Note II., p. 213.

The author has made an attempt in this character to draw a picture of
what is too often seen, a wretched being whose heart becomes hardened
and spited at the world, in which she is doomed to experience much
misery and little sympathy. The system of compulsory charity by poor's
rates, of which the absolute necessity can hardly be questioned, has
connected with it on both sides some of the most odious and malevolent
feelings that can agitate humanity. The quality of true charity is not
strained. Like that of mercy, of which, in a large sense, it may be
accounted a sister virtue, it blesses him that gives and him that takes.
It awakens kindly feelings both in the mind of the donor and in that of
the relieved object. The giver and receiver are recommended to each
other by mutual feelings of good-will, and the pleasurable emotions
connected with the consciousness of a good action fix the deed in
recollection of the one, while a sense of gratitude renders it holy to
the other. In the legal and compulsory assessment for the proclaimed
parish pauper, there is nothing of all this. The alms are extorted from
an unwilling hand, and a heart which desires the annihilation, rather
than the relief, of the distressed object. The object of charity,
sensible of the ill-will with which the pittance is bestowed, seizes on
it as his right, not as a favour. The manner of conferring it being
directly calculated to hurt and disgust his feelings, he revenges
himself by becoming impudent and clamorous. A more odious picture, or
more likely to deprave the feelings of those exposed to its influence,
can hardly be imagined; and yet to such a point have we been brought by
an artificial system of society, that we must either deny altogether the
right of the poor to their just proportion of the fruits of the earth,
or afford them some means of subsistence out of them by the institution
of positive law.

Note III., p. 318.

_Non omnis moriar._ Saint Ronan's, since this veracious history was
given to the public, has revived as a sort of _alias_, or second title,
to the very pleasant village of Inverleithen upon Tweed, where there is
a medicinal spring much frequented by visitors. Prizes for some of the
manly and athletic sports, common in the pastoral districts around, are
competed for under the title of the Saint Ronan's Games. Nay, Meg Dods
has produced herself of late from obscurity as authoress of a work on
Cookery, of w