the Kirk of Scotland who had not bent the knee unto Baal, according
to David's expression, or become accessory to the course of national defections,
- union, toleration, patronages, and a bundle of prelatical Erastian oaths which
had been imposed on the church since the Revolution, and particularly in the
reign of »the late woman« (as he called Queen Anne), the last of that unhappy
race of Stuarts. In the good man's security concerning the soundness of the
theological doctrine which his daughter was to hear, he was nothing disturbed on
account of the snares of a different kind, to which a creature so beautiful,
young, and wilful, might be exposed in the centre of a populous and corrupted
city. The fact is, that he thought with so much horror on all approaches to
irregularities of the nature most to be dreaded in such cases, that he would as
soon have suspected and guarded against Effie's being induced to become guilty
of the crime of murder. He only regretted that she should live under the same
roof with such a worldly-wise man as Bartoline Saddletree, whom David never
suspected of being an ass as he was, but considered as one really endowed with
all the legal knowledge to which he made pretension, and only liked him the
worse for possessing it. The lawyers, especially those amongst them who sate as
ruling elders in the General Assembly of the Kirk, had been forward in promoting
the measures of patronage, of the abjuration oath, and others, which, in the
opinion of David Deans, were a breaking down of the carved work of the
sanctuary, and an intrusion upon the liberties of the kirk. Upon the dangers of
listening to the doctrines of a legalised formalist, such as Saddletree, David
gave his daughter many lectures; so much so, that he had time to touch but
slightly on the dangers of chambering, company-keeping, and promiscuous dancing,
to which, at her time of life, most people would have thought Effie more
exposed, than to the risk of theoretical error in her religious faith.
    Jeanie parted from her sister with a mixed feeling of regret, and
apprehension, and hope. She could not be so confident concerning Effie's
prudence as her father, for she had observed her more narrowly, had more
sympathy with her feelings, and could better estimate the temptations to which
she was exposed. On the other hand, Mrs. Saddletree was an observing, shrewd,
notable woman, entitled to exercise over Effie the full authority of a mistress,
and likely to do so strictly,