that class of people who make excessively sure about every thing, and
are in no manner of means to be imposed upon. I style such persons
Secure Ones, in order to be intelligible to southern as well as
northern readers. Every body must know a certain class of secure ones
by the timid cautiousness and exactness of their behaviour; by the
trim, unostentatious propriety of their external aspect. There is a
lambs’-woollery comfort and a broad-cloth completeness about this sort
of secure one, that nobody can mistake; he even seems to have made the
number of buttons in his vest, and the height to which that garment is
buttoned up, a matter of accurate calculation. He could not go abroad
under less than a certain press of flannel and great-coat for the
world; and you might almost as soon expect to meet him without his left
arm as minus the silk umbrella under it. (He carries the latter part
of himself, or fifth limb, at an angle of about sixty degrees to the
horizon, the handle down behind, and the point forked up in front.)
When he observes any part of the pavement railed off, in order to save
the passengers all danger from an occasional pelleting of stones and
bits of plaster which the slaters or chimney-doctors are producing
from above, he deploys into the street a good way before coming up to
the actual rail or rope, and, in passing, takes care to sweep several
good yards beyond the utmost range of shot. “Don’t like these things
coming peppering down that way; might almost dislocate one’s shoulder
if they were to fall upon it; perhaps we had better go over to the
other side of the street altogether. No need, you know, for running
into unnecessary danger.” When a secure one ascends a stair, he goes
step after step monotonously on, performing every move of his feet
with a sound, conscientious deliberation, and seems determined upon
doing full justice to every landing-place. He holds firmly, however
unnecessarily, by the baluster, since the baluster is there, and he
has an obvious satisfaction in the slight pant which he thinks himself
entitled to get up on the occasion. The secure one always shuts a door
carefully behind him. He takes off his hat softly, with a regard at
once to the smooth economy of his hair, and the pile of his chapeau.
He has a maxim that the hat should be first raised and loosened from
behind, where it slides up along the glossy hair, not from the front,
where it encounters a comparative obstruction from the fleshy brow.
He lays down his gloves neatly on the top of each other, and hangs up
his hat with an air of carefulness truly exemplary. The secure one is
a bit of an epicure. When out in the forenoon, he would not for any
consideration take lunch or wine. “Madam, would you have me spoil my
appetite for dinner?” This appetite he nurses and cherishes in the
course of his saunterings between two and five, as carefully as a miser
doting over his heap. He holds a telegraphic communion with his inner
man that passeth show; he coquets and dallies with his stomach; every
indescribable symptom is taken into account, and forms the subject
of unexpressed congratulation. “Dear tender flowers of appetite, it
would be sacrilege, or worse, to nip ye in the bud, by powdering over
you the baneful dew of a glass of Bucellas, or the still more odious
blight of a basin of mulligatawny. No, I will coax you, and protect
you, and _travel_ for you, in faithful love and kindness, even until
ye shall be fully fattened up for slaughter at five o’clock.” When the
secure one sits down to table, he painsfully and not unostentatiously
(to himself) relieves the one lowest button of his vest from the
thrall of button-hole, and with equally deliberate care arranges a
napkin over the front of his person. Dinner is a sacred ceremony,
and requires its canonicals. Being fully acquainted with the whole
planisphere of the table, he takes an exactly proportioned quantity
of each article, so as ultimately to have enjoyed each in its exact
proportion of merit, and to have precisely enough out of the whole.
A secure one is frequently an old respectable unmarried gentleman,
residing with a single servant—Jenny—in a “self-contained” house about
Stockbridge or Newington. Knowing the distance at which he lives from
the mercantile parts of the town, he takes care never to want what he
calls a pound of change, as well as a small stock of copper—at least
the value of a shilling—observing also that the change is not unmixed
with sixpences, so that when any shopkeeper’s boy calls for payment of
an account, or to take back the purchase-money of any article he has
bought that day in town, he may not have to trouble [_i. e._ trust]
the messenger with the duty of obtaining change for a bank note,
which would tend to occasion a more than necessary answering of the
bells at the door, besides keeping him in an agony of fiddle-faddle
till the little affair was settled. Jenny, who has been so long in
his service as to have become almost as secure as himself, never
opens the door o’ nights without putting on the chain; and she has a
standing order against all parleying with beggars, or poor women who
sell tapes and such things out of baskets. The secure one regards few
creatures in this world with a more jealous or malignant eye than these
personages. “Why, Sir, they want nothing but to make an opportunity
of stripping the lobby or the kitchen!” And such a story he can tell
of a missing hat-brush! “A woman seen that morning going about—sold a
pair of garters to the maid-servant three doors off at ten—front door
had been left open for a minute, not more, while Jenny ran after me
with something I had forgot—and in that time—it could have been at no
other—the deed was done. A hat-brush I had just got with my last hat
at Grieve and Scott’s; had a thing that screwed in at the one end,
so that it was a stretcher also; cost four and sixpence, even taking
the hat along with it.” And the secure one, without any premeditated
hard-heartedness, thinks nothing of making such an incident apologize
to himself for an habitual shutting of his door and his heart against
the poor for the next twelvemonth. There is never any imperfection
in the _externe_ of the secure one. He bears about him a certain
integrality of look that fills and satisfies the eye. From his good
well-brushed waterproof beaver, all along down by his roomy blue coat,
drab well-fledged, amply-trousered limbs, and so down to his _double_
shoes, not omitting such points as his voluminous white neckcloth
without collar, his large Cairngorm brooch, which looks as if a dish of
jelly had been inverted into his bosom, and his heavy, pursy bunch of
seals dangling, clearly defined and well relieved, from the precipice
of belly—every thing betokens the secure one. Clothes are not so much
clothes with him as they are a kind of defensive armour! The truth is,
the secure one lives in a state of constant warfare with the skiey
influences. The chief campaign is in winter. Instead of entering the
field, like Captain Bobadil, about the tenth of March, he opens the
trenches towards the twenty-fourth of October. He then invests himself
with a cuirass of wool almost thick enough to obstruct the passage
of a cannon-ball. For months after, he remains in arms, prepared to
stand out against the most violent attacks of the enemy, and, in
reality, there is hardly any advantage to be got of the secure one by
fair open storms or frosts. He bears a charmed life against all such
candid modes of warfare. He cannot be overthrown in a pitched battle.
It is only ambuscade draughts through open windows, and other kinds of
bush-fighting, that ever are of any effect against him. Like Hector
in the armour of Patroclus, he is invulnerable over almost all his
whole person; but an arrowy rheumatism, like the spear of Achilles,
will sometimes reach him through a very small chink. Like the mighty
Achilles himself, he is literally proof, perhaps, against every thing
but what assails him through the very lowest part of his person—he can
stand every thing but wet feet. There is an instance on record of his
having once been laid by the heels for three months, in consequence
of sitting one night in the pit of the Theatre with a slightly damp
umbrella between his knees. He was just about to get entirely better of
this disorder, when all at once he was thrown back for six weeks more,
by reason, as he himself related, of his having changed the wear (in
his sick-chamber) of a silk watch-riband for a chain! “All from the
imprudence of that rash girl Jenny, who thought the riband a little
shabby, and put on the chain instead. Why, Sir! a thick double riband,
more than an inch broad; only conceive what a material addition it must
have been to my ordinary clothing!” The chain, he might have added,
was apt to be worse than nothing, for it was of irregular application,
tattooing his person, as it were, with a minutely decussated exposure,
so that the cold was likely to have struck him as with the teeth of
a comb! The secure one has an anxiety peculiar to himself on the
subject of easy-chairs, nightgowns, and slippers. The easy-chair
must be exact in angle to a single minute of a degree; the nightgown
must be properly seen to in respect of fur and flannel; the slippers
must every night be placed for him at the proper place; and if Jenny
has been so inattentive as to place the left one on the right of the
other, he feels himself not a little discomposed. The secure one is
most pestilently and piquantly accurate about all things. He loves to
arrange, and arrange, and arrange, and over again arrange and settle
all the preliminaries and pertinents of any little matter which cannot
reasonably be done but one way. If he wishes, for instance, to confer
with an upholsterer respecting some alteration in the above easy-chair,
he first calls one forenoon, and inflicts an hour’s explanation upon
the unhappy man of wood—who is not all a man of wood, otherwise he
would, in such a case, be happy. It does not in the least matter at
what hour the tradesman should come to see this chair, for the secure
one is to be at home the whole day. Yet the very liberty at which he
stands produces a difficulty. It would be charity in Providence, by
any interference, “to give him not to choose.” “Say eleven; I shall
then be quite disengaged—will that hour suit you? Or make it any other
hour—say twelve—or say half-past eleven—half-past would do very well.”
[He recollects that he seldom gets the whole fiddle-faddle of feeding
the canaries over by _half-past_.] “Suppose it were a quarter to
twelve; that would answer me better still. I may, perhaps, take a walk
out at mid-day; would a quarter to twelve do? Or I might hurry the
canaries, and then the half-past might do. I dare say half-past will
do best after all; mind half-past eleven,” &c. &c. The man comes, and
the business of the chair is entered into. The whole affair is most
amply canvassed. The secure one sits down in it, and gives a lecture
in a very _ex-cathedra_ style upon all its properties and defects. He
complains of the back reclining a little too much back, or the bottom
showing too little bottom, or some other fault equally inappreciable;
and the upholsterer sees at once that the secure one only complains
of this, as he is apt to do of other things, for the very uneasiness
arising from its over-easiness.
“Lulled on the rack of a too-easy chair.”
The fact is, the secure one has brought every appliance of life to such
an absolute exactitude and perfection, that, having no longer any thing
to give him pain, he becomes quite wretched. Secureness, it is evident,
may go too far. We may become actually frightened in this world at our
own caution. We may be shocked by the very unimpeachability of our own
virtue. We may become miserable through the extremity of our happiness.
In the same manner the secure one, when he has “got all things right,”
as he would say, finds himself, to his great disappointment, just at
the threshold of woe and evil. He has exactly got time to set his
house in order, before the proper consequence of such an event befalls
him; and he expires at the very moment when he has just completed his
preparations to live.
There is another order of secure ones, whose carefulness refers rather
to their wealth than their health. There is an awful inviolability of
pocket about such men—a provoking guardedness against all the possible
appeals of friendship, and all the impulses of benevolence. Such men
look as if they were all stanchioned over. _La Pucelle_ itself was
not more perfectly fortified than their breeches. A poorer man is apt
to feel in their presence as if he were under an indictment for an
intention either to beg or borrow, or, perhaps, to steal from them. He
sees something criminative against himself in every impregnable-looking
button. Secure ones of this class, perhaps, are bachelors under
forty—careful, circumspect men, that have passed through the ordeal
of a thousand evening parties without ever being in the least danger.
They abstain from marrying, from very fear lest any advantage should be
got of them. They cannot enter into the slightest intercourse with a
young lady, without letting it appear that they are perfectly on their
guard. The most undesigning girl, like the above poor man, feels in
their presence as if she were liable to be construed into an absolute
“drapery miss.” He is always quite civil, but that is from his very
_secureness_: he knows he is in no danger. An experienced woman gives
up a man of this kind at first sight. She sees he is cook’s meat, _i.
e._ that he is to marry a middle-aged kitchen woman at fifty, upon
the ground of her proficiency in preparing a beef-steak. The general
feeling of the sex regarding this sort of secure one is, “Confound the
fellow! does he think that any one cares for him, or would take him
though he were willing?”
“Nobody wants you, Sir, she said.”
The secure one, however, does not appear ever to suppose that the
ladies have a veto in proposals of marriage. He looks upon them all as
a class so eager on capturing and entrapping men, that it never enters
into his head that there is such a thing as a rejected offer. The man
he considers to be the passive and accepting party; the lady is the
besieging enemy, and he is the fortress; the marriage takes place only
if _he_ chooses. It may be supposed, then, what would be the state of
a secure one’s mind, if he were to relent some fine day in a fit of
generosity (a thing only to be supposed in the event of his becoming
_fey_), and in a liberal, candid, honourable manner, offer his hand to
a young lady of little fortune, whom he was disposed to think suitable
on the score of personal merit alone, but who having some prior
attachment to a man one-half as old, and twice as generous, was under
the necessity of only thanking him for the honour. The cook or any
thing after that! And how the whole sex would rejoice in his calamity!!
“A fellow, forsooth, that has been a living insult to the tribe of
womankind all his days. He is well served.”
There is another kind of secure one, considerably different in
circumstances from the above—a married man about sixty, with a large
family, in which there are several grown daughters. These girls
are constantly under his eye. At church he puts them into a pew,
and sits down at the door himself, as if he were a kind of serpent
guarding the Hesperian fruit. To the eyes of hundreds of young men
under twenty, who are not yet considered to be sufficiently settled
in the world to marry, these young ladies seem unapproachable as
the top of the steeple. They look as if they were absolutely walled
round with jealous and _secure_ paternity. One after another they are
taken off by middle-aged cousins and other distant relations, about
whose “respectability” there can be no doubt; and the young men in
the back pew sigh to see that the family is determined upon being
self-contained. For it is one of those families, perhaps, who enjoy
the credit of a great deal of vague, and not very strictly apportioned
wealth, under the clause, “There’s plenty o’ siller amang them;” and
who seem as if they would consider the admission of a stranger into
the circle as a thing of some danger, however “respectable” he might
appear.
TO SCOTLAND.
Scotland! the land of all I love,
The land of all that love me;
Land, whose green sod my youth has trod,
Whose sod shall lie above me!
Hail! country of the brave and good,
Hail! land of song and story;
Land of the uncorrupted heart,
Of ancient faith and glory!
Like mother’s bosom o’er her child,
Thy sky is glowing o’er me;
Like mother’s ever-smiling face,
Thy land lies bright before me.
Land of my home, my father’s land,
Land where my soul was nourished;
Land of anticipated joy,
And all by memory cherish’d!
Oh, Scotland, through thy wide domain,
What hill, or vale, or river,
But in this fond enthusiast heart
Has found a place for ever?
Nay, hast thou but a glen or shaw,
To shelter farm or shieling,
That is not garner’d fondly up
Within its depths of feeling?
Adown thy hills run countless rills,
With noisy, ceaseless motion;
Their waters join the rivers broad,
Those rivers join the ocean:
And many a sunny, flowery brae,
Where childhood plays and ponders,
Is freshen’d by the lightsome flood,
As wimpling on it wanders.
Within thy long-descending vales,
And on the lonely mountain,
How many wild spontaneous flowers
Hang o’er each flood and fountain!
The glowing furze—the “bonny broom,
The thistle and the heather;
The bluebell, and the gowan fair,
Which childhood loves to gather.
Oh, for that pipe of silver sound,
On which the shepherd lover,
In ancient days, breathed out his soul,
Beneath the mountain’s cover!
Oh, for that Great Lost Power of Song,
So soft and melancholy,
To make thy every hill and dale
Poetically holy!
And not alone each hill and dale,
Fair as they are by nature,
But every town and tower of thine,
And every lesser feature;
For where is there the spot of earth,
Within my contemplation,
But from some noble deed or thing
Has taken consecration?
First, I could sing how brave thy sons,
How pious and true-hearted,
Who saved a bloody heritage
For us in times departed;
Who, through a thousand years of wrong,
Oppress’d and disrespected,
Ever the generous, righteous cause
Religiously protected.
I’d sing of that old early time,
When came the victor Roman,
And, for the first time, found in them
Uncompromising foemen;
When that proud bird, which never stoop’d
To foe, however fiery,
Met eagles of a sterner brood
In this our northern eyry.
Next, of that better glorious time,
When thy own patriot Wallace
Repell’d and smote the myriad foe
Which storm’d thy mountain palace;
When on the sward of Bannockburn
De Bruce his standard planted,
And drove the proud Plantagenet
Before him, pale and daunted.
Next, how, through ages of despair,
Thou brav’dst the English banner,
Fighting like one who hopes to save
No valued thing but honour.
How thy own young and knightly kings,
And their fair hapless daughter,
Left but a tale of broken hearts
To vary that of slaughter.
How, in a later, darker time,
When wicked men were reigning,
Thy sons went to the wilderness,
All but their God disdaining;
There, hopeful only of the grave,
To stand through morn and even,
Where all on earth was black despair,
And nothing bright but heaven.
And, later still, when times were changed,
And tend’rer thoughts came o’er thee,
When abject, suppliant, and poor,
Thy injurer came before thee.
How thou did’st freely all forgive,
Thy heart and sword presented,
Although thou knew’st the deed must be
In tears of blood repented.
Scotland! the land of all I love,
The land of all that love me;
Land, whose green sod my youth has trod,
Whose sod shall lie above me!
Hail! country of the brave and good,
Hail! land of song and story;
Land of the uncorrupted heart,
Of ancient faith and glory!
R. C.
STORY OF MRS MACFARLANE.
——“Let them say I am romantic—so is every one said to be, that either
admires a fine thing or does one. On my conscience, as the world goes,
’tis hardly worth any body’s while to do one for the honour of it.
Glory, the only pay of generous actions, is now as ill paid as other
great debts; and neither Mrs Macfarlane, for immolating her lover,
nor you for constancy to your lord, must ever hope to be compared to
Lucretia or Portia.”—_Pope, to Lady M. W. Montague._
It was formerly the fashion in Scotland for every father of a family to
take all the people under his care along with him to church, leaving
the house locked up till his return. No servant was left to cook
the dinner, for it was then judged improper to take a dinner which
required cooking. Neither, except in the case of a mere suckling,
was it considered necessary to leave any of the children; every brat
about the house was taken to church also; if they did not understand
what was said by the minister, they at least did not prevent the
attendance of those who did; and moreover—and this was always a great
consideration—they were out of harm’s way. One Sunday, in autumn 1719,
Sir John Swinton of Swinton, in Berwickshire, was obliged to omit his
little daughter Margaret from the flock which usually followed him to
church. The child was indisposed with some trifling ailment, which,
however, only rendered it necessary that she should keep her room. It
was not considered requisite that a servant should be left behind to
take charge of her, for she was too sagacious a child to require any
such guardianship; and Sir John and Lady Swinton naturally grudged,
with the scruples of the age, that the devotions of any adult member
of their household should be prevented on such an account. The child,
then, was left by herself in one of the upper bed-rooms of the old
baronial mansion of Swinton, no other measure being taken for her
protection than that of locking the outer door.
For a girl of ten years of age, Margaret Swinton was possessed of
much good sense and solidity of character. She heard herself doomed
to a solitary confinement of six hours without shrinking; or thought,
at least, that she would have no difficulty in beguiling the time by
means of her new book—the Pilgrim’s Progress. So long as the steps
and voices of her kindred were heard about the house, she felt quite
at her ease. But, in reality, the trial was too severe for the nerves
of a child of her tender age. When she heard the outer door locked by
the last person that left the house, she felt the sound as a knell.
The shot of the bolt echoed through the long passages of the empty
house with a supernatural loudness; and, next moment after, succeeded
that perceptible audible quiet, the breath-like voice of an untenanted
mansion, which, like the hum of the vacant shell, seems still as if
it were charged with sounds of life. There was no serious occasion
for fear, seeing that nothing like real danger could be apprehended;
nor was this the proper time for the appearance of supernatural
beings: yet the very loneliness of her situation, and the speaking
stillness of all around her, insensibly overspread her mind with
that vague negative sensation which is described by the native word
_eeriness_. From her window nothing was visible but the cold blue sky,
which was not enlivened by even the occasional transit of a cloud. By
and by the desolating wind of autumn began to break upon the moody
silence of the hour. It rose in low melancholy gusts, and, whistling
monotonously through every chink, spoke to the mind of this little
child, of withering woods, and the lengthened excursions of hosts of
leaves, hurried on from the scene of their summer pride into the dens
and hollows where they were to decay. The sound gradually became more
fitful and impetuous, and at last appeared to her imagination as if it
were the voice of an enemy who was running round and round the house,
in quest of admission—now and then going away as if disappointed and
foiled, and anon returning to the attack, and breathing his rage and
vexation in at every aperture. She soon found her mind possessed by a
numerous train of fantastic fancies and fearful associations, drawn
from the store of nursery legends and ballads which she was in the
habit of hearing night after night, at the fireside in the hall, and
which were infinitely more dreadful than the refined superstitions of
modern children. She thought of the black bull of Norway, which went
about the world destroying whatever of human life came within its
reach; of the weary well at the World’s End, which formed the entrance
into new regions, from whence no traveller ever returned; and of the
fairies or _good neighbours_, a small green-coated race of supernatural
creatures, who often came to the dwellings of mortals, and did them
many good and evil turns. She had been told of persons yet alive, who
in their childhood had been led away by these fays into the woods, and
fed for weeks with wild berries and the milk of nuts, till at length,
by the _po’orfu’_ preaching of some great country divine, they were
reclaimed to their parents, being in such cases generally found sitting
under a tree near their own homes. She had heard of a queen of these
people—the Queen of Elfinland—who occasionally took a fancy for fair
young maidens, and endeavoured to wile them into her service; and the
thought occurred to her, that, as the fairies could enter through the
smallest aperture, the house might be full of them at this moment.
For several hours the poor child suffered under these varied
apprehensions, till at last she became in some measure desperate, and
resolved at least to remove to another part of the house. The parlour
below stairs commanded from its window a view of the avenue by which
the house was approached; and she conceived that, by planting herself
in the embrasure of one of those windows, she would be at the very
border of the _eerie_ region within doors, and as near as possible to
the scene without, the familiarity of which was in itself calculated
to dispel her fears. From that point, also, she would catch the first
glimpse of the family returning from church, after which she would no
longer be in solitude. Trying, therefore, to think of a merry border
tune, she opened her own door, walked along the passage—making as much
noise as she could—and tramped sturdily and distinctly down stairs.
The room of which she intended to take possession was at the end of a
long passage leading from the back to the front of the house. This she
traversed slowly—not without fear of being caught from behind by some
unimaginable creature of horror; an idea which, on her reaching the
chamber door, so far operated upon her, that, yielding to her imaginary
terrors, and yet relying for safety upon getting into the parlour, she
in the same moment uttered a slight scream and burst half joyfully into
the room. Both of these actions scarcely took up more than the space
of a single moment, and in another instant she had the door closed and
bolted behind her. But what was her astonishment, her terror, and her
awe, when, on glancing round the room, she saw distinctly before her,
and relieved against the light of the window, the figure of a lady, in
splendid apparel, supernaturally tall, and upon whose countenance was
depicted a surprise not less than her own! The girl stood fixed to
the spot, her breath suspended, and her eyes wide open, surveying the
glorious apparition, whose beauty and fine attire, unlike aught earthly
she had ever seen, made her believe it to be an _enchanted queen_—an
imaginary being, of which the idea was suggested to her by one of
the nursery tales already alluded to. Fortunately, the associations
connected with this personage were rather of a pathetic than an
alarming character; and though she still trembled at the idea of being
in the presence of a supernatural object, yet as it was essentially
beautiful and pleasing, and supposed to be rather in a condition of
suffering than in the capacity of an injurer, Margaret Swinton did
not experience the extremity of terror, but stood for a few seconds
in innocent surprise, till at length the vision completely assured
her of its gentle and pacific character, by smiling upon her, and, in
a tone of the most winning sweetness, bidding her approach. She then
went forward, with timid and slow steps; and becoming convinced that
her enchanted queen was neither more nor less than a real lady of this
world, soon ceased to regard her with any other sentiment than that of
admiration. The lady took her hand, and addressed her by name—at first
asking a few unimportant questions, and concluding by telling her that
she might speak to her mother of what she had seen, but by no means to
say a word upon the subject to any other person, and that under pain
of her mother’s certain and severe displeasure. Margaret promised to
obey this injunction, and was then desired by the lady to go to the
window, to see if the family were yet returning from church. She did
so, and found that they were not as yet in sight; when, turning round
to give that information to the stranger, she found the room empty, and
the lady gone. Her fears then returned in full force, and she would
certainly have fainted, if she had not been all at once relieved by the
appearance of the family at the head of the avenue, along which the
dogs—as regular church-goers as their master—ran barking towards the
house, gratifying her with what she afterwards declared to have been
the most welcome sounds that ever saluted her ear.
Miss Swinton, being found out of her own room, was sharply reprimanded
by her mother, and taken up stairs to be again confined to the
sick-chamber. But before being left there, she found an opportunity
of whispering into her mother’s ear, that she had seen a lady in the
low parlour. Lady Swinton was arrested by the words, and, immediately
dismissing the servant, asked Margaret, in a kindly and confidential
tone, what she meant. The child repeated, that in the low parlour
she had seen a beautiful lady—an enchanted queen—who had afterwards
vanished, but not before having exacted from her a promise that
she would say nothing of what she had seen, except to her mother.
“Margaret,” said Lady Swinton, “I see you have been a very good girl;
and since you are so prudent, I will let you know a little more about
this enchanted queen, though her whole story cannot properly be
disclosed to you at present.” She then conducted Margaret back to the
parlour, pushed aside a sliding panel, and entered a secret chamber,
in which the child again saw the tall and beautiful woman, who was
now sitting at a table with a large prayer-book open before her. Lady
Swinton informed the stranger, that, as Margaret had kept her secret
so far according to her desire, she now brought her to learn more of
it. “My dear,” said her ladyship, “this lady is unfortunate—her life is
sought by certain men; and if you were to tell any of your companions
that you have seen her, it might perhaps be the cause of bringing her
to a violent death. You could not wish that the enchanted queen should
suffer from so silly an error on your part.” Margaret protested, with
tears, that she would speak to none of what she had seen; and after
some farther conversation, she and her mother retired.
Margaret Swinton never again saw this apparition; but some years
afterwards, when she had grown up, and all fears respecting the
unfortunate lady were at an end, she learned the particulars of her
story. She was the Mrs Macfarlane alluded to in the motto to this
paper; a person whose fatal history made a noise at the time over all
Britain, and interested alike the intelligent and the ignorant, the
noble and the mean.
Mrs Macfarlane was the only daughter of a gentleman of Roxburghshire,
who had perished in the insurrection of 1715. An attempt was made by
his surviving friends to save the estate from forfeiture, so that it
might have been enjoyed by his orphan daughter, then just emerged
into womanhood. But almost all hope of that consummation was soon
closed, and, in the meantime, the unfortunate young lady remained in a
destitute situation. The only arrangement that could be devised by the
generosity of her friends, was to permit her to reside periodically
for a certain time in each of their houses—a mode of subsistence from
which her spirit recoiled, but to which, for a little while, she was
obliged to submit. It was while experiencing all the bitter pangs of
a dependent situation, encountered for the first time, and altogether
unexpectedly, that Mr Macfarlane, a respectable and elderly law agent,
who had been employed by her father, came forward and made an offer of
his hand. Glad to escape from the immediate pain of dependency, even
at the hazard of permanent unhappiness, she accepted the proposal,
although her relations did every thing they could to dissuade her
from a match so much beneath her rank. The proud spirit of Elizabeth
Ker swelled almost to bursting, when she entered the dwelling of her
low-born husband; and the humble marriage-feast which was there placed
before her, seemed in her eyes as the first wages of her degradation.
But her own reflections might have been endured, and in time subdued,
if they had not been kept awake by the ungenerous treatment which she
received from all her former friends. The pride of caste was at this
period unbroken in Scotland, and it rigorously demanded the exclusion
of “the doer’s wife” from all the circles in which she had previously
moved. The stars made a conspiracy to banish the sun. If Mrs Macfarlane
had been educated properly, she would have been able to repel scorn
with scorn, and, in these tergiversations of the narrow-spirited great,
would have only seen their degradation, not her own. But under her
deceased mother, a scion of a better house than even her father’s,
she had grown up in the full participation of all the ridiculous
notions as to caste, and of course was herself deeply sensible of the
advantages she had forfeited. Rendered irritable in the highest degree
by consciousness of her own loss, she received every slight thrown upon
her by society into her innermost heart, where it festered and fed
upon her very vitals. She found that she had fallen, that the step was
irretrievable; and as factitious degradation, imposed by the forms of
society, always in a short time becomes real, her character suffered
a material deterioration. She took refuge from offended self-love in
a spirit of hatred and contempt for her fellow-matrons, and began to
entertain feelings from which, in earlier and happier years, she would
have shrunk as from actual crime.