Montrose returned to Scotland some time in 1636. He was then in his twenty-fourth year, of the middle height, well and strongly made, of graceful carriage and singularly expert in all bodily exercises, especially in riding. His hair was of the light reddish tinge which darkens with time, and his complexion of that clear fresh colour which is often found with red hair; his nose was aquiline, his eyes gray, bright, and keen. Though not strictly a handsome man, his appearance in later life at least must have been striking, dignified, and noble. Those who knew him only in manhood describe him as being somewhat haughty to strangers, especially if they were his equals or superiors in rank; but to his friends, and always to his inferiors, his manners were singularly courteous and engaging. In his later years of exile he is said to have been somewhat too stately and formal, and inclined, as the saying goes, to take too much upon himself. Burnet, whose friendship for the Hamiltons would not dispose him to think favourably of Montrose--though he does him more justice in the biography of those brothers than in the history of his own time--says contemptuously that he had too much of the hero about him, and that his manner was stately to affectation, insinuating also that his courage was not so certain as his friends pretended. To call Montrose a coward should be enough to put any witness out of court at once; but indeed, as Burnet was only seven years old when the man against whom he vented this silly piece of spite died, and as the society he knew best was unlikely to foster any fervent admiration for the great champion of the Throne, his evidence cannot go for much. From the accounts, however, of men better able to judge than the Bishop of Salisbury, it is clear that there was something in Montrose's manner that did not please all tastes, and perhaps seemed fantastic to some. "He was of most resolute and undaunted spirit," writes one of his friends, "which began to appear in him to the wonder and expectation of all men, even in his childhood." And again: "He was exceeding constant and loving to those who did adhere to him, and very affable to such as he knew; though his carriage, which indeed was not ordinary, made him seem proud." These expressions fall in well with Clarendon's famous character of him, and also with the impression made by him on Cardinal De Retz, when they met in Paris in 1647, as the very ideal of one of Plutarch's heroes. These are witnesses of Montrose's prime; but the carriage that is admitted to be not ordinary in a grown man would probably be still more marked in a young one. The Covenanters, through their great mouthpiece Robert Baillie, declared him to be too proud, headstrong, and wilful for their tastes. Certainly he had little of the tone or temper of the Puritan about him, and of all the young aristocrats who joined them was the least likely to submit himself blindly to their dictation, or become the mere instrument of