the specimen of one printed in the preface of the Register.' It describes a scene very far from uncommon in those days.

* MY DEAREST HEART,

'London, 31st December, 1719.

'I wrote to you from Dover. We came here this afternoon, and had, I thank God, a good jurney, tho' mett with a small misfortune; for as the byeword is, "They never lost a cow that cryed for a needle." In short, we was robed about ten miles from this by two highwaymen on horseback, which we had no warning of but by their holding a cockt pistole at each window, so there was no resisting. Mr. Maule had about 10 guineas in his pocket and I 5, which we gave them: he lost his watch, sword, and pistole, but by gott luck I gave my watch to a gentleman who went post that morning from Dover that we left it. I must tell you that I was not frighted the least, nor would I have writt of it to you, if I did not think that you might chance to hear of it some other way. They made us come out of the coach that they might search it, but 2 gentlemen on horseback coming up in the meantime, they left us and went and robd them close by our coach. The highwaymen took the gentlemen's horses with them, but left the horses at some distance, and the gentlemen gott them againe.'

The Maules had got a lesson, and made no attempt to help the house of Stuart in 1745. The earl, steadfast to the end, continued in exile till his death. Harry Maule conformed on his return from Holland, and his second son, William, kissed the hands of George II., and accepted the commission of ensigncolonel in the Royal Scots Regiment. This William succeeded his father. He represented Forfarshire from 1735 till his death. He served in several campaigns in the Low Countries, and was present at Dettingen and Fontenoy. He rose to be a general, and in 1743 was created a peer of Ireland. In 1764 he repurchased the family estate in Forfarshire for 49,1577. 18s. 4d. ; thus recovering all that had been lost save Belhelvie, in Aberdeenshire. He never married, and settled his estate on his half-brother, John Maule, Esq., Advocate, a Baron of the Exchequer, a man noted for his conviviality. He, however, died before his brother, so the race ended in the male line. The estate descended to Jane, the only child of Harry Maule, who had married. She became the wife of Lord Ramsay, eldest son of the sixth Earl of Dalhousie, by whom she had issue, and thus the fine estates passed into that family.

This destination did not remain unchallenged. In 1782 Lieutenant Thomas Maule, grandson and heir of the Right Reverend Dr. Henry Maule, Lord Bishop of Meath, raised an action in the Court of Session against George, Earl of Dalhousie, as administrator for his son. Informations were led for both

parties,

parties, but with the exception of certain long leases, the Irish branch were found to have no claim to the property.

With the death of the last heir male of the family, this notice must cease. We approach times which could not be alluded to without pain to those who are still alive, and whose feelings demand the sincerest respect; else it might have been shewn how, that even when tempered with the gentler Ramsay blood, the old strong-willed character of the Maules survived. The memoirs of the bookseller, Constable, have exhibited to us what was the life of the Forfarshire lairds in his time, and the tone was mainly given by William Ramsay-Maule. But to describe him as a mere man of conviviality and inventor of practical jokes, is to give a most inadequate description of his character. He had great mental powers, an indomitable will, an unrelenting temper, and a tender heart. His faults were the faults of too early prosperity, of habitual association with those who were every way his inferiors, of the abiding results of the non-religious habits produced among the Whig gentry of the period by the principles of the first French Revolution. But all these deteriorating influences failed to quench the generous instincts of a naturally noble soul; he detested tale-bearing, and honoured those who refused to carry stories to him; his ear was ever open as his purse to the widow and the friendless, and to live and let live' was the standard of morals which he proposed to others, and amid many imperfections endeavoured to carry out himself.

But if reserve is needful in speaking of one who died in 1852, still more is it becoming in speaking of him over whom the grave has so recently closed, and to whose munificence we owe the splendid volumes which we have been reviewing. And yet Fox Maule is in a sense public property, and his character part of the inheritance of his country. Inheriting his father's indomitable will, he was in many respects his counterpart, but modified by the very different circumstances of his career. His early youth was not lapped in luxury, and he bravely fought his way to the high position to which he attained. Though from the beginning supported by his Whig friends, his start in life was not that to which he was entitled from the position of his family. He got on by his admirable powers of administration, and by the clear business-like turn of his mind. Without pretending to eloquence no one could make a clearer statement. His conduct of a public meeting was perfect. His force of character bore down opposition, but while men yielded they were convinced. When in the confusions consequent upon the Duke of Newcastle's unsuccessful administration in the midst of

the Crimean War he was called to the helm, the army was saved. On the other hand, for twenty-two years he was one of the prime offenders in Scotland in the matter of the inordinate preservation and sale of game. But for this it is very doubtful if the representation of the county of Forfar would have passed out of the hands of the gentry. As it was, under the protection of the ballot, the farmers rose, and the edifice of political power, which had been built up with care by able men in two generations, fell to the ground like a house built of cards.

The part which the late Lord Dalhousie took in the politics of the Free Kirk is well known. Not one of the Scottish nobility did so much for the remarkable movement which followed upon the disruption in the Scottish Establishment in 1844. It was the fashion to doubt his sincerity; and a Churchmanship, which was compatible with sport on the Sabbath,' and with the partaking of the Communion in the English Church at Cannes, was perhaps open to suspicion. But the doubt was most unjust. What may have begun in political expediency ended in religious conviction. He would year by year hurry home from his delightful villa on the Mediterranean to take part in the debates of the General Assembly of the religious communion to which he adhered; yet withal the political element prevailed in him, otherwise he never would have advocated the fusion of the Free Kirk with the United Presbyterians, implying, as it did, a modus vivendi between those who maintain the principle of Establishments, with due subordination of the Civil State, to be tolerable, and those who consider all Establishments essentially sinful. He had strong family affections; he was a devoted brother and a kind uncle. His friendships, especially for those below him in the social scale, were as warm as his enmities were decided.

In the Registrum de Panmure,' besides the memorials of the members of the Maule family, we come across interesting notices of several of the political characters of the time. We have already alluded to the letters of Thomas Innes; there are also specimens of the correspondence of the tempter Mar, the crafty old Lovat, Lockhart of Carnwarth, Lord Grange, Mr. George Crawford, Alexander Edward-to whose father we owe one of the earliest and most curious accounts of Forfarshire-and James Greenshields, rector of Tynan, who was thrown into prison, at the instance of the presbytery of Edinburgh, for the use of the English Prayerbook. Among Edward's papers is an account of the murder and funeral of Archbishop Sharp, so circumstantial, that it deserves to be given here :

"My father having gone to Crail after the synod, and being engaged to preach on the Sabbath (Sunday), as he did at Kingsbarns, at seven hours

hours at night in the Murrose, we got information of the execrable murder of Dja. Sharp, L. Archbishop of St. Andrew's, that day at eleven hours in the afternoon, in Magus Moor, by nine emissaries and a part of a greater waylaying number of Presbyterian incarnate devils. The first disarmed his attendants, who were fewer than his ordinar, shoot many pistols in at the stern of the coach; but all missed both my L. and his eldest daughter Isabel, who was with him therein. Then they wounded the postilion boy and houghed the postilion horse. Then he came out of the coach, and while they wounded his daughter thrice, he desired to spare the child, and asked if there was mercy with man, for he hoped there was with his God. They said no mercy, for he was not a Christian. Then instantly saying let me pray for you and for myself, while kneeling down and while so praying with uplifted hands, they immediately fell upon him, shoot at him near the shoulder-blade and along the side, wound his hands five times, then so struck upon his hind head that pieces of his skull was lost and much of his brains fall out, so that three surgeons who emboucled him thought there had been twenty-three strokes on that place, but gave upon oath that there were at least fifteen; and before they hit him on the hind head, they wounded him thrice on the face, the deepest two whereof the deriding murderers expressed St. Andrew's cross, and last of all they run him through with a sword (" How long, L., holy and true, doest thou not judge and revenge the blood of these that were killed for thy word on these wicked that duel on the earth") Rev. vi. 20. Jo. Hakstown of Rathilet, and Jo. Balfour of Kinloch, were the principal murderers, but all were Fifans; whereof two were Websters (Weavers), and one Taylor, and two Hendersons, husbandmans' sons. They took considerable gold from off my L., and from off his daughter twenty-five pieces, she being shortly to be married, wherewith she at first offered to ransom her father's life, and even took away my L.'s cassock-belt. He had on his morning clothgown, which was not his ordinary. And that day the postilion-horse, which was wounded, would not at all yoke right postilion in Kennewey. That day the sun appeared not-not at all, though it was Saturday, contrary to the seamen's rule-no, not before Tuesday afternoon. His spilled blood, even to more than a quart, being but gathered up off the place on Tuesday morning, and yet of a very fresh and clear colour and unmixed with the rain. The murderers

got in my L.'s pocket D. Bruce's Congé d'Elire for the See of Dunkeld, and his Majesty's letter to him to go to London, which voyage he intended to begin the Monday next.'

It only remains for us to say something of the editing and execution of the present work. It is done with the care and accuracy we should have expected from Dr. Stuart, especially when aided by the local knowledge and familiarity with the papers of Mr. Jervise. Still we cannot but think that even more might have been made of a family history so interesting. Why have we not had the whole of the narrative of the Commissary Maule,

with its racy Scotch, accurate detail, and family enthusiasm? or the letters of the Countess to her exiled Lord, of which we have just enough to tantalise us? or a further supply of those of James Maule, who seems to have been the flower of the race? or the correspondence of the Jacobite agents? Then we have no account of the collateral branches, or the scions of the house, who were settled in Sweden, England, and Ireland. At this moment one of the noble families in the first of these countries, now named Mel, traces from a Maule, who first emigrated to Dieppe, and then to Sweden. It is well known that the blood of the race ran in the veins of the sainted author of the "Christian Year; and we have already alluded to the lawsuit which was raised against the destination of the estate to the Ramsays by the Irish branch.

However, these abatements from the perfection of the work are not due to the editor. We believe that it was only a very short time before Lord Dalhousie's death that the work was entrusted to him, and it was at first intended that it should consist entirely of a reproduction of the MS. of Harry Maule, and be comprised within a single volume. The preface, &c., were therefore matters of afterthought. Although, as he tells us himself, family histories have not hitherto occupied the attention of one who has devoted himself so ably to historical disquisitions of more general import, yet the success of the present undertaking induces us to express the hope that he may be entrusted with the duty of editing the contents of some of the muniment rooms in Scottish castles, the treasures of which, as we have seen, he has so diligently explored.

ART. VII.-1. Ruskie v svoikh poslovitsakh. [The Russians in their Proverbs.] By Ivan Snegiref. 4 vols. 12mo. Moscow, 1831-34.

2. Poslovitsui russkago naroda. [The Proverbs of the Russian People.] Collected by Vladimir Dahl. Imp. 8vo. Moscow,

1862.

3. Istoricheskie Ocherki, &c. [Historical Essays on Russian Popular Literature and Art.] By F. Buslaef. 2 vols. Imp. 8vo. St. Petersburg, 1861.

4. Mudrost narodnaya, &c. [The wisdom of the people in the proverbs of the Germans, Russians, French, &c.] By M. Masson. 8vo. St. Petersburg. 1868.

WHI

HILE Peter the Great was sleeping one night, his chamberlain Kikin attempted to kill him. But when