"From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs,
That makes her lov'd at home, revered abroad."
_Cotter's Saturday Night._
There was a wide and cheerful circle this evening round the hospitable
hearth of Lochlea. The father of my friend, a patriarchal-looking old
man, with a countenance the most expressive I have almost ever seen,
sat beside the wall on a large oaken settle, which also served to
accommodate a young man, an occasional visitor of the family, dressed
in rather shabby black, whom I at once set down as a probationer of
divinity. I had my own seat beside him. The brother of my friend (a lad
cast in nearly the same mould of form and feature, except, perhaps, that
his frame, though muscular and strongly set, seemed in the main less
formidably robust, and his countenance, though expressive, less
decidedly intellectual) sat at my side. My friend had drawn in his
seat beside his mother, a well-formed, comely brunette, of about
thirty-eight, whom I might almost have mistaken for his elder sister;
and two or three younger members of the family were grouped behind
her. The fire blazed cheerily within the wide and open chimney; and,
throwing its strong light on the faces and limbs of the circle, sent
our shadows flickering across the rafters and the wall behind. The
conversation was animated and rational, and every one contributed his
share. But I was chiefly interested in the remarks of the old man,
for whom I already felt a growing veneration, and in those of his
wonderfully-gifted son.
"Unquestionably, Mr. Burns," said the man in black, addressing the
farmer, "politeness is but a very shadow, as the poet hath it, if the
heart be wanting. I saw, to-night, in a strictly polite family, so
marked a presumption of the lack of that natural affection of which
politeness is but the portraiture and semblance, that truly I have been
grieved in my heart ever since."
"Ah, Mr. Murdoch," said the farmer, "there is ever more hypocrisy in
the world than in the church, and that, too, among the class of fine
gentlemen and fine ladies who deny it most. But the instance"--
"You know the family, my worthy friend," continued Mr. Murdoch--"it is a
very pretty one, as we say vernacularly, being numerous, and the sons
highly genteel young men; the daughters not less so. A neighbour of the
same very polite character, coming on a visit when I was among them,
asked the father, in the course of a conversation to which I was privy,
how he meant to dispose of his sons; when the father replied that he had
not yet determined. The visitor said, that were he in his place, seeing
they were all well-educated young men, he would send them abroad; to
which the father objected the indubitable fact, that many young men lost
their health in foreign countries, and very many their lives. 'True,'
did the visitor rejoin; 'but, as you have a number of sons, it will be
strange if some one of them does not live and make a fortune.' Now,
Mr. Burns, what will you, who know the feelings of paternity, and the
incalculable, and assuredly I may say, invaluable value of human souls,
think when I add, that the father commended the hint, as showing the
wisdom of a shrewd man of the world!"
"Even the chief priests," said the old man, "pronounced it unlawful to
cast into the treasury the thirty pieces of silver, seeing it was the
price of blood; but the gentility of the present day is less scrupulous.
There is a laxity of principle among us, Mr. Murdoch, that, if God
restore us not, must end in the ruin of our country. I say laxity of
principle; for there have ever been evil manners among us, and waifs
in no inconsiderable number, broken loose from the decencies of
society--more, perhaps, in my early days than there are now. But
our principles at least were sound; and not only was there thus a
restorative and conservative spirit among us, but, what was of not less
importance, there was a broad gulf, like that in the parable, between
the two grand classes, the good and the evil--a gulf which, when it
secured the better class from contamination, interposed no barrier
to the reformation and return of even the most vile and profligate,
if repentant. But this gulf has disappeared, and we are standing
unconcernedly over it, on a hollow and dangerous marsh of neutral
ground, which, in the end, if God open not our eyes, must assuredly
give way under our feet."
"To what, father," inquired my friend, who sat listening with the
deepest and most respectful attention, "do you attribute the change?"
"Undoubtedly," replied the old man, "there have been many causes at
work; and, though not impossible, it would certainly be no easy task to
trace them all to their several effects, and give to each its due place
and importance. But there is a deadly evil among us, though you will
hear of it from neither press nor pulpit, which I am disposed to rank
first in the number--the affectation of gentility. It has a threefold
influence among us: it confounds the grand eternal distinctions of
right and wrong, by erecting into a standard of conduct and opinion that
heterogeneous and artificial whole which constitutes the manners and
morals of the upper classes; it severs those ties of affection and
good-will which should bind the middle to the lower orders, by disposing
the one to regard whatever is below them with a true contemptuous
indifference, and by provoking a bitter and indignant, though natural
jealousy in the other for being so regarded; and, finally, by leading
those who most entertain it into habits of expense, torturing their
means, if I may so speak, on the rack of false opinion--disposing
them to think, in their blindness, that to be genteel is a first
consideration, and to be honest merely a secondary one--it has the
effect of so hardening their hearts, that, like those Carthaginians of
whom we have been lately reading in the volume Mr. Murdoch lent us,
they offer up their very children, souls and bodies, to the unreal,
phantom-like necessities of their circumstances."
"Have I not heard you remark, father," said Gilbert "that the change you
describe has been very marked among the ministers of our church?"
"Too marked and too striking," replied the old man; "and in affecting
the respectability and usefulness of so important a class, it has educed
a cause of deterioration, distinctly from itself, and hardly less
formidable. There is an old proverb of our country--'Better the head of
the commonality than the tail of the gentry.' I have heard you quote it,
Robert, oftener than once, and admire its homely wisdom. Now, it bears
directly on what I have to remark--the ministers of our church have
moved but one step during the last sixty years; but that step has been
an all-important one--it has been from the best place in relation to the
people, to the worst in relation to the aristocracy."
"Undoubtedly, worthy Mr. Burns," said Mr. Murdoch, "there is great
truth, according to mine own experience, in that which you affirm. I
may state, I trust, without over-boasting or conceit, my respected
friend, that my learning is not inferior to that of our neighbour the
clergyman--it is not inferior in Latin, nor in Greek, nor yet in French
literature, Mr. Burns, and probable it is he would not much court a
competition, and yet, when I last waited at the manse regarding a
necessary and essential certificate, Mr. Burns, he did not so much as
ask me to sit down."
"Ah!" said Gilbert, who seemed the wit of the family, "he is a highly
respectable man, Mr. Murdoch--he has a fine house, fine furniture, fine
carpets--all that constitutes respectability, you know; and his family
is on visiting terms with that of the laird. But his credit is not so
respectable, I hear."
"Gilbert," said the old man, with much seriousness, "it is ill with a
people when they can speak lightly of their clergymen. There is still
much of sterling worth and serious piety in the Church of Scotland; and
if the influence of its ministers be unfortunately less than it was
once, we must not cast the blame too exclusively on themselves. Other
causes have been in operation. The church, eighty years ago, was the
sole guide of opinion, and the only source of thought among us. There
was, indeed, but one way in which a man could learn to think. His mind
became the subject of some serious impression:--he applied to his Bible,
and, in the contemplation of the most important of all concerns, his
newly awakened faculties received their first exercise. All of
intelligence, all of moral good in him, all that rendered him worthy of
the name of man, he owed to the ennobling influence of his church; and
is it wonder that that influence should be all-powerful from this
circumstance alone? But a thorough change has taken place;--new sources
of intelligence have been opened up; we have our newspapers, and our
magazines, and our volumes of miscellaneous reading; and it is now
possible enough for the most cultivated mind in a parish to be the
least moral and the least religious; and hence necessarily a diminished
influence in the church, independent of the character of its ministers."
I have dwelt too long, perhaps, on the conversation of the elder
Burns; but I feel much pleasure in thus developing, as it were, my
recollections of one whom his powerful-minded son has described--and
this after an acquaintance with our Henry Mackenzies, Adam Smiths, and
Dugald Stewarts--as the man most thoroughly acquainted with the world he
ever knew. Never, at least, have I met with any one who exerted a more
wholesome influence, through the force of moral character, on those
around him. We sat down to a plain and homely supper. The slave question
had, about this time, begun to draw the attention of a few of the more
excellent and intelligent among the people, and the elder Burns seemed
deeply interested in it.
"This is but homely fare, Mr. Lindsay," he said, pointing to the simple
viands before us, "and the apologists of slavery among us would tell you
how inferior we are to the poor negroes, who fare so much better. But
surely 'man liveth not by bread alone!' Our fathers who died for Christ
on the hillside and the scaffold were noble men, and never, never shall
slavery produce such, and yet they toiled as hard, and fared as meanly
as we their children."
I could feel, in the cottage of such a peasant, and seated beside such
men as his two sons, the full force of the remark. And yet I have heard
the miserable sophism of unprincipled power against which it was
directed--a sophism so insulting to the dignity of honest poverty--a
thousand times repeated.
Supper over, the family circle widened round the hearth; and the old
man, taking down a large clasped Bible, seated himself beside the iron
lamp which now lighted the apartment. There was deep silence among us as
he turned over the leaves. Never shall I forget his appearance. He was
tall and thin, and though his frame was still vigorous, considerably
bent. His features were high and massy--the complexion still retained
much of the freshness of youth, and the eye all its intelligence; but
the locks were waxing thin and grey round his high, thoughtful forehead,
and the upper part of the head, which was elevated to an unusual height,
was bald. There was an expression of the deepest seriousness on the
countenance, which the strong umbery shadows of the apartment served to
heighten; and when, laying his hand on the page, he half turned his face
to the circle, and said, "_Let us worship God_," I was impressed by a
feeling of awe and reverence to which I had, alas! been a stranger for
years. I was affected too, almost to tears, as I joined in the psalm;
for a thousand half-forgotten associations came rushing upon me; and my
heart seemed to swell and expand as, kneeling beside him when he prayed,
I listened to his solemn and fervent petition, that God might make
manifest his great power and goodness in the salvation of man. Nor was
the poor solitary wanderer of the deep forgotten.
On rising from our devotions, the old man grasped me by the hand. "I
am happy," he said, "that we should have met, Mr. Lindsay. I feel an
interest in you, and must take the friend and the old man's privilege
of giving you an advice. The sailor, of all men, stands most in need
of religion. His life is one of continued vicissitude--of unexpected
success, or unlooked-for misfortune; he is ever passing from danger to
safety, and from safety to danger; his dependence is on the ever-varying
winds, his abode on the unstable waters. And the mind takes a peculiar
tone from what is peculiar in the circumstances. With nothing stable in
the real world around it on which it may rest, it forms a resting-place
for itself in some wild code of belief. It peoples the elements with
strange occult powers of good and evil, and does them homage--addressing
its prayers to the genius of the winds, and the spirits of the waters.
And thus it begets a religion for itself;--for what else is the
professional superstition of the sailor? Substitute, my friend, for
this--(shall I call it unavoidable superstition?)--this natural religion
of the sea, the religion of the Bible. Since you must be a believer in
the supernatural, let your belief be true; let your trust be on Him who
faileth not--your anchor within the vail; and all shall be well, be your
destiny for this world what it may."
We parted for the night, and I saw him no more.
Next morning, Robert accompanied me for several miles on my way. I saw,
for the last half hour, that he had something to communicate, and yet
knew not how to set about it; and so I made a full stop.
"You have something to tell me, Mr. Burns," I said: "need I assure you I
am one you are in no danger from trusting." He blushed deeply, and I saw
him, for the first time, hesitate and falter in his address.
"Forgive me," he at length said--"believe me, Mr. Lindsay, I would be
the last in the world to hurt the feelings of a friend--a--a--but you
have been left among us penniless, and I have a very little money which
I have no use for--none in the least;--will you not favour me by
accepting it as a loan?"
I felt the full and generous delicacy of the proposal, and, with
moistened eyes and a swelling heart, availed myself of his kindness. The
sum he tendered did not much exceed a guinea; but the yearly earnings of
the peasant Burns fell, at this period of his life, rather below eight
pounds.