The Heart of Mid-Lothian

eat shall

all ne’er be

well shall

ue-love’s

So

arm of the sea, with its rocks, isles, distant shores, and boundary of mountains; and now, a fair and fertile champaign country, varied with hill, dale, and rock, and skirted by the picturesque ridge of the Pentland mountains. But as the path gently circles around the base of the cliffs, the prospect, composed as it is of these enchanting and sublime objects, changes at every step, and presents them blended with, or divided from, each other, in every possible variety which can gratify the eye and the imagination. When a piece of scenery so beautiful, yet so vari

ct, that which he chose was extremely circuitous. But to compose his own spirits, as well as to while away the time, until a proper hour for visiting the family without surprise or disturbance, he was induced to extend his circuit by the foot of the rocks, and to linger upon his way until the morning should be considerably advanced. While, now standing with his arms across, and waiting the slow progress of the sun above the horizon, now si

Stephen, and Bible Butler) was a stanch Independent, and received in its fullest comprehension the promise that the saints should inherit the earth. As hard knocks were what had chiefly fallen to his share hitherto in the division of this common property, he lost not the opportunity which the stor

e balance, and found wanting. It was supposed he felt no call to any expedition which might endanger the reign of the military sainthood, and that he did not consider himself as free in conscience to join with any party which might be likely ultimately to acknowledge the interest of Charles Stuart, the son of “the last man,” as Charles I. was familiarly and irreverently termed by them in their common discourse, as well as in their more elaborate predications and harangues. As the time did not admit of cashiering such dissidents, Stephen Butl

ment on this side of the grave reconciled her to the gruff manners, serious temper, and weather-beaten features of the martial enthusiast. Stephen did not long survive the falling on “evil days and evil tongues,” of which Milton, in the same predicament, so mournfully complains. At his death his consort remained an early widow, with a m

enient thing to rake up all matter of accusation against the deceased Stephen. In this enumeration his religious principles made no small figure, as, indeed, they must have seemed of the most exaggerated enormity to one whose own were so small and so faintly traced, as to be well nigh imperceptible. In these circumstances, poor widow Butler was supplied with her full proportion of fines for nonconformity, and all the other oppressions of the time, until Beersheba was fairly wrenched out of her hands, and became the property of the Laird who had so wantonly, as it

actions, perhaps because he was ashamed to tax too highly the

ewhat superior strength to that which had broken down the day before. However reasonable this practice appeared to the Laird of Dumbiedikes, he ought to have observed, that it may be overdone, and that it infers, as a matter of course, the destruction and loss of both horse, and cart, and loading. Even so it befell when the additional “prestations” came to be demanded of Benjamin Butler. A man of few words, and few ideas, but attached to Beersheba with a feeling like that which a vegetable entertains to the spot in wh

various exactions now commuted for money, and summed up in the emphatic word rent. But the years 1700 and 1701, long remembered in Scotland for dearth and general distress, subdued the stout heart of the agricultural whig. Citations by the ground-officer, decreets of the Baron Court, sequestrations, poindings of outside and inside plenishing, flew about his ears as fast as the tory bullets whistled aro

ttle, that is to say, at least once every day. The leech for the soul, and he for the body, alighted in the court of the little old manor-house at almost the same time; and when they had gazed a moment at each other with some surprise, they in the same breath expressed their conviction that Dumbiedikes must needs be very ill indeed, since he summoned them both to his presen

Mr. Novit, the son and heir of the patient, a tall gawky silly-looking boy of fourteen or fifteen, and a housekeeper, a good buxom figure of a woman, betwixt forty and fifty, who had kept the keys and managed matters at Dumbiedikes since the lady’s

, minister. — Jock, ye’ll take warning — it’s a debt we maun a’ pay, and there stands Nichil Novit that will tell ye I was never gude at paying debts in my life. — Mr. Novit, ye’ll no forget to draw the annual rent that’s due

mirabilis; Jenny there makes it weel — Doctor, my breath is growing as scant as a broken-winded piper’s, when he has played for four-and-twenty hours at a penny wedding — Jenny, pit the cod an

ergyman; “and if you would have your soul redeemed like a prey f

’ the aughty-nine, and I canna get a spell of a prayer for’t, the only time I ever asked for ane in my life? — Gang awa wi’ your whiggery, if that’s a’ ye

le from the housekeeper on the state of his complaints, assu

to tell me that ye canna help me at the pinch? Out wi’ them, Jenny — out o’ the house! and, Jock, my curse, and the

e cried, with a voice in which passion contended with pain. “I can die as I have lived, without fashing ony o’ them. But there’s ae thing,” he said, sinking his voice —“there’s ae fearful thing hings about my heart, and an anker of brandy winna wash it

Jock, after having opened the window

iring sinner —“they’ll perish wi’ cauld! — b

an opiate for the agonised conscience of the Laird, reparation of the injuries he had done to these distressed families, which, he observed by the way, the civil law called restitutio in integru

k siller, when ye ken how I want it? or dispone Beersheba, when it lies sae weel into my ain plaid-nuik? Na

Novit; “and maybe ye wad die easier — it’s but

the puir creatures, the Deanses and the Butlers — be kind to them, Jock. Dinna let the warld get a grip o’ ye, Jock — but keep the gear thegither! and whate’er ye do

ease, that he drank three bumpers of brandy continuously, and “soughed aw

s among the snow-wreaths, and were allowed wherewith to procure butter-milk and peas-bannocks, which they ate under the full force of the original malediction. The cottage of Deans, called Woodend, was not very distant from that at Beersheba. Formerly there had been but little intercourse between the families. Deans was a sturdy Scotsman, with all sort of prejudices against the southern, and t

length created some intimacy between the families. They had shared a common danger and a mutual deliverance. They needed each other’s assistance, like a c

Deans had as wholesome a terror as against papists and malignants, Above all (for Douce Davie Deans had his weak side), he perceived that widow Butler looked up to him with reverence, listened to his advice, and compounded for an occasional fling at the doctrines of her deceased husbands to which, as we have seen, she was by no means warmly attached, in consideration of the valuable counsels which the Presbyterian afforded her for the management of her little farm. These usually concluded with “they m

ady in some degree acquainted, and Jeanie Deans, the only child of Douce Davie Deans by his first wife, “that singular Christian woman,” as he was wont to express himself, “whose nam