It has frequently happened, that the virtues of the individual, at least their excess (if, indeed, there can be an excess in virtue), have been fatal to the prince. Never was this more fully exemplified than in the history of Charles I. His zeal for religion, his family affection, the spirit with which he defended his supposed rights, while they do honour to the man, were the fatal shelves upon which the monarchy was wrecked. Impatient to accomplish the total revolution, which his father's cautious timidity had left incomplete, Charles endeavoured at once to introduce into Scotland the church-government, and to renew, in England, the temporal domination, of his predecessor, Henry VIII. The furious temper of the Scottish nation first took fire; and the brandished footstool of a prostitute[A] gave the signal for civil dissension, which ceased not till the church was buried under the ruins of the constitution; till the nation had stooped to a military despotism; and the monarch to the block of the executioner. [Footnote A: "_Out, false loon! wilt thou say the mass at my lug (ear)_," was the well known exclamation of Margaret Geddes, as she discharged her missile tripod against the bishop of Edinburgh, who, in obedience to the orders of the privy-council, was endeavouring to rehearse the common prayer. Upon a seat more elevated, the said Margaret had shortly before done penance, before the congregation, for the sin of fornication: such, at least, is the tory tradition.] The consequence of Charles' hasty and arbitrary measures were soon evident. The united nobility, gentry, and clergy of Scotland, entered into the SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT, by which memorable deed, they subscribed and swore a national renunciation of the hierarchy. The walls of the prelatic Jericho (to use the language of the times) were thus levelled with the ground, and the curse of Hiel, the Bethelite, denounced against those who should rebuild them. While the clergy thundered, from the pulpits, against the prelatists and malignants (by which names were distinguished the scattered and heartless adherents of Charles), the nobility and gentry, in arms, hurried to oppose the march of the English army, which now advanced towards their borders. At the head of their defensive forces they placed Alexander Lesley, who, with many of his best officers, had been trained to war under the great Gustavus Adolphus. They soon assembled an army of 26,000 men, whose camp, upon Dunse-law, is thus described by an eye-witness.