prospect of a benefice, although he was an acceptable preacher,
throughout the bounds of the presbytery. But an incident occurred
which facilitated the union, of which the preliminaries were thus
established.

The Earl of Bellersdale,[H] a nobleman in the neighbouring county, who
affected to be descended from an ancient family that flourished in the
days of good King Duncan, but who had really no more connection with it
than with Hercules or the Man in the Moon, reared a village or sea-port
at a short but convenient distance from his magnificent castle. Among
the other items in the arrangements which were destined to immortalise
the munificence of the Earl in the establishment of Bellerstown, a
church was deemed necessary for political, to say nothing of moral
considerations; and the earl, being a man of taste, thought that a
church, placed in a particular position, would make a fine vista from
various points in the noble park which surrounded the Castle of
Bellersdale. A picturesque chapel was accordingly built on a rising
knoll, separated from the pleasure grounds and the castle by a river,
over which a handsome bridge made no mean addition to the lordly scene.

[H] A little reflection will enable the reader to see what true
name this fictitious one is intended to cover.--ED.

The chapel being built, and endowed with a stipend of "forty pounds
a-year" (the hint, I suppose, was taken from Oliver Goldsmith), it was
necessary to provide a clergyman to officiate in it; and William Douglas
being one of the most approved young men in the district, had the honour
to be preferred by the patron. The period to which I now refer was long
before the church, in its wisdom, enacted a law for regulating chapels
of ease; and not only the amount of stipend, but the continuance of
clergymen who officiated in such chapels, depended on the arbitrary and
sovereign will of their pious founders. Bellerstown, though a step in
William Douglas' professional progress, yielded too scanty a revenue to
admit of matrimony; but the talents, respectability, and prepossessing
manners of the chaplain made him a favourite at the castle, and
rendered it practicable to eke out the slender living by the addition
of a small farm, at what was called a moderate rent. But this appendage,
too, was held by the same precarious tenure--Lord Bellersdale's will.
The probationer was inducted as pastor of the Bellerstown chapel,
according to the rules of the ch