Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer — Complete by Walter Scott (reading an ebook .txt) 📕

well-brushed black suit, with very clean shoes and gold buckles and stock-buckle; a manner rather reserved and formal than intrusive, but withal showing only the formality of manner, by no means that of awkwardness; a countenance, the expressive and somewhat comic features of which were in complete repose--all showed a being perfectly different from the choice spirit of the evening before. A glance of shrewd and piercing fire in his eye was the only marked expression which recalled the man of ‘Saturday at e’en.’

‘I am come,’ said he, with a very polite address, ‘to use my regal authority in your behalf in spirituals as well as temporals; can I accompany you to the Presbyterian kirk, or Episcopal meeting-house? Tros Tyriusve, a lawyer, you know, is of both religions, or rather I should say of both forms;--or can I assist in passing the fore-noon otherwise? You’ll excuse my old-fashioned importunity, I was born in a time when a Scotchman was thought inhospitable if he left a guest alone a moment, except when he slept; but I trust you will tell me at once if I intrude.’

‘Not at all, my dear sir,’ answered Colonel Mannering. ‘I am delighted to put myself under your pilotage. I should wish much to hear some of your Scottish preachers whose talents have done such honour to your country--your Blair, your Robertson, or your Henry; and I embrace your kind offer with all my heart. Only,’ drawing the lawyer a little aside, and turning his eye towards Sampson, ‘my worthy friend there in the reverie is a little helpless and abstracted, and my servant, Barnes, who is his pilot in ordinary, cannot well assist him here, especially as he has expressed his determination of going to some of your darker and more remote places of worship.’

The lawyer’s eye glanced at Dominie Sampson. ‘A curiosity worth preserving; and I’ll find you a fit custodier. Here you, sir (to the waiter), go to Luckie Finlayson’s in the Cowgate for Miles Macfin the cadie, he’ll be there about this time, and tell him I wish to speak to him.’

The person wanted soon arrived. ‘I will commit your friend to this man’s charge,’ said Pleydell; ‘he’ll attend him, or conduct him, wherever he chooses to go, with a happy indifference as to kirk or market, meeting or court of justice, or any other place whatever; and bring him safe home at whatever hour you appoint; so that Mr. Barnes there may be left to the freedom of his own will.’

This was easily arranged, and the Colonel committed the Dominie to the charge of this man while they should remain in Edinburgh.

‘And now, sir, if you please, we shall go to the Grey-friars church, to hear our historian of Scotland, of the Continent, and of America.’

They were disappointed: he did not preach that morning. ‘Never mind,’ said the Counsellor, ‘have a moment’s patience and we shall do very well.’

The colleague of Dr. Robertson ascended the pulpit. [Footnote: This was the celebrated Doctor Erskine, a distinguished clergyman, and a most excellent man.] His external appearance was not prepossessing. A remarkably fair complexion, strangely contrasted with a black wig without a grain of powder; a narrow chest and a stooping posture; hands which, placed like props on either side of the pulpit, seemed necessary rather to support the person than to assist the gesticulation of the preacher; no gown, not even that of Geneva, a tumbled band, and a gesture which seemed scarce voluntary, were the first circumstances which struck a stranger. ‘The preacher seems a very ungainly person,’ whispered Mannering to his new friend.

‘Never fear, he’s the son of an excellent Scottish lawyer; [Footnote: The father of Doctor Erskine was an eminent lawyer, and his Institutes of the Law of Scotland are to this day the text-book of students of that science.] he’ll show blood, I’ll warrant him.’

The learned Counsellor predicted truly. A lecture was delivered, fraught with new, striking, and entertaining views of Scripture history, a sermon in which the Calvinism of the Kirk of Scotland was ably supported, yet made the basis of a sound system of practical morals, which should neither shelter the sinner under the cloak of speculative faith or of peculiarity of opinion, nor leave him loose to the waves of unbelief and schism. Something there was of an antiquated turn of argument and metaphor, but it only served to give zest and peculiarity to the style of elocution. The sermon was not read: a scrap of paper containing the heads of the discourse was occasionally referred to, and the enunciation, which at first seemed imperfect and embarrassed, became, as the preacher warmed in his progress, animated and distinct; and although the discourse could not be quoted as a correct specimen of pulpit eloquence, yet Mannering had seldom heard so much learning, metaphysical acuteness, and energy of argument brought into the service of Christianity.

‘Such,’ he said, going out of the church, ‘must have been the preachers to whose unfearing minds, and acute though sometimes rudely exercised talents, we owe the Reformation.’

‘And yet that reverend gentleman,’ said Pleydell, ‘whom I love for his father’s sake and his own, has nothing of the sour or pharisaical pride which has been imputed to some of the early fathers of the Calvinistic Kirk of Scotland. His colleague and he differ, and head different parties in the kirk, about particular points of church discipline; but without for a moment losing personal regard or respect for each other, or suffering malignity to interfere in an opposition steady, constant, and apparently conscientious on both sides.’

‘And you, Mr. Pleydell, what do you think of their points of difference?’

‘Why, I hope, Colonel, a plain man may go to heaven without thinking about them at all; besides, inter nos, I am a member of the suffering and Episcopal Church of Scotland--the shadow of a shade now, and fortunately so; but I love to pray where my fathers prayed before me, without thinking worse of the Presbyterian forms because they do not affect me with the same associations.’ And with this remark they parted until dinner-time.

From the awkward access to the lawyer’s mansion, Mannering was induced to form very moderate expectations of the entertainment which he was to receive. The approach looked even more dismal by daylight than on the preceding evening. The houses on each side of the lane were so close that the neighbours might have shaken hands with each other from the different sides, and occasionally the space between was traversed by wooden galleries, and thus entirely closed up. The stair, the scale-stair, was not well cleaned; and on entering the house Mannering was struck with the narrowness and meanness of the wainscotted passage. But the library, into which he was shown by an elderly, respectable-looking man-servant, was a complete contrast to these unpromising appearances. It was a well-proportioned room, hung with a portrait or two of Scottish characters of eminence, by Jamieson, the Caledonian Vandyke, and surrounded with books, the best editions of the best authors, and in particular an admirable collection of classics.

‘These,’ said Pleydell, ‘are my tools of trade. A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect.’

But Mannering was chiefly delighted with the view from the windows, which commanded that incomparable prospect of the ground between Edinburgh and the sea--the Firth of Forth, with its islands, the embayment which is terminated by the Law of North Berwick, and the varied shores of Fife to the northward, indenting with a hilly outline the clear blue horizon.