SCOTCHMEN IN POLAND.
(Vol. vii., pp. 475. 600.)
"Religious freedom was at that time [the middle of the sixteenth century] enjoyed in Poland to a degree unknown in any other part of Europe, where generally the Protestants were persecuted by the Romanists, or the Romanists by the Protestants. This freedom, united to commercial advantages, and a wide field for the exercise of various talents, attracted to Poland crowds of foreigners, who fled their native land on account of religious persecution; and many of whom became, by their industry and talents, very useful citizens of their adopted country. There were at Cracow, Vilna, Posen, &c., Italian and French Protestant congregations. A great number of Scotch settled in different parts of Poland; and there were Scotch Protestant congregations not only in the above-mentioned towns, but also in other places, and a particularly numerous one at Kieydany, a little town of Lithuania, belonging to the Princes Radziwill. Amongst the Scotch families settled in Poland, the principal were the Bonars, who arrived in that country before the Reformation, but became its most zealous adherents. This family rose, by its wealth, and the great merit of several of its members, to the highest dignities of the state, but became extinct during the seventeenth century. There are even now in Poland many families of Scotch descent belonging to the class of nobles; as, for instance, the Haliburtons, Wilsons, Ferguses, Stuarts, Haslers, Watsons, &c. Two Protestant clergymen of Scotch origin, Forsyth and Inglis, have composed some sacred poetry. But the most conspicuous of all the Polish Scotchmen is undoubtedly Dr. John Johnstone [born in Poland 1603, died 1675], perhaps the most remarkable writer of the seventeenth century on natural history. It seems, indeed, that there is a mysterious link connecting the two distant countries; because, if many Scotsmen had in bygone days sought and found a second fatherland in Poland, a strong and active sympathy for the sufferings of the last-named country, and her exiled children, has been evinced in our own times by the natives of Scotland in general, and by some of the most distinguished amongst them in particular. Thus it was an eminent bard of Caledonia, the gifted author of The Pleasures of Hope, who, when
'Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime,'
has thrown, by his immortal strains, over the fall of her liberty, a halo of glory which will remain unfaded as long as the English language lasts. The name of Thomas Campbell is venerated throughout all Poland; but there is also another Scotch name [Lord Dudley Stuart] which is enshrined in the heart of every true Pole."—From Count Valerian Krasinski's Sketch of the Religious History of the Sclavonic Nations, p. 167.: Edinburgh, Johnstone and Hunter, 1851.
J. K.