comes immediately to him a cause of failure in
charity.

"Yon divine has another air from powerful Master Rollock, and Mess
David Black of North Leith, and sic like. Alack-a-day, wha can ken,
if it please your lordship, whether sic prayers as the Southrons
read out of their auld blethering black mess-book there, may not be
as powerful to invite fiends, as a right red-het prayer warm from
the heart may be powerful to drive them away; even as the evil
spirit was driven by the smell of the fish's liver from the bridal
chamber of Sara, the daughter of Raguel!"

The scene in which this speech occurs is one of Scott's most finished
pieces, showing with supreme art how far the weakness of Richie's
superstitious formality is increased by his being at the time partially
drunk!

It is on the other hand to be noted to his credit, for an earnest and
searching Bible-reader, that he quotes the Apocrypha. Not so gifted
Gilfillan,--

"But if your honor wad consider the case of Tobit--!"

"Tobit!" exclaimed Gilfillan with great heat; "Tobit and his dog
baith are altogether heathenish and apocryphal, and none but a
prelatist or a papist would draw them into question. I doubt I hae
been mista'en in you, friend."

Gilfillan and Fairservice are exactly alike, and both are distinguished
from Moniplies in their scornfully exclusive dogmatism, which is indeed
the distinctive plague-spot of the lower evangelical sect everywhere,
and the worst blight of the narrow natures, capable of its zealous
profession. In Blattergowl, on the contrary, as his name implies, the
_doctrinal_ teaching has become mere Blather, Blatter, or patter--a
string of commonplaces spoken habitually in performance of his clerical
function, but with no personal or sectarian interest in them on his
part.

"He said fine things on the duty o' resignation to the will of God--that
did he"; but his own mind is fixed under ordinary circumstances only on
the income and privilege of his position. Scott however indicates this
without severity as one of the weaknesses of an established church, to
the general principle of which, as to all other established and
monarchic law, he is wholly submissive, and usually affectionate (see
the description of Colonel Mannering's Edinburgh Sunday), so that
Blattergowl, _out of the pulpit_, does not fail in his serious pastoral
duty, but gives real comfort by his presence and e