Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/91

Rh Samuel. Bid him beware of painted flesh and languishing eyes, of which there be enough in this wicked parish. Tell him to beware of one whose love-locks and whose lures will soon pluck him down from his high calling, even the fair daughter of the old dour trunk of the tree of Papistry, bonnie Bess Glendinning." Here her words were drowned in the more audible counsel of another of the burning and shining lights of the parish, from whose lips escaped, in a tone resembling a voice from a cavern, the alarming words, "Socinians, Arminians, Dioclesians, Erastians, Arians, and Episcopalians "Episcopalians!" ejaculated an old woman in dismay and astonishment, who mistook, perhaps, this curtailed catalogue of schismatics for some tremendous anathema or exorcism—" Episcopalians! God protect me! what's that?"

I have no wish to attempt to describe the effects which a very happy, pithy, and fervent inauguration sermon had on the multitude. The topics of election, redemption, predestination, and the duties which he called his brother to perform, with a judicious mind, a Christian feeling, and an ardent but temperate spirit, were handled, perilous as the topics were, with singular tact, and discrimination, and delicacy. The happy mixture of active morality and spiritual belief, of work-day-world practice and elegant theory, which this address contained, deserves a lasting remembrance.

The summary of the preacher's duties, and the description of the impetuous and distempered spirits of the parish, and the contradictory creeds which he had to soothe and to solder, form still a traditionary treasure to the parish. To minds young and giddy as mine, these healthy and solacing things were not so attractive as the follies and outrages of a disappointed crowd; and let not an old man, without reflecting that he too was once eighteen, condemn me for forsaking the presence and precepts of the preacher for the less spiritual and less moral, but no less instructive drama which was acting in the open air.

The dragoons were still in their saddles, but had retired to the extremity of the village, where they emptied bottles of ale and sung English ballads with a gaiety and a life which obtained the notice of sundry of the young maidens, who are observed to feel a regard for scarlet and lace, which I leave to those who love not their pleasant company to