ed to suit narrow
capacities, not a single word or note. All the attempts at originating a
cheap literature that have failed, have been attempts pitched too low:
the higher-toned efforts have usually succeeded. If the writer of these
chapters has been in any degree successful in addressing himself as a
journalist to the Presbyterian people of Scotland, it has always been,
not by writing _down_ to them, but by doing his best on all occasions to
write _up_ to them. He has ever thought of them as represented by his
friend William, his uncles, and his Cousin George--by shrewd old John
Fraser, and his reckless though very intelligent acquaintance Cha; and
by addressing to them on every occasion as good sense and as solid
information as he could possibly muster, he has at times succeeded in
catching their ear, and perhaps, in some degree, in influencing their
judgment.

FOOTNOTE:

[10] The extreme picturesqueness of these fires--in part a consequence
of the great height and peculiar architecture of the buildings which
they destroyed--caught the nice eye of Sir Walter Scott. "I can
conceive," we find him saying, in one of his letters of the period, "no
sight more grand or terrible than to see these lofty buildings on fire
from top to bottom, vomiting out flames, like a volcano, from every
aperture, and finally crashing down one after another, into an abyss of
fire, which resembled nothing but hell; for there were vaults of wine
and spirits which set up huge jets of flames whenever they were called
into activity by the fall of these massive fragments. Between the corner
of the Parliament Square and the Tron Church, all is destroyed excepting
some new buildings at the lower extremity."

CHAPTER XVII.

"Beware, Lorenzo, a slow, sudden death."--YOUNG.

There was one special subject which my friend, in our quiet evening
walks, used to urge seriously upon my attention. He had thrown up, under
strong religious impressions, what promised to be so good a business,
that in two years he had already saved money enough to meet the expenses
of a college course of education. And assuredly, never did man determine
on entering the ministry with views more thoroughly disinterested than
his. Patronage ruled supreme in the Scottish Establishment at the time;
and my friend had no influence and no patron; but he could not see his
way clear to join with the Evangelical Dissenters or the Secession; and
believing that the most import