CHAPTER XI.

THE BLACKNESS OF DARKNESS.

THE year 1880 began in the same tranquil fashion, without prognostics of evil. The routine of Tulloch's life was so far changed, that instead of the weekly journeys to Edinburgh, which, during the time of the Education Board, diversified his days with a series of Edinburgh dinner-parties and social dissipations in addition to the work, he had now a series of visits to London, in which his life varied between the Athenæum and Paternoster Row, and dinner-parties more pretentious, if not more amusing, than those in the northern capital. 'Fraser' went on more or less steadily, having a succès d'estime if never a commercial success, and his feelings were soothed by applause if not by more substantial advantage. The only excitement was that of public matters; above all, the prospect of Disestablishment for the Church, which, now that Mr Gladstone was about to be brought back to power, seemed to the Principal imminent. It always appeared to him the greatest misfortune that could happen to Scotland, and his anticipations were very gloomy.

To Rev. W. W. Tulloch.

ST ANDREWS, April 3, 1880.

The political prospect looks very grave,-Gladstone will almost certainly be Premier, or at least the governing spirit in the new Government; and my own sober opinion is, that the existence of the Church of Scotland will be before the constituencies before

three, or at the utmost five years, and unless there be a Conservative reaction, that its days are numbered. You somewhere spoke of the number of young men of Conservative leanings in Glasgow and Greenock, but the result of the polls there yesterday shows how little anything of this kind comes to, amidst the powerful political forces of the country. The witness of three such men for Glasgow is very significant, and I have no doubt whatever that Mr Adam and all the official wire-pullers are gradually tightening the cords of strangulation around the old institution. It is a curious Nemesis of the Patronage Act, but exactly one of those revenges that constantly repeat themselves in history. The Tories, and especially Scotch Tories, are hopelessly blinded to all the real influences that are moving the modern world. I am not sorry that since the Liberals—or rather, I fear, they must be called the Liberal-Radicals—are to return to power, they should return with a large majority. They will be able to show their real mind, and bring matters about the Churches and some other things to a crisis. Anything, I believe, is better than the present state of suspense and pretence, of saying one thing and meaning another.

The result of our local contest will not matter much now in the general run; and although Bennett's agents show a clear majority of pledges, it is not unlikely we will be beaten. We had a great meeting in Cupar last night, numbers of the students having gone of their own accord. Crombie (who has acted very kindly in the whole matter) and Col. Grindley went with me. I thought I should not have got a hearing at all for a long time. But I compelled them to hear at last, and never, I believe, spoke better. But, as one of the students said to David this morning, "it was casting pearls before swine." Bennett himself spoke with amazing clearness, force, and point. It is really no matter to me how it ends, I feel I have done my duty; while the Glasgow Liberal Churchmen, and many others, who pestered Mr Gladstone with their remonstrances in December, have sung small, and I suppose quietly given their votes for men like Middleton and Anderson.

No one is personally less likely to be affected by the revolution than I am. And it is better perhaps for St Mary's and the old college to perish by violence than by a slow and lingering decay.

The allusions above are to the election for the Fife Burghs, in which, for the first time, the Principal took a leading part, feeling, in the face of so great a risk as that which threatened the Church, that her clergy were bound to exercise the duty of public-spirited citizens, as well as those more specially appropriate to their profession, by keeping out her enemies,

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and adding to the number of her supporters in the House of Commons. He was naturally attacked with great violence in some of the local papers for taking a part in political agitation; but, unfortunately, his efforts were not successful. On a later occasion, when the popular feeling had changed, the result which he had desired was, however, attained, and a candidate who was on the side of the Church against her assailants was chosen. But it was not so in the election of 1880. He relates the result as follows:

To Rev. W. W. Tulloch. ST ANDREWS UNIVERSITY, April 7, 1880.

You will see that we have been beaten, and more beaten than we ought to have been. But all the organisation of the Associations was in Williamson's hand, and his agents far cleverer than Bennett's. In fact, nothing has impressed me more than the very clever craft of the Radical Dissenters which has entrapped hundreds of Churchmen into voting on their side. And it is under such influence that the Church will go down. Their organisations will be maintained in great perfection; and opposed to them we have merely a motley lot, belonging to the Church but not caring much about it, and not believing that it can be destroyed till its destruction comes. I have received a great deal of abuse, of course; but I really don't mind much. The only thing one feels is that people at a distance cannot understand all the unfairness that has been practised.

After this burst of political commotion, the year seems to have gone peacefully by. At the time of the meeting of the Assembly in May, Principal Tulloch was presented by a large number of his friends with his portrait-a large full length, in the costume which he had worn as Moderator, painted by Mr Herdman, R.S.A.—a fine picture and a tolerable likeness. After his lifetime and that of his wife it was to pass into the hands of his university as a memorial of him, and there accordingly it now is. The picture was presented to him by Lord Rosslyn, once more Lord High Commissioner, in a very flattering speech. The Principal's own remarks in reply were characteristic. After thanking his friends warmly, he expressed his pleasure in the knowledge that the donors were

not those only who approved his opinions, but those who recognised amid all difference of opinion the desire to do right. It had been his lot, and he considered it a happy one, to mingle a good deal with many classes of his countrymen of all shades of opinion. He had, of course, come into contact with those with whom he had differed, and feeling a deep interest in public questions, he might have expressed himself with keenness or espoused a side disliked by others; but he had never failed to receive, as he hoped he had extended to others, that kind indulgence which came to all public men who acted from sincere motives and a real desire to promote the good of the Church or society. He had never allowed any opposition in the General Assembly or elsewhere to interfere with those private relations of friendship in which it had been his happiness to live with many of those most differing from him in political or ecclesiastical matters. There were few causes worthy of the antagonism which embittered private life, and there was no good cause, he believed, ever advanced by asperity or alienation from those who might not see it in the same light as they did. Whatever might be before them in Scotland politically or ecclesiastically-and it was not for him to touch on such topics there he might venture perhaps to say that their public life, and especially their public religious life, needed something of that sweetness and light with which a wellknown writer had made them familiar. They were all really nearer to each other than they often thought-all public men, he meant, who sought the public good in Church and State, who did not really use party interests to promote their own purposes. If in any respect he had helped, however slightly, to promote a more generous spirit in the discussion of religious questions in Scotland, he should feel that he had done something, not indeed deserving of so much kindness on the part of his friends, but something which they, and his children afterwards, would gladly remember.

No doubt this evidence of much warm friendship and good feeling had an exhilarating and happy effect. He writes to Professor Baynes in September from Balmoral that “I am a good deal in spirits, as I often am. I have reason to thank God that I am well withal, and that we have so many blessings." It is not unusual that an expression of comfort and satisfaction like this should, in our fantastic humanity, so little foreseeing, so ignorant of what is at hand, even when most near it, precede misfortune. The end of the year had not come when the cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, came suddenly up upon this serene sky. In a letter to his son, to warn him against the risk of a literary undertaking upon which his heart was set, we have the first indication of approaching trouble.

To Rev. W. W. Tulloch.

I am beginning to feel the effects of having my nose so incessantly at the grindstone, having had during the last fortnight some return of my old discomfort, hyper-consciousness and depression. I have been at pains to get quit of work I had undertaken for the 'Encyclopædia Britannica,' and I feel sorry that I have undertaken the St Giles' lectures in March, and those lectures in Inverness in April, two of which, however, are written. I must ease myself in every possible way and not write anything for the Magazine, and the discomfort, I hope, will pass away. It is not bad, but it is distinctly present. I really think my class-work has something to do with it, thrashing the old theistic straw, and trying to clear up my own ideas as well as the ideas of the students about this, as well as dogma and other things. But we should all be on the watch against any over-strain, and I cannot help saying a word of warning.

The cloud, however, for the moment seemed to disperse; and another letter, a few days later, is altogether buoyant and satisfied. He had during the interval met Mr Gladstone at the house of a mutual friend.

ST ANDREWS, Dec. 13, 1880.

I am glad to say that old 'Fraser' begins to move at last. It is not much more than a beginning, but the November number is decidedly better, and Longman writes to-day that the present