period, a period which it might have been thought no Briton, more especially no North Briton would have selected for a work of fiction, unless it had been as the subject of some solemn and elevated tragedy, in which the strongest emotions of pity, admiration, and horror, should have been called forth in behalf of the heroic sufferer and the inhuman oppressor.

'What though the men

Of worldly minds have dared to stigmatize
The Sister Cause, Religion and the Law
With Superstition's name! yet, yet their deeds,
Their constancy in torture and in death,
These on tradition's tongue still live, these shall
On History's honest page be pictured bright
To latest times.'

Grahame's Sabbath.

The exact date of the period referred to in the tale of 'Old Mortality,' is fixed by the murder of Archbishop Sharp, which took place in 1679; but the introductory sentences carry us back to the events of the preceding nineteen years, which were occupied with the disgusting intrigues of the rival factions that contended by means of the royal favour to domineer over Scotland, and with the attempts on the part of one of these factions, at the head of which was the Earl of Middleton, to impose Episcopacy upon the nation. The King himself heartily disliked Presbytery. He told Earl Lauderdale, who was a firm presbyterian, that it was not a religion for gentlemen.' The treatment, indeed, he had met with in Scotland, when the Covenant was forced upon him as a condition of the Crown, was not likely to lessen his deeply rooted aversion. But he was either too indolent or too politic to enter with any warmth into the plans of the Episcopalian party, and it was only by a series of base machinations on the part of Sharp, the Earl of Middleton and others, that he was at last persuaded into the belief that the greater and more honest part of the nation were in favour of the establishment of Episcopacy. The foliowing is the way in which, according to Bishop Burnet, the Government sought to < counteract the strict or puritanical spirit which had been the chief characteristic of the republican government!"

"In the end of the year (1669) the Earl of Middleton came 'down with great magnificence: his way of living was the most splendid the nation had ever seen; but it was likewise the 'most scandalous; for vices of all sorts were the most open practices of those about him. Drinking was the most notorious of all, which was often continued through the whole 'night to the next morning. And many disorders happening after those irregular heats, the people who had never before that time seen any thing like it, came to look with an ill eye

'on every thing that was done by such a set of lewd and vi'tious men. This laid in all men's minds a new prejudice 6 against episcopacy: For they, who could not examine into the nature of things, were apt to take an ill opinion of every < change in religion that was brought about by such bad instru'ments. There had been a face of gravity and piety in the former administration, which made the libertinage of the present time more odious.'

The measures which followed the establishment of Episcopacy, are notorious matter of history. Presbyteries were suppressed, and by a subsequent act a large proportion of the presbyterian ministers who had been admitted to churches without presentations, were ejected by proclamation, which the military were ordered to enforce by pulling out of their pulpits the ministers who had neglected or refused compliance with the act. Above two hundred churches were shut up in one day, and one hundred and fifty ministers more were turned out for not submitting to the bishop's summons to attend the synod. A hue and cry was set up to invite persons to accept of benefices, and Burnet, the historian, then only nineteen years old, was pressed to take his choice of the vacant churches; but he represents that though he was entirely episcopal, yet he would not engage with a body of men that seemed to have the principles and tempers of inquisitors in them, and to have no regard to religion in any of their proceedings.'

Wherever, adds the episcopal historian, the people had generally forsaken their churches, the guards were quartered through the country. Sir James Turner, that commanded 6 them, was naturally fierce, but was mad when he was drunk ; and that was very often. So he was ordered by the Lord "Rothes to act according to such directions as Burnet (Archbishop) 'should send him. And he went about the country,and reeeived such <lists as the ministers brought him, of those who came not to Church and without any other proof, or any legal conviction, <he set such a fine on them as he thought they could pay, and 'sent soldiers to lie on them till it was paid. He confessed it went against him to serve such a debauched and worthless company as the clergy generally were; and that sometimes he did not act up to the rigour of his orders; for which he was often chid, both by Lord Rothes and by Sharp, but was never checked for his illegal and violent proceedings.'

Archbishops Sharp and Burnet were also the principal instigators to the ferocious severities to which the Government subsequently proceeded. After the rising in 1666, which terminated in the defeat of the Covenanters at Pentland Hill, the latter advised the hanging of all those who would not renounce the Cove'It was a moving sight,' says Bishop Burnet, to see

nant.

1

6

ten of the prisoners hanged upon one gibbet, at Edinburgh; thirty-five more were sent to their countries, and hanged up 'before their own doors; their ministers all the while using them hardly, and declaring them damned for their rebellion. 6 They might all have saved their lives, if they would have renounced the Covenant: so they were really a sort of martyrs for it. They did all at their death give their testimony, ac'cording to their phrase, to the Covenant, and to all that had 'been done pursuant to it: and they expressed great joy in their 'sufferings.' They were,' he remarks, speaking of the rebels, a poor harmless company of men, become mad by oppres"sion.' Hume states, that the oppressions which these people had suffered, the delusions under which they laboured, and their inoffensive behaviour during the insurrection, made them the objects of compassion. Yet were the King's ministers, particularly Sharpe, resolved to take severe vengeance. The executions were going on, when the king put a stop to them.' Dalziel's forces, however, continued to lie in the west, and to be guilty of the most horrid enormities. That general, according to Burnet's expression, acted the Muscovite too grossly.' 'He threatened to spit men, and to roast them: and he killed 'some in cold blood, or rather in hot blood; for he was then drunk, when he ordered one to be hanged, because he would not tell 'where his father was.' By this means all people were struck with such a terror, that they came regularly to church: and the clergy were so delighted with it, that they used to speak of that time as poets do of the golden age.'

In 1670, all Field Conventicles were declared treasonable, and in the preacher they were made capital. House Conventicles,' also, if crowded without the doors or at the windows,' were punishable as field conventicles. Rewards were offered to informers, and the heavy fines exacted upon conviction were awarded to the magistrates in order to stimulate them to activity. This infamous Act was considered even by the king as extravagantly severe; but he contented himself with remarking, that Bloody laws do no good,' and that had he been aware of the nature of the act he would never have passed it. A subsequent law enacted, that whosoever should refuse, when called upon, to depone against such as attended conventicles, should be fined, imprisoned, or banished; another denounced severe penalties against parents who did not apply to their parish ministers to baptize their children; and a third, which was expressly limited to his Majesty's Protestant subjects, forbade the withdrawing from the churches. In spite of these edicts, the field conventicles increased, and the zeal which originated in piety, and in affectionate attachment to the venerable ministers who were the objects of persecution, was exasperated into the boldness of en

thusiasm. Many came to them armed, in order to repel the wanton attacks to which they were exposed; yet when the sermon was ended, they peacefully dispersed themselves. Great numbers were in consequence of these proceedings outlawed; and writs, termed letters of intercommuning, were issued, which involved all who sheltered such persons, or did not seize them, when they had it in their power, in the same guilt and punishment. Thus every man was exposed to the malice of secret enemies, and many, under the apprehension of prosecution, left their houses, and wandered through the kingdom, Burnet affirms, like a sort of banditti' ;-but such a sort of banditti as the world had never seen, assembling for no worse purpose than to worship the Divine Being after the manner of their fathers, and to hear from the venerated lips of their accustomed teachers, welcome tidings of a world beyond the reach of the oppressor; a banditti who, except in thus peacefully assembling, transgressed no social law, and became formidable only from the resistance of despair. The early Christians were exposed to similar sufferings. "They wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in "dens and caves of the earth;" and the parallel could not fail to occupy the imagination of the oppressed Presbyterians, as conferring sanctity on their cause, and the character of martyrdom on their sufferings.

It was now pretended that the country was in a state of war. An army was raised, but no enemy appeared. Fresh edicts were passed of the most oppressive nature, in order, as was generally believed, to force a rebellion; but the country looked on in silent dismay, till at length some of the nobility, alarmed for their personal safety under the unprincipled despotism of Lauderdale, came up to London to carry their complaints to the throne. The lawless army of Highlanders was upon this dismissed, after having wasted the country for nearly two months. The Government however still continued inflexibly bent upon utterly suppressing the conventicles, and offered immense rewards for the apprehension of the obnoxious preachers. The mad people, as they are designated, who attended them, were driven almost to frenzy; they assembled in larger bodies, and frequently the troops that came to disperse them, did not think fit to engage with parties so strong, and so resolutely prepared for resistance.

At this exact crisis of affairs, our Author begins his entertaining tale of the Sunday wappen-schaws, which, it seems, the rigid Presbyterians, accustomed to a Judaical observance "of the sabbath,' scrupled to attend, and laboured to discountenance; and we have a most amusing description of the shooting at the popinjay, of the grotesque equipage of Lady Margaret, of the misfortunes of Goose Gibbie, and sundry other par

ticulars, illustrative of the harmless methods by which the Government sought to counteract the strictness of Puritanism. If the reader can but divest his mind of all recollection of historical fact, he cannot avoid being exceedingly amused by the liveliness and spirit of the fiction. The characters of Old Mause and Lady Margaret, are admirably supported, and display a fund of genuine and original humour in the Author; nor is it wholly out of the compass of probability, that in respect to the general traits by which they are marked, they might have their prototypes in some silly old lady and an aged female covenanter of 1678. It must be confessed, that for the purpose either of a novel or a farce, they form two of the best personages which the Author could have chosen as representatives of their respective parties. Balfour of Burley is in a far higher style of characteristic painting. So powerful is the conception, and so finely wrought up, that it leaves on the imagination a distinct biographical impression which, how directly soever at variance with the truth of history and the laws of moral combination, deceives us into the belief that such a man must really have existed. This Balfour proves to be one of the murderers of Archbishop Sharp; and to add to the terrific interest of his character, he is represented as subject to visitations of maniacal frenzy, in which the agitations of remorse are dreadfully commingled with the flashings of religious zeal. The cruel assassination of the aged prelate, whose atrocities and thorough baseness form no part of the detail of the Novelist, is brought in immediately after the innocent scenes of the wappen-schaw, in order to form a proper contrast between the ferocious proceedings of the rebel whigs, and the mild though impolitic' exercise of authority on the part of their oppressors, who only sought to compel them to dance and be merry' against their wills, and to hear only the indulged preachers. By the alternate aid of the ludicrous in the person of Old Mause, and of the terrific in that of John Balfour, heightened in each case by certain fanatical peculiarities of expression, consisting chiefly of the language of Scripture, which are designed to identify them with the sect, the Author succeeds to admiration in putting to flight for the time every feeling of respect for the poor Covenanters. Thus, what no historian would dare assert, the Novelist artfully leads his reader to infer; namely, that the arbitrary proceedings of the Privy Council of 1678, were not unjustifiable, and that those who, in the phrase of Lauderdale, glorified God in the Grass-market, were but the victims of their own folly. The following dialogue between Old Mause and her son Cuddie Headrigg, will assist him in forming this opinion.

❝ "And now we're settled ance mair," said Cuddie to his mother, " and if we're no sae bien and comfortable as we were up yonder, yet