hose
whom he supposed guilty of entertaining similar tenets, and the scoffers
at religion by whom he was sometimes assailed, he usually termed the
generation of vipers. Conversing with others, he was grave and
sententious, not without a cast of severity. But he is said never to have
been observed to give way to violent passion, excepting upon one
occasion, when a mischievous truant-boy defaced with a stone the nose of
a cherub's face, which the old man was engaged in retouching. I am in
general a sparer of the rod, notwithstanding the maxim of Solomon, for
which school-boys have little reason to thank his memory; but on this
occasion I deemed it proper to show that I did not hate the child.--But I
must return to the circumstances attending my first interview with this
interesting enthusiast.

"In accosting Old Mortality, I did not fail to pay respect to his years
and his principles, beginning my address by a respectful apology for
interrupting his labours. The old man intermitted the operation of the
chisel, took off his spectacles and wiped them, then, replacing them on
his nose, acknowledged my courtesy by a suitable return. Encouraged by
his affability, I intruded upon him some questions concerning the
sufferers on whose monument he was now employed. To talk of the exploits
of the Covenanters was the delight, as to repair their monuments was the
business, of his life. He was profuse in the communication of all the
minute information which he had collected concerning them, their wars,
and their wanderings. One would almost have supposed he must have been
their contemporary, and have actually beheld the passages which he
related, so much had he identified his feelings and opinions with theirs,
and so much had his narratives the circumstantiality of an eye-witness.

"'We,' he said, in a tone of exultation,--'we are the only true whigs.
Carnal men have assumed that triumphant appellation, following him whose
kingdom is of this world. Which of them would sit six hours on a wet
hill-side to hear a godly sermon? I trow an hour o't wad staw them. They
are ne'er a hair better than them that shamena to take upon themsells the
persecuting name of bludethirsty tories. Self-seekers all of them,
strivers after wealth, power, and worldly ambition, and forgetters alike
of what has been dree'd and done by the mighty men who stood in the gap
in the great day of wrath. Nae wonder they dread the accomplishment of
what was spoken by the