in his hood of mail, with his shield
hanging on his breast, the armorial bearings are defaced by time, and a few
worn-out letters may be read, at the pleasure of the decipherer, Dns. Johan - de
Hamel, - or Johan. - de Lamel -. And it is also true, that of another tomb,
richly sculptured with an ornamental cross, mitre, and pastoral staff, tradition
can only aver that a certain nameless bishop lies interred there. But upon other
two stones which lie beside, may still be read in rude prose, and ruder rhyme,
the history of those who sleep beneath them. They belong, we are assured by the
epitaph, to the class of persecuted Presbyterians who afforded a melancholy
subject for history in the times of Charles II. and his successor.4 In returning
from the battle of Pentland Hills, a party of the insurgents had been attacked
in this glen by a small detachment of the King's troops, and three or four
either killed in the skirmish, or shot after being made prisoners, as rebels
taken with arms in their hands. The peasantry continued to attach to the tombs
of those victims of prelacy an honour which they do not render to more splendid
mausoleums; and, when they point them out to their sons, and narrate the fate of
the sufferers, usually conclude by exhorting them to be ready, should times call
for it, to resist to the death in the cause of civil and religious liberty, like
their brave forefathers.
    Although I am far from venerating the peculiar tenets asserted by those who
call themselves the followers of those men, and whose intolerance and
narrow-minded bigotry are at least as conspicuous as their devotional zeal, yet
it is without depreciating the memory of those sufferers, many of whom united
the independent sentiments of a Hampden with the suffering zeal of a Hooper or
Latimer. On the other hand, it would be unjust to forget that many even of those
who had been most active in crushing what they conceived the rebellious and
seditious spirit of those unhappy wanderers, displayed themselves, when called
upon to suffer for their political and religious opinions, the same daring and
devoted zeal, tinctured, in their case, with chivalrous loyalty, as in the
former with republican enthusiasm. It has often been remarked of the Scottish
character, that the stubbornness with which it is moulded shows most to
advantage in adversity, when it seems akin to the native sycamore of their
hills, which scorns to be biassed in its mode of growth even by the influence of
the prevailing wind, but, shooting its branches