Читать книгу The Secret Dispatch; or, The Adventures of Captain Balgonie онлайн

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A captain in the ducal Regiment of Smolensko and not yet twenty-five! Same ten years ago, his future seemed to point to a very different course of life.

Far from Russian steppes and icy streams, their forests and barbarity, his mind had been wandering home to Britain's happier shore; and he might have said with the Bard who sang the "Course of Time,"—

"Nor do I of that Isle remember aught,

Of prospect more sublime and beautiful,

Than Scotia's northern battlement of hills,

Which first I from my father's house beheld,

At dawn of life; beloved in memory still,

And standard yet of rural imagery."

His story is a brief one, and not very startling, save for its rapid career of injustice.

Charles Balgonie, son of John Balgonie of that Ilk in Strathearn, had come into the world during that which was perhaps the most stupid, lifeless, and impoverished era of Scottish existence, the middle of the reign of George II.; when the country was without trade, energy, or enterprise, and when nothing flourished save that which prospers there more than ever even under the rule of her present Majesty, and will do so apparently unto the end of time,—gloomy fanaticism and canting hypocrisy: more among the laity certainly, who make a trade and cloak of outward religion, than among the clergy, who dare not be liberal, even if so disposed; for without a public and noisy exhibition of sanctity, few have ever had much chance of place or profit north of the Tweed.