Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/192

140 Assembly had repaired to the ancient palace of Holyrood, to pay dutiful homage to their Sovereign, in the person of Lord Bute, her commissioner; and there also were the protesting clergy, eager to show at that trying crisis, that let the issue he what it might, they were, and still would continue to he, the leal and loyal subjects of her Majesty. But as the crowded levee approached his lordship, the picture of King William that hung upon the wall—he who had restored that Presbyterian Church whose rights were now to be vindicated—fell to the ground with a sullen clang, while a voice from the crowd exclaimed, "There goes the revolution settlement? " The levee was over in Holyrood; the devotional exercises had been finished in the Cathedral of St. Giles; and the General Assembly were seated in St. Andrew's church, ready to commence the business of the day—but not the wonted business. Dr. Welch, who, as moderator of the last Assembly, occupied the chair of office, and opened the proceedings with prayer, had another solemn duty to perform: it was, to announce the signal of departure to those who must remain in the Church no longer; it was like the "Let us go hence!" which was heard at midnight in the temple of Jerusalem, when that glorious structure was about to pass away. Rising from his chair, and addressing one of the densest crowds that ever filled a place of worship, but all hushed in the death-like silence of expectation, he announced that he could proceed with the Assembly no further. Their privileges had been violated and their liberties subverted, so that they could no longer act as a supreme court of the Church of Scotland; and these reasons, set forth at full length in the document which he held in his hand, he, with their permission, would now read to them. He then read to them the well-known protest of the Free Church of Scotland; and having ended, he bowed respectfully to the commissioner, left his chair oF office, and slowly passed to the door. Dr. Chalmers, who stood beside him, like one absorbed in some recollection of the past, or dream of the future, started, seized his hat, and hurried after the retiring moderator, as if eager to be gone. A long stream followed; and as bench after bench was emptied of those who thus sacrificed home, and living, and station in society at the call of conscience, the onlookers gazed as if all was an unreal phantasmagoria, or at least an incomprehensible anomaly. But the hollow echoes of the building soon told them that it was a stern reality which they had witnessed. More than four hundred ministers, and a still greater number of elders, who but a few moments ago occupied these places, had now departed, never to return.

In the meantime George Street, one of the widest streets of Edinburgh, in which St. Andrew's church is situated, was filled—nay, wedged—not with thousands, but myriads of spectators, who waited impatiently for the result. Every eye was fixed upon the building, and every tongue was impatient with the question, "Will they come out?"—"When will they come out?" At length the foremost of the retiring ministers appeared at the church porch, and onward came the long procession, the multitudes dividing with difficulty before their advance, and hardly giving them room to pass three abreast. Well, then, they had indeed come out! and it was difficult to tell whether the applauding shouts or sympathizing tears of that heaving sea of people predominated. Onward slowly went that procession, extending nearly a quarter of a mile in length, down towards Tanfield, where a place of meeting had been prepared for them in anticipation of the event. It was a building constructed on the model of a Moorish Hambra, such as might have loomed over an orange-grove in Grenada during the days of the Zegris and Abencerrages; but which now, strangely