The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 01Stevenson, Robert Louis
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The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 01
Stevenson, Robert Louis
English literature -- 19th century
For this _infelix campus_, as it is dubbed in one of its own
inscriptions--an inscription over which Dr. Johnson passed a critical
eye--is in many ways sacred to the memory of the men whom Mackenzie
persecuted. It was here, on the flat tombstones, that the Covenant was
signed by an enthusiastic people. In the long arm of the churchyard that
extends to Lauriston, the prisoners from Bothwell Bridge--fed on bread
and water, and guarded, life for life, by vigilant marksmen--lay five
months looking for the scaffold or the plantations. And while the good
work was going forward in the Grassmarket, idlers in Greyfriars might
have heard the throb of the military drums that drowned the voices of
the martyrs. Nor is this all: for down in the corner farthest from Sir
George, there stands a monument, dedicated, in uncouth Covenanting
verse, to all who lost their lives in that contention. There is no
moorsman shot in a snow shower beside Irongray or Co'monell; there is
not one of the two hundred who were drowned off the Orkneys; nor so much
as a poor, over-driven, Covenanting slave in the American plantations;
but can lay claim to a share in that memorial, and, if such things
interest just men among the shades, can boast he has a monument on earth
as well as Julius Caesar or the Pharaohs. Where they may all lie, I know
not. Far-scattered bones, indeed! But if the reader cares to learn how
some of them--or some part of some of them--found their way at length to
such honourable sepulture, let him listen to the words of one who was
their comrade in life and their apologist when they were dead. Some of
the insane controversial matter I omit, as well as some digressions,
but leave the rest in Patrick Walker's language and orthography:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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