there was not in them that charm of humanity which captivates the
heart. One must study the work of William of Orange if he is to
understand the history of his nation, but one would not go round the
corner to meet him. Claverhouse, if one faces the facts and sweeps
away the glamour, was only a dashing cavalry officer, who happened
to win an insignificant battle by obvious local tactics, and yet
there are few men whom one would prefer to meet. One would make a long
journey to catch a sight of Claverhouse riding down the street, as one
to-day is caught by the fascination of his portrait. But the reader
has already discovered that Graham can hardly be called a hero by
any of the ordinary tests except beauty of personal appearance. He
was not an ignorant man, as certain persons have concluded from the
varied and picturesque habits of his spelling, but his friends
cannot claim that he was endowed with rich intellectual gifts. He
had sense enough to condemn the wilder excesses of his colleagues
in the government of the day, but he had not force enough to replace
their foolishness by a wiser policy. Had his powers been more
commanding, or indeed if he had had any talent for constructive
action, with his unwavering integrity and masterful determination,
he might have ousted Lauderdale and saved Scotland for King James.
But accomplished intriguers and trained politicians were always too
much for Claverhouse, and held him as a lithe wild animal is caught in
the meshes of a net.

Wild partisans, to whom every man is either white as snow or black as
pitch, have gone mad over Graham, making him out, according to their
craze, either an angel or a devil, and forgetting that most men are
half and between. But it must be also said that those who hold John
Graham to have been a Jacobite saint are the more delirious in their
minds, and hysterical in their writing, for they will not hear that he
ever did anything less than the best, or that the men he persecuted
had any right upon their side. He is from first to last a perfect
paladin of romance whom everyone is bound to praise. Then artists rush
in and not only make fine trade of his good looks, but lend his beauty
to the clansmen who fought at Killiecrankie, till the curtain falls
upon "Bonnie Dundee" being carried to his grave by picturesque and
broken-hearted Highlanders dressed in the costly panoply of the
Inverness Gathering, and with faces of the style of George MacDonald
or Lord L