Page:Autobiography of William Love, P.C..pdf/53

53 turnpike roads of time pointing "Onwards." They have always some predominant faculty by which they are distinguished. Some have a volubility of language, as if they had swallowed Dr Johnson's Dictionary, with the Notes, or a dose of literary pills. Some, like the shepherd in "Noctes Ambrosianæ" can "dispute on any subject—sacred or profane." My great distinguishing gift is memory. I have a first class one. This Autobiography has been written entirely from memory, without the assistance of a single note. I can, at pleasure, dig up from the deep recesses of the brain, things which have lain there undisturbed for years. For instance, how long is it since any one of my 20,14 subscribers has thought of the Paisley Bailies parading to the Kirk from the Council Chamber—the Town officers, dressed with scarlet coats, knee'd breeks, and carrying glittering halberds in their hands, marching before, in all the pomp of power, and looking as if they felt themselves the connecting link between the Church and the State? You all recollect this now when I have touched the secret spring of your dull brains and what thoughts does that resuscitated idea awaken? Those were the days when a sound state of things prevailed. The "Tumble-the-wulket" heterodoxy was then unknown in the kirk. The Bailie, with his big round gaucy belly, was a terror to evil doers—and although "time changes a' things" I cannot yet believe in a bailie, like Cassius, with "a lean and hungry look." I don't know how it is, but to my mind a scranky bailie is not natural. When the Reformed Council went into office, the belly "with good capon lined," was banished