PICKENPILGRIMAGES. 



737 



anew, but literature had now marked him for her 

 own, and he came to London with the manuscript 

 of a novel; the composition of which had been 

 the amusement of his leisure hours, and subse- 

 quently his chief consolation in difficulty and dis- 

 tress. 



" The Sectarian," as this novel was called, ex- 

 cited considerable interest at the time of its first 

 appearance ; it showed great skill in what may be 

 termed the morbid anatomy of the mind, and one 

 picture, of madness caused by religious melancholy, 

 which was drawn from nature, gave considerable 

 offence to persons who are too apt to confound an 

 attack upon fanaticism with hostility to religion. 

 This error, and in the present instance, no greater 

 error could be made, prevented " The Sectarian " 

 from obtaining the success which its merits de- 

 served. But though the circulation of " The Sec- 

 tarian" was limited, it had the effect of making the 

 author known to the editors of the principal perio- 

 dicals, and from this time, Mr Picken became a 

 regular contributor to the leading Magazines and 

 Reviews. The publication of " The Dominie's 

 Legacy," in 1830, finally established his fame as 

 the historian of Scottish humble life ; we say the 

 historian rather than the delineator, because the 

 Dominie speaks not of what he has imagined, but 

 of what he has seen, felt, and understood, almost 

 from his infancy ; and we remember his characters, 

 more as those of persons that we somewhere knew, 

 than of personages we have seen described. The 

 work had great success, and its fame has not been 

 injured by time. 



Mr Picken's next publication was " The Club 

 Book," to which several of the most popular liv- 

 fng writers contributed. The tales written by 

 the editor, were in his happiest style ; that, en- 

 titled, " The Three Kearneys,'' was founded on 

 circumstances which he had witnessed during his 

 residence in Ireland, and it showed that Mr Picken 

 had thoroughly investigated the mixed character of 

 the Irish peasantry. " The Deer-Stalkers" was 

 also a tale of great interest ; it was dramatized at 

 the Queen's Theatre, and much admired. Soon 

 after appeared a work on the Canadas, professedly 

 a compilation ; in preparing this volume, Mr Pic- 

 ken. received valuable assistance from his friend 

 Mr Gait. This was followed by " Waltham," a 

 tale published in Leitch Ritchie's " Library of 

 Romance," and though not very favourably re- 

 ceived, displaying, perhaps, higher powers of 

 thought and sentiment than any of his other 

 works. 



In the course of 1833, he published " Tradi- 

 tionary Stories of Old Families," in two volumes ; 

 designed as the first part of a series, which would 

 embrace the legendary history of Scotland, Eng- 

 land, and Ireland. The project excited considera- 

 ble interest, and many of the most distinguished 

 members of the aristocracy offered to aid the 

 author, by giving him access to their family papers. 

 Before he could avail himself of the ample stores 

 thus opened to him, he was attacked by the dis- 

 ease which so rapidly terminated his life. On the 

 10th of November, 1831, while conversing with 

 his son, he was suddenly struck down by apo- 

 plexy, which terminated in death, on the 23d of 

 the same month. 



A little before his last illness, he had completed 

 a novel, which he regarded as by far the best of 

 his productions. It was published after his death, 

 and is entitled, " The Black Watch," which was 



VII. 



the original name of the gallant 42nd regiment. 

 The date of the story is about the time of the 

 battle of Fontenoy. 



The character of Picken, like that of the Domi- 

 nie of his own tales, was simple, affectionate, re- 

 tiring; dwelling apart from the world, and blend- 

 ing in all his views of it the gentle and tender 

 feelings reflected from his own mind. 



PILGRIMAGES. The custom of making pil- 

 grimages to spots of reputed sanctity prevailed to 

 a great extent in the latter ages of paganism, and 

 coupled with a reverence for relics was transferred 

 at a very early period to the Christian church. 

 Journeys of this kind to Jerusalem are mentioned 

 in the third century; and in the fourth they are 

 said, by St Jerome, to have become common from 

 all parts of the Roman empire. The custom of 

 worshipping the relics of martyrs also prevailed in 

 Egypt in the same century, as we learn from Euna- 

 pius, who angrily complains that the Christians of 

 Canopus had transferred the homage formerly paid 

 to the Egyptian deities to nauseous collections of 

 bones and relics. It was much later, however, 

 before either practice became established in its full 

 extent, probably not till the time of the crusades. 

 In England there were few shrines or relics of great 

 repute which dated beyond this period. In some 

 of the most celebrated, as that of the Virgin at 

 Walsingham, and the true blood at Hailes, the 

 sacred materiel was confessedly imported by the 

 crusaders ; while the greatest of all, the shrine of 

 Becket at Canterbury, derived its existence from 

 an event as late as the twelfth century. 



The passion of visiting shrines and other sacred 

 places, appears, in the middle ages, to have pre- 

 vailed pre-eminently in England. In the days of 

 Bede, a pilgrimage to Rome was held to be a 

 "great virtue;" and the number of our country- 

 men who visited the papal court is said to have 

 excited the sarcastic jokes of the Italians on our 

 catholic enthusiasm. In later ages, the " shadow" 

 of St James at Compostella was chiefly visited by 

 English pilgrims, and appears to have been set up 

 to divert a part of the inundation which flowed 

 upon Rome. In the number of her domestic 

 shrines England also exceeded all other countries. 

 Thirty-eight existed in Norfolk alone, and to one 

 of these, that of our Lady of Walsingham, Eras- 

 mus says, every Englishman, not regarded irreli- 

 gious, invariably paid his homage. The pilgrims 

 who arrived at Canterbury, on the sixth jubilee of 

 the translation of Becket, are said to have exceeded 

 100,000 ; a number which, if correctly given, must 

 have comprised nearly a twentieth of the entire 

 population of the kingdom. Even on the eve of 

 the Reformation, when pilgrimage had much de- 

 clined, it appears, from the report of one of Henry's 

 visitors, that upwards of 500 devotees, bringing 

 money or cattle, had arrived the day before he 

 wrote, at an obscure shrine in Wales. These 

 facts give some idea of the extent to which pil- 

 grimages were carried in this country, and impart 

 a peculiar interest to the subject. 



The pilgrimages of the middle ages may be 

 divided into four classes first, pilgrimages of 

 penance or devotion to foreign shrines ; secondly, 

 pilgrimages of the same kind to English shrines ; 

 thirdly, pilgrimages to medical and charmed shrines ; 

 and fourthly, vicarious pilgrimages for the good of 

 the soul of the principal. Other kinds have been 

 enumerated, but these contain all which had any 

 professed reference to devotion. 

 3 A. 



