--Next, the justice, In fair round belly, with good capon
lined, With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut, Full of
wise saws, and modern instances: And so he plays his part.
--As You Like It.
When Mrs. Bertram of Ellangowan was able to hear the news of what
had passed during her confinement, her apartment rung with all
manner of gossiping respecting the handsome young student from
Oxford, who had told such a fortune by the stars to the young
Laird, "blessings on his dainty face." The form, accent, and
manners, of the stranger, were expatiated upon. His horse, bridle,
saddle, and stirrups, did not remain unnoticed. All this made a
great impression upon the mind of Mrs. Bertram, for the good lady
had no small store of superstition.
Her first employment, when she became capable of a little work, was
to make a small velvet bag for the scheme of nativity which she had
obtained from her husband. Her fingers itched to break the seal,
but credulity proved stronger than curiosity; and she had the
firmness to enclose it, in all its integrity, within two slips of
parchment, which she sewed round it, to prevent its being chafed.
The whole was then put into the velvet bag aforesaid, and hung as a
charm round the neck of the infant, where his mother resolved it
should remain until the period for the legitimate satisfaction of
her curiosity should arrive.
The father also resolved to do his part by the child, in securing
him a good education; and with the view that it should commence
with the first dawnings of reason, Dominie Sampson was easily
induced to renounce his public profession of parish schoolmaster,
make his constant residence at the Place, and, in consideration of
a sum not quite equal to the wages of a footman even at that time,
to undertake to communicate to the future Laird of Ellangowan all
the erudition which he had, and all the graces and accomplishments
which--he had not indeed, but which he had never discovered that he
wanted. In this arrangement, the Laird found also his private
advantage; securing the constant benefit of a patient auditor, to
whom he told his stories when they were alone, and at whose expense
he could break a sly jest when he had company.
About four years after this time, a great commotion took place in
the district where Ellangowan is situated.
Those who watched the signs of the times, had long been of opinion
that a change of ministry was about to take place; and, at length,
after a due proportion of hopes, fears, and delays, rumours from
good authority, and bad authority, and no authority at all; after
some clubs had drunk Up with this statesman, and others Down with
him; after riding, and running, and posting and addressing, and
counter-addressing, and proffers of lives and fortunes, the blow
was at length struck, the administration of the day was dissolved,
and parliament, as a natural consequence, was dissolved also.
Sir Thomas Kittlecourt, like other members in the same situation,
posted down to his county, and met but an indifferent reception. He
was a partisan of the old administration and the friends of the new
had already set about an active canvass in behalf of John
Featherhead, Esq., who kept the best hounds and hunters in the
shire. Among others who joined the standard of revolt was Gilbert
Glossin, writer in--, agent for the Laird of Ellangowan. This
honest gentleman had either been refused some favour by the old
member, or, what is as probable, he had got all that he had the
most distant pretension to ask, and could only look to the other
side for fresh advancement. Mr. Glossin had a vote upon
Ellangowan's property; and he was now determined that his patron
should have one also, there being no doubt which side Mr. Bertram
would embrace in the contest. He easily persuaded Ellangowan, that
it would be creditable to him to take the field at the head of as
strong a party as possible; and immediately went to work, making
votes, as every Scotch lawyer knows how, by splitting and
subdividing the superiorities upon this ancient and once powerful
barony. These were so extensive, that by dint of clipping and
paring here, adding and eking there, and creating over-lords upon
all the estate which Bertram held of the crown, they advanced, at
the day of contest, at the head of ten as good men of parchment as
ever took the oath of trust and possession. This strong
reinforcement turned the dubious day of battle. The principal and
his agent divided the honour; the reward fell to the latter
exclusively. Mr. Gilbert Glossin was made clerk of the peace, and
Godfrey Bertram had his name inserted in a new commission of
justices, issued immediately upon the sitting of the parliament.
This had been the summit of Mr. Bertram's ambition; not that he
liked either the trouble or the responsibility of the office, but
he thought it was a dignity to which he was well entitled, and that
it had been withheld from him by malice prepense. But there is an
old and true Scotch proverb, "Fools should not have chapping
sticks"; that is, weapons of offence. Mr. Bertram was no sooner
possessed of the judicial authority which he had so much longed
for, than he began to exercise it with more severity than mercy,
and totally belied all the opinions which had hitherto been formed
of his inert good nature. We have read somewhere of a justice of
peace, who, on being nominated in the commission, wrote a letter to
a bookseller for the statutes respecting his official duty, in the
following orthography,--"Please send the ax relating to a gustus
pease." No doubt, when this learned gentleman had possessed himself
of the axe, he hewed the laws with it to some purpose. Mr.
Bertram was not quite so ignorant of English grammar as his
worshipful predecessor: but Augustus Pease himself could not have
used more indiscriminately the weapon unwarily put into his hand.
In good earnest, he considered the commission with which he had
been intrusted as a personal mark of favour from his sovereign;
forgetting that he had formerly thought his being deprived of a
privilege, or honour, common to those of his rank, was the result
of mere party cabal. He commanded his trusty aide-de-camp, Dominie
Sampson, to read aloud the commission; and at the first words, "The
king has been pleased to appoint"--"Pleased!" he exclaimed, in a
transport of gratitude; "honest gentleman! I'm sure he cannot be
better pleased than I am."
Accordingly, unwilling to confine his gratitude to mere feelings,
or verbal expressions, he gave full current to the new-born zeal of
office, and endeavoured to express his sense of the honour
conferred upon him, by an unmitigated activity in the discharge of
his duty. New brooms, it is said, sweep clean; and I myself can
bear witness, that, on the arrival of a new housemaid, the ancient,
hereditary, and domestic spiders, who have spun their webs over the
lower division of my book-shelves (consisting chiefly of law and
divinity) during the peaceful reign of her predecessor, fly at full
speed before the probationary inroads of the new mercenary. Even
so the Laird of Ellangowan ruthlessly commenced his magisterial
reform, at the expense of various established and superannuated
pickers and stealers, who had been his neighbours for half a
century. He wrought his miracles like a second Duke Humphrey; and
by the influence of the beadle's rod, caused the lame to walk, the
blind to see, and the palsied to labour. He detected poachers,
black-fishers, orchard-breakers, and pigeon-shooters; had the
applause of the bench for his reward, and the public credit of an
active magistrate.
All this good had its rateable proportion of evil. Even an
admitted nuisance, of ancient standing, should not be abated
without some caution. The zeal of our worthy friend now involved
in great distress sundry personages whose idle and mendicant habits
his own lochesse had contributed to foster, until these habits had
become irreclaimable, or whose real incapacity for exertion
rendered them fit objects, in their own phrase, for the charity of
all well-disposed Christians. The "long-remembered beggar," who for
twenty years had made his regular rounds within the neighbourhood,
received rather as an humble friend than as an object of charity,
was sent to the neighbouring workhouse. The decrepit dame, who
travelled round the parish upon a hand-barrow, circulating from
house to house like a bad shilling, which every one is in haste to
pass to his neighbour; she, who used to call for her bearers as
loud, or louder, than a traveller demands post-horses, even she
shared the same disastrous fate. The "daft Jock," who, half knave,
half idiot, had been the sport of each succeeding race of village
children for a good part of a century, was remitted to the county
bridewell, where, secluded from free air and sunshine, the only
advantages he was capable of enjoying, he pined and died in the
course of six months. The old sailor, who had so long rejoiced the
smoky rafters of every kitchen in the country, by singing Captain
Ward, and Bold Admiral Benbow, was banished from the district for
no better reason, than that he was supposed to speak with a strong
Irish accent. Even the annual rounds of the pedlar were abolished
by the justice, in his hasty zeal for the administration of rural
police.
These things did not pass without notice and censure. We are not
made of wood or stone, and the things which connect themselves with
our hearts and habits cannot, like bark or lichen, be rent away
without our missing them. The farmer's dame lacked her usual share
of intelligence, perhaps also the self-applause which she had felt
while distributing the awmous (alms), in shape of a gowpen
(handful) of oatmeal, to the mendicant who brought the news. The
cottage felt inconvenience from interruption of the petty trade
carried on by the itinerant dealers. The children lacked their
supply of sugar-plums and toys; the young women wanted pins,
ribbons, combs, and ballads; and the old could no longer barter
their eggs for salt, snuff, and tobacco. All these circumstances
brought the busy Laird of Ellangowan into discredit, which was the
more general on account of his former popularity. Even his lineage
was brought up in judgment against him. They thought "naething of
what the like of Greenside, or Burnville, or Viewforth, might do,
that were strangers in the country; but Ellangowan! that had been a
name amang them since the mirk Monanday, and lang before--him to be
grinding the puir at that rate!--They ca'd his grandfather the
Wicked Laird; but, though he was whiles fractious aneuch, when he
got into roving company" and had ta'en the drap drink, he would
have scorned to gang on at this gate. Na, na, the muckle chumlay
in the Auld Place reeked like a killogie [*Lime-kiln] in his
time, and there were as mony puir folk riving at the banes in the
court, and about the door, as there were gentles in the ha'. And
the leddy, on ilka Christmas night as it came round, gae twelve
siller pennies to ilka puir body about, in honour of the twelve
apostles like. They were fond to ca' it papistrie; but I think our
great folk might take a lesson frae the papists whiles. They gie
another sort o' help to puir folk than just dinging down a saxpence
in the brod [*Collection-plate] on the Sabbath, and kilting, and
scourging, and drumming them a' the sax days o' the week besides."
Such was the gossip over the good twopenny in every alehouse within
three or four miles of Ellangowan, that being about the diameter of
the orbit in which our friend Godfrey Bertram, Esq., J.P., must be
considered as the principal luminary. Still greater scope was
given to evil tongues by the removal of a colony of gipsies, with
one of whom our reader is somewhat acquainted, and who had for a
great many years enjoyed their chief settlement upon the estate of
Ellangowan.