radical meeting ever held in England—he was an atheist when he came over to us, in the hope of mortifying his own church—but he is now—ho! ho!—a real Catholic devotee—quite afraid of my threats; I made him frequently scourge himself before me. Well, Radicalism does us good service, especially amongst the lower classes, for Radicalism chiefly flourishes amongst them; for though a baronet or two may be found amongst the radicals, and perhaps as many lords—fellows who have been discarded by their own order for clownishness, or something they have done—it incontestably flourishes best among the lower orders. Then the love of what is foreign is a great friend to us; this love is chiefly confined to the middle and upper classes. [{227}] Some admire the French, and imitate them; others must needs be Spaniards, dress themselves up in a zamarra, stick a cigar in their mouths, and say, ‘Carajo.’ Others would pass for Germans; he! he! the idea of any one wishing to pass for a German! but what has done us more service than anything else in these regions—I mean amidst the middle classes—has been the novel, the Scotch novel. The good folks, since they have read the novels, have become Jacobites; and, because all the Jacobs were Papists, the good folks must become Papists also, or, at least, papistically inclined. The very Scotch Presbyterians, since they have read the
novels, are become all but Papists; I speak advisedly, having lately been amongst them. There’s a trumpery bit of a half papist sect, called the Scotch Episcopalian Church, which lay dormant and nearly forgotten for upwards of a hundred years, which has of late got wonderfully into fashion in Scotland, because, forsooth, some of the long-haired gentry of the novels were said to belong to it, such as Montrose and Dundee; and to this the Presbyterians are going over in throngs, traducing and vilifying their own forefathers, or denying them altogether, and calling themselves descendants of—ho! ho! ho!—Scottish Cavaliers!!! I have heard them myself repeating snatches of Jacobite ditties about ‘Bonnie Dundee,’ and—
“‘Come, fill up my cup, and fill up my can,
And saddle my horse, and call up my man.’
There’s stuff for you! Not that I object to the first part of the ditty, it is natural enough that a Scotchman should cry, ‘Come, fill up my cup!’ more especially if he’s drinking at another person’s expense—all Scotchmen being fond of liquor at free cost: but ‘Saddle his horse!!!’—for what purpose I would ask? Where is the use of saddling a horse, unless you can ride him? and where was there ever a Scotchman who could ride?”
“Of course you have not a drop of Scotch blood in your veins,” said I, “otherwise you would never have uttered that last sentence.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” said the man in black;
“you know little of Popery if you imagine that it cannot extinguish love of country, even in a Scotchman. A thorough-going Papist—and who more thorough-going than myself—cares nothing for his country; and why should he? he belongs to a system, and not to a country.”
“One thing,” said I, “connected with you, I cannot understand; you call yourself a thorough-going Papist, yet are continually saying the most pungent things against Popery, and turning to unbounded ridicule those who show any inclination to embrace it.”
“Rome is a very sensible old body,” said the man in black, “and little cares what her children say, provided they do her bidding. She knows several things, and amongst others, that no servants work so hard and faithfully as those who curse their masters at every stroke they do. She was not fool enough to be angry with the Miquelets of Alba, who renounced her, and called her ‘puta’ all the time they were cutting the throats of the Netherlanders. Now, if she allowed her faithful soldiers the latitude of renouncing her, and calling her ‘puta’ in the market-place, think not she is so unreasonable as to object to her faithful priests occasionally calling her ‘puta’ in the dingle.”
“But,” said I, “suppose some one were to tell the world some of the disorderly things which her priests say in the dingle.”