he had endeavoured to impress upon his mind.
This was sufficient: the ill-fated prisoner immediately inquired,
"whether the warrant for his execution was come down?" "I told him that
it was," relates Mr. Foster, "and that the day fixed upon was the
following Monday."

Lord Kilmarnock received this intimation with a solemn consciousness of
the awful nature of its import; but no signs of terror nor of anxiety
added to the sorrows of that hour. In the course of conversation, he
observed to Mr. Foster, that "he was chiefly concerned about the
consequences of death, in comparison of which he considered the 'thing
itself' a trifle: with regard to the manner of his death he had, he
thought, no great reason to be terrified, for that the stroke appeared
to be scarcely so much as the drawing of a tooth, or the first shock of
a cold bath upon a weak and fearful temper." At the last hour,
nevertheless, the crowd,--the scaffold,--the doom, upset that sublime
and heavenly resignation,--the weakness of the flesh prevailed, although
only for an instant.

In the silence and solitude of his prison, Lord Kilmarnock's
recollection reverted to those whom human nature were shortly to be left
to buffet with the storms of their hard fate. It reverted also to those
who might, in any way, have suffered at his hands. The following
touching epistle, addressed to his factor, Mr. Robert Paterson, written
two days only before his execution, shows how tender was his affection
for his unhappy wife: in how Christian a spirit towards others he died.
His consideration for the poor shoemakers of Elgin is one of those
beautiful traits of character which mark a conscientious mind. The
original of this letter is still in existence, and is in the possession
of the great-grandson of him to whom it was addressed.[383]

"Sir,

"I have commended to your care the inclosed packet, to be delivered
to my wife in the manner your good sense shall dictate to you, will
be least shocking to her. Let her be prepared for it as much by
degrees, and with great tenderness, as the nature of the thing will
admit of. The entire dependance I have all my life had the most just
reason to have on your integrity and friendship to my wife and
family, as well as to myself, make me desire that the inclosed
papers may come to my wife through your hands, in confidence; but
you will take all the pains to comfort her, and relieve the grief I
k