' answered the steward. 'Long ere
this castle was builded--ay, long ere the islet which sustains it reared
its head above the blue water--I was destined to be your faithful slave,
and you to be my ungrateful mistress.'

Freethinkers, infidels, and atheists abound in novels, but it is to the
credit of Sir Walter Scott that wherever he has introduced a _sincere_
character of this description, he has gone to the very origin for his
facts, and then given us the result without pedantry. The four which I
have examined are each a curious subject for study, and indicate,
collectively and compared, a train of thought which I believe that few
have suspected in Scott, notwithstanding his well-known great love for
the curious and occult in literature. That he perfectly understood that
absurd and vain character, the so-called 'infidel,' whose philosophy is
limited to abusing Christianity, and whose real object is to be odd and
peculiar, and astonish humble individuals with his wickedness, is most
amusingly shown in 'Bletson,' one of the three Commissioners of Cromwell
introduced into 'Woodstock.' Scott has drawn this very subordinate
character in remarkable detail, having devoted nearly seven pages to its
description,[16] evidently being for once carried away by the desire of
rendering the personality as clearly as possible, or of gratifying his
own fancy. And while no effort is ever made to cast even a shadow of
ridicule on the Knight Templar, on Dryfesdale, on the gypsy, or even on
the crawling Dwining, he manifestly takes great pains to render as
contemptible and laughably absurd as possible this type of the very
great majority of modern infidels, who disavow religion because they
fear it, and ridicule Christianity from sheer, shallow ignorance. Our
own country at present abounds in 'Bletsons,' in conceited, ignorant
'infidel' scribblers of many descriptions, in of all whom we can still
trace the cant and drawl of the old-fashioned fanaticism to which they
are in reality nearly allied, while they appear to oppose it. For the
truth is, that popular infidelity--to borrow Mr. Caudle's simile of
tyrants--is only Puritanism turned inside out. We see this, even when it
is masked in French flippancy and the Shibboleth of the current
accomplishments of literature--it betrays itself by its vindictiveness
and conceit, by its cruelty, sarcasms, and meanness--with the infidel as
with the bigot. The sincere seeker for truth, whether he wander