his right cheek there were the traces of a severe wound, which, it was supposed, he had received in his desperate struggle with the game-keeper. The top of his head was entirely bald; and, when his hat was off, the bold projection of his forehead gave a vigorous and determined character to the general expression of his face. He scarcely looked at Edmund while speaking to him; but once or twice their eyes met, and-it might be fancy-but his manner seemed disturbed, as if some dimly remembered resemblance of features once familiar to him were suddenly awakened: for Edmund was exceedingly like his mother. To the pretended message, of which Edmund represented himself as the bearer, his answer was, that "he knew of no service which Mrs Morgan, or any body else, could render him, unless she could save his neck from the halter; and, if she would supply him with money to pay the lawyers well, perhaps he might get off." Edmund, who felt deeply shocked at this reprobate speech, and at the reckless insensibility it evinced of the awful situation in which his father stood, said, he would undertake to promise for Mrs Morgan that, whatever money might be required to obtain for him the utmost benefit of legal assistance, should be ready. He then endeavoured, indirectly, to lead him into a conversation upon the na ture of the crime with which he was charged, and the certain consequences of his conviction; but he maintained a sullen silence; and, at last, manifested no equivocal symptoms of a determination to put an end to the interview. Edmund, therefore, took his leave.

It wanted full two months of the time when the assizes would commence; and, during the whole of that period, Edmund sought frequent opportunities (sometimes twice or thrice in the course of a week) of visiting his father, as the messenger of Mrs Morgan; but at none of these visits did David give him to understand he was indebted for this solicitude, on her part, to that which was the real cause. Edmund, at length, beheld the ripen ing harvest which was to reward his hallowed labours. Inspired with a holy ardour, beyond what even his sacred zeal in the cause of heaven could excite in ordinary circumstances; and

his fervent piety exalted by the consciousness that it was a father's salvation he was seeking; every impulse of his heart and mind, every energy which religion could animate, was em ployed to regenerate the sinful nature, and touch the hardened bosom, of the criminal. Much, he consider ed, was accomplished, when he had brought him into such a state of feeling, that he would listen patiently and attentively to his mild yet earnest exhortations, though they elicited no corresponding demonstrations of repentant sorrow. But most was he rejoiced, and most assured did he then feel of ultimate success, when, as he

was

one evening about to depart, after having enforced, with more than his usual eloquence, the great doctrine of a sincere repentance and a true reconciliation unto God, through the Redeemer, his father took him by the hand, and in a voice of supplication almost, rather than of enquiry, said, "When shall I see you again, sir?" He had never before asked a similar question: he had never before manifested the slightest desire for his return; and his doing so now, was a grateful evidence to Edmund that his awakened heart began to hunger for the words of eternal life,

for the consolation of believing, with a devout and lively faith, that "if we confess our sins, God is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to make us clean from all wickedness." Nor was this a delusive promise. The seed of righteousness had been sown; the tree had taken root; and the diligent labourer in the vineyard saw its green branches shoot forth, bearing goodly and pleasant fruit.

The day of trial came, and David was arraigned as a criminal before man; but stood before his judges as one who, having made his peace with God, was prepared to atone for the life he had taken, by the just forfeiture of his own. He was convicted, and sentence of death passed upon him. He heard it with an air of composure and resignation, which even they who knew not the conversion that had been wrought within him, still recognised as the workings of a contrite heart, and not as the insensibility of an obdurate and callous one. He returned to his cell, and greeted Edmund, whom he found waiting for him, with a serene

smile, that seemed to say, The last mortal pang will soon be past, and you have taught my soul how to pray for mercy, and hope for happiness hereafter. The short interval that remained to him before he ascended the scaffold was so employed, and his demeanour such, that Edmund's heart yearned to receive a blessing from lips which were now washed pure from guilt. He could not endure the thought that his father should quit the world in ignorance that the son, whom he knew not, had been a shining light to shew him the path of salvation. And yet he feared lest the disclosure might discompose his thoughts, and bring them back again to earth. He was thus unresolved, and the fatal morning approached. Edmund passed the whole of the preceding night with his father, in those solemn exercises of devotion which are the fitting preparations of an immortal soul for heaven. The dim light of a lamp fell upon his features as he bent over a Bible which lay open before him, and from which he was reading such passages as were most appropriate to the situation of his father.

"It

David fixed his eyes upon him with sudden emotion, and exclaimed, is very striking!" Edmund looked up. "I was thinking at that moment," he continued," of one whom it would have delighted me to see ere I die, though I have never mentioned her to you, sir, as my wife. But you are her friend, and I hope you have found cause to speak of me to her in such a way that I may feel assured of her forgiveness for all the misery I have occasioned her."

"My mother," exclaimed Edmund, with an emphatic solemnity of voice, " is on her knees this night, to pray for you, and to join her intercessions with those of your son."

David's breathing was quick, and his whole frame violently agitated; but he could not utter a word.

"Father!" cried Edmund, and knelt before him.

David took his son's hands and pressed them convulsively to his bosom, but still he could not speak, though he wept as a child. In a few minutes the struggle was over, and he was able calmly to learn how myste riously the will of God had brought about his conversion by the holiness of his own issue.

The morning dawned, and only a few hours now remained before he would have to suffer the brief agony of a death which no longer appalled him by its terrors. He earnestly entreated Edmund to accompany him to the scaffold, that he might see with how much Christian fortitude he could meet his doom. It was a dreadful task, but he shrunk not from it. He walked by his father's side. As they passed through one of the yards leading to the place of execution, David stopped and spoke to his son. "It was on this very spot," said he, "that I first looked upon you, then an infant in the arms of your mother; and she held you to me, and bade me kiss you; and I did so. It was my FIRST kiss. Receive here, my son, my LAST ; and, if I am worthy to beg a blessing from hea ven upon you, may your life be spared till a child of your own shall smooth your path to the grave, as you have smoothed mine!" So saying, he bent forward, pressed his lips gently on the forehead of Edmund, then walked on with a firm step, and, in a few moments, David Morgan had satisfied alike the laws of God and man, by rendering life for life.

M.

SIR,

You sometimes take notice of new books; perhaps it may enter into your plan to receive some account of the work of an author, who ventured to enter upon the fallacious engagement, "Come, I will write a duodecimo," and, what is more, kas performed his task within the limits he had prescribed himself. Yet the work on which he was employed occupies the whole space betwixt the cradle and the grave, and even passes that last stern limit of earthly hopes and fears, since this little book contains "Thoughts concerning a Man's Condition and Duties in this Life, and his Hopes in the World to Come." Neither is the author of this treatise to be considered as an ordinary retainer of the press, since it is written by no less a person than Alexander Lord Pitsligo, a baron of the ancient kingdom of Scotland, and entitled, therefore, to be numbered with Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors, although the Lord of Strawberry-hill might have objected to his brother peer on two accounts; first, that he was a Jacobite, and secondly, that he was a sincere Christian, both great weaknesses in the judgment of the son of Horace Walpole, and the admirer of Voltaire. Accordingly, Lord Pitsligo is noticed as an elderly man who went into the rebellion of 1745, and wrote Essays, Moral and Philosophical, on several subjects, viz. "A View of the Human Faculties, a Short Account of the World, Two Discourses, and An Essay on Self-Love." These were written about 1732, and published in May 1763.

To this short notice of a remarkable and most excellent character, we are now enabled to append an account of Lord Pitsligo, drawn from authentic documents, and highly calculated, in my opinion, to interest not only those who love to look upon the noble spectacle of a brave and lofty-minded man contending with the storms of adversity, but the feelings of that lighter minded class of readers who enjoy the interest annexed to hair-breadth escapes, and the detail of singular sufferings, whether the sufferers be heroes or rogues, an honest man suffering for opinions which to him were sacred, or

a rogue engaged in difficulties in his flight from justice.

In this last point of view, every one peruses with an interest, which is, in a moral point of view, somewhat liable to censure, the adventures of a Lazarelle de Tormez, or the numerous accumulations of what are called after the Spanish Picaresque romances, and the best of us are interested in the adventures of modern adventurers, of modern pick-pockets, swindlers, and thieves, such as Vidocque, who lately rose by due gradations to be a general officer of police from an escaped galley slave, or an estate similar to that of the boy-hero of our modern Athens, Haggart, whose adventures are unfortunately so much a subject of admiration among those of the youths of his class, that they, in many instances, have been carried into imitation of his crimes.

In fact, nothing conveys such a deep interest as narrow escapes, effected by the prudence and presence of mind of the person pursued. Our pleasure in tracing their enterprize, (if our feelings when seated in an easy chair could be compared to those which prompt our exertions, when in active exertion,) might be compared to the almost unanimous excitation produced by a foxhunt, or otter chase,-even by coursing with greyhounds, or pursuing with harriers the timid and inoffensive hare, sports so natural to the human mind, that labour suspends its task to witness them, and age and decrepitude creep from their hovels to catch a glimpse of the chase, and add a feeble halloo to the engrossing animation which it affords. No sportsman wishes to see the object of pursuit worried in its scat, or mob◄ bed and overcome by its more powerful foes; the chase is what we think of, with its singular chances and precarious hazards of danger and escape. We may demand of more rigid censurers, in the words of Uncle Toby, whether, when our pulse beats higher, and our spirits become more animated, at the cry of the hounds, and halloo of the chase-whether, I say, when we ride or run at the summons so universally felt, or when, not doing so, we regret that we can ride or run no longer,

is it we ourselves, or nature, which has planted the alarm in our bosoms?

But if such an interest prevails in witnessing the vicissitudes in the chase of a hunted animal-if we read with such similar feelings of the arts and efforts of a criminal to escape from justice, how much deeper must the interest be, when the object is a man of eminent rank, amiable manners, and uncontested worth and benevolence, endeavouring to elude the penal consequences of a political error which in his views, however mistaken, was identified with high principle and virtuous feeling! A most singular scene of this nature is presented to us in the biography of Lord Pitsligo, given as an introduction to this little volume.

Of the biographer himself we know nothing, but from what guess we can form, we are disposed to consider him as a Scottish gentleman of the old school, who, loyal in principle and feeling to the present sovereign, might, in the days of Lord Pitsligo, have fallen into the great mistake of liking a white cockade better than a black one; we suppose him to be a member of the ancient, but poor and suffering Episcopal Church, and one who certainly, time, place, and society fitting, would prefer a Scottish pint of claret to the same English measure of port. In a word, Mr North, I conceive him to be a stanch old Tory of the trueblue complexion, with good blood in his veins, good brains in his head, and a good heart in his bosom. If I am right in my guess, and there are secret signs, like those of masonry, by which such individuals can be recognised, you will, I think, be disposed to pardon a long commentary on a short text so introduced to us.

The life of Lord Pitsligo will probably be the charm which will best recommend his reflections to the public. For the opinions which we form in our minds of ease and safety, are entitled to far less consideration than when we evince patience under adversity, liberal feelings under oppression, and the blessed disposition to do good to those who persecute us, and to answer reviling with kind and liberal construction of the motives which prompt the calumny. This is the conduct of a philosopher and of a Christian; and your readers shall judge by a short sketch, whether the noble person of whom we are treating might not claim the inestimable praise attached to these characters.

Alexander Lord Pitsligo was the fourth who bore that title, descended from a second son of the no less ancient than respectable house of Forbes,

a race of whom it may be said with truth, that the men were brave, and the women virtuous. His estate lay in the district of Aberdeenshire, of which the ready and acute intellects of the inhabitants atone for the sterile and unproductive quality of the soil. Lord Pitsligo was born in 1678, and succeeded to the title and estate of his father in 1691. He was for some time resident in France, where he attracted the notice, and obtained the friendship of the celebrated Fenelon, the rather that he coincided with that virtuous and benevolent prelate, in certain warm and enthusiastic religious doctrines, approaching to that Quietism, as it was called, encouraged by the enthusiastic conceptions of Madame Guion. He formed his taste and habits of society upon the best models which Paris then afforded. With a feeling which might be pardoned in a Scottish nobleman, he commenced at the same period an unhappy attachment to the exiled but native Princes of the House of Stuart, which was the cause of all his future misfortunes. This choice, although adopted from conviction, was the more to be regretted, as the greater part of the families of the House of Forbes composed what was called a Whig Clan, under the chief of their name, and were stanch to the cause of the Revolution and the Protestant succession. His religious principles, as a Protestant of the Scottish Episcopal Church, Lord Pitsligo retained unaltered, notwithstanding his intimacy with Fenelon, and his attachment to the somewhat mystical divinity of that excellent prelate.

When Lord Pitsligo returned from France, he took his seat in Parliament in 1700. Here it is no discredit either to his head or heart to say, that, obliged to become a member of one of the contending factions of the time, he adopted that which had for its object the independence of Scotland, and restoration of the ancient race of monarchs. The advantages which were in future to arise from the great measure of a national union were so hidden by the mists of prejudice, that it cannot be wondered at that Lord Pitsligo, like many a high-spirited man, saw nothing but disgrace in a measure forced on by such corrupt means, and calling in its com

mencement for such mortifying na tional sacrifices. The English nation, indeed, with a narrow yet not unnatural view of their own interest, took such pains to encumber and restrict the Scottish commercial privileges, that it was not till the best part of a century after the event, that the inestimable fruits of the treaty began to be felt and known. This distant period, Lord Pitsligo could not foresee. He beheld his countrymen, like the Israelites of yore, led forth into the desert, but his merely human eye could not foresee that, after the extinction of a whole race-after a longer pilgrimage than that of the followers of Moses the Scottish people should at length arrive at that promised land, of which the favourers of the Union held forth so gay a prospect.

Looking upon the Act of Settlement of the Crown and the Act of Abjuration as unlawful, Lord Pitsligo retired to his house in the country, and threw up attendance on Parliament. Upon the death of Queen Anne, he joined himself in arms with a general insur rection of the Highlanders and Jaco bites, headed by his friend and relation the Earl of Mar.

Mar, a versatile statesman and an able intriguer, had consulted his am bition rather than his talents, when he assumed the command of such an enterprise. He sunk beneath the far superior genius of the Duke of Argyle, and after the indecisive battle of She riff-moor, the confederacy which he had formed, but was unable to direct, dissolved like a snow-ball, and the nobles concerned in it were fain to fly abroad. This exile was Lord Pit sligo's fate for five or six years. Part of the time he spent at the Court, if it can be called so, of the old Chevalier de Saint George, where existed all the petty feuds, chicanery, and crooked in trigues which subsist in a real scene of the same character, although the objects of the ambition which prompted such arts had no existence. Men seemed to play at being courtiers in that illusory court, as children play at being soldiers.

A reflecting man like Lord Pitsligo was soon disgusted with this scene. In 1720, he returned to Scotland. He had not been attainted, (as is asserted by mistake in Park's edition of Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors, vol. v. p. 158, where there seems to be some confusion betwixt the in surrection of 1715 and that of 1745,)

and it is to be supposed, had obtained some assurance that his past conduct would not be challenged.

After his return to Scotland, Lord Pitsligo resided chiefly at the castle of that name in the district of Aberdeenshire, called Buchan, where he conti nued to live, struggling with the dif ficulties of a small fortune and embarrassed estate, but distinguished for hospitality and kindness towards his neighbours, who held him in the highest respect, by charity and benevolence to the poor, and by good-will to all ranks; so that he was without dispute one of the most popular persons, in a district inhabited by men of singular ly quick apprehension, where popularity is not gained by the mere show of merit.

It appears also, that Lord Pitsligo maintained, from his remote residence friendly intercourse and exchange of sentiments with persons who like himself were somewhat impressed with the doctrines of Quietism-a species of transcendental devotion. His neigh bour, Mr Cumming of Pittullie, entertained opinions similar to Lord Pitsligo; and they were also adopted by Dr Heytin, called the Mystical Doctor, the friend of Bishop Butler. This learned divine undertook, what in those days was no small labour, being a journey to Edinburgh to meet Lord Pitsligo. But when he arrived at the Scottish metropolis, and found that he had yet two hundred miles to travel, au fin fond d'Ecosse, as Froissart says, he shrunk from the undertaking, and left Buchan unvisited.

It was during this period of his life, that Lord Pitsligo, as mentioned in Wood's Peerage, was twice married, first to Rebecca, daughter of John Norton, merchant in London, second, to Elizabeth Allan, an English lady. The Memoir under review throws no light on these alliances.

Lord Pitsligo was past the age of active exertion, being sixty-seven years old, and affected with an asthmatic complaint, when, in the autumn 1745, the young Chevalier landed in Moi dart, on his romantic enterprise. The north of Scotland, Aberdeenshire in particular, abounded with high-spirited cavaliers, bred up in Jacobite principles, and a leader was all they looked for. In this crisis, as we learn from Home, Lord Pitsligo's determination was looked for by all who adhered to the Jacobite cause, as equally esteem. ed and beloved by his neighbours.