a poor woman if she ever attended there for
divine service--"Ou ay," she replied; "there's a man ca'd Chalmers
preaches there, and I whiles gang in and hear him, just to encourage
him, puir body!"

From the religious opinions of a people, the transition is natural to
their political partialities. One great political change has passed over
Scotland, which none now living can be said to have actually
_witnessed_; but they remember those who were contemporaries of the
anxious scenes of '45, and many of us have known determined and thorough
Jacobites. The poetry of that political period still remains, but we
hear only as pleasant songs those words and melodies which stirred the
hearts and excited the deep enthusiasm of a past generation. Jacobite
anecdotes also are fading from our knowledge. To many young persons they
are unknown. Of these stories illustrative of Jacobite feelings and
enthusiasm, many are of a character not fit for me to record. The good
old ladies who were violent partisans of the Stuarts had little
hesitation in referring without reserve to the future and eternal
destiny of William of Orange. One anecdote which I had from a near
relative of the family may be adduced in illustration of the powerful
hold which the cause had upon the views and consciences of Jacobites.

A former Mr. Stirling of Keir had favoured the Stuart cause, and had in
fact attended a muster of forces at the Brig of Turk previous to the
'15. This symptom of a rising against the Government occasioned some
uneasiness, and the authorities were very active in their endeavours to
discover who were the leaders of the movement. Keir was suspected. The
miller of Keir was brought forward as a witness, and swore positively
that the laird was _not_ present. Now, as it was well known that he was
there, and that the miller knew it, a neighbour asked him privately,
when he came out of the witness-box, how he could on oath assert such a
falsehood. The miller replied, quite undaunted, and with a feeling of
confidence in the righteousness of his cause approaching the sublime--"I
would rather trust my soul in God's mercy than Keir's head into
their hands."

A correspondent has sent me an account of a curious ebullition of
Jacobite feeling and enthusiasm, now I suppose quite extinct. My
correspondent received it himself from Alexander, fourth Duke of Gordon,
and he had entered it in a commonplace-book when he heard it, in 1826.

"David Tulloch, tenan