Wardour lived like most country gentlemen in
Scotland, hunted and fished - gave and received dinners - attended races and
county meetings - was a deputy-lieutenant and trustee upon turnpike acts. But,
in his more advanced years, as he became too lazy or unwieldy for field-sports,
he supplied them by now and then reading Scottish history; and, having gradually
acquired a taste for antiquities, though neither very deep nor very correct, he
became a crony of his neighbour, Mr. Oldbuck of Monkbarns, and a joint-labourer
with him in his antiquarian pursuits.
    There were, however, points of difference between these two humourists,
which sometimes occasioned discord. The faith of Sir Arthur, as an antiquary,
was boundless, and Mr. Oldbuck (notwithstanding the affair of the Prætorium at
the Kaim of Kinprunes) was much more scrupulous in receiving legends as current
and authentic coin. Sir Arthur would have deemed himself guilty of the crime of
leze-majesty had he doubted the existence of any single individual of that
formidable bead-roll of one hundred and four kings of Scotland, received by
Boethius, and rendered classical by Buchanan, in virtue of whom James VI.
claimed to rule his ancient kingdom, and whose portraits still frown grimly upon
the walls of the gallery of Holyrood. Now Oldbuck, a shrewd and suspicious man,
and no respecter of divine hereditary right, was apt to cavil at this sacred
list, and to affirm, that the procession of the posterity of Fergus through the
pages of Scottish history, was as vain and unsubstantial as the gleamy pageant
of the descendants of Banquo through the cavern of Hecate.
    Another tender topic was the good fame of Queen Mary, of which the knight
was a most chivalrous assertor, while the esquire impugned it, in spite both of
her beauty and misfortunes. When, unhappily, their conversation turned on yet
later times, motives of discord occurred in almost every page of history.
Oldbuck was, upon principle, a staunch Presbyterian, a ruling elder of the kirk,
and a friend to revolution principles and Protestant succession, while Sir
Arthur was the very reverse of all this. They agreed, it is true, in dutiful
love and allegiance to the sovereign who now fills7 the throne; but this was
their only point of union. It therefore often happened, that bickerings hot
broke out between them, in which Oldbuck was not always able to suppress his
caustic humour, while it would sometimes occur to the Baronet that the
descendant of a German printer, whose sires had »sought the base fellowship of
paltry burghers,« forgot himself, and took