E BURTON."

[A copy of this rare little volume is in the library at Abbotsford.]

NOTE J.--INTERCOURSE OF THE COVENANTERS WITH THE INVISIBLE WORLD.

The gloomy, dangerous, and constant wanderings of the persecuted sect of
Cameronians, naturally led to their entertaining with peculiar credulity
the belief that they were sometimes persecuted, not only by the wrath of
men, but by the secret wiles and open terrors of Satan. In fact, a flood
could not happen, a horse cast a shoe, or any other the most ordinary
interruption thwart a minister's wish to perform service at a particular
spot, than the accident was imputed to the immediate agency of fiends.
The encounter of Alexander Peden with the Devil in the cave, and that of
John Sample with the demon in the ford, are given by Peter Walker almost
in the language of the text.

NOTE K.--CHILD-MURDER.

The Scottish Statute Book, anno 1690,
CHAPTER 21, in consequence of the
great increase of the crime of child-murder, both from the temptations to
commit the offence and the difficulty of discovery enacted a certain set
of presumptions, which, in the absence of direct proof, the jury were
directed to receive as evidence of the crime having actually been
committed. The circumstances selected for this purpose were, that the
woman should have concealed her situation during the whole period of
pregnancy; that she should not have called for help at her delivery; and
that, combined with these grounds of suspicion, the child should be
either found dead or be altogether missing. Many persons suffered death
during the last century under this severe act. But during the author's
memory a more lenient course was followed, and the female accused under
the act, and conscious of no competent defence, usually lodged a petition
to the Court of Justiciary, denying, for form's sake, the tenor of the
indictment, but stating, that as her good name had been destroyed by the
charge, she was willing to submit to sentence of banishment, to which the
crown counsel usually consented. This lenity in practice, and the
comparative infrequency of the crime since the doom of public
ecclesiastical penance has been generally dispensed with, have led to the
abolition of the Statute of William, and Mary, which is now replaced by
another, imposing banishment in those circumstances in which the crime
was formerly capital. This alteration took place in 1803.

NOTE L.--CALUMNIATOR OF THE FAIR SEX.