10 
LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. 
when Rizzio was murdered, fell on the field of Lang- 
side, smitten not by the hand of the enemy, but by the 
finger of God ;— how Colin, Earl and boy-General at 
fifteen, was dragged away by force, with tears in his 
eyes, from the unhappy skirmish at Glenlivet, where his 
brave Highlanders were being swept down by the 
artillery of Huntley and Errol,—destined to regild his 
spurs in future years on the soil of Spain. 
Then I told him of the Great Rebellion, and how, 
amid the tumult of the next fifty years, the Grim Mar¬ 
quis—Gillespie Grumach, as his squint caused him to 
be called—Montrose’s fatal foe, staked life and fortunes 
in the deadly game engaged in by the fierce spirits of 
that generation, and, losing, paid the forfeit with his 
head, as calmly as became a brave and noble gentle¬ 
man, leaving an example, which his son—already twice 
rescued from the scaffold, once by a daughter of the 
gallant house of Lindsay, again a prisoner, and a rebel 
—because four years too soon to be a patriot—as nobly 
imitated;—how, at last, the clouds of misfortune cleared 
away, and honours clustered where only merit had been 
before; the martyr’s aureole, almost become hereditary, 
being replaced in the next generation by a ducal 
