they shall say, "He was brave as those who fought by the side of Harold, and swept from the sward of England the hosts of the haughty Norman."

Ex. CXCIII.-SPEECH OF RINGAN GILHAIZE.*

GALT.

You, Mr. Renwick, counsel moderation ;-you recommend the door of peace to be still kept open;-you doubt if the Scriptures warrant us to undertake revenge; and you hope that our forbearance may work to repentance among our enemies. Mr. Renwick, you have hitherto been a preacher, not a sufferer; with you the resistance to Charles Stuart's government has been a thing of doctrine,-of no more than doctrine; with us it has been a consideration of facts. Judge, therefore, between yourself and us,—I say, between yourself and us; for I ask no other judge to decide whether we are or not, by all the laws of God and man, justified in avowing that we mean to do as we are done by.

And, Mr. Renwick, you will call to mind, that in this sore controversy, the cause of debate came not from us. We were peaceable Christians, enjoying the shade of the vine and the fig-tree of the gospel, planted by the care and cherished by the blood of our forefathers, protected by the laws, and gladdened in our protection by the oaths and the covenants which the king had sworn to maintain. The Presbyterian freedom of worship was our property,-we were in possession and enjoyment, no man could call our right to it in question,—the king had vowed, as a condition, before he was allowed to receive the crown, that he would preserve it. Yet, for more than twenty years, there has been a most cruel, fraudulent, and outrageous endeavor instituted, and carried on, to deprive us of that freedom and birthright.

We were asking no new thing from government, we were taking no step to disturb government; we were in peace with all men, when government, with the principles of a robber, and the cruelty of a tyrant, demanded of us to surrender those immunities of conscience which our fathers had earned and defended; to deny the gospel as it is written in the evan

* Addressed to the "moderator" of the last meeting of the persecuted remnant of covenanters, during their discussion of the question of further resistance to the royal government.

gelists, and to accept the commentary of Charles Stuart, a man who has had no respect to the most solemn oaths, and of James Sharp, the apostate of St. Andrews, whose crimes provoked a deed, that, but for their crimson hue, no man could have doubted to call a most foul murder. The king and his crew, Mr. Renwick, are, to the indubitable judgment of all just men, the causers and the aggressors in the existing difference between his subjects and him. In so far, therefore, if blame there be, it lieth not with us, nor in our cause.

But, sir, not content with attempting to wrest from us ou inherited freedom of religious worship, Charles Stuart and his abetters have pursued the courageous constancy with which we have defended the same, with more animosity than they ever did any crime. I speak not to you, Mr. Renwick, of your own outcast condition;--perhaps you delight in the perils of martyrdom: I speak not to those around us, who, in their persons, their substance, and their families, have endured the torture, poverty, and irremediable dishonor;—they may be meek and hallowed men, willing to endure. But I call to mind what I am and was myself. I think of my quiet home: -it is all ashes. I remember my brave first-born ;-he was slain at Bothwell-brig. Why need I speak of my honest brother?--the waves of the ocean, commissioned by our persecutors, have triumphed over him in the cold seas of the Orkneys; and as for my wife,--what was she to you? Ye can not be greatly disturbed that she is in her grave. No, ye are quiet, calm, and prudent persons; it would be a most indiscreet thing of you, you who have suffered no wrongs yourselves, to stir on her account: and then how unreasonable I should be, were I to speak of two fair and innocent maidens. It is weak of me to weep, though they were my daughters. O men and Christians, brothers, fathers!-but ye are content to bear with such wrongs; and I alone, of all here, may go to the gates of the cities, and try to discover which of the martyred heads moldering there belongs to a friend or a son. Nor is it of any account whether the bones of those who were so dear to us, be exposed with the remains of malefactors, or laid in the sacred grave. To the dead all places are alike; and to the slave, what signifies who is master?

Let us, therefore, forget the past,-let us keep open the door of reconciliation,-smother all the wrongs we have endured, and kiss the proud foot of the trampler. We have our lives, we have been spared; the merciless bloodhoods have not yet reached us. Let us, therefore, be humble and

thankful, and cry to Charles Stuart, O king, live for ever!for he has but cast us into a fiery furnace and a lion's den.

In truth, friends, Mr. Renwick is quite right. This feeling of indignation against our oppressors is a most imprudent thing. If we desire to enjoy our own contempt, to deserve the derision of men, and to merit the abhorrence of Heaven, let us yield ourselves to all that Charles Stuart and his sect require. We can do nothing better, nothing so meritorious, -nothing by which we can reasonably hope for punishment here, and condemnation hereafter. But if there is one man at this meeting,-I am speaking not of shapes and forms, but of feelings,-if there is one here that feels as men were wont to feel, he will draw his sword, and say with me, Woe to the house of Stuart !-Woe to the oppressors!--Blood for blood!-Judge and avenge our cause, O Lord!

Ex. CXCIV.—ST. JOHN.

J. G. WHITTIER.

[The events recounted in the following ballad, occurred in “Acadia,” about the middle of the seventeenth century. Charles St. Estienne, Lord De La Tour, a French officer, and a Protestant, had his fortified seat at the mouth of St John's river. His antagonist, D'Aulney Charnisy, of the same nation, but a Roman Catholic, occupied a fort at the mouth of the Penobscot, or ancient Pentagoet. The feud between these nobles was inveterate and deadly. D'Aulney, taking advantage of a temporary absence of Estienne, attacked the castle of his rival, and, after a brave resistanee, by Lady La Tour, took it by assault. The captive lady, within a few days, died of grief, before the return of her husband.]

"To the winds give our banner!

Bear homeward again!"

Cried the lord of Acadia,

Cried Charles of Estienne;

From the prow of his shallop
He gazed, as the sun,
From its bed in the ocean
Streamed up the St. John.

O'er the blue western waters
That shallop had passed,
Where the mists of Penobscot
Clung damp on the mast.

St. Saviour* had looked

On the heretic sail,

As the songs of the Huguenot
Rose on the gale.

The pale, ghostly fathers
Remembered her well,

And had cursed her while passing,
With taper and bell;

But the men of Monhegan,t

Of papists abhorred,

Had welcomed and feasted

The heretic lord.

They had loaded his shallop
With dun-fish and ball,
With stores for his larder
And steel for his wall.
Pemequid, from her bastions
And turrets of stone,
Had welcomed his coming
With banner and gun.

And the prayer of the elders
Had followed his way,
As homeward he glided
Down Pentecost bay.
O, well sped La Tour!
For, in peril and pain,
His lady kept watch
For his coming again.

O'er the Isle of the Pheasant
The morning sun shone,
On the plane-trees which shaded
The shores of St. John.
"Now, why from yon battlements
Speaks not my love?
Why waves there no banner
My fortress above ?"

A Jesuit settlement on the island of Mount Desert.

The isle of Monhegan, one of the earliest English settlements on the coast of Maine.