Perthshire in bygone days

Xll PERTHSHIRE IN BYGONE DAYS.
and necessarily antagonistic to everything that is prosperous,
has expanded, until it has reached the footsteps of the
throne, and every citizen, short of the good Queen herself, —
from the Knight of the Garter to the pauper by the wayside, —
claims equally the application of the monosyllable. "While
denying to any class the title of being exclusively good, they
all repudiate the accusation, as applied to themselves, of
being necessarily exclusively bad.
No one can accuse me of stabbing in the dark. Indeed, I
do not intend to stab at all. There cannot possibly be a
more gratuitous task than writing a man down, because,
if he deserves it, he is not worth it ; and, as an inevitable
corollary, if he is worth it, he does not deserve it. I do not
pretend to have found mankind all alike. Nay ! Many men
are driven by necessity to do deeds that their better nature
puts far from them ; and I have also discovered that no
amount of riches or prosperity will bestow heart where all
is originally empty as the bubbles that boys blow at school.
Gossiping, prying and speculating are by common consent
voted improper, yet the rate at which they are practised is
more than a match for that at which they are censured.
The abuse of them leads to great inconvenience and many
heart-burnings, but the same arise from the over-working of
many of our blessings ; and abstractly, it is not difficult to
show that the three decried tendencies are compatible with
the very highest state of our common nature. The climax
of the first great drama of human life is narrated in the sixth
verse of the third chapter of Genesis. Up to that climax,
all was innocence. Yet, (before it, we find Eve gossiping
with the Serpent, and telling him everything; and prying,
for she went to examine one of the interdicted trees, and
found that it was " pleasant to the eye, and good for food ;"
and speculating on the comparative verity of the two state-
ments, — " Ye shall not eat of it, lest ye die," and "Ye shall
not surely die." If it is argued that Eve was all the time
acting under the influence of the Serpent, the Fall does not
date from the eating of the forbidden fruit, and Milton's
noble lines —
She pluck'd, she eat,
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat,
Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe.
That all was lost,
— apply to the wrong scene of the terrible drama, The only
way of getting over the difficulty is by pronouncing " Gossip-