A MONKISH VILLAGE. 07 



though no angler, is a better sort of creature than the roystcring 

 roaring bully type, of whom I have seen several. They haunted 

 Inverleithen, and were the pest of that sweet spot. A superior 

 class, usually fox-hunters, infested, and perhaps still infest, the 

 Cross Keys, Kelso. None such are true anglers. But be this as 

 it may, time and tide wait for no man, and so we left the Dee 

 by the same conveyance which brought us there namely, a 

 gig, drawn by my good grey mare, making our way, without 

 loss of time, towards Dumfries. Man and horse require food, 

 and so we rested at a village or town which the traveller will 

 find about half way between Kirkcudbright and the capital of 

 Dumfriesshire, Dumfries of some celebrity, chiefly for the 

 cruel fate of the poet Burns ; Bums, " who gauged beer- 

 barrels, whilst George the Third sat on the throne of England.'* 

 "And what for no ?" as the landlady of the Cleikum Inn says, 

 in " St. Ronan's Well," " what for no ?" As you sow, so must 

 you reap : your social system leads to this ; based on self, it 

 can only end in selfish results. Men of genius are of necessity 

 trodden down amidst the universal rush for gold. When gold 

 alone is esteemed, valued, worshipped, all other things must 

 sink in value ; and this reminds me of one of the bully type, 

 who also gave himself out for an angler, affirming that he never 

 yet met a patriotic, public-minded man, a philanthropist, who 

 was not at the same time a scoundrel ! This man, though a 

 good mechanical angler, was of the Satanic school. Let us leave 

 him to his own reflections, and proceed on our journey. 



The town or village we now reached wore a curious foreign 

 aspect ; I fancied it had a Flemish air ; a something monkish 

 about it ; a physiognomy unlooked-for in Protestant and pro- 

 testing Scotland ; 011 inquiry, we found out that it really was the 

 seat of a nunnery, or monkery, or some such establishment, and 

 that I had not been deceived in my first glance of the place. 

 Important, most important, are the first impressions of those who 

 can observe, first resolves of those whose instincts are large. 

 They are seldom wrong. It is our reason which misleads us ; 

 our judgment that errs ; instinct seldom, if ever. Thus it is 

 that woman is so seldom wrong in her first resolves. When I 

 had resided a short time in that monstrous assemblage of bricks 



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