f, is still perfectly legible, concludes with the
following remarkable words:--"THIS.STONE.SHALL.BEAR.WITNESS.
AGAINST.THE.PARISHIONERS.OF.KILTEARN.IF.THEY.BRING.ANE.UNGODLY.
MINISTER.IN.HERE." Could the imagination of a poet have originated
a more striking conception in connexion with a church deserted by
all its better people, and whose minister fattens on his hire,
useless and contented?

"I entered the church, for the clergyman had just gone in. There
were from eight to ten persons scattered over the pews below, and
seven in the galleries above; and these, as there were no more
'_Peter Clarks_' or '_Michael Tods_'[18] in the parish, composed
the entire congregation. I wrapped myself up in my plaid, and sat
down; and the service went on in the usual course; but it sounded
in my ears like a miserable mockery. The precentor sung almost
alone; and ere the clergyman had reached the middle of his
discourse, which he read in an unimpassioned, monotonous tone,
nearly one-half his skeleton congregation had fallen asleep; and
the drowsy, listless expression of the others showed that, for
every good purpose, they might have been asleep too. And Sabbath
after Sabbath has this unfortunate man gone the same tiresome
round, and with exactly the same effects, for the last twenty-three
years;--at no time regarded by the better clergymen of the district
as really their brother;--on no occasion recognised by the parish
as virtually its minister;--with a dreary vacancy and a few
indifferent hearts inside his church, and the stone of the
Covenanter at the door. Against whom does the inscription testify?
for the people have escaped. Against the patron, the intruder, and
the law of Bolingbroke--the Dr. Robertsons of the last age, and the
Dr. Cooks of the present. It is well to learn from this hapless
parish the exact sense in which, in a different state of matters,
the Rev. Mr. Young would have been constituted minister of
Auchterarder. It is well, too, to learn, that there may be
vacancies in the Church where no blank appears in the Almanac."

On my return home from this journey, early on the following Monday, I
found a letter from Edinburgh awaiting me, requesting me to meet there
with the leading Non-Intrusionists. And so after describing, in the
given extract, the scene whic