"Their chief characteristic," said the man in black, "is a rage for grandeur and gentility; and that same rage makes us quite sure of them in the long run. Every thing that's lofty meets their unqualified approbation; whilst everything humble, or, as they call it, 'low,' is scouted by them. They begin to have a vague idea that the religion which they have hitherto professed is low; at any rate that it is not the religion of the mighty ones of the earth, of the great kings and emperors whose shoes they have a vast inclination to kiss, nor was used by the grand personages of whom they have read in their novels and romances, their Ivanhoes, their Marmions, and their Ladies of the Lake." "Do you think that the writings of Scott have had any influence in modifying their religious opinions?" "Most certainly I do," said the man in black. "The writings of that man have made them greater fools than they were before. All their conversation now is about gallant knights, princesses, and cavaliers, with which his pages are stuffed--all of whom were Papists, or very high Church, which is nearly the same thing; and they are beginning to think that the religion of such nice sweet-scented gentry must be something very superfine. Why, I know at Birmingham the daughter of an ironmonger, who screeches to the piano the Lady of the Lake's hymn to the Virgin Mary, always weeps when Mary Queen of Scots is mentioned, and fasts on the anniversary of the death of that very wise martyr, Charles the First. Why, I would engage to convert such an idiot to popery in a week, were it worth my trouble. O Cavaliere Gualtiero, avete fatto molto in favore della Santa Sede!" "If he has," said I, "he has done it unwittingly; I never heard before that he was a favourer of the popish delusion." "Only in theory," said the man in black. "Trust any of the clan MacSycophant for interfering openly and boldly in favour of any cause on which the sun does not shine benignantly. Popery is at present, as you say, suing for grace in these regions _in forma pauperis_; but let royalty once take it up, let old gouty George once patronize it, and I would consent to drink puddle-water, if the very next time the canny Scot was admitted to the royal symposium he did not say, 'By my faith, yere Majesty, I have always thought, at the bottom of my heart, that popery, as ill scrapit tongues ca' it, was a very grand religion; I shall be proud to follow your Majesty's example in adopting it.'" "I doubt not," said I, "that both gouty George and his devoted servant will be mouldering in their tombs long before Royalty in England thinks about adopting popery." "We can wait," said the man in black; "in these days of rampant gentility, there will be no want of Kings nor of Scots about them." "But not Walters," said I. {159}