Shepherd. No, Mr North, no loupin; for it seems as if it were nature's ain Sabbath, and the verra waters were at rest. Look down upon the vale profound, and the stream is without motion! No doubt, if you were walking along the bank, it would be murmuring with your feet. But here—here up among the hills, we can imagine it asleep, even like the well within reach of my staff!

North. Tickler, pray make less noise, if you can, in drinking, and also in putting down your tumbler. You break in upon the repose of James's picture.

Shepherd. Perhaps a bit bonny butterfly is resting, wi' faulded wings, on a gowan, no a yard frae your cheek; and noo, waukening out o' a simmer dream, floats awa in its wavering beauty, but as if unwilling to leave its place of mid-day sleep, comin back and back, and roun' and roun', on this side and that side, and ettlin' in its capricious happiness to fasten again on some brighter floweret, till the same breath o' wund that lifts up your hair sae refreshingly catches the airy voyager, and wafts her away into some other nook of her ephemeral paradise.

Tickler. I did not know that butterflies inhabited the region of snow.

Shepherd. Ay, and mony million moths; some o' as lovely green as of the leaf of the moss-rose, and ithers bright as the blush with which she salutes the dewy dawn; some yellow as the long steady streaks that lie below the sun at set, and ithers blue as the sky before his orb has westered. Spotted, too, are all the glorious creatures' wings-say rather, starred wi' constellations! Yet, O sirs, they are but creatures o' a day!

North. Go on with the calm, James-the calm!

Shepherd. Gin a pile o' grass straughtens itself in silence, you hear it distinctly. I'm thinkin that was the noise o' a beetle gaun to pay a visit to a freen on the ither side o' that mossy stane. The melting dew quakes! Ay, sing awa, my bonny bee, maist industrious o' God's creatures! Dear me, the heat is ower muckle for him; and he burrows himsel in amang a tuft o' grass, like a beetle panting! and noo invisible a' but the yellow doup o' him. I too feel drowsy, and will go to sleep amang the mountain solitude.

North. Not with such a show of clouds

1 Ettlin-intending, attempting.

Shepherd. No! not with such a show of clouds. A congregation of a million might worship in that Cathedral! What a dome! And is not that flight of steps magnificent? My imagination sees a crowd of white-robed spirits ascending to the inner shrine of the temple. Hark-a bell tolls! Yonder it is, swinging to and fro, half-minute time, in its tower of clouds. The great air-organ 'gins to blow its pealing anthemand the overcharged spirit falling from its vision, sees nothing but the pageantry of earth's common vapours-that ere long will melt in showers, or be wafted away in darker masses over the distance of the sea. Of what better stuff, O Mr North, are made all our waking dreams? Call not thy Shepherd's strain fantastic; but look abroad over the workday world, and tell him where thou seest aught more steadfast or substantial than that cloud-cathedral, with its flight of vapour-steps, and its mist towers, and its air-organ, now all gone for ever, like the idle words that imaged the transitory and delusive glories.

Tickler. Bravo, Shepherd, bravo! You have nobly vindicated the weather as a topic of conversation. What think you of the Theatre-Preaching-Politics-Magazines and Reviews, and the threatened Millennium?

Shepherd. Na, let me tak my breath. What think ye, Mr Tickler, yoursel, o' preachin?

Tickler. No man goes to church more regularly than I do; but the people of Scotland are cruelly used by their ministers. No sermon should exceed half-an-hour at the utmost. That is a full allowance.

North. The congregation, if assured that the sermon would stop within that period of time, would all prick up their ears, and keep their eyes open during the whole performance. But when there is no security against an hour, or even an hour and a half, the audience soon cease to deserve that name, and the whole discourse is lost.

Tickler. Then, most ministers do drawl, or drivel, or cant after a very inexcusable fashion. A moderate degree of animation would carry almost any preacher through half-anhour agreeably to an audience-yet is it not true, that, generally speaking, eyelids begin to fall under ten minutes, or from that to a quarter of an hour? Why is it thus ? Shepherd. What yawns have I not seen in kirks! women, at least the young anes, dinna like to open their

The

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SLEEPING IN CHURCH:

mouths verra wide, for it's no becoming, and they're feared the lads may be glowering at them; so they just pucker up their bit lips, draw in their breath, haud doun their heads, and put up their hauns to their chafts, to conceal a suppressed gaunt, and then straughtenin themsels up, pretend to be hearkenin to the practical conclusions.

2

Tickler. And pray, James, what business have you to be making such observations during divine service?

Shepherd. I'm speakin o' ither years, Mr Tickler, and human nature's the same noo as in the Ninety-eight. As for the auld wives, they lay their big-bonneted heads on their shouther, and fa' ower into a deep sleep at ance; yet you'll never hear a single ane among them committin a snore. I've often wondered at that, for maist o' the cummers hae sonorous noses when lyin beside the gudeman, and may be heard through a' the house, as regular as clock-wark.

Tickler. Yes, James, the power of the mind over itself in sleep is indeed inexplicable. The worthy fat old matron says to herself, as her eyes are closing, "I must not snore in the kirk;" and she snores not-at the most, a sort of snuffle. How is this?

Shepherd. Noo and then you'll see an ill-faured, pockmarked, black-a-viced hizzie in the front laft, opposite the poupit, wha has naething to houp frae our side o' the house, openin the great muckle ugly mouth o' her, like that o' a bull-trout in Tarras Moss, as if she were ettlin to swallow the minister.

North. James-James-spare the softer sex!

Shepherd. But the curiousest thing to observe about the lasses, when they are gettin drowsy during sermon, is their een. First a glazedness comes ower them, and the lids fa' doun, and are lifted up at the rate o' about ten in the minute. Then the poor creatures gie their heads a shake, and, unwillin to be overcome, try to find out the verse the minister may be quotin; but a' in vain, for the hummin stillness o' the kirk subdues them into sleep, and the sound o' the preacher is in their lugs like that o' a waterfa’.

North. Your words, James, are like poppy and mandragora. Shepherd. Then, a'thegither inconscious o' what they're doin, they fix their glimmerin een upon your face, as if they 1 Chafts-jaws.

2 Gaunt-yawn.

were dyin for love o' you, and keep nid-noddin upon you, for great part o' ane o' the dizzen divisions o' the discourse. You may gie a bit lauch at them wi' the corner o' your ee, or touch their fit wi' yours aneath the table, and they'll never sae much as ken you're in the same seat; and, finally, the soft rounded chin draps down towards the bonny bosom; the blue-veined violet eyelids close the twilight whose dewy fall it was sae pleasant to behold; the rose-bud lips, slightly apart, reveal teeth pure as lily leaves, and the bonny innocent is as sound asleep as her sister at hame in its rockin craddle.

North. My dear James, there is so much feeling in your description, that, bordering though it be on the facetious, it yet leaves a pleasant impression on my mind of the Sabbathservice in one of our lowly kirks.

Shepherd. Far be it frae me or mine, Mr North, to treat wi' levity ony sacred subject. But gin folk wull sleep in the kirk, where's the harm in saying that they do so? My ain opinion is, that the mair dourly you set yoursel to listen to a no verra bricht discoorse, as if you had taken an oath to devour't frae stoop to roop, the mair certain sure you are o' fa'in ower into a deep lang sleep. The verra attitude o' leanin back, and stretching out your legs, and fixing your een in ae direction, is a maist dangerous attitude; and then, gin the minister has ony action,-say, jookin down his head, or see-sawin wi' his hauns, or leanin ower, as if he wanted to speak wi' the precentor, or keepin his een fixed on the roof, as if there were a hole in't lettin in the licht o' heaven, -or turnin first to the ae side and then to the ither, that the congregation may hae an equal share o' his front physiognomy as weel's his side face,-or staunin bolt upright in the verra middle o' the poupit, without ever ance movin ony mair than gin he were a corp set up on end by some cantrip,1 and lettin out the dry, dusty moral apothegms wi' ae continued and monotonous girn,-oh! Mr North, Mr North, could even an evil conscience keep awake under such soporifics, ony mair than the honestest o' men, were the banns cried for the third time, and he gaun to be married on the Monday morning?

North. Yet, after all, James, I believe country congregations are, in general, very attentive.

Shepherd. Ay, ay, sir. If twa are sleepin, ten are wauken; 1 Cantrip-magical spell.

VOL. I.

L

162

POPULAR PREACHERS.

and I seriously think that mair than ae half o' them that's sleepin enter into the spirit o' the sermon. You see they a' hear the text, and the introductory remarks, and the heads; and, fa'in asleep in a serious and solemn mood, they carry the sense alang wi' them; neither can they be said no to hear an accompanying soun', so that it wadna be just fair to assert that they lose the sermon they dinna listen to; for thochts, and ideas, and feelings, keep floatin doun alang the stream o' silent thocht, and when they awaken at the "Amen," their minds, if no greatly instructed, hae been tranquilleezed; they join loudly in the ensuing psalm, and without remembering mony o' the words, carry hame the feck' o' the meaning o' the discourse, and a' the peculiarities o' the doctrine.

North. I never heard a bad sermon in a country church in my life.

Shepherd. Nor me neither. Oh, man, it's great nonsense a' that talk about preachin that gangs on in Embro'. Simplicity, sincerity, and earnestness, are a' I ask frae ony preacher. Our duty is plain, and it requires neither great genius nor great erudition to teach and enforce it. To me nae mair disgusting sight than a cretur thinkin o' himsel, and the great appearance he is makin afore his brother-worms!

Tickler. The popular preacher has written his sermon according to the rules of rhetoric, and for the sake of effect. He chuckles inwardly before he delivers the blow that tells; and at the close of every climax the inward man exclaims, "What a fine boy am I!"

North. He dares some antagonist to the fight who has been dead for a hundred years-digs up such of his bones as are yet unmouldered, and erects them into a skeleton - figure veiled with its cerements. There stands the champion of infidelity; and there the defender of the Faith! Twenty to one - Flesh against Bones—and at the first facer, Hume or Voltaire is grassed, and gives in.

Tickler. The pride of the presbytery is in high condition, and kicks his prostrate foe till the shroud rings again like a bag of bones.

2

Shepherd. Then, when the kirk scales, what a speerin3 o' questions about the discourse! "Oh! wasna the doctor wasna he beautifu' about

great the day?" "Oh! Mem,

1 The feck-the chief part.

2 The kirk scales-the congregation disperses.

3 Speerin-asking.