But I’ll build my love a bonny bower——
“Basil, awake! the old man waits you at the Playfield—arise! He hears me not—ha—I remember!” and she sank again on the floor, and was carried home by her friends.
A fair company of young men bore Basil to his grave; and by his side a weeping band of maidens carried Mary Leslie. They were lovely in their lives, and in death they were not separated. One grave contains them both, which was long hallowed by the remembrance of this tragical transaction. The sacred spot has now become common ground, and I have searched in vain for it, that I might shed one tear to the memory of the unfortunate lovers.
The goodwill of his fellow-citizens called Patrick Leslie several times to be their chief magistrate; but life to him had lost its savour, and he lingered for several years in this world as one whose hopes and enjoyments were elsewhere. It was said that Isaac Rolland, at stated intervals, visited the grave of his son, and watered it with the tear of unavailing sorrow. He afterwards involved himself with the factions that tore the kingdom asunder, and, it was supposed, perished at the battle between the Covenanters and Oliver Cromwell, at Dunbar, in 1650.—Aberdeen Censor.
THE LAST OF THE JACOBITES.
By Robert Chambers, LL.D.
I had occasion to mention, at the conclusion of my “History of the Insurrection of 1745,” that after that period the spirit of Jacobitism became a very different thing from what it had formerly been; that, acquiring no fresh adherents among the young subsequent to that disastrous year, it grew old, and decayed with the individuals who had witnessed its better days; and that, in the end, it became altogether dependent upon the existence of a few aged enthusiasts, more generally of the female than the male sex.
These relics of the party—for they could be called nothing else—soon became isolated in the midst of general society; and latterly were looked upon, by modern politicians, with a feeling similar to that with which the antediluvian patriarchs must have been regarded in the new world, after they had survived several generations of their short-lived descendants. As their glory lay in all the past, they took an especial pride in retaining every description of manners and dress which could be considered old-fashioned, much upon the principle which induced Will Honeycomb to continue wearing the wig in which he had gained a young lady’s heart. Their manners were entirely of that stately and formal sort which obtained at the commencement of the eighteenth century, and which is so inseparably associated in the mind of a modern with ideas of full-bottomed perukes, long-backed coats, gold-buckled shoes, and tall walking canes. Mr Pitt’s tax, which had so strong an effect upon the heads of the British public, did not perhaps unsettle one grain of truly Jacobite powder; nor is it hypothetical to suppose that the general abandonment of snuff-taking by the ladies, which happened rather before that period, wrenched a single box from the fingers of any ancient dame, whose mind had been made up on politics, as her taste had been upon black rappee, before the year of grace 1745.
In proportion as the world at large ceased to regard the claims of the house of Stuart, and as old age advanced upon those who still cherished them, the spirit of Jacobitism, once so lofty and so chivalrous, assimilated more and more with the mere imbecility of dotage. What it thus lost, however, in extensive application, it gained in virulence; and it perhaps never burned in any bosoms with so much fervour as in those few which last retained it. True, the generosity which characterised it in earlier and better times had now degenerated into a sort of acrid humour, like good wine turned into vinegar. Yet, if an example were wanting of the true inveterate Jacobite, it could not be found anywhere in such perfection as amongst the few who survived till recent times, and who had carried the spirit unscathed and unquenched through three-quarters of a century of every other kind of political sentiment.
As no general description can present a very vivid portraiture to the mind, it may be proper here to condescend upon the features of the party, by giving a sketch of an individual Jacobite who was characterised in the manner alluded to, and who might be considered a fair specimen of his brethren. The person meant to be described, might be styled the Last of the Jacobites; for, at the period of his death in 1825, there was not known to exist, at least in Edinburgh, any person, besides himself, who refused to acknowledge the reigning family. His name was Alexander Halket. He had been, in early life, a merchant in the remote town of Fraserburgh, on the Moray Firth; but had retired for many years before his death, to live upon a small annuity in Edinburgh. The propensity which characterised him, in common with all the rest of his party, to regard the antiquities of his native land with reverence, joined with the narrowness of his fortune in inducing him to take up his abode in the Old Town.