In bearing Donald company into an age so recent, I have wandered far from the era of the curates, and must now return. Their time-serving dogmas seem to have had no very heightening effect on the morals of the burghers of Cromarty. Prior to the year 1670, the town was a royal burgh, and sent its commissioner to the Convention, and its representative to Parliament. For the ten years previous, however, its provost and bailies had set themselves with the most perfect unanimity to convert its revenues into gin and brandy, the favourite liquors of the period; and then to contract heavy debts on its various properties, that they might carry on the process on a more extensive scale. And in this year, when the whole was absorbed, they made over their lands to Sir John Urquhart, the proprietor, “in consideration,” says the document in which the transaction is recorded, “of his having instantly advanced, paid, and delivered to them 5000 merks Scots, for outredding them of their necessary and most urgent affairs.” The burgh was disfranchised shortly after by an act of the Privy Council, in answer to a petition from Sir John and the burghers. There is a tradition, that in the previous ten years of license, in which the leading men of Cromarty were so successful in imitating the leading men of the kingdom, the council met regularly once a day in the little vaulted cell beneath the cross, to discuss the affairs of the burgh; and so sorely would they be exhausted, it is said, by a press of business and the brandy, that it was generally found necessary to carry them home at night. But it was all for the good of the place; and so perseveringly were they devoted to its welfare, that their last meeting was prolonged for three days together. [Sidenote: GEORGE, EARL OF CROMARTIE.]