170 NIMROUS NORTHERN TOUR. 



he would occasionally throw his tongue in church ; and oftce to 

 the. amusement of his hearers. Wishing to encourage a young 

 declaimer in the pulpit, he was not content with nodding assent 

 to several passages that struck him, but at last cried out in ecstasy, 

 " Well done, Harry /"* Then again "The preacher seems a 

 very ungainly person," whispered Mannering (Guy) to his friend. - 

 " Never fear? replied the latter, " he is the son of an excellent 

 Scotch lawyer; he'll show blood, I'll warrant htm" These are 

 the graphic words of Scott, when giving a vivid picture of a 

 celebrated character of this day ; but it is to be hoped the 

 whispers of neither party reached quite so far as the pulpit, from 

 which " the still small voice of reason" ought to whisper to us. 



With the captain's politics I have no right to find fault. He is 

 an out and out radical ; on principle, I conclude. The celebrated 

 Tom Pye, however (of the Edinburgh mail), says, the captain's 

 politics remind him of the clock at York, (Janique bifrontis 

 imago !) but why, or wherefore, I leave Tom to explain. It 

 certainly does appear that the captain was bred and reared in 

 the Tory school, as his chairman acknowledged at the Cupar 

 dinner ; and whether, like too many of his kidney, he became so 

 stout a radical as he now is, from a feverish appetite for popu- 

 larity and distinction, or from a sincere conviction far the more 

 probable of the two that he is thus more signally benefiting his 

 country, is not for me to hazard an opinion upon here. But I 

 greatly admire his laconic answers to the questions of the " un- 

 washed." No government, nor scarcely any human institution, 

 ever yet existed, but what was censured and opposed; but 

 neither errors nor faults can justify an appeal to a rabble, who 

 cannot possibly judge of what they cannot possibly understand ; 

 whose opinions are not propagated by reason, but caught, 

 like the small-pox, by contagion. 



Friday the I2th being a non-hunting day, I rode to Cupar to 

 see the kennel and the whole establishment, and to have half an 

 hour's chat with Walker. The kennel is close to the town, and 

 yet not inconvenienced by its vicinity to it, no thoroughfare being 

 near ; and it is equal to the accommodation of the pack, which 

 does not exceed forty couples ; and it also has the advantage of 

 being healthy. The stables likewise are adjoining ; rather so-so 

 in appearance, and their contents more useful than ornamental. 

 Indeed, I should not say the Fife servants are well mounted ; 

 but the lacerating nature of the stone with which the greater part 

 of the Fife walls are erected a sort of whin, or slate stone is a 

 damper to the purchasers of high-priced horses, as a walk 

 through these stables would show. There is, however, no lack 

 * Rev. Henry Eatoff. 



