thout the help of
a book. But he pulled out of his pocket a small book, and began to read
over some words to himself, which filled us with amazement and
indignation." So they fired their pistols into the old man, and then
chopped him up with their swords, supposing that he had a charm against
bullets! Dr. McCrie seems to have forgotten, or may have disbelieved the
narrative telling how Sharpe's use of the Prayer Book, like Morton's,
"enraged" his murderers. The incident does not occur in the story of the
murder by Russell, one of the murderers, a document published in C. K.
Sharpe's edition of Kirkton. It need not be true, but it may have
suggested the prayer of Morton.

If Scott thought that the Prayer Book was ordained to be read in Scotch
churches, he was wrong; if he merely thought that it might have been read
in some churches, was "working amongst us," he was right: at least,
according to Mr. James Guthrie.

Dr. McCrie argues that Burley would never have wrestled with a soldier in
an inn, especially in the circumstances. This, he says, was inconsistent
with Balfour's "character." Wodrow remarks, "I cannot hear that this
gentleman had ever any great character for religion among those that knew
him, and such were the accounts of him, when abroad, that the reverend
ministers of the Scots congregation at Rotterdam would never allow him to
communicate with them." In Scott's reading of Burley's character, there
was a great deal of the old Adam. That such a man should so resent the
insolence of a soldier is far from improbable, and our sympathies are
with Burley on this occasion.

Mause Headrigg is next criticised. Scott never asserted that she was a
representative of sober Presbyterianism. She had long conducted herself
prudently, but, when she gave way to her indignation, she only used such
language as we find on many pages of Wodrow, in the mouths of many
Covenanters. Indeed, though Manse is undeniably comic, she also commands
as much respect as the Spartan mother when she bids her only son bear
himself boldly in the face of torture. If Scott makes her grotesque, he
also makes her heroic. But Dr. McCrie could not endure the ridiculous
element, which surely no fair critic can fail to observe in the speeches
of the gallant and courageous, but not philosophical, members of the
Covenant's Extreme Left. Dr. McCrie talks of "the creeping loyalty of the
Cavaliers." "Staggering" were a more appropriate epithet. Both sides w