■WILLIAM AND MAKY.

11

cavern, lighting a fire at the entrance, and suffocating the chap.whole race, men, women and children* It is much less - 1Gy2 ”strange that the two great Earls of the house of Campbell,animated by the passions of Highland chieftains, should haveplanned a Highland revenge , than that they should have foundan accomplice, and something more than an accomplice, inthe Master of Stair.

The Master of Stair was one of the first men of his time, ajurist, a statesman, a fine scholar, an eloquent orator. Hispolished manners and lively conversation were the delight ofaristocratical societies; and none who met him in such societieswould have thought it possible that he could bear the chief partin any atrocious crime. His political principles were lax, yetnot more lax than those of most Scotch politicians of that age.Cruelty had never been imputed to him. Those who mostdisliked him did him the justice to own that, where his schemesof policy were not concerned, he was a very goodnatured man.**

There is not the slightest reason to believe that he gained asingle pound Scots by the act which has covered his name withinfamy. He had no personal reason to wish the Glencoe menill. There had been no feud between them and his family. Hisproperty lay in a district where their tartan ivas never seen. Yethe hated them with a hatred as fierce and implacable as if theyhad laid waste his fields, burned his mansion, murdered hischild in the cradle.

To what cause are we to ascribe so strange an antipathy?

This question perplexed the Master’s contemporaries, and anyanswer which may now be offered ought to be offered withdiffidence.*** The most probable conjecture is that he was

* Johnson’s Tour to the Hebrides.

** Lockhart's Memoirs.

*** “What under heaven was the Master’s byass in this matter? I canimagine none.” — Impartial Account, 1G95. “Nor can any man of candourand ingenuity imagine that the Earl of Stair, who had neither estate, friend-