NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 247 



to watch the fires at home, and mount guard upon the spits," that he would 

 occasionally throw his tongue in church ; and once 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, Fll warrant him.''' 

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

 celebrated character of his 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 where- 

 fore, 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 

 popularity and distinction, or from a sincere conviction — far the more pro- 

 bable 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 " unwashed." No government, 

 nor scarcely any human institution, ever yet existed, but what was cen- 

 sured and opposed; but neither errors nor faults can justify an appeal to 

 a rabble, who cannot possibly judge of what they cannot possibly under- 



* Rev. Henry EatofF. 



