His bonnet was a broad one;
which garb, and which bonnet, had been familiar to the frequenters of “tent preachings” for the greater part of forty years. Such was the father of Rose Jamieson, the beautiful, the meek, the modest Rose Jamieson, whose fame extended for many a mile round her father’s dwelling; and whose fortune perhaps lent her an additional charm in the eyes of the less worthy of her suitors. Beautiful women have been so often described by master-spirits, that it would be presumptuous in me to attempt it. I entreat the reader, therefore, to place before his mind’s eye Milton’s Eve, or Thomson’s Lavinia, or Campbell’s Gertrude, or some of the still more glorious creations of Scott or Shakspeare; ’twill serve my purpose a thousand times better, and save me a world of trouble. Having thus briefly disposed of her bodily and mental attractions, it is needless to add that she was sought in marriage by the flower of the peasantry, and even by many above that rank in life, but shrunk from their society, as the sensitive plant shrinks from the human touch, or the sunflower when its idol withdraws to his ocean bed.
Her pursuits were of an intellectual nature. She loved literature immensely; and though her parent was sufficiently rigid and unbending in general, relative to what he designated the “vanities,” yet he gladly supplied her with the means of gratifying her taste for books, and even condescended at intervals to direct her in the choice of their “mute friends;” but his selections generally consisted of those tremendous folios of divinity, both doctrinal and controversial, which even yet may be seen on the shelves of our more unsophisticated peasantry; and her masculine mind was not slow in making herself mistress of their voluminous contents.
By a careful perusal, however, of the immaculate Volume which the great Founder of Christianity left as a guide to His followers, she perceived that her father’s favourite authors did not always resemble their Divine Master in the milder virtues—such as charity, which thinketh no evil; brotherly kindness, which is ever and anon ready to bear with an erring being; and that humility of spirit which is ever ready to esteem another better than one’s self. As her mind got emancipated from the thraldom of the austere dogmas which had been inculcated on it from infancy, she saw a very great deal to admire, nay, to love, in the doctrines of those very persons whom her father had branded with the name of “prelatists” and “malignants;” and hence she began to examine more closely into the merits of the controversy which raged with so much violence between persons worshipping the same God, through the mediation of the same Redeemer.
The result was, that she saw much to praise and much to blame on both sides, and she endeavoured to cover the failings of either party with the mantle of Christian love. That many of the Episcopalian clergy of that unhappy period, when the lieges were forced to attend the parish church at the point of the bayonet, disgraced their sacred profession, and brought obloquy on the holy name by which they were called, can neither be denied nor disputed. That some of them acted like incarnations of the devil, will not be controverted even in our own times, when truth, like the meridian sun, has dissipated the clouds of error and prejudice; but it is equally true, that there were men among them who adorned their profession by a walk and conversation becoming the Gospel, and who lamented in secret the evils which their circumscribed influence could not avert. Who does not revere the memory of the great and good Leighton, whose philanthropy extended to all mankind—whose whole existence was a living commentary on the great doctrine which was ever on his lips—namely, that the Founder of Christianity came to proclaim “peace on earth, good-will to men?” After the Revolution, when Presbyterianism again unfurled her banners to the mountain-breezes of our country—banners which, alas! had been wofully trampled under foot, and in defending which the best blood in Scotland had been poured out like water—the son of one of the ejected curates settled in the parish of —— as a farmer, retaining, however, the religious principles in which he had been educated, and which were now doubly dear to him in the hour of his church’s adversity.
Like his father, he was a Christian, not only in theory, but in practice; his faith was evinced, not by vague declamation, not by ultra-sanctimoniousness, but by its genuine fruits—namely, good works.
Son succeeded sire in the same district and the same principles; and it seemed that a peculiar blessing had descended on the whole race; as whatever things were lovely, or of good report, these things they did; and the promise to the meek was fulfilled them, for they literally “inherited the earth.”
Their flocks and herds were numerous; their corn and pasture fields ample;—they enlarged their borders, and, at the time this sketch commences, they mingled with the aristocracy of the county.
The youngest son of a branch of this family had studied at the University of Oxford, with a view to the Church of which his family had been such distinguished members. He was a youth not only of ardent piety, but of intense application; he fearlessly grappled with the most abstruse subjects; he divested philosophy of its jargon, and divinity of its verbosity; and nothing was so dear to his heart as when he discovered truth like a diamond amidst the heaps of rubbish which had been accumulating for ages.
But, alas! like the gentle Kirke White, while his mind was expanding and luxuriating amid the treasures of Greece and Rome, and the still more sacred stores of Palestine, his body was declining with corresponding rapidity; therefore, with attenuated frame and depressed spirits, he sought once more his native vale, to inhale health with its invigorating breezes.