the 4th of February, 1798; and on the 6th of that month he thus wrote to the French Directory:

CITIZEN DIRECTORS,-I arrived two days ago in Paris, in a very weak and sickly state.

To you I owe my liberty. To you I owe my life. But there are other considerations, of infinitely superior importance, which ought to make a forcible impression on my mind. To my last breath I will remain faithful to my adopted country.

I shall esteem, Citizen Directors, the day on which I shall have the honour to be admitted to your presence the most precious of my life; and if I have passed through dangers and misfortunes, that moment will ever efface their remembrance.-I have the honour to be, Citizen Directors, with the most profound respect, your grateful and devoted servant, THOMAS MUIR.

Several members of the French Government immediately waited on Muir to congratulate him on his arrival in Paris. His company was now courted by the highest circles in Paris. Nothing was awanting on their part to soothe and comfort him, and of this he felt most deeply grateful But his mortal wounds were beginning to show their certain result. He retired to the beautiful village of Chantilly, near Paris, and there, on the 29th of September, 1798, he calmly breathed his last.

"The time will come," said Thomas Muir in one of his prophetic letters long ago, "the time will come when my sentence will be REVIEWED BY POSTERITY."

We have been humbly endeavouring to perform that duty.

Thirty years ago, at the first advent of the great Reform Bill, when our hearts beat warmly at the memory of Thomas Muir and for the unparalleled sufferings he underwent to pave the way, as they helped to do, for the ultimate success of that great measure, we sketched out rapidly a history of his life, and transmitted it with a

short note to EARL GREY-the great and good Earl Grey -reminding his Lordship of what he had done for Thomas Muir in his place in the House of Commons in 1793, and congratulating him on the glorious position he now held (1832) as PRIME MINISTER of Great Britain, and as we truly addressed him, the Father of the Reform Bill, which had accomplished a most peaceful, and, we will now add, a most beneficial REVOLUTION in these realms, as the state of the nation from that date to this abundantly proves. We are not ashamed, nay, rather we are proud to state, that we had the honour to receive the following acknowledgement from Earl Grey, written by his secretary and son-in-law, who is now the Right Honourable Sir Charles Wood, one of Her Majesty's present Ministers. We have kept it privately in our own repositories till now, when it appears for the first time in these pages; and we thus publish it because it shows how the prophetic enunciations of Thomas Muir have come to pass, not from anything we could say or do, but from the highest evidence the Nation could give.

DOWNING STREET, May 21st, 1832.

SIR-I am desired by Lord Grey to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, and to convey to you the expression of the deep sense which he entertains of the very flattering mark of your attention and kindness to him.

It has afforded him the greatest pleasure to receive so flattering a proof of regard from so zealous a labourer in the cause of Reform as yourself. I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant,

CHARLES Wood.

To Peter Mackenzie, Esq., Glasgow.

Other letters from most eminent men of the same period we might publish, as well as the tribute from Thomas Campbell, author of the imperishable "Pleasures

of Hope," who knew Muir in early life in this city; but
we postpone these now, and probably for ever.
And yet
we may go on for a moment or two to remark-and why
should we here be ashamed of telling it?—indeed, we
should rather feel gratified in so doing-that, still im-
pelled by a strong sense of feeling towards his memory,
we made a pilgrimage to the grave of Thomas Muir at
Chantilly, exactly thirty years ago, having then received
letters of introduction from Prince Talleyrand, the then
French Ambassador in London; and from Joseph Hume,
Esq., M.P., and others, addressed to the Marquis La
Fayette, General Pepe, M. Moreau, Dr. Borthwick Gil-
christ, and others in Paris. But we must reserve some
of the circumstances of that journey, with the singular
proceedings that afterwards occurred in Scotland, for
another (shorter) Chapter at another time. Meanwhile,
we are not altogether without the hope that NAPOLEON
THE THIRD, from the regard his GREAT UNCLE in the
first French Directory entertained for Thomas Muir, will
yet erect some tablet to the memory of the exiled Scottish
Advocate and citizen of France, in that beautiful Cemetery
of Chantilly, where, as already stated, his ashes repose.
"Far may the boughs of Liberty expand,

For ever cultured by the brave and free;
For ever withered be the impious hand

That lops one branch from this illustrious tree!
Britons! 'tis yours to make the verdure thrive,
And keep the seeds of liberty alive!”

CHAPTER II.

THE EVENTS OF 1812, 1819-20.

IF the statement be true, that the blood of Martyrs is the seed of the Church, then it is equally true, we think, that the persecutions and the oppressions of the Reformers of early times, conduced greatly to the advance and triumph of their principles. The trial in particular, of Thomas Muir, in 1793, on which we have been largely descanting in these previous pages, instead of making him detested by the people at home or abroad, only excited their highest admiration of him, and of the constitutional principles he so no nobly but perilously advocated. His cruel sentence, in place of crushing those principles, or, as the words of his Indictment bore, and the punishment following upon it purported to be, "in order to deter others from committing the like CRIMES in all time coming," had the very contrary effect. But what a shocking manifesto that was for the Crown lawyers of Scotland of 1793, to put forth, for "all time coming!" Why, his sufferings, we repeat, instead of deterring, kindled up more earnest flames, if we may so speak, of real heartfelt emotion in his favour, and those increased the more just as they became the more known throughout the kingdom. Within a quarter of a century after Thomas Muir had been infamously banished out of this country with his

companions to Botany Bay, the demand for Reform became ani:nated with loud, vigorous, and unmistakeable accents in this city of Glasgow in particular, as well as in other places throughout the realm, where previously it had only been feebly or scarcely heard. We would appeal now to the residue or remnant, if such really exist, of the violent Tories of 1793-of the Anti-Reformers of that period to all classes, indeed, of any and of every degree, whether they could now in their consciences propose that any person, whether of the highest or lowest character, should be treated now as a FELON, for holding faithful to his political creed? In fact, we are almost persuaded that those who may have some scruples still about the Politics of parties, and don't very well relish the name of Reform, whether on the part of "advanced Liberals," or others, will have the candour to admit, that some of the revelations we have made, and may yet make, are truly revolting to the feelings of humanity itself in this age, as contradistinguished from 1793; and we almost feel confident that the mellowed hand of Time, with the improving knowledge of the age, will never permit those scenes to be enacted again, in this free and glorious country of ours. Still it is well that history should keep its finger carefully pointed at some of those bygone times.

"They only laugh at wounds, who never felt a scar.”

Therefore in no tone of levity, but the very reverse, we proceed to observe, that towards the year 1812, the Government of that period, at the head of which was the Earl of Liverpool, got perfectly indignant and furious at some of the fresh movements then making in the provinces towards Reform. The Government would listen to no reasonable proposition on the subject whatever. They