To-night the playhouses open again, and we are going to the Oratorio, and
the captain goes with us, a circumstance which I am the more pleased at,
as we are strangers, and he will tell us the names of the performers. My
father made some scruple of consenting to be of the party; but when he
heard that an Oratorio was a concert of sacred music, he thought it would
be only a sinless deviation if he did, so he goes likewise. The captain,
therefore, takes an early dinner with us at five o'clock. Alas! to what
changes am I doomed,--that was the tea hour at the manse of Garnock. Oh,
when shall I revisit the primitive simplicities of my native scenes
again! But neither time nor distance, my dear Bell, can change the
affection with which I subscribe myself, ever affectionately, yours, RACHEL PRINGLE.
At the conclusion of this letter, the countenance of Mrs. Glibbans was
evidently so darkened, that it daunted the company, like an eclipse of
the sun, when all nature is saddened. "What think you, Mr. Snodgrass,"
said that spirit-stricken lady,--"what think you of this dining on the
Lord's day,--this playing on the harp; the carnal Mozarting of that
ungodly family, with whom the corrupt human nature of our friends has
been chambering?" Mr. Snodgrass was at some loss for an answer, and
hesitated, but Miss Mally Glencairn relieved him from his embarrassment,
by remarking, that "the harp was a holy instrument," which somewhat
troubled the settled orthodoxy of Mrs. Glibbans's visage. "Had it been
an organ," said Mr. Snodgrass, dryly, "there might have been, perhaps,
more reason to doubt; but, as Miss Mally justly remarks, the harp has
been used from the days of King David in the performances of sacred
music, together with the psalter, the timbrel, the sackbut, and the
cymbal." The wrath of the polemical Deborah of the Relief-Kirk was
somewhat appeased by this explanation, and she inquired in a more
diffident tone, whether a Mozart was not a metrical paraphrase of the
song of Moses after the overthrow of the Egyptians in the Red Sea; "in
which case, I must own," she observed, "that the sin and guilt of the
thing is less grievous in the sight of HIM before whom all the actions of
men are abominations." Miss Isabella Tod, availing herself of this break
in the conversation, turned round to Miss Nanny Eydent, and begged that
she would read her letter from Mrs. Pringle. We should do injustice,
however, to honest worth and patient industry were we, in thus
introducing Miss Nanny to our readers, not to give them some account of
her lowly and virtuous character.