's wealth, let out the winds upon themselves;
and there is now, in consequence, a perilous voyage and an uncertain
landing before them. It was the patronate wedge that struck from off the
Scottish Establishment at least nine-tenths of the Dissenters of the
kingdom,--its Secession bodies, its Relief body, and, finally, its Free
Church denomination,--comprising in their aggregate amount a great and
influential majority of the Scotch people. Our older Dissenters,--a
circumstance inevitable to their position as such,--have been thrown
into the movement party: the Free Church, in her present transition
state, sits loose to all the various political sections of the country;
but her natural tendency is towards the movement party also; and
already, in consequence, do our Scottish aristocracy possess greatly
less political influence in the kingdom of which they own almost all
the soil, than that wielded by their brethren the Irish and English
aristocracy in their respective divisions of the empire. Were the
representation of England and Ireland as liberal as that of Scotland,
and as little influenced by the aristocracy, Conservatism, on the
passing of the Reform Bill, might have taken leave of office for
evermore. And yet neither the English nor Irish are naturally so
Conservative as the Scotch. The patronate wedge, like that appropriated
by Achan, has been disastrous to the people, for it has lost to them the
great benefits of a religious Establishment, and very great these are;
but it threatens, as in the case of the sons of Carmi of old, to work
more serious evil to those by whom it was originally coveted,--"evil to
themselves and all their house." As I approached the Free Church, a
squat, sun-burned, carnal-minded "old wee wifie," who seemed passing
towards the Secession place of worship, after looking wistfully at my
gray maud, and concluding for certain that I could not be other than a
Southland drover, came up to me, and asked, in a cautious whisper, "Will
ye be wantin' a coo?" I replied in the negative; and the wee wifie,
after casting a jealous glance at a group of grave-featured Free Church
folk in our immediate neighborhood, who would scarce have tolerated
Sabbath trading in a Seceder, tucked up her little blue cloak over her
head, and hied away to the chapel.

In the Free Church pulpit I recognized an old friend, to whom I
introduced myself at the close of the service, and by whom I was
introduced, in turn, to severa