It is perhaps to the credit of human nature, that misfortune is not the trial under which mutual attachment so frequently gives way as under that of unbroken prosperity. When there is any groundwork of tenderness, the sight of the object of that tenderness in sorrow, in sickness, or in suffering, endears it more and more. The attention is fixed; the thoughts are occupied: affection is called into action; it is not allowed to drop into a slumber, which sometimes ends in lethargy. The enduring love of wives to wayward husbands, the exceeding fondness of some husbands for capricious wives, may thus be accounted for. How natural was it, then, that an anxious and thoughtful temper, produced by conscientious scruples, devoted loyalty, romantic honour, and disinterested patriotism, should concentrate upon her husband every feeling of a soul which, like the Countess of Nithsdale's, was made up of duty and of tenderness! The imprudent boldness with which many Jacobites professed their principles and their attachment to the Pretender was to Lord Nithsdale a source of much vexation. The Duchess of Gordon sent the faculty of advocates a silver medal, representing on one side the Chevalier de St. George, and on the reverse the British islands, with the motto "Reddite." The duchess was thanked for having presented them with a medal of "their sovereign lord the king;" and a confident hope was expressed that her grace would soon have an opportunity of offering them a second medal, struck upon the "restoration of the king and royal family, and the destruction of usurping tyranny and whiggery." This whole proceeding was afterwards disowned by the faculty, and by a solemn act they declared their attachment to the queen and the Protestant succession. But such uncalled-for boldness, such weak retracting of daring imprudence, in the opinion of Lord Nithsdale, augured ill for the cause to which he was bound. Such conduct could in no wise forward the hopes of his master, and it only served to keep the country in an unquiet and disturbed state. He disapproved of the measures of his party; and consequently he kept himself somewhat retired at Terreagles, associating more with his immediate neighbours than courting political connexions. With the Earl of Derwentwater alone he kept up a constant and confidential intercourse. They together deplored the infatuation of some of their friends: in loyalty and patriotism each found in the other a spirit congenial to his own.