"Galt, John - The Ayrshire Legatees" - читать интересную книгу автора (Galt John)

was bleak and cold; but we had a good fire in a carron grate in the
middle of the floor, and books to read, so that both body and mind
are therein provided for.

Among the books, I fell in with a History of the Rebellion, anent
the hand that an English gentleman of the name of Waverley had in
it. I was grieved that I had not time to read it through, for it
was wonderful interesting, and far more particular, in many points,
than any other account of that affair I have yet met with; but it's
no so friendly to Protestant principles as I could have wished.
However, if I get my legacy well settled, I will buy the book, and
lend it to you on my return, please God, to the manse.

We were put on shore at Glasgow by breakfast-time, and there we
tarried all day, as I had a power of attorney to get from Miss Jenny
Macbride, my cousin, to whom the colonel left the thousand pound
legacy. Miss Jenny thought the legacy should have been more, and
made some obstacle to signing the power; but both her lawyer and
Andrew Pringle, my son, convinced her, that, as it was specified in
the testament, she could not help it by standing out; so at long and
last Miss Jenny was persuaded to put her name to the paper.

Next day we all four got into a fly coach, and, without damage or
detriment, reached this city in good time for dinner in Macgregor's
hotel, a remarkable decent inn, next door to one Mr. Blackwood, a
civil and discreet man in the bookselling line.

Really the changes in Edinburgh since I was here, thirty years ago,
are not to be told. I am confounded; for although I have both heard
and read of the New Town in the Edinburgh Advertiser, and the Scots
Magazine, I had no notion of what has come to pass. It's surprising
to think wherein the decay of the nation is; for at Greenock I saw
nothing but shipping and building; at Glasgow, streets spreading as
if they were one of the branches of cotton-spinning; and here, the
houses grown up as if they were sown in the seed-time with the corn,
by a drill-machine, or dibbled in rigs and furrows like beans and
potatoes.

To-morrow, God willing, we embark in a smack at Leith, so that you
will not hear from me again till it please Him to take us in the
hollow of His hand to London. In the meantime, I have only to add,
that, when the Session meets, I wish you would speak to the elders,
particularly to Mr. Craig, no to be overly hard on that poor donsie
thing, Meg Milliken, about her bairn; and tell Tam Glen, the father
o't, from me, that it would have been a sore heart to that pious
woman, his mother, had she been living, to have witnessed such a
thing; and therefore I hope and trust, he will yet confess a fault,
and own Meg for his wife, though she is but something of a tawpie.
However, you need not diminish her to Tam. I hope Mr. Snodgrass
will give as much satisfaction to the parish as can reasonably be