ms to
have been, not courage, nor activity, nor skill, but simply authority.
He should have known that of all wants this is the most fatal.
Armies have triumphed under leaders who possessed no very eminent
qualifications. But what army commanded by a debating club ever escaped
discomfiture and disgrace?

The great calamity which had fallen on Argyle had this advantage, that
it enabled him to show, by proofs not to be mistaken, what manner of
man he was. From the day when he quitted. Friesland to the day when his
followers separated at Kilpatrick, he had never been a free agent. He
had borne the responsibility of a long series of measures which his
judgment disapproved. Now at length he stood alone. Captivity had
restored to him the noblest kind of liberty, the liberty of governing
himself in all his words and actions according to his own sense of the
right and of the becoming. From that moment he became as one inspired
with new wisdom and virtue. His intellect seemed to be strengthened and
concentrated, his moral character to be at once elevated and softened.
The insolence of the conquerors spared nothing that could try the temper
of a man proud of ancient nobility and of patriarchal dominion. The
prisoner was dragged through Edinburgh in triumph. He walked on
foot, bareheaded, up the whole length of that stately street which,
overshadowed by dark and gigantic piles of stone, leads from Holyrood
House to the Castle. Before him marched the hangman, bearing the ghastly
instrument which was to be used at the quartering block. The victorious
party had not forgotten that, thirty-five years before this time, the
father of Argyle had been at the head of the faction which put Montrose
to death. Before that event the houses of Graham and Campbell had borne
no love to each other; and they had ever since been at deadly feud. Care
was taken that the prisoner should pass through the same gate and the
same streets through which Montrose had been led to the same doom. [349]
When the Earl reached the Castle his legs were put in irons, and he was
informed that he had but a few days to live. It had been determined not
to bring him to trial for his recent offence, but to put him to death
under the sentence pronounced against him several years before, a
sentence so flagitiously unjust that the most servile and obdurate
lawyers of that bad age could not speak of it without shame.

But neither the ignominious procession up the High Street,