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
church-yard 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