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The monastery ; and, Chronicles of the Canongate
The monastery and Chronicles of the Canongate Author:Sir Walter Scott Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ANSWER THE AUTHOR OF WA VERLEY TO THE FOREGOING LETTER CAPTAIN CLUTTERBUCK Dear Captain— Do not admire that, notwithstanding the distance and c... more »eremony of your address, I return an answer in the terms of familiarity. The truth is, your origin and native country are-better knoflin to me than even to yourself. You derive your respectable parentage, if I am not greatly mistaken, from a land which has afforded much pleasure, as well as profit, to those who have traded to it successfully. I mean that part of the terra incognita which is called the province of Utopia. Its productions, though censured by many (and some who use tea and tobacco without scruple) as idle and unsubstantial luxuries, have nevertheless, like many other luxuries, a general acceptation, and are secretly enjoyed even by those who express the greatest scorn and dislike of them in public. The dram-drinker is often the first to be shocked at the smell of spirits ; it is not unusual to hear old maiden ladies declaim against scandal; the private bookcases of some grave-seeming men would not brook decent eyes ; and many, I say not of the wise and learned, but of those most anxious to seem much, when the spring-lock of their library is drawn, their velvet cap pulled over their ears, their feet insinuated into their turkey slippers, are to be found, were their retreats suddenly intruded upon, busily engaged with the last new novel. I have said, the truly wise and learned disdain these shifts, and will open the said novel as avowedly as they would the lid of their snuff-box. I will only quote one instance, thoughI know a hundred. Did you know the celebrated Watt of Birmingham, Captain Clutterbuck ? I believe not, though, from what I am about to state, he would not have failed to have sought an acquainta...« less