suit the
prejudices and modes of thought of the laity. The church, it may be
said, was thoroughly secularised. The priest was no longer a wielder of
threats and an interpreter of oracles, but an entirely respectable
gentleman, who fully sympathised with the prejudices of his patron and
practically admitted that he had very little to reveal, beyond
explaining that his dogmas were perfectly harmless and eminently
convenient. He preached, however, a sound common sense morality, and was
not divided from his neighbours by setting up the claims characteristic
of a sacerdotal caste. Whether he has become on the whole better or
worse by subsequent changes is a question not to be asked here; but
perhaps not quite so easily answered as is sometimes supposed.

The condition of the English church and universities may be contrasted
with that of their Scottish rivals. The Scottish church and universities
had no great prizes to offer and no elaborate hierarchy. But the church
was a national institution in a sense different from the English. The
General Assembly was a powerful body, not overshadowed by a great
political rival. To rise to be a minister was the great ambition of poor
sons of farmers and tradesmen. They had to study at the universities in
the intervals, perhaps, of agricultural labour; and if the learning was
slight and the scholarship below the English standard, the young
aspirant had at least to learn to preach and to acquire such philosophy
as would enable him to argue upon grace and freewill with some
hard-headed Davie Deans. It was doubtless owing in part to these
conditions that the Scottish universities produced many distinguished
teachers throughout the century. Professors had to teach something which
might at least pass for philosophy, though they were more or less
restrained by the necessity of respecting orthodox prejudices. At the
end of the century, the only schools of philosophy in the island were to
be found in Scotland, where Reid (1710-1796) and Adam Smith (1723-1790)
had found intelligent disciples, and where Dugald Stewart, of whom I
shall speak presently, had become the recognised philosophical
authority.

NOTES:

[22] At Cambridge subscription was abolished for undergraduates in 1775;
and bachelors of arts had only to declare themselves '_bona-fide_
members of the church of England.'

[23] Gilbert Wakefield's _Memoirs_, ii. 149.

[24] De Quincey, _Works_ (1863), ii. 106.

[25] Wordsworth's _U