ch would have been sacrificing his own
principles, or of the Pretender, which would have been offensive to
those of others. Again, he usually designated the Rebellion as the
AFFAIR of 1745, and spoke of any one engaged in it as a person who had
been OUT at a certain period. [OLD-FASHIONED SCOTTISH CIVILITY.--Such
were literally the points of politeness observed in general society
during the author's youth, where it was by no means unusual in a company
assembled by chance, to find individuals who had borne arms on one
side or other in the civil broils of 1745. Nothing, according to my
recollection, could be more gentle and decorous than the respect
these old enemies paid to each other's prejudices. But in this I speak
generally. I have witnessed one or two explosions.] So that, on the
whole, Mr. Fairford was a man much liked and respected on all sides,
though his friends would not have been sorry if he had given a dinner
more frequently, as his little cellar contained some choice old wine, of
which, on such rare occasions he was no niggard.

The whole pleasure of this good old-fashioned man of method, besides
that which he really felt in the discharge of his daily business, was
the hope to see his son Alan, the only fruit of a union which death
early dissolved, attain what in the father's eyes was the proudest of
all distinctions--the rank and fame of a well-employed lawyer.

Every profession has its peculiar honours, and Mr. Fairford's mind was
constructed upon so limited and exclusive a plan, that he valued nothing
save the objects of ambition which his own presented. He would have
shuddered at Alan's acquiring the renown of a hero, and laughed with
scorn at the equally barren laurels of literature; it was by the path of
the law alone that he was desirous to see him rise to eminence, and
the probabilities of success or disappointment were the thoughts of his
father by day, and his dream by night.

The disposition of Alan Fairford, as well as his talents, were such as
to encourage his father's expectations. He had acuteness of intellect,
joined to habits of long and patient study, improved no doubt by the
discipline of his father's house; to which, generally speaking, he
conformed with the utmost docility, expressing no wish for greater or
more frequent relaxation than consisted with his father's anxious and
severe restrictions. When he did indulge in any juvenile frolics, his
father had the candour to lay the whole b