r's
account of the large prayer-book in the library at Panmure. After the
'45, Episcopalians were treated with suspicion and severity. The severe
laws passed against Jacobites were put in force, and poor Skinner fined.

However, better and more peaceful times came round, and all that John
Skinner had undergone did not sour his temper or make him severe or
misanthropical. As a pastor he seems to have had tact, as well as good
temper, in the management of his flock, if we may judge from the
following anecdote:--Talking with an obstinate self-confident farmer,
when the conversation happened to turn on the subject of the motion of
the earth, the farmer would not be convinced that the earth moved at
all. "Hoot, minister," the man roared out; "d'ye see the earth never
gaes oot o' the pairt, and it maun be that the sun gaes round: we a' ken
he rises i' the east and sets i' the west." Then, as if to silence all
argument, he added triumphantly, "As if the sun didna gae round the
earth, when it is said in Scripture that the Lord commanded the sun to
stand still!" Mr. Skinner, finding it was no use to argue further,
quietly answered, "Ay, it's vera true; the sun was commanded to stand
still, and there he stands still, for Joshua never tauld him to tak the
road again." I have said John Skinner wrote little Scottish poetry, but
what he wrote was rarely good. His prose works extended over three
volumes when they were collected by his son, the Bishop of Aberdeen, but
we have no concern with them. His poetical pieces, by which his name
will never die in Scotland, are the "Reel of Tullochgorum" and the "Ewie
with the Crooked Horn," charming Scottish songs,--one the perfection of
the lively, the other of the pathetic. It is quite enough to say of
"Tullochgorum" (by which the old man is now always designated), what was
said of it by Robert Burns, as "the first of songs," and as the best
Scotch song Scotland ever saw.

I have brought in the following anecdote, exactly as it appeared in the
_Scotsman_ of October 4, 1859, because it introduces his name.

"The late Rev. John Skinner, author of 'Annals of Scottish Episcopacy,'
was his grandson. He was first appointed to a charge in Montrose, from
whence he was removed to Banff, and ultimately to Forfar. After he had
left Montrose, it reached his ears that an ill-natured insinuation was
circulating there that he had been induced to leave this town by the
temptation of a better income and of f