ars set to such music; there are men in that country who say that they
still hear it when they pass the plantations of Knockbrex alone at night.
Knockbrex is now a fine modern mansion that is sometimes let for the
summer to city people seeking solitude and rest. Among these thick woods
and along these silent sands Samuel Rutherford and Robert Gordon were
wont to walk and talk together. And here still a man who wishes it may
be free from the noise and the hurrying of this life. Here a man shall
not be let and hindered in his contemplations as in other places he is
apt to be. There are woods here that he who loves a pilgrim's life may
safely walk in. The soil also all hereabouts is rich and fruitful, and,
under good management, it brings forth by handfuls. The very shepherd
boys here live a merry life, and wear more of the herb called heart's-
ease in their bosoms than he that is clad in silk and velvet. What a
rich inheritance to the right heir is the old estate of Knockbrex! What
an opportunity, and what an education, it must be to tenant Knockbrex
with recollection, with understanding, and with sympathy even for a
season.

Robert Gordon would very willingly have remained behind the screen all
his days. He would very willingly have given himself up to the care of
his estate, to the upbringing of his children, and to the working out of
his own salvation, but such a man as he now was could not be hid. The
stone that is fit for the wall is not let lie in the ditch. We have a
valuable letter of Rutherford's addressed to Marion M'Naught about the
impending election of a commissioner for Parliament for the town of
Kirkcudbright. In that letter he urges her to try to get her husband,
William Fullarton, to stand for the vacant seat. 'It is an honourable
and necessary service,' he says. And speaking of one of the candidates,
he further says: 'I fear he has neither the skill nor the authority for
the post.' Now, it was either at this election, or it was at the next
election, that an influential deputation of the gentry and burgesses and
ministers and elders of the district waited on Robert Gordon to get him
to stand for one of the vacant seats in Galloway; and once he was chosen
and had shown himself to the world he was never let return again to his
home occupations. 'He was much employed in those years,' says
Livingstone, 'in parliaments and public meetings.'

There are some good men among us who think that the w