heavens. Yea, bursting as we have seen it to have done, it had filled the land with mourning, and lamentation, and wo. But to return: having traversed the whole field, now quietly reposing in the bright sunshine, and from whose green breast the ghastly stains of human blood had already been washed away-yet by the tall grass in many places still trampled down, and the earth in many places rent, and the fragments of garments and pieces of broken armour that strewed the ground -and the numerous newly-raised mounds, within which reposed in death the mangled warriors of the Covenant-bearing silent but affecting witness to the strife and the slaughter of which it had so lately been the scene, and having taken sad farewell with Mr. Veitch, who is at this moment I believe in Holland, an exile for his concern in the rising and battle of the Pentlands-which, as detailed by himself, I have here recorded-we continued our journey towards what once was called the "good city," but which, as it rose on my view from the top of Rullion Green, seemed to deserve rather that it should be called the city of blood. As on the morrow we entered its gates, the day, which in the morning was serene and beautiful, suddenly became black and louring, and immense masses of clouds were seen driving heavily athwart the heavens, which seemed to clothe themselves in mourning for the deed that was about to be done on earth. The trial and sentence, and above all, the torture of the young minister, whose blood was this day to soak the tree of Prelacy, had created in the minds of the people an unexampled excitement. The shrieks of Nelson of Cor-sack, his companion in tribulation, when enduring the boot, had been heard without the wall of

the prison, and still rung in the ears of all who heard them. Men heard of the revival of this terrible engine with horror. The fact of its having been made to ply its inhuman energies on the person of one who, both as a man and a minister, was universally beloved-his learning and piety, and his youth, for he was only in the twenty-sixth year of his age, and very comely to look upon withal,—had made him an object of deep and universal sympathy. As we entered the South Gate, it was with difficulty that we prevented ourselves from being borne onwards to the Cross, the scene of the approaching martyrdom. There we could see that a great multitude had congregated, while from every street and lane crowds of both sexes, their faces pale and anxious, were seen every moment shoaling thither. Cautiously and tremblingly we approached the outer ring of that mighty living circle. In front of the dismal prison I saw for the first time, in my life-a scaffold. At the sight of the ghastly apparatus-of the vast multitude of human beings that were gathered around it, and who, under the sway of the various passions of the human heart, which the sight of a martyrdom is fitted to waken, were heaving to and fro like the sea when swept by a tempest; at the roll of the drums-the slowly repeated strokes of the death-bell-the murmurs-the heavy sobs-and occasionally the shrill convulsive shriek that burst from the lips of the spectators, -I was filled with the strangest and wildest apprehensions. I would have fled, but I could not. I felt as if spell-bound to the spot. Now I imagined that the people had resolved to rise up against their armed oppressors, and rescue the martyr from the power of his real, though legal

E

ised murderers. Again, I imagined that the city was about to be visited by some awful judgment —that the lurid clouds which gathered in masses over it, were charged with the fires of destruction, and that every moment we should hear sounding in the heavens the knell of its ruin. How long I stood there, the subject of these wild and fantastic emotions, I know not. I felt myself growing sick at heart-the day seemed suddenly to grow dark-a loud wail was in my ears-I was conscious of nothing more-I had fallen into a swoon, in which I was carried to my lodgings, in the house of Mrs. Bethune, a godly woman, in the Netherbow. On recovering, my ideas, as it may be easily conceived, were confused, and my feelings painful. For many a day, indeed, all that I had seen and felt seemed no reality, but the images and emotions of some hideous and frightful dream.

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CHAPTER IV.

MY APPRENTICESHIP.

IF Edinburgh was in a state of deep excitement on the day when Hugh Mackail suffered, it was scarcely less excited on the day following. The citizens were every where to be seen in groups; the topics of conversation were in every group the same. The looks of some were sad and dejected, and of others fierce and louring. Those who were filled with a hatred of tyranny, and with a mere natural impatience of "all the oppressions that are done under the sun," cursed the king, his commissioners, and the prelates. Others who feared God, prayed with Stephen that the sin of all the blood that they were shedding might not be laid to their charge. The conduct of Hugh Mackail in prison on the night previous to his execution, and in his last moments on the scaffold, was matter of all men's admiration. To a friend, who obtained permission to see him in prison, he said, "Oh how good news, to be within four days journey of being in heaven," and protested "that he was not so cumbered how to die, as he had sometimes been to preach a sermon." To some pious women lamenting for him, he said, that his condition, though he was but young, and in the budding of his hopes and labours in the ministry, was not to be mourned, "for one drop of my blood," he added, "through the grace of God,

may make more hearts contrite than many sermons might have done."

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Hugh," said his father unto him, “thou wert to me a goodly olive tree of fair fruit, and now a storm hath destroyed the tree and his fruit." To which he replied, "that his good thoughts of him afflicted him." On the night previous to his execution, he asked his fellow-prisoners "how he should best go from the tolbooth through a multitude of spectators and guards of soldiers, to a scaffold and gibbet, and overcome the impression?" To which he replied, "by realizing the presence of angels, and the innumerable company of celestial onlookers, who should doubtless be there to witness their good confession, and to convey their souls to paradise." On the morning of the day on which he suffered, he rose at five o'clock. To one of his fellow sufferers-John Wodrow, he said, with a cheerful voice, Up, John, you and I look not like men going to be hanged this day, seeing we lie so long. To which the said Mr. John replied, "Ah, Hugh, you and I shall be chambered shortly, very differently from this." He answered, "John, you will get farther in than I, for you were freer before the council than I was, but I shall be as free as any of you upon the scaffold."

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About two o'clock afternoon, he was brought to the scaffold with five others who suffered with him on the same day, and in the same cause. His countenance was observed to be fairer and more stayed than ever it had been seen to be before. Being come to the foot of the ladder, he said, "that as his years in the world had been few, his words then should not be many." On ascending the ladder he said, "I care no more to go up this ladder and over it, than if I