Sir Dugald

“ In the cool, appraising eyes of Sarah, Blanche, and Marjorie, the bold Sir Dugald was set down already as a freak of nature. They were not used to that sort of person at Bridport House. Unfortunately such an attitude forbade any just perception of the man himself. His career was still in the making, and in the view of keen but unsympathetic observers who had followed it from the start, the hapless Muriel had been marked down in order that she might advance him in it. ”

“ It is enough to make a man’s blood boil, Haigh. I am an alien and a renegade all the rest of my days on account of a woman for whom I have not now even a kindly thought.”
“We have all made fools of ourselves at one time or another,” said Sir Dugald, soothingly. “You have paid heavily enough for that madness of yours, Bigg, and now you can come back with us when we leave this place and get into the world again.” ”

“ With a pained smile, directed towards the scribe, who was obviously watching the transaction while pretending to be absorbed in the study of the tiled floor, the Vizier held up his right hand, with the second finger turned down.
“Oh, nonsense!” said Sir Dugald. “You can’t afford to do it for that, you know. Or is there any other little thing we could do for you besides? Out with it; we are all friends here.”
“The life of man is uncertain,” sighed Fath-ud-Din.
“Quite so—especially in Ethiopia,” responded Sir Dugald.
“Even kings cannot rule for ever,” went on the Vizier. ”

“ To hear that Armenian chap deferentially commending Sir Dugald for his progress is a joke! He’s a thorough courtier, and wouldn’t let your humble servant get ahead of the Chief on any account.”
“It shows Sir Dugald’s pluck that he has begun a new language at all at his age,” said Stratford. “Most men would have left everything to Kustendjian, and thrown the blame on him if things went wrong.”
“Oh, we all know that you will back up the Chief on every possible occasion,” said the doctor, irreverently. ”

“ This was the more serious in that Jahan Beg reported the reappearance upon the scene of the Scythian agent, with larger presents and more abundant promises, and it was calculated to suggest that the King wished to irritate Sir Dugald into breaking off the negotiations. But long experience of the East had made Sir Dugald the most patient of men—in public—and his staff were astonished at the mildness with which he altered the wording of a clause again and again, without ever abating one jot of the concessions he had determined to obtain. His mingled tact and resolution carried the day at last. ”

“ Lady Haigh honestly believes that he did all the work, and that I merely reaped the fruit, so that she won’t let out. Sir Dugald has never been properly appreciated at home, and it is hard on him to lose the reputation he deserves for the way he has managed this affair, which he will do if it once gets known that it was not he who got the treaty signed after all. He is an old man, and he will do no more work after this. His illness has left marks on him. You have noticed it, Miss Keeling, I am sure? ”

“ This was high treason, but though Captain Crosse showed signs of flight, Sir Dugald argued patiently on. “You must know yourself, Mrs Ambrose, that there’s no better-hearted person in the world than the Resident. ”

“ Since you know something now of Wilayat Ali, I needn’t remind you not to trust a word that he says. Well, I’ll turn back here. Take care of yourself.”
Sir Dugald saluted and rode on with his detachment, and Major Keeling, putting spurs to his horse, galloped back to Alibad, still in the gold-laced uniform and plumed helmet he had donned for his interview with the Vizier. He had never many minutes to waste, and Gobind Chand had robbed him of half a working day already, but he made time to pause at the fort and send Lady Haigh a message that he had seen her husband on his way. ”

“ For the love of Heaven, let us hasten home, Dugald!”
“Nay, my good master,” said Dugald weeping, “for if this sad tale be true as to Sir Walter’s death, other master than thee, I fear me, that I now have none. Neil says well that Drummin is no place for thee to-night, with so sudden and tumultuous a clamour excited against thee. Thine innocence will avail thee nothing. Even the innocence of an angel would naught avail against the diseased judgments of men, with minds so poisoned and so possessed. ”

“ The way he keeps poor Dugald running about all day and every day is really shameful. I do believe”—with gloomy triumph—“that he picks him out for all the dangerous and awkward bits of work on purpose. If anything happened to any of the other men, their sweethearts or mothers or sisters might reproach the Major, and so he sends Dugald, knowing that I have sworn not to say a word, whatever happens.” ”

“ Lady Muriel and I intend to marry, and Mr. Dinneford and Miss Lawrence ought to marry.”
The Duke gazed at him with an air of blank stupefaction.
“I invite you to give the matter very careful consideration.” [Pg 244] Sir Dugald had constrained a harsh accent to the point of mellowness. “Let me say at once that if you don’t withdraw your opposition it is in my power to make myself rather unpleasant.”
“Nature has relieved you of any obligation in that matter. You are the most unpleasant man I have ever had to do with.”
“Let me outline the position.” The mellifluous note spurred his Grace to fury. ”

“ Captain Dugald was what is called a 'dare-devil,' and I think he rather gloried in that name. He acted upon the maxim that 'all stratagems are fair in love as in war.' And he resorted to a stratagem to get me into his power, and reduce me to the alternative of marrying him or losing my good name forever."
"Good Heaven! he did not attempt to carry you off by violence," exclaimed Claudia.
The countess laughed.
"Oh, no, my dear! Such things are never attempted in this age of the world. Captain Dugald was far too astute to break the laws. ”

“ Troth, lads, we'll gie a roar that will mak' Buonaparte himsel shake in his shoon, if he be within hearin'."
The soldiers began to cheer and laugh, while Dugald waved his bonnet, but the voice of the colonel arrested them.
"Silence, Dugald!" said he to that aged follower, who with his sword drawn stuck close to the flanks of his horse; "silence! You always create some uproar in the ranks by your odd observations. I am ever apprehensive that you will thrust yourself needlessly into danger; and indeed it would relieve me of much anxiety, if you would remain in the rear. ”

“ A chill crept over Ally’s heart as she saw his pale face and sorrowful look—but this was as nothing to the agony that thrilled through her ere long. Dugald sat in one of the richly embroidered chairs, with the graceful ease so natural to him in any society, while directly opposite, in a large arm-chair with a cushion beneath her feet, sat the countess. An air of haughty indifference was meant, perhaps, to check the young man’s hopes, for well did the proud lady know the object of his long journey, and sorely did she tremble lest her plans should yet be defeated. ”

“ With the broad blue bonnet over his thin white haffets, the heavy-belted plaid cast over his gallant breast, the dirk, the pistol, and the claymore dangling at his belt, his strong bare limbs, and the brass-studded Highland target slung on his shoulder, Dugald Mhor was the beau-ideal of the loyal old Jacobite of the 'forty-five;' that period when the star of the Stuarts, amid the last blaze of the true Scottish spirit, flashed-forth but to vanish for ever. ”

“ Captain Dugald Dalgetty had it to boast he had sate with princes at feasts made for monarchs, and therefore was not a person to be brow-beat even by the dignity which surrounded M'Callum More. Indeed, he was naturally by no means the most modest man of the world, but, on the contrary, had so good an opinion of himself, that into whatever company he chanced to be thrown, he was always proportionally elevated in his own conceit; so that he felt as much at ease in the most exalted society as among his own ordinary companions. ”

“ Go, Haigh, certainly; and every man I can spare shall go, as Pater says. We have got lazy and luxurious up here of late. It’ll do some of these youngsters good to go back to the old days, when a man’s life and the fate of the province depended on his eye and his sword. Not but that I have a fine set of young fellows just now. They all want to come up here—flattering, isn’t it?—and I have to thin ’em out.” He laughed, and so did Sir Dugald, who had heard strange tales of the General’s methods of weeding out the recruits who offered themselves to him. “But how long can you stay, Haigh? ”

“ Eccentricity Lord Dudley had inherited from his father, and perhaps from his mother, who in her later days was intemperate. He was always shy, but as he grew older his manner became noticeably strange. He was given to soliloquies—a habit said to have been caught from Dugald Stewart—and as he rehearsed to himself what he was going to say to others in two voices, a gruff and a shrill one (Moore, Memoirs, iv. 87) , it was said, ‘It is only Dudley talking to Ward.’ His absence of mind, even when entertaining friends, as he constantly did, gave rise to numberless stories. ”

“ Mart does not think about Lavender the way Mr. Dugald taught me to think. She can tell the grandest stories of the sea because her father and grandfather were fishermen who went out on big boats and her father was lost at sea so she is an aristocrat, too. She is going to show me how to dig clams tomorrow. And we are going to the moving pictures on Saturday. It seems very queer and like home to have moving pictures here but Mr. Dugald says they are like the poor. To quote him exactly, ‘Alas, the movies—like the poor, we have always with us!’ He says very queer things. ”

“ From the time of the completion of the new dike dated the Scotchman's troubles. His cattle one year, his crops another, seemed to find the seasons set against them. Dugald's prudence, watchfulness, and untiring industry minimized every stroke; nevertheless, things went steadily to the worse.
It was Destiny versus Dugald McIntyre, and with true Scottish determination Dugald braced himself to the contest. He made a brave fight; but wherever there was a doubtful point at issue, the Court Invisible ruled inexorably and without a scruple against the possessor of the "Eye of Gluskâp." ”

“ The weight on the king's beam is six tons thirteen hundred weight.
—
Dugald Stewart, the celebrated metaphysician, of whom Scotland has just reason to be proud, died a short time since at Edinburgh, at the age of seventy-five. He recently published two volumes, of which a distinguished gentleman in Edinburgh thus speaks:—"June 16. Dugald Stewart is to be buried to-morrow. A great light is gone out, or rather gone down,—for its glory will long be in the sky, though its orb be no more visible above the horizon. ”

“ Like the fantastic and giant shapes which, in a thick fog, the imagination lends to a block of stone or to the stump of a tree, they produce, while the illusion lasts, the same effect with truths and realities ”

“ The study of the Roman Law, which, from a variety of causes, natural as well as accidental, became, in the course of the twelfth century, an object of general pursuit, shot a strong and auspicious ray of intellectual light across the surrounding darkness. No study could then have been presented to the curiosity of men, more happily adapted to improve their taste, to enlarge their views, or to invigorate their reasoning powers ”

“ But it is a question whether the revolutions that are past, or those which must hereafter take place, have been, or can be, of any utility to the human race. Will they add to the tranquillity, to the enjoyments, and to the happiness of mankind? ”

“ The long interval, commonly known by the name of the middle ages, which immediately preceded the revival of letters in the western part of Europe, forms the most melancholy blank which occurs, from the first dawn of recorded civilisation, in the intellectual and moral history of the human race. ”

“ Locke, "the first and most general, as well as natural, division of the objects of our understanding; for a man can employ his thoughts about nothing but either the contemplation of things themselves, for the discovery of truth, or about the things in his own power, which are his own actions, for the attainment of his own ends ”

“ The object of a public teacher is no longer to inculcate a particular system of dogmas, but to prepare his pupils for exercising their own judgments; to exhibit to them an outline of the different sciences, and to suggest subjects for their future examination. ”

“ Nous sommes trop convaincus de l'arbitraire qui régenera toujours dans une pareille division, pour croire que notre système soit l'unique ou le meilleur; il nous suffira que notre travail ne soit pas entièrement désapprouvé par les bons espirits. ”

“ Is not the one the appropriate field and province of observation,—a power habitually awake to all the perceptions and impressions of the bodily organs? and does not the other fall exclusively under the cognizance of reflection,—an operation which inverts all the ordinary habits of the understanding, abstracting the thoughts from every sensible object, and even striving to abstract them from every sensible image? ”

“ It is only, too, in such a state of society, that education and books are likely to increase the sum of human happiness; for while these advantages are confined to one privileged description of individuals, they but furnish them with an additional engine for debasing and misleading the minds of their inferiors. ”