These were the first false steps of Charles in Scotland. They shook irretrievably the confidence of his subjects in his personal integrity, and in his reverence for the law and the purity of its administration; and the whole of these proceedings are eminently instructive, as evincing to what trivial circumstances, in some respects, convulsions and revolutions, of an extended and sweeping character, may often be ascribed as the source. It is exceedingly difficult now to estimate fully the motives of either party in these transactions. The Scottish Estates were not averse to yield the point of royal supremacy exacted by James and Charles; but when the latter claimed as his prerogative the power to regulate the draperies of the priesthood, it was vehemently resisted by parliament and people as an encroachment on their religious liberties. And to this paltry subject, which was more appropriate to a college of tailors than to the cabinet of a monarch or the arena of a senate, we may trace the first beginnings of that succession of revolutions which, for upwards of half a century afterwards, overflowed the land with torrents of blood and of tears.[8] The arbitrary principles in which Charles had been trained by his father, were so deeply impressed on his character, that, though in other respects an able and amiable man, they were never eradicated from his mind by all his experience of their consequences. Prompted by the bigoted intolerance of Laud, surrounded by court sycophants, who sought favour by subserviency to his prejudices, and betrayed in Scotland by a set of the most unprincipled knaves, both lay and clerical, that ever were destined to mislead a sovereign into disgrace and destruction, Charles took not warning in his government from the lessons that had been taught him in the transaction to which we have thus briefly alluded; and he must needs enforce by coercion in Scotland that uniformity in religious ceremonials with the Episcopal Church of England, on which his father had bestowed so much of his royal wisdom.[9] His enterprises in this respect led to consequences which he little anticipated, and which terminated most fatally for his own authority and honour. We allude to his attempt to introduce the Liturgy and canons, which were concocted for the Church in Scotland, under the auspices of Archbishop Laud—an attempt which, within a very brief space after Balmerino’s trial and sentence had excited universal alarm, rallied the whole population of Scotland under the banner of “THE COVENANT,” in open resistance to their throned monarch; presenting to our contemplation one of the most remarkable and sublime moral spectacles that is to be found in the history of ancient or modern times—an entire nation simultaneously banding themselves together, and leagued by solemn religious vows, for the vindication and maintenance of their liberties, civil and religious, yet cherishing and avowing