on. They all, as I was told, belonged to the Free Kirk, which
has lately been rent from the establishment, and threatens to leave it a
mere shadow of a church, like the Episcopal church in Ireland. "Nothing,"
said an intelligent Glasgow friend of mine, "can exceed the zeal of the
friends of the Free Church. One of our Glasgow merchants has just given
fifteen hundred pounds towards the fund for providing _manses_, or
parsonages, for the ministers of that Church, and I know of several who
have subscribed a thousand. In all the colleges of Scotland, the
professors are obliged, by way of test, to declare their attachment to the
Presbyterian Church as by law established. Parliament has just refused to
repeal this test, and the friends of the Free Church are determined to
found a college of their own. Twenty thousand pounds had already been
subscribed before the government refused to dispense with this test, and
the project will now be supported with more zeal than ever."

I went into one of these Free churches, and listened to a sermon from Dr.
Lindsay, a comfortable-looking professor in some new theological school.
It was quite common-place, though not so long as the Scotch ministers are
in the habit of giving; for excessive brevity is by no means their
besetting infirmity. At the close of the exercises, he announced that a
third service would be held in the evening. "The subject," continued he,
"will be the thoughts and exercises of Jonah in the whale's belly."

In returning to my hotel, I passed by another new church, with an
uncommonly beautiful steeple and elaborate carvings. I inquired its name;
it was the new St. John's, and was another of the buildings of the Free
Church.

On Monday we made an excursion to the birthplace of Burns. The railway
between Glasgow and Ayr took us through Paisley, worthy of note as having
produced our eminent ornithologist, Alexander Wilson, and along the banks
of Castle Semple Loch, full of swans, a beautiful sheet of water, sleeping
among green fields which shelve gently to its edge. We passed by Irvine,
where Burns learned the art of dressing flax, and traversing a sandy
tract, close to the sea, were set down at Ayr, near the new bridge. You
recollect Burns's dialogue between the "auld brig" of Ayr and the new, in
which the former predicted that vain as her rival might be of her new and
fresh appearance, the time would shortly come when she would be as much
dilapidated as herself. The p