This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1833. Excerpt: ... Scotland ever prospers who dares to say ill of the minister. But, in truth, had not the laird been a man whose expectations were formed more from his own wishes than the nature of things, he might have seen, from the first, what was seen by every body else around, that, though naturally anxious, like every well-meaning father, to obtain a comfortable settlement for his favourite daughter, yet the simple fact of Mr. Bannatyne's coming to be assistant minister in the neighbourhood, and accepting, for a time, the hospitality of his house, formed little ground for so extravagant an expectation as that he was shortly to have, in such near relationship, the fastidious and gentlemanly junior minister of Hillington. We can seldom, in this world, receive a gratification to ourselves, without, whether conscious of it or not, giving pain or offence to some other person; so the interesting visits of our clergyman to Lawford House were, without his suspecting it, carefully observed, and enviously felt, by the angry and disarm pointed family at Glaunderston. The idle gossip of his parishioners, however, had far outrun the truth, as to the prospects or the intentions of their pastor in the quarter where he visited; for, instead of the commonplace process of wooing and wedding, such as the ordinary world experience and expect, his mind, even amidst the pleasing excitement of passion, was, as before hinted, plunged into a sea of cares and fears, with which all who seek to enjoy the higher emotions of our nature seldom fail to be painfully tried. When he came to see fully into the state of his own mind, and to conclude, in candid self-examination, that, reason as he might, from this time forth earthly happiness and Rebecca Prior were with him inseparably connected, he, in...