offices, ’I didna dee that, for ye see he turned Seceder afore he dee’d, an’ I buried him like a beast.’  He then rode quietly away.  This worthy man, however, could, when occasion required, rebuke with seriousness as well as point.  Always a welcome guest at the houses of both clergy and gentry, he is said on one occasion to have met with a laird whose hospitality he had thought it proper to decline, and on being asked the reason for the interruption of his visits, answered, ‘Ye ken, an’ I ken; but, laird, God kens!’”

One question connected with religious feeling, and the manifestation of religious feeling, has become a more settled point amongst us, since fifty years have expired.  I mean the question of attendance by clergymen on theatrical representations.  Dr. Carlyle had been prosecuted before the General Assembly in 1757 for being present at the performance of the tragedy of Douglas, written by his friend John Home.  He was acquitted, however, and writes thus on the subject in his Memoirs:—­

“Although the clergy in Edinburgh and its neighbourhood had abstained from the theatre because it gave offence, yet the more remote clergymen, when occasionally in town, had almost universally attended the play-house.  It is remarkable that in the year 1784, when the great actress Mrs. Siddons first appeared in Edinburgh, during the sitting of the General Assembly, that court was obliged to fix all its important business for the alternate days when she did not act, as all the younger members, clergy as well as laity, took their stations in the theatre on those days by three in the afternoon.”

Drs. Robertson and Blair, although they cultivated the acquaintance of Mrs. Siddons in private, were amongst those clergymen, referred to by Dr. Carlyle, who abstained from attendance in the theatre; but Dr. Carlyle states that they regretted not taking the opportunity of witnessing a display of her talent, and of giving their sanction to the theatre as a place of recreation.  Dr. Carlyle evidently considered it a narrow-minded intolerance and bigoted fanaticism that clergymen should be excluded from that amusement.  At a period far later than 1784, the same opinion prevailed in some quarters.  I recollect when such indulgence on the part of clergymen was treated with much leniency, especially for Episcopalian clergy.  I do not mean to say that there was anything like a general feeling in favour of clerical theatrical attendance; but there can be no question of a feeling far less strict than what exists in our own time.  As I have said, thirty-six years ago some clergymen went to the theatre; and a few years before that, when my brothers and I were passing through Edinburgh, in going backwards and forwards to school, at Durham, with our tutor, a licentiate of the Established Church of Scotland, and who afterwards attained considerable eminence in the Free Church, we certainly went with him to the theatre there, and at Durham very frequently.  I feel quite assured,