the private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner analysis

Then one day, as Robert walks through the fields alone, he encounters a mysterious and apparently powerful young man called Gil-Martin, who has a few suggestions about how he can sort out all his problems. Robert won't be inheriting anything on his father's death-that's all going to his elder and more popular brother, George Colwan-and he regards himself as an outcast, although his stepfather has assured him that he is predestined to be one of God's elect. Lord Dalcastle suspects that he is the illegitimate son of his estranged wife and her religious adviser (whose name he shares and who is effectively his stepfather). His father, who he has been raised by his pious mother to despise as an unrepentant sinner, has no time for him.

Instead, this is the tale of Robert Wringhim, the younger son of the Laird of Dalcastle. It sounds like it ought to be an Awful British Sex Comedy, but in fact James Hogg's Scottish novel dates from 1824 and is thankfully lacking in pinging bras, creaking bedsprings and window cleaners. That was a scene that would have entranced the man of science with delight, but which the uninitiated and sordid man would have regarded less than the mole rearing up his hill in silence and in darkness.'An assured reward for the faithful one', the motto on the title page of Robert Wringhim's titular memoirs. But the better all the works of nature are understood, the more they will be ever admired.

But he soon perceived the cause of the phenomenon, and that it proceeded from the rays of the sun from a pure unclouded morning sky striking upon this dense vapour which refracted them. He was struck motionless at the view of the lovely vision for it so chanced that he had never seen the same appearance before, though common at early morn. “As he approached the swire at the head of the dell – that little delightful verge from which in one moment the eastern limits and shores of the Lothian arise on the view, - as he approached it, I say, and a little space from the height, he beheld, to his astonishment, a bright halo in the cloud of haze, that rose in a semi-circle over his head like a pale rainbow.

The private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner analysis