sake, save my life; his daughter falling on her knees, begging his life also. But they told him that he should die, and desired him to repent and make for death. Alexander Henderson said, Seeing there has been lives taken for you already, and if ours be taken it shall not be for nought; he rising off his knees went forward, and John Balfour stroke him in the face, and Andrew Henderson stroke him on the hand and cut it, and John Balfour rode him down; whereupon he, laying upon his face as if he had been dead, and James Russell hearing his daughter say to Wallace that there was life in him yet, in the time James was disarming the rest of the bishop's men, went presently to him and cast off his hat, for it would not cut at first, and hacked his head in pieces."-Pp. 416-418. He Mr. Sharpe's industry has traced some curious particulars of James Russell, who so coolly narrates his own share in this horrible transaction. He was afterwards a captain among the insurgents at Bothwell bridge. occasioned a good deal of schism among the suffering remnant, being a person not only "of a hot and fiery spirit," which is evident from his narrative, but also, which could less easily have been anticipated, one of a very nice and scrupulous conscience, extending the duty of disowning the prelatic government beyond the bounds adopted even by the most scrupulous Presbyterians. He quarrelled with the heathen names given to the days of the week and months of the year. Whereas it was generally regarded as lawful to pay all public burdens excepting cess, he abhorred, as a base compliance, even paying customs at ports and bridges, and upon this ultra-scrupulosity separated from the communion of the brethren. Russell was followed in his schism by three men, a boy, and seven or eight women, who were to the Cameronians what the Circumcellions in Africa were to the Donatists, or rather what the Cameronians themselves were to moderate Presbyterians. The Cameronian societies when "refreshed" by the return of Mr. James Renwick from Holland, and exhorted to lift up (in the language of the times) and display the fallen banner of the church, became anxious to recall these scattered sheep from their wanderings in the wilderness. They despatched missionaries to the dissidents, "to whom they feelingly described the great gifts of Mr. James Renwick, and, in the name of the general meeting, invited them to partake of that rich and unspeakable blessing, the Lord hath bestowed. But their eloquence was of no avail; for the three men, the boy and the women declared that they would neither listen to Renwick, nor join with them, insisting on the abomination of paying customs at ports and markets, though they were willing to pay them at boats and bridges; and as for days of the week, and months of the year, they owne the same was not a ground of separation, yet adhered to that paper given in by James Russell to the general meeting anent the same.""-P. 401. What became of Russell afterwards does not appear, but we are inclined to think that he was the person who, having commenced the killing trade on the person of Sharp, afterwards carried it on as a physician in London, and lived there for several years after the Revolution. Respecting the principal action of Russell's life, various opinions have been entertained. A gentleman of fortune and military rank, the descendant of the celebrated John Balfour of Burley, has hurled down the gauntlet (in the Scottish Magazine) to all cavaliers of the day, Jedediah Cleishbotham included, declaring himself too proud of "his great progenitor to refuse either his name to his life, or his hand to his defence." As the wager of battle is not received among the canons of criticism, we can only reply to this bold defiance by the expostulation of the poet, "What will you do, renowned Falconbridge? On the whole, if Archbishop Sharp was a persecutor of the Covenanters while he lived, a scandal to them in the manner of his death, and a stumbling-block and shibboleth to them after he was no more, the question of the justice of his death being illegally pressed upon every prisoner of their faction, it can hardly be said even now that the sinister influence of his name has ceased to affect those who cannot divide their just attachment to the kirk of Scotland from a doting and depraved admiration of men who, far from having put on religion, seem, from their own narrative, to have stripped themselves of every ordinary feeling of humanity. What should we now say of the memory of Ridley and Latimer, had they encouraged their followers to waylay and murder Pole or Bonnar? We know thousands who have adored the name of Hampden, and some who could even admire that of Cromwell; but we never heard of any who made a saint of Hugh Peters or Ludovic Claxton. As to the pretended share which these enthusiasts are supposed to have taken in the Revolution, there is extant on the subject their own formal resolutions taken at a general meeting on the 24th October, 1688, in which, after deliberating how far they could concur in conscience with the Prince of Orange, whose landing was then expected, they determined thus: " It was concluded unanimously, that we could not have an association with the Dutch in one body, nor come formally under their conduct, being such a promiscuous conjunction of Lutherans, malignants, and sectaries, to join with whom were repugnant to the testimony of the Church of Scotland." This rational decision at such an important crisis shows these enlightened persons' zeal for civil and religious liberty to have been similar to the refined parental affection of the French lady of rank, who suffered her infant to starve rather than feed it out of any dish but a porcelain one. This singular and entertaining volume is embellished by etchings of the well-known Duke of Lauderdale and his duchess, who has much the air of what she was, a woman of gallantry, rather too old for the profession; and of Archbishop Sharp, whose countenance neither augurs ambition nor pride, but seems, on the contrary, grave and evangelical: two curious vignettes are also given, one representing an allegorical defence of the candlesticks of the church by two sturdy whigs: the other a bas-relief on the sumptuous tomb of Sharp, exhibiting the scene of his murder. There is another curious etching from a picture of the battle of Bothwell bridge, preserved at Dalkeith House; the original, however, has not the merit of exhibiting an accurate landscape; for the houses on the right hand bank of the Clyde, some of which, coeval with the battle, are still standing, are whimsically transferred to the left bank. The reader owes these illustrations to the editor, who is distinguished by his genius and execution as an amateur of the art. LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN HOME.* [Quarterly Review, June, 1827.] THE memory of Mr. Home, as an author, depends, in England, almost entirely upon his celebrated tragedy of Douglas, which not only retains the most indisputable possession of the stage, but produces a stronger effect on the feelings of the audience, when the parts of Douglas and Lady Randolph are well filled, than almost any tragedy since the days of Otway. There may be something of chance in having hit upon a plot of such general interest, and no author has been more fortunate in seeing the creatures of his imagination personified by the first performers which England could produce. But it is certain, that to be a favourite with those whose business it is to please the public, a tragedy must possess, in a peculiar degree, the means of displaying their powers to advantage; and it is equally clear, that the subject of Douglas, however felicitous in itself, was well suited to the talents of the writer, who treated it so as to enable them to accomplish a powerful effect on the feelings of successive generations of men. It must be interesting, therefore, to the public, to know the history and character of that rarest of all writers in the present age-a successful tragic author; by which, we understand, one whose piece has not only received ephemeral success, but has established itself on the stage as one of the best acting plays in the language. There is also much of interest about Home himself, as his character is drawn, and his habits described, in the essay prefixed to these volumes, by the venerable author of the Man of Feeling, who, himself very far advanced in life,† still cherishes the love of let * The Life and Works of the Author of Douglas, edited by the venerable HENRY MACKENZIE, appeared in 3 vols. 8vo. in 1824. + [Mr. Mackenzie died at Edinburgh, 14th January, 1831, in his ters, and condescends to please at once and instruct those of the present day, who are attached to such pursuits, by placing before them a lively picture of those predecessors at whose feet he was brought up. Neither is it only to Scotland that these annals are interesting. There were men of literature in Edinburgh before she was renowned for romances, reviews, and magazines— "Vixerunt fortes ante Agamemnona;" and a single glance at the authors and men of science who dignified the last generation, will serve to show that, in those days there were giants in the North. The names of Hume, Robertson, Fergusson, stand high in the list of British historians. Adam Smith was the father of the economical system in Britain, and his standard work will long continue the text-book of that science. Dr. Black, as a chemist, opened that path of discovery which has since been prosecuted with such splendid success. Of metaphysicians, Scotland boasted, perhaps, but too many: to Hume and Fergusson, we must add Reid, and, though younger, yet of the same school, Mr. Dugald Stewart. In natural philosophy, Scotland could present Professor Robison, James Watt, whose inventions have led the way to the triumphs of human skill over the elements, and Clerk, of Eldin, who taught the British seaman the road to assured conquest. Others we could mention; but these form a phalanx, whose reputation was neither confined to their narrow, poor, and rugged native country, nor to England and the British dominions, but known and respected wherever learning, philosophy, and science were honoured. It is to this distinguished circle, or, at least, to the greater part of its members, that Mr. Mackenzie introduces his readers; and they must indeed be void of curiosity who do not desire to know something more of such men than can be found in their works, and especially when the communication is made by a contemporary so well entitled to ask, and so well qualified to command, attention. We will endeavour, in the first place, to give some account of Mr. Home's life and times, as we find them detailed by this excellent 86th year. A monument, bearing an appropriate inscription, has since been erected to his memory in the Greyfriars' churchyard of Edinburgh.] |