Guy Mannering.

102 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
new-born zeal of office, and endeavoured to express his
sense of the honour conferred upon him, by an unmitigated activity in the discharge of his duty. New brooms,
it is said, sweep clean; and I myself can bear witness,
that on the arrival of a new housemaid, the ancient,
hereditary, and domestic spiders, who have spun their
webs over the lower division of my book shelves (consisting chiefly of law and divinity) during the peaceful reign
of her predecessor, fly at full speed before the probationary inroads of the new mercenary. Even so the Laird of
Ellangowan ruthlessly commenced his magisterial reform,
at the expense of various established and superannuated
pickers and stealers, who had been his neighbours for half
a century. He wrought his miracles like a second Duke
Humphrey; and by the influence of the beadle's rod,
caused the lame to walk, the blind to see, and the palsied
to labour. He detected poachers, black-fishers, orchardbreakers, and pigeon-shooters; had the applause of the
bench for his reward, and the public credit of an active
magistrate.
All this good had its ratable proportion of evil. Even
an admitted nuisance, of ancient standing, should not be
abated without some caution. The zeal of our worthy
friend now involved in great distress sundry personages
whose idle and mendicant habits his own ldchesse had
contributed to foster until these habits had become irreclaimable, or whose real incapacity for exertion rendered
them fit objects, in their own phrase, for the charity of all
well-disposed Christians. The "long remembered beggar," who for twenty years had made his regular rounds
within the neighbourhood, received rather as an humble
friend than as an object of charity, was sent to the neighbouring workhouse. The decrepit dame, who travelled