"Remember the deevil!' cried this worthy member of the landed interest. 'Isna what I say a God's truth? The vera weavers in Glasgow and Paisley hae houses, I'm told, that the Craiglands here wouldna be a byre to. Can ony gude come, but vice and immorality, from sic upsetting in a Christian kingdom?'" Vol. III. P. 163. In this temper of mind, though he overwhelms Andrew at first with homely civilities as "a lad weel to do, and to whom we could do no less than gie some countenance," yet when his name is brought upon the tapis as a match for the heiress of Craiglands, the jealous prejudices of the old landed proprietor against one whom he persists in considering as Martha Docken's oye," break out with full force in the following dialogue, to which the Laird's broad Scotch gives an incomparable zest to his testy scepticism. 66 "I dinna understand,' said he, 'a' this wark about Martha Docken's oye. That English Lord and his Leddy mak him joke. fellow wi' themselves; but the Englishers, as it is weel known, are no overladen with discretion-that's a certain fact. But how Andrew came to the degree of a Bauronet, is a thing I would fain hear the rights o'. Howsever, I'm thinking that your Bauronets noo-a-days are but, as a body would say, the scum that's cast uppermost in times o' war and trouble.' 666 Ay, but, brother,' said Miss Mizey, Sir Andrew's a great and wealthy man, and a Member of Parliament; and ye hae heard how Mary and me found him on a footing with the Duchess of Dashingwell, and a' the nobility, which was just confounding.' "Ye have said sae,' replied the Laird; but everybody kens that Duchesses, especially o' the English breed, are nae better than they should be.' "But you forget, sir,' interposed Mary, that lady Margaret is sister-in-law to her Grace; and when she gave us letters. to the Duchess, she not only assured us that she was a lady of unblemished honour, but beloved and esteemed by all her friends. "Ye wouldna surely hae had Leddy Margaret,' said the Laird, 'to speak ill of her ain kith and kin.' "But Sir Andrew,' resumed Miss Mizy, 'has made a great fortune, and has bought the estate of Wylie.' "Is't paid for?' interrupted the Laird. that.' I would like to ken 'that he must be a "I should think,' said Mary, diffidently, man of merit and ability; for you know, sir, that he had but> his own conduct for his patron, and he has acquired both riches and honour.' "But how did he acquire them?' cried the Laird, sharply. Any body may acquire riches and honour !-the road is open baith to gentle and semple. But, thanks be and praise, the democraws are no just able yet to mak themselves men o' family.' It is not likely that Sir Andrew is a democrat; neither his associates nor his inclinations, or I am much mistaken,' replied Mary, 'lie that way.' "Wha made you a judge?' exclaimed the Laird. "I do not affect any judgement in the matter,' was the answer; 'I only think "What business hae ye to think? It's not as clear as a pikestaff that trade and traffic are to be the ruin o' this country. In a few years, It's my opinion, they'll no be sic a thing as a gentleman. There's that poor mean-spirited body Monkgreen, wha was aye ettling to improve and improve his lands, like a common farmer, and wha cut down the fine auld trees o' his grandfather's planting, and set up his sons as Glasgow merchants-What has he made o't? His auld son, Robin, they say, stands benint counter gieing out wabs to tambourers. Willy, the second, is awa' wi' a pack among the niggers to the West Indies; and his only dochter, she's drawn up wi' a manufacturer, which in broad Scotch mean just a weaver. In another generation, a' that we'll hear o' the auld respectit family of Monkgreen, will be something about a sowan cog or a sugar-hoggit. I wouldna be surprised to see a clecking o' blackent weans coming hame frae Jamaica, crying Massa-granpa' to Monkgreen, yet, before he died-it's a judgement he weel deserves." Vol. III. P. 197. Sir Andrew, however, without making any undue concessions, shews great good sense and good temper in conciliating his father-in-law elect; and Lord Sandyford, who has visited the neighbourhood purposely to forward Andrew's wishes, with his friend Sir Archibald Maybole, succeeds at last, by the marked deference with which they treat the Baronet, in impressing his importance on the mind of the repugnant Laird, who warmed by Sir Archibald's claret, gives his consent to the marriage, and the purposes of his existence being now fulfilled, is the same evening overturned and brought to his grave by a drunken hind, his coachman. The lovers are of course married as soon as propriety will permit, and Sir Andrew, already become Wylie of that Ilk by purchase, combines the estate with that of Craiglands, and, (more wisely than is probable) quits business and public life for the scenes of his childhood. From the statement and extracts already given, our readers will perhaps form a fair estimate of the merits and defects of this original novel. The former are many and various, the latter glaring and wilful, arising from selfcreated difficulties. Having assumed an improbable though pleasing groundwork of his story, and perfectly aware that he has done so, the author wantonly multiplies untoward obstacles, that he may shew his skill in surmounting them, and fairly laughs to scorn the calculations of men of the world, as well as the habitual partialities of the gentler sex. That a raw illiterate country stripling, of mean unrefined education and uncouth manners, strongly addicted to petty gains and the society of beggars, afraid of bogs and thunder showers, and lacking even that degree of personal courage which is as common and necessary as the nose in a man's face; disfigured moreover by an exterior, ridiculously homely, totally devoid of personal vanity or romantic sentiment, and even romping on the dickey with an Abigail for the sole purpose of pilfering her eatables, that such a person should become at the age of seventeen or eighteen the chosen confidant and associate of the great, the fair, and the fastidious; that he should at an age not much later obtain a large fortune, a baronetcy, a seat in parliament, and the affections of a beautiful heiress, who had known him in his original obscurity; and that finally he should carry the cordial sympathies of the reader along with him, in a manner in which the more legitimate heroes of romance seldom do,-is what few will believe on a mere dry statement of the heads of the story. When, however, we have once entered on its perusal, although our sober reason may suggest that such a concurrence of circumstance's never did, and never will take place, yet our imagination is inclined to acquiesce implicitly in the fiction: and if the results in question were ever to be attained at all, we perceive that the author has selected the best means of attaining them. The hinge on which Andrew's advancement turns, "the tide in his affairs, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune," is his introduction to Lord Sandyford, improved as it is by his estimable qualities and diverting oddities: and the young Earl is accordingly represented as exactly the person likely to appreciate the one and enjoy the other. Indolent, whimsical, possessing an eccentric genius and a kind heart, and partly from ennui, partly from secret unhappiness, as weary of this world's state and unprofitable usages as Hamlet himself, endued with sensibility to value, sterling worth and feeling, and penetration enough to detect their counterfeits, he falls in with our valuable little nondescript just at the conjuncture when his mind requires a new excitement, and his affairs demand a faithful, active, and plain spoken adviser. Unable to resist the temptation of exhibiting Andrew as a butt, and eager to make the friendless lad some reparation, his attention is drawn to the good-humour and self-possession with which his butt can either take or crack a joke, and he finishes by laughing with him instead of at him. The rest follows of course, aided by those conjunctures which authors have a right to invent, and which are not perhaps overstrained, as relating to the history of the Sandyfords. The young Earl, requiring an able adviser and disliking a dull one, too feeling and judicious to trust a mere buffoon, and too proud to brook the influence of a man whose qualities come in competition with his own, is taken with the peculiar character of Andrew: and having entrusted him with a confidence which the latter neither abuses nor presumes on, is finally attached by services the most grateful to his feelings, and the most important to his happiness, while his imagination is amused by a never failing vein of drollery, of which a good specimen may be found in vol. ii. page 5. We cannot so easily swallow at a gulp the three duchesses, four marchionesses, and eighteen other peeresses, to whom we have already alluded as scrambling for our hero's attentions. To speak seriously, the great, though naturally as amiable and as accessible as the little, are, as our hero would have said, "kittle cattle to shoe behind;" and that from circumstances reflecting no blame on themselves. "If any silly thing," as Pindar observes, "escapes them, it is made a great matter of;" and their least word is seized upon, to be repeated to the praise and glory of the narrator's sçavoir vivre, or treasured as an earnest of favour and patronage. Placed on a conspicuous eminence, they are the more exposed to the scandal of those ephemeral scribblers, who exist by pampering the worst feelings of our nature, and continually teazed and perplexed either by the mauvaise honte, the ill-founded hopes, or the presumption, of the small wits, parodists, protegès, or parvenus, whom they admit to a familiar footing. Thus situated, we cannot wonder that pride and shyness should arise in them from the common feelings of our nature, and lead them to distrust the intimacy of those out of their own sphere. Such at least appears to have been the conception of the author, and the character of his hero is skilfully adapted to meet the obstacles in question, after his first introduction by Lord Sandyford. 66 Witty himself, and the source of wit in others," he soon shews that he possesses too little personal vanity, and too much real respectability, to be either degraded or nettled by the part of an oddity to which nature has destined him. To a cheerful, elastic, civil courage, he unites manners independent, unassuming, and original, and of a description which his noble friends have not been accustomed to associate with any thing offensive. Affecting none of that cheap common place worldly polish which to a certain extent is easily ac quired by the crowd of "young men about town" of doubtful pretensions, nay even by fiddlers, waiters, and sharpers, and content with the emoluments of his profession, he professedly disclaims all rivalry in address or exterior, with the gay world. Even his intimate associate is not introduced under his wing, to witness his triumph; and in his choice of a good house in an unfashionable street, and the arrangement of the third course of his dinner, and his ball, as well as his sudden allusion to the dying man's will and testament, vol. i. p. 135. he bounds back to his own condition as suddenly as the merry and wise Cawdie Fraser and his compeers. Our readers will recollect the saturnalia of this fraternity, as related in Humphry Clinker; and how after playing the boon companion to the utmost limit of allowed freedom, they suddenly took their places behind the chairs of their noble guests, saying," Noo we're your honour's cawdies again." A similar amende honorable is made by Andrew continually, and his unaltered manners remain as a guarantee that it never will be wanting. If on more serious occasions, he appears to forget the dignity of those whom he is addressing, his forward humour is in a moment atoned for by the deep and honest interest in their welfare, in which he forgets himself also; and though he buffoons in word, he never does so in deed. What else could atone for the startling indecorum of calling an earl a goose; but the grateful anxiety shewn and felt in the following words ? ،، ، This winna do, cried Andrew, seriously, on observing the absent and melancholy look of Lord Sandyford; 'your Lordship's like a fat goose drapping awa'; and if ye're no ta'en frae the fire, ye'll soon no be worth the taking." " Vol. II. p. 269 Though we admire the dexterity shewn by the author in thus adapting the character of his hero to the nice part which he has to play, we must admit that events are made most uniformly and civilly subservient to his advancement and reputation. To say nothing of a crowd of minor instances, Vellum acquiesces instantly in a salary which must nearly have swallowed up the profits of the Sandyford agency, and Sir Thomas Beauchamp surrenders at discretion to the arguments of one, whom it is more probable that he would have turned out of his house as an intruding busy body. Blondel is kept back in his profession by an impediment of speech, in order that Andrew may bring him forward, and as to the" metaphysical aid" afforded by the gypsies at the Bidford election, the stratagem would have been too absurd and palpable for the borough of Gotham-that old Craiglands 2 |