Page:History of England (Macaulay) Vol 4.djvu/92

 of that Church which had, forty years before, been the glory of Scotland. But, though the second temple was not equal to the first, the chosen people might well rejoice to think that they were, after a long captivity in Babylon, suffered to rebuild, though imperfectly, the House of God on the old foundations; nor could it misbecome them to feel for the latitudinarian William a grateful affection such as the restored Jews had felt for the heathen Cyrus.

There were however two parties which regarded the settlement of 1690 with implacable detestation. Those Scotchmen who were Episcopalians on conviction and with fervour appear to have been few; but among them were some persons superior, not perhaps in natural parts, but in learning, in taste, and in the art of composition, to the theologians of the sect which had now become dominant. It might not have been safe for the ejected Curates and Professors to give vent in their own country to the anger which they felt. But the English press was open to them; and they were sure of the approbation of a large part of the English people. During several years they continued to torment their enemies and to amuse the public with a succession of ingenious and spirited pamphlets. In some of these works the hardships suffered by the rabbled priests of the western shires are set forth with a skill which irresistibly moves pity and indignation. In others, the cruelty with which the Covenanters had been treated during the reigns of the last two kings of the House of Stuart is extenuated by every artifice of sophistry. There is much joking on the bad Latin which some Presbyterian teachers had uttered while seated in academic chairs lately occupied by great scholars. Much was said about the ignorant contempt which the victorious barbarians professed for science and literature. They were accused of anathematizing the modern systems of natural philosophy as damnable heresies, of condemning geometry as a souldestroying pursuit, of discouraging even the study of those tongues in which the sacred books were written. Learning, it was said, would soon be extinct in Scotland. The Universities, under their new rulers, were languishing and must soon perish. The booksellers had