he had brought with
him into the country a taste for certain kinds of dry reading,
judged pre-eminently respectable, and for its indulgence had brought
also a not insufficient store of such provender as his soul mildly
hungered after, in the shape of books bound mostly in
yellow-calf--books of law, history, and divinity. What the books of
law were, I would not foolhardily add to my many risks of blundering
by presuming to recall; the history was mostly Scotish, or connected
with Scotish affairs; the theology was entirely of the New England
type of corrupted Calvinism, with which in Scotland they saddle the
memory of great-souled, hard-hearted Calvin himself. Thoroughly
respectable, and a little devout, Mr. Galbraith was a good deal more
of a Scotchman than a Christian; growth was a doctrine unembodied in
his creed; he turned from everything new, no matter how harmonious
with the old, in freezing disapprobation; he recognized no element
in God or nature which could not be reasoned about after the forms
of the Scotch philosophy. He would not have said an Episcopalian
could not be saved, for at the bar he had known more than one good
lawyer of the episcopal party; but to say a Roman Catholic would not
necessarily be damned, would to his judgment have revealed at once
the impending fate of the rash asserter. In religion he regarded
everything not only as settled but as understood; but seemed aware
of no call in relation to truth, but to bark at anyone who showed
the least anxiety to discover it. What truth he held himself, he
held as a sack holds corn--not even as a worm holds earth.

To his servants and tenants he was what he thought just--never
condescending to talk over a thing with any of the former but the
game-keeper, and never making any allowance to the latter for
misfortune. In general expression he looked displeased, but meant
to look dignified. No one had ever seen him wrathful; nor did he
care enough for his fellow-mortals ever to be greatly vexed--at
least he never manifested vexation otherwise than by a silence that
showed more of contempt than suffering.

In person, he was very tall and very thin, with a head much too
small for his height; a narrow forehead, above which the brown hair
looked like a wig; pale-blue, ill-set eyes, that seemed too large
for their sockets, consequently tumbled about a little, and were
never at once brought to focus; a large, but soft-looking nose; a
loose-lipped mouth,