the common people only that the rage of the persecutor is directed. Of the few of Scotland's once renowned gentry and nobles who are walking in the steps of their ancestors, and who, for the sake of court honours and the favour of kings, have not renounced the cause of Christ's truth and free kingdom, several have been singled out for destruction. For refusing, or rather for attempting to put an explanation on the Test-oath consistent with his principles as a Protestant and a Presbyterian, the Earl of Argyle has been found guilty of high treason, and is condemned to suffer death. Jerviswood is in prison, and is about to be brought to trial. O, woful Scotland! well indeed is it with them whose eyes have not seen, and whose ears have not heard the desolations that have now come to the utter

most on thee! Well might the weary-hearted Peden, as in the course of his wanderings he sat down on the green hillock beneath which lay the mangled remains of Cameron, lift his meek eyes.to heaven and sigh, " O, to be wi' Ritchie!" Truly, the days which he foresaw, and the desolations which he foretold, "when a man should wander forty miles, and see neither a reeking house, nor hear a cock crow," have come; but are these days and these desolations to last for ever? No: I am confident they are not. During these years in which I have pined here in captivity, I have had dim hauntings of fear, but I have had also fair visions of hope-visions both of the Kirk's and the Kingdom's deliverance have rushed upon me above the brightness of the day. It's a day of darkness and of gloominess, and of fear; but as the swan of Anwoth has said " Scotland's day will yet clear up, and there will be glory upon the top of the moun

tains, and joy at the noise of the married wife once again.' That fallen star, the Prince of the bottomless pit, knoweth it is near the time when he shall be tormented, and now in his evening he hath gathered his armies to win one battle or two, in the edge of the evening, at the sun's going down; but his defeat is decreed-it is only for a time delayed. Our rightful King shall yet return, and by all ranks shall be brought home with joy. The "Stone of Israel shall not be broken, and the burning kirk shall not be consumed." As for its enemies and persecutors, who have silenced her ministers and slain her people-her grey-haired fathers-her men in the prime and vigour of manhood-her sons in the bloom and beauty of youth-her aged women, her tender maidens, and my long-lost, my beautiful, my beloved sister, that spared not thee-a gigantic hand like that which came forth and wrote on the wall the doom of Belshazzar, I have beheld writing theirs, "Mene, Tekel, Upharsin," it is written, it is written, and it shall come-a voice like that of the prophet who cried in Bethel against the altar and its sacrilegious king-like that of the blood of Abel, crying against his murderer from the ground-I have heard crying on the midnight winds,

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Avenge, O Lord! thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the mountains cold."

That cry shall be heard. Yet a little while, and the Lord shall " give thee rest from thy sorrow," and thy fear, and thy hard bondage, wherein thou hast been made to serve; then shall thy children no more be doomed to wander as exiles on a foreign shore, or as outlaws

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on the moors and mountains of their native land; then they shall sit under their vines and their fig-trees, none daring to make them afraid. Then, at the sound of the Sabbath bell, they shall be glad, and say, Let us go up to the house of the Lord. Then shall they take up this proverb, and say, How hath the OPPRESSOR ceased!" Is this the man that made the land to tremble, that destroyed cities, that opened not the house of his prisoners? All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, every one in his own house; but thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch: thou shalt not be joined with them in burial, because thou hast destroyed thy land and slain thy people. The seed of evil-doers shall never be renowned." Yea, the whole land which shall be at rest and be quiet," its cottages and cities-its Sabbaths and sanctuaries-its glens and mountains-its woods and waters-at the downfall of thy oppressors-at thy emancipation from the creed and the chains, the superstition and the slavery of Popery-at the return of Protestant law, liberty, and religion-at the sight of a FREE KIRK and a FREE KINGDOMshall break out into songs of joy.

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This triumphant outgate to the Kirk of Scotland from her sufferings, and this glorious upshot to her struggles I may not live to witness -others will. In the full assurance of the truth of her covenanted cause I have lived, and to contribute to its triumph I AM WILLING TO DIE. PATRICK WELWOOD.

FROM MY DUNGEON IN THE BASS ROCK,

August 10, 1683.

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NOTE.

A FRIEND, at present assistant to the minister of Dron, has transmitted to the author the following Inscription and Lines on a Monument erected in the Church-yard of that parish, to the memory of the Rev. John Welwood, whose name occurs in the preceding pages:

"Here lyes the Rev. Mr. John Welwood, Minister of the Gospel in the Church of Scotland, who died at Perth, April 1679, about the 30th year of his age.

"Here lyes a follower of the Lamb,
Through many tribulations came-
For long time of his christian race,
Was persecute from place to place.
A Scottish prophet here behold,
Judgment and mercy who foretold,
The Gospel Banner did display,
Condemned the sins of that sad day,
And valiantly for truth contended,
Until by death his days were ended."

When drawing near his end, this young minister, as is recorded in the "Lives of the Scottish Worthies," said, "I have no more doubt of my interest in Christ, than if I were already in

heaven." The morning of the day on which he died, observing the light of day, he said, "Now eternal light, and no more darkness to me." When it became known that an intercommuned minister was dead in town, the magistrates issued an order, forbidding him to be buried in Perth. His friends having obtained leave to carry his corpse out of town, they sent two men before them to Dron, to prepare a grave in the church-yard of that place. The men went to Mr. Pitcairn, the minister, and requested the keys of the church-yard, but he refused to give them. They went over the church-yard dyke, however, and digged a grave, and there the remains of this servant of God, and sufferer for the Crown and Covenant of Christ, rest in peace.

Better days succeeded the " evil ones" on which his lot was cast, and in these, by some of the good christian people of the place

"Mindful of the unhonoured dead"

the stone above alluded to seems to have been erected-and which still remains to implore, rather for the times in which the sufferer lived, than the sufferer himself,

"The passing tribute of a sigh."

John Welwood had two brothers, Andrew and James, both of whom outlived the period of per