o you bring us from Edinburgh, Monkbarns?" said Sir
Arthur; "how wags the world in Auld Reekie?"

"Mad, Sir Arthur, mad--irretrievably frantic--far beyond dipping in the
sea, shaving the crown, or drinking hellebore. The worst sort of frenzy,
a military frenzy, hath possessed man, woman, and child."

"And high time, I think," said Miss Wardour, "when we are threatened
with invasion from abroad and insurrection at home."

"O, I did not doubt you would join the scarlet host against me--women,
like turkeys, are always subdued by a red rag--But what says Sir Arthur,
whose dreams are of standing armies and German oppression?"

"Why, I say, Mr. Oldbuck," replied the knight, "that so far as I am
capable of judging, we ought to resist cum toto corpore regni--as the
phrase is, unless I have altogether forgotten my Latin--an enemy who
comes to propose to us a Whiggish sort of government, a republican
system, and who is aided and abetted by a sort of fanatics of the worst
kind in our own bowels. I have taken some measures, I assure you, such
as become my rank in the community; for I have directed the constables
to take up that old scoundrelly beggar, Edie Ochiltree, for spreading
disaffection against church and state through the whole parish. He said
plainly to old Caxon, that Willie Howie's Kilmarnock cowl covered more
sense than all the three wigs in the parish--I think it is easy to make
out that inuendo--But the rogue shall be taught better manners."

"O no, my dear sir," exclaimed Miss Wardour, "not old Edie, that we have
known so long;--I assure you no constable shall have my good graces that
executes such a warrant."

"Ay, there it goes," said the Antiquary; "you, to be a staunch Tory, Sir
Arthur, have nourished a fine sprig of Whiggery in your bosom--Why,
Miss Wardour is alone sufficient to control a whole quarter-session--a
quarter-session? ay, a general assembly or convocation to boot--a
Boadicea she--an Amazon, a Zenobia."

"And yet, with all my courage, Mr. Oldbuck, I am glad to hear our people
are getting under arms."

"Under arms, Lord love thee! didst thou ever read the history of Sister
Margaret, which flowed from a head, that, though now old and somedele
grey, has more sense and political intelligence than you find now-a-days
in the whole synod? Dost thou remember the Nurse's dream in that
exquisite work, which she recounts in such agony to Hubble Bubble?--When
she would have taken up a piece of broad-clot