Turning to his wife, who was standing by with her child in her arms, and her husband's little daughter by her side, he 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, in this cause I am willing to part with you.'

'Then,' he said, 'this is all I desire; I have no more to do but to die.'

'He kissed,' continues the narrative, 'his wife and bairns, and wished purchased and promised blessings to be multiplied to them and his blessing. Clavers ordered six soldiers to shoot him. The most part of the bullets came upon his head, and scattered his brains upon the ground. Marion Weir had never before that been able to look on blood without being in danger to faint, yet she was helped to be a witness to all this without either fainting or confusion, except that, when the shots went off, her eyes dazzled. When the deed was over, Claverhouse said to her: "What thinkest thou of thy husband now, woman?" "I ever thought meikle o' him," she replied, "and now more than ever." "It were but justice," said he, to lay thee beside him." "If you were permitted," she said, “I doubt not but your cruelty would go to that length; but how will ye answer for this morning's work?" "To man," he said, "I can be answerable; and as for God, I will take him in my own hand." He then mounted his horse and rode off, and left her with the corpse of her dead husband lying there. She set the bairn on the ground, and gathered his brains, 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.'

66

The accession of James VII. to the throne, which took place on the 6th of February 1685, by the death of his brother, Charles II., did not improve the condition of Scotland; on the contrary, the sufferings of the Covenanters were aggravated in the beginning of his reign. On the 11th of May 1685, two women, Margaret Maclaughlan, aged sixty-three, and Margaret Wilson, aged only eighteen years, were executed at Wigton for nonconformity—that is, for attending field-preachings. The sentence, which was, that they should be drowned by being tied to stakes in the sea while the tide was advancing, was carried into effect with circumstances of great cruelty, in the presence of Major Windram, the Laird of Lagg, and a vast concourse of spectators.

During the years 1686 and 1687, the Covenanters enjoyed a period of comparative quiet; the attention of the most active persecutors being diverted from them by the struggle which James VII. was carrying on with his subjects for the restoration of the Catholic religion. The struggle ended, as all know, in the Revolution of

1688, which expelled James VII. from the kingdom, and placed William and Mary on the throne. This Revolution restored peace to Scotland: the last who suffered in the cause of religion being Mr James Renwick, a young man, a preacher of the gospel, who was executed at Edinburgh on the 17th of February 1688. ~ In July 1689, Prelacy was formally abolished in Scotland, and Presbyterianism restored.

CONCLUSION.

Thus closed the 'persecutions in Scotland,' as they are very properly called. These persecutions, as has been seen, commenced almost at the accession of James I. to the throne of England, and did not cease till the Revolution of 1688-the more outrageous of the proceedings having taken place during the last twenty-eight years. Altogether, there was pretty nearly a century of strife: tyranny on the one hand, and suffering on the other. According to the most credible authority, not fewer than 18,000 persons suffered death, or the utmost extremities and hardships. Of these, 1700 were banished to the plantations-which was equivalent to becoming slaves; 750 were banished to the northern islands; 2800 were imprisoned for a long period; 7000 fled from the country; 680 were killed in battle; 498 were murdered in cold blood; and 362 were executed in form of law. The remainder of the 18,000 are summed up in those who perished through cold, hunger, and other privations. But besides all this amount of suffering and loss of life, the nation at large was exposed to numerous injuries, which it was long in recovering. Judged by the spirit of the present age, the persecutions so relentlessly projected by the latter members of the house of Stuart fill one with horror and amazement. We can scarcely comprehend how any men in their senses should have plunged into, and maintained such a career of wickedness and folly-the wickedness of attempting to dragoon a whole nation into opinions to which they expressed a settled repugnance; the folly of expecting to be successful. That they completely failed in their efforts, has just been shewn; but more than this, they actually damaged the cause which they espoused. Their persecutions impressed a rooted hatred of Episcopacy, and an equally intense love of Presbyterianism, in Scotland-sentiments, to all appearance, not likely soon to be weakened. To the present day, the Scotch refer, with natural pride and enthusiasm, to the great stand made by their ancestors for conscience' sake in the seventeenth century; and in their popular tales, the achievements of the Covenanters have eclipsed those of Wallace, Bruce, and other national heroes. May the remembrance of these deeds serve only to cherish mutual forbearance and toleration, with every other Christian virtue !

32

MORE simple and kind-hearted being than Bob Parsons -little Bob Parsons, as he was called, on account of his somewhat diminutive size-was not known within the sound of Bow Bells. Bob had for years been a slave to the counting-house; and, while other clerks were occasionally indulged with a holiday, he was quite contented to toil on as usual, without any idea that he deserved or required a similar relaxation. At length the little man's time came. Bob, unasked, got a week's holiday at Christmas; and having such a monstrous allowance of time, he resolved to spend it in the country. In the country!-Christmas spent in the country!-that sounds like going to visit at some castle, or manor, or old farm-house at the very least; where roaring fires are kept up all day and all night, where casks of ale are as plentiful as blackberries in autumn, and where roast beef and plum-pudding are by no means dainties, but quite ordinary everyday occurrences.

But it was to no place so grand as a farm-house even that Bob thought of going on this particular Christmas. Bob's relations, he believed, were few-and those few, as far as he knew, were all poor; but it was a very long time since he had seen any of them.

He had been a clerk in the firm of Linsey, Woolsey, & Co., Aldermanbury, for the last twenty years, and he was now hard upon five-and-forty. During these years he had maintained little intercourse with the place of his nativity-a remote village in Lincolnshire, called Littlethorpe, which I defy you to find on the map.

No. 87.

I

Bob's father and mother were dead long ago, and so were Bob's sisters and brothers: that he knew well enough; but he did not know what number of aunts, uncles, and cousins he might have living still just on the other side of Grantham. As he felt a strange yearning to see or hear something about his kindred on this occasion -a yearning which he could not very easily account for, as he was not much given to the romantic-Bob made up his mind to go down into Lincolnshire, and announced his intention accordingly.

This announcement astonished his friends in the counting-house; and Jack Hooper was so incredulous on the subject, that he was heard to declare 'he believed it was all a joke that Little Bob Parsons was not going into the country at all. He had known Bob thirty years, as long as he (Jack Hooper) could remember, and he had never heard of Bob's knowing any one out of London. As to Bob's relations, he believed they were all merely ideal.' As Jack was the wag of the counting-house, every one joined him in laughing at the idea of Little Bob Parsons' journey into the country; and they were quite sure nothing would ever come of it. Now, we shall see that they were never more mistaken in their lives. It was in the days of long stages-before these panting, screeching, flying railway days-that Bob and his portmanteau were hoisted to the top of the Grantham coach on a fine 23d of December morning. It was a sharp frost, to be sure; but Bob's greatcoat was a very great one indeed for so little a man, and it wrapped him well from head to foot, so that he did not mind the cold; beside his portmanteau, on the roof of the coach, Bob placed a small basket, which his landlady had stored with provender for the inward man; including a small bottle of brandy-a sacred deposit, made by Bob himself, with a view to spiritual comfort on the road.

By the time the coach stopped at Barnet, Bob felt ten years younger than he had seemed the day before, when his mates in the counting-house had wished him a very merry Christmas, with nobody, at nowhere, in Lincolnshire.' Bob ate some sandwiches at Barnet, and felt as strong as a giant afterwards. When the coach started once more, he gave himself up to thoughts something like these:

'Well, it is a pleasing thing to live in such improving times! I scarcely remember this road at all. To be sure, it is thirty years ago since I travelled it. How strange! it seems but yesterday since I left the old place down there. I wonder whether that's altered? Ah, it is long ago! How well I remember poor mother's kissing and hugging me, and crying like anything all the time when I was coming away to London. "Robert," says she to my father, as he sat ready in the cart-" Robert, something tells me I shall never see him again. He's going all the way to London, and he's sure to die or make his fortune there; and either way, I'm afraid he'll never come here to see his old mother again!" "Ah! didn't I kiss

her then? Poor mother! And my father said: "Nonsense, woman," says he; "you'll see him fast enough in a year or two. There, let him go now; the horse won't stand." And so I got into the cart; and, sure enough, mother was right; she never did see me any more; nor father either. But I always wrote to them regularly, and I know they never wanted for anything. Brothers and sisters all dead too! Poor Polly! I think I loved her the best, though she was a little sharp-tempered; she was always so kind to me because I was the youngest, and the least, and the weakest. So she's gone! But she had children; I may see them. And Dick, what a fellow he was, to be sure! The daring things he used to do. But he is gone also; and all his little ones but two, they tell me. The girl married somewhere about Littlethorpe, and the boy settled at Wisbeach. And sister Anne, and Bill-both dead too! and never married, like myself. I wonder whether the people in Littlethorpe will know me again? I must be altered a good deal. Thirty years is a long time!"

Here Bob felt his face with his hand, and tried to take a survey of his figure, the lower part of which was eclipsed by the somewhat globular form of the central portion. On the whole, Bob had worn well. He was of a contented, cheerful, kindly disposition: much given to mirth, and by no means averse to good cheer in moderation. He took a gentle interest in politics, but was disposed to believe that Providence ordered all things for the best; and he had no new lights on religion to trouble his soul. He always went to church twice on the Sunday; and when a free-thinking friend tried to argue him out of the habit, he listened quietly to what was said, and never contradicted him; for Bob had learned, by experience, that arguing about religion was not the way to be religious. He went to church on Sunday to worship God in his own way; and he believed in God, and trusted in His goodness all the rest of the week, without thinking himself better or wiser than his neighbours; in which last respect he did not resemble most of his free-thinking, free-living friends.

For worldly matters, certainly Bob was not rich but he was not poor; and he was contented with what he had. His salary had been £150 per annum for the last ten years, and he had contrived to save about half of that; for he dined with the other clerks at his employers' expense. He did not smoke, and he was economical in all things, except that he never denied himself a penny to give to a poor body in the street, or sometimes a sixpence, if the poor body happened to be a woman; for Bob was a bachelor, and retained his youthful feeling of chivalrous reverence for the sex, and took shame to himself when he saw a woman starving, and never could be virtuous enough to think that 'it served her right for her misconduct.'

To return. The Grantham coach, with Bob on the top, went on,