His learning seemed to have taken the wrong fermentation, and turned to folly instead of wisdom.
But he did not do much harm, for he had a great respect for his respectability.

Perhaps if he had been a craftsman, he might even have done more harm--making rickety wheelbarrows, asthmatic pumps, ill-fitting window-frames, or boots with a lurking divorce in each welt.

He had no turn for farming, and therefore let all his land, yet liked to interfere, and as much as possible kept a personal jurisdiction.
There was one thing, however, which, if it did not throw the laird into a passion--nothing, as I have said, did that--brought him nearer to the outer verge of displeasure than any other, and that was, anything whatever to which he could affix the name of superstition.

The indignation of better men than the laird with even a confessedly harmless superstition, is sometimes very amusing; and it was a point of Mr.Galbraith's poverty-stricken religion to denounce all superstitions, however diverse in character, with equal severity.

To believe in the second sight, for instance, or in any form of life as having the slightest relation to this world, except that of men, that of animals, and that of vegetables, was with him wicked, antagonistic to the Church of Scotland, and inconsistent with her perfect doctrine.