Redgauntlet | Page 9

traffic but his own.] Now, don't you read this to your worthy father,
Alan--he loves me well enough, I know, of a Saturday night; but he
thinks me but idle company for any other day of the week. And here, I
suspect, lies your real objection to taking a ramble with me through the
southern counties in this delicious weather. I know the good gentleman
has hard thoughts of me for being so unsettled as to leave Edinburgh

before the Session rises; perhaps, too, he quarrels a little--I will not say
with my want of ancestry, but with my want of connexions. He reckons
me a lone thing in this world, Alan, and so, in good truth, I am; and it
seems a reason to him why you should not attach yourself to me, that I
can claim no interest in the general herd.
Do not suppose I forget what I owe him, for permitting me to shelter
for four years under his roof: My obligations to him are not the less, but
the greater, if he never heartily loved me. He is angry, too, that I will
not, or cannot, be a lawyer, and, with reference to you, considers my
disinclination that way as PESSIMI EXEMPLI, as he might say.
But he need not be afraid that a lad of your steadiness will be
influenced by such a reed shaken by the winds as I am. You will go on
doubting with Dirleton, and resolving those doubts with Stewart, ['Sir
John Nisbett of Dirleton's DOUBTS AND QUESTIONS UPON THE
LAW, ESPECIALLLY OF SCOTLAND;' and 'Sir James Stewart's
DIRLETON'S DOUBTS AND QUESTIONS ON THE LAW OF
SCOTLAND RESOLVED AND ANSWERED,' are works of authority
in Scottish jurisprudence. As is generally the case, the doubts are held
more in respect than the solution.] until the cramp speech [Till of late
years, every advocate who catered at the Scottish bar made a Latin
address to the Court, faculty, and audience, in set terms, and said a few
words upon a text of the civil law, to show his Latinity and
jurisprudence. He also wore his hat for a minute, in order to vindicate
his right of being covered before the Court, which is said to have
originated from the celebrated lawyer, Sir Thomas Hope, having two
sons on the bench while he himself remained at the bar. Of late this
ceremony has been dispensed with, as occupying the time of the Court
unnecessarily. The entrant lawyer merely takes the oaths to government,
and swears to maintain the rules and privileges of his order.] has been
spoken more SOLITO from the corner of the bench, and with covered
head--until you have sworn to defend the liberties and privileges of the
College of Justice--until the black gown is hung on your shoulders, and
you are free as any of the Faculty to sue or defend. Then will I step
forth, Alan, and in a character which even your father will allow may
be more useful to you than had I shared this splendid termination of

your legal studies. In a word, if I cannot be a counsel, I am determined
to be a CLIENT, a sort of person without whom a lawsuit would be as
dull as a supposed case. Yes, I am determined to give you your first fee.
One can easily, I am assured, get into a lawsuit--it is only the getting
out which is sometimes found troublesome;--and, with your kind father
for an agent, and you for my counsel learned in the law, and the
worshipful Master Samuel Griffiths to back me, a few sessions shall
not tire my patience. In short, I will make my way into court, even if it
should cost me the committing a DELICT, or at least a QUASI
DELICT.--You see all is not lost of what Erskine wrote, and Wallace
taught.
Thus far I have fooled it off well enough; and yet, Alan, all is not at
ease within me. I am affected with a sense of loneliness, the more
depressing, that it seems to me to be a solitude peculiarly my own. In a
country where all the world have a circle of consanguinity, extending to
sixth cousins at least, I am a solitary individual, having only one kind
heart to throb in unison with my own. If I were condemned to labour
for my bread, methinks I should less regard this peculiar species of
deprivation, The necessary communication of master and servant would
be at least a tie which would attach me to the rest of my kind--as it is,
my very independence seems to enhance the peculiarity of my situation.
I am in the world as a stranger in the crowded coffeehouse, where he
enters, calls for what refreshment he wants, pays his bill,