Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/207

Rh into an army, and backed by the popular suffrage, which had always inclined to it since the days of the Solemn League and Covenant, was advancing with all the energy of a newly resuscitated cause, and giving certain promise that at no distant day it would recover the superiority which it had formerly enjoyed. Against such an onward tide it was not wonderful if Dr. Cook and his brethren were unable to make head, although they struggled bravely and to the last. Consistently with the principles which he had adopted from the beginning, and advocated on every occasion, both as an author and a divine, Dr. Cook could not be expected to sympathize with the opposite party in their claims for the abolition of patronage, and the entire exemption of the Church from State control, and accordingly he contested every step of ground with a zeal and honesty equal to their own. At length the result took him as completely by surprise as it did the wisest politicians and profoundest calculators of the day. The memorable 18th of May, 1843, occurred, on which the disruption of the Kirk of Scotland took place; and when, after it had been confidently asserted that not even twenty ministers would abandon their livings, nearly five hundred rose from their places in the General Assembly, bade a final farewell to the Established Church, with which they could no longer conscientiously agree, and departed to form, at whatever sacrifice or risk, a church more consistent with their principles. It was a melancholy spectacle, a stunning blow to the upright affectionate heart of the leader of the Moderates. The labours of his past public life were thus destroyed by a single stroke, and while history recorded the calamitous event, he must have guessed that it would reproach him as one of the chief causes of the evil. And besides, in that departing train, whose self-sacrificing devotedness he was well disposed to acknowledge, how many were there whom he had revered for their commanding talents, and loved for their piety and worth, but who were now lost for ever to the church with which he was identified, and whom he must henceforth meet or pass by as the ministers of a rival and hostile cause! Such to Dr. Cook was the disruption; and, although his own party exonerated him from blame, while his church still continued as before to be directed by his counsels, the rest of his life was clouded by the recollection of an event which the best men, whether of the Free or Established Church, will never cease to regret.

The latter years of Dr. Cook's life were spent at St. Andrews, as he had been appointed to the chair of Moral Philosophy in its university, in the room of Dr. Chalmers, when the latter was called to Edinburgh. Here his end was sudden, his death having been instantaneous, and occasioned by the rupture of a blood-vessel, while he was walking in the Kirk Wynd, on his way to the college library. This melancholy event occurred on the forenoon of the 13th of May, 1845. It is much to be regretted that a man of such talent and worth should as yet have found no biographer among the many who, while he lived, availed themselves of his counsels, and were proud to be numbered among his friends. It is not yet too late.

.—This distinguished poet entered the world under those lowly circumstances, and was educated under those disadvantages, which have so signally characterized the history of the best of our Scottish bards. He was born at Blackwood, in Dumfriesshire, in 1785, and was the fourth son of his parents, who were persons in the humblest ranks of life. One circumstance, however, connected with his ancestry, must have gratified the Tory and feudal predilections of Allan Cunningham; for his family had been of wealth and