or 'the
antique and ballad verses' of our metrical version of the Psalms.
Indeed, so devoid was he of learning, that he could scarce have valued
at a sufficiently high rate the doctrines of Oxford; and so little
gifted with taste, that he would have probably failed to appreciate
the sublimities of Brady and Tate. Nor could Peter have known that the
'liturgy of the heart' was in the Covenanter's cottage, and that the
'litany' of the spirit breathed from his evening devotions. But it is
all known to the Rev. Mr. Cumming. He knows, too, that there were
sufferings and privations endured by the persecuted Presbyterians of
those days, of which writers of less ingenuity have no adequate
conception; that they were forced to the wild hill-sides, where they
could have no 'organs,' and compelled to bury their dead without the
solemnities of the funeral service. Unhappy Covenanters! It is only
now that your descendants are beginning to learn the extent of your
miseries. Would that it had been your lot to live in the days of the
Rev. John Cumming of the Scottish Church, London!

He would assuredly have procured for you the music-box of some
wandering Italian, and gone away with you to the wilds to mingle
exquisite melody with your devotions, qualifying with the sweetness of
his tones the 'antique and ballad' rudeness of your psalms; nor would
he have failed to furnish you with a liturgy, by means of which you
could have interred your dead in decency. Had such been the
arrangement, no after writer could have remarked, as the Rev. Mr.
Cumming does now, that no 'pealing organ' mingled 'its harmony of
bass, tenor, treble, and soprano' when you sung, or have recorded the
atrocious fact, that not only was John Brown of Priesthill shot by
Claverhouse, but actually buried by his friends without the funeral
service. And how striking and affecting an incident would it not form
in the history of the persecution, could it now be told, that when
surprised by the dragoons, the good Mr. Cumming fled over hill and
hollow with the box on his back, turning the handle as he went, and
urging his limbs to their utmost speed, lest the Episcopalian soldiery
should bring him back and make him a bishop!

It is partly from the more than semi-Episcopalian character of this
gentleman's opinions, partly from the inimitable felicities of his
style, and partly from one or two peculiar incidents in his history
which lead to a particular tone of remark, that we i