"O, Maister Frank, a' your uncle's follies and your cousin's fliskies, were nothing to this! Drink clean cap-out, like Sir Hildebrand; begin the blessed morning with brandy-taps like Squire Percy; rin wud among the lasses like Squire John; gamble like Richard: win souls to the Pope and the deevil, like Rashleigh; rive, rant, break the Sabbath, and do the Pope's bidding, like them a' put thegither-but merciful Providence! tak' care o' your young bluid, and gang na near Rob Roy."

I said one might for a moment think it was a Moniplies' lecture to Nigel. But

not for two moments, if we indeed can

think at all. We could not find a pas

sage more concentrated in expression of Andrew's total character; nor more

characteristic of Scott in the calculated precision and deliberate appliance of every word.

Observe first, Richie's rebuke, quoted above, fastens Nigel's mind instantly on

the nobleness of his father. But Andrew's to Frank fastens as instantly on the follies of his uncle and cousins.

Secondly, the sum of Andrew's lesson is-" do anything that is rascally, if only you save your skin." But Richie's is summed in The grace of God is better than gold pieces.

Thirdly, Richie takes little note of Thirdly, Richie takes little note of creeds, except when he is drunk; but looks to conduct always; while Andrew clinches his catalogue of wrong with doing the pope's bidding," and Sabbath-breaking; these definitions of the unpardonable being the worst absurdity of all Scotch wickedness to this hour everything being forgiven to people who go to church on Sunday, and curse the pope. Scott never loses sight of this marvellous plague-spot of Presbyterian religion, and the last words of Andrew Fairservice are :

"The villain Laurie, to betray an auld friend that sang aff the same psalm-book wi' him every Sabbath for twenty years.'

and the tragedy of these last words of his, and of his expulsion from his former happy home-" a jargonelle pear-tree at one end of the cottage, a rivulet and flower plot of a rood in extent in front, a kitchen-garden behind, and a paddock for a cow" (viii. 6, of the 1830 edition) can only be understood by the reading of the chapter he quotes on that last Sabbath evening he passes in it-the 5th of Nehemiah.

For--and I must again and again

point out this to the modern reader, who, living in a world of affectation, suspects "hypocrisy" in every creature he sees-the very plague of this lower evangelical piety is that it is not hypocrisy; that Andrew and Laurie do both expect to get the grace of God by singing psalms on Sunday, whatever rascality they practise during the week. In the modern popular drama of School, the only religious figure is a dirty and malicious usher who appears first reading Hervey's "Meditations," and throws

*

away the book as soon as he is out of

sight of the company. But when Andrew is found by Frank "perched up like a statue by a range of beehives in an attitude of devout contemplation, the little irritable citizens, and the other with one eye watching the motions of fixed on a book of devotion," you will please observe, suspicious reader, that the devout gardener has no expectation whatever of Frank's approach, nor has he any design upon him, nor is he reading or attitudinizing for effect of any kind on any person. He is following his own ordinary customs, and his book of devotion has been already so well used that "much attrition had deprived it of its corners, and worn it into an oval

shape;" its attractiveness to Andrew being twofold-the first, that it contains doctrine to his mind; the second, that such sound doctrine is set forth under figures properly belonging to his craft. Mess John. Quackleben's Flower of a "I was e'en taking a spell o' worthy

of

Sweet Savour sown on the Middenstead of this World'' (note in passing Scott's easy, instant, exquisite invention the name of author and title of book); and it is a question of very curious interest how far these sweet" spells" in Quackleben, and the like religious exercises of a nature compatible with worldly business (compare Luckie Macleary, with eyes employed on Boston's

* Its "hero" is a tall youth with handsome fowling-piece, eats a large lunch, thinks it witty calves to his legs, who shoots a bull with a to call Othello a nigger," and, having nothing to live on, and being capable of doing nothing for his living, establishes himself in lunches and cigars forever, by marrying a girl with a fortune. The heroine is an amiable governess, who, for the general encouragement of virtue in governesses, is rewarded by marrying a lord.

'Crook in the Lot,' while her ideas were engaged in summing up the reckoning"-" Waverley," i., 112)-do indeed modify in Scotland the national character for the better or the worse; or, not materially altering, do at least solemnize and confirm it in what good it may be capable of. My own Scottish nurse, described in "Fors Clavigera" for April, 1873, page 13, would, I doubt not, have been as faithful and affectionate without her little library of Puritan theology; nor were her minor faults, so far as I could see, abated by its exhortations; but I cannot but believe that her uncomplaining endurance of most painful disease, and steadiness of temper under not unfrequent misapprehension by those whom she best loved and served, were in great degree aided by so much of Christian faith and hope as she had succeeded in obtaining, with little talk about it.

I knew however in my earlier days a right old Covenanter in my Scottish

aunt's house, of whom, with Mause Hedrigg and David Deans, I may be able perhaps to speak further in my next paper. But I can only now write carefully of what bears on my immediate work; and must ask the reader's indulgence for the hasty throwing together of materials intended, before my illness last spring, to have been far more thoroughly handled. The friends who are fearful for my reputation as an “écrivian" will perhaps kindly recollect that a sentence of Modern Painters" was often written four or five times over in my own hand, and tried in every word for perhaps an hour-perhaps a fore

CHAPTER XXVI.

RANDULF.

THE ball had been kept up until morning, if not till daylight. When people began to stroll in to the very late breakfast at Danesdale Castle not a lady was to be seen among them, save one intrepid damsel, equally renowned for her prowess in the chase, and her unwearying fleetness in the ball-room.

As she appeared in hat and habit, she was greeted with something like applause, which was renewed when she announced that she had every intention of sharing the day's run. Sir Gabriel, in his pink (for no ball would have caused him to be absent at the meet), gallantly placed her beside himself, and apologized for his daughter's absence.

Philippa has no go' left in her after these stirs," he remarked," and a day's hunting takes her a week to get over; but I'm glad to see that you are less delicate, my dear."

Here the door opened, just as breakfast was nearly over, and Sir Gabriel paused in astonishment in the midst of his meal.

What, Ran? You!" he ejaculated, as his son entered equipped, he also, for riding to hounds. "The last thing I should have expected. If any one had asked me I should have said you were safe in bed till lunch-time.'

"You would have been wrong, it seems," replied Randulf, on whom the exertions of the previous evening appeared to have had worse effects than they had upon Miss Bird, the brightlooking girl who was going to ride.

Miss Bird was an heiress; the same pretty girl with whom Randulf had been walking about the ball-room the night before, when Aglionby had come to call Lizzie away.

Randulf himself looked pale, and almost haggard, and was listless and drawling beyond his wont. Sir Gabriel

eyed him over, and his genial face brightened. Of course it was bad form to display fondness for your relations in the presence of others. Every Englishman knows that, and Sir Gabriel as well as any of them; but it was always with difficulty that he refrained from smiling with joy every time his eyes met those of his lad. He looked also more kindly than ever upon Miss Bird, who was a favorite of his, more especially when Randulf carried his cup of tea round the table and dropped into the vacant place by her side.

"

The meet took place at a certain park a couple of miles from Danesdale Castle, and soon after breakfast a proces sion of six-Miss Bird, Sir Gabriel, his son and three other men who were of their party-set off for it. It was a still, cloudy day, with a gray sky and lowering clouds, which, however, were pretty high, for all the hilltops were clear.

That was a long and memorable run in the annals of Danesdale fox-hunting —“ a very devil of a fox!" as Sir Gabriel said, which led them a cruel and complicated chase over some of the roughest country in the district. Sir Gabriel, as will easily be understood, was a keen sportsman himself, and had been a little disappointed with Randulf's apparent indifference to fox, or any other, hunting. He had put it down to his long sojourn abroad with people who, according to Sir Gabriel's ideas, knew no more about hunting than a London street-Arab does, who has never stepped on anything but flags in his life. He had always trusted that the boy would mend of such outlandish indifference, and he certainly had no cause to complain of his lack of spirit to-day.

Sir Gabriel was lost in amazement. He could not understand the lad. Randulf's face-the pale face which he had brought with him into the breakfastroom-never flushed in the least; his eyebrows met in a straight line across his forehead. He seemed to look neither to right nor to left, but urged his horse relentlessly at every chance of a leap, big or little, but the uglier and the

bigger the better it seemed, till his father, watching him, began to feel less puzzled than indignant. A good day's run, Sir Gabriel would have argued, was a good day's run; but to drive your horse wilfully and wantonly at fences which might have been piled by Satan himself, and at gaps constructed apparently on the most hideous of man-andhorse-trap principles, went against all the baronet's traditions! for all his life he had been very merciful to his beast," holding his horse in almost as much respect as himself. He had always credited Randulf with the same feelings, and his conduct this day was bewildering, to say the least of it.

As Sir Gabriel and Miss Bird happened to be running almost neck and neck through a sloping field-the chase nearly at an end, the fox in full view at last, with the hounds in mad eagerness at his heels-suddenly a horseman flew past them, making straight for a most hideous-looking bit of fence, on the other side of which was the bed of a beck, full of loose stones, and in which the water in this winter season rushed along, both broad and deep.

All day long a feeling of uneasiness had possessed Sir Gabriel; this put the climax to it. Forgetting the glorious finish, now so near, he pulled his horse up short, crying:

Good God! Is he mad ?” Miss Bird also wondered if he were mad, but put her own horse, without stopping, at a more reasonable-looking gap, considerably to the left side of the fence Randulf was taking.

Two seconds of horrible suspense, and -yes, his horse landed lightly and safely at the other side. Sir Gabriel wiped the sweat from his brow, and caring nothing for the "finish" or any thing else, rode limply on to where, not Randulf, but another, was presenting the brush to the amiable Miss Bird.

"What ails you, lad? What is the matter with you?" asked poor Sir Gabriel, his brown cheek turning ashy pale, and a feeling of sickly dread creeping over his heart.

"What ails me? Oh, nothing that I know of," replied Randulf, with blank indifference; and then suddenly heaving such a sigh as comes only from the depths of a sick heart.

The laughter, and jesting, and joyous bustle of the finish were sounding all round them. No one took much notice of the two figures apart, apparently earnestly conversing. Neither Sir Gabriel nor Randulf was given to displaying his feelings openly in public, but Randulf knew, as well as if some one were constantly shouting it aloud from the house-tops, that his father worshipped him that he was the light of his eyes and the joy of his life, and that to give him any real joy he would have sacrificed most things dear to him. And Sir Gabriel knew that his worship was not wasted upon any idol of clay or wood-that it fell gratefully into a heart which could appreciate and understand it. During the last month it had occasionally crossed his mind that Randulf was a little absent-somewhat more listless and indifferent than usual; but the baronet had himself been unusually busied with magisterial and other concerns, and had scarcely had time to remark the subtile change. Of one thing he was now certain, that Randulf, as he saw him now, was a changed man from what he had been four-and-twenty hours ago. The poor old man felt hopelessly distressed. He knew not how to force the truth from a man who looked at him and said nothing ailed him, when it was patent to the meanest comprehension that, on the contrary, something very serious ailed him. He sat on his horse, looking wistfully into Randulf's face. The groups were dispersing. The young man, at last looking up, seemed to read what was passing in his father's mind, and said:

I have something to say to you. Could we manage to ride home alone? How will Miss Bird do?"

Sir Gabriel's face brightened quickly. If Randulf had "something to say" to him, no doubt that communication