the burden to be laid on you else.""I defy thee," retorted Macbriar; "this has not been the first of my imprisonments, or of my sufferings, and, young as I may be, I have lived long enough to know how to die when I am called upon."-" Ay, but there are some things which must go before an easy death, if you continue obstinate," said Lauderdale, and rung a small silver bell which was placed before him on the table.

A dark crimson curtain, which covered a sort of niche, or Gothic recess, in the wall, rose at the signal, and displayed the public executioner, a tall, grim, and hideous man, having an oaken table before him, on which lay thumb-screws, and an iron case called the Scottish boot, used in these tyrannical days to torture accused persons. Morton, who was unprepared for this ghastly apparition, started when the curtain arose; but Macbriar's nerves were more firm. He gazed upon the horrible apparatus with much composure; and if nature called the blood from his cheek for a second, resolution sent it back to his brow with greater energy." Do you know who that man is?" said Lauderdale, in a low, stern voice, almost sinking into a whisper." He is, I suppose," replied Macbriar, "the infamous executioner of your blood-thirsty commands upon the persons of God's people. He and you are equally beneath my regard: I may shrink under the sufferings you can doom me to, and poor frail nature may shed tears, or send forth cries, but I trust my soul is anchored firmly on the Rock of ages."

"Do your duty," said the Duke to the executioner. The fellow advanced, and asked, with a harsh and discordant voice, upon which of the prisoner's limbs he should first employ his engine?" Let him choose for himself," said the Duke; "Ishould like to oblige him in any thing that is reasonable."" Since you leave it to me,"

said the prisoner, stretching forth his right leg, "take the best-I willingly bestow it in the cause for which Isuffer." The executioner, with the help of the assistants, inclosed the leg and knee within the tight iron boot, or case, and then placing a wedge of the same metal between the knee and edge of the machine, took a mallet in his hand, and stood waiting for fur ther orders. A well-dressed man, by profession a surgeon, placed himself by the other side of the prisoner's chair, bared his arm, and applied his thumb to regulate the torture according to the strength of the patient.When these preparations were made, the president of the council repeated, with the same stern voice, the ques tion, "When and where did you last see John Balfour of Burley?" The prisoner, instead of replying to him, turned his eyes to Heaven, to implore divine strength, and muttered a few words, of which the last were distinctly audible, "Thou hast said, thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power."

The Duke of Lauderdale glanced his eye around the council, as if to collect their suffrages, and judging from their mute signs, gave on his own part a nod to the executioner, whose mallet instantly descended on the wedge, and forcing it between the knee and the iron boot, occasioned the most exquisite pain, as was eviden from the flush which instantly took place on the brow and cheeks of the sufferer. The fellow again raised his weapon, and stood prepared to give a second blow.

"Will you yet say," repeated the Duke of Lauderdale, "where and when you last parted from Balfour Burley?"-" You have my answer, said the sufferer resolutely, and the second blow fell. The third and fourth succeeded, but at the fifth, when a larger wedge had been introduced, the prisoner set up a scream agony. "He is gone," said the sur

geon

geon; "he has fainted, my Lords, and human nature can endure no more. "Release him," said the Duke, and added, turning to Dalzell, "He will make an old proverb good, for he'll scarce ride to-day, though he has had his boots on; I suppose we must finish with him.”—“Ay, dispatch him, and have done with him, we have plenty of drudgery behind."

As a contrast to this horrid scene, may be given the following delightful picture of Christian philanthropy.To tranquillize the mind of the reader, and to prepare him for the contemplation of such an amiable character, I shall introduce her, with a description of the solitary spot in which she resided, in the author's happiest

manner

"Evening lowered around him as he advanced up the narrow dell, which had once been a wood, but was now divested of trees, unless where a few, from their inaccessible situation on the edge of precipitous banks, or clinging among rocks and huge stones, defied the invasion of men or of cattle; like the scattered tribes of a conquered country, driven to take refuge on the barren strength of its mountains. These, too, wasted and decayed, seemed rather to exist than to flourish, and only served to indicate what the landscapes had once been. The track of the road followed the course of the brook, which was now visible, and now only to be distinguished by its brawling heard among the stones, or in the clefts of the rocks, that occasionally interrupted its course.— • Murmurer that thou art,' said Morton, in the enthusiasm of his reverie, why chafe with the rocks that stop thy course for a moment?-There is a sea to receive thee in its bosom, and an eternity for man, when his fretful and hasty course through the vale of time shall be ceased and over.'

"On the banks of this rivulet lived Bessy M'Lure. Although blind with age and grief, with the assistance

only of a little girl, she still continued to lodge and entertain any solitary wanderer that happened to be bénighted in that rugged solitude.

"Have you no one but this pretty little girl to assist you in waiting on your guests?" said Morton, wishing to begin a conversation with his hostess. "None, Sir: I dwell alone, like the widow of Zarephath. Few guests come to this puir place, and I haena custom enough to hire servants. I had anes twa fine sons that lookit after a' thing; but God gives and takes away-His name be praised!" she continued, turning her clouded eyes towards heaven; "I was anes better aff, that is worldly speaking, even since I lost them; but that was before this last change."

"Indeed! But you're a presbyterian, good mother?"

"I am, Sir; praised be the light that shewed me the right way!" replied the landlady. "Then I should have thought the Revolution would have brought you nothing but good."—"If," said the old woman, it has brought the land gude, and freedom of worship to tender consciences, it's little matter what it has brought to a puir blind worm like me. -“Still,” said Morton, "I cannot see how it could possibly injure you."-" It's a lang story, Sir-but ae night, sax weeks or thereby, afore Bothwell-brigg, a gentleman stopped here, all bloody with wounds, pale and dune out wi' riding, and his horse sae weary he couldna drag ae foot after the other, and his foes were close ahint him, and he was ane o' our enemies. What could I do, Sir? You that's a soldier will think me but a silly auld wife; but I fed him, and relieved him, and keepit him hidden till the pursuit was ower."-" And who," said Morton, "dares disapprove of your having done so?"" I kenna; I gat illwill about it amang some o' our ain folk. They said I suld hae been to him what Jael was to Sisera. But

weel

weel I wot I had nae divine command to shed blood, and to save it was baith like a woman and a Christian: and they said I wanted natural affection, to relieve ane that belanged to the band that murdered my twa sons."“That murdered your two sons!" "Ay, Sir; though maybe ye'll gie their deaths anither name: the tane fell sword in hand for a broken national covenant; the tother-Oh! they took him, and shot him dead on the green before his mother's face! My auld een dazzled when the shots were looten off, and, to my thought, they waxed weaker and weaker ever since that weary day; and sorrow, and heart-break, and tears, might help on the disorder. But, alas! betraying Lord Evandale's young blood to his enemies' sword wad ne'er hae brought my Ninian and Johnnie alive again." It may be supposed by some, that as so great a cloud of respectable witnesses have borne testimony to the inoffensive behaviour of the covenanters, that their conduct was such as to defy the tongue of malice to charge them with inhumanity, and that the author of the Tales has recorded the conduct of this worthy woman, more to give a semblance of truth and impartiality to his work, than for any respect he bears to the memory of the sufferers of a persecuted church. To shew that he was not destitute of grounds for giv. ing a very different representation, had he been so disposed, I shall insert a few extracts from the book that the Reviewer alleges has furnished the chief authority for the events recorded in the tale of Old Mortality*. This writer the critic facetiously calls "the author's good friend."

"A single dragoon coming into a public house to ask the way to Blahan, a woman, spinning on her distaff, told him she would shew him, and instead thereof, immediately called six or seven men, and murdered the dragoon."

Memoirs of Viscount Dundee.

"Oliphant and his comrade, two dragoons quartered in the parish of New-Milns, in the shire of Air, were both murdered by the whigs on a Su day morning, as they went to their conventicle-a glorious work before prayers!"

What the Reviewer conceives to be another "glaring instance of partiality and injustice" in the author of the Tales, is his withholding a vier of the sufferings of the presbyterians previous to their rising in open rebellion. Though the Reviewer insists on "the partiality the author has shewn to an oppressive government, and his want of sympathy for the ob jects of persecution," yet he brings forward no proofs of that partiality he lays great stress on an expression of Morton's, when urged by Burley to join the covenanters; when, in or der to evade the pressing solicitations of this zealous leader, he hints that his uncle was satisfied with regard to the religious freedom and liberty of conscience enjoyed under the indulged clergymen, and that he must necessarily be guided by his sentiments respecting the choice of a place of wor ship for his family. "This," exclaims the Reviewer, "is passive obedience with a witness! Upon this principle a man must necessarily be a Papist at Rome, a Mahomedan at Constantineple," &c. This may be true; but one would hardly have expected t hear such an argument from an avowed adherent to the principles of the covenanters. It is a certain fact, that they disapproved of their people going to hear preachers of another persua sion. The Cameronians, and what are called the Old-light Antiburghers, the only two sects who now profess

strict adherence to the opinions held by our covenanting forefathers, and who consider themselves as the only "witnessing remnants" that continue steadfast in the faith in this age of innovation, are in general averse from permitting their young people to attend places of worship where doctrines are taught differing from what they profess; and, in many instances, this extends to absolute prohibition: so that this triumphant argument of the Reviewer, if it prove any thing, proves too much, but does not at all bear upon the point at issue. No one who reflects on the predicament in which Morton was placed at the time when be uttered the offensive expression, will consider it in any other light than merely as an evasion to avoid farther importunity to set aside the weighty argument that might be urged in favour of patriarchal authority. Morton had other motives sufficient to restrain him, at that time, from openly declaring in favour of the co

venanters.

The Reviewer, in this instance, certainly does betray a disingenuousness very unbecoming in an advocate for the cause of truth. It surely would have been more candid, especially as he wishes to identify the sentiments of the author with those of his hero, to have fixed upon the opinions of the latter, when emancipated from the thraldom of pupillage. In a conversation with Miss Bellenden, he says: "The guilt of civil war, the miseries which it brings in its train, lie at the door of those who provoked it by illegal oppression, rather than of such as are driven to arms in order to assert their natural rights of free

men."

"That is assuming the question," replied Edith," which ought to be proved: each party contends that they are right in point of principle, and therefore the guilt must lie with them who first drew the sword; as in a fray, law holds those to be the cri

minals who are the first to have recourse to violence."

"Alas!" said Morton, 66 were our vindication to rest there, how easy would it be to shew that we have suffered with a patience which alinost seemed beyond the power of humanity, ere we were driven by oppression into open resistance !"

There is one great error into which our critic has fallen with respect to the object of his author. He rather unwarrantably concludes, that his intention must have been to expose the presbyterian preachers to ridicule, as a previous step to some more serious innovation; and that the attack has been occasioned by the overflowing of that gall and spite against the principles of reformation of Scotland, religious and political, which has always lodged in the breasts of a certain faction, and which has burst forth in consequence of the removal of those restraints by which it was long re-. luctantly pent up, or forced to vent itself in secret. Now this may be applicable to the illiberal effusions of his brother Reviewer, whom he calls. "the organ of the High Church party;" but every person of candour will spurn at such an imputation being cast upon the author of the Tale of Old Mortality. The Reviewer's chief evidence of his being a party-writer, of High Church principles, seems to rest on "the tenderness and delicacy shewn to the Episcopal clergy, contrasted with the manner in which the Presbyterian ministers are treated through the work." "We seldom bear of the bishops and curates," says he, " except when we are told of their being religiously employed in reading prayers." Now, in the extracts that have been given in this paper, two curates are introduced, but employed in occupations very different from the pious exercise just mentioned. One of them was at the head of a party of armed men, who were stationed to guard a pass-with orders

to shoot any wanderer who should attempt to proceed that way to join the Covenanters. Another is gambling with a soldier in a public house-and on a Sunday afternoon too, if it be true, as the Reviewer asserts, that the wappenshaws were held on that holy day. It can hardly be credited, that a writer of such discernment as the author in question, could imagine that the harangues he has put in the mouths of some of the covenanting preachers could be considered fit subjects for mirth, for in reality they produce on the mind an effect quite contrary. It is more rational, as well as more charitable, to suppose that the author, by these intemperate speeches, attempts to expose a most dangerous perversion of scripture, which greatly prevailed among our Scottish reformers, viz. that of placing themselves in the stead of those worthies, who acted under a Theocracy, and held their commissions by virtue of divine authority. This right of succession was strenuously maintained, and publicly avowed by Knox; a circumstance that in some degree tarnishes his glory as a reformer, and which his ingenuous historian and apologist labours hard to palliate, tho' he cannot deny. Indeed, the principles of that spirited writer are much akin to those of our Reviewer; the same vast fund of information is conspicuous in both, and the same boast ing of still greater stores yet unrevealed. Both are equally dexterous in disposing of evidence that militates against themselves; if it come from their own party, they reduce it to mere hearsay; if from their opponents, one dogmatical dash blasts its authenticity for ever. But it may be said, and with some justice too, why rake up the ashes of the dead, to arraign them at the bar of posterity, for failings which died with them; while we enjoy, unimpaired, the invaluable privileges which they purchased for us with their blood, and

handed down as a memorial of them to future generations? The only reply the author of the Tales could make to this is, that the same opinions, with regard to divine agency, that occupied such a conspicuous place in the creeds of our ancestors, prevail in some degree at the present time. How often have we seen pious and well-disposed persons approving of the deeds of a national plunderer, while in the act of laying sacrilegious hands on the costly furniture of the sacred temples! It is no doubt the ardent wish of every one who has experienced the soul-cheering comfort arising from the worship of the heart, that all his fellow-christians would cease to lay stress on those trappings that furnish out the mere graces of devotion. But it is not the province of man to interfere, or to use any other means to bring about so desirable an event, but that of persuasion; and "I own with Morton, that I should strongly doubt the origin of any inspiration which seemed to dictate a line of conduct contrary to those feelings of humanity which Heaven has assigned us as the general law of our conduct.”

I am, &c.

D.

Queries proposed by the Geological Society of LONDON.

THE following queries have been

proposed by this learned body, in order to facilitate, and in some measure to direct, general research, with the view of collecting geological facts, so that mineralogical maps of districts, which are now so much wanting, may be supplied; that the nomenclature of the science may be gradually amended by the selection of the most cerrect and significant terms; that the oretical opinions may be compared with the appearances of nature; and,