he pedants of
Oxford hailed both--ay, and the Pope, too, as soon as Scott had made the
old fellow fascinating, through particular novels, more especially the
"Monastery" and "Abbot." Then the quiet, respectable, honourable Church
of England would no longer do for the pedants of Oxford; they must belong
to a more genteel church--they were ashamed at first to be downright
Romans--so they would be Lauds. The pale-looking, but exceedingly
genteel non-juring clergyman in Waverley was a Laud; but they soon became
tired of being Lauds, for Laud's Church, gew-gawish and idolatrous as it
was, was not sufficiently tinselly and idolatrous for them, so they must
be Popes, but in a sneaking way, still calling themselves
Church-of-England men, in order to batten on the bounty of the church
which they were betraying, and likewise have opportunities of corrupting
such lads as might still resort to Oxford with principles uncontaminated.

So the respectable people, whose opinions are still sound, are, to a
certain extent, right when they say that the tide of Popery, which has
flowed over the land, has come from Oxford. It did come immediately from
Oxford, but how did it get to Oxford? Why, from Scott's novels. Oh!
that sermon which was the first manifestation of Oxford feeling, preached
at Oxford some time in the year '38 by a divine of a weak and confused
intellect, in which Popery was mixed up with Jacobitism! The present
writer remembers perfectly well, on reading some extracts from it at the
time in a newspaper, on the top of a coach, exclaiming--"Why, the
simpleton has been pilfering from Walter Scott's novels!"

O Oxford pedants! Oxford pedants! ye whose politics and religion are
both derived from Scott's novels! what a pity it is that some lad of
honest parents, whose mind ye are endeavouring to stultify with your
nonsense about "Complines and Claverse," has not the spirit to start up
and cry, "Confound your gibberish! I'll have none of it. Hurrah for the
Church, and the principles of my _father_!"

CHAPTER VII--Same Subject continued.

Now what could have induced Scott to write novels tending to make people
Papists and Jacobites, and in love with arbitrary power? Did he think
that Christianity was a gaudy mummery? He did not, he could not, for he
had read the Bible; yet was he fond of gaudy mummeries, fond of talking
about them. Did he believe that the Stuarts were a good family, and fit
to govern a country l