These principles, at first received with doubt, were afterwards carried out to the utmost extent by the more violent of the insurgent party. Murder and assault, frequently perpetrated upon unoffending and defenceless persons, became so common, that the ordinary course of the law was suspended, and its execution devolved upon the military. Scotland was indeed in a complete state of terrorism. Gangs of armed fanatics, who had openly renounced their allegiance, perambulated the country, committing every sort of atrocity, and directing their attacks promiscuously against the clerical incumbents and the civil magistracy.
But the crowning act of guilt was the murder of the unfortunate Archbishop. On the 3d of May 1679, a party of the Fife non-conformists were prowling near the village of Ceres, on the outlook, it is said, for Carmichael the Sheriff-substitute of the county, against whom they had sworn vengeance if he should ever fall into their hands. This party consisted of twelve persons, at the head of whom were John Balfour of Kinloch, better known by his soubriquet of Burley, and his brother-in-law, David Hackstoun of Rathillet. Balfour, whose moral character had never stood high, though his religious fanaticism was undoubted, had been at one time chamberlain to the Archbishop, and had failed to account for a considerable portion of the rents, which it was his official duty to levy. Hackstoun, whose earlier life had been in little accordance with the ostensible tenets of his party, was also in debt to the Archbishop, and had been arrested by the new chamberlain. "These two persons," says Mr Lawson, "had most substantial reasons for their rancour and hatred towards the Archbishop, apart from their religious animosities."
It does not seem to be clearly ascertained, whether Carmichael was the real object of their search, or whether their design from the first had been directed against the person of the Primate. It would appear, however, from the depositions taken shortly after the murder, that the deed had been long premeditated, and that three days previously some of the assassins had met at a house in Ceres and concerted their plans. The incumbent of Ceres, the Rev. Alexander Leslie, was also to have been made a victim if found in company with the Prelate.
Fortunately for himself, Carmichael eluded their search, but towards evening the carriage of the Archbishop was seen approaching the waste ground near St Andrews, which is still known by the name of Magus Muir. A hurried council was then held. Hackstoun, probably from some remnant of compunction, declined to take the lead; but Balfour, whose bloodthirsty disposition was noted even in those unhappy times, assumed the command, and called upon the others to follow him. The consummation of the tragedy can best be told in the words of the historian already quoted.
"When the Primate's servants saw their master followed by a band of men on horseback, they drove rapidly, but they were overtaken on the muir about three miles west of St Andrews; the murderers having previously satisfied themselves, by asking a female domestic of the neighbouring farmer, who refused to inform them himself, that it was really the Archbishop's coach.
"Russell first came up, and recognised the Primate sitting with his daughter. The Archbishop looked out of the coach, and Russell cast his cloak from him, exclaiming,—'Judas, be taken!' The Primate ordered the postilion to drive, at which Russell fired at the man, and called to his associates to join him. With the exception of Hackstoun, they threw off their cloaks, and continued firing at the coach for nearly half a mile. A domestic of the Archbishop presented a carbine, but was seized by the neck, and it was pulled out of his hands. One of the assassins outrun the coach, and struck one of the horses on the head with a sword. The postilion was ordered to stop, and for refusing he was cut on the face and ankle. They soon rendered it impossible to proceed further with the coach. Disregarding the screams, entreaties, and tears of his daughter, a pistol was discharged at the Primate beneath his left arm, and the young lady was seen removing the smoking combustibles from her father's black gown. Another shot was fired, and James Russell seized a sword from one of his associates, dismounted, and at the coach-door called to the Archbishop, whom he designated Judas, to come forth." Sir William Sharp's account of what now occurred, which would be doubtless related to him by his sister, is as follows:—"They fired several shots at the coach, and commanded my dearest father to come out, which he said he would.—When he had come out, not being yet wounded, he said,—'Gentlemen, I beg my life!' 'No—bloody villain, betrayer of the cause of Christ—no mercy!' Then said he,—'I ask none for myself, but have mercy on my poor child!' and, holding up his hand to one of them to get his, that he would spare his child, he cut him on the wrist. Then falling down upon his knees, and holding up his hands, he prayed that God would forgive them; and begging mercy for his sins from his Saviour, they murdered him by sixteen great wounds in his back, head, and one above his left eye, three in his left hand when he was holding it up, with a shot above his left breast, which was found to be powder. After this damnable deed they took the papers out of his pocket, robbed my sister and their servants of all their papers, gold, and money, and one of these hellish rascals cut my sister on the thumb, when she had him by the bridle begging her father's life."
So died with the calmness and intrepidity of a martyr this reverend and learned prelate, maligned indeed by the fanatics of his own and succeeding ages, but reverenced and beloved by those who best knew his innate worth, unostentatious charity, and pure piety of soul. In the words of a worthy Presbyterian divine of last century,—"His inveterate enemies are agreed in ascribing to him the high praise of a beneficent and humane disposition. He bestowed a considerable part of his income in ministering to pressing indigence, and relieving the wants of private distress. In the exercise of his charity, he had no contracted views. The widows and orphans of the Presbyterian brethren richly shared his bounty without knowing whence it came. He died with the intrepidity of a hero, and the piety of a Christian, praying for the assassins with his latest breath."
[16] Lawson's History of the Episcopal Church of Scotland.
Andiamo a Napoli; and so we will, in accordance with the repeated suggestions we have received during the last ten days from all the vetturini in Rome. Easter is gone by, the Girandola went off last week, the English are going, and so is our bell, tinkle! tinkle! tinkle!—as if its wire had a touch of vernal ague—while the old delf plate in the hall is filled and running with cards, every pasteboard parallelogram among them with two P's and a C in the corner; for we are becoming too polite, it seems, to take leave of each other in our own tongue. As the English quit Rome, the swallows arrive, and may be seen in great muster flitting up and down the streets, looking at the affiches of vacancies before fixing on a lodging. Unlike us, these callow tourists—though many of them on their first visit to Rome—are no sooner within the walls, than they find, without assistance, their way to the Forum, and proceed to build and twitter in that very Temple of Concord where Juvenal's storks of old made their nidus and their noise! Andiamo a Napoli; yes, but not yet; we are sure at this season to have an impatient patient or two to visit in the Babuino, or at Serny's; who, labouring under incipient fever which has not yet tamed them into submission, tell us they would—optative mood—be at Florence in a week, and add—in the imperative—that they must be in London in three! Vedremmo! These cases—may they end well—are sure, meanwhile, to be somewhat tedious in their progress; and besides, were there none such, two motives have we for always lingering the last in Rome: the one, to avoid the importunity of many indiscreet acquaintance, who would else be sure at this season to plague us with some trifling commission, on purpose to open a sudden correspondence, in the hope of learning all about the heat, the fever, the mosquitoes, the fare and the accommodation of Castellamare and Sorrento, thinking themselves, meanwhile, perfect Talleyrands in diplomacy, in employing a ruse which it is impossible not to see through; the other and more important, to secure the necessary quiet while we linger about favourite haunts, and refresh our memory with sites and scenes endeared by long and intimate acquaintance. To describe people or places accurately, requires a long and attentive familiarity, but to do so feelingly and with effect, we should trust principally to first and last impressions: either will be more likely to furnish a lively representation, as far as it goes, than when too great intimacy with details leads us to forget what is characteristic, and to dwell without emphasis, or with equal and tedious emphasis, upon all alike. New scenes, owing, perhaps, part of their charm to that circumstance, may occasionally betray us into exaggeration; but the records of a last coup-d'œil, when we dwell with sad complacency upon every feature, as upon those of a friend from whom we are about to part, are characterised at once by an equal freshness, and by more truth, feeling, and discrimination. We might proceed to exemplify this, from a long series of first and last views in Italy: with some of them the reader may be familiar, for we have frequently met in Maga's pages; with others he will—should it so please him—become acquainted, when, leaving the company of our present agreeable associates, we stand forth an author of "Travels," and have more ample scope for our egotism. We confine ourselves now to a few valedictory visits in and about Rome.
It was on 15th April, 1843, seven A. M., when we went to take farewell of the Borghese. In passing up the Via Babuino on our way thither, our ears catch some of the well-known street cries. These generally attract a momentary attention, even amidst all the bustle, activity, and din of agreat commercial city: how much more, then, in the comparative stillness of Rome, particularly in the morning, when few people are stirring, and we are most alive to sounds? Some of these cries are not unpleasing: the first to greet us, plaintive and melancholy in its character, is that of "Aqua acetosa," which announces the water of a mineral spring in the neighbourhood, brought in at sunrise for those who are too idle or too ill to drink it at its source. Another kind of water—also very matutinal in its delivery,—the "Aqua vita," is intonated by the Aquavitario, in a sharp kestrel key,—hear him! Now, list to two men carrying a large deep tub of honey between them, and bellowing in rapid alternation, "Miele, miele," and say if their accents are mellifluous! Next, comes a loud-tongued salesman, who out-brays Lablache, but confines his singing to "Che vuole, che vuole!" and oranges and lemons are his commodity. From an itinerant green-grocer, who passes with his panniered donkey, suddenly bursts forth, "Cimaroli, cimaroli!" The last cry we hear is that of "Tutti vivi, tutti vivi!" from the asparagaro, who is bringing frogs and wild asparagus into Rome. Now we are in the Piazza del Popolo, and having glanced a moment at those buxom goddesses, at the foot of the Pincian hill, who look right well this morning in their flowing robes, turn out of the Popolo Gate, just as a large drove of lean turkeys, driven in from the Campagna, besiege the entrance on their way to the bird-market, where they are to be presently slaughtered, drawn, and quartered; their "disjecta membra" exposed to sale at so many baiocchi a pound; and their blood, which is more esteemed than their flesh, hawked about the streets in cakes: of course we are too humane to hint to them their coming destiny. In front of the elegant Borghese entrance, and round the Park lodge, all strewn about in picturesque disarray, we behold one of those numerous herds of goats, which come in every morning, to be milked at the different house doors: their udders at present are brimful, and almost touch the lintel of the gate where they are standing—"gravido superant vix ubere limen;" and though they are emptied continually, soon fill again,—
Some are lying down to lighten their load; and some, with an air of patient expectancy, turn their heads towards an "osteria cacinante" opposite, knowing that so soon as their drover has finished his own cold broccoli breakfast, he will come out to accompany them into Rome to disperse theirs. And now we are within the enceinte of the Borghese grounds, have passed the good-humoured custode at the gate, responded a hearty "da vero," to the "che bella qiornata" with which we are greeted, tarried for an instant by the little pond to the left, and heard the Babylonian willow susurrate the same salutation to the water under its boughs, and then make for, and soon reach, the large ever-spouting fountain which is scattering its comminuted water-dust far and near, and bathes our cheek refreshingly as we pass it: and now we are at the Borghese dairy, and now by Raphael's little frescoed house, untenanted within, and with a solitary robin, the custode of the porch; but at the back premises we come upon an artist in a blouse making a sketch. He could not have chosen a more picturesque spot than this any where in the park: for foreqround, a beautiful green sward, well dotted with recumbent and standing cows, and interspersed with masses of acanthus-crowned ruin; and for the back, the graceful sweep of the old gray Roman walls, with the Villa Medici and the Pincian hill peering just above. Fain would we carry away some such souvenir; but as nature or our misfortune forbid this, our endeavour shall be to supply its place, however inadequately, by dotting down a few words of description of one or two of the principal trees, which here so greatly embellish the view.
The Ilex, interesting alike from its appearance and physiology, first engages our notice. Compact and solid while yet a shrub, (for hers is indeed an old head upon young shoulders,) she grows like a tree that is to count by centuries, and under no advantage of soil or situation does her sober aspect change; no premature overgrowth was ever known to weaken her fibres, those têtes mortées; the Lombardy poplars there, whose only merit is their height, may shoot up ever so tauntingly, for aught she cares, at her elbow; her ambition is not like that of the stately pines, to nurse a noisy aviary on high; nor does she seek to rival the fair sisterhood of the Acacias in the youthful vanity of overdecking her person; one dark-coloured investment lasts her, and remains unchanged the whole year through. But though she takes no improper "pride in dress," even the rigid Dr Watts would hardly be disposed to object to the exceedingly charming trimming of semi-transparent green flouncing, and the rich festoons of straw-yellow tassels, with which—not to appear insensible to the festivities of spring—she has just now fringed her winter apparel. Making less demands upon the earth than many of her neighbours, she turns her supplies to better account; her acorns from early youth are firm and mature; excrescences, the common result of excess, mar not the rough symmetry of her hardy frame—few insects feed upon that uncompromising rind, which, opposing itself to most cryptogamic alliance, seldom suffers moss or lichen to spread over its incised and tesselated surface,
Much does the Ilex gain by this prudent economy of her resources; for, long after the autumnal rains have stripped her companions bare, while they are shivering and sighing in the blast, she knows neither moult nor change. Immutably serene, she plants the dense screen of well-clothed boughs across the road, and affords shelter to the careless wight who has forgotten his umbrella, keeping him dry and warm under an impenetrable water-proof and winter-proof canopy. Of all trees that bloom, (especially when as now in full feather,) few can rival the acacia in delicacy of white, or in profusion of blossoming. Nodding their heavy plumes and parting their leafy tresses in the breeze, they are the charm of every spot where they grow; whether as here, alternating in beautiful relief by the lofty wall of the aqueduct, commingling their snowy bunches amidst thousands of red and white Banksian roses; or else standing sentinel with a weeping willow over some garden fountain. Whether alone or in company, there is not a more beautiful sylvan blonde than the acacia; but it is too apparent that such loveliness will not last, that her stature is fully beyond her strength. For example, there is a row of them; none counts her twelfth birth-day, and yet all are grown up! Turn we, now, to the great stone pines: here they stand in the morning sun, that has already cracked their fevered bark, and caused it to peel off in red laminæ from the rugged trunk. See the ground at their base strewn with these thin vegetable tiles; and large quantities of that most beautiful of funguses, the Clatharus Cancellatus, chooses this situation to blush and stink. This group is a well-known land-mark for miles around Rome; far off in the Campagna we recognise the clump; the dome of St Peter's itself meets not sooner the inquiring eye of the arriving tourist. They are also the artists' trees; not a bough of them but has been studied and depicted time after time for centuries; they have stood oftener for their portraits than they have cones to count, and are as familiar to the young painter, as the line-school that beset the Pincian hill. These are the principal trees which give character to the garden; but there are hosts of others that help to make up the beauty of the scene; Catalpas, Meleas, Brousenitias, &c. &c., all now in light green foliage. Some are still hung with pods and berries of their last year's growth, producing an insieme of pictorial effect rarely to be met with out of Italy, and in Italy only at this season of the year. Continuing our walk, we pass under the rose-crowned aqueduct, and strike into the green avenue that darkens beyond; listening to the distant water bubbling up from the deepest recesses, and to the fitful whistle of blackbird and thrush, as they flit athwart the moss-grown gravel, and perch momentarily on the heads of mutilated termini and statues; whilst the clipt trees vibrate under the wings of others extricating themselves on a piratical cruise against a whole flotilla of butterflies, which is rising and falling over the sunny parterres beyond. "The well-greaved grillus" bounds twenty feet at a spring, and having thighs as thick as a lark's to double under him, makes little use of his wings. Many a callow bee is buzzing helplessly in the path. The gray curculio walks with snout erect, snuffing the morning air; and here we fall upon a party of apprentice pill-beetles, learning to make up stercoraceous boluses, and forming nearly as long a line as the shopmen who are similarly engaged behind Holloway's counter in the Strand. Near us, hordes of "quick-eyed lizards,"—insect crocodiles, which much infest this region, start from their holes in the wall, and, rustling along the box hedge, suddenly pounce upon a butterfly, detach his wings—the whole walk is strewed with them—and having bolted his body, retire again to their resting—no—they never rest—lurking-places. Notwithstanding, however, these constant aggressions, from both birds and reptiles, the lepidopterous race is not, it seems, to be exterminated; and there, in evidence, lies that very blue-zoned peacock-butterfly, with his wings extended, and motionless as if pinned to the gravel, on the same sunny spot where we have been in the habit of noticing him for these three successive Aprils past. The eye that follows butterflies takes note also of the flowers on which they settle, but we must not indulge ourselves in pointing them out to the reader, who, unless a botanist, or inclined that way, might turn as restive as the young bride listening to her "preceptor husband."
And, therefore, though "flowers, fresh in hue and many in their class," absolutely "implore the pausing step," we forbear, and will let him off this time with rehearsing only three or four among them:—the Allium fragrans, he will join with us, if he has been in Italy, in the wish that all onions there were like it! the Anchusa Italica, through whose long funnel the proboscis of the ever-buzzing Bombylius finds its way to the sweet nectar prepared within; the Scilla Lilio-hyacinthus—a Squill masquerading it as a Hyacinth; the leaves of the Cnicus Syraicus, most beautiful of thistles, glistening here in abundance, and scarcely inferior in attractions to the far-famed Acanthus. But the society of plants is as promiscuous as our own, and accordingly we find here the jaundiced Chelidonium filled with bilious juices; the feculent-smelling flowerets of the Smyrnum olusatrum, and the stinking Geranium robertianum, mingle with the sweets of Calendula, Narcissus, and Jonquil; not to mention the Orchis tribe, which flourishes in profusion. Traversing the green arena of the amphitheatre,—where annual festas are held, and occasional cricket matches played—to the left, and leaving the Temple of Diana to the right, we come upon a deep descent just in front of the villa, and enter it for a minute to cast a hasty coup-d'œil at the ample frescoes of the ceiling and the grim mosaics of the floor; the subjects of the latter, however, not being congenial to an unbreakfasted stomach, we relinquish them presently, for the beauties of the park.... By the time we think of retracing our steps, the clock of Monte Citorio has struck ten; but the morning is still delightfully cool and exhilarating; we have been overtaken and passed by three pedestrians, each carrying away from the grounds something more than mere recollections; one, a semplicista of the Rotunda, with a collection of Galenicals for his shop; another with a pocket full of Arum roots, which he has been grubbing up for his wife, a lavatrice, to clear linen; and a third, whose handkerchief contains several pounds weight of prugnoli—Agaricus prunulus—destined for his breakfast. These do not long keep pace with our lingering footsteps; we are loth to quit hastily, and for the last time, this scene of by-gone pleasures. Oh! Villa Borghese, well known to us from curly-pated boyhood, before Waterloo was won, and often at intervals since, till now, when half our hair has become gray, and the remainder has left our temples, while grown-up nephews and nieces declare to us, what our contemporaries will not—the progress of time—how many happy hours of careless childhood have we frolicked away among thine avenues and plantations—on which we cast a last sad look—with urchins now as bald as ourselves! In early youth we have read our favourite authors under thy trees; a little later, have botanised with friends who loved thee and nature as dearly as we did; and thus have we learned to know thee, in every dress, in every phase of light and shade, and in every month of the year. During our last sojourn, in particular, this has been our favourite haunt; in winter, when walking required speed, and stalactites of ice would glisten occasionally from the aqueduct; or when summer returned, and we could bask under the tall spread pines, and watch the cawing rooks as they went and came over head, or screened ourselves in some dark avenue from the fervency of the sun, from whence we could see him blazing at both ends of it. A long and endearing familiarity has indeed been ours, melancholy and unsating; and it has given rise to a host of trying associations, conjured up by each new visit after a brief absence from Rome, and now adds poignancy of regret to what we feel must be the last,—