d of clog
or drawback in the mysterious providence of God affixed to bards, and
distinctly probative of poetical genius. To appreciate the simplicity of
their mutual admiration it was necessary to hear Clem, arrived upon one
of his visits, and dealing in a spirit of continuous irony with the
affairs and personalities of that great city of Glasgow where he lived
and transacted business. The various personages, ministers of the
church, municipal officers, mercantile big-wigs, whom he had occasion
to introduce, were all alike denigrated, all served but as reflectors to
cast back a flattering side-light on the house of Cauldstaneslap. The
Provost, for whom Clem by exception entertained a measure of respect, he
would liken to Hob. "He minds me o' the laird there," he would say. "He
has some of Hob's grand, whunstane sense, and the same way with him of
steiking his mouth when he's no very pleased." And Hob, all unconscious,
would draw down his upper lip and produce, as if for comparison, the
formidable grimace referred to. The unsatisfactory incumbent of St.
Enoch's Kirk was thus briefly dismissed: "If he had but twa fingers o'
Gib's, he would waken them up." And Gib, honest man! would look down and
secretly smile. Clem was a spy whom they had sent out into the world of
men. He had come back with the good news that there was nobody to
compare with the Four Black Brothers, no position that they would not
adorn, no official that it would not be well they should replace, no
interest of mankind, secular or spiritual, which would not immediately
bloom under their supervision. The excuse of their folly is in two
words: scarce the breadth of a hair divided them from the peasantry. The
measure of their sense is this: that these symposia of rustic vanity
were kept entirely within the family, like some secret ancestral
practice. To the world their serious faces were never deformed by the
suspicion of any simper of self-contentment. Yet it was known. "They hae
a guid pride o' themsel's!" was the word in the country-side.

Lastly, in a Border story, there should be added their "two-names." Hob
was The Laird. "Roy ne puis, prince ne daigne"; he was the laird of
Cauldstaneslap--say fifty acres--_ipsissimus_. Clement was Mr. Elliott,
as upon his door-plate, the earlier Dafty having been discarded as no
longer applicable, and indeed only a reminder of misjudgment and the
imbecility of the public; and the youngest, in honour of his perpetual