Years after all these actors in the drama of life had passed away, a gentleman of Gueldres, a friend of Francis, fifth Lord Napier (who died in 1773), recognized, in the collection of a Flemish virtuoso, by the coat-armorial and other engravings upon it, the identical gold filigree box belonging to the Napiers of Merchiston. The steel case was within it; but the silver urn was gone. The former "was the size and shape of an egg. It was opened by pressing down a little knob, as is done in opening a watch-case. Inside was a little parcel containing all that remained of Montrose's heart, wrapped in a piece of coarse cloth, and done over with a substance like glue." Restored by this friend to the Napiers, it was presented to Miss Hester Napier, by her father, Lord Francis, when his speculations in the Caledonian Canal and elsewhere led him to fear the sale of his patrimonial castle of Merchiston, and that he would lose all, even to this relic, on which he set so much store. Miss Napier took it with her on her marriage with Johnstone of Carnsalloch, and it accompanied her when she sailed for India with her husband. Off the Cape de Verd Isles their ship was attacked by Admiral de Suffrien, who was also bound for the East with five French sail of the line. In the engagement which ensued, Mrs. Johnstone, who refused to quit her husband's side on the quarter-deck, was wounded by a splinter in the arm, while carrying in her hand a reticule in which she had placed all her most valuable trinkets, and, among these, the heart of Montrose, as it was feared that the Indiaman would be taken by boarding; Suffrien, however, was beaten off.
At Madura, in India, she had an urn made like the old one to contain the heart, and on it was engraved, in Tamil and Telegu, a legend telling what it held. Her constant anxiety concerning its safety naturally caused a story to be spread concerning it among the Madrassees, who deemed it a powerful talisman. Thus it was stolen, and became the property of a chief; so the loyal heart that had beat proudly in so many Scottish battles, hung as an amulet at the neck of a Hindoo warrior. The latter, however, on hearing what it really was, generously restored it to its owner, and it was brought to Europe by the Johnstones on their return in 1792. In that year they were in France, when an edict of the revolutionary government required all persons to surrender their plate and ornaments for the service of the sovereign people. Mrs. Johnstone intrusted the heart of Montrose to one of her English attendants named Knowles, that it might be secretly and safely conveyed to England; but the custodian died by the way; the relic was again lost, and heard of no more.
In the wall of an aisle of the old ruined church of Culross, there was found, not long ago, enclosed in a silver case of oval form, chased and engraved, the heart of Edward Bruce, second Lord Kinloss (ancestor of the Earls of Elgin), in his day a fiery and gallant young noble, who fought the famous duel with a kindred spirit, Sir Edward Sackville, afterwards Earl of Dorset, a conflict which is detailed at such length, and so quaintly, in No. 133 of the Guardian. Bruce was the challenger, and after a long and careful pre-arrangement, attended by their seconds and surgeons, they encountered each other, with the sword, minus their doublets, and in their shirtsleeves, under the walls of Antwerp, in August, 1613. Sackville had a finger hewn off, and received three thrusts in his body, yet he contrived to pass his rapier twice, mortally, through the breast of his Scottish antagonist, who fell on his back, dying and choking with blood.
"I re-demanded of him," wrote Sir Edward, "if he would request his life; but it seemed he prized it not at so dear a rate to be beholden for it, bravely replying that 'he scorned it,' which answer of his was so noble and worthy, as I protest I could not find in my heart to offer him any more violence."
As Sackville was borne away fainting, he escaped, as he relates, "a great danger. Lord Bruce's surgeon, when nobody dreamt of it, came full at me with his lordship's sword, and had not mine, with my sword, interposed, I had been slain, although my Lord Bruce, weltering in his blood, and past all expectation of life, conformable to all his former carriage, which was undoubtedly noble, cried out, 'Rascal, hold thy hand!'"
Sackville was borne to a neighbouring monastery to be cured, and died in 1652 of sorrow, it was alleged, for the death of Charles the First. Kinloss died on the ground where the duel was fought, and was buried in Antwerp; but his heart was sent home to the family vault, in the old abbey church, which lies so pleasantly half hidden among ancient trees, by the margin of the Forth; and a brass plate in the wall, with a detail of the catastrophe engraved upon it, still indicates its locality to the visitor.
Still more recently there was supposed to be found in the vault of the Maitlands, at St. Mary's Church, in Haddington, an urn containing the heart of the great but terrible duke, John of Lauderdale, the scourge of the Covenanters, a truculent peer, who, for his services to the powers that were, was created Baron Petersham and Earl of Guildford, and who died at Tunbridge Wells in 1682. He was buried in the family aisle, amid the execrations of the peasantry, to whom his character rendered him odious, and his coffin on tressels was long an object of grotesque terror to the truant urchin who peeped through the narrow slit that lighted the vault where the lords of Thirlstane lie. The heart of the unhappy king, James the Second of England, which was taken from his body, and interred separately in an urn, in the church of Sainte Marie de Chaillot, near Paris, was lost at the Revolution, in 1792, while the heart of his queen, Mary d'Este, of Modena, and that of their faithful friend and adherent, Mary Gordon, daughter of Lewis, Marquis of Huntley, and wife of James, Duke of Perth (whilom Lord Justice-General, and High Chancellor of Scotland), were long kept where the ashes of the latter still repose, in the pretty little chapel of the Scottish College, at Paris, in the Rue des Fosses St. Victoire, one of the oldest portions of the city.
When the body of the Emperor Napoleon was prepared for interment at St. Helena, in May, 1821, the heart was removed by a medical officer, to be soldered up in a separate case. Madame Bertrand, in her grief and enthusiasm, had made some vow, or expressed a vehement desire, to obtain possession of this as a precious relic, and the doctor, fearing that some trick might be played him, and his commission be thereby imperilled, kept it all night in his own room, and under his own eye, in a wine-glass. The noise of crystal breaking roused him, if not from sleep, at least from a waking doze, and he started forward, only in time to rescue the heart of the emperor from a huge brown rat, which was dragging it across the floor to its hole. It was rescued by the doctor, soldered up in a silver urn, filled with spirits, by Sergeant Abraham Millington, of the St. Helena Artillery, and placed in the coffin.
During the repair of Christ's Church, at Cork, in 1829, a human heart, in a leaden case, was found embedded among the masonry; but to whom it had belonged, what was its story, the piety or love its owner wished to commemorate, no legend or inscription remained to tell.
In 1774, Sir Francis Dashwood, Lord Le Despenser, seems to have received the singular bequest of a human heart, as the obituaries of that year record, that when "Paul Whitehead, Esq., a gentleman much admired by the literati for his publications, died at his apartments in Henrietta-street, Covent Garden, among other whimsical legacies was his heart, which, with fifty pounds, he bequeathed to his lordship." But of all the relics on record, perhaps the most singular, if the story be true, is that related in the second volume of the memoirs of the Empress Josephine, published in 1829, when the Duc de Lauragnois had not only the heart of his wife, to whom he was tenderly devoted, but her entire body, "by some chemical process reduced to a sort of small stone, which was set in a ring, that the duke always wore on his finger." After this, who will say that the eighteenth century was not a romantic age?