entertained a sort of parental tenderness, short, but the most
affectionate letters, wherein he gives them the greatest satisfaction
then in his power, by assuring them of his composure and tranquillity of
mind, and refers them for further consolation to those sources from which
he derived his own. In his letter to Mrs. Smith, written on the same
day, he says, "While anything was a burden to me, your concern was; which
is a cross greater than I can express" (alluding probably to the
pecuniary loss she had incurred); "but I have, I thank God, overcome
all." Her name, he adds, could not be concealed, and that he knows not
what may have been discovered from any paper which may have been taken;
otherwise he has named none to their disadvantage. He states that those
in whose hands he is, had at first used him hardly, but that God had
melted their hearts, and that he was now treated with civility. As an
instance of this, he mentions the liberty he had obtained of sending this
letter to her; a liberty which he takes as a kindness on their part, and
which he had sought that she might not think he had forgotten her.

Never, perhaps, did a few sentences present so striking a picture of a
mind truly virtuous and honourable. Heroic courage is the least part of
his praise, and vanishes as it were from our sight, when we contemplate
the sensibility with which he acknowledges the kindness, such as it is,
of the very men who are leading him to the scaffold; the generous
satisfaction which he feels on reflecting that no confession of his has
endangered his associates; and above all, his anxiety, in such moments,
to perform all the duties of friendship and gratitude, not only with the
most scrupulous exactness, but with the most considerate attention to the
feelings as well as to the interests of the person who was the object of
them. Indeed, it seems throughout to have been the peculiar felicity of
this man's mind, that everything was present to it that ought to be so;
nothing that ought not. Of his country he could not be unmindful; and it
was one among other consequences of his happy temper, that on this
subject he did not entertain those gloomy ideas which the then state of
Scotland was but too well fitted to inspire. In a conversation with an
intimate friend, he says that, though he does not take upon him to be a
prophet, he doubts not but that deliverance will come, and suddenly, of
which his failings had rendered him unwort