These were awful signs of the times, and seemed to say that the world was fast coming to a finis; the ends of the earth appearing to have combined in a great Popish plot of villany. Every man that had a heart to feel, must have trembled amid these threatening, judgment-like, and calamitous events. As for my own part, the depravity of the nations, which most of these scenes showed me, I must say, fell heavily upon my spirit; and I could not help thinking of the old cities of the plain, over the house- tops of which, for their heinous sins and iniquitous abominations, the wrath of the Almighty showered down fire and brimstone from heaven, till the very earth melted and swallowed them up for ever and ever. These added to the number, to be sure; but not that I had never before seen signs and wonders in my time. I had seen the friends of the people,--and the scarce years,--and the bloody gulleteening over-bye among the French blackguards,--and the business of Watt and Downie nearer home, at our own doors almost, in Edinburgh like,--and the calling out of the volunteers,--and divers sea-fights at Camperdown and elsewhere,--and land battles countless,--and the American war, part o't,--and awful murders,--and mock fights in the Duke's Parks,--and highway robberies,--and breakings of all the Ten Commandments, from the first to the last; so that, allowing me to have had but a common spunk of reflection, I must, like others, have cast a wistful eye on the ongoings of men: and, if I had not strength to pour out my inward lamentations, I could not help thinking, with fear and trembling, at the rebellion of such a worm as man, against a Power whose smallest word could extinguish his existence, and blot him out in a twinkling from the roll of living things. But, if I was much affected, the callant Mungo was a great deal more. From the days in which he had lain in his cradle, he had been brought up in a remote and quiet part of the country, far from the bustling of towns, and from man encountering man in the stramash of daily life; so that his heart seemed to pine within him like a flower, for want of the blessed morning dew; and, like a bird that has been catched in a girn among the winter snows, his appetite failed him, and he fell away from his meat and clothes.