The allusion to his funeral had something touching, coming from the old Highland chieftain. Almost the solitary good trait in Lovat's character was the fondness for his Highland home--a pride in his clan--a yearning to the last for the mountains, the straths, the burns, now ravaged by the despoiler, and red with the blood of the Frasers. "Bury me," he said, "in my own tomb in the church of Kirk Hill; in former days, I had made a codicil to my will, that all the pipers from John O'Groat's house to Edinburgh should be invited to play at my funeral: that may not be now--but still I am sure there will be some good old Highland women to sing a coronach at my funeral; and there will be a crying and clapping of hands--for I am one of the greatest of the Highland chieftains." The circumstance which gave him the most uneasiness was the bill then depending for destroying the ancient privileges and jurisdiction of the Highland chiefs. "For my part," he exclaimed, when referring to the measure, "I die a martyr to my country." He became much attached to one of his warders, and the usual influence which he seems to have possessed over every being with whom he came into collision, attracted the regards of this man to him. "Go with me to the scaffold," said Lovat--"and leave me not till you see this head cut off the body. Tell my son, the Master of Lovat, with what tenderness I have parted from you." "Do you think," he exclaimed, on the man's expressing some sympathy with his approaching fate, "I am afraid of an axe? 'Tis a debt we all owe, and what we must all pay; and do you not think it better to go off so, than to linger with a fever, gout, or consumption? Though my constitution is so good, I might have lived twenty years longer had I not been brought hither." During the week which elapsed between the warrant for his being brought down to the Tower, and his death, although, says a gentleman who attended him to the scaffold, "he had a great share of memory and understanding, and an awful idea of religion and a future state, I never could observe, in his gesture or speech, the least symptom of fear, or indeed any symptoms of uneasiness."[260] "I die," was his own expression, "as a Christian, and a Highland chieftain should do,--that is, not in my bed." Throughout the whole of that solemn interval, the certainty of his fate never dulled the remarkable vivacity of his conversation, nor the gay courtesy of his manners. No man ever died less consistently with his life. "It is impossible,"--such is the admission of a writer who detests his crimes,--"not to admire the fearlessness even of this monster in his last moments. But, in another view, it is somewhat difficult to resist a laugh of scorn at his impudent project of atoning for all the vices of a long and odious career, by going off with a fine sentiment on his lips."[261]