ys your favourite Palingenius, the very mention of whose name
gives me new life; for the _regeneration_ forms almost the sole
topic of my meditations, and in this do I exercise myself that
I may have my conversation in heaven.'

How keenly Melville felt the cruelty of the Government in driving
himself and his nephew into exile appears in another part of the same
letter:--

'What crime have you committed? What has the monarch now to
dread? Does not the primate sit in triumph--_traxitque sub
astra furorem_? What is there, then, to hinder you, and me also
(now approaching my seventieth year, and consequently
_emeritus_), from breathing our native air, and, as a reward of
our toils, being received into the Prytaneum, to spend the
remainder of our lives, without seeking to share the honours
and affluence which we do not envy the pretended bishops? We
have not been a dishonour to the kingdom, and we are allied to
the royal family. [Melville claimed a consanguinity for his
family with the Stuarts through their common extraction from
John of Gaunt.] But let envy do its worst; no prison, no exile,
shall prevent us from confidently expecting the kingdom of
heaven.'

In the following year Melville was greatly cheered by hearing that all
the exiled ministers had refused an offer which the Crown had made to
allow them to return to their country on condition of their making a
submission to Episcopacy; and he wrote expressing his admiration of
their heroism, and assuring them of his continual remembrance: 'I keep
all my friends in my eye; I carry them in my bosom; I commend them to
the God of mercy in my daily prayers.... I do not sink under adversity;
I reserve myself for better days.'

In April 1614 there fell on Melville the heaviest blow his affection
ever received--the tidings of his nephew's death. James Melville died
well-nigh broken-hearted; he had not been allowed to return to his own
country and resume his charge of his poor seafaring folk, nor to join in
France the exile who was so endeared to him. On his deathbed, and within
a few hours of the end, when one who was beside him asked if he had no
desire to recover, he replied, 'No, not for twenty worlds.' His friends
asked him to give them some sign that he was at peace, when he repeated
the dying words of the martyr Stephen, and so passed away to that
country of his own which all his l