have to do with religion, is to be themselves under its power; all that
Christians, as such, have to do with the State, is to be good citizens.

The fourth epoch of his personal life I would date from his second
marriage. As I said before, no man was ever happier in his wives. They
had much alike in nature,--only one could see the Divine wisdom of his
first wife being his first, and his second his second; each did best in
her own place and time. His marriage with Miss Crum was a source of
great happiness and good not only to himself, but to us his first
children. She had been intimately known to us for many years, and was
endeared to us long before we saw her, by her having been, as a child
and girl, a great favorite of our own mother. The families of my
grandfather Nimmo, and of the Crums, Ewings, and Maclaes, were very
intimate. I have heard my father tell, that being out at Thornliebank
with my mother, he asked her to take a walk with him to the Rouken, a
romantic waterfall and glen up the burn. My mother thought they might
take "Miss Margaret" with them, and so save appearances, and with Miss
Crum, then a child of ten, holding my father's hand, away the three
went!

So you may see that no one could be nearer to being our mother; and she
was curiously ingenious, and completely successful in gaining our
affection and regard. I have, as a boy, a peculiarly pleasant
remembrance of her, having been at Thornliebank when about fourteen, and
getting that impression of her gentle, kind, wise, calm, and happy
nature--her entire lovableness--which it was our privilege to see
ministering so much to my father's comfort. That fortnight in 1824 or
1825 is still to me like the memory of some happy dream; the old
library, the big chair in which I huddled myself up for hours with the
New Arabian Nights, and all the old-fashioned and unforgotten books I
found there, the ample old garden, the wonders of machinery and skill
going on in "the works," the large water-wheel going its stately rounds
in the midst of its own darkness, the petrifactions I excavated in the
bed of the burn, _ammonites_, etc., and brought home to my museum (!);
the hospitable lady of the house, my hereditary friend, dignified,
anxious and kind; and above all, her only daughter who made me a sort of
pet, and was always contriving some unexpected pleasure,--all this feels
to me even now like something out of a book.

My father's union with Miss Crum was not only