A MORE RATIONAL DAY THAN THE LAST.
The Baron of Bradwardine, mounted on an active and well-managed horse, and seated on a demi-pique saddle, with deep housings to agree with his livery, was no bad representative of the old school.His light-coloured embroidered coat, and superbly barred waistcoat, his brigadier wig, surmounted by a small gold-laced cocked-hat, completed his personal costume; but he was attended by two well-mounted servants on horseback, armed with holster-pistols.
In this guise he ambled forth over hill and valley, the admiration of every farm-yard which they passed in their progress, till, ``low down in a grassy vale,'' they found Davie Gellatley leading two very tall deer greyhounds, and presiding over half-a-dozen curs, and about as many bare-legged and bare-headed boys, who, to procure the chosen distinction of attending on the chase, had not failed to tickle his ears with the dulcet appellation of _Maister Gellatley,_ though probably all and each had hooted him on former occasions in the character of _daft Davie._ But this is no uncommon strain of flattery to persons in office, nor altogether confined to the bare-legged villagers of Tully-Veolan: it was in fashion Sixty Years since, is now, and will be six hundred years hence, if this admirable compound of folly and knavery, called the world, shall be then in existence.
These _gillie-wet-foots,_<*> as they were called, were destined to * A bare-footed Highland lad is called a gillie-wet-foot.Gillie, in * general, means servant or attendant.
beat the bushes, which they performed with so much success, that after half-an-hour's search a roe was started, coursed, and killed; the Baron following on his white horse, like Earl Percy of yore, and magnanimously flaying and embowelling the slain animal (which, he observed, was called by the French chasseurs _faire la cur<e'>e_) with his own baronial _couteau de chasse._ After this ceremony he conducted his guest homeward by a pleasant and circuitous route, commanding an extensive prospect of different villages and houses, to each of which Mr.Bradwardine attached some anecdote of history or genealogy, told in language whimsical from prejudice and pedantry, but often respectable for the good sense and honourable feelings which his narrative displayed, and almost always curious, if not valuable, for the information they contained.
The truth is, the ride seemed agreeable to both gentlemen, because they found amusement in each other's conversation, although their characters and habits of thinking were in many respects totally opposite.Edward, we have informed the reader, was warm in his feelings, wild and romantic in his ideas and in his taste of reading, with a strong disposition towards poetry.
Mr.Bradwardine was the reverse of all this, and piqued himself upon stalking through life with the same upright, starched, stoical gravity which distinguished his evening promenade upon the terrace of Tully-Veolan, where for hours together, the very model of old Hardyknute, Stately stepped he east the wa', And stately stepped he west.
As for literature, he read the classic poets, to be sure, and the Epithalamium of Georgius Buchanan, and Arthur Johnston's Psalms, of a Sunday; and the Delici<ae> Poetarum Scotorum, and Sir David Lindsays Works, and Barboux's Bruce, and Blind Harry's Wallace, and the Gentle Shepherd, and the Cherry and the Slae.But though he thus far sacrificed his time to the Muses, he would, if the truth must be spoken, have been much better pleased had the pious or sapient apothegms, as well as the historical narratives, which these various works contained, been presented to him in the form of simple prose.And he sometimes could not refrain from expressing contempt of the ``vain and unprofitable art of poem-making,'' in which, he said, ``the only one who had excelled in his time was Allan Ramsay, the periwig-maker.''<*>
* The Baron ought to have remembered that the joyous Allan literally * drew his blood from the house of the noble Earl, whom he terms ** Dalhousie of an old descent, * My stoup, my pride, my ornament.
But although Edward and he differed _toto c<ae>lo,_ as the Baron would have said, upon this subject, yet they met upon history as on a neutral ground, in which each claimed an interest.
The Baron, indeed, only cumbered his memory with matters of fact---the cold, dry, hard outlines which history delineates.
Edward, on the contrary, loved to fill up and round the sketch with the colouring of a warm and vivid imagination, which gives light and life to the actors and speakers in the drama of past ages.Yet with tastes so opposite, they contributed greatly to each other's amusement.Mr.Bradwardine's minute narratives and powerful memory supplied to Waverley fresh subjects of the kind upon which his fancy loved to labour, and opened to him a new mine of incident and of character.And he repaid the pleasure thus communicated by an earnest attention, valuable to all story-tellers, more especially to the Baron, who felt his habits of self-respect flattered by it; and sometimes also by reciprocal communications, which interested Mr.Bradwardine, as confirming or illustrating his own favourite anecdotes.
Besides, Mr.Bradwardine loved to talk of the scenes of his youth, which had been spent in camps and foreign lands, and had many interesting particulars to tell of the generals under whom he had served, and the actions he had witnessed.