But besides what I have said of them, the people of
Scotland hold in the world's repute--signally so--the name of a
religious people. Many of them, the descendants of the old covenanters,
heirs of the stern zeal which took up arms for the purity of the
national faith--still tinged, it may be, by the breath of the flame that
then passed over the land--retain a certain severity of religious
judgment in questions of moral transgression, which is known to make a
part of hereditary Scottish manners--especially in rural districts,
where manners best retain their stamp. But the sound natural
understanding of the Scottish peasant, I use the liberty to say, admits,
to take their place at the side of one another, objects of his liberal
and comprehensive regard, which might appear, to superficial observation
and shallow judgment, to stand upon such different grounds, as that the
approbation of the one should exclude the admiration of the other. But
not so. Nature in him is various as it is vigorous. He does not, with an
over-jealous scrutiny, vainly try to reduce into seeming consistency
affections spontaneously springing from many sources. Truth lies at the
bottom; and, conscious of truth, he does not mistrust or question his
own promptings. An awful reverence, the acknowledgment of a Law without
appeal or error--Supreme, Sacred, Irresistible--rules in his judgment
of other men's actions, and of his own. Nevertheless, under shelter and
sanction of that rule, he feels, loves, admires, like a man. Religion
has raised and guards in him--it does not extinguish--the natural human
heart. If the martyrs of his worship to him are holy--holy, too, are his
country's heroes. And holy her poets--if such she have--who have
sung--as during his too short life above them all sang Burns--for
Scotland's sake. Dear is the band that ties the humbly educated man to
the true national poet. To many in the upper classes he is, perhaps, but
one among a thousand artificers of amusement who entertain and scatter
the tedium of their idler hours. To the peasant the book lies upon his
shelf a household treasure. There he finds depicted himself--his own
works and his own ways. There he finds a cordial for his drooping
spirits, nutriment for his wearied strength. Burns is his brother--his
helper in time of need, when fretfulness and impatience are replaced
with placidity by his strains, or of a sudden with a mounting joy. And
far oftener than they who know not ou