Jock was always a privileged character in attending all sorts of kirks, though many ministers, who dreaded a future sufferance under his relentless caricaturing powers, would have been glad to exclude him. He never seems to pay any attention to the sermon, or even deigns to sit down, like other decent Christians, but wanders constantly about from gallery to gallery, upstairs and downstairs. His erratic habit is not altogether without its use. When he observes any person sleeping during the sermon, he reaches over to the place, and taps him gently on the head with his _kent_ till he awake; should he in any of his future rounds (for he parades as regularly about as a policeman in a large city) observe the drowsy person repeating the offence, he gives him a tremendous thwack over the pate; and he increases the punishment so much at every subsequent offence, that, like the military punishment for desertion, the third infliction almost amounts to death itself. A most laughable incident once occurred in —— church, on a drowsy summer afternoon, when the windows were let down, admitting and emitting a thousand flies, whose monotonous buzz, joined to the somniferous snuffle of Dr. ——, would have been fit music for the bedchamber of Morpheus, even though that honest god was lying ill of the toothache, the gout, or any other equally _woukrife_ disorder. A bailie, who had dined, as is usual in most country towns, between sermons, could not resist the propensity of his nature, and, fairly overpowered, at last was under the necessity of affronting the preacher to his very face, by laying down his head upon the book-board; when his capacious, bald round crown might have been mistaken, at first sight, for the face of the clock placed in the front of the gallery immediately below. Jock was soon at him with his stick, and, with great difficulty, succeeded in rousing him. But the indulgence was too great to be long resisted, and down again went the bailie’s head. This was not to be borne. Jock considered his authority sacred, and feared not either the frowns of elders, nor the more threatening scowls of kirk-officers, when his duty was to be done. So his arm went forth, and the _kent_ descended a second time with little reverence upon the offending sconce; upon which the magistrate started up with an astonished stare, in which the sentiment of surprise was as completely concentrated as in the face of the inimitable Mackay, when he cries out, “Hang a magistrate! My conscience!” The contrast between the bailie’s stupid and drowsy face, smarting and writhing from the blow, which Jock had laid on pretty soundly, and the aspect of the _natural_ himself, who still stood at the head of the pew, shaking his stick, and looking at the magistrate with an air in which authority, admonition, and a threat of further punishment, were strangely mingled, altogether formed a scene of striking and irresistible burlesque; and while the Doctor’s customary