We came away before the exercises of the evening were finished.

The next morning we had quite a large breakfast party, mostly ministers and their wives.  Good old Dr. Dick was there, and I had an introduction to him, and had pleasure in speaking to him of the interest with which his works have been read in America.  Of this fact I was told that he had received more substantial assurance in a comfortable sum of money subscribed and remitted to him by his American readers.  If this be so it is a most commendable movement.

What a pity it was, during Scott’s financial embarrassments, that every man, woman, and child in America, who had received pleasure from his writings, had not subscribed something towards an offering justly due to him!

Our host, Mr. Thoms, was one of the first to republish in Scotland Professor Stuart’s Letters to Dr. Channing, with a preface of his own.  He showed me Professor Stuart’s letter in reply, and seemed rather amused that the professor directed it to the Rev. James Thom, supposing, of course, that so much theological zeal could not inhere in a layman.  He also showed us many autograph letters of their former pastor, Mr. Cheyne, whose interesting memoirs have excited a good deal of attention in some circles in America.

After breakfast the ladies of the Dundee Antislavery Society called, and then the lord provost took us in his carriage to see the city.  Dundee is the third town of Scotland in population, and a place of great antiquity.  Its population in 1851 was seventy-eight thousand eight hundred and twenty-nine, and the manufactures consist principally of yarns, linen, with canvas and cotton bagging, great quantities of which are exported to France and North and South America.  There are about sixty spinning mills and factories in the town and neighborhood, besides several iron founderies and manufactories of steam engines and machinery.

Dundee has always been a stronghold of liberty and the reformed religion.  It is said that in the grammar school of this town William Wallace was educated; and here an illustrious confraternity of noblemen and gentry was formed, who joined to resist the tyranny of England.

Here Wishart preached in the beginning of the reformation, preparatory to his martyrdom.  Here flourished some rude historical writers, who devoted their talents to the downfall of Popery.  Singularly enough, they accomplished this in part by dramatic representations, in which the vices and absurdities of the Papal establishment were ridiculed before the people.  Among others, one James Wedderburn and his brother, John, vicar of Dundee, are mentioned as having excelled in this kind of composition.  The same authors composed books of song, denominated “Gude and Godly Ballads,” wherein the frauds and deceits of Popery were fully pointed out.  A third brother of the family, being a musical genius, it is said, “turned the times and tenor of many profane songs into godly songs and hymns, whereby he stirred up the affections of many,” which tunes were called the Psalms of Dundee.  Here, perhaps, was the origin of “Dundee’s wild warbling measures.”