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Crown the great hymn! In swarming cities vast,
Assembled men, to the great organ join

The long-resounding voice, oft breaking clear,
At solemn pauses, through the swelling bass;
And, as each mingling flame increases, each
In one united ardour rise to heaven.
Or, if you rather choose the rural shade,
And find a fane in every sacred grove;
There let the shepherd's flute, the virgin's lay,
The prompting seraph, and the poet's lyre
Still sing the God of Seasons, as they roll!
For me, when I forget the darling theme,
Whether the blossom blows, the Summer ray
Russets the plain, inspiring Autumn gleams,
Or Winter rises in the blackening east,

Be my tongue mute; may fancy paint no more ;
And, dead to joy, forget my heart to beat!

Should fate command me to the farthest verge Of the green earth; to distant barbarous climes; Rivers unknown to song, where first the sun Gilds Indian mountains, or his setting beam Flames on the Atlantic isles; 'tis nought to me; Since God is ever present, ever felt,

In the void waste as in the city full:

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And where He vital 5 breathes there must be joy.
When even, at last, the solemn hour shall come,
And wing my mystic flight to future worlds,
I, cheerful, will obey; there, with new powers,
Will rising wonders sing. I cannot go
Where Universal Love smiles not around,
Sustaining all yon orbs, and all their sons;
From seeming evil still educing good,
And better thence again, and better still,
In infinite progression.-But I lose

Myself in Him, in Light Ineffable!

Come then, expressive silence, muse His praise!

THOMSON.

1. HUMID, damp or moist. (Lat. humus, the ground.)

2. EFFUSE, to shed, or pour out. 3. PHILOMELA, the nightingale.

(Lat. fundo, to pour.)

4. RUSSETS THE PLAIN, i. e., turns the plain brown.

5. WHERE HE VITAL BREATHES, i.e., where the living God breathes.

6. MYSTIC, mysterious, secret.

7. INEFFABLE, inexpressible.

CAPTURE AND EXECUTION OF THE

MARQUIS OF MONTROSE.

JAMES GRAHAM, Marquis of Montrose, was descended from the royal family of Scotland, and embraced with ardour the cause of Charles I.

He greatly distinguished himself during the long Civil War, and gained the battles of Perth, Aberdeen, and Inverlochy. But in 1645, being defeated by Lesley, he left the kingdom, and remained abroad until early in the year 1650, when, holding a commission from Charles II. to attempt a descent upon Scotland, he embarked at Hamburg with some arms and treasure supplied by the northern courts of Europe.

The fame of Montrose drew around him a few of the emigrant royalists, chiefly Scottish, and he recruited about six hundred German mercenaries.1 His first descent was on the Orkney Islands, where he forced to arms a few hundred of unwarlike fishermen. He next disembarked on the mainland, and Strachan, an officer under Lesley, came upon him by surprise near a pass called Invercharron on the confines of Ross-shire. The Orkney men made but little resistance. The Germans

retired to a wood, and there surrendered; the few Scottish companions of Montrose fought bravely, but in vain. Montrose, when the day was irretrievably lost, threw off his cloak bearing the star of the Order of the Garter, and afterwards changed clothes with an ordinary Highland kern,2 that he might endeavour to effect his escape, and swam across the river Kyle. Exhausted with fatigue and hunger, he was at length taken by a Ross-shire chief, MacLeod of Assint, who happened to be out with a party of his men in arms. The Marquis discovered himself to this man, thinking himself secure of favour, as Assint had been once his own follower. But, tempted by a reward of five hundred bolls of meal, this wretched chief delivered his old commander into the unfriendly hands of David Lesley.

The Covenanters, when he, who had so often made them tremble, was at length delivered into their hands, celebrated their victory with all the exultation of mean timid spirits suddenly released from the apprehension of imminent danger. Montrose was dragged in a sort of triumph from town to town, in the mean garb in which he had disguised himself for flight. To the honour of the town of Dundee, which had been partly plundered and partly burnt by Montrose's forces during his eventful progress in 1645, the citizens of that town were the first who supplied their fallen foe with clothes befitting his rank, with money and with necessaries.

Before Montrose reached Edinburgh, he had been condemned by the Parliament to the death of a traitor. The sentence was pronounced without further trial, upon an act of attainder passed while he was plundering Argyle in the winter of 1644, and it was studiously aggravated by every species of infamy.

The Marquis was, according to the special order of

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Parliament, met at the gates by the magistrates, attended by the common hangman, who was clad for the time in his own livery. He was appointed, as the most infamous mode of execution, to be hanged on a gibbet thirty feet high, his head to be fixed on the Tolbooth, or prison of Edinburgh, his body to be quartered, and his limbs to be placed over the gates of the principal towns of Scotland. According to the sentence, he was conducted to jail in a cart, whereon was fixed a high bench on which he was placed, bound and bareheaded, the horse led by the executioner wearing his bonnet, and the noble prisoner exposed to the scorn of the people, who were expected to hoot and revile him. But the rabble, who came out with the rudest purposes, relented when they saw the dignity of his bearing, and silence, accompanied by the sighs and tears of the crowd, attended the progress, which his enemies had designed should excite

other emotions.

He was next brought before the Parliament to hear the terms of. his sentence. When it had been read he observed, that he was more honoured in having his head set on the prison for the cause in which he died, than he would have been, had they decreed a golden statue to be erected to him in the market-place, or in having his picture in the king's bedchamber. As to the distribution

of his limbs, he said he wished he had flesh enough to send some to each city of Europe, in memory of the cause in which he died. He spent the night in reducing these ideas into poetry.

Early in the morning of the next day he was awakened by the drums and trumpets, calling out the guards by order of the Parliament to attend on his execution. "Alas," he said, "I have given these good folk much

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trouble while alive, and do I continue to be a terror to them on the day I am to die?"

The clergy importuned him, urging repentance of his sins, and offering, on his expressing such compunction, to relieve him from the sentence of excommunication, under which he laboured. He calmly replied that though the excommunication had been rashly pronounced, yet it gave him pain, and he desired to be freed from it, if a relaxation could be obtained by expressing penitence for his offences as a man; but that he had committed none in his duty to his prince and country, and therefore had none to acknowledge or repent of.

Johnstone of Warriston, an eminent Covenanter, intruded himself on the noble prisoner, while he was combing the long curled hair, which he wore as a Cavalier. Warriston, a gloomy fanatic, hinted as if it were but an idle employment at so solemn a time. "I will arrange my head as I please to-day, while it is still my own," answered Montrose ; "to-morrow it will be yours, and you may deal with it as you list."

The Marquis walked on foot from the prison to the Grassmarket, the common place of execution for the basest felons, where a gibbet of extraordinary height, with a scaffold covered with black cloth, was erected. Here he was again pressed by the Presbyterian clergy to own his guilt. Their cruel and illiberal officiousness could not disturb the serenity of his temper. To exaggerate the infamy of his punishment, or rather to show the mean spite of his enemies, a book containing the printed history of his exploits, was hung around his neck by the hangman. This insult, likewise, he treated with contempt, saying, he accounted such a record of his services to his prince, as a symbol equally honourable

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