poor Kemp, an architect who was removed from us at the very hour when his great talents had become acknowledged, and when the long weight of poverty had passed away from him, as it seemed, for ever. Beautiful is that monument, and unsurpassed as a tribute of national regard to a single labourer in the fields of literature. But the whole of the Highlands and Lowlands are, together, the monument of one who, by the Waverley Novels and his glowing romances of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," and "the Lady of the Lake," &c., made his country familiar to dwellers in far distant regions. It is as the "Land of Scott" that to many it possesses so much interest, and his fame is enduringly connected with its loveliness and grandeur.

ECCLESIASTICAL INTELLIGENCE.

The Presbytery of Dundee, having met to receive the return of the Presbyterial citation summoning the congregation of the Steeple Church to appear, if they saw cause, and none appearing to object, the Presbytery unanimously loosed and translated the Rev. James Dodds to Glasgow.

The Presbytery of Glasgow have appointed Thursday, 2d August, for the admission of the Rev. James Dodds as minister of St Stephen's Church, in Cambridge Street, Glasgow, in succession to the Rev. Archibald Nisbett, now incumbent of Coldstream.

The Presbytery of Mull, in the Synod of Argyle, are at present engaged in examining the objectors to the call of the Rev. John Gordon Campbell, presentee to the vacant church and parish of Tyree, for which an unanimous petition had been presented to his Grace the Duke of Argyle in favour of the Rev. William Macalpine, the present missionary minister in the parish.

The Presbytery of Inverary, Synod of Argyle, having received and sustained a presentation granted by the Duke of Argyle in favour of the Rev. Neil Macmichael, presently missionary minister at Kilberry, in the Presbytery of Kintyre, to be minister of the church and parish of Craignish, void by the demise of the Rev. Duncan Mackellar, appointed 25th July ult., for his admission to the incumbency of that parish.

The Presbytery of Hamilton met at the Kirk of Blantyre, and formally moderated in a call in favour of the Rev. Patton James Gloag, M.A., of Dunning, to be incumbent of that parish, void by the decease of the Rev. Samuel Paterson.

The Presbytery of Montreal, on Wednesday, 2d May, admitted the Rev. James Kerr, recently assistant minister in the parish of Murroes, in the Presbytery of Dundee, on producing a Presbyterial certificate from that Presbytery in Scotland, of which he is a licentiate, having become assistant minister in St Andrew's Church, in Montreal, to the Rev. Alexander Mathieson, D.D., in succession to the Rev. Robert Herbert Story, now incumbent of Roseneath. The Presbytery hav ing acceded to the request of the congregation at Beauharnois, void by the decease of the Rev. Prosper Louis Leger, met there on Wednesday, 23d May, when Rev. James Crichton Muir, D.D., of Georgetown, having conducted divine service, moderated in a call in favour of the Rev. Frederick Petry Sym, presently at Russeltown, in the same Presbytery. The new chapel at Point St Charles, in Montreal, opened on Sunday, 8th April, to which the Rev. James Smart, A.M., of Glasgow, was designated, but unfortunately drowned in the Hungarian on 19th February, has been filled by the appointment of the Rev. James Black, M A., who was ordained on 9th May at Glasgow, as announced there on Sunday 13th April, by the Rev. James Thomson Paul, of St Louis-de-Gonzague.

MACPHAIL'S

EDINBURGH ECCLESIASTICAL JOURNAL.

No. CLXXVI.

SEPTEMBER 1860.

HOW AM I TO REPLY?

DEAR AND MUCH ESTEEMED READER,-I have no help for it, but to take you into my confidence on a point of uncommon delicacy. Of course what I say to you must be regarded as "strictly private and confidential."

You by no means know who I am, and I have no purpose in the meantime of telling you; in the meantime, if you please, I remain incog. Who or what I am signifies nothing in regard to the knotty problem which I want you to solve for me. How am I to deal with men who take offence at my "Letter to a Friend in the Country," in the July number of Macphail, and write me the most serious expostulations and the most Christian warnings against "malice" and "imagination?" I would like to answer them, but I cannot get a chink or arrowslit through which to fire off my bolt. I cannot write them privately, for I have no private existence. I cannot let my incognito be thus blown aside by every breath of air. The obvious way would be to print their expostulatory and irate epistles, and then follow up with such rejoinder as I might be able to produce; but they are marked "private," and so in this direction also I really see no outlet. I am at my wit's end, I assure you. I cannot write a private reply; I must not attempt a public; faith must be kept, and yet a wrong, if a wrong has been done, ought surely to be redressed; a wound, if a wound has been unjustly inflicted, ought surely to be salved. I might ask the editor, it is true, to apply a salve to the wound, but, besides being somewhat doubtful whether he possesses the requisite skill in surgery, I am not in the habit of asking another to do for me what I should do myself.

VOL. XXX.

E

Now I think I must take you into my counsels, and hear what you would advise me to do. I cannot give you the names of my correspondents; but you now sufficiently understand the case to be able to advise. The worst of it, is that I find I must have made a mistake on one point which I feel myself bound to correct. I have in that article recorded the whispered comments of one who passes under the soubriquet of "the Stagyrite ;" and I did so for the purpose of giving a more vivid picture of the varying emotions by which the House was stirred during its most important sitting, and of shewing thereby the spirit of life which has again wakened in that Church, which was accused of being bereft of all life in 1843. In the Stagyrite's whispered comment, occurs the following expression, "Macpherson's Aberdeenawa snellness seems actually melted away into the saffron glow of an autumn sunset." Injustice has been done in this sentence to Dr Macpherson, by representing him as anticipating with joy a decision which in reality he did all in his power to prevent. He did not support the proposal to settle Mr Logie at Scoonie, but after a deliberate consideration of the merits of the case arrived at the conclusion that his settlement there ought not to take place. I am sorry that he should have been represented as in the minority, instead of the majority on that occasion.

As to the language employed by the Stagyrite, I certainly would not have written it down, had I considered it in any other light than as a piece of graphic humour, spiced with perhaps the slightest sprinkling of not very ill-natured, and certainly not very unbearable sarcasm -just enough to give zest, but not by any means so much as justly to cause pain. The reference to Aberdeen in that sentence, and in another, is not "malicious" as is most wrongly supposed, but simply humorous. I bear no malice to Aberdeen, nor Aberdeen Professors, nor any Aberdeen persons or things whatsoever. On the contrary, I admire them prodigiously. I admire their granite; I admire their colleges; I admire their professors; I admire their citizens; and above all things, I admire the length and hardness of their heads. In Aberdeen, every thing is of a piece. The air bites shrewdly; the pavement is hard; the buildings are solid and clean, and of a very noticeable grace-rejecting unhewableness; it is always like a city in snow, and too often is what it looks. To apply the term snell to Aberdeen is not derogatory, but the contrary. True; where there is snellness, you cannot have the finer graces, the genial glow, the voluptuous softness of the south. Aberdeen would be among the last places you would go to in search of these. If you would see the very opposite of snellness, you must go to the north-west angle of Rome, and stand in the Piazza di San Pietro, with the delicious gush of the great fountains in your ears, and your eye resting on the magnificent circuits of colonnades, and the lovely marble statuary rising high in the air like a guardian circle of angels, and the splendid up-towering temple of St Peter's, and the massy structure of the Vatican, with all their witchery of architectural grace, and the lines of genius still fresh and clear in the tender and delicate marble, and above all, the glow

ing Italian sky with its infinite depths of blue merging off to the horizon, into still richer shades, as if the colours of heaven were woven into a fringing of most gorgeous purple. Well, surely I say nothing derogatory of Aberdeen, when I say that it is the antipodes of Rome. Long may it continue so! Far from cherishing malice in the bestowal of the epithet, I see in it a compliment to the keenness and activity, the piercing and sharp force, and the severity of power which lead to logical correctness of thinking, and the expulsion from the region of the understanding of all cloudy no-meanings, and hazy images of thought, and phantasms, and nonsense of all kinds. Malice! No, no. I sincerely admire the sheer intellect, the granite solidity, the exactitude and precision, the hardheadedness and strong willedness of Aberdeen. These strong attributes, it is true, may, if too potent, tend to smother the softer elements of the heart, and the tenderer emotions of weaker people may meet with little forbearance; but we must take the good that we get, and be thankful.

Exception has also been taken to the following sentence: "Professor Macpherson brought the speaker quickly to a close by calling for the motion: the Aberdeen Professor has a chill manner-is keen and acid in his temperament and probably labours under the common enough infirmity of loving better to hear himself than others; pity 'tis natheless that the courtesies of Christian sympathy, should in a great Christian Institute, prove too weak for the full hearing of even the smallest causes." The injury alleged is that I have represented Dr Macpherson as opposing the discussion of missionary subjects, when in reality he takes the deepest interest in missions, and has given more valuable pledges of interest than most men. I do not think that the abovequoted sentence bears out the charge. It turns entirely upon the fact referred to in the first clause, that a speaker was brought quickly to a close by Professor Macpherson's interruption. Having myself heard the interruption, I must adhere to the statement of fact; but I am willing to allow many exculpatory possibilities. It is possible, nay certain, that the doctor and I differed in our estimate of the speaker, and in our expectations of deriving instruction from anything he said. The House, too, was exhausted; and a great deal of business was demanding attention; and members were getting annoyed at the pertinacity with which some speakers would insist on being heard, even after the question had been discussed usque ad nauseam. The circumstances were possibly, therefore, quite aggravating enough to make any man's manner chill, and any man's temperament keen and acid. Then, if every one were to take offence, who labours under the common enough infirmity of loving better to "hear himself than others," I jalouse that the whole world would be in a huff. As to the concluding clause, it is general in its application, not specific. It is applied to the whole Assembly, not to Dr Macpherson more than any other member. And finally, the reference to "chillness of manner, and keenness and acidity of temperament," had no application to private character, but was intended to describe him in his public appearances more especially at that particular moment. "Malice?"

No, no. "Imagination?" I think not. Were the party himself to employ such ill-favoured terms against me as malice and imagination, it would probably, by candid judges, be deemed sufficient evidence that my description was but too true, however rigorously interpreted. I would be indeed very sorry were any one to think of the Aberdeen Professor, save as a scholarly and sound theologian, and an amiable

man.

Still the point which provoked my criticism remains an unfortunate characteristic of last Assembly; and I am happy to have received valuable testimonies of good results from my brief, though it would seem cutting, comments upon it. Expressions of thanks have not been wanting from eminent sources to counterbalance the expressions of personal irritation and offence. There was undoubtedly a thrusting of missions aside. Conveners should seriously consider whether they ought to print their reports, and circulate them among the members beforehand, if the doing so is to be seized as an excuse for doing away with the reading of them before the House. It was averred that the moment a Convener rises to read his report, there is a universal rushing to the door; and that since nobody will wait to hear, it is far better not to read. I am happy to be unable to believe so ill of the General Assembly, as what was thus so broadly asserted. So far as I can judge, a large proportion derived a keener gratification from listening to the reading of the Report of the schemes, than from any other of the proceedings of the Assembly; and even though they read the report beforehand, they were pained to find the Convener fettered, and restricted, and bound down; only permitted,-not to read his report, but to offer any explanatory remarks which he might deem necessary. The reports lay buried among bundles of papers of every kind and of every character; and thus the missions came sneaking in before the House among mobs of moribund "bills and cases," with scarcely a living voice to bid them welcome. As might have been anticipated, the conveners really stood up with much the air of men who felt they were not wanted; with a copious use of excuses a helpless "I-fear-I-am-intruding" air—and a hurrying haste of utterance which was painful to behold. They evidently had their minds full of their theme; but this feeling of incertitude paralysed them. They spoke with a hurriedness of mental unrepose, knowing their time was short,-not erectly, but in a posture something between sitting and standing, and shrunk to their seats at last with any thing seemingly but a conviction that they had done justice to their trusts. Now, the temper and zest of the House when the Tricentenary of the Reformation was the question of the moment, would shew, in my opinion, the right spirit in which to receive our conveners: and as representing the interests and vital activities of the living Present, surely the conveners of our glorious Schemes deserve as warm a welcome and as kindly a hearing as the laudators of the dead Past. It may be quite right to build the sepulchres of the prophets and paint them white,-I do not object to it; but I hold it a much more honourworthy thing to be a doer, even on the humblest scale, of the truth for