secret looking
back with bitter remorse to the period of his youth, during which he had
nourished a virtuous though unfortunate attachment.
    »Alas! what are we,« said Morton, »that our best and most praiseworthy
feelings can be thus debased and depraved - that honourable pride can sink into
haughty and desperate indifference for general opinion, and the sorrow of
blighted affection inhabit the same bosom which license, revenge, and rapine,
have chosen for their citadel? But it is the same throughout: the liberal
principles of one man sink into cold and unfeeling indifference: the religious
zeal of another hurries him into frantic and savage enthusiasm. Our resolutions,
our passions, are like the waves of the sea, and, without the aid of Him who
formed the human breast, we cannot say to its tides, Thus far shall ye come, and
no farther.«
    While he thus moralised, he raised his eyes, and observed that Burley stood
before him.
    »Already awake?« said that leader - »It is well, and shows zeal to tread the
path before you. What papers are these?« he continued.
    Morton gave him some brief account of Cuddie's successful marauding party,
and handed him the pocket-book of Bothwell, with its contents. The Cameronian
leader looked with some attention on such of the papers as related to military
affairs, or public business; but when he came to the verses, he threw them from
him with contempt.
    »I little thought,« he said, »when, by the blessing of God, I passed my
sword three times through the body of that arch tool of cruelty and persecution,
that a character so desperate and so dangerous could have stooped to an art as
trifling as it is profane. But I see that Satan can blend the most different
qualities in his well-beloved and chosen agents, and that the same hand which
can wield a club or a slaughter-weapon against the godly in the valley of
destruction, can touch a tinkling lute, or a gittern, to soothe the ears of the
dancing daughters of perdition in their Vanity Fair.«
    »Your ideas of duty, then,« said Morton, »exclude love of the fine arts,
which have been supposed in general to purify and to elevate the mind?«
    »To me, young man,« answered Burley, »and to those who think as I do, the
pleasures of this world, under whatever name disguised, are vanity, as its
grandeur and power are a snare. We have but one object on earth, and that is