That the descendant of a long line of monarchs should thus be hunted from country to country--that the lawful sovereign of one of the fairest realms of Europe should not have where to lay his head, over-came all other considerations; and it was with zealous passion that he joined himself with the Earls of Mar, Carnwarth, Kenmure, and the other most ardent Jacobites. It was the generous impulse of compassion for the injured,--indignation, reckless of the consequences, which prompted his conduct, rather than hope of seeing their efforts crowned with success. While others were elated at the unpopularity of the king, whose foreign language, manners, and habits were not calculated to please the multitude, and who, by the favour shown exclusively to the Whigs, had indisposed the Tories, with whom lay the great mass of landed property; Lord Nithsdale perceived that the new monarch was determined, spirited, and active. While others relied on the secret assistance which Louis the Fourteenth, notwithstanding his engagements with England, afforded to the Chevalier; Lord Nithsdale was convinced, from the effectual measures taken to defeat them, that the Chevalier's designs must be by some means communicated to the government: and, in truth, the Earl of Stair, the English ambassador at Paris, found means to discover, and transmitted to his own court, all the plans and intentions of the Pretender while yet in embryo. Not many months after the king's accession, some tumults and riots took place, which tended greatly to raise the spirits of the more sanguine; and even to Lord Nithsdale himself seemed to augur well for the ultimate result. Those who celebrated the king's birth-day were insulted; while on the following day, which was the anniversary of the Restoration, the whole city was illuminated, and its streets re-echoed with the sounds of mirth and rejoicing. The government, aware that the spirit of disaffection was making considerable progress, adopted measures of some severity towards the Scottish Jacobites; they resolved that all who were in any degree liable to suspicion should be summoned to appear at Edinburgh, and there required to give bail for their peaceable behaviour. The Earl and Countess of Nithsdale were one evening on the bowling-green of their castle of Terreagles, watching the gambols of their children; the little Lord Maxwell, a stout bold boy, was exerting all his might to drag one of the garden-seats up the steep grass bank. He had turned it upside down; had stuck in it a tall staff, with a handkerchief for its streamer; and having christened it "his gallant vessel the Royal James," had laden it with all the bowls and bowling-pins he could find scattered upon the grass.