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From The Contemporary Review. "THE BLOODY MACKENZIE."

feat of daring to go to the persecutor's tomb as the gloaming darkens into night, and with trembling lips and feet prepared for instant flight, to shout through the key-hole the quaint and horrible adjuration

Lift the sneck and draw the bar,

Bluidy Mackenyie, come out an ye daur!'

AMONG those persecutors of the Covenanters, whose names are mentioned "with a peculiar energy of hatred wherever the Scottish race is found on the surface of the globe," the subject of our paper has long held a place of especial abhorrence. What, sir, wad ye speak to me," said Davie Deans, when a neighbour had sug- turies under the execration of a whole Now who was this man, buried for cengested a youthful relative of Mackenzie as a suitable lawyer to take up poor Effie's people? He was, as a political adversary, plea, "about a man that has the blood of but a wise judge and a most candid conthe saints at his fingers' end? Didna his temporary observer,† confessed, "the eme (uncle) die and gang to his place wi' brightest Scotsman of his time." Even the name of the Bluidy Mackenyie? and Dryden, at the summit of his fame, avowed winna he be kenned by that name sae lang originated by the conversation of "that that his poetic efforts and successes were as there's a Scots tongue to speak the noble wit of Scotland, Sir George Mackenword?" In confirmation of this grim prophecy, we need only refer to two testi-zie." He was an eminent lawyer, in the monies one of them again from Sir Wal- great age of the lawyers of a nation which ter Scott, who by no means exaggerates has always been governed by its lawyers; the popular feeling against the memory of and his institutional works are to this day But turn to that wonderful of high authority in the jurisprudence of story in "Redgauntlet," supposed to be Scotland. He was not only a lawyer, but told so late as this century, about the a reformer of the law, and he claims, with tenant who swore he would go to hell to justice, that the changes in its administrasee his savage old laird, and suddenly tion which he procured were in the direcfound himself in a great hall amid the tion of protecting the rights of the subject ghastly revellers, now, as of old, "birling of the Crown and the Bench. Lastly, we and of the accused against the influence the red wine and speaking blasphemy and sculduddry "after a day of persecution. shall be able to prove that this alleged "There was the fierce Middleton, and the persecutor was anything but a bigot; that dissolute Rothes, and the crafty Lauder- he was imbued with large and latitudidale; and Dalzell, with his bald head and narian principles in all matters relating a beard to his girdle; and Earlshall, with to religion; that these principles had the Cameron's blude on his hand; and wild strongest influence over himself personally, Bonshaw, that tied blessed Mr. Cargill's and were the rule and guide of his whole limbs till the blood sprang; and Dunbar- public course; and, in particular, that ton Douglas, the twice-turned traitor baith they had the closest connection with those to country and king; and Claverhouse, as political measures against the Presbytebeautiful as when he lived, with his long, the Crown, or carried into execution as rians which he originated as a minister of dark, curled locks, streaming down over his laced buff coat; and, prominent public prosecutor.

these men.

Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh was born in 1636, a son of the Laird of Lochslin, near Tain, of the powerful fanly of Seaforth. In his tenth year he had become "master of his grammar and of all the common classic authors," at Dun

among the doomed ghosts, "there was the bluidy Advocate Mackenzie, who, for his worldly wit and wisdom, had been to the rest as a god." But we need not go to books, either of fiction or history. Sir George Mackenzie's tomb in the Grey-dee; in his sixteenth he had finished his friars churchyard of Edinburgh is a gloomy structure of stone, erected by him studies in Greek and philosophy at Aberin his lifetime, surmounted by a ponderous deen and St. Andrews, and for three years cupola, and shut in by a massive door, more he read civil law at Bourges, then locked and barred. At the present day, as 'the Athens of lawyers." It is unnecesfor generations back, the boys of the old sary to trace his professional success and town of Edinburgh (those of them especial-eminence. In 1661 he was already coun

ly whose parents are connected with the moorland districts of Scotland), hold it a

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whose most careful quasi-legal works is on the science of heraldry, which he took up because "I found it looked upon abroad as the science of gentlemen," and the concluding sentence of which is worth quoting as the quintessence of this feeling:

"Thus have I, for the honour and satisfac

tion of my country, interrupted so far the

course of my ordinary studies at spare hours; . . . . and as it is much nobler to raise a science than to be raised by it, so having writ this book as a gentleman, I design as little praise or thanks, as I would disdain all other rewards.”

The Discourse on Point of Honour is dedicated to "the dissolute Rothes," with the boundless flatteries of the time; but is preceded by an address to the nobility and gentry, in which the author claims to have "lighted this, though the smallest and dimmest of Virtue's torches, at Honour's purest flame," while in a third prefatory statement of his design, he apologizes in the most curious way for his undertaking :—

close to the din of the forum, amid which, that there is nothing so mean (or unwe pen these lines-"nobis hæc otia worthy of a gentleman) as vice." This, fecet." He claims for it the title of the afterwards the argument of Steele's first existing library of law, and urges the "Christian Hero," fell very appropriately advantages of possessing in common, "as to the Scotch cavalier lawyer, one of was the manner in the age of gold," all the books which could aid or illustrate that jurisprudence which they venerate as Queen of the Sciences, from the reported judgments of the Bench "veras illas et immortales judicum imagines - up to the civil law itself, "quod cœlo potius quam Romæ debemus." But enough of him as a lawyer. When he was only twenty-four years old he published his Aretina," or "Serious Romance," "wherein he gave a very bright specimen of a gay and exuberant genius." This is not included in the two folio volumes of his works which were published about 1716, but certain poems are, the chief of which, Cælia's Country House and Closet," is serious rather than romantic, and ennuyeux above all. But what Sir George valued himself upon as much as upon any of his public acts, was his Moral Essays, some of them written in his youth, others composed, or at least published, in his age, and giving (the former at least) a very fair insight into the man. One of the most artificial of these was published in 1665-"A Moral Essay: preferring Solitude to Public Employment, and all its Appanages, such as Fame, Command, Riches, Pleasures, Conversation, &c." It is, as might be expected, addressed to Celadon, quotes the seraphic Mr. Boyle, and perhaps the best thing in it is the motto on the title-page, which gives the response of the Shunamite woman of quality to the question of the Hebrew To the Earl of Rothes he says he decourtier, "Wouldst thou be spoken for to signs these to be his last words in print; the king, or to the captain of the Host? but they are succeeded by " A Moral ParAnd she said, I dwell among mine own adox, maintaining that it is much easier people." His biographer quaintly inti- to be virtuous than vicious," dedicated apmates that this was written "in that great propriately enough to one of the honourman's youth, when he was free from busi-able members of the Royal Society, and ness," and that the dislike to public em- ending with the sentence " Adieu for ever ployment did not survive his advance to writing." Unfortunately, however, a ment, after which "his thoughts and certain "Consolation against Calumnies" studies were wholly taken up in the service is subjoined also to this discourse, "beof his king and country." It is quite cause of the contingency of the subjects; " clear, however, that a half-stoic, half- but this does at last come to an end, and epicurean self-restraint was the ideal closes with what he calls elsewhere "my which Mackenzie had set before himself beloved verse" in youth, and that this doctrine was not without influence on his public conduct. In 1667, he published a much pithier treaPulveris exigui jactu, compressa quiescunt.' tise, on "Moral Gallantry," a "discoursewherein the author endeavours to prove Many years passed, and Mackenzie, afthat point of honour (abstracting from all ter serving Charles II. and James II., and other ties) obliges men to be virtuous, and in vain defending the latter in the Scots

I find that it is a part of my employment, as a man and a Christian, to plead for virtue against vice; and really, as a barrister, few subjects will employ more my invention, or better more my unlaboured eloquence, than this can do. And I find that, both by writing and speaking moral philosophy, I may contract a kindness for virtue; seeing such as repeat a lie with almost any frequency do at last really be

lieve it."

"Hi motus animorum, atque hæc certamina tanta,

"Albeit the glass of my years hath not yet turned five-and-twenty, yet the curiosity I have to know the different limbos of departed souls, and to view the card of the region of death, would give me abundance of courage to encounter this king of terrors, though 1 were a Pagan; but when I consider what joys are prepared for them that fear the Almighty, and what craziness attends such as sleep in Methusalem's cradle, I pity them who make long life one of the oftest repeated petitions of their Pater Noster."

Parliament against its downright declara- | tion of forfeiture of the Crown, retired in dread of assassination to Oxford, and was admitted in a congregation of Regents in June, 1699, to study in the public library. He survived only a year; but here he published one or two works which need not detain us, a "Moral History of Frugality," dedicated to the University, and an "Essay on Reason," which gained more reputation. It is dedicated to the Hon. Robert Boyle, “as a token of our friend- The author's design in this discourse he ship," and immediately on its being pub- states to be "this one principle, that speclished at London in 1690, attracted the at- ulations in religion are not so necessary, tention of the learned Grævius, who "put and are more dangerous than sincere a preface to it, and published it in Latin practice. It is in religion, as in heraldry, at Utrecht the same year, under this title, the simpler the bearing be, it is so much the "De Humanæ Rationis Imbecillitate." purer and the ancienter." The sentiment There is nothing very striking in it, how- of this admirable comparison he expounds ever, except some sentiments on bigotry, throughout his treatise, and particularly which we shall presently notice, and a in "The Stoic's Friendly Address to the spirited argument in defence of the posi- Fanatics of all Sects and Sorts," which tion, "I know no greater enemy to just precedes the treatise itself. thought or reasoning than railery and satyrs, and the new way of reasoning, ridiculous similies." There is, he grants, a justice in "scourging, defaming, and banishing vice; and this jurisdiction is given by heaven immediately to such as have sense." But wit is a salt, and should be used "plentifully in conversation, moderately in business, but never in religion," the use of it there having, he thinks, a close connection with bigotry. It may be feared that Sir George, in his old age, safe in the peaceful halls of Oxford from the distant execration of his Whig and Presbyterian foes, was more sensitive to the few personal sarcasms which penetrated his retreat than to the reasonings or the wrath, both of which he had always been ready to confront.

"I am none of those who acknowledge no temples, besides those of their own heads. And I am of opinion that such as think they have a church within their own breasts, should likewise believe their heads are steeples, and so should provide them with bells. I believe that there is a Church militant, which, like the ark, must lodge in its bowels, all such as are to be saved from the flood of condemnation but to chalk out its bordering lines, is beyond the geography of my religion. He was infallible who compared God's spirit to the wind that bloweth where it listeth: we hear the sound of it, but know not whence it comes or whither it goeth. And the name graven on the white stone none knows but he who hath it."

"Most of all Christians," he says, in his chapter of the strictness of churches, "do, like coy maids, lace their bodies so strait that they bring on them a consumption; " but

But by far the ablest of Mackenzie's books, and the one also which throws most light on his private sentiments and "Since discretion opened my eyes, I have alpublic career, is his "Religio Stoici," pub-ways judged it necessary for a Christian to look lished in 1663. The title reminds one of oftener to his practice of piety than to confesSir Thomas Browne; and not the title sion of faith; and to fear more the crookedness alone. The quaintness of the first words, of his will, than the blindness of his judgment; "Albeit man be but a statue of dust delighting more to walk on from grace to grace, kneaded with tears, moved by the hidden thus working out the work of his own salvation engines of his restless passions," suggests with fear and trembling, than to stand still an inferior imitation of the same model, and with the Galileans, curiously gazing up into no one who has ever reverentially studied heaven."

the " Hydriotaphia or the " Religio Medici," can be at a loss to know whom the following sentences by Sir George recall:

"That brain hath too little pia mater, that is too curious to know, why God who evidences so great a desire to save poor man, did yet suffer him to fall.”

Few writers are more severe inan he

whom his countrymen have called "the bloody Mackenzie" against all persecution for the sake of truth; nor can there be any doubt of his sincerity in this.

"Opinion," he argues, "kept within its own proper bounds, is a pure act of the mind;