y. Believing that, though essentially in the
right, they were yet politically in the wrong, and that a plausible case
might be made out against them by the newspaper press, I waited on my
minister, and urged him to give way to the Liberals, and have his
preparation-day changed from Thursday to Friday. He seemed quite willing
enough to act on the suggestion; nay, he had made a similar one, he told
me, to his Session; but the devout eldership, strong in the precedents
of centuries, had declined to subordinate the religious services of the
Kirk to the wassail and merriment sanctioned by the State. And so they
determined on keeping their day of sacramental preparation on the
Thursday, as their fathers had done. Meanwhile, the Liberals held what
was very properly termed a public meeting, seeing that, though the
public had failed to attend it, the public had been quite at liberty to
do so, nay, had even been specially invited; and there appeared in the
provincial newspapers a long report of its proceedings, including five
speeches--all written by a legal gentleman--in which it was designated a
meeting of the inhabitants of the town and parish of Cromarty. The
resolutions were, of course, of the most enthusiastically loyal
character. There was not a member of the meeting who was not prepared to
spend upon himself the last drop of his bottle of port in her Majesty's
behalf. Thursday came--the Thursday of the sacrament and of the
coronation; and, with ninety-nine hundredths of the church-going portion
of my townsfolk, I went to church as usual. The parochial resolutioners,
amounting in all to ten, were, I can honestly avouch, scarce at all
missed in a congregation of nearly as many hundreds. About mid-day,
however, we could hear the muffled report of their carronades; and,
shortly after the service was over, and we had returned to our homes,
there passed through the streets a forlorn little group of individuals,
that looked exceedingly like a press-gang, but was in reality intended
for a procession. Though joined by a proprietor from a neighbouring
parish, a lawyer from a neighbouring burgh, a small coast-guard party,
with its commanding officer, and two half-pay Episcopalian officers
besides, the number who walked, including boys, did not exceed
twenty-five persons; and of these, as I have said, only ten were
parishioners. The processionists had a noble dinner in the head inn of
the place--merrier than even dinners of celebration