"
"However," said Roland Graeme, "as the Catholics say they do not
worship wood or stone, but only as emblems of the holy saints, and not
as things holy in themselves----"
"Pshaw! pshaw!" answered the falconer; "a rush for their prating.
They told us another story when these baptized idols of theirs brought
pike-staves and sandalled shoon from all the four winds, and whillied
the old women out of their corn and their candle ends, and their
butter, bacon, wool, and cheese, and when not so much as a gray groat
escaped tithing."
Roland Graeme had been long taught, by necessity, to consider his form
of religion as a profound secret, and to say nothing whatever in its
defence when assailed, lest he should draw on himself the suspicion of
belonging to the unpopular and exploded church. He therefore suffered
Adam Woodcock to triumph without farther opposition, marvelling in his
own mind whether any of the goblins, formerly such active agents,
would avenge his rude raillery before they left the valley of
Glendearg. But no such consequences followed. They passed the night
quietly in a cottage in the glen, and the next day resumed their route
to Edinburgh.
Chapter the Seventeenth.
Edina! Scotia's darling seat,
All hail thy palaces and towers,
Where once, beneath a monarch's feet,
Sate legislation's sovereign powers.
BURNS.
"This, then, is Edinburgh?" said the youth, as the fellow-travellers
arrived at one of the heights to the southward, which commanded a view
of the great northern capital--"This is that Edinburgh of which we
have heard so much!"
"Even so," said the falconer; "yonder stands Auld Reekie--you may see
the smoke hover over her at twenty miles' distance, as the gosshawk
hangs over a plump of young wild-ducks--ay, yonder is the heart of
Scotland, and each throb that she gives is felt from the edge of
Solway to Duncan's-bay-head.
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