“And you, magnificent Christians,” I rejoined, “who, by the way, have had your rival Popes, and still have divisions among you, you have already got _more_ to believe than Scripture, tradition, or common sense acknowledge. As to our being 'miscellaneous,' we churchmen have no communion with the sects, though you delight to identify us with them, and though some disloyal teachers among us may 'apply the call of dissent to their own lost sheep, and tinkle back their old women by sounding the brass of the Methodists,' 1 our Church, unswerving, still maintains the old, catholic faith, and earnestly entreats deliverance from all false doctrine, heresy, and schism.”
And so we went on, strophe, and antistrophe, with an occasional epode from Frank (who kindly applauded both parties, encouraging us, more liberally than respectfully, with “_Bravo Babylon!” “Now heretic!_” and the like), and only arrived at unanimity, when it was proposed that we should return and dine.
Our host, Mr. Duncan, told us this evening, with other very interesting details, concerning the Famine of 1847, how that, at a public meeting in the neighbourhood, he had said, somewhat incautiously, that rather than the people should starve, they might take his sheep from the hills; and how that, when want and hunger increased, they kept in remembrance his generous words, and, taking advantage, like Macbeth, of “the unguarded Duncan,” turned ninety of his sheep into mutton.
WE left _Kyle-more_ next morning about 8.30,--the Irishman calling to us from his window, “to give his love to the Bishop of London, and to ask him what he fancied for the Chester Cup,”--travelling on an outside car,--the most pleasant mode of conveyance for two persons, as you are thus perfectly independent, can stop when and where you please, have plenty of room, and can converse agreeably. Frank looked wistfully back at the lake, like the pointer sent home at luncheon, or the hunter you have ridden as your hack to the “meet,” or (a resemblance much more to his taste), a _belle_, reluctantly leaving the ball-room, on the arm of her drowsy but determined Pa.
Now we pass through the severe and solemn scenery of _the Killeries_, compared by Inglis, Barrow, and Miss Martineau, to a Norwegian Fiord, with its lakes so still, and cold, and black, and its mountains so bleak and stern, that even the sea-fowl seemed to have deserted it with the exception of a single cormorant, who looked as though he had committed himself in some disreputable way, and had been banished here for solitary confinement.