86 SCOTLAND ILLUSTRATED. 



celebrated, and counts among the number of its eleves, the late Lord 

 Melville. 



It is worthy of remark, that, during a visit of three weeks to the earl of 

 Douglas, (successor to the " gallant Graham,") at his castle of Dalkeith, 

 Froissart, the French historian, collected materials for his glowing description of 

 the fight at Otterbourne, and other gallant exploits of the Scottish chivahy. 



The following story, as recorded in a well-known repository of the marvel- 

 lous,* may serve to illustrate the superstitious creed of our ancestors. In 1638, 

 during the residence of the earl of Traquair, as lord high treasurer of Scotland, in 

 the castle, one James Spalding, charged with homicide, was found guilty, and con- 

 demned to be executed. Having failed in his prayer for a remission of the 

 sentence — " Oh, why," he exclaimed, " was I not condemned to lose my head 

 like a man, and not sentenced to die like a dog !" On the scaffold, continues 

 the same authority, he prayed that the " soul might never quit his body till he 

 had obtained a remission of his crime." This done, the science of the execu- 

 tioner was completely defeated — nothing could strangle the prisoner — and at 

 last it was resolved to bury him alive ! But even the accompHshment of this 

 desperate resource of the astonished functionary was foiled ; and, fearful to relate, 

 there was " such a rumbling and tumbhng in the grave, that the earth was moved, 

 and the mules (mould) so heaved up, that they could hardly keep them down!" 

 From that time forward his house, at the east end of the town, was haunted 

 by a spectre. 



The extensive coal-field around Dalkeith has been wrought for several 

 centuries, and seems to have been employed for domestic use in this countryf 

 much ^earlier than on the continent, where at Liege, Charleroi, and various 

 other districts, it is raised in great quantities under the name of houille, in 

 honour of Houille, its first patron in Belgium. 



To this discovery the manufacturing districts of the present day owe their 

 prosperity ; and in proof of this, in every district in France where coal mines 

 are wTought, manufactures have been established, and industry received a most 

 gratifying impulse. In Lyons, which, in its smoky prosperity resembles 

 London, this fact is particularly exemplified; and hardly less so in Rouen, and 

 other coal districts : but in France, tJiere is much more coal than inclination on 



• Satan's Invisible World Discovered. 



t Towards the middle of the fifteenth century, when jEneas Sylvius visited Scotland, the poor people, 

 he observes, who begged at the churches, received for alms pieces of stone, with which they went away 

 contented ; and this stone, says he, impregnated either with sulphur, or some other inflammable matter, 

 burns like wood. Boetius, at a somewhat later period, mentions " black stones dug out of the earth, which 

 were very good for firing, and of such intense heat as to soften and mell iron." 



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