holics--alike anxious for emancipation--should
be at a particular place, at one particular moment of time out of the
twenty-four hours given to man for motion and for rest? Confident are we
that that obese elderly gentleman beside the coachman--whose ample
rotundity is encased in that antique and almost obsolete invention, a
spenser--needed not to have been so carried in a whirlwind to his
comfortable home. Scarcely is there time for pity as we behold an honest
man's wife, pale as putty in the face at a tremendous swing, or lounge,
or lurch of the Highflier, holding like grim death to the balustrades.
But umbrellas, parasols, plaids, shawls, bonnets, and great-coats with
as many necks as Hydra--the Pile of Life has disappeared in a cloud of
dust, and the faint bugle tells that already it has spun and reeled
onwards a mile on its destination.

But here comes a vehicle at a more rational pace. Mercy on us--a hearse
and six horses returning leisurely from a funeral! Not improbable that
the person who has just quitted it, had never, till he was a corpse, got
higher than a single-horse Chay--yet no fewer than half-a-dozen hackneys
must be hired for his dust. But clear the way! "Hurra! hurra! he rides a
race, 'tis for a 'thousand pound!" Another, and another, and
another--all working away with legs and knees, arms and shoulders, on
cart-horses in the Brooze--the Brooze! The hearse-horses take no sort of
notice of the cavalry of cart and plough, but each in turn keeps its
snorting nostrils deep plunged in the pail of meal and water--for well
may they be thirsty--the kirkyard being far among the hills, and the
roads not yet civilised. "May I ask, friend," addressing ourself to the
hearseman, "whom you have had inside?" "Only Dr Sandilands, sir--if you
are going my way, you may have a lift for a dram!" We had always
thought there was a superstition in Scotland against marrying in the
month of May; but it appears that people are wedded and bedded in that
month too--some in warm sheets--and some in cold--cold--cold--dripping
damp as the grave.

But we must up, and off. Not many gentlemen's houses in the parish--that
is to say, old family seats; for of modern villas, or boxes, inhabited
by persons imagining themselves gentlemen, and, for anything we know to
the contrary, not wholly deceived in that belief, there is rather too
great an abundance. Four family seats, however, there certainly are, of
sufficient antiquity to please a l