usually are, as it
was, of course, loyalty and public spirit to ignore the special claim
upon the day asserted by the Church; and the darkening evening saw a
splendid bonfire blazing from the brae-head. And the Liberal newspapers
south and north taking part with the processionists, in many a paragraph
and short leader, represented their frolic--for such it was, and a very
foolish one--as a splendid triumph of the people of Cromarty over
Presbyterial bigotry and clerical domination. Nay, so bad did the case
of my minister and his Session appear, thus placed in opposition to at
once the people and the Queen, that the papers on the other side failed
to take it up. A well-written letter on the subject by my wife, which
fairly stated the facts, was refused admission into even the
ecclesiastico-Conservative journal, specially patronized, at the time,
by the Scottish Church; and my minister's friends and brethren in the
south could do little else than marvel at what they deemed his wondrous
imprudence.

I had anticipated, from the first, that his position was to be a bad
one; but I ill liked to see him with his back to the wall. And though I
had determined, on the rejection of my counsel, to take no part in the
quarrel, I now resolved to try whether I could not render it evident
that he was really not at issue with his people, but with merely a very
inconsiderable clique among them, who had never liked him; and that it
was much a joke to describe him as disaffected to his sovereign, simply
because he had held his preparation services on the day of her
coronation. In order to make good my first point, I took the
unpardonable liberty of giving the names in full, in a letter which
appeared in our northern newspapers, of every individual who walked in
the procession, and represented themselves as the people; and challenged
the addition of even a single name to a list ludicrously brief. And in
making good the second, I fairly succeeded, as there were not a few
comical circumstances in the transaction, in getting the laughers on my
side. The clique was amazingly angry, and wrote not very bright letters,
which appeared as advertisements in the newspapers, and paid duty to
make evident the fact. There was a shallow and very ignorant young
shoemaker in the place, named Chaucer, a native of the south of
Scotland, who represented himself as the grandson of the old poet of the
days of Edward III., and wrote particularly wretched doggrel