Different men, different minds. Even from this picture, which is taken from the point of view of one who was by nature critical and prone to dissent, one can see how jolly and amusing such parties must often have been made. Scott liked them; enjoyed them thoroughly. What would one not give to have seen him presiding at one of those 'grave annual dinners of the Bannatyne Club,' where he always insisted on rounds of ladies and gentlemen, and of authors and printers, poets and kings, in regular pairs. The custom, in spite of its drawbacks, fulfilled the great end and aim of sociability: it brought every individual guest into active participation in the evening's proceedings. Nowadays, 'annual' banquets almost always fail in this; being only, as a rule, occasions for more or less falsetto speechifying by a temporary clique of self-regarded notables and their complacent secretary. The toast-system was also favourable to loyalty and patriotism, the health of the King never being neglected at the family dinner-table, even when no guests were present. That custom, we fear, has now fallen away, along with that other and nobler one immortalised in 'The Cotter's Saturday Night.'
Religious Observances--Sunday Attendance at Church--Sunday Books--Breakdown of the System--Alleged Infidelity among Professors--Low State of Morality--Increase of mixed Population--Provincialism.
The externals of religion in Edinburgh underwent a radical change during the boyhood of Walter Scott. The generation that was then retiring from the scene was a generation devoted, in all externals at least, to the cultivation of the religious duties. Rich and poor, old and young, they attended church with unfailing regularity. They held to the strict Puritanic idea of the Sabbath Day. That is, they thought devotion the only proper employment of that day, and considered even a casual appearance on the street during the hours of worship as a disgrace. With them family worship was a general and honoured practice. The reading of any but definitely religious books on Sunday was forbidden in every respectable family. In fact, the Sunday at home in such a family as Scott's was a day of discipline, of which even his good-nature was inclined to complain. What vexed his young soul was 'the gloom of one dull sermon succeeding to another.' The Sunday books were to him a relief and a delight. He retained all his life a favour for Bunyan's Pilgrim, Gesner's Death of Abel, Rowe's Letters, and a few others. Still, in his opinion, the tedium of the day did the young people no good. The scene soon changed. Even in the early eighties we find it noted as 'ungenteel' to go to church in a family capacity. Amusements and idle recreation began to be common. The streets were now crowded during the hours of service. On Sunday evenings they became scenes of noise and disorder. Family worship was abandoned, even, as was whispered, by the clergy themselves. And, as a striking evidence of this rapid declension, it is recorded that church collections had fallen from £1500 to £1000 a year. Critical seniors loudly wailed, but their outcry was as useless as it was earnest. Old times were changed, old manners gone, never to return. The decent, staid, and dignified generation was being hustled from the scene by a flippant, noisy crowd of loose and licentious innovators. Conduct which the elders would have regarded and punished as criminal was no longer atoned for even by the blush of shame.