the five schemes? in which case why should not a sixth scheme, for extending the parochial system, as yielding to none in importance, obtain the advantage of a distinct collection once a year, taking its turn with the others? From this source, although it should yield only L.1000 a year, a fund would accrue sufficient to secure one additional parish every three years, or to clear several chapels of their debt. The endowed clergy, as many of them have already done, might subscribe from L.20 to L.25, or L.50, to be paid not at once, except where convenient, but in yearly instalments of L.5 or L.10, according to the sum subscribed. Thus, an additional income of at least L.5000 a year would be forthcoming for the next five years. In some parts of the country there are few or no chapels, and the Secession has made but little progress, and there some of the clergy may feel indisposed to contribute; but they ought to recollect that their brethren have already made large sacrifices by subscribing for the erection of the Chapels now sought to be converted into Parish Churches, that many of them are even personally responsible for the debts on certain of the Chapels, and that the interests of religion, and the stability of the Church of Scotland, demand extraordinary sacrifices from all. When the Church Benefices Act was introduced by the late Government, it was understood that the Crown teind, for ages alienated from Ecclesiastical objects, was to be at the service of the Church for the endowment of additional parishes, at all events in the localities where such teind existed. The present ministry could scarcely with a good grace deny the boon intended by their predecessors, especially seeing that several cases are already before the Court of Teinds, at the instance of parties who have made arrangements for implementing the provisions of the Act, on the faith of obtaining an endowment from the Crown Teind. From this source, endowments for twenty or thirty of the Chapels might with every probability be obtained. In several instances landed proprietors have intimated their willingness to surrender out of the teind held by them the amount of endowment required by the Act before a new parish can be erected. Some, as Lords Bute and Eglinton, Sir John Gladstone, &c., have already achieved the object. Others are at this moment in court, and more may be expected to follow, when the scheme has developed itself more fully. The ladies of Scotland, so forward in every benevolent enterprise, might, we should think, do worse than direct their views towards one poor district after another where a Chapel stands, in order to raise subscriptions to supply them with the many temporal and spiritual advantages, connected with all the apparatus of the good old parochial system. We rejoice to know that many excellent ladies, who seceded from feeling, or under mistake in 1843, have emancipated themselves from the bondage and worrying annoyances of the system misnamed Free. Surely such would bring a double portion of zeal to the good cause. We may add, that every Conservative is interested in this matter. Our readers may have noticed an article on Scottish Ecclesiastical affairs in the Quarterly Review, (Dec. 1845,) evidently from the pen of a Scottish Episcopalian, of extreme opinions and so ignorant of one part of the subject on which he treats, as to pronounce the Free Church" the legitimate descendant of Knox," the fact being, that the doctrine of the Reformer, in regard to the province of the Civil Magistrate in matters Ecclesiastical, so condemns the Free Church Protest, that though the Free Church press is teeming with republications of the writings of the Reformers, it dare not publish Knox's Appellation. While the Reviewer has committed the above, and other errors which we need not here notice, he is constrained, notwithstanding his prejudices against Presbyterianism in every form, to admit that the Church of Scotland presents "the natural and only rallying point for the whole Conservative feeling of the country, properly so called, as far as it applies to religion." Notwithstanding loud professions of loyalty, on the part of the Free Church leaders, the doctrines they have avowed in regard to sites, and the terms they have applied to the aristocracy and judges of the land, show some progress already made towards an attitude of hostility to all the institutions of the country. "The rallying point for the whole Conservative feeling of the country" has been styled "a moral nuisance." The parochial schools, though unaltered in every respect, are denounced simply because they are connected with the Established Church-as Erastian-exclusiveSectarian-and doomed to destruction likewise. We may expect Voluntaryism now in practical operation to be ere long adopted in theory by a large division of the New Seceders. When this takes place, we cannot doubt that there will be a contemporaneous disruption of that body: but the larger half will probably then amalgamate with other dissenting sects, and commence a fierce war against all Establishments. If, then, Dr. Chalmers, in his younger and better days, raised the cry, the Church is in danger, and called upon all good Christians and good citizens to extend and endow her, in order that she might be able under God to cope with the adversary and spoliator; much more may the same cry be raised in the present state of affairs, which that once venerated Doctor has been so largely instrumental in bringing about. Nor is this a time to forget his memorable words: "The spoliators of our Establishment are on the wing, and their unhallowed hands are already uplifted to mutilate and destroy; but if supported as we ought, the benefactors of our Establishment will greatly outnumber and overmatch them. In that mighty host of aliens from the lessons and ordinances of the Gospel, who are still unreached and unreclaimed, we behold full demonstration of the impotency of what is commonly termed the Voluntary system. It is now for the Church to bestir herself, and put forth her own peculiar energies and resources in calling in those hapless outcasts, and in proportion to our success shall we earn for the cause of religious Establishments, the friendship of the wise and the good, the support of every honest and enlightened patriot." HISTORY OF EARLY SCOTTISH LITERATURE. In arriving at the eleventh century, we enter on the period of authentic Scottish History: we enter also on a century when the knowledge of letters began to flourish amongst the Scottish Ecclesiastics. It is in this age as we have already remarked that the name Scotia comes to be applied to the country which now enjoys it. In this age flourished Marianus Scotus, a monk first of Fulda and then of Mentz, the author of a universal history from the birth of Christ to his own days, and entitled Chronicon Chronicorum, a work of the highest reputation in the middle ages. Bishop Nicholson has been liberal enough to allow the claim made by Dempster and Mackenzie to Marianus as a native of Scotland. In his Scottish Historical Library, he says, "Marianus Scotus ought to be especially remembered here amongst his countrymen.” Dr. Mackenzie gravely tells us, that Marianus was one of those who about the year 1058 fled from the tyranny of Macbeth. Nevertheless the balance of impartial authorities is against the claims of Scotland-and Marianus is now almost universally allowed to have been an Irish Scot. Towards the end of the eleventh century, Scotland received into her bosom one of the choicest Saints in the Kalender, and also an historian to record her deeds of virtue and piety. St. Margaret, the sister of Edgar Etheling, was married to King Malcolm III. somewhere between the the years 1067 and 1070. St Margaret died in 1093 of intense grief it is said for the death of her husband.* It is a historical fact that she only survived the King three days. Malcolm was killed along with his son Edward, at the seige of Alnwick, on the 13th November; and Margaret died on the sixteenth; but she had been for six months in ill health. Her life has been written by Turgot or Theodoric her confessor. Turgot appears to have had a life of some vicissitude. At one period he had been obliged to fly from England, and had taken refuge with Olaus, King of Norway. He returned from that country, but lost the wealth which he had there acquired, and went into the monastery of Durham, of which he was first a monk, and afterwards prior. It was during this period that he became confessor to Margaret. So long after her death as the year 1109 he was chosen bishop of St. Andrews on the nomination of Alexander I. His consecration was delayed for some time, on account of a claim made on the part of the Archbishops of York, to have the privilege of consecrating the bishops of St Andrews-a claim which was resisted by the Scottish clergy.' The dispute was quashed by an arrangement between the Euglish and Scottish monarchs. Turgot however does not appear to have filled his see in peace-but worn out with vexation, he revisited his cell at Durham, and died there in 1115. † Besides the Life of Margaret, Turgot wrote the earliest work known on the Antiquities of the Church of Durham,‡ which, however, has never been printed. Boethius, and after him Bale, Pitts, and Dempster, assert that Turgot wrote a history of Scotland.§ This history is one of the authorities from whom Boethius professes to have derived the materials of his history. He mentions Turgot along with Veremund and Campbell, as writers, whose works he had procured from the library at Iona. The existence of such a history rests entirely on the authority of Boethius, as no other writer pretends to have seen it. Turgot's Life of Margaret is dedicated to her daughter, Maud, or Matilda, the wife of Henry 1st of England. The work has been republished by Mr. Pinkerton, in his collection, from the Acta Sanctorum of the Bolandists. It is a wearisome and monotonous eulogium of a pious woman. There is not even the amusement of monkish miracles in it; the only thing at all in Quum bona Regina Margarita fama accepisset carissimum suum dominum, filiumque ita proditos fuisse, erat (prope) ad mortem animi aegrotatione capta, et cum ea Presbyteri Ecclesiam adibant, ritibusque (Ecclesiae) peractis, Deum illa oravit ut animam suam efflaret. -Chronicon Saxonicum, p. 199. + Hailes' Annals of Scotland, i. p. 57. 1 Nicholson's English Hist. Library, p. 107. § Boethius makes Turgot the author of a life of Malcolm, as well as of Margaret, (Scot. Hist. lib. xii. p. 250,) and Bale has not only enumerated both these, and alia quædam, but has made Turgot the writer of two works on Scottish affairs, the one entitled De Scotorum Regibus, and the other Annales sui Temporis, (Script. Illust. Mag. Brytanniæ, p. 469.) There need be little hesitation in believing that all this literature has arisen out of the fact of Turgot having written the Life of Margaret. Vita Margaretæ, c. iii. sec. xxv. this way, being the wonderful preservation of Margaret's copy of the Gospels, a beautifully illuminated volume," ornamented with gems and gold,” which fell into the water, and was got out again nothing the worse.* Malcolm could not read, but according to Turgot, he used to kiss the books that his wife read, and was in the way of causing her favourite volumes to be ornamented with jewels and gold as a token of his devotion.† In mentioning the various great reforms, in morals and religion, effected by this queen, Turgot makes no allusion whatever to the marcheta mulierum, by which, according to Boethius, Margaret abrogated an infamous law attributed by him to King Evenus, both the king and the law being equally fabulous. The silence of Turgot on the subject is decisive of its falsehood. Turgot had learned from Margaret's own lips her whole course of life. He paints her as a model of piety, virtue, and prudence. He represents her, however, as given to long prayers, a devotion certainly not recommended in Scripture. A less amiable trait in her character was a propensity to disputation on ecclesiastical subjects. She was in her day an eminent theologian, one of the least agreeable varieties of the sex. While she was ostentatious in her equipage and her attendants, and displayed a love of finery in her dress, she is believed to have impaired her health and shortened her days by fasting and abstinence in her food. The life of Margaret bears in some manuscripts to be the work of a Theodoric, and Papebroch the Jesuit has contended, that the work which we now have is not the work of Turgot, but of this Theodoric, and that the biography of Turgot is lost. His arguments, which do not appear to be weighty, have been replied to by Lord Hailes.§ The work is quoted as the production of Turgot by Fordun, and this is better authority than all that Papebroch has said on the other side. The theory of this Jesuit, however, got some countenance from the curious manner in which Boethius refers to the work of Turgot: "Vitam D. Margareta et Malcolmi regis conscripsit, vernacula quidem lingua, sed non minori elegantia quam pietate veritateque."-(Scot. Hist. 259.) Lord Hailes conjectures, that Boethius may have seen a translation of Turgot, and mistaken it for the original. A life of Margaret was written by Ailred of Rieval, an abridgment of Lord Hailes has dealt unfairly both with this queen and with William of Malmesbury, in only quoting the depreciatory remarks which that admirable writer makes on Matilda, (Annals of Scotland, i. 59.) These remarks form merely a qualification of a long and enthusiastic eulogium, (Willielmi Malmesburiensis de Gestis Reg. Anglorum, p. 164, apud. Savile, Rer. Anglic. Scriptores, Francof. 1601.) William was a truly philosophic historian, and knew that ladies whom the Church has canonized were not perfect. Matilda has, however, been fortunate in having her character transmitted to posterity in some exquisite verses, which even those to whom they are familiar will pardon us for quoting. They are coeval with Matilda. We quote them from Henry of Huntingdon, writing in 1154. "Prospera non lætam fecere, nec aspera, tristem; Aspera risusei, prospera terror erant. Non decor effecit fragilem, non sceptra superbam, (Henrici Huntindon. Histor. lib. vii. p. 380, apud Savile.) All Turgot's elaborate eulogies on the mother, are not worth these beautiful six lines on the daughter. f Id. c. ii. sect. xi. ↑ Boethii Scot. Hist. fol. 35. Buchanan has described almost in the same words as his predecessor, Boethius, the law of Evenus, (Rer. Scot. Hist. lib. iv.) and its repeal by Malcolm, (lib. vii.) Annals of Scotland, i. 40. which was published by Surius, in his Lives of the Saints, and is republished in Pinkerton's Collection. Papebroch refers to a Life of Margaret published at Rome in the year 1675, and written in elegant Italian by P. Gulielmus Aloysius Leslæus, a Jesuit. Mr. Pinkerton refers, with an expression of contempt, to a French Life of Margaret, under the title of “L'Idée d'une Reine parfaite en la vie de S. Marguerite reine d'Eccosse; avec les eloges de ses enfans, David et Matilde-à Douay 1660"-dedicated to Charles II. by the Scottish Jesuits, and which had been translated into English. Mr. Pinkerton believes, that there is also a Spanish Life of this Saint-a circumstance not at all improbable, considering that her relics in the sixteenth century found their way to Madridt and by the care of Philip II. were placed in the Escurial along with those of her husband Malcolm, who, it would appear, came to be reckoned a sort of saint also. Turgot has been called by Boethius, a most holy and most learned man ; and bishop Bale, who loved to speak ill of a Popish bishop, if he could, has been diffuse in his eulogium. He has been enabled, however, to relate from an older author, a vision which a certain knight Boso had, and which he related to Turgot while he was prior of the Monastery of Durham. He had a vision of hell, in which he saw the monks making a solemn procession on one side, while on the other side, there were some lascivious women dancing with great immodesty. He also saw the iron chamber that was prepared for the bishop, and for the Procurator General. Visions of this sort were particularly to Bale's mind. Mr. Pinkerton has asserted that Scotland did not produce any writer till the thirteenth century.. We shall afterwards show that this is inaccurate-but in the meantime we have to notice a writer standing on questionable ground, but whom there is good reason to reckon a Scotsman. When the emperor Henry V., in the year 1110, set out on his expedition against Pope Pascal II., with whom he had quarrelled on the subject of investitures, he was accompanied, as we are told by William of Malmesbury, by David, a Scot, bishop of Bangor, who wrote the history of that expedition.§ The question involved, was, whether or not bishops should do homage to princes for the temporal possessions received from them. The German clergy, up till the time of Pope Hildebrand, had peaceably complied with the reasonable regulation which required them to do homage to their princes before they were ordained. A stand was then made by Hildebrand and the Free Church party, against this practice, which they discovered to be heretically sinful, and, if the word had then been in existence, they would have called it Erastian. However, in those days the Free Church party, on the whole, spoke as vehemently in behalf of their claims, as they have done in these days of Cunningham and Candlish. William of Malmesbury, who was nearly contemporary with these transactions (writing in 1140,) expressly calls the historian to whom we now refer David Scottus, without any explanation of his being an Irish Scot. Bishop Bale, in that part of his work, (Centuria xiv.) which is occupied by Scottish writers, has given a place to this David, and Bishop Nicholson seems to have had no doubt of his being our countryman.]] We know of Vita Antiq. Sanctorum, p. 308. + Conaeus de duplici statu religionis apud Scotos, p. 56. Romae 1628. Cone assures us that the following inscription was placed on the box which contained the bones of the Royal pair: S. Malcolmus Rex S. Margareta Regina. O venerabile factum coelestis providentiae, quas vilis plebecula sprevit reliquias, monarcha alienus in regiis collocavit." ↑ Multarum literarum peritus vir erat, et in operationibus externis sobrius prudens ac modestissimus-Script. Illust., Brytaniae, § Willielm Malmesburiensis de gestis Regum Anglorum, p. 166, ap. Savile. 1 Scottish Hist. Library, p. 20. D |