Chapter 21

But beyond any other evil consequence prepared by the Free Church, is the appalling spirit of Jacobinism which accompanies their whole conduct, and which latterly has avowed itself in their words. The case began Jacobinically, for it began in attacks upon the rights of property. But since the defeat of this faction by the law courts, language seems to fail them, for the expression of their hatred and affected scorn towards the leading nobility of Scotland. Yet why? The case lies in the narrowest compass. The Duke of Sutherland, and other great landholders, had refused sites for their new churches. Upon this occurred a strong fact, and strong in both directions; first, for the Seceders; secondly, upon better information, _against_ them. The _Record_ newspaper, a religious journal, ably and conscientiously conducted, took part with the Secession, and very energetically; for they denounced the noble duke's refusal of land as an act of "persecution;" and upon this principle--that, in a county where his grace was pretty nearly the sole landed proprietor, to refuse land (assuming that a fair price had been tendered for it) was in effect to show such intolerance as might easily tend to the suppression of truth. Intolerance, however, is not persecution; and, if it were, the casuistry of the question is open still to much discussion. But this is not necessary; for the ground is altogether shifted when the duke's reason for refusing the land comes to be stated: he had refused it, not unconditionally, not in the spirit of Non-intrusion courts' "_without reason shown_," but on this unanswerable argument--that the whole efforts of the new church were pointed (and professedly pointed) to the one object of destroying the establishment, and "sweeping it from the land." Could any guardian of public interests, under so wicked a threat, hesitate as to the line of his duty? By granting the land to parties uttering such menaces, the Duke of Sutherland would have made himself an accomplice in the unchristian conspiracy. Meantime, next after this fact, it is the strongest defence which we can offer for the duke--that in a day or two after this charge of "persecution," the _Record_ was forced to attack the Seceders in terms which indirectly defended the duke. And this, not in any spirit of levity, but under mere conscientious constraint. For no journal has entered so powerfully or so eloquently into the defence of the general principle involved in the Secession, (although questioning its expediency,) as this particular _Record_. Consequently any word of condemnation from so earnest a friend, comes against the Seceders with triple emphasis. And this is shown in the tone of the expostulations addressed to the _Record_ by some of the Secession leaders. It spares us, indeed, all necessity of quoting the vile language uttered by members of the Free Church Assembly, if we say, that the _neutral_ witnesses of such un-Christian outrages have murmured, remonstrated, protested, in every direction; and that Dr Macfarlane, who has since corresponded with the Duke of Sutherland upon the whole case--viz. upon the petition for land, as affected by the shocking menaces of the Seceders--has, in no other way, been able to evade the double mischief of undertaking a defence for the indefensible, and at the same time of losing the land irretrievably, than by affecting an unconsciousness of language used by his party little suited to his own sacred calling, or to the noble simplicities of Christianity. Certainly it is unhappy for the Seceders, that the only disavowal of the most fiendish sentiments heard in our days, has come from an individual not authorized, or at all commissioned by his party--from an individual not showing any readiness to face the whole charges, disingenuously dissembling the worst of them, and finally offering his very feeble disclaimer, which equivocates between a denial and a palliation--not until _after_ he found himself in the position of a petitioner for favours.

Specifically the great evil of our days, is the abiding temptation, in every direction, to popular discontent, to agitation, and to systematic sedition. Now, we say it with sorrow, that from no other incendiaries have we heard sentiments so wild, fierce, or maliciously democratic, as from the leaders of the Secession. It was the Reform Bill of 1832, and the accompanying agitation, which first suggested the _veto_ agitation of 1834, and prescribed its tone. From all classes of our population in turn, there have come forward individuals to disgrace themselves by volunteering their aid to the chief conspirators of the age. We have earls, we have marquesses, coming forward as Corn-League agents; we have magistrates by scores angling for popularity as Repealers. But these have been private parties, insulated, disconnected, disowned. When we hear of Christianity prostituted to the service of Jacobinism--of divinity becoming the handmaid to insurrection--and of clergymen in masses offering themselves as promoters of anarchy, we go back in thought to that ominous organization of irreligion, which gave its most fearful aspects to the French Revolution.

Other evils are in the rear as likely to arise out of the _funds_ provided for the new Seceders, were the distribution of those funds confessedly unobjectionable, but more immediately under the present murmurs against that distribution. There are two funds: one subscribed expressly for the building of churches, the other limited to the "sustentation" of incumbents. And the complaint is--that this latter fund has been invaded for purposes connected with the first. The reader can easily see the motive to this injustice: it is a motive of ambition. Far more display of power is made by the annunciation to the world of six hundred churches built, than of any difference this way or that in the comfort and decorous condition of the clergy. This last is a domestic feature of the case, not fitted for public effect. But the number of the churches will resound through Europe. Meantime, _at present_, the allowance to the great body of Seceding clergy averages but £80 a-year; and the allegation is--that, but for the improper interference with the fund on the motive stated, it would have averaged £150 a-year. If any where a town parish has raised a much larger provision for its pastor, even _that_ has now become a part of the general grievance. For it is said that all such special contributions ought to have been thrown into one general fund--liable to one general principle of distribution. Yet again, will even this fund, partially as it seems to have been divided, continue to be available? Much of it lies in annual subscriptions: now, in the next generation of subscribers, a son will possibly not adopt the views of his father; but assuredly he will not adopt his father's zeal. Here however, (though this is not probable,) there may arise some compensatory cases of subscribers altogether new. But another question is pressing for decision, which menaces a frightful shock to the schismatical church: female agency has been hitherto all potent in promoting the subscriptions; and a demand has been made in consequence--that women shall be allowed to vote in the church courts. Grant this demand--for it cannot be evaded--and what becomes of the model for church government as handed down from John Knox and Calvin? Refuse it, and what becomes of the future subscriptions?

But these are evils, it may be said, only for the Seceders. Not so: we are all interested in the respectability of the national teachers, whatever be their denomination: we are all interested in the maintenance of a high standard for theological education. These objects are likely to suffer at any rate. But it is even a worse result which we may count on from the changes, that a practical approximation is thus already made to what is technically known as Voluntaryism. The "_United Secession_," that is the old collective body of Scottish Dissenters, who, having no regular provision, are carried into this voluntary system, already exult that this consummation of the case cannot be far off. Indeed, so far as the Seceders are dependent upon _annual_ subscriptions, and coupling that relation to the public with the great doctrine of these Seceders, that congregations are universally to appoint their own pastors, we do not see how such an issue is open to evasion. The leaders of the new Secession all protest against Voluntaryism: but to that complexion of things they travel rapidly by the mere mechanic action of their dependent (or semi-dependent) situation, combined with one of their two characteristic principles.

The same United Secession journal openly anticipates another and more diffusive result from this great movement; viz. the general disruption of church establishments. We trust that this anticipation will be signally defeated. And yet there is one view of the case which saddens us when we turn our eyes in that direction. Among the reasonings and expostulations of the Schismatic church, one that struck us as the most eminently hypocritical, and ludicrously so, was this: "You ought," said they, when addressing the Government, and exposing the error of the law proceedings, "to have stripped us of the temporalities arising from the church, stipend, glebe, parsonage, but not of the spiritual functions. We had no right to the emoluments of our stations, when the law courts had decided against us but we _had_ a right to the laborious duties of the stations." No gravity could refuse to smile at this complaint--verbally so much in the spirit of primitive Christianity, yet in its tendency so insidious. For could it be possible that a competitor introduced by the law, and leaving the duties of the pastoral office to the old incumbent, but pocketing the salary, should not be hooted on the public roads by many who might otherwise have taken no part in the feud? This specious claim was a sure and brief way to secure the hatefulness of their successors. Now, we cannot conceal from ourselves that something like this invidious condition of things might be realized under two further revolutions. We have said, that a second schism in the Scottish church is not impossible. It is also but too possible that Puseyism nay yet rend the English establishment by a similar convulsion. But in such contingencies, we should see a very large proportion of the spiritual teachers in both nations actually parading to the public eye, and rehearsing something very like the treacherous proposal of the late Seceders, viz. the spectacle of one party performing much of the difficult duties, and another party enjoying the main emoluments. This would be a most unfair mode of recommending Voluntaryism. Falling in with the infirmities of many in these days, such a spectacle would give probably a fatal bias to that system in our popular and Parliamentary counsels. This would move the sorrow of the Seceders themselves: for they have protested against the theory of all Voluntaries with a vehemence which that party even complain of as excessive. Their leaders have many times avowed, that any system which should leave to men in general the estimate of their own religious wants as a pecuniary interest, would be fatal to the Christian tone of our national morals. Checked and overawed by the example of an establishment, the Voluntaries themselves are far more fervent in their Christian exertions than they could be when liberated from that contrast. The religious spirit of both England and Scotland under such a change would droop for generations. And in that one evil, let us hope, the remotest and least probable of the many evils threatened by the late schism, these nations would have reason by comparison almost to forget the rest.

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SITTING FOR A PORTRAIT

What could induce you, my dear Eusebius, to commit yourself into the hands of a portrait-painter? And so, you ask me to go with you. Are you afraid, that you want me to keep you in countenance, where I shall be sure to put you out? You ask too petitioningly, as if you suspected I should refuse to attend your _execution_; for you are going to be _be-headed_, and soon will it be circulated through your village, that you have had your _head taken off_: I will not go with you--it would spoil all. You are afraid to trust the painter. You think he may be a physiognomist, and will hit some characteristic which you would quietly let slip his notice; and you flatter yourself that I might help to mislead him. Are you afraid of being made too amiable, or too plain? No, no! You are not vain. Whence comes this vagary?--well, we shall all know in good time. Were I to be with you, I should talk--perhaps maliciously--on purpose to see how your features would unsettle and shift themselves to the vagrant humour, that though one would know another from habit, and their old acquaintanceship, the painter would never be able to keep them steadily together. I should laugh to see every lineament "going ahead," and art "non compos."

I will, however, venture to put down some plain directions how you are to sit. First, let me tell you how you are not to sit. Don't, in your horror of a sentimental amiable look, put on yourself the air of a Diogenes, or you will be like nothing human--and if you shun Diogenes, you may put on the likeness of a still greater fool. No man living can look more wise than you; but if you fall out with wisdom, or would in your whim throw contempt on it, no one can better play the fool. You are the laughing or crying Philosopher at pleasure--but sit as neither, for in either character you will set the painter's house in a roar. I fear the very plaster figures in it will set you off--to see yourself in such motley company, with Bacchus and Hercules, and Jupiter and Saturn, with his marble children to devour. You will look Homer and Socrates in the face; and I know will make antics, throw out, and show fight to the Gladiator. This may be, if your painter, as many of them do, affect the antique; but if he be another sort of guess person, it may be worse still with you. You may not have to make your bow to a Venus Anadyomene--but how will you be able to face the whole Muggletonian synod? Imagine the "Complete Body," from the Evangelical Magazine, framed and glazed, round the walls, and all looking at you in the condemned cell. Against this you must prepare; for many country artists prefer this line to the antique. It is their connexion--and should you make a mistake and go to the wrong man, you will most assuredly be added to the Convocation, if not put to head a controversy as frontispiece. It will be in vain for you to say, "Fronti nulla fides;" "[Greek: gnothi seauton]" before you get there, or nobody will know you. Take care lest your physiognomy be canvassed by many more besides the painter. Are you prepared to have your every lineament scrutinized by every body? to hear behind a screen the disparagement of your lips, your eyes thought deceitful, and, in addition, a sentence of general ugliness passed upon you? So you must stoop to paint-pots, have daubs of reds, and yellows, and greys perked up against your nose for comparison. Your man may be a fancy mesmerizer, or mesmerize you, now that it is flying about like an epidemic, without knowing it. If he can, he will surely do it, to keep you still: that is the way to get a good sitter. Eusebius in a _coma_! answering all comers, like one of the heads in the play of Macbeth! But I was to tell you how to sit--that is the way, get into a _coma_--that will be the painter's best chance of having you; or, when he has been working for hours, he may find you a Proteus, and that you have slipped through his fingers after all his toil to catch you. I will tell you what happened to a painter of my acquaintance. A dentist sat to him two days--the third the painter worked away very hard--looked at the picture, then at his sitter. "Why, sir," said he; "I find I have been all wrong--what can it be? Why, sir, your mouth is not at all like what it was yesterday." "Ah! ah! I will tell you vat it ees," replied the French dentist; "ah! good--my mouse is not de same--no indeed--yesterday I did have my jaw in, but I did lend it out to a lady this day." Don't you think of this now while you are sitting. You know the trick Garrick played the painter, who, foiled in his attempt, started up, and said--"You must be Garrick or the d----!" Then as to attitude, 'tis ten to one but you will be put into one which will be quite uncomfortable to you. One, perhaps, after a pattern. I should advise you to resist this--and sit easy--if you can. Don't put your hand in your waistcoat, and one arm akimbo, like a Captain Macheath, however he may entreat you; and don't be made looking up, like a martyr, which some wonderfully affect; and don't be made turn your head round, as if it was in disgust with the body; and don't let your stomach be more conspicuous than the head, like a cucumber running to seed. Don't let him put your arm up, as in command, or accompanied with a rapt look as if you were listening to the music of the spheres; don't thrust out your foot conspicuously, as if you meant to advertise the blacking. Some artists are given to fancy attitudes such as best set off the coats, they are but nature's journeymen at the faces; don't fancy that the cut, colour, or cloth of your coat will exempt you from the penalty of their practice. Why, Eusebius, they have lay-figures, and dress them just as you see them at the tailor's or perfumer's; and one of these things will be put up for you--a mannikin for Eusebius! In such hands the coat is by far the best piece of work, you may be sure your _own_ won't be taken for a pattern. You will despise it when you see it, and it will be one you can never change--it will defy vamping. You may be at any time new varnished whenever after generations shall wish to see how like a dancing-master the old gentleman must have looked. It is enough to make you a dancing bear now to think of it. Others, again, equip you with fur and make you look as if you were in the Hudson's Bay Company. Luckily for you, flowered dressing-gowns are out, or you might have been represented a Mantelini. What can you be doing! It is difficult to put you in your positions. There are some that will turn you about and about a half an hour or more before they begin, as they would a horse at the fair--ay, and look in your mouth too. If they cannot get you otherwise into an attitude, they will shampoo you into one. And, remember, all this they will do, because they have not the skill to paint any one sitting quite easy. Don't have a roll in your hand--that always signifies a member of Parliament. Don't have your finger on a book--that would be a pedantry you could not endure. I cannot imagine what you will do with your hands. Ten to one, however, but the painter leaves then out or copies them out of some print when you are gone. This will be picking and stealing that you will have no hand in. What to do with any one's hands is a most difficult thing to say--too many do not know what to do with them themselves; and, under the suffering of sitting, I think you will be one of them. If there is a child in the room, you will be making rabbits with your fingers. Then you are at the mercy of the painter's privilege--the foreground and background. If you have the common fate, your head will be stuck upon a red curtain, a watered pattern. If your man has used up his carmine, you will be standing in a fine colonnade, waiting with the utmost patience for the burst of a thunder cloud that makes the marble column stand out conspicuously, and there will be a distant park scene; and thus you will represent the landed interest: or you will perhaps have your glove in your hand--a device adopted by some, to intimate that they are hand and glove with all the neighbouring gentry. And it is a common thing to have a new hat and a walking-cane upon a marble table. This shows the sitter has the use of his legs, which otherwise might be doubted, and is therefore judicious. If you are supposed to be in the open air, you will not know at first sight that you are so represented, until you have learned the painter's hieroglyphic for trees. You will find them to be angular sorts of sticks, with red and yellow flag-rags flapping about; and ten to one but you have a murky sky, and no hat on your head; but as to such a country as you ever walked in, or ever saw, don't expect to see such a one as a background to your picture, and you will readily console yourself that you are turning your back upon it. If you are painted in a library, books are cheap--so that the artist can afford to throw you in a silver inkstand into the bargain, and a pen--such a pen! the goose wouldn't know it that bred it--and perhaps an open letter to answer, with your name on the cover. If you are made answering the letter, that will never be like you--perhaps it would be more like if the letter should be unopened. Now, do not flatter yourself; Eusebius, that all these things are matters of choice with you. "_Non omnia possumus omnes_," is the regular rule of the profession; some stick to the curtain all their lives, from sheer inability to set it--to draw it aside. You remember the sign-painter that went about painting red lions, and his reply to a refractory landlord who insisted upon a white lamb. "You may have a white lamb if you please, but when all is said and done, it will be a great deal more like a red lion." And I am sorry to say, the faces too, are not unfrequently in this predicament, for they have a wonderful family likeness, and these run much by counties. A painter has often been known totally to fail, by quitting his beat. There is certainly an advantage in this; for if any gentleman should be so unfortunate as to have no ancestors, he may pick up at random, in any given county in England, a number that will very well match, and all look like blood-relations. There is an instance where this resemblance was greatly improved, by the advice of an itinerant of the profession, who, at a very moderate price, put wigs on all the Vandyks. And there you see some danger, Eusebius, that--be represented how you may--you are not sure of keeping your condition ten years; you may have, by that time, a hussar cap put upon your unconscious head. But portraits fare far worse than that.