This Christmas-day, the minister and reader of Dumfries having refused to teach or read, ‘the town ... brought a reader of their own, with tabret and whistle, and caused him read the prayers.’ This extraordinary exercise they maintained during all the days of Yule. It was complained of at the subsequent General Assembly, and referred to the Regent.--_Cal._ * * * * * [Sidenote: 1574.] In this year died David Home of Wedderburn, a gentleman of good account in Berwickshire, and father of the David Home of Godscroft, to whom Scottish literature owes the _History of the House of Douglas_. The son has left us a portraiture of the father, which, even when we make a good allowance for filial partiality, must be held as shewing that society was not then without estimable members. ‘He died in the fiftieth year of his age, of a consumption, being the first (as is said) of his family who had died a natural death--all the rest having lost their lives in defence of their country. [Sidenote: 1574.] ‘He was a man remarkable for piety and probity, ingenuity [candour], and integrity; neither was he altogether illiterate, being well versed in the Latin tongue.... He had the Psalms, and particularly some short sentences of them, always in his mouth; such as: “It is better to trust in the Lord than in the princes of the earth:” “Our hope ought to be placed in God alone.” He particularly delighted in the 146th psalm, and sung it whilst he played on the harp with the most sincere and unaffected devotion. He was strictly just, utterly detesting all manner of fraud. I remember, when a conversation happened among some friends about prudence and fraud, his son George happened to say, that it was not unlawful to do a good action, and for a good end, although it might be brought about by indirect methods, and that this was sometimes necessary. “What,” says he, “George, do you call ane indirect way? It is but fraud and deceit covered under a specious name, and never to be admitted or practised by a good man.” He himself always acted on this principle, and was so strictly just, and so little desirous of what was his neighbour’s, that, in the time of the civil wars, when Alexander, his chief, was forfeit for his defection from the queen’s party, he might have had his whole patrimony, and also the abbacy of Coldingham, but refused both the one and the other. When Patrick Lindsay desired that he would ask something from the governor [Morton], as he was sure whatever he asked would be granted, he refused to ask anything, saying that he was content with his own. When Lindsay insisted, says he: “Since you will have it so, I will ask something; but you must first assure me I will not be refused.” Then Lindsay swore to him that he should have whatever he desired. “Let me have, then,” says he, “the abbacy of Haddington.” “That you cannot get,” says Lindsay, “as I received it myself some time ago. But ask something seriously; for if