Chapter XX: Part 20

But with the House of Commons Blue-book before us, let us leave cases of individual suffering for a time, and look at the case of whole congregations. Throughout Scotland the Free Church was, with labour and difficulty, erecting places in which to worship God. But in many places the landlords refused a foot of soil on which to do it. The congregations who met in the open air were not much to be pitied at their starting, for it was summer, and a thorough soaking with rain was the worst that befel them. But as the first winter of 1843 darkened down upon them, it was no wonder that men and women gathering weekly under a canvas tent, and in some cases without even that, but in the open air, under the bitter inclemency of the northern sky, began to set up piteous requests to be permitted to meet under some roof, or at least to be allowed land on which to erect a roof to cover them. But in many instances this was refused; and during that winter, in different districts of Scotland whole congregations of not men only, but delicate women and children (after coming, as the Scotch manner is, many miles to worship or to sacrament), remained through each Sunday of December, January, and February, under whatever variety of snow, sleet, slush, frost, rain, and ice, their native sky, rich in such alternations, chose to pour upon them. Another year came round, and though by this time a number of the proprietors had relented, a great many stood firm, and the second winter showed the same kind of suffering as the first. The following circumstances in which one of the ordinary services in a congregation in the South of Scotland, in February of the year 1844, was held, must have had parallels during the same months, especially in Skye, and the Western Isles, and the Highlands of Inverness and other counties. But it is given by the Edinburgh minister who conducted the meeting, and whose evidence on matters of which he was eye-witness we have already found so graphic. In this case the congregation had met for some time in a canvas tent on a piece of moor or waste ground by the permission of the tenant; but the landlord, who had already refused a site, checkmated this evasion of his will by procuring an interdict, or order of Court, and the congregation were driven in the beginning of winter to meet on the public road, and to try to erect their tent there. But the tent could not be erected without digging holes for the poles, and making holes in the public road was an illegal proceeding, which they were afraid to attempt so soon after being driven off a waste moor. Consequently, they met all that winter without shelter, as described in the following private letter, written at the time, but afterwards read publicly to the Committee of the House of Commons:--

'Well wrapped up, I drove out yesterday morning to Canobie,
the hills white with snow, the roads covered ankle deep in
many places with slush, the wind high and cold, thick rain
lashing on, and the Esk by our side all the way, roaring in
the snow-flood between bank and brae. We passed Johnnie
Armstrong's tower, yet strong even in its ruins, and after
a drive of four miles a turn of the road brought me in view
of a sight which was overpowering, and would have brought
the salt tears into the eyes of any man of common humanity.
There, under the naked boughs of some spreading oak trees,
at the point where a country road joined the turnpike,
stood a tent, around, or rather in front of which was
gathered a large group of muffled men and women, with some
little children, a few sitting, most of them standing, and
some old venerable widows cowering under the shelter of an
umbrella. On all sides each road was adding a stream of
plaided men and muffled women to the group, till the
congregation had increased to between 500 or 600, gathering
on the very road, and waiting my forthcoming from a mean
inn, where I found shelter till the hour of worship had
come. During the psalm-singing and first prayer I was in
the tent, but finding that I would be uncomfortably
confined, I took up my position on a chair in front, having
my hat on my head, my Codrington close buttoned up to my
throat, and a pair of bands, which were wet enough with
rain ere the service was over. The rain lashed on heavily
during the latter part of the sermon, but none budged; and
when my hat was off during the last prayer, some man kindly
extended an umbrella over my head. I was so interested, and
so were the people, that our forenoon service continued for
about two hours. At the close I felt so much for the
people; it was such a sad sight to see old men and women,
some children, and one or two people pale and sickly, and
apparently near the grave, all wet and benumbed with the
keen wind and cold rain, that I proposed to have no
afternoon service; but this met with universal dissent--one
and all declared that if I would hold on they would stay on
the road till midnight. So we met again at three o'clock,
and it poured on almost without intermission during the
whole service; and that over, shaken cordially by many a
man and many a woman's hand, I got into the gig and drove
here in time for an evening service, followed through rain
in heaven and the wet snow on the road by a number of the
people.'

When this letter was produced to the House it was taken advantage of by Sir James Graham, with the view of bringing out that so sad a sight must have had the effect of driving the minister who witnessed it into some bitterness of expression in the pulpit, such as might perhaps justify or excuse the Duke of Buccleuch. Said Sir James--

'May I ask whether your own feeling was not that some
oppression had been exercised towards those people? Ans.
Certainly; I felt that the people were in most grievous
circumstances, being necessitated to meet on the turnpike
road; and not only I, but I may mention in addition that
the person who drove me in the gig from Langholm to
Canobie, when we came in sight of that congregation
standing in the open air upon such a day, and in such a
place, burst into tears, and asked me, Was there ever a
sight seen like that?

'You have mentioned that "oppression makes a wise man mad;"
the feelings of the driver might be one thing, but you, a
minister of the gospel, would be very considerably excited
by seeing what you have described; you thinking it an act
of oppression upon the people? Ans. Deep feeling would be
excited--if you mean by excitement that I was ready to
break forth into unsuitable expressions, I say certainly
not; I felt when I saw it as if I could not preach, I was
so overpowered by the sight--to see my fellow-creatures,
honest, respectable, religious people, worshipping the God
of their fathers upon the turnpike road was enough to melt
any man's heart.'

Sir James was disappointed in the object of his examination, for it turned out that Dr. Guthrie on this occasion had with some deliberation avoided making any reference to the circumstances of the congregation, and had turned all the feeling roused within him into the channel of more fervid preaching of the common gospel.

This was in 1844; the following year the ministers, even in the bleakest Highlands, began to have some comfort, for now the manse scheme was set on foot, and was being pressed by Dr. Guthrie; but the position of these unfortunate and exceptional congregations remained the same. A minister in Skye, whom the Highlanders there regarded with boundless veneration, but who was little fitted to face hardships (he saw his family of eleven delicate children melt into the grave before him), used to preach at Uig in the open air, with a covering over himself, but none for the people. 'I have preached,' he says, 'when the snow has been falling so heavily upon them, that when it was over I could scarcely distinguish the congregation from the ground, except by their faces.' Two years more passed on; and even then, in 1847, there were still thirty-one cases in Scotland in which sites were absolutely refused, besides many others in which very inconvenient and humiliating places were alone offered, and in many cases had been accepted. The House of Commons now took up the matter, and perhaps the most curious thing in their investigation was the careful cross-examination of medical men on the question whether it could be proved that the members of the congregation who met winter after winter in the open air had actually suffered, or at least had suffered seriously and fatally from their compulsory exposure. No doubt they were drenched with rain and chilled with sleet, and then they caught cold and died; but were the medical men prepared to prove (so argued the apologists of oppression in the committee)--could the medical men say that their taking cold was the necessary consequence of the drench and chill, or that the fatal result was due to this original cause, and not to subsequent carelessness or blunders in the treatment? For example, when 'Miss Stewart, Grantown, about eighty years of age, but strong for her years, and of sound constitution, after attending public worship of the Free Church in the open air, was attacked by sub-acute rheumatism,' and died exhausted after four months of the disease, no one could certainly say that the old lady might not have taken rheumatism even if she had separated from her neighbours, and gone peaceably back to the Established Church!

We shall quote no more, however, from the details of this Blue-book, but it will be remembered that, after taking evidence extending to nearly five hundred pages of print, the committee unanimously concurred in expressing an 'earnest hope that the sites which have hitherto been refused may no longer be withheld.' They held, and all Englishmen will echo the opinion, that 'the compulsion to worship in the open air, without a church, is a grievous hardship inflicted on innocent parties;' while they found that even at that late date of 1847, about 16,000 people were still compelled so to worship, or at least were 'deprived of church accommodation,' and were without 'a convenient shelter from the severity of a northern climate.'

But though the site-refusing caused much distress to the people, still the edge even of this fell chiefly upon the ministers. Driven out of their old homes in one day, they were often refused new ones, and in the great Highland counties denied even temporary shelter. Lodging there was hardly to be got, and in many places the tenantry were haunted with fears of what the consequences might be to themselves if they gave house-room where their landlords had already refused a site. 'Many of these ministers' families,' said Dr. Guthrie in 1845, when the facts were recent,--'some of them motherless families--are thirty, and fifty, and sixty, and seventy miles separated from them. I think of the hardship of many of these men going to see their own children; and of children who see their father so seldom that they do not know him when he visits them.' One of the most curious cases thus produced was that of the parish of Small Isles--so called because it consists of four little islands clustered together in the Atlantic. The minister, Mr. Swanson, well known now as the friend from youth of Hugh Miller--famous as a geologist, and much more famous as a Scottish stonemason, gave up his home, 'placed far amid the melancholy main,' and came out with the others in 1843; and a site both for manse and Church being refused on the central island, where the whole congregation adhered to him, he betook himself to what his friend, the gifted editor of the _Witness_, dubbed the 'Floating Manse.' It was a little yacht, 30 feet by 11 feet, in which he lived when visiting his parish, his family, however, residing in Skye.

In 1844, Hugh Miller set out to visit his friend on a geological excursion, the scientific record of which he has preserved in his volume 'The Cruise of the _Betsy_,' where he also gives a most curious account of the relations of Mr. Swanson, the minister, to the people to whom he so clung. On one Sunday morning the geologist and his host got ashore on their way to a low dingy cottage of turf and stone (just opposite the windows of the deserted manse), which its former occupant had built with his own money as a Gaelic school for the people, and which they were obliged to use as a place of worship--'the minister encased in his ample-skirted storm-jacket of oiled canvas protected atop by a genuine _sou'-wester_, of which the broad posterior rim sloped half-a-yard down his back; and I closely wrapped up in my grey maud, which proved, however, a rather indifferent protection against the penetrating powers of a true Hebridean drizzle.' When they got in, the minister took off his sou'-wester, and preached on 'God so loved the world,' and the visitor remarks how the attention of his hearers to him who was not only their pastor, but the sole physician, and that without fee or reward, in the island, was increased by his new life of hardship and danger undertaken for their sakes; for they had seen his little vessel driven from her anchorage just as the evening had fallen, and always feared for his safety when stormy nights closed over the sea. Next year Miller had himself an opportunity of judging of this, for while he was on board the _Betsy_ 'the water, pouring in through a hundred opening chinks in her upper works, rose, despite of our exertions, high over plank, and beam, and cabin door, and went dashing against beds and lockers. She was evidently fast filling, and bade fair to terminate all her voyagings by a short trip to the bottom.' They barely saved themselves by the Point of Sleat interposing between them and the roll of the sea. The 'Floating Manse' will not be forgotten while the works of this charming writer survive; but very much later than this, on Loch Sunart, also in the West, a 'floating church' also had to be provided in consequence of the refusal of a site; and the Sheriff of Edinburghshire, himself a naval officer in his youth, testified to the Committee of the House that in the winter of 1846 it answered very well. It was moored about a hundred yards from the shore, and although there was a little difficulty in the people going out in boats, still it was possible to manage it. Many English pedestrians in Sutherland have seen the famous Cave of Smoo, a vast cavern protected by a natural gateway of rock, and with an interior chamber where a black stream flows in perpetual darkness. It was here that the Free Church congregation of Durness met.

'One minister has preached for two years in a deep sea pit,
which I saw in Sutherlandshire; God's sea is their
protection. No man can say he is ruler of the sea, though
he boasts himself possessor of the land. In a deep gully,
where the rocks are some hundred feet high, a hollow has
been closed in from the sea by a barrier of rocks, which
protects them from the Western Ocean, behind this they
meet; and there, some hundred feet down, where no man can
see them till he stands on the verge of the precipice, and
where they might have been safe from Claverhouse in the
days of old, that minister with his congregation, while the
waves of the Atlantic Ocean were roaring beside them, and
protected by that barrier of rock, met two winters and two
summers; and I know, from the determination of that man and
his people, that there they would have met till their dying
day if the Duke of Sutherland had not granted them
redress.'

But we were treating of the hardships rather of the ministers than of the congregations, and Dr. Guthrie's question is pertinent,

'Where does the minister go after having preached in such
circumstances? Not in the case I have just mentioned, but
in another, the minister, after preaching to his hearers in
the winter snow, where there was no barrier or creek
sheltering them from the salt sea spray, had to go back,
not to a comfortable home, like you and me, but to a
miserable dwelling, where he had to climb to a lonely and
miserable garret, and in a place where there was little
ventilation, and in a room where he could have no fire, the
minister had to sit from week's end to week's end, till his
health was broken down, and he was obliged to retire from
the battle-field, forced away from it to save himself from
an early, and, I say, a martyr's grave.'

It need not be said that such cases as these were exceptional and extreme; but, on the other hand, it is certain the facts in these cases are accurately given, and are representative of other extreme cases that were never published. Our last quotation from the eloquent divine who laid the foundations of the homes of a whole Church (and to whom we shall not apologize for quoting so many facts which are the inheritance of the Church catholic) is interesting to the writer, because the younger of the two ministers spoken of in it was one of the first men whom he remembers in his childhood to have seen in the pulpit. He gave up no manse in 1843, but belonged to another class, the licentiates or candidates of the Church, who threw in their lot with the body now to be stripped of all its prospects and emoluments. The following visit, narrated by Dr. Guthrie, was to the old minister of Tongue, 'a man of the highest character and the best affections.' His son, whom we remember merely as a gentlemanly young cleric, with a rather plaintive voice, which ranged through endless intonations and cadences, and was provocative of meditation much more than of thought, was at this time his father's assistant, and died of the fever mentioned by Dr. Guthrie.

'The place where Mr. Mackenzie's old manse is situated is
near the small village of Tongue, the prettiest place in
all that country. He had a sort of ancestral right to
it--his family having had possession of it for about a
hundred years--and he had spent several hundreds of pounds
in improving the property, never dreaming but that his son
would inherit it after he was gone. It was told me that his
Grace of Sutherland wrote to him, expressing his hope that
he would not go out, considering how much he had done for
him. Mr. Mackenzie wrote back that he was not forgetful of
his Grace's kindness, but that he owed more to the Lord
Jesus Christ.... When I went to Tongue, where did I find
him? I passed the manse, with its lawns, its trim walks,
and its fine trees. I went on till I came to a bleak,
heather hill, under the lee of which I found a humble
cottage belonging to the parish schoolmaster, where this
venerable man and his son had found a shelter, and were
accommodated for four shillings a week. There was nothing
inviting about the house, though I believe the people were
kind enough. Before the door there was an old broken cart,
and a black peat stack, and everything was repulsive. I
opened the door of the single room, which served for
dining-room, drawing-room, parlour, library, study, and
bedroom, all and everything in one; and there, beyond the
bed, I saw him, nature exhausted. He had never closed his
eyes all night, having passed a night of extreme suffering;
and there, in exhausted nature, he was sitting half dressed
in a chair, in profound slumber, his old grey locks
streaming over the back of the chair on which he was
sitting--a picture of old age, a picture of disease, a
picture of death. I stood for some time before him, and as
I looked round the room I thought, Oh! if I had B----, if I
had any of the men here who are persecuting our poor Free
Church, surely they would be moved by such a sight as this!
I pushed open a door, and in a small mean closet I found
this venerable man's son--a minister of our Church, and a
man who would be an honour to any Church--lying on a fever
bed. His children were seventy miles away, for no house
could be procured for them in the district. The son had
never closed his eyes all night, his own sufferings having
been aggravated by his father's. I tried to console him,
but I was more fit to weep with him than anything else. I
only remember that he said something to this effect: "Ah,
Mr. Guthrie, this is bad enough and hard enough, but,
blessed be God, I don't lie here a renegade; my own
conscience and my father's are in peace." As I came back
amid the driving tempest, I confess that I was more like a
child than a man, so little was I able to resist what I had
seen; and as I came along I saw a little flower, that God
in his providence had taught, when the storm came on, to
close its leaves; and I thought, if God is so kind to this
little flower, he will never see the righteous man
forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.... When I returned
from the North a few days ago, I found a letter, informing
me that this venerable man was dead. Death has tied his
tongue: it has loosed mine. I believe that that man may
have died as much in consequence of the privations he
endured, as John Brown did from the pistol of Claverhouse.
There was some mercy in the dragoon's pistol; it put an end
to the man's sufferings at once. But he is now in his
coffin, and they cannot disturb him there.'

'And what I pray this meeting to remember,' concluded the speaker, 'is that there are other men in similar circumstances.' There were others, not a few; but most of them now dwell where they hear not the voice of the oppressor; and though family records all over Scotland might add not a few pages to our chronicle of constancy, these are generally too sacred to draw upon. Enough has been said to recall us to the circumstances of straitening and suffering under which the extraordinary work of church organization and construction which we formerly sketched was carried on; and to remind us that the favourite motto of the Scottish church, _Nec tamen consumebatur_, has more modern applications than to those days of the Covenant

'Whose echo rings through Scotland to this hour.'

But this subject has at present a more than historical interest. The paragraph referring to Scotland and its urgent educational needs in the Queen's Speech at the opening of this Session, followed by the immediate introduction of a bill by the Lord Advocate, which was promptly opposed by his political opponents, on the ground that it confessedly cuts off the parish schools from any connection with the Established Church, reminds us of perhaps the most cruel chapter in the whole history of suffering in 1843. The parish school-masters of Scotland have always been a most meritorious but very ill-remunerated set of men; and it might have been hoped that whatever severities a mistaken sense of duty might have led those in power to exercise towards the ministers and leaders of the Church after 1843, these humbler members not being themselves ecclesiastical officials, might have been allowed to remain in the possession of their hearths and homes. But it was not so. Many of the schoolmasters were elders of the Church. All of them were to a certain extent educated men, and took an interest in the questions raised as to the Church's right to be free from patronage and from civil dictation generally. The consequence was, that not a few of them came out along with the other laymen who followed the ministers in 1843, prepared to take their share of the pecuniary burdens which were thus brought upon the community. But this milder lot was not allowed them. They, too, like the ministers, had their Bartholomew's Day. They would gladly have clung to their humble daily work in the school-house, and more gladly still to the little home built generally at the end of it, during the week, with bare liberty on the Sabbath to join with either congregation in worship; but it was not to be. Throughout Scotland, every schoolmaster who joined with the Church in fulfilling its pledge of 1842, was at once ejected from his small house, and deprived of his smaller income; and the consequences to them and to their families were in many cases misery, approaching almost to starvation. The result to education was not disadvantageous; for the Free Church, having thrown upon it the burden of so many men deprived of bread, for no other crime than their attachment to itself, was in no mood to shrink from the duty. It at once added to the rest of its organization an education scheme. Homes were gradually built for the ousted schoolmasters, and in as many places as possible they continued to teach the same children of the same hamlets where they had previously dwelt. The Free Church has now, or had very recently, 620 schools and 645 teachers, and taught upwards of 60,000 of the youth of Scotland, many of whom were in the most remote and destitute parts; while its normal schools are reported by her Majesty's inspectors as the most efficient in Scotland. Yet for a proper national scheme, such as has for many years been desired in Scotland, the Free Church would at once be ready to give up an organization so interesting in its origin, and so powerful in its results. Some years ago, in the midst of the keenest opposition by the Conservative party and the Established Church, the choice of a teacher of any denomination was allowed to the heritors; and next year, whatever else is done on this most important subject, it is plain that the last strands of exclusive connection will be parted.

The remaining matter which may come before Parliament during the next session is one in which the other Voluntary and Presbyterian Churches of Scotland are quite as much interested as that which dates from 1843. It is the proposal to transfer the patronage of the churches from the few existing possessors, partly to the landowners, and partly to the communicants of the Established Church, but excluding other parishioners. A Committee was appointed in 1869 by the General Assembly, to watch over a legislative measure to this effect, and their first step was to go to the Prime Minister. In answer to Mr. Gladstone's questions, they explained that the chief reason for the sudden change of sentiment on the part of a body which had hitherto been distinguished by its uncompromising defence of the present rights of patrons, was a desire to conciliate the Presbyterians outside by a deference to their well-known views. On this point, and on the proposal generally, Mr. Gladstone requested that a formal memorial might be drawn up, not only 'because it is desirable that the Government should have in their hands some statement with some degree of authority,' but also to instruct 'the Parliament of the three kingdoms' in a matter which Scotchmen alone can be expected accurately to know.

The desired 'Statement on the Law of Church Patronage' has accordingly now been issued and transmitted to the Government, and will doubtless be laid on the table of the House. It is a very remarkable document, giving the ecclesiastical history of Scotland with great fairness until it comes down to quite recent times, but making it in consequence quite impossible for any Legislature with the least sense of justice to reconstitute church endowments in the way desired. It narrates how patronage was abolished in Scotland at the Revolution settlement; and how its restoration by an Act in 1711 (protested against by the Free Church in 1843 as altering a thing reserved from the jurisdiction of the Union Parliament) was 'one of the acts of a conspiracy for the purpose of bringing back the Stuart dynasty to the throne.' The Assembly of 1735 stated in an address to the King, 'That it was done in resentment against the Church of Scotland.' Bishop Burnet, present at the passing of the Act, says it was intended to 'weaken and undermine' the Church of Scotland. The 'Statement' then goes on to show how it was not merely the Free Church that protested against the outrage: the Assembly of 1812 protested that 'the Act abolishing patronage must be understood to be a part of our Presbyterian constitution secured to us by the Treaty of Union forever;' and for seventy years in succession thereafter the Assembly yearly instructed its Committee to attempt to get redress. Gradually, however, as the cold eighteenth century crept on, a party began to dominate in the Church which took the same view of patronage which was afterwards formulated by Dr. Mearns and Dr. Cook, and by the aid of the civil courts became finally triumphant in 1843. And thus followed the first secession. Ebenezer Erskine, a great name in those northern regions in that dark century, protested publicly that 'those professed Presbyterians who thrust men upon congregations without, and contrary to, the free choice their king had allowed them, were guilty of an attempt to jostle Christ out of his government.' He and three other ministers were thereupon deposed in 1733, and 'appealed unto the first free, faithful, and reforming General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.' The second secession, in 1752, was a still more exact parallel to the third great schism of 1843, for the founders of the Relief Church in 1752 were driven out, like Dr. Chalmers and his friends, because they refused to take a personal part in ordaining those whom the patron had presented, but whom the people refused to receive. These circumstances are very fairly narrated in the Statement, which farther refers to the evidence given before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Law of Patronage in 1834, as giving 'the best summary of the historical and legal aspects of the question which we possess.' That Committee, it is stated, came to no definite finding, because the necessity for doing so was superseded by the Act of the previous General Assembly, giving the people a veto against an unacceptable presentee--an Act which was 'not passed without a full assurance from the law officers of the Crown in Scotland that it was quite within the power of the Church.' Within a year thereafter, however, a question arose as to this, and a narrow majority of the Scotch judges, backed by the House of Lords, held that it was not within their power. The Church at once took steps to appeal to the Legislature to correct the anomaly, and concede the power which was questioned; asking only that in the meantime the courts should not force them to take a part in violating with their own hands those rights of the Christian people which they had affirmed. The refusal to allow this brought on the disruption. The 'Statement' winds up with pointing out how 'the non-intrusion controversy thus passed into that of spiritual independence;' and 'it was on a question thence arising in regard to the respective provinces of the ecclesiastical and civil courts that the secession of 1843 actually took place.' They add, however, that though in 1836 the Church refused to condemn patronage altogether, and was satisfied with the supposed security of the Veto Act, in 1842 this as well as other matters came to maturity, and the General Assembly resolved, 'That patronage is a grievance; has been attended with much injury to the cause of true religion in this Church and kingdom; is the main cause of the difficulties in which the Church is at present involved; and that it ought to be abolished.' Far from conciliating opponents, however, this resolve was made part of the reason by the courts and the moderate party for driving its authors into disruption.

The candour and fairness of the earlier historical part of this memorial will always give it importance; but the gross inadequacy of the practical measures proposed has subjected it in Scotland to an unfair amount of ridicule. Dr. Cook, as the head of the moderate party, the proper representative of those who stayed in in 1843, at once protested against it, asserting that patronage is essential to the stability of the Church of Scotland. Dr. Tulloch, of St. Andrew's, as representing the broad section of the Church, repudiated it two days after. Mr. Story, the biographer of Dr. Lee, and Dr. Wallace, who is Dr. Lee's successor in Edinburgh, made haste to attack it also. The great difficulty within the Church seems to be the proposed refusal to admit all parishioners to vote for the parish minister. So long as he was appointed by a single laird or nobleman, who might be a stranger altogether, that difficulty was not felt. The people were excluded, but they were excluded equally. It is now proposed, however, that the minister should be paid by the whole country, but should be appointed by the communicants of the Established Church alone, excluding the members of the older and properly anti-patronage bodies, who have all the same creed, but whose principles of Church polity the Established Church, itself a minority of the nation, is only now adopting. It is clearly the vague sense of injustice and wrong thus caused which is at the root of the dissatisfaction everywhere expressed with the proposed measure, even by members and ministers of the Scottish Establishment itself. But another more important result has been the clear recognition that there is no chance of thereby 'conciliating' the older anti-patronage Presbyterians or uniting the Church. Last year we expressed the belief that any fair proposals or endeavours on the part of the Establishment would have the effect of at least producing a pause in the projected union of the voluntary Presbyterians outside. The 'Statement' to be laid before Parliament has had decidedly the effect of consolidating that union, and there is no doubt now that it will go on, though probably in the meantime rather by way of mutual co-operation. A very short time will see the Free Church, the United Presbyterian Church, and the Reformed Presbyterian Church--all the large Presbyterian communities who have protested against patronage, and whose leading principle is the liberation of religion from State control--absolutely united in their work, and partitioning Scotland between them. It need not be said how hopeless is the proposal to choose this time for asking Parliament to reconstitute the endowment of a minority of the Scotch people at the expense of the whole, or how fatal to the Church the success of the scheme would be, even if it could be expected to succeed.

The movement is more likely to be in quite another direction. Dr. Wallace, in his paper on 'Church Tendencies in Scotland,' and some other men not belonging to his party in the Kirk, have rather indicated that the Highlands of Scotland, with which a large part of our paper has dealt, should be handed over from their own body to that disestablished church which for the last twenty-five years has with increasing success taken charge of it. In July last, this subject came up in the House of Commons, in the discussion upon Mr. M'Laren's Church Rates Abolition Bill for Scotland, a measure which its able and energetic mover has withdrawn, upon receiving a promise from the Government to introduce one next year upon their own responsibility. On some matters raised by this bill differences of opinion were expressed. Mr. Graham, member for Glasgow, said that he knew from experience that 'a large number of his constituents--the enormous mass of the people of Scotland--bitterly resented these compulsory assessments;' while his colleague, Mr. Anderson, opposed the bill as premature, on the ground that 'if, as is very probable, in the course of a few years the House should think proper to disestablish and disendow that Church, its property will have to be handed over to the State.' But the special matter of the Highlands, a scandal which even the friends of the Establishment are desirous to see wiped out at any expense, was brought forward by Mr. Ellice, who 'agreed with the hon. member for Edinburgh, that in many parts of the country the Church of Scotland was but the caricature of a Church, and that the presence of the Established Church, in places where it was only represented by five or ten persons, was a reproach to the Legislature. He hoped the Lord Advocate, when dealing with the question, would also deal with those useless churches and manses which were a standing reproach to common sense, and ought no longer to be supported.' The Lord Advocate was cautious in his rejoinder to this appeal, restricting his observations to the Highland churches and manses '_provided by_ _Parliament_ at a time when the Church numbered a larger portion of the population than it does now.' With regard to these--the annual payments in connection with which form, perhaps, the most offensive example of mere waste of public money at present existing--the Government officer said, 'So far as I have been able to ascertain, it would be in accordance with good sense to make provision whereby that accommodation, which is not profitable either to the kingdom or the Church, might close.' Any money saved in this direction will almost certainly be devoted to the education of Scotland; for the Free Church will refuse a concurrent endowment which would include Roman Catholics, and the long Conservative battle against a good Education Bill beyond the Tweed, cannot be successful for ever. When the Scotch Presbyterians form their Union (in which as Mr. Gordon pointed out in Parliament, there is no reason why the members of the present Established Church should not join), they will undertake a weighty responsibility for the religious good of Scotland. But the weight which they unite to bear will be easy, compared to that crushing load which fell upon one of them in 1843, and which yet became to it only such a burden 'as wings are to the bird.'

FOOTNOTE:

[50] The famine of 1846, to relieve which the Free Church sent £15,000 to the Highlands.

ART. IV.--_The Romance of the Rose._

(1.) _Le Roman de la Rose._ Nouvelle Édition. Par Francisque Michel. Paris: Firmin Didot Frères. 1864.

The study of pre-Renaissance literature belongs especially to the present century. A few ballads had been previously rescued from oblivion; a few names unearthed from the rubbish of centuries; but the great mass of writers who lived and flourished in what men used to call the Dark Ages had been utterly forgotten, names as well as writings, until the labours of Ampère, Fauriel, Raynouard, and others in France, as well as those of our own antiquarian scholars in England, brought them again to light within the last fifty years.

The literature thus revived has a value of its own quite independent of any literary merit, though this is by no means contemptible. It reveals to us not only the manners and customs of the time, the mediæval daily life, but, which is more important, the mediæval conditions and modes of thought, within such limits--too narrow, alas!--as the conventional rules of poetry allowed. But artificial grooves cannot wholly prevent a vigorous mind from running off the beaten track, and in spite of conventionalism, the reader comes sometimes, in the midst of sandy deserts of commonplace morality, monotonous repetitions, and thirsty verbiage, upon oases of such exceeding brightness and splendour, cooled with fountains so sparkling and foliage so luxuriant, that he feels he is repaid for all his trouble. And the country is by no means explored. As in the great goldfields of Australia, the big nuggets have disappeared and been gathered up long since; nevertheless there remain, for those who have patience to dig, plenty of smaller pieces of virgin gold, which may amply serve to reward their toil. But because all have not the time or the opportunity for this work, and because, after all, it lies a good deal out of the beaten track of scholars, it may not be uninteresting to our readers to invite them to come with us and visit, sparing themselves the trouble of looking for them, certain oases which lie scattered about in a vast Sahara of verse called the 'Romance of the Rose.' 'Rien n'est agréable et piquant,' says Sainte Beuve, 'comme un guide familier dans les époques lointaines.'

Our sketch of the book will be necessarily incomplete; nor could any ordinary limits of a paper suffice for its thorough examination. Its importance is evidenced by the fact that for two hundred and fifty years it was a sort of Bible to France; the source whence its readers drew their maxims of morality, their philosophy, their science, their history, and even their religion; and which, after having retained its popularity for a length of time almost unparalleled in the history of literature, was revived with success after the Renaissance, the _only_ mediæval book which enjoyed this distinction.

We shall endeavour to show some of the reasons of this long-continued success, and to prove that the book, once the companion of knights and dames, of _damoiseaux_ and _damoiselles_, has the strongest claims on the student of the Middle Ages; that it is not a congeries of dry and dead bones of antiquity, not a mass of mediæval fables, but a book full of ideas, information, and suggestion--a book warm with life.

France, whence it came, is indeed the mother of modern literature. Thence both Italy and England derived their inspiration. In the countries of Provence and Languedoc lingered longest the remains of the Latin civilization: there the lamp of learning, dwindled down at last to a mere speck, had yet flame enough to light the new taper of the troubadour; there was first heard the 'Nibelungen Lied;' there originated the _tenson_, the _canso_, the _sirvente_, the _chanson royale_, the _triolet_, and all the varied forms of mediæval poetry; and there was the chosen home of such philosophy and science as existed between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. English writers before the Elizabethan age copied openly and avowedly from French sources, taking plot, plan, and framework of their poems. Even Dante deferred to Provence, and owned that the troubadour led the thought of Western Europe. Other countries of Europe have little indeed in their early literature to compare with the treasures of the Langue d'Oc and the Langue d'Oil; and while, outside France, stand almost alone the great figures of Dante, Petrarch, and Chaucer, there is, within the circle of the Langue d'Oil alone, a constellation in which are the names of Marie de France, Rutebeuf, Jean de Meung, Charles of Orleans, Christine de Pisan, Alain Chartier, Eustache Deschamps, and François Villon, besides a host of minor poets whose works are little inferior, and who may still be read, if not always with delight, certainly always with profit. Scattered about in their writings is the whole of the mediæval life; by their light we can penetrate through the clouds of six hundred years, and bring those picturesque ages of colour and splendour back to our minds as brightly and vividly as we realize any battle-field in France by the pen of a special correspondent. And besides the mediæval life, with its habits and its thought, the student will trace in this poetry the gradual development of the true French Muse--her mockery, her satirical spirit, her cynicism, her incredulity, her curiosity, her want of reverence, with her inimitable wit and fresh buoyancy of spirit--a muse _gaillarde et moqueuse_, unlike any other that the world has seen, whom to know is to love, though not always to respect. It is no fault of modern France if her old literature is not known as it deserves to be. Editions have been multiplied of the fabliaux, romances, poems, and chronicles which began with Wace and ended with Clement Marot. But as yet no great writer has taken up the subject as it deserves, and a consolidated history of the literature and thought of the Middle Ages, from the tenth century to the Renaissance, embracing as a whole, and not in unconnected parts, the writings of Italy, France, and England, with those of Spain and Germany, is a work which awaits the hand of some man who will devote to it the greater part of a lifetime. Materials for such a work amply exist; but he who undertakes it should bring to his task a knowledge of languages and an amount of reading rare indeed, and difficult to be found.

English readers principally know this 'Romance of the Rose' through the translation which is attributed to Chaucer. Whether it be really his or not is a matter which does not concern us here, and, to save trouble of explanation, we will refer to it as Chaucer's translation. It is unfortunate, in some respects, that it contains only a portion--viz., the first 5,170 lines, and then, with an omission of 5,544 lines, about 1,300 more. It gives entire the portion contributed by Guillaume de Lorris, and as much of the remainder as fell in most readily with the humour of the translator, the attack on the hypocrisy of monks and friars. But by omitting all the rest, amounting to about two-thirds of the whole, he has failed altogether in giving the spirit of the work; and those who read only Chaucer's version would certainly be at a loss to explain the rapid, extraordinary, and lasting popularity which the book achieved.

The reasons of this popularity have, indeed, been the subject of considerable discussion among French critics. Pasquier speaks of its 'noble sentiments,' and considers that its object was moral--viz., to show that love is but a dream. Roquefort can see in it only a long and rather stupid allegory, enlivened by occasional gleams of poetry; Villemain considers it a mere gloze on Ovid's 'Art of Love,' with a _mélange_ of abstractions, allegories, and scholastic subtilties. Nisard deduces from its popularity a proof of its entire conformity with the spirit of the age--an almost obvious conclusion. Other writers, Goujet among the number, try to account for its success by the reputation which Jean de Meung enjoyed as an alchemist, and the belief that the great secrets of the science were to be found in the poem: a manifestly inadequate reason, because the proportion of alchemists to the rest of his readers must have been small indeed. Others, among whom were Molinet and Marot--of whom more presently--thought its success was due to a double allegory which they found in it; while Professor Morley and Mr. Thomas Wright, the latest writers who have given any account of the book--both of them meagre, dry, and uninteresting--do not attempt to explain its popularity at all. There are sufficient reasons why the book sprang at once into favour, which we hope presently to explain. The great success which it attained is illustrated by the number and weight of its assailants. Foremost among these was Gerson, the 'most Christian Doctor.' He calls it a book written for the basest purposes; he says that if there were only one copy of it in the world, and if he were offered fifty pounds in gold for it, he would rather burn it: that those who have it ought to give it up to their father confessors to be destroyed: and that even if it were certain--which was unfortunately far from being the case, the contrary being presumable--that Jean de Meung had repented his sins in sackcloth and ashes, it would be no more use praying for him than for Judas Iscariot himself. Cursing so ecclesiastical, invective so angry, stimulated public curiosity more and more, and instead of copies being given to confessors to be burned, copies were given to scribes to be multiplied. Assailants came every day unto the field. Christine de Pisan, later on, took up the cause of her sex, and vindicated womankind from the sweeping charges made against them by the poet; while Martin Franc, who styled himself 'Le Champion des Dames,' wrote an elaborate apology for his clients, which has all the dreariness of the 'Romance of the Rose,' and none of its brightness. The one is a desert indeed; the other, as we have said, is a desert with oases.

The book is the work of two writers, Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung. The earlier of these seems to have died about the time that his successor was born. Of his life we know absolutely nothing. He came from the little town of Lorris, where, it is said, the house in which he was born is still shown. Two or three lines in the poem are cited to prove the date of his birth and death. These, however, are by no means to be relied upon. Thus, he tells us in his opening lines--

'Au vingtiesme an de mon aage,
Si vi ung songe à mon dormant.'

whence most writers have assumed that he died at the age of twenty, considering, we suppose, that it would not take a year to write the 4,670 lines which form his part. This would be, at least, quick writing, while internal evidence seems to us to point most unmistakeably to the bestowal of very careful thought, and therefore much time, upon the work. And the lines which follow shortly after have not received proper attention--indeed, hardly any modern writer on the 'Romance of the Rose' appears to have read the book at all. Here the poet says--

'Avis m'iere qu'il étoit mains;
Il a j'à bien cinc ans au mains.'

which would make him five and twenty at least, a much more likely age, considering the work he had done, for his death.

At the close of his part of the book we get the following note by the scholiast, if we may call him so:--

'Çi endroit, trespassa Guillaume
De Lorris et ne fist plus pseaume;
Mais après plus de quarante ans
Maistre Jehan de Meung li romans
Parfist, ainsi comme je treuve,
Et ici commence son oeuvre.'

That is,--

'Here William died; his song was done.
When forty years had passed away,
Sir John the romance carried on,
And here commencing, told the lay.'

While Jean de Meung himself says, prophesying after the event--

'Car quant Guillaume cessera
Jehan le continuera
Après sa mort que je ne mente
Anns trespassés plus de quarente.'

So that if we fix the date of Jean de Meung, we have that of Guillaume de Lorris. Now, there is nothing to help us, except a tradition that Guillaume died in the middle of the thirteenth century, and whatever internal evidence the book itself affords. Most writers, because the order of Knights Templars is mentioned as still existing, have been content to date the book at about 1306, the year before the destruction of the fraternity; but the poet mentions Charles of Anjou as King of Sicily. We have, therefore, a much lower limit, viz., the year 1282. Perhaps on closer examination, a range of years might easily be found in which the book was written. It is, however, sufficient for our purpose to date its authorship about 1280, and that of Guillaume de Lorris at 1240.