I think it will be found, however, that upon no class of society has there been a greater change during the last hundred years than on the Scottish clergy as a body.
This, indeed, might, from many circumstances, have been expected.

The improved facilities for locomotion have had effect upon the retirement and isolation of distant country parishes, the more liberal and extended course of study at Scottish colleges, the cheaper and wider diffusion of books on general literature, of magazines, newspapers, and reviews.
Perhaps, too, we may add that candidates for the ministry now more generally originate from the higher educated classes of society.

But honour to the memory of Scottish ministers of the days that are gone! The Scottish clergy, from having mixed so little with life, were often, no doubt, men of simple habits and of very childlike notions.

The opinions and feelings which they expressed were often of a cast, which, amongst persons of more experience, would appear to be not always quite consistent with the clerical character.

In them it arose from their having nothing _conventional_ about them.