Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

The shifting of the scene of the story from the north of England to Glasgow, and thence to the Highlands, is naturally done, and without creaking of machinery. We have just enough of the villain Rashley and his nefarious plotting to give the continuous interest of uncertainty; and Die Vernon (pardon me, reader, for compressing her in a closing paragraph), with ready wit and sterling sense, flits about like a hoydenish angel—but in spite of eccentricities a ministering angel of peace and comfort. In the happiness of Frank Osbaldistone, who wins her hand in the closing chapter, we forget the defeat of the Jacobite party, or the fact that the Pretender is again an exile from the throne of his fathers.

“The Heart of Midlothian” opens with a description of the celebrated Porteous Mob at Edinburgh, in 1736. Two smugglers, Wilson and Robertson, who were reduced to poverty, robbed the collector to make good their own loss. They were arrested, tried, and condemned to death. As the Parliament was endeavoring to make the income of Scotland a source of revenue to the common exchequer, smuggling was not looked upon by the people as a very heinous offense. In fact, it was almost universal in every port north of the Tweed during the reigns of George the First and George the Second. The people, unaccustomed to duties, considered them in the light of national oppression; and the sentence of death pronounced against Wilson and Robertson was considered severe and unjust. The prisoners attempted an escape, but were discovered. The day of execution came. It was customary for persons sentenced to death to attend preparatory service at the kirk. On this occasion the church was thronged. Wilson, who was a very powerful man, at the conclusion of the exercises seized two of the guards with his hands, at the same time catching the collar of the third with his teeth. He cried to his companion to run, and the crowd, whose sympathies were with the prisoners, allowed Robertson to mix with the people and escape. Wilson was executed. The City Guard, under the command of Porteous, was insulted by the citizens. The Guard fired upon them with deadly aim. Porteous was tried and condemned for murder. King George at this time was on the Continent, and Queen Caroline, acting in his absence, sent a reprieve to Porteous. Edinburgh was now thoroughly aroused. They asked if a poor smuggler, accused of stealing, should hang without a reprieve, while a hard hearted and despised man, who shot down the people of their chief city without mercy, should go scathless. A mob, apparently of the better class of citizens, too orderly to need even a leader, attacked the Tolbooth. Porteous was taken by force and hung at night in the Grassmarket.

The Queen was incensed. “A bill was prepared and brought into Parliament for the punishment of the city of Edinburgh, in a very vindictive spirit, proposing to abolish the city charter, demolish the city walls, take away the town guard, and declare the provost incapable of holding any office of public trust.” Scotland was fortunate at that time in possessing a great leader, John, Duke of Argyle and Greenwich. His talents as a statesman and a soldier were generally admitted; he was not without ambition, but “without the illness that attends it”—that irregularity of thought and aim which often excites great men to grasp the means of raising themselves to power, at the risk of throwing a kingdom into confusion. Pope has distinguished him as

“Argyle, the state’s whole thunder born to wield,
And shake alike the senate and the field.”

Soaring above the petty distinctions of faction, his voice was raised, whether in office or opposition, for those measures which were at once just and lenient. His independent and haughty mode of expressing himself in Parliament, and acting in public, were ill calculated to attract royal favor; but his high military talents enabled him, during the memorable year 1715, to render such services to the House of Hanover, as, perhaps, were too great to be either acknowledged or repaid. His spirited and witty reply to the queen was quoted and chuckled over from Berwick to Inverness: “Sooner than submit to such an insult as this Porteous Mob,” said the Queen to the Duke, “I will make Scotland a hunting field.” “In that case,” answered Argyle, “I will take leave of your Majesty, and go down to my own country to get my hounds ready.”

His speech in Parliament in reference to the dismantling of Edinburgh reveals the straightforward character of the man. He retorted upon the Chancellor, Lord Hardwick, the insinuation that he had stated himself in this case rather as a party than as a judge: “I appeal,” said Argyle, “to the House—to the nation, if I can be justly branded with the infamy of being a jobber or a partisan. Have I been a briber of votes? a buyer of boroughs? the agent of corruption for any purpose, or on behalf of any party? Consider my life, examine my actions in the field and in the cabinet, and see where there lies a blot that can attach to my honor. I have shown myself the friend of my country—the loyal subject of my king. I am ready to do so again, without an instant’s regard to the frowns or smiles of a court. I have experienced both, and am prepared with indifference for either. I have given my reasons for opposing this bill, and have made it appear that it is repugnant to the international treaty of union, to the liberty of Scotland, and, reflectively, to that of England, to common justice, to common sense, and to the public interest. Shall the metropolis of Scotland, the capital of an independent nation, the residence of a long line of monarchs, by whom that noble city was graced and dignified—shall such a city, for the fault of an unknown body of rioters, be deprived of its honors and privileges—its gates and its guards? And shall a native Scotsman tamely behold the havoc? I glory, my lords, in opposing such unjust rigor, and reckon it my dearest pride and honor to stand up in defense of my native country, while thus laid open to undeserved shame and unjust spoliation.” In this tribute of Scott, and this speech, which he has recorded in one of his best known novels, Argyle stands out as a noble representative of a family powerful through centuries; ay, so thoroughly revered to-day in Scotland that an old Scotch woman on a comparatively recent wedding morn remarked that the Queen must be a happy woman noo, since her daughter has married the son of Argyle.

So much for the historic setting of this well known story, which makes the reader acquainted with Arthur’s Seat, with High Street, the Old Tolbooth, the Grassmarket and the Church of St. Giles. We see in the unbending and uncompromising character of David Deans a descendant of the Covenanters, who could hardly understand how a Presbyterian could acknowledge a government that did not acknowledge the Solemn League and Covenant. We see his house made desolate by the misfortune and misguidance of his daughter Effie. We trace the unswerving rectitude of Jeanie’s character, destined to triumph at last over all obstacles. We witness the dramatic scene in the court room, and read her eloquent appeal before the Queen in the great park of Richmond. We go with her through strange villages, and over solitary heaths. But through insult and disaster we find her serenely relying upon that Providence which she knew was all-kind and all-powerful.

She accomplished her mission and lived to enjoy the blessedness of well doing. And Effie, ah! poor Effie! she inherited wealth and possession, but lived to see her husband shot by a Gypsy band; while her son, reared among outlaws, became a wanderer, lost to the view of herself and the world. In the contrast of these sisters’ lives we recognize the truth of the oft-quoted lines:

“’Tis better to be lowly born
And range with humble livers in content,
Than wear a golden sorrow.”

Scott closes this dramatic story with these words: “This tale will not be told in vain, if it shall be found to illustrate the great truth, that guilt, though it may attain temporal splendor, can never confer real happiness; that the evil consequences of our crimes long survive their commission, and like the ghosts of the murdered, forever haunt the steps of the malefactor; and that the paths of virtue, though seldom those of worldly greatness, are always those of pleasantness and peace.”

SOME LONDON PREACHERS.

Canon Liddon and the Bishop of Peterborough stand out as unquestionably the two first preachers of the Established Church of England. There is a story of a private soldier having gone to St. Paul’s on an afternoon when Dr. Liddon was to preach. The printed paper with the hymn was handed to him, but not understanding that it was offered gratis he refused it with a shake of the head, saying: “You don’t suppose I should be here if I had got any money?” Most of the people who go to hear the eloquent Canon are different from this soldier, for they would pay—and very liberally—to get seats near the pulpit. On the afternoons of the Sundays when Dr. Liddon is in residence, the Cathedral presents an extraordinary sight with its huge nave and aisles densely thronged. So far as the preacher’s voice will reach people stand, straining eyes and ears, and fortunately Dr. Liddon’s voice resounds well under the dome; though now and then it becomes indistinct through the preacher’s speaking too fast in his excitement. Two other things occasionally mar Dr. Liddon’s delivery. Shortness of sight makes him often stoop to consult Bible or notes, and again he bows the head in a marked manner when he utters the holy name; but when he thus bends he goes on speaking, so that his words fall on the pulpit cushion and are deadened, which produces upon people who are at a little distance off, the effect of continual stoppages and gaps in the sermon. No other defects beside these, however, can be noted in orations which for beauty of language, elevation of thought and lucidity in reasoning, could not be surpassed. We have heard Dr. Liddon many times at Oxford and in London, and have observed that the impression produced by his eloquence was always the same, no matter who might be listening to him. We remember, in particular, a sermon of his on the text: “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation.” It was absolutely magnificent to hear him prophesy the gradual progress of the world toward a higher state. Every man, from the greatest to the least, was made to feel his share of responsibility in advancing or retarding the evolution of mankind, and while the consequences of evil were pointed out as extending to incalculable lengths, there was a sublime hopefulness in the promise that the smallest good offering brought to the Creator would be multiplied by Him as the “five loaves were multiplied.”

Optimism—which is nothing but great faith—pervades Dr. Liddon’s preaching. He never leaves his hearers under the apprehension that in any struggle between the good and the bad forces of this world, the bad are going to get the best of it. He knows human nature too well, however, to exaggerate what can be done by any single human being. “The first lesson in true wisdom”—he said in one of his most recent sermons—“is the limited nature of our faculties, the reality and extent of our ignorance;” and there is a curious mixture of religious and mundane philosophy in the following remarks about the presumption of St. Peter, a few minutes before he denied his Master:

We only weaken ourselves by dwelling upon mischiefs which we can
not hope to remedy. We have only a certain amount of thought,
of feeling, of resolve, each one of us, to dispose of. And when
this has been expended unavailingly on the abstract, on the
intangible, it is expended; it is no longer ours, and we can not
employ it when and where we need it close at home.… Peter failed
as he did, because he had expended his moral strength in words,
and had no sufficient force to dispose of when the time came for
action and for suffering.

These observations made in a grand sermon, “The Lord was not in the fire,” may also be quoted:

Religious passion carried to the highest point of enthusiasm is
a great agency in human life; but religious passion may easily
be too inconsiderate, too truculent, too entirely wanting in
tenderness and in charity, to be in any sense divine. Christendom
has been ablaze again and again with fires: and those fires are
not extinct in our own day and country, of which it may certainly
be said that the Lord is not in them.

The Bishop of Peterborough has not often been heard in London of late years, but whenever he is advertised to preach, crowds flock to hear him. He need not be compared with Liddon, for the personal appearance, style, and opinions of the two men are quite different. But whereas the Canon sometimes preaches above the understanding of dull men, the Bishop’s eloquence never soars much above earth. It is a rousing eloquence, spirited, combative, often sarcastic and always directed against some evil which is preoccupying public attention at the time being. Dr. Magee is not merely a hater, but an aggressive enemy of “humbug,” clothe itself in what garb it may. With his animated Celtic features, long upper lip, large mouth, energetic nose and shaggy eyebrows, with his gruffness and broad smile which breaks up the whole of his face into comical lines, he has all the look of a humorist. The glance all round which he takes at his congregation when he has got into the pulpit, is that of a master. His first words arrest attention, and if some unlucky man drops a book during his exordium, that man will stare hard at the pulpit and pretend to have no connection whatever with the book, lest his lordship’s eyes should suddenly be turned upon him like two fiery points of interrogation. Presently, when the Bishop warms to his work, his arms hit out from the shoulder like piston-rods wrapped in lawn; down come his large hands with great slaps on his book or cushion, and if he is preaching in a church where the beadle has not heard of his little ways and has not been careful to give the cushions a beating, enough dust will be raised to make a fine powdering for the heads of the people in the pew beneath.

Plainspoken and shrewd, discussing all questions with easy arguments, never stooping to subtleties, clear in his delivery, happy in the choice of words, he keeps his hearers bound like Ogmius, that god of eloquence among the Gauls who used to be represented with chains flowing out of his mouth. On occasions he rises to the highest flights of oratory, but never loses sight of his congregation, who have always been carried along by him through the successive degrees of his own enthusiasm. He should be heard delivering a charity sermon, for this is a duty which he discharges in no perfunctory fashion. He masters his subject thoroughly; speaks of the poor or afflicted for whom he is pleading like one who knows them; and his advice as to supplying their wants is never dictated by eccentric philanthropy, but springs from that true benevolence which has common sense for its source. He was being asked to interest himself in a carpenter’s clever young apprentice whom some good people wanted to send to college. “Let him first graduate as a good carpenter,” said the Bishop; “when he has become a skilled craftsman, so that he is proud of his trade and can fall back upon it if others fail, then will be the time to see if he is fit for anything better.”

A popular vote would probably give the position of third amongst the best preachers of the day to Archdeacon Farrar. In his own church of St. Margaret, the Archdeacon shines with a subdued light. Those who have chatted with him by his own fireside, and know him to be the most amiable, unaffected of _causeurs_, those who remember him at Harrow as a most genial boy-loving master, will miss nothing of the good-natured simplicity which they liked in him, if they hear him in his own church discoursing about matters that concern his parish. But in the Abbey he is different. There, his massive face settles into a hard, expressionless look; his voice, which is loud and roughish, is pitched in a monotonous key; and his manner altogether lacks animation, even when his subject imperatively demands it. To illustrate any common reflection on the vicissitudes of life, the Archdeacon drags in the destruction of Pompeii with the latest mining accident; the overthrow of Darius with that of Osman Digna, the rainbow that appeared to Noah with Mr. Norman Lockyer’s explanations of recent glorious sunsets; and all these juxtapositions come down so pat as to suggest the irreverent idea that the book which the venerable preacher was studying during the prayers must have been an annotated copy of Maunders’s “Treasury of Knowledge.”

Mr. Spurgeon stands head and shoulders above all the Non-conformist preachers. Somebody once expressed a regret that the great Baptist minister was not a member of the Establishment, to which the late Bishop of Winchester answered by quoting a portion of the tenth commandment. But Mr. Spurgeon was much more aggressive in those days than he is now; he has softened much of late years, and churchmen can go to hear him without fear of being offended. On the days when he preaches his Tabernacle holds a multitude. It is a huge hall, and to see gallery upon gallery crowded with eager faces—some six thousand—all turned toward the pastor whose voice has the power of troubling men to the depths of their hearts, is a stirring sight. Mr. Spurgeon’s is not a high-class congregation, and the preacher knows that its understanding can best be opened by metaphors and parables borrowed from the customs of the retail trade, and with similes taken from the colloquialisms of the streets. Laughter is not forbidden at the Tabernacle, and the congregation often breaks into titters, but the merriment is always directed against some piece of hypocrisy which the preacher has exposed, and it does one good to hear. He says:

“You are always for giving God short measure, just as if He had
not made the pint pot.”

“You don’t expect the Queen to carry your letters for nothing,
but when you are posting a letter heavenward you won’t trouble to
stick a little bit of Christian faith on the right-hand corner of
the envelope, and you won’t put a correct address on either, and
then you wonder the letter isn’t delivered, so that you don’t get
your remittance by next post.”

“You trust Mr. Jones to pay you your wages regularly, and you say
he’s a good master, but you don’t think God can be trusted like
Mr. Jones; you won’t serve him because you don’t believe in the
pay.”

“You have heard of the man who diminished his dose of food every
day to see on how little he could live, till he came to half a
biscuit and then died; but, I tell you, most of you have tried on
how little religion you could live, and many of you have got to
the half-biscuit dose.”

These whimsicalities, always effective, constitute but the foam of Mr. Spurgeon’s oratory; the torrent which casts them up is broad, deep and of overwhelming power. Mr. Spurgeon is among preachers as Mr. Bright among parliamentary orators. All desire to criticise vanishes, every faculty is subdued into admiration, when he has concluded a sermon with a burst of his truly inspired eloquence, leaving the whole of his congregation amazed and the vast majority of its members anxious or hopeful, but in any case roused as if they had seen the heavens open. We are compelled to add that Mr. Spurgeon has in the Baptist communion no co-minister wielding a tenth of his power, and that those who, having gone to the Tabernacle to hear him, have to listen to some other man, will be disappointed in more ways than one.—_Temple Bar._

THE PRAYER OF SOCRATES.

By JOHN STUART BLACKIE.

Grant, O Olympian gods supreme,
Not my wish, and not my dream;
Grant me neither gold that shines,
Nor ruddy copper in the mines,
Nor power to wield the tyrant’s rod
And be a fool, and seem a god,
Nor precious robe with jeweled fringe
Splendid with sea-born purple tinge,
Nor silken vest on downy pillow,
Nor hammock hard on heaving billow;
But give all goodly things that be
Good for the whole and best for me.
My thoughts are foolish, blind and crude;
Thou only knowest what is good.