benevolent heart. He once attempted to explain his feelings for the worms
to the gardener, who stared at him with all the insolence of ignorance,
and bade him mind his work, with a tone of authority which ill suited
Forester's feelings and love of independence.

"Is ignorance thus to command knowledge? Is reason thus to be silenced by
boorish stupidity?" said Forester to himself, as he recollected the
patience and candour with which Dr. Campbell and Henry used to converse
with him. He began to think, that in cultivated society he had enjoyed
more liberty of mind, more freedom of opinion, than he could taste in the
company of an illiterate gardener. The gardener's son, though his name
was Colin, had no Arcadian simplicity, nothing which could please the
classic taste of Forester, or which could recall to his mind the Eclogues
of Virgil, or the golden age; the Gentle Shepherd, or the Ayrshire
Ploughman. Colin's favourite holiday's diversion was playing at _goff_;
this game, which is played with a bat loaded with lead, and with a ball,
which is harder than a cricket-ball, requires much strength and
dexterity. Forester used, sometimes, to accompany the gardener's son to
the _Links_,[7] where numbers of people, of different descriptions are
frequently seen practising this diversion. Our hero was ambitious of
excelling at the game of _goff_; and, as he was not particularly adroit,
he exposed himself, in his first attempts, to the derision of the
spectators, and he likewise received several severe blows. Colin laughed
at him without mercy; and Forester could not help comparing the rude
expressions of his new companion's untutored vanity with the unassuming
manners and unaffected modesty of Henry Campbell. Forester soon took an
aversion to the game of _goff_, and recollected Scotch reels with less
contempt.

[Footnote 7: A lea or common near Edinburgh.]