faith. Nobody knows what are
their _credenda_--what they hold indispensable for fellow-membership,
either as to faith in mysteries or in moral doctrines. Now, if they
reply--"Oh! as to that, we adopt for our faith all that ever we _did_
profess when members of the Scottish kirk"--then in effect they are hardly
so much as a dissenting body, except in some elliptic sense. There is a
grievous _hiatus_ in their own title-deeds and archives; they supply it by
referring people to the muniment chest of the kirk. Would it not be a
scandal to a Protestant church if she should say to communicants--"We have
no sacramental vessels, or even ritual; but you may borrow both from Papal
Rome." Not only, however, is the Kirk to _lend_ her Confession, &c.; but
even then a plain rustic will not be able to guess how many parts in his
Confession are or may be affected by the "reformation" of the
Non-intrusionists. Surely, he will think, if this reformation were so vast
that it drove them out of the national church, absolutely exploded them,
then it follows that it must have interveined and _indirectly_ modified
innumerable questions: a difference that was punctually limited to this
one or these two clauses, could not be such a difference as justified a
rupture. Besides, if they have altered this one or these two clauses, or
have altered their interpretation, how is any man to know (except from a
distinct Confession of Faith) that they have not even _directly_ altered
much more? Notoriety through newspapers is surely no ground to stand upon
in religion. And now it appears that the unlettered rustic needs two
guides--one to show him exactly how much they have altered, whether two
points or two hundred, as well as _which_ two or two hundred; another to
teach him how far these original changes may have carried with them
secondary changes as consequences into other parts of the Christian system.
One of the known changes, viz. the doctrine of popular election as the
proper qualification for parish clergymen, possibility is not fitted to
expand itself or ramify, except by analogy. But the other change, the
infinity which has been suddenly turned off like a jet of gas, or like the
rushing of wind through the tubes of an organ, upon the doctrine and
application of _spirituality_, seems fitted for derivative effects that
are innumerable. Consequently, we say of the Non-intrusionists--not only
that they are no church; but that they are not even any separate body of
Dissenters, until they have published a "Confession" or a _revised_
edition of the Scottish Confession.

IV. Lastly, we have to sum and to appreciate the _ultimate_ consequences
of these things. Let us pursue them to the end of the vista.--First in
order stands the dreadful shock to the National Church Establishment; and
that is twofold: it is a shock from without, acting through opinion, and a
shock from within, acting through the contagion of example. Each case is
separately perfect. Through the opinion of men standing _outside_ of the
church, the church herself suffers wrong in her authority. Through the
contagion of sympathy stealing over men _inside_ of the church, peril
arises of other shocks in a second series, which would so exhaust the
church by reiterated convulsions, as to leave her virtually dismembered
and shattered for all her great national functions.

As to that evil which acts through opinion, it works by a machinery, viz.
the press and social centralization in great cities, which in these days
is perfect. Right or wrong, justified or _not_ justified by the acts of
the majority, it is certain that every public body--how much more then, a
body charged with the responsibility of upholding the truth in its
standards!--suffers dreadfully in the world's opinion by any feud, schism,
or shadow of change among its members. This is what the New Testament, a
code of philosophy fertile in new ideas, first introduced under the name
of _scandal_; that is, any occasion of serious offence ministered to the
weak or to the sceptical by differences irreconcilable in the acts or the
opinions of those whom they are bound to regard as spiritual authorities.
Now here in Scotland, is a feud past all arbitration: here is a schism no
longer theoretic, neither beginning nor ending in mere speculation: here
is a change of doctrine, _on one side or the other_, which throws a sad
umbrage of doubt and perplexity over the pastoral relation of the church
to every parish in Scotland. Less confidence there must always be
henceforward in great religious incorporations. Was there any such
incorporation reputed to be more internally harmonious than the Scottish
church? None has been so tempestuously agitated. Was any church more
deeply pledged to the spirit of meekness? None has split asunder so
irreconcilably. As to the grounds of quarrel, could any questions or
speculations be found so little fitted for a popular intemperance? Yet no
breach of unity has ever propagated itself by steps so sudden and
irrevocable. One short decennium has comprehended within its circuit the
beginning and the end of this unparalleled hurricane. In 1834, the first
light augury of mischief skirted the horizon--a cloud no bigger than a
man's hand. In 1843 the evil had "travelled on from birth to birth."
Already it had failed in what may be called one conspiracy; already it had
entered upon a second, viz. to rear up an _Anti-Kirk_, or spurious
establishment, which should twist itself with snake-like folds about the
legal establishment; surmount it as a Roman _vinea_ surmounted the
fortifications which it beleaguered; and which, under whatsoever practical
issue for the contest, should at any rate overlook, molest, and insult the
true church for ever. Even this brief period of development would have
been briefer, had not the law courts interposed many delays. Demurs of law
process imposed checks upon the uncharitable haste of the _odium
theologicum_. And though in a question of schism it would be a _petitio
principii_ for a neutral censor to assume that either party had been
originally in error, yet it is within our competence to say, that the
Seceders it was whose bigotry carried the dispute to that sad issue of a
final separation. The establishment would have been well content to stop
short of that consummation: and temperaments might have been found,
compromises both safe and honourable, had the minority built less of their
reversionary hopes upon the policy of a fanciful martyrdom. Martyrs they
insisted upon becoming: and that they _might_ be martyrs, it was necessary
for them to secede. That Europe thinks at present with less reverence of
Protestant institutions than it did ten years ago, is due to one of these
institutions in particular; viz. to the Scottish kirk, and specifically to
the minority in that body. They it was who spurned all mutual toleration,
all brotherly indulgence from either side to what it regarded as error in
the other. Consequently upon _their_ consciences lies the responsibility
of having weakened the pillars of the Reformed churches throughout
Christendom.

Had those abuses been really such, which the Seceders denounced, were it
possible that a primary law of pure Christianity had been set aside for
generations, how came it that evils so gross had stirred no whispers of
reproach before 1834? How came it that no aurora of early light, no
prelusive murmurs of scrupulosity even from themselves, had run before
this wild levanter of change? Heretofore or now there must have been huge
error on their own showing. Heretofore they must have been traitorously
below their duty, or now mutinously beyond it.

Such conclusions are irresistible; and upon any path, seceding or not
seceding, they menace the worldly credit of ecclesiastical bodies. That
evil is now past remedy. As for the other evil, that which acts upon
church establishments, not through simple failure in the guarantees of
public opinion, but through their own internal vices of composition; here
undeniably we see a chasm traversing the Scottish church from the very
gates to the centre. And unhappily the same chasm, which marks a division
of the church internally, is a link connecting it externally with the
Seceders. For how stands the case? Did the Scottish Kirk, at the last
crisis, divide broadly into two mutually excluding sections? Was there one
of these bisections which said _Yes_, whilst the other responded _No_? Was
the affirmative and negative shared between them as between the black
chessmen and the white? Not so; and unhappily not so. The two extremes
there were, but these shaded off into each other. Many were the _nuances_;
multiplied the combinations. Here stood a section that had voted for all
the changes, with two or three exceptions; there stood another that went
the _whole_ length as to this change, but no part of the way as to that;
between these sections arose others that had voted arbitrarily, or
_eclectically_, that is, by no law generally recognised. And behind this
eclectic school were grouped others who had voted for all novelties up to
a certain day, but after _that_ had refused to go further with a movement
party whose tendencies they had begun to distrust. In this last case,
therefore, the divisional line fell upon no principle, but upon the
accident of having, at that particular moment, first seen grounds of
conscientious alarm. The principles upon which men had divided were
various, and these various principles were variously combined. But, on the
other hand, those who have gone out were the men who approved totally, not
partially--unconditionally, not within limits--up to the end, and not to a
given day. Consequently those who stayed in comprehended all the shades
and degrees which the men of violence excluded. The Seceders were
unanimous to a man, and of necessity; for he who approves the last act,
the extreme act, which is naturally the most violent act, _à fortiori_
approves all lesser acts. But the establishment, by parity of reason,
retained upon its rolls all the degrees, all the modifications, all who
had exercised a wise discretion, who, in so great a cause, had thought it
a point of religion to be cautious; whose casuistry had moved in the
harness of peace, and who had preferred an interest of conscience to a
triumph of partisanship. We honour them for that policy; but we cannot
hide from ourselves, that the very principle which makes such a policy
honourable at the moment, makes it dangerous in reversion. For he who
avows that, upon public motives, he once resisted a temptation to schism,
makes known by that avowal that he still harbours in his mind the germ of
such a temptation; and to that scruple, which once he resisted, hereafter
he may see reason for yielding. The principles of schism, which for the
moment were suppressed, are still latent in the church. It is urged that,
in quest of unity, many of these men _succeeded_ in resisting the
instincts of dissension at the moment of crisis. True: But this might be
because they presumed on winning from their own party equal concessions by
means less violent than schism; or because they attached less weight to
the principle concerned, than they may see cause for attaching upon future
considerations; or because they would not allow themselves to sanction the
cause of the late Secession, by going out in company with men whose
principles they adopted only in part, or whose manner of supporting those
principles they abhorred. Universally it is evident, that little stress is
to be laid on a negative act; simply to have declined going out with the
Seceders proves nothing, for it is equivocal. It is an act which may cover
indifferently a marked hostility to the Secession party, or an absolute
friendliness, but a friendliness not quite equal to so extreme a test. And,
again, this negative act may be equivocal in a different way; the
friendliness may not only have existed, but may have existed in strength
sufficient for any test whatever; not the principles of the Seceders, but
their Jacobinical mode of asserting them, may have proved the true nerve
of the repulsion to many. What is it that we wish the English reader to
collect from these distinctions? Simply that the danger is not yet gone
past. The earthquake, says a great poet, when speaking of the general
tendency in all dangers to come round by successive and reiterated shocks--

  "The earthquake is not satisfied at once."

All dangers which lie deeply seated are recurrent dangers; they intermit,
only as the revolving lamps of a lighthouse are periodically eclipsed. The
General Assembly of 1843, when closing her gates upon the Seceders, shut
_in_, perhaps, more of the infected than at that time she succeeded in
shutting _out_. As respected the opinion of the world outside, it seemed
advisable to shut out the least number possible; for in proportion to the
number of the Seceders, was the danger that they should carry with them an
authentic impression in their favour. On the other hand, as respected a
greater danger, (the danger from internal contagion,) it seemed advisable
that the church should have shut out (if she could) very many of those who,
for the present, adhered to her. The broader the separation, and the more
absolute, between the church and the secession, so much the less anxiety
there would have survived lest the rent should spread. That the anxiety in
this respect is not visionary, the reader may satisfy himself by looking
over a remarkable pamphlet, which professes by its title to separate the
_wheat from the chaff_. By the "wheat," in the view of this writer, is
meant the aggregate of those who persevered in their recusant policy up to
the practical result of secession. All who stopped short of that
consummation, (on whatever plea,) are the "chaff." The writer is something
of an incendiary, or something of a fanatic; but he is consistent with
regard to his own principles, and so elaborately careful in his details as
to extort admiration of his energy and of his patience in research.

But the reason for which we notice this pamphlet, is, with a view to the
proof of that large intestine mischief which still lingers behind in the
vitals of the Scottish establishment. No proof, in a question of that
nature, _can_ be so showy and _ostensive_ to a stranger, as that which is
supplied by this vindictive pamphlet. For every past vote recording a
scruple, is the pledge of a scruple still existing, though for the moment
suppressed. Since the secession, nearly 450 new men may have entered the
church. This supplementary body has probably diluted the strength of the
revolutionary principles. But they also may, perhaps, have partaken to
some extent in the contagion of these principles. True, there is this
guarantee for caution, on the part of these new men, that as yet they are
pledged to nothing; and that, seeing experimentally how fearfully many of
their older brethren are now likely to be fettered by the past, they have
every possible motive for reserve, in committing themselves, either by
their votes or by their pens. In _their_ situation, there is a special
inducement to prudence, because there is a prospect, that for _them_
prudence is in time to be effectual. But for many of the older men,
prudence comes too late. They are already fettered. And what we are now
pointing out to the attention of our readers, is, that by the past, by the
absolute votes of the past, too sorrowfully it is made evident, that the
Scottish church is deeply tainted with the principles of the secession.
These germs of evil and of revolution, speaking of them in a _personal_
sense, cannot be purged off entirely until one generation shall have
passed away. But, speaking of them as _principles_ capable of vegetation,
these germs may or may not expand into whole forests of evil, according to
the accidents of coming events, whether fitted to tranquillize our billowy
aspects of society; or, on the other hand, largely to fertilize the many
occasions of agitation, which political fermentations are too sure to
throw off. Let this chance turn out as it may, we repeat for the
information of Southerns--that the church, by shutting off the persons of
particular agitators, has not shut off the principles of agitation; and
that the _cordon sanataire_, supposing the spontaneous exile of the
Non-intrusionists to be regarded in that light, was not drawn about the
church until the disease had spread widely _within_ the lines.

Past votes may not absolutely pledge a man to a future course of action;
warned in time, such a man may stand neutral in practice; but thus far
they poison the fountains of wholesome unanimity--that, if a man can evade
the necessity of squaring particular _actions_ to his past opinions, at
least he must find himself tempted to square his opinions themselves, or
his counsels, to such past opinions as he may too notoriously have placed
on record by his votes.

But, if such are the continual dangers from reactions in the establishment,
so long as men survive in that establishment who feel upbraided by past
votes, and so long as enemies survive who will not suffer these
upbraidings to slumber--dangers which much mutual forbearance and charity
can alone disarm; on the other hand, how much profounder is the
inconsistency to which the Free church is doomed!--They have rent the
unity of that church, to which they had pledged their faith--but on what
plea? On the plea, that in cases purely spiritual, they could not in
conscience submit to the award of the secular magistrate. Yet how merely
impracticable is this principle, as an abiding principle of action!
Churches, that is, the charge of particular congregations, will be with
_them_ (as with other religious communities) the means of livelihood.
Grounds innumerable will arise for excluding, or attempting to exclude,
each other from these official stations. No possible form regulating the
business of ordination, or of induction, can anticipate the infinite
objections which may arise. But no man interested in such a case, will
submit to a judge appointed by insufficient authority. Daily bread for his
family, is what few men will resign without a struggle. And that struggle
will of necessity come for final adjudication to the law courts of the
land, whose interference in any question affecting a spiritual interest,
the Free church has for ever pledged herself to refuse. But in the case
supposed, she will not have the power to refuse it. She will be cited
before the tribunals, and can elude that citation in no way but by
surrendering the point in litigation; and if she should adopt the notion,
that it is better for her to do _that_, than to acknowledge a sufficient
authority in the court by pleading at its bar, upon this principle once
made public, she will soon be stripped of every thing, and will cease to
be a church at all. She cannot continue to be a depository of any faith,
or a champion of any doctrines, if she lose the means of defending her own
incorporations. But how can she maintain the defenders of her rights or
the dispensers of her truths, if she refuses, upon immutable principle, to
call in the aid of the magistrate on behalf of rights, which, under any
aspect, regard spiritual relations? Attempting to maintain these rights by
private arbitration within a forum of her own, she will soon find such
arbitration not binding at all upon the party who conceives himself
aggrieved. The issue will be as in Mr O'Connell's courts, where the
parties played at going to law; from the moment when they ceased to play,
and no longer "made believe" to be disputing, the award of the judge
became as entire a mockery, as any stage mimicry of such a transaction.

This should be the natural catastrophe of the case, and the probable
evasion of that destructive consummation, to which she is carried by her
principles, will be--that, as soon as her feelings of rancour shall have
cooled down these principles will silently drop out of use; and the very
reason will be suffered to perish for which she ever became a dissenting
body. With this however, we, that stand outside, are noways concerned. But
an evil, in which we _are_ concerned, is the headlong tendency of the Free
church, and of all churches adulterating with her principle, to an issue
not merely dangerous in a political sense, but ruinous n an anti-social
sense. The artifice of the Free church lies in pleading a spiritual
relation of any case whatever, whether of doing or suffering, whether
positive or negative as a reason for taking it out of all civil control.
Now we may illustrate the peril of this artifice, by a reality at this
time impending over society in Ireland. Dr Higgins, titular bishop of
Ardagh, has undertaken, upon this very plea of a spiritual power not
amenable to civil control, a sort of warfare with Government, upon the
question of their power to suspend or defeat the O'Connell agitation. For,
says he, if Government should succeed in thus intercepting the direct
power of haranguing mobs in open assemblies, then will I harangue them,
and cause then to be harangued, in the same spirit, upon the same topics,
from the altar or the pulpit. An immediate extension of this principle
would be--that every disaffected clergyman in the three kingdoms, would
lecture his congregation upon the duty of paying no taxes. This he would
denominate passive resistance; and resistance to bad government would
become, in his language, the most sacred of duties. In any argument with
such a man, he would be found immediately falling back upon the principle
of the Free church: he would insist upon it as a spiritual right, as a
case entirely between his conscience and God, whether he should press to
an extremity any and every doctrine, though tending to the instant
disorganization of society. To lecture against war, and against taxes as
directly supporting war, would wear a most colourable air of truth amongst
all weak-minded persons. And these would soon appear to have been but the
first elements of confusion under the improved views of spiritual rights.
The doctrines of the _Levellers_ in Cromwell's time, of the _Anabaptists_
in Luther's time, would exalt themselves upon the ruins of society, if
governments were weak enough to recognise these spiritual claims in the
feeblest of their initial advances. If it were possible to suppose such
chimeras prevailing, the natural redress would soon be seen to lie through
secret tribunals, like those of the dreadful _Fehmgericht_ in the middle
ages. It would be absurd, however, seriously to pursue these anti-social
chimeras through their consequences. Stern remedies would summarily crush
so monstrous an evil. Our purpose is answered, when the necessity of such
insupportable consequences is shown to link itself with that distinction
upon which the Free church has laid the foundations of its own
establishment. Once for all, there is no act or function belonging to an
officer of a church, which is faces. And every examination of the case
convinces us more and more that the Seceders took up the old papal
distinction, as to acts spiritual or not spiritual, not under any delusion
less or more, but under a simple necessity of finding some evasion or
other which should meet and embody the whole rancour of the moment.

But beyond any other evil consequence prepared by the Free Church, is the
appalling spirit of Jacobinism which accompanies their whole conduct, and
which latterly has avowed itself in their words. The case began
Jacobinically, for it began in attacks upon the rights of property. But
since the defeat of this faction by the law courts, language seems to fail
them, for the expression of their hatred and affected scorn towards the
leading nobility of Scotland. Yet why? The case lies in the narrowest
compass. The Duke of Sutherland, and other great landholders, had refused
sites for their new churches. Upon this occurred a strong fact, and strong
in both directions; first, for the Seceders; secondly, upon better
information, _against_ them. The _Record_ newspaper, a religious journal,
ably and conscientiously conducted, took part with the Secession, and very
energetically; for they denounced the noble duke's refusal of land as an
act of "persecution;" and upon this principle--that, in a county where his
grace was pretty nearly the sole landed proprietor, to refuse land
(assuming that a fair price had been tendered for it) was in effect to
show such intolerance as might easily tend to the suppression of truth.
Intolerance, however, is not persecution; and, if it were, the casuistry
of the question is open still to much discussion. But this is not
necessary; for the ground is altogether shifted when the duke's reason for
refusing the land comes to be stated: he had refused it, not
unconditionally, not in the spirit of Non-intrusion courts' "_without
reason shown_," but on this unanswerable argument--that the whole efforts
of the new church were pointed (and professedly pointed) to the one object
of destroying the establishment, and "sweeping it from the land." Could
any guardian of public interests, under so wicked a threat, hesitate as to
the line of his duty? By granting the land to parties uttering such
menaces, the Duke of Sutherland would have made himself an accomplice in
the unchristian conspiracy. Meantime, next after this fact, it is the
strongest defence which we can offer for the duke--that in a day or two
after this charge of "persecution," the _Record_ was forced to attack the
Seceders in terms which indirectly defended the duke. And this, not in any
spirit of levity, but under mere conscientious constraint. For no journal
has entered so powerfully or so eloquently into the defence of the general
principle involved in the Secession, (although questioning its expediency,)
as this particular _Record_. Consequently any word of condemnation from so
earnest a friend, comes against the Seceders with triple emphasis. And
this is shown in the tone of the expostulations addressed to the _Record_
by some of the Secession leaders. It spares us, indeed, all necessity of
quoting the vile language uttered by members of the Free Church Assembly,
if we say, that the _neutral_ witnesses of such un-Christian outrages have
murmured, remonstrated, protested, in every direction; and that Dr
Macfarlane, who has since corresponded with the Duke of Sutherland upon
the whole case--viz. upon the petition for land, as affected by the
shocking menaces of the Seceders--has, in no other way, been able to evade
the double mischief of undertaking a defence for the indefensible, and at
the same time of losing the land irretrievably, than by affecting an
unconsciousness of language used by his party little suited to his own
sacred calling, or to the noble simplicities of Christianity. Certainly it
is unhappy for the Seceders, that the only disavowal of the most fiendish
sentiments heard in our days, has come from an individual not authorized,
or at all commissioned by his party--from an individual not showing any
readiness to face the whole charges, disingenuously dissembling the worst
of them, and finally offering his very feeble disclaimer, which
equivocates between a denial and a palliation--not until _after_ he found
himself in the position of a petitioner for favours.

Specifically the great evil of our days, is the abiding temptation, in
every direction, to popular discontent, to agitation, and to systematic
sedition. Now, we say it with sorrow, that from no other incendiaries have
we heard sentiments so wild, fierce, or maliciously democratic, as from
the leaders of the Secession. It was the Reform Bill of 1832, and the
accompanying agitation, which first suggested the _veto_ agitation of 1834,
and prescribed its tone. From all classes of our population in turn, there
have come forward individuals to disgrace themselves by volunteering their
aid to the chief conspirators of the age. We have earls, we have
marquesses, coming forward as Corn-League agents; we have magistrates by
scores angling for popularity as Repealers. But these have been private
parties, insulated, disconnected, disowned. When we hear of Christianity
prostituted to the service of Jacobinism--of divinity becoming the
handmaid to insurrection--and of clergymen in masses offering themselves
as promoters of anarchy, we go back in thought to that ominous
organization of irreligion, which gave its most fearful aspects to the
French Revolution.

Other evils are in the rear as likely to arise out of the _funds_ provided
for the new Seceders, were the distribution of those funds confessedly
unobjectionable, but more immediately under the present murmurs against
that distribution. There are two funds: one subscribed expressly for the
building of churches, the other limited to the "sustentation" of
incumbents. And the complaint is--that this latter fund has been invaded
for purposes connected with the first. The reader can easily see the
motive to this injustice: it is a motive of ambition. Far more display of
power is made by the annunciation to the world of six hundred churches
built, than of any difference this way or that in the comfort and decorous
condition of the clergy. This last is a domestic feature of the case, not
fitted for public effect. But the number of the churches will resound
through Europe. Meantime, _at present_, the allowance to the great body of
Seceding clergy averages but £80 a-year; and the allegation is--that, but
for the improper interference with the fund on the motive stated, it would
have averaged £150 a-year. If any where a town parish has raised a much
larger provision for its pastor, even _that_ has now become a part of the
general grievance. For it is said that all such special contributions
ought to have been thrown into one general fund--liable to one general
principle of distribution. Yet again, will even this fund, partially as it
seems to have been divided, continue to be available? Much of it lies in
annual subscriptions: now, in the next generation of subscribers, a son
will possibly not adopt the views of his father; but assuredly he will not
adopt his father's zeal. Here however, (though this is not probable,)
there may arise some compensatory cases of subscribers altogether new. But
another question is pressing for decision, which menaces a frightful shock
to the schismatical church: female agency has been hitherto all potent in
promoting the subscriptions; and a demand has been made in
consequence--that women shall be allowed to vote in the church courts.
Grant this demand--for it cannot be evaded--and what becomes of the model
for church government as handed down from John Knox and Calvin? Refuse it,
and what becomes of the future subscriptions?

But these are evils, it may be said, only for the Seceders. Not so: we are
all interested in the respectability of the national teachers, whatever be
their denomination: we are all interested in the maintenance of a high
standard for theological education. These objects are likely to suffer at
any rate. But it is even a worse result which we may count on from the
changes, that a practical approximation is thus already made to what is
technically known as Voluntaryism. The "_United Secession_," that is the
old collective body of Scottish Dissenters, who, having no regular
provision, are carried into this voluntary system, already exult that this
consummation of the case cannot be far off. Indeed, so far as the Seceders
are dependent upon _annual_ subscriptions, and coupling that relation to
the public with the great doctrine of these Seceders, that congregations
are universally to appoint their own pastors, we do not see how such an
issue is open to evasion. The leaders of the new Secession all protest
against Voluntaryism: but to that complexion of things they travel rapidly
by the mere mechanic action of their dependent (or semi-dependent)
situation, combined with one of their two characteristic principles.

The same United Secession journal openly anticipates another and more
diffusive result from this great movement; viz. the general disruption of
church establishments. We trust that this anticipation will be signally
defeated. And yet there is one view of the case which saddens us when we
turn our eyes in that direction. Among the reasonings and expostulations
of the Schismatic church, one that struck us as the most eminently
hypocritical, and ludicrously so, was this: "You ought," said they, when
addressing the Government, and exposing the error of the law proceedings,
"to have stripped us of the temporalities arising from the church, stipend,
glebe, parsonage, but not of the spiritual functions. We had no right to
the emoluments of our stations, when the law courts had decided against us
but we _had_ a right to the laborious duties of the stations." No gravity
could refuse to smile at this complaint--verbally so much in the spirit of
primitive Christianity, yet in its tendency so insidious. For could it be
possible that a competitor introduced by the law, and leaving the duties
of the pastoral office to the old incumbent, but pocketing the salary,
should not be hooted on the public roads by many who might otherwise have
taken no part in the feud? This specious claim was a sure and brief way to
secure the hatefulness of their successors. Now, we cannot conceal from
ourselves that something like this invidious condition of things might be
realized under two further revolutions. We have said, that a second schism
in the Scottish church is not impossible. It is also but too possible that
Puseyism nay yet rend the English establishment by a similar convulsion.
But in such contingencies, we should see a very large proportion of the
spiritual teachers in both nations actually parading to the public eye,
and rehearsing something very like the treacherous proposal of the late
Seceders, viz. the spectacle of one party performing much of the difficult
duties, and another party enjoying the main emoluments. This would be a
most unfair mode of recommending Voluntaryism. Falling in with the
infirmities of many in these days, such a spectacle would give probably a
fatal bias to that system in our popular and Parliamentary counsels. This
would move the sorrow of the Seceders themselves: for they have protested
against the theory of all Voluntaries with a vehemence which that party
even complain of as excessive. Their leaders have many times avowed, that
any system which should leave to men in general the estimate of their own
religious wants as a pecuniary interest, would be fatal to the Christian
tone of our national morals. Checked and overawed by the example of an
establishment, the Voluntaries themselves are far more fervent in their
Christian exertions than they could be when liberated from that contrast.
The religious spirit of both England and Scotland under such a change
would droop for generations. And in that one evil, let us hope, the
remotest and least probable of the many evils threatened by the late
schism, these nations would have reason by comparison almost to forget the
rest.

SITTING FOR A PORTRAIT

What could induce you, my dear Eusebius, to commit yourself into the hands
of a portrait-painter? And so, you ask me to go with you. Are you afraid,
that you want me to keep you in countenance, where I shall be sure to put
you out? You ask too petitioningly, as if you suspected I should refuse to
attend your _execution_; for you are going to be _be-headed_, and soon
will it be circulated through your village, that you have had your _head
taken off_: I will not go with you--it would spoil all. You are afraid to
trust the painter. You think he may be a physiognomist, and will hit some
characteristic which you would quietly let slip his notice; and you
flatter yourself that I might help to mislead him. Are you afraid of being
made too amiable, or too plain? No, no! You are not vain. Whence comes
this vagary?--well, we shall all know in good time. Were I to be with you,
I should talk--perhaps maliciously--on purpose to see how your features
would unsettle and shift themselves to the vagrant humour, that though one
would know another from habit, and their old acquaintanceship, the painter
would never be able to keep them steadily together. I should laugh to see
every lineament "going ahead," and art "non compos."

I will, however, venture to put down some plain directions how you are to
sit. First, let me tell you how you are not to sit. Don't, in your horror
of a sentimental amiable look, put on yourself the air of a Diogenes, or
you will be like nothing human--and if you shun Diogenes, you may put on
the likeness of a still greater fool. No man living can look more wise
than you; but if you fall out with wisdom, or would in your whim throw
contempt on it, no one can better play the fool. You are the laughing or
crying Philosopher at pleasure--but sit as neither, for in either
character you will set the painter's house in a roar. I fear the very
plaster figures in it will set you off--to see yourself in such motley
company, with Bacchus and Hercules, and Jupiter and Saturn, with his
marble children to devour. You will look Homer and Socrates in the face;
and I know will make antics, throw out, and show fight to the Gladiator.
This may be, if your painter, as many of them do, affect the antique; but
if he be another sort of guess person, it may be worse still with you. You
may not have to make your bow to a Venus Anadyomene--but how will you be
able to face the whole Muggletonian synod? Imagine the "Complete Body,"
from the Evangelical Magazine, framed and glazed, round the walls, and all
looking at you in the condemned cell. Against this you must prepare; for
many country artists prefer this line to the antique. It is their
connexion--and should you make a mistake and go to the wrong man, you
will most assuredly be added to the Convocation, if not put to head a
controversy as frontispiece. It will be in vain for you to say, "Fronti
nulla fides;" "[Greek: gnothi seauton]" before you get there, or nobody
will know you. Take care lest your physiognomy be canvassed by many more
besides the painter. Are you prepared to have your every lineament
scrutinized by every body? to hear behind a screen the disparagement of
your lips, your eyes thought deceitful, and, in addition, a sentence of
general ugliness passed upon you? So you must stoop to paint-pots, have
daubs of reds, and yellows, and greys perked up against your nose for
comparison. Your man may be a fancy mesmerizer, or mesmerize you, now that
it is flying about like an epidemic, without knowing it. If he can, he
will surely do it, to keep you still: that is the way to get a good sitter.
Eusebius in a _coma_! answering all comers, like one of the heads in the
play of Macbeth! But I was to tell you how to sit--that is the way, get
into a _coma_--that will be the painter's best chance of having you; or,
when he has been working for hours, he may find you a Proteus, and that
you have slipped through his fingers after all his toil to catch you. I
will tell you what happened to a painter of my acquaintance. A dentist sat
to him two days--the third the painter worked away very hard--looked at
the picture, then at his sitter. "Why, sir," said he; "I find I have been
all wrong--what can it be? Why, sir, your mouth is not at all like what it
was yesterday." "Ah! ah! I will tell you vat it ees," replied the French
dentist; "ah! good--my mouse is not de same--no indeed--yesterday I did
have my jaw in, but I did lend it out to a lady this day." Don't you think
of this now while you are sitting. You know the trick Garrick played the
painter, who, foiled in his attempt, started up, and said--"You must be
Garrick or the d----!" Then as to attitude, 'tis ten to one but you will
be put into one which will be quite uncomfortable to you. One, perhaps,
after a pattern. I should advise you to resist this--and sit easy--if you
can. Don't put your hand in your waistcoat, and one arm akimbo, like a
Captain Macheath, however he may entreat you; and don't be made looking up,
like a martyr, which some wonderfully affect; and don't be made turn your
head round, as if it was in disgust with the body; and don't let your
stomach be more conspicuous than the head, like a cucumber running to seed.
Don't let him put your arm up, as in command, or accompanied with a rapt
look as if you were listening to the music of the spheres; don't thrust
out your foot conspicuously, as if you meant to advertise the blacking.
Some artists are given to fancy attitudes such as best set off the coats,
they are but nature's journeymen at the faces; don't fancy that the cut,
colour, or cloth of your coat will exempt you from the penalty of their
practice. Why, Eusebius, they have lay-figures, and dress them just as you
see them at the tailor's or perfumer's; and one of these things will be
put up for you--a mannikin for Eusebius! In such hands the coat is by far
the best piece of work, you may be sure your _own_ won't be taken for a
pattern. You will despise it when you see it, and it will be one you can
never change--it will defy vamping. You may be at any time new varnished
whenever after generations shall wish to see how like a dancing-master the
old gentleman must have looked. It is enough to make you a dancing bear
now to think of it. Others, again, equip you with fur and make you look
as if you were in the Hudson's Bay Company. Luckily for you, flowered
dressing-gowns are out, or you might have been represented a Mantelini.
What can you be doing! It is difficult to put you in your positions. There
are some that will turn you about and about a half an hour or more before
they begin, as they would a horse at the fair--ay, and look in your mouth
too. If they cannot get you otherwise into an attitude, they will shampoo
you into one. And, remember, all this they will do, because they have not
the skill to paint any one sitting quite easy. Don't have a roll in your
hand--that always signifies a member of Parliament. Don't have your finger
on a book--that would be a pedantry you could not endure. I cannot imagine
what you will do with your hands. Ten to one, however, but the painter
leaves then out or copies them out of some print when you are gone. This
will be picking and stealing that you will have no hand in. What to do
with any one's hands is a most difficult thing to say--too many do not
know what to do with them themselves; and, under the suffering of sitting,
I think you will be one of them. If there is a child in the room, you will
be making rabbits with your fingers. Then you are at the mercy of the
painter's privilege--the foreground and background. If you have the common
fate, your head will be stuck upon a red curtain, a watered pattern. If
your man has used up his carmine, you will be standing in a fine colonnade,
waiting with the utmost patience for the burst of a thunder cloud that
makes the marble column stand out conspicuously, and there will be a
distant park scene; and thus you will represent the landed interest: or
you will perhaps have your glove in your hand--a device adopted by some,
to intimate that they are hand and glove with all the neighbouring gentry.
And it is a common thing to have a new hat and a walking-cane upon a
marble table. This shows the sitter has the use of his legs, which
otherwise might be doubted, and is therefore judicious. If you are
supposed to be in the open air, you will not know at first sight that you
are so represented, until you have learned the painter's hieroglyphic for
trees. You will find them to be angular sorts of sticks, with red and
yellow flag-rags flapping about; and ten to one but you have a murky sky,
and no hat on your head; but as to such a country as you ever walked in,
or ever saw, don't expect to see such a one as a background to your
picture, and you will readily console yourself that you are turning your
back upon it. If you are painted in a library, books are cheap--so that
the artist can afford to throw you in a silver inkstand into the bargain,
and a pen--such a pen! the goose wouldn't know it that bred it--and
perhaps an open letter to answer, with your name on the cover. If you are
made answering the letter, that will never be like you--perhaps it would
be more like if the letter should be unopened. Now, do not flatter
yourself; Eusebius, that all these things are matters of choice with you.
"_Non omnia possumus omnes_," is the regular rule of the profession; some
stick to the curtain all their lives, from sheer inability to set it--to
draw it aside. You remember the sign-painter that went about painting red
lions, and his reply to a refractory landlord who insisted upon a white
lamb. "You may have a white lamb if you please, but when all is said and
done, it will be a great deal more like a red lion." And I am sorry to say,
the faces too, are not unfrequently in this predicament, for they have a
wonderful family likeness, and these run much by counties. A painter has
often been known totally to fail, by quitting his beat. There is certainly
an advantage in this; for if any gentleman should be so unfortunate as to
have no ancestors, he may pick up at random, in any given county in
England, a number that will very well match, and all look like
blood-relations. There is an instance where this resemblance was greatly
improved, by the advice of an itinerant of the profession, who, at a very
moderate price, put wigs on all the Vandyks. And there you see some danger,
Eusebius, that--be represented how you may--you are not sure of keeping
your condition ten years; you may have, by that time, a hussar cap put
upon your unconscious head. But portraits fare far worse than that.

I remember, when a boy, walking with an elderly gentleman, and passing a
broker's stall, there was the portrait of a fine florid gentleman in
regimentals; he stopped to look at it--he might have bought it for a few
shillings. After we had gone away,--"that," said he, "is the portrait of
my wife's great uncle--member for the county, and colonel of militia: you
see how he is degraded to these steps." "Why do you not rescue him?" said
I. "Because he left me nothing," was the reply. A relative of mine, an old
lady, hit upon a happy device; the example is worth following. Her husband
was the last of his race, for she had no children. She took all the family
portraits out of their frames, rolled up all the pictures, and put them in
the coffin with the deceased. No one was more honourably accompanied to
the grave--and so he slept with his fathers. It has not, to be sure,
Eusebius, much to do with your portrait, but thinking of these family
portraits, one is led on to think of their persons, &c.; so I must tell
you what struck me as a singular instance of the _'sic nos non nobis.'_ I
went with a cousin, upon a sort of pilgrimage at some distance, to visit
some family monuments. There was one large handsome marble one in the
chancel. You will never guess how it had been treated. A vicar's wife had
died, and the disconsolate widower had caused a square marble tablet, with
the inscription of his wife's virtues, to be actually inserted in the Very
centre of our family monument: and yet you, by sitting for your portrait,
hope to be handed down unmutilated to generations to come,--yes, they will
come, and you will be a mark for the boys to shoot peas at--that is, if
you remain at all in the family--you may be transferred to the wench's
garret, or the public-house, and have a pipe popped through the canvass
into your mouth, to make you look ridiculous. I really think you have a
chance of being purchased, to be hung up in the club parlour as pictorial
president of the Odd-Fellows. Why should you be exempt from what kings are
subject to? The "king's head" is a sign in many a highway, to countenance
ill-living. You too, will be bought at a broker's--have your name changed
without your consent--and be adopted into a family whereof you would
heartily despise the whole kith and kin. If pride has not a fall in the
portraits of the great and noble, where shall we find it?"

A painter once told me, that he assisted one of the meanest of low rich
men, to collect some family portraits; he recommended to him a fine
Velasquez. "Velasquez!--who's he?" said the head of his family. "It is a
superb picture, sir--a genuine portrait by the Spaniard, and doubtless, of
some Spanish nobleman. "Then," said he, "I won't have it; I'll have no
Spanish blood contaminate my family, sir." "Spanish blood," rejected by
the plebeian! I have known better men than you, Eusebius--excuse the
comparison--vamped up and engraved upon the spur of the moment, for
celebrated highwaymen or bloody murderers. But this digression won't help
you out in your sitting. Let me see what the learned say upon the
subject--what advice shall we get from the man of academies. Here we have
him, Gerrard Larresse; you may be sure that he treats of portrait-painting,
and with importance enough too. Here it is--"Of Portraiture." But that is
far too plan. We must have an emblem:--

  "Emblem touching the handling of portraits."

"Nature with her many breasts, is in a sitting posture. Near her stands a
little child, lifting her garment off her shoulders. On the other side
stands Truth, holding a mirror before her, wherein she views herself down
to the middle, and is seemingly surprised at it. On the frame of this
glass, are seen a _gilt pallet and pencils. Truth has a book and palm
branch_ in her hand." What do you think of that, Eusebius, for a position?
But why Nature or Truth should be surprised at viewing herself down to the
middle, I cannot imagine. It evidently won't do to surprise you in that
manner. Poor Gerrard, I see, thinks it a great condescension in him to
speak of portrait-painting at all; he calls it, "departing from the
essence of art, and subjecting (the painter) to all the defects of nature."
Hear that, Eusebius! you are to sit to be a specimen of the _defects_ of
nature. He is indignant that "such great masters as Vandyke, Lely, Van Loo,
the old and young Bakker, and others," possessed of great talents,
postponed what is noble and beautiful to what is more ordinary. There you
are again, Eusebius, with your ordinary visage, unworthy such men as the
old and young Bakker, whoever they were. But since there must be portraits,
he could endure the method of the ancients, who, "used to cause those from
whom the commonwealth had received extraordinary benefits, either in war
or civil affairs, or for eminence in religion, to be represented in marble
or metal, or in a picture, that the sight of them, by those honours, might
be a spur to posterity to emulate the same virtues. This honour was first
begun with their deities; afterwards it was paid to heroes, and of
consequence to philosophers, orators, religious men, and others, not only
to perpetuate their virtues, but also to embalm their names and memories.
But now it goes further; a person of any condition whatsoever, have he but
as much money as the painter asks, must sit for his picture. This is a
great abuse, and sprung from as laudable a cause."

Are you not ashamed to sit after that? He is not, however, without his
indulgences. He will allow something to a lover and a husband.

"Has a citizen's wife but an only babe? he is drawn at half a year old; at
ten years old he sits again; and for the last time in his twenty-fifth
year, in order to show her tender folly: and then she stands wondering how
a man can so alter in that time. Is not this a weighty reason? a
reprovable custom, if painters did not gain by it. But again, portraits
are allowable, when a lover is absent from his mistress, that they may
send each other their pictures, to cherish and increase their loves; a man
and wife parted so may do the same." You undertake, you perceive, a matter
of some responsibility--you must account to your conscience for the act of
sitting for your picture. Then there is a chapter upon defects, which, as
I suppose he presumes people don't know themselves, he catalogues pretty
fully, till you are quite out of humour with poor human nature. The
defects are "natural ones--accidental ones--usual ones." Natural--"a wry
face, squint eyes, wry mouth, nose," &c. Accidental. "Loss of an eye, a
cut on the cheek, or other part of the face, pits of the small-pox and the
like." Usual. "Contraction of the eyes and mouth, or closing or gaping of
the latter, or drawing it in somewhat to this or that side, upwards or
downwards," &c. As for other bodily infirmities, how many have wry necks,
hunchbacks, bandy legs--withered or short arms, or one shorter than
another; dead or lame hands or fingers." Now, are you so sure of the
absence of all these defects, that you venture? You must think yourself an
Adonis, and not think that you are to be flattered, by having any very
considerable number of your defects hid. "The necessary ones ought to be
seen, because they _help the likeness_; such as a wry face, squint eyes,
low forehead, thinness, and fatness; a wry neck, too short or too long a
nose; wrinkles between the eyes; ruddiness or paleness of the cheeks, or
lips; pimples or warts about the mouth; and such like." After this, it is
right you should know that "Nature abhors deformity." Nay, that we always
endeavour to hide our own--and which do you mean to hide, or do you intend
to come out perfect? I daresay you can discover some little habits of your
own, Eusebius, free from vanity as you are, that tend to these little
concealments! Do you remember how a foolish man lost a considerable sum of
money once, by forgetting this human propensity? He had lost some money to
little K---- of Bath, the deformed gambler--and being netted at his loss,
thought to pique the winner. "I'll wager," said he, "£50, I'll point out
the worst leg in company."--"Done," said K---- to his astonishment. "The
man does not know himself," thought he, for there sat K---- crouched up
all shapes by the fireside. The wagerer, to win his bet, at once cried,
"Why, that," pointing to K----'s leg, which was extended towards the grate.
"No," said K---- quietly unfolding the other from beneath the chair, and
showing it, "that's worse." By which you may learn the fact--that every
man puts his best leg foremost. But we must not quit our friend Gerard yet.
I like his grave conceit. I rejoice to find him giving the painters a rap
over their knuckles. He says, Eusebius, that they are fond of having
"smutty pictures" in their rooms; and roundly tells them, that though fine
pictures are necessary, there is no need of their having such subjects as
"Mars and Venus, and Joseph and Potiphar's Wife." Now, though I do not
think our moderns offend much in this respect--the hint is good--and some
exhibit studies from models about their rooms, that evidently sat without
their stays. Gerard was the man for contrivances--here is a capital one.
He does not quite approve of painting a wooden leg; but if it be to be
done, see with what skill even that in the hands of a Gerard may be
dignified--and the painter absolved, "lege solutus." "But if the hero
insist upon the introducing of such a leg, on a supposition that 'tis an
honour to have lost a limb in his country's service, the painter must then
comply with his desires; or _else contrive it lying on a table covered
with red velvet_." But capital as this is, it is not all. He quite revels
in contrivances; "if he desire it after the antique manner, it must be
contrived in a bas-relief, wherein the occasion of it may be represented;
or it may hang near him on a wall, with its buckles and straps, as is done
in hunting equipages; or else it may be placed among the ornaments of
architecture, to be more in view." You see he scorns to hide it--has
worked up his imagination to conceive all possible ways of showing it;
depend upon it he longed to paint a wooden leg, to which the face should
be the appendage, the leg the portrait. "Hoc ligno," not "hoc signo
vinces." But here Gerard bounces--giving an instance of a gentleman "who,
being drawn in little, and comparing the smallness of the eyes with his
own, asked the painter whether he had such? However, in complaisance, and
for his pleasure, he desired that one eye at least might be as big as his
own, the other to remain as it was." Fie, Gerard! you have spoiled your
emblem by taking the mirror out of truth's hand.

He is particular about postures and backgrounds. "It will not be improper
to treat also about easiness and sedateness in posture, opposed to stir
and bustle, and the contrary--namely, that the picture of a gentlewoman of
repute, who, in a grave and sedate manner, turns towards that of her
husband, hanging near it, gets a great decorum by _moving and stirring
hind-works_, whether by means of waving trees, or crossing architecture of
stone and wood, or any thing else that the master thinks will best
_contrast_, or oppose, the _sedate posture of his principal figure_." Here
you see Eusebius, how hind-works tend to keep up a _bustle_! "And because
these are things of consequence, and may not be plainly apprehended by
every one," he explains himself by ten figures in one plate--and such
figures! As a sitter, he would place you very much above the eye--that is,
technically speaking, adopt a low horizon; "because--the because is a
because--because it's certain that when we see any painted figure, or
object, in a place where the life can be expected, as standing on the
ground, leaning over a balcony or balustrade, or out at a window, &c., it
deceives the eye, and by being seen unawares, (though expected,) causes
sometimes a pleasing mistake; or it frightens and surprises others, when
they meet with it unexpectedly, at such places as aforesaid, and where
there is _any likelihood_ for it." Your artist will probably put you on an
inverted box, and sitting in a great chair, probably covered with red
morocco leather, in which you will not be at home, and in any manner
comfortable. We see this deal box sometimes converted into a marble step,
as a step to a throne, and such it is in one of the pictures of the Queen;
but it is so ill coloured, that it looks for all the world like a great
cheese; it should be sent to the farmers who made the Queen the cheese
present, to show the pride of England walking upon the "fat of the land."
He presents us with many methods of showing the different characters of
persons to be painted, some of which will be novel to you. For instance,
you would not expect directions to represent a secretary of state with the
accompaniments of a goose. "With a secretary the statue of Harpocrates,
and in tapestry or bas-relief, the story of Alexander shutting
Hephæstion's mouth with a seal-ring; also the emblem of fidelity, or a
goose with a stone in its bill." Methinks the director, or governor, of
the East India Company, must look very small beside his bedizened
accessory, meant to represent Company. "She is to be an heroine with a
scollop of mother-of-pearl on her head, in the nature of an helmet, and
thereon a coral branch; a breast ornament of scales; pearls and corals
about her neck; buskins on her legs, with two dolphins conjoined head to
head, adorned with sea-shells; two large shells on her shoulders, a
trident in her hand, and her clothing a long mantle; a landskip behind her
of an Indian prospect, with palm and cocoa trees, some figures of _blacks_,
and elephant's teeth. This figure also suits an admiral, or commander at
sea, when a sea-fight is introduced instead of a landskip." Such a figure
may, indeed, be more at home at sea, and such a one may have been that
famous lady, whose captain so "very much applauded her," and

  "Made her the first lieutenant
  Of the gallant Thunder Bomb."

Not a painter of the present day, it seems, knows how to paint the clergy.
Mr Pickersgill has done quite common things, and simply shown the cloth
and the band--that is poor device. See how Gerard would have it done.
Every clergyman should be a Dr Beattie. "With a divine agrees the statue
of truth, represented in a Christian-like manner, or else this same emblem
in one of his hands, and his other on his breast, besides tapestries,
bas-reliefs, or paintings, and some Christian emblems of the true faith;
and representation of the Old and New Testament--in the offskip a temple."
All the portraits of the great duke are defective, inasmuch as none of
them have "Mars in a niche," or Victory sitting on a trophy, or a statue
of Hercules. You probably have no idea what a great personage is a
"sea-insurer." He is accompanied by Arion on a dolphin; and in a picture a
sea-haven, with a ship under sail making towards it; on the shore the
figure of Fortune, and (who are, think you, the "supercargoes?") over the
cargo "Castor and Pollux." In this mode of portrait-painting it would be
absolutely necessary to go back to the old plan of putting the names
underneath the personages; and even then, though you write under such,
this is Castor, this Pollux, and this the sea-insurer, it will ever puzzle
the whole ship's crew to conjecture how they came there together. Gerard
admits we cannot paint what we have not seen, and by example rather
condemns his own recommendations. Fewer have seen Castor and Pollux, than
have seen a lion, and he says men cannot paint what they have not seen.
"As was the case of a certain Westphalian, who, representing Daniel in the
lions' den, and having never seen a lion, he painted hogs instead of lions,
and wrote underneath, 'These should be lions.'"

By this time, Eusebius, you ought to know how to sit, if you have not made
up your mind not to sit at all. You need not, however, be much alarmed
about the emblems--modern masters cut all that matter short. They won't
throw in any superfluous work, you may be sure of that, unless you should
sit to Landseer, and he will paint your dog, and throw in your superfluous
self for nothing. You would be like Mercury with the statuary, mortified
to find his own image thrown into the bargain.

Besides your own defects, you have to encounter the painter's. His
unsteady, uncertain hand, may add an inch to your nose before you are
aware of it. It is quite notorious that few painters paint both eyes of
the same size; and after your utmost efforts to look straight in his face,
he may make you squint for ever, and not see that he has done so. Unless
he be himself a sensible man, he will be sure to make you look like a fool.
Then, what is like to-day will be unlike to-morrow. His megillups will
change, so that in six months you may look like a copper Indian; or the
colours may fade, and leave you the ghost of what you were. Again, he may
paint you lamentably like, odiously like, yet give you a sinister
expression, or at least an unpleasant one. Then, if you remonstrate, he is
offended; if you refuse to take it, he writes you word that if not paid
for and removed by next Tuesday, he will add a tail to it, and dispose of
it to Mr Polito. Did not Hogarth do something of this kind? If he please
himself he may not satisfy you, and if you are satisfied, none of your
friends are, who take an opportunity of the portrait to say sarcastic
things of you. For in that respect you may be most like your picture, or
it most like you, for every body will have some fault to find with it. Why,
don't you remember but last year some _friends_ poked out the eye from a
portrait, even after it had been on the exhibition walls. Then, what with
the cleaning and varnishing, you have to go through as many disorders as
when you were a child. You will have the picture-cleaner's measles. It was
not long ago, I saw a picture in a most extraordinary state; and, on
enquiry, I found that the cook of the house had rubbed it over with fat of
bacon to make it bear out, and that she had learned it at a great house,
where there is a fine collection, which are thus bacon'd twice every year.
You are sure not to keep even your present good looks, but will become
smoked and dirty. Then must you be cleaned, and there is an even chance
that in doing it they put out at least one of your eyes, (I saw both eyes
taken out of a Correggio,) and the new one to be put in will never match
the other. The ills that flesh is heir to, are nothing to the ills its
representative is heir to. At best, the very change of fashion in dress
will make you look quizzical in a few years. For you are going to sit when
dress is most unbecoming, and it is only by custom that the eye is
reconciled to it, so that all the painted present generation must look
ridiculous in the eyes of posterity. Don't have your name put on the
canvass; then you may console yourself that, in all these mortal chances
and changes, whatever happens to it, you will not be known. I have one
before me now with the name and all particulars in large gilt letters.
Happily this ostentation is out; you may therefore hope, when the evil day
comes, _fallere_, to escape notice. I hope the painter will give you that
bold audacious look which may stare the beholder in the face, and deny
your own identity; no small advantage, for doubtless the "[Greek: sêmata
lugra]" of Bellerophon was but his portrait, which, by a hang-look
expression, intimatd death. Your painter may be ignorant of phrenology,
and, without knowing it, may give you some detestable bumps; and your
picture may be borrowed to lecture upon, at inns and institutions, and
anecdotes rummaged up or forged, to match the painter's doing--the bumps
he has given you.

You must not, however, on this account, think too ill of the poor painter.
He is subject to human infirmities--so are you--and his hand and eye are
not always in tune. He has, too, to deal with all sorts of people--many
difficult enough to please. You know the fable of the painter who would
please everybody, and pleased nobody. You sitters are a whimsical set,
and most provokingly shift your features and position, and always expect
miracles, at a moment, too; you are here to-day, and must be off to-morrow.
It is nothing, to you that paint won't dry for you, so even that must be
forced, and you are rather varnished in than painted, and no wonder if
your faces go to pieces, and you become mealy almost as soon as you have
had the life's blood in you, and that with the best carmine. And often you
take upon yourselves to tell the painter what to do, as if you knew
yourselves better than he, though he has been staring at nothing but you
for an hour or two at a time, perhaps. You ask him, too, perpetually what
feature he is now doing, that you may call up a look. You screw up your
mouths, and try to put all the shine you can into your eyes, till, from
continual effort, they look like those of a shotten herring; and yet you
expect all to be like what you are in your ordinary way. After he has
begun to paint your hair, you throw it about with your hands in all
directions but the right, and all his work is to begin over again. You
have no notion how ignorant of yourselves you are. I happened to call,
some time since, upon a painter with whom I am on intimate terms. I found
him in a roar of laughter, and quite alone. "What is the matter?" said I.
"Matter!" replied he; "why, here has Mr B. been sitting to me these four
days following, and at last, about half an hour ago, he, sitting in that
chair, puts up his hand to me, thus, with 'Stop a moment, Mr Painter; I
don't know whether you have noticed it or not, but it is right that I
should tell you that _I have a slight_ cast in my eye.' You know Mr B., a
worthy good man, but he has the very worst gimlet eye I ever beheld." Yes,
and only _slightly_ knew it, Eusebius. And I have to say, he thought his
defect wondrously exaggerated, when, for the first time, he saw it on
canvas; and perhaps all his family noticed it there, whom custom had
reconciled into but little observation of it, and the painter was
considered no friend of the family. For the poor artist is expected to
please all down to the youngest child, and perhaps that one most, for she
often rules the rest. And people do not too much consider the _feelings_
of painters. I knew an artist, a great humorist, who spent much time at
the court at Lisbon. He had to paint a child, I believe the Prince of the
Brazils. I remember, as if I saw him act the scene but yesterday, and it
is many years ago. Well, the maid of honour, or whatever was her title,
brought the child into the room, and remained some time, but at length
left him alone with the painter. When he found himself only in this
company, his pride took the alarm. He put on great airs, frowned, pouted,
looked disdainful, superbly swelling, and got off the chair, retreating
slowly, scornfully. The artist, who was a great mimic, imitated his every
gesture, and, with some extravagance, frowned as he frowned, swelled as he
swelled, blew out his breath as the child did, advanced as he retreated,
till the child at length found himself pinned in the corner, at which the
artist put on such a ridiculous expression, that risible nature could
stand it no longer; pride was conquered by humour, and from that hour they
were on the most familiar terms. It was not an ill-done thing of our Henry
VIII. when he made one of his noble courtiers apologize to Holbein for
some slight, bidding him, at the same time, to know that he could make a
hundred such as he, but it was past his power to make a Holbein. And you
know how a great monarch picked up Titian's pencil which had fallen. How
greatly did Alexander honour Apelles, in that he would suffer none else to
paint his portrait. And when the painter, by drawing his Campaspe, fell in
love with her, he presented her to him. It is a bad policy, Eusebius, to
put slights upon these men--and it is more, it is ungenerous; they may
revenge themselves upon you whenever they please, and give you a black eye
too, that will never get right again. They can in effigy, put every limb
out of joint; and you being no anatomist, may only see that you look ill,
and know not where you went wrong. All you sitters expect to be flattered,
and very little flattery do you bestow. Perversely, you won't even see
your own likenesses. Take, for instance, the following scene, which I had
from a miniature painter:--A man upwards of forty years of age, had been
sitting to him--one of as little pretensions as you can well imagine; you
would have thought it impossible that he could have had an homoeopathic
proportion of vanity--of personal vanity at least; but it turned out
otherwise. He was described as a greasy bilious man, with a peculiarly
conventicle aspect--that is, one that affects a union of gravity and love.
"Well, sir," said the painter, "that will do--I think I have been very
fortunate in your likeness." The man looks at it, and says nothing, puts
on an expression of disappointment. "What! don't you think it like, sir?"
says the artist. "Why--ye-ee-s, it is li-i-ke--but----" "But what sir?--I
think it exactly like. I wish you would tell me where it is not like?"
"Why, I'd rather you should find it out yourself. Have the goodness to
look at me."--And here my friend the painter declared, that he put on a
most detestably affected grin of amiability.--"Well, sir, upon my word, I
don't see any fault at all; it seems to me as like as it can be; I wish
you'd be so good as to tell me what you mean." "Oh, sir, I'd rather
not--I'd rather you should find it out yourself--look again." "I can't see
any difference, sir; so if you don't tell me, it can't be altered." "Well
then, with reluctance, if I must tell you, I don't think you have given my
_sweet expression about the eyes_." Oh, Eusebius, Eusebius, what a mock
you would have made of that man; you would have flouted his vanity about
his ears for him gloriously; I would have given a crown to have had him
sit to you, and you should have let me be by, to attend your colours. How
we would have bedaubed the fellow before he had left the room, with his
sweet eyes! But there, your patient painter must endure all that, and not
give a hint that he disagrees in the opinion: or if he speak his mind on
the occasion, he may as well quit the town, for under the influence of
those sweet eyes, nor man, woman, nor child, will come to sit to him. And
consider, Eusebius, their misery in having such sitters at all. They are
not Apollos, and Venuses, nor Adonises, that knock at painters' doors. Not
one in a hundred has even a tolerably pleasant face. I certainly once knew
a rough-dealing artist, who told a gentleman very plainly--"Sir, I do not
paint remarkably ugly people." But he came to no good. Not but that a
clever fellow might do something of this kind with management, with good
effect; get the reputation of being a painter of "beauties," with a little
skill, make beauties of every body, and stoutly maintain that he never
will have any others sit to him. I am not quite certain, that something of
this kind has been practised, or I do not think I should have the art to
invent it. All those who sit during a courtship, to present their
portraits as lovers, I look upon it come as professed cheats, and mean to
be most egregiously flattered; and if the thing succeeds through the
painter's skill, within six months after the marriage, he, the painter, is
called the cheat, and the portrait not in the least like. So easy is it to
get out of repute, by doing your best to please them with a little
flattery. You will never get into a book of beauty, Eusebius. Hitherto,
the list runs in the female line. The male will soon come in, depend upon
it.

Have a little pity upon the poor artist, who would, but cannot,
flatter--who is conscious of his inability to put in those blandishments
that shall give a grace to ugliness--from whose hand unmitigated ugliness
becomes uglier--who, at length, driven from towns, where people begin to
see this, as a dauber, takes refuge among the farm houses; at first paints
the farmers and their wives, their ugly faces stretching to the very edge
of the frames, and is at last reduced to paint the favourite cow, or the
fat ox--the prodigal (alas! no; the simply miserable, in mistaking his
profession) feeding the swine, and with them, and they not over-proud of
his doings. Then there is another poor, self-deluded character among the
tribe. I have the man in my eye at this moment. It is not long since I
paid him a visit to see a great historical composition, which I had been
requested to look at. It was the most miserable of all miserable daubs;
yet so conspicuously set off with colours and hardness, that the eye could
not escape it. It was a most determined eye-sore. The quiet, the modest
demeanour of the young man at first deceived me; I ventured to find some
trifling fault. The artist was up--still his manner was quiet--somewhat,
in truth, contemptuously so; but, as for modesty, I doubt not he was
modest in every other matter relating to himself; but, in art, he as
calmly talked of himself, Michael Angelo, and Raffaelle, as a trio--that
two had obtained immortality of fame, and that he sought the same, and, he
trusted, by the same means, and believed with similar powers: as calmly
did he speak in this manner, as if it were a thing long settled in his own
mind and in fate--and in the manner of an indulgent communication. He
lamented the lack of taste and knowledge in the world; that so little was
real art appreciated, that he was obliged to submit to the drudgery of
portrait. _Submit!_--and such portraits. Poor fellow! how long will he get
sitters to _submit_? I have recently heard the fate of one of his great
compositions. He had persuaded the vicar and church-wardens of a parish to
accept a picture. He attended the putting it up. It was a fine old church.
With the quietest conceit, he had a fine east window blocked up to receive
the picture--had the tables of Commandments mutilated, and thrust up in a
corner--damaged the wall to give effect to the picture--and really
believed that he was conferring an honour and benefit upon the
parishioners and the county. Soon, however, men of better taste and sense
began to cry out. The incumbent died. His successor related to me the
shocking occurrence of the picture. He had it removed, and the damage done
to the edifice repaired. And what became of the grand historical? The
church-warden alone, who, in the pride of his heart and ignorance, had
paid the poor artist for the colours, gladly took the picture. His account
of it was, that it was so powerful in his small room, as to affect several
ladies to tears--and that he had covered it with a thin gauze, to keep
down _the fierceness of the sentiment_; for it was too affecting. Now,
here is a man, who, if you should happen to sit to him, will think it the
greatest condescension to take your picture, and will paint you such as
you never would wish to be seen or known. There is a predilection now for
schools of design; and the world will teem with these poor creatures.

Many there are, however, who, having considerable ability, have much to
struggle against--who love the profession of art, and with that
unaccountable giving themselves up to it, are quite unfit for any other
occupation in life, yet, from adverse circumstances--ill health, strange
temperaments--do not succeed. Many years ago, I knew a very interesting
young man, and a very industrious one, too, of very considerable ability
as a painter, but not, at that time, of portraits. While hard at work,
getting just enough to live by, he was seized with an illness that
threatened rapid consumption. The kind physician who gratuitously visited
him, told him one day--"You cannot live here. I do not say that you have a
year of safety in this climate, or a month of safety, but you have not
weeks. You must instantly go to a warmer climate." Ill, and without means,
beyond the few pounds he could gather from his hasty breaking-up, he had
courage to look on the cheerful side of things, and went off in the first
vessel to the West Indies. I saw him afterwards. He gave me a history of
his adventures. He went from island to island--became portrait-painter--a
painter of scenes--of any thing that might offer; by good conduct,
urbanity, gentleness, and industry, was respected, liked, and patronized;
lived, and sent home a thousand pounds or two--came to England to see his
friends for a few months. I saw him on his way to them. He was then in
health and spirits--told me the many events of the few years--and in six
weeks the climate killed him. But the anecdote of his turning
portrait-painter is what I have to tell. On the passage, they touched at
one of the islands, and he found but very little money in his pocket; and,
while others went off to hotels, or estates of friends, he went his way
quietly to seek out cheap lodgings. He found such, which the good woman
told him he could have in three hours. He afterwards learned that she
waited that time for the then tenant _to die in the bed which he was to
occupy_. Walking away to pass the time, he met some of his fellow
passengers, who asked him if he had been to see the governor. He had not.
They told him it was necessary he should go. So thither he went. Now, the
governor asked him, "What brought him out to the West Indies?" He replied,
that he came as an artist. "An artist!" said the governor. "That is a
novelty indeed. Have you any specimens? I should like to see them." Now,
among his things, he had a miniature of himself, painted by a man who
attained eminence in the profession, and whom I knew well. Here, with an
ingenuousness characteristic of the man, he acknowledged to me how,
starvation staring him in the face, _he_ stared in the governor's; and the
governor being rather a hard-featured man, whose likeness, though he had
never taken a portrait, he thought he could hit; when the governor admired
the miniature, and asked him, "If it was his?" he did not resist the
temptation, and said, "Yes." Upon which the governor sat to him. Then
others sat to him; and so he left the island, with a replenished purse,
and from that time became a portrait-painter. If the poor fellow had been
the veriest dauber, you, Eusebius, would have sat to him twenty times over,
and have told all the country round quite as great a fib as he did the
governor, that he was a very Raffaelle in outline, and Titian in coloring.
And what shall the "recording angel" do? Poor fellow! he had no conceit.

But you, Eusebius, need not trust or give your countenance, in the way of
the art to any man because you like his history or his manners. A thing
you are very likely to do in spite of this advice, though you multiply
portraits for "Saracen's Heads."

Foolish artists themselves, who affect to talk of the great style, and set
themselves up as geniuses, speak slightingly of portrait-painting, as
degrading--as pandering to vanity, &c. I verily believe, that half this
common cant arose from jealousy of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Degradation
indeed!--as if Raffaelle and Titian, and Vandyk and Reynolds, degraded the
art, or were degraded by their practice; and as to pandering to
vanity--view it in another light, and it is feeding affection.

I knew a painter, who honourably refused to paint a lady's picture, when
he waited upon her on purpose, sent by some injudicious friends to take
her portrait in her last days. She had been a woman of great
celebrity--she received the painter--but, with a weakness, pointed first
to one side of the room where were portraits of earls and bishops, saying,
"these are or were all my particular friends"--and then to the other side
of the room, to a well filled library--"and these are all my works." "Now,"
said the painter to me, "I did not think it fair to her reputation to take
her portrait--and she had had many taken at better times." Here was one
who would not pander to vanity. After all, it is astonishing how few
flattering painters there have been. Even he who made Venus, Minerva, and
Juno, starting with astonishment at the presence of Queen Elizabeth,
certainly made her by far the ugliest of the quartette. You may see the
picture at Hampton Court. She must have been difficult to please, for she
insisted upon being painted without shadow. "Glorious Gloriana" was to be
the sun of female beauty. She is quite as well as some in "The Book." For
modern "beauty" manufacturers make beauty to consist in silliness or
sentimentality.

Do you believe in the story of the origin of portrait--the Grecian maid
and her lover? I cannot--for I have often tried my hand, and such frights
were the result, that it would have been a cure for love.

For lack of the art of portrait-painting, we have really no idea what
mankind were like before the time of our Eighth Harry. What we see could
not possibly be likenesses, because they are not humanity. But in
Holbein's heads, such as the royal collection, published by Chamberlaine,
we begin to see what men and women were. What our early Henrys and Edwards
were: what the court or the people were, we cannot know; they are buried
in the night of art, like the brave who lived before the time of Agamemnon.
Perhaps it is quite as well--"_omne ignotum pro mirifico_"--and who would
lose the pleasure of wonder and conjecture, with all its imaginary
phantasmagoria? We might have a mesmeric _coma_ that might put us in
possession of the past, if it can of the future--and gratify curiosity
wofully at the expense of what is more valuable than that kind of truth. A
mesmeric painter may take the portrait of Helen of Troy, and you may knock
at your twenty neighbours' doors, and find perhaps a greater beauty,
especially if chronology be trusted as to her age at the Trojan war. Would
you like to see a veritable portrait of Angelica--or of your Orlando in
his madness?

The great portrait-painter--the sun, in his diurnal course all over the
world, may be, for aught we know, photographing mankind, and registering
us, too; and, if we are to judge from the specimens we do see, the
collection cannot be very flattering. Who dares call the sun a flatterer?

  "... Solem quis dicere falsum
  Audeat?"

At the very moment that you are sitting to your man, to be set off with
smirk and smile and the graces of art, you are perhaps making a most
formidable impression elsewhere. You would not like to

  "Look upon this picture, _and_ on this."

Some poor country people have an unaccountable dislike to having their
portraits taken. Savages think them second selves, and that may be
bewitched and punished; possibly something of this feeling may be at the
bottom of the dislike. I was once sketching in a country village, and an
old woman went by, and I put her into the picture. Some, looking over me,
called out to her that her likeness was taken. She cried, because she had
not her best cap and gown on. I was once positively driven from a cottage
door, because a woman thought I was "taking her off." I know not but that
it was a commendable wish in the old woman to appear decent before the
world, and so might have been the fine lady's wish--

      "Betty, put on a little red,
  One surely need not look a fright when dead."

We choose to be satirical, and call it vanity; but put both anecdotes
into tolerably good grave Latin, and name them Portia and Lucretia, and
we should have as fine a sentiment as the boasted one of the hero
endeavouring to fall decently. There may be but little difference, and
that only just what we, in our humours, choose to make it. I am sure you,
Eusebius, will stand up for the old village crone, and the fine lady,
too. But the fraternity of the brush, if they do now and then promote
vanity, much more commonly gratify affection. Private portraits seem to
me to be things so sacred, that they ought not to survive the immediate
family or friends for whose gratification they are painted. I much like
the idea of burying them at last. I will show you how estimable these
things sometimes are. You remember a portrait I have--a gentleman in a
dress of blue and gold--in crayon. Did I ever tell you the anecdote
respecting him? If not, you shall have it, as I had from my father. If
you recollect the picture, you must recollect that it is of a very
handsome man. His horses took fright, the carriage was overturned, and he
was killed upon the spot. The property came to my father. One day an
unknown lady, in a handsome equipage, stopped at his door, and, in an
interview with him, requested a portrait of this very person, not the one
you have seen, but another in oil-colour, and of that the head only. My
father cut it out, and gave it to her. Many, many years afterwards it was