Chapter 3

"Visitors from England were crushed by the gloom of the Edinburgh Sunday. Sir Richard Steele, founder of The Tatler, who visited Edinburgh in 1717, nicknamed the Reverend Andrew Hart 'the hangman of the Gospel' because he seemed to take such pleasure in preaching 'the terrors of the Lord'. As late as 1775, Captain Edward Topham, an English traveller, said that during Sunday service it was as if 'some epidemic disorder had depopulated the whole city.' " Weekdays were only a little less sombre...

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"Yet as the years passed, the Kirk came to be confronted with the challenge to all religious revolutions that legislate for eternity but subsist in time: the rising generation ceases to care about the blood of the martyrs. 'The witty lown-warm Air of Edinburgh' had its effect, as Patrick Walker reported, and men found 'the Tables better-covered, the Chambers warmer, and the Beds Softer than the cold Hills and Glens of Carrick, and Galloway.'