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IN concluding these fragmentary
notices, I cannot refrain from giving utterance to my feeling that few
towns so small have as interesting and honourable a history to look back
upon as ours. I own I am proud of my native burgh; and a chief object
which I have had in view in the preparation of these lectures has been to
strengthen a similar feeling in the rising generation of my fellow
townsmen, so as to stimulate theta to emulate whatever deserves to be
emulated in the actions of our forefathers; and to do what in them lies,
besides, to maintain the character of their native place, and promote its
welfare. Long may Tain be distinguished by such a spirit as was manifested
by our ancestors at various epochs from the Reformation downwards—a spirit
at once conservative of what was good, and willing to reform what was
corrupt; a spirit reverently religious and submissive to rightful
authority, yet enlightened to distinguish between true authority and
false; and may an influence for real good thus ever emanate from our
ancient town!
May I be permitted to express my
earnest wish for her continued and increasing prosperity? She has lost,
indeed, peculiar advantages which she once had, and some of these she
cannot hope to regain. She cannot hope for any new charter to restore her
a monopoly of trade among the towns and villages beside her, nor can she
expect or wish that superstition should again draw royal pilgrims to her
bounds. She cannot recover the territory of which the encroaching sea has
robbed her, nor the natural beauties which the sea-sand on one side and
the hand of cultivation on the other have removed. Yet she has important
advantages still—a picturesque and healthy situation, a position not
unfavourable for provincial trade, a fertile neighbourhood, a good
municipal revenue, a beautiful and respectably endowed academy; and, along
with these, she has beyond many towns the prestige of her past history to
inspire her children with enthusiasm in her behalf, and to prompt them to
zealous efforts for her good—such enthusiasm as that which has recently
restored and beautified her ancient, historic church. But not all of these
advantages will insure her prosperity on any other terms than that
energetic use be made of them by her own inhabitants. On their personal
and collective character, and on their intelligence and enterprise, it
must depend whether her railway, for example, will act as an open vein to
drain away the life-blood of trade from her streets, or as an artery in
which the pulse of commerce will beat more vigorously than ever. So also
of our academy; it manifestly depends on the character of the instruction
and training to be obtained within it, whether the railway will carry our
youth away from it to pursue their studies elsewhere, or carry the youth
of the respectable ranks of society from other places to be educated here.
Do I dream in thinking that by a wise enlargement and modification of its
plan to meet the ever-rising educational demands of the age, with such a
generous increase of its endowments as is requisite for that end; and by
such intelligent earnest management as is necessary to keep alive the
cordiality of public interest in it, it might be made in reality what it
was originally designed to be by its energetic founder—the College of the
North? Then, again, in reference to the amenity of our town, it needs
only, but it does need, a continued exercise of that good taste and public
spirit which our Magistrates, to their honour, have shown in the
beautifying and preservation of the now narrowed links and in other
improvements; and it needs the hearty sympathy and generous co-operation
of the proprietors and occupants of lands all round the town, to replace
the natural beauties we have lost with those which art can bestow; to give
us, if not the old luxuriance of wild nature, at least the varied richness
of cultivated fields and trees and hedgerows; and if not the old freedom
with which in former days the youth of our place used to expatiate when
and where they pleased, at least such agreeable combination of open and
wooded walks, by sea-shore and winding river-bank, and from high-road
across to high-road girdling the town, as would make it very fair to see
and pleasant to live in. And, finally, while the faithfulness and even
public spirit with which our municipal funds have for a good many years
back been managed hardly admit of increase, this very fact encourages the
hope that far-seeing wisdom and large- hearted comprehensiveness will
characterise all their specific applications; so that they may be devoted
to purposes that will contribute to raise our burgh to a greater height of
prosperity, usefulness, and honour than it has ever yet attained.
I cannot conclude without casting
a glance into a region of interest higher still. I could not have occupied
so much time in the collection and preparation of these materials for the
purpose of encouraging a feeling of affectionate enthusiasm in behalf of
our native town, had I thought that this was inconsistent with the pursuit
of an inconceivably more important end. I have already remarked, that the
man who loves his native town may be not the less a lover of his native
land; and not the less, let me now add, may he be a true subject of the
kingdom of God and a citizen of heaven. There is a city that hath
foundations, whose builder and maker is God. No sea of change will ever
waste its territory, or sap its everlasting walls. Its chartered
privileges can never be lost; for they have been purchased with the blood
of- the Lamb. Its generations shall never be removed by death, nor their
memory forgotten in the grave. Its. inhabitants say not, "I am sick," for
the people that dwell therein are forgiven their iniquity. In the daily
routine of life, in the midst of private and public duties, each of us in
our station, and not seeking to pass beyond it, we may, through divine
grace, be preparing for that everlasting habitation. He who on earth has
never passed the bounds of his own loved native town, as well as he who
embraces in his sphere of effort the wider interests of his country and of
the world, may be living a life of faith, and treading a path that brings
him daily nearer God.
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