humour he introduced an anecdote of a brother minister not of a brilliant order of mind, who had terminated in this place a course of appointments in the Church, the names of which, at least, were of an ominous character for a person of unimaginative temperament.  The worthy man had been brought up at the school of Dunse; had been made assistant at Dull, a parish near Aberfeldy, in the Presbytery of Weem; and had here ended his days and his clerical career as minister of Dron.

There can be no doubt that the older school of national clergy supply many of our most amusing anecdotes; and our pages would suffer deplorably were all the anecdotes taken away which turn upon their peculiarities of dialect and demeanour.  I think it will be found, however, that upon no class of society has there been a greater change during the last hundred years than on the Scottish clergy as a body.  This, indeed, might, from many circumstances, have been expected.  The improved facilities for locomotion have had effect upon the retirement and isolation of distant country parishes, the more liberal and extended course of study at Scottish colleges, the cheaper and wider diffusion of books on general literature, of magazines, newspapers, and reviews.  Perhaps, too, we may add that candidates for the ministry now more generally originate from the higher educated classes of society.  But honour to the memory of Scottish ministers of the days that are gone!

The Scottish clergy, from having mixed so little with life, were often, no doubt, men of simple habits and of very childlike notions.  The opinions and feelings which they expressed were often of a cast, which, amongst persons of more experience, would appear to be not always quite consistent with the clerical character.  In them it arose from their having nothing conventional about them.  Thus I have heard of an old bachelor clergyman whose landlady declared he used to express an opinion of his dinner by the grace which he made to follow.  When he had had a good dinner which pleased him, and a good glass of beer with it, he poured forth the grace, “For the riches of thy bounty and its blessings we offer our thanks.”  When he had had poor fare and poor beer, his grace was, “The least of these thy mercies.”

Many examples of the dry, quaint humour of the class occur in these pages, but there could not be a finer specimen than the instance recorded in the “Annals of the Parish” of the account given by the minister of his own ordination.  The ministers were all assembled for the occasion; prayers had been offered, discourses delivered, and the time for the actual ordination had come.  The form is for the candidate to kneel down and receive his sacred office by the imposition of hands, i.e. the laying on of hands by the whole Presbytery.  As the attendance of ministers was large, a number of hands were stretched forth, more than could quite conveniently come up to the candidate.  An old minister, of the quiet jocose turn of mind we speak of, finding himself thus kept at a little distance, stretched out his walking staff and put it on the young man’s head, with the quiet remark, “That will do!  Timmer to timmer”—­timber to timber.