Chapter XIX: Part 19

Lunardi, having ascended from Liverpool in July, 1785, found himself without ballast, and in a balloon insufficiently inflated. He was carried out to sea, retaining of course the power of sinking, which, however, he did not wish to exercise, as he was almost without the means of rising. To lighten the machine, he tossed off his hat, and even this insignificant article afforded him some relief. Soon afterwards, he removed his coat, and this enabled him to mount a little higher, and bear away towards the land. To escape a thunder-cloud, he subsequently divested himself of his waistcoat, and finally succeeded in grappling the earth in a cornfield near Liverpool, spite of his improvidence in the matter of ballast.

It is under such circumstances, however, that we discover the value of the long rope suspended from the car, and which may be let out to the depth of some hundreds of feet. It is a clever substitute for ballast, with this great-advantage, that it is retained, not lost; and that it may also be used as a kind of flexible buffer to break the force of the descent. When the balloon is sinking, every inch of the rope which rests upon the ground relieves it of an equivalent portion of its weight: the process is tantamount to the discharge of so much ballast, and, therefore, the rapidity of the descent is not only lessened, but possibly the downward course of the machine may be arrested some time before it reaches the soil; should it mount again, every coil of the cable lifted from the earth adds to its gravity. In cases where the aeronaut has from any cause lost the mastery of his vessel, this self-manipulating agency may preserve him from a fatal reception, whilst, on the other hand, he has it in his power, by letting out gas when the balloon is balanced in the air, to lower himself (other conditions being favourable) as peaceably as he chooses.

The _Géant_ of Nadar, with a weight of 7,000 to 8,000 lbs., in descending on one occasion, after all the ballast had been exhausted, rushed down towards the earth with the speed of an ordinary railway train, and yet, thanks to the guide-rope, no serious accident occurred, though the instruments were all broken, and a few contusions were sustained. This admirable contrivance was introduced by that 'ancient mariner' of the air, Mr. Green.

In returning to our native soil, however, one of the most dangerous conditions which can arise is the prevalence of a thick fog, or the necessity for ploughing our way through a dense cloud. Under such circumstances, how do we know where the earth lies? Not that we are likely to miss it--the great fear is that we may hit it too soon, and too forcibly. It is then that the value of the barometer is most fully appreciated. This instrument does for the aeronaut what the compass does for the sailor. But the observer must be prompt and careful in his reading, for if the descent is rapid, the least inattention may result in a fractured collarbone, or a couple of shattered bodies.

Presuming, however, that, as we sink through the cloudy trap-door by which we entered the upper sky, we find all clear below, the old familiar earth again bursts upon our view. For a few moments the planet appears to be shooting upwards with considerable velocity. It is like a huge rock which has been aimed at our little balloon, or a star which has shot madly from its sphere, and is hastening to crush us on our return from our sacrilegious voyage. By throwing out a quantity of ballast, however, as if in defiance, we seem to check it in its course, and if it continues to approach, it does so with moderate speed. But we soon discover the deceit, and learn (probably to our chagrin) that it is not the world which is troubling itself to meet us, but we who are doing obeisance in our own puniness to its irresistible will.

In one sense, indeed, the appearance of a balloon in the sky is always the signal for a certain amount of commotion. Dogs begin to bark furiously, poultry begin to run to and fro in evident alarm, whilst cattle stand gazing in astonishment or scamper off in terror, as people used to do--so we suppose--when hippogriffs were in the habit of alighting at their doors. One French aeronaut remarks very drily that the best mode of obtaining a correct estimate of the population of any given district is to approach it in a balloon, for then every individual rushes out of doors to look at the visitor, and so 'the people can be counted like marbles.' Another states that in passing over Calais the only figure that did not lift its head to gaze at the travellers was the Duc de Guise, whose bust in the Place d'Armes was incapable, for good reasons, of paying them that act of homage.

Other things being duly considered, the chief business of a balloonist in descending is to select an open and unincumbered locality. To plump down upon a cathedral, or impale his car upon the top of a spire; to allow it to alight amongst the clashing trees of a forest, or to attempt to ground it amongst the chimneys and gables of a crowded town, would be pretty much the same as for a sailor to run his vessel amongst the breakers, or to drive it full tilt against the nearest lighthouse. The experienced navigator knows where to throw out his grapnel, and this, digging into the soil or catching in the rocks, or laying hold of any object from a tree to a tombstone, will bring the big airship to anchor, and enable the crew, with a little management, to disembark.

But having landed, what kind of a reception shall we encounter? That is a question of some little consequence. There are two ways of dealing with aeronauts: the first is to invite them to dinner and offer them beds for the night; the other is to make an extortionate claim for damages, or carry them before the magistrates as trespassers. The latter practice is much in vogue in rustic regions. You have scarcely leaped out of the car than up there comes an angry farmer, vociferating loudly, gesticulating frantically, and when he sees his fences broken down, and his crops trampled under foot by a crowd of villagers who rush to the spot to inspect the stranger from the clouds, his wrath rises to the boiling point (far below 212° Fah.), and the brute threatens immediate arrest, or appears to be on the eve of inflicting personal chastisement. In some instances, attempts have been made to distrain upon the balloon, _damage feasant_, as lawyers would say, though it would have puzzled the bumpkins to determine how such an unmanageable object could be safely lodged in the village pound.

When the first hydrogen balloon fell at Gonesse, near Paris (1783), a most extraordinary scene was witnessed. The inhabitants of the village were struck with terror upon seeing an unknown monster descending from the sky. A genuine dragon could not have excited more consternation. Was it some fabulous animal realized in the flesh, or was it the great fiend in proper (or improper) person? On all sides they fled. Many sought an asylum at the house of the _curé_, who thought that the wisest mode of dealing with the intruder was to subject it to exorcism. Under his guidance they proceeded falteringly to the spot where it lay, heaving with strange contortion. They waited to see what effect the good man's presence would produce, but the creature seemed to be utterly insensible to his fulminations. At length one of the crowd, more intrepid than the rest, took aim with his fowling-piece, and tore it so severely with the shot that it began to collapse rapidly; whereupon the rest, summoning up courage, darted forward and battered it with flails or gashed it with pitchforks. The outrush of gas was so great that they were driven back for the time, but when the dying monster appeared exhausted, the peasants fastened it to the tail of a horse and drove it along until the carcase was utterly dismembered.

The rustics who witnessed the first descent in England--Lunardi's, in Hertfordshire--shrank from the aeronaut as a very equivocal personage, because he had arrived on what they called the 'devil's horse.' Nor are these terrors wholly extinct in the present day, for Flammarion gives a description (with the pencil as well as the pen) of a descent in which men appear to be flying, children screaming, and animals scampering, whilst the balloon with its flags and streamers, waving fantastically on each side like long arms or tentaculæ, is regarded by them as some formidable being coming from the clouds. 'It is the devil himself!' they exclaim.

But having anchored, and escaped all the perils due to chimney-tops or infuriated farmers, the first question we put will doubtless be--Where are we? A more unfortunate query could scarcely be propounded. It expresses the greatest of all the infirmities under which the balloon labours--namely, that no mortal can tell us beforehand where we shall alight. Would it not be rather inconvenient if a traveller, on setting out from Derby, were unable to say whether he should land at Liverpool or at Hull, at Brighton or at Berwick-upon-Tweed? For aught we know, we might find ourselves, after ascending from the most central part of England, hovering over the Irish Sea or the English Channel, with simple power to rise into the clouds or plunge into the waves, but with none to choose any horizontal path or enter any particular port. Whilst drifting tranquilly along in a current, we could hardly fail to ask whether no means could be adopted for propelling balloons in the air as is the case with vessels on the water. Put out our oars? Unhappily they would do little to assist our progress, for, however broad their blades, they would meet with small resistance from the thin medium into which they were dipped. Rely upon paddle-wheels? Just as bad! There is no dense fluid like water to grip, and the floats would spin around almost as vainly as if they were worked in the receiver of an air-pump. Besides, the inflated globe with its suspended car does not constitute a rigid and inflexible whole, and if it did, the attempt to drive it against or athwart a current, in its present form, would be like rowing a man-of-war, with all its canvas stretched, right in the teeth of a gale.

It would be impossible in an article like this to glance at the innumerable schemes which have been propounded for the guidance and propulsion of balloons. Wonderful ingenuity has been expended upon the subject. In one project, for example, the waste gas, instead of being idly discharged, was to be conveyed into an apparatus from which it would issue with a centrifugal force capable--so it was fondly supposed--of urging the aerostat in any given direction. In another, the balloon itself was to be converted into a kind of screw, so that when turned by means of a small engine, it should advance at each motion through a space proportioned to the distance between the threads of this monster spiral. M. Farcot gives us a description, in a little treatise on Atmospheric Navigation,[48] of a _petit navire aèrien de plaisance_, framed like a flying whale, 100 yards in length, with an extensive gallery slung below, and fitted up with fins or wings, by means of which it is to be propelled. The picture of this marvellous structure is so enchanting, that we feel an irrepressible desire to mingle with the passengers who seem to be lounging luxuriously over the balcony, and who are evidently as much at home as if they were taking a pleasure excursion in a steamer on Windermere or the Lake of Geneva. M. Dupuy de Dôme not long since received a grant from the French Government to enable him to construct a fish-like machine to be worked by a screw, and assisted by a sort of swimming bladder. Indeed, a large number of persons, either doubting or despairing of man's power to master the balloon in its ordinary form, rest their hopes upon the construction of machines which, whether lighter or heavier than the air, shall be driven through the atmosphere by brute force, if it may be so called. Mr. Glaisher does not, of course, share in these views. He tells us that he has attempted no improvement in the management of the balloon, that he found it was wholly at the mercy of the winds, and that he saw no probability of any method of steering it being ever discovered. Fonvielle and Tissandier, on the other hand, whilst admitting that the machine is still in its infantile stage, complain that the engineers have not yet brought all their resources to bear upon the subject, and entertain some vague notion that what has been done for locomotives, for steamboats, and ordinary sailing vessels, will surely be done for the ships of the air, forgetting that the problem to be solved is not exactly how you shall skim the surface of the water in a boat, but rather how you could drive a frigate through the fluid with its sails set when sunk to a depth of many feet, and this with the whole body of water in motion in a different direction. M. Flammarion remarks that a bird is much heavier than its bulk of air, yet the eagle and the condor, massive as they are, soar with ease to the tops of the tallest rocks; and shall man, he inquires (especially a Frenchman, to whom the empire of the air properly belongs[49]), be beaten by a bird? M. Flammarion declines. M. Farcot positively refuses.

For all purposes of aerial travelling, however, the painful fact remains, which may, perhaps, be most summarily expressed by saying that there is no Bradshaw for balloons. When the day comes in which it can be announced that 'highflyers' or 'great aerials' will leave Trafalgar-square for Paris or Dublin, weather permitting, at a certain hour; or that balloon trains will regularly ply between Hull and Hamburg, or, better still, that a Cunard or Collins line of atmospheric steamers has been established between London and New York, then the apparatus will be admitted into the noble army of machines which, like the ship, the locomotive, the steam-engine, the spinning jenny, the telescope, the mariner's compass, the electric telegraph, and many others, have rendered such splendid service to mankind.

Some dozen years ago, indeed, an aerial ship, intended to traverse the Atlantic, was announced as in course of construction in America, by Mr. Lowe. Weighing from three to four tons in itself, it was to possess an ascending power equal to twenty-two tons. Its capacity was to be five times larger than that of any previous machine. Fifteen miles of cord were to be employed in the network alone. Beneath the car a boat thirty feet in length was to be slung, and this skiff was to be fitted up with masts, sails, and paddle-wheels, in order that the crew might take to the water in case their balloon failed them at sea. Copper condensers were to be attached, in order that additional gas might be driven into the globe, or surplus gas abstracted, as occasion demanded, the object of this contrivance being to enable the navigators to raise or lower themselves without wasting any precious material. The ship was to be directed by an apparatus containing a fan like that of a winnowing machine, and this was to be worked by an Ericsson's caloric engine of four-horse power. Various ingenious appliances, amongst others a sounding line one mile in length to show the course of the atmospheric currents, were to be adopted, and it was confidently hoped that this _Great Eastern_ of the atmosphere, which was to be styled the _City of New York_, would cross the Atlantic in not less than three days, and possibly in two! We regret to say that it has not yet put into any European port, though its arrival would be hailed with more satisfaction than the first steamship, the _Sirius_, was in America.

Let it not be supposed, however, that the balloon, even in its present rudimentary condition, is available for frivolous or exceptional purposes alone--for the former, when it is used as a brilliant supplement to some display of fireworks; for the latter, when we happen to be locked up in some steel-begirded city. For scientific objects it may be difficult to overrate its value as a 'floating observatory,' and we cannot refrain from sharing in M. Fonvielle's chagrin when he tells us how, on one occasion, after preparing to view an eclipse from a lofty elevation, he found that his aeronaut was not ready to set out until the eclipse was over; or how on another, when all had been arranged to make a sally amongst the November meteors on one of their grand gala nights, he found, on arriving at the spot, that the workmen had taken to flight in consequence of the escape of the gas, and that his only chance was to go up the 'day after the fair.' Many uses also may be found for captive balloons. Half in jest, M. Flammarion inquires, whether these might not be pleasantly employed in traversing the deserts where camels or dromedaries constitute the ordinary means of conveyance. How uncomfortable is a seat upon the back of one of these brutes--what patience it requires to endure the tearing, jerking motions of these ships of the wilderness--most wanderers in the East well know, and perhaps painfully remember. Suppose, then, that an aerostat were harnessed to a dromedary and drawn peacefully along, whilst the traveller sat softly in the car--reading, smoking, sleeping, dreaming--without a single jolt to mar his enjoyment, would not this be a blessed improvement in locomotion? Half in jest, too, we might carry the idea a little further, and ask whether, if balloons occupied by delicate voyagers were attached to steamers, and allowed to float at a sufficient height, so as to reduce the see-saw motion of the vessels to an imperceptible quantity, the pains of that abhorrent malady, sea-sickness, might not be avoided in crossing the Channel, or making small marine excursions?

So, many homely uses for captive balloons might be imagined. A traveller in Russia gives an account of a church at St. Petersburg with a lofty spire crowned with a large globe, upon which stood an angel supporting a cross. The figure began to bend, and great fears were entertained lest it should come down with a terrible crash. How could it be repaired was the question? To erect a proper scaffold would involve a formidable expense, and yet to reach the object without it seemed utterly impracticable, for the spire was covered with gilded copper, and looked more unscaleable than the Matterhorn. A workman, however, undertook the task. The plates of metal had been attached by nails which were left projecting. Furnished with short pieces of cord, looped at both extremities, he slung one end over a nail, and placing his feet in the other, raised himself a short distance: this enabled him to reach a little higher and fasten another loop over another nail, and so by repeating the process, and mounting from stirrup to stirrup, he crawled up, until by a still more daring manoeuvre he threw a cord over the globe, and then finally clambered to the side of the figure. A ladder of ropes was next drawn up, and the rest of the work became comparatively easy of execution; but with a captive balloon the needful materials might have been sent up, and the angel put in repair, without costing an anxious thought, or jeopardising either life or limb.

How far it is possible to employ a balloon for purposes of exploration in quarters which are naturally inaccessible, or at any rate difficult of approach, must be a question dependent in no small degree upon the power of replenishing the machine with gas or heated air. It would, doubtless, be a fine thing if men could thus sail over all the obstructions which fence in the two poles, and pry into the Antarctic continent, or solve the problem of a hidden Arctic sea. Many years ago Mr. Hampton designed, and we believe completed, a big Montgolfier, which was to be employed in the search after Sir John Franklin. The machine was to be inflated by means of hot air produced by the agency of a great stove; but, if the necessity for a supply of the ordinary gas was thus avoided, the demand for fuel in regions where neither timber nor coal could be had (blubber, indeed, might perhaps have been procured), must have proved an insuperable difficulty, and the enterprise would probably have terminated in leaving the aeronauts stranded on some icy waste, without any better means of return than were possessed by the poor lost ones themselves.

Let us not part from this subject, however, without informing the reader that if M. Flammarion's views are correct, it is the most important topic under the sun. 'For,' says he, with the look of a prophet and the tone of a poet, 'when the conquest of the air shall have been achieved, universal fraternity will be established upon the earth, everlasting peace will descend to us from heaven, and the last links which divide men and nations will be severed.' Without laying any stress upon the oracular form of this prediction--and the indefinite 'when' may conceal some sly reference to the Greek Kalends--we regret to say that we cannot join in his jubilant conclusion. Our firm persuasion is, that in the present state of affairs, seeing that so large a portion of the world's revenue is squandered upon fighting purposes, one of the first steps which would be taken in case the 'conquest of the air' were perfected to-morrow, would be to fit out a fleet of war-balloons, to raise a standing army of aeronauts, to add a new and afflictive department to our annual estimates, and to encourage the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make another assault upon the match-sellers, and probably to double our income-tax without compunction.

FOOTNOTES:

[48] 'La Navigation Atmosphérique.' Par M. Farcot, Ingenieur-Mécanicien, Membre de la Société Aérostatique et Météorologique de France. Paris, 1859.

[49]

'Les Anglais, nation trop fière,
S'arrogent l'empire des mers;
Les Français, nation légère,
S'emparent de celui des airs.'

ART. III.--_Early Sufferings of the Free Church of Scotland._

(1.) _Illustrations of the Principles of Toleration in Scotland._ Edinburgh. 1846.

(2.) _The Headship of Christ and the Rights of the Christian People._ By the late HUGH MILLER. Nimmo, Edinburgh.

(3.) _The Cruise of the Betsy._ By HUGH MILLER. Nimmo.

(4.) _Evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons on the Refusal of Sites for Churches in Scotland, 1847._

(5.) _Statement on the Law of Church Patronage, prepared by a Committee of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, in compliance with a suggestion of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone._ William Blackwood and Sons. 1870.

We were enabled to present our readers last year with what we believe to be the only full sketch in existence, drawn from authentic and official documents, of the rise and progress during a quarter of a century, of the Free Church of Scotland. From the figures there quoted it was made clear that at the very time when the Archbishop of Canterbury was proclaiming that this voluntary church was 'a failure' financially, its yearly income, steadily increasing from £275,000 of its earliest lustrum, had at last reached the highest point of £400,000; and that just when his Grace was asserting that 'whereas for a time it went forth triumphantly, now the ministers in all remote places are utterly destitute,' these remote ministers had, for the first time (although their number was doubled) attained the minimum stipend proposed by Dr. Chalmers of £150 each. The organization and machinery by which such a striking success has been achieved, as well as the principles which gave the original impulse to the body, were worthy of careful statement and study. Yet while devoting exclusive attention to these, we became gradually conscious that we were treading coldly upon the ashes of what history will describe as a marvellous outburst of self-sacrifice. The pathos and the suffering of that sad but noble year of 1843 have never yet been brought before English readers, but there is not so much heroism among us that we can afford to lose from the annals of this easy-going modern time so startling a narrative.

'Ah! that was something like disestablishment,' said a minister of the Free Kirk to us in the spring when the precedents of the Irish Church Bill were being discussed. He had been arguing that besides assuring their life-interests to the Irish clergy, it would be only fair to make a present to them of their glebes and parsonages. 'You should let a working-man take his working tools with him,' said our friend, and he was not sorry when the House of Lords gave a million or so of money to the new body. We were rash enough in reply to ask whether he got any equivalent for a glebe when a quarter of a century ago he and his two boys left the pleasant manse of B---- overlooking the Great Strath. But we had touched too deep a sore. The old man cheerfully turned it off with the words we have quoted above, but we could not forgive ourselves; and the thing led us back to enquire into some extraordinary scenes which took place in Scotland when many of the present generation were too young to observe them.

For this chapter of forgotten heroism, in which men of kindred blood and almost of our own generation took part, there are fortunately authentic as well as vividly descriptive materials. The reports presented year by year to the Scotch General Assemblies are the most public of all documents, and are intended to invite challenge and scrutiny. The evidence presented to the House of Commons Committee in 1848 is of great importance and of unquestioned authority. The writings of a man of genius like Hugh Miller will carry part of the truth down to other generations of readers. And yet, while much is known, much must ever remain untold. Scotchmen, who are men of education, and in a sacred office, are precisely the men to cover the sharpest pangs of poverty, and dread of poverty, with an impenetrable covering of reserve; and now that twenty-six years have passed, most of those grave, suffering faces have gone down into a deeper silence. Besides, the Free Kirk has come to be so proud of its extraordinary success in reconstruction, that it has rather attempted (notably in the recent debates in the House of Commons) to throw into the background the anguish of its birth, and to dwell rather on the achievements of the whole than on the sufferings of individuals. Our business is now rather with the latter, and fortunately there is one additional source whence this information can be derived. Dr. Thomas Guthrie, of Edinburgh, is known chiefly by his philanthropic efforts, after the example of Dr. Chalmers, to provide churches and schools and ragged schools for the masses in the large towns of Scotland; but the great achievement of his life, and one, too, for which men of all parties can now join in his praise, was that marvellous tour through Scotland in the year 1845, as the result of which parsonages, or 'manses' as they are called in Scotland, were actually provided for the seven hundred ministers, most of whom had been left homeless a year or two before, and whose places in the Establishment had all now been filled up. In the course of this great 'circumnavigation of charity,' he naturally became acquainted with facts and details, some of which found their way into speeches published at the time, and it is fortunate that we can still quote, from one of the greatest platform orators whether of England or Scotland, some of the fresh facts of that suffering time.

Until we recently came to the knowledge of these documents, we had the feeling that this suffering must have consisted more in apprehension or imagination than in actual privations--that the terrible dread which haunted men who were giving up their whole livings had scarcely any actual realization. And even though this turns out not to be the case, it is plain from Dr. Guthrie's own statements, that all over Scotland the approaching trial struck a chill to the hearts even of those who were determined to face it:--

'I remember,' he says, 'in a certain district of country, a
minister said to me, "You think there is no chance of a
settlement?" I said, "We are as certain of being out as
that the sun shall rise to-morrow." I was struck by
something like a groan, which came from the very heart of
the mother of the family; they had had many trials in their
day: there had been cradles and coffins in their home, and
the place was endeared by many associations to the mother;
there was not a flower or shrub or a tree but what was dear
to her--some of them were planted by the hands of those who
were in their graves,--and that woman's heart was like to
break. I remember another instance, where there was a
venerable mother who had gone to the place when it was a
wilderness, but who, with her husband, had turned it into
an Eden. Her husband had died there. Her son was now the
minister. This venerable woman was above eighty years of
age; yes, and I never felt more disposed to give up my work
than in that house. I could contemplate the children being
driven from their home; but when I looked on that venerable
widow and mother, with the snows and sorrows of eighty
years upon her head, and saw her anxiety about two things,
namely, that Lord Aberdeen should bring in a bill to settle
the question, but her anxiety, at the same time, that if
Lord Aberdeen did not bring in a satisfactory measure, her
son should do his duty,--I could not but feel that it was
something like a cruel work to tear out such a venerable
tree--to tear her away from the house that was dearest to
her on earth.'

For, as we formerly said, compared with this blow, the disestablishment of the Irish Church was a fall into the lap of luxury. Every minister in Scotland who adhered to the Church lost his income in one day--Whit-sunday of 1843. On the same day they lost their dwellings. The professors of divinity, with Chalmers at their head; the missionaries, with Dr. Duff at their head; the humble schoolmasters, with no great name to sustain them--were all turned out at the same moment. And the great strain and crisis of conscience must have been in the spring of that year, when those who in 1842 had pledged themselves, with two-thirds of the Assembly, 'to endure resignedly the loss of the temporal blessings of the Establishment,' saw that there was to be no escape from the sacrifice. The dread and depression must often have been extreme; yet it was not unmixed with a sustaining joy, as in the case of the following story, with reference to Dr. Charles Mackintosh (a venerated minister in the North, whose memorials have recently been published), for which we are indebted to a correspondent who is a native of the Highlands:--

'One morning in the spring of 1843, I jumped early out of
bed, for my head was full of marbles and peg-tops, and a
dozen or so of games before breakfast has its attractions
for a schoolboy. To my astonishment, I found my father down
before me; nay, he had evidently been there for some time,
for the moment I appeared he folded up the newspaper in
which he had been so unseasonably engaged, and--with a
break in his voice indicating an emotion that was quite
unaccountable to me--he asked me to take it at once over to
the manse, with his compliments to the minister. I went
very readily, for, besides the comfort of fingering the
marbles in my pocket, the hedge-rows were full of young
birds upon whom legitimate hostilities could be waged in
passing. But as I went I reflected on the austere and
stately image of the minister--a man everywhere respected,
but whose face inspired awe rather than love in the
beholder--(Had I not seen the town-boys break and scatter
round one corner of the street as soon as he appeared at
the other?)--and I resolved that my interview with him
should be short. And it was shorter than I expected, for I
had scarcely got out of the sunshine into the manse
evergreens, when I found him in the porch; and when I
offered him the newspaper, he showed me that he had already
got the _Times_, by some unusual express, and as he spoke
he patted my head and smiled--but such a smile, so full of
radiant kindliness! I was confounded; and as I went back
between the edges the birds sang unheeded while I thought
what could be up with the minister. Had anybody left him a
fortune? or had he met one of the shining ones walking
among the hollies in that early dawn? And it was not for
some weeks that I found out that this was what had
happened--the newspaper that morning had brought him the
vote of the House of Commons, finally refusing an inquiry
into the affairs of the Scotch Church, and so making it
certain that within a few weeks he and his aged mother
would leave for ever the home, at the door of which I saw
him; in which his father, the previous minister, had dwelt
peacefully before him, but which the son would now have to
quit without retaining a farthing of his income for the
future. Of course he came out, and 470 ministers with him.'

For the crisis followed in May. The disruption itself (as the actual and final wrench given to the Church came to be called) concentrated the anguish of the general sacrifice in a very painful, but, at the same time, a more poetical form. Sir George Harvey, the present President of the Scottish Academy, has painted the 'Leaving of the Manse' with much dignity and power: the grey-haired pastor moving with feeble steps from the well-known door; his wife's quiet tears, as she guides the child whose pet lamb refuses to accompany it in its early exile; the awe-struck respect of the rustics around, while the men take off their caps, and the women throw their aprons over their faces and sob. Yet the words which immediately follow what we have already quoted from Dr. Guthrie, are, perhaps, the most memorable record of the feelings which accompanied the final step:--

'I remember passing a manse on a moonlight night, with the
minister who had left it,--for the cause of truth, his
brother Scotchman earnestly adds--'No light shone from the
house, and no smoke arose. Pointing to it in the moonlight,
I said, "Oh, my friend, it was a noble thing to leave that
house." "Ah, yes," he replied; "it was a noble thing, but
for all that it was a bitter thing. I shall never forget
the night I left that house till I am laid in my grave.
When I saw my wife and children go forth in the gloaming,
when I saw them for the last time leave our own door; and
when in the dark I was left alone, with none but my God in
the house; and when I had to take water and quench the fire
on my own hearth, and put out the candle in my own house,
and turn the key against myself, and my wife, and my little
ones that night--God in His mercy grant that such a night I
may never again see! It was a noble thing to leave the
manse, and I bless God for the grace that was given to me;
but, for all that, it was a cruel and bitter night to me."'

The actual circumstances of departure must have been very various: 'One minister writes to us that he left the manse with his family in a snow-storm, when the mountain was white with snow, and the sky was black with drift; but that he never knew so much of the peace of God as he did that night, when following his wife and children as they were carted over the mountain, without knowing where they were to find a place to dwell in.'

And in many places over Scotland, this was the beginning of sorrows. In some parts, and especially in the large towns, the actual hardships were nothing worse than diminution of income and straitened circumstances; while in not a few cases even that was not felt. But in the country, and especially in the Highlands, it was different. It was some years before the manses were built, and homelessness added to poverty pressed heavily on the outed ministers.

'I remember well,' writes the Highland correspondent we
have already quoted from, and for whose accuracy and good
faith we can vouch, 'how I used to watch one man, the
minister of the neighbouring parish of E----, who, like
many others, was unable to find a place to dwell in among
his own people, and had to come into the neighbouring town.
He was a scholarly and cultivated man, who in his early
days had attained much academical distinction at a Northern
University, but a weak chest and a threatening of heart
complaint now bore heavily upon him. Yet week after week,
as every Sabbath morning came round, he persisted in
driving away for miles through that first inclement winter,
to meet his congregation; and I can remember to this day
his keen, delicate face set to meet a heavy snow-storm from
the north-west, while a hacking cough shook his whole frame
as he set out on his journey, four miles of which must pass
ere he caught sight of the well-sheltered manse, which the
year before he had left for ever.'

But those who, like him, found shelter in a town dwelling, however humble, were not worst off. The great difficulty was in the country; even where harbouring the minister was not forbidden (as in some cases, from a desire to crush out the movement, it was) by the great landlords. And of course it was with this that Dr. Guthrie's facts chiefly dealt.

'I have a letter here from a man who has suffered more for
gospel truth than any other I know. He says that he has
been obliged to pack two nurses and eight children into two
beds, in the small house to which they have removed. His
wife took a cold in October, which there was some
apprehension might end in consumption; and at my own table
he told me, what was enough to melt a heart of stone, that
when he and his family gather together at the family altar,
they have not room to kneel before Almighty God, and some
of them require to kneel on the floor of the passage before
they can unite together in their family devotions. Some of
our ministers write that they live in crofter's houses;
some in places as damp as cellars, where a candle will not
burn. One says he sits with his great coat on; another that
the curtains of his bed shake at night like the sails of a
ship in a storm. One minister, a friend of mine, lives in a
house which every wind of heaven blows through. On getting
up one morning he found the house all comparatively
comfortable, and wondered what good genius had been putting
it in order, when he discovered that a heavy shower of snow
had fallen, and stopped up the crevices of the roof.'

Narrating this to a vast meeting in Glasgow, at the close of which he announced that upwards of £10,000 had been subscribed during that one day for his scheme, Dr. Guthrie added, with Scotch shrewdness, 'I said to my friend, that I was glad he had told me that story, for if that shower of snow did not produce a shower of notes, I would be very much disappointed.' The story of the shower of snow was hearsay; but we must make room for what the speaker testifies to having seen with his own eyes.

'Some of you may have read of the death of Mr. Baird, the
minister of Cockburnspath, a man of piety, a man of
science, a man of amiable disposition, and of the kindest
heart, but a man dealt most unkindly by; although he would
not have done a cruel or unjust thing to the meanest of
God's creatures. I was asked to go and preach for a
collection to his manse, last winter. He left one of the
loveliest manses in Scotland. He might have lived in
comfort in Dunbar, seven or eight miles away, but what was
to become of his people? They were smiting the shepherd,
that they might scatter the sheep. No, said Mr. Baird, be
the consequences what they may, I shall stand by my own
people. I went out last winter, and found him in a mean
cottage, consisting of two rooms, a _but_ and a _ben_, with
a cellar-like closet below, and a garret above; and I
honestly declare, that the house was so small and so cold
that, when sitting by the fire, the one part of the body
was almost frozen, while the other was scorched by the
heat. Night came, and I asked where I was to sleep. He
showed me a closet; there was a fire-place in it, but it
was a mockery, for no fire could be put in it; the walls
were damp. I looked horrified at the place; but there was
no better. Now, said I to Mr. Baird, where are you to
sleep? Come, said he, and I will show you. So he climbed a
sort of trap stair, and got up to the garret, and there was
the minister's study, with a chair, a table, and a flock
bed. His health was evidently sinking under his sufferings;
and, but that I was not well myself, I never would have
permitted him to lie on such a bed. A few inches above were
the slates of the roof, without any covering, and as white
with hoar frost within, as they were white with snow
without. When he came down next morning, after a sleepless
night, I asked him how he had been, and he told me that he
had never closed an eye, from the cold. His very breath on
the blankets was frozen as hard as the ice outside. I say,
that man lies in a martyr's grave ... and I would rather,
like him this day, be laid in the grave, with a grateful
Church to raise my honored monument, than dwell in the
proudest palaces of those that sent him there.'

We have exscinded from these quotations, not only all polemics, but such not unnatural expressions of indignation as the brethren of the more unfortunate ministers slipped into. There is no injustice in omitting these now, for the time has come when all parties, and in particular most of the members of the Scotch Established Church, are earnest in expressing their admiration of the heroism of those who suffered. But, in order to bring out the story completely, and, in particular, to do justice to the difficulties in the face of which the enormous task of covering the land with voluntary churches and manses and ministers was accomplished, it is necessary to go farther down, and refer to another historical chapter. We allude to the facts which came out in the Committee of the House of Commons on 'Sites for Churches (Scotland),' in 1847. No doubt these hardships have nearly all now passed away, and the great landowners, themselves chiefly members of the Church of England, have, almost in every case, consented to sell to the poorer congregations of the Church ground on which to erect churches. But at first it was perhaps natural that men, most of them imperfectly acquainted with their countrymen, should have conceived it possible to stamp out, or starve out, the new church. And, accordingly, some very strong things were done. The writer happened to be acquainted with one district, where a gentleman of large property, a man, too, of immense energy and public spirit, entertained a passionate opposition to the popular movement, and had been heard to declare, shortly before the disruption, that he would 'give five hundred trees from his woods, to hang the seceding ministers upon.' Those innocent vegetables were, fortunately, not called upon to bear the _novos fructus et non sua poma_, thus destined for them; but Mr. R---- soon tried another course, which was practically of not much more use. He suddenly issued a notice, that every labourer on his estates, who did not go to the parish church, should cease, after next Monday, to work on his land. Now, in that part of the Highlands, as in most others, the people had gone out _en masse_ with their ministers, and no one would go to the Established Church for the heaviest bribe. What was the result of the attempt at coercion? The result was simply this, that on that Monday no plough or spade was touched on all his estates; and Mr. R----, proud and passionate as he was, had simply and unconditionally to surrender--knowing, too, that he had consolidated the whole country-side in a bond of mutual allegiance, which would long survive the living generation of men. The same sort of oppression was attempted in particular cases for years afterwards. So late as 1847, we find, in the evidence before Parliament, many cases, _e.g._, a witness, whose family had been tenants of a farm, in Strathspey, for many generations, 'probably since 1630,' saying, that 'there is a general rumour prevalent in the district, and among the adherents of the Free Church, that certain of their number may be made examples of at the earliest opportunity, in the way of being evicted from their farms, possessions, or holdings', and expressing his own lively apprehensions in consequence. Nor was this general belief unfounded. A poor woman, who had offered a shed on her holding, where the congregation might meet, 'got a message from his lordship's factor, through another person, that, in the event of her granting such a site, he would withdraw her lease.' One Donald Cameron, in the same place, who, being an elder in the church, had come out with his brethren, was urged by the same middleman with the sensible argument, 'Why, I conceive you to be the greatest fool in the nation; might not a minister who remained within the walls of a church, be as instrumental in saving your soul, as those who preach in woods or fields?' but, on this very fair reasoning failing to make him abandon his own pastor and principles, he was summarily turned out of his situation as the great man's overseer. But the most curious instance of this sort of thing being carried out systematically is given in the evidence of Mr. M----, of Skye, who was factor for Lord Macdonald, in that island. In this case, not only was the minister refused a holding, but a list was made out of all the collectors who ventured to go round and gather up the small contributions of their brethren, and all of them received summary notice to quit, some under circumstances of the greatest hardship. The factor, who seemed, at last, to be somewhat ashamed of the transaction, told the Committee that 'It was Lord Macdonald himself who gave me the list of such as he wished to be served with notices, on account of their being collectors. The day he was leaving the country he gave me a list, and said, "Here is a list of fellows that must have notice to quit."' One of the poor men travelled all the way up to London to try to persuade his landlord to be merciful; but, as the factor told the Committee, 'I rather think his lordship did not look at his petition.' Nor was it merely the officials connected with the Free Church who were turned out: the innkeeper and the miller of the district were both ejected on account of their being members, or, as the factor put it, partisans, of that body. 'Being, as we considered, public servants, we thought it better to remove them.' The Committee was very severe in dealing with the allegations of partisanship made _ex post facto_ against these unfortunate people, the factor not being able to say that he had ever hinted such a reason to themselves. Mr. Bouverie's question to the factor, 'Was any _locus penitentiæ_ allowed to the miller?' was met by the curious reply, 'That would be interfering with the man's conscience, if he thought he was acting rightly,' and Mr. Fox Maule's rejoinder, 'And you think it was no interference with his conscience, turning him out of his farm?' received the placid answer, 'No.' Niel Nicholson, one of the unfortunate Free Churchmen removed at this time to make way for a teacher of the Established Church, at the time he received notice to quit, had a bedridden wife, and his son the eldest of eight or ten children, laid up with a broken leg. Another man, removed by a brother of the Established minister, after being ejected from his land had nowhere to go, and lived for a considerable time in a kind of tent by the roadside, at last receiving shelter from the very factor of Lord Macdonald whose general conduct seems to have been so harsh. The correspondence brought in evidence before the Committee on this occasion was very instructive, as in the case of the following laconic missive:--

'ARMADALE, 16_th November_, 1846.
SIR,--I refuse a site for a Free Church for your people.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
MACDONALD.'

But the same minister who was thus addressed as to his church, wrote a very respectful letter to his landlord, as to his house, trusting 'that your Lordship does not really intend to drive me, with my young and helpless family, out of my present dwelling-house.'

'I am willing to give any rents for the same which another
will offer; and should your Lordship not choose to give the
farm on any terms, I would be satisfied with the house, and
grass for two cows and a horse. The building of this house
cost me £150, and I have been at considerable expense in
improving the farm, for which, from the shortness of the
lease, I have had as yet little or no returns. Will your
Lordship allow me to observe without offence, that at a
time[50] when we are all suffering under the chastening
hand of our heavenly Father, it looks somewhat unseemly
that we should be the occasion of suffering to one another.
I have already taken the principal part in distributing
food supplied by the Free Church among your Lordship's
cotters and crofters in this country. I am at this moment
in receipt of nearly £40 (I may now say £100) from
respectable private parties in London, Edinburgh, and
Glasgow, with which I am helping to relieve much of the
present distress, besides lessening the burden of
supporting many of the people to your Lordship and tenants.
From all these considerations, I might naturally expect
some favour at your Lordship's hands.'

The answer to this letter came through, another factor, to the effect that 'Lord Macdonald instructs me to inform you that he has received your letter, and that it is not his intention either to grant you a site or give you any lands;' adding that the landlord would not give him any compensation for his improvements, and that 'he had brought it all on himself' by persisting in staying with his present congregation.