straint. more strict than those of the established church, once thought many of their observances an inconvenient and unnecessary reBut when he calls to mind the cheerfulness possessed by the working classes of Scotland, their kind and social disposition, their festivity and their general happiness, and reflects at the same time on the benefits derived from habits of early restraint in after-life, the mischiefs of indulgence, and that obstacles in the way of enjoyment tend often to enhance its value, laying all other considerations aside, he is inclined to doubt whether even the mass of worldly happiness is not increased by what may seem, at first sight, an abridgement of it. The native of Scotland, who visits other countries, will often, like Bruce in Abyssinia *, when viewing the men around him, and their dispositions and habits, be forced to remark the wide interval in the moral scale which separates them from the peaceful and intelligent inhabitants of the valleys of Tweed, Annan, and Clyde, and to cherish a feeling of gratitude to the memory of those who laid the foundation of that superiority. The author of these Memoirs involuntarily pays a high tribute to the character of the presbyterians whom he abuses. Though he belonged to a party whom they abhorred, he was more than once indebted to them for his life, and they concealed him in their houses, at a time when that concealment was attended with the utmost danger to themselves, and when to have discovered him would have been attended with a considerable reward. * See his Reflections on discovering the Source of the Nile. |