“ Frank, my good fellow, you’re too sober; you’re thinking too much of yourself; you’re looking at the world with convex glasses; and thus the world seems little—you yourself only great; but, recollect, everybody looks through a convex glass; and that’s vanity, Frank:—there, now! the murder’s out.”
“Nay, Harry,” cried Rhimeson, good-naturedly; for he saw Elliot’s nether lip grow white with suppressed passion; “don’t push Frank too hard, for charity’s sake.” ”

“ How strong is the force of those qualities of the heart which we men often treat as weak baubles to toy with, and throw away in our fits of proud spleen—the softness, the gentleness, the fidelity and devotedness of woman! How strangely, how wonderfully formed is the heart of man, which, disdaining the terrors of the rope of the executioner, breaks and succumbs at the touch of the thistle-down of a woman’s love! This creature, sir, gave me my fortune, made me what I am, left for me her country and her friends, adhered to me through good and evil report—and I prepared for her a cruel death! ”

“ Poor Simon o’ Yarrow-foot is to be my companion in death, and he whines to meet his fate with the weakness of a woman, and yearns a perpetual yearning for his wife and bairns. On that account I forgie him the want o’ heart and determination which he manifests; but see ye to them, and take care that they be provided for. As for me, I shall meet my doom wi’ disdain for my enemy in my eyes and on my tongue. Even in death he shall feel that I despise him; and a proof o’ this I have given him already; for he has offered to save my life, providing I would marry his daughter, Meikle-mouthed Meg. ”

“ My mother, my honoured mother,—Fate has delivered me into the power of Murray of Elibank, the enemy of our house. He has doomed me to death, and I die to-morrow; but sit not down to mourn for me, and uselessly to wring the hands and tear the hair; but rouse every Scott upon the Borders to rise up and be my avenger. If ye bewail the loss o’ a son, let them spare o’ the Murrays neither son nor daughter. Rouse ye, and let a mother’s vengeance nerve your arm! ”

“ Stand for a while among the graves of the chief of Gilnockie and his fifty followers, in the lonely churchyard of Carlenrig—cast a contemplative eye on the roofless tower of that brave riever, then glance at the gorgeous policies of Bowhill, and resist, if you can, the deep sigh that rises as a tribute to the memories of men who, having, by their sleepless spirits, kept a kingdom in commotion, died on the gallows, and left no generation to claim their lands from those who, with less bravery and no better sense of right, had the subtle policy to rise on their ruins. ”

“ Let him hang us if he dare, and the disgrace be his that is coward enough so to make an end of his enemy.
“O sir,” said Simon, “but that is poor comfort to a man that has to leave a small family behind him.
“Simon! are you afraid to die?” cried the captive laird, in a tone of rebuke.
“No, your honour,” said Simon—“that is, I am no more afraid to die than other men are, or ought to be—but only ye’ll observe, sir, that I have no ambition—not, as I may say, to draw my last breath upon a wuddy, but to have it very unnaturally stopped. ”

“ Andrew Duncan!
“Rash man!” exclaimed Mowbray, as he again stepped forward to unloose the cords that bound him. “Why have ye again cast yourself into the hands of the men who seek your blood? Do you hold your life so cheap, that, in one week, ye would risk to sell it twice? Why did not ye, with your father, your brother, and your wife, flee into England, where protection was promised!”
“My father!—my brother!—my wife!—mine!—mine!” repeated the preacher wildly. “There are no such names for my tongue to utter!—none!—none to drop their love as morning dew upon the solitary soul o’ Andrew Duncan!” ”

“ The cosmopolite is but a puny abortion—a birth ere the natural time, that at once endangers the life and betrays the weakness of the country that bears him. Would that he were sleeping in his elements till his proper time! But we are getting ashamed of our country, of our language, our manners, our music, our literature; nor shall we have enough of the old spirit left us to assert our liberties or fight our battles. Oh, for some Barbour or Blind Harry of the present day, to make us, once more, proud of our country! ”

“ He knew the meaning of justice in its severest sense, but not of compassion; he was a stranger to the attribute of mercy, and the life of the man who had injured him, he regarded as little as the life of the worm which he might tread beneath his heel upon his path. He was a man of middle age; and had three daughters, none of whom were what the world calls beautiful; but, on the contrary, they were what even the dependents upon his estates described as “very ordinary-looking young women.”
Such was Sir Gideon Murray of Elibank ”

“ One cannot always live upon the future, divorced from the sympathies of the present. One cannot always solace one’s self under the grinding despotism that would fetter one’s very thoughts, with the conviction, however assured, that posterity will do justice both to the oppressor and the oppressed. I am sick at heart; and were it not for the poor little things that depend so entirely on my exertions, I could as cheerfully lay me down in the grave as I ever did in bed after the fatigues of a long day’s labour. ”

“ Be assured he stands high among the aristocracy of nature, whatever may be thought of him in Kirkoswald. There is a robustness of intellect, joined to an overmastering force of character, about him, which I have never yet seen equalled, though I have been intimate with at least one very superior mind, and with hundreds of the class who pass for men of talent. I have been thinking ever since I met with him, of the William Tells and William Wallaces of history—men who, in those times of trouble which unfix the foundations of society, step out from their obscurity to rule the destiny of nations. ”

“ And the curtain at length rose. “The person,” continues the essayist, “to whom I allude”—and he alludes to him as a genius of no ordinary class—“is Robert Burns, an Ayrshire ploughman.” The effect on my nerves seemed electrical; I clapped my hands, and sprung from my seat: “Was I not certain of it! Did I not foresee it!” I exclaimed. “My noble-minded friend, Robert Burns!” I ran hastily over the warm-hearted and generous critique, so unlike the cold, timid, equivocal notices with which the professional critic has greeted, on their first appearance, so many works destined to immortality. ”

“ I muttered a simple assent.
“See,” he continued, “how finely these insulated piles of rock, that rise in so many combinations of form along the beach, break and diversify the red light, and how the [Pg 70] glossy leaves of the ivy glisten in the hollows of the precipices above! And then, how the sea spreads away to the far horizon, a glorious pavement of crimson and gold!—and how the dark Ailsa rises in the midst, like the little cloud seen by the prophet! The mind seems to enlarge, the heart to expand, in the contemplation of so much of beauty and grandeur. The soul asserts its due supremacy. ”

“ If your brother, as is likely, has sought some foreign land, and remains in ignorance of my recovery from the wounds I received from him, how shall I answer to myself—how shall I even dare to ask for this fair hand—how shall I ever hope to rest upon your bosom in peace—if I do not [Pg 143] use every possible means to discover him? O my dear Elliot—friend of my youth—if thou couldest translate the language of my heart, as it beats at this moment—if thou couldest hear my sacred resolve!”—
“Whitaker, my friend! Harriet, my beloved sister!” ”

“ You are groping on in darkness, and it may be unhappiness, for your proper sphere; but it is in obedience to a great though occult law of our nature—a law, general as it affects the species, in its course of onward progression—particular, and infinitely more irresistible, as it operates on every truly superior intellect. There are men born to wield the destinies of nations—nay, more, to stamp the impression of their thoughts and feelings on the mind of the whole civilized world. ”

“ The preachers at the head of the different divisions of the army gave out a psalm, and the entire host of the Covenanters, uncovering their heads, joined at the same moment in thanksgiving and praise. John Brydone was not a man of tears, but, as he joined in the psalm, they rolled down his cheeks, for his heart felt, while his tongue uttered praise, that a day of deliverance for the people of Scotland was at hand. The psalm being concluded, each preacher offered up a short but earnest prayer; and each man, grasping his weapon, was ready to lay down his life for his religion and his liberty. ”

“ In a bed lay a man of a genteel, yet sinister cast of countenance, with a large aquiline nose, and piercing black eyes. He appeared very pale and feverish, and threw upon me that anxious eye which we often find in patients who are under the first access of a serious disease; as if nature, while she kept her secret from the understanding, communicated it to the feelings, whose eloquence, expressed through the senses, we can often read with great facility. I knew, in an instant, that he was committed, by a relentless hand, to suffering, in all likelihood, in the form of a fever. ”

“ Never was there a fonder father than Burns, a more attached husband, or a warmer friend. There was an exuberance of love in his large heart, that encircled in its flow, relatives, friends, associates, his country, the world; and, in his kinder moods, the sympathetic influence which he exerted over the hearts of others seemed magical. ”

“ Never have I passed an evening with my Mary without returning to the world a better, gentler, wiser man. Love, my friend, is the fulfilling of the whole law. What are we without it?—poor, vile, selfish animals; our very virtues themselves, so exclusively virtues on our own behalf as to be well nigh as hateful as our vices. Nothing so opens and improves the [Pg 89] heart, nothing so widens the grasp of the affections, nothing half so effectually brings us out of our crust of self, as a happy, well-regulated love for a pure-minded, affectionate-hearted woman! ”

“ What if these dying, melancholy cadences, which so melt and sink into the heart, be—what we may so naturally interpret them—the melodious sinkings of a deep-seated and hopeless unhappiness! Nay, the fancy is too wild for even a dream. But are there none of those fine analogies, which run through the whole of nature and the whole of art, to sublime it into truth? ”

“ As the prisoners entered, Lieutenant Mowbray turned away his head, and placed his hand upon his brow.
“Sir,” said John, addressing Claverhouse, “I’m neither knave nor rebel—I hae lifted up my voice to the God o’ my faithers, according to my conscience; and, unworthy as I am o’ the least o’ His benefits, for threescore years and ten he has been my shepherd and deliverer, and, if it be good in His sight, He will deliver me now. My trust is in Him, and I fear neither the frown nor the sword o’ the persecutor.” ”

“ Burns,” said the man in black, addressing the farmer, “politeness is but a very shadow, as the poet hath it, if the heart be wanting. I saw, to-night, in a strictly polite family, so marked a presumption of the lack of that natural affection of which politeness is but the portraiture and semblance, that truly I have been grieved in my heart ever since.”
“Ah, Mr. Murdoch,” said the farmer, “there is ever more hypocrisy in the world than in the church, and that, too, among the class of fine gentlemen and fine ladies who deny it most. ”

“ To some such purpose did Margaret argue against Will’s allusions to the doings at Jedburgh; but, secretly, Will cared no more for the threat of a rope, than he did for the empty bravado of a neighbour whom he had eased of a score of cattle. He merely brought in the doings of the Justice-Ayr at Jedburgh, to screen his fits of laziness; those states of the mind common to rievers, thieves, writers, and poets, and generally all people who live upon their wits, which at times incapacitate them for using sword or pen for their honest livelihood. ”