(Continued from page 157)
To return to the women, there was the future Lady
Stair, (wife of John, Earl of Stair,) in the days of her first widowhood,
who fled for her life from the maddest fool in Scotland, and stinted the
wine of one of its first commanders and wisest statesmen—a lively,
sensible, resolute woman, and a lover of the Covenant as a daughter of
Loudon's—handsome from bodily and mental health and strength—in her grave-coloured
jacket and skirt, with silver buttons. There was the Honourable Mrs
Ogilvie, in a scarlet riding-dress, and an under petticoat of callimanco,
reputed "the best-bred woman in Scotland," who "finished" the education of
young ladies of quality, and introduced them into the society of the
capital. And there was many a nameless grim Mrs Jonet in her mantle, and
fair Euphame Napier under her plaid. There was Lord Abruchil, the richest
of the Lords of Session, with a satin capachin, lined with fur, on his
bent shoulders, and a muff strapped round his waist to protect his age
from the chillness of the east wind; and young Duncan Forbes, brother of
the Highland laird whose ominous sobriquet was "Bumper John," already
mourning Mary Rose of Kilravock, with whom he held tryst at the broad
stone, beneath the lonely oak which
"Shakes its branches bold,"
on his own Drummossie Moor, when he little dreamt that
he would live to hear of the familiar heather wild as a great sangue
lac. He has ere now accompanied Captain Green to his execution, and
laid the murdered head with his own hands in its dishonoured grave— that
just and generous young advocate. And there was a towering figure moving
readily among the divines—a broad contrast to the intellectual icicle,
Mackenzie,—a gaunt, whimsical, rough, true, godly giant, Sir James
Stewart, the Queen's advocate—a learned man, too, for he read eighteen
hours a-day when in hiding for his principles, and could repeat "long
passages of the Roman authors and the poets not many months before his
death,"—not a classical English writer, possibly, because in his
conversation he was wont to be uncourtly and uncouth enough, flinging
"many a beast, fool, and ignoramus" at the heads of those with whom he
reasoned in his homely freedom, though, at the same time, of a temper
"most sweet, and easy, and very pleasant," as may well be believed of so
brave and good a man, who, when a clergyman mentioned his usefulness by
his deathbed, shrugged his shoulders, and objected characteristically, "Hout!
hout!" and who expired in the very act of blessing his children. It is not
difficult to realise great, loose-limbed, manly Sir James, lounging among
the black coats, and pleasing and teasing them as their most trusty and
privileged friend.
These black coats—they scarcely need to be
daguerreotyped at this hour of the day; but their outlines are very clear,
very impressive, very touching still. They were not now fighting for
existence, and hunted on the moors and morasses; they had established
their plea with the Revolution, and, beyond the Cameronians, and those
who, like the earlier Christians, when the persecutions of the Roman
emperors ceased, began to torture themselves—were afflicted with the fine
disease of scrupulousness, which Dr Samuel Johnson could not away
with—they were at peace; and the qualities which had been grand in
adversity were already undergoing the harder test of prosperity. They need
nervous touches and double lines to indicate them. Some were poor men,
like Mair, who was a carter until he was above twenty years of age, who
was taught by his wife (a resolute, faithful Euphame) to read English, and
who pursued his studies until he mastered Greek and Hebrew; who refused
gold from King James, (very sparing in the coin which bore his effigy,)
because the king threatened the liberties of the Church, and might design
to inveigle him into concessions; and gladly availed himself of bags of
meal left at the door when his family were starving. Some were of ancient
family and independent means, like the Melvilles. Many were learned in the
abstruse mysteries and subtle logic of the schools. A few were simple men,
only furnished with gospel riches. They were isolated in country parishes,
where news from Edinburgh was rare. And yet almost all the noted figures
in the groups had visited London, a fine venture in those days; and not a
few of them had been educated or ordained in Holland, where they were
brought into contact with foreign requirements and foreign verdicts; where
they found the national reformer, the liberal, if languid Erasmus; and
where they learnt how Grotius escaped from prison, very
significantly in his book-chest. They were men who plunged deep in the
fathomless abysses of Arminianism and Antinomianism, and who, from the
very concentration of their ideas, underwent fierce individual mental
struggles. They were unbending in their discipline, until it arrived at an
iron coercion, and severe to cruelty in their sentences. They sedulously
collected God's judgments on their ancient enemies as well as His acts of
providence towards their friends : how this laird sailed with the wrecks
of the miserable captives of Dunottar to plant East Jersey—and a
pestilence breaking out in the ship, bis wife and himself were among the
first victims; and how that laird dropped down dead on the floor, where he
had held a wicked "cabal" and dancing match. They credited wraiths, and
showers of blood; yet were they men most honourable in their reputations,
most tender in their household charities, most self-sacrificing in their
duties, most manly in their faith; and over their proverbial Scotch
gravity there rippled brightly the equally proverbial Scotch humour. They
were spiritual-minded, godly; and one is in a rapture while he speaks of
the righteousness of Christ—and cries out at another time, while
expatiating on the eternity of glory in heaven, like a man in the seventh
heaven already, "It's glory to come—glory to come, and always, through all
eternity, glory to come;" and another, in facing his last enemy,
murmurs of a tryst— a tryst next day—a tryst at seven o'clock—a tryst with
his Saviour: and girds up his loins, and keeps his heavenly tryst at the
hour and the place appointed.
Up in Edinburgh, at this Assembly, these officers of
the most potent army in the kingdom were anxiously scrutinised by the
other authorities, while they frequently disputed hotly, and legislated
arrogantly, and experienced sufficiently that, though their lives were no
longer in danger, their posts were no sinecures. They were already divided
among themselves, and threatened with dissent; the old volcanic throes of
their history were still heaving, the Cameronians and other dissenters
bore them bitter grudges, and they themselves, on the other hand, were
tempted to revenge their old humiliations on their neighbours, the
Episcopalians. In one parish the heritors were inducting a pastor in
defiance of the congregation, in another, trades-bands were placing a
probationer in open scorn of the heritors; in a third, an Episcopalian
proprietor, in orders himself, was endeavouring to blot out the very
existence of one of the parishes of the country. In Ross, the Laird of
Coul sent armed men to arrest a Presbyterian minister venturing within his
bounds, threw him into a shed or hut containing cattle, and kept him in
guard two days "without meat, drink, or a bed." In the south, there were
similar outrages. Last, not least, among their own people, a good divine
found it necessary to complain sadly of his parishioners, that, as a
consequence of the long years of strife and contest, he found them more
zealous after Presbyterianism than Christianity—that although the
persecuted clergy had preserved true points in their character, the
natives, generally speaking, "were naturally smart, and of an uncommon
assurance; self-conceited and censorious to a pitch; using an indecent
freedom both with Church and State." [Boston.]
At this season many a black coat was inditing a daily
letter to a primitive, rural manse. Models of the correspondence remain,
and, in one case, the likeness of a receiver of these constant epistles.
"A woman of great worth, whom I therefore passionately loved and inwardly
honoured; a stately, beautiful, and comely personage, truly pious, and
fearing the Lord; of an evenly temper, patient in our common tribulations,
and under her personal distresses; a woman of bright, natural parts, an
uncommon stock of prudence; of a quick and lively apprehension in things
she applied herself to; great presence of mind in surprising incidents;
sagacious and acute in discerning the qualities of persons, and therefore
not easily imposed upon; modest and grave in her deportment, but naturally
cheerful; wise and affable in conversation, having a good faculty at
speaking, and expressing herself with assurance. Endowed with a singular
dexterity in dictating letters; being a pattern of frugality and wise
management of household affairs, therefore entirely committed to her; well
fitted for, and careful of, the virtuous education of her children,
remarkably useful to the country side, both in the Merse and in the
Forest, through her skill in physic and surgery, on which, in many
instances, a peculiar blessing appeared to be commanded from heaven; and,
finally, a crown to me in my public station and appearance."
These letters are wonderfully characteristic. They
begin: "My dear," or "My heart," and they proceed to detail, with great
accuracy, the day's proceedings— a communication to be forwarded to some
minister in the vicinity, not this year a member of Assembly, or to the
lord or laird in whose family the writer has at one time taught as
governor, and with whom, root and branch, he usually maintains a
peculiarly endearing and perfectly unservile relation. He never fails to
give the text of the sermon preached before the Commissioner, with,
perhaps, the heads of the discourse; and it is evident that he feels a
little gentle disappointment if it does not deal with the signs of the
times. He intermingles words of spiritual counsel with the news of the
great world crowding upon him as he emerges from his corner. A
considerable proportion of these tidings refers to rumours from the
Continent. There is a great subject of interest and anxiety in that dull,
morose, banished old man over in France, whose bleedings at the nose are
becoming more frequent and violent. There are serious apprehensions of an
invasion, and in one letter the man has to encourage the apprehensive
woman,—"I hear nothing now anent the invasion; neither do I expect it so
suddenly as you do in yours, which I just now receive. I shall haste home
as soon as I can. I hope you will write every post. Turn not melancholy,
for I don't think there is any cause for it. God overrules all." And again
the Assembly are so little under the impression of an invasion, that it is
not named in the fast. There are occasional glimpses of the army
abroad—"Young Torrens is killed at Douay;" and a very little gossip, which
has its peculiar flavour— "The Laird of Megginch's sister is married to
afriend." That may happen still—but there "young Houston has had a duel
with Chartres, and he has been wounded." "Little Tom Stewart is dead of
the pox." However, the letters are singularly impersonal; only here and
there comes a short sentence or two—"I long for Thursday, and am weary to
be home, though I am perfectly well. The horses are not come at ten at
night." "My dearest Peggy, I am longing to hear from you. I fancy the
Assembly may rise upon Tuesday or Wednesday next, so let my horse come in
to me some time on Tuesday. He may either come off on Monday, and stay a
night by the way, or on Tuesday morning, and come through, as Johnny
pleases; but I think the first best." "I am grieved to hear of Mary's ill
rest. I wish it do not much break yours; but it becomes us to be
submissive. She has been an easy child till of late. I shall speak to B.
Warrandar, if possible, but he is now out of town. As to the picture, I
shall satisfy you when I come home. You must not judge of my respect to
you by this; if it is not done, I can sincerely say it is not for want of
inclination to satisfy you. I were most ingrate if I did it not to the
best of my power." "Send me word with Johnny what placks to buy for Mary."
"I shall mind the calligoe." "Let Johnny, if he bring the black horse,
bring a wallet with him, and light at William Ker's, in the head of the
Grassmarket, on the side next to the Castle, and call for mo at Mr
Stewart's, the 'Regent's,' just at Bristo Port, or in the Parliament
Close, the first door as he goes down the meal-market steps, at Mrs
Watson's, or at the Assembly House." And the precise, old-fashioned
scholar breaks out in the postscript, after he has signed himself "her
own,"—"Please pardon escapes; I want time to read this over." [Wodrow's
Letters.]
These spare incidental allusions blot out the Assembly
House and its troubles about the abjuration oath, and bring vividly before
the reader the manse by the burn or under the hill—the pear-tree a sheet
of snow—the gowans cropped in the infield by the minister's cow—the
swallow fluttering under the eaves in this May-time of the year—the
arrival of the minister from the Assembly—the innocent importance and
pleasure with which he opens his "wallet," and displays a share of the
wonders of the capital, the news-prints to be studied and treasured till
harvest, the "calligoe," "the picture" for the lady, "the placks" for the
bairns; and the lady is glad, and the bairns are gleeful, and they talk of
that event and that scene after real snow is clinging to the gable, and
the minister is watching his bairns sweeping down the slide in the centre
of the shady kirk-road.
The black coats are in very simple and occasionally
rather threadbare attire, with bag-wigs or powdered hair, or more
frequently their own hair, without powder, combed straight back, and
falling down behind, leaving the temples exposed. There is slight,
delicate Thomas Boston of Ettrick, who spent much of his youth with his
father in the prison at Dunse, and Erskine of Stirling, and Hog of Dalserf,
who was employed by the Assembly to confute Arminianism, and in the act
subjected himself to a clamour of Antino-mianism, who was licensed in
Holland, and spent so many years there, that, like the young Frenchman,
Joseph Renee Bellot, one of Franklin's knights, he lost grace and ease in
his native tongue,—all three, whether meek or bold, protesting
enthusiastically against the abjuration oath, and preparing for the first
Secession. There, in his fiery youth, is the Celt, Niel Macvicar, who,
when gray-headed, sat watching at a friend's window for the return of the
messenger whom he sent to procure him liberty to preach while Prince
Charlie was in Holyrood, and when the answer in the affirmative reached
him, sprang up, clapping his hands, and calling out, "A fine day for Niel
Macvicar!" And mounting his pulpit, prayed that the Prince who came among
them seeking a temporal crown, might rather be transplanted to a heavenly
one—a free petition, at which poor Prince Charlie, in the glow of his
success and his good humour, laughed. There is stiff-limbed Barclay, who
was in hiding with the Camero-nian lad Renwick, and hunted by Claverhouse,
for the space of six weeks, and who attributed his marvellous escapes,
with simple greatness of faith, to his God's right arm bared in his
defence, and yet who, in the course of his doublings and windings, had
acquired all the wary tactics, ready resources, and daring
coups-de-main of an experienced military commander. There is Wodrow,
the careful historian, who also finds time to correspond with Sir Robert
Sibbald on antiquities, Lluyd on geology and zoology, and Cotton Mather,
for twenty years, on "all the churches." There is the learned Professor
Jameson, blind from his birth, yet a miracle of knowledge, a great
opponent of Prelacy; and there is manly Principal Carstairs, ("Cardinal
Carstairs," if ever man was by desert a cardinal,) master of all his
faculties, bodily and spiritual, and wise and temperate in their use, who
had been subjected to torture and imprisonment with the illustrious
sufferers in the Ryehouse Plot, who was classed by Butch William as "a
truly honest man," who is ready to acknowledge the amount of liberty
allowed to his party, who is mild and prudent in his allusions to causes
of division and distraction, and who, with brave Christian spirit, in the
words of an ear-witness, "recommended charity and ingenuousness in dealing
with those of the Episcopal communion who did not think it fit to join
with us, and avoiding harshness and bitterness of spirit towards them; and
told us that morosity and disingenuity will no way recommend us in dealing
with them; which expressions some looked upon as what contained a tacit
reflection upon ourselves."
Euphame's ignorance of those actors on an ancient stage
was enlightened by such notes as her companions could supply. "Yonder is
worthy Mr Hepburn —a powerful man in prayer." "I tell you, lass, I've seen
that spruce, comfortable, middle-aged goodman in a tramper's rags, with
old pans on his back, glowering steadfastly up at a taller tree than ever
grew in green wood—just the black gal!ows-tree, in the centre of stone and
lime." "Well, they say he's a sweet singer in Israel now, and minds only
the mercies of the past. But see to you—here is the billy that beats the
lave; oh, he's a grand, mysterious preacher, Mr David Gillespie."
"I hope it has been an edifying sight," observes Mrs
Jonet, fastening her hood; "and they have seen us, too, I trust, and will
not draw back from the plough"—in the spirit of those women who looked
from the house-tops on Luther travelling on his dauntless mission, and
cried, in shrill warning, "He who denies me before men, him will I deny
before my Father and His holy angels." "But I have seen a grander sight,"
adds Mrs Jonet, sombrely, but loftily, "and one where there was no
laughing and daffing to disturb one's meditations."
But even Euphame shuddered a little at Mrs Jonet's
supernatural preference for the Grassmarket.
VIII.
When Mrs Jonet and Euphame Napier reached home, they
found that the day's extraordinary occurrences were not over. A licence
had been snatched, and a delinquency committed in their absence, which had
not taken place in Bristo Street during Mrs Jonet's supremacy there—enough
to prove that Mrs Jonet did not often turn her back upon her court.
In the morning, Katie Crichton and Alison Hughes had
petitioned for leave to go with Mrs Jonet and Euphame Napier to see the
ministers.
"To see the ministers!" Mrs Jonet blazed up in scorn;
"a fell-like pair of gilpies, who could not mint the plainest doctrine, to
profess to want out to see the ministers! If ye had asked to win to
witness a wappinschaw on the Borough Moor, I would have held you in
earnest, at least."
"But we want to get a glance at the braw Lord
Commissioner, in his gilt coach. Ye might consent, Mrs Jonet," pleaded
Katie, quite misled by Mrs Jonet's pretence of extreme sincerity and
liberality. No; Mrs Jonet had righteously decided that only Euphame Napier
was entitled to accompany her, and dogmatically fulfilled her resolution.
Katie and this girl Alison, of the same cast of
character, smarting with mortification and envy, and very slenderly
endowed with wisdom, had slipped out without leave, and were still absent
when the principal returned. Truants among Lady Somerville's maidens! Mrs
Jonet was shocked; and, while she sped a trusty deputy to Mrs Crichton's,
in the High Street, to order her, on pain of intimation to Lady
Somerville, forfeit of all privileges, and expulsion from the hospital, to
deliver up the offenders and despatch them back without delay to Mrs Jonet,
to be punished and disgraced in keeping with their scandalous behaviour,
and according to Mrs Jonet's sovereign will and pleasure, Mrs Jonet
moralised on the sins of the world, that she could not take a step out to
see the ministers enter the Assembly House, but this folly must befall in
Bristo Street.
Mrs Crichton received the information, but returned no
answer, save what was contained in the philosophic observation, that "bairns
would be bairns, and the show was most ended." Mrs Jonet did not fume, but
she was settling into a white heat of wrath. Still, Mrs Crichton was so
unsettled and inconsiderate in her words and actions, that there was no
reason to suppose that she would not comply with Mrs Jonet's demand, the
moment her hand reached the culprits. Mrs Jonet hesitated to apprise Lady
Somerville; she was not a merciful woman, but she loved that fragile, fine
body and spirit, whom she was very nearly ostentatious in styling her
mistress; she grieved to discompose and distress her; she was fain to be
excused from giving a bad account of her stewardship—stern as she was, an
immediate accusation, without room for intervening rebuke and repentance,
seemed disproportioned to the offence.'
Mrs Jonet waited for several hours, while the
excitement and ferment of the usually profoundly-regular and peaceful
hospital spread and deepened. At last, when Mrs Jonet must take some step
to relieve her resentment and gathering apprehension, and was resuming her
hood to proceed in person to Lady Somerville's closet in the Queea's
Close, an express communication arrived from Mrs Crichton to notify that
she had not seen the bairns since they changed their clothes in her house,
in the early part of the day, and she would hold Mrs Jonet accountable for
the safety of her Katie, since she should have looked after her in
time,—and the Edinburgh mob was up!
"The silly, vain woman to abet the lass in slipping her
tether, and then throw the blame on another ! Because the lass was her ain,
for that very reason she should have dealt sharply with her youth—and
grudged not the defeating of her own weak inclinations, so that the rod
was not spared, and the child was not spoilt."
But Mrs Jonet's homily died away on her thin lips. The
matter was no joke—the Edinburgh mob was up; and two girls, of seventeen
and sixteen, were abroad in the streets, exposed to its excesses; and the
May twilight was descending suddenly, dank with a curtain of gray mist,
caught up from the German Ocean, and borne on the wings of a shrill east
wind.
(To be continued.)