Three generations

THE BANKER AND THE MINISTER 115
or non-recommendations to his employers the lairds,
great influence, looked up to him with much outward
deference, and with almost abject submission. My
father, whose business continued in the hands of his
old Cupar comrades, and whose laird was not one of
the factor's employers, had no matters of personal
interest to subject to his judgment.
Personally, my father disliked this man's arrogance,
and was amazed at the illiteracy which caused him
in speaking at a public dinner to give William and
Robert Chambers by their Journal a place in the
world of letters above that of Sir Walter Scott. In
looking back on the smouldering enmity which
existed thenceforth between my father and the local
magnate, I can see what a check it was likely to
prove to our being well received among the mass of
his satellites — we who were already outsiders, regarded
quite as much in the light of townspeople, with their
" uppish " airs and graces, as if we had hailed from
Edinburgh itself.
Really the only men with whom my father had much
in common were the ministers of our own and the
next parishes. The parish minister was dignified and
stately, a professor of ecclesiastical history in the
University of St. Andrews, as well as a parish
minister, one of the last examples of the holders
of a plurality of livings in the Church of Scot-
land. He was, I think, of comparatively humble
extraction, of which he showed not a vestige. He
appeared always by right and by nature an autocratic
ruler and leader. Withal he had what used to exist,
not seldom side by side with a Scotchman's proverbial
respect for ability and culture, a sentiment quite dis-
tinct from sycophancy and snobbery, a positively