s and seditious spirit of those unhappy
wanderers, displayed themselves, when called upon to suffer for their
political and religious opinions, the same daring and devoted zeal,
tinctured, in their case, with chivalrous loyalty, as in the former with
republican enthusiasm. It has often been remarked of the Scottish
character, that the stubbornness with which it is moulded shows most to
advantage in adversity, when it seems akin to the native sycamore of
their hills, which scorns to be biassed in its mode of growth even by the
influence of the prevailing wind, but, shooting its branches with equal
boldness in every direction, shows no weather-side to the storm, and may
be broken, but can never be bended. It must be understood that I speak of
my countrymen as they fall under my own observation. When in foreign
countries, I have been informed that they are more docile. But it is time
to return from this digression.

"One summer evening, as in a stroll, such as I have described, I
approached this deserted mansion of the dead, I was somewhat surprised to
hear sounds distinct from those which usually soothe its solitude, the
gentle chiding, namely, of the brook, and the sighing of the wind in the
boughs of three gigantic ash-trees, which mark the cemetery. The clink of
a hammer was, on this occasion, distinctly heard; and I entertained some
alarm that a march-dike, long meditated by the two proprietors whose
estates were divided by my favourite brook, was about to be drawn up the
glen, in order to substitute its rectilinear deformity for the graceful
winding of the natural boundary. [Note: I deem it fitting that the reader
should be apprised that this limitary boundary between the conterminous
heritable property of his honour the Laird of Gandercleugh, and his
honour the Laird of Gusedub, was to have been in fashion an agger, or
rather murus of uncemented granite, called by the vulgar a drystane dyke,
surmounted, or coped, _cespite viridi_, i.e. with a sodturf. Truly their
honours fell into discord concerning two roods of marshy ground, near the
cove called the Bedral's Beild; and the controversy, having some years
bygone been removed from before the judges of the land, (with whom it
abode long,) even unto the Great City of London and the Assembly of the
Nobles therein, is, as I may say, adhuc in pendente.--J. C.] As I
approached, I was agreeably undeceived. An old man was seated upon the
monument of the slaughtered presbyteri