I have said that the proprietor of the lands of Cromarty, in the early part of the reign of Charles II., was a Sir John Urquhart of Craigfintrie, celebrated by Wodrow, though the celebrity be of no enviable character, as the person whose advice, strengthened by that of Sir George Mackenzie of Tarbat, led Commissioner Middleton to introduce the unhappy Act which overturned Presbyterianism in Scotland. He was a shrewd, strong-minded man, thoroughly acquainted with all the worse and some of the better springs of human action--cool, and cautious, and skilful, in steering himself through the difficulties of so unsettled a period by the shifts and evasions of a well-balanced expediency. The current of the age had set in towards religion, and Sir John was by much too prudent to oppose the current. There were few men who excelled him in that most difficult art of computation, the art of estimating the strength of parties; perhaps he was all the more successful in his calculations from his never suffering himself to be disturbed in them by an over-active zeal; and believing, with Tamerlane and Sir Thomas, that the Deity usually declares for the stronger party, Sir John was always religious enough to be of the stronger party too. About twelve years before his death, which took place in 1673, there resided in his family a young licentiate of the Scottish Church, a nephew of his own, who officiated as chaplain. Dallas Urquhart was naturally a soft-tempered, amiable man, of considerable attainments, and of no inferior powers of mind, but his character lacked the severer virtues; and it was his fate to live in an age in which a good-natured facility of disposition was of all qualities the worst fitted to supply their place. He was deemed a person of more than ordinary promise in an age when the qualifications of the Presbyterian minister were fixed at least as high as in any after period;--there was a charm, too, in his pliant and docile disposition, which peculiarly recommended him to his older friends and advisers; for even the wise are apt to overvalue whatever flatters themselves, and to decide regarding that modest facility which so often proves in after life the curse of its possessor, according to an estimate very different from that by which they rate the wilful, because partially developed strength which thwarts and opposes them. Dallas therefore had many friends; but the person to whom he was chiefly attached was the young minister of Cromarty--the “good Maister Hugh Anderson,” whose tombstone, a dark-coloured slab, roughened with uncouth sculpture, and a neat Latin inscription, may still be seen in the eastern gable of the parish church, and to whom I have already referred as one of the few faithful in this part of the country in a time of fiery trial. The two friends had passed through college together, associates in study and recreation, and, what is better still, for they were both devout