Lady Victoria Campbell

NIGHEAN AN DIUC 283
many were the appeals made to the Duke, that the
cathedral might remain in its restored condition.
The Roman Catholics, as was fitting, obtained from
those who had been entrusted with the time of
commemoration, the use of the cathedral for a ser-
vice, according to the rites of their Church ; and the
thoughts of many hearts were turned to the future
of the nation's greatest relic of the storied past.
Two years later the Duke decided to give, in trust
to the Church of Scotland, the Abbey Church of Iona.
He had thought much and said little, and even to
Lady Victoria the news from him came on the eve
of an information to the general public. Ecclesiasti-
cal strife was always a weariness of the flesh to him,
and he could not but know that a restored Iona
would mean, that those who desired to claim St.
Columba as belonging, not to the Church Universal,
but to some branch or sect, would be jealous that the
Church of Scotland should have in trust this shrine
and beacon of the Light of Christianity. The Duke
foresaw that, in the future, it could never remain
as it had been before the Commemoration, and he
determined it should be in charge of " the Scottish
Church and the Scottish State which were born
together."
The Duke's letter is brief and characteristic, but
it bears the stamp of the conflict " within and
without," and the shadows which were gathering
round his own days.
Her own diary has a sentence, even more compres-
sed: "Wonderful news of redemption of Cathedral."