Dr. Alexander Webster, on the other hand, was of the evangelical school, though an odd specimen, since he preached and prayed, drank and feasted, with the same whole-hearted fervour. The Edinburgh wits called him Doctor Magnum Bonum, and swore that he had drunk as much claret at the town’s expense as would float a 74-ton-gun ship. He died somewhat suddenly, and just before the end spent one night in prayer at the house of Lady Maxwell of Monreith, and on the next he supped in the tavern with some of his old companions who found him very pleasant. He was returning home one night in a very unsteady condition. “What would the kirk-session say if they saw you noo?” said a horrified acquaintance. “Deed, they wadna believe their een” was the gleeful and witty answer. This bibulous divine was the founder of the Widows Fund of the Church of Scotland, and you must accept him as a strange product of the strange conditions of strange old Edinburgh. The material prosperity of the Church, such as it was, did not meet with universal favour. Lord Auchinleck, Boswell’s father, a zealous Presbyterian of the old stamp, declared that a poor clergy was ever a pure clergy. In former times, he said, they had timmer communion cups and silver ministers, but now we were getting silver cups and timmer ministers. It is alleged of one of the city ministers, though I know not of what epoch, that he performed his pastoral ministrations in the most wholesale fashion. He would go to the foot of each crowded close in his district, raise his gloved right hand and pray unctuously if vaguely for “all the inhabitants of this close.” Some divines honestly recognise their own imperfections. Dr. Robert Henry was minister of the Old Kirk: his colleague was Dr. James M‘Knight. Both were able and even distinguished men, but not as preachers. Dr. Henry wittily said, “fortunately they were incumbents of the same church, or there would be twa toom kirks instead of one.” One very wet Sunday M‘Knight arrived late and drenched. “Oh, I wish I was dry, I wish I was dry,” he exclaimed; and then after some perfunctory brushing, “Do you think I’m dry noo?” “Never mind, Doctor,” said the other consolingly, “when ye get to the pulpit you’ll be dry enough.” As the last century rolled on the moderate cause weakened and the evangelical cause became stronger. The Rev. Sir Henry Moncreiff was one of the great figures of that movement. Referring to his power in the Assembly a country minister said: “It puts you in mind of Jupiter among the lesser Gods.” Another was Dr. Andrew Thomson, minister of St. George’s, who died in 1831. An easy-going divine once said to him that “he wondered he took so much time with his discourses; for himself, many’s the time he had written a sermon and killed a salmon before breakfast.” “Sir,” was the emphatic answer, “I had rather have eaten your salmon, than listened to your sermon.”