Transcriber's Notes:
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(University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Westminster Review, October, 1883.
"Inchbracken" is a clever sketch of Scottish life and manners at thetime of the "Disruption," or great secession from the EstablishedChurch of Scotland, which resulted in the formation of the FreeChurch. The scene of the story is a remote country parish in the northof Scotland, within a few miles of the highland line. The maininterest centres in the young Free Church minister and his sister andtheir relations, on the one hand, with the enthusiastic supporters ofthe Disruption movement, mostly of the peasant or small tradesmenclass, with a sprinkling of the smaller landowners; and, on the otherhand, with the zealous supporters of the Established Church,represented by the Drysdales of Inchbracken, the great family of theneighbourhood. The story is well and simply told, with many a quiettouch of humour, founded on no inconsiderable knowledge of humannature.
Academy, 27th October, 1883.
There is a great deal of solid writing in "Inchbracken," and they whoread it will hardly do so in vain. It is a story of the Disruption;and it sets forth, with much pains and not a little spirit, thehumours and scandals of one of the communities affected by the event.The main incident of the story has nothing to do with the Disruption,it is true; but its personages are those of the time, and the uses towhich they are put are such as the Disruption made possible. RoderickBrown, the enthusiastic young Free Church minister, finds on thesea-shore after wreck and storm, a poor little human waif which thesea has spared. He takes the baby home, and does his best for it. Oneof his parishioners has lost her character, however; and as Roderick,at the instigation of his beadle, the real author of her ruin, is goodenough to give her money and help, it soon becomes evident toInchbracken that he is the villain, and that the baby of the wreck isthe fruit of an illicit amour. How it ends I shall not say. I shall dono more than note that the story of the minister's trials and theportraitures--of elders and gossips, hags and maids and villagenotables--with which it is enriched are (especially if you are notafraid of the broadest Scotch, written with the most uncompromisingregard for the national honour) amusing and natural in no mean degree.
W. E. Henley.
Athenæum, 17th November, 1883.
"Inchbracken" will be found amusing by those who are familiar withScotch country life. The period chosen, the "Disruption time," is anepoch in the religious and social life of Scotland, marking a revival,in an extremely modified and not altogether genuine form, of thepolemic Puritanism of the early Presbyterians, and so furnishing asubject which lends itself better to literary treatment than mostsides of Scottish life in this prosaic century. The author has a gooddescriptive gift, and makes the most of the picturesque side of theearly Free Church meetings at which declaimers against Erastianpatronage posed in the attitude of the Covenanters of old. The storyopens on a stormy night when Roderick Brown, the young Free Churchmi