scowling aspect, rushed among the cabbages, and dashed them to pieces with his _kent_, exclaiming, ‘I hate the worms, for they mock me!’” When he visited the neighbouring metropolis of the county, which happened very seldom towards the latter part of his life, he was generally followed by crowds of boys, who hooted and insulted him, with all that disregard of feeling and insolence of wickedness so often to be observed in children of the lower ranks in Scottish villages. On these occasions he was wont to give his persecutors the “length of his _kent_,” as he called it, when he could reach them; but they being generally too nimble for his crippled evolutions, he had often to vent his revenge in the more harmless form of curses. These were frequently of the most terrific and unusual kind. He is even said to have evinced something like _genius_ in the invention of his imprecations, some of which far surpassed Gray’s celebrated “Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!” He would swear he would “cleave them to the _harn-pans_, if he had but his _cran_ fingers on them;” that he “could pour seething lead down their throats;” that “hell would never be full till they were in it;” and frequently exclaimed that there was nothing he would “like so well as to see their souls girnin’ for a thousand eternities on the red-het brander o’ the de’il!” Among the traits of his character, there is none reminds us so strongly of the Misanthrope of the tale as this propensity to execration. The same style of discourse, and almost the same terms of imprecation, are common to both. The _Mighty Unknown_ has put expressions into the mouth of this character which, as specimens of the grand and sublime, are altogether unequalled in the whole circle of English poetry—not even excepting the magnificent thunders of Byron’s muse. Now, his prototype is well remembered, by those who have conversed with him, to have frequently used language which, sometimes sinking to delicacy and even elegance, and at others rising to a very tempest of execration and diabolical expression, might have been deemed almost miraculous from _his_ mouth, could it not have been attributed partly to the impassioned inspiration that naturally flowed from his consciousness of deformity, from keen resentment of insult, and from the despairing, loveless sterility of his heart. The history of his death-bed furnishes us with an anecdote of a beautiful and atoning character.