Walter could scarcely repress a shudder when he surveyed those frightful engines, under the application of which, so many unfortunates had writhed; but he confronted with an undaunted air the various members of that stern tribunal, which had so long ruled Scotland by the sword, and many of whose acts and edicts might well vie with those of the Inquisition, the Star-chamber, or any other instrument of tyranny and misgovernment. Two earls, Perth, the Lord Chancellor, and Balcarris, the High Treasurer, were present; they were both fine-looking men, in the prime of life, richly dressed, and wearing those preposterous black wigs (brought into fashion by Charles II.), the ends of which rolled in many curls over their broad collars of point lace. The Bishop of Edinburgh, the Lord Advocate, and his predecessor, the terrible Sir George Mackenzie, of Rosehaugh, "that persecutor of the saints of God;"--(he whose tomb was, till of late years, a place so full of terror to the schoolboy,) occupied one side of the council-board. Opposite sat John Grahame, of Claverhouse, colonel of the Scottish life-guards, the horror of the Covenanters, (and to this hour the accursed of the Cameronians,) but the handsomest man of his time. His face was singularly beautiful, and his black, magnificent eyes, were one moment languid and tender as those of a love-sick girl, and the next sparkling with dusky fire and animation. When excited, they actually seemed to blaze, and were quite characteristic of his superhuman daring and unmatched ferocity. Cruel as the character of the Laird of Claverhouse has ever been held up to us, let us not forget the times in which he lived, and how much room there is for malevolent exaggeration. Even Wodrow allows that at times he showed compunction, mercy, and compassion. Mutual injuries, assassinations, and outrages heightened the hostility of spirit between the Scottish troops and the Scottish people to a frightful extent; but it is a curious fact, that the local militia and vassals of the landholders were, by far, the most severe tools of persecution. The _real_ sentiments of the troops of the line, were powerfully evinced by their joining _en masse_ the banner of the Protestant invader. In making these remarks, let it not be thought we are attempting to gloss over the atrocities of the persecution, the records of which are enough to make one's blood boil even at this distant period of time. The darkest days of our history are those of which the industrious Wodrow wrote; but glorious indeed was the ardour and constancy with which so many of Scotland's best and bravest men gave up their souls to God in the cause of the "oppressed kirk and the broken covenant."