CHAPTER ELEVENTH.

My name is Argyle, you may well think it strange,
To live at the court and never to change.
Ballad.

Few names deserve more honourable mention in the history of Scotland,
during this period, than that of John, Duke of Argyle and Greenwich. His
talents as a statesman and a soldier were generally admitted; he was not
without ambition, but "without the illness that attends it"--without that
irregularity of thought and aim, which often excites great men, in his
peculiar situation, (for it was a very peculiar one), to grasp the means
of raising themselves to power, at the risk of throwing a kingdom into
confusion. Pope has distinguished him as

Argyle, the state's whole thunder born to wield,
And shake alike the senate and the field.

He was alike free from the ordinary vices of statesmen, falsehood,
namely, and dissimulation; and from those of warriors, inordinate and
violent thirst after self-aggrandisement.

Scotland, his native country, stood at this time in a very precarious and
doubtful situation. She was indeed united to England, but the cement had
not had time to acquire consistence. The irritation of ancient wrongs
still subsisted, and betwixt the fretful jealousy of the Scottish, and
the supercilious disdain of the English, quarrels repeatedly occurred, in