to some cattle-fair in the neighbourhood.

Such was the group of countenances, rising tier on tier, discovered to my
critical inspection by such sunbeams as forced their way through the
narrow Gothic lattices of the Laigh Kirk of Glasgow; and, having
illuminated the attentive congregation, lost themselves in the vacuity of
the vaults behind, giving to the nearer part of their labyrinth a sort of
imperfect twilight, and leaving their recesses in an utter darkness,
which gave them the appearance of being interminable.

I have already said that I stood with others in the exterior circle, with
my face to the preacher, and my back to those vaults which I have so
often mentioned. My position rendered me particularly obnoxious to any
interruption which arose from any slight noise occurring amongst these
retiring arches, where the least sound was multiplied by a thousand
echoes. The occasional sound of rain-drops, which, admitted through some
cranny in the ruined roof, fell successively, and splashed upon the
pavement beneath, caused me to turn my head more than once to the place
from whence it seemed to proceed, and when my eyes took that direction, I
found it difficult to withdraw them; such is the pleasure our imagination
receives from the attempt to penetrate as far as possible into an
intricate labyrinth, imperfectly lighted, and exhibiting objects which
irritate our curiosity, only because they acquire a mysterious interest
from being undefined and dubious. My eyes became habituated to the gloomy
atmosphere to which I directed them, and insensibly my mind became more
interested in their discoveries than in the metaphysical subtleties which
the preacher was enforcing.

My father had often checked me for this wandering mood of mind, arising
perhaps from an excitability of imagination to which he was a stranger;