land; and the reaction against the infant Government of William would have been very powerful, and, to say the least of it, very troublesome. But he had fallen in the

arms of victory. No head in the battle had been more completely severed from its body than he had been from the body of the Jacobite enterprize; and, after a little more struggle, dissensions began among the Highlanders themselves, and there was no one with commanding enough genius to reconcile them. One is reminded of that impressive passage in the "Lady of the Lake" which describes the battle between the Sassenach and the Gael in the gorge of the Trossachs, carried on in the absence of Roderick Dhu who had been, unknown to his followers, beaten in fight, and sent as a captive to Stirling:

"The horsemen dashed among the rout

As deer break through the broom;
Their steeds are stout, their swords are out,
They soon make lightsome room.

Clan Alpine's best are backward borne,
Where, where was Roderick then?

One blast upon his bugle horn

Were worth a thousand men !"

In the absence of their Roderick, the Highlanders were again defeated, and Mackay was at last able to pass through the Highlands without meeting the slightest resistance, and to carry into execution his favourite plan of subduing the Highlands by building a line of forts to overlook them the first being erected at Inverlochy, near Fort-William, which commanded at once the passage along the line of lakes which now form the Caledonian Canal,

and the communication by sea with the Western Islands and Ireland.

While the Highlands were thus subjected to a slow but sure process of pacification, in the Lowlands the religious commotions were to a great extent appeased. There was now in many parts of Scotland, a Sabbath feeling prevailing. The storms of a long night had passed, and

once

"The morn was up again; the dewy morn,

With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom,
Chasing the clouds away with playful scorn,

And living as if earth contained no tomb."

Scotland's Reign of Terror was over. People resumed their ordinary habits of industry. The moors became more deserted and silent, save for a few hero worshippers, who, like Old Mortality, long afterwards, visited them, for the purpose of erecting monuments to the dead who slumbered there. The churches were again crowded with congregations. The hateful curates had fled, and many of the ejected pastors, who had once expected, when a better day should come, to be able simply to say with old Simeon, "Lord, now let thy servants depart in peace," and so to die, were reinstated in their parishes, and permitted to spend their closing years quietly among their original flocks. No summary revenge had been taken by them upon their persecutors. This, if the passions of some of the fiercer of the Presbyterians demanded, the policy of William's wise and lenient Government resolutely refused, so that, on the whole, there was general peace and contentment.

In the ecclesiastical state of the country, a decided improvement had taken place. The majority of the Scottish Protestants had now got their will, their Church was settled on the basis of Presbyterian parity; their worship was restored to that elemental simplicity which yet exists; but there remained, we must not omit to notice, many of the real roots of the evils which had been luxuriating for more than half a century in Scotland. We mention only two-the perplexed state of the law of patronage, which led to that secession of which we mean to speak afterwards; and, secondly, the grand fundamental error which underlies all the thought and all the efforts of all parties at that period-namely this, the thought that there is any possible plan of reconciling the claims of Church and State, except by identification, a thing at present and that may for ever be impossible; or by subjection, which is resisted by both; or by compromise and bargain, a game at which both have played for centuries without coming to any satisfactory conclusion. In closing this rapid view of the Covenanting sufferings, we may say, that seldom do we find in history a hobler specimen of the resistance of principle to power than here. There was a great disproportion between the efforts made to suppress the Covenanting principle and that principle itself. It was not, in our judgment, sufficiently large; but from the tenacity with which it was held, from the severity with which it was persecuted, and from the resolution with which the sufferings were borne, it gathers around it both the air and reality of grandeur. It sufficed to arouse the depths of the Scottish spirit. In no part

of the history of that country do we find a more marked, strenuous, and long-continued expression of the perfervidum ingenium of Scotland. Scottish Covenanters were not great in prosperity--few parties are; but the alchemy of suffering brought out the rich qualities of self-denial, stubborn endurance, unlimited trust in divine aid, a strange wild eloquence and insight, a courage which never quailed, and an integrity which was never shaken. In the recollection of these distinguishing excellencies, posterity may well forget the faults which unquestionably they committed. But let us blend with admiration for their energy and zeal, sorrow that they effected not still more.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SECESSION AND RELIEF CHURCHES IN THEIR

CRADLE.-PART I.

IN

N our former chapter, we left Scotland in a state of spiritual quiet as well as of political peace. Within the Highland line, indeed, there might be heard now and then mutterings as of far-off thunders; but these began to die away, and in the south all was comparatively still. But although there was stillness, it was, to some extent, especially in ecclesiastical matters, a deceitful stillness. William of Orange was a sincere lover of religious liberty in general, but his views of its details were either too latitudinarian, or, at all events, too liberal and advanced for that age, and in his attempts to conciliate all parties, he ended, as usually happens, by giving general offence, and nearly rekindling those flames of religious dissension which the Revolution had quenched. He strongly urged the General Assembly to admit, upon terms of free and easy communion, the curates as Episcopalian incumbents into the communion and ministry of the Presbyterian Establishment. This the more determined and zealous of the Presbyterians resisted; and, to overcome their resistance, Parliament was persuaded to pass an Act declaring that such of the curates as offered to subscribe the Confession of Faith, to submit to the Presbyterian form of

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