The croak of flesh-gorged ravens, as they slake
Their thirst in hoof-prints fill'd with gore, disturbs
The stupor of the dying man: while death
Triumphantly sails down th' ensanguin'd stream,
On corses throned, and crown'd with shiver'd boughs,
That erst hung imaged in the crystal tide.*

And what the harvest of these bloody fields?
A double weight of fetters to the slave,

And chains on arms that wielded Freedom's sword!
Spirit of Tell! and art thou doom'd to see
Thy mountains, that confess'd no other chains
Than what the wintry elements had forged-
Thy vales, where freedom and her stern compeer,
Proud virtuous poverty, their noble state
Maintain'd, amid surrounding threats of wealth,
Of superstition, and tyrannic sway
Spirit of Tell! and art thou doom'd to see
That land subdued by slavery's basest slaves,
By men, whose lips pronounce the sacred name
Of Liberty, then kiss the despot's foot?
Helvetia! hadst thou to thyself been true,
Thy dying sons had triumph'd as they fell:
But 'twas a glorious effort, though in vain.
Aloft thy genius 'mid the sweeping clouds,
The flag of freedom spread; bright in the storm
The streaming meteor waved, and far it gleam'd;
But ah! 'twas transient as the iris' arch,
Glanced from leviathan's ascending shower,
When 'mid the mountain waves heaving his head.
Already had the friendly-seeming foe
Possess'd the snow-piled ramparts of the land;
Down like an avalanche they roll'd, they crush'd
The temple, palace, cottage, every work
Of art and nature, in one common ruin.
The dreadful crash is o'er, and peace ensues-
The peace of desolation, gloomy, still:
Each day is like a Sabbath; but, alas!
No Sabbath-service glads the seventh day;
No more the happy villagers are seen,
Winding adown the rock-hewn paths that wont
To lead their footsteps to the house of prayer;
But, far apart, assembled in the depth
Of solitudes, perhaps a little group
Of aged men, and orphan boys, and maids
Bereft, list to the breathings of the holy man
Who spurns an oath of fealty to the power
Of rulers chosen by a tyrant's nod.
No more, as dies the rustling of the breeze,
Is heard the distant vesper-hymn; no more
At gloamin hour, the plaintive strain that links
His country to the Switzer's heart, delights
The loosening team; or if some shepherd boy
Attempt the strain, his voice soon faltering stops;
He feels his country now a foreign land.

Oh Scotland! can'st thou for a moment brook
The mere imagination, that a fate

Like this can e'er be thine, that o'er those hills
And dear-bought vales, whence Wallace, Douglas, Bruce,
Repell'd proud Edward's multitudinous hordes,
A Gallic foe, that abject race, should rule?
No, no! let never hostile standard touch
Thy shore: rush, rush into the dashing brine,
And crest each wave with steel; and should the stamp
Of Slavery's footstep violate the strand,
Let not the tardy tide efface the mark;
Sweep off the stigma with a sea of blood!

But truce with war, at best a dismal theme; Thrice happy he, who far in Scottish glen Retired (yet ready at his country's call), Has left the restless emmet-hill of man! He never longs to read the saddening tale Of endless wars; and seldom does he hear

*After a heavy cannonade, the shivered branches of trees, and the corpses of the killed, are seen floating together down the

rivers.

The tale of woe; and ere it reaches him,
Rumour, so loud when new, has died away
Into a whisper, on the memory borne
Of casual traveller: as on the deep,
Far from the sight of land, when all around
Is waveless calm, the sudden tremulous swell,
That gently heaves the ship, tells, as it rolls,
Of earthquakes dread and cities overthrown.

Oh Scotland! much I love thy tranquil dales;
But most on Sabbath eve, when low the sun
Slants through the upland copse, 'tis my delight,
Wandering and stopping oft, to hear the song
Of kindred praise arise from humble roofs;
Or when the simple service ends, to hear
The lifted latch, and mark the grey-hair'd man,
The father and the priest, walk forth alone
Into his garden-plat or little field,

To commune with his God in secret prayer-
To bless the Lord, that in his downward years
His children are about him: sweet meantime,
The thrush that sings upon the aged thorn,
Brings to his view the days of youthful years,
When that same aged thorn was but a bush.
Nor is the contrast between youth and age
To him a painful thought; he joys to think
His journey near a close; heaven is his home.
More happy far that man, though bowed down,
Though feeble be his gait, and dim his eye,
Than they, the favourites of youth and health,
Of riches and of fame, who have renounced
The glorious promise of the life to come-
Clinging to death. Or mark that female face,
The faded picture of its former self,

The garments coarse but clean; frequent at church
I've noted such a one, feeble and pale,
Yet standing, with a look of mild content,
Till beckon'd by some kindly hand to sit.
She had seen better days; there was a time
Her hands could earn her bread, and freely givo
To those who were in want; but now old age
And lingering disease have made her helpless.
Yet is she happy, ay, and she is wise,
(Philosophers may sneer, and pedants frown),
Although her Bible be her only book;
And she is rich, although her only wealth
Be recollection of a well-spent life-
Be expectation of the life to come.
Examine here, explore the narrow path

In which she walks; look not for virtuous deeds
In history's arena, where the prize
Of fame or power prompts to heroic acts.
Peruse the lives themselves of men obscure;
There charity, that robs itself to give,
There fortitude in sickness nursed by want,
There courage that expects no tongue to praise,
There virtue lurks, like purest gold deep hid,
With no alloy of selfish motive mix'd.
The poor man's boon, that stints him of his bread,
Is prized more highly in the sight of Him
Who sees the heart, than golden gifts from hands
That scarce can know their countless treasures less:*
Yea, the deep sigh that heaves the poor man's breast
To see distress, and feel his willing arm
Palsied by penury, ascends to Heaven,
While ponderous bequests of lands and goods,
Ne'er rise above their earthly origin.

And should all bounty that is clothed with power Be deem'd unworthy? Far be such a thought!

*"And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury; and many that were rich cast in much. And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing. And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast more in than all they which have cast into the treasury: for all they did cast in of their abundance, but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living."-MARK, xii. 41-44.

Even when the rich bestow, there are sure tests
Of genuine charity: yes, yes, let wealth
Give other alms than silver or than gold-
Time, trouble, toil, attendance, watchfulness,
Exposure to disease; yes, let the rich

Be often seen beneath the sick man's roof;
Or cheering, with inquiries from the heart,
And hopes of health, the melancholy range
Of couches in the public wards of woe:
There let them often bless the sick man's bed,
With kind assurances that all is well
At home, that plenty smiles upon the board,
The while the hand that earn'd the frugal meal
Can hardly raise itself in sign of thanks.
Above all duties, let the rich man search
Into the cause he knoweth not, nor spurn
The suppliant wretch as guilty of a crime.

Ye bless'd with wealth (another name for power
Of doing good), oh would ye but devote
A little portion of each seventh day
To acts of justice to your fellow men!
The house of mourning silently invites.
Shun not the crowded alley; prompt descend
Into the half-sunk cell, darksome and damp;
Nor seem impatient to be gone: inquire,
Console, instruct, encourage, soothe, assist;
Read, pray, and sing a new song to the Lord;
Make tears of joy down grief-worn furrows flow.

O health! thou sun of life, without whose beam
The fairest scenes of nature seem involved
In darkness, shine upon my dreary path
Once more; or, with thy faintest dawn, give hope
That I may yet enjoy thy vital ray :
Though transient be the hope, 'twill be most sweet,
Like midnight music, stealing on the ear,
Then gliding past, and dying slow away.
Music! thou soothing power, thy charm is proved
Most vividly when clouds o'ercast the soul-
So light displays its loveliest effect

In lowering skies, when through the murky rack
A slanting sunbeam shoots, and instant limns
Th' ethereal curve of seven harmonious dyes,
Eliciting a splendour from the gloom:

Oh Music! still vouchsafe to tranquillise

This breast perturb'd; thy voice, though mournful, soothes;

And mournful aye are thy most beauteous lays,
Like fall of blossoms from the orchard boughs-
The autumn of the spring. Enchanting power!
Who, by thy airy spell, canst whirl the mind
Far from the busy haunts of men to vales
Where Tweed or Yarrow flows; or, spurning time,

Recall red Flodden field; or suddenly

Transport, with alter'd strain, the deafen'd ear
To Linden's plain! But what the pastoral lay,
The melting dirge, the battle's trumpet peal,
Compared to notes with sacred numbers link'd
In union, solemn, grand! Oh then the spirit,
Upborne on pinions of celestial sound,

Soars to the throne of God, and ravish'd hears
Ten thousand times ten thousand voices rise
In slow explosion-voices that erewhile
Were feebly tuned perhaps to low-breathed hymns
Of solace in the chambers of the poor,
The Sabbath worship of the friendless sick.

Blest be the female votaries, whose day No Sabbath of their pious labours prove, Whose lives are consecrated to the toil Of ministering around th' uncurtain'd couch Of pain and poverty: blest be the hands, The lovely hands (for beauty, youth, and grace, Are oft conceal'd by Pity's closest veil), That mix the cup medicinal, that bind The wounds which ruthless warfare and disease Have to the loathsome lazar-house consign'd.

Fierce Superstition of the mitred king! Almost I could forget thy torch and stake, When I this blessed sisterhood surveyCompassion's priestesses, disciples true

Of him whose touch was health, whose single word Electrified with life the palsied arm

Of him who said, "Take up thy bed and walk!"----Of him who cried to Lazarus "Come forth!"

And he who cried to Lazarus "Come forth!" Will, when the Sabbath of the tomb is past, Call forth the dead, and reunite the dust (Transform'd and purified) to angel souls. Ecstatic hope! belief! conviction firm! How grateful 'tis to recollect the time When hope arose to faith! Faintly at first The heavenly voice is heard. Then by degrees Its music sounds perpetual in the heart. Thus he, who all the gloomy winter long Has dwelt in city crowds, wandering afield Betimes on Sabbath morn, ere yet the spring Unfold the daisy's bud, delighted hears The first lark's note, faint yet, and short the song, Check'd by the chill ungenial northern breeze; But, as the sun ascends, another springs, And still another soars on loftier wing, Till all o'erhead, the joyous choir unseen, Poised welkin-high, harmonious fills the air, As if it were a link 'tween earth and heaven.

How still the morning of the hallow'd day, &c.-P. 5. THAT the religious observance of one day in seven was a point of main importance under the Jewish and Christian dispensations, is evident from the very strong terms in which the law commanding its observance is couched-from the anxious repetitions of that law, the judgments which the prophets denounced against its violation, the fulfilment of those denunciations, the strict observance of the Sabbath during the best times of the Jewish polity; and its observance by Christ, the apostles, and the primitive Christians. What is more material, that the Sabbath was instituted not as a mere ritual observance, but as an essential article of moral duty, is proved by this consideration, that one of the objects of the institution was-the amelioration of the lot of the laborious part of the creation, animals as well as men. But the spirit of this admirable institution will be best illustrated, by bringing into one view some of those passages of scripture, whether preceptive, prophetic, or historical, in which the Sabbath is mentioned.

"Keep the Sabbath day, to sanctify it as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee. Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work. But the seventh is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy

daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates; that thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may

rest as well as thou. And remember that thou wast a servant in

the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence, through a mighty hand, and by an outstretched arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day."-DEUT. v. 12-15.

"Ye shall keep my Sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord."-LEV. xix. 30.

"Six days shall work be done; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of rest, an holy convocation: ye shall do no work therein; it is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings."-LEV. xxiii. 3.

"Six days shalt thou do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest, that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid and the stranger may be refreshed."-ExOD. xxiii. 12.

"Also the sons of the stranger that join themselves to the Lord, to serve him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, every one that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold of my covenant, even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer: their burntofferings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar;

"And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias: and when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised; to preach the acceptable year of the Lord."-LUKE, iv. 16–19.

"And that day was the preparation, and the Sabbath drew on. And the women also which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments, and rested the Sabbath day, according to the commandment."-LUKE, Xxiii. 54-56.

tion, he brake bread and blessed it. "But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us, for it is towards evening, and the day is far spent; and he went in to tarry with them. And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, und blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him, and he vanished out of their sight. And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the Scriptures? And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jern salem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them, saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath ap peared to Simon. And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread."LUKE, xxiv. 29-35.

NOTE IV.

The pale mechanic now has leave to breathe.-P. 5, 1. 41. He who has seen threescore and ten years, has lived ten years of Sabbaths. The appropriation of so considerable a portion of human life to religious duties, to domestic enjoyment, and to meditative leisure, is a most merciful branch of the divine die pensation. It is the grand bulwark of poverty against the encroach ments of capital. The labouring classes sell their time. The rich are the buyers, at least they are the chief buyers; for it is obri ous, that more than the half of the waking hours of those who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, is consumed in the manufacture of articles that cannot be deemed either necessaries If Sunday were in the market, it would find purchasers too. The abolition of the Sabbath would in truth be equivalent to a sentence, adjudging to the rich the services of the poor for lift.

"Hear this, oh ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail, saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit? That ye may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat."-AMOS, viii. 4, 5, 6.

"If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable, and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."-Isa. lviii. 13, 14.

"In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn towards the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, to see the sepulchre. And, behold, there was a great earthquake; for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow. And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered, and said unto the women, Fear not ye; for I know that ye seek Jesus which was crucified. He is not here; for he is risen, as he said: Come see the place where the Lord lay."MATTHEW, xxviii. 1-6.

"And on the Sabbath we went out of the city by a river-side, where prayer was wont to be made."-ACTS, xvi. 13. "And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow, and continued his speech until midnight."ACTS, XX. 7.

NOTE II.

The toil-worn horse set free.-P. 5, 1. 24. "A Sabbath day's journey," says an able and faithful labourer in the vineyard of the Lord, "was among the Jews a proverbial expression for a very short one. Among us it can have no such meaning affixed to it. That day seems to be considered by too many as set apart, by divine and human authority, for the purpose not of rest, but of its direct opposite the labour of travelling; thus adding one day more of torment to those generous but wretched animals whose services they hire; and who, being generally strained beyond their strength the other six days of the week, have, of all creatures under heaven, the best and most equitable claim to suspension of labour on the seventh. Considerations such as these may perhaps appear to some below the dignity of this place, and the solemnity of a Christian assembly; but benevolence, even to the brute creation, is in its degree a duty no less than to our own species, and it is mentioned by Solomon as a striking feature in the character of a righteous man, that he is merciful even to his beast.' HE, without whose permission not a sparrow falls to the ground, and who feedeth the young ravens that call upon him,' will not suffer even the meanest work of his hands to be treated cruelly with impunity. He is the common Father of the whole creation. He takes every part of it under his protection. He has, in various passages of Scripture, expressed his concern even for irrational creatures, and has declared more especially, in the most explicit terms, that the rest of the Sabbath was meant for our cattle and our servants, as well as for ourselves."-PORTEUS.

NOTE III.

Of giving thanks to God.-P. 5, 1. 37. Though this usage did not originate in positive institution, yet our Lord may be said to have enjoined it by his example. Many

NOTE V.

The Sabbath service of the shepherd boy.-P. 6, 1. 29.
Say how, by early lessons taught
(Truth's pleasing air is willing caught),
Congenial to th' untainted thought,
The shepherd boy,

Who tends his flocks on lonely height,
Feels holy joy.

Is aught on earth so lovely known?
On Sabbath morn, and far alone,
His guileless soul all naked shown
Before his God;

Such prayers must welcome reach the throne
And blest abode."*

NOTE VI.

Their constancy in torture and in death.-P. 6, 1. 54.

The following passage from Bishop Burnet's History of his Own of that hideous persecution from which the people of Scotland Time, will give some notion of the kind, though not of the extent, were delivered by the Revolution. "When any are to be struck that occasion almost all offer to run away. The sight is so dreadin the boots, it is done in the presence of the council; and upon board would be forsaken. But the duke, while he had been in ful, that without an order restraining such a number to stay, the Scotland, was so far from withdrawing, that he looked on all the while with an unmoved indifference, and with an attention, as terrible idea of him to all that observed it, as of a man that had no if he had been to look on some curious experiment. This gave a bowels nor humanity in him. Lord Perth observing this, resolved to let him see how well qualified he was to be an inquisitor-general. The rule about the boots in Scotland was, that upon one witness and presumptions both together, the question might be given: but it was never known to be twice given, or that any other species of torture, besides the boots, might be used at pleasure. In the courts of inquisition, they do, upon suspicion, or if a man refuses to answer upon oath as he is required, give him the torture; and repeat it, or vary it, as often as they think fit; and do not give over, till they have got out of their mangled prisoners all that they have a mind to know from them.

This Lord Perth resolved now to make his pattern; and was a little too early in letting the world see what a government we were to expect under the influence of a prince of that religion. So, upon his going to Scotland, one Spence, who was a servant of Lord Argyle's, and was taken up at London, only upon suspicion, and sent down to Scotland, was required to take an oath to answer all the questions that should be put to him. This was done in a direct contradiction to an express law against obliging men to swear that they will answer super inquirendis. Spence likewise said, that he himself might be concerned in what he might know; and it was against a very universal law, that excused all men from swearing against themselves, to force him to take such an oath. So he was struck in the boots, and continued firm in his refusal. Then a new species of torture was invented; he was kept from sleep eight or nine nights. They grew weary of managing this; so a third species was invented; little screws of steel were made use of, that screwed the thumbs with so exquisite a torment, that he sank under this; for Lord Perth told him, they would screw every joint of his whole body, one after another, till he took the oath. Yet such was the firmness and fidelity of this

* Fragments of a poem by Thomas Telford, addressed to Robert Burns.

poor man, that, even in that extremity, he capitulated that no new questions should be put to him but those already agreed on; and that he should not be obliged to be a witness against any person, and that he himself should be pardoned: so all he could tell them was, who were Lord Argyle's correspondents. The chief of them was Holmes, at London, to whom Lord Argyle writ in a cypher that had a particular curiosity in it. A double key was necessary: the one was, to show the way of placing the words or cypher, in an order very different from that in which they lay in the paper; the other was the key of the cyphers themselves, which was found among Holmes's papers when he absconded. Spence knew only the first of these; but he putting all in its true order, then by the other key they were deciphered. In these it appeared what Argyle had demanded, and what he undertook to do upon the granting his demands; but none of his letters spoke any thing of any agreement then made.

When the torture had this effect on Spence, they offered the same oath to Carstairs: and upon his refusing to take it, they put his thumbs in the screws, and drew them so hard, that as they put him to extreme torture, so they could not unscrew them, till the smith that made them was brought with his tools to take them off. So he confessed all he knew, which amounted to little more than some discourses of taking off the duke, to which he said that he answered, his principles could not come up to that; yet in this he, who was a preacher among them, was highly to blame for not revealing such black propositions; though it cannot be denied but that it is a hard thing to discover any thing that is said in confidence. And therefore I saved myself out of those difficulties, by saying to all my friends that I would not be involved in any such confidence; for as long as I thought our circumstances were such that resistance was not lawful, I thought the contealing any design in order to it was likewise unlawful; and by this means I had preserved myself. But Carstairs had at this time some secrets of great consequence from Holland trusted to him by Fagel, of which they had no suspicion; and so they asked him no questions about them. Yet Fagel saw by that, as he himself told me, how faithful Carstairs was, since he could have saved himself from torture, and merited highly, if he had discovered them. And this was the foundation of his favour with the Prince of Orange, and of the great confidence he put in him to his death.

Upon what was thus screwed out of these two persons, the Earl of Tarras, who had married the Duchess of Monmouth's eldest sister, and six or seven gentlemen of quality, were clapt up. The ministers of state were still most earnestly set on Baillie's destruction, though he was now in so languishing a state, occasioned chiefly by the bad usage he met with in prison, that if his death would have satisfied the malice of the court, that seemed to be very near. Baillie's illness increased daily; and his wife prayed for leave to attend on him, and if they feared an escape, she was willing to be put in irons; but that was denied. Nor would they suffer his daughter, a child of twelve years old, to attend him, even when he was so low that it was not probable he could live many weeks, his legs being much swelled. But upon these examinations a new method in proceeding against him was taken. An accusation was sent him, not in the form of an indictment, nor grounded on any law, but on a letter of the king's, in which he charged him, not only for a conspiracy to raise rebellion, but for being engaged in the rye-plot; of all which he was now required to purge himself by oath, otherwise the council would hold him guilty of it, and proceed accordingly. He was not, as they said, now in a criminal court upon his life, but before the council, who did only fine and imprison. It was to no purpose for him to say, that by no law, unless it was in a court of inquisition, a man could be required to swear against himself, the temptation to perjury being so strong when self-preservation was in the case, that it seemed against all law and religion to lay such a snare in a man's way. But to answer all this, it was pretended he was not now on his life, and that whatsoever he confessed was not to be made use of against his life; as if the ruin of his family, which consisted of nine children, and perpetual imprisonment, were not more terrible, especially to one so near his end as he was, than death itself. But he had to do with inexorable men; so he was required to take this oath within two days. And by that time, he not being able to appear before the council, a committee of council was sent to tender him the oath, and to take his examination. He told them he was not able to speak by reason of the low state of his health, which appeared very evidently to them; for he had almost died while they were with him. He in general protested his innocence, and his abhorrence of all designs against the king or the duke's life. For the other interrogatories, he desired they might be left with him, and he would consider them. They persisted to require him to take this oath; but he as firmly refused it. So, upon their report, the council construed this refusal to be a confession, and fined him £6000, and ordered him to lie still in prison till it was paid. After this it was thought that this matter was at an end, and that this was a final sentence; but he was still kept shut up, and denied all attendance or assistance. He seemed all the while so composed and even so cheerful, that his behaviour looked like the reviving of the spirit of the noblest of the old Greeks or Romans, or rather of the primitive Christians and first martyrs in those best days of the church. But the duke was not satisfied with all this. So the ministry applied their arts to Tarras, and the other prisoners, threatening them with all the extremities of misery, if they would not witness treasonable matter against Baillie. They also practised on their wives, and, frightening them, set them on

their husbands. In conclusion, they gained what had been so much laboured: Tarras, and one Murray of Philiphaugh, did depose some discourses that Baillie had with them before he went up to London, disposing them to a rebellion. In these they swelled up the matter beyond the truth. Yet all did not amount to a full proof; so the ministers, being afraid that a jury might not be so easy as they expected, ordered Carstairs's confession to be read in court; not as an evidence (for that had been promised him should not be done), but as that which would fully satisfy the jury, and dispose them to believe the witnesses. So Baillie was hurried on to a trial. And upon the evidence he was found guilty, and condemned to be executed that same day; so afraid they were lest death should be too quick for them. He was very little disturbed at all this; his languishing in so solitary a manner made death a very acceptable deliverance to him. He in his last speech showed that in several particulars the witnesses had wronged him. He still denied all knowledge of any design against the king's life, or the duke's; and denied any plot against the government. He thought it was lawful for subjects, being under such pressures, to try how they might be relieved from them; and their design never went farther; but he would enter into no particulars. Thus a learned and worthy gentleman, after twenty months' hard usage, was brought to such a death, in a way so full, in all the steps of it, of the spirit and practice of the courts of inquisition, that one is tempted to think, that the methods taken in it were suggested by one well studied, if not practised in them. The only excuse that was ever pretended for this infamous prosecution was, that they were sure he was guilty, and that the whole secret of the negotiation between the two kingdoms was trusted to him; and that since he would not discover it, all methods might be taken to destroy him: not considering what a precedent they made on this occasion, by which, if men were once possessed of an ill opinion of a man, they were to spare neither artifice nor violence, but to hunt him down by any means." It will surely be admitted that the practice of torture, as a mode either of detection or conviction, is the consummation of injustice and tyranny.

NOTE VII.

A people doom'd, &c.-P. 6, 1. 61.

By the tyrannous and bloody laws that were passed between the year 1661, and the ever-memorable year of the blessed revolution, the whole inhabitants of extensive districts in the Lowlands of Scotland might be said to have lived under sentence of death.

NOTE VIII.

Old men, and youths, and simple maids.-P. 6, 1. 62. One morning, between five and six hours, John Brown, having performed the worship of God in his family, was going, with a spade in his hand, to make ready some peat-ground. The mist being very dark, he knew not until cruel and bloody Claverhouse compassed him with three troops of horse, brought him to his house, and there examined him; who, though he was a man of a stammering speech, yet answered him distinctly and solidly; which made Claverhouse to examine those whom he had taken to be his guide through the muirs, if they had heard him preach? They answered, "No, no, he was never a preacher." He said, "If he has never preached, meikle he has prayed in his time." He said to John, "Go to your prayers, for you shall immediately die." When he was praying, Claverhouse interrupted him three times: one time that he stopped him, he was pleading that the Lord would spare a remnant, and not make a full end in the day of his anger. Claverhouse said, "I gave you time to pray, and ye are begun to preach." He turned about upon his knees and said, “Sir, you know neither the nature of praying nor preaching, that calls this preaching:" then continued without confusion. When ended, Claverhouse said, "Take goodnight of your wife and children." His wife standing by with her child in her arms that she had brought forth to him, and another child of his first wife's, he came to her, and said, "Now, Marion, the day is come that I told you would come, when I spake first to you of marrying me." She said, "Indeed, John, I can willingly part with you." Then he said, "This is all I desire, I have no more to do but die." He kissed his wife and bairns, and wished purchased and promised blessings to be multiplied upon them, and his blessing. Claverhouse ordered six men to shoot him; the most part of the bullets came upon his head, which scattered his brains upon the ground. Claverhouse said to his wife, "What thinkest thou of thy husband now, woman?" She said, "I thought ever much of him, and now as much as ever." He said, "It were justice to lay thee beside him." She said, "If ye were permitted, I doubt not but your cruelty would go that length; but how will ye make answer for this morning's work?" He said, "To man I can be answerable; and for God, I will take him in mine own hand." Claverhouse mounted his horse, and marched, and left her, with the corpse of her dead husband lying there. She set the bairn on the ground, and tied up his head, and straighted his body, and covered him in her plaid, and sat down, and wept over him. It being a very desert place, where never victual grew, and far from neighbours, it was some time before any friends came to her; the first that came was a very fit hand, that old singular Christian woman in the Cummerhead, named Elizabeth Menzies, three miles distant, who had been tried with the violent death of her husband at Pentland, afterwards of two worthy sons, Thomas Weir, who was killed at Drumclog, and David Steel, who was suddenly shot afterwards when taken. The said Marion Weir, sitting upon her husband's grave, told me,

eulogy of the book, exclaiming finally, "Ah, James! if you could but produce a poem like this!" The pleasure derived by both parties from the acknowledgment that followed must have been ineffable.

"The Sabbath" appeared in the form of a small duodecimo volume, and met with such immediate approval from the public, that the whole of the original impression was sold off in a few days. Unknown as the authorship then was, Mr Grahame derived much gratification from the praises bestowed on his work, both by professional critics and by private friends. But he had also to endure no slight mortification from the same cause. The Edinburgh Review noticed the work, and, while conferring considerable applause on it, sprinkled therewith a very liberal admixture of sarcasm and censure. It is but just to both critic and author, however, to state, that the notes appended to the poem received a much more severe judgment than the poem itself. Heedless of such critical decisions, whether favourable or unfavourable, the public stamped the work at once with the warmest approbation; nor, from that period to this, has "The Sabbath" ever declined in popular

esteem.

A pamphlet, entitled "Thoughts on Trial by Jury," was composed by Mr Grahame in the year 1806, and his conduct of his argument was able and convincing. The step which he advocated, nevertheless, was not accomplished till many years afterwards. In the following year (1807), he also avowed before his countrymen the authorship of "The Sabbath" and other Poems, which were then collected and published in two volumes by Blackwood. This disclosure rendered his name as much honoured at a distance as it had long been within the elegant circle in which he habitually moved at least through the winter months of the year. The summer season was almost uniformly passed by him in some agreeable retreat in the country. His health, unhappily, was so often, and, at times, so long unsettled, that such periodical visits to the banks of the Esk, and other rural spots, became absolutely necessary to his comfort. Indeed, he constantly yearned to attain such a position in life as would enable him to pass all his days in the retirement which was most congenial to him both mentally and corporeally. On this account he had never ceased to entertain the hope of entering the clerical profession, by which consummation he thought his every wish would be realised. In the years 1807 and 1808, he employed himself sedulously, but unostentatiously, in preparing for ordination in the church of England. Before adverting to the consequences of these preparations, it ought to be mentioned that, in the course of the same two years, he produced the "Birds of Scotland," and the "British Georgics," of which poems the first was composed at Kirkhill on the Esk, and the second at a sweet retreat near his wife's native town of Annan. The "Birds" and the "Georgics" have not enjoyed so lasting a popularity as "The Sabbath," but they were poems calculated to sustain the author's fame.

In 1809, a poem on the subject of Slavery, from the pen of our author, made its appearance, in conjunction with two others, the one produced by James Montgomery, and the other by Miss Eliza Benger. These three pieces were published in one splendidly embellished volume, the expense of issuing which was borne by Mr Bowyer, a London citizen who was patriotically zealous for the commemoration, in a fitting form and manner, of the recent abolition of the traffic in slaves. All of these poems were compositions of high merit.

In the same year (1809), on the 28th of May, Mr Grahame, having purposely visited England, was admitted to orders in the English church, by Dr Henry Bathurst, Bishop of Norwich. The Bishop of Norwich kindly pressed the newly ordained clergyman to reside within his diocese; but the health of the Scottish

poet was then so much shaken that he was anxious to get some settlement in the most southerly, or rather south-western, parts of England. He obtained his wish to a certain extent, being appointed to fulfil the duties of a curacy at Shipton Mayne in Gloucestershire. Here he remained from the July following his ordination till March of the succeeding year, when some domestic affairs compelled him to return for the time to Scotland. While residing in Edinburgh, in the summer of 1810, he became a candidate for the charge of St George's Chapel, but was unsuccessful, to the great and lasting regret of his friends. This circumstance carried him once more to England, where he obtained the office of sub-curate in the chapelry of St Margaret's, Durham. He entered on the duties of his sub-curacy in August 1810, and, on the 1st of May 1811, was transplanted to the parochial charge of Sedgewick, in the same diocese. This was the last of Grahame's clerical removes, and though his whole career in the Durham district had been brief, and his employments humble, he earned a high reputation as a preacher, and wherever he went drew crowds to hear him. It is to be feared that his zealous and irrepressible exertions in this respect injured his health deeply, rendering the clerical office by no means that place of calm and tranquil repose which he had long pictured it to be. Severe headaches were the form in which his malady displayed itself, and these were usually accompanied by stupor and temporary insensibility. In August of the same year he came to Edinburgh, and received very encouraging opinions from his medical friends there; but after removing to Whitehill, his brother's residence near Glasgow, his fits of stupor increased, and he expired on the 14th of September 1811. He had reached the age of forty-seven, and left behind him a family of two sons and a daughter.

In private life, James Grahame was a man of many virtues. Gentle in manners, and refined in taste, his conversation and company were delightful to all who had the happiness of knowing him, and seldom did any man possess more tenderly attached friends than the author of "The Sabbath." He was tall in person, and on his dark and expressive features there sat, at moments of repose, a degree of gravity which might at first have called to one's mind the epithet "sepulchral" Grahame; but the thought would soon have been dispelled on beholding the cheerful, and even mirthful, glow which lighted up the same countenance, in the midst of friends, when wit and wisdom were bandied from lip to lip. Gloom was no ingredient in our poet's temperament. Nor, indeed, can he be justly charged with having infused a morose or "sepulchral tone" into his writings generally, though, in particular passages (to use the words of Sir Walter Scott), "his views of society are more gloomy than the truth warrants." Sir Walter's further remarks upon Grahame's poems may be introduced here, as calculated to give a fairer idea of his merits as a poet, than any other critique which could be presented to the reader. "The most remarkable feature of Grahame's poetical character, is his talent for describing Scottish scenery, in a manner so true and lively, as at once to bring the picture to the recollection of his countrymen. The ardent love of nature, in which this power of description has its source, is uniformly combined with virtuous and amiable feeling. Accordingly, his poetry exhibits much of these qualities. In his moral poetry, he occasionally unites, with the nakedness of Wordsworth's diction, a flatness which is all his own. In his landscapes, on the other hand, he is always at home, and more fortunate than most of his contemporaries. He has the art of being minute without being confused, and circumstantial without being tedious. His Sabbath Walks are admirable specimens of this his principal excellence." These observations were written in 1808.